Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (15 page)

Sullenly, she picked up a small rock and threw it hard, sending it splashing into the lake. She knew the risk. “How are things in my universe?”

“Worsening every moment. Cole Tahn just captured Amirah Jossel. We haven’t much time. We—”

“Is Tahn going to survive?” She turned to stare up at him.

Aktariel’s mouth tightened. He smoothed the sand with the toe of his sandal. “Hard to say.”

Gracefully, he walked around to stand before her. His blond curls fluttered in the breeze, highlighting the deep tan of his perfect oval face and dark brown eyes. The wind whipped his long robe around his legs until the silken fabric crackled. She held Aktariel’s powerful gaze and all her miseries swelled to unbearable burdens. Rachel closed her eyes and braced her forehead against her knees.

A long silence ensued between them. She listened to the bleating of the goats as they greeted Yeshwah, then she turned her head to stare at the grains of sand still trickling to fill the impression left by his tall body.

“Rachel, you only torture yourself by coming here. I wish I’d never shown you this place.”

She rubbed her forehead against her knees, concentrating on the softness of her white robe while she gathered the courage to ask the question that gnawed her soul like a ravening beast. “I assume that Nathan’s been born?”

Aktariel came forward and eased down beside her. “Yes.”

Rachel’s emotions welled up with a violence that startled her. A sob caught in her throat. “
I can’t do it, Aktariel.
Do you hear me? I can’t!
She’s
my daughter.
He’s
my grandson.”

He casually smoothed his blue silk sleeve and evaded her eyes. The gesture condemned as surely as the crack of a judge’s gavel. When he looked back up, his brown eyes glimmered. “It’s up to you,” he responded gently. “You know the stakes. You know that individual lives are meaningless in the overall scheme of things.”

“Yes, but … Sybil’s been hurt so much. Can’t we just—”

“No. I wish we could. We haven’t the luxury of ending the suffering for a select few in that universe. It’s either all or nothing.”

“The thought breaks my heart.”

“Interfering with the patterns of either Sybil’s or Nathan’s destiny could kill our plans. To change what Epagael has wrought, we must move precisely, one step at a time, or all our work will have been for naught. This is a house of cards we’re building, Rachel. Any wind could knock it down for good. But I’m sorry that it has to be this way.”

He tenderly brushed the long waves of black hair that fell down Rachel’s back. She pulled away, sliding across the sand to brace her back against the cool trunk of the pomegranate tree. Aktariel dropped his hand and dug his fingers into the sand, but his eyes stayed on her—measuring, evaluating. From her new angle, his blue robe seemed almost to blend with the background of the cerulean sky.

“Aktariel, I have a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about Epagael and the Treasury of Light.”

“Epagael is the Treasury of Light.” His tanned brow furrowed. “At least, insofar as the Treasury concerns us.”

“What does that mean? Maybe they’re two sides of the same coin, different but one. Ha Notzri just told me that the mystics at Qumran—”

“Oh, I see.” He leaned back on his elbows and stared out across the lake. The herd of goats frolicked near the shore, baaing as they playfully chased each other. “That’s the other problem with you coming here. Let’s get this straight, Rachel. Yeshwah may have been one of the fathers of the Gamant people in your universe, but he’s not in this one. He knows nothing of the nature of the Void. The teachings of this time period are fascinating, I’ll grant that. The Qumran mystics, especially, have touched the rind, but they have no understanding of the true foundation of reality.”

“What do you mean, they’ve touched the rind?”

“The
reshimu,
the residue of light left in the universe when God withdrew to spawn the void of creation. Some mystics, very diligent ones, can transcend the bonds of their own ego consciousnesses and melt into the background radiation. Those rare individuals sense the patterns in the maze of chaos. But what they touch isn’t the Treasury, Rachel, it’s a filmy counterfeit.”

Rachel frowned up at the red pomegranates clinging to the branches over her head. They looked ostentatiously scarlet against the jade green leaves. “I’m not so sure anymore that you’re right,” she challenged. “Do you know I’ve wondered if perhaps you and Epagael aren’t just a strange alien species? In my jumps to alternate universes I’ve seen …”

Aktariel laughed softly. “Aliens? That’s actually not a bad way of putting it. Especially when you’re describing God. He is alien to everything in this universe.”

