Burr’s smile was insincere as he said with a hint of sarcasm. “To overthrow His Highness, of course.”
“What a shock,” I responded in kind. “Thanks, then. I’ll let him know the next time I see him.”
Burr’s chuckle caught in his throat as I added, shaking my head, “It hasn’t worked yet, you know. Even the synchrotrons don’t have enough energy to make the crossing.”
Sober, Burr folded his hands and said nothing.
“But, I’m sure that’s not a surprise,” I continued. “There are Trapezalnitaks all over this constellation from your earlier attempts. You need the Somalderis.”
Burr allowed himself a smile. “And if we do …?”
“Well, that’s where I can help.”
His astonishment was clear. “Really,” he finally responded as he waved Plionarctos to aim the stun gun at my head. “Good. Then just tell us where we can find it.”
I shrugged my shoulders and, continued to bluff. “Oh dear, I do so wish I could. But, you see, Gary warned me about you, so, on my orders, the Somalderis was hidden by my mercenaries, even from me. My men see that the Ytrans and I return safe and sound, fifty million in credits richer, and you’ve bought the Somalderis. If not, no Somalderis—and, just like Gary, you’ve bought the farm.”
Burr studied me intently as I confidently met his gaze. Finally, he sighed and pulled up his holo display. “Krøneckðr account?”
“Of course.” I stood up, as if to leave, and gave him the numbers I remembered Carlton Platt had used for Wart’s secret bank account, praying that the account had not been closed after Wart’s arrest.
There was a noticeable delay, and my anxiety grew as Burr continued to enter data. Finally, to my relief, the redhead laughed. “Well done. The money is almost yours. I’ll release the escrow as soon as I get the Somalderis.”
“Not that I’m not trusting,” Burr added as he waved a hand towards the lift doors, “but you won’t mind if we keep your Ergals and weapons until you’re safely out of range, of course.”
I shook my head. “Be my guest.” Then, to the Ytrans I said, “Come on, let’s go get Mr. Burr his Somalderis.” They looked at me, even more alarmed than before.
The lift doors opened as we approached. “Come on,” I said intently, pulling them towards the elevator.
“No!” Agriarctos shouted. “Don’t!”
I paused at the threshold, my back to the others. Snapping my fingers, I said, “Darn. Guess you’re right. Three hundred storeys is a big drop. Especially without an Ergal. And you took ours, didn’t you?”
Suddenly, I clutched my abdomen with both hands and bent over, my face painfully contorted. As the Ytrans approached me, concerned, I flashed them a warning look and then spun around, launching myself from the carpet towards Burr’s chair. I levved into a double flip and landed on my feet right behind him, aiming a stun gun directly at his head.
“Well, now, that’s better,” I said smoothly. “Pooh-bear, put our weapons and Ergals back on the floor and step away. Now we can all go down the three hundred storeys together.”
Plionarctos stammered, “How…?” He held the Ergal he had taken from me in his hand and looked at it, confused.
“It really helps to have a back-up Ergal,” I smiled, wagging my hand to display Gary’s ring on my middle finger. “Gary clued us in. M81 technicians are making Ergals in micromodels now. So move it, Plionarctos: Ergals, Weapons, Floor!” I pressed the gun into Burr’s temple, and added politely, “Shall we go?”
Grudgingly, Plionarctos put the Ergals and weapons down on the carpet and stepped back away. I motioned to my comrades who, with no little hesitation, inched towards the pile. Setsei finally picked up his stun gun, and, after a nod from me, stunned the Ursans. I stunned Burr, and, radiating confidence, the Ytrans and I grabbed the rest of our equipment and levved our prisoners into the lift.
* * *
I cut through the paperwork to get out of Daralfanoon by blasting all the bureaucratic forms to cinders with the laser setting on my stun gun. We then Ergaled in peace to our inn, where we were greeted by Lykkos and Spud, who had just returned themselves and were eager to report on their investigations.
I had Ergaled E-shields around all three of our prisoners but was still uncomfortable with doing our debrief in the small Orion suite. For all I knew, the walls could have ears, big floppy ones like the hotels on Scylla. “Let’s take our friends … upstairs,” I suggested, “where they’ll be a little more … secure.”
