"I am the best I have ever been, Fed."
Fed let out a short laugh.
"What, no 'Federico'?"
"Too tired. And I don't need that anymore."
"Need what?"
Galen closed his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep in this nice, comfortable chair.
"Listen, is it safe to approach the ship? Are you alone?"
Reluctantly, Galen opened his eyes.
"I am not alone. I will never be alone. But it is safe."
Fed grimaced.
"A bona fide speech, and I have no idea what it means."
He dropped into the chair opposite Galen's.
"You've got to help me out here, Galen. I know you're smarter than me. I know you're a better mage than me. I want to trust you. I do trust you. But I don't know what to do. I don't understand."
"Yes, that's the beauty of it."
Fed bowed his head, shook it back and forth.
"When you don't make sense anymore, then I think the entire galaxy must have turned upside down. I'm crazy for even hanging around. Anyone else would have run straight back to the hiding place at the first sign of that Shadow ship."
"Better to be too crazy than too sane."
Fed's head came up.
"I never thought I'd be wanting to slap some sense into you. Okay, here's the deal. I'll dock with it, if I can. You come into my ship, and then I'll try to blow the damn thing up."
"No. It must come with us."
Fed's knee bounced nervously.
"You're kidding, right? We can't take that back to the hiding place. The Shadows could track it. Or it could send some kind of signal to them."
"It won't betray us."
"How can you know that?"
"I know."
Fed studied him.
"The Circle is going to flay my butt for this."
"Blaylock will understand."
A strange expression came over Fed's face, but he said nothing. Galen closed his eyes.
"I'm tired. Let me go. We will follow you."
"What do you mean, 'we'?" Fed said, but Galen heard nothing more. He was back in the comforting embrace of the ship, drifting into a peaceful half sleep. They would follow Fed, and they would go home.
JANUARY 2261
C
HAPTER 21
Galen lay in bed, replaying his life. So many of his memories had been boxed up in coffins and buried in the walls of his tunnel vision. When he'd joined with the tech, those walls had peeled away, leaving the memories lying before him, exhumed from their hiding places, bare and raw. He took time, now, to relive each, to embrace his past rather than hide from it, to see it in all its hideousness and pain and failure and love and beauty.
For the first time he thought of Isabelle, and Fa, and Elric not as threats to control, but as who they had been, and what they had given him. No agitating undercurrent rose up to fuel his grief, yet the grief remained, sharp and deep, resonating through him.
Those losses were great, the wounds open and fresh, yet he would not hide from them. Besides, he was no longer able. He had relinquished control, given himself over to the tech, and to life. Whatever life brought him, good or bad, pain or joy, he would face it, and question it, and learn all he could from it.
He would hide in tunnels, walk in circles, no longer. Finally, he could move ahead, into uncertainty. Who he was, more than ever, was a mystery. He was not the mage he had once dreamed to be, a masterful figure who controlled events, manipulated perceptions, healed wounds, imposed his design upon the universe.
He was not the agent of chaos that the Shadows had conceived, embodied in seven basic postulates. He had only the bare beginnings of an answer. And for now, that was enough. For the full answer to that question, he hoped, would not be written for some time. As for what he was, he learned more about that every day.
He and the tech were discovering their capabilities together. At times, Galen felt that the tech was as much a part of him as his heart or his brain, and that it was meaningless to think of them as separate, of one part as "him" and another part as "the tech" Collectively, he carried the traits and desires of both, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish them.
Yet at other times the tech's still, pervasive warmth seemed a distinct presence within him, communicating a thought, or a desire. With each day, they grew in strength.
Galen looked down at his arms, which lay flat against the blanket. Much of the black had flaked away, and the skin beneath was a mottled red, tender and swollen. All over his body, burns were healing. Within, the organelles told him that most of the cellular damage and internal injuries had been repaired.
The only area that seemed resistant was the bright red bull's eye over his heart, which throbbed with each breath he took. But they were eager to pursue their purpose. There were so many questions still to be asked. And there was so much tech still to be freed, if only the mages could free it.
