The Betwixt Book One (24 page)

Chapter 13

This was the first time in my life I'd been in a situation
like this. Never before had I been placed before the proverbial
firing squad with one chance to justify my actions or die. Because
that's what this was – I could see the look in Jason's eyes, the
sheer intensity – this was a test for me . . . and
if I didn't pass . . .
well . . . .

I suddenly didn't know what to do with my hands. I kept
playing with them – touching my fingers together, running my thumbs
along my wrists, flicking the tips of my nails.

Jason looked at me for another long moment. It might as well
have been just the two of us in the room at that point, his eyes
were like a search beacon in a pitch-black night – plastering me
against the wall with nowhere to run.

‘
This is where you tell me your story,’ he prompted, ‘all of
it,’ he qualified with almost a little growl, just in case I was
under any illusion that he wasn't serious.

‘
I,’ I took a breath as I spoke, and my voice piqued like a
kazoo, ‘well . . . I don't know . . .
‘

‘
You start at the beginning,’ he answered my question before I
even had a chance to push it out. ‘You tell me where you really
came from, why you are here, and what you are.’

I flinched. No one should say 'what' like that. Not unless
they were looking at some kind of monstrosity or the unidentifiable
scum you scrape of a spaceship that's been through too many alien
clouds.

‘
But . . . ‘ my voice was so quiet I could see
him lean in to catch it, ‘you've already read my
file . . . ‘

‘
What I know about you could hardly fill a half-page of a
datapad. Your identity file was brief, to the point, didn't contain
any flags or red lights – no crimes or indiscretions. You were
clean, so all I really know about you is you're a floater waitress
who buys sophisticated weaponry and fights strange creatures with
the agility of battle mech. Forgive me if, under the current
circumstances, I demand a bit more than that.’

I flinched again, this time with the full-body jerk of someone
who has had a bucket of space-cold water thrown over them as they
slept. I couldn't help it, Jason's words were just so frozen, so
biting. In the Med ay, on the planet – he had
seemed . . . genuinely concerned about my welfare.
But now he was ripping into my like a Crag attacking his steak at
the dinner table.

He had two sides, I could see that now. One was the Commander,
and one was Jason. I was clearly talking to the Commander now, and
the Commander demanded to know everything. I wanted to believe that
Jason was still under there somewhere – that this brave, tough act
was more a ploy at extracting information, than how he really
wanted to treat me . . . .
But . . . . I still couldn't get past that look
in his eyes. Commander Jason Cole wasn't going to stop until he got
what he wanted . . . .

Okay. The beginning . . . he wanted to know
everything from the beginning.

I took a breath so shallow it didn't seem like any air reached
my lungs at all, and tried to steady enough courage to begin. ‘I
was found in an abandoned cruiser, Universal date 2573, Cycle 34. I
don't know much about the cruiser, what kind of ship it was or
where it came from. All I know is it was intercepted on a path to
the GAM HQ – Station One – but you would know what head quarters
are called,’ I gave a small pathetic laugh, ‘because you are in the
Galactic Military and all—’

‘
Just continue,’ he crossed his arms again, leaning heavily on
one hip as he stood, still in the center of the room.

‘
Oh, y-yeah. Well as soon as they found me they took me to
Earth, set me up in an orphanage—’

‘
Why was your ship on an intercept course for Station One?’ The
Commander cut in, voice far louder than mine in this small
room.

‘
I . . . don't know.’

‘
What did security scans of your ship reveal?’ he fired another
question at me.

‘
I . . . I never . . . got any
information. Just what Sister Mirabella told me—’

‘
Jason,’ Doctor Cole interrupted, ‘stop hounding her.’ Doctor
Cole was looking excited again – that same fire leaping up behind
her eyes as it had the first time that she had met me. ‘You said
your ship had been on an intercept for Station One?’

I nodded, happy to look at someone else other than the fuming
Commander.

