End of the Circle

by Jack McKinney

  Vince turned to his communications officer. “Inform Cabell that we’ll soon be folding for Haydon IV.”

  Lunk was standing in the center of a small patch of cleared ground a kilometer east of Roca Negra proper, attacking a stump of hardwood with a heavy ax. He was shirtless in the morning heat, long black hair tied back, brutish features determined, barrel-chested torso glistening with sweat. He checked his swing momentarily to monitor Scott’s approach—ax handle resting on his shoulder and a hand to his brow—then resumed his work, putting increased effort into each blow.

  “Good to see you, Lunk,” Scott said, keeping what he determined to be a safe distance.

  The former Southern Cross soldier stopped only to mop his face with a Paisley bandanna. “I guessed it was you when I saw the jet come down,” Lunk grunted after the blade bit wood. “The way I read it, you must be on leave or undercover. You land on the old highway?”

  “Just.”

  Lunk took another swing. “A Lear, isn’t it?”

  Scott’s boot tip drew a shallow trench in the tilled ground. “I suppose so. Pre-Wars. But I almost lost it this time.”

  “Yeah, well you’ll be lucky if the thing’s still there when you get back.”

  “It’s being looked after, Lunk,” Scott assured him.

  The big man went back to chopping. “So how’d you find us, Lieutenant?”

  Scott squatted, waving insects away from his face. “I found Rand. But I think I’m supposed to mention that he wasn’t exactly eager to tell me.”

  “Sure,” Lunk said.

  “So you’re homesteading, huh?”

  Lunk turned to face him. “The townspeople gave us a place to live and a bit of land to work. The Invid came down hard on everyone after we passed through last year, but the town’s rebuilding. They’re good folk, Lieutenant. What’s past is past. We’re all making new lives for ourselves.”

  Scott caught the warning in Lunk’s baritone voice and decided not to mention the promotion. “I can see that,” he said, glancing about. Well-tended fields of grain stretched emerald to distant hills. On nearby terraces, men and women were harvesting and threshing golden stalks of rice. “Annie around?” he asked after a moment.

  Lunk threw the ax into the wood and gave a twist to the blade. “She left right after we got here. The idea of settling down didn’t suit her too well. Went off to find that guy Magruder. The kid’s still got stars in her eyes.”

  Scott smiled to himself, picturing Annie in her “E.T.” cap and faded green jumpsuit.

  “What d’ ya say we skip the small talk and come to the point, Lieutenant,” Lunk said suddenly.

  Scott contemplated the line his boot had drawn, then raised his eyes. “All right, Lunk. The fact is, I’m looking for Marlene.”

  Lunk spit. “I thought so. What happened, Lieutenant—got lonely for you up there?” He motioned with his chin to the cloudless sky. “Figured maybe you’d passed on a good thing down here, a girl that was only trying to love you the best she knew how?”

  That from the guy who had called Marlene a traitor that day in Reflex Point, Scott thought, getting to his feet. “It’s nothing like that, Lunk.”

  “Think you can just fly in here with your little jet and pick up where you left off, huh?” Lunk held the ax like a hatchet and shook it in Scott’s face. “Lemme tell you, you’re way off the mark, Lieutenant. Marlene’s had a rough time of it, but I’ve been helping her. She’s kinda come to rely on me, and I think your showing up is just gonna gum up the works, understand me?”

  “Look, Lunk, I just want to talk to her.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya how it is, Lieutenant.”

  Scott left a brief empty space in the exchange, waiting for Lunk to cool down. “Back at Command everyone’s still scratching their heads about what happened at Reflex Point,” he commenced on a casual note. “There’s a possibility the SDF-3 got itself caught up in the Regess’s exit.” He looked at Lunk. “I think Marlene can help out.”

  Lunk glared at him, then threw the ax down into the stump and left it there. “Come on,” he said, storming off across the field in the direction of Roca Negra.

  Scott fell in behind him for a silent walk that delivered them fifteen minutes later to two spacious freestanding tents erected side by side on a small parcel of land dotted with olive trees. Lunk’s battered APC was parked off to one side.

  “Marlene,” Lunk bellowed, rustling the mosquito-netting front flap of the larger tent.

  “Lunk?” Marlene responded from somewhere inside. “You’re back early.”

