To Dream in the City of Sorrows (11 page)

“Ah,” said Sinclair with understanding. “That’s why you had me personally interview as many Humans as you could fit into my schedule, so I would have a leg up on who might be a likely candidate to become a Ranger and who wouldn’t.”

Rathenn nodded. “You can continue to contact all visitors here from Earth without attracting unwanted attention for as long as you continue to function as the Earth’s ambassador here. From those you select will come others, as they recruit other candidates from among those they know.”

“Then we are agreed?” Jenimer asked. “You will join the battle and lead the Rangers?”

Sinclair took a deep breath. “Under one other condition. That if you accept me as Entil’Zha, accept me as a fully Human Entil’Zha, for that is what I am, Human, no more and no less than any other Human. If you’ll agree to that, then ... yes.”

What was he getting himself into? And what was Catherine going to say about all of this?

“Our beliefs are as firm as yours,” said Jenimer, “but we can accept your terms and conduct ourselves toward you as you request. It is just as well for the present, as the subject of the transference of souls is a most sensitive one. It is best not spoken of outside these walls or the chambers of the Grey Council.”

Yes, that’s what Rathenn had said – was it only a few weeks ago? – in the meeting with President Clark in which they had persuaded Sinclair to accept the position of ambassador. Can’t tell the Minbari or Humanity about this soul business, both had said. Might upset them. Best to keep it to ourselves.

For a people who claimed they never lied, the Minbari were the masters of the art of the concealed truth.

For the first time, Jenimer stood. He walked over to Sinclair. “I understand there is a custom among your people when reaching such an agreement.”

He extended his hand to Sinclair. The unexpected gesture delighted Sinclair, and the Chosen One and the Entil’Zha-to-be shook hands.

“It is wise for the arrow to remember it does not choose the target.”

Sinclair looked sharply over at the Vorlons, whom he had momentarily forgotten about. That sounded far too much like a challenge or perhaps even a threat, and it had come from Ulkesh, Sinclair realized, judging from the slight difference in the tone of the synthesized voice, and the fact that while Kosh was looking at Ulkesh, Ulkesh was looking at Sinclair.

The Vorlon abruptly moved to depart, gliding past Sinclair, apparently deciding the meeting was concluded. He had said his little piece, and would now leave the mere non-Vorlon mortals to ponder his wise words.

Like hell, thought Sinclair. He didn’t like this Vorlon at all. He waited until Ulkesh was almost to the door, then said in a clear voice: “That depends entirely upon which arrow you choose. The wise archer remembers that.”

Ulkesh hesitated at the door for just a moment, but did not turn around, then left without another word. A moment later Kosh also left.

Officially, the meeting was over. Sinclair was told that nothing else could be done until the joint convocation of the Grey Council and the Council of Caste Elders at which Rathenn would plead the case for the reinstitution of the Rangers and the installation of Sinclair as Entil’Zha.

Delenn escorted Sinclair and Rathenn out into the hall, then asked Rathenn if he would go on ahead so that she could have a few moments to speak to Sinclair alone.

As they walked slowly through the empty halls of the great palace, Delenn began by saying good-bye.

“I have to leave for Babylon 5 immediately,” she said. “My work is still there and I cannot be away any longer.”

It struck Sinclair that the Universe had suddenly been turned upside down; now it was Delenn who had to return to Babylon 5, and he was the one that had to stay on Minbar. He felt a wave of regret wash over him that he had come so close to returning to his beloved station, only to have his sense of duty once again pull him in a different direction.

“I will not be able to attend the council meeting,” Delenn was saying, “But Rathenn will carry my vote, and will speak as I would have.”

“I’ll just be sorry not to see you there,” said Sinclair. “You’re the one friendly face I know I can count on when things start getting a little thick, as I’m sure they will. But it has been good to see you again. So tell me, how are things on the station? How is Garibaldi doing?”

“He is fine,” said Delenn. “Well enough to return to duty.” And they talked about everyone and everything that was dear to Sinclair on Babylon 5.

