“He knew,” Hadeed whispered; his exhausted teammates did not notice. “He was prepared. What have I done?”
The terror consumed him. He needed to tell her; he needed a private, secure channel. Yet he knew such attempts would be folly, as Miriam was on one of her occasional retreats to the blue hills northwest of the capital. She’s smart, full of vision. She’ll be prepared. Those words were little comfort all the way back to the uplift station alongside the Bengalese River.
As soon as he stepped from the transport, Hadeed searched for options. He had to get to her; she had to be warned. Representatives of the warriors’ clans were present at landing, and the greetings were jubilant. Hadeed paid them little mind until he saw Polemicus Damon, Miriam’s aide, standing stone-faced. Hadeed raced to him.
“What?” He asked the aide.
“I was just told the news,” Damon said. “It’s Fynn. Apparently, there was some sort of incident on Nephesian. He … he was killed by a peacekeeper. I don’t know everything, but they’re saying he was in a restricted zone and …”
“No. No, Damon. He wouldn’t.” He struggled to keep his thoughts clear. “Where is she, Damon? We have to get to her now.”
“That’s why I’m here. I was sent to bring you to her. She wanted to be with you tonight.”
He pointed to Miriam’s personal Scram at the end of the landing port, and they raced toward it. Damon had her coordinates but had not spoken to her in more than six hours. As soon as they jumped into the Scram, Damon tried in vain to make contact. Hadeed felt nauseous.
They never took off. Out of the corner of his eye, Hadeed saw commotion at the edge of the river, where many of the returning warriors and their greeters pointed or scurried. Damon was oblivious, but Hadeed leaped out at once. Every ounce of instinct, firmly honed under her tutelage, told him what this was and drew him to the water’s edge.
The first thing he saw was the red stain on the river, but the fingers of other Hiebim pointed to the true horror. The naked body of Polemicus Miriam drifted slowly with the current, her chest and abdomen flayed open. Her alabaster features were painted a sickly red, and her hands were missing. Hadeed broke through the crowd and raced to the shore, jumped into the river and waded twenty feet. He grabbed her mutilated body and brought it back to shore. He fell to the ground holding her in his lap. He closed her glassy, misshapen eyes and poured ten years of grief and anger and hope and love into her. His tears clouded his vision as he rocked her, and Hadeed sank into an abyss.
“Will you still love me when I am old and ragged?” She had asked him during their last night together.
“I’ll love you until I go to dust.”
And he would. As he held her body close, Hadeed became certain of many things. He realized Sir Ephraim was smarter than them all and a man of far greater evil than he could have imagined. He knew the Chancellors were invincible, but war would come anyway. For this was their declaration, and Hadeed vowed to become their nightmare.
TWELVE
HOMEWARD
“IT’S DONE, SIR. All the pieces have fallen.”
Sir Ephraim Hollander heard Elizer Gripphen’s reassuring words but felt no true sense of accomplishment, only the numbness of finality. The lure of the next day, the next maneuver had kept him pushing forward all those years on Hiebimini; now the last day was complete. In a strange way, he felt betrayed.
“As Chancellors, we have an inherent flaw,” Ephraim told his aide. “We set our goals to unattainable standards. It is our genetic curse. Yes?”
“I’m not entirely sure I understand, sir. However, it would seem our desire to set a high bar is what brought us across the galaxy.”
Ephraim settled into his settee, the lone possession he would not leave Hiebimini without. The forward view lounge of the luxury liner Arcturus was otherwise empty, cleared out on his orders prior to boarding.
“True, my sweet Elizer. But at some point we grab for more than we are entitled.” He held Elizer’s hand and kissed it, soaking in his aide’s citrus body perfume. “We overreach.”
“You seem despondent, sir. I thought this news would please you.”
“Oh, it does, after something of a fashion.”
Elizer hesitated. “We have done so much in the past ten years, sir. So many things I don’t understand. I wish you would share the larger picture with me. How do these deaths matter? Why will we not try to save Hiebimini? What has it all been about?”
