The Cauldron

by Jean Rabe

  Fast, fast, fast, his mother had called otherspace travel, shaving decades and centuries off conventional spaceflight. Only a handful of otherspace navigators were working on ships; Elthor was not producing individuals with the talent. And news of another navigator’s death reached him before his fourth journey.

  Pregnant women were often sent on missions in the hopes that they would give birth in the space between, creating others with Delphoros’s abilities. Delphoros prayed they would not be successful; he did not want to doom another to an existence without the use of legs.

  However, he found some amount of delight in his circumstance. His mind touched other life on distant worlds, feeling their shapes and imagining the textures of their skins—scales and fur and leathery hides—and marveling at how they raced, flew, and burrowed. He touched alien races, too, most of them having forms similar to Elthorans, though certainly not the density. And he touched the foggy outlines in otherspace. So much life everywhere, Delphoros continued to be amazed. Even the Elthoran ships lived, the ones they used for the great distance travels; they’d been culled from a neighboring world and enslaved, much in the same manner other races captured and tamed mounts and working beasts.

  He and his ship shared a lack of freedom, always going where the shipkeeper and the mission demanded, ripping a hole in otherspace and coming out the other side. Rarely was he told what a mission was about, though he supposed if he asked he would have been supplied that information. He didn’t care about such particulars, only about the lives he sensed along the way and wondered over.

  By his fifth mission he could no longer twitch his fingers or work his jaw, not that he needed to.

  By the seventh he’d realized the nature of otherspace, and by the tenth he decided to act. Greater controls were put on him, as word of his beliefs were spreading, passed through the liaison to his crewmen … and then to their families. Something was added to his nutrients to help control him. His tank was altered. He was, in effect, imprisoned and called a renegade.

  But he was resourceful, though he was trapped. It was just a matter of timing and of a willingness to sacrifice himself and his living ship and the scant few crewmembers that he absconded with. Their lives in exchange for—what?—for an end to otherspace travel? Elthorans would continue to traverse otherspace as long as they had navigators.

  But navigators were a dying breed. Three left, wasn’t there? They’d been dying off, and some had been raided by Alzur ships.

  And with Delphoros’s death they would lose their brightest. One fewer crew to go fast, fast, fast through the stars.

  A trivial sacrifice—the lives of his ship and crewmen and himself—considering what could be saved. No real sacrifice at all, he decided by the eleventh mission when he navigated the ship to crash.

  Except the crash did not kill Delphoros.

  … and in the center ring …

  It instead birthed the Divine Bear and Petey and Carl and Ellen’s John.

  “Wake up Carl!”

  Shelly?

  Ellen?

  Sarah?

  “Wake up, Carl!” Charlie hovered over him, Ellen at his side. “Wake up!”

  ***

  Chapter 35

  Melusine

  Her rest had been necessary and insufficient. The shipkeeper tugged her from a pleasant dream about Elthor and a man whose company she enjoyed there.

  “It is too soon,” she said. Melusine did not need to tell the shipkeeper that she was still exhausted from her forays into the minds of Jerrah and an elderly librarian; both visits gaining yet more perceptions about Carl Johnson. The shipkeeper had to see how weak she appeared and that she needed his aid to rise from her restrainment pod. “I need more rest. Last time … last time I tried to slip inside Carl Johnson, as you instructed. His mind was too strong. It was painful. I am so tired and—”

  “I realize that was wrong for me to make that request. You cannot delve into the mind of another Elthoran.”

  She relaxed a little. “Then a few more hours of—”

  “We do not have the time for the indulgence of rest.”

  Her shadowlids fluttered to adjust to the bright glow of the ship’s interior. “Carl Johnson’s mind cannot be directly breached, shipkeeper, and—”

  “I say again that I erred by making that request. You will use the Jerrah woman again to get close. Through her you will talk directly to him. It is time to reach out to him. No more studying. No more gathering information. We have our confirmation. He is the Bright One. Tell him who you really are and that it is time for him to return to Elthor.”

