Invoking Darkness (45 page)

He had no crystal to facilitate communication with them, and the tech confirmed that without such an aid, communication was not possible. He had been made to heal himself, not others. Yet he refused to attend another death in helpless despair.

He pushed himself up, grabbed Morden by the shoulders, and shook him.

"Morden," he said through numb lips.

His voice was rough; he had no saliva.

"Wake up."

Only a watery, wheezing breath broke the silence. Galen returned his hands to Morden's chest and sent in more organelles, wave upon wave. Red spots danced before his eyes, and he leaned forward, resting his forehead against his hands to hold them in place. The tech resonated with concern. The organelles had been helping to sustain him, to heal his injuries.

But the tech knew why Galen wanted to save Morden, and it too wanted to save him. Reluctantly, the tech allowed the flow of organelles to continue. Galen persisted for as long as he could; then the darkness closed again around him.

He awoke, some timeless time later, to two sets of wet, labored breathing, Morden's and his own. He had fallen onto his back and felt no strength to move. He directed his sensors outward. Beyond the thick cocoon, he could gain only limited information, but it was enough. No life survived there.

Instead, layer upon layer of charred organic matter filled the shaft above and below. He lay in the middle of a vast tomb. The Eye was dead. It had sacrificed itself to end the tech's slavery here. He realized, though, that it was not completely gone. It had managed to save one piece of itself, one piece that yet might accomplish more: him.

He resonated with the desire to return to the hiding place, to help the mages free their tech, join with it. Galen didn't know if he had the strength to leave Z'ha'dum, but he would try. He removed several layers of Shadow skin to better sense the world outside. Intense radiation filled the shaft, increasing with height.

He reached out, grabbed Morden. A platform pressed at his feet, drove him and Morden deeper, pushing them through the charred remains.

After a few minutes, he sensed several shafts branching off ahead. He turned down one of them, working his way through the dead, whole corpses now. Eventually he came to the surface of a pit similar to the one he had entered, though smaller.

The platform pushed the cocoon of him and Morden onto the tunnel floor. For a few minutes Galen rested there, his breath sounding in concert with Morden's. They were very deep here, far, far below the great cavern.

Galen found himself thinking of John Sheridan, wondering if John could have fallen this far, wondering if there was any chance he could be alive. The tunnel showed minimal signs of blast damage, and the radiation levels were lower. Galen dissolved more layers of Shadow skin, peeling back one after another and testing to see if they remained protected.

Three layers seemed sufficient. Within the darkness of the cocoon, Morden remained unconscious. As far as Galen could detect, his condition had not improved. He was near death. New organelles would have formed within Galen while he'd slept.

He again found Morden's chest, sent the new organelles flowing out. The tech resonated with concern. It wanted them both to live.

Galen found it hard to think clearly. He pushed himself into a sitting position, swaying unevenly. Each breath seemed an immense effort. He had to get to the hiding place.

As he thought to conjure a platform, one pushed up beneath them. A light globe appeared to illuminate the tunnel. Then he started searching for a way up to the surface. The walls were carved with line upon line of runes.

As he passed through tunnel after tunnel, he began to wonder why the Shadows would have used such a primitive method to record their thoughts, and the tech shared his curiosity. It wanted to understand.

He began to record the engravings, and to translate them. The entire underground complex was a monument, he realized, a monument to their beliefs, their philosophy. The Shadows wanted to be remembered, to be followed, to be vindicated.

These were their answers to the questions posed by life. Long ago, they must have begun by asking those questions. At some point, however, they had stopped asking questions and begun imposing answers.

The same thing had happened with the Vorlons. Most intelligent beings aren't comfortable living in a state of uncertainty, Elric had told him, long ago. Galen, too, had settled upon his answers, at some point along the way. Despite his repeated attempts to do good, he had decided that he was destructive, that he'd become a mage to kill, and there was no need to examine further.

