The Cauldron (21 page)

Delphoros shared his race’s fear of water. They could not swim. It was not a matter of lacking the skill; that could be taught. They lacked the
ability
; their bodies so impossibly dense, they could not float. They could only sink and die drowning. The terror of such a death was inborn, like an animal’s instinct for survival. It was hereditary in all Elthorans and deep-seeded. Their history was filled with disasters of drowning: sailing ships that capsized, entire crews lost; rare waves pounding a shore and suffocating the unwary who had traveled too close to the hated water; tremors that opened rents in the ground and dropped unfortunate Elthorans into watery pits below. There were never survivors where water was concerned.

Being submerged in the fluid of a navigation tank—there was no way to suspend such a dense form—was like drowning.

Was in fact drowning, Delphoros believed.

His lungs took in the fluid, where once they had breathed air. His throat filled with the nutrients, never more to drink berry nectar or feast on the pulp of succulent fruits. His shadowlids closed, forever he was certain, and his mind extended outward from his tank and ship, searching through space at the command of a shipkeeper. He was not assigned his mother’s ship, the officials believing Delphoros would perform better if he remained emotionally distant from those he worked with. They hadn’t needed to worry, as Delphoros was as stoic as any Elthoran. But he would have found a measure of comfort in her presence.

By his second journey, Delphoros could no longer feel his toes. He managed to twitch his fingers—or believed that he could, though he wondered if perhaps his mind merely let him think he still possessed some limited ability to move. As his body grew weaker, his mind grew stronger. Effortlessly he stretched his senses through space, touching the edge of
otherspace
and guiding the ship and the passengers through it.

Fast, fast, fast, his mother had called
otherspace
travel, shaving decades and centuries off conventional spaceflight. Only a handful of
otherspace
navigators were working on ships; Elthor was not producing individuals with the talent. And news of another navigator’s death reached him before his fourth journey.

Pregnant women were often sent on missions in the hopes that they would give birth in the space between, creating others with Delphoros’s abilities. Delphoros prayed they would not be successful; he did not want to doom another to an existence without the use of legs.

However, he found some amount of delight in his circumstance. His mind touched other life on distant worlds, feeling their shapes and imagining the textures of their skins—scales and fur and leathery hides—and marveling at how they raced, flew, and burrowed. He touched alien races, too, most of them having forms similar to Elthorans, though certainly not the density. And he touched the foggy outlines in
otherspace
. So much life everywhere, Delphoros continued to be amazed. Even the Elthoran ships lived, the ones they used for the great distance travels; they’d been culled from a neighboring world and enslaved, much in the same manner other races captured and tamed mounts and working beasts.

He and his ship shared a lack of freedom, always going where the shipkeeper and the mission demanded, ripping a hole in
otherspace
and coming out the other side. Rarely was he told what a mission was about, though he supposed if he asked he would have been supplied that information. He didn’t care about such particulars, only about the lives he sensed along the way and wondered over.

By his fifth mission he could no longer twitch his fingers or work his jaw, not that he needed to.

By the seventh he’d realized the nature of
otherspace
, and by the tenth he decided to act. Greater controls were put on him, as word of his beliefs were spreading, passed through the liaison to his crewmen … and then to their families. Something was added to his nutrients to help control him. His tank was altered. He was, in effect, imprisoned and called a renegade.

But he was resourceful, though he was trapped. It was just a matter of timing and of a willingness to sacrifice himself and his living ship and the scant few crewmembers that he absconded with. Their lives in exchange for—what?—for an end to
otherspace
travel? Elthorans would continue to traverse
otherspace
as long as they had navigators.

But navigators were a dying breed. Three left, wasn’t there? They’d been dying off, and some had been raided by Alzur ships.

And with Delphoros’s death they would lose their brightest. One fewer crew to go fast, fast, fast through the stars.

A trivial sacrifice—the lives of his ship and crewmen and himself—considering what could be saved. No real sacrifice at all, he decided by the eleventh mission when he navigated the ship to crash.

Except the crash did not kill Delphoros.

 … and in the center ring …

It instead birthed the Divine Bear and Petey and Carl and Ellen’s John.

“Wake up Carl!”

Shelly?

Ellen?

Sarah?

“Wake up, Carl!” Charlie hovered over him, Ellen at his side. “Wake up!”

***

Chapter 35

Melusine

Her rest had been necessary and insufficient. The shipkeeper tugged her from a pleasant dream about Elthor and a man whose company she enjoyed there.

