Recent Short Stories - Defending Elysium Part 2
Coln rifled through the in-room bar, searching for something to drink. He wasn’t normally prone to drinking, but normally he wasn’t facing the loss of his job and probable imprisonment. Eventually, he poured himself a small glass of scotch and made his way out onto the balcony.
He paused halfway out the door. Jason Write stood leaning on his own balcony just a short distance away. The man didn’t look over, but Coln still felt as if he was being watched.
Don’t let him intimidate you, Coln told himself. He turned away from Write indifferently and leaned against his own balcony railing.
Coming after Write had seemed like such a good idea at first. Coln had been frustrated at the Bureau’s lack of information. They knew the PC was hiding technology from them, but they had no clue what it was. They knew Write had something integral to do with the PC’s runnings, but they weren’t sure why. They wanted to keep trailing him, but they’d made too many promises. The Bureau had been ready to just leave Write alone.
Coln sighed, taking a sip of his drink. He’d picked the wrong mission. Write planned to leave within the day, taking the unfortunate scientist with him. And then Coln would be left by himself, a fugitive and a fool.
“That kid is a fool,” Lanna said.
“I know,” Jason mumbled. “But at least he has passion. And courage.”
“Not courage—brashness.”
“Call it what you will,” Jason said, Sensing the young UIB agent standing a short distance away.
“What’s more,” Lanna continued, “he may have passion, but that passion is hatred of you. I’ve been doing some searching. It appears that you were the focus of several of his research projects back when he was an undergraduate. None of his conclusions were flattering, old man. You should read some of these things. . . .”
Lanna continued to speak, but Jason’s mind drifted. His thoughts kept coming back to Denise. Who had taken her, and what had they done?
She didn’t understand violence, Jason thought. She didn’t understand violence, and she hadn’t ever tasted salt. She spoke oddly, in a way that was almost familiar. She couldn’t walk, or use her muscles. It was almost . . .
Jason took in a sharp, surprised breath.
Almost as if she were accustomed to another body.
“What?” Lanna demanded.
“Denise Carlson is dead,” he said.
“What! What happened to her?”
Jason was silent for a moment.
“Jason! What happened!”
Jason ignored her, turning and walking back into his room. He strode out into his hallway, then made his way to the room beside his own—not Coln’s, but the one on the other side. He threw open the door, not bothering to knock.
Denise sat up with surprise, but relaxed when she realized who he was. Jason strode past her without saying a word, walking to her room’s control panel. He entered a few commands, and the light in the room grew far brighter, the bulbs turning slightly red in color.
“How is that?” he asked, turning to her.
Denise regarded him with confusion. “It’s nice. “It feels right for some reason.”
Jason nodded once. The light was bright enough that most people would find it very uncomfortable—in Jason’s mind it was a virtual roar.
“Please,” Denise said, holding her hands forward. “Tell to me what you are doing.” Her hands held forward—forward in the Varvax gesture of supplication. He should have seen it sooner.
“Jason, you’re freaking me out,” Lanna said in his ear.
“This isn’t Denise Carlson,” Jason said quietly.
“What? Who is it?”
“Its name is Vahnn,” Jason explained.
Suddenly, Coln pushed his way into the room. He immediately shielded his eyes from the light—light that imitated a harsh, hot sun, one that required a strong crystalline carapace to provide protection.
“What are you doing, you maniac!” Coln said, pushing past Jason and altering the controls to the room. Then he turned to Denise. “Are you all right?”
“I . . .” Denise said. “Yes, why would I not be?”
Coln turned harsh eyes toward Jason. Then he paused, frowning.
“What?” Jason asked.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Write?” Coln demanded.
“Like what?”
Coln shivered. “Your eyes . . . it’s like you’re looking past me. Like . . .”
Jason reached unconsciously for his face, feeling for sunglasses that weren’t there. He had forgotten he wasn’t wearing them. He turned from the room in shame, rushing out into the hallway.
I mustn’t let him see—mustn’t let him know. He’ll mock me. He’ll laugh. . . .
Coln stayed behind, watching with confusion as he knelt beside the creature that had the body of a woman and the mind of an alien.
“It’s not possible,” Lanna said.
“They said that about psionics years ago,” Jason said, striding down a walkway outside the hotel.
“But, it’s just so . . .”
“So what?”
Lanna sighed in frustration. “All right, let’s assume you’re correct. Who would do such a thing? Why switch someone’s mind for an alien’s? What good would it do them?”
