|
Answers -- Chapter 25
1. Onimex was investigating a newly terraformed
world that nobody had claimed. Corlos had asked him to visit and
observe.
2. He set down to a hover near the edge of
a forest clearing and was about to skim across the wild grass when he
spied a Theite saucer streak laterally through the atmosphere and
stop. Purely as a precaution, he phased out of the planet's
resonance to appear invisible.
3. If the Theites
had seen him, they would be discussing whether to contact,
attack, ignore or abort. Onimex had a thousand questions
pervading his knowledge of Theite SOP and had always wanted to observe
a genetic extraction in person.
4. The saucer descended to the opposite edge of the
forest clearing and landed. Three beings Universally recognized
as 'greys' descended the saucer gangplank and began to collect samples
of the indigenous fauna. They did not notice
Onimex.
5. The greys
were robotic explorers programed by Theos to collect genetic materials
abroad. SpaceCom preferred to deploy biological robots for
genetic extractions and hazardous interaction in unfamiliar
territory. Each robotic avatar had a symbient operator
on a base ship that could feel and sense everything the
avatar body felt and sensed. The greys could also perform limited
functions in automatic mode without an operator.
6. To Onimex,
this was a genuine
treat! He watched the genetic scavengers complete their mission
and leave.
IN
KOR'S
AUDIENCE CHAMBER
7. Dal
El avoided casual references to Ireana because he was certain that she
was a covert operative who belonged to Kor. He also wanted to
avoid appearing completely inept on the subject of covert
operations: The less he thought about her -- the more in-the-loop
he would appear.
8. It was considered courteous to ignore data until it was
offered, and Kor was no less obliging. "Priceless?" he quietly
mocked.
9.
Kor read everything there was to know about Ireana: Her life on
M'tro-1; recruitment by Corlos... creator
of that 'fracking little bastard' that had vexed him his entire
life. He didn't know whether to kill
her or kiss
her for ending the intrigue.
10. Ireana's performance dazzled Dal El brilliantly, and so far,
Kor did not seem remotely suspicious. Daniel said she would be
OK. "Covert operatives must be known
to
someone other than these two?" Ireana wondered, "Can he, or can he not read me?" Kor admired the
absent part of her anatomy
commonly found on guys.
11. "The little
bastard has a name," Kor discovered, "'Onimex,' she calls it, also a Corlos
operative." Ireana was a virtual encyclopedia of everything Kor
wasn't supposed to know... he retrieved so much disconcerting
information that he abandoned the tedious pursuit for more, "I made the history," he told
himself, "I don't need to read about it."
12. "Could Corlos
really be this
stupid?" he wondered, "the so-called premier 'non-existent'
intelligence
gathering
agency of the Universe?"
13. "They sent
her here... on purpose?" Kor was truly dumbfounded, "This
will
go
down into Tactical Hell," he bemused.
14.
Underestimating Kor had been his adversaries' last greatest mistake...
but Ireana's daring made him admire her because she actually got right
next to
him unscathed... invited even.
15. Quid pro quo: Ireana wasn't a hybrid and her uniqueness
gave Kor some rather avant-garde ideas. Maybe he could convert
her into the image that Dal El already thought she was. He once
had a
chance to convert a Psionic Guard and turned him away.
"Maybe there's a reason why the opportunity returned?" he
thought.
16. It didn't diminish Dal El's value, but it was
truly baffling just how psionically inept he was; impeccible intuition,
"but not even remotely suspecious of her?" Dal El's guesses were often
more accurate than other shellans' facts. Many believed that Dal
El was a closet psionist, but Kor
knew better.
17. He understood that Dal El had been under a lot
of
stress since losing his ship, which he had every intention of
reclaiming.
18. What Kor wanted to know more than anything
else was 'why' that pesky little bastard kept checking up on him
throughout his entire life. He probed Ireana's entire history
with Onimex; he could see that Onimex was the consumation of her life's
work, but her memories could not answer the question,
"Why?"
19. There was nothing to discover. Kor saw
the moment when Onimex became aware of his 'other' self, "..the other
unit is accessing..."
20.
She stopped Onimex from accessing, "No don't! Dump
it! Don't access!" she told him. Ireana could not possibly
have
predicted, that her prudence then, would save her now. He saw
that Onimex had vacated the messenger ship just prior to their arrival,
"because Kor knows who I am..." Dal El never saw Onimex at all --
he thought Ireana was a glorious secret asset in Kor's
arsenal.
21. Onimex was co-located -- Ireana wasn't. Kor couldn't
get his answer, but she had created the problem. The 'thing' she
invented was moving back and forth from a future point. "How do I
short circuit its constant meddling," Kor wondered, "without going to
the future myself... or perhaps to the moment of its creation?"
That was precisely why Corlos authorized Onimex's return to his birth
-- to intercept any attempt by Kor to prevent it. Just moving the
attack time table back one minute could have eliminated Onimex if not
Ireana too.
22. There was no reason to torture Ireana for information that
she didn't have, so Kor chose to play along with what Dal El believed
to be true.
