“And a journey for which Garlidan had not sought the permission of the council,” Ebimus growled.
“Carry on, Dr. Falik,” Serda said. He had anticipated interruptions by those angry at Garlidan for his constant meddling. “How was this journey possible?”
Falik reached for the simplest answer. She refused to defend Garlidan, but his boldness had made the whole project possible. “Garlidan imported new, proprietary technology from Holdrian to speed Paul’s journey, accelerating his module to more than three times the speed of light.”
Ebimus spoke once more, the translation placid compared to his own animated hisses and croaks. “The Council should have been informed long before any of this took place.” He was clearly furious, although his electronic, public voice remained calm. “Acceleration to such speeds required Council approval. Garlidan exceeded his authority, and stranded a crewed science vessel many light-years from Takanli.”
This wasn’t strictly true, Falik knew. The crew of the Lawrence had all freely agreed to take part, fully aware that their foray to the Earth’s solar system would be as far from Takanli as any indigenous being had ever traveled. They were young, somewhat idealistic and naïve, but professional and disciplined in their work. The Institute continued to receive broadcasts from them every few months as they moved through Earth’s neighboring systems, charting a rough course back towards the Pleaos System.
But Ebimus was not finished. “This Council attaches great importance to the relationship between Takanli and Holdrian. We are saddened,” he said, “at the compromising of this relationship.”
“We await Holdrian’s answers to our queries on this matter,” Serda said. “It is a complex question, but undoubtedly Garlidan bears much of the blame for any diplomatic ramifications.” The crowd seemed to agree, muttering quietly. “Unfortunately, he is not with us today to answer these accusations, nor can we expect Dr. Falik to speak for him.” Falik’s pulse eased a little as Serda calmly silenced his boisterous, scaly colleague. “His transgressions,” Serda reiterated, “are his own, but we continue to gather evidence preparatory to trying Garlidan.”
The chamber’s audience was divided on this issue, with strong views on both sides of the debate. Some regarded Garlidan as a charlatan and a traitor, while others held that he had surpassed even the Council in intellectual matters, and should be trusted as an advisor. The only point of agreement was that he should be compelled to appear and speak for himself.
Serda consulted his lectern and continued. “We are chiefly concerned, at least today, with the appropriation and disappearance of the Cruiser-class space vehicle which we understand was later named Phoenix. Were you aware of the existence of this vessel?”
Falik pictured the sleekly beautiful cruiser edging away from the Holdrian space dock. It was one thing to be crazy about someone who’s home was a hundred light-years away. It was quite another to watch him prepare to be flung back forty years into the past and then undertake an impossible mission. And do it all alone. Her heart ached at the thought.
“I never saw Phoenix with my own eyes,” she reminded the Council. “It was gifted to Paul. He only encountered it at Holdrian, and then left for the experiment.”
Mumbling from the crowd brought Falik’s head around. Serda calmed the room.
“We heard testimony in the last few days from members of the finance team associated with Garlidan’s plot. It seems that the Cruiser was not, in fact, Garlidan’s to give. It belonged to the Bephran diplomatic mission.” Neighbor planets maintained permanent embassies, the better to adapt to each other’s culture. “They are not,” Serda intoned gravely, “the slightest bit amused at its blatant theft.”
“Reparations will have to be made.” This, surprisingly enough, was uttered by Grithik, a dwarven humanoid with a colossal beard of flowing silver. The crowd was stunned to silence; as major figures, each of the Council members is well known to the multitude, but Grithik had not spoken out loud for nearly six years. The ancient dwarf then simply sat in his carved, hardwood chair, chewing steadily on an unlit pipe. Falik was unprepared for such an unfamiliar event. Even Serda was briefly ruffled. After a pause, when it became clear Grithik had spoken his mind in full, Serda pressed on.
“Were you aware that the Cruiser was stolen?”
Falik shook her head. “Garlidan was forever coming up with odd bits of machinery, devices, Red Cubes… This was just part of his pattern.”
