Dream Called Time (27 page)

“I know the Jxin were the founding race,” I told him. “But I don’t believe they used a disease to create life.”

“Then you tell me, Doctor: how else could the Jxin have done it?” He produced a small container filled with black liquid. “The Odnallak knew. They had developed a cure for the plague the Jxin intended to release. When my ancestors were destroyed, it created the black crystal. Their final vengeance against the Jxin.”

He opened the container, spilling the black crystal onto the rocky ground. I staggered backward.

“It will not harm you. You are as much its child as you are mine,” he said.

“It’s not a person, Joseph,” I told him. “It’s a rock. A deadly, contagious, malicious rock that, according to you, was created to wipe out all life in the universe, but still, a rock.”

“You’re wrong. It knows you. It helped me bring you to life.” He smiled. “I showed it to you when you came to me on Terra. Don’t you remember?”

Central Analysis was a research scientist’s fantasy-land, fully stocked with all the latest in medical examination tech. Some of the scanners were so new I didn’t recognize the models. Several worktables stood ready for human subjects, but there was a sterile, unused feel to the room.

I wiped up a little dust from a console with my fingertip and examined it. “Been suffering mad-scientist block lately?”

“I generally work in Development and Engineering.” He pointed to another panel. “Through there.”

I walked through the door and entered an equally sterile, cold environment. However, here there were signs of ongoing experiments, centrifuges spinning, culture dishes cooking, and an entire wall of containers stuffed with organs and other, less recognizable objects preserved in duralyde solution.

I nodded toward the wall. “Spare parts in case you mess up?”

“Some are continuing experiments in cloned organ scaffolding. Others are failures. As were these.”

He pressed a button on a console, and an entire section of the opposite wall slid away. Behind it were endless rows of glittering plas bubbles, filled with black liquid, and hooked to dozens of data cables. Each had a drone clamped to its base, and from the flickering lights many were still active.

That didn’t get my attention as much as the contents of the bubbles. Inside the murky fluid were small, pale objects enmeshed in a web of monitor leads. They were human. Human fetuses in various stages of development.

Hundreds of them.

I could feel the color draining from my face. “Embryonic chambers, I presume?”

“That is correct. This one”—he went over and placed a hand on the only empty chamber—“was where I developed you.”

I walked toward it, morbidly fascinated. Memories stirred with every step.

The sea of warm, black fluid . . . the intricate web held my body suspended . . . warm and safe. . . .

I shoved out of my head the memories of the artificial wombs I had seen in Joseph’s hidden laboratory on Terra. I wanted to vomit. “You put black crystal in the embryonic chambers.”

“Of course. The crystal may not be benign, but it is immortal,” he said. “I knew if I eradicated the Jxin sequences from the Terran DNA I used to create you, and replaced them with my own, it would not harm you. I was correct. As soon as I introduced your embryo to the fluid matrix, the crystal recognized you. It nurtured you. It gave you the gift of eternal life.”

“That rock,” I said through my teeth, “is
not
my mother.”

He shrugged. “Not in the traditional sense, but it served quite admirably as a surrogate, and it still regards you as its offspring.” He watched my face. “Once we destroy the Jxin, the black crystal will be ours to command. Think of all that we can do with such an ally. Any world we want will be made ours. Our children will live forever.”

“I’d rather eat black crystal.”

Dark tendrils wrapped around my feet and inched up my legs, leeching the warmth and the life out of me. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t.

“I regret that I have to force your hand,” I heard Joseph say. “But once this is done, you will see that it was the only possible cure.”

Eighteen

I felt the frigid weight crawling up my body, tightening around my throat before I could scream. Then it inched into my ears, and streamed inside my head, closing off my thoughts to everything but the beautiful darkness inside me.

As the black crystal filled me, my body accepted it, and my mind expanded. I still saw the crystal panels displaying Joseph’s images, but they were unnecessary to me now. The darkness was not evil or good; it simply was. I felt foolish for ever having feared it.

