End of the Circle Read online

  Aurora was not calling Dana’s name. The child spoke so infrequently that when she did, everyone stopped to listen. But even though she was mouse-quiet, one always knew when she was around.

  “Hurry, Dana!” Miriya said, joining her husband at the lift. She, too, had a few things in hand. Dana glanced around the room and quickly decided that there was nothing she needed to keep.

  Let it all come down, she thought.

  Llan and Anad, their two Haydonite advocates, were already in the tube. It was the only place planetside where everyone got to hover together, except on the city’s Arabianlike flying carpets. Dana often wondered just whose bright idea those things had been. Some planet-hopping culture hero named Haydon was credited with building the world; Dana had him figured for some kind of kidder.

  The tube field was as calm as the eye of a storm.

  “What do you think, Max,” she said excitedly, “an attack?” She rarely called him “Dad.” Somehow it didn’t feel right to her after their thirteen-year separation. Not that she didn’t love him and Miriya both; it was simply that they had changed so much.

  “I hope not, Dana,” Max told her, adjusting his glasses so that they sat where they were supposed to. “For the sake of whoever’d be foolish enough to try.”

  So gentle-voiced, Dana thought. It was a continual source of amazement, especially when she tried to picture her parents mixing it up inside the SDF-1 with knives or battle mecha. And Max—cripes! Max had been gobbling Malcontents for breakfast when Dana was a toddler!

  “Upon exiting the lift tube, you must proceed across the plaza and descend the elevators to level four,” Llan sent, as if he were giving orders all of a sudden. But only Dana seemed disturbed by the tone.

  “Level four, my ass, Llan. I think we better shuttle up to one of the trade ships. I’d rather ride this out up there—whatever this is. Wouldn’t you, Max? Miriya?” Dana noticed that Aurora was giving her one of those funny looks.

  “No, Dana,” Miriya answered. “I think it’s best that we follow Llan’s advice for the time being.”

  “Your mother is correct,” Llan sent with emphasis.

  Dana folded her arms across the sequined bib of her jumpsuit and faced off with the taller of the two Haydonites. “Yeah? Then tell us what’s going on.”

  “A slight readjustment,” Anad answered.

  “Slight?”

  “We are arrived,” Llan interrupted as the tube field opened onto the plaza.

  Things were even worse close up, Dana realized. On the far side of the plaza, the entire colonnade of a Tiresian-style commercial hall had crumbled, burying dozens of Karbarran traders and visitors under tons of debris. The ursinoid beings, who had been enjoying great prosperity among the Local Group worlds since the fall of the Regent, constituted the majority of Haydon IV’s alien population, but Dana could see quite a few injured Praxians emerging from the ruined building. Elsewhere, a couple of dazed Spherisians were wandering aimlessly through the pandemonium. The Haydonites themselves, however, were unhurt; it was as though they had known beforehand which areas to avoid.

  “Move quickly and orderly if you wish to avoid injury,” Llan sent to the Sterlings, attempting to hurry them along by hovering at their backs a yard off the plaza’s adamantine-smooth surface.

  “They need help,” Dana said, indicating a small group of Karbarrans who, heedless of the dangers overhead, were attempting to dig out their trapped companions.

  “Move!” Anad sent sharply in response.

  Max could not fail to notice the change in Anad and Llan and was about to protest, when a series of blindingly blue energy bolts tore up into the sky from the outlying sectors of the city. From somewhere deep outside Glike’s obscuring haze came scattered reports of explosive light that reached the surface like heated thunder.

  “It is an invasion!” Dana exclaimed.

  But even as she said it, she noted something inexplicable going on around her: Individual Haydonites had begun to employ some sort of energy weapon to herd the plaza’s offworlders toward the subwaylike entrances to the city’s subsurface maze of transport corridors and multilevel shelters. On closer inspection, Dana saw that the light-prods were emanating from the Haydonites’ foreheads, from the cabochon-like organs centered there, which Veidt had once called dzentile. The English term that came closest was governor, but Dana suddenly understood that those regulators could be made to serve a double-edged function.

