A Game of Universe (15 page)

By the end of the third year, I could read and understand all within the seven volumes. I was sick of
Marbane’s Ocular Enhancer.
It filled my head. I thought of nothing else. I swore it was almost ready to release itself.

I marched up to the second story chamber. Abaris sat there and gazed at the landscape painted upon the paper panel with his back to the two walls of windows. It was noon, and the sunlight filtered in and glistened off the white pine floorboards.

He must have sensed my frustration, for he said, “While I believe there is much more you can learn, it is perhaps time you tried. I gauge your chances to be adequate.”

“What do I do?”

“Close your eyes,” he commanded. “Clear your mind. Focus on your past three years, your efforts, your studies, your mastery of all knowledge of light and darkness, of vision and perception.”

It all swam through my mind: equations and theories, the mixing of colors and lectures by wise men who were long dead.

Abaris continued, “Associate to each of these blocks of information, a unique motion of your fingers; for the postulates of quantum mechanics bend your thumb and touch the tip of your pinkie, for neurobiology cross your index over your middle finger, for Verrinous’s
Cantos of Perception
ball your hand into a fist.”

I did as he instructed.

“These mnemonics shall anchor the knowledge within your mind. They shall prevent them from uncoiling when you release the knowledge. Now, repeat them, and slowly let the data unwind. Feel confident in your understanding. Do not panic.”

My accumulated wisdom trickled away. It faded from my mind. Was I losing the information? I didn’t stop. After three years, I was going through with it no matter what happened, even if I lost it. It would be released!

The power came.

A rush like adrenaline, but a hundred times more powerful, flashed in my blood. The outside world vanished. I was alone with my knowledge, a singularity of information ready to uncoil. I sensed a static charge build within me, mounting until it became painful to hold. I released it slowly, not wanting my hard-won wisdom to leave, but it slipped easily through my mental grasp. A charge shot through my body, and struck my eyes, lightning attracted to the rod.

My eyes opened wide, stinging, buzzing from the power, and full of tears, making all before me a blur. I blinked thrice, squeezed my tears out, and my vision cleared. But all appeared normal.

“It is lost,” I whispered. “All my work was for nothing!”

Abaris raised his hand and put a finger to his lips. “Observe,” he said and pointed to the windows. They were sealed.

“You closed them?”

“While you were in your trance,” he explained. “I thought the intense light of the courtyard might startle you.”

“How dark is it?”

Abaris held his hand before his face and moved it back and forth. “I cannot even perceive my hand. But what do you see?”

I looked. There beneath my feet was the polished pine floor, but now I saw every grain in the wood, even the marks where it had been sanded, tiny scratches that I couldn’t even feel. And upon the printed paper screen, I saw the landscape: a hundred farmers in the distant fields, all smaller than the head of a pin, and clouds in the sky beyond the mountain I had never before seen, and beyond that, a grand city on the coast, flags flickering from its towers, and merchant caravans of camels and elephants and mules marching from the west.

“Everything,” I told him. “I can see everything.”

“Excellent. And your memory?”

I reviewed what I knew. It was there firmly in place. I had mastered the ocular enhancer, my first magic!

This is going too well
, Necatane said, disrupting my recollection.
What happened to make you leave? You had the drive, the intellect, and the infinite boring patience required to become a muse.

That memory was buried deep. I knew it was there, a thing untouched, neatly tucked away, and filed into obscurity. And that’s precisely where I wanted it to stay.

Perhaps you have an infinite amount of patience
, Necatane remarked,
but I do not. The effort to project you into your past drains the last of my strength.
He dug deeper, slaying the mental guardians that protected the memory.
Ah,
he said, triumph full in his thoughts,
here is the next part of your transformation. Do you recall?

I remained silent, remembering that what I did was repulsive, but not the specifics of the act.

Allow me the honor then, killer. Your next construct was a disappointment. It wasn’t flashy, a trifle easier than the ocular enhancer, and only marginally useful:
Halciber’s
Theorem of Malleability.
You studied it, but had other plans, didn’t you?

The memory welled to the surface. How frustrated I was with his choice. If only Abaris had let me choose my own instead of picking it for me. I wanted to learn how to change my shape, or to fly, or to conjure elementals, demons, and nymphs. But above all else, I wanted to impress Abaris and make him proud of me.
Halciber’s Theorem of Malleability
was not the piece of mnemonic lore to do it.

And?
prompted Necatane.

So I cheated. I cast the ocular enhancer and searched his seven towers, searched until I discovered a set of scuff marks that vanished behind a solid wall. With the eyes of an eagle, it was a simple matter to locate the release mechanism and find the hidden library beyond. There, in the small room, were more of my Master’s notes. And these were much better than the ones I had access to.

