Dominion (6 page)

When he opened his heavily lidded eyes, they displayed the pupils and irises of an Illyri.

He stood before them, space at his back, the vessels of the fleet visible behind him, and gazed intently at each of the visitors in turn. He spent the longest time staring at Syl and Paul, as though trying to come to some understanding of the connection between them.

Then he spoke, slowly but clearly, in English, his voice soft and only a little hesitant. There were pauses between certain words, even between some syllables. And as he spoke, a translation appeared in the air before his face, rendered in the letters of the Illyri alphabet.

“Welcome,” he said. “It is a”—pause—“pleasure to have you. Here.”

“Who are you?” asked Paul.

He had almost asked “What are you?” but that seemed impolite.

“We are Cayth.”

Meia was circling the being, examining him. He appeared untroubled by her attention.

“Syl?” Meia said.

“Yes.”

“I can hear no heartbeat.”

Meia's faculties were far more acute than those of humans or Illyri.

Syl reached out with her mind to the one who called himself Cayth, trying to get some sense of him, but found nothing. He was like a skinned, walking corpse.

“It's just something for us to focus on,” she said. “It has no life.”

“It's a composite,” said Meia. “I see aspects of Illyri musculature and bone structure, but human too. And then there are the eyes. They've created a fusion of both species, probably from the scans they made of our bodies.”

“You told us they were coming, Syl,” said Paul. “Is this what you meant?”

She shook her head.

“No, they're here. They're all around us. I can feel their presence.”

“They're invisible?” asked Thula. He looked unhappy. Skinless bodies were bad enough; unseen beings peering over his shoulder were another matter entirely.

“It's more than that,” she said. “I don't think they have any physical form at all.”

“We are Cayth,” repeated the being before them, but his movements and gestures had changed. They were less mechanical and mannered than before. Syl saw an expression on his face that reminded her of Paul, a little flick of the left eyebrow that he used when he was amused, or skeptical.

“It's learning from us,” she said. “It's imitating our gestures, our expressions.”

“We want you to be. Comfortable,” said Cayth. “We want to communicate.”

Then it tried switching to Illyri, but no equivalent translation into English appeared in the air.

“What's the deal?” asked Thula.

“It's simply repeating what it already said,” Meia informed him. “I think it learned English from listening to us talk on the
Nomad
, and some Illyri the same way. Perhaps it picked up the Illyri alphabet from the ship's systems, but it has no idea how the English alphabet might look.”

Seeing Thula's puzzled expression, Cayth returned to English.

“We wish to communicate,” he said, again. “We want you to be. Unconcerned.”

“Skin might help,” said Thula. “And maybe a pair of pants.”

Cayth's body jerked, his back arching to such a degree that his face turned to the ceiling. He stretched out his arms and legs, and his feet left the floor, so that he became a crucified figure hanging before them.

And then he was gone. He fell apart before their eyes, muscle, flesh, and bone reduced to a thick red soup that fell to the floor and was reabsorbed into the body of the ship.

“Was it something I said?” said Thula, looking appalled.

“Clearly that wasn't working for anyone,” said Paul.

“Is this preferable?”

The voice came from behind them, deeper and more organic than the unfortunate Cayth's. They turned.

Before them stood a dense hologram, easily seven or eight feet in height. The creature it depicted was black and exoskeletal, like a shadow version of the ship itself. It resembled a hybrid of a predatory insect and an armored knight on horseback, with six long, armored limbs arrayed in pairs. Those on its upper body ended in sharp, striking talons that, as they watched, flared into a delicate star pattern, each phalange capable of independent movement, so that the alien could just as easily pick up an egg without cracking it as strike a lethal blow. Its head was a great, elongated bone mask, dotted with multiple black eyes at its thickest part before narrowing to a point barely wider than a man's hand. They could see no sign of a mouth or jaws.

“Again,” said the voice, “is this preferable?”