  Scott’s heart broke at the sound of her voice; save for a hint of Southlands Forager accent, it might as well have been that of Marlene Rush.

  As the Invid simulagent stepped into the sunlight, luxurious red hair shorn to her shoulders and skin as pale as a Tiresian’s, Scott thought: She is Marlene!

  The Regess’s daughter took a moment to absorb the scene before she collapsed into Scott’s slapdash embrace, sighing. “I knew you’d return for me, Scott, I knew you’d return.”

  Lunk quickly turned his back to the two of them, afraid they would see his tears.

  Scott immediately realized that Marlene had undergone a profound change since they had last embraced. Marlene then had been alive and vital to his confused thoughts and anxious hands, a woman of human lusts and needs, nothing like the insubstantial being he cradled in his arms now. It was something he could not articulate, but it was obvious to all who dared to look deep enough into her eyes.

  Scott led her into the shade, to a canvas-backed chair at the head of a split-log longtable. Lunk positioned himself behind the chair, his large callused hands resting on Marlene’s frail shoulders. “I told ya she was having a rough time of it, Lieutenant. Ya never shoulda come back.”

  Marlene patted Lunk’s hand and gazed up at him fondly. “I’m all right, Lunk. Really.”

  Scott felt her eyes return to him and swallowed hard as he perched himself on the edge of the table. “Marlene,” he began, “how much do you remember about those last few days at Reflex Point?”

  “Only some of it, Scott. I remember when we were all inside the central chamber together. With Sera and Corg and the Queen-Mother.”

  “What made the horde—er, the Queen-Mother leave, Marlene? I mean, I’m sure she realized the fleet had plans to irradiate the area, but it seemed like she’d decided to leave before the neutron missiles were launched.”

  Marlene nodded and reached across the table for a water bottle. “It’s true, Scott. And something vital left me when she departed.” She took a long pull from the bottle. “I know you sensed it when you held me. I feel as though I’m only half-here, as though if I breathe too deeply I’ll fade from sight. But I have a knowledge of things, Scott, a knowledge that seems undreamed of by any race.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lunk said, “I’m not about to let you fade away.”

  Marlene squeezed his hand. “You see, Scott, the Queen-Mother finally understood the reasons for all that had happened on Optera, Tirol, and Earth, and that knowledge liberated her.”

  “But what was it she understood?” Scott asked.

  Marlene quivered. “I can’t tell you, Scott.”

  “Please, Marlene,” Scott snapped.

  Lunk stepped out from behind the chair. “I’m warning you, Lieutenant.”

  Marlene put a hand on his balled-up fist. “No, Lunk, Scott doesn’t understand. It’s not that I’m keeping something from you, Scott. I only mean that you’re asking the wrong person.”

  “Sera,” Scott said after a moment’s reflection.

  “Yes. She was more closely bound to the Regess than I was. But I fear that bond has affected her more than it has me.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Marlene closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. “I can sense where she is. Sometimes I can almost see through her eyes and feel her suffering.”

  Scott edged closer to her. “Where, Marlene?”


  “The city of tall towers in the Northlands. The one Sera and Corg were to rule.”

  Scott and Lunk exchanged looks and simultaneously said: “Mannatan.”

  “Yes. She is with Lancer.”

  Scott was already on his feet. “Will you come with me, Marlene? You, too, Lunk,” he was quick to add. “Just until we locate her.”

  “Forget it, Lieutenant,” Lunk said. “Marlene’s not going anywhere.”

  Marlene stood up and gently swung Lunk around to face her. “But I am, Lunk. Don’t you see that I have to go?”

  Lunk’s face fell. “No, Marlene, no. You can just stay here and let me take care of you. You said yourself you were all right. I could just—”

  “No, Lunk, it’s no good this way,” she cut him off. “Remember who and what I am.”

  Lunk stiffened. “You’re Marlene, that’s it.”

  Marlene shook her head. “I am Invid, Lunk.” She reached up to stroke his face. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t loved you.”

  Lunk steeled himself, holding back his anger and grief. “You’ll come back to me?” he asked softly.

  “Nothing can take away these past few months, Lunk.”

  It was Scott’s turn to avert his gaze.

  He swore to himself he would never love again.