Four weeks I spent reading the introductory passages of his notes, then chose
Caesar’s Ritual of Borrowing.
With this mnemonic lore one could borrow another’s thoughts and skills. In the advanced chapters, I would learn to borrow other things, the hardness from a diamond, the speed from a gazelle, or the flight from a bird. There were subtle nuances that I could not fathom yet, warnings and such, but understanding those would come later.

Halciber’s Theorem of Malleability
was a simple ritual, so I researched the borrowing enchantment at night in secret. I did not remove the notes from the concealed library. Instead, I cast the ocular enhancer and read them in the dark.

Then what?

I recalled what I had done, and was shamed by it. Rather than share this with Necatane, I pushed it back, deep into the recesses of my mind.

Not so fast. We were making progress.
He fished it back out.
Here,
he ordered,
look at it. This is part of you. You cannot toss it away and pretend it never happened. Look!

He shoved my nose into the experience. I was older by two years, sitting in the shadows, reading. Several volumes of the borrowing ritual lay scattered and opened, sprawled across the single table in the secret library. I had only discovered within the last five months how complex it truly was. There were thirteen parts, each as long and detailed as the ocular enhancer, and each necessary to successfully release the power. I considered giving up and returning to the drab schedule Abaris had prescribed for me. Yet, I had mastered the first section of the ritual. Perhaps the others were easier.

The first part taught me how to copy the skills and memories from a person’s mind. Even constructs could be copied. I knew that mnemonic knowledge thusly transferred would be incomplete. In my estimation, the borrowed lore would be lost upon its initial release. The other knowledges, memories, and skills, tended to remain imprinted longer, sometimes permanently. There were cautionary words about the effects this had both on the caster and the subject, but those details were in the dozen volumes I had yet to cover.

The door clicked open and light flooded into the secret library. I stood and froze. I had no time to replace all the volumes upon the shelf, and I had no time to hide.

Abaris entered, candle in hand, and peered about. He looked over the open manuscripts, over the notes I had taken on the ritual in my own journal, and then his gaze rested on me. He shook his head, and in a pained voice he said, “Why? Why have you done this?” He cocked his head sideways to read the spine of one of the volumes. “The Borrowing Ritual? By all the Gods!” His eyes opened wide. “It is perilous. Even I am loath to use it!”

“But Master, I only wanted to—”

“Shhh,” he hissed and his eyes narrowed.
“Sit down.”

I sank into the chair.

“You must not be permitted to continue these studies. It is too dangerous. It invokes powerful forces, non-natural forces, forces of evil.”

I wanted to say I was sorry, tell him that I did it only to impress him, but how could I? He had caught me doing what I knew was forbidden. And in truth, I was relieved to abandon the ritual. It was far beyond my abilities. I knew that. I felt it in my mind, a serpent ready to uncoil and strike … uncontrollable.

Abaris walked behind me. I could not turn in the chair and meet his eyes, so shamed was I. Instead, I hung my head.

He set his hand on my shoulder, leaned close, then in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “I am sorry, Germain.” His breath fell on the back of my neck. “For whatever reasons you thought to study this horror, it must stop. I must stop you. You must be punished.”

Punished? The word echoed through my mind. It jostled loose memories of Hades. Memories of when Mike held me down. Memories of his hot breath on my back. Memories too awful to think about. Abaris couldn’t mean that. It couldn’t be the same punishment Mike meant. Not Abaris, I wouldn’t believe it of him. My body and mind flooded with cold panic. I scrambled out of the chair and backed against the wall.

Abaris seemed surprised at my reaction.

For a split-second I was back in our cellar, face down in a pile of dirty heat suits, my brother’s breath falling on my skin, him holding me down, touching me. I had to run, but with a word of power Abaris could paralyze me. I was trapped. I was about to be
punished.
No!

From my fear the power came.

It rushed to the surface of my mind, the first deadly part of
Caesar’s Ritual of Borrowing.
The power exploded, out of control, and searched for a target, for something to borrow. It found my Master’s mind, huge and looming before me.

I sensed his thoughts, sensed his worry for my well-being. He had never meant the same
punishment
that Rebux and Mike had. He meant extra duties, a canceling of my stipend for a few months, but he’d have never harmed me. This man had only love for me, fatherly concern, pride, and friendship.

The ritual peeled away the first layers of his thoughts. I commanded it to halt, but I had never learned how to stop the process—that was in the fifth section.

Abaris knew precisely what was happening. He might have resisted, reflected it back to me, but uncontrolled, it would have torn through my mind. He would not allow that.

