Most of the furniture was heavily curved, symbolizing the Zondarian belief that all was eternal. That what began had no end, and vice versa. Furthermore, most of it was bolted to the floor, so that vibrations from nearby explosions would not send them tumbling all over the place.
It was early in the morning, and Ramed’s wife, Talila, had already prepared breakfast for herself and their young son, Rab. For the first time in a long time, she had moved about the house without the perpetual cringing in her shoulders, an involuntary spasm that haunted her most of her waking hours as she prepared herself for the sound of another shell dropping or another bomb exploding in the middle to near distance. There was a cease-fire throughout Zondar, and thus far it seemed to have taken hold. It was as if the entire planet was awaiting the coming of the Savior.
Talila felt so close to the actual event, particularly because it was her husband who was part of the inner circle. He who had studied the sacred writings of Ontear and Suti, probably with greater detail and scrutiny than virtually anyone else on the planet. When he had told her of the possible coming of the Savior, she had been unable to find words. Instead she had simply begun to cry, tears of joy pouring down her face so effusively that she couldn’t begin to control them. Nor was she interested in trying.
Since Ramed had joined with Killick of the Unglza (whom she did not particularly trust, but Ramed seemed tolerant enough of him) to go to the Savior and convince Him to come to Zondar and fulfill His destiny, Talila had not known what to do with herself. Little Rab had asked every day since his father’s departure when he would be coming back, and she had never known what to tell him. “A few days,” Ramed had told her, but who truly knew what that constituted?
Talila had just cleared the breakfast dishes away, and was now preparing to teach Rab his morning lessons. Like most children in their particular sphere, Rab was home taught. It was not an unreasonable course of action. Both Talila and Ramed were, naturally, highly educated. And it saved Rab from having to make that potentially treacherous journey to school every morning. Instead she kept him safe and sound in their home, teaching him the wisdom of the Zondarians while protecting him from the foolishness of those very same peoples.
She heard Rab cry out, and immediately a chill cut through her. A woman in her situation automatically assumed the worst when hearing her child sound a cry of alarm, and she immediately went to the main foyer …
There to find Rab wrapped around the leg of his father.
Talila went to him quickly and embraced him with all the fierceness that her small frame commanded. “It seems as if you have been away for ages!” she said.
“I feel the same,” he said, stroking the back of his wife’s gleaming head. “It is good to see you, wife. Were there any … problems in my absence?”
The pause before the word was painfully significant. It was his understated way of inquiring as to whether there had been any threats to the safety of his wife or son.
“None, Ramed,” she was happy to reply. “The cease-fire remains in force. It is as if our whole world is … is holding its breath. Tell me,” and her eyes widened, “tell me what … He was like.”
“He?” For a moment, Ramed didn’t understand what she meant, and then, of course, he did. “The Savior.”
“You saw Him, father?” asked Rab.
“Yes,” and he embraced both wife and son. “Yes. I did.”
“Did He have a … glow about Him?” Talila asked. “Did power crackle from His eyes? Did He perform any miracles for you?”
“He was … different than I expected.”
“Different? How so?”
“He had power about Him. It was a quiet power, however. Almost an … an aura. A sense of command, of inner strength.”
“As if He wanted to keep His true power hidden?”
“That could be,” he agreed. “Yes, that would definitely be one way to look at it.” He strode thoughtfully around his living room. “As if mere mortals such as ourselves should not—would not even want to—look at Him in display of His full glory. It might be too much for us.”
“Did He know that He was destined to be our Savior?” she asked.
“No. No, it was completely a surprise to Him.” He shrugged. “All of us have our places in the grand scheme, my wife. Sometimes we are aware of them, and sometimes we are not. Nonetheless we fulfill our purpose.”
“I suppose you are correct. It’s so amazing,” she breathed. “To think that this would happen within our lifetime. Is He with you? Has He returned with you?”
“He is on His way,” Ramed assured her. “We raced ahead to make preparations.”
Talila turned to Rab and knelt down to face him. “I want you to begin keeping a journal, my dear. You are young yet, and the events might not be as clear to your recollection when you’re older. So you should be able to look back at your words of this age as a sort of tunnel back through time.”
“Yes, mother,” Rab said agreeably. “Will you help me start it?”
“Of course. Let me just spend some time with your father first—”
“But I want to start it now,” Rab protested. It was not an atypical reaction for a child. An idea that had not even occurred to him mere moments before had suddenly become the single most important thing in his world.
Ramed put a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’s all right, wife,” he said gently. “Be happy that the boy has embraced the notion. I need a short time to myself to collect my thoughts anyway. I shall be in my study for a bit.”
“As you wish, husband.” She brought his knuckles to her lips and smiled at him affectionately. She touched his face and whispered, “I have never been more proud of you.”
He smiled in response as she went off with Rab to help him set up his journal. But then the smile faded as he retreated into his study.