  With Marlene in the copilot’s seat, Scott returned the jet to the REF’s provisional planetside base on the Venezuelan coast and apprised Vince Grant of his plans to continue on to the Northlands. The general informed him of the successful position jump undertaken by the Ark Angel and the rapidly approaching launch window for the fold to Haydon IV. To speed Scott and Marlene on their way, Grant ordered that they be escorted to and from the Northlands city in one of the ship’s few remaining reconfigurable Veritechs.

  From what Scott could gather, Mannatan—recently returned to its original name of New York—was fast becoming a population center once again. The narrow island city had miraculously escaped saturation by Dolza’s deathbolts, only to suffer disastrously some twenty years later at the hands of the Regess’s power-mad “son,” Corg. But by then the city had already fallen into the hands of street crazies ‘who had somehow survived a radiation pall that had hung over the city for more than fifteen years’ and roving gangs of Foragers and rough-trade Southern Cross deserters. A scarcity of food and arable land had kept the population numbers low, but now that New York had become a kind of raw-materials depot for developing towns to the south and west, a barter system for foodstuffs had been implemented.

  The Veritech put down west of the Hudson River, leaving Scott and Marlene to negotiate the rest of the journey on foot, along with hundreds of other migrants who were talking or buying passage through checkpoints on the single bridge that linked city and mainland. Scott saw the end result of Corg’s fiery campaign to bring the city to its knees: huge leveled tracts where tall brick and stone buildings had once stood, gridded by the scorched remains of asphalt and concrete roadways.

  Marlene acted as guide, drawing on her recently enhanced psychic talents to close on her sister simulagent’s whereabouts. In a certain sense she seemed more the Terran than Scott. But Scott refused to be fooled by the human guise the Invid Queen-Mother had fashioned for her, and so their conversations were strictly of the pragmatic sort. Scott, after all, was on a military mission.

  Marlene led them ultimately to a refurbished theater in the city’s midtown district, where a young Hispanic named Jorge greeted them at the door and affirmed that Lancer was in fact part of a troupe of actors, singers, and musicians.

  After the less than warm reunions with Rand and Lunk, Scott was expecting more of the same from Lancer, but the former stage gender-bender surprised him by running up the broad aisle after Jorge’s announcement and embracing the two of them like family.

  “Scott, I can’t believe it!” Lancer said, gripping him by the arms. “God, it’s great to see you again.” He had equal enthusiasm for Marlene, along with a bear hug that went on for well over a minute.

  Lancer looked lean and limber in tight-fitting trousers and a sleeveless shirt, but Scott noted dark circles under the singer’s eyes and a somberness beneath the cheeriness of the moment. The natural color of Lancer’s hair was growing in. Scott thought briefly of Yellow Dancer and wondered whether she was gone for good.

  “You don’t know how I need you guys right now,” Lancer continued, taking hold of their hands.

  “What is it, Lancer?” Marlene asked.

  “Your sister,” he said, favoring Marlene’s hand. “I’m afraid she’s dying.”

  Sera was bedridden in Lancer’s backstage room, a tight, cluttered space that apparently served as living quarters and dressing room. A man named Simon was ministering to her, but he exited as Lancer entered, stopping only to introduce himself to Scott and Marlene in an affected, slightly effeminate manner.

  Fetally curled beneath the bed’s threadbare blankets, Sera seemed hardly more than a specter. “I’ve been waiting for you to come, Ariel,” she said as Marlene kneeled beside the bed and laid a comforting hand on her heaving breast.

  “Sister—”

  Sera pressed a finger against Marlene’s lips to quiet her. “Do not weep for me, Ariel. I am to rejoin the Queen-Mother.”

  “Then I’ll return with you, sister.”

  Sera shook her head. “No, Ariel, your destiny lies along a different path. And what a wonderful one it is.”

  Marlene leaned closer to her sister, her eyes brimming with tears. “Tell me, Sera.”

  “You need know only this, Ariel: that the world can be remade. The Queen-Mother learned this when she mated with the Protoculture—the goal of the Great Work, the transmutation of our race.”

  “The Protoculture!”

  “Yes, Scott,” Sera said, looking at him. “Your people will understand what to make of this.”

  “Stay, sister,” Marlene pleaded with her. “Love has the power to keep you here.”

