Day Seventeen

There was the desk, a light honey-coloured plastic with a comshape chair perversely set to keep the occupant's posture rigid, their attention fully forward on the short, silver man, his glass eyes dusty, his shirt achingly white. His words were a clatter of consonants, heavy things tumbling from a thin face with too many articulated points. The professor emeritus occasionally waved his hands at the catalog that flitted around him, projecting citations and references for the full oval lecture hall. There were no scrapings of pens, no rustle of paper, each of these students were hand-chosen impressionists of the college and absorbed his words with a linear nicety, would later compare and contrast tone recognition, share overtones of inflection to make sure each had obtained the most accurate memory of the event.
Betaine was oddly bored, did not slouch even while bored. His polished shoes made no sound as he slammed his heel against the floor and he realized he was lost in a dream, stared at his fellow students who wore, to a one, the withdrawn intensity of memory absorption. He looked down at his hands, the long, pale fingers, the shiny knuckles, the lack of freckles, moles, scars oddly worrying. They were the hands of blank moderation and so different from her hands.
"Saul, you're not listening."
Whose hands?
"I am listening, Professor Kmep," he replied, laying his hands flat against the desk, wishing he had something to fiddle with. He didn't have to focus to remember this; perfect recollection was easy for him, a natural gift. It was sorting the data afterwards that was difficult.
"You are not, or you would know this is not the recollection you believe it to be."
"It's a dream. Yes, I'm aware."
Had the professor possessed any hint of egotism or desire to chastise, Betaine wouldn't have resented him so much. Kmep was brilliance amplified through perfect awareness of his faults, obtained over several lifetimes of self-reflection and careful control, and knew, as Betaine knew, that they would have been close friends once the young man got over his obsession, his phase, with purpose. Betaine's desire to prove him, and not just him, all his sort, wrong about this "phase, this flight of fancy" was simply made stronger and more shameful by the knowledge that his teachers were right. As it was, invisible arguments cluttered the silence between them. It was as difficult for Kmep to speak to him as it was for Betaine to listen to the professor.
"You are not aware nor are you listening yet otherwise you wouldn't perpetually be stuck at the mercy of others."
"The girl?"
"What? Oh, no. She has you honestly. You should ask her to show you the suit she's wearing. She might say no, but ahhh, if she's going to get what she wants anyway, may as well get something you want in return."
The other students in the hall had vanished and Betaine couldn't pinpoint when they had disappeared. Kmep remained at his own wide, polished stone lab table, occasionally laying a silvered finger against it pointedly. There was too much going on! How did they expect him to focus?
"I'm not asking you to focus. I'm telling you to listen. That was always your problem: too talented in too many things. Your skills would crowd up clamoring for your attention any time the smallest thing needed doing. You've been drowning in brains again.
No, I'm talking about the whole Planet ordeal. I believe you have no idea what's at stake here."
Betaine opened his mouth, felt a bitter drip of panic at the back of his throat, bit his teeth together before speaking.
"No, I don't. What does it really matter if a ten thousand year old person goes missing for a few months, a year, maybe more? Perhaps when you've been living as long as her and Bala, you cling to the familiar, but no, they've spent decades not speaking to each other. I honestly believe she doesn't need finding and that I'm getting paid an obscene amount of money to soothe a stupid goddess' fears!"
He found himself standing, hands trembling in a shocking loss of control. Kmep's expression hadn't changed at all through their discussion, but now carried a trace of anger. The desks had vanished, leaving a plain, oval room.
"Perhaps it would have been better if you had merely recalled the lecture I was giving before you began imposing your inadequacies on an otherwise pristine memory. Can you remember what it was about, Saul?"
A heavy lock of hair poked his eyelid as Betaine shook his head sharply. Irritating, out of place, but his hand wouldn't move to push it away. His outburst had shocked himself.
"Motivation. You were, ehhh, discussing the individual's need for action."
"Wrong! I was talking about the individual's need to cause. There is an evolution of needs in a sentient being which is the heart of Feynermann's Theory of Purpose. Foresight only extends as far forward as experience does back, which is why the needs of youth revolve around immediate effect, immediate consequence. You suffer from this; everyone does. It's good and necessary. Immediate results from experimentation give undeniable feedback in order to rule out that which is unimportant to a sentient being's fulfillment."
