"She was a fool."
Anna wondered how the liberators had sensed she'd had any potential at all.
"It's not your place to make judgment."
Morden snapped. With a deep breath, he folded his hands in his lap. When he spoke again, his words came more slowly.
"There's no point to it. You're supposed to learn, so you can fool John. What do you do as an archaeologist?"
He was going to test her understanding of the information he'd given her.
"I uncover artifacts of ancient civilizations, such as the J'Lai, the Anfran, and the Subatu."
"What do you enjoy most about that?"
"I like to figure out how the beings in those cultures thought, and how they lived."
The answer troubled Anna.
"But what importance can that have? Those beings are dead because they failed. Their civilizations were inferior."
"You believed that studying the past could tell us about the present, and the future."
"What can the inferior past tell us about the present?"
"The past has formed us. It has made us who we are and determined what we want. It reveals where we came from, and where we're going."
How could someone who knew the First Principles understand them so little?
"We go toward perfection, through means of warfare and chaos. Those who survive are superior. The past is filled with the corpses of the inferior."
He studied her silently.
"Sometimes things of great worth can be lost in the past. Ideas, knowledge, people."
He took her hand, turned the palm face up.
"Do you see the thickened, hardened skin here? And here?"
He ran his finger over her palm, sending a strange sensation shivering up her arm.
"These calluses are the result of numerous small injuries you sustained in the course of your work. Friction, pressure, scrapes – this is a map of your past. You gladly accepted these injuries, because they brought you closer to the answers you sought. Answers that you gave your life for."
She studied her hand, an archaeologist's hand.
"This skin is incredibly vulnerable."
She looked up at him.
"Do you mean my inferior life? Before my potential was released?"
"When we arrived on Z'ha'dum, the liberators offered each of us a choice, to serve them willingly, or to serve them unwillingly. Do you remember what you chose?"
"I remember being born into the machine. I remember its cold, dark embrace."
She felt her face deforming into a smile.
"It taught me the secret life of circuits, the joys of circulation and cleansing, the elegance of neurons firing in perfect harmony. It revealed the sublime beauty of itself, towering dark in the vault of the universe. And I joined with it."
Of course she had joined willingly. His hand was tight about hers.
"You used to want to understand the past. That was your passion. What do you want now? What have they promised you, Anna?"
"Not, Sheridan?"
"You're not Sheridan."
She was not. And she had no desire to be.
"I want to be joined with the machine, with the greatest of all machines. They will give me control of the Eye if I succeed."
Morden released her, and his hands withdrew into his pockets.
"Let's make sure you can pretend, at least, to be Sheridan. Then you can have what you want. One of the ancient civilizations you studied had a love incantation that you used to read to John. What was it?"
"The song of the Anfran star god."
''Bring me the love that ascends as far into the heavens as the gods can reach. Bring me the love that is the ultimate joining of two essentials, with nothing withheld, nothing rejected. Bring me the returned stronger than it was given, that grows more powerful and irresistible with each exchange. Bring me the love that enriches all it touches, transmuting misfortune into promise, weakness into strength, selfishness into generosity, limitation into possibility. Bring me the love that knows no borders.''
Morden's mouth twisted in a strange expression. The true meaning of the love incantation came to her in a flash of insight.
"That's what I feel for the machine, Morden. The ultimate joining. Sheridan could never have felt that with John."
"But she did. One Human can feel that for another."
"One Human can't join completely with another."
"They can, in a way I can't explain. But everything you feel for the machine, you once felt for John."
Morden looked away. At last, she understood one of the emotions the archaeologist woman had felt. Anna didn't know how it could be so, but she had once felt for John the great passion she felt for the machine. And she must make John believe she felt it still.
Morden looked back at her with a smile, his teeth strikingly even, white.
"We have to finish getting you ready."
He set the case on the seat beside him, opened it.
"Take off that dress, and put this suit on. John has a picture of you in his drawer, and this is what you're wearing."