“The Varvax are the most developed Cytonics in the galaxy,” Jason said, speaking quietly as he passed people on Evensong’s dark streets.
“So?”
“So,” Jason said, “what could you learn if you could spend a few years in a Varvax’s head? What if you could get into a Varvax body somehow and infiltrate their society? Someone tried to get ahold of a Varavax host—but something went wrong. The body they stole was killed, or perhaps the transfer went wrong. They disposed of the Varavax body afterward and left Denise wandering the streets.”
“But why Denise?”
Jason paused. “I don’t know. Maybe she was one of them—a spy of some sort. When a better opportunity came along, she took it.”
“That’s weak reasoning, old man.”
“I know,” Jason admitted. “But I can’t think of anything else right now. All I know is that woman back in my rooms is not human. She acts like a Varvax, thinks like a Varvax, and gestures like a Varvax.”
“She speaks English,” Lanna pointed out.
“Many Varvax study English,” Jason said. “Or, at least, understand it. They find spoken languages interesting. Besides, maybe her body retained a residual understanding of speech and motion.”
“Maybe,” Lanna said, sounding unconvinced. “Where are you going?”
“You’ll see.” Jason continued on his way for a short distance until he came to the mental hospital. He strode in, and the same nurse sat behind the desk. She raised an eyebrow at him, confused and a little disapproving.
Jason ignored her, striding into the facility itself.
“Sir!” she called. “You can’t go in there! Sir, you don’t have . . .” her voice trailed off, but soon she began calling for security.
“The nurse?” Lanna said, listening. “You’re back at the hospital? So, you’ve finally admitted that you’re insane and decided to commit yourself?”
Orderlies, nurses, and even some patients began to look into the hallway. He’d better be here, Jason thought. Just after the thought occurred to him, he sensed a familiar face peeking out of one of the rooms.
“Please alert the Evensong Police Department, Lanna,” Jason said. “They’re about to get a report of a madman attacking one of the orderlies in this hospital. Please tell them to ignore it.”
“Jason, you are a very strange man.”
Jason smiled, then spun and burst into the room. Several orderlies jumped back in surprise at Jason’s entrance—the buzzing white room was some kind of employee lounge. The orderly, the one Jason had seen at the café, immediately turned to run. Jason jumped forward and snatched the man in one hand, then spun him around.
The man struggled, but knee to the groin stopped that. Jason pulled off his glasses, then grabbed the man’s head with both hands and turned it toward him.
“Who sent you?” Jason asked, staring at the man with his sightless eyes.
The man stared back defiantly.
“Ah, I see,” Jason said, hold the man’s head in both of his hands. “Yes, I can read your thoughts easily. Very interesting. Ah, and yes. So they switched minds, did they? I didn’t know that was possible. Thank you, you’ve been very informative.”
Jason released the man’s surprised head.
Lanna snorted in his ear. “Jason, unless you’ve been hiding some strange powers for a very long time, that was the biggest load of lies I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes,” Jason said, replacing his glasses and striding out of the room. “But they don’t know that.”
“What’s the point?” Lanna asked.
“Be patient,” Jason chided, holding up his hands as security guards entered the hallway. “I was just leaving,” he said, then pushed past them and left the hospital.
Back at the hotel, Jason gathered Denise and Coln in his room. One regarded him with customary wide-eyed confusion, the other with equally customary hostility. Jason removed his pin and handed it to Coln.
“There is a ship chartered for Jupiter Fourteen,” Jason said. “Be on it when it leaves, and take Denise with you. Go to the PC office, and they will protect you from the Bureau.”
“What about you, Write?” Coln asked suspiciously.
“If I’m right, I should be going somewhere else in a bit. You should get moving—the ship leaves in less than an hour.”
Coln frowned. Jason could sense the apprehension in his face. He didn’t want to accept the PC’s help, but he also didn’t want to face the Bureau’s justice. Hopefully, he would see to Denise’s safety.
After a short internal debate, Coln nodded and stood. “I’ll do it, Write. But first I want you to tell me something. Answer one question for me.”
“What?”
“Do you have what everyone says you do?”
Jason frowned. “Have what?”
“FTL engines,” Coln said. “Does the PC have the technology to create them or not? Have you been withholding the secret of FTL travel from the rest of humankind?”
Jason paused. “You’re asking the wrong question,” he finally said.
