As the shuttlecraft rose from the planet and the oasis dwindled bhind them, silence reigned. Chet Rickman had barely blinked when she and Mothram had introduced Adam. Apparently now that most of humanity was dead, anything was possible; so meeting the legendary father of humanity was nothing too extraordinary.
Marah studied him from the corner of her eye. Even if none of the others were impressed by Adam, SHE was. Here was a man who had witnessed the whole of human history, had probably even influenced a great deal of it. He WAS history. He'd even lived through those long years when mankind had been imprisoned with thoughts of that Relativity nonsense.
She was overwhelmed by his presence.
Shouldn't they be asking him questions? she wondered. Thousands of questions about the past. Why this silence?
Adam caught her watching him. He turned and smiled at her.
Marah quickly turned her gaze out the window, directed her attention to the relaxing vibration of the ship around her. Through the viewport, the blue of the sky became darker, thinner, finally fading to blackness speckled with a few stars. The limb of the planet hung to the right. Straight ahead drifted the Exeter. The Zeus floated in the distance, matching course and speed with the Exeter.
The sight of the Zeus cheered her somewhat. Comforting to know that the Exeter didn't harbor the last of humanity. How many others were out there, in the dark between the stars, wondering if THEY were the last?
Back on the ship, Marah touched Mothram's hand briefly as they parted. Malone noticed the discrete gesture of affection and raised his eyebrows non-commitally. Mothram shrugged his shoulders at the Science Officer, then he, Rickman and Malone headed toward the bridge.
Marah led Adam through the corridors of the ship in silence. They passed several crew members who tried covertly to cast admiring glances at Marah. They weren't very successful. Marah pointedly ignored them. Beside her, Adam chuckled. "Some things never change, not in millions of years."
Marah's face reddened as they drew near the quarters which the Vice-Captain had assigned to Adam. She keyed open the door and led him inside. The door closed behind them with a soft click.
And suddenly Marah lost control of her body.
She turned halfway around to face Adam and her muscles froze. She felt a momentary shock as she willed her muscles to move and they didn't respond. Then, to her horror, something seemed to push her consciousness aside. She watched with helpless dismay as her body completed the turn and faced Adam, responding to impulses she hadn't sent it.
"Hello, Rymyruh." She felt her lips form the words, heard the sound come from her vocal chords, but it wasn't her.
A look of momentary shock crossed Adam's face, then joy as she came forward and put her arms around his neck.
Marah mentally tried to lash out, but there was nothing to lash out against. Someone else controlled her body, but she could only stand by and watch helplessly. She'd become a passenger trapped inside her mind as someone else pulled her strings. A marionette.
She felt herself pull out of Adam's embrace and stand at a distance, watching him. "It's good to see you again," her voice said.
Adam looked at her. Horror began to replace joy on his face. "You shouldn't be doing this to her," he said. "Let her go."
Yes, Marah screamed out. Let me go!
"I apologize, but it's necessary," her voice said, apparently directed at Marah herself. "This won't take long." Her eyes refocused on Adam (Rymyruh?). "Once a month, each Enchanced must upload his/her core into our central computer. At the same time, I download a current analog of myself, my personality--for the day when you return among us, in case I'm not there to greet you, brief you. Three conditions must be satisfied for my analog to be activated: word of my death must reach the Enhanced, you must be alone with one of them, and we must be at the brink of fulfilling our destiny."
Marah listened to this, stunned. She hadn't known this analog had been downloaded into her, hadn't known her core could take control of her like this. She felt like she'd been infected with a deadly parasite. Violated in the worst imaginable way: she'd been ejected from her own body. And the person responsible, the analog that had invaded her, could only be Marina Farrakhan herself. That realization hurt the most. How could her sworn leader betray her in this hideous manner?
She numbly listened and watched as the scene played itself out.
Adam spoke. "Then you went ahead with it? The Enhanced program we idly talked about? How long ago did you start it?"
"Four hundred years ago," she replied. "Two hundred years after we first encountered the creatures we call the Banshees nowadays. There was a great war between most of our colonies, which we call the Reconstruction. It seemed the perfect time to set the program into motion."
Beyond her rage, a part of Marah wondered exactly how long Adam had been alone on his planet, that he didn't know about the Reconstruction.
"But why?" Adam asked. "I thought we'd decided not to pursue the program, that it was too dehumanizing."
"YOU decided," Marah's voice said, with a momentary trace of anger. "And then you walked away. Left me."
Adam closed his eyes. "You should have come with me."
The slight edge of anger left Marah's voice. She suspected the Marina analog wasn't capable of more than rudimentary, false emotions. "But later, as our technology advanced, I found a way that we could use the Enhanced to communicate with the Banshees." She put a hand on Adam's arm. "You never wanted to fight this war we're supposed to fight, and neither did I. But we'd never had much of a choice, until now. This whole thing has been about communication. Specifically, a lack of it. The Banshees and the Shiw'a couldn't possibly talk to each other, negotiate a peace, even if they wanted to. But humans, our universe, is an intermediary between the two. Why can't we be the actual intermediary between them? Instead of fighting the war for the Shiw'a, why not be the conduit through which they and the Banshees communicate? Perhaps if they talk to each other the coming battle will be unnecessary."