“Man, bring back the other guy,” whispered Thula to Paul. “Even without pants.”

The head of the hologram tilted in his direction.

“No offense meant,” Thula added.

Syl stepped forward.

“You are Cayth, aren't you?” she said. “All of you.”

“There is not one. There is only all. I am Cayth. We are Cayth.”

The hologram flickered and vanished, to be replaced by a series of rapidly changing images, in which each of them saw some of those whom they knew and loved: parents, brothers, sisters, friends, comrades.

“Where are they getting these from?” asked Paul.

“Some of it is from the databases on board the
Nomad
, I imagine,” said Syl. “But most of it is from us.”

“How?”

“When they scanned us, they saw the things we care about, the things we hold dear: memories and images, families and friends—all that we treasure. They also probably saw what we had in the ship: those mementos we all keep.”

Paul glimpsed his mother, smiling at him, uncannily like the old passport photo of her that he kept in his pocket. Thula watched one of his brothers grinning at him, just as he did from the picture of them together that was one of his most prized possessions.

Syl saw her father, and she stumbled backward, the shock of him there, apparently in the living flesh, clear on her face.

“But when they scanned you, you were blank, Syl,” said Thula softly. “I saw it.”

She swallowed hard, and when she spoke her voice was high and sharp.

“Well, obviously they saw more than you did,” she said.

Paul caught Thula's eye, giving him a warning look; he kept little from his longtime comrade, and Thula was aware that Syl possessed some very strange abilities. He'd even seen a little of them for himself. She was an odd one, he thought, watching her surreptitiously as her honeyed features smoothly recast themselves and her face became a mask once more. She was the sort of complicated girl his mother had warned him to avoid. Clearly Paul's mother had not done the same. Perhaps she should have.

And still the images continued to change, like a reel of tiny films.

Meia saw Danis, to whom she had spoken just before she left Earth, and whom she trusted; and she saw the human, Trask, too, leader of the Resistance movement in Edinburgh, as much friend as enemy. Curious, she thought.

And from all of these images, the Cayth created a single figure, containing a little of each of those whom the others found reassuring, trustworthy. It was vaguely masculine and middle-aged, and, like the original composite, it combined human and Illyri features—skin as dark as Thula's, its face set with entirely lidless Illyri eyes—but it had a kind of gentleness to it, as though the Cayth had somehow managed to pinpoint the finest qualities of each of those remembered. It wore the uniform of a Brigade officer. The campaign badges on the left breast were familiar to Paul. It was a replica of the uniform worn by Peris, their old guardian, now left behind on Erebos.

“Is
this
preferable?” the composite asked, and there was humor in the voice.

Nobody objected. It seemed that this was, indeed, preferable.

T
he observation deck, previously empty of furniture, produced chairs from the floor, and an oval table, precisely like those on board the
Nomad
. A shape began to form in the wall, and what might almost have been a female version of the Cayth figure appeared, sliding effortlessly out of it with a soft plop. Paul heard Syl gasp beside him, but he was too distracted even to look at her. The new arrival bore traces of Paul's mother—vague, and impossible to identify precisely, but present nonetheless. He felt a huge rush of need and emotion unlike any that he had experienced since he was a young boy. All of his feelings for his mother—love, guilt for being forced to abandon her on Earth, sorrow for all of the times he had hurt her, gratitude for all that she had done for him and his brother, and other sensations too complex to name—threatened to overwhelm him.

He became aware of sobbing from his left. He looked at Syl, and saw that she had broken down. The sounds she was making seemed to come from the very depths of her being, and there was something so primitive and painful to them, and something so desolate yet awed about the expression on her face, that all he could do was try to pull her to him in order to console her. Yet she brushed him away, her eyes fixed on the alien, captivated by her, and Paul was reminded of the illustrations in the books of religious instruction at his old Catholic school, of Bernadette kneeling before the Virgin Mary, bathed in radiance.

