Empress of Eternity (26 page)

“They are but one shadow of many, and the shadow you must oppose.”

Exactly how? wondered Maertyn. “Who
are
you?”

“You see but a construct of the past and the future.” The woman turned once more to Maarlyna. “Find the door and go through it.”

“If I don’t…”

The woman/construct vanished.

Maertyn looked at his wife. “The door? There isn’t a single door in the station…”

“There wasn’t…but there wasn’t anyone else but us here, either.

We’re not doing anything else right now. We might as well start looking to see if there is a door.”

“She’s been right about other things,” admitted Maertyn, although he could hear the doubt in his voice—and disliked it.

“The assassin…and didn’t she say that we were linked?”

“She did.” He smiled in the dim light. “Let’s see if we can find a door where there wasn’t one before.”

They inspected their bedchamber and sitting room and the rest of the upper level, and then the main level. As they did so, Maertyn couldn’t help but wonder exactly what the Gaerda troopers were doing…and thinking.

After discovering nothing, they stood at the top of the ramp to the lower level.

“It must be down there.” Maarlyna started down the ramp.

Maertyn followed, absently wondering what might happen if the troopers cut off the power from the turbines and battery banks. From the bottom of the ramp, he glanced toward the kitchen area, where Shaenya had hurriedly covered her preparations for dinner. He saw several more sprigs of the mistletoe in a glass vase filled two-thirds of the way with water.

After inspecting the chambers on the west end, they moved eastward until they reached the small chamber off the largest lower room.

“There!” Maarlyna pointed at the blank east wall.

“Where?” Maertyn saw nothing.

“Can’t you see, dear? There is a door here. It’s six-sided, but not hexagonal, and it’s open. It looks like there’s a long passageway beyond it.”

For all of Maarlyna’s description, Maertyn could still see nothing. “Do we really want to go through it?”

“Why not? We can stay here for days, perhaps weeks…” Maarlyna said. “But we’re like a turtle. It can’t go anywhere unless it sticks its neck out.”

Maertyn had to admit that she was right about that.

“Maertyn…dear…I needed to be a turtle for a time. I needed to recover and discover who I am. I’m not the Maarlyna you lost. At times, I’ve wished I were.” She smiled sadly. “But I’m me, not her.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” Her voice was soft. “Take my hand, and close your eyes.”

Maertyn couldn’t help but hesitate.

“You asked me to do that for you. I did. Do the same for me. Please.” After a pause, she added, “I may not be the Maarlyna you lost, but I love you every bit as much as she must have.”

Maertyn reached out and took her hand.

Together they stepped forward……and blinding silver light swirled around them…

You cannot see what you cannot comprehend.

From high in the sky, the city appeared as a giant hexagon. From orbit, its hexagonal shape remained clear, if greatly diminished in size amid the surrounding fields and forests of more conventional rectangular dimensions. The roadways radiated in straight lines, either from the points of the large hexagon, or at times from the smaller hexagonal cells that comprised the larger hexagon of the city proper.

From the center of the city, in the middle of the hexagonal main square, a kay on a side, rose a golden structure, also hexagonal in shape, crowned by a shimmering golden dome, a perfectly rounded surface bearing no adornment whatsoever. Some of the adjoining hexagons contained buildings, and those were of close to uniform height, if varying in size and function, while others held parks or exercise fields or even occasional schools.

Some few scattered clouds dotted the sky, but only a few, and that was why all those who had glanced into the blueness of the heavens paused, not to view the pale silvery trace of the Selene Ring, but because a rainbow arched across the sky from the arid south of sun and sand and was descending toward the golden hexagonal structure in the center of the city. While there might have been a trace of blue-gray in the distant south where the far end of the rainbow was anchored, neither clouds nor rain surrounded the colors of the heavenly bridge.

In moments, the end of the rainbow caressed the third level of the golden-domed hexagonal building. Those in the central square watched, and the minidrones, whose surveillance had replaced that of the satellite facilities, scanned the bridge of light.

Moments and then minutes passed.

Abruptly, dust and haze billowed up from the central square, high enough to shroud the golden dome…and the rainbow shivered along the thousands of kays of its length…and vanished…

Those others in the city and beyond gaped at the disappearance, and the plume of dust, then shook their heads and returned to their industrious businesses.

20 Siebmonat 3123, Vaniran Hegemony

The blinding intrusive darkness flared and waned, waned and flared, until Duhyle had no idea whether he was blind in the presence of brilliant light or seeing nothing amid darkness. Slowly, he became aware of a coolness that became an icy chill. Was this death, the chill of Niflheim, the old and discredited idea of the depths of an after-world where even the flames of fire had no heat?

Amid that darkness, he became aware of Helkyria, and a soft silver-golden light that radiated from her. He turned and opened his mouth to speak, but there was no sound. Yet there were words, as if upon a neuralnet of some sort.
You’re silver-gold.

So are you
, came her calm reply.

Where are we? Or when? Or if?

We are…because we’re thinking. As for the other questions…

Abruptly, the darkness vanished, and they stood in the chamber where they had activated the synchronizer. Yet it was not the same chamber, because banks of instruments lined the walls, each clad in a soft silver light, each displaying symbols that changed, and with each change, words ran through Duhyle’s mind. He didn’t understand the words.

Do you know the language?
he asked.

I don’t,
she replied.
I’d judge it’s that of the builders.

Builders? Someone had to have built the canal, but to think they might encounter them after millions of years? That was improbable, since time travel had long since been proven impossible.

