To Dream in the City of Sorrows (31 page)

She was about to go to him, protocols be damned, then with an obvious effort, he relaxed his stance and opened his eyes. He nodded to Rathenn, who then nodded to Sakai. She sprinted forward, far more quickly than she had been drilled to move in the rehearsals, and picked up Valen’s garment.

Sinclair’s face was ashen, his expression a taut mask of controlled agony. His hands were clenched tight and he was trembling faintly. As she helped him on with the robe, she could feel that his clothes were soaked through with sweat.

“Are you all right?” She whispered to him when she had the chance, knowing it was a stupid question, but what else could she say?

“Tasted-like-molten lava,” he managed to whisper back.

Finished, Sakai stepped back, only a half-step away, determined to be right there if he collapsed. But he stayed solidly straight and motionless, his head up, his eyes looking out over the audience, somehow maintaining the noble bearing he knew was expected of him. Fortunately, there was only a little more to go.

Rathenn turned back to the assemblage. “As it was done long ago, so now we name him who will lead us. Among the Rangers let Jeffrey David Sinclair be known as Entil’Zha.”

Immediately, the Rangers down front shouted out in unison: “Entil’Zha! We live for the One. We die for the One!”

“Entil’Zha,” Rathenn continued. “He is the light in darkness. He is the bridge between worlds.”

At that, a roar of approval went up from the whole crowd. The ceremony was over. They were to leave in reverse order. Sinclair turned and walked steadily to the ramp. Sakai did not wait for him to get halfway down as she had been instructed, but went immediately to his side as he took the first step down, staying a step behind, but prepared for anything.

Neroon waited until they were well down the ramp before leaving; Rathenn followed a little more quickly than protocol required. When she was sure they were out of sight of the crowd, Sakai put a steadying hand on Sinclair’s elbow. His steps were beginning to falter, and he was now shaking visibly.

“My God,” she said as they reached the bottom of the ramp and headed for the nearby buildings where the doctors were waiting for him. “What the hell did they make you drink?”

“My own damn fault,” he whispered. “So nervous-swallowed-more than I meant to.”

Rathenn was beside them now, looking on with concern, but before he could say anything, Neroon had joined them.

“Entil’Zha,” Neroon said in a cool voice. “Feeling a little ill?”

Sakai wanted to go for him, wanted to knock the contemptuous smirk off his face, and a lot more, but she wasn’t about to let go of Sinclair, even if she thought she had a chance to do Neroon some damage, which she knew only too well she didn’t.

Her anger quickly turned to astonishment, however, when she heard Sinclair manage a weak laugh.

“A sense-of humor, Neroon?” he said hoarsely. “Didn’t think-you had one.”

Neroon halted, perhaps out of his own surprise, leaving Sakai and Rathenn, who now had Sinclair’s other arm, to hurry the new Entil’Zha into the nearest building.

Sinclair did not lose consciousness until they entered the room where the doctors were waiting. He was hurried onto a gurney and hooked up to a nightmarishlooking collection of IV tubes, electrodes, and monitoring patches. They administered what they claimed was an antidote, explaining that pumping his stomach would make matters worse, not better. After an hour, they placed him in a medical transport, and sent him home with Sakai.

They had done everything they could. All that remained now was to wait and let him recover.

For three days and three nights, a fever burned through him. Sakai stayed with him, doing what she could to calm him when he thrashed about and called out in his delirium, sleeping there at the bedside only when exhaustion forced her to. The Minbari doctors checked in regularly, assured her everything was proceeding properly, then left again.

On the morning of the fourth day, she had fallen asleep leaning forward on the bed. She was brought out of a hazy dream by the touch of a hand on her face. She opened her eyes to see Sinclair sitting up a little, smiling a little weakly, the fever broken.

“Hi,” was all he said.

“Good to have you back.” She took his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

“It’s good to be back. I took quite a ride. Some wild dreams.”

“I gathered as much,” she admitted. “You did a little talking in your sleep.”

“I imagine you heard your name a few times,” he said.

“A few times.”

