The Void (13 page)

“Computer,” he said, “locate the nearest gravity well.”

It appeared in an instant, the physical representation of insanity made manifest. A swirling darkness on the computer screen. The black hole was only a moderate distance away, but far enough that Aidan did not fear the event horizon.

“Computer,” he said, “zoom out ten light years.”

The screen changed, the image stretching and expanding, the small whirling darkness shrinking to a mere black dot. Then it multiplied and a hundred more black holes filled the screen.

“Computer,” Aidan whispered, “zoom out, maximum.”

For several minutes Aidan waited, the only sound that of the computer collecting data from as far as the ship's sensors could reach. Collating and arranging it into a graphical representation of space that he could understand. Then the computer displayed what Aidan expected, and he felt his sanity slip.

Thousands of gravity wells appeared, spread across what had been the galaxy. Splotches of blackness on an already inky sky. He looked up again at the great dome of glass above him. One intended, he supposed, to allow men to gaze out at the glories of the universe. Glories long dead. And finally, Aidan understood.

He had awoken then, just as the
Vespa
had dropped out of warp somewhere beyond Pluto. It was the last warp jump he had ever taken, the
Vespa
having not made another one successfully. But now, he had been prepared to see it all again, the heat death of the universe. A vision of that which must one day be.

Billions of years in the future, a time when every star had died, and every civilization with it. Burnt out to charcoal cinders, exploded to nothingness, or collapsed into black holes. He had steeled himself for that ultimate darkness, that infinite shade. How surprising then when his dream began somewhere completely different.

Well, not completely. It was a ship, but not an unfamiliar one. Nor were the corridors darkened and empty. No, it was just as he remembered it. Alive and full of light. For when Aidan awoke to the dream, he found himself on the
Vespa
, standing on a hallway that led from the engine room to the bridge. It was her final voyage. He knew that instinctively.

Mark Anderson, the ship's engineer, came through the door to the bridge on the far side of the corridor. He walked toward Aidan with eyes directly upon him. Aidan started to say something, but then a cold realization dawned on him—Mark could not see him. He then had the most disconcerting moment of his life as Mark seemed to pass straight through his body, walking toward the engine room beyond. The door opened, and the shadow wall appeared. But Mark did not seem to notice it.

“No!” Aidan cried out. Mark didn't hear him, either. He simply passed through, with nary a ripple. As horrific as the old dream had been, somehow this was worse.

Aidan took a few steps toward the bridge, and tried to get everything straight. He wasn't on the
Vespa
, not really. So the sensors on the door would not recognize his presence. But when he reached them the doors opened, just as they should. He didn't bother to pause and think on it, instead stepping through them, feeling the whoosh of air as they closed behind. It was then he found himself standing face-to-face with his doppelgänger.

There he was as he had been only a few months before, standing at attention, wearing the same blue flight suit he always did. Aidan shivered as he recognized just how much these last few months had aged him, but the scene he was witnessing was a recent one. The only things he couldn't explain were why his twin seemed to be sweating so profusely, and why he had no memory of this moment.

“Aidan,” he heard a voice say. He spun on his heel to see Captain Marcus standing behind him. His mouth fell open and he started to answer. But the man's eyes were fixed beyond his left shoulder. He wasn't addressing him. At least, not his present self. “Aidan, I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean.”

“Sir, I don't know that I can explain it. But my gut says there's something wrong here. I think we should wait.”

“Wait? Wait on what? Mr. Connor,” the captain began, and Aidan heard a twinge of sympathy in his voice. The older man moved forward and Aidan stepped to the side to avoid the awkward feeling of having the captain stand in his spectral presence. “I know you had a tough go of it last time. We've all been there. But you've got to move on. Listen, when this mission is done, why don't you take a break? A vacation. A couple months would do you good.”

A feeling of lightheadedness rushed over Aidan and he had to grab the chair next to him for support. He half expected his hand to slide straight through it as he fell to the floor, but it held his weight.

He had long tried to avoid thinking about those days, the ones following that last horrible sequence of dreams. After he had stared into the final fate of all things. He had experienced what might be called a nervous breakdown, and had even spent a couple weeks under the care of a psychiatric doctor in the infirmary. It was nothing serious.

