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Terra's Pride United Earth ship, four days after pirate attack, System DSN9041
Life support to the Terra's Pride had been cut off by the crewmembers resisting the pirate takeover of the ship. In the one section of the ship where the loyal crew rested, Ramash dozed fitfully. He had cast his lot with the crew of the Pride, mainly on the strength of his attraction to the telepathic ship's counselor, Mareshika Jubell. But now that he had met her in person, she was irritable and stand-offish. Ramash hoped that his lovelorn fantasies wouldn't cost him his life.
After tossing and turning for an hour, he had one of his vivid dreams, what he privately termed an important dream.
Mareshika waited for him in a room full of light. She was wearing something revealing and shimmery. As he saw her, she seemed to suddenly see herself, looking down at her diaphonous negligee. She sighed exasperatedly.
/ Would you try turning those hormones down, please /
Ramash concentrated on seeing Mareshika in her officer's uniform as she had first appeared to him, and instantly she was in uniform, correct and formal.
/ That's better. Now, we have things to mindspeak about. First... I apologize for my irritability earlier. Psychic murder takes a lot out of me. Second....you have to stop thinking of me as a potential lover. Among our people, only telepaths of equal potential can relate sexually. Otherwise, the stronger telepath's mind overpowers the other's. I'm aware and flattered that you find me attractive, but you are still a child by the standards of our people. It's not your age, but your lack of telepathic control that is a problem. Relations between telepahts of unequal potential is taboo. /
In a very private corner of his mind, which Ramash visualized as being behind a lead-lined plasticrete wall, he thought: / OK, but I learn fast, and we won't be unequal for long. /
Mareshika sent, / _Very good. You are learning to shield your thoughts from me. I couldn't quite catch that last."
/Never mind/ sent Ramash. /What do we do now? Are there any pirates left alive?/_
The dream-Mareshika's eyes closed, and he saw a violet glow around her head, sending smoky tendrils snaking through the ship. / Only one live mind remains....but it is getting closer. It is that mind that feels like a starving Creet swamp dweller. It is that woman who led the pirates, the one who wants to find a hypergate. They called her just The Commander. She is not afraid of us. She is in an armored mechsuit....she sees herself as invincible. /
In his dream, the room began to shake with footfalls. Shadows trembled in the corners. A light fixture fell off the wall. Dream-Mareshika turned and pointed to an open hallway. / There she comes /
Adrenalin surged as he felt a hand grab his shoulder.
Ramash opened his eyes and saw a room of shadows. One of them was shaking his shoulder. Hair fell around the shadow's face, and a husky voice Wahila's, he realized after a moment- whispered, "She is coming here in a mechsuit. We must be ready."
/ She..../ Ramash reached out, in the now-familiar way, and felt a mind that was all raging hunger, barely contained. The thoughts ran in a circle: /I am too close to give up now. The crew will die now, except for two to help run it, and I will have it all...ship, Hypergate, and complete control...very close now/
The surviving Pride crew members were poorly armed. They had a total of three pulse rifles, taken from the pirates. With this, they had picked up various cutting tools, pipes, and pieces of scrap metal from the hydroponics bay. Ramash felt panic clutch his guts as the mechsuit, barely clearing the doorway, lurched into the room. Bullets poured from the guns attached to the thing's "hands". The laser weapon, which had just cut down the door, swung in an arc, shearing off shelves at ceiling height.
/She's not afraid of puncturing the hull/ Ramash thought despairingly. /If she does, she'll survive, in that suit...but we won't./
/Help me, lend me your strength./ In response to Mareshika's plea, Ramash visualized a stream of energy, green fire pouring from his heart, his hands, the top of his head, to Mareshika. She took it, accumulated it, and added her own searing violet streaks. While the other crew members pounded the suited Commander with small arms fire, Mareshika and Ramash attacked her mind. For Ramash, it was as if he held a coiled electric whip, which he lashed out again and again, coiling around...yes, he saw the Commander through Mareshika's perception as a vicious swamp dweller . The monster circled, lashing out with bloody claws, swiping futilely at Ramash's mental whip as it dug into its scaled flesh. It screeched, horribly, in Galactic Standard. "You can't win, it is for me!!!! How can you, how dare you, you're nothing, this was MINE.....' Ramash saw the world for moments through the Commander's eyes. It was laid out before her, infinitely beautiful, challenging, waiting for her to possess and direct it. Yet, stupid, unknowing beings continually were frustrating her, spoiling the Plan. It could not be tolerated. They had to be destroyed, wiped from the future, erased from the map of the Commander's glorious destiny....