In no mood for a slow scenic return via the siderodrome train, we Ergaled to the spaceport. Spud and I both used our Zygint ID’s to get our group expedited through Customs this time. We were done in just over an hour. Burr repeatedly tried to mumble protests, but was fortunately stopped by his frozen tongue and jaws. The Orions were unable to make out Burr’s incomprehensible syllables, and bought our story that he and the Ursans were Zygan tax scofflaws we were extraditing back to Zyga to pay for their capital crimes.
Back on board, Matshi recognized Burr immediately. “That’s Benedict’s #8!”
Burr grumbled something unintelligibly through his frozen jaw. I knew my practice understanding Ev with his mouth full would come in handy some day. I was able to make out, “He’s #7, now that Gary’s gone.”
“Maybe he and Fahrquardt can have a playoff round to see who makes it to the semi-finals,” I joked as we escorted our guests to their holding cells, in which only a few hours earlier we had been prisoners.
On the bridge, Eikhus and Nephil Stratum joined us by holo from their ship so we could all catch up. I quickly filled in the group on our discoveries at the university about the compact particle accelerator, and how our detective work had led to our arrest of Burr and the Ursans.
“I think the box Gary was holding was an older version of the super-Synchrotron that the Nestorian showed us,” I offered.
“A subatomic parachute,” surmised Spud. “For a quick getaway to another brane.”
There was a murmur of agreement. “But even that Synchrotron apparently wasn’t strong enough to get him through to the other dimension,” I added.
Sarion concurred. “Especially with Nephil Stratum’s helpful barrier blocking his way.”
We nodded, and Matshi gave the Syneph an energetic four thumbs up. I noted with some surprise that Spud’s expression was dubious.
“Give me an hour with Burr and I’ll find out what Benedict’s been up to.” Matshi was eager to tackle our prisoners—literally, I expect.
“In due time,” Nephil Stratum soothed. “First, let’s hear from Lykkos and William.”
Spud had remained lost in thought. At the sound of his name, he started, and said, “Oh, er, yes.” He looked at Lykkos, who gestured for Spud to speak.
“Well, as soon as we departed the Inn, Lykkos and I made our way to the estate of Ulenem’s family,” Spud began. “The streets were so quiet you could hear an athame drop. And, actually, I did do.
“We hid behind a tree and waited. Nothing. No one was there. So, we set off again on our path, and then, this time, we both heard a sound.
“Again we hid, again nothing.
“By that time, we were in proximity to Ulenem’s family estate. It was an enormous villa by Madai standards, with several wings and a plethora of rooms. We vaulted over the perimeter fence and micro’ed, so that we should not bump our heads were we to venture inside. Unsurprisingly, as it was well past the hibernation threshold, the main house was dark and silent. What drew our eyes, however, was a small structure behind it.
“It appeared to be a mausoleum, recently built, and lit brightly by floodlights. We proceeded closer and observed that the door was open, or, more accurately, that there was no door at all, just an arch. On each side of the building.
“We entered with great care and found ourselves in a bare central atrium, with an open arch to our left and right, and a conical ceiling that seemed to rise up into infinity.
“I checke
d outside again, but from the exterior, the building’s roof was flat, so I assumed the ceiling was a holo. I was preparing to mega inside the cone and test my theory when I heard the noise again. We spun round, stun guns at the ready, and saw him.”
“Ulenem,” Lykkos said unnecessarily.
I nodded. “All cut up and … dead?”
Spud shook his head. “No. He was … complete … this time. Well, still transparent, but healed.”
Matshi looked up, his expression puzzled.
“He spoke first,” Spud continued, “in Zygan.
“‘It may be too late,” Ulenem said, ‘It has begun.’
“‘Where are you,’ I cried, ‘Level Three?’
“He shook his head. ‘No, I am luxuriating in a tomb with a view,’ he explained sadly, adding, ‘And I can see the future in the past.’
“‘Then what do we need to do?’ I asked in desperation.
“‘There is only one hope. Benedict must not succeed. Destroy the Somalderis or all is lost.”
“‘How can we find it,’ I asked him anxiously, ‘if Benedict himself has not?’