In a fluid move, he stretched out on his back and laced his fingers behind his head. Above, hawks glided unhindered on the warm air currents. “Let’s talk about it. After this past week, I could use a good intellectual discussion.”

Rachel studied him suspiciously. Usually when he agreed to such conversations it was because he’d been planning them all along. “In the beginning all that existed was Pure Light, correct?”

“Correct.”

“The Light withdrew a part of Itself to spawn the dark Void. But in the Void a residue of Light remained, the
reshimu
—like the perfume that continues to scent the bottle long after the contents have been emptied.”

“Pretty much. It would be better to say that
Epagael
withdrew a part of Himself. Go on.”

“Epagael shot a minute part of Himself into the Void and creation began.”

“Not exactly,” he said. His brows lowered thoughtfully. “Creation did not begin until the vessels of light burst. You remember why they burst?”

“They were tainted by the
reshimu.”

“Exactly.” He retrieved Yeshwah’s driftwood twig from the sand and gestured with it. “Without the fullness of God, the light that had been trapped in the Void soured, became a shadowy remnant of the original substance. When Epagael threw the vessels filled with Pure Light into the Void, they picked up the taint and burst forth, scattering through the Void in a massive flood.”

“And developed a consciousness of their own?”

“Oh, yes. The consciousness of this universe—because it’s denied the fullness of reality—is very different from God’s consciousness. It’s chaotic and violent. That’s why it fascinates Epagael so.”

“And we experience that chaos as suffering.”

“We do.”

“Adom told me once that for every moment the creation continued to exist, chaos sent more tendrils twining through the body of the universe like a malignancy. He said that not even entropy could kill suffering.”

Aktariel’s gaze went hollow as though he again saw Adom’s innocent face and boyish smile. Rachel dropped a finger to the sand and drew a spiral.
Circles within circles. That’s the way the fabric of the Void works.

“The culmination of entropy,” Aktariel responded, “will only clear that universe for another infusion of divine light. And because the
reshimu
will have grown even more rancid by the end of time, the fresh vessels of light will burst immediately. I fear greatly that the new beings condemned to live in such a foul universe will suffer even more terribly than we do now.”

“More?”

Aktariel inhaled a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. We must force Epagael to reabsorb all those tormented consciousnesses, so that he can actually
feel
the suffering and understand how terrible it is.”

“Does He have the compassion necessary to understand?” When she’d stood face-to-face with Him, she’d seen no signs of such merciful tendencies.

Aktariel bowed his head. “I believe that He does. And perhaps His personality will grow and change—like a child’s does when faced with the horrors of life.”

Sounds from the lake drifted up to them: an ass braying; a man cursing; laughter from the boat filled with fishermen that rocked lazily along the edge of the azure water.

“You sound as though you mean God will become someone else.”

He looked at her through eyes filled with so much sorrow that she felt wounded by that gaze. “God is God—regardless of who He is, Rachel.”

A curiously empty sensation invaded her. “You mean God’s personality is irrelevant to-to His station or … what?”

He cocked his head and gave her a bare smile. “To His essence. The essence of Pure Light stays the same, it simply tastes different.”

“Has that ever happened? Has Epagael’s personality ever metamorphosed completely?”

Aktariel blinked contemplatively. “If I answer that for you, will you answer a question for me?”

Her pulse started to throb. “What?”

“Rachel, whatever else you believe,” he said sincerely, “I’m sure you understand that I’m fighting for the salvation of trillions. You’re not sabotaging my efforts by playing God in other universes …
are you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He pursed his lips and vented a disbelieving sigh. “Don’t lie to me, Rachel. I can’t bear it. I know you’ve seen Nathan’s future and are deeply hurt by it, but you must understand—”

“I
do
understand. Don’t preach to me. You know I hate it.”

He turned away and studied the way the sunlight glinted from the lake. “Yes, forgive me. But we’re so close to the end. You don’t have to play on my side—I’ve never demanded that of you.
But I beg you, Rachel, please don’t work against me! I don’t have the time to follow you around correcting what you’ve interfered with!”