"Purpose doesn't require noticeable results, you said."
Kmep nodded, his chin a guillotine edge.
"You insist upon thinking about purpose as a thing, a set of actions which produce immediate cellular fulfillment, such as when you initiate a mnemonic trance or even get up in the morning, that create self-sustained immortality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Purpose is that which needs no fulfillment, action that needs no consequence. Don't mistake it for 'what is natural' either. Billions still die across the great, glorious face of the Universe simply because their purpose may be an action alien to them."
"You just said it wasn't a set of actions and immediately contradicted yourself," said Betaine, not bothering to conceal the smugness from his voice. Even an imaginary victory meant something.
"I'm attempting to explain it to you in a way that won't take you another twenty years to process. To be honest, words will always fail when you attempt to discover what purpose is because we still don't know! Oh, we have hints, bits and pieces, but I would guess that even were Feynermann still alive today, he could not give you a solid answer himself. All we know is that it is."
Betaine shook his head again, this time tugging swiftly and savagely on the errant strand of hair, smoothing it back into place.
"You talk about something with no definition as if you want to confuse me further. What does purpose have to do with being controlled by others?"
"What it has to do with control is that you insist upon judging others by what they want to do and not what they need to do and you never, ever plan for an action that may have no foreseeable consequence."
Understanding came in a rush of blood, colouring Betaine's cheeks the shade of roses, his hand frozen still on the back of his head.
"What Planet would need..."
Kmep began walking sedately away from Betaine, his fingers clasped behind his back, nestled in the creases of his shirt, resembling pebbles in snow. His steps were small, but each one took him a dozen yards.
"No!" shouted Betaine, "if I'm so wise, what do I do about the girl?"
His ears didn't register the words even though his lips knew he had said them and Betaine felt foolish for yelling at a dream.

Day Sixteen

"You may sit if you'd like. Unfortunately, due to rectifying this minor mishap, the Captain is currently unavailable to attend you. Please accept my sincerest apology."
Her voice was clear, cutting in the dim air and Betaine shook his head. Was it just the lack of sleep making him fuzzy or were there chemicals in this room at work? He stood there dumbly, his shoulders rigid with the strain of staying upright, his neck curved forward like a whipped horse. Surely there was no reason for this. What had he seen that the Captain didn't want him to? Everything, Ober's presence, his familiarity with the Steeress, the Controller, made a clear pattern of smuggling. Weapons? Sentient beings? Noetic drugs? Obviously this Steeress, Bethany, Butterfly, whoever she was, was masquerading as an idiot to cover her involvement...
"Please take a seat, sir. We do not know yet if the engines have fully stabilized yet and the last thing we would wish is for you to risk further injury."
He'd certainly had enough of her.
"Letter of the law, then? What would it matter to your sort one way or the other?"
He watched her, the sleek, blonde hair, the soft, little hands. No. A ridge of calluses along the palm, down the side, across the fingertips. There was a scar on the ring finger of the left.
"Is there any refreshment I can bring you while you wait, sir?"
Not a scar. There was the faint glimmer of wire around the finger that threaded back up the sleeve. Betaine stared openly at it and the brittle smile Bethany wore faded slowly, leaving a heart-breaking sadness in its place.
"Can't you leave well enough alone?" she whispered, "you will cause so much trouble if you talk."
"It will cause a lot more if I don't make it back alive to my employer."
He was halfway through the sentence when he lunged towards the hand. She would think he was going for skin contact, recalling his internalist abilities, and pulled away with a fluid motion that left Betaine stumbling behind her. She stood poised for another attack, deadly purpose on her face, watched the young man right himself ever so slowly, wondered why he smiled that thin, exhausted smile.
"Do you fix all your mistakes by making more?" he asked, turning towards her, "had you left me to go back to my room, all I'd want to know is why the Controller suddenly decided I, and I'm sure there are more internals on board, had anything to do with him. Now I have to deal with your...your saccharine bullshit. Are you going to spit more lies at me about being just a Steeress, asking me politely if perhaps I'd like to choose the poison you'll kill me with? Some rejection training if you have to keep away from contact!"