As Morden held out the suit, his head turned to the doorway. Anna followed his gaze, finding one of the liberators there. She laid down the suit and began to undress.
* * *
Galen sat silently in his ship, drifting at the outskirts of the Alpha Omega system. In his mind's eye, the ship's sensors provided an image of the space all around. Barely visible at the extremes of magnification, the third planet was a black fleck against the tiny bright disk of the sun.
As he stared at that fleck, that dark heart of the chaos that had caused so many deaths, and would cause so many more, he wanted nothing but to crush it and all who lived there. The tech burned cold and restless, echoing his desire. The darkness had its own heart within him, but he could not surrender to it. He must hold to his task. Over the last ten days, he had returned the trading vessel he'd rented, retrieved his mage ship from the backwater where he'd hidden it, then made his way quickly to the rim.
Now that he was here, though, he only drifted. He saw no sign of Vorlons, despite Kosh's claim that they would try to stop him. Even if they let him pass, he had no idea how he might penetrate Z'ha'dum's defense net.
He had watched Shadow ships come and go from the planet, and he could detect no trace of the Eye. He suspected he would not detect it until it had already seized his ship.
In the unlikely event he did reach the planet, he still found it hard to believe that Elizar and Razeel were there. It made no sense.
Elizar's "invitation" to Galen –
let him come to me, if he dares
– implied that Elizar would remain on Z'ha'dum. But Galen thought it might be a ruse, a way to trap or kill him within the defense net. He had felt certain that if Elizar translated the spell of destruction, brother and sister would use their new ability in the largest Shadow attack of the war, helping to spread terror and crush any resistance.
Elizar was sensitive to issues of power and politics, and he would know that to maintain any position of influence with his associates, he would have to constantly prove his value.
Galen had waited, here, for Elizar to reveal his hand. Yet the battle had come and gone. Watching through the mages' many probes, he had seen no sign of Elizar or Razeel. Perhaps they'd been unable to translate his spell of destruction, just as Alwyn had been unable to translate his one-term equation for listening to the Shadows. Or perhaps the knowledge Bunny had gained was incomplete.
In any case, as the forces of light and dark had clashed in their first major engagement, here he had sat, just as he had in the hiding place, watching as others lived and fought and died.
John had deduced the Shadows' strategy. He had gathered his forces, had surprised the Shadow fleet. The alliance's telepaths succeeded in blocking the connections between many of the Shadow ships and the living beings at their cores. As those ships hung frozen in space, the Army of Light hammered them with the sustained blasts necessary to penetrate their strong Shadow skins. Some were destroyed; many fled. Galen wondered if Anna had been among those lost.
Alwyn and G'Leel fought with the alliance, Alwyn's mage ship disguised as a small Narn fighter. They helped destroy two of the Shadow vessels, and despite their reckless tactics, they survived unharmed.
The victory, however, was not without cost. Although the surrounding planets and refugees were barely touched, many alliance ships were lost – two for every one of the Shadows'.
Some of those deaths could have been avoided if Galen had fought with them, used his power in their cause. But he had not dared approach the heat of battle. Now it was over. John was safe and back on Babylon 5. Yet the danger, Galen feared, was greater than ever. In their defeat, the Shadows had learned that they'd underestimated their enemy. They would not be taken by surprise again. Many more battles would follow. Many more would die. The Shadows would pursue their plan against John with new malice and determination.
But Galen could do nothing for John, or for the Army of Light. The light was not his place. That fleck of darkness was. He must hold to the remnants of his task. If Elizar and Razeel were not at the battle site, and were not elsewhere, perhaps they were, truly, on Z'ha'dum. Why they would draw him here, to the home of the Shadows, he didn't know. Were they that certain the Eye would destroy him before he reached the surface? Or did Elizar and Razeel plan to let him pass, confident in their ability to control him once he landed?
He believed Elizar would want to fight him face-to-face. Just as he wanted to fight Elizar. As he had wanted for a long time.
He remembered the Shadow's words:
As for Galen, you know our plans for him, if you can capture him. In any case, he must be stopped.