  She took a quick head count, calculating just how many Haydonites she would have to take down to clear a path out of the plaza. Beginning with Llan, who was still hovering at her back, although he had yet to demonstrate any light-prod capability. Answering to Anad’s telepathic insistence, Max, Miriya, and Aurora were already halfway across the square.

  “Move!” Llan sent with sufficient force to make Dana’s eyes cross.

  Oh, you’re gonna get yours, she promised herself, mentally forging her spin kick. But no sooner had she commenced her turn than Max grabbed her around the shoulders and swung her off her feet. “Dana, we don’t have a chance,” he told her.

  Dana watched a nascent glow center itself above Llan’s expressionless visage. “Well, we certainly don’t now,” she said, shrugging out of Max’s restraining hold.

  Llan and Anad were more vigilant after that, making certain to keep the entire family between them for the rest of the dash across the plaza, relaxing their guard only after the Sterlings were well inside the accessway, dwarfed by several dozen Karbarrans who had been funneled in from the collapsed commercial center.

  “That was a foolish thing to do,” Max said in a lecturing tone, loud enough to be heard above the ursinoids’ unnerving growls and grumblings.

  “Maybe it was,” Dana conceded, “but I don’t like it when somebody says they’re concerned for my safety and then aims a weapon at me.”

  The incident only pointed up the differences between them. Dana had had reservations about returning to Haydon IV with her parents as early as those first few weeks in Tiresia, but it had meant so much to them that she get to know Aurora and give peace a chance. And then, when she had learned that Rem had assigned himself to the SDF-3, she saw no alternative but to give Haydon IV a try. Oh, she supposed she could have signed aboard the Ark Angel or any one of the ships of the fleet, but she saw little purpose to it.

  It had come as quite a shock to find yet another Zor-clone waiting on Tirol after she had just finished her brief go-round with one on Earth. Rem and Zor Prime were more like twins separated at birth than clones, but there were enough underlying similarities to make her feel as though she were dealing with the same person. She thought the original Zor must have been one mixed-up character, another trickster in a galaxy full of them.

  She still couldn’t explain just what it was about the slender, elfin-featured clones that drew her to them. But it seemed obvious that the attraction arose from the Zentraedi, biogenetically engineered side of her personality.

  Those thoughts were with her for the duration of the short descent to Llan’s “level four,” where, she imagined, luxuriously appointed shelters awaited them. She had even begun to feel guilty about her perhaps misguided outburst in the plaza and was about to apologize to Max, when from up ahead in the corridor—the recycled air thick with the musky smell of Karbarran fur and fear—came cries of protest in trader’s tongue.

  “You limbless mechanoids!” one Karbarran yelled. “May Haydon curse the lot of you!”

  Dana went up on tiptoe in an attempt to discern what all the commotion was about, but all she could see was the backs of massive shoulders and knob-horned heads. It was not until the group reached the terminus of the corridor, where it opened into a vast, domed chamber lit by an unseen source, that she glimpsed the reason for the Karbarrans’ distress: A police force of black-cloaked Haydonites a meter taller than the norm were using their enabled light-prods to segregate the confused crowd into planetary types, shepherding each into separate rooms similar to ones Dana
knew had been used by the Invid Regess to contain the Sisters of the Praxian diaspora.

  “Comport yourselves in a manner befitting the intelligence of your race and no harm will come to you,” the police line sent to everyone in frightening telepathic discord. “Your nutritional and medical needs will be attended to. Haydon IV will strive to make you as comfortable as possible in your containment.”

  “Imprisonment, I’d say,” said an all-too-familiar voice off to the left of the Sterling family. Dana caught sight of Exedore peeking out from behind the high-collared cloak of one of the hovering jailers.

  “Yes,” he added, folding his arms and glancing around. “I suggest that we consider ourselves under arrest.”

