To Dream in the City of Sorrows (5 page)

Sinclair’s watch chimed at him, telling him it was time to head back. For the first time since coming to Minbar, Sinclair was having a real conversation with a Minbari other than a Grey Council member, and he had to break it off, had to get back to his duties. What would Catherine say? He knew only too well.

But he was also keeping the Minbari from his work, and had no idea what the worker might suffer as a consequence.

“It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Inesval, but I had better let you get back to your work, and–“ Sinclair stopped in mid-sentence. The Minbari had a welder’s torch!

“Is it possible,” Sinclair asked slowly, “and please tell me if this violates any rules or customs I’m not aware of, but could you perhaps do a job for me?”

Inesval looked amazed.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay you for a while, but I assure you that you will be compensated.”

“Ambassador, it would be my great pleasure to be of service to you in any way I can, and I do not wish compensation.”

Sinclair bowed in delighted gratitude, then explained the job he wanted done.

Sinclair returned to the government palace to find an ashen-faced Rathenn anxiously waiting for him in his office.

“Forgive me, but it is only out of concern when I say that the Ambassador shouldn’t just walk off like that.”

“Afraid I’ll get mugged, Rathenn?”

“Mugged? I don’t understand–“

“I just took a walk,” said Sinclair, “and don’t even think of reprimanding Venak. There was nothing he could’ve done to stop me. Now it looks to me like there’s a waiting room full of people to talk to and register as visitors. That is what you want me doing, isn’t it?”

Rathenn bowed and left without another word.

When Sinclair returned to his quarters that evening, he went straight to the bedroom. A faint smell of ozone told him Inesval had been there and gone already. The Minbari had done a first-rate job. The mechanism of the bed was now permanently welded into the horizontal position.

At last, Sinclair thought, he just might get a good night’s sleep.

C
HAPTER 4

“Stay in formation! Hold the line. No one gets through, no matter what!”

“Alpha Leader! You’ve got a Minbari fighter on your tail! I’m on him.”

“No! Mitchell! Stay in formation! It might be a–“

The shadow of the massive Minbari fighter fell across Sinclair’s Starfury. “Oh my God. It’s a trap!”

“Mitchell! Break off! Break off!”

Too late. Starfury after Starfury blown to bits, exploding like miniature suns around him. Every ship of his squadron gone. Every Earth ship in his field of view destroyed.

“Not like this! Not like this! If I’m going out, I’m taking you bastards with me. Target main cruiser. Set for full-velocity ram. Afterburners on my mark ... Mark!”

Sinclair was thrown back in his seat, his craft hurtling toward a collision with the Minbari cruiser. Ten, nine, eight, seven ...

Metal fiber ropes bit into Sinclair’s wrists and legs. He was racked with almost unbearable pain. Just beyond the rim of light, he could see moving shadowy shapes, humanoid, robed. Minbari.

“Who are you?” Sinclair could barely force the words out. “Why are you doing this?”

Neroon stepped out of the shadows. “You stand accused of the death of thirty-three Minbari warriors. How do you plead? Answer the court!”

“It was your war,” Sinclair tried to shout, but again could barely croak out a whisper. “I was defending my planet. Defending the survival of Humanity. It was combat–“

“You stand accused,” Neroon thundered, “of killing our leader Dukhat. How do you plead?”

“I wasn’t even there when our two peoples met for the first time. It was a tragic misunderstanding that caused Dukhat’s death. And for that you tried to exterminate an entire species of sentient beings!”

“And was it a misunderstanding,” Neroon shouted over him, “when you conspired to assassinate the new Chosen One? How do you plead?”

“I had nothing to do with that!”

Neroon turned away. “The council will render its verdict.”

Out of the shadows stepped other Minbari. He recognized some of them. Jenimer. Rathenn. Delenn.

“Sentence him as he would be sentenced on Earth,” said a voice that Sinclair did not recognize. “Death of personality.”

Sinclair was no longer bound. He was standing in the center of the area of light. Rathenn walked over to him, held up the Triluminary. The stone at its center glowed. There was a mirror to his right. Sinclair looked into the mirror – and a Minbari stared back at him from out of the mirror.

