The Light-Field (55 page)

‘I thought I had,' he replied, ‘until I saw him walking around a short while ago, looking fitter and younger than ever.' He raised his brow in question.

Zeven backed off to avoid explaining, but Khalid had drawn his own conclusions.

‘Who would have thought that you all had dual lives going on in a parallel universe?' He gave a sarcastic grin. ‘I mean, I suspected you so-called Zagriata were powerful, but … I really had
no idea
.'

‘We should just kill him,' Zeven suggested, ‘before he figures out a way to screw us again!'

‘I agree,' Jazmay stated for the record.

‘Me too,' Khalid said. ‘Clearly you believe I am useless to you, so please stop with the threats and get it over with.'

‘I'm not sure I agree,' Taren ventured to say. ‘If we kill him, what makes us any different from the Orions?'

‘That's what I said,' Ringbalin cut in, looking to Jazmay who rolled her eyes.

‘He's done the same to us!' Zeven protested. ‘He's shown no mercy —'

‘All the more reason that we should then, don't you think?' she reasoned with a questioning frown.

‘In this universe, it's known as karma,' Telmo spoke up to shed some light on the matter. ‘Which basically means, treat others as you would have them treat you, or it will come back to bite you in the arse!'

‘I'm in touch with that notion,' Khalid commented, whereupon Zeven punched him in the face.

‘Zeven!' Taren objected, as clearly her cousin didn't comprehend.

‘What?' Zeven snapped. ‘That's exactly how I'd have him treat me, if I had murdered his father.'

‘You all did murder my father,' Khalid pointed out, nursing his bleeding nose. ‘And I was extremely grateful —'

‘Shut up!' Zeven ordered and Khalid very wisely obeyed.

‘Just lock him in a meditation chamber,' Lucian decreed. ‘Our focus is needed elsewhere at present.'

Zeven reluctantly followed the order, hauling Khalid out of his chair to drag him away. He could have just as easily have placed Khalid under lock and key psychokinetically, but clearly he preferred the physical satisfaction of doing it by hand.

Taren's attention turned back to En Noah, as he appeared on the brink of collapse. ‘You should rest. As much as I wish it were not so, you are mortal and mortals need to sleep.'

‘I hate being useless.' He roused himself out of his slouched position. ‘Shoot me with your gun again —'

‘You've only just stopped shaking from the last pounding.' Taren denied the request.

‘But there is no time for me to waste
slumbering
.' Noah managed to get to his feet. ‘We need a combat strategy … yesterday,' he concluded sombrely.

‘We have the specs for the weapon we devised, but it's a hand combat weapon. We were not expecting such a large scale threat.' Taren was frustrated; this was supposed to have been a simple mission, one that she thought she was well prepared for.

‘I am going to meditate,' announced Telmo, as he strolled in the direction Zeven had taken Khalid.

‘Now, Telmo?' Taren wondered at how calm he seemed; it was as if he were simply musing the next scene of a play he was writing. ‘We're in the middle of a crisis.'

‘In the middle of a crisis is the perfect time to stop, reflect and find clarity.' The technologist stayed his course and left them all speechless and in shock — it was like mass déjà vu!

Taren found her voice first. ‘That sounds just like —'

‘
Taliesin
,' Noah gasped, having not noted the resemblance before now; he'd never seen his old mentor appear youthful before.

‘Taliesin!' Jahan was shocked away from his work a moment, for the time-hopping druid was a legend that he'd only ever seen in the recollections of others in Noah's chronicles. ‘If the Time Lord has returned —'

‘Telmo is not a Time Lord,' Zeven said, rejoining the conversation, having passed Telmo en route. ‘Taren, Jazmay and myself are the only Timekeepers on the crew.'

‘Really?' En Noah was fascinated. ‘You can move through time?'

‘Yes,' Taren replied, not wishing to raise his hopes. ‘But we can only go back to somewhere where our physical body has been.' She explained why they had not simply transported themselves back to a few days ago to warn Rhun.

‘We could just go back to before we left our universe and ensure Khalid's ship never crosses over into this one?' Zeven suggested.