Betaine pointed at her hand, trying to find the words that would get him out of here. He felt the anger rise but it was a dull thing concealed behind an increasingly cloudy haze and failed to supply any energy.
"If you think I'm going to stand here and stay a part of your idiotic smuggling scheme..."
"Accidents happen," Bethany said, "all I do is make the best of them."
"Failure isn't important," he replied, "it's how you react to failure that creates your situation!"
"Are you so determined to conceal your own mistakes that you'd keep flinging those stupid words at me?"
Betaine paused, profoundly disturbed. The pattern of her speech, the set of her slender shoulders - it was as if facing an entirely new foe, one that could read him with increasing accuracy. The Steeress spoke with an arrogance that illuminated an incredible intelligence. She'd dropped the act, but why? The second he had lunged for her, the recorders tucked discreetly around the small lounge would have all the evidence required for her to remove him. His curiosity had gotten him into a bigger mess than anything she had done and the knowledge stung, but the desire for why hammered in his chest and he slumped on to the divan.
There was a ragged silence in the room that swirled around them and Betaine looked up at Bethany, her mouth thin with the sadness he had seen before and something else, pity? in her sky-deep eyes.
"Whatever you're going to do, I don't need your pity," he said.
"I have no sympathy for those with guts, brains and freedom who waste all three."
She moved to within a meter of where he sat, looking down at the analyst who grimaced under the weight of her reprimand.
"Why are you here, Saul Betaine?"
His elbows on his thighs, through the fabric, it felt as if his bones were grating together. What gave her the right to ask these questions?
"I..."
"...don't care about who sent you or what for. Why are you here now, on my ship, in my lounge, such a brilliant young man but so goddamn dumb?"
"Lack of sleep, I think..."
Betaine's voice, thick and low, trailed off and Bethany's face spun in front of him. He almost felt the microsuede of the divan beneath his head and after a moment, didn't at all feel the small, strong grip that kept him from falling off onto the floor.

This was the dark of the death of stars. There were no markers in this stellar graveyard, no light, no cosmic wind, even the low burn of the greatest of gas giants had faded long ago. Particles smaller than comprehension waited here, spinning themselves sick in the usual way. If there was an underlying fabric to space, it was this, the frenzied bang-bang on the subatomic level that permeated everything in greater or lesser amounts but science had long done away with theories of unity. The cause and effect of these miniscule motions were too far apart to mean anything on a noticeable scale and thus, what happened here happened only here. To any observers, could there have been observers, this was a true void.
Against the omnipresent black appeared an unimpressive hairball of lesser darkness, threads of whatever it was coruscating outward, slowly filling a space no more than three feet to a side. There it stayed, fixed against the blankness and despite what anyone with a basic grasp on the principles of a vacuum had to say about the matter, began to hiss.

Day Fifteen

"You....I almost can't believe what I'm hearing. Why the hell should I want to talk to you?"
The mercenary shifted upwards in his seat, discomfort rippling across his jaw.
"Off of this ship, you're out of protection..."
"Threats won't buy you much truth."
The laugh started low in Ober's guts and roared up and out. Tears squirted out the corners of his eyes, head to his knee, his shoulders heaving so much it looked as if his shirt would split.
Betaine felt the heat build up behind his eyes, burning a path across his cheeks, biting his lips hard enough to leave a bruise.
"Will you talk some goddamned sense?!"
His voice almost imperceptibly cracked as it rose and he cursed himself for the loss of control but did this idiot soldier think he was going to openly take the ridicule? All he wanted was to sleep...
Ober looked up, blond caterpillar eyebrows raised.
"Oh you don't want sense, you want logic." The older man leaned back again, swiftly wiped at his tear-bright eyes. "You're such a weird one. What's a boy like you doing on his way to Regulskek, that's what everyone wants to know. An obvious impressionist, you're so wrapped up in yourself, but you're not an Archivist. Definitely not one of Bala's boy toys, not guarded enough to be a financier, and not careful enough to be one of her murdering priest agents those, what are they, thurghatee?"
"Are you and your friends queuing up for when we land and I'm 'defenseless'?" Betaine hated himself even as he sneered the words. This man had no discretion whatsoever, despite just being shown how his memory could be reduced to slurry. He was so at ease with Betaine's anger and discomfort, the muscles loose and ready in their freckled skin, his face open and almost friendly. His attitude was wholly one of peaceful interest.
