Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2)

by Jenny Schwartz

  This morning I’d accepted that the only person I was kidding with my hope of avoiding attention was myself. So I’d given up dressing to blend in with the administration staff. I wore a charcoal-gray utility suit and black boots, adding a splash of color by tying a narrow scarf around my ponytail. The red and turquoise silk drifted to my shoulders.

  A waitress served us with quick efficiency, swooping in as soon as the door closed behind Matron. In the two weeks that I’d been eating here, I’d made a point of tipping generously.

  On the Academy’s side of the river, forest to the north west and pastures suited to dairy cattle naturally encouraged forestry and dairy farming. On this side of the river, the town of Independence was surrounded by market gardens growing a range of vegetables and, further to the east, fields of wheat and oats. The coffee shop, like other restaurants in town, benefited from access to high quality raw ingredients.

  I ordered apple pancakes.

  Alex ordered a full breakfast of bacon, eggs and fried bread. If Matron had seen it, she’d have lectured him—“for his own good”—on healthy eating.

  We both had coffee, imported from the islands where it flourished on the volcanic soil.

  “The Galactic Court,” Alex began abruptly. “Is more subtle than the public realizes, and more complicated than the Academy teaches. Brolga, one of the judges, has adapted the old Earth saying about justice being blind. She says that if justice is blind, mercy must see everything. The Galactic Court envisions itself as the caretaker for Galaxy Proper.”

  I ate my apple pancakes, thickly dusted with cinnamon sugar, absently as I listened to Alex’s insider’s view of the Galactic Court. I had to remind myself that he wasn’t giving me his unfiltered opinion. Just like everyone else on San Juan, he was manipulating me for his own purpose.

  Given that humanity’s Charter of Galactic Union committed us to providing a minimum of two Shaman Justices to serve the Galactic Court, the Academy carefully educated its students on the court’s importance and the basics of its operation. One hundred and fifty judges ruled on interplanetary civil and criminal trials. Double that number worked in the field as mediators. The media and general public concentrated on the judges. The Academy taught us that it was the mediators who Shaman Justices chiefly assisted since they were the court officials who ventured into the field.

  Alex revealed the extent of that assistance. “A quarter of the mediators work on cases that never become public. They’re the advance guard.”

  “Pardon?” Advance guard sounded remarkably warlike.

  “They seek out problems, unravelling knots at the first tangle. The Galactic Court has one artificial intelligence for every six mediators, and the AIs continually surveille, extrapolate, and run scenarios. They bring problems to the mediators for active investigation. Sometimes those investigations require a Shaman Justice.”

  I played dumb. “To examine the sha energy?”

  It turned out Alex was, unsurprisingly, better than me at a sardonic turn of phrase. “To handle specific complexities.”

  And then he broadsided me. “Like the Ceph.”

  “You know?” I whispered. Then, with dawning anger. “For how long?”

  “I learned of their existence after you did. Winona contacted me over secure communications—quantum and sha entanglement. It’s something Dan’s been working on. She outlined what happened on Naidoc and leading up to it. The extent of your shamanic talent startled some powerful people.”

  I registered the warning in his last sentence, but I remained focused on my anger. “Does the court know that the Meitj have held the Ceph, an entire species, in stasis on the Ceph’s home world for forty two millennia?”

  Alex met my gaze. “Brolga, the judge I quoted earlier, is Meitj. She knows. She sought me out.”

  I took a sip of coffee, buying myself time to calm down and think. I replaced the nearly empty cup in its saucer. “What do you want from me? No, wait. What does the Galactic Court want from me? You’re their messenger boy, aren’t you? You’re not here because of loyalty to the Academy or to me.”

  “I care about you, Jaya.”

  “No.” I refused to listen to his evasions.

  He sighed and looked down at his plate. When he looked up, all emotion had blanked from his expression.

  A chill ran through me. This was the real man, the Shaman Justice who’d walked away from me as a child.

  “When your grandfather discovered the existence of the Ceph he became obsessed.”