He turned back around, intent on grabbing Rathenn and throttling him if necessary to find out what was happening. But the Minbari were gone. Every member of his squadron was standing there, looking at him accusingly. Bill Mitchell stepped forward. “Why are you doing this?”

Sinclair shot upright in his bed, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding furiously, his breathing labored. He sat there, a long time it seemed, until his heartbeat and breathing returned to normal.

Damn it, he thought. The dreams shouldn’t still shake him that much. He had been reliving the Battle of the Line in his nightmares for eleven years now. True, they had been changing in the last year, but they were still only dreams, weren’t they?

For the first ten years, the battle itself dominated the nightmares. The events following his attempt to ram the Minbari cruiser with his Starfury, the 24 hours he could not remember, appeared in his dreams only as vague but sinister flashes of light, shadow, and sound, images he could not completely recall upon waking.

Then two men had come to Babylon 5, agents perhaps of his own government, or from some independent group with connections in the government. He was never able to determine which it was. They had come to try to prove his loss of memory was a sham, and that he was in fact colluding with the Minbari. They had hooked him up to a machine that had forced memories of the missing 24 hours back into his conscious awareness; memories of the capture, torture, interrogation, and mind-wipe he had suffered at the hands of the Minbari. These memories had afterward joined his repertoire of nightmares, slowly gaining equal prominence with his dreams of the battle.

When he had been recalled from Babylon 5 to Earth and summoned to President Clark’s office, to meet with Rathenn and be offered the position of Earth’s ambassador to Minbar, Rathenn had produced a Triluminary and claimed it would restore the rest of Sinclair’s memory about those 24 hours. The tiny alien device seemed to confirm Rathenn’s claim that the Minbari surrendered even though winning the war because they had discovered some Humans possessed Minbari souls. That he, Sinclair, had a Minbari soul.

Sinclair hadn’t known what to believe. Certainly, he rejected the notion that he had a Minbari soul, or even that the Minbari could be capable of determining such a thing with any kind of machine or device. So what could he trust of the memories the Triluminary had produced? He wasn’t sure.

But since then, new versions of his nightmare had emerged out of his subconscious with a violent fury, dreams different from what he had endured before, even more intense and disorienting. Now his experiences at the Battle of the Line and while prisoner of the Minbari mixed freely with other experiences and with bizarre nightmare images, reality and nightmare logic jumbling together chaotically.

Sinclair didn’t know what time it was, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be getting any more sleep this night. He got up to get ready for another day.

“Forgive me for saying so, Ambassador, but you look rather tired. Are you not sleeping well?” Sinclair looked at Rathenn, and felt a ridiculous urge to laugh. “No. Not particularly.”

“That is unfortunate. Is there anything I can do?” This time Sinclair did laugh, clearly puzzling the Minbari. This had been the first morning Rathenn had not walked him to the government palace, but had sent his aide, instead, who had walked silently one pace behind Sinclair the entire way. Rathenn was there to greet him, however, as he walked into his offices.

“Yes, you can tell me my uplink to StellarCom has been restored. Or have I been kidnapped and just don’t know it?”

“Kidnapped?” Rathenn looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. The uplink, Rathenn. Has it been restored? Do you know?”

“I will look into it.” And the Minbari hurried off.

That wasn’t a good sign. Sinclair went to his computer and quickly confirmed the worst. He wouldn’t be contacting Earth, Babylon 5, or anyplace else, at least not this morning.

Sinclair was slowly coming to a difficult decision. Aside from acting as a glorified official greeter, what was he doing here? Wasting his time, as far as he could see.

Venak came in, bowing. “Your first appointment is here, Ambassador.”

Apparently they weren’t going to leave him any time on his own today. The second passenger ship they had been expecting, the one arriving from Earth, had finally docked during the night, and twenty-three new visitors needed to be greeted by their ambassador on Minbar. It was the first ship to arrive from Earth since Sinclair had himself arrived, and he was looking forward to finally getting some news as to how things were going on Earth. And, perhaps, someone might even know some news from Babylon 5.

“All right,” Sinclair said. “Send ‘em in.”