“You were in almost all my dreams, sometimes just as a silent observer. Even on the Line. I spent an eternity on the Line. And on the Minbari ship. It was odd, but everywhere I saw death and destruction I kept seeing Ulkesh as well. Made him something of a demonic figure, I’m afraid. What do you think about that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“My subconscious was probably being very unfair to him.”

“Maybe. Did you see Kosh, as well?”

“Yes,” he said, as if suddenly remembering something. “It seems to me he was trying to tell me something, but I could never quite make it out.” He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “But do you know, I also dreamed a lot about Father Raffelli and his wife. I haven’t dreamed about them in years.”

Sakai knew they were the husband and wife priests who had run the high school Sinclair had attended after his father had been killed in the Dilgar War. They had been lifelong friends until their deaths several years back.

“Went back to school again, did you?”

She wondered if she shouldn’t be contacting the Minbari doctors, or maybe just letting him sleep. But though he looked tired, his color was returning as clearly was his energy. And he seemed to want to talk.

“Sometimes. I went back a couple of times to the day I first arrived there. I can still feel how angry I was at God and the Universe at large for taking my father away. My poor mother hadn’t known what else to do but send me there. There he was, this decrepit-looking old priest, and me wondering what kind of a prig he was only to have him invite me for a spin on that speedboat of his. I was sure we were both going to die the way he hurled that boat around.”

Sakai smiled. She’d of course heard all this before, but he hadn’t spoken of it in some time.

“But what I dreamt about more was when I went back to see them after the war. You remember how I was, so enraged with the Minbari that I shut out everything else in my life. I wouldn’t let myself express it, and I couldn’t let it go.”

“I remember,” she said softly.

“So here I am in these dreams, going back again and again to that retreat I took with the Raffellis after the war. Kept hearing them talk to me about forgiveness and love, urging me to learn as much as I could about the Minbari. Study their languages, read their history, examine their culture. Because, they said, through knowledge comes understanding, and through understanding comes forgiveness. And without forgiveness, they said, we lose what is best in our Humanity.”

He closed his eyes, as if suddenly running out of the little energy that had come back to him. She wondered if he had gone to sleep, when he sighed and opened his eyes again. “I also remember that at times it wasn’t the Raffellis talking, but Jenimer.” He smiled. “I have a feeling they would have liked each other.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said.

“I think I’ll sleep for a while,” he said, drifting off almost before finishing the sentence.

She left quietly to call the doctors from the other room, but she knew he was going to be fine.

C
HAPTER 27

“I AM a Ranger. We walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no one may pass. We live for the One. We die for the One.”

Sinclair felt a surge of conflicting feelings to hear Catherine Sakai’s voice among those of all the other newly initiated Rangers saying those words and making that pledge contained in the last two sentences. He was very proud of her, of course. But he had certainly never asked her to live or die for Jeff Sinclair, and he wasn’t comfortable having her do so for the Entil’Zha.

It was just Minbari tradition, he reminded himself. He no more expected her to take that pledge literally than he did the other new Rangers assembled before him in the chapel. He knew that all his Rangers would accomplish their work and do their duty to the best of their Abilities regardless of personal risk. More than that he could – and would – ask of no one.

He tried to concentrate on his feelings of delight and pride at what this group of Humans and Minbari had already accomplished, and the enthusiasm with which they were embarking on the future, Catherine among them.

Sech Turval dismissed the new Rangers and they filed out. Sinclair allowed himself one brief moment in the temple by himself – not counting Valen, of course – to collect his thoughts. Lately, these ceremonies had been raising other emotions in him. Looking into the eager faces of new Rangers waiting for him to send them off on their first missions, off Minbar and out among the stars, he found himself feeling a familiar restlessness that was getting harder and harder to push down.

Sinclair left the temple and stood by the entrance to look on as the excited Humans and Minbari congratulated each other, shaking hands, bowing, hugging – depending on who was congratulating whom – laughing, and in a few cases crying. A typical graduation. It might be the last typical thing any of them did for a long time. With Shadow activity expanding rapidly, tensions growing between Earth and Minbar, tensions growing between the Minbari military and religious castes, and the Narn-Centauri war escalating in ferocity while going ever more badly for the Narns, there was plenty for every Ranger to do.