Rachel angrily got to her feet and pulled her
Mea
from beneath her robe. She lifted her hand to the beautiful crystalline skies and a black whirlwind spun out of the air, gouging a hole in the tawny hillside. The warm winds of eternity whipped the tree branches.

“Who was God before He became Epagael, Aktariel? I want to
know.”

But before he could answer, she stepped through and vanished into the darkness. The Void spun closed behind her. And she ran with all her heart.

CHAPTER 16

Carey inhaled a shallow breath. Voices echoed around the small white room, harsh and angry. The drug permeating her body magnified the doctors’ emotional tones until each alien note clashed like an out of tune piano. She shifted slightly, straining against the EM restraints to find a more comfortable position. Her right leg had gone numb. How long had she been under the probes this time? Ten hours? Fifteen? The helmet still hugged her skull, molding to her head like a cool silver burial shroud. A hollow, aching sensation filled her, as though the probes had drowned the fire in her spirit. Yet she kept fighting, diverting them. Every time they touched a dangerous memory, she quenched it by deliberately saturating her mind with so much hate and rage that the neurotransmitter environment obscured the memory.

Mundus shook wormy strands of hair away from his blue balloon face and irritably slapped a palm against his side. “I say we bring in one of her companions and use the tandem technique. What was that boy’s name? The one with the leg injuries?”

Axio gasped. “Are you sure you want
that
one? He’s dangerous! We’ve captured hundreds of the Gamants who are tearing the satellites around Palaia apart. Why not use one of them?”

Carey opened her eyes a slit and gazed at Axio, Mundus’ assistant, the anesthesiologist. He clenched three of his hands nervously. Both doctors looked overwrought, sweat shining over their blue faces. Had Slothen threatened them with punishment if they didn’t discover Cole’s whereabouts in the next few days? The intensity of their efforts certainly suggested it.

Carey’s gaze drifted over the room. They’d moved things around—part of the psychological technique to keep her disoriented. The long table with instruments now sat to her left beside a desk strewn with crystal sheets. She faced the door and the rectangular windows which framed it. Six physicians in white coats stared in, watching her through blank clinical eyes. Five were Giclasian. One was human, a roly-poly little man with white hair, a pointed beard, and ears that stuck out from his head like glued-on shells; he peered in warily, occasionally scribbling in a notebook.

“Let’s check with Doctor Creighton,” Mundus insisted.

He moved to the window and hit the communications switch. “Creighton?” Mundus called. The human looked up from his notes. “Since Lieutenant Halloway is being so recalcitrant, we were thinking it might be wise to bring one of her companions in and subject him to intensive probing to encourage the lieutenant’s cooperation. Does that suggestion meet with your approval?”

A companion? Who else had survived the Kiskanu attack?

“Yes,” Creighton noted distastefully. “The
Sargonid
should be circling Horeb right now. If Jossel can’t capture Calas, no one can. The sooner we discover the whereabouts of Tahn, the sooner we’ll all be able to return to important work. Proceed.”

Carey’s auburn brows drew down over her nose. They wanted Cole and Mikael? Why? They had nothing in common—except things in the past. Cole had been the one to pick Mikael up off Kayan just before the
Hoyer
had scorched the planet. Carey recoiled from memories of how worried and gut-sick Cole had been at the sight of the terrified little boy in the landing bay. He’d taken care of Mikael as though he were his own son. But what did they have in common now?

Mundus turned and commandingly waved a hand at Axio. “Go, retrieve the one with the leg injuries.”

“But that one’s dangerous, Mundus. He punched Technician Hio in the stomach!”

Carey smiled. Pride for the unknown comrade filled her. She and Cole had taken great pains to train every Underground soldier in the techniques of resisting mind probes. Anger served as one of the best, discomfiting Giclasian doctors and drenching the human brain in adrenaline, which hindered the progress of the probes.

Axio continued in a taut voice, “Are you sure we can’t choose the woman with the respiratory—”

“I said bring the man! Difficult subjects like Halloway usually calm down once they share their comrades’ memories.
Bring him.”

