The jump sequencing worked as before. Ansti’s sense of self expanded and multiplied, and now carried within it the urgent need for contact with the par-born. He let it float just below his conscious thoughts, like a message encased within ice, visible to those looking for it and easily missed by others. He consciously aided the vehicle as it found the barrier world again and worked to persuade the universe that they could and should exist there. The feedback was tenuous and fleeting. It was likely they would fail. Their arguments were unpersuasive. How could they be in a place they could not sense? This was not truth. It was speculation, and the universe did not make fantasy real. But, to Ansti’s relief and surprise the vehicle did not give up, he felt it search for the new reality that must exist. There must be mass and volume below the surface. It existed as a place even if they could not describe it yet. The surface of the world inferred that it must be there. The logic was unshakeable, and it niggled at the boundaries of uncertainty.
Ansti smelt it again; the unmistakable odour of tar, and now ozone, filled his nostrils, and to his amazement it did not fade. It seemed as if the vehicle might actually succeed as Ansti had proposed. Could it be that his lie was actually the answer? He felt pressure build in his inner ear as it adjusted to the atmosphere of the target world. His senses were making the connection, beginning to believe more in the destination than the point of departure. Sun-shit, this might actually work. He shifted his remaining focus onto the task, guiding the vehicle and urging it to provide more input for his senses. For intense moments nothing happened and then he felt cool wind tickle his skin; the atmosphere of the barrier world. He still could not see it, but now it must only be a matter of time. The vehicle was taking hold in this new place and its mysteries were unfolding.
The vehicle sensed it first and Ansti quickly agreed. This was enough to initiate jump. They could go. Ansti still could not see the place he wished to be in, but it seemed the reality fed to his other senses was enough to believe in it. The feelings were heightened when Ansti closed his eyes. Then the overwhelming majority of his senses agreed; this was the place they existed in. It was undeniable when sight was not the dictator of reality. He told the vehicle ‘go’ and felt the familiar sense of time’s viscosity changing. He noticed he was smiling too. He was making a ship jump unaided by a sun and to a place he could not see. No other pilot had ever achieved such a feat, and only days ago he would have said himself that it was utterly impossible. He was uniquely able, and he did not resist the flood of pride that filled him, nor the sense of power that eyed his ego.
Tannen could not have felt the sensory and emotional negotiations that lifted the ship, but his instruments and his own senses detected the movement into the slow time of jump. He flashed standby messages to the crew that arrived in ears and eyes as slowly evolving graphics and sounds on monitors. Then he flashed a message at Ansti, it read simply ‘Unbelievable!’
It kept the smile on Ansti’s face even as he focused on keeping hold of their existence in the new destination. The vehicle had a firm grip, but it felt as if it gripped something loose like crumbling rock. Ansti felt a wavering from time to time as realities mixed. When he thought of ‘here’ the universe was not entirely convinced of where he meant and he had to focus not to ping back to the default reality that his memory told him was unequivocally real; the Praveen world. But, there was re-assurance in slow-time. It could only mean the transition had started and that was so much more than had been achieved before.
Ansti flicked off the optics; they were not helping him to believe and he did not need the technical data they fed. Tannen would monitor such things and the ship had wits enough to keep itself functioning. He opened his eyes and took in the area of the ship he rested in. Across from him the vehicle nestled in amongst its connections to the ship. Clean now, it was crowded by machinery in the subdued lighting of this space. Just as Ansti amazed Tannen, the little vehicle and the power it channelled, awed Ansti. Just how it could sit there contained within the ship and constrained by the intruding connections, like something caught in the mechanical web of a cyborg spider, and still stretch itself across parsecs and light years was a source of delight and intrigue to Ansti. He would dearly have loved to know how, but he suspected that he never would.