What I had always thought of as Jxin DNA was a contagion, a carefully engineered, encoded gene that the Jxin had inserted into their own DNA. They had created it exactly for the reasons Joseph had told me, to infect primitive life-forms on other worlds, and duplicate their evolution. They had believed that by forcing intelligent humanoid life to evolve on other worlds, they were contributing to the future of that level of existence. They saw the infection they spread as a means of reproducing one last time, so that the universe would remain under the control of their offspring.

It was horrendous. A disease without a cure that they had released without a second thought. By doing so, they had interfered in the natural evolution of millions of worlds. And they had done it out of conceit and pride. They believed their species was superior to all others.

I understood now what Joseph meant to do. Once I separated the Jxin from my ancestors and destroyed them in this time, I could use the infinity crystal to safely evolve the Odnallak. They would take their rightful place in existence, and one day attain perfection. It would be the Odnallak who traveled to other worlds, and left behind their legacy to existence before they ascended. Life would evolve, not from the plague of the Jxin, but from the same species that had created me.

“That won’t happen, baby, and you know it,” a voice drawled.

A light penetrated the cool darkness, glaring into my mind like the unwanted intruder it was.

I didn’t want her here, but she wouldn’t go. Not until I acknowledged her presence, and listened to more of her nonsense, and then drove her away. “Mother.”

“After several million years of waiting for the kid to grow up and catch up,” Maggie said, “you’d think she’d call me Mom. But no. It’s Mother.”

We faced each other in a featureless void, no bodies, no meaningless settings to provide her with her usual amusements. I didn’t have to see her to know why she had come.

“Joseph told me I would know who created the black crystal. It was you.”

“Technically it was both of us, but I’ll take the blame. I was very young, Joey. I hadn’t yet learned the value of a good, bald-faced lie.” She drew closer, bathing me in her light. “Don’t feel so superior. You’re still trying to be Daddy’s girl.”

She was vicious and selfish and had never cared about me. How could I have ever loved her? “Joseph told me the truth.”

“Joseph told you what you wanted to hear,” she corrected. “I liked that part about how the Odnallak are going to save the future as soon as you kill off all of us. These future saviors would be the same Odnallak who never stop for a nanosecond to think about anyone but themselves and what they want.”

“Because of you,” I reminded her, “and the way you treated them.”

“Guilty as charged. When we see trash, we call it trash, and we treat it like trash. Because, oh, what do you know, it
is
trash, and it always will be.” She appeared in front of me, beautiful and cold in her Jxin form, her hair floating around her as if we were both underwater.

“If the Odnallak were trash, it was because you made them feel that way.”

“Oh, please, spare me the eternal sob story of the poor beleaguered, deprived, abused Odnallak.” She swatted the air. “They were defectives who refused to improve themselves. They preferred to steal what they wanted instead of earning it. They always took the easy way out.” She gave me an unpleasant smile. “And what do you know? Now you’re following in their footsteps.”

“If I don’t destroy the Jxin now, they will exile the Odnallak, and create the same situation that led to their destruction.” I didn’t want to feel this anger. It was tearing at me, making it harder to think. “It’s the only logical solution.”

“No matter how many mistakes my people and I have made, Cherijo,” she said, “we spent millions of years working toward the wisdom and the compassion we needed to ascend. The Odnallak haven’t. We always tried to be better than we were. The Odnallak didn’t. We will ensure the future of all existence. The Odnallak won’t.”

Joseph stepped between us. “You’ve done enough damage, Margaret. You’ve hurt our daughter for the last time.”

“There’s something he hasn’t told you,” Maggie said. “I can end his existence now. I could have done it at any time. We made you and the others so that you existed outside the timeline. No matter how he altered events or shifted time, at any time I could have sent you or one of the others back to destroy the Odnallak and finish this. But my people and I believed you deserved to make the choice freely. He doesn’t.”

“Shut up,” my father shouted.

“It’s all right, Joe. She’s all yours now. Cherijo, while he’s telling you all the reasons you have to destroy the Jxin, remember one thing. We never once asked you to destroy the Odnallak.” Maggie spread out her arms. “No matter what you decide, I will always love you, baby.”

Joseph swept his arm toward her, and black crystal smashed over her, erasing her and her light.

I felt her go. She disappeared from existence as if she had never been.

My father turned to me. “That is what must be done, Cherijo. To all of them. Kill them. Remove them from existence now, before they destroy all life.”