“‘It will soon be in his hands,’ he said, to my alarm. ‘You must—’
“Whoosh! The missile flew past me, millimeters from my head. I sprung back behind a column in the atrium and saw Assassins aiming weapons at us from both arches. We were squarely in the line of fire.
“As we levved and dodged, Lykkos and I got off a few good volleys, but we were quickly outnumbered. And Ulenem had long since disappeared. There were at least ten Madai warriors coming towards us—Ulenem’s family, I surmise—shooting missiles and heaving knives, defending their brother’s crypt. In seconds, they would be upon us.”
“How did you get out of there?” Sarion interrupted anxiously, almost falling out of his seat.
Spud glared at him. “We used our magic wands,” he responded with obvious sarcasm.
Sarion snorted. “No, really.”
Lykkos stepped in. “I think he’s being metaphorical.” He pulled out his Ergal and waved it in front of Sarion. “Abracadabra.”
Once again, everyone laughed. Everyone except me.
* * *
Memories of Maryland and Mingferplatoi
One trait John and I shared was a love of knowing how things worked. As a young kid, I used to take things apart around the house to try to figure out their innards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always successful in putting them back together again. Thankfully, John was always happy to help, especially before Connie discovered what I had done that time to her hair dryer.
It only took me about a week at Mingferplatoi before I tried the same trick with my Ergal. I pried it open to see what miracles of Andromedan technology made the instrument do all the wonderful things we were learning. I expected to see some combination of gears, dials, and motherboards, but nothing had prepared me for what I did see.
Nothing. The Ergal was completely empty. By then, mine had been disguised to resemble a cell phone, so, from the inside, it actually looked like one of those cheap plastic phone covers that vendors sell from carts in the mall.
I asked one of my pedagogues about it the next day, expecting to get a lecture about nano-technology. I was shocked at his reaction. He warned me I’d be in big trouble if anyone else found out what I’d done. I shut up, of course, and hoped that my curiosity wouldn’t have already bought me a visit to the Omega Archon.
After a few months at Mingferplatoi, I’d come home for a few days on my first leave, and finally decided to venture back up to John’s attic room. Again, inexplicably, the stairwell was filled with dust and cobwebs, but the room itself was pristine. I didn’t need the overhead light this time, as the July sunshine filtered through the windows and brightly illuminated the entire chamber.
The letter from the “Army” that I had tossed into the wastebasket months before had somehow disappeared. The manila envelope was still there, however, lying on the desk where I had laid it, empty. I sat in John’s comfortable chair and pulled the box with his research onto my lap, running my fingers over the multiple disks and computer drives it contained. Now that I’d finished my astrophysics uploads at Mingferplatoi, maybe some of John’s research would actually make sense to me.
To my surprise, under the metal drives, my fingers felt several leaves of smooth paper. John was a brilliant computer geek, but I’d never known him to do anything much by hand. I pulled out the sheets and studied them. They were lined and seemed to have been torn from a spiral notebook. John’s flowing handwriting was easily recognizable, and covered all the pages. I’d never figured John for an essayist—that was clearly Connie’s territory—but I began to read a most disturbing story…
The story was set on a planet called Daedalus where people lived wonderful lives—or so they thought. In reality, the populations of this planet were slaves to a supercomputer, which controlled their life and death. This computer had lined up all the planet’s citizens in incubators inside massive chambers, fed them by tubes, and wired inputs into their brains that made them think they were actually experiencing active, exciting lives. As they lived “virtually”, the computer powered itself with the energy given off by the population’s brain waves.
To ensure the population wouldn’t become too large or too old, this evil computer randomly generated a death list each day. The individuals unlucky to find their names on that list would be terminated, their virtual lives halted and their physical bodies destroyed.
The protagonist of John’s story somehow awakens out of his wonderful life, and realizes he is actually a prisoner on full life-support. The hero escapes from his womb-like entrapment, and strives to prevent other people on the death list from being randomly executed. Eventually, he starts a revolution that struggles to pull people away from the computer’s nurturing virtual world into the harsh, but free reality.