Coln’s expression darkened. “I knew you wouldn’t answer,” he said, turning toward Denise’s chair. “Come on, Denise.”
Denise didn’t move. She slumped in her chair, eyes closed.
“Denise!” Coln said urgently, kneeling beside her. She appeared to be breathing, but . . .
Jason began to feel light-headed, and he noticed a faint scent in the air. He cursed quietly, turning to dash across the room. He stumbled halfway to the door, losing his balance. He barely even felt himself hit the ground.
They work fast. Must have already been prepared to gas us. . . .
Jason awoke to blackness. Pure, horrifying blackness. There was no sight, no Sense, no feelings at all. The darkness had returned.
Jason began to shake. No! It can’t be! Where is my Sense! He curled up, barely feeling the cold metallic floor below him. The blackness swallowed him—it was more than just a darkness, it was a nothingness. A lack of sensation. It was the one, true terror in Jason’s life. And it had returned.
He whimpered despite himself, memories flooding in.
It had started with his night vision, as visual diseases often did. He remembered the nights spent in bed as a child, the darkness seeming to grow more and more oppressive. And then, it had started to come during the day. First his peripheral vision—it had been like the darkness was following him, enveloping him. Each morning when he awoke, it had seemed that the darkness was closer. It had crouched like a beast in the corner of his vision.
Terror. The doctors had been able to do nothing. Jason had been forced to try and live his life as normal, the darkness seeming to grow closer every moment. He had lived in perpetual fear of what must come.
And then, there had been the children. The other children, who hadn’t understood. He had tried to go on as normal, tried to live his life as if nothing was wrong. He should have admitted it to them. As it was, they only saw a stumbling fool. They had laughed. Oh, how they had laughed.
Jason screamed, as if yelling could push back the darkness. Where was his Sense? What was wrong? He flailed in the darkness, his fingers brushing a wall. He pulled back into a corner, frightened and confused.
“How did you do it?” a voice asked from above.
Jason looked up, but didn’t see, or Sense, anything.
“Tell me, Mr. Write,” the voice demanded. “Can you read minds? This is impossible of Cyto—even the Varvax cannot penetrate an individual’s thoughts. How did you do it?”
Jason didn’t respond. The darkness. The blackness.
I did this on purpose, a piece of Jason’s mind thought. I bated them. I wanted to get their attention, so they would bring me to them. They did. This is what I wanted.
But . . . the darkness.
“How!” Jason croaked. “How have you taken it away?”
“Answer my questions, Mr. Write,” the voice said, “and I will return your Sense. How did you read that man’s mind?”
Jason shuddered, pulling back against the cold telanium. The man’s voice was harsh and guttural. He spoke oddly—with an accent of some sort, but not one that Jason recognized.
It’s not permanent, Jason told himself. The darkness will go away. Just like it did when you developed Cyto.
“I am not a patient man, Mr. Write,” the voice warned. “Speak, and I will let your companions live.”
Coln, Denise. They were in the room with me.
Jason didn’t answer. He sat, breathing deeply, struggling to remain sane. Ever since he had developed Cyto, he had never been in darkness. His Sense worked even when there was no light.
“Lanna?” Jason whispered, feeling the darkness advance on him. “Lanna!”
“The link to your home base has been cut, Mr. Write,” the voice said.
Jason whimpered. The darkness seemed to be growing closer—closer to devouring his mind.
“As you wish, Mr. Write,” the voice said. “I will give you three minutes. If you don’t have an answer for me by then, the woman dies.”
A click, then silence. It seemed worse without the voice—suddenly Jason wished he had kept the man talking. He wished he had told the voice the truth, that he couldn’t read minds. Anything to keep someone else there.
Now he had no one.
I can’t do this! Jason thought. Anything but this. I lived this horror once, I can’t do it again!
He tried to push out with mindblades, but nothing happened.
Be calm, Jason. Control yourself. The Varvax said something about this. Sonn had said it once. He had been reserved and uncomfortable—odd for a Varvax. Jason had asked if there was a way to suppress Cytonic ability. Sonn had eventually admitted there was, but had told Jason he wouldn’t need it. Not yet.
The darkness . . .
No! Stay focused. You don’t have time for fear. There was probably a technological aspect to the suppressant device. Many Cytonic abilities had mechanical halves—like the FTL comm feed, which wouldn’t work without physical receivers. The Cytonic behind his imprisonment would be feeding part of his mental energy into a physical device, one that used electricity to amplify the effect. But because of that augmentation, Jason would never be able to break free. He would be trapped forever in the blackness.