I stared at the blackness where Maggie had been. “She never asked me to kill you.”

“This is what they do,” he said quickly. “They twist everything so that their lies sound like the truth. You know it isn’t. She’s still trying to pollute your mind.
Cherijo.
”

I looked at him. “No more of this.” I brought up my hands, and let the power building inside me flow through them. “No more.”

My father did not go quietly, as Maggie had. Before he winked out of existence, he screamed his rage. Then he was gone, and I was alone.

I emerged from the darkness as I forced the black crystal out of my body, just as I had in the immersion tank on the
Sunlace
. Something had changed inside me, something that the crystal could not control.

I looked at the crystal panels around me, and reached out to touch the surface of one. It showed me the settlements where the ancestors of the Jxin and the Odnallak lived. I could feel their simple minds, the manner in which they had already divided themselves, and the first link in the chain of events that would end with the destruction of all life.

I felt power still growing inside me, and by instinct sent it out into the crystal panel. All around me the shafts and structures began to glow with silvery light. In turn I felt the enormous complexity of the dome, and how it eagerly responded to me, awakening more of the sleeping crystal in the soil, sending out golden tendrils toward the settlement, capturing and imprisoning the Jxin where they stood, holding them suspended in time and space. They would never move again unless I willed it.

I felt the timeline I existed in, but I also became aware of others, waiting to form. I called up images from them on the crystal panels, and studied the time constructs.

I discovered that if I destroyed the Jxin, the Odnallak would not save my timeline. Without the Jxin to keep them in check, they would become conquerors and spread throughout the universe, first creating life, then enslaving it. They crushed every rebellion, and destroyed the children in their endless quest for ascension. Nothing I could do would alter their timeline, or its grim conclusion: In their desperation, the Odnallak would once more destroy themselves, creating and unleashing the black crystal.

If I destroyed the Odnallak, I discovered, the Jxin would never ascend. Without the existence of the Odnallak to drive them toward perfecting themselves, their civilization would continue peacefully for several thousand years and then it would simply die out of existence. Maggie’s species had never fully appreciated the one thing the existence of the Odnallak among them had bestowed: the Jxin’s desire to better themselves. Now because they had not evolved, they would never begin life on other worlds. But the universe had a way of correcting things, and the DNA left behind by the extinct Jxin would be blasted into space by an asteroid collision, where it would crystallize, spread to other worlds. Several million years after the Jxin died out, another species would rise to take their place, evolve, weed out their undesirables, and seek perfection. And the cycle of the black crystal would be repeated again.

If I did nothing, the black crystal would remain in existence, and the same timeline would play out. I called it up to see if any life escaped the scourge of the Odnallak’s final weapon of vengeance. Joren and oKia did not escape, and once the black crystal wiped out all life, it began attacking stars, devouring them until it eradicated all light and all possibility of life in the universe.

Maggie had said I would have to make a choice, but there was no choice, except . . .

I called up one last potential timeline.

Once I had found the solution, I collected the last of the black crystal Joseph had brought back from my future, placing it in the specimen container he had discarded and sealing it.

“Cherijo.”

Nineteen

I had forgotten about Reever and Shon, and stepped out of the time matrix to see the settlers imprisoned in crystal, and Shon lying unconscious on the ground.

My husband stared at my hair. “What has happened to you?”

I glanced at my reflection in one of the crystal shafts. My hair had turned completely silver, as had my eyes. “I’ve been changed again. This will be the last time.”

He followed me back into the matrix. “Did Joseph do this to you?”

“Joseph, and Maggie. They’re both gone now.” I set the container aside and focused on reviewing the time constructs I’d called up. “I’ve found a cure for the black crystal.”

“You told me that there is no cure.”

“Not now, there isn’t.” I scanned the images, looking for the precise time sequence I needed, the moment when the Jxin and the Odnallak had separated as a species. I found it further along in the timeline than I’d imagined. “I’m going to make one. Step back from that archway, Duncan; I need that.”

“You can control the crystal now.”

“That’s one way to put it.” He had a gift for understatement, but his mind couldn’t grasp what mine had attained in the last hour. I felt a little sorry for him. “It’s all right. This will only take another minute or two.”