  “Where will you land the ship?”

  The shipkeeper looked over his shoulder to the navigator. “We will find a place remote, yet near the … resort.”

  “And I will bring Carl Johnson—”

  “Delphoros—”

  “I will bring Delphoros there. While it is still night?”

  He nodded.

  “And in this storm?”

  Another nod. “Less chance to be noticed. It must be soon, Melusine. In a few hours it will be light below.”

  “What if—”

  “—Delphoros does not want to come with you? We have been over this before, Melusine. You will be persuasive.”

  Melusine heard the impatience in the shipkeeper’s voice. His face—was it marked with anger? His eyes were wild.

  “You can be persuasive, Melusine, such is one of your many skills. You will make him remember home and navigating otherspace and the stars. He must know that he is crucial to Elthor. And he must be made to realize he has no choice in this matter.”

  She set aside her reluctance and waited for the tendrils of the augmentor to tickle her scalp so she could continue with the mission—to make direct contact with Delphoros and bring him back. She wanted to see the mission through and to be successful; she had never wanted anything more. Melusine had been away from Elthor so long, she missed it profoundly, and gaining Delphoros would mean a triumphant return. Her hesitance was born only of fatigue, merging her mind into the body of someone below—even someone like Jerrah who had become familiar to her and was easy to manipulate—was physically and emotionally taxing, especially the longer she maintained it. And the attempt to merge with Carl had been grueling and impossible.

  That failed attempt, more than any of the shipkeeper’s words, made her realize Carl and Delphoros were indeed one—the Bright One. She had never touched a mind so strong.

  But truly she had not rested long enough since her previous foray. She would not be able to maintain a link with Jerrah for very long. Could she achieve a link at all?

  And yet the shipkeeper was insistent.

  She knew better than to argue with him and ask for more rest time. No doubt he was right, best to accomplish this while it was night below … now. Leave the system through otherspace and be gone to Elthor.

  To be successful, she thought. Would all of Elthor praise her?

  “He has merely lost himself, Delphoros,” the shipkeeper said, as the tendrils persisted against Melusine’s scalp. “Forgotten who he truly is, the identities he assumed through the years like layers of earth burying his real self. But we are close to awakening him and casting aside all those layers.”

  How did the shipkeeper know they were close to making Carl realize who he truly was? Melusine had not yet directly communicated with Carl Johnson/Delphoros. But in her earlier explorations it had seemed clear that the man believed he was merely a human, one that had been reincarnated multiple times.

  “We are so very near to succeeding,” the shipkeeper continued. “I know it. And it is all up to you, Melusine.” Then he turned toward the navigator’s tank and left her to reconnect with Jerrah.

  So tired! The tendrils sensed her hesitation and waited for an assurance from her. Melusine tried to empty her thoughts and accept the connection. Her distraction complicated the process. She pictured the man she’d dreamed about, and she worried over the shipkeeper’s orders; she did
not want to fail him.

  Behind her the shipkeeper and navigator were engrossed in a conversation she could not overhear, yet left her curious. The shipkeeper and navigator had conversed several times, sharing some secret; she could tell that because they quit talking whenever she came too near. Did they whisper a secret now? Involving Delphoros? Regarding herself or this mission? No. She suspected they were merely looking for a secluded place to land this ship so Delphoros could come on board and they could be on their way home. Again thoughts of the man on Elthor resurfaced and curled the corners of her lips. Had he waited for her?

  Just how long had they all been gone from Elthor?

  The shipkeeper had mentioned something about time passing that they’d not accounted for, that perhaps they’d been lost in otherspace for quite some years before emerging at this world. That Delphoros had been gone longer than they had first judged.

  Had it been so much time that the man she favored had moved on?

  Carl Johnson, she thought, focusing and discarding all her other concerns. Only Carl Johnson and Delphoros mattered. The Bright One was needed for Elthor’s continued otherspace travel. He had to be brought home. Her weariness was inconsequential; she had to find the strength. She had to marshal her energy and—

  Contact.

