George Zebrowski (29 page)

“And what will it bring you?” a slippery thought asked.

“That will only be the beginning,” he answered.

“Forget!” Myraa commanded, scattering the growing army of his resolve. He retreated, but she breached his walls and moved toward his center.

He shuddered and tried to resist.

“Let go of what you were,” she said, encamped within him. She closed herself around his heart and squeezed.

“No!” He pictured her body and hurled knives at it.

She became visible. One shoulder was bloody.

“I don’t care!” he shouted, realizing that he would gladly tear her to pieces if he could.

She thrust the memory of his death into his mind. Pain surged through his lost body as the beam weapon blinded him and burned his flesh.

“I gathered you up,” she said.

“Only to imprison me.”

“To save you.”

“For what?” he asked. Her compassion was a weapon, ready to strike if he let down his guard.

Suddenly he knew, and her fear stabbed back in confirmation. She was using the darkness to prevent him from learning how to act in this realm.

“I will be what I was!” he cried.

But without the weakening sympathies and troubled feelings of his previous self; death had taken all that from him, leaving him a new strength to explore.

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RAFAEL KURBI FELT UNEASY as he grasped the railing of his terrace and gazed out over the ocean; nothing was as it had been. He wished that the past would take him by the hand and lead him back to better times. What better times? The past was inhabited by unhappy, far-off things and lost battles. His sentiments mocked him. What would he be when he crossed the century mark? Wallowing in nostalgia. The time was coming when he would have to start erasing certain debilitating memories.

He had failed in the Herculean affair. The death of Gorgias had left him with half-asked questions, vague insights and haunting suspicions. He could still picture the impressive lines of Herculean infantry moving forward in the searchlights. The fact that Gorgias might have cycled the troop storage cylinder more than once, to materialize as many identical divisions as he might have needed, still brought a queasiness to Kurbi’s stomach. The final battle had been more of a close call than anyone was willing to admit.

Five years.

Yet it seemed that he had seen the charred bodies only a few days ago. It still seemed to him that he might have prevented Gorgias’s death. The soldier who burned him had fired without orders, on his own impulse.

“Have you become a statue?” a familiar voice asked.

Kurbi turned around. “What are you doing here?”

Julian Poincaré’s image shrugged. “Can’t I come see you?”

Kurbi walked through him and sat down. Julian ignored the insult. “Okay, Raf, so perhaps we’re not the friends we were, but we have important matters to discuss. Will you listen?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I’m here to do you a favor.”

“Get to the point.”

“We want you to go to Myraa’s World … to look around and see what might be going on.”

Kurbi felt himself tighten, as if he had just been pulled out of darkness into a harsh light. “Whatever for?” he asked, swallowing hard.

“Certain studies suggest that their mentalistic skills may pose a danger to us. There may be a weapons aspect.” Julian paused and stared at him. “Well, that’s what our various students say after examining the cult’s claims. Something may be going on. I’ll be honest. The people I work with just don’t trust the Herculean survivors.”

Kurbi laughed. “Troubled consciences. You’re afraid that Gorgias will send his ghost to haunt you.”

“Not me. I was ordered to talk to you, to ask you if you feel anything.”

“Just my usual doubts and conscience.” There was more to this than Julian was telling, Kurbi suspected. “Next you’ll tell me they’re considering rounding up the remaining Herculeans and killing them, or destroying the planet.”

“That’s why I want you to go and check things. If there’s any kind of danger, you’ll be trustworthy and we’ll be sure. Raf, I fought hard for this much.”

“So it’s true. They want to be rid of everything that’s left.”

“If you care, then go see. Otherwise you’ll be left out.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Others will go, not so sympathetic.”

“What’s the use?”

“Raf, they’re very sure about this. If you’d participated in the investigations of the last five years, you might feel differently.”

“Do you believe it?”

“If you’d been told some of the things I have, you’d think long and hard about destroying Myraa’s World while you still had a chance.”

“What did they tell you?”

Poincaré sat down on an invisible chair. “They can … reach across stellar distances and know what you’re thinking. It’s possible that they can move objects against us, on a cosmic scale, project irrationalities into our minds. It would take only a few such supermen to do decisive damage.”

“And what evidence have you seen for this?”

“None. But it’s all implied in the Omega cult’s philosophy. Look, I’ll grant that our fear of the Herculeans runs deep. Maybe our guilt does also. But we’ve got to know. The stakes are too high to dismiss this kind of thing, whatever the evidence.” He scratched a bushy eyebrow. “Belief systems that promise survival after death have always struck me as dangerous, sooner or later.”

“Don’t you see what you’re doing to me?” Kurbi asked. “They’re planning genocide … sorry, the completion of genocide, just so they can have certainty and be able to sleep nights. And you come here to blackmail me with the illusory hope that I can save the Herculeans!”

“Say it anyway you like, Raf. I have to get you there while you can still do some good. It’s what I can do, and I’m doing it.”

“You’re not really concerned about me.”

“I’m concerned about you too. Let me say it another way. The Old Bones are afraid. They’ve lived a long time. Earth is prosperous and there’s a lot to lose. They’re sick of having this hanging over them. Some of the oldest remember the war — they were old even then.”

Long life breeds cowards, Kurbi thought.

“They want to make sure,” Julian continued, “before the Herculeans grow strong and it’s too late.”

“A few thousand people?”

“Something is going on, I’m convinced of that.”

“But it’s probably nothing threatening. Just who are these researchers who are spreading this kind of superstition?”

“Then go disprove it and put an end to … to their demands for containing the danger. There is one bit of evidence.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“All the scattered Herculean survivors are now on Myraa’s World. They’ve been returning steadily.”

“Go away, Julian. Leave me alone.”