Ephraim studied his aide with a blend of overwhelming desire and deep pity. His primal urges commanded him to grab Elizer, strip off the aide’s form-fitting golden tunic and embrace one more night of pleasure before returning to the tightly-wound cocoon of Earth politics and Sanctum business. Yet Ephraim resisted. A mournful pall came between him and the object of his affection. He loved Elizer’s eyes more than anything …
“Elizer, we learn as Chancellors that all knowledge will come to us in time. We have to wait our turn. Yes? If a man is destined to live for another hundred years, what is the value of knowing all the secrets when he still has a century ahead of him? Our journey is relevant only when we continue to discover truth right to the end.”
Ephraim saw it in those beautiful, seductive eyes – a frustration borne from years of establishing intricate, fragile threads among the Hiebim without ever being provided answers by the man young Elizer loved. Ephraim knew Elizer was entitled to full disclosure of the secrets that had been the trove of a few hundred humans over the past three millennia. Yes, Ephraim decided. I will tell him everything … before the end.
“You have been a great friend,” he told the aide, who responded with a soft smile and bowed head. “I cannot imagine a more devoted or reliable aide, especially given all I have asked of you. Take peace in that small token. We’ll talk again soon. I promise. Go now.”
For an instant, Elizer seemed angelic, a mere innocent who had not grown a day from when he came to Ephraim’s service fresh from the UG. And then the door slid shut. Ephraim dropped into the settee and allowed the weight of finality to overwhelm him once more. He turned up his right palm. The catalyzed Quatroxal speck had been successfully transferred.
He refused to lose sleep over this decision, for it was a necessary, prudent step – one of many in an endless procession that would follow him until he went to dust. Still, he would miss the scent of Elizer in the morning.
“Open,” he said boldly, shooting his right hand upward.
The forward bulkhead, painted royal blue and gold – the official colors of the TransAmerican Consortium – seemed to shiver, as if about to implode. In a matter of seconds, the bulkhead disappeared altogether, supplanted by the onrush of space. The Arcturus was traveling through Zentilli’s Fulcrum, a wormhole network that had, for more than fifteen hundred years, made interstellar travel possible and opened doorways of discovery to the thirty-nine colony worlds. The Fulcrum would allow Ephraim to complete his journey of two hundred ninety light-years to Earth in a mere sixteen standard days.
He stepped forward, as close to the edge of the bulkhead as safety parameters and the force field would allow. The Fulcrum glowed like eternal sunset, a blend of orange and red shimmers. To fly through it was like flying through wispy clouds, each one pulsating with the energy that collectively acted as catapults, pushing ships across the galaxy thousands of times faster than the most powerful propulsion engines could ever manage. It was a miracle beyond the physics of the visible universe, of a design understood by no one but linked to a truth known only to a few. Among those people: Ephraim Hollander.
He knew he was among the fortunate; many others who learned the ultimate truth before he did could not fathom its depths and eventually lost their way if not their sanity. Several of those bore his DNA. They had been at first certain they could shoulder the weight of this knowledge and apply it to their roles in the grand scheme. What none of them counted on, however, was their own human frailty, the limited capacity of the brain to process such immense possibilities. In
the end, some turned away from the truth and rejected it entirely. Ephraim pitied them and what they surrendered. To have this knowledge, to know what it all meant, was the greatest honor of his life, even though his first moments inside the blue glasses so long ago had proven tragic. He slipped on his blue glasses.
Seconds later, he stepped inside the raucous, smoke-and-dance-filled orgy of an early fortieth century Marseilles discotheque. His heart sank at once. He knew which of his many relatives chose this venue, as Ephraim had had the misfortune at arriving here when he was fifteen and still looking for help to sort out his life’s purpose.
