Daughter of Time 1: Reader (16 page)

“Yes, they are stupid. To be punished.” The officer tapped several things into a small device it removed and then replaced it on a belt around its upper abdomen. The thing then just stared at me, silently, for several moments.

Thel’s words came back to me then, those mad words about me reading minds. The Xix had said it was real and that I could not turn away from it, but that I would need all my skills to survive. I decided to trust Thel’s final words, to believe in them with all that I had. If they were true, then I would find out now and probe my captors.

I closed my eyes as the Dram creature observed me silently. Being blind, it didn’t do that much, but it was long habit from sighted years when trying to focus. Slowly, using all my concentration and the meditative techniques Thel had taught me, I scanned with my unique organ, my sixth sense. Past and future spilled back and forth over me, but I ignored them, seeking for something different, something tied to the creature in front of me.

And then it happened, like seeing an optical illusion play out its different visuals in front of you. A subtle, so subtle and effervescent shimmering of a glow beside me came slowly into focus, and I knew, I could
feel
that it came from the presence of the two Dram in the cell with me. One was simpler, far more angular and hard.
The soldier
. The other was still harsh, as all Dram would turn out to be, but more complex, layered. There was a deeper intelligence and complexity in this one that was not in the other. Its thoughts disturbed the space-time matrix in several dimensions at once.

But also so much fear.
That
I could recognize even in this alien creature. A deep fear that was totally absent from the mind of the guard. This intrigued me and gave me a sense of my own power in this place. This Dram officer sought something from me that was terribly important.

My eyes opened. “Why do you fear me?” I probed, deciding to offer a wild opening gambit.

The insect once again recoiled, taking several steps back, then stopped. “They are an intelligent,” it finally responded. It decided to resort to a lie. “The Dram fear nothing! But we are we try to we include, what you to be have made.”

“You mean opening the Orb?”

“Yes! How human creatures, a nothing member of Hegemony, is in position so that does make such a thing? Which secrecy did you learn of Holy Orbs?”

Holy Orbs?
This was getting weird. Since when did aliens get religion?

“Are you a priest?”

I felt a surge of anger from the consciousness of the creature.

“No! Never! I do not grasp the idiots of those superstitions! I besides the fact that power in the Orbs, it seems I and like me, understand those respect in order to control, seeking those.”

Control? Power? A technologist! A scientist, perhaps.
This made sense, and many of my readings of its mind now fell into place giving me a much clearer image of the personality and motivations of the creature I was dealing with. Motivations to be exploited, perhaps.

“I can control them. You wish me to give you my secret?”

The insect’s feet padded up quickly, bringing its hideous face close to mind.

“When Dram wish, they take,” it said ominously. I had to be careful.

“If you make a mistake, and you harm me, you may damage my mind, and you will never learn the secret. Do you dare take that risk now, alone? What will your punishment be if you fail?”

The wash of anxiety from the creature was like a prismatic spray. Again it retreated several steps. “They are a human intelligent, yes. Special. But in Dram is skillful large number very with persuasion. The Emperor thinks, is grasped that we consume this you-power; It orders. Then this word of you has not importance. Until time, enjoy the existence.”

The officer clicked toward the guard who escorted the creature through the door and re-engaged the force field, leaving me alone, and for the moment, free from their probes.

But for how long? I could feel the time-tugs of hyperspace jumps—we had made at least four since I was brought onboard. The Dram could not go directly to the destination they wished as I had done by activating the Orbs. They were limited to the off-shooting Strings, and had to follow the indirect routes of the String Tree, heading eventually, I presumed, to their home world. The nexus of the Dram Hegemony, with their Emperor, and all their numbers “very with persuasion.” Soon, I would be in their hands, and while I doubted that they could learn how I controlled the Orbs –
I
didn’t even know – I knew that they very well might kill me in trying to find out. Or worse. I had to find a way out of this, for so many, not just myself.

Every expansion of my abilities has been centered on life crisis, and it was no different this time. I sat down in the cell, crossing my legs, closing my eyes, and throwing out everything that had been a part of my hiding from the future. I decided to take my potential seriously. I decided to risk anything, even my sanity, to cross over the planes of possibility and look the future square in the face. More than my life might depend on me becoming what I was meant to be, to let the seed finally sprout. If the Xix were right, perhaps the Resistance and freedom for so many in the galaxy rested upon it. Yes, it was megalomaniacal. But you can’t let humility get in the way of the truth.

Nothing in my life or training prepared me for what was about to happen. I sank into a deep trance, my awareness focusing inward until I could count each heartbeat, analyze each slow breath as my lungs drew in the air and then forced it out. The universe around me became infinitely distant. But the secret in meditation is finding without seeking, and at this terrible distance, it became microscopically close to me. Slowly, one by one, the obstacles my psychology had placed in the way of my vision were toppled over by the force of my will. Each felt like a rush of panic, screaming to go no further, my soul terrified of what lay on the other side. But now I was filled with purpose greater than my fears, and I knocked them down.