He knew that Talila would not have entered it in his absence. She respected his privacy; indeed, she might even have been a little afraid of the room. Talila was a sweet woman, a good wife, a superb mother. But she was not the scholar or philosopher that Ramed was. When Ramed and the others in his clan would gather to discuss various fine points of Eenza law, or go over the predictions of Ontear and Suti to see how they applied to the modern world, she was a bit intimidated by it all. She would stand on the outskirts of the group, dart in and out of the room and pick up snatches of conversation, but she did not pretend to understand any of it. Nor did she have need to, really. She was married to a great man. In truth, that alone was really enough for her.
But because of the slight intimidation factor, she kept her distance from such places as Ramed’s study. For any number of reasons, he found that preferable, although it was not as if he had ever given her explicit instructions not to enter. It was simply an unspoken understanding between them.
He stood in the middle of his study, drinking in the presence of the words. The shelves were lined with scrolls of knowledge dating back to ancient times, carefully preserved. There had been a movement to transfer that information to more modern, computer-oriented means of information storage, but the Eenza inner circle had fought that notion. There was something pure and sacrosanct about the preservation through writing, through that physical connection to those scribes who had taken the time to write down the words of wisdom those many centuries ago. It was more of a living history in this manner.
His eyes skimmed the repository of Eenza written tradition, each carefully preserved in their cylinders, but he did not focus on any one of them in particular. Instead he went to one cylinder in particular set in the lower right-hand section of the shelving. Unlike the others, however, it did not slide loose from its place in the rack. Instead he pulled on it and it pivoted on a hidden hinge. A moment later, a small section of the nearby wall swung open. Ramed reached into the hole in the wall and pulled out a scroll, older than any of the others on the wall. He unrolled it carefully on his reading table, clipping the upper and lower ends down so that he could rea
d it flat and uninterrupted.
It was not as if he didn’t have it memorized already. He had read it so many times that every word, every syllable was seared into his consciousness. Yet for some reason he derived some degree of affirmation, perhaps, by seeing the original writing once more. Words written by the divine Suti himself, as told to him in turn by the sacred Ontear at the time when the mysterious Great Wind had come down and whisked Ontear away to whatever his reward would be.
Words that had only partly found their way into the sacred texts of Zondar.
Ramed had never been entirely certain just how the original, unexpurgated text had wound up in the hands of his family. It had been given him by his father, who had in turn been given it by his, and so on. It was not as if Ramed was a direct descendant of Suti himself; to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Suti had never married, never produced any offspring. The words of Ontear and the spiritual well-being of the Zondarians was the sum and substance of his entire life. He had never seemed to need anything more than that.
Perhaps he had passed the complete text to a trusted disciple, and he had held onto it until his passing was near, and in turn had given it to a trusted individual. It was nothing short of miraculous, really, that the scroll had found its way through the centuries to Ramed without word of its full contents filtering outside of the sphere of its caretakers.
There was something else that was in the same secret compartment as the scroll had been. It was a cylinder, about a foot long and made from wood. One side was closed off, the other end open. On the handle, a small emblem that looked like a flame was carved on it. He ran a finger over it lightly, as he had so many times before.
He extended the cylinder straight out in front of himself and pushed in firmly on the flame. And with a quiet shak noise, a sharpened rod snapped out of the end of the handle. It was telescoped in three places and extended to about a yard in length. As always, it felt incredibly light. Ramed swung it about him experimentally, satisfied at the whistling sound it made as it passed through the air. Then he lunged forward once or twice, and wondered what it would be like to drive it through the chest of a living, breathing being. Would it be possible? When the time came, would he have the intestinal fortitude to do what had to be done?
He thought of what he had just said to his wife. “All of us have our places in the grand scheme, my wife. Sometimes we are aware of them, and sometimes we are not. Nonetheless we fulfill our purpose.”
He had his purpose. He had his own role that had been handed down to him. How would he be viewed, he wondered? As one of the great heroes of Zondar? As one of the most memorable traitors? Would he be a martyr to a great ideal that he, and only he, knew to be the truth? What would they say to his wife? What sort of torment would his son be subject to?
Perhaps the course upon which he was embarking was the wrong one.
He began to tremble. Whether it was in fear, in excitement, or in religious zeal over the Tightness of his actions, he couldn’t begin to say. All he knew was that he was trembling so violently, he couldn’t even hold on to his weapon. It clattered to the floor, although the noise was minimal since the staff was so lightweight.
He dropped to his knees, waiting until the spasms passed. And all during that time, he prayed. Prayed to the shades of Ontear and Suti. Prayed for guidance.
“Please,” he whispered to them. “Please … help me do the right thing.”
He paused a long moment, then picked up the spear. He envisioned the Savior standing against the opposite wall. Standing there strong, confident. Ramed then drew his arm back, as he had so many times before, and hurled the spear. It flew lightly through the air and thudded into the far wall, the shaft quivering, the point squarely in the heart of the Savior.
“May the fates help me,” he whispered. “And may the Savior, even in His death throes, have mercy on my soul.”