“It is too soon,” she said. Melusine did not need to tell the shipkeeper that she was still exhausted from her forays into the minds of Jerrah and an elderly librarian; both visits gaining yet more perceptions about Carl Johnson. The shipkeeper had to see how weak she appeared and that she needed his aid to rise from her restrainment pod. “I need more rest. Last time … last time I tried to slip inside Carl Johnson, as you instructed. His mind was too strong. It was painful. I am so tired and—”

“I realize that was wrong for me to make that request. You cannot delve into the mind of another Elthoran.”

She relaxed a little. “Then a few more hours of—”

“We do not have the time for the indulgence of rest.”

Her shadowlids fluttered to adjust to the bright glow of the ship’s interior. “Carl Johnson’s mind cannot be directly breached, shipkeeper, and—”

“I say again that I erred by making that request. You will use the Jerrah woman again to get close. Through her you will talk directly to him. It is time to reach out to him. No more studying. No more gathering information. We have our confirmation. He is the Bright One. Tell him who you really are and that it is time for him to return to Elthor.”

“Where will you land the ship?”

The shipkeeper looked over his shoulder to the navigator. “We will find a place remote, yet near the … resort.”

“And I will bring Carl Johnson—”

“Delphoros—”

“I will bring Delphoros there. While it is still night?”

He nodded.

“And in this storm?”

Another nod. “Less chance to be noticed. It must be soon, Melusine. In a few hours it will be light below.”

“What if—”

“—Delphoros does not want to come with you? We have been over this before, Melusine. You will be persuasive.”

Melusine heard the impatience in the shipkeeper’s voice. His face—was it marked with anger? His eyes were wild.

“You can be persuasive, Melusine, such is one of your many skills. You will make him remember home and navigating
otherspace
and the stars. He must know that he is crucial to Elthor. And he must be made to realize he has no choice in this matter.”

She set aside her reluctance and waited for the tendrils of the augmentor to tickle her scalp so she could continue with the mission—to make direct contact with Delphoros and bring him back. She wanted to see the mission through and to be successful; she had never wanted anything more. Melusine had been away from Elthor so long, she missed it profoundly, and gaining Delphoros would mean a triumphant return. Her hesitance was born only of fatigue, merging her mind into the body of someone below—even someone like Jerrah who had become familiar to her and was easy to manipulate—was physically and emotionally taxing, especially the longer she maintained it. And the attempt to merge with Carl had been grueling and impossible.

That failed attempt, more than any of the shipkeeper’s words, made her realize Carl and Delphoros were indeed one—the Bright One. She had never touched a mind so strong.

But truly she had not rested long enough since her previous foray. She would not be able to maintain a link with Jerrah for very long. Could she achieve a link at all?

And yet the shipkeeper was insistent.

She knew better than to argue with him and ask for more rest time. No doubt he was right, best to accomplish this while it was night below … now. Leave the system through
otherspace
and be gone to Elthor.

To be successful
, she thought. Would all of Elthor praise her?

“He has merely lost himself, Delphoros,” the shipkeeper said, as the tendrils persisted against Melusine’s scalp. “Forgotten who he truly is, the identities he assumed through the years like layers of earth burying his real self. But we are close to awakening him and casting aside all those layers.”

How did the shipkeeper know they were close to making Carl realize who he truly was? Melusine had not yet directly communicated with Carl Johnson/Delphoros. But in her earlier explorations it had seemed clear that the man believed he was merely a human, one that had been reincarnated multiple times.

“We are so very near to succeeding,” the shipkeeper continued. “I know it. And it is all up to you, Melusine.” Then he turned toward the navigator’s tank and left her to reconnect with Jerrah.

So tired! The tendrils sensed her hesitation and waited for an assurance from her. Melusine tried to empty her thoughts and accept the connection. Her distraction complicated the process. She pictured the man she’d dreamed about, and she worried over the shipkeeper’s orders; she did not want to fail him.

Behind her the shipkeeper and navigator were engrossed in a conversation she could not overhear, yet left her curious. The shipkeeper and navigator had conversed several times, sharing some secret; she could tell that because they quit talking whenever she came too near. Did they whisper a secret now? Involving Delphoros? Regarding herself or this mission? No. She suspected they were merely looking for a secluded place to land this ship so Delphoros could come on board and they could be on their way home. Again thoughts of the man on Elthor resurfaced and curled the corners of her lips. Had he waited for her?

Just how long had they all been gone from Elthor?

The shipkeeper had mentioned something about time passing that they’d not accounted for, that perhaps they’d been lost in
otherspace
for quite some years before emerging at this world. That Delphoros had been gone longer than they had first judged.

Had it been so much time that the man she favored had moved on?