Ramash's stomach roiled. Joining with Mareshika, they struck out a final time, wrapping their psychic coils completely around the swollen ego, suffocating it, choking it off completely....
The suit could have held out indefinitely. But the Commander's mind was undefended. The giant figure stopped, awkwardly groped hands to its helmet, rocked, swayed, hydraulics whining, as it made jerky, abortive movements into the room.
Finally, it stopped. The massive, weaponed arms paused at 45 degree angles to the armored torso. The helmet canted forward. The weaponed claws hung limply down to the floor. Magnetized feet clung to the deck, but it was evident that the thing was off balance. The mechsuit canted weirdly forward, then slowly, majestically, crashed to the floor.
Some minutes passed, while plastic dust, water, and shredded plants slowly settled to the floor. Hesitantly, the crew members crept out of their alcoves toward the prone mechsuit.
"Mareshika ---is she...dead?" asked Farus, gesturing at the prone form. Mareshika whispered with effort. "No. She clings to life, for not much longer. Ramash, you must help me again. We must find out, before she dies, what all our friends have died for, what is this Hypergate that she was seeking."
Flinching at the prospect of more contact with the Commander's mind, Ramash once again sent his flagging strength to Mareshika. Distantly, he felt her asking questions, seeking images, as the Commander's mind slowly disintegrated. He saw a holo-map, with coordinates glowing red on it. He saw a strange machine, big as a moon, floating in space, saw a ship enter its portal and wink out..
The images kept flowing, disjointed, nonseqential...a prisoner moaning incoherently after losing eyes and tongue, officer training, stars on the uniform, stars flooding by a viewport, an impossibly glowing nebula, a lover's face hovering in the dark, always the feeling of need : more power, more control....betrayal of trust, mutiny, her first command of a pirate ship....more lives under her control, building a network. Back and back, a mother's touch, a summer garden, the taste of strawberries, the smell of coffee, a plump baby's hand like a tiny starfish...my hand, mine, curling fingers...
/Ramash! Disengage! Let her mind go, now...Ramash! Let go!/
The energy link he had used recoiled back on him now, but weakened, and he felt an electric jolt as the link with the Commander was severed. Ramash's head lolled against the plastic paneling. He had no strength to move. Dimly, he could see Mareshika, crew members gently lowering her to the floor. He felt their hands on him then, let himself go, felt how good it was to rest, to let a brown tide of nothingness wash over the unclean memories of the dying Commander.
Ramash opened his eyes. The surviving crew had lit an emergency beacon, and its amber glow reminded Ramash of a campfire on Novitia. The faces were tired, haggard even, but at peace. Someone saw his small movement, and helped him sit, pressed a cup of a warm beverage into his hand, helped him drink. His vision cleared.
Mareshika looked as tired as he felt, sagging against Bannath's protective arm, and Ramash instantly felt jealous. / Oh well. He can only touch her body, not her mind/ Ramash thought smugly, behind his mental shield. Mareshika was speaking.
"The coordinates are in this system, not far away. A derelict outpost is drifting there, but nothing resembling the image in the Commander's mind. The station is very small, has no crew, yet that is the place. She has been there. She could not find a way in. It is on a deserted space station, barely bigger than a room. It has solar panels for power and life suport, yet she found no one there. She decided that she had been misled, and that, since the Pride was in the same system, that we must know where the real hypergate was. That is why she attacked us. We must repair the Terra's Pride and go to those coordinates, investigate this mystery that so many have died for."
Repairing the Pride took ten days of patching, rewiring, cleaning up the pirate's filth, jettisoning the corpses of pirates and comrades. When the ship was at last operational again, Ramash was exhausted, but gratified. Although Mareshika was as distant and unpredictable as ever, the others had accepted him as a crew member and friend. Farus had offered to sponsor him at the United Earth Space Academy for training "if we ever finish this fardling mission, that is." At last, Ramash belonged to a community, and he liked that feeling. The Pride reached the coordinates J460/ P032 twelve days after the Commander's death. It was the third hour of First Shift, and only Mareshika, Ramash, and Wahila were on the bridge.