  This time the sensation was dizzying. Melusine’s sanity spun and her head pounded with pain and confusion. Jerrah’s eyes were closed, and so Melusine could not see outward and relied, instead, on her host’s other senses. The fingertips rested on something cool and smooth, the same surface touching the backs of her arms and legs, pleasant feeling, but hard and uncomfortable. Her head on the same surface … as if Jerrah was stretched out on a board. Melusine tried to open Jerrah’s eyes, but they resisted.

  Her head pounded harder.

  She felt Jerrah’s chest rise and fall regularly, but more shallow than on the previous visits. She tasted something coppery-acrid and sweet. Blood? Jerrah had bitten her tongue and the taste lingered. Melusine forced her host to work up some saliva. Jerrah’s jaw twitched and a sharp, brief pain traveled down her neck. Had Jerrah been injured during the time Melusine rested?

  A moan escaped Jerrah.

  Melusine pushed Jerrah’s consciousness to the background and worked to rouse the body. She took inventory of its systems: heart, lungs. If there was an injury, she could not find it. The problem must be in the woman’s mind. Had Melusine visited it so often she’d caused damage?

  She probed Jerrah’s thoughts, spiraling down into an unconscious state that made the dizzy sensation worse. Had Jerrah succumbed to madness? Melusine had to know … if Jerrah’s mind was twisted, Melusine would have to find another host. The woman called Ellen, perhaps, the elderly librarian, the waitress, or—

  Not madness, she decided. Incredulity, confusion, disbelief. Jerrah was emotionally overwhelmed by something. Melusine’s own senses continued to spin as she picked through Jerrah’s memories and attempted to smooth the turmoil. Better that she could rouse Jerrah and use this familiar body than to take on another host.

  Silver images flashed in the back of Melusine’s mind. Long and curved. Knives. She saw them scattered in the cabin Jerrah and Carl had used, one dropped near the hated lake’s shore. Another gleamed in Jerrah’s hand. Melusine nearly lost her connection, but she held fast.

  The knife was a memory, she realized, almost feeling the handle of it against the palm of Jerrah’s hand. A recent memory of Jerrah’s.

  Of Jerrah’s … but also of someone else’s.

  Shipkeeper! A piece of Jerrah’s memory was a fragment of the shipkeeper’s presence.

  Melusine’s shock forced Jerrah’s eyes to fly open, her mouth to gasp and suck in lungfuls of air.

  The shipkeeper had been inside Jerrah’s head, manipulating her like a child’s toy, causing her to take the knives and try to kill … Delphoros. It had to have happened when Melusine rested.

  Why?

  Why? Why? Why?

  Because Delphoros is too powerful to live, Jerrah’s memory surrendered. Because he should be killed for the safety of Elthor and this planet Earth. Because the shipkeeper had settled on that notion and had become singular about it.

  Because it wasn’t Jerrah that had slipped into madness, but the shipkeeper.

  Somewhere in otherspace, sometime during the voyage, the shipkeeper had lost himself.

  The shipkeeper wanted the Bright One dead. And yet, even mad he had to know that Melusine would not allow Delphoros to be killed … he was the reason for their mission … he had to be brought back.

  So why would the shipkeeper send her back into Jerrah to regain Delphoros?

  Had his madness flip-flopped his intentions? Had he changed his mind—at least temporarily? Did he no longer want Delphoros killed, but recovered?

  Melusine took control of Jerrah’s body and sat up. She was on a boxlike object. A freezer; Jerrah’s mind transferred the information. Jerrah had been placed here after the failed attempt to kill Carl Johnson. But the man who put her here was gone, as was Ellen and Carl.

  She listened. Voices came from upstairs. Ellen’s, and a man’s. Probably the man who had put Jerrah here. There was the faint sound of a siren, too. After a moment, she realized it was coming closer.