Not forever. Just another few minutes, until they kill me. That would almost be preferable.
An image came to him. An image of humankind escaping into space. An image of human merchants cheating and trading, of human tyrants capturing the technologically-inferior Varvax, Tenasi, and Hommar. Images of wars, of fighting, of a paradise destroyed.
I can’t let that happen!
But, what could he do? He felt along the wall, stumbling to his feet and feeling his way around the room. It was small, perhaps two meters square. He could barely feel the seal of the door—there wasn’t a handle on his side.
There’s not enough time! Jason thought with desperation. I can’t escape, I can’t contact Lanna—
He couldn’t contact Lanna, but . . . He reached up to his ear, tapping at the control disk. They had broken his link to the home base, but perhaps they hadn’t thought of stowaways. . . .
“You won’t get away with this!” Coln screamed to the empty room. “I’m a UIB agent. There are serious repercussions for the imprisonment of a law-enforcement officer!”
There was no answer. Coln sighed, his rage weakening before sheer boredom. He had awakened in this room, which appeared to be some sort of storage closet, with a headache. He hadn’t heard a thing outside their door since that time. Denise was there too, sitting quietly on a box a short distance away.
What is Write planning? Coln thought. He had us captured, but why? It had to have something to do with the PC master plan, whatever that was.
Suddenly, a sound crackled in his ear. “Coln?” The voice crackled sickly—like whispers from the lips of a dead man.
“Write?” Coln asked. “Why did you imprison me!”
“Hush, Coln,” the voice whispered. “We are both imprisoned. We are going to die unless you can do something.”
“Something?” Coln asked suspiciously. “What?”
“You need to knock out the power. Blow a fuse, overload a circuit—do something.”
Coln frowned. “What good will that do? They’ll have backups.”
“Just do it.” The link crackled off.
Coln swore quietly. What was Write planning this time? Dare he trust the man? Dare he do otherwise?
Denise watched with confusion as Coln searched through the small room, pushing aside boxes and carts. Eventually, he found a power jack on the wall. He stood for a moment, regarding it. Finally, he sighed and unloosed a piece of steel from a nearby box’s constraint. Why not? It’s not like I can get into more trouble than I’m already in.
Jason couldn’t escape the darkness. He couldn’t shut his eyes against it, he couldn’t run away from it, and he couldn’t ignore it. He could only huddle against the wall, feeling his resolve—and his sanity—grow weaker by the second. He heard, but didn’t understand, the voice when it returned. His captors had made a grave mistake. They could make all the demands they wanted, but he was in no condition to respond to them. They could kill him. It wouldn’t matter.
The voice screamed at him. Jason felt his sanity slipping. He couldn’t struggle against it. He didn’t want to struggle against it. Struggling would be far too difficult. Blissful unconsciousness was the only answer—a silencing of thought and perception.
At that moment, his Sense returned.
It was only a blip—a fractional waver in the power level. But it was enough. Sense flooded into Jason like drugs into an addict’s veins. It immediately began to fade, the suppressor coming back on line.
Jason blasted out a thousand mindblades at once, shredding the walls around him. He shattered the telanium into chunks, the chunks to chips, and the chips to dust. The walls dissolved like tissue-paper before a nuclear blast, spraying grains of metal away from him. He screamed as he let out the surge of power, a bestial yell to push back the darkness.
The suppressor immediately fell dead, its mechanisms destroyed by the blast. Jason lay huddled, his suit stained with dirt and sweat, on a bright telanium floor. He reveled in his returned Sense for a wonderful, silent moment. However, with Sense came sanity—the two were inseparable to him.
There is another Cytonic in here, and he’s not going to be pleased that I’ve escaped.
So, taking a deep breath, Jason forced himself to stand.
Coln sat, stunned. He held a piece of rubber in his hand—the very same he had used to grip the metal as he rammed it into the power jack. He had expected a slight reaction; he hadn’t expected the room next to his own to explode.
Coln blinked, dusting the silvery telanium flakes off of his clothes. What . . . ? he thought with amazement, rubbing some of the telanium grains between his fingers. What could have done this? Modern weaponry had difficulty even scarring telanium.
He looked up, and saw Jason Write standing in the direct center of the explosion. The operative’s suit was torn. Coln let the telanium dust trickle from his stunned fingers as he saw Write’s eyes. Like before, they were unfocused, even unresponsive. They stared dully forward, motionless, like the eyes of . . . a blind man.