His door chime rang twice – Fed's signal – and after a moment, the door slid open. Fed entered quickly with a tray of food, while other mages crowded behind him. The door closed them out. Over the past weeks, aside from Fed, Galen remembered seeing only Herazade, who had questioned him perhaps five days ago about what had happened, receiving answers he feared were incoherent.
Galen was surprised that Blaylock had not come, but he was busy, Galen supposed, with all that had happened. Still, Galen was anxious to speak with him. Of all the mages, he was the one most likely to understand. Fed set the tray on his bare dresser and stood over him.
"Hey. You're looking a lot better."
He said that every day. With a thought, a platform took shape beneath Galen, bent to raise his head and shoulders.
"Don't need me to rearrange your pillows anymore, huh?"
Galen curled to one side as pressure closed around his heart. He found himself gasping with quick, shallow breaths, his heartbeat stumbling, as it had when the Eye's jaundiced web had collapsed, as it had been doing since, more and more often.
"What is it?"
Fed hovered anxiously over him. He broke into a sweat, his heartbeat erratic, tumbling.
"Galen," Fed said louder. "Are you all right?"
Finally, the pressure eased, and his heart fell into a pounding beat. After a few moments, he nodded.
"Don't scare me like that." Fed studied him. "You sure?"
Galen moved swollen, flaky lips. "Not really."
Fed gave a nervous laugh, pulled up the chair from his desk, dropped into it.
"I need to rest."
Galen could see no change in Fed, none of the joy he had felt in joining with the tech, or the newfound sense of purpose.
"It didn't work," he said. "I tried, Galen. So have others. But you're sounding awfully Vorlon these days. When I tell them they have to conjure nothing, they don't understand. Hell, I don't understand. To cast a spell, I have to think about something. We all do it differently. I think of movement, of a line in my mind tracing out what I want to happen. If I imagine just a stationary point, that conjures a fireball. I don't know how to think of nothing. I mean I do, that's what I do all the time, but it doesn't lead me to any great cosmic insights."
He shrugged.
"Not usually."
"None have been successful?"
"Not yet. And the spell can't really be translated, because there's nothing to translate."
Fed leaned forward.
"Are you sure it happened? When we pulled you out of that Shadow ship, you were so messed up... Just going to Z'ha'dum must have been weird enough. Then being caught at Ground Zero. Couldn't it have been your imagination?"
"I feel it right now, Fed, as I speak to you. I feel it as a partner, not a slave."
Galen felt strange talking about it, self-conscious. It was so personal. Yet he wanted Fed to understand, wanted them all to understand.
"The Circle is anxious to talk to you about that – and other things – as soon as you're able."
Fed straightened.
"Hey... I didn't even tell you who won the election. It was just announced this morning. Miostro, Tzakizak, and Celaene. They're already complaining that you haven't reported to them yet. I think the whole Circle has quite an agenda where you're concerned. They're saying you overstepped your task. I've never seen Herazade so angry. She's worried... about another split in the mages."
Fed had told him about the bloodshed that had erupted while he'd been gone. Soon after his departure, Blaylock and Herazade had told the mages of the tech's true origins. A few followed Gowen's example, unable to live with the knowledge. Many more struck out in anger, at everyone and everything.
A group of about thirty, led by Emond, determined that the Circle had violated solidarity and deserved flaying. Others, including Fed, defended Blaylock and Herazade. Many were killed. The solidarity that Elric had so worked to preserve was broken. Yet in the aftermath, with over forty dead, they came together once again.
Perhaps they realized the Code critical in their fight against chaos. Perhaps they realized that if they continued to fight, the hiding place would simply become their tomb. Perhaps they were simply tired of death. The election of new members to the Circle had been viewed as part of the healing process.
"I returned to the mages only to help them," Galen said.
Fed pulled a rubber ball out of his pocket, tossed it back and forth between his hands.