Not the sleep-madness at least, and everyone accepted the doctor's diagnosis that Aidan had simply been working too hard for too long and needed a break. But now he knew what Captain Marcus had always understood: it was more than that.

He watched the man put a hand on his twin's shoulder, and it struck him once again that he had no memory of this event, just as he had no memory of most of that final, fateful trip on the
Vespa
. Had any of this actually happened? Was any of this real? Or was this all
their
creation? But for what purpose? To confuse him? To scare him? That, he could not say.

He glanced around the bridge, searching every dark spot, every shadowed corner for their empty, watching eyes. But he did not see them, and more importantly, he did not feel or hear them either.

“I promise you,” Captain Marcus said as Aidan looked back at the man he had called friend, “nothing is going to happen on this trip. You and I, we've done this for years. Done this dozens, hell, hundreds of times. This one is no different.”

The other Aidan nodded once, and Captain Marcus accepted it, even if no one in the room was convinced. Then a computer voice broke in, the same female voice as always. “Warp point reached,” it said.

Marcus looked at Aidan's twin. “Alright,” he said. “I'll be with the others. We'll see you shortly, right?”

He didn't wait for an answer. Instead, he turned and walked to the door, stopping there to cast one last glance back at Aidan. Then he was gone, off to his destiny.

Aidan and his double were alone. Aidan looked over at the man who had been him and he didn't like what he saw. He was shaking, whatever self-control he had mustered for the captain was now gone. The other Aidan looked down at the controls. The computer had opened the warp console. He need only input a few numbers, mark a few coordinates, and his work would be finished. But he did not move. He just stared, the trembling in his hands spreading to the rest of his body.

“Go on,” Aidan said, even though his twin didn't hear. The man's trembling stilled and in his face Aidan saw a conclusion reached, a decision made. He reached down and with a swipe of his hand, closed the warp console. “What are you doing?” Aidan shrieked as much as asked. In a few seconds, he would have known the answer, but then a scream echoed through the bridge like the sound of thunder.

Chapter 10

Cyrus was smoking a cigar. The paper band wrapped around the cut end said it was Cuban, though he had no recollection of buying it or lighting it for that matter. He took a deep draw and the glowing embers of lit tobacco glowed so fiercely that for a moment they almost lit the dim rear compartment of the Rolls Royce. Cyrus blew thick smoke into the air and grinned. He'd smoked the same cigar dozens of times over the years and it always tasted just as sweet as the first.

As if on cue, the driver turned to him. “We're here, Mr. McDonnell.”

“Of course we are,” he thought. The script was so familiar to him he could almost count the beats to the next event, the next phrase. Especially the beginning. The beginning was always the same. The same sweet cigar; a touch of orange peel and the taste of leather. The ancient Rolls Royce, curving lines of steel that trumpeted wealth to the world. And the driver. In a way, Cyrus was frightened by him. It was his black, soulless eyes, and Cyrus was glad their interactions were brief.

“Thank you, Charles,” Cyrus said. Whether the man's name was Charles or not, he couldn't say. But the appellation seemed appropriate and the man had never objected, so Charles it was. “I'll take it from here.”

Cyrus stepped out into a rain-slicked Chicago evening. He stood and buttoned the middle buttons of his suit jacket, pausing a second to fix the cuffs of his shirt. “Just part of the ritual”, he thought. “Just part of the night.”

Before him sat a tall granite building, cyclopean in its construction. It rose up like a modern pyramid in the center of the city, disappearing somewhere above the rain-full clouds, their bloated forms threatening to break at any moment.

On either side of the building was a shadow wall. Each pulsated like a living thing, rippling and roiling as the seas might on a stormy night. He watched as cars emerged from and then disappeared into those implacable barriers. People on the sidewalks did the same, not seeming to notice them, or not caring if they did. “A barrier only to you,” Cyrus thought.

He had wondered, when he first dreamed, what lay beyond them. He was an explorer at heart. He had joined the guild for adventure. To see beyond what others saw. Space had called to him like the sea must have called his ancestors centuries before.