Betaine forced a quick breath, felt the slowing of time, the rush of focus. What the mercenary said was true; Betaine hadn't realized how odd his trip would appear to outsiders. He'd be damned if he mentioned precisely what he was doing to this...external. As far as Bala's people were concerned [the Archivists were bound by a professional code of silence in regards to his research], he'd been another handsome academian that had interested the goddess enough to become one of her boon companions. No one yet knew Planet was missing, barring perhaps the Council. A cover identity had to be constructed and more fool he for not taking the time to do a proper job before he had to interact with inquisitive folk who could snap his neck with one arm.
He settled back against the divan.
"What do you offer for this information?" he asked.
Ober snorted, something Betaine realized he did when he found something funny but wasn't worth the effort of laughing at.
"So you can be bought."
"I'm bound by the court [but which one, mercenary?] to keep the particulars close, but the gist of my journey is of no huge importance. Of course, worth is in the brain of the buyer."
The mercenary's odd eyes twinkled. There was a stuffy silence in the hallway for several moments, and on the edge of hearing, Betaine caught a muffled squeaking, as if an enormous un-oiled gear was spinning lopsided. A planet powered by the frantic fearful energies of one person, he thought, stuck forever in the only place he feels safe while everyone around him relaxes and feeds on his labour. He was hit with an unexpected twitch of jealousy for the winged and wild Controller. He at least knows where he runs...
"Well damn, you have me by curiosity at the very least," said Ober, "I offer as geas my countenance for a full Standard year in any regard that's not life threatening. The Red Dragon Cell name carries weight in over 600 quadrants. You'd be pressed to find a civilized planet we haven't been on."
It was, Betaine realized, an inordinately valuable offer. Certainly Ober didn't expect him to understand the severity of the promise or the potential for abuse. Many a misplaced geas had elevated the wielder to the surface of society while drowning the giver. A verbal geas held a strange power, bound a compulsion to obey into the one who uttered it and would hold up as evidence even in a Collegiate court. What was Ober being offered that made it worth his while to put himself in such a precarious position?
"I'm a trans messenger hired by Bala in regards to a civil matter," Betaine said. Trans messengers were impressionists often hired for their singular data storage capabilities, burying the sensitive communications in layers of half-dreams, odd memories, image sequences, then purging the actual message. The shape of the information was there, but only the impressionist could link it all together. Memory specialists such as Betaine were rare enough and those willing to accept the risks of a courier of sensitive information with powerful enemies commanded high, if hushed, salaries and respect.
"Does this have anything to do with the mess the Minister's making of that caul worship?"
Betaine smiled thinly.
Ober looked peeved, tapped his foot against the armrest.
"I was hoping this wasn't going to be a legal matter. Dammit! He's an idiot if he thinks he's going to get away with destroying part of his own damn planet. Those blobs have no...no...foresight."
Even through his dazed senses, Betaine felt the wrongness before he heard it, the subtle shift of gravitational forces that sent the blood in his feet and hands tingling. Far off, a small bell sound rang twice and shouting was heard, then immediately suppressed. The orbs flickered into green, giving a sick glow to the cream-coloured corridor. Stillness, terrible stillness settled around the two men as both strained for a hint of what had occurred. Betaine, his breathing shallow and slow, glanced over at Ober, flinched to see flickers of dark brown glow weaving slowly over the embroidered lines of runes, his muscles solid, poised, unmoving.
The seconds of silence fell slowly and Betaine allowed himself a quick, deep breath when a rasping shriek dopplered towards them, followed by the light whisk of feet used to many miles of running. The Controller, straw spikes of his hair trembling, green light casting his face as a plague-ridden death's head, the wings on his arms humming and twitching sickly, tore past, running skinny gut forward as if pulled on a string. He slammed into one of the walls and stopped with a whimper then turned to stare at Betaine, a fierce anger in his eyes.
"I heard...I heard. There was something in the middle! I didn't want to go!"
Betaine pushed himself back against the divan. He was unprepared for violence, his head spinning from the random shifts in gravity, tasted bile.