Laughter rose sharply from a large corner table not near the dance floor. The carousers – those responsible for bringing their lineage to this site – had removed portions of their clothes; one woman tossed her bra to the next table, where three muscular men in tight golden tunics of a much later historical era were not impressed. The women at this table, their beauty hidden behind thick mascara and glossed, ruby-red lipstick, smoked long, thin cigarettes and blew rings; while their men – tuxedoes untied and pants at their feet – groped and licked exposed breasts and aroused their companions with filthy verbal foreplay.
Ephraim shook his head and reached for his glasses, much preferring the spectacular view outside the Arcturus. However, Frederic Ericsson patted him on the shoulder.
“Bloody Eglantines,” Frederic said. “Never did have a sense of propriety.”
“I fail to understand,” Ephraim said. “Why do they still have privilege here? Why were they allowed to choose the venue?”
“If they were never given the right to choose, they would have no purpose at all. Yes? Actually, this is their first draw in years. The bastards. They almost cost us everything. The entire mission, virtually lost on their watch. Set us back five hundred years. The very notion that they came of my blood …”
Ephraim cleared his throat. “… or mine. That entire period of history never made sense, Frederic. The Eglantines rose to prominence less than two centuries after the Heretic Wars. How could they have so easily lost sight of what you and all the others accomplished?”
Ericsson laughed. “Ah, my friend. I don’t believe the problem was an appreciation of history. Rather, a lack of concern about the future. It was the man in the back – third from the right – Henrik Dorffman. He claimed to be a philosopher. In truth, he was a mad drunk every day from the time he first looked through the glasses. Dorffman rejected the very notion of our three-thousand-year mission simply because his role would have been so perfunctory and fleeting. He knew the collapse would not come for twenty-eight hundred years after his death. So, he decided we were wrong. All of us. The Jewels could not possibly hope for us to sustain this mission over three millennia, he said. He even suggested – mind you, this is remarkable – we had no right to carry out this mission without the full complicity of the rest of humanity. Imagine the audacity. He loved wearing the glasses, mind you. So did his immediate descendants. Had some of them not eventually moved to Catalonia and intermarried with more pragmatic Chancellors, I dare say we might never have come this far, never even heard of the Fulcrum, let alone be traveling it.”
Both men turned about and stared into the orange-red shimmer of Zentilli’s Fulcrum.
“Stunning,” Ericsson whispered. “The greatest invention of my lifetime was the airplane. A week before I died, I flew from Paris to Roma on the first commercial jet. The last day of my life – I knew my heart was about to give out – I made a wish that regardless of what came after, one day I would experience what lay among the stars. Took the better part of a bloody millennium, but the journey has been worth the price of patience. Yes?”
“Soon,” Ephraim sighed, “We’ll know how it all ends.”
“We will at that.” Ericsson paused after absorbing Ephraim’s newest knowledge, ending with a transfer of a Quatroxal speck. He frowned through a nod. “You made the right choice, my friend. Your young aide could not have handled the full scope of it. And if he were to leak anything he knows, put our family at all in jeopardy, well …”
Ephraim scowled at the Eglantines. One of the heavily-busted women responded by spitting in Ephraim’s direction.
“They definitely have little use for me,” Ephraim said without concern. “Seeing me reminds them of how little time they have.” He turned to Frederic. “Yes. Elizer. He was … is … a good man, and he loves me. Perhaps in a different context, I could have made him happy.”
“Perhaps. Are you still convinced about Hiebimini?”
“No doubts. The timetable for its destruction is too coincidental.”
“Agreed. And the second sign?”
“No. That one eludes me. I have a sense it will come to me in my lifetime, but perhaps it is actually meant for …”
“Your son.”
Ephraim sighed. “Yes.”
Ericsson blew purple smoke rings from his typically fat cigar. “Still concerned about his ability to face his path?”
“He wouldn’t be the first to lose his faculties, Frederic. And when the day comes for that boy to look through the glasses for the first time … he will be devastated by what he sees.”