“What are you?” Coln whispered.
Write ignored the question. “Take the girl and go,” he said, his voice calm but ominous. “This area is about to become very dangerous.”
Coln nodded, reaching for the frightened Denise’s hand. At that moment, a new voice spoke—one Coln didn’t recognize.
“Oh, come now, Mr. Write,” the voice said. “Must we stoop to such assumptions? Are we not . . . civilized?”
Write didn’t turn toward the source of the sound—a speaker on the wall. “Show yourself.”
There was silence. The sound of footsteps. Coln pushed Denise behind him, turning wary eyes on the hallway outside their rooms—the hallway that was now exposed, thanks to the strange explosion.
A figure appeared in the hallway. He was nondescript save for a long nose and a thin body. He wore a sharp navy suit, and he was smiling as he strolled forward, scuffing the layer of telanium dust.
“Tell me who you are,” Write said, turning to face the man with his unfocused eyes.
“Come, Jason,” the man said. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“No.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” the man said, continuing to stroll around the room. “It has been several years, and I really wasn’t all that important. Just one of your many recruits. My name was Edmund.”
The room fell silent. “Why did you try to kill Coln?” Write finally asked.
Edmund just smiled. “Even for a PC agent, you’re an extremely secretive man, Jason. You’ve been hiding things from the Varvax. If they knew that you could create mindblades, they’d certainly be tempted to elevate humankind’s intelligence designation.”
Write frowned. “It was a test. You wanted to see if I could stop the bullets.”
“And I was not disappointed,” Edmund said, stopping just in front of Write. “Mindblades are very advanced, Jason. Another few decades of study, and you might get FTL. I’m impressed.”
The two men stood facing each other—yet neither one’s eyes focused on his opponent. They remained like that for a tense few moments, and Coln frowned. He felt like something important was on the verge of happening, but it never occurred.
What is going on?
Jason fought for his life. Hundreds of mindblades whipped toward him, invisible blasts of pure thought. It was all he could do to keep them from shredding his flesh. He fought back, sending his own mindblades to block those of his opponent—an opponent he still didn’t understand.
He vaguely remembered Edmund—though he hadn’t know the face well enough that he had recognized it in the café. Edmund had been a man with some Cytonic potential. He had run away from the PC after just a few months of training. That had only been two years ago—how had he learned so much in such little time?
The barrage of mindblades slackened, and Edmund stepped back. He was still smiling, but there was reservation in his eyes. He hadn’t expected Jason to be as good as he was.
Jason breathed deeply. Coln was watching from a short distance away, his face confused—he hadn’t been able to see the insane battle Jason had just fought.
“I’m impressed again, Jason,” Edmund said.
Jason felt sweat trickle down his cheek. He could smell his own exhaustion. “I wouldn’t have expected you to know how to block mindblades,” Edmund continued. “Few of us have even practiced that.”
Jason stood stiffly. “I’ve been expecting this for some time,” he whispered. “I knew I couldn’t keep it away from people like you. I knew that some day I would have to fight.”
“You prepared well.”
The mindblades struck again. Jason grunted, whipping out with his own blades. There was a faint ripple to his Sense when a mindblade was about to appear, and he sliced at that area with his own blade. The blasts canceled each other, wavering in his Sense like two curves of light. He blocked hundreds of them, the air around him shining like he was in the middle of an explosion.
I can’t keep this up long. Eventually, a mindblade would break through. Jason had only one card to play—he would have to make it count.
Jason continued to fight, waiting for the right time. Edmund was better than Jason was. It shouldn’t have been possible—Jason had been practicing Cyto longer than any other man. How could someone have overcome him so quickly? Jason had to find out. Otherwise, all he had worked for would be lost.
The attack retreated again. Edmund was perspiring now—at least it was difficult for him.
“You learned from the Varvax well,” Jason said, gambling.
Edmund looked up with surprise. Then he laughed. “So you can’t read minds after all,” he said with a smile. “That was quite the bluff.”
I was wrong, Jason thought. But, how then . . . ?
“Goodbye, Jason Write.”
Jason felt the air waver around him. More mindblades than he could count began to form—it was like he was being circled in a dome of pure energy. He couldn’t block them all. He would die.
Now!
