1.
Sometimes is impossible to tell where
truth ends and mythology begins. I am only certain of my
uncertainties these days, but it began with a simple assignment. I
wasn’t any kind of bounty hunter, but I did work in collections and
everything was – worrisome. No one knew how long the company would
keep existing. No one knew much about anything. The Sable Empire
collapsing was a blip that spread far, the loss of the hyperlane
system they’d made destroying intergalactic trade within moments.
So I wasn’t about to say no to anything.
I was given a name, and told to find
them and bring them to Earth – the first one – for a trial. I’d
like to think that I knew it was a trap, but I was desperate for the
work and desperation makes one nothing if not desperate. That was the
start of it. I was given a budget, and weapons. The verkonis blade –
worried me, since they are illegal across ever star system. But I had
said yes to the assignment, and was not brave enough to say no.
Every story becomes something else in
the telling. Every time I have to remind myself of what I did not
know. I was told to find Jayseltosche, and nothing else. Most of the
major Intelligences operated on a pangalatic level, the destruction
of the hyperspace lanes crippling them as well. It was one reason I
did not learn much about the target, only that I would know his age,
and that he looked the way humans hadn’t looked for centuries.
I had resources, weapons, and strangely
no time restriction though I took that to be more taking into account
the difficulties in travel more than anything else. I was not given
my own craft – nothing so grand – but booked passage on various
transport vessels, space stations and colonies. The company goes
under many names, so I used whatever one fit the area I was in, asked
questions, continued my search. Most of the answers I discovered were
worrying, even initially. Many could not believe I was looking for
Jay. Some feared me for attempting the search.
I came to define Jay as a kind of
terrified wonder, for that encapsulated most descriptions of him. But
it did not deter me. One galaxy became two, and finally three before
I began to hone in on my quarry. I learned he was sixteen and there
was a small, quiet religion of jayists. I am not certain if any
approached me. I learned of wars he had ended, and some claimed he
had broken the Sable Emperor himself. It was hard not to believe
that: many stories said he didn’t have
limits and they often agreed on too many things.
The
Kabados was
an old pleasure vessel turned into a mining operation in the Gasthar
Cluster. It was nowhere special and mostly had some small fame in
that it hadn’t fallen apart centuries ago. That
drew me to it in the end, and I was the only person to disembark at
the station.
“Otha.” The
head of security security was waiting when I exited the transit
freighter.
There
were stories about me, too, if I am being honest. One cannot search
for so long without becoming part of the sought. The Rathkuin
had given me thier blessing
two hundred years into my journey. I escaped the fall of Hisseth. I
had taken apart in the Tikiro wars, mostly by accident instead of
design.
“I am he. You
know what I seek.”
The other nodded
and simply stepped aside. Which was a small relief: I am dangerous,
but I have no desire to have to be dangerous and the machine-man
watches me silently as I moved through the Kabados. There are many
mining companies and businesses here. The company has
representatives, though no one try to contact me. I asked questions,
and the lack of answers is answer enough as I searched each floor.
I finally find him
on the fourth level, eating at a small canteen. Humanoid, male, and
sixteen. He didn’t look impressive. If anything, he seemed far less
dangerous than I, but four hundred years of seeking had taught me
some aspects of caution. “You are Jay.”
The automatic
canteen scuttles away as he stood. Shorter than I and unafraid, head
cocked slightly to one side. “That is my name. It isn’t that
uncommon.”
“You are sixteen.
And Jayseltosche.”
He blinked. Once.
“You seem very certain of yourself.”
“I am Otha; I
have been seeking you on behalf of the Hildago Company for over four
hundred years.”
“Ah. I used to be
easier to find.” He shrugged lightly. “I am trying to be – less
of a fact, as much as I can. I am pleased to know that I have done
better than I knew in this.” He smiled. The smile was wry and
gentle, kind in a way that somehow hurts. He is kindness, and not
simply because he could afford to be.
“I was sent
here.” I got that out steadily.
“Few
are. At least not to Kabados.
May I ask why you are here?”
“There is a trial
and you are needed for it on Earth. The first one, in the Sol
system.”
“I
am sorry for the time you have wasted then,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“I will not
return to that world. You have spent a long time coming here, and I
regret that it was for nothing.”
“I
cannot return without you.”
“And I will not
go.” He smiled, thin and sad, and turned away.
“I am under
orders.”
“I do not care.”