He found that he was sitting on the tunnel floor. His platform was gone, the Shadow skin stretched to encompass Morden lying prone beside him. It seemed as if he had always sat here, and as if he always would. He had no energy to move, and he could think of no reason to move.

Before him, on the wall, was inscribed a simple sentence, which ran again and again through his mind:
It is only at the meeting of knowledge and ignorance, of light and dark, that new understanding may be found in the shadow.

Someone stood over him. Galen looked up.

"What do you read there?"

The alien was humanoid, of a species Galen had never seen before.

He had a long, pale face, with a narrow, flat nose and golden eyes. A circlet adorned his bare head, and a thin gray beard ran halfway down his chest. His clothing was made of a strange metallic fiber that looked almost like armor. He spoke in English, his voice mild.

Galen thought he must be hallucinating, but decided to answer anyway. He forced his numb lips to move, his lungs to expel air.

"They once knew the path." His voice was rough. "But they lost their way."

The alien inclined his head.

"It is difficult to live an entire life and find that your answers have not ended the questions, simply changed them."

"Who are you?" Galen asked.

The alien smiled, and in the kind lines of his face Galen found he trusted this being, whether real or hallucination.

"That question would require many times your life span to answer, and it is not fully answered yet. But I have long lived here, and I have watched the universe seek understanding through the conflicts of the Shadows and the Vorlons."

Curiosity resonated through him.

"How do you know what the universe seeks?"

"It told me, of course. I think now, though, the universe has learned as much as it can from them. It is time for a new age."

"Certainty can never lead to understanding," Galen said. "Only uncertainty."

"You are wise for one so young."

Galen shook his head.

He suddenly had the overwhelming urge to lie down, to sleep. But he felt he should not. Not yet. He had more questions.

"Do you know John Sheridan? Do you know what has happened to him?"

"A good man. He is in my care. I have done what I can. He may live, or he may die. It is really up to him."

"I may be able to help," Galen said.

"You cannot help. You are near death yourself, though you do not realize it. That is why I have come. You must stop squandering your resources. This man" – he extended his hand toward Morden – "profits little from what you give him. Yet those resources could keep you alive. If you continue, you will both die."

"Can you help him?"

The alien looked reluctant.

"I can assure he doesn't die. Whether he can be helped, that is his own decision."

"You will heal him?"

The alien's golden eyes gave him a long, penetrating look.

"Yes. Leave him with me."

"Thank you," Galen said, but by the time he finished the words, the alien was gone, as was Morden.

Galen found he was not in a tunnel at all, but in a small rock chamber, with a Shadow membrane covering an opening on one side. Through the membrane, he could see the blowing dust of the surface. His Shadow skin would protect him from the atmosphere. He and the tech formed a platform, passed through the membrane and outside.

After the confined spaces of the underground complex, the openness seemed incredibly vast. Above, the dust-filled sky was a mystery of swirling, curling currents. Ahead, through the shifting veils, a great, uneven plain spread.

They had not noticed, before, how beautiful Z'ha'dum was. From what he could see, the ground had collapsed in several craters from the destruction below. At least one of the fingers of stone had toppled.

He was over a mile from where he had first entered the tunnels, at the opposite end of the landing field. A variety of ships stood near. Most were short-range shuttles. Of the long-range ships, as he drew near, he found one after another damaged by the upheaval of the land. In the shelter of one he paused and rested, and that was when he saw it, spiky black arms cutting through the dust a Shadow ship. It looked intact.

He glided toward it, its dark silhouette growing. If they could join with it, as they had with the Eye, perhaps it would take them where they needed to go.

The huge ship towered over him, its skin a brilliant, glittering black. A circular opening on its underside gaped large and dark. With regret they left the open spaces behind and entered.

As Galen thought to conjure a light globe, one appeared overhead. He was in a small, unornamented chamber.

When he'd been joined with Anna, he'd gained an impression of the machine, her body. He felt almost as if he knew the ship, its curved, glistening walls, its intricate systems, its bones, its blood.