Ericsson dropped a comforting hand upon Sir Ephraim’s shoulder. “And I believe his father will be devastated for him. Yes?” Sir Ephraim nodded and allowed Ericsson to continue. “I have always thought the mission was easiest for those who came first. People like me were charged with creating, building, revitalizing, reshaping, molding. We pushed civilization forward by whatever means necessary. Except for those Eglantine bastards. But the past few generations … I believe they have struggled with the mission. To stagnate, to undermine, to sabotage, to tear asunder everything that came before … this cannot be easy. We are all children of humanity. We like to believe we are better than the generation before us. We believe in the ideals of evolution, both of the mind and the heart. To chase objectives that run counter to our basic instinct … difficult, Ephraim. Not an enviable task. Yes?”
Ephraim nodded. “I have wondered.”
“Understandable. And yet, you have set in motion the climax. Your legacy is secured.”
Ephraim turned around and stared across the discotheque to almost all those – Eglantines excepted – who had gathered up humanity from humble beginnings and pushed it forward and outward. Scientists, politicians, philanthropists, corporate tycoons, generals, explorers – even the discoverer of the Fulcrum – and Ephraim questioned whether they would ever truly appreciate his role in fraying the wonders they created. All of them had been players on a common stage, yet only a few could take the blame for what was to come. Would they be his allies after the end? And what of the few who never came anymore? Or the one whom he missed the most?
“We’re like bookends, you and I,” he told Ericsson. “In the twenty years since I first looked through the glasses, you have been on my side, Frederic. As I go forward, I trust …?”
Ericsson took a puff and smiled. “Always, my young friend. One day, when the Jewels return and set us on our way to another realm, you and I and perhaps two or three of these pompous demigods will sit down and have tea. For a very long time. Meanwhile, be confident, Ephraim. Go home. Tell Genevieve that playtime is over. She needs to bear your son. The last generation.” He mused. “Incredible words, aren’t they? The last generation.”
“They are at that.” He turned and shook Ericsson’s hand. “Thank you, as always. I should be leaving. There’s something I have to do. Goodbye, Frederic. Hopefully next time, someone other than the Eglantines can choose the venue. Yes?”
Ephraim removed his blue glasses and stood in the almost-empty and very quiet forward view lounge. He sighed as he fell into the settee and stared upon the Fulcrum.
“CV drop.” Upon his command, recessed lights from the ceiling formed a glow point directly before him, introducing a holographic screen. “Vidsearch protocol. Gripphen.”
A live shot of Elizer Gripphen captured the young man in his personal qua
rters. Much to Ephraim’s delight, his mortally-wounded aide – unaware his major organs would fail sometime in the next day – was refreshing himself with a new coating of body perfume. The oil glistened as he rubbed his pectoral muscles. Ephraim would not have minded watching this show for hours. But he couldn’t. His heart wasn’t in it this time.
“I am sorry, Elizer,” he whispered. “I am truly sorry.”
Yet, he could not let this end without giving Elizer one final gift. He tapped the stream amp on his right temple and called forth the familiar holocube. His fingers scrambled the cube until finding a direct line into the receptor matrix of Elizer’s amp.
“Interpretative,” he commanded the amp. “Deliver the following message as host reaches maximum sleep depth. Element: Voice of Hans Gripphen, host’s father. Text follows. ‘My son, you have been searching for the truth. Know then that the destiny of all humanity is yours to behold in these words, which come to us from those who knew the universe a million years before the infancy of our own civilization ...
“ ‘The fall will come not in the bath of fire, but in the arrival of the first flame unknown. And from the three-winged beast is delivered the gifts of expeditious annihilation and the undiscovered path toward renewal. The fallen know only the window through which they see, but the lasting blood is drawn from fire and braced in twelve eyes. They are the five encased for the one, appearing through the arrogant rift of the soul, in geometry unpredicted. From this gift is found final truth, the path reborn.’ ”
Ephraim took a deep breath and debated whether to release the message. Yes, he told himself. Elizer is entitled this much, at the very least.
“Dispatch,” he told the amp then disconnected the link.
He ordered the CV transmission to end. Enough of this, he told himself. Enough sentimentality. Time to focus on the next journey. Earth. The mother to be.
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