Co-written with Siege
Villa Straylight
Geosynchronous orbit around Solaris
The
Strahl was moving ever closer to the massive space habitat, creating a sight of wonder for Nisa as she watched through the cockpit. A week of solid travel through the Cevaucian Ascendancy into Solarian territory had given her time to feel better about what had happened in Prince Jabin’s Palace. Her Father, Yamia, Balthier, even Chandra had given her some advice or comfort on the issue, even if she could still remember that young woman’s head bashed in as a result of her attack.
But that was not on her mind now. What was on her mind was the impossible sight before her. On Toutaine such structures were the stuff of hushed stories and distant legends. Now she was seeing it face to face, even as around them starships of all shapes and sizes flitted about on their voyages.
“And one man owns that entire thing?”, she asked in a hushed whisper.
“Oh yes,” Balthier answered from the pilot’s seat. “Mr. Hank is a rather wealthy individual, quite eccentric as well. I suspect you will enjoy your visit, though. He is a gentleman and a fair host.”
“And a philanderer,” Vanrya muttered under her breath. Nisa wasn’t paying attention to the thought and Balthier, who heard it, could only grin in amusement. Aloud Vanrya stated, “We have landing clearance.”
“Taking us in, then.”
They flew on toward the villa while Nisa continued to stare, her wonderment a source of amusement and some joy for her father as he stood behind her, thinking his own thoughts on this long-overdue reunion now imminent.
The fact was, Stephen could have done this centuries ago. He
should have. But he had not, for varying reasons. He wasn’t sure Sidney would actually remember him - his note had been meant to intrigue as well as remind - and he wasn’t sure this was the same man he had known on Nova Terra, fourteen hundred years ago. And then everything had happened, first Titusville and then Redwood City, and he’d been too frightened to remain in civilized space any longer. Not until he mastered this curse within him.
“And you knew this man, Father?”, Nisa asked as they drew nearer to the actual hanger.
“Oh yes. A very long time ago,” he said. “He was a friend. Not the closest I ever had, but a good one nevertheless. And we had quite a few mutual accomplishments.”
“I’m glad you’ll get to see him again, then.” Nisa smiled at him and rested her head on his shoulder.
Sidney experienced an odd feeling of deja-vu as he watched the
Strahl edge in to one of the hangars through the multitude of sensors fitted to the exterior and interior of the villa. Aboard that ship was one of his oldest acquaintances, another person he’d known over 1,400 years ago, and had long thought lost to the ravages of time. He remembered attending the man’s funeral, a lifetime ago -- hell, a multitude of lifetimes ago. That dreary Nova Terra day had been one of the last times he’d set foot on the old world. He recalled the speeches, the mourning crowds outside his limousine, the casket lowering into the rain-soaked ground, with the unerring precision of memories long since digitized.
And yet, there he was. Approaching on a starship built many centuries after his death.
For centuries that distant past on Nova Terra had been a closed chapter in his ageless existence. Now though, it was undeniable someone had reopened it.
For a brief moment he experienced the same kind of paranoia he’d felt during his meeting with Shady -- Seth -- only a few months earlier. Sidney loathed not knowing what was going on, why these people he’d once cared about were resurrected, what their purpose was -- indeed, if they were perhaps part of some scheme directed at him either directly or indirectly. They were a blank spot in his calculations, an entirely unanticipated factor, and the simple fact that they shouldn’t be here but
were made him very, very nervous. People didn’t come back from final personality death. That one, simple fact more than anything had driven him for over a millennium. He had given up everything in his quest for immortality: his old world, his old political connections... the love of his wife. Hell, if the Church was to be believed, his soul. Power, friendships... Everything he had burned on the altar of his one overriding ambition: to continue existing so that he might one day find the purpose for his twisted, transplanted existence.
And now, here he was, 1400 years later, and his friends of old were back again. The simple fact of their existence made a mockery out of what had been an unparallelled accomplishment. He felt his gorge rising. For endless microseconds he mulled over the possibility of ordering the villa’s weapons systems to obliterate the approaching ship.
