Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .
They never noticed the slight vertigo and disorientation of the emergence into normal space, but at the moment it happened something dark and crackling with energy flared within her, reached out for him, and they were both enveloped in an energy pattern that seemed almost a living creature, tentacles of black flame reaching out directed by three tiny red eyes, and throughout the ship all the talents heard terrible mental screams of pure hatred from creatures of a type they could not imagine . . .
And then, suddenly, there was silence, with just the normal sounds of the ship around them, and the telltale whine and vibration from the subspace engines kicking in and regulating normal flight.
It was Krisha who loosened her grip first, relaxing and pulling a bit away from his lips. Sensing that she wanted to break, he let her go, and she stepped back a half step and almost fell. He moved to steady her but she waved him off and remained on her feet, breathing very hard.
“Krisha . . . ?”
“I—I am all right, Captain,” she responded, coughing, but speaking in the classical Mizlaplanian dialect she’d had problems with before. She went over and sank into a chair, and he just watched her, excited, heartened, but puzzled.
“The darkness?”
“That which is within me is back where it belonged,” she told him, eyes tearing. “That which was added is gone. Dead, I think, if such things can truly die. The others, too, although, like me, it will depend on their own wills to control and push that inside them back down. At least—it is our choice once again.”
“You know about the others?”
She nodded. “It is back. I am not a part of their group, but I can read their surface thoughts and feel the absence of that horrible darkness.”
“Then . . . what is wrong?” He was troubled by her strange tone and seeming sadness at what could only be called wonderful news.
“I—I will treasure that moment forever, Captain, when your love saved me. It is the greatest moment in my life, and I mean that. Still, I understand now. That poor little wretch of an animal I was turning into was me, Captain. Not the fantasy I always had, which was based on fanciful ideas about what I might have become in some other culture, some other nation, some other time, but the real me, stripped of all that I was, as I am now.”
He frowned, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“My fantasies were false, Captain, as most fantasies are. In intelligence, in relative appearances, even in social class, I’m not really all that different than, say, Modra of the Exchange, or the wretched Kalia of the Mycohl. In a sense, they are both alternative versions of me, no matter how different we might seem. No matter my childish fairy tales of a different life, they are, in a great sense, alternate truths had I been born into either of their societies instead of my own. It’s quite a choice. A self-centered, driven work-obsessed woman too busy to even see the feelings of others and causing much pain as a result for an empty, hollow end, or an ignorant, abused girl hating her own beauty and herself for it instead of the society that made her that way, consumed with loathing for life itself. That—or a priestess of the Mizlaplan, helping maintain a state of peace and relative plenty, serving people and solving their problems rather than causing them or being victimized by them.”
“You are not like those other two,” he told her gently.
“No, Captain, I’m like McCray. My identity, all that I have, is wrapped up in one personality, one existence. Remove it now, at this point, and there is nothing upon which to stand. When he lost his faith he became nothing. In his search for something else, he got a replacement control on his back. On our descent to the city, he lost that control but regained his faith for a time and was a great man. When the demon and the ascent to The Ship took it away once more, only ugliness remained. I’m sorry, I’m trying to explain what may not be explainable. I know what you want, and a part of me wants that, too. But, over time, it would be as hollow as Modra’s future, and as selfish. I could never be what we both imagine; in the end, it would eat me from the inside as sure as that darkness. If I am not a priestess, I am nothing at all.”
He shook his head, more confused than ever. “I am trying to understand, but it is difficult. You can’t truly believe the Cosmology. Not after what you know now.”
“It’s beyond that. For twenty years I have been defined by, and defined myself by, a single identity. That’s the very person you love and wanted to save, and you did. It is the only way I can contribute, be a human being. Without that bedrock of truth within a much confused faith, I am too cold and dark and alone, no matter what I am doing or who I am with. It’s no compulsions talking, no powerful hypnotic talent, just me. I almost wonder about that priestess or what ever she was that broke McCray. I wonder how much conditioning and mind control they actually did on her, or whether she, too, came to this point, a point as incomprehensible to him as mine is to you. It hurts—it’s supposed to hurt—but I know now, knew from the moment that thing left me, that I can be one or the other but not something new. You have never truly believed in the Cosmology, even from the start. I’ve known that. I think we all did. But you believed in it over all the alternatives.”
He sighed and gave her a sad sort of smile. “In a sense, I think I do understand.” And he did, although his heart ached. He went over to her, took her hand, and kissed it. “As you say, I, too, am of Mizlaplan.”
He could see her tears, and fought with all his self-control to hold back his own. Of all the losses of this great adventure, though, this one was the most difficult to accept.
Worse, what he’d already determined made it the best result, for now there was hope again for any future at all.
Josef’s voice suddenly came on the intercom speakers. “What the hell happened?” he growled. “There’s nothing on the scanners! Nothing on the screens! We’re dead and flying blind!”
HARD TRUTHS
TOBRUSH HAD TAKEN HIS INNER, REAL SELF OUT of their mind-link, but Josef had still been able to follow the Mycohl master’s physical actions, which seemed quite ordinary. This made the sudden freeze in all systems all the more inexplicable.
Tobrush decided to kick in on the intercom so that all of them could be reassured.