  Bitterly, I recognized the same guilt stick that Winona beat me with. Ivan was my grandfather. I felt a need to both repair what he had damaged and separate myself from his dangerous insanity. Alex would try to use Ivan and my complicated emotions against me.

  “Ivan’s reckless actions would have caused more than a black hole and the death of millions in the Meitj solar system. The whole galaxy would have plunged into chaos.”

  “I stopped him, remember?”

  “You did. None of the court’s AIs had anticipated Ivan’s discovery of the Ceph’s existence, or rather, his response. Other people venture into the forbidden Ceph Sector occasionally.” Alex might have only recently learned of the Ceph’s existence and imprisonment, but someone had briefed him, possibly the Meitj judge, Brolga. “Usually it is a starship captain exploring for gain or trying to hide and desperate enough to risk the dangers of the Ceph Sector.”

  “Are the intruders mind-wiped?” I asked. It was something the most powerful healer shamans could achieve. Specific memories could be removed. Such interventions were rare and only done after months of counselling and the person’s informed consent. All other mind-wipes in the galaxy stole as much personality as they did memory. They were a disgusting violation.

  There was an insult in my question, but also a deeper, urgent curiosity that I needed answered. If the Galactic Court ordered mind-wipes to hide the secret of the Ceph, how could its judges, mediators and AIs be trusted?

  How could I trust Alex’s answer?

  Some of the secure underpinnings of my life were shaking. The criminal and civil courts of the Galactic Court were meant to provide a framework in which Galaxy Proper citizens could work out evolving notions of justice and broader morality. In discussing the court’s role, the Academy taught us that while principles are constant, the context and understanding of them change their interpretation.

  But some things weren’t up for interpretation.

  Beneath the table, my hands curled into tense fists, fingernails digging into my palms. I wanted to believe Alex. I wanted to believe in the purpose and actions of the Galactic Court. For years I’d lived with, and avoided the knowledge, that I’d likely end by serving it as a Shaman Justice. But this was bigger than a personal sense of betrayal. The entire galaxy relied on the court meeting its mission.

  Its goal could never change because that goal was life. Ultimately, every Galactic Court decision, whether it was for immediate justice or for longer-term considerations of mercy, had to support life.

  “The court punishes mind-wiping. It does not order it,” Alex said, coldly. He’d taken offence at the question.

  I was just as angry—that I’d had to ask the question. “Then how come the Ceph haven’t, at minimum, leaked into public consciousness as a galactic myth?”

  “Physical barriers of meteorite storms and other space hazards keep everyone from the Ceph’s home planet. Ivan sensed the sha energy barrier and his own rampant curiosity caused him to investigate. Only a shaman could sense the sha barrier.”

  And there’d been no shamans traversing the galaxy until humanity joined Galaxy Proper.

  Moreover, those of us who now existed were registered. Ivan was a rare unregistered rogue shaman talent. At least, the Academy assumed shamans couldn’t hide their talent. The Academy would have to rethink that assumption, given Ivan’s activities and the fact that I’d hidden the extent of my talent right under their noses growing up here.

  But the immediatel
y vital point was that the Galactic Court hadn’t needed to order mind-wipes to keep the Ceph a secret. It had taken a shaman to sense them. “I apologize,” I said to Alex. I’d offended him by suggesting that the court would act less than honorably. That he’d taken offense was interesting, though. It emphasized how closely he identified himself with it.

  He swiped payment for our meal on the table’s reader.

  I stood.

  “Do you know what interests me,” he said as we exited the coffee shop. “I brought up that first Ivan, then you, had acted in ways that the AIs hadn’t anticipated, and you focused on the Ceph and the possibility of mind-wipes. That’s not the usual reaction.”

  I frowned at him even as I side-stepped a jogger. Sarcasm might be the lowest form of wit—Matron tended to reprimand with aphorisms, and they still clung years later—but I indulged in it, anyway. “How many people have you told about the Ceph?” I wasn’t concerned that anyone might overhear my indiscreet comment. I’d noticed the privacy bubble Alex erected back in the coffee shop and which stretched to enclose us as we walked to the Academy.