“It might have settled things more,” Poincaré continued, “if we had been able to enter the Whisper Ship, if it had led us to the Herculean base. But the feeling now is that Myraa lied about quite a few things. Some believe that the ship can be activated at any time and taken from us.”

Kurbi shook his head “You’ve all gone insane!”

Julian smiled. “Raf, we do have
some
cause for our suspicions.”

“Produce it, then, don’t just refer to it!”

“We all feel uneasy, yourself included.”

“You’re right, but that isn’t evidence for what you’re talking about.”

Poincaré was silent. “So, what have you been doing?” he asked after a while.

Kurbi shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs. “Thinking, reading, living a daily routine. It’s easy to forget time. I try to do it more often. Don’t like the residue it leaves.”

“Forget, renew yourself.”

“I’m not ready to let go of certain things yet. Too many bits and pieces of myself seem essential, however painful.”

Julian stood up. “You’re hopeless! So the universe is a bit irrational. It doesn’t surprise me, since it rests on a substratum of chaos. So we’re not quite cortical intellects, but that’s no reason to revert to this kind of instinctive, brooding way of yours. You must enjoy it.”

“Who is being instinctive, with these paranoid suspicions?” Kurbi asked. “By the way, where is the Whisper Ship now?”

“Centauri Docks, bolted down to the planet’s bedrock.”

“So, exactly what am I supposed to do on Myraa’s World?”

“Just question her, spend some time, gather a few impressions, nothing more.”

“And no action of any kind will be taken until I return?”

“I can guarantee that.”

“Tell me, Julian, why should I be trusted? I was seen as being sympathetic to the Herculeans.”

“So were a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t see the Herculean cause as hopelessly wrong. You can be trusted because I will trust your report.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Cut the undercurrent, Raf. I’ve worked with you. We’ve known each other for many years. You’re not a simpleton. You’re a concerned, meticulous observer, whatever your wilder impulses — and you need to work, to plan for the second century of your life. We lose too many people around the century mark through self-destructiveness. It seems likely that you’ll retain some continuity with your earlier self, and that will make you valuable.”

“So I can take my place among the ruling Old Bones?”

Julian held up his hands. “I want this Herculean thing to be laid to rest once and for all, for your sake and for Earth’s.”

“One way or another. Do you believe all these speculations or not?”

“I honestly don’t know. On the evidence, no. But the feeling is so pervasive …”

“So is that of a mob.”

Poincaré clenched his teeth.

“I’ll go,” Kurbi said. “What are the arrangements?”

“You’ll command your own ship,” Poincaré said, rubbing his chin nervously.

Kurbi got up slowly. “I can’t help feeling that you’re setting me up as a stalking horse. Don’t get angry, we’re talking about feelings.”

Julian’s face became rigid. “We don’t want to be wrong about this.”

“Of course not.”

“Why needle me? Go see for yourself. I’ll trust your report.”

His image disappeared.

Kurbi stepped over to the rail again. Sunlight seemed to fill the ocean, as if it had been poured into the shallows for the benefit of human swimmers. Clouds were docked on the horizon, waiting for nightfall.

The memory of the Herculeans was a dark mirror, he thought. Every time an Earthman looks into it, he scares himself witless.

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MYRAA WAS RIGID before the window. The ship from Earth was a silver ball on the grassland below the hill.

Gorgias writhed within her, stabbing into her arms and legs, burning in her belly, striving to replace her will at every nerve center in her body.

“He’s here!”

“Yes,” she said, striving to deny him sight.

Scalding blood coursed through her heart as she failed. Gorgias came up inside her and looked out.

“I see him!” he cried.

A tall figure walked across the grass, following a black shadow toward the hill.

Gorgias gazed at the plain behind the cruiser, where his army of Herculeans had died. The ship sat where his own body had been burned beyond recognition. The Earthman walked the old battlefield as if nothing had happened.

The figure paused at the bottom of the hill and looked back to the ship, then turned and started upward. The ship’s lock closed behind him like a Cyclopean eye.

Kurbi leaned forward as he marched up the slope.

“Let him in!” Gorgias ordered.

Myraa would not move. She tried to hide her fear, but he saw at once that she was afraid for Kurbi’s life.

The Earthman stopped halfway and looked out over the rolling grasslands, shielding his face from the hot afternoon sun. Then he turned again toward the house and continued his climb.

“Why is he so slow?” Gorgias said, struggling with Myraa. Finally, the figure came to the door and Gorgias hurled Myraa in front of the transparent panel. It slid open and the Earthman entered. He was unchanged from the tall, black-haired man Gorgias had first met here on Myraa’s World. The same look of pity still lived in his eyes.

Myraa gazed up at him, unable to speak. Gorgias burgeoned within her, flowing with hatred for his destroyer. This was the man who had taken everything from him, leaving him as a dimensionless point within the mind of another.

“May I ask a few questions?” Kurbi said, looking around at the empty chairs in front of the windows. “Can we sit down?”

Myraa nodded.

Kurbi sat down. She took a facing chair and locked her hands together in her lap.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said softly, staring directly at him. “Why are you here?”

“I may be of some help.” He was quiet for a moment. “What I’ve come for — I’ll be honest — I want to dispel a few suspicions.”

“
He knows
,” Gorgias said within her. “
But how could he?
”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They’re very nervous on Earth, especially since they failed to open the Whisper Ship after it locked us out, or locate its base.”

Myraa’s lips moved, but no sound came out for a moment. “We’re at peace,” she managed to say finally. “What can these fears have to do with us here?”

“I feel the same way. Perhaps you could return to Earth with me for a time. As leader of the survivors you could allay these suspicions.”

“He must know something!”