‘Then we also risk making the situation worse,' Taren stated in all honesty. ‘You know it only gets harder each time you try to rework one focused point in time.'

Jazmay nodded. ‘Next time Khalid's ship might get here and we don't, then what?'

At this point everyone took a deep thoughtful breath and silence descended on the room.

 

Zeven noticed Noah quietly edging toward him. ‘Could I speak with you a moment?' the historian asked quietly, not wanting to disturb his company from their contemplation.

‘Sure.' Zeven knew he didn't have a hope of solving their quantum dilemmas, and so was happy to follow Noah into the adjoining conference room.

By the time the door closed behind them, En Noah was wavering in his stance and struggling to keep his eyes open. ‘Shoot me.'

Zeven was momentarily startled by the request, unaccustomed to carrying a weapon that made others feel better.

‘I
want
you to shoot me,' Noah repeated for clarity.

‘Not a problem.' Zeven understood his reasons. ‘But why ask me in private?'

‘Please.' Noah was going to pass out if he didn't have his request met. ‘I know your soul-mind … you throw caution to the wind as I
rarely
do. I need you to draw on some of that wild abandon right now and shoot me until I either pass out or heal.' Noah was deadly serious. ‘My mind won't stop and my body is ready to collapse. Without my immortality I am useless to you anyway.'

‘But … all your knowledge,' Zeven begged to differ.

‘Knowledge that lay in
any
incarnation of me,' he pointed out. ‘Has Brian Alexander's knowledge ceased to be because he is no longer with us? No,
you
have it.'

‘If you think Ringbalin can replace you, he can't!' Zeven scoffed. ‘He doesn't remember anything about this universe, not even the last time that
he
was here! Psychically speaking, Balin is a healer, mostly.'

‘Goddess give me strength,' Noah appealed to the heavens, frustrated, as he hobbled over to Zeven. ‘Please, the weapon is too damn big for me to shoot
myself
,' he appealed one last time. As Zeven was still hesitant, Noah grabbed the pistol from the pilot's holster and stumbled back to aim it at him.

‘
Come on,
En Noah.' Zeven was almost amused. ‘You're not going to fire on
me
.'

‘I need this to happen.' Noah held his aim.

‘That gun is set on stun,' Zeven pointed out the flaw in his plan, ‘so shooting me isn't going to get you anywhere but stuck.'

Upon being enlightened, Noah checked the side of his weapon and set it to kill. ‘That was helpful, thank you.' He took aim once more.

‘Look, we're good friends, where I come from,' Zeven explained. ‘I don't want to do anything that will put your life in danger.'

‘That's what we Chosen do!' Noah exclaimed. ‘We put
our lives
at
risk
for the greater good! We were good friends where I come from too, but that never stopped you putting my life in jeopardy …
please shoot the damn weapon
!'

 

The shots were fairly silent; it was En Noah and Zeven yelling at each other that drew Taren and Lucian into the adjoining conference room.

When the door opened, Zeven was staring at En Noah's quivering, seemingly unconscious body on the floor, weapon raised. When Zeven noted he had company, he was horrified. ‘I told him we should stop.' The pilot's weapon clattered to the floor as he made his way to En Noah's side.

Taren joined him to check the historian's vital signs. ‘He's not breathing.' She positioned her patient to attempt to resuscitate him. ‘We need Ringbalin.' She looked to Lucian to find Ringbalin had come to check out what was happening and appeared shocked by what he found.

‘You killed me?' he queried Zeven, as he approached to examine his own incarnation.

‘You threatened to kill me if I didn't!' Zeven examined the body and raised up one of Noah's still quivering hands, noting the scratches had all healed. ‘It was working.' He brought the miraculous healing to Taren's attention.

‘It might have worked … had we taken it a little
slower
,' Taren emphasised, her lecture directed at En Noah in this instance and not Zeven. ‘It takes eons of incarnating and evolving to braid twelve-strand DNA. You can't expect your body to cope with doing it in seconds!'

‘Can I have some room?' Ringbalin knelt beside the body, and everyone backed up as requested.