A young man in his twenties walked in, almost bouncing with every step, a look of pure delight on his face. He was slightly built, with a pale complexion offset by a shock of dark black hair, and radiating enthusiasm and energy. He carried a satchel over his shoulder that Sinclair suspected was the sum total of his luggage – especially as he seemed to be wearing, in a great many layers, what was probably half of the clothing he possessed. An old trick to save space when traveling that Sinclair himself had used when he spent the two years before entering the Earthforce Academy to travel, work, and “find” himself.

Sinclair got up and came from around his desk to shake hands.

“It is an honor to meet you. Ambassador,” said the young man stepping up quickly to shake hands. “You’re a genuine hero, sir, if I may say so.”

Sinclair had never gotten used to being called that, had never figured out what to say in response. He had certainly never felt like a hero. He was just a soldier doing his duty, just a man doing his best. But somehow it sounded corny to say those things, so he usually just smiled and said: “Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr...?” Sinclair motioned for the young man to sit down and then returned to behind his desk.

“Cole. William Cole. And believe me, the pleasure’s all mine. I mean, I’ve read all about you. The best fighter pilot Earthforce ever had. The first commander of Babylon 5. The first ambassador to Minbar. And I’ve never before met anyone who actually fought on the Line. I mean, my brother was in Earthforce during the war, but he didn’t fight in the Battle of the Line.”

“Is your brother still in the military, Mr. Cole?” Sinclair wanted to change the subject.

“No,” William replied. “He didn’t much like the military. Got out as soon as the Minbari turned tail and ran. No offense intended. I mean, I like the Minbari. Really interesting people. That’s why I’m here. I want to study the language, learn more about their customs, their martial arts, their history, everything!”

“So how long do you plan to be here. Mr. Cole?”

“Until they throw me out, I guess. That’s about three months, right?”

“Approximately,” said Sinclair. “Well, if you run into any difficulties while you’re here, this embassy is open to help. Before you leave, my aide will give you a packet of information that should prove useful to you. I assume you’ve already filled out all the required forms for the Minbari government?”

“A stack of them. Jeez, these people like their paperwork, don’t they?”

Sinclair laughed in assent. He liked this young man, but he wondered how some of the more stuffy Minbari would react to him.

“Tell me, how are things back on Earth? I’ve had a little trouble getting news in the last couple of weeks.”

William shrugged. “I’m not really all that up on the latest. I’ve been traveling around – spent a lot of time seeing the outer planets, then Mars, and then, of course, the Moon – saw the Apollo 11 museum, and did the whole tourist bit. I was born on a mining colony, and spent most of my life on one out-of-the-way colony or another, so I’d always wanted to see the sights of the Solar System, as the ads say. But I ended up only having about a day to spend on Earth, just long enough to catch the flight here.”

He paused and rummaged around in his satchel.

“I got Universe Today in here. It’s only a couple of days old.” He pulled the creased and tattered paper out and handed it to Sinclair. “I’ve read everything I want to. You can have it.”

“Thanks.” Sinclair took the paper and was stopped cold by the headline:

EARTHFORCE ONE EXPLOSION AN ACCIDENT. INVESTIGATION CLOSED AS EA WORLDS CONTINUE TO MOURN.

“Anything else?”

Sinclair looked up from the paper. “Oh, sorry. No, that’s it. It was good meeting you.”

The young man stood up. “Hope to see you again. Really an honor, sir. Really an honor.” And he left.

Sinclair sat back down, and began to read. The commission on the Assassination had swiftly completed its investigation and concluded beyond doubt that a faulty power core in the main engine had caused a chain reaction, resulting in the explosion of Earthforce One. Other theories, including assassination, were dismissed in one line as either “fantasies, self-serving lies, or deliberate attempts to undermine the government.” There was nothing about the evidence they had uncovered on Babylon 5.

The other main article on the front page covered President Clark’s speech before the Industrial Assembly, in which he assailed “the undue influence of alien representatives” on Earth, hinting that the unrest on Mars might be linked to such influence, and castigating Minbar for its “seeming policy of duplicity and aggression toward the interests of the Earth Alliance throughout the galaxy.”