Did you ever put a bottle in the freezer, super-cool it, pull it out hours later unfrozen, then tap it hard? It freezes all at once before your amazed eyes. That’s how my sixth sense finally awakened fully within me. That enormous organ, grown to grotesqueness at the hands of my fellow humans, opened its odd eyes from a long slumber. It was like the sledgehammer striking the surface of the dam over and over, until the small cracks became fissures, trickling water, and then, with one fateful blow, the concrete shattered, and the water gushed forth with terrible force. I pushed through my fears and weakness, and the future burst over me so that it could not be stopped; a thousand visions flooded my mind, and continued to do so over the next few days so that I could not hope to even process them all.

I fought a strange battle to stay focused, to hold these visions at bay, to integrate the Now and the coming times. Present, Past, and the enormous Future churned and mixed within me so that one blurred into the other in a confused fashion—future events gave birth to past ones, the Past to both the Future and the Now. Cause and effect became meaningless, and it was as if I stepped out of Time and saw a giant ocean of events, tossing and twisting before me, waves undulating and splashing and morphing. There was no center from which to observe, no arrow of time, only the ever-churning currents of an infinite ocean.

I lost myself in this sea, set adrift never to find a place on which to stand. During this trance, I responded to nothing, even as, I later discovered, Dram medics and scientists tried to revive me. For three weeks of travel through the String Tree, and two more weeks in a hospital on the Dram home world, I lay unmoving, unresponsive in a deep coma. Fed intravenously, my captors, and representatives from several other species, watched with great anxiety my condition.

But I found my way home. The meaning of how it happened, I do not know. Somewhere, as the mists cleared before my eyes over the tempestuous sea, I saw Ricky smiling and laughing in the distance. I followed his voice, swimming against the raging currents, to some place within me where there was only me and the love I had. And there the sound of his laughter was full and loud, spanning my awareness.

I had finally understood what he tried to tell me that day.

24

0

We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. 
—Blaise Pascal

I drifted in space once again.

Space was terribly still. Uncountable patterns of stars lit the darkness around me. Behind, the golden light of the sun pushed forward, and, like a giant sail, I drew speed from the solar wind. Slowly, irresistibly, I accelerated, gaining speed past Mercury. Then past the sulfurous clouds of greenhouse Venus. In front of me, the Moon appeared once more, yet behind it, like a quarter surrounding a dime, the blue, white, and green-brown of Earth captured my vision.

Earth!
There she hung in the blackness, in all her glory. After the violet seas of the Sortax home world, the alien structures of the Dram, the orange deserts of Xix, and the countless sterile and horrible things I had seen, even the saint-like Xix that still caused primal discomfort in my simian brain, here before me was that one place in all the expanse of seeming infinity that was right for me. For all human beings.
Home.

I felt myself crying and smiling broadly at the same time. I rushed like some gleeful child into the arms of her mother, dashing past the lifeless Moon, arms outstretched and encompassing the blue marble as it approached me.
I was finally going home.

My smile foundered, broke and faded like clouds on a mountainside. A terrible mask of horror replaced it as I watched in near madness as the planet I held in my arms began to dissolve. From pole to pole, sea to land, the sphere shattered like some stained-glass window, the separate fragments blurring and melting in my hands. Frantically, I worked my fingers and palms, trying to reshape the thing as if it were some melting snowball on a warm spring day. But there was nothing to stop the merciless process. Dripping right through my clasped fingers like flowing blue-brown ink, the Earth
melted
, and I cried out in anguish as the liquid poured through, then into the blackness of space, only to dissipate, evaporate into a faint mist and then to nothingness.

My scream echoed through empty space like some wolf’s howl in a stone cathedral, reverberating and interfering, wailing for a soul abandoned and trapped forever in the cold of space, unable to perish, unable to escape, and forever unable to find its way home again.

25

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts. 
—Olaf Stapledon

The first thing I saw when I awoke was the monstrous form of a Xixian medic. For a moment, I thought I was back on the ship with Thel. A false relief spread over me that the nightmare of the Dram attack and Thel’s death, and the nightmare that was a dream of the dying Earth, were both unreal. Then I saw the Dram workers standing around the medic, and the doom and dread of reality struck me solidly in the stomach. Along with it came a resurgence in the grim determination I had developed since becoming a captive of the Dram.

“You are awake,” said the Xixian medic. The Dram insects crowded around behind the Xix observing, their many hands and fingers tapping against each other loudly yet not interfering.

“Why does a Xix work with the Dram?” I wondered aloud.

“The Xix serve everywhere within the Hegemony,” it chirped. “Especially in the medical sciences, where our talents and technology cannot be perverted so easily to actions that run counter to our being. We often prove quite useful,” it said, with some seeming emphasis. I wondered if it meant something more than it seemed to be saying. Thel had said the Xix would know about me, would work to help me. Was this medic communicating this?

There was no time to find out. A Dram military officer stormed into the room, its composite armor clicking nearly as loudly as its many feet and the communication to other Dram in the room. It turned toward the Xixian medic. With several bursts of clicking sounds between them, the Xix bowed and left the room. The Dram officer turned to me.

“Depending upon us the best efforts employed, had in order to maintain human, its life. They must better prove the Emperor their worth.”