He decided against it.
His biological avatar sighed. “I suppose I should go welcome them,” he said to his own reflection in one of the orbital’s many windows.
An idle part of him realized that Villa Straylight hadn’t entertained visitors in over a hundred and seventy-nine years.
The hangar was a cavernous place, an expanse of immaculately polished white large enough to hold several ships. Apart from the
Strahl there was just one however: a sleek yacht, bright red and ancient looking, was parked in a corner. Walking out of the elevator just as the ship’s landing struts touched down, Sidney waited patiently for the landing ramp to descend, hands stuffed in his suit’s pockets. A thousand thoughts mulled through his mind, none of them very constructive.
The port airlock opened and a ramp came downward. The first figure out was Stephen, still in his desert robes and the vest and trousers he wore underneath, recovered from his now-abandoned hut on Toutaine before they’d gone on to al-Yasuj the prior week. His beamsaber dangled openly on his waist, though the hood was kept down. He saw Sidney and, for a moment, looked on quizzically until he was certain he was looking at the right man. He finished coming down the ramp and stepped up toward the figure to look at him directly. “Sidney,” he said plainly, “I see we’ve both gone through some changes over the years. Despite everything... it is good to see you.”
Behind him, Chandra and Phani left the
Strahl, followed by a curious Nisa who was taking in the sights of the hanger with gusto.
Sidney gazed at the man who’d come down the ramp first, his own senses aided by the villa’s myriad sensors. He saw the robe, the saber, the leathery, sun-dried skin. He heard his heartbeat; felt his footsteps against the station’s artificial gravity, sensed the subtle aura of psionic power that shrouded him. “Stephen,” he greeted, nodding slowly. “It’s been... a while.”
“On the order of thirteen and a half centuries, I believe.”
“Thirteen hundred forty seven years, eighty-nine days, six hours, five minutes and fifty-two seconds. But who’s keeping count?” He shook his head. “Remarkable. I have to admit I didn’t see this day coming. Not, as the saying goes, in a thousand years.” He smiled thinly. “I have to say, then, that your message came as quite a surprise.”
“I imagine it did,” Stephen admitted. “I’ve been keeping a low profile over the centuries since I was... brought back. And I admit I wanted to ensure it got your attention even if I was wrong and you would not know who I was. Anyway, I’ve brought someone with Toutaine with me, if you don’t mind.” He gestured to Nisa, who approached and bowed her head in respect as a greeting. “This is Nisa.”
There was no way his artificially aided, hyper-keen senses would miss the physical similarities - the high cheek bones, the matching eye colour, her unusual height... Not to mention the similar psionic aura. “Your daughter?” Sidney murmured. He smiled handsomely at the girl and bowed just a little deeper in return. “Welcome to the Villa Straylight, madam Nisa. I hope your stay will be... Enjoyable.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hank.” Nisa smiled at him. “I will enjoy seeing your beautiful home.”
Stephen gave Hank a slight look as he put an arm over Nisa’s shoulders. He suspected Sidney already knew this, but just for the record he stated, “She’s my daughter” in a tone that, while fairly pleasant, had a slight edge to it, in the sense of “
She’s my little girl, Sidney, so don’t even think about it”.
Sidney flashed the hermit a grin. “You and your crusty old-fashioned twenty-first century sensibilities.” He experienced a rush of emotions he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Stephen... I’m glad to see you again. Regardless of the circumstances.”
He made a gesture toward the waiting elevator. “Why don’t we take this conversation someplace more comfortable? I’m sure Mr. Balthier and his crew would like a chance to refresh themselves as well.”
“Yes, that would be rather welcome,” Balthier stated from where he and everyone, sans Umarbacca, were standing and observing the strange reunion. “Toutaine is most certainly not on a list of pleasant planets to walk about on.”
