Dream Called Time (11 page)

Joren’s governing body probably wanted to be briefed on our project, but I still needed to run more tests and put together a tentative treatment plan. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“Stand by.” The intercom fell silent for a minute, and then Apalo’s voice returned. “The council members have received an interplanetary signal that requires your immediate attention, Healer.”

There goes my staff meeting,
I thought glumly. “Very well. Tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I dismissed the off- duty staff for the rest of the day, wrote up quick orders for PyrsVar’s care, and left the ward in ChoVa’s capable hands. She and the pediatrician promised to run secondary scans on the fetus-in-fetu lodged in PyrsVar’s chest and determine if it could be removed without compromising the blood supply to the surrounding organs.

“Don’t tell him that he has a sibling in his chest,” I advised the Hsktskt healer. “He’s carrying around enough guilt.”

Shon joined me. “Are you leaving now?”

“Yes.” I started toward the lift, and then stopped to look back at him. “Where, exactly, is the Ruling Council?”

After a little bickering (I didn’t need an escort, the oKiaf didn’t want me going alone) Shon accompanied me to the council’s chambers, which were in a beautiful but tightly secured sector of the innermost halo. Built of neutral golden stone studded with panels of polished minerals from every inhabited province on Joren, the place looked like a small palace.

My admiration for the structure seemed to amuse the oKiaf. “You were chosen as a ruler of this world, and yet you have never once been in their chambers?”

“I’ve signaled them a few times.” I made an exasperated sound. “Back in those days I was busy being a doctor, and a fugitive, and a ship’s healer. Don’t even get me started on how time-consuming it is to be enslaved.”

“There are eleven seated members on the council,” he told me as he parked our glidecar in a designated area. “They are elected based on provincial governing experience; most are high-ranking members of their HouseClans. Three alternates also monitor every proceeding from their home provinces and participate when necessary. While you were away from Joren, one of the three would have voted in your stead.”

I’d never asked to be made a planetary ruler, so I didn’t feel bad about the lousy job I had done as a council member. Still, I felt a little uncomfortable with the way the security team grinned and greeted me as we stopped at three identification checkpoints on the way to the ruling chamber. At the final gate, six guards stood smiling but with weapons ready as Shon and I were scanned from head to footgear and our mouths swabbed.

I didn’t mind being searched, but I was never happy about giving up a DNA sample. When the guard verified we were genetically who we said we were, I asked for both our swabs back and dropped them into a small disposal unit.

The interior of the council chamber proved to be as interesting as the outer structure. Oversized screens encircled the room, and had been installed at an angled pitch so they could be easily viewed from the center platform. A long spiral of ClanSigns, one from every House on the planet, marched across the screens, and illuminated pedestals holding complex flower arrangements glowed underneath them.

The real show was on the center platform, a dais surrounded by gently sloping tiers of stone steps that ended at the edge of a polished expanse of old, scarred wood. The humble material used for the platform seemed out of place compared with the grandeur of the rest of the chamber, until I realized what it was.

“That’s the base of an old warrior quad, isn’t it?” I murmured to Shon.

He nodded. “It is the quad where Tarek Varena defended his honor.”

My stomach rolled—I wouldn’t have preserved a place where hundreds of men had been slaughtered—but I could see the symbolic power of it. Tarek Varena had not only created Jorenian path philosophy, he’d been responsible for instituting the first set of planetary laws. Without the hundred days he’d spent killing everyone who challenged him, there would be no HouseClans.

Atop the old warrior quad stood the eleven members of the Ruling Council, dressed in simple white robes with narrow belts woven from yiborra grass. The five women and six men had calm faces, and plenty of purple in their hair, one of the few signs of age among their species.

One of the women stepped forward. “Healer Torin, we thank you for attending us so quickly.”

“My pleasure, council member.” I glanced up as another Jorenian face appeared on the room’s screen panels. I recognized the handsome face and shrewd eyes of an old ally.

“Welcome back, Doctor,” Ambassador Teulon Jado said from the screens.

I knew from the records that the ClanLeader of the Jado had been sent to Akkabarr to be sold as a slave to the Toskald. There he had somehow escaped to the surface, and united the tribes of slaves left to die there into a rebel force. With their help, he had cobbled together a fleet out of the thousands of shipwrecks on the planet, and taught the tribesmen how to fly the ships. Then he had begun staging attacks against their former masters, the Toskald, until the surface rebellion had developed into a full-fledged war.