His memories burned away, mnemonic lore forever lost, skills ripped to shreds. I had to stop it, choose a skill, or a memory before his mind was gone. There, an enchantment, I plucked it from his mind, hoping to end this nightmare process. It did not. Information filled my mind:
Bander’s Enchantment of Time Lost
, a complex ritual that reversed the flow of time. It was seventy years of information coiled tightly, ready to spring forth and rewind seven seconds.

The borrowing ritual continued, swept deeper into my Master’s intellect, and left nothing intact. I was forced to watch, connected mentally; I could do nothing but participate in the rape of his mind. All the knowledge he wished to impart to me, slipped through my fingers as water would. All the magic, lost forever.

I am sorry my child,
Abaris thought, as if this were his fault. Then he thought no more.

The ritual burned out. I had seen his life flash before me, flash into oblivion, gone. He died there on the cool stone floor; no thoughts remained to command his heart or body. It was the ultimate indignity for a man who had spent many lifetimes filling his mind.

I collapsed next to him, and held him, wishing I was dead instead of he. Why had he let me live?

Worst of all, it remained intact. The terrible borrowing ritual that I only wanted to forget, against all odds, had stuck in my mind. Forever it would remain there, just as the ocular enhancer had. I could never forget it.

You then fled into the sewers?
Necatane inquired, sounding exhausted.
Interesting how you took the young assassin’s place in Umbra Incorporated. I would love to explore those years in the brotherhood, but alas time has run out for us. I must release you soon. The sun rises, and your friends come. I fear your quest must continue … and mine must end here.

11

I
heard Quilp, a faint whisper invading my trance: “Let’s get him outta here before reinforcements show up.” His voice trembled. “You should have finished them like I told you.”

“Grab his arms,” Virginia replied. “I’ll get the legs.”

If they touched me I couldn’t tell. A double-dose of narcotics held my senses hostage.

The unfortunate choice of a single word and a jar of rotten peaches,
Necatane remarked,
are tiny things to alter one’s life. I studied the phenomenon and published my findings in the
Journal of Theoretical Psychology.
I call it “Catastrophic Minutia,” and it might surprise you to know how many suicides and fallen empires it has caused.

I could give a damn,
I said.
Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?

You misunderstand, killer. I am the one fated to die this morning, not you. The poison already flows in my blood.

You poisoned yourself?

Like the Buddha, poisoned by a mushroom. I am not fool enough to cheat fate. My vision shows my death clearly. If not by poison, then by another unpleasant circumstance would I expire. Perhaps even by your borrowing ritual?

Then why bother to show me the past? Why not commit suicide before I came?

My path ends here, but yours, yours is at a crossroad. All your life you have been pushed by circumstance, herded by events beyond your control. You have been deceived, you are being deceived, and you shall be deceived again in the future.

I laughed.

Good
, he said.
Your sense of humor remains. You will need it when you learn the truth. However, to answer your question, I showed you the past to demonstrate that you were not responsible for your fate. Your father and brother gave you no options. And Abaris was an unfortunate accident, nothing more, remember that. You are not evil, Germain, at least, not by any conscious decision.

Thanks for the vote of confidence
, I said,
but you’ve wasted your time. I’m as dead as you. Finding the Grail without your powers of prophecy is a one in a million shot.

This I know,
Necatane whispered,
so I have one last vision for you, a nightmare really. Consider it a parting gift. Understand it and you shall find your Grail.

Fragments of Necatane’s thoughts pushed into mine. They had no shape, distorted globs, then bits of emotion clarified: animalistic hostility, the fire of lust, and terror; flashes into a life that was not mine: the sensation of slick ice, smooth and clear, the taste of a chocolate malt, a firm handshake, and a tender kiss upon my brow.

One shape persisted however, a mouth disembodied. Its lips drifted closer, opened wide and revealed rotten teeth and a long gray tongue. Another mouth appeared. This second smirk had teeth so jagged they looked like cracked rock. It salivated, then snapped up the first mouth—swallowed it whole.

Behind me, I sensed another presence.

It was a third smile, enormous canines that dripped a putrid sludge. In one grinning flash it devoured me, chewed my bones into meal, flesh into paste, then spat me out.

When I looked again, a crowd of blue-skinned men surrounded me, oddly dressed in hose and doublets, refugees from a Shakespearean festival. They pressed against me, then shoved me back and forth. One drew a rapier and waved it at my nose. I reached for my own blade. It wasn’t there.

A girl from the mob stepped between my body and the attacker’s sword. She commanded him to drop the weapon, and he did so. One of her gloved hands rested on my arm to reassure me. She was exquisite, a heart-shaped face and delicate nose, a fall of raven-black hair, and blue-skinned, too. Her hand in mine, she led me away from them.