Carl Johnson
, she thought, focusing and discarding all her other concerns. Only Carl Johnson and Delphoros mattered. The Bright One was needed for Elthor’s continued
otherspace
travel. He had to be brought home. Her weariness was inconsequential; she had to find the strength. She had to marshal her energy and—

Contact.

This time the sensation was dizzying. Melusine’s sanity spun and her head pounded with pain and confusion. Jerrah’s eyes were closed, and so Melusine could not see outward and relied, instead, on her host’s other senses. The fingertips rested on something cool and smooth, the same surface touching the backs of her arms and legs, pleasant feeling, but hard and uncomfortable. Her head on the same surface … as if Jerrah was stretched out on a board. Melusine tried to open Jerrah’s eyes, but they resisted.

Her head pounded harder.

She felt Jerrah’s chest rise and fall regularly, but more shallow than on the previous visits. She tasted something coppery-acrid and sweet. Blood? Jerrah had bitten her tongue and the taste lingered. Melusine forced her host to work up some saliva. Jerrah’s jaw twitched and a sharp, brief pain traveled down her neck. Had Jerrah been injured during the time Melusine rested?

A moan escaped Jerrah.

Melusine pushed Jerrah’s consciousness to the background and worked to rouse the body. She took inventory of its systems: heart, lungs. If there was an injury, she could not find it. The problem must be in the woman’s mind. Had Melusine visited it so often she’d caused damage?

She probed Jerrah’s thoughts, spiraling down into an unconscious state that made the dizzy sensation worse. Had Jerrah succumbed to madness? Melusine had to know … if Jerrah’s mind was twisted, Melusine would have to find another host. The woman called Ellen, perhaps, the elderly librarian, the waitress, or—

Not madness, she decided. Incredulity, confusion, disbelief. Jerrah was emotionally overwhelmed by something. Melusine’s own senses continued to spin as she picked through Jerrah’s memories and attempted to smooth the turmoil. Better that she could rouse Jerrah and use this familiar body than to take on another host.

Silver images flashed in the back of Melusine’s mind. Long and curved. Knives. She saw them scattered in the cabin Jerrah and Carl had used, one dropped near the hated lake’s shore. Another gleamed in Jerrah’s hand. Melusine nearly lost her connection, but she held fast.

The knife was a memory, she realized, almost feeling the handle of it against the palm of Jerrah’s hand. A recent memory of Jerrah’s.

Of Jerrah’s … but also of someone else’s.

Shipkeeper! A piece of Jerrah’s memory was a fragment of the shipkeeper’s presence.

Melusine’s shock forced Jerrah’s eyes to fly open, her mouth to gasp and suck in lungfuls of air.

The shipkeeper had been inside Jerrah’s head, manipulating her like a child’s toy, causing her to take the knives and try to kill … Delphoros. It had to have happened when Melusine rested.

Why?

Why? Why? Why?

Because Delphoros is too powerful to live, Jerrah’s memory surrendered. Because he should be killed for the safety of Elthor and this planet Earth. Because the shipkeeper had settled on that notion and had become singular about it.

Because it wasn’t Jerrah that had slipped into madness, but the shipkeeper.

Somewhere in
otherspace
, sometime during the voyage, the shipkeeper had lost himself.

The shipkeeper wanted the Bright One dead. And yet, even mad he had to know that Melusine would not allow Delphoros to be killed … he was the reason for their mission … he had to be brought back.

So why would the shipkeeper send her back into Jerrah to regain Delphoros?

Had his madness flip-flopped his intentions? Had he changed his mind—at least temporarily? Did he no longer want Delphoros killed, but recovered?

Melusine took control of Jerrah’s body and sat up. She was on a boxlike object. A freezer; Jerrah’s mind transferred the information. Jerrah had been placed here after the failed attempt to kill Carl Johnson. But the man who put her here was gone, as was Ellen and Carl.

She listened. Voices came from upstairs. Ellen’s, and a man’s. Probably the man who had put Jerrah here. There was the faint sound of a siren, too. After a moment, she realized it was coming closer.

Melusine slid off the freezer and steadied herself, in the dim light spying the stairs that led to the residence and the voices. She had to find Carl Johnson/Delphoros. She had to warn him about the shipkeeper, while at the same time urge him to come back to Elthor.

The shipkeeper …

Melusine/Jerrah stopped at the foot of the stairs. She wouldn’t warn Delphoros about the shipkeeper, she would confront the shipkeeper herself. She would slip back to the ship and—

Jerrah’s heart seized.

Melusine realized she could not break the connection with Jerrah.

Something was preventing her mind from returning to her own body.

***