The rebellion had given Teulon direct access to secret bunkers on the surface, which contained weapons stores and the Toskald’s greatest advantage, crystals etched with command codes that gave him control over thousands of armies. He’d used the crystals to bring the Hsktskt and the League as well as the Toskald to their knees. His rebellion had been an engine of vengeance, a vehicle of justice for the Jado Massacre, but in the end he had used his power to force a peaceful end to the war.

Even I didn’t have to be told that he was the most admired man in the galaxy.

He looked as young and vigorous as any Jorenian male, his blue-skinned face austerely handsome and his long black hair coiled into a deceptively simple-looking warrior’s knot. But his eyes were another matter altogether; they spoke of his soul, one that had been battered and pushed to the brink of madness while witnessing unthinkable tragedies.

He and Jarn had been allies, but I wouldn’t hold that against him. “It’s good to see you again, Ambassador. How may I be of assistance?”

“My bondmate and I are presently on Vtaga, negotiating some trade agreements with the Hanar,” Teulon said. “We have received several signals from a number of border patrols and cargo vessels which have encountered a newly formed anomaly in an unexplored region between N-jui and Varallan. The anomaly appears to be a rift in space.”

Rifts, or dimensional disruptions, were so rare that only a handful had been discovered and mapped over the last thousand years. While their bizarre properties were interesting, most were unstable and presented only a minor hazard to the shipping routes. No one knew what caused them to appear or vanish.

“Does this rift pose a threat to any populated worlds?” I asked.

“Not to our immediate knowledge,” Teulon replied. “It is what came out of the rift that concerns us now.”

The fuzzy image of a star vessel appeared on the chamber screens. It appeared to be drifting in front of an uneven ellipse filled with millions of tiny stars. I couldn’t tell how large the ship was, but the sweeping design and intricate filigree of its hull arrays were unlike anything I’d ever seen. So were the red, white, and orange alloys or materials used to build it.

I frowned. “What is that?”

“We have been unable to identify it,” Teulon said. “The hull reflects most of our scans, although our patrols have used a drone probe to determine there is a crew on board.”

A vidfeed from the drone appeared on the screens, and showed the little mechano using some exhaust shafts to gain access to the mysterious vessel. It passed through several conduits and into what appeared to be a fuel tank filled with some dark, gelatinous liquid before it emerged into an interior compartment. There it widened the view from its lens to take in a series of clear vertical columns suspended from the upper deck.

Inside each column a motionless humanoid body hung suspended in a silvery white fluid.

“Are those stasis chambers?” I heard Shon say.

I didn’t see any breathing tubes or monitor lines attached to the bodies, but their heads were completely covered by some sort of helmet that might have been providing them with oxygen. Each column had also been equipped at the base with a series of control panels.

The technology we were seeing was so far advanced that it appeared unlike anything in existence.

I also saw something on the exposed skin of the bodies. “Ambassador, can you magnify the image and focus on one of the hands inside the tank?”

“Yes.” The image zoomed larger as it was magnified, until it showed a close-up of the back of one hand, glittering as if it was gloved in clear crystal. As we watched, the mineral attached to the skin grew a few millimeters.

“Those tanks are filled with protocrystal,” Shon said.

I glanced at him. “Are you sure?”

“I have seen it many times on my homeworld. The matrix is unmistakable.” He kept staring at the image. “But why isn’t it attacking or absorbing the bodies?”

I studied the images. “Maybe they’re somehow immune to it.” I raised my voice. “Ambassador, have you determined if the crew of this vessel is still alive?”

“Not as of yet.” Teulon Jado’s face reappeared on the screen. “We have sent out a salvage crew to secure the ship and tow it a safe distance away from anomaly, but for obvious reasons we do not wish to bring it to an inhabited world.”

“You can’t leave it to drift through space, either,” I said.

The council member made an elegant gesture. “Ambassador Teulon, the Hsktskt Hanar and our council agree that the first to board should be a medical response team, in the event the crew is still alive and require treatment. Healer Torin, Healer Valtas, you have had much experience with this mineral. You understand the dangers involved.”

“Seeing as the protocrystal almost ate Healer Valtas,” I said politely, “I guess we do.”

“Ambassador, this mineral is unpredictable, aggressive, and very dangerous,” Shon said. “As this appears to be the same substance, I advise against having any contact with this ship.”

“But if this crew belongs to a species unknown to us, one that has found the means with which to control the protocrystal,” Teulon countered, “they may be willing to share their knowledge. It could save your homeworld, oKia, from being consumed by it.”

I’d feel better if we first found out who the crew were. “Have you been able to determine if the ship came out of the rift?”

“Both appeared on a cargo vessel’s long- range scanners simultaneously,” he said.