“Yes he cut quite a figure,” Serda agreed. Immortal-Genius-Fugitive-Pariah status had done nothing to slow Garlidan’s ceaseless appetite for the new, his relish for unpredictable behavior and his disdain for both artificial borders and inconvenient legal systems. He was, in some ways, the most wanted man in this part of the galaxy. More so still because, at present, no one had any clue whatsoever where he was.
Falik weathered the storm. Serda was her guardian through a difficult afternoon, and helped to deflect many of the toughest questions, and all of those he considered unfair. The crowd were ever willing to spark into rowdiness, even given the presence of the eight-foot Guardians. They resented Garlidan for relegating the most profound test of universal laws – the breaking of the lightspeed barrier – to a mere personal amusement, an amateur science experiment. His arrogance offended their sense of moderation; inflated egos were held in low regard on Takanli. And they were upset about the stolen Cruiser. Regional partnerships were seen as pillars of system-wide stability and peace; they were also good for business. Garlidan’s deliberate theft had angered the Bephran community. It was a relationship which would have to be carefully nurtured back to health.
Finally, Serda was wrapping up when Ebimus spoke again. “What of Garlidan’s plan for Paul?” His translation took half a second, transforming hissing clicks into a calm, measured baritone. “Can Paul be trusted with such technology, when the stakes for his planet are so high?”
The crowd agreed. There was the clear feeling that Garlidan had overreached in the diplomatic sense; relations between planets, even those in the past, should be handled through proper channels. It was one thing to borrow an Earth-human for some experiments (although that, too, was enormously controversial). It was an egregious imposition for Garlidan to have provided an untrained neophyte like Paul access to a time-travel Vortex, equip him with a light-speed engine … a warp drive … a Replicator … a hibernation module. And such a craft as the Phoenix, which could travel into virtually any environment, even inside giant gas planets or into alien oceans.
Or, for that matter, Garlidan’s decision to gift Paul a quantum supercomputer. Only a dozen were known to exist, none of them in private hands. It was a breathtaking indulgence, an unprecedented and ballsy piece of interstellar showmanship, in the face of certain punishment.
Falik straightened her back. Time to speak up for the absent. “Paul arrived as a naïve human, someone only beginning to accept that life existed beyond his own planet. Within a few days, assisted by learning implants from our Boffin, and possessed of a natural curiosity, he was more than able to take part in Takanlian society. He made friends.” She remembered the cheery Cruiser ride and that hysterical Jerry Lee Lewis re-entry. “He was then entrusted with forging a settlement in the Outer Rim.”
This really riled up the crowd, and for the first time Falik heard obvious calls of support for the beleaguered Earth-man. “A thousand years of dispute, and he arranged a truce within a few days,” she reminded them.
“By drugging an entire city!” came a yell from the back. This time the Guardians didn’t hesitate; the nearest one strode over and jabbed his metal staff into the heckler’s back. There was a brief, agonized scream as a strangely blue halo appeared around the stricken figure, before he slumped unconscious to the ground and was swiftly carried out by panicked bystanders.
Ah, the great dichotomy of Takanlian life, thought Falik to herself as the commotion passed. Be free! Learn, travel, meet people, live life to its fullest! But shut the fuck up when you’re told to.
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br /> The balance of the crowd seemed content with Paul’s rather unorthodox solution, however. This intractable dispute, a needless confrontation stemming from the basest of motives, had plunged the Outer Rim into generations of war and instability. The public applauded measures and personalities who steadied the ship and brought dialogue and peace, unusual methodologies notwithstanding. This was seen as the peak of Paul’s career, a boon to his already soaring popularity. The public would not desert him now, especially as he was… missing? In unexplained circumstances? That was the official version.
The folklore had him speeding through the galaxy, solving disputes and bringing together warring factions wherever he went. Earth, you say? He’ll fix that before breakfast. The man’s a legend.
“So, his plan?” cackled the reptilian Ebimus.