I sent power into the archway, manipulating the time and space within its boundaries until it formed a small conduit. I could have made it much larger—big enough to swallow a fleet of ships—but for my purposes it didn’t need to be big.

My final adjustment was to activate the energy well within the archway, and I stepped back as the portal began to open.

“What are you doing?”

“My last surgery.” I sealed off the portal from the rest of the matrix—leaving it open would have sucked me and Reever into the portal—and returned to the crystal panels. “Bring me that container over there, will you?”

Reever picked up the black crystal I had collected. “Why do you need this?”

“Don’t worry.” I had to walk over and take the container from him. “I’m destroying it and the rest of the black crystal.”

“As you said, the crystal cannot be destroyed.”

“Not in the conventional sense, no.” I lifted it up and looked at the angry, glittering contents. Now that I was immune to the effects, I could see the dark, ugly beauty of it. “But when I’m done, it will be destroyed, and there won’t be a single trace of it anywhere in the universe.”

Reever eyed the portal. “You cannot send it to an alternative dimension.”

“Seeing how it can jump dimensions, that would be an exercise in supreme futility. What I’m going to do is give the black crystal exactly what it was designed to kill. The Jxin.”

“Cherijo.”

“And the Odnallak, too.” I almost had enough power channeled to stabilize my tiny time rift. “I’m sending it to the moment in time when the Jxin still had bodies, and undesirables, and all the other little grubby problems that spoiled things for the ascension. The black crystal will infect them. They won’t evolve. They won’t discard the undesirables. And they damn well won’t ascend.”

“It will wipe out their species.”

“Both species, to be exact. By the time it’s finished, there won’t be a single trace of their DNA left. At which point, the black crystal will cease to exist.” I set down the container. “Say bye-bye to the Jxin, the Odnallak, and everything they’ve done to wreck our timeline.”

“You cannot do this,” he said at once.

I eyed him. “It’s already done. I just have to send the crystal through.”

“If you infect the Jxin and destroy their DNA, they will never become the founding race. Millions of species will be lost.”

“Life will evolve again; it always does.” I shrugged. “Only this time it won’t be polluted by the Jxin or the Odnallak. It will be something different. Something new. Something that will not continue the cycle.”

“You will kill everyone we know. Everyone we have tried to protect.” He grabbed my wrist. “Cherijo, stop this.”

“If I don’t send it back, the crystal will destroy all life anyway,” I reminded him mildly. “And it will prevent any new life from evolving. This construct is the only way that sentient life has a chance.”

He wouldn’t let go. “There has to be another option.”

I felt the frantic energy that had kept me going slowly draining out of me. “I’ve run thousands of time simulations through the matrix. Every other construct ends with the advent of the black crystal. Nothing survives it but me. It has to be destroyed, Duncan.”

He frowned. “Why do you survive?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “According to the time constructs I’ve run, no matter what happens, I am the only thing in the universe that never dies.”

“So you would do this and condemn yourself to an eternity of solitude?”

That was the part I didn’t want to think about. “It’s the price tag, Duncan. Someone has to pay. I’d rather it be me.” I tried to smile. “When it’s done, I’m going to give myself to the protocrystal. It won’t kill me, but it should keep me company while we wait for new life to evolve. Should only take a couple of billion years.”

He let go of me and backed away. “I understand now.” He looked blindly at the images flashing around us. “I was wrong.”

“It won’t hurt,” I promised. “Not you or anyone else. You’ll just stop existing.”

“I was wrong about Jarn,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk about her.” I turned away. “Would you leave now? I really don’t want to watch you disappear.”

“Why will you not be affected by the shift in the timeline, Cherijo?”

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t care. “The matrix can’t confide in me. It can only show me what will happen. Maybe Joseph did a better job cloning himself than he thought he did.”

“It wasn’t only Joseph,” he said softly. “Maggie also gave you her DNA.”

“She meant well, I suppose.” I didn’t want to think about my surrogate mother anymore. “Reever, I have all the time in the world here, but the rest of the existence doesn’t. Let me do this. Let me end this.”