Which meant that the ship could have been caught in the rift when it formed, or may have created it. “Have your patrol ships sent in any drones to see what’s on the other side of the rift?”

He nodded. “There is an unusual energy field within the perimeter of the anomaly. It has destroyed every drone sent through it.”

I didn’t want to go any more than Shon did, but the ambassador was right: we had the most experience in dealing with the effects of protocrystal exposure. “I’ll need time to assemble a team and arrange transport.”

“HouseClan Torin has put the
Sunlace
and her crew on standby,” the council member told me. “The Hanar’s delegation has also been instructed to provide you with any assistance the Faction may provide.”

Jarn had worked with ChoVa to cure the plague of memory, and with her experience in stasis medicine ChoVa would be invaluable. It meant putting Pyrs-Var’s restoration on hold, but I had no doubt if the Hsktskt healer came on the sojourn, he would insist on accompanying her. I could also work on designing the retroviral compound.

“If the
Sunlace
is ready, we can leave tomorrow,” I told Teulon. “I’ll go, on one condition.”

“Which is?” the ambassador asked.

“There is one person I don’t want on this expedition,” I told him. “He is to be kept on planet while I’m gone. Under guard, if necessary.”

Teulon’s brows rose. “Who is this male?”

“The ship’s linguist,” I said. “Duncan Reever.”

Seven

At my request, Ambassador Teulon sent orders for the
Sunlace
to land at Adan Main Transport while I put together a medical team. As soon as Shon and I explained the situation to ChoVa, she immediately volunteered to go along, and as I’d expected, so did PyrsVar.

“There are some species that use different mineral compounds in their stasis suspensions,” the Hsktskt healer told me. “It is possible that these people have mastered the use of the protocrystal as a life-support system.”

“We’ve only just begun discovering its properties,” I reminded her. “And since it doesn’t occur outside our galaxy, that implies that this rift may have come through time as well as space.”

“You think this ship jumped here from the future? PyrsVar chuckled. “No one can do that.”

“No one can now.” I looked over the roster of residents and nurses. “The
Sunlace
has a competent medical staff on board, but I’d like a couple of extra hands. If this crew is still alive but in distress, and we can extract them, they’re probably going to need intensive, round-the-clock care.”

In the end we recruited another dozen Adan medical professionals to join the expedition, as well as a xenogeologist and several engineers who were very interested in getting a good look at the ship.

Xonea Torin was waiting for us at the docks when we reported the next morning. He greeted the Adan, ordered the medical equipment be brought on board, and then pulled me to one side.

“I know this is a time of great personal distress for you,” he said, his voice gentle, “but know that whenever you need to talk, you have but to ask for me.”

Ask for him. The man who had destroyed the last of my illusions just so he could have me for himself. Yeah, I was going to do that.

I kept my expression blank. “That’s very nice of you, ClanBrother, but I’m not in any distress that I know of.”

“You are not.” He frowned. “But surely you have been subjected to some recent unpleasant revelations.”

“Nope.” Now that I knew he had been the one to slip me the disc, I wanted to punch him in the face. Pretending nothing had happened between me and Reever would hurt him more, though. “Duncan came up yesterday with Marel to see me before I left, which was wonderful. I am glad he’s decided to stay behind with her. She’s had enough upheaval in her life, don’t you think?”

His eyes narrowed. “As you say.”

“I’d better get to Medical and check on my staff.” I picked up my case. “See you later.”

Shon met me at the boarding ramp and glanced back at where Xonea stood watching me. “The captain does not appear pleased.”

“The captain can go jump out an air lock,” I said pleasantly as I walked up into the ship.

I made an appearance in Medical to greet the ship’s staff, introduce the extra hands, and issue orders for shifts and work assignments. I designated Shon and ChoVa as alternate shift supervisors but left the running of the bay in the hands of the residents and nurses. Everyone seemed much more comfortable around ChoVa than PyrsVar, but the rogue decided to make himself useful by joining the crew in the cargo hold and helping them transport our equipment and supplies up to the bay.

When the ship’s navigator gave the five- minute warning before transition, I had Shon accompany me into one of the treatment rooms.

“The last time we did this, I was someone else,” I joked as I lay on the berth and let him strap me down.

“I will stay with you.” He brushed back my hair before he attached the monitor leads to my temples. “I would also like to scan you during transitional phasing, if that is acceptable to you.”

“Sure.” I stifled a yawn. The panic attack I had been expecting hadn’t arrived, and all I felt was a sinking feeling that had been boring into my belly since I’d listened to Reever tell Jarn he’d never loved me. “While we’re waiting for reality to take a vacation, why don’t you tell me something about Jarn?”