On the viewscreen, the tiny station looked decrepit, grey, and lifeless. Wahila frowned as she scanned it.
"The mass on this thing is off the scale. It scans like a large planet. We're at the edge of its gravity well now. Counselor Mareshika: Proceed?"
Mareshika, the sole surviving senior officer of the Pride, acting as Captain, hesitated. There had been no incongruous mass readings in the Commander's dying memories. The late and unlamented Commander had simply landed, tried to explore a locked-up ghost station, and left in disgust. Still...
"Proced with caution," she ordered. Then a voice insinuated itself into her mind.
/ _At last, one comes for whom this Gate was made. Be welcome, sister. ./
/Who are you?_/ asked Mareshika.
/I am the Guardian of this Gate. I will bend a path for your ship to land without harm. Then you, and all who can hear me, may enter and choose/
/Choose?/
/All who hear me may enter and choose/
The Pride , on an elliptical orbit around the station, had begun to spiral downward faster, as the tremendous mass of the tiny station drew it in. Ramash felt his body grow heavier, pressing into the seat. Just at the point when Mareshika was about to order thrusters fired to slow the ship's motion, the gravity stopped. Just stopped. The crew, and anything not tied down, floated upward in the sudden absence of gravity.
Then, as if an immense hand had gently cupped the ship, it floated down and hovered near an entrance pod of the station. What now? Ramash wondered. The rest of the crew had straggled and air-swum up to the bridge, awakened from their sleep by the rapid changes in motion and gravity. Mareshika suddenly became aware of the crew, and haltingly explained to her bewildered colleagues, "There is a telepath on the station. He spoke to my mind, and told me that he would bend a path for the ship to land safely. He said that we could enter and choose.....what, I don't know."
Ramash said slowly, "Not all of us can enter or choose. He said, "Those who can hear me." Who else heard him?"
One by one, the crew members assembled on the bridge said "Not me", or shrugged, or shook their heads. Only Mareshika and Ramash had "heard" the telepath. "Then, Ramash, we will go and investigate. Bannath, in my absence, you have command. If we don't return in six hours, take the Pride back home. I've already made a full report in the Captain's log," said Mareshika.
With hugs and some tears all around, the crew said their goodbyes. Ramash wondered if he was doing the right thing. Once again, he was casting his lot with this irritating, irritable woman, leaving behind people who respected and liked him.
Mareshika, sensing his train of thought, reached out and squeezed his hand once. / All will be well/ she thought at him.
With that small comfort, the two of them stepped into the airlock of the ship. The station had extended a smooth wall of some unknown cream-colored substance to the airlock. As the door cycled open, Ramash turned for one last glimpse of the Pride and its crew. Then the door closed, and, with his companion, he strolled down a blank corridor to whatever adventure awaited.
The door was wood, brass-hinged, huge, incongruous against the neutral anonymity of the corridor. As they hesitated, / Enter and choose pulsed subtly in their minds. Mareshika strode boldly up and twisted the handle.
It was bigger on the inside than the outside. An immense cathedral hall, lined with arching stone pillars, intertwined like tree branches at the dim ceiling far above, astonished them. Between the pillars were more wooden doors, each one with a small brass plaque on it, and a small peephole window through the door. The hall, and the doors, stretched on for a kilometer.
Walking towards them was a tall, slender, robed figure. As the figure drew closer, Ramash realized that he couldn't tell if it was male or female. No beard, no curves. Only piercing dark eyes, loose flowing dark hair, and skin of his own bronze color. Only a warm mental greeting. / Welcome to the Hall of Choices. Are you ready to Choose?/
"Perhaps a little explanation first," demanded Mareshika aloud. Her voice echoed eerily for some moments, and Ramash wondered if people ever spoke here.
/ True. No one has spoken here in....hundreds of your years. Your late friend, the Commander... stood outside and cursed for quite a while. She never saw this hall. She could not hear my voice. She left angry./
/I bet she did,/" chuckled Ramash. Somehow, the telepath had picked the history of the battle with the Commander's pirates out of their brains. The telepath favored him with a smile for his thoughts.