Ober was standing, a dim, burnt orange glow to his fingernails.
"What're you doing out here?" the mercenary said. His voice was low, careful with suppressed fear. A ship without a Controller was an enormous disaster-in-waiting, inertia carrying it forward until it collided with whatever it had been aiming for. The force of impact had split planets, fracturing down to the core. A slow death as the world fell apart into lifeless chunks was considered nominally worse than the fate of those on the ship itself, necks snapped at terrible angles, spines broken from being thrown against what was the floor-ceiling-floor again. Some on the planet could be saved; for the passengers, nothing.
"I don't know," cried the Controller, staring desperately at Betaine, "I hit something that wasn't there and I heard...I heard. It was a hiss! There were words Butterfly told me. I don't remember." He crawled forward, grabbed Betaine's hand, gripping tightly enough the fingernails went purple. The wings stirred fitfully, gave off an odor of lilacs.
"You'd know...you'd know! You're like her, what's in your head!"
"Let go of the clerk, Charl." Ober closed a thick, ruddy hand around the Controller's upper arm, taking care not to break the brown iridescence of the wing carapace. Betaine's hand was released quickly and the lump in his throat made room for words.
"Who's Butterfly?"
The bone-skinny boy grinned up at him.
"Butterfly knows everything. But no...no," the smile contorted, slid off the pointed chin like a rock into a hole, "you're like the other one. Everything in your head...that's like where it comes from."
"Where what..."
"Charl!" The bright little voice was trimmed with anger. The blond Steeress appeared, ignored Betaine and Ober, stomped stiffly forward, slapped the Controller across his sharp cheekbone with a force Betaine could feel from his cringed position. The boy clutched his cheek, began wailing.
"But...but...Butterfly! The thing I hit..."
"Was nothing. It's not there. You will go back and run or you will get us all killed. You are not going to get me or my passengers killed."
Her voice softened as she helped him up; her arm steady as he grasped tightly to it, as if his weight were nothing. Fully upright, the Controller was a head taller than the Steeress, yet so gaunt in the green light he seemed some bizarre ghost.
"Scared is fine, Charl, but you cannot do that."
"I'm sorry, Butterfly. I thought...he looked like he could help me." The boy's liquid eyes flickered to Betaine. She pried his grip from her arm and shooed him off down the corridor.
"Go back and hurry. We're a day away but who knows what else is out there." The lack of questioning inflection made Betaine glance up curiously at the blonde girl. The glassy facial expression she usually wore was gone and her face was filled with a hard loneliness as she watched the Controller dash back towards the port to the center. The glimmer in her eyes swept across the odd tableau the three of them formed, calculating, absorbing. She met the analyst's inquisitive stare and the bright, stupid face was back.
"Bethany, I..." Ober stepped away from the Steeress, the runes dead and quiet, the crackling hum of his power gone.
"How many people are you going to get into trouble today, Master Ober?"
"We were discussing the caul crisis on Regulskek. He's protected, you know that!"
She blinked once, then smiled, tilting her head slightly.
"I can't believe you think I'd act on anything other than my Captain's explicit orders, Master Ober. We need to make sure he's all right after this...traumatic experience. Our hull readers show the disturbance hit the hardest in this node. Nothing untoward will happen to our esteemed guest."
Betaine felt a gurgling mix of panic/anger. He'd seen something he shouldn't have and all because of this stupid mercenary. He needed time to process; his every muscle and nerve cried out with fatigue.
"This 'guest' would prefer to return to his room and sleep. I am physically and mentally undisturbed and hold no ill will towards the ship or its Captain." He stood, attempting to stretch without seeming to do so, feeling his stomach settle as gravity returned to the proper alignment. The words should be precisely right, but Bethany merely smiled apologetically at him.
"The Captain wishes to make amends. There will be methods of refreshment while you wait," she said, her voice ripe with the chipper edge Betaine had come to hate. She bowed slightly towards the older man, who looked suddenly lost and bewildered.
"I wish you good night, Master Ober."
The Steeress clapped her hands twice and Betaine, despite knowing it was coming, gagged at the gut-wrenching lurch of the spell. His skin felt hot and crinkled as he appeared in a soft, pale blue waiting room, his neck hair on end, every nerve tingling.