He adjusted the linens covering my legs. “What would you care to know?”

What did she have that I don’t?
seemed like a pathetic thing to ask. “What was it about her that you loved?”

He sat down on the stool beside my berth and thought about it. “She was direct, like you, but she could be kind, as well. The first time I saw her was when she was making rounds with the Omorr. She looked across the ward at me, and in that moment I knew her. As one hunter recognizes another.”

He described his first meeting with Jarn, and how she had paid him what sounded like the ultimate compliment by deferring to him as a female to male.

“She put an end to that as soon as we were alone,” he admitted. “But even as she exercised her authority, she remained courteous.”

So she’d had great manners. Mine were okay, as long as my temper wasn’t involved. “What else?”

“She had a tenacious respect for life,” he said. “In every instance when she had to choose between her personal safety and someone hurt or in danger, she never gave herself a single thought.”

I’d been reckless that way a few times myself. “Immortality is very reassuring.”

“She jumped into an open pit of protocrystal to save my life,” the oKiaf advised me. “Your body may be as inviolate as mine, Healer, but it is the one thing that can kill us.”

“Is that why you jumped in the pit?” I asked softly.

He nodded. “I was very depressed and lonely. Jarn had soundly rejected my overtures, just as Jadaira had on K-2. I did not want to face eternity alone.”

I closed my eyes. “No one does.”

Distantly I heard the final warning before transition, and felt the soft warmth of Shon’s paw cover my cold right hand. Even with my eyes closed, my head began to spin, and then I was pulled down into that whirlpool of blackness until it consumed me.

I floated above the deck of a Jorenian ship, where a group of people stood around Reever and a cloaked woman holding Marel in her arms. I spiraled down, pulled toward and then into the woman, until I saw the others through her eyes.

“Teulon,” I said in a harsh voice. When he came to me, I handed Marel to him. “We are taking her with us. The Iisleg are my people; I don’t know any of you. I am Jarn, not Cherijo, and you cannot stop me.”

Squilyp took a hop toward me, but Xonea put a hand on his shoulder and held him back.

Then my husband got in my face. “I challenge your right to take her from me. I am her father. We are the only family she knows.”

“You have each other. I have nothing.” I slipped a dagger out from the sheath on my belt. “No, Reever. You will not take her from me.”

“Squilyp.” Reever waited until the Omorr came to us. “Is what she says true?”

“I will have to run some tests, but she has suffered at least two point-blank pulse fire shots to the head,” the Omorr told him. “If there was enough brain damage, the cells would have regenerated, but the memories belonging to Cherijo would not. Cherijo, in essence, would no longer exist.”

“We will leave now,” I told the men.

“You would kill anyone who tried to take your daughter, would you not? Is this the way of the Iisleg women now?” my husband demanded. When I nodded, he said, “So would I. Anyone but you.”

“But he took the kid away from you anyway,” a deep female voice drawled.

The faces around me paled like ghosts of themselves, and then faded away, leaving me standing on an empty deck.

I turned around slowly, looking for her. The subliminal implants in my brain that allowed my dead surrogate mother to communicate with me seemed to work only whenever I was seriously disoriented, unconscious, or having a near-death experience. “You might as well show yourself. Transition won’t last forever.”

“You’d be surprised at how long I could keep you here.” Maggie stepped out of the shadows.

She was dressed in an inappropriately fitted Jorenian flight suit, her red hair coiled up into a sleek knot atop her skull. She brought a cigarette to her lips, inhaled, and blew out a stream of smoke before she dropped it on the deck and crushed it out under her bootheel. “Nice of you to come back, though.”

“I never chose to leave.”

“That’s not true.” She waggled a finger at me. “You see, when your kidnapper crashed you on that frigging ice cube of a planet, you’d already decided to end it in the big way. You’d watched the Jado ship blow up; you knew Reever and Marel were dead. You didn’t give a damn about the promises you made to me. No, Joey, it was all over long before your pals the skela showed up to skin you.”

I wondered why I didn’t feel any lingering emotion for her. On Terra she had been my best friend, the one person who had kept me from becoming a miniature of my creator. But the cutting tone of her voice, the silly, provocative way she dressed, and the stink of her illegal tobacco had become as tiresome as her demands. Whatever good she had done for me in the past, she’d also done a great deal of harm. I didn’t owe her anything.