  Melusine slid off the freezer and steadied herself, in the dim light spying the stairs that led to the residence and the voices. She had to find Carl Johnson/Delphoros. She had to warn him about the shipkeeper, while at the same time urge him to come back to Elthor.

  The shipkeeper …

  Melusine/Jerrah stopped at the foot of the stairs. She wouldn’t warn Delphoros about the shipkeeper, she would confront the shipkeeper herself. She would slip back to the ship and—

  Jerrah’s heart seized.

  Melusine realized she could not break the connection with Jerrah.

  Something was preventing her mind from returning to her own body.

  ***

  Chapter 36

  Shipkeeper

  The navigator worked to get the shipkeeper’s attention, a flashing panel above his tank urging a connection with the liaison.

  The shipkeeper ignored it.

  Sitting in his command chair, his long fingers played over the few visible controls. In the belly of the living ship a small crew maintained the organ-engine and fueled the weapons’ systems that he had just fired on the Alzur ship. He kept his crew mostly oblivious to what transpired on the bridge; they were subordinates and did not need to be privy to his ultimate plans.

  “But they did not provoke us, the Alzurites,” the navigator had said when they’d shared a link minutes ago. “We cannot fire on the Alzur ship without cause. We are at peace.”

  “Peace? They are the enemy. Their very presence was provocation,” the shipkeeper had returned. “We should have reduced them to nothingness the moment we noticed them in this system. I was a fool to let them live this long and to observe the peace treaty. There could be no peace with an Alzur ship so close.”

  The shipkeeper broke his connection with the navigator then, easing back from the tank and looking to Melusine, lost in her merging with the woman called Jerrah. “There is no peace within me.”

  The Alzur ship tried to communicate after the first strike hit them below the bridge section, then they tried to retaliate after the second hit. The third one broke the ship in half, and the fourth and fifth strikes destroyed the two lifepods that had been jettisoned.

  The shipkeeper knew the navigator would demand answers for the weapons’ barrage, and he wasn’t in the mood to discuss the matter. Anger played at the edges of his mind … over his failure to dispatch Delphoros, and worse over the method he had tried to employ. Simple! How could he have considered something so simple as slaying Delphoros with a knife? What had he been thinking? He had thought to get close using the Jerrah woman, but all he had managed was to drive Delphoros away. And chased away himself by a human in a car? It was humiliating.

  “Are the weapons ready?”
he asked as he thumbed a control.

  A low, sustained hum indicated they were not yet fully recharged.

  His fingers thrummed against the console.

  Behind him a diffused light flashed above the navigator’s tank.

  “No. I will not talk to you. Not now.” The shipkeeper rose and circled his chair, his steps in time with the flashing light. Good that the navigator was so controlled, he thought. Floating in his nutrient tank, legs useless, muscles wasted, the navigator could do nothing physically to stop the shipkeeper’s actions, nor could he verbalize any complaints unless they were connected via the liaison.

  Sworn to serve, the navigator could only obey the shipkeeper’s directions and pull the ship through otherspace. He had done just that, moments ago, used otherspace to get close to the Alzur ship. The shipkeeper had not told him why—that it was to provide a better position to fire on the Alzur. Instead the shipkeeper had implied it was so he could open communications with the other ship.

  The shipkeeper had become expert at lying. And the navigator need only follow orders.

  The light continued to blink.

  The shipkeeper, like a scattering of other Elthorans, knew the secret; the tanks were not necessary to sustain the navigators. They served only as prisons. Navigators were so priceless a commodity that they had to be closely controlled. They could not be allowed any independence. The tanks and the alterations to their bodies were only a means to enslave them. The Elthoran population—and those few individuals with the gift to navigate otherspace—had been fed a lie: that the surgeries were necessary to otherspace navigation. The fluid the navigators were entombed in was so effective because of Elthorans’ instinctive terror of water. Their bodies had a much higher specific gravity than water and would not allow them to swim. Too, the nutrients were laced with an artificial virus that made the navigators extremely suggestible, their minds malleable. There was no fear the navigators would rebel—physically or mentally.