If their intent was to capture him, then they would attempt to maneuver him into a place where they could turn off his tech. The device implanted by the Circle would kill him, and whatever plans the Shadows had for him would fail. They could not force him to do ill. Only he would be responsible for any bad he did. As long as he maintained control, then he had nothing to fear. He would either succeed at his task or fail, but he would do no further harm.
He could hope for no more. And he should delay no longer. The mages would send someone to meet him at the rendezvous point in twelve days. But he would not be there. Galen sent the command to his ship, and it started forward, toward Z'ha'dum and its defenses.
As if materializing out of nothingness, a ship appeared directly in front of him. Galen stopped his forward motion, the tech surging with anxious energy. He recognized the distinctive yellow-green coloring, the long, narrow frame with four flowing arms aimed forward, almost like a squid on its side.
The Vorlon ship drew closer, coming up alongside him. The hull rippled, like liquid, gathering in one spot, its thickness growing. With a graceful stretch was the hull of the Vorlon's ship.
[ About three paragraphs were lost :( ]
The flowing, liquid movement that had created the extension – he'd seen it before, in the Shadow building on Thenothk, and the membrane protecting Morden's room. He'd known that the Vorlons utilized organic technology, just as the Shadows did, but he'd been able to find only the most vague information on it.
Galen set his sensors to record. Tentatively, he brought his hand to the wall, ready to pull away at the slightest hint of movement. The surface was hard yet warm, its yellow-green pattern shifting slightly. He detected carbon, silicon, oils, various organic compounds. Beneath the skin, electrical activity traveled along structures that resembled nerves, elastic fibers stretched like muscles, and liquid flowed through a circulatory system.
When he'd been connected to Anna, he'd gotten a similar impression of the Shadow ships. He sensed something more, though, something in the shifting pattern of its skin, an unquantifiable sense of life, and more than that, of intelligence. As if he were in the presence of a sentient creature, and that creature was watching him.
Galen began two new mind-focusing exercises. He had to keep his thoughts calm, disciplined, so he would notice any telepathic probe.
He stepped out of the air lock and found the bottom of the cylinder as hard and firm as the side. He extended his sensors forward, searching.
The Vorlons were the ancient enemies of the Shadows. They believed in order, while the Shadows promoted chaos. But did they, too, use innocent beings as central processing units for their ships? He could not tell.
Around him the patterns shifted, studying him. He moved ahead. Time for the Vorlon to let him in or kill him.
Galen stumbled on some unevenness. A ripple propagated through the yellow-green skin beneath his feet and continued ahead, toward the Vorlon ship. The ripple ran not only through the bottom of the cylindrical passage, but all around its circumference, in the shape of a ring.
He stopped, puzzled. In a moment, another ripple followed, and another, as if the passage were wrinkling. Galen glanced back, saw the extension had sealed up behind him and was retracting, rushing at him like a great wave. He had only an instant to hold his breath before it slammed into him, enveloping him in its fluid currents, tumbling him over and over, driving him forward, into the Vorlon ship.
Then the movement stopped, and Galen found himself submerged in the ooze of the ship. He fluttered his eyes open for an instant; the yellow-green glow surrounded him. He jerked his arms and legs, trying to push his way through it. His sensors revealed a hollow area a few feet ahead. That must be the interior of the ship.
As he struggled, the material tightened its hold, as if he were thrashing through maturate that was hardening by the moment. Movement required more and more effort, grew more and more limited, until finally, he was immobilized.
Frantic energy welled up in him, and he found himself visualizing the blank screen in his mind, ready to impose spells upon it, to attack. But killing the Vorlon was not his purpose. He would not lose control. He would not strike out.
Instead, as the need to breathe intensified, he focused on his exercises, building them step by orderly step in his mind. If the Vorlon meant to kill him, then he would be killed. Whatever happened, though, he could not allow the Vorlon to learn the mages' hiding place. He would not be the cause of their deaths.