  “It doesn’t matter the topic. When people hear about the central role AIs play in the Galactic Court’s operation, it’s what they focus on. But you…AIs don’t bother you, do they? Is that because of the time you spent on Vulf Trent’s mLa’an starship? I believe it houses an AI. Were you comfortable dealing with it?”

  “Ahab—the starship’s artificial intelligence,” I corrected myself. Ahab’s nickname wasn’t mine to share. “Saved my life after Ivan kidnapped me on Naidoc.”

  “Being compelled to feel gratitude is not the same as accepting an artificial intelligence as an individual. AIs are designed to protect organic sentient species.”

  I couldn’t work out what response Alex was fishing for. It seemed a non-issue to me. Ahab was a sentient individual. Anyone who encountered him had to realize that truth. “Ivan is also an organic sentient, and he had the mLa’an override codes to compel Ah—the starship’s artificial intelligence—to serve him. The AI saved me because he’s my friend.” I believed it. I also believed that Ahab had saved me because I was Vulf’s mate. My importance to Ahab’s closest human friend made me important to Ahab.

  Alex strode along with his hands in the pockets of his blue utility suit. “Interesting. Humans have little contact with true artificial intelligences. The majority of their contact is with sophisticated software that mimics sentient interaction. True AIs have made the jump from logic codes to self-awareness and acceptance that actions have consequences. They aren’t yet citizens of Galaxy Proper, but the process has started to gain them full membership.”

  “Which is what humanity’s leaders want,” I pointed out.

  He made a noncommittal sound that could have been agreement, except for the edge of cynicism. Which is a polite way to say, he grunted.

  We’d reached the bridge and its impressive span across the Rubicon River. The Academy had been built high on a bluff where the wide and turbulent river narrowed briefly. The town had sprang up on the opposite bank; near but separate. History related that Clarence Bloodstone had rested a day after using sha energy to create the central hall of the Academy, then he’d used the same shamanic talent for working stone to shape the bridge. Every time I crossed the bridge on foot, I touched the parapet nearest me. I did so now. It was a sign of respect to the first galactic shamans and all that they’d achieved, as well as a way of reminding myself that I belonged to their tradition.

  The turbulent water flowing beneath the bridge carried a surge of sha energy with it, intoxicatingly wild. That flow was one of the reasons the Academy was sited where it was. The powerful river helped to clear the buildup of shaped and re-shaped sha energy that came with training so many student shamans in such a relatively small area.

  Perhaps crossing Clarence Bloodstone’s bridge also reminded Alex of what we owed those who’d come before us. But he gave it a different spin, one that emphasized our role outside of humanity. “As Shaman Justices we’re useful beyond our shamanic talent. Being human, part of a species new to Galaxy Proper, we are neutral through ignorance. We lack millennia-old grievances and alliances shaping our actions. The mediators’ undiscussed role is to stop trouble before it starts. Not all trouble. Conflict is healthy. But things like what your grandfather attempted are impossibly dangerous. Shaman Justices serve both overtly and in secret to keep the peace.”

  We’d reached the apex of the bridge. Our pace increased as we descended. Or perhaps I walked faster in an attempt to outrun my anger. The problem was that I was more than angry. “So Shaman Justices exist to shuffle everyone along according to some master plan? We’re good little sheepdogs, trusting in the benevolence of the shepherds?”

  “And in our own judgement, yes.”

  Alex’s stark assent to my sarcastic challenge halted me as I stepped off the bridge onto the hard-packed dirt footpath.

  “Think on it, Jaya.” He veered off, taking a minor path that led to the farm at the rear of the Academy. The farm enabled students to learn how to manipulate sha energy to assist in raising healthy animals and plants.