"So tell me, why should we not leave ourselves? What is this "choice" that you offer?" Mareshika asked, crossing her arms and scowling.
The telepath sighed. "I will speak aloud, since you refuse me access to your mind. Perhaps you are right to be so afraid. There is an excess of delight and dangers here. Perhaps you should go. But first know what you flee."
"Your universe is not the only one. There are, in fact, an infinity of possible universes, and they all touch here, in this corridor, at this spacetime my people created to hold them here. The Commander thought this was a Hypergate, because people from the Hypergated Universe came through here centuries ago, into your world, and passed their stories on. But there are even many versions of the Hypergate universes. Each door opens to a unique world, with its own history and laws, its own galaxies and races."
The telepath's voice was deep, warm and vibrant. "They all have in common a multiplicity of dimensions, eleven to be exact, an expanding universe, and consciousness. The fifth dimension is always consciousness, and conscious choice is the gateway to each universe.
"If you know your physics, you know the theory of "strings". All matter and energy are made up of different frequencies of tiny strings vibrating at the subatomic level. When a group or body of strings is "conducted" to vibrate differently, a tiny, curled up dimension unfurls, and can expand into another world, if there is sufficient energy, passion and craving for existence to do so. "
Ramash was not following this well. Strings? Conducting? Dimensions? Mareshika, by her expression, had been concentrating, was nodding, and seemed to understand most of it. He only understood that the Hall of Choices was a gateway to other universes.
"Who are you? Why is the mass of this place so great for its size? How can it be bigger on the inside than from the outside? And what do you mean by conducting?" asked Mareshika with her usual asperity.
The telepath chuckled. "I am the Conductor. As for your other questions, we're not really all here, and what is here is more than can fit in this space."
/Whaaaat?/ Ramash's head was spinning.
"Young man, your education has been neglected. If I told you of dark matter, and that your whole universe has much more to it than can possibly exist in it, you'd be baffled. But dark matter is only matter belonging to another universe. It touches our own on the tiny, hidden dimensions, and we know of its existence, yet can't see it or touch it. But here, in this place, in this time, it is ordered so that you may see it all. The inside of the Hall exists in a dimension specially created to hold it. That dimension is infinitely too large for the tiny derelict station where your ship is waiting for you. I can't explain it more precisely yet. And as for conducting, Mareshika Jubell, you have done it yourself. You did it to kill the Commander, and Fabian. You know well the uses of directed consciousness. "
Mareshika's face was ashen, and she was trembling. Her mind suddenly was open, raw, and bleeding. / I had never used my mind to kill before. It hurt me! It fouled me. I can't forget it. I still have her memories, all of them....../
Ramash and the Conductor reached to soothe her mind, and Ramash held her while she sobbed convulsively. A part of him, which he instinctively shielded from mental view, delighted to hold her so closely, enjoying her scent and soft skin on his.
/ The memories of those you kill will remain, but they will dim with time. / the Conductor was sending to both of them now. His mental touch was soothing, infinitely peaceful. / That one you called the Commander had killed many times herself, without any remorse. When you killed her, it finally stopped, and that was a good thing. You need not hide your mind from me. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You chose well, and will choose well again.
After some minutes, Mareshika's sobbing slowed, and her mental touch was calmer. She stepped away from Ramash gently. / Thank you. So "conducting" is using mind to change matter's vibrations.
/ Yes, at the subatomic level. You choose a pattern, and you create a path of least resistance, make it more likely that the dancing particles will dance to your tune. It is very difficult to learn to do it precisely. Hence the doors. Each is a bridge from one world to the next; they will hold the patterns of your bodies and integrate them into the larger patterns of the new universe. You choose the one most appropriate for your next learning in the bodies you wear now. And I bend a path, smooth the way for your beginning steps into the new pattern. Are you ready to choose?/ Mareshika and Ramash looked at each other and shrugged. "What if we choose not to choose?" asked Ramash. The Conductor pointed back to the entrance door. There is the door you came in, and it will lead you back to your own universe. Your friends are waiting for you to choose to return. Take some time. Walk. Look through the doors, and if you feel one calling to you, let me know."