There was envy and awe in Ansti’s gaze, and he realised a slight optical illusion too, a left over from his dramatic unplugging earlier perhaps? A cloudy film seemed stretched across his vision and he blinked repeatedly to remove what he guessed was an obstruction in his eye. He began to worry that some chronic damage had been done as the mistiness stubbornly refused to go. He found himself shaking his head to try and clear his vision, but that did not work either. He couldn’t leave his post — that would have crashed the jump — or he would have sought attention. Instead he focused on the task at hand and resolved to get checked after the jump. He could have called up medical attention now and let the ship’s diagnostics and treatment intervene, but again, he needed focus.
Ansti was about to close his eyes when something extraordinary happened. A crew member entered the chamber he was in. His immediate thought was for her safety and his own. Human mass stumbling around in this environment could gain dangerous momentum, as motor control would be confused and dysfunctional. He watched her move and she had the unmistakable slow motion carriage of jump, but she also seemed remarkably able in this environment. Her movement was slow but precise, graceful even. The movements short and controlled, adapted to the new relationship between time and distance and nerves. He studied her, and a shot of recognition hit him. It was the girl who had accosted him in the corridor with the story of his sister.
Concern for her safety was displaced with a rising fear for his own. He began to imagine her with malicious intent. She was already far too deft in slow time, trained perhaps? And why would she be here now when he was incapacitated by machinery and connections. This was no time to resume their conversation, and she risked serious sanction for leaving her post and moving about, let alone disturbing the pilot. She was either irrational or directed, and neither boded well for his safety or his focus on the mission. He called out to her to stop moving and flashed an alert message to Tannen at the same time. As he flashed the message he realised that something was missing. His connection to the mission controller was lost. He could not see or feel Tannen’s presence. A wave of hot fear swept over him.
And she jumped. She launched herself into the air as a talented swimmer would lift themselves to splash gracefully into a pool. Ansti watched her bend her legs and then spring upwards, arms not held in front as a diver would, but outstretched at her sides. She formed a crucifix shape, and in the stretched moments of slow time, drifted up. As he watched, Ansti knew he had seen this before, remembered the grace and terror of a previous encounter. He watched wide eyed as she arced in front of him, heading on a ballistic trajectory that would see her pass through the cloudy membrane he had thought a trick of his eye. She flew, and at the nadir of her movement curled into a ball and let her legs overtake her torso. It was beautiful, inhuman and terrifying. It was a perfect manoeuvre that only par-born could complete with such gymnastic precision in the slow time of jump.
She curved through the cloud, and as she did tiny parts of her unravelled and floated free; clothing, hair and even flesh formed droplets of existence and parted from her, turning to liquid as they did. She shed that which was not her true self and left it in a floating slick of detritus. She emerged pure par-born. The shape was feminine without being female. An uninformed observer might have judged it delicate, but Ansti knew this being was a thing of power, not be judged by reference to human form. She turned her head to look directly at him even as her body dipped back towards the floor. She was close enough for Ansti to see the concentric circles that took the place of irises in her eyes, and feel the unblinking gaze penetrate his soul with surgical precision. She was here for him, there could be no doubt.
Ansti felt the vehicle tugging at his consciousness, d
emanding that he aid the jump. It had them anchored under the Helvyani hex but it could not proceed. It needed Ansti to believe in the transition in order to complete the negotiation and fully arrive. Ansti could not give himself to that task when a more pressing event was occurring in front of him. He flashed back an angst ridden query — do you see it? The vehicle asked him to clarify what he meant by ‘it’, and Ansti almost screamed at the vehicle. It! The par-born. It is here and threatens us both, he flashed. In return he felt a questioning probe but no confirmation. I sense your anxiety, the vehicle replied, but we must focus. Ansti fought to control panic and subdue its mind clouding demand for attention. Sun-shit these creatures could camouflage themselves from the vehicle. Was there anything they could not do?
She landed, and immediately twisted in a convoluted way that would have sent human joints popping free of each other. Loosing no momentum she snapped a new course directly at Ansti. He watched helplessly as she drifted at him curving slowly about her centre of gravity so her feet moved up and her head moved down, sweeping clockwise like the hands of an ancient time piece. Her pace was slowing as she neared him. Ansti’s body twitched within the cocoon of his pilot’s couch. It was designed to isolate his body from the world of the ship and to deprive it of sensory input from his immediate surroundings so that the pilot could focus on worlds outside. The designers had never envisaged an urgent need to withdraw from it. Anything powerful enough to reach inside the ship and target the pilot would have the entire ship’s fate in its hands. Whether or not the pilot could wriggle free would be immaterial, or so they thought.