Axio bowed at the waist and left the room hurriedly. The door closed with a soft clack. Carey ground her teeth. The tandem technique involved witnessing each other’s memories? What would that accomplish that ordinary individual probing couldn’t? She fixed Mundus with a hate-filled glower. He wandered around the room, picking up instruments and slamming them down, kicking at table legs and frowning menacingly. Finally, he strode over and reached behind her chair for something she couldn’t see. He glared as he held out the
Mea
in his blue hand.

“What is this, Lieutenant?” He lowered it to swing like a hypnotic pendulum over her chin. The glow had vanished. She blinked wearily at the gray lusterless ball.

“A necklace … idiot.”

His ruby red mouth quirked contemptuously. “We’ve had it analyzed, Lieutenant. For a simple ‘necklace’ it has some curious properties. For example, the electromagnetic shells which compose the globe itself seem to spiral down into nothingness, like a vortex focusing on infinity. Were you aware of that?”

“No,” she lied. She and Jeremiel had discussed the object extensively. “What does that … mean?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know.”

Jeremiel suspected it was a rotating hole. The theory supported all the ancient stories of the Gamant zaddiks who claimed they’d traveled through the
Mea
to the throne of God.
Rotating black holes were different from other types in that the singularity at the center was not a point but a ring. Hypothetically, if you approached the ring at an oblique angle, thereby avoiding infinitely curved space-time, you could pass straight through into another universe.
Heaven, perhaps.

“Look, Lieutenant,” Mundus growled testily. “We only have a limited amount of time to gain the information we need from you. If you don’t start cooperating, you’ll simply be eliminated. Do you understand what that means?”

Carey laughed grimly. The fools. She’d already been dead once. Did they think threats of murder could frighten her?
Imbeciles. Goddamned buffoons.
She laughed harder.

The door snicked back and Carey opened one eye to see Axio push Josh Samuals into the room on an antigrav gurney. Propped up on his elbows, Samuals looked worse than she did. His blond hair stuck to his round face in wet curls. Sweat beaded across his hooked nose. Heavy bandages enveloped both of his legs. He glanced at Carey and their eyes met. He looked as frightened as a scalded cat.
Goddamn, they’ve been putting you through the wringer, too, haven’t they, Josh?

Mundus strode arrogantly across the room and lowered the probe helmet onto Samuals’ head. A brief shudder rippled through Josh’s body. He leaned back weakly against the gurney and stared at the ceiling.

From the corner of her eye, Carey glimpsed Creighton standing up. He leaned forward, studying the room pensively. His purple uniform bulged around his fat little body.

“Mundus?” Creighton called. “Switch the screens, so they can view each other’s memories.”

Axio complied, turning the luminescent three by five foot white screen near Samuals’ first, so that Carey had a clear view of it. Then he walked across the room and hit the button to turn Carey’s. She tried not to breathe while he stooped over her. Axio smelled oddly from the chemicals he dealt with, like a dead carcass putrefying beneath a searing sun.

“All right, Creighton, they’re ready,” Mundus informed.

The fat man waved a hand negligently. “Good, please stimulate the cerebellum at the same time you’re probing areas 1178 of the amygdala and 213 of the hippocampus.”

Mundus’ lavender eyes gleamed in anticipation as he strode across the room. He smiled at Carey. If she’d been able, she would have reached up and slapped that cocky smile off his face. In the harsh light of the lustreglobes, his blue skin had an ethereal silver cast.

Mundus reached out to the helmet control console. She heard two clicks. A second later, chemicals tingled in her veins and the probes began moving, biting into her brain like tiny stingers. Carey heard Josh moan softly. Images flickered to life on the screen over his head. She watched in reluctant fascination. Like a faulty hand-operated projector, the scenes moved erratically, sometimes in slow motion, other times in fast.
Good. Fight, Josh. Don’t let them get anything coherent.

When the probes stimulated her cerebellum, the three-lobed structure at the back of the human brain, Carey felt ill, motion sick. The room whirled. The doctors’ faces slid at her from the edge of her vision, hideous and bug-eyed. She gripped her chair arms to fight the rising nausea. A wealth of images tumbled through her mind: playing with her brother Tim when she was nine; hiding in the tall green grass while her parents argued in the house; practicing hand-to-hand combat aboard the
Hoyer.