We wandered across a floor of black marble with inlaid circles of gold. Breaking through this floor was a majestic tree, an ancient oak whose roots made the stone buckle and crack. The girl pointed to the top, and there, an eagle perched. One talon clutched a burning chalice, flames as bright as an electric arc. I could not bear to watch, but neither could I look away.

The girl indicated that I climb.

I grabbed the lowest branch, and two serpents appeared, uncoiling and undulating. One hesitated, reared back—then spat venom into my eyes. It burned and I fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Both serpents hissed.

That hissing continued, longer than any snake should have breath for, then it said, “Hand me another blue shield. This one’s filters are clogged. Another twenty ccs of benexidor should get him wide awake.”

The snake bit my upper arm.

“Isn’t that a truth drug?”

“Yeah? So what? Trust me, if there’s one thing I know, it’s stimulants. Or would you rather wait for more ships to join us?”

Sensation returned to my toes. They were cold. The chill seeped into my legs and torso, then my fingertips tingled. I opened my eyes and beheld a face of hard-chiseled beauty, wide brown eyes full of concern with a double-star insignia in the center. Virginia smiled at me. Behind her, I made out Quilp’s sour features.

She brushed the hair from my face and said, “You had a seizure. We brought you out of it.”

I was on the
Grail Angel
in my quarters. “How long?” I asked.

“Six hours,” Quilp said. “We repaired the generator and waited like you wanted, but two ships popped into orbit. One was a warship. It didn’t waste any time trying to kill us.”

“It was a
Whisper-class
scout vessel,” Virginia corrected.

“Whatever,” Quilp said. “This second ship though, it looked just like ours, three fins, three mass-folding generators, even a silver circle on its nose. It might have been an echo, generated when we tunneled through that planet.”

“You said those other
Grail Angels
couldn’t simultaneously exist with us.”

“Yeah, I know what I said,” Quilp replied, “but I’ve been doing some thinking and I’m not sure anymore. It might be possible for a copy to exist, but all the spins in its wave function would have to be exactly opposite to ours. And the odds of that happening are next to impossible.”

“But not impossible,” I said. “Did you see the name on the prow? Was it the
Grail Angel?”

Quilp shook his head. “There was no time to look. It was gone before we sneezed; besides, we had that other one to deal with.”

“I calculated our double’s exit vector,” Virginia said. “If it plotted a linear course, it headed for Golden City.”

If it was a double, why go back to Golden City? Maybe this other Germain would wait and ambush me when I returned, if I returned. “Go on, what happened next?”

“The first ship, the warship,” Quilp said, “we shot that sucker a few times and he ran.” He glared at Virginia with his beady eyes, and added, “Our pilot thought we better get you, so he got away.”

Virginia returned his glare, about sixty degrees colder.

Quilp continued, “So we go to this town you told us about, expecting all sorts of hell to have broke loose, but it was deserted, the entire place. Real eerie. You were alone in that temple, all doped up and crying like a baby. What happened?”

I was alone? If Necatane poisoned himself like he claimed, then why wasn’t his body with mine? Did he lie? Did he lie about everything? That would be a fitting revenge for his student. Send me chasing a useless nightmare until Erybus’s contract came due, and my soul forfeit. Suspicion however was not my strong point; it was Fifty-five’s.
Do you think he lied to us?
I asked him.

The psychologist blocked us after you shot him,
Fifty-five answered.
But forget him, you’ve got other things to worry about. We’ve been followed again! First to Needles and now here. Forget chasing ghosts of yourself. If we stick with what we know, there are only two concrete possibilities. Either our ship is bugged
—

Virginia checked the
Grail Angel
before we left,
I reminded him.
If there was a transmitter powerful enough to send a signal to Golden City, she would have found it.

Which brings me to the second possibility,
Fifty-five said.
It’s clear that either Quilp or Virginia works for the competition. Someone had to transmit our position. The safest thing to do is ice them both. Drain your girlfriend’s mind so we can fly this ship. And Quilp has done his job. We don’t need him anymore.

Fifty-five was right. It was the only way to be certain. But the thought of using the borrowing ritual on Virginia filled me with dread. I admired her. She had saved me on Needles, and again here. If she was a spy I still owed her. I couldn’t absorb her soul. I couldn’t kill her. I wouldn’t.

“If you don’t mind,” I said to them, “I need time to think. Virginia, please power down the mass-folding generators, and Quilp, watch the displays for any ships.”