Sinclair saw Catherine and Marcus congratulating each other, each with huge grins. Marcus had turned out to be as fine a prospective Ranger as Sinclair had hoped. Intelligent, resourceful, quick to learn, quick to admit a mistake, a holy terror with the denn‘bok, and one hell of a pilot. A Ranger didn’t necessarily have to be a good pilot, but Sinclair admittedly had a certain prejudice in this area.

Sakai finally made her way over to where Sinclair was standing. Everyone knew of their relationship, of course, but he didn’t think public displays of that kind of affection were proper for his position. So he just smiled broadly and said: “Congratulations. I’m very proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she said with an equally decorous bow of the head, but then couldn’t contain her grin. “It feels pretty good.”

They left the celebration behind and headed back to the house, walking in silence for a while.

“Well,” Sakai said at last. “It’s time to bring up the subject again. What now?”

Sinclair had been waiting for this question. “What you asked me to do three months ago. Put your talents to their fullest use to help with the work.” That sounded more formal than he’d planned. “I’m going to assign you full-time to training pilots. The other teachers and your fellow students are united in–“

Sakai laughed. “I wasn’t being very clear, was I? Although, that’s an excellent idea, Entil’Zha, and I’d be most pleased to be assigned to that duty. But actually I was talking about our postponed wedding. We both agreed it was better to wait until after graduation–“

“Oh,” Sinclair said with a grin. “That. Well, it doesn’t look like a trip to Babylon 5 is in the cards anytime soon, and I don’t think we should wait any longer. So, I guess we’ll just have to have the ceremony right here. We have an ordained minister and a Buddhist priest among our Rangers.”

“Now if the Entil’Zha can just find time in his schedule,” she said, teasing.

He nodded. “Don’t worry. He will.”

As the Rangers continued to grow in both number and responsibilities, his duties kept him busier all the time. Perhaps just a little too busy, he had slowly come to believe. If they were trying to keep him so occupied he wouldn’t have time to think about other things, it hadn’t succeeded. The work, in the broader sense of what the Rangers were trying to do, was important, of course. But the work in the more narrow sense of his day-to-day responsibilities was sometimes frustrating.

And a raw, restless dissatisfaction had been building inside him lately. He wondered if sooner or later Catherine wouldn’t feel the same thing. Lines from “Ulysses” came to mind ...

“What are you thinking about?” Sakai asked.

“I don’t know if I want to tell you,” he said with a laugh. “Tennyson ... again.”

“Which verses are rattling around in your mind today?”

“ ‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end; To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!’ “

Sakai was silent for a moment. “I know you well enough to know what that means. You’re feeling planetbound, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been on Minbar for eight months now,” he said. “I haven’t been to space in all that time. On Babylon 5, I could just get in a Starfury when I started to feel like this. I can’t do that here. I’ve been keeping my piloting skills sharp by flying the trainer craft and using the computer simulations. But it isn’t the same. All my life I’ve tried to avoid flying a desk and pushing paper. But somehow, I keep having those jobs pushed on me. Giving it a Minbari name doesn’t make it any better.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” he said as they came up to their quarters. “I shouldn’t have brought it up, not today. Everyone feels a bit restless now and again. I’ll deal with it.”

“Jeff, don’t do that–“ she started to say, but stopped abruptly after she opened the door.

Rathenn and Ulkesh were waiting for them inside.

Sinclair had not seen the Vorlon as often as he had when Jenimer was alive. Whenever he did appear, Rathenn was usually with him.

“I do apologize, Entil’Zha, for this unavoidable invasion of your privacy,” Rathenn said, “but we have a matter of the greatest urgency to discuss with you. One that must be held in the strictest of confidence and there is no more secure place to talk than here.”

Sakai started to leave. “I’ll take another walk.” Rathenn stopped her. “No. It is better for you to stay.”