But the walls were not necessary to stop him anymore. Cyrus had no desire to go beyond them. No, what he wanted was in the building in front of him. Or more precisely, below it. He rubbed his hands together and smiled. Cyrus didn't hate the dreams like the others. He loved them.

Oh, he kept up the lie. He told people that he feared the dreams as they did. He would recount the terror he experienced vaguely, never in too much detail. Which was fine. No one ever talked about the dreams, not really. The dreams were a gift in a funny way. A treasure of the sleeper. Unique and yet the same all at once. Like falling snowflakes.

Cyrus walked down the long, dark alley next to the building. He loved how clichéd and wonderful it was. Like something out of a movie. It was barely lit and bathed in shadows, every one of which threatened to hide some unnamable evil or danger. Steam rose from open pipes that protruded from the alley walls. Cyrus stopped and listened carefully until he heard the sound of an empty bottle skittering across the ground, as if an angry man who intended evil against man and bottle alike kicked it. Cyrus almost laughed. The regularity was humorous in a way.

He kept walking until he reached a door in the massive building's wall, a dim bulb hanging naked above it. He remembered still the first time he had the dream. It had not been much of a search to find this door. He had walked straight to it, as if guided by some preternatural sense. He had found it, even if he had not known he sought it.

He knocked loudly. Three times, pausing a half beat between each. He had known to do that the first time, too. A wooden slat slid away in the center of the door. Two unfriendly eyes peered out at Cyrus. Then the look changed to recognition.

“Mr. McDonnell!” the voice that came with the eyes exclaimed. “So good to see you again, sir.” The slat slid back in place and the sound of the unbolting of many locks reverberated down the door and into the alleyway.

The door swung open and a man who Cyrus felt like he had known his entire life appeared. He was a giant. From his shaved head to his muscle-bound arms to his massive fists, one of which he opened and offered to Cyrus, everything about him made one think he’d been built instead of born. Created for the sole purpose of winning a fight. The man's hand enveloped his own and Cyrus winced from the power of that grip.

Cyrus had learned over the years that the man had been a professional boxer before he was a bouncer. His career had gone so far as to land him in a championship fight in a division that was not heavyweight and thus that Cyrus did not recall—assuming, of course, that this man existed in the real world. In any event, he had lost that match, and his career with it. Cyrus often mused that anyone who could defeat this man in single combat was not a person he had any desire to meet.

“Who's on stage tonight, Tom?” Cyrus asked. He knew the answer. It was a question he had asked a dozen times. But he had come to feel that he had a role to act out in this play. It was incumbent upon him not to stray too far from his part.

Tom grinned. “Sidney, of course. But you know that.”

Cyrus did know it. It was strange, though. He never recalled Tom knowing that he knew it before. Perhaps this abnormality should have given him pause, and maybe it did deep within that reptilian part of the brain where the instincts live. But he brushed the inconsistency away. He had no time for such silly things.

Tom led him down a darkened hallway to a spiraling staircase that curved down to a floor below. Gesturing toward it with a sweep of his huge hand, Tom said, “You know the rest of the way, Mr. McDonnell. Do enjoy yourself, now. I hope you have a . . . pleasant evening.” Tom smiled, and for the first time Cyrus noticed he had the same coal-black eyes as the driver.

Cyrus began his descent, curling down the stairs, his feet making a

clank

clank

clank
sound with every step.

It ended in the opening to a hallway. Another large man in a suit stood at the entrance. He nodded to Cyrus, just as he always did. Cyrus had never spoken to the man and he occasionally pondered what would happen if he did. He suspected the man would merely nod, regardless. A robot, programmed to do a single task.

The hallway beyond was darkened by clouds of smoke billowing from chambers to each side. Cyrus stepped into that smoke, smelling the sweet, sappy fragrance, the decadent tang. The gift of the poppy. The side chambers were no more than open pits where men lay, most of them emaciated and slack-jawed. Their eyes were still open, even if they no longer saw. Their lives given to the opium that still burned within pipes they clutched in their hands.