"You should have run for the Circle, Galen. You understand a lot more than they do. They're pretty freaked out by that Shadow ship sitting outside, and by the fact that you – joined with it. I think they're... afraid of your help."
The Circle's goal had always been to impose order upon the mages, to counterbalance the programming of chaos within them just as the Vorlons counterbalanced the Shadows. Both forces sought control, yet control was not the answer.
That thought resounded through him. Fed's unkempt beard shifted as he smiled.
"They're also not too happy that you destroyed most of Z'ha'dum, but saved Morden, the one person they wanted dead. He's shown up on Centauri Prime, by the way. Seems to be up to his old tricks."
The familiar feeling came over Galen, that he was unable to accomplish anything good. Though the bombs had killed many of the Shadows, not all of them had been on Z'ha'dum. Still they fought, with even greater viciousness, and still Morden served them. But the tech told him that they could do good here.
"Did Blaylock try the spell?" Galen asked.
Fed caught the ball, closed it in his hand.
"I was told to wait until you were better. But – you are better, right?"
Galen waited.
"Blaylock fell ill soon after you left. I think – the loss of Gowen... He's in a coma. Could go at any time, Miostro says."
"I have to see him."
"I don't think you want to go out there. Some of the mages think you're the best thing since Wierden and you've finally realized our great destiny. Others think you've succumbed to some trick of the Shadows and we're all about to be annihilated. And then there are the ones who hate you for destroying Z'ha'dum, thinking you killed any future for our order."
Galen bent his platform further, straightening himself into a sitting position.
"I need a robe. Will you help me?"
And then the pressure was closing again around his heart. A sharper pain sliced through him, and as he fell forward, Fed jumped up and caught him. A spot of blood seemed to have magically appeared on the front of his sleeping gown, centered over his heart.
"Whoa!" Fed said.
"What is that? What's happening?"
Galen couldn't catch his breath. It felt as if his heart was being squeezed out through his ribs. The red spread slowly outward. Fed grabbed the neck of the gown and ripped it down. At the center of his mottled chest was the bright red bull's eye, and across it, a slit leaking blood. As the pressure increased, Galen's gasp rose into a dry, hollow rattle.
A small blue lump slipped through the slit, ran with a trickle of blood down his chest. Then the pressure released him, and he was swallowing air in great gulps. After a minute, he could speak.
"I'm okay," he said in a whispering voice. "I'm okay."
The pain already was fading. He extricated himself from Fed, leaned back against the platform. Now he understood.
"What is that?"
Fed was trying to locate the blue lump among the gown and blankets.
"The device – from the Circle."
"That tracking device they gave you? What the hell was it doing?"
Fed picked it out of the blankets, studied it.
"It's totally fused. Inoperative. If the bombs had caused you that much internal damage, you'd be dead."
He rolled the small blue lump between his fingers.
"Your organelles must have destroyed it..."
The Circle, fearing the Shadows' power over his tech, had required their own power over him. He would be ruled by neither. As the Shadows' seven basic postulates no longer defined him, neither did the seven elements of the Circle's Code.
"I am under no one's control."
Fed looked up at Galen, and his beard shifted in concern.
"The Circle isn't going to like..."
He glanced at the device.
"Why are there explosives in here?"
"Tell the Circle I will report to them at their convenience, and give them that. Now, I must see Blaylock."
After Galen was dressed, Fed went out into the hall to clear the way. Apparently he was unsuccessful, for when he called Galen out, the corridor was lined with mages.
Fed led the way toward Blaylock's room, and Galen glided after. At first the mages watched him silently. Then one touched his arm, startling him. Then another. Finally, someone spoke.
"Glad to have you back."
That was Ak-Shana.
"Good to see you."
Kane.
Then Fed stopped. Ahead, several mages blocked the passage. At their front, Chiatto called out in an angry voice.
"No one told you to wage war against the Shadows."
Fed waved him back. Chiatto's Centauri crest trembled.