Jason focused on himself. He didn’t raise any mindblades. Instead, he Sensed inward. He felt his own vibration in his Sense, a cool black-clothed creature. So different than the boy he had once been. The boy had been stupefied, made immobile, by his horror.
Jason was no longer that boy. With a scream, he felt the mindblades descend around him, and he threw himself willingly into the darkness.
All was still.
The blackness enveloped him, the non-existence that had threatened him since childhood. Except, this time he had come to it by choice. He suffocated for an eternal moment in its embrace.
Then he reappeared. As he reentered normal space, he pushed the air away, lest its molecules get trapped within his appearing body. In a similar manner, he pushed Edmund’s flesh away from his hand.
The world shook, and Jason was back. He stood with arm extended directly in front of Edmund. Jason’s wrist ended abruptly where it met Edmund’s flesh—his hand had materialized inside of the man’s chest.
Edmund’s heart, gripped in Jason’s fist, thumped once. Edmund’s eyes stared ahead in shock. Behind, the place where Jason had been a moment earlier exploded with mindblades.
Jason squeezed once, and Edmund cried out in pain. The heart stopped beating. Edmund slid to his knees, and Jason pushed his hand slightly outside space and withdrew it.
Edmund fell backward, staring with surprised, agonized, eyes. He didn’t fall unconscious as he died—he was far too powerful a Cytonic for that. Instead, he just whispered.
“FTL transmission. Jason, you surprise me again. We had no idea. . . .”
Jason knelt beside the man. “I’ve had it for some time. Tell me. Tell me how you did it. Where did you learn such powers?”
The man laughed, a pained hacking laugh. “I’ve studied it all my life, Jason.”
“How?” Jason demanded.
Somehow, Edmund met Jason’s eyes. “Ah, you’re such an idealist, Jason of the Phone Company. Sometime, you must ask yourself this. Why would a race such as the Varvax need to learn an ability such as Cytonic suppression?”
Jason paused, his mind growing numb. He only knew one answer, one he had barely dared consider. “To keep prisoners.”
“Prisoners?” Edmund coughed. “Original thinkers! Dissenters! Anyone who doesn’t agree with them.”
“You lie!”
Edmund laughed, his back arching in pain. “And you will be our escape,” he said, his voice growing loud until he was practically screaming. “They’ve had their paradise long enough. You nearly went mad after spending just a few minutes without your Sense—imagine living your life in such a box! You only see the peace, you only see the perfect society.
“You don’t see the price!”
Edmund’s final breath hissed out, and his body fell limp.
“You lie,” Jason whispered. “They are a peaceful people. We are the monsters, not them. . . .” He sat for a moment, regarding the fallen body. Coln still stood a short distance away, looking amazed—and confused.
“Come here,” Jason said quietly. “Bring the girl.”
Coln obeyed without a word. Jason put a hand on each of them, then he entered the darkness once again.
Coln recognized the room immediately. He blinked once, trying to forget about the awful sense of emptiness he had just experienced. He was in a white, curved room—the operations center of PC Headquarters. The room pictured in his fuzzy holo-vid. Coln had studied its image hundreds of times, and now he was actually there.
Except, PC Central Operations was on Earth, months away from Evensong. Coln breathed in with surprise. Write stood a short distance away, his suit tattered, blood seeping down his arms.
“You do have FTL travel!” Coln accused.
“Yes.”
“Then I was right!” Coln said. “You’ve been keeping FTL travel from humankind!”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Coln demanded. “What are you trying to protect us from?”
“I wasn’t trying to protect us,” Write said, walking over to the side of the room. He approached the wall—the one that was supposed to house the FTL communication machinery—and pulled a lever. A small cup popped out the bottom, followed by a stream of steaming coffee. “I was trying to protect them. And prepare us.”
“Prepare us?” Coln asked.
“The exchange programs,” Write said. “The outreach programs—even the skin-color fad. Anything to make us more open minded. Of course, it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
Coln frowned, then eyed the coffee machine. “So, it’s not the FTL comm unit . . .”
Write shook his head, then pointed to the side. A man, the man Coln had mistaken for a security guard in the holo-vid, sat a short distance away. The man had his eyes closed, and he sat quietly in a chair.
“His mind,” Write said. “It powers all of the FTL calls.”
“But,” Coln said, “there are millions of them. . . .”
“All you need is one mind to provide the FTL capability,” Jason explained. “Computers can do the actual routing.”
Coln hissed quietly in surprise.
“Technology is limited,” Jason said, “only the mind is infinite.”