  I resumed walking slowly, staying on the main path to the central hall. I wasn’t sure what Alex wanted me to consider, but his departure suggested he’d delivered the message he’d intended. Was it about me accepting the role as a third Shaman Justice? Or was it a broader issue? He’d said that Shaman Justices served the mediators to halt problems before they blossomed. There were certainly problems here at the Academy.

  I looked at the array of official vehicles and the ordered security presence. Representatives from humanity’s official planets were arriving in a steady stream over the bridge and along the driveway. Bodyguards watched me approach, their expressions flat. If I intended to bring trouble, they had blasters and—I sent out a tendril of sha energy to investigate—two disrupters primed to trigger.

  Evidently, President Hoffer wasn’t the only human willing to obliquely threaten his shamanic hosts.

  I glanced at the Academy’s weapons master. Dan Carson stood unobtrusively at a distance, a tall, gray-haired man with shrewd brown eyes and a rugged face. He’d drilled me in offensive and defensive maneuvers as a student, including shielding in the combat arena, but I’d never taken his optional classes in sha energy weapons development. Nonetheless, when he caught my eye, he nodded, and I crossed over to him. He was one of the most respected shamans at the Academy and far more powerful than Winona. If he’d ever indicated an interest in the chancellorship, shamans would have elected him in her place in a heartbeat.

  “They have disrupters,” I murmured.

  “And they all recognize you.”

  His information startled me. “The guards, not just the politicians?” I double-checked.

  “Both. I observed them watching for someone. That was you.”

  I turned around, noting how many gazes slid away. My skin crawled. In the best of circumstances, I preferred to go unnoticed. This was not the best of times. “Maybe they’ve heard the rumor that I might be the next Shaman Justice?”

  “Count on it,” he said with grim warning.

  I nodded jerkily and continued on inside. Rather than head for the conference room, I took a labyrinthine route to the Archives at the rear of the central hall and hid there till two minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin. The eclectic collection of objects as well as texts hid my personal sha signature from anyone cursorily scanning for me. The Archives’ location also meant that at a brisk walk, I reached the conference room with a second to spare.

  People turned to stare at me, but Winona tapped her official speaker’s gong and the meeting began.

  Once introductions and preliminary speeches were complete, the meeting started over the same ground as the San Juan-specific meeting of yesterday: I was a weapon/card they could play. How could they use me? What was to stop the rest of the galaxy from simply killing me to remove my shamanic talent from humanity’s control?
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br />   This time, Winona had an answer. “The Meitj have declared Ms. Romanov protected. Their assassins are legendary and do not stop with a single victim, but take out the victim’s family, friends, and, on occasion, home city.”

  The Meitj were a compassionate and peace-loving species, but they’d had millennia of interspecies galactic exchanges in which to learn how such peace had, at times, to be won and defended.

  I hadn’t realized they’d extended that protection to me.

  “The Meitj are aliens. They have their own priorities and purposes which are unlikely to align with humanity’s.” President Hoffer smoothed his suit. “We would like to be sure Ms. Romanov is protected.”

  Whereas I’d felt a glow of warmth at learning of the Meitj’s declaration of support, President Hoffer’s response elicited nothing but suspicion. The president of San Juan was not one of my supporters. Obviously, if I died, he’d lose a vital element in his attempt to gain humanity full membership of Galaxy Proper. That might explain his words. But there was something more, something I was missing.

  I rubbed my fingers together, dancing sparks of sha energy between them, as I worried over what my political naivety hid from me.

  When Winona struck the gong, signaling a break for lunch, I ignored the rules of ordinary courtesy and wrapped the sha energy that I’d been playing with around me so that I “disappeared” from view for the non-shamans in the room. However, that made me invisible, not undetectable. If I brushed against them in the crowded doorway they’d feel the contact.

  I sidled over to a window, opened it, and jumped down from the second floor, using a weaving of sha energy to cushion my fall. Then I jogged over to the forest path, releasing my invisible sha bubble once I was under cover of the trees.

  The forest had the invigorating urgency of fall. The growing season had ended, harvest was over, and everything readied itself for the stillness of winter. This was the season of last chances.