For hours, Mareshika and Ramash wandered the Hall. They looked through the peepholes of the doors, into universes where conscious beings flew or crawled, whose home stars burned red and blue. They looked into some which were almost identical to their own universe. Almost, yet entirely different. Consciousness had made choices; and the worlds were not their own.
Finally, they found one where, when they peered through the door hole, they saw an immense machine hanging among the stars. It flared with violet light, and opened like a flower. Alien ships paused, then leaped into nothingness through the portals of the machine. "A Hypergate," breathed Mareshika. "We have to go there." Ramash, too, felt a tug, a pattern that resonated to his very cells.
The Conductor was suddenly beside them. / You have chosen?/ / It has chosen us/ , thought Ramash, and knew it was true.
The Conductor nodded, and laid his hand on the door handle. Images of stars and blooming Hypergates, tattooed warriors, Terra ringed with iron, swirled around him, painting his flesh, charging his limbs with alien energies.. He vibrated like a tuning fork with the music of the Hypergate universe; then the music changed subtly, as the Conductor blended in his own harmonies. Still Conducting, he extended his hands to Ramash and Mareshika.
As Ramash took the Conductor's hand, knowledge began to flood his brain. He knew the paths between the stars; he knew the shift and manipulations of governments striving for power; he knew the rapacious instincts of a preying Pirate; and something more, something almost familiar, like family, like the touch of his own hand on his face. He touched the mind of a ....... Vell-os. The word slipped into his mind like an almost-forgotten melody.
/ I am a Vell-os. You and your companion are Mareshi, which race descended from the Vell-os of India on Old Terra millenia ago. Someone chose, and the world changed, divided, split off into different realities like branches of the World Tree. But what you feel is our racial spirit, our essential sameness at the root. There are others like you in this reality, but they are enslaved. You must learn to shield very well to keep your freedom. Come with me now./
Mareshika and Ramash found themselves in a field of shoulder high grass. A white sun beat on their shoulders, and the air was humid and salty-smelling. /(/I) Help me "bend the strings"/(/I) the Conductor asked. / Feel the life of the grass by this ocean. Now ask it to make room for your life patterns. Ramash felt his roots exploring the marshy ground, twining into dark moistness. His leaves arced up to light and warmth, then curved over with all others bent by the unceasing wind on the tide flats. He felt the pull of the tides in his blood, and the taste of ocean on his tongue. Yet still he was himself, Ramash the Mareshi, and felt Mareshika's pattern as a web of moving light beside him. Brothers, let us in, take our pattern into yours they sang, they danced.
In starlight vision, they saw the changes at the smallest levels of the Universe they were entering. The dancing string particles, without skipping a beat, altered slightly, subtly, to allow them to join their dance. Some spun faster, some slower, some exploded, some faded into entropy. Somewhere in the wheeling figures, the Conductor let go their hands, and smiling, faded back into the night sky.
Ramash's mind kept whirling, spinning, tumbling, until, overwhelmed by the dazzle of the dance, time became a word without meaning.
He felt sun on his eyelids before he opened them. He was lying on a beach. It was hot, and smelled dank and salty. He was looking over a vast ocean, with evidence of cultivation; buoys and nets crisscrossed it in a pattern Ramash almost remembered, almost remembered the music.....then it passed. He stirred, and his hand brushed Mareshika's hair. She sat up, surveying him. Her dark eyes sparkled. "We made it!" she said aloud, and squeezed his hand. Silently he responded/ We danced. . Our pattern was accepted.
"We have made the journey. But where are we now?' wondered Mareshika, shading her eyes with a sand-crusted hand.
As if in answer, an old woman hailed them from a boat. She gunned her motorboat to bring her closer to them across the shining water, then killed the engine, and paddled the rest of the way with brisk strokes. When she was about 5 meters away, she paused and regarded them with amusement, her eyes almost disappearing in a web of wrinkles. The sun was rising behind her, haloing her head and shoulders, glancing off the calm, rippling water.
"A likely pair of castaways you are. And what are you doing this fine morning on Xyon?"
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 07-09-2002).)
Many apologies for depriving you guys of the final chapter of this story, but I was on vacation this weekend and didn't get a chance to update the Chronicles. Sorry.
Also, like I said in the email, this story is awesome.
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