The lyceum of the Villa Straylight appeared more like a museum than an ordinary living room, and wholly out of place aboard something as futuristic as an orbital villa. Filled with all manner of trinkets and antiques its owner had amassed over the centuries, it offered a fantastic view of the gas giant Solaris in the far distance as well as the twin city-moons that orbited it. Refreshments were served by drone robots wearing old-fashioned butler livery, after which Sidney exchanged glances with Chandra. The mercenary got up and walked over to Nisa, who was still gawking at the sculptures and armored suits, not to mention the ancient biplane that hung suspended in its own gravity field somewhere high above them.. “Come on, there’s much more to see here. I’ll show you around the place.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chandra,” she said, following him away from the others. She sensed that Mr. Hank and her father were about to have a very personal, private talk.
Stephen looked toward Sidney. “I suppose we have a great deal to discuss now.”
He sighed. “I suppose we do.” He looked the hermit in the eye. “Do you know you’re not the only one to, ah, return?”
Stephen looked at him with interest. “I was not aware,” he admitted. “Who else is back amongst the living?” Not that he could guess them all; when he had died three days after the
Straylight launched, a number of his fellow heads of state, his fellow “players” in Q’s demented game, were still alive. Any number of them could have done as Sidney had and lived on, though quietly.
“I was contacted by Shady only a few months ago,” Sidney spoke quietly. “He incarnated on a planet dominated by the Karlack. He’s an Aspect of the Swarm now.” He looked at Stephen. “And it looks like he wasn’t the only one to make a comeback with... unusual abilities.” It wasn’t a question.
“Then it is another game,” Stephen sighed. He remembered Shady as a good man as well. A good man with a vicious streak, true, but he meant well. “But this time we’ve not been told what the game is.” Seeing Sidney’s expression, he added, “As you’re undoubtedly aware, I am now what the people of this era call an ‘Esper’. And a fairly powerful one, though it’s become a very dangerous burden for me to carry. It’s why I had to become a damned hermit, living on Toutaine this past quarter century.”
“I had inferred as much. I’ve experimented with psion bodies a few times over the years. It’s... not my cup of tea. I think I understand your reservations.” Sidney shook his head. “Still, man. You could’ve at least told me.” There was a shadow of an accusation in his words.
“I wasn’t quite sure if you were the same man I knew once,” Stephen confessed, “but I do apologize. Had I come to you thirty years ago, then maybe things would have been different.”
Though Nisa would not be alive, and poor Yamia would be suffering somewhere in Pfhor space or dead, he thought to himself. In a way he thought things had probably turned out for the better anyway.... at least if you didn’t count
why he went to Toutaine. “I believe you would like to know where I’ve been these past centuries?”
A fractional nod. “I would like that very much.”
“Then it will be quite a story, and we should probably find a place to sit down and share a drink while it is told.”
“That can be arranged.” A thought and a floating drone approached holding an assortment of beverages. Sidney lead the way to a patio that offered a view out across space as well as the lyceum below. A set of comfortable leather chairs was arraigned around an elegant table. The two sat down. Sidney looked at his visitor. “So. How does one get... reincarnated? Am I right to assume it involves infuriatingly cryptic conversations with a certain entity we are both acquainted with?”
“With me, he was not quite so cryptic.” Stephen put his hands together after taking a drink. “On the other hand, sometimes I wonder if I might have been better off had he wanted me for some cryptic purpose....”
“My memories go like this, Sidney. It was three days after we watched the
Straylight leave for Earth. I was at my family house. My granddaughter Abigail was cooking as my family gathered and my great grandchildren were playing in the backyard while I watched. I sat there and, to my surprise, I saw Sophia sitting beside me in her wedding dress.” There was a distant look in his eye. “She said she’d been waiting for me and gave me a kiss. I remember falling asleep as our lips touched. And then...” A sigh. “I was staring in a mirror. Suddenly I was young again, didn’t look a day over 20, and I was in a house in some suburban home. I walk around the house to find, well, all sorts of things that a 21st century man doesn’t expect to see. But they were rather popular in the 32nd Century.”