Somehow, Syl managed to force the words out.

“My mother,” she said. “It's become my mother.”

Paul, who had never seen any pictures of the Lady Orianne, looked from Syl to the alien. He had thought that the alien perhaps bore some slight resemblance to Syl as well as his own mother, but he had put it down to the possibility that the presence of Syl had partly influenced its creation. Now he knew differently. He wondered just how much the alien resembled Orianne. He suspected, from Syl's reaction, that it was not merely a passing similarity, or simply a hint or suggestion as with his own mother. No, whatever the Cayth were, they had somehow tapped into Syl's wellspring of love and loss, and so powerful was it that it had influenced the appearance of this latest manifestation.

The alien tilted its head, watching Syl in turn, fascinated by this emotional response to her presence. As it did so, its appearance altered, shifting like sand, and now the resemblance to Syl was unmistakable.

Careful
, Paul wanted to say.
Careful, Syl.

And a little of his concern got through to her. He saw her force herself to look away, although it clearly pained her to do so.

A hatch in the table opened. Ornate glass bottles appeared, filled with water and bowls of Illyri and human food, squares of chocolate among them. There was also a steaming pot, and cups. Paul smelled fresh coffee.

“Please,” said the female Cayth, gesturing at the table and chairs. “Sit.”

They sat, the male Cayth at the head of the table, the female to his left. She had not taken her eyes from Syl.

Meia picked up a piece of chocolate and examined it. She sniffed it carefully before returning it to its bowl.

“It appears to be real,” she told Paul. “Either they raided our larder, or they scanned our stores and replicated everything in them, just as they scanned us in order to create these hybrid forms.”

Thula took a square of chocolate and paused for a moment to say what might have been a small prayer before popping it into his mouth. He nodded as he ate, and poured himself some coffee, then picked up two more pieces of chocolate and sent them the way of the first.

“They might have been poisoned,” said Paul.

“Still might be,” said Thula. “But what a way to go.”

Paul returned his attention to the Cayth.

“You haven't introduced us to your friend,” he said to the first figure.

“We are Cayth,” the female replied.

“We can't call you all Cayth,” said Thula, through a mouthful of chocolate and coffee. “It'll become confusing.”

The female frowned. They watched as she struggled with something—memories, perhaps.

“Fara,” she said at last.

The masculine form looked puzzled at this latest development.

“Fara?” he asked her. “Why?”

“It was a name that we once knew.”

The male regarded her curiously. “Yes,” he said. “It was.”

He turned back to Paul.

“Kal,” he said, indicating himself. “That too is a name we once knew.”

“Kal,” Paul repeated. “I am Paul Kerr.”

“You are the leader.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“We saw you.”

“Where?”

“On a planet of sand and stone.”

A system map appeared in the air before them. Paul saw a wormhole, and a series of moons and planets. He recognized Torma, where all this had begun: the attack on their ship, the deaths of their comrades, and the fleeing and fighting that had led them at last to the Derith wormhole. The image changed, and Paul saw a Brigade shuttle hovering against the Tormal landscape. The image was magnified, over and over, until Paul could make out the silhouette of his brother at the controls, and glimpsed a ghost of himself standing beside a window, staring out. If the image was a photograph, he was staring directly at the camera.

“That rock,” he said. “It was covered in symbols.”

“Yes.”

“I sensed something there.”

“You sensed us.”

“But it was just a rock.”

“No, it was much more than that. It was a sentinel.”

“You left it there?”

“Long ago. We left many like it.”

“Why?”

“To watch. To warn.”

“Of what?”

Kal did not answer. Instead, he pointed to the observation window, and the Corps ship that hung trapped beyond it.

“The Illyri?” said Paul.

“The contamination.”

“The Others,” said Syl. “That's what he means.”

“Others?” said Fara.

Syl could still not quite bring herself to look at the female form, as though she did not have faith in her abilities to keep her feelings under control.