Further questions were forestalled as the door to the room slammed open and a red-hared woman burst into the room. She immediately ran forward and grabbed Write in a powerful embrace. “What happened!” she demanded, and Coln instantly recognized Lanna’s voice.
“Coln,” Write mumbled, “meet Lanna Write. My wife.”
“What? Your wife?”
“Unfortunately,” Write said. There was fondness in his voice.
“But,” Coln objected. “The Bureau has bugged your communications dozens of times—you always complain when she’s assigned to you!”
“Yes, and he does the assigning,” Lanna said, checking the small wounds on his arms. “He always says that the less the Bureau knows about his personal life, the better. Besides, he can’t help teasing me.” She looked up at Write. “All right, sit down and tell me what’s going on. The medic is on his way.”
Write sighed, taking another sip of his drink. “I might have been wrong, Lanna.”
“About what?”
“About everything,” he said, his voice haunted.
Jason sat in his rooms, letting the medic bandage his arms. Lanna stood dissatisfiedly a short distance away. She was the terror of PC Central Operations—few men had the courage, or the stupidity, to incur her wrath.
“All right, old man,” she said. “What happened?”
Jason shook his head. Before he could reply, his holo-vid beeped. Jason punched the button, and Sonn’s chitinous face appeared.
“You have some explaining to do, Sonn,” Jason said.
The Varvax put forward his hands in supplication. “I am at your disposal, Jason of the Phone Company.”
Jason pushed a button, showing Sonn an image of Denise being questioned by PC operatives. “Tell me it’s not true, Sonn,” Jason pled quietly. “Tell me you don’t lock your discontents away.”
“Varvax discontents?” Lanna asked with surprise.
Sonn raised his hands, a sign of apology. “I said that you would discover the reason for Cytonic-suppression eventually, Jason of the Phone Company.”
Jason bowed his head. No. It can’t be. . . .
“It is the only way,” Sonn said. “The way to have peace.”
“Peace for those who agree with you,” Jason spat.
“It is the only way.”
“And the others?” Jason demanded. “The Tenasi, the Hallo?”
“The same,” Sonn said. “They have discovered the way, as you will eventually. The way to Prime Intelligence. I must apologize for the inconvenience we have given to you.”
Jason sat, stunned. He was wrong. All of these years, over a century of work, and he was wrong. They had deceived him. Suddenly, he felt sick—sick, and angry.
“They’re going to come for you, Sonn,” Jason said, nodding thankfully to the medic as he finished the bandaging. The man was trustworthy—one of the first Cytonics Jason had recruited over a hundred years before.
“Excuse me, Jason of the Phone Company?” Sonn asked after a short pause. His hands were pulled back in the Varvax sign of confusion.
The medic left and Lanna sat down beside Jason. She watched Sonn with calculating eyes—she had never liked the Varvax. She said she didn’t like people who could so easily falsify their body language.
“The ambassador—the one who died,” Jason said. “He was a discontent. I have him now. I thought humans were trying to infiltrate Varvax society; I didn’t realize that it was the other way around. Your dissidents are escaping, and they’re hiding amongst us. They’re trying to get hold of human technology. We’re still uncivilized, Sonn. We have some war machines that could blast down your ships without even pausing.”
Sonn maintained his sign of confusion, then augmented it with one of worry. Few people know that the Tenasi ambassadorial vessel that had been shot down over Earth had been one of the most advanced, most powerful ships in the galaxy. A single human missile had destroyed it. The other species had far inferior technology.
“This is disturbing,” Sonn admitted.
“I know,” Jason said. Then he reached over and cut the connection. Sonn’s face fuzzed and disappeared.
Jason leaned back with a sigh, Sensing Lanna beside him. He’d known it was coming—he’d feared that he couldn’t keep humankind out of space. He just hadn’t expected heaven to fail him.
“I’m sorry,” Lanna whispered.
Jason shook his head. “You always warned me that I was too idealistic.”
“I wanted to believe you anyway,” Lanna said. She slowly trailed her hand along his cheek. “Do you think the one who attacked you was the only one?”
“Not a chance,” Jason said. “He was too confident.”
“Then . . .”
Jason took a deep breath. “Prepare a press release, Lanna. Tell them that the Phone Company has finally developed faster-than-light travel, and that we will release it to the public as soon as the United Governments approves our patent.”
Lanna nodded.
“Perhaps we can salvage something from paradise,” Jason whispered.
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