“I didn’t know what was going on. I picked up a remote control, hit the on button, and suddenly there’s the image of a man hovering over the living room table, giving the news. And the date said ‘April 17th, 3169’.” He took another drink and closed his eyes. “I must of spent about two days in a daze. Sometimes I called out for Sophia, expecting it to be a bizarre dream. It was, you imagine, hardly the kind of afterlife I had thought possible.”
Sidney bit it back the snide comment he’d been about to make when he heard Sophia’s name. He felt the familiar pang of regret as he thought of his own wife, gone too but for entirely different and far more selfish reasons. “That can’t’ve been easy,” he said instead.
“I eventually settled down to learning about things. I was in my hometown, Sidney. My
original hometown, on Earth, in the region of Central Florida.” Stephen looked briefly toward the Lyceum, letting the memories shift about in his head. “A suburban expansion of a larger city now. And then. I learned about the UN, about the ultimate fate of the
Straylight’s voyage and what had transpired since then. I also found my ‘personal’ data on the household computer. I had an eight digit fortune stored away in Swiss banks somehow, far more money than I ever had in my prior lives, and a house of my own. I had no indication of all how I bought my home, who’d lived there before. My ‘new’ birth certificate listed the names and IDs of a couple who’d died in a starship accident years before, with no kin at all. It was as if I was plunked back into life with no purpose or reason whatsoever.” He frowned darkly. “You can guess who.”
“Q,” Sidney said gloomily.
“He didn’t show up until a week had passed. At the time, yes, he was cryptic. He told me nothing but that I would learn why I was still alive in due time. ‘There are lessons that need to be taught’.”
“Bastard,” Sidney muttered. “I haven’t seen him since our first arrival but... He’s a bastard.”
“I know. I would, in time, figure out what he meant.” Stephen drew in a sigh. “Around then, after I was ‘visited’ by him, I learned about my ESP. With something that dangerous, I knew I had to be educated, so I found a school.”
“I had what my instructors thought was a surprising mix of abilities. I had electrokinesis, pyrokinesis, an incredibly powerful telekinesis capable of advanced manipulation, physical enhancement, precognition, even some direct perception. I had almost all the criteria to be classified a Class 6 Esper with one glaring exception. I could not read minds. I had only basic emotion sensing and while I could sense the presence of minds I could not read them. At all.”
Sidney creased his brow. “I’ve never heard of a Class 6 psion lacking basic farsensing skills.” He used the term for telepathy that was commonly used in the Sovereignty.
“I was assured it was considered impossible by the Esper scientific community. That telepathy was too basic a function for a Class 6 to be incapable of it. I was, in fact, told that only Class 1s had no telepathic ability, and those are people who are barely Espers possessing only slight empathy and occasional limited precognition.” He took a drink. “They wanted me to go to Harvard’s Psionics College for full testing and study, but I refused. And I successfully prevailed upon my instructors to not report my name to the Esper research journals they contribued to.” Stephen’s expression was grim. “I knew it was Q’s doing. He had a reason to keep me from being telepathic.”
“One imagines it can’t have been a very pleasant reason.”
“I’m not sure why. I have my suspicions though.” He took another drink. “Through the 33rd Century my life on Earth was pleasant enough, I imagine. I became an ESP instructor myself, not because I needed money but because I wanted to help young people understand their gifts. ESP instruction is, you understand, a very personal thing. We rarely have more than six children at any given time, sometimes less. And it becomes generational; I had quite a few cases where I’d teach a couple kids who would grow up, marry, and send their children to me for instruction if they developed abilities.” He drew in a sigh. “And, to be frank, it made me feel good about my unexpected return to life. I had some purpose to it, I wasn’t alone. I stopped thinking about Q and the past and just focused on living my new life. But unfortunately, good things don’t always last.”