I’d seen the theme with some variations in many books, TV, and movies before reading John’s work. What stood out in my brother’s story was the ending. The hero, also named John, recognizes that even the so-called free world he discovers is really just another layer of virtuality, and that his only hope of fleeing these layers, these virtual prisons, is death.
So, to escape his multi-layered virtual purgatory, John the hero sacrifices himself, hoping to go to heaven and finally achieve freedom. And that was the fictional John’s end. Not that he made it to heaven, but that there was no heaven. There was nothing more after his death, except, simply nothing.
John the Martyr’s story ended by focusing on his followers, his fellow resistance fighters. Without a sign from their lost idol, some got desperate, and followed their leader into the void. Others waited and waited for his return, his resurrection, until one by one, they died, too. Eventually, the planet’s sun went supernova and melted the planet and all its organic and inorganic components, and, when the star receded into a dwarf, all that was left in the planet’s place was … nothing.
I’d reached the end of the story and had become totally depressed. Then I noticed that there wasn’t a period at the end of the last sentence. Seems trivial, I know, but John was a stickler for punctuation. If he had completed his essay, he wouldn’t have left off that period. I searched the box and then his room for any trace of another page, and didn’t find it. There wasn’t a file that I could find on his computer either. I looked for hours without any luck. I finally asked George. He didn’t know, but he did wonder if the last page could’ve been that paper John had always kept folded in his wallet. In any case, he told me, with eyes averted, that he didn’t have time to read John’s story, what with law school finals looming. I doubted he ever would.
I never opened my Ergal again. I just kind of took it for granted that it did wonderful things and that I should just appreciate them. There had to be some technology that made the Ergal work, but I would never be able to access it or understand it. All that my curiosity would bring me would be … nothing. So, for a while at least, I
pledged my allegiance to “ours is not to reason why,” and tried to avoid asking questions.
And that remains Zygan Policy #28746.33, by the way. But I couldn’t stand by after John disappeared and just accept what I was told. Or make jokes about it. Like blacklisted author Arthur C. Clarke had written, “Magic is just science we don’t understand yet.” John had dedicated—and given--his life to finding those answers. And because of him, I was willing to do so too.
* * *
The Messier Sportstar—present day
“So Benedict did try the Synchrotron to go to another brane and it didn’t work,” Eikhus theorized again. “Shiloh? Hello? The radiation belts?”
“Oh, sorry, I was … somewhere else,” I stammered. “You know, I don’t really know. Burr never actually verified …”
“It’s more likely Benedict sent some of his Andarts to try it,” Matshi interjected, sweeping a finger dramatically across his neck. “So now all we have to do is keep him from getting the Somalderis. Considering he hasn’t found it all these years, sounds easy to me.”
Spud shook his head, lost in thought. “No …”
“Yeess …?” I prompted.
“Ulenem said that the Somalderis would be in Benedict’s hands soon,” repeated Spud.
“Well, then, we’d better find Benedict before that happens,” Matshi said forcefully. “And keep whoever’s bringing the Somalderis from reaching him. I’m sure that’s what Ulenem was going to suggest.”
Eikhus nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. But, let’s question our guests, first, and see what they can tell us.”
We all turned towards Spud, who continued to stare off into the distance. Finally, with a troubled expression, he returned a weary. “Yes, by all means.”
* * *
We took a few hours to question our visitors, as well as for rest and brainstorming, on how we might prevent Benedict from “brane-storming,” Sarion joked. Under gentle questioning by Matshi and the Megaran warriors, or so I would like to believe, our guests finally admitted that Benedict had used the most powerful synchrotron he could find for test runs, and had lost more than a few of his Andarts who had volunteered to brave the portals near the Orion system’s planets. None of the travelers had succeeded in maintaining the transition. Most had come back severely burned and/or dead. Apparently, only the Somalderis, channeling massive amounts of fusion energy from the closest sun, had ever allowed travelers to fully and safely transport to the other dimensions. Therefore, Benedict had recently abandoned the Synchrotron and turned all his organization’s efforts towards the quest for the Golden Fleece. If he were to get the Fleece, he and his Andarts could commit the ultimate Zygfed crime: successfully escaping to another dimension, beyond the reach of the Omega Archon.