She hovered upside down directly in from of him, her eyes level with his and her body extended upwards. If she moved any closer they would touch. Her arms were outstretched and motionless, defying laws of momentum and gravity. Ansti smelt the citrus scent he had known before, and as he inhaled the tiny particles that transmitted the smell to him, a vivid memory of arcing lines of attack and wet pulpy victory returned. He felt his neck muscles straining, pushing his head away from her and trying in vain to retreat into the mass of his seat. His jaw was clenched and his head bobbed spastically as muscles tried simultaneously to shake with fear, and retreat. Ansti sensed the panic was taking him over and fought to calm it, to place it beside his thoughts, not in front of them. It was a battle he half won, but that was victory enough to let him function and avoid a flight into helpless screaming terror.
For the first time Ansti noticed that she didn’t breathe. There was no brush of air against his skin, and no rise and fall of her chest. Neither did she blink; her eyes held him without interruption. For a few moments it reminded him of a lovers gaze and he felt a stirring of attraction that was replaced quickly by disgust at himself, and yet he could not deny that there was a human beauty to this alien thing. And in that moment of brief attraction he felt her enter him. Her body still floated, physically disconnected from his but her presence gushed in. She levered open the gaps in his mind and insinuated herself inside. Ansti felt an awful mental squirming as she took control of his mind, and it fought to keep a control. It was a battle that was lost in a moment.
The probing returned, memories and feelings flashing by, one replacing another in rapid succession. A kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings assaulted Ansti’s consciousness with a speed he could never have achieved himself. She was there behind it all, searching for something it seemed, ransacking his mind as carelessly as a burglar searches for hidden valuables. A part of her leaked into him and he felt her desperate longing; a certainty that somewhere there was a thought or feeling in Ansti that could unlock meaning. That thought was overwhelmed as quickly as it formed, in another surge of mental flotsam. But it was changing. The random patterns of life and feelings were being sorted. Similar memories began to repeat and certain themes became dominant. His heart and mind began to fill with just one focussed feeling; stop!
That word became a plea, a rallying cry, a flashing urgent, red letter message, a tender tearful ex-lover’s pain at a long goodbye, the command of a man in authority, the surrender of a beaten adversary, the shrill scream of a passenger in a speeding vehicle, his own sister’s anger at his teasing. Every moment of ‘Stop!’ that he remembered filled his consciousness, and the most powerful communication he had ever felt in his life filled him. She wanted him to stop, but to stop what? For a fleeting second his focus was shifted outside again and he saw her angle her head slightly in that quizzical human gesture he had seen before. As soon as his mind had registered it she pulled him back inside and ransacked his mind again.
Now, a thousand images and emotions associated with piloting dominated his thoughts. He could think of nothing else except the rituals and sensory life of a pilot. The memories and feelings of jump filled him. He remembered his first solo jump and time spent waiting while passengers and cargo boarded. He relived each and every jump in more detail than he could have hoped to recover himself. She pulled things from his mind and thrust them at him with the speed and resolution of a perfect recording. Ansti was aware that his face was still in a rictus of concentration. His muscles were taught with stress, reflecting his mind’s powerless pursuit of some truth or meaning. Pain and fatigue were adding physical discomfort to his mental torture. He wondered how much a human mind could bear before sanity was crushed under the weight of impossibilities made real. He wished he could expand it and frolic in his own memories as easily as the vehicle capered in space.