“No, they usually don’t.” Sidney’s voice was distant, obviously thinking about all the things he’d left behind himself. Of course, he’d been able to lead the good life for pretty much the entire period, but even so there had on occasions been things he’d regretted, things he’d lost that he’d rather not... And over the centuries, such things tended to mount up to an awful lot of stuff that wasn’t around anymore. He’d had a life and a purpose; sure. He hadn’t been messed with by weakly godlike entities, or at least not insofar as he knew. But it definitely hadn’t always been easy. It was one thing to found nations, it was another to see them crumple into dust around you -- or turn into things you hadn’t envisioned at the start and wasn’t quite sure you liked, for that matter.
“It was eighty years ago,” Stephen sighed. “I had a student, Clarice, who exhibited a rare development; metacognition. She didn’t have much in the way of telepathy, much like me, as she had been born in Shepistan.” There was a noticable chill in the room. Even if it wasn’t necessarily important to the story being told, the name carried a great weight simply by being stated, especially for these two men who knew precisely what the nation of Shepistan had proven itself capable of over the long centuries. “I had high hopes for her. She was already capable of college level mathematics at that age.”
For a moment there was silence, as Stephen took a drink. And it was the kind of ominous silence that told you this is where everything in the story goes horribly, horribly wrong.
“She disappeared,” Stephen said. “She missed an after-school appointment with me. Her parents had no signs of her. A glitch in the security systems had prevented the recording of data from the day she disappeared. The school insisted she’d been picked up by an approved relative, an uncle who was out of town, and the police didn’t know what to do.” He looked toward Sidney. His expression grew cold. “So I took matters into my own hands.”
Sidney nodded. Any number of things could’ve happened, from kidnapping by relatives to covert actions by Shepistani intelligence. But he knew it wouldn’t be either of the two. He also knew that whatever happened, it probably wasn’t a story with a happy end.
“With the help of a former student living in the area, I found out the school’s data monitors had been tampered with. I confronted a secretary in the school office. She was uncooperative... for a time.” Stephen took a sip. His voice took on a low quality to it, as if speaking a shameful thing or some hushed secret. “You would be surprised at how much fear you can inspire if people know you’re a Class Six Esper. After all, who’d ever heard of one who didn’t have telepathy?”
“As it turned out, someone bribed this woman with a great deal of money and favors to help them get their hands on Clarice. At my...
urging the woman informed the police of her duplicity and was taken into custody. She committed suicide shortly thereafter, and an attempt to employ a brain-state backup failed due to unexpected data corruption.” Stephen folded his hands together. “But I had more important things to deal with. Through my contacts in the Esper community I learned there had been a handful of other abductions in the area, all of children who were either confirmed or unconfirmed Espers. We couldn’t trust the police; witnesses to abductions were leaving town or becoming uncooperative, local officials were complaining about wasted man-hours on an investigation going nowhere, that sort of thing that tells you that someone with a great deal of money and influence was pulling strings. This wasn’t an ordinary kidnapping ring but something far more sinister.”
“We took the law into our own hands. I won’t name names, you understand, but only say that telepaths can learn things from hostile witnesses without having to actually burrow into their minds. Stray unguarded thoughts laced with memories, for instance. Either way, thanks to such interviews and the help of direct-perceptives and precognitives, we were able to determine there was a storage facility in Titusville that had activity a tad too frequent to be a dormant corporate warehouse. Of course, breaking in was a dangerous concept. Whomever did so would go to prison. It could wreck families, harm lives, that sort of thing. And it could end up with media attention, and you know how invasive the anti-Esper groups can get.” Stephen put his hands together. “So, naturally, I volunteered to do it alone. I had the widest mix of abilities, after all, and I had no life to ruin. Besides, I’d lived one before.” His expression turned dark. “Do you want to guess what I found, Sidney?”
