Deathstalker Destiny (34 page)

Ah, said Owen, after a pause. All for the best, really,
I
suppose. The Campbell’s a good man. Probably make
a much better constitutional monarch too. I never wanted to be Emperor.

She broadcast compressed telepathic images of all that had been happening during Owen and Hazel’s absence. The great golden ships of the Hadenmen, blasting the Fleet apart, destroying cities on a hundred worlds, deploying armies of golden-eyed merciless killers, to destroy or remake Humanity in their own logical image. The huge Shub ships sailing out of the Forbidden Sector in endless numbers, taking planet after planet with their armies of Furies and Ghost Warriors and Grendel aliens. The Recreated, and their vast insane ships, moving steadily toward the homeworld Golgotha. The nano plague, spreading slowly but unstoppably from world to world, melting down all living tissue. Jack Random executing his enemies on Loki, and then returning to Golgotha to murder more people there, before going on the run with Ruby Journey in hot pursuit, sworn to kill him. And finally, the awful truth about the actual nature of the Mater Mundi.

I can’t believe Jack
just
killed that many people in cold blood,
said Owen.

Oh, you can be pretty sure it wasn’t cold blood,
said Diana.
By all accounts he had a really good time doing it.

Something must have pushed him over the edge,
said Owen
tiredly. Jack was a good man. A hero. He must have lost his mind ...

Captain Silence is on his
way
into the Darkvoid,
said Diana desperately.
Let my father deal with it, whatever it is.

I don’t think so,
said Hazel.
In fact, if he’s on his way there, it’s more important than ever that we get there first.

And as suddenly as that, they were gone. She called again and again, but no one answered. Diana wasted a few moments in cursing their names and general foul language, and then moved reluctantly on to the next on her mental list. Having located two Maze minds, it wasn’t too difficult for her to track down another.

Damn, said
Jack Random.
I would have sworn no one could find me. Hello, Diana Vertue. How are you?

None of them were innocent, said Jack
immediately.
They all needed killing. I’m just doing what I’ve always done. Taking out the garbage.

Diana tried to get a glimpse of where he was, or what he was planning, but Jack’s shields were already reforming, like bricks in a great wall, and she knew he’d never let her find him again. She’d caught him by surprise, but her expanded mind, powerful as it was, was no match for his, and they both knew it. She quickly filled him in on the latest emergencies, and the true nature of the Mater Mundi, but she could tell she wasn’t reaching him.

Interesting
was all he had to say.
But esper problems are your province, not mine. I have my own responsibilities, and the duty I have chosen to shoulder is a heavy
one. I can’t put it down, even for a moment. Don’t
try
to find me again, for your own sake. I can’t trust anyone these days.

And then his presence was gone, shut away behind shields so powerful Diana couldn’t even sense where he had been. Diana called after him anyway, and was somewhat surprised to get an immediate response. From Ruby Journey. Hers was a cold, controlled presence, her thoughts as precise and unemotional as well-oiled machinery. Diana quickly prepared her own shields and defenses, just in case. This was Ruby Journey, after all.

I heard your call,
said Ruby.
I even managed to listen in on your conversation with Jack. I don’t give a damn about your problems either. All I care about is locating Jack. You must have picked up some idea as to where he is, some clue to what he’s planning. Open your mind to me, so I can see.

Foolish,
said Ruby Journey.
Very foolish.

Her mind smashed against Diana‘s, but even her Maze-given powers couldn’t just sweep aside Diana’s shields. Ruby increased the pressure, but despite the pain and the strain, Diana wouldn’t give way. Ruby’s power raged about her, like a storm that might capsize a ship at any moment, but somehow Diana’s shields still held. And in the end Ruby got tired, or bored, and backed off. She sent out a single mental image, and Diana studied it cautiously from behind her shields. The image showed Ruby Journey at a city armory, equipping herself with all manner of weapons and explosives. Enough to hunt down and kill a hundred men. Ruby was smiling coldly.

Ruby disappeared behind her shields and was gone, leaving Diana hovering alone above Golgotha. It was an unnerving thing, to know you’d just faced an enemy that could have beaten you if she’d cared enough to spend a little more time and energy. Far off in the dark, the Recreated were still howling their endless awful scream. Diana felt very tired and very vulnerable, and fell back into her body. Once again she was lying on her back on a stranger’s bed, staring up at a dirty ceiling in search of answers it didn’t have. There were others Diana could have tried to contact, but after her disappointments with the Maze people, she couldn’t see any point in exhausting herself any further. She was going to need her strength, where she was going.

She allowed herself a few moments to say good-bye to her life. She’d always hoped it would amount to something more than just a mistaken saint, and a hero of the rebellion that most people seemed to prefer not to remember. Oh, they’d written her into a few of the holo films they’d made about the rebellion, and its heroes, but she didn’t recognize herself at all in the enigmatic sorceress or total psychopath they’d chosen to portray her as. Some accounts weren’t even sure which side she’d fought on. But then, Jenny Psycho had always been a little too extreme for most tastes.

She would have liked to have known love, friends, family; but there was never any time. She knew duty, and sometimes honor, but few friends, and never a love or a lover. She scared people. She gave so much to the cause, only to discover in the end that it wasn’t worthy of her dedication.