“To repair the ravaged Earth,” Falik summarized succinctly. Serda awaited further details, if only for the record. “He was to intervene in what, from our point of view and his, would have been Earth’s past. Through the application of high technology and the fostering of intellectual pursuits, education and debt relief, Paul sought to create a kind of utopia… a perfect society… which would chart a fresh course for human history. The pollution and calamities which had overcome the Earth by the mid 2040s would be avoided, and a vibrant, peaceful, space-faring civilization would take its place.”
The crowd loved the rhetoric. Earth sounds a lot like Takanli! An educated, cultured society, bravely forging new paths to the stars. Such themes never failed to set the heart aflutter. But Serda wasn’t here to sing Paul’s praises.
“Isn’t it true that, according to sub-space probes, and the latest data from the far-flung Lawrence, that since arriving on Earth, Paul has cut… a rather unusual figure?”
Net episodes from Paul’s life had started to filter through – some framed as animations, speculatively but cleverly, and some based on media reports from Earth – showing the debauched playboy lifestyle to which he had quickly become accustomed. A serial philanderer, technological sorcerer, political wizard and engineering genius, wrapped in a highly polished, Armani-suited, Veuve Clicquot image. Some loved it. Some despised his grandstanding selfishness, seeing it merely as a distraction from the hard and vital work of fixing a broken planet.
Still others were uncomfortable at the showmanship but mollified by the apparently stupendous successes the man had chalked up; the latest news, from Earth-year 2021, showed his spaceflight business going gangbusters, his educational initiatives transforming continents, and his project to encourage coral reef growth setting new benchmarks for public-private partnerships.
“Let us not forget,” cautioned Serda, “that anyone with the guidance and focus of a quantum supercomputer is apt to achieve much in little time. But,” even he was prepared to admit, “a lot has been achieved, very quickly, and inarguably for the betterment of Earth’s peoples.”
The day grew older. Few of the audience left, though, preferring to await the denouement which followed each Council session: another silent, cyan-blue spark deliberation, and a set of decisions often so concise and intricate that a supercomputer would find them unimprovable.
Falik was permitted a seat among a row of dignitaries who were observing the proceedings, and there she waited for the Council’s verdict. Despite her well-handled appearance, her mood was glum. They’ll fire me. Or send me to a moon of Gaj to sequence the genomes of atmospheric bacteria. Garlidan must be laughing his ass off, wherever he is. The conniving old bastard.
The giant chamber fell into the most total silence as the council’s final deliberations concluded. The introductory voice, steady but authoritative, filled the hall. Heart in her throat, Falik listened with her fingers crossed and her stomach tighter than a snare drum.
“The Earth human known as Paul shall be considered, as he always has been, an employee of this Council.” Falik blinked. After all this, they’re prepared to protect him? There was no speaker at which to stare, so she fixed her gaze almost compulsively on a shining patch of cloth below her knee.
“Following his successes in the Outer Rim, Paul was permitted by this Council to undertake the journey to Earth. Garlidan then took control, illegally and without the Council’s consent, of the arrangements for this journey. Had the Council been informed of his plan, he would not have been permitted to proceed. For this, the Council censures Garlidan and demands that he appear before this body, no later than three revolutions around our star from this day, in order to receive our judgment.”
This was wildly popular but the crowd’s euphoria was short-lived, truncated by the voice which resumed, emanating as if from within the walls. “Paul has been sent on an extremely difficult assignment, admittedly of his own choosing, but one which has positive implications for this system. The furtherment of education, space-faring technology and cultural exchange are all strong interests of this Council, and we see no reason to punish Paul for the transgressions of his enablers and friends.”
The euphoria erupted once more. Our hero is safe! Then the voice resumed its solemn tone.
“Paul made extremely close ties during his time on Takanli, and on the Daedalus among the Outer Rim planets. These friendships are of significance to the Council, as is his exemplary past service. We therefore decree that a science vessel be sent to the Sol system in order to check on Paul’s progress, and provide assistance as required. This will also give him the opportunity, should he wish, to return to Takanli.”