Scenarios blossomed through his CompInt cores with the rapidity of subatomic lightning, branching into possibilities that were instantaneously correlated against extrapolated probabilities, known historical facts and psychological profiles of Stephen Garrett himself, forming catalytic trees at speeds far in excess of ordinary human thought. “My guess would be,” he said flatly, “rabid anti-psion xenophobes. In the timeperiod as I recall they were still all over the place, and quite often very well funded and organized. Like the KKK in its heyday. I remember when they used to be popular around these parts. And what the Apexai did to them.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Anyone who thinks the little grey buggers can’t be creative hasn’t seen them angry.”
Stephen wasn’t quite in the mood to discuss the horrors that a psionic race could inflict on xenophobes. Not given the memories he’d now dredged up. “Their security operated under the assumption of telepaths penetrating their security, so they had portable Blitzschlag field generators. Those don’t quite work when you’re throwing fireballs or channeling electric currents at them though.” He almost flashed an instinctive smile, but a horrible memory was now coming to the forefront, on the tip of his tongue waiting to be told. “Afterward I found their wards. Some were empty, others had kids. I remember a boy who was brain-dead from drugs and almost drowning in his own saliva. Another who had half his scalp missing and wires sticking through his head. They were
experimenting on them, Sidney.
They were experimenting on children.”
The man opposite him sighed into his drink. At an intellectual level Sidney was still appalled by the things people did to one another, but he’d seen too much, and to a very real extent had been responsible for too much, to be still horrified. What was one atrocity in a galaxy where uncountable atrocities occurred every day? How could he possibly still be shocked by these things?
He couldn’t, not like Stephen obviously still could. The only thing he could do was file away the name of the girl away in the labyrinthine recesses of his digital mind, as one fragment of data among many. Suddenly he felt tired to the bone, exhausted by life and worn down by an uncaring universe.
This will all change he told himself.
Once I succeed, none of this will happen again. Maybe he’d one day believe it himself.
“It was about the third room that I finally threw up,” Stephen continued. “And not just from seeing what they were doing to the kids they’d taken. It was because I knew then I was too late. It’d been weeks since Clarice had gone missing. I knew I was too late to save her, but I had to try anyway, so I kept on. And I found Clarice in one of the rooms. At least, what was left of her...”
He went silent, closing his eyes and showing old pain welling up. A sip of drink wet his throat and tongue. For a moment the sentence hung in all its ominous horror.
“They’d cut her open, Sidney.
They cut open a 10 year old girl and stuck wires into her head!” His fist clenched and slammed the table. “
They’d pumped poison in until her brain was reduced to a stew of chemicals!” It took him a moment to regain his composure. “She was gone. The girl I’d been teaching, I mean. She looked at me with these dull eyes and asked me who I was. She didn’t remember her own damn name, much less anyone who’d been important to her! That was how far they had messed her brain up!”
“There was nothing I could do for her. The damage was permanent, you see. And she had no brain backups, her parents hadn’t... they came from Shepistan, people didn’t do that there, and they hadn’t had the money yet.” He put his hand on his forehead. “I did what I could. I took the IVs out, shut down the poisons they’d been circulating into her, severed the wires. Found out it was the only thing keeping her alive, really; her brain was so damaged it literally shut down once it wasn’t getting external support.”
“Of course, doing this caused me to be detected. But I didn’t care. I should have, though.” Stephen frowned. “They activated a Blitzschlag Field that covered the entire facility. It was like having someone trying to put my brain into a vise and suffocate it at the same time. I felt like a fool, thinking they wouldn’t have such protection. Obviously they didn’t run it normally - the power draw would be noticable and the field might be detected. And they’re illegal in most interstellar nations.” He resisted the temptation to draw a line of civilized/uncivilized. “In short order I found myself facing some very angry men with some very scary guns. Not that I cared at the moment. I screamed at them with rage and was going to try and rip their heads off with my bare hands. I wanted to
kill them right then and there for all the horrors they were committing.” He laughed bitterly. “Naturally they opened fire.”
Sidney raised an eyebrow. “One doesn’t suppose they missed.”
“Oh, they didn’t.” Stephen took a drink. “That’s when Q decided to show up.”