“Reever and Marel weren’t dead, and I didn’t die, and here we are.” I folded my arms. “What do you want, Maggie? An apology? Sorry I haven’t been around. Alien-possessed body and all that. Kiss kiss, bye-bye.” I shut my eyes and concentrated on regaining consciousness.

“I’ve not really missed that mouth of yours,” Maggie said as she circled around me. “But apology, such as it is, accepted. Now, we have some black crystal to talk about.”

I opened my eyes. “I’m on my way to investigate a ship full of infant crystal. You’ll have to get in line with your doomsday mineral and wait.”

“Baby, I’d like nothing better, but your stupid little war with the Hsktskt accelerated the things,” she snapped. “What we assumed wouldn’t be happening for quite some time is now coming at us like a runaway glidetrain. It’s time to do the job you were created for, Cherijo. Time to pay for all the gifts you were given.”

“I never asked for any of this,” I reminded her.

She made a contemptuous sound. “But you never gave it back, either.”

“Why don’t you spare us both the usual song and dance,” I suggested, “and just tell me whatever it is that you want me to do.”

Her snide smirk disappeared. “Don’t go anywhere near that ship or that rift. Turn the
Sunlace
around, go back to Joren, and get your family. We’re moving you to a safer neighborhood.”

“So now I’m in
danger
?” I laughed. “If that’s the best you can come up with, Maggie, I think you’re out of luck this time.”

“Mistakes have been made. Timelines miscalculated.” She spread her hands. “We can correct the problems, but we need to get you out of here, and for that, you need Reever and the kid.”

There was only one reasonable response to Maggie’s demands. “Go to hell.”

“Honey, that’s right where you’re headed.” She patted my cheek so hard it was more like three slaps. “I haven’t endured all this grief to let you blow it now. So be a good kid and do what I say, or I’m going to have to get nasty.”

“Why would that be any different?” I countered. “Come on, Maggie. I’m not going to turn the ship around, I’m not going to get my family, and I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You spent the last five years drifting mindlessly through my backyard.” She caught my chin and looked into my eyes. “And you don’t remember. Shit. I keep forgetting how primitive your brain is.”

“Let go of me,” I said nicely.

“You ascended, Cherijo, but you couldn’t assimilate. We were kind of shocked, actually, but without corporeal existence, you were your basic mindless bowl of vegetable soup.” She released my chin. “I’m sorry, kiddo, but after we tried nudging you a few times, we had no choice. We had to send you back.”

“So you killed Jarn, and shoved me back into my body?” I grabbed the front panels of her suit. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. We can’t do anything like that.” She pushed me away with a flick of her fingers. “Jarn understood that a sacrifice had to be made. How she knew, I can’t tell you, but she vacated the premises voluntarily. As much as you hate her, she’s the one who brought you back. She traded her life for yours so that you could save Reever and the kid.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. “Free will, Joey. It’s the bitch that keeps on wrecking.”

Something welled up inside me, and a lower, harsher voice came out of my mouth. “No being undergoing a dimensional transformation preserves its sense of spatial relation.”

“Jarn?” All the color drained out of Maggie’s face as she stared at me. “You can’t be—not after—”

I backhanded her, taking vicious pleasure in it, and knocked her to the deck. Then I stepped over her, straddling her as I bent down and grabbed her by the throat.

“I think you miscalculated more than the timeline, Jxin.” I could have snapped her neck in that instant, but I knew it wouldn’t kill her. Nothing would. She was as invulnerable as the black crystal. I released her, and stepped away as she coughed and gasped in air. “Now release me from this dream, or I will show you what more I can do.”

Maggie staggered to her feet. “Fine. Be it on your head. If you board that ship, your timeline will end in a matter of weeks.”

I didn’t look at her. “Now, Maggie.”

The deck around me began shrinking, and I floated up and back until I hovered horizontally above it. A berth appeared under me, and monitors sprang up all around me. Then Shon was there, scanning my head and baring his teeth in a grim snarl.

“Are you going to assess me,” I said weakly, “or bite me?”

“Cherijo.” He fumbled with the scanner, almost dropping it before he tossed it aside. “You’ve had hardly any brain activity at all. We were about to move you into intensive care.”

That sounded ominous. “How long was I out?”

“Three days.”

“I need to find another way to travel.” I sat up, groaning as my stiff muscles protested. “Are we there yet?”

“We will arrive at the rendezvous point in a few hours.” He helped me out of the berth. “I should run some tests.”

“It’s always like this,” I assured him. “Just point me toward a cleansing unit, and let everyone know I’m back. Again.”

He saw how wobbly I was, and put an arm around my waist. “Where did you go?”