“I want to get something straight first,” Quilp said. “You never mentioned so many people shooting at us. Three times in two days! I want some sorta danger pay, a bonus for risking my skin to save your butt.”

I didn’t have the strength to argue. “I’ll double what I’m paying you, just watch the displays.”

“Double?” he said, surprised. “Maybe this isn’t such a bad deal.” With a calculating look in his eyes he left me alone with Virginia.

She stood silent a moment, then whispered, “You would have died if we hadn’t gone back for you.”

“A fact I am keenly aware of. There will be a bonus for you too at the end of our mission.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She stomped her foot. “You should have taken me with you, to watch your back.”

“Perhaps I will next time,” I told her—if for no other reason than to keep an eye on her.

“Good, then if you need anything, I’ll be on the bridge.” She paused in the doorway and gave me a long look before leaving.

I got up and locked the door. Indeed, it would be very hard to kill her if she worked for the competition. “Setebos, are you here?”

A cube of cobalt glass and jade materialized on the reading table. “I am here to serve you, Master.”

“White noise please, sixty-five decibels.”

The room flooded with static. It was distracting, but I’d take no chances on any eavesdropping. “Was the communications system active within the last six hours?” I asked.

“No.”

“Were there any signals transmitted from the ship?”

“I am sorry, Master. My logs indicate nothing.”

Have you gone soft?
Fifty-five demanded.
Simply kill them both.

I’m distracted enough with five of you in my head. I’m not adding anyone else unless it’s absolutely necessary. Virginia’s piloting skills stay where they are—out of my body.

The psychologist then inquired,
Did Necatane provide you with the location of the Grail?

Not exactly. I had two visions. But if they are of any use remains to be proven.

“Setebos,” I said, “please search the Grail database for the following references.”

“Ready.”

“Any mention of three giant mouths that consume one another?”

The cube flashed. Azure triangles aligned into squares and pentagons, then fell apart. “I apologize, wise Master, no such images are indicated in the collected works. There is a legend of a giant, but only one, and I regret there is a body attached to his mouth.”

“What about a blue-skinned people?”

Pairs of green and blue triangles found each other on the cube’s surface, made tiny squares, and arranged themselves into a checkerboard pattern. Setebos replied, “Correlation found, Master: the legend of Sir Osrick. His people were called the Bren and they were a third generation colony located—”

“Dump the information through the display. I’ll look it over myself.”

I read. This Bren world was close, less than a day’s travel, relative time, from our present position.

Their planet had no magnetic field to shield them from the ionizing radiation of their sun. To counter, they genetically altered their skin to safely absorb the radiation. A side effect was their odd coloration: blue.

The colony had been settled fifteen hundred years ago, and according to their charter, organized as a feudalistic society with strict laws to limit technology. I knew of places like these, safe havens from the waves of change that swept through the galaxy. Social reform, scientific breakthrough, plagues, and war were the order of the day, normal fluctuations in a collective society with too many governments, too many people, and vessels of both trade and battle that sailed the distances between the stars too fast. Some people couldn’t handle it all. They hid. Eventually, these retro-utopias developed strong trade routes, and made friends, or they were conquered. Either way, they never stayed isolated for long.

The Bren were different. They compensated for their puny technology with sorcery. The report rated them quite high on the Markoff magic scale, an eight. Impressive.

“Shall I read you the legend?” Setebos politely inquired.

“Please, verbosity level four.” I reclined in the leather reading chair and closed my eyes.

“The legend of Sir Osrick,” Setebos began, “is the final piece of Bren history. More than two centuries ago, the King and Queen of Kenobrac bore a single daughter. This Princess possessed great beauty, and even as a child she had suitors from every corner of their world. The King, however, turned them all away, never satisfied with their intentions. He wanted them to love his daughter for what she was inside, not for her appearance.

“Upon her thirteenth birthday the princess fell deathly ill. The royal physicians were summoned, but none could cure the sickness that consumed her. The King declared that any man to heal his daughter could have her hand in marriage.

“Every hero on the Bren world, and a few from farther realms, came to help. One of them was Sir Osrick of the Silver Sword, the Bold Rider of—”

“This princess,” I said, interrupting his narrative, “what did she look like?” She had to be the one in Necatane’s vision, the blue-skinned girl who led me to the Grail.

“There is no visual record available for the princess.”

“Continue then.”

“Sir Osrick accepted the King’s quest, and embarked on a search for the legendary Cup of Regulus, reputed to have magical healing powers. The bulk of the story details his ill-luck in finding this cup. He was captured by pirates, sold into slavery, escaped, battled a dragon, endured the ice torture of the Priest of La Rue de Nom, had his left arm severed, lost four squires—”