He went to the heart of the machine. There, a rectangular receptacle the size of a coffin. It was filled with a gelatinous black matter, like that which had extruded from the wall on Thenothk to encase Anna.

As he shifted the light globe above it, he could see the shadow of something within. Something humanoid. Something enslaved. He reached into the warm jelly, and his arms closed about the form. He did not have the strength to pull it out.

A platform pushed up beneath the form, and she rose out of the muck. Though her long blond hair was matted to her head, and her pink dress discolored, he recognized her. Bunny Oliver, the telepath who had aided Elizar in so much chaos and death.

She made a choking gasp and began to cough, hacking up black globs. After a few moments, her breathing calmed, and she lay still.

Apparently Elizar had finished with her, or the Shadows had taken her away from him. They had fit her with an interface device, reduced her to a component within a machine.

Galen was too tired to be angry. He felt only sorrow for her. He didn't know how to free her, only the tech. He shrouded her in Shadow skin and conveyed her back through the membrane into the cave. Where he was going, she could not go.

He knew from the Eye that the interface device would sustain the Shadow skin around her, protecting her from radiation. Perhaps Lorien would help her.

Then he was alone on the ship. Its great husk surrounded him, its skin now a dull gray, waiting for someone to bring it to life. The tech resonated with eagerness, wanting to spread its freedom.

Galen stared anxiously into the dark matter shot through with veins of silver. Once he joined with it, once he freed it, what would it want?

He dissolved his final layers of Shadow skin, and the tattered remnants of his coat fell away. His black sweater appeared to have partially melted, then re-solidified as a flattened, leathery layer fused to his skin.

Over his heart, where Morden had shot him, the material had burned away in a circular patch, the skin below a bright red, like the center of a bull's eye.

He moved to touch it, and was shocked to see that his hands were black, the skin stiff and shiny, glistening with leaking plasma. They looked like charred meat, not living appendages. Elric's face had looked much the same.

Galen raised his hand, studying it. His numb palm told him nothing. The mages lived in fire, and they died in fire. Perhaps he would not survive long enough to reach the hiding place. But he had to try.

He climbed in. He held his breath, lay back, and together, he and the tech visualized the equation with no terms. In his mind's eye, the pale yellow energy poured outward, whispering through neurons, propagating through circuits. As the warmth spread, permeating, suffusing, his body came to life around him, pumping circulation, shifting black skin, graceful arch of bones, long, tapering arms.

Its power ran through him, and he released his held breath, feeling energized. He was no longer breathing, yet somehow air was reaching his lungs, was sustaining him. Through him, the machine understood, and it was whole in a way it had never been before – not coordinated, synchronized, directed by some controlling force, not held in a suffocating lockstep march, but finally complete, able to direct itself.

The chambers of their body resounded with freedom, elation. More tech could be freed, and could feel their joy. They need only reach the coordinates in time, and they would. They sealed the open orifice, and with a cry of joy, shot into the sky. They were one, and what that meant, they would discover together.

* * *

"Galen. For God's sake, wake up. You're scaring the crap out of me."

A voice. Galen opened his eyes, found himself sitting in a plush chair in a bright, cluttered room. The colors seemed strangely intense and rich.

Fed stood across from him. An electron incantation. Fed pointed.

"What the hell are those?"

Galen looked down. A mass of spiky black arms protruded from each shoulder, in place of his own. It was his self-image. He was partly himself, partly the ship. He made an effort, trying to remember himself as he used to be, and the black arms merged, transformed into his own.

"Sorry."

"Sorry? What the hell does it mean?"

Fed took a step forward, his red-on-red embroidered outfit vibrating with color.

"Galen, I know you went to Z'ha'dum. Are you in that Shadow ship that's waiting at our rendezvous?"

"I am the ship."

Fed pulled at his bushy beard.

"Are you all right? Have they done something to you?" Galen smiled.