  As expected, their individual cells were splendidly designed affairs with all the necessary conveniences and furnishings, all the more sinister in their homeyness. Exedore and the Sterlings found themselves lodged with the four Praxians whose very size dictated that they be given the largest of the four rooms. Their section of the jail was flanked by Karbarran and Spherisian quarters but was effectively sealed off from them, with access to the central portion of the domed chamber barred by laser fence. Thoughts of escape were not only difficult to entertain but periodically discouraged by squads of the now obsequious jailers who glided through sweeps of the area.

  Dana, however, had not yet given up on the idea and sat timing the patrols while Exedore filled everyone in on the details of his own arrest.

  “One moment Veidt and I were interpreting the results of our latest calculations, and the next I was being hurried out of the data room by two of these black-cloaked fellows, with Veidt warning me to obey their every command.”

  “Our advocates acted the same way,” Max said. “Turned on us without warning.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it safe to assume they were acting at all,” Exedore cautioned. “It’s my belief that the Awareness sent a command to each and every Haydonite—a telepathic stirring, if you will, analogous to that which prompted the planet to reorient itself in space.”

  “Then we are … moving?” Miriya asked.

  Exedore nodded. “Most definitely moving.”

  “But we saw a salvo of energy bolts, Exedore,” Dana interjected. “The planet’s probably moving because it’s under attack.”

  Exedore shook his head. “There’s been no attack, although what you witnessed was certainly defensive fire. It seems that the commander of one of the Karbarran cargo ships armed his weapons array when planetary realignment commenced. The Awareness registered this and responded as programmed. I’m afraid several ships were destroyed in the process. This much I was able to learn from Veidt.”

  “Then our lives are in danger,” Miriya said, hugging Aurora to her.

  “No, child. Haydon IV is not only abandoning its orbit around this system’s primary but shedding its atmosphere as it accelerates. That’s precisely why we’ve all been brought down here.

  “For all this sudden militant posturing, they do seem to have our safety in mind. Haydon knows they require no true atmosphere for themselves, nor any need of Glike, for that matter.” The Zentraedi snorted. “A surface paradise, indeed, for that’s all that it was—a veneer, to borrow a Terran word.

  “It only confirms what I’ve been saying all along: that Haydon IV is not a planet transformed by ultratech wonders but a ship. Its very name suggests as much. Haydon IV, and yet it occupies the third place in the Briz’dziki system.” Exedore adopted a puzzled frown. “No. It has come to be known as Haydon IV because it was Haydon’s fourth.”

  “Haydon’s fourth what?” Max wanted to know.

  Exedore threw up his hands. “Any answer I give you would be pure speculation. Much as my guess as to exactly where it is that we’re headed.”

  “We’ll know when we get there, is that it?” Dana said.

  “Well put.”

  Max looked from Exedore to Dana and back again. “But what about these calculations of yours? You still think this has something to do with the SDF-3?”

  “I’m certain of it,” Exedore affirmed. “And with the Invid departure as well. A pulse of novel energy has been sent into the known universe. Our calculations prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the focus of this outpouring is the dead star we Zentraedi know as Ranaath’s.”

  Miriya sucked in her breath. “Exedore!”

  “Yes, Miriya, I’m afraid so. But there’s more: This pulse has also caused subtle but potentially dangerous quantum and gravitational shifts throughout the continuum. All standard measurements seem to have been infinitesimally affected.”

  “Meaning what?” Max said.

  “Meaning that something unprecedented has occurred, Max. It’s as though everything is suddenly drawing closer and closer together.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Eventually, Rem saw the logic of the REF’s arguments [that a Protoculture matrix was essential to ensure certain victory against the Invid Regess]—or at least he gave Lang every impression of being convinced. Just as Zor had once given sway to the Robotech Masters’ conviction that knowledge went hand in hand with power and that all real power sprang from the conquest of life itself … This tendency to submit, this plasticity, was a character flaw inherited by both clones—Rem and Zor Prime—and taken advantage of by yet new generations of masters. “Zor, the reshaped,” as Lang himself once thought to describe Rem in his notes. Who else could have enticed Protoculture from the secret places of the Flower but one of equal lability?