A torrent of emotions ripped through Falik. She found she couldn’t stand. Or breathe. The crowd were going insane all around her, but she was limited to a few gasps of amazement. Serda, glancing over in concern, motioned for a guard to help her to her feet, and bring her some water.
We’re going to go and help him.
He’s fought across all that space, and through time itself, battled the prejudices of his home planet and faced the toughest of challenges. And now we’ve made him official. He’s become a one-man outpost of the will of the Council, existing under its protection. It was the sweetest relief. She found herself in tears, something a Takanlian might expect on only a handful of occasions in a lifetime.
“Dr. Falik, I’m told you are familiar with the captain and crew of the Daedalus?” Falik nodded, too stunned to speak. “We shall recall Daedalus from her present mission and re-fit her for Chrono-Vortex insertion. Our emissaries will contact Holdrian to request assistance; one can only hope they break their usual strict communications silence. If necessary, a member of the Council will personally journey to Holdrian and make arrangements.”
The crowd had begun to sing. It was a slow, scalar melody, easy for a large crowd to intone together, full of nobility and a sense of community. It was known by some as ‘Praise for the Voyager’. Oh, Paul. How I wish he were here to hear this, to see these people. You should know what you mean to us.
“Finally, Dr. Falik, the Council sees no reason why you should not travel with the Daedalus, perhaps as part of their bioscience team. We are anxious to learn more about a society who are steadily achieving peace and prosperity without recourse to emotional vaccines or genetic coercion. Learn from them; spend time with them. And then return to us, with Paul alongside you if he should so wish. Bring him to us, so that we may thank him once more for his service.”
The session ended, but the crowd kept singing as they filed slowly to the exit. Tears streaming down her face, Falik found Serda and hugged him – a gesture which he politely endured – before being escorted out by the giant, ever-vigilant Guardians.
Falik’s research colleague Carpash was waiting outside, almost levitating with glee. “I don’t believe it! Firsthand experience of Earth’s people… this will make our careers, Falik… imagine the publications, the lecture series, the…” He stopped, cowed and a self-conscious now, as he noticed the tears in the young woman’s eyes.
She steadied herself, took him by the shoulders and kissed both cheeks. “Yes. You’re right. This is what we’ve
all been waiting for. We’ll be elected to the Academy after this trip… it will be a mere formality.” Carpash was grinning again. “But, you know what I’m imagining right now?”
Carpash shook his head. Women can be so damned confusing.
“I’m just imagining holding my Earth boy again.”
***
Chapter 3: The Phoenix and the Larssen
High Earth Orbit, aboard the Phoenix
Sunday, January 22nd, 2034
They were words Paul would never forget: “I think I’ve got an idea.”
He was desperately typing at the communications console, trying to alert Beasley to the crisis which was about to unfold. It was a tough email to send. You’re about to cease to exist. So is everyone else. Instead, the Earth and everything on it is to be cast back down into the pit of fucking despair.
“That’s great, Hal. Step on it, will you? I’m going to try to warn them.”
The machine pondered this. “Why?”
Paul glanced out of the window at the storm of lights in space, the swirling Chrono-Vortex toward which Julius’ long, slender spacecraft, the Larssen, was charting a high-speed course. Paul and Hal had perhaps two minutes. After that, Julius would disappear into the past, carrying on his deranged mission to track down and stall every attempt at time travel. He would intercept the unarmed Lawrence, and there would be nothing to stop him from destroying the ship and her intrepid crew. Paul’s Sunday afternoon hike in Snowdonia, all those years ago, would carry on uninterrupted, and he would remain blissfully unaware of Takanli, or lightspeed drives, or replication. Or the cure for cancer, he remembered with a shudder. It would all end; in fact, it would never be permitted to begin. His head swam, but he was forced to argue with Hal. “What do you mean ‘Why’?” he yelled.
“This reality is about to come to an end, Paul. Telling Chris Beasley, or anyone else, would only be to inform them of their own inevitable doom, moments before it arrived. I would call that rather unfair.”
Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels) Page 5