Delenn saw Sinclair to the portal leading out into the Minbari night and the waiting flyer, then disappeared back into the palace.

Sinclair boarded the flyer where Rathenn was waiting for him. The small craft lifted up toward the night sky.

“That was quite a contribution the Vorlons made to the meeting,” Sinclair said. He had been wondering what the Minbari made of such pronouncements.

“Yes,” said Rathenn. “I have been trying to comprehend the wisdom of their words. They speak so rarely, so when they do each word carries great weight.”

“Maybe,” said Sinclair, “but I sometimes think the Vorlons just make up nonsense to amuse themselves at our expense.”

Rathenn seemed nonplussed. “Why would the Vorlons deliberately speak nonsense, Ambassador? Please forgive me for asking, but how would that constitute amusement? Surely, that would not be proper behavior in any case.”

Sinclair grinned at the puzzled Minbari. “I thought the Minbari placed a high value on humor, Rathenn. What was the phrase Delenn told me – that all Minbari are trained in humor, delight, and laughter?”

“That is true, Ambassador,” Rathenn quickly acknowledged, “But the Vorlons are not like the Minbari, and I had always assumed they had evolved beyond such simple emotions as humor.”

“That could very well be a big part of the problem,” Sinclair said.

Rathenn clearly did not know how to respond to that.

“I suspect,” said Sinclair, “that the Minbari sense of humor and the Human sense of humor are quite different in many respects.”

Rathenn nodded, perhaps a little too vigorously. “In that we are in complete agreement, Ambassador.”

“Well, if I’m going to lead the Rangers, I guess I’m going to have to start my training in Minbari humor, delight, and laughter. Perhaps you could start by telling me the best joke you know.”

“A joke, Ambassador?”

“A joke. A humorous story.”

“Ah, you mean some humorous event from my life, or that has been related to me by someone else.”

“Well, that’s good, too,” said Sinclair, “but I was thinking more along the lines of a very short fictional anecdote with a punch line?”

“A punch line?”

Sinclair laughed again. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Rathenn bowed his head, acutely embarrassed now. “I apologize, Ambassador.”

“No, no, Rathenn. No need to apologize. It seems we both still have a lot to learn about each other. And from each other. You know, I’ve never actually thanked you for the help you have extended to me since I’ve been here.”

“It has been my great honor,” Rathenn said, clearly now more at ease. “And I will look into this notion of ‘joke’ to see if we have anything similar in Minbari culture and report to you what I find.”

Sinclair grinned again and sat back to enjoy the beautiful lights of Yedor sparkling in profusion below them.

C
HAPTER 9

Catherine Sakai did not like hyperspace travel. The crackling energy discharges and the cascades of constantly shifting, eerily colored and glowing plasma clouds were beautiful, but only in the way incandescent streams of molten rock flowing from a volcano could be said to be beautiful, or the roaring, red-orange walls of flame and showering sparks of a raging forest fire. They were all humbling displays of Nature’s unfathomable power and destructive potential, and were best appreciated in very short doses, preferably from a good distance away.

Sakai had been in hyperspace for five and a half days now, and was suffering as bad a case of hyperspace travel syndrome as she had ever endured. HST syndrome was caused by the conditions of hyperspace in which the apparent motion of a craft as a person’s eyes perceived it outside the cockpit windows was not the true motion of the craft as the craft’s instrument panels would confirm it to be. This, coupled with the constantly flickering patterns of light outside, began to play tricks on the brain, scrambling notions of up and down, forward and backward, causing nausea, vertigo, and panic attacks, including an overwhelming feeling that one was caught motionless in hyperspace and not moving at all. It was like being caught in a dream or nightmare from which one could not awaken.

Because of HST syndrome, passenger ships did not have windows in the passenger compartments, or darkened them during hyperspace travel. But a pilot could not afford the luxury of flying blind. Hyperspace travel was tricky and always potentially dangerous and a ship’s pilot or crew had to learn to live with the side effects, see past the optical illusions, and trust their instrument readings.