  Sera smiled. “No, Ariel. Love has the power to release me …”

  With that, the Invid simulagent shut her eyes and surrendered her all too brief life.

  Scott watched horrified but transfixed as Sera grew subtle and translucent, then slowly faded from sight. An eerie breeze caressed his cheek as the blankets dropped empty and silent to the foam mattress.

  Lancer clutched desperately for what was no longer there.

  “This is my fate also,” Marlene said, turning to Scott with tears coursing down her cheeks. “You were right to promise you would never love again!”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Of course I understand how you feel, you big jerk. You think I want to break up the team? But look at things from my side, will you, Bowie? First, I’ve got Max and Miriya riding my tail about shipping back on the fortress, and now I find out that Rem’s going along for the ride. I can’t handle it just yet, that’s the long and short. I look at him, and I see Zor Prime. Ask yourself what it would have been like if Musica had died instead of Octavia—god forbid. I mean, how could you look at her without thinking about Musica? So maybe Haydon IV’s going to work out for me. Maybe I’ll even get to know Aurora a little better. Anyway, from what I hear, at least it’ll be a change for the quiet.

  Dana Sterling in a letter to Bowie Grant, quoted in Altaira Heimel, Butterflies in Winter: Human Relations and the Robotech Wars

  Dana Sterling tightened her grip on the balcony railing and launched phrases of gratitude into Haydon IV’s amber skies. In the plaza twenty stories below her, pedestrians were scurrying for cover as Glike rumbled and shook. Like bare trees caught in the hurricaning mass of a storm front, the city’s tapering glasslike spires swayed and snapped, falling in a prismatic rain of deadly gems. Skyways danced loose their walls and roofs of transparent sheathing and sent them crashing to heaving, buckling streets and garden-lined thoroughfares. Onion domes and entablatures fissured; ornate facades and friezes peeled away from buildings and archways; water surged from canals and drained fro
m lakes into the planetoid’s ruptured seams.

  “ ’Bout time there was action around the place!” Dana yelled to no one in particular.

  She leapt back from the railing to flatten herself against the building’s exterior wall as a plummeting guillotine blade of permaplas struck the balcony edge and splintered into hundreds of angry fragments. At the same time the entire city seemed to tilt radically to one side, the normally clear skies tainted with smoglike roilings of clouds. Where she could see the horizon, Glike’s backdrop of photo-perfect mountains wavered, as though dazzled by atmospheric heat.

  We’re finally seeing Haydon IV’s other face, Dana thought.

  She had heard all about the battle that had been fought there years before between the Sentinels and the Invid Regent, but that might as well have been a campfire tale. Glike had been fully rebuilt by the time she had arrived, and it had been nothing less than paradise since.

  Hopelessly boring.

  But something had finally happened to shake things up. It did not seem possible that Haydon IV could be subject to tectonic shifts, but who could tell? Well, Exedore maybe, or his free-floating good buddy Veidt. Some internal malfunction, then, some glitch in the unfathomable technology that kept the world turning. An actual invasion was too much to hope for—a chance to see for herself those well-concealed planetary defenses everyone talked about. The ones said to react to the mere suggestion of aggression, the ones that forced everyone on-world to hang up their hip howitzers when they rode into town.

  But even if it turned out to be nothing more than a quake, it was certainly more excitement than she had seen since Exedore had burst into the Sterling’s high-rise quarters three months ago, raving that the planetoid’s so-called Awareness had gotten itself all fired up about something or other.

  The collapse of a structure down below sent a swirling cloud of debris up the face of the building. Dana heard panicked cries in several offworld tongues.

  “Dana!” her parents shouted from inside their living quarters.

  She turned and passed through the balcony’s field portal in a long-legged rush, blond hair in wild disarray. Her father was by the lift-tube door, a few obviously irreplaceable items clutched to his chest. Her mother had Aurora, Dana’s eight-year-old sister, by the wrist. Dark-eyed and otherworldly, she was nearly five feet tall already and a regular pain in the ass. It was hard for Dana to believe they had had the same father, but that was a thought she kept to herself. Veidt claimed that Aurora’s rapid development and psychic gifts had come about as the result of Miriya’s experiences on Garuda, but Dana ventured that it had more to do with something the Haydonites were putting in the food.