The answer came; insanity was not to save him. A nauseating string of repeated images pulsated through his consciousness. The same memories played and replayed at growing speed until the feelings and images were overwhelming. Nothing of the moments before remained, one single, urgent imperative dominated; piloting, stop, piloting, stop, piloting, STOP, PILOTING!. It built to an orchestral crescendo and became all that his mind could comprehend. There was no room for any other thoughts. There were no distractions, no fleeting moments of idle mental drifting, no capacity to plan an escape. His mind focussed with laser precision on this twin swirl of simple ideas as they curdled in to one. She wanted him to stop piloting. As he shifted from merely experiencing the feelings to understanding the meaning she gave them, he felt the pace of recall slow. His mind was being returned to him.
Ansti became aware of himself and recoiled. His body dripped in sweat. Stomach muscles had knotted and unknotted leaving tight fatigued feelings in his mid-riff, and his breath came in fast, deep gasps. An intense pulsing pain filled his skull. Ansti was shocked that he could have been so removed from himself. She did not seem to care, hovering still, she simply regarded him. Ansti could read nothing in her expression. There was neither triumph nor pity, joy nor satisfaction. She simply was. He wanted to wipe his mouth but his hands were still encased in the pilot’s couch. And, more than that he desperately wanted to know why. Why did this alien thing urge, with such pitiless focus, that he reject the very thing he had fought so hard to regain? Why did she want what his enemies wanted? Why did it seem that a skill once revered was now loathed by so much of the universe?
As the questions formed in his mind, Ansti felt the first probings of a second penetration by the par-born. He tried to relax, tried to let himself bend with the thing she did. He could not resist and so he must adapt, and that was a thing he did well. This was what he had wanted when he suggest a second jump— more communication and perhaps answers — but it came at a high price. He was conscious of himself shaking with fearful anticipation before there was no longer room in his consciousness for anything but her presence and that which she wanted him to recall. Like a motor winding to full power his mind was once again a tool of another’s bidding. Memories and feelings, thoughts and images, scents and sensations throbbed through his being, each as detailed, and passing as rapidly as they had before, each presented to himself with alien force.
Beginnings engulfed him, and refined themselves into images of birth. She dredged the depths of his mind and presented to him in violent detail all that which he
had stored about the first moments of life. Spasming images and feelings rocked his mind; flowers blossomed from seeds, eggs hatched and women of his race lovingly pushed their offspring into the world. The sensations bit at him like hungry dogs. But, this time it was different, there was a hunter’s feeling from her, a searching amidst the detritus of random thoughts, until she found her target. It started with birthdays, parties and presents, kisses and hugs, the inevitable early excitement and then dread of ageing. It developed into childhood and then with the most powerful feelings of revulsion and untainted wrongness that Ansti had ever experienced, he began to re-live his own birth.
Had he been asked to recall these events he would have said it was impossible — such things were not kept by a human mind — and yet he felt it now. It started with the warm blood-red diffused light and gentle pulsing sounds of the womb. His mother’s nurturing flesh pressed against him keeping him perfectly, and feelings of serenity more profound than he had experienced in the most gentle moments of transit meditation. There was a beauty to these moments like none he had ever experienced. Pain and anxiety were unknown and his life seemed balanced and at peace; all needs cared for and provided for. It was the state that adult humans spent a lifetime pursuing, and Ansti realised the things people consumed, the people they loved, and the places they visited all had one purpose. I was a purpose that not one of the billions understood; every person was seeking the ultimate bliss of return to the womb. This was the Garden of Eden that mystics described. It was a pure untainted haven.
Heartbreaking joy swept over Ansti. He’d found the place of peace that his race searched for. It was there inside all along. Until it changed. There was a growing wave of new rhythms; more urgent and less compatible than those he had known for his entire nine month life. Even the support of flesh was changing. It began to push at him and the warm liquid in which he floated began to drain. He was being shoved at, squeezed and thrust. Fear found a place in him for the first time and it hurt like the shock of iced water. His world was changing and he did not want it to. This perfect environment no longer wanted him. It was rejecting and ejecting him. The sense of loss that arrived was monumental, and his face screwed into a ball of anger and anxiety for the first time in his life. Paradise it seemed was transient, and the loss of it a lesson in darker feelings and experiences that he did not wish to learn.
The Man Who Talked to Suns Page 21