“Orders are
bindings, and after this one I would be nothing if I broke them. No
matter how foolish I was to accept them, they are part of me.”
He slowed, but did
not stop.
“I can take you
back. I have a verkonis blade.”
Jay stopped at
that. “My back is to you; you could use it.”
“I was fool
enough to accept this assignment. I am not fool enough to wound you.”
That won a soft,
surprised laugh. He turned back, stared up at me. “I like you. But
there are things I cannot do, not for likes or even love.”
“You
are needed! They have turned the world into a safari park. They have
remade continents,
the moon, the star –.”
“And
this trial is part of that?”
“No. It’s a
ruse. I’ve been searching for you long enough to have worked that
out. The company is worried about what is being done to that world, a
worry that goes beyond profit margins and investments. I do not not
know why, Jay. I only know that they invested centuries and a lot of
resources into my finding you. And I doubt I am the only one who was
sent.”
“You were not.”
Nothing more.
“Please.
Whatever is going on, whatever is happening. The Company is
terrified. And they weren’t terrified even when the hyperlanes
fell. Earth is – there is something in it. Something not to be
used. And this safari is a cover for trying to use it. I’ve worked
that out.”
“And yet you still came. And thought
I would come.”
“I don’t know why you won’t.” I
had the verkonis blade. I had enough nanotechnology in me to destroy
the entire Kabados station.
“I can’t force you to come. I can’t bribe you, I can’t – I
can only follow you. Until you change your mind.”
“I
will not.” His voice was soft, implacable.
“But if they use
the energy they find there? The power they are seeking?”
“They cannot.”
“And you are
certain of this?” It was dangerous, this, but I had no other weapon
except hope.
“I am.”
And everything I
had was nothing next to the certainty in Jay’s voice.
“They say you
broke the Sable Emperor. Destroyed the hyperspace lanes.” Rumours,
nothing more, but I had been certain of less during my seeking of
him. Jay did not move. Stared at me in a waiting silence. “It has
destroyed the entire intergalactic economy.”
“I am aware of
this.”
“I imagine the
alternative was worse?”
“It
was.” He did not move. He could move between moments. Be across the
galaxy in a heartbeat. He did
not move. There was no expression to his face at all.
“And
if you do nothing about Earth? If
you let the safari – if you let the people behind them do whatever
they want to that world, what happens?”
“Otha.” Nothing
more, but there is a note of warning in that.
I pressed on. If I
stopped, I would never have this courage again. “They know there is
power there. And they are desperate enough to seek it because the
destruction of the hyperlane system has forced them down that path.
If not them, someone else will manage this. I cannot stop them. The
Company cannot stop them. You can.”
“No.” And he
was gone, vanishing between moments to another part of the universe.
Not Earth. I was certain of that much, and as certain that I would
never find him again.
I reported in. I do
it every so often, they don’t forget to send payments to me.
And I am ordered to
Earth. To find out what I can.
Again, I am told
nothing more. But this time I worry it is because even the Company
does not know what is being attempted on that world. Or what might be
found if those behind the safari dig deep enough into the world.
I am given the name
of those behind the safari.
I will not survive
this.
I do not refuse the
orders.
2.
The chief danger of
a famous place is not the danger of it, but the degree in which it
can only disappoint you. Earth is old, mostly a curiosity to humanity
now after centuries spent away. It is barely part of its own galactic
Hub, a place even history has all but considered unimportant to the
present. That the company known only as Tril would turn the world
into a safari seemed odd but the universe is full of odd things. Our
company was hired to underwrite, and at some point someone in Hildago
began to wonder what Tril was a front for.
And so I was sent
to find Jay, who is not human at all but spent time on earth long
ago. I was given weapons and lies to aid a quest of centuries, but I
used neither. He refused to come. So I journey alone to earth, moving
from space yacht to space yacht. The collapse of the hyperlane
system and the Sable Emperor has broken intergalactic travel for a
time, but eventually trade will recover. And people always need
insurance, so Hildago will remain.
It does mean that
Tril has seed a marked decrease in tourists in the last few years and
they were barely turning anything like a profit earlier. But that was
never their motive.
I have a verkonis
blade in my possession, a weapon illegal on any hyperspace flight,
capable of cutting through dimensions as easily as matter. I have
technology in my body that has kept me alive and safe for centuries.
None of that means anything. The Tril are not some human group. They
were never human ago.