Adam looked at Marah with pity. Why does he pity me? Marah wondered.
"How can she make that possible?" Adam asked. "They've told me about the Banshees. Humans can't even function in their presence, and the Banshees seem bent on killing them."
"We believe that the Banshees manisfest themselves in our universe as some form of electromagnetic, plasmic energy. The cores of the Enhanced have been constructed to interface with this type of energy. Store it in their cores and allow an exchange of thoughts between our two species. The Banshees can communicate with us, and we can relay their messages to the Shiw'a. Perhaps, if an avenue of communication is opened between them, they'll be able to settle their differences."
Horror chilled Marah to the bone. She'd been Enhanced merely to be a recepticle for a Banshee? She remembered the one time she'd encountered a Banshee, and she remembered Duncan's encounters with them as well. She never wanted to go through THAT again.
As if reading her thoughts, the Marina analog said, "My activation has activated a program in her core which will enable her to block out pain, to nullify the effects which the Banshees have on humans. She'll be able to tolerate them."
"And how do you propose we interest the Banshees in making peace?" Adam asked. "So far all they want is to destroy us."
"Get us to J359 at once," the Marina analog said. "Once we're there, we can expose this Enhanced--" My name is Marah! Marah shouted furiously--"to the Banshees and let her explain the situation to them. They can either agree to negotiate with the Shiw'a and let us humans alone, or we can go on to fulfill our destiny and destroy them in battle. I think they'll chose to negotiate."
The Marina analog fell silent then and stepped forward to once again embrace Adam. "I've always loved you," she whispered into his ear. Then, to Marah, "I'm sorry for everything done to you. But please try to remember that it's for the good of humanity."
Marah collapsed to the deck as if her strings had been cut.
Marah stepped onto the bridge as if in a daze. Her thoughts were
chaotic, her mind a maelstrom. Everything she'd been told about her
Enhancement, everything she'd believed about the program, had been
turned upside down. The meaning in her life, the certainty, was
gone, vanished just as swiftly and surely as the presences of the
other Enhanced had vanished.
At least the analog of Marina Farrakhan had deleted itself from her core once it returned her body to her. It couldn't come back to haunt her. But now, always at the back of her mind she would be wondering what other programs that could deprive her of her will had been downloaded into her core. The once-a-month draining of her core had been a necessity, or so they said. She'd accepted that without question. But apparently one of its more sinister purposes had been kept from her. What else had been kept from her, and how much of what they told her was really true?
She numbly walked over and sat down at her seat beside the Vice-Captain, trying her best to hold back her tears, to betray no sign of her inner turmoil. Apparently she wasn't successful. Without hesitation Mothram reached out and wrapped her small hands in his. That unexpected, public gesture of affection and support from him brought the tears welling up. She leaned over to weep on his shoulder and--
He screamed.
An unstoppable shiver of ebony agony washed over her body. The alert klaxon started to sound but was quickly drowned out by an unbearable screech-whining that filled the bridge. Mothram toppled out of his chair. All across the bridge her crewmates writhed in agony. Marah herself doubled over in pain, clutching at her belly and gagging as bile flooded into her mouth.
She managed to look up and see a Banshee drifting across the bridge. It stopped by the Communications Officer, and she fought to turn her gaze away as his head imploded.
Through her agony, she remembered what the Marina analog had said. In nanoseconds she searched through her core and found what she sought. She activated the new program.
As if a switch had been thrown, the pain stopped and her stomach ceased its heaving. The haze of pain that made thought impossible receded. However, the whining screech still filled her ears. So she simply turned her ears off.
Now it was up to her to save them all.
She stood up and, ignoring the contorting bodies of her shipmates, jumped over to the helm. The course for J359 had already been laid in and put on standby. She threw the toggles on the hyperdrive. As it was cycling up to readiness, she glanced over at the Banshee.
It was working its way methodically around the bridge, slaughtering everyone in its path. The CO was a pulpy mess in his seat, and at the moment its attention was on Michael Malone.
Is it aware that I'm no longer affected by it? she wondered.
She saw movement in the monitor above the science station, which was centered on the Zeus. The Exeter's sister ship burned in space, its hull broken in three places.
No! she screamed silently.
Just then a green light flared on the panel before her, indicating the readiness of the hyperdrive. She furiously pounded the final toggle and turned to face the Banshee. As the hull of the ship shuddered upon entry into hyperspace, the ghostly being winked out of existence. Presumably it was left standing in the space which the Exeter had just vacated.
The mutilated body of Michael Malone toppled to the deck. He'd been torn in half.
Scott can be contacted at: straycow@hotmail.com
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