At least the elves had put up a statue to her.

So; time to face down the impossible, master the monster, put her life and sanity on the line as she had so many times before. Alone again against a powerful enemy, while those who might have helped her went their own way. Business as usual for Diana Vertue. She summoned up all the old berserker rage and dedication of her Jenny Psycho persona, and dived deep into her own mind, down past the shining columns of conscious thought, and into the dark unexplored areas of the mind; the backbrain. Some joking part of herself showed her a bright neon sign,
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter
Here, and then she’d left the outside reality behind, diving down into the dark miracles and mysteries of the inner mind. The face behind the mask, the place where normal humans couldn’t go. The backbrain.

Most people didn’t know what the backbrain was, though a few bandied the name about as though they did. Most people only used a small part of their brain, accessing only the merest fraction of what it could do. The esper gene allowed some people to delve deeper into their minds than most, and make use of the powers they found there. Telepathy, pyrokinesis, precognition. Others, like the Maze people who’d had their minds forced open by outside forces, could call up even stranger and wondrous abilities. Diana had studied the concept of the backbrain during her time in the esper Guild House, trawling tirelessly through its massive files in search of knowledge. The espers had been studying themselves almost as long as they had existed, and they had discovered many things about who and what they were, most of it disturbing. Most of that knowledge had never been released, even inside the esper community, and much was actively suppressed, for a variety of reasons. Partly because if the normals ever got hold of it, they’d just use it to better control their esper slaves. And partly because the Mater Mundi made sure some things were forgotten, rather than risk their true nature being exposed.

Perhaps the greatest secret of all was that the human mind was capable of far more than either normals or espers ever dreamed of. Anyone could become like the Maze people, if they could only access and control the secrets of the backbrain. All that grey matter and potential that was never used. Diana had written it all down, and hidden it in a file that couldn’t easily be found. So that if the Mater Mundi did win in the end, and Diana Vertue disappeared, never to be seen or spoken of again, what she’d learned might still survive. We could all shine like suns, she wrote.

She still believed that. Even after all the horrors and tragedies she’d seen, she still believed.

She passed through the backbrain, and on into the undermind. Few people knew about the backbrain; fewer still knew about the undermind. Mainly because you could only reach the undermind through the backbrain. It was a vast, awful, magnificent place, and not everyone survived encountering it. The undermind was the collective unconscious of all Humanity. The dreamtime. The race memory. The bedrock of human existence. As far as Diana knew, the undermind had no distinct persona or agenda, like the Mater Mundi. It simply existed, the place that was not a place, where all minds came together; the great dreaming unconscious from which all human thought derived.

Or perhaps it wasn’t any of those things. Diana was only an explorer in these regions, and what she saw was filtered through her own conscious mind.

She saw the collective unconscious as a great ocean. The sea of dreams. The waters we all swim in for nine months before we’re born. The place we visit for dreams and ideas and inspiration. An ocean big as the world, greater than all the worlds. Diana had to be careful how she thought about it. Her mind was interpreting what was there in terms she could deal with. Allow her mind to drift beyond that, and she’d lose whatever control over the situation she had. She could become lost forever here, mislaid, swept away by unknown tides, her thoughts drifting forever as a screaming phantom in other people’s dreams.

This was a place with no maps, no boundaries, and no limitations. Here Be Tygers.

She was standing on a small island, a rock-hard place of conscious intent and certainty. Waves lapped slowly against it, murmuring in many voices. She’d manifested in her old Jenny Psycho form, complete with spiked steel armor and a gun so huge she couldn’t have lifted it in the waking world. The gun represented her power. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.

There were shadows and colors in the sky, streaming overhead like the nightmares rainbows might have. They were stray thoughts, coming and going in people’s heads. Sometimes the colors became recognizable shapes and images, representing things that troubled or intrigued Humanity’s thoughts. The rocky reefs of the zeitgeist. Looking at them made Diana’s head hurt, so instead she looked down into the tranquil waters surrounding her island. There were things there too; vast shapes moving slowly through the dream waters. The shared ideas, beliefs, and compulsions of human culture. People created them and spread them, and then they had power over people. Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, but we put the bit between our teeth.

Humanity’s collective unconscious. They called it the worldmind, before we went to the stars, and spread ourselves over so many worlds. You could go fishing in the sea of dreams, and pull out anything, anything at all. The collective unconscious is full of archetypes; perfect manifestations of cultural tropes or fascinations. The Wise Old Man, the Mystical Virgin, the King with a Wound That Will Not Heal. You could have interesting conversations with them, as long as you realized their words only made sense in the world of dreams and fancies. Their truths were too great for the waking world. And since this was the sea of dreams, there were bad things here too. Horrors of the kind that can only exist in nightmares. Everyone knows that there are Things in dreams that will get you unless you wake up first. And in the undermind there is no waking up. Those few, very few people, who have any knowledge of the undermind wonder if perhaps these Things are the natural predators of this place. Or are they rather just externalized manifestations of the psychic mind-set; self-loathing, depression, homicidal manias?