My name is Otha,
and I am human and I will die soon. Because Tril are seeking ancient
energies buried deep in earth. Energies that have allowed the world
to exist this long, have kept the solar system in a queer stasis. The
Tril are hingari, and with such weapons – I do not know what will
happen. All I know is the hingari are shape-changers and
skin-shifters, and there was a war against them centuries ago. There
are worlds and star systems that have never recovered from it.
How do you defeat
an enemy who can look like anyone? You kill everyone. Worlds burned,
star systems became clouds of debris and over four galaxies were
decimated in the war. What the hingari wanted, I do not know. All I
know is that they lose, and fled, and hid. And now are seeking
weapons.
‘Investigate
this, Otha’, I am told. My first order since I sought Jay and he
refused to return to Earth. I do not know what my employers expected:
Jayseltosche has power we cannot touch, and all I could do was ask.
This is all I think
of, in variant strains of worry, before I reach the Sol system. Earth
is a safari world, tourist class. I land without fuss, finding myself
in a small spaceport. There are humans here, of course. For the work,
and nostalgia, and history. But also the hingari, and I have no idea
how to tell which is which. I am to meet a representative from
Hildago, but I have landed two continents away from them. I cannot
trust what they are.
I do not know why
Hildago told me hingari were here at all.
I ignored guides
and other offers, procured a small hovercar and drove out into the
vast Serengeti fields of the northern half of the world. Both
northern continents are grasslands and hills, the southern ones
deserts, swamps, mountains. It takes little time to discover the
world wasn’t like this at all while humanity was here, but the Tril
company wished to capture ‘something mythic’. Nothing more. I
suspected that was Jay, if anything, but words were hardly proof.
I let two days
pass. Ate Food. Charged the car – I was told it is something
quaint, to remind us of the past – and drove down old roads and
through countries and continents forgotten to history. I found myself
wondering at how little I knew about the past of this world. How
little Tril had to offer, or the Hubs had as data this far from
civilization. The hingari might have taken over the world of our
birth like a parasite, but a proper one: one not discovered by the
host at all.
And we had allowed
this to happen. It had been over two hundred hears before anyone at
Hildago had looked into Tril in depth. I had no idea when my
employers had learned Tril was hingari. I suspected they did not
care. Insurance is famous for that, as a rule. But even so, I drove.
Along roads, past others. Finally coming to a place not on the casual
maps, where I got out.
I spent centuries
hunting down Jay, and I learned many tricks and techniques in that
time. I begin to scan the area around me, slowly broadening it out to
compass the entire world. Searching for anything anomalous, trusting
my instincts as much as the technology within.
It occurred almost too late to me that
there were places that were nothing save birthing pools for monsters.
I spun at movement behind me, froze.
Jay smiled. He looked the same: sixteen, pale, his smile not an
impossible wonder. Perhaps because of this world, and his desire to
not be here.
I spoke his name, moved toward him.
Recalled, too late, that I didn’t know
he was sixteen
the way I should have. I activated my personal protections, but the
hingari moved even faster than I could think. I felt things break
deep inside me, an inhuman weight pressing down. Tendrils dug into
the earth and my poor flesh.
“You,” the
hingari hissed, breath reeking of desperation and anger. “Why are
you here?”
‘To
find you,’ I almost say, but my employers knew the hingari were
here.
I have lived longer
than many, and I have seen many things others have not. “I was sent
here to die,” I say finally, getting the words out against the pain
pressing into my flesh.
“Ah. That I can
help with,” and the hingari laughed a shrill, alien sound that
wasn’t part of the natural order of created things.
The thought was
absurd. But it would not leave me.
Even if it was my
last.
3.
Otha is a sad name. My parents told me
that once, when I complained about some ill which had befallen me. I
had been named after some infamous colonist, though they never told
me the details: only that fact as though it were an explanation. It
explained nothing then, but perhaps it meant more a sad death. Dying
on a world I’ve never been to before, for reasons I will never
know.
I am, in small ways, dangerous. That
was nothing next to the hingari shifting form and features above me,
weight pressing down into my body. I can feel bones breaking faster
than my body can repair itself. My personal protective systems
sputtered to life but the hingari were a byword for death and despair
for centuries for good reasons. Life never flashes before your eyes
in moments like this: I have worked in insurance long enough to learn
that. Important moments do.