  Adrian Mizner, Rakes and Rogues: The True Story of the SDF-3 Mission

  Even with the knowledge they had been able to amass during the voyages of the SDFs-1 and -3 and with what little they had been able to beg, borrow, and steal from the Sentinels, the fortress’s chief astrogators still considered themselves among the Quadrant’s least experienced travelers. So while the void they had been folded into presented a novel challenge, there was no sure way of ascertaining whether this “newspace”—as it had been termed—was not just some commonplace occurrence among the more well traveled. To this end, interviews with those Sentinels aboard—Kami, Learna, Lron, Crysta, Baldan, Gnea, and others—had thus far proved unenlightening, a not entirely unexpected development given that the original crew of the starship Farrago had never been top-notch spacefarers to begin with.

  Lang nevertheless had gone about his investigation of the ship’s environment with unflagging confidence and textbook determination. The results of Jack Baker’s brief extravehicular recon were in. Exterior background temperatures and the velocity of light had been measured and found to be constant; the fortress chronometers were still functioning. Physical laws inside the ship—and within a radius of a half million kilometers from it—were in fact operating much as they should have. It was simply that the stars—indeed, space itself—had disappeared.

  The SDF-3’s reflex engines were functioning, but there was still nowhere for the fortress to go.

  “I’m inclined to favor the hyperspace hypothesis,” Lang was saying, eyes glued to an immense tabletop display screen in his office. Rem stood behind him, just off to one side, the handsome features of his pale face highlighted by the screen’s intermittent flashings. “We’ve somehow become trapped in the fold corridor itself.”

  Rem grunted noncommittally. “You’re dismissing the popular notion, then—the one circulating through the ship?”

  “What, that we’re all actually dead? I certainly am.”

  No one knew just how the rumor got started, but it seemed that the results of a survey taken of some two hundred crew-persons had revealed remarkable similarities in their fold, space lace experiences. These included feelings of tranquillity, out-of-body experience, the encountering of a presence or a deceased relative in a dark tunnel, a sudden urge to review one’s life, a warm and accepting light at the end of the tunnel, and a brief merging with that light prior to an immediate return to physicality.

  “If we were all dead,” Lang continued, “we probably
wouldn’t have returned at all.”

  “And how to prove it in any case?” Rem said, smiling. “Against what can we measure nonexistence?”

  Lang turned to regard the Tiresian, pleased that he had finally succeeded in spiriting him away from Minmei, if only for a short while. One would have thought the strangeness of the ship’s predicament alone would have been enough to pique Rem’s interest, but the Zor-clone had agreed to a conference only after Lang had made mention of the vanished Protoculture.

  Lang had reminded himself later that he should have known better; Protoculture was the only thing that ever brought Rem around. But Rem did not share Lang’s enthusiasm for Protoculture’s application to mechamorphosis or astrogation. In fact, the REF had had to coerce him into lending his brilliant talents to the creation of the facsimile matrix by painting lurid scenarios of what was bound to occur throughout the Quadrant should the Invid Regess have her way with Earth. How long, they asked him to consider, before the Queen-Mother would decide to spread her vengeful horde across the stars as her husband had done? How long before her armies would return to the Local Group for what they had been forced to surrender—Optera itself? And what of the Praxians, then, who had made that tortured world their own? And what of Tirol and Spheris and the rest, so recently liberated from the claw hold of that very race?

  Rem could be infuriating at times, but how Lang enjoyed the few discourses they had shared! How thrilling it was to converse with an intellect as powerful as his own. What they might be able to achieve together, he often thought, were it not for Rem’s preoccupation with the biotransmutational aspects of Protoculture or his inexplicable attachment to Lynn-Minmei.