“But you will not end. You will never die.” He came to the console and took my hand. “Because you are not Odnallak or Jxin. You are both. You are neither.”

“Whatever.”

“Listen to me, Wife.” He pressed my hand between his. “You are Jxin, but you chose not to ascend. You are Odnallak, but you chose not to harm. No crystal can kill you. The Jxin cannot control you, and neither can the Odnallak. You became Jarn, and Jarn became you. You are the paradox, Cherijo. The one true paradox in all of this. Why is that, do you think?”

“Shut up.” I pulled away from him and accessed the control grid. I channeled the power grid into the matrix, and opened the portal.

“Squilyp told you there was no Jarn. I am telling you there is no Jarn. The woman who Joseph brought here was you. There is only you. It is the same with them. In you, there is no Jxin, no Odnallak. You are neither and both. You are their child, beloved. Their only child. The beginning and the end. The path changes, Cherijo. So, too, must the traveler.”

“I have to stop them,” I shouted.

“No.” He swept me up into his arms. “You have to do what you were created to do. You have to save them.”

Reever carried me to the portal, and jumped through.

Light streamed around us, and then I stood in the center of a field, surrounded by Jxin. Reever lay at my feet, unconscious. I didn’t see any familiar faces this time, but their expressions ranged from stunned to frightened.

Jxin with normal emotions, dressed in ordinary garments, gathered closer. Beyond them I could see a city, one that was much more advanced than the primitive settlement of the past, but not yet the metropolis of the crystal towers and mind-boggling technology.

“Are you injured?” I heard one of the men ask.

“I don’t think so.” I crouched down to check my husband. His pulse and respiration were normal, and after a few moments he opened his eyes. “That was unbelievably stupid.”

He smiled up at me. “I know.”

I looked up at the now-worried faces of my ancient ancestors. “My name is Cherijo Grey Veil, and this is my husband, Duncan Reever. We came here from the future.”

It took them a minute or two to digest this. Finally one of the women asked, “Why?”

“To talk to you.” Reever wasn’t the only one who could make a crazy leap. “To save you.”

It took a lot of talking. Several weeks of it, in fact, that I spent answering questions and mapping out timelines and submitting to medical examinations. The Jxin were nothing if not skeptical.

Fortunately they were also advanced enough in this era to grasp what Reever and I told them, and civilized enough to be horrified by their imminent future.

“It has always been the dream of our people to explore space, and colonize other worlds,” one of their leaders, an older male known as an Elder, admitted. “But we have no wish to abandon our world or our bodies in order to evolve. And yet you say our descendants will do this.”

“If you go on as you are, they will. The means by which they do it are the problem.” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “The Jxin must evolve into the founding race of the future. But it has to be all of the Jxin, not just the genetically perfect.”

“How can we stop our descendants from causing this division?”

“Celebrate your diversity,” Reever suggested. “Seek balance instead of perfection.”

“We could outlaw bioengineering,” one of the council members said.

“That might stop your people from tampering with your genetic future for a few generations, but eventually they’ll forget why it had to be outlawed.”

“Not if they preserve the records of our visit to this time,” Reever said. “Etched in crystal, they will last forever. Then you only have to pass them and the warning we have given you to each new generation.”

“If we do this,” their leader said, “the future will be changed. Your timeline will be altered.” He looked at me. “If there is no division among our descendants, you . . .”

I knew what he didn’t want to say. “Reever may never be born, and I’ll probably never be created. We know.”

He looked shaken. “You would give your lives for an unknown future?”

I leaned forward. “Billions of generations are depending on it. The future of the universe. So tell me, Elder, wouldn’t you?”

The portal remained stable throughout the length of our sojourn, and once we had convinced the Jxin to alter their future, Reever and I had one last decision to make.

“We can remain here for as long as our timeline remains cohesive,” he said to me as we walked out to the portal. “It will be several generations before the changes affect it.”

“As much as I like them, I’d rather go back to our own time.” I looked into the shimmering depths of the rift. “Marel could still be waiting for us on the other side. Or maybe we’ll go to wherever she is.”

“I love you,
Waenara
.”

“I know,
Osepeke
.”

We said our good-byes, and then held hands and walked into the light.