I was almost waiting for one when the
hingari moves from me. Lifted, flung through the air. Another
hingari? I pulled myself to my feet. Everything hurt, even the parts
of me I’d been told would never hurt again. Spending four centuries
looking for Jayseltosche had meant making myself able to survive many
things. Some – even I – might have argued I was not human any
longer. But returning to the homeworld I only vaguely knew of had
stirred a kind of longing in me regadless, or at least I imagined it
had.
The longing was long with every other
thought when I realized Jay was standing behind me. The hingari was
in the air, spasming through a million forms and shapes in an effort
to avoid whatever hold Jay had on it. I met Jay only the once, when
he refused to return to earth. He was still sixteen, but there was no
gentle sadness to him. Just something old and implacable wearing
human skin.
“I made a choice once to never come
back to Earth.” Jay did not move, but the hingari writhed and
screamed with a dozen voices from at least twenty mouths. “I have
no desire to be here again, but you pretended to be me. There are
less than a hundred hingari in the universe now: you should be
working on growing, not – whatever this is.”
The Hingari shifted into one humanoid
form, a mouth of sharp teeth and burning eyes focused downward. “Some
things are more important than survival. We do not expect you
to understand.”
The
hingari hit the ground. Jay strolled over, almost casual, except his
expression was too distant and empty. There was a thin smile on his
face I didn’t want to see remain. “You have some small idea of
what I am, Ydurthkjul of the hingari. Do not pretend it is more than
that. Explain your actions here,”
and the last words were not raised, but the force of them drove me
back to my knees when they were not directed at me at all.
The hingari made
low, whining noises for a few moments that almost engendered pity in
me.
“You do not want
me to ask again,” Jay said calmly.
“You can hurt me.
But we are larger,” the hingari hissed, voice a broken chorus. “We
have –.”
“Of course you
set a trap.” Jay did not sound worried. He did not sound
not-worried. Merely resigned. “But you set a trap for Jayseltosche,
and not for Jay.”
“There is a
difference?” The hingari asked.
“All the
difference that ever was.” And Jay did not move but something left
him. Or returned. I did not know what it was, only that he seemed
younger for a moment. Only they he stepped away from the hingari and
let out a soft noise.
“No! That was our
power! We had claimed –.”
Jay turned his head
slowly, and the hingari fell silent at the look in his eyes. I had
never seen such a stare before, and I hold no desire to ever see it
again. “Power? You thought this was power? I am almost tempted to
see what would happen... but no. I have not had the luxury of
adventures involving oopses or accidents in longer than you could
understand.
“A very long time
ago, I gave a friend a gift. Because I was eleven I gave her a piece
of jaysome. A slice of the innocent wonder that I was placed inside
her. And it remained here, you understand, long after I left. There
are things that cannot…” His voice caught. He looked so human for
a moment that it scared me more than anything else. “There are
things one cannot reclaim once they are lost. Memories one dares not
touch again.”
I did not move. The
hingari was frozen. I am not certain I could have moved had I wished
to. This had moved far beyond wanting.
Jay laughed. It was
somehow free and sad both. “I meet myself in the past sometimes.
But even so, you understand, I forget. Until now. Jaysome,” he
added, a word and exhalation of breath at once. And then: “I won’t
meet me from the past again, I think. The wound to me would be too
great.”
“I don’t
understand.” Because I didn’t. Because it was too big.
And Jay smiled.
The pain was gone.
I was wounded still. But they was no pain. I had nothing in me to
describe the smile with. I burst into tears that had nothing of pain
within them.
I could not sense
the hingari after. I believe it ran away, or was allowed to escape.
“This
world has too many memories for me to stay here even now, Otha,”
Jay said slowly. “I could
take you elsewhere if that is your wish?”
I shook my head. I
would be content here, for a time. I didn’t speak aloud. I wasn’t
ready for speech yet.
Jay nodded and waved. The gesture had
no threat behind it. Something caught in my throat, despite the fact
that nothing could have. I have very good systems that keep my body
working. Yet even so.
“You are seventeen.”
“I am.” Jay’s voice was a
gentleness no one deserved to hear.
I could find no other words. He
vanished then, between moments. And I was left along on Earth. I
walked slowly. In no direction, without any aim for the first time in
centuries. I felt my sorrow leave me; I am not certain yet what has
replaced it.
There are journeys one should never
make. And perhaps, just perhaps, they are the most important ones of
all.