“We are under the control of my own kind,” it assured them. “No measurements or recordings are permitted in this place.”
There was a slight jar and the ship shuddered.
“That is a shuttle for me,” Tobrush told them. “You cannot come, but you will be safe and guarded here until I return.”
“We have always been a team!” Josef protested. “Why can’t we go with you?”
“You could,” the Mycohlian responded, “but only your body would return. By keeping you here, I hope to preserve you. Somehow, I still believe that all of us are essential to the success of our operation. Now, stand clear, I am coming down.”
Josef met Tobrush at the hatch. “How long will you be gone?” he asked.
“I do not know. There are sufficient supplies on board, and I will arrange for the tanks to be serviced and the lost air reserve replaced. As for me, it might be hours, it might be much longer. If it is too long I shall send word. The decision on what to do next will shortly be out of my hands, and I will be following orders. In the meantime, the mind-link will allow me to monitor you here. No harm must come to anyone aboard this vessel while I am gone, Josef. You, as commander of the vessel, are responsible—and accountable. You are right on the edge, Josef, of either again becoming the responsible top officer with great potential you were, or tipping over into Kalia’s mental realm. Much depends on how wisely you decide.”
The hatch opened, and the Julki body oozed through it and down into the shuttle below.
Gun Roh Chin sat at the quartermaster’s table in the bubble and picked up a stylus. Putting it to the white-surfaced table, he drew a small design which the table then showed in stark black and white outlines.
He moved above it and drew:
Below it, he drew yet another shape, the same as the second but reversed:
“I’m missing something,” he muttered to himself. But what? To the right of the star he sketched:
He stared at them, certain that what he was looking for was now in front of his eyes, but, somehow, he couldn’t make the jigsaw fit.
He heard someone come up into the bubble and turned to see who it might be. It was Modra.
She had a lot of bruises and some scratches, but still somehow appeared softer than in the descent and the city, as if all the hard edges, the toughness, the fight, as it were, had gone out of her.
She said nothing right away but came over behind him and just looked at what he was drawing. Finally she said, “Sorry if I’m interruptin’,” in a lower, sexier voice than she’d used before the last few days. It was almost as if she was consciously trying to turn herself not into Grysta but into the original Molly.
“No, no, not at all,” he responded. “There seemed little else to do but sit and think right now.”
“Yeah. Josef’s suddenly got himself sealed up in the cockpit—said he had to sort some things out, whatever that means—and I’m a little scared of Jimmy right now.”
“Overall, I’d say Jimmy is more dangerous to himself right now than to anyone else,” he commented. “Deep down, he’s a very good, very moral man with too much ego and not enough will to resolve his problems on his own. He needs help, but his ego stands in the way of accepting that, and his ego is all he’s really got left.”
She sighed. “I threw my ego over the side days ago and I’m sleepin’ better than I have in months.”
“Krisha tried that, and the result was so empty it nearly destroyed her. Each person is very different.”
“Yeah, I know about Krisha, and I think she’s nuts. Being the wife of a freighter captain, living on board, seeing different places that don’t try to kill you while havin’ all the peace and quiet you want, that’s perfect. If you ever want a replacement, I’m available.” She started, massaging his neck and shoulders.
“You’re married,” he reminded her, but the massage felt too good to tell her to stop.
“A temporary thing, if 1 ever get back there, and if he hasn’t already declared me dead anyway,” she told him. “He’s a very sweet man, but it was a marriage on impulse, without either of us even knowin’ the other. Besides, I didn’t say you had to-marry me.”
“We don’t do such things in the Mizlaplan. The whole system is designed to create a uniformity of thought and behavior. I’m beginning to believe it’s a kind of long-term defense. The Church, synthesized out of countless other religions of the races incorporated into the Mizlaplan, evolving to meet its needs but always strict, makes it nearly impossible for cults tied to the Quintara and what they stand for to exist, at least for very long. I doubt if you’d like or accept those rules. Besides, with your current multiplicity of talents, they’d haul you in and make you a priestess like Krisha. As long as all the talents are in the priesthood and out maintaining the system, large-scale rebellion and conspiracies are next to impossible.”
“Yeah? You ever been married, Captain?”
“Me? No. To commit to marriage I’d have to know the woman well, first, and my life and profession do not lead to many long-term associations with ordinary folks. I’m not against it, it’s just one passion of mine ruling out other passions, as it were.”
“Oh, come on! You’re no virgin, Captain! You’re a real gentleman and a charmer, but you know your way around. And you didn’t lose your chastity in the empire you describe.”
He smiled. “You are correct. As a matter of fact, I lost it at the age of twenty-two on my first military assignment as assistant arbiter in a treaty dispute with the Exchange. To a Mycohl, in fact. I rather think she was a spy. I certainly hoped so, since she was so intent upon seducing me.”
She had to laugh. “And that’s when you do it? When you put in for foreign duty?”
“Well, most of the time. There are some people one can have in the Mizlaplan if you must, or are in a situation like mine. To keep you sane, to bleed off your worst impulses— therapeutic sex, you might say. They are barren, so there are no complications, and for one reason or another they have no other thing to do. You might say that their job is to keep people like me on the straight and narrow, as it were. They are pleasant folk, usually, and, believe it or not, they work out of the medical branch.”