‘
Doctor Cole,’ Jason's voice was full to the brim with warning,
‘this is my interview—’

‘
That's why we couldn't find you.’ Doctor Cole sat back in her
chair, a half-smile fattening up one cheek. ‘God knows we looked on
every planet we could – but you weren't on a planet, you were in a
god damn space ship.’

‘
Doctor Cole—’ Jason turned to his mother, arms uncrossing, but
forming far more menacing fists at his sides.

‘
But that still doesn't explain,’ Doctor Cole continued,
obviously ignoring her son, ‘where you've been for the past
thousands of years.’

I stopped, or rather, my mind ground to a halt. Thousands of
years?

I felt my mouth drop open, my lips parting open without any
conscious act of my own. ‘S-sorry?’ I stumbled over the word.
Thousands of years? What kind of game was the Doctor playing? Was
she just trying to annoy her son into blowing us all out an
airlock? Or . . . 

‘
What the hell are you talking about—’ Jason began, arms once
again crossing, but this time with a stiff readiness that looked
like he was trying to put a Crag into a headlock.

‘
Thousands of years,’ Doctor Cole looked up defiantly at her
son, ‘you may not choose to believe me, Jason, but that won't stop
me from speaking the truth. Because that's when the last of Mini's
people died. That's when she must have been born – the end of the
last Twixt war.’

I caught a look at Jason's face. His expression was two parts
pure frustration, to one part exasperation. ‘I don't need you
making up stories, Doctor Cole, I imagine Mini can do that for
herself.’

‘
Thousands of years?’ I repeated the words, voice hollow, as if
I were mindlessly repeating some phrase I did not know the meaning
of. ‘But how—’

‘
Stasis, maybe,’ Doctor Cole shrugged, ‘cryo. The Technology
would certainly have existed. And it makes sense the more I think
about it. Set you on a ship with enough evasive maneuvers built
into its programming that it will avoid suns and any damn populated
area of space – then they could be certain you would arrive at the
time you were needed. If they'd just left you on a planet, who
knows what wars could have ravaged it, what random spatial
anomalies could have befallen it – space is still, dark, and safe,
for the most part.’

I stared at Doctor Cole, with the same expression of complete
incomprehension that Jason was, except Jason's looked far more
dangerous than mine.

‘
Doctor Cole,’ he tried again, ‘stop—’

‘
No, Jason, I'm not going to stop. This is important, very
important. She needs to know where she came from, far more than you
do.’

‘
Thousands of years,’ my voice was just a little bit more
certain of itself, ‘floating in space, alone, in cryo?’

‘
Yes,’ the Doctor nodded her head very sharply, ‘the perfect
plan. A ship floating in some quiet, quiet cluster, with a program
built in telling it to avoid any signs of life, other ships, and
anomalies. Just floating as the millennia pass. Waiting till the
right time came—’

Jason let out a massive sigh, and cupped his brow in one large
hand. ‘God damn it, mother, you can't honestly be suggesting a ship
could run that long – run cryo, run an evasive navigational program
– that long. No ship would have the energy, the fuel – life support
would burn out after the first 100 years. And we're talking
thousands of years ago – you think they had effective scanner tech
then? You think they could really develop an evasive navigational
program sophisticated enough to keep a lone cruiser out of contact
of everything for that long?’

‘
Jason, we aren't talking about a race with our level of
technology. You may not believe in the People, the Twixt, or
anything else I've ever studied. But even you aren't stupid enough
to deny that there have been races in this galaxy, beyond this
galaxy, that have demonstrated far more technological
sophistication—’

‘
Okay, so you are telling me an ancient, highly sophisticated
ship took her,’ he gestured to me over his shoulder, ‘to Station
One. And Station One didn't bother to have a poke around the
advanced alien tech? Didn't bother to run tests on the kid that
just appeared on their doorstep—’

‘
I don't know, Jason,’ Doctor Cole snapped, ‘ I can't answer
what tests your GAM may or may not have preformed. You're the one
in the army – why don't you go and ask?’