Her eyelids fluttered. She saw Josh’s memories flashing on the screen. They mixed eerily with her own, twining, taking her thoughts down certain lines through association. Josh’s eyes were riveted to the screen over her head, as though caught in a strange absurdist film. Their memories seemed to lead each other along. When Josh thought of family, she did, too. When she forced her thoughts to meaningless days of lying in the sun outside of Academy, his thoughts reflected the same train. It dawned blindingly what they were doing and Carey squeezed her eyes closed, refusing to look at Josh’s screen.

“Open your eyes, Lieutenant,” Mundus ordered. “Shall I force you? You know I can. The last time the anesthesia made you sick for days. Remember?
Open your eyes.”

She didn’t respond.

A brief flurry of activity clattered around the room, metal scraping against petrolon, hushed voices raging irritably. Finally she heard Mundus whisper, “Forget her. We’ll concentrate on the other one. He’s already given us a great deal.”

A hot flood of adrenaline flushed her system. What did Mundus mean? Had Josh broken?

She felt the probes stimulating memories of Jeremiel and she made a deep-throated sound and drove her memories elsewhere …
elsewhere!
To Academy. Yes, yes, Academy and listening to boring lectures about metabolic mapping of the neuro systems of the amygdala. She concentrated on Professor Vol’s face, his thin gray hair, his mouth….

“Is that the bridge of the
Zilpah?”
Mundus asked Josh in an insidiously kind voice.

“N-no!” Samuals stuttered.

Carey jerked her eyes open, staring at the screen which portrayed the
Zilpah
so clearly. Jeremiel sat in the command chair, a serious look on his handsome face as he studied the forward monitor; he caressed his reddish-blond beard thoughtfully. Josh’s memories moved about the bridge, focusing on Carey where she sat at the nav console just in front of Jeremiel. She had her head cocked, a brow lifted.

Moran system. Two months ago. They’d been hiding amid the gas clouds, trying to get a fix….

“Mundus,” Creighton commanded from the observation room. “Freeze those scenes. What star system is that?”

Panic ravaged Carey’s brain. Was the fleet still there? “Don’t, Josh!
Don’t!
” What else had Samuals told them? He hadn’t revealed any data about the Horeb mission, had he?

Samuals moaned and thrashed on his gurney. She saw his arms flailing against the EM restraints. From her skewed perspective, they twisted like eels out of water.

“Easy, Lieutenant Samuals. Everything’s all right. We’ve already got that scene logged. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Relax, relax,” Mundus soothed, but Josh continued to thrash wildly; his voice rose to an anguished scream, and he swung aimlessly at Mundus.

“I warned you he was dangerous,” Axio hissed.

Mundus angrily flicked a hand and the anesthesiologist ran around behind Josh and hurriedly administered more drugs. In seconds, Samuals went limp, his wide blue eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

Carey stopped breathing. He looked so pale, so quiet. One of his hands twitched for a few seconds, then fell still.

“There, Lieutenant, very good. Are you feeling better?” Mundus asked.

No answer.

Mundus frowned. “Lieutenant Samuals? Are you feeling better?”

Axio’s blue face slackened at the same time that his lavender eyes went wide. “No, he can’t be … I was in a hurry to put him under, but …” He raced from behind his anesthesiology console and to the general med panel. His white coat flared behind him like the wings of a giant bat.

“Oh, it can’t be! I didn’t give him that much!”

Mundus spun, aghast, and shouted, “Get a revitalization team in here. Quickly!”

Carey stared at Josh. A serene, almost thankful expression adorned his round face—as though in the last moments, he knew something had gone wrong—and the knowledge eased his torment.

She lay quietly, watching Creighton. He angrily tapped the end of his laser pen against the window. The soft ticking sound reminded Carey of an old style clock.

Unconsciously, she used it to tally the seconds. On the count of twenty, four Giclasian technicians burst into the room. They shoved a multilegged revitalization unit in front of them. Positioning it over Josh’s limp body, their hands flew over the control console, powering it up.