No, she wasn’t at all fond of hyperspace travel. Perhaps some thought that odd for a professional space pilot, but she saw no contradiction at all. Space travel she liked, traveling through the deep blackness that served as the perfect backdrop for the thick swirls of brilliantly shining stars that surrounded her ship, visiting as many of those stars as she could, one by one resolving distant points of light into suns with planets of their own.

This was all she had ever wanted to do since her earliest childhood, when her father would take her outside into the cold Alaska spring nights to show her the constellations and explain the stories behind each one, then name as many of the stars for her as he could, making each one not just a distant light, but a friend that she might actually visit someday.

How important those friends in the night sky had become to her during those first painful and confusing months after her parents’ divorce and she had moved with her mother to Hong Kong. She would sneak outside late at night, spread a blanket out in their little backyard, and lie down to watch the stars wheel by overhead and think about how they were still her friends even though they were trillions upon trillions of miles away. It made the few thousand miles that separated her from her father seem like a relatively short distance by comparison, and thus made her feel closer to him.

Once she had fallen asleep while under that canopy of stars, and her mother, panicked to find her daughter missing from her room in the predawn hours, had discovered her out there just as the horizon began to lighten. Instead of rushing outside to scold her daughter, she had fixed a pot of tea and brought it out on a tray, had sat down beside her and gently wakened her, and together they drank the tea and watched the sun come up and for the first time talked about the divorce and her father without rancor or bitterness, and remembered as many happy memories as they could. Her mother had assured her that she was not responsible for her parents breaking up, and that, although they had decided they could not live together anymore, her mother and father still loved one another in some way, so it was okay for her to still love both of them.

Years later, after her mother had died and she had gone to live with her father for a while, they sat outside one evening to look at the stars and she had told him about that morning. And as his eyes had filled with tears, he had reached out and taken her hand, and for a moment, in the glow of those same unchanging stars, it felt as if her family had been reunited.

Though her father was now also gone, any time she looked at the stars, she could feel the presence and love of both her parents, and the palpable sense of longing she had felt to someday travel among those stars.

The rude blaring of her computer’s early warning system interrupted her reverie.

“Approaching jump gate quadrant one hundred zero two, coordinates zero seven by four eight by one six in ten minutes,” intoned the ship’s computer.

“Acknowledged.”

Sakai initiated her ship’s hyperspace departure sequence and instructed her computer to establish contact with the jump gate. She began the routine exit procedures with more than usual care. She would be exiting hyperspace into normal space through one of the oldest jump gates ever found. Universal Terraform had estimated it at some six thousand years old. Though all the original jump gates had been built to last for millennia, they could be quirky and unpredictable in operation and she was poised to be the first Human ever to go through this particular one. She had seen the data from the original robot exploration vessel that had discovered this gate and the mineral-rich planet it opened on to, and while it had indicated no unusual functionings, Sakai knew from experience not to rely on that. Each jump through these ancient gates was a unique experience and nothing could prepare a pilot for it completely.

Nobody knew anything about the alien species who had built the original network of jump gates other than what the gates themselves revealed. The aliens had been highly advanced, and were extraordinary engineers. They had built the first gates maybe as early as seven thousand years before, and had apparently flourished as an interstellar civilization for some four to five thousand years after that – then vanished, leaving only their gates behind. No trace of their civilization beyond the gates had ever been found.

Some contemporary alien civilizations such as the Minbari and the Centauri had stumbled across gates at the outer edges of their own solar systems while exploring in their first early sublightspeed ships. Once having unlocked the complex codes required to activate the jump gates, they set out to explore hyperspace in an attempt to map the jump-gate network.

But hyperspace proved to be so exceedingly difficult and dangerous to navigate through that many of the early ships were destroyed. Those that did manage to survive discovered that finding their way out of hyperspace was an extremely difficult task. A uniform series of beacons was developed to help ships locate the gates within the chaotic nightmare of hyperspace. No one knew how the original aliens had navigated through their network of gates, but they didn’t seem to use homing beacons, so it became clear that finding all the original gates would be a process that might take as many millennia as the gates had been in existence, since there was no sure method for doing so other than blind luck.