Things were degenerating into another mother-son battle,
except this time with an edge. At least for me. They were
tit-for-tatting over the possibility of me having
been . . . set adrift in space for thousands of
years . . . . This was just stupid. ‘I think
Ja- I mean, the Commander, is right on this one. I think if I'd
been found on an alien ship that had been drifting in space for
thousands of years . . . I don't think the GAM would
have just let me go. I grew up normally, well, as normal as any
halfy floater, anyway. If I'd arrived on the literal doorstep of
the GAM in an advanced, unknown vessel, I don't think they would
have ever let me go.’

‘
Perhaps you had assistance in escaping, child,’ the Doctor
said, voice much quieter.

‘
And what does that mean?’ Jason virtually spat. ‘You need to
stop spinning fairy tales, Doctor Cole. Here we deal with facts and
probabilities, not the remotest fantasies that entertain your mind.
If you want to believe Mini is some prophesied child, who harkens
from a mysterious long-lost race that abandoned her in space so
that she may one-day return to fulfill some warped destiny – then
go ahead. I'm going to need a little more than your word on
that—’

‘
I do not believe this conversation will yield promising
results,’ Od spoke suddenly, causing everyone to turn his way. ‘A
demonstration, of considerable effect, I believe, will be the only
thing to convince the Commander.’

Jason cocked his head Od's way. ‘What do you have in mind?’
Jason cast his eyes in my direction.

My heart skipped several beats, my eyes widening at the
prospect of having to give the Commander a
'demonstration'.

‘
Unfortunately,’ Od shook his head sorrowfully, ‘we have
nothing at this point.’

Jason rolled his eyes, the weariness at their edges crinkling
the skin and making him look much older than his years. ‘You're
wasting my time—’

‘
The answers you seek, and those that Mini herself requires,
can only be found with the Rain Man.’

‘
The Rain Man?’ I spoke before the Commander could. My sheer
confusion at the conversation was starting to catch up with me. I
was a ball of worry and frustration, and I couldn't just sit here
any longer as people made the most fanciful claims about me. ‘Who
is he?’

‘
He's a librarian,’ the Commander's voice was softer, had lost
the interrogator's edge. It seemed far more natural too, the tone
not stressed, his mouth relaxing and forming around his words
easier.

He was such an enigma – one moment kind, the next a harsh
galactic commander. You ask him for his assistance and he'd leap to
your side – get in his way while he's protecting the needy, and
he'd likely shoot you on the spot.

I swallowed the smile that crept to my lips.

. . . . Sorry, had he just said
librarian?

Jason could obviously see the disbelief on my face, because he
put up a hand quickly. ‘We're not talking about a regular
librarian. The Rain Man travels the galaxy collecting information –
all the literary, historical, cultural, and technological works of
every race he comes across. And technically, it's them, not him.
They are a very long-lived race who make it their life's work to
collect and store the information of the galaxy.’

‘
I've never even heard of them . . .
‘

‘
You work in a diner,’ Jason's voice was to the point, ‘why
would you have?’

He had a point there. But still, a race that traveled the
galaxy collecting every book ever written? Why hadn't we just
started there on our quest to find out more about the People,
rather than heading to some random Crag moon? 'I don't get it
though . . . If this Rain Man, or Rain Men, or
whatever – if they have all this information, why didn't we just go
there first?’

Jason looked ready to laugh, his half-smile pumping up his
cheek and giving him more color than he'd had all day. ‘You're
asking me this? I'm the one supposed to be asking you why you
showed up on a private dig site at on a Crag moon.’

I turned to Od.

‘
The Rain Man is hard to find.’ Od sat forward and looked up at
the plain ceiling above us. ‘Or at least the Rain Man we are after,
anyway. Through certain channels, and at certain times, one can
make remote contact with him. But never in person. The most I have
ever received are data messages, encrypted files. The information
we would seek may be in his collection, but how to find
him . . . .’