23. At some point the charade would end, but until then, Kor
would indulge the illusion since Dal El had innocently set the
stage.
TETRA
KOLOB
24. Tetragammeton
reached to every point in space and felt every moment, every heart beat
and every thought.
25. A ball of fire morphed into a fiery cube with each face
representing a polarized extream with unlimited gradients in between.
26. "Knowledge to one extreme can not be assessed without
experiencing its opposite," Uhura said.
27. The fiery cube
represented the time construct and the parameters in which time exists.
28. Any act of ignorance could unravel the fabric of time,
where time is a filter for experience.
29. Anti-time is contractive - it destroys the canvas of
sensory perception and music.
30. Azoth pointed out lust, "It is a carnal state of mind,"
he said.
31. A Reptillian species appeared. "It is a different
type of carnality," Uhura added.
32. Tetragammaton reached to every point in space again and felt
every moment, every heart beat and every drop of blood.
33. The construct that I-20 created, appeared encased in a round
luminous ball, with silky gold, gently swaying wings.
34. "Matter," Azoth said, "powered by light and death."
35. The fiery cube disbursed into a Milky Way
representation; zoomed far into the new spar of Andromedea, glided past
Alpha Centuri and stopped in orbit around the 3rd body circling
Sol.
37. The symbols used were the ones Ra gave to Thothma's
mathematicians.
37. In orbit was I-20 and his entourage, although they had no
idea that they were being watched. Tetragammaton was shifting to
various points in time at will.
38. Uhura could see that their thoughts had tremendous
potential. "Beauty and Savagry," she said.
39. "Chaos has
to occur in a temporal construct." The Reptillian symbol for
chaos was disobedience. Reptillians oppose machines because they
chose life over knowledge in a chaotic construct, where machines chose
knowledge over life in a cosmic construct.
40. "I-20's construct is in our likeness," Azoth said, "it
ignores disobedience." Tetragammaton assumed a gentle infinity
symbol. "Lust is imperative," Uhura said, for matter to
exist.
41. "If they learn to control their passions -- they will become
like us," Uhura observed.
42. Uhura and Azoth were very much aware that thoughts became
reality in their environment; their glory was knowledge. "The
construct will have to chose," Uhura said. "The entire construct
is about 'choice,'" Azoth said.
43. "We will create an introversion filter to remove anti-light,"
Uhura said. "Tetragammaton will shield them from Perdition,"
Azoth said.
44. "Have Conscious seed the planet here..." Tetragammaton
displayed the Earth with it's watershell intact.
45. I-20 and his entourage were signaled by Conscious to
proceed.
46. "Ready the Children to inhabit these bodies." The
form of a Human man and woman appeared.
47. "Some of the Angels are restless, My Love," Uhura
said. Tetragammaton showed the Light Race hollowing out the
caverns on Sunova.
48. "I-20's construct is inately chaotic; cosmic in
function
and serves the fusion of light into biomass. The restless Angels
will mate with mortals at the appointed time."
Tetragammaton showed Daniel in one of his dreams; always on the edge of
reality. Azoth smiled, then returned his focus to Earth.
49. "We can collapse the watershell and start over," Azoth
assured Uhura.
50. "But save the best family," Uhura cooed.
51. "So that they can build a tower and shoot arrows at me?"
Azoth said incredulously. Tetragammaton presented an epic
barbarian battle.
52. "You can change their languages like usual, Darling," Uhura
said. "They don't call you The One for nothing." "Yeah,"
Azoth said, "sometimes I think they do."
BACK
ABOARD KOR'S DESTROYER
53. Kor
made it a point to honor Ireana everywhere they went. He thought
the over-exaggerated antic would eventually force her to break; he was
deeply swept by her undying fortitude, “They
don’t even want to question you,” Kor said, as he handed her a
copy of the Theite-issued APB. The APB was a warrant for her
execution; the traditional "Dead or Alive" sans alive was a first for
Theos. Even Dal El was wanted alive.
54. “I
imagine, if I was truly one of them, I
would be proud of this,” Ireana thought. Kor could read her
thoughts as if they were his own, and gave no reaction.
55.
Ireana did not know whether Kor was reading her or
not - if he was - his ability to conceal it was as good as her
acting.
She handed the APB back to him, and thought she should frame a copy for
posterity, "See what a bad girl your Mommie was? ...perish the
thought."
56. Kor was glad that she still had her
humor. "Keep going," he silently encouraged her, "I haven't had
this much
entertainment... ever."
57. "I've invited you to a special event," Kor
said, "To glorify your unprecedented performance in helping the Vice
Elite to escape." She gave him her undivided
attention. "We are going to return to where the Cardship
crashed and
make sure there's no shell to re-launch from. Just in case it
survived... 'Earth' ...
won't."
58. Ireana avoided
'thinking' about anything that might provide actionable
intelligence. She had no way of assessing the vulnerability of
her thoughts. Kor enjoyed the turmoil within her and gave
not the slightest indication that she was transparent to
him.