If the situation of trying to resurrect himself from the brink of death was in any way off-putting, Ringbalin didn't mention it. He held his hands cupped together above his patient's heart, until a ball of energy swelled between his fingers. He directed the life force
downward into Noah; if there was life left in him, the patient would normally convulse and awaken with a gasp. In this instance, however, the energy rebounded back into Ringbalin and it was he who convulsed and with a gasp, blacked out.

Noah's body finally fell still.

‘What just happened?' Zeven couldn't believe his eyes; Balin had never been injured trying to heal anyone before.

‘Not Balin.' Taren moved to check on him. ‘I can't lose them both in one day!' She wanted to burst into tears when she couldn't feel a pulse, and he wasn't breathing either. ‘Stay with me.' She sniffled back her welling tears as she re-positioned him for resuscitation.

The sound of a weapon firing in the main control centre stopped everyone's heart a moment.

‘Now what?' Taren didn't dare to look.

‘Stay focused on Balin. I'll go.' Lucian left the room.

 

In the pit, Lucian found Jazmay with her killing gun in hand and Jahan's brains blown all over the control desk.

‘What the hell has gotten into everyone?' Lucian could hardly believe he had a gun aimed at Jazmay, but his first instinct was to suspect another Orion implant. ‘Please don't tell me you've just murdered the last of the Chosen Ones? We've got two dead bodies already!'

‘Relax, Captain.' The Phemorian's calm demeanour put him at ease. ‘Jahan asked me to kill him. He hasn't physically died and until he did, he could not assume his immortal state or the greater powers that go along with that.'

‘I see.' The captain lowered his weapon. ‘I seem to remember something to that effect.

‘All the Chosen have to die a psychical death before their immortal gene kicks in.' She winked at Lucian and then glanced over at Jahan's bleeding corpse. ‘At least I hope we got that right.' She considered it seemed to be taking him a while to recover. ‘Here we go …' Jazmay
noted the droplets of blood on the desk drawing themselves together in a backward procession toward the wound in Jahan's head. ‘He's getting it together.'

When Lucian saw Jahan's body begin to wriggle and then sit upright, he had to wonder if this mini-death had any bearing on what was transpiring in the conference room and he immediately headed back in there.

Ringbalin and En Noah were floundering about on the floor and moaning — Taren and Zeven were breathing a huge sigh of relief.

‘I have a headache,' Ringbalin grumbled as Taren assisted him to sit up. ‘What happened?'

‘When you tried to help Noah, the healing force rebounded back at you,' she explained.

‘Weird.' Balin nursed his ailing head.

‘Self-defence,' Noah deduced, as he raised himself to a seated position. ‘I wasn't dead, but simply going through a spiritual metamorphosis in order to return to my immortal state. I'd already had an abundance of healing,' he motioned to Zeven's weapon, ‘so my body —'

‘— rejected the additional photons,' Taren and Balin concluded at once.

‘That's quite a talent you have,' Noah told his younger counterpart. ‘It will prove very useful where we're going.'

‘We are going somewhere?' Taren was quietly relieved by how empowered and confident En Noah sounded suddenly.

‘Whilst liberated from my body, I bumped into Taliesin, among others, and we had a rather long chat about our present woes,' he explained.

‘I remember that,' Ringbalin was stunned to note.

‘Of course you do,' Noah grinned, ‘you're me.'

‘I remember a lot of things …' Ringbalin's baffled gaze shifted to Taren and then Lucian. ‘We have all lived lives together before, many more than I could have imagined.'

‘But you weren't dead that long.' Zeven was perplexed.

‘Time outside the physical realm is non-existent,' Noah replied. ‘How do you think you manage to move through time … if not by passing through a barrier and into a realm where time and distance do not exist, and then repassing through this barrier to arrive at the desired location?'

‘The Zero Point Field,' Taren concluded in her own scientific terms, and Noah nodded.

‘It turns out you are right about reworking one point in time too much. It becomes matted and very unpredictable,' Noah told her. ‘So we need to go further back in history if we wish to rectify this disaster.'

‘But immediately prior to this disaster, we did not have physical bodies residing on Kila,' Taren clarified, even though she'd outlined this problem earlier.