X
BURGOYNE SAT IN HIR OFFICE in engineering and studied the reports compiled by Ensign Beth, looking over them again and again until it felt as if the numbers were blurring in front of hir. S/he became aware that Beth was hovering nearby, probably looking rather concerned. S/he couldn’t blame her, because the information that s/he’d been handed was less than useful. “So let me see if I understand this,” Burgoyne said slowly. “We not only do not know what is causing this energy wave, but now it’s causing a drain on the engines.”
“Not exactly a drain, Chief,” Beth said. “Look, follow the power curves. The energy reserves begin to build up exponentially. They reach a maximum point of somewhere around eighteen percent above the norm, and then they drain off, reaching standard levels. As if someone were topping off a glass of water and then sipping off the top so that it doesn’t overflow. Bringing it down to a more reasonable level.”
“But what’s causing the overage?” asked Burgoyne in frustration. “And when it’s being drained off, where is it going? You don’t think …”
“Think what?” asked Beth.
Burgoyne sat back, studying the readouts with just a touch of visible apprehension. “What if we’ve some … thing … living in there? Something sentient.”
“A sentient energy creature?”
“We ran from one not too long ago,” Burgoyne pointed out. Beth was forced to agree with that reminder. “If this is somehow connected with that.…”
“Is there any way that we can determine it?”
“I’m not quite sure,” said Burgoyne. “At the very least, we keep observing it. Also, we’ll probably want to bring Soleta in on this. She’s the science officer, after all.”
“How about medical?” asked Beth. “If there’s a living creature rooting around in our energy transfer ducts somehow, then maybe Doctor Selar can—”
“Let’s leave Doctor Selar out of it for the time being,” Burgoyne said after a moment’s thought.
“Are you sure? Perhaps if we—”
Burgoyne turned, and hir canines were extended as s/he said, “Are you questioning my orders, Ensign?” Hir voice was very sharp, hir eyes narrowed and genuine anger was flashing within them.
“No! No, sir!” said Beth quickly.
There was such clear alarm in her voice that Burgoyne immediately felt chagrin. “Sorry, Ensign,” Burgoyne said, the ire passing as quickly as it had made its presence known. “It’s not your fault.”
“I was hoping it wasn’t.” Beth paused a moment, and then said, “Chief … I hope I’m not overstepping myself here, but is everything okay between you and the CMO?”
“Okay?”
“It’s just that any time she’s mentioned for some reason, you seem to tense up. Personality conflict?”
Burgoyne considered several possible answers, but finally said, “You could say it’s something like that.”
“I know how it is,” Beth said by way of commiseration. “Sometimes you just meet someone, and for absolutely no reason you can think of, you just connect on a negative level. You take an instant dislike to them. It’s as if you have a bad history that goes back before the two of you even met.”
“That is an … interesting way to look at it.”
“Sometimes two people just click—like Christiano and I did,” admitted Beth with a grin. “And other times, well, two people can’t even work together without getting on each other’s nerves.”
“You’re very likely correct, Ensign. It would probably serve us best if we didn’t discuss it anymore.” S/he went back to the energy wave readouts. “Look at this. This is interesting.”
“What do you see, Chief?”
“During those periods when the energy drain slows down, it occurs when the Excalibur speeds up. The faster we go, the slower the energy drain. And when we go in excess of warp five, there’s never any drain at all. Those are the points at which the energy wave indicates growth.”
“That’s right,” Beth said slowly.
“Of course that’s right,” Burgoyne said archly. “I said it. Therefore, by definition, it’s right.”
S/he drummed hir fingers in annoyance. “I should be able to figure this out more expeditiously,” s/he said. “I’ve just got to get my mind clear.”
“What’s on your mind, Chief?” asked Beth.
And for just a moment, Burgoyne allowed hir thoughts to stray to a face that had a perpetual stoic pout, framed by the loveliest pointed ears.
“Just someone I can’t work with,” Burgoyne said with a trace of sadness.
On the bridge of the Excalibur, Calhoun leaned forward in the command chair and said, “ETA at Zondar?”
“Three hours, eleven minutes, sir,” McHenry said crisply. As always, he didn’t even bother to check his instruments. The first several times, it had been a bit disconcerting to Calhoun, and extremely so to Shelby, but by this point they were accustomed to it.
“Keep her steady on course, Mister McHenry,” Calhoun told him.
“Steady on, sir.”
Lefler glanced at the captain, who seemed to become involved in conversation with his first officer. Then, very casually, she sidled over from her post at Ops and murmured, “Haven’t seen you around much after hours.”
“Hmm?” He looked up at her, apparently surprised that she had come over. “What?”
“I said you’re something of a stranger off-duty these days. Don’t see you in the team room, or any of the usual haunts. What have you been up to?”
“Oh, that,” said McHenry. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy … how?”
He shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I’ve been spending a lot of time with Burgy.”
“‘Burgy,’ is it? Very friendly nickname to be using.”
“Is it?” McHenry seemed unimpressed. “I didn’t think so especially.”
“So what do you guys do? Talk?”
“No, we have sex,” McHenry said matter-of-factly.
Now, Lefler didn’t fancy herself as a prude, but nonetheless she was still caught a little flat-footed by the frankness of his response. “Oh,” was all she could think of to say.