Even before Helkyria’s words faded in Duhyle’s mind, a figure appeared before them, midway between them. At first, Duhyle thought that a man stood there, then a woman, but features and physique shifted. All that remained common was the fitted scarlet singlesuit.

You keep shifting.
What else could Duhyle have said that wouldn’t have revealed even greater ignorance?
…no shifts…perception…

Behind the figure, whose appearance continued to change, one image/figure/persona replacing another in flicker-fashion, the instruments also changed—at the same time as the figure did.

Are we seeing all possible futures?
Duhyle finally asked.

I don’t think time works that way
, replied Helkyria.
There’s something else…

Duhyle took a step forward, and everything swirled around him so violently that vertigo and nausea left him trembling. He was barely able to hold himself together. After a long moment, if they were where time existed, and he had his doubts about that, he straightened up slowly and carefully.
Don’t move…very painful…disconcerting. So dizzy…vertigo…disorientation.

Thank you.
After a pause, she added,
It was painful and disorienting to watch you. You seemed to fragment…but you didn’t.

The figure in scarlet seemed to speak.
…all event-points…all at once…
Then he/she became an indistinct shifting shape.

Duhyle thought he’d understood what it had said or projected.
Did you get that—about all event-points at once?

That could be a suggestion that sequence or causality exists independent of perception,
replied Helkyria.

Or? You don’t sound all that certain.

There’s always been a debate about whether time exists in de pen dent of space. Most theorists say it doesn’t…or that it doesn’t exist at all.
Rainbows, or something like them, flickered around Helkyria.

How can time not exist at all?
questioned Duhyle, slowly beginning to feel the last of the vertigo and nausea subside.

More than a few people have asked—

All the silver vanished, and the darkness returned.

34 Quad 2471 R.E.

Faelyna took only three steps before the corridors beside and overlapping the one that she, Eltyn, and Rhyana had taken began to contract and expand, getting dimmer and then increasingly brighter with each expansion…and each step. After another few yards, the glare was blinding.

Eltyn squinted so that his eyes were barely slits. He had no idea where they were going.

Faelyna slowed and stopped. So did the other two.

The light dimmed, slowly, and until the three stood in a long corridor that stretched ahead of them, disappearing into the distance as a silvered point of light.

Eltyn turned and glanced back over his shoulder, past Rhyana. The hexagonal door through which they had stepped was now open. He blinked, but nothing changed. “Do we go on?”

“Let’s see.” Faelyna took another step forward, and the corridor twisted, and light flared. She stopped.

Eltyn turned around and took one step, then another, past Rhyana and toward the still-open doorway. Nothing happened. He looked back at Faelyna. “I think we head back.”

“For now,” she agreed, turning and joining him.

They retraced their steps and made their way through the hexagonal door. Eltyn shook his head, almost resignedly. He couldn’t help but wonder exactly what had happened and where the corridor led—to the eastern end of the MCC, some two thousand kays away?

The dead riffie was in the same slumped position where they had left him, and the images of equipment on the walls flickered in and out of focus, shifting colors now and again.

Eltyn looked back again. The door to the long corridor was still open. “Let’s go up to the equipment and see if we can figure out what it shows.”

Rhyana sniffed. “The air smells different. Sort of damp.”

“The ventilators aren’t working,” Eltyn said. “The station closed the ducts, or the debris did, and I shut down the system right after the impact.”

“It does feel more humid,” acknowledged Faelyna. “We’re still seeing equipment around us.” She stepped toward the silver-flickering images, then stopped and fumbled in her belt pouch, extending what looked to be a folded scrap of something.

The scrap touched the edge of the image and passed through it, then seemed to double, and the second ghostly folded scrap flared instantly, and dust sifted down toward the stone floor.

Faelyna still held the first scrap. Her brows furrowed.

“Real and not real?” Eltyn’s words sounded inane, at least to him.

“I wonder,” replied Faelyna. “We might as well see if our equipment is still there.” She started up the ramp.

All three of them stopped at the top of the ramp. Everything had changed. The main chamber was filled with silver light, but dark rust-brown consoles seemed to be everywhere, leaving corridors to the ramps and to where the doors were—or had been.

Yet as he watched, Eltyn could see the consoles shifting, and, abruptly, they were all dark gray, and the intensity of the light increased once more.

Where are we?

That Rhyana’s voice came to Eltyn in the same manner as a private comm pulse stopped him from asking an almost identical question.

It might be when…not where
, replied Faelyna.
We were just on the main level. That can’t have changed.

Doesn’t look the same to me,
replied Rhyana.

A swirl of gray and scarlet appeared before them, momentarily coalescing into a figure in a scarlet singlesuit of some sort, only to be replaced by a figure in silver and gray, and then by one in pale ice-blue, before returning to the scarlet-clad figure.

Eltyn swallowed.
Who…what…are we seeing…?

The figure’s mouth moved.
…all event-points…all at once
…Then he/she returned to an indistinct blur of fast-shifting shapes.

All event-points at once,
mused Faelyna.
That sounds like a theory of time.

No sequence or causality? Hasn’t that been discredited?

Politically, because the Ruche is founded on certainty and causality.
The feeling of a laugh followed Faelyna’s words.
There are a few theoreticians who might not think the universe is that certain.

What about universes?
asked Eltyn, looking for the smile he knew he wouldn’t see amid the increasing light and shifting images.

That’s more likely in a multiverse—

A flare of light brighter than a nova and simultaneously darker than the depths reserved for unbelievers in the Ruche swept over Eltyn…and the chamber…