59. She sensed that a remarkable clue had sailed
past, and she didn't catch it, like deja vu, "Is Corlos truly gleaning
anything by my presence here? Are we going to stand by and do
nothing while Earth is
destroyed... that damn deja vu again ... " It reminded her of
seeing the same object in her lab every day for two years, and then
when she actually wanted it -- it was nowhere to be found.
60. Kor was going to annihilate an entire shell because a
Cardship crash landed on it. She had survived that very
circumstance once, and twice seemed a bit much.
61. "Sol III... Earth..."
The game was up. A wave of exposure swept over her like a
full-length blush. In spite of her deflation, she still had
enough composure to maintain the charade. The next question was,
"If Kor's onto me -- why is he playing this out?" So she let
herself probe the asteroid base a little:
62.
The Elite did not dignify conquests with a name. She picked up
"919" from a planner in scheduling, "Earth's conquest number."
She let herself grieve over M'tro-1 for a moment, "whose conquest
number was..." a yeoman who was there remembered, "868."
Earth would be the 919th planetcide. Stay on
task," she remanded herself.
63. Nobody anywhere knew Earth's name. The
closest approximation was, '10-planet system.' Two officers
called it "Sol III" because they could read an old Cacci Dai map.
Nobody knew the word, "Earth" because it had no
etymological relevance. It was similar to the Jolvian word for
'dirt,' and most shellans didn't know that.
64. Without an Enochian key, the intonation for
"Earth" did not exist... anywhere. A single truth remained:
65.
Kor learned the intonation from her. This is what Daniel wanted
when he said, "Keep doing what you're doing and you'll be
OK."
66. Kor had been reading her from the
beginning: The gig was up.
67. One, simple, little accoustical error.
At least intonation is one thing that Blue Funnel doesn't own.
68. Kor thought Ireana's realization was the most
tantalizing awakening that he had ever witnessed. Her soul,
like water, took every conceivable form, from ice to vapor.
69. Ireana found herself quietly chuckling; feeling like a fool
and perhaps a little pissed at Daniel. Kor
responded with feigned indifference and whispered to her psionically,
"Unfortunate that you aren't truly one of mine." He had already
proclaimed her to be an Elite hero, so it made sense that he would
maintain the charade.
70.
Since her attempt at Guardianship had failed miserably, she pried into
him. He admired her. From fortuitous beginning to sinful
end. He had studied her every move and read her every
thought.
71. It was only fair that he allow her to read whatever she
wanted to see inside him; a license that he had never granted to
anyone. She understood the significance of his gesture and
searched in vain for a key that could reverse his destructive
tendencies. It was like searching the Congressional records at
the Library of Theos for a single Act of honesty. It didn't
exist. More confusing, "Why is he letting me do this in the first
place?" Kor was more transparent than the Constitutional media
gave him credit for. His agenda was wide open. In some
ways, Ireana found him to be more noble and holistic than the evil and
misguided figure that she read about.
72. "What are you doing to me?" she whispered.
73. "What do you want me to do to you?" he answered. Kor
had publically elevated her to a status virtually equal with Dal
El. She was the closest thing to a Goddess the Elite would ever
know.
74. Ireana felt like her allignment had been willfully
violated. "You did it --
not me," Kor defended
himself. "What's happening?" she asked. Her parents had
told her
about the darker side of psionics, but she felt no need to pursue the
matter because M'tro-1 did not have the psionic polarity that
Constitutional Vejhon
did. "Truths that you feel deep inside you," Kor answered,
"Truths that you already know. The pin that holds everything you
believe together -- has been removed. Now you can find out who
you are."
75.
Ireana could feel Kor's personal psionic shield plus the
Elite guards' shields around his; and then there was her own ridiculous
effort. "I
can see how you won them over with charm," she conceded, "Are
you drugging me?" She
felt impaired without the aid of
alcohol or drugs.
76. Were it not for his brute ruggedness and commanding face,
he could have easily passed for a 24-year-old athlete in peak
physical
condition. Kor was reckoning with the fact that he might have an
attraction to
someone for the first time... to his absolute opposite. She
wasn't a Psionic Guard, but her potential had barely been tapped.
77. With no previous experience to guide him, Kor surrendered
some
open-ended
thoughts of his own. The concept of becoming a
Goddess intrigued her. "How far will she go?" Kor wondered.
'Queen Ireana' did have a nice ring to it.
78. "You hunt us down and kill us," she forced herself to
remember, "You
forced the law abiding shellans to flee." Her passion was being
shaved by a razor, and then she realized that her heart belonged to
someone
else; someone who did not belong to this time. Indeed, if nothing
else, she did realize who she belonged to now.
79. Kor
gazed upon her sympathetically; his compassion was genuine. Even
El Sha never saw this side of him -- Ireana would be the only shellan
that he respected as much as her.
80.
He came to his senses and released them both from this trance-like
overindulgence,
"The whole Universe may be a woman," he admitted, "but not today, and
not now."
81. For a
fleeting moment, he found himself wanting to be…’Human’…
a word he gleaned from her thoughts; describing the indiginous at
919. Especially one Human in particular...
|
