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Caleb awoke with a jolt. Immediately aware some sound had roused him, he stilled and listened. There was a faint, distant hum, but it was gone before he could identify it.

Alex wasn’t in the bed. He went to the door of the lavatory. “Alex, are you in there?” Nothing. He nudged the door open and found it empty.

He paused long enough to pull on pants before heading through the house. His eyes scanned the open rooms as he made his way to the front door but spotted neither her nor anything out of place. He’d heard Pinchu arrive home an hour earlier, but only one vehicle was outside.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Valkyrie, where did Alex go?”

‘I’ve been instructed not to share that information.’

“Goddammit. She went to the temple.” He leapt into the vehicle and activated the engine.

The temple stone almost seemed to shine from within under a full moon. An eerie crimson radiance lit the night and the open interior.

Alex crept along the columns toward the dais. She didn’t think the temple had guards, but she might as well attempt not to be seen.

The dais was empty except for the large table…but the table wasn’t empty. It hadn’t been visible from the audience, but a concave recess in the center of the table contained a dark metal ring. Miniscule gaps between the edges of the metal and the stone indicated it had a range of motion. She searched the area a second time for any other communication candidates, then reached in and pressed the ring.

It lit up briefly in pure white light then went dark. She looked around the temple but saw no activity. She wasn’t a patient person, but she forced herself to lean on one of the pillars and wait.

Three minutes later a luminosity brighter than the moonlight descended from the ceiling to surround the temple dais. If the Metigen had traveled from its own watcher planet, this was fast travel indeed; perhaps it watched from a closer vantage, given how intimately involved in Khokteh society it was.

The pinpoints of light began coalescing into the rough form of a Khokteh—but the transformation abruptly halted.

Anaden? Here?
The voice quaked with an air of horror, and the lights surged toward her, probing, prodding.

If it surrounded her it would be able to transport her away. She stepped deliberately backward.

No…HUMAN. One of Mnemosyne’s pets off its leash. The Conclave will not be pleased to learn of this.
Condescension replaced horror as the voice gained an aura of authority.

She wished it would take some form, any form, so she could glare it in the eye. “What are you trying to accomplish with the Khokteh? Why do you arm them with technology they do not comprehend and send them to kill one another over and over in endless cycles?”

Run along home, little fledgling. Try again in a thousand years.

“Did you learn nothing from your war against us? We don’t do as we’re told.”

“No, we don’t.” She pivoted to see Caleb taking the stairs two at a time up to the dais. His attention was focused on the Metigen, but she’d be an idiot not to recognize the layers of meaning in the statement.

She reached out and grasped his hand as he joined her. Now was not the time to seek forgiveness; now was the time to present a strong, united front. Thankfully, he appeared to agree.

Yes, I did hear something to that effect. Two of you then, or are there yet more? Did you bring an army?

“Not yet. Do we need to?”

Tread carefully, Humans. You intrude in affairs you do not understand.

She groaned. “We realize this, which is why we want to understand. Explain it—explain your reasons for manipulating the Khokteh. Tell us what your purpose is for all these universes.”

Alas, it is not for me to decide what is to be done with you. But you would do well to return home before your ignorant flailing destroys more than you intend.

“We don’t intend to destroy anything at all—and you seem to be doing plenty enough destroying for all of us. You….” Her voice trailed off as the Metigen dissipated and vanished as swiftly as it had arrived. “Oh, motherfucker!”

Caleb’s hand was instantly on her arm. “Alex, what the bloody hell were you thinking? It could have hurt you—it could have
taken
you!”

Her gaze roved around the temple grounds, still hoping it would return for another go. “I was thinking I wanted some damn answers, and this might be my best or even only chance to get them.” She steeled herself and reluctantly looked at him. “I didn’t wake you because you wouldn’t have wanted me to come here.”

“Because it was a stupid thing to do. And now you’ve exposed us.”

“Oh, come on—they knew we were traversing their portals. Remember when they chased us through a bunch of them? They have alarms on every damn one.”

“Well, now they know we’re doing a bit more than surveying the scenery.”

“Good.”

“Good
?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Dammit, Alex, do you have the first care for your safety? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“No, of course not. I’m starting to think the Metigens can’t hurt us, at least not directly.”

“Why not? They can manipulate their environment—Mesme built a house. They can
transport
us.”

“I know. But when it comes to violence, they act through others or via machines. I don’t have an explanation, but the evidence speaks for itself.”

“The evidence is a little thin. Too thin to act so recklessly. Not without a damn good reason—something I believe I rather clearly said we didn’t have.”

“You think a chance to get answers isn’t a good enough reason? Why are we here then?”

He leveled a deeply scathing scowl at her. “To find the answers ourselves. To fit the puzzle pieces together one at a time instead of trusting aliens who have plainly ulterior motives to give us the truth. Otherwise, we would’ve simply gone to Mesme, right?”

She sank against the table to stare at the ground instead of him. “Yeah. They—the Metigens—drive me mad. They play with people, with whole species, like they were toys, to be tossed aside when they no longer amuse. I wish they had throats so I could strangle them.”

He eased back beside her, and his voice softened a touch. “But not to death.”

“That depends….” She risked a glance at him. “I’m sorry I snuck out on you.”

His eyes remained hard though. “No, you’re not.”

She chewed on her lower lip and tried again. “Okay, I’m…sorry you wouldn’t have agreed to come. I’d have preferred it if you were here with me.”

He gazed up at the high, curved ceiling of the temple, once more tinted an ominous crimson now that the Metigen had departed. “Look. We’ve both spent a long time going our own way and not asking permission before we did. I’m not your keeper, nor are you mine. I just wish like hell you’d told me what you planned to do.”

“Then we would’ve argued.”

“As opposed to what we’re doing now?”

She huffed a weak, resigned laugh. “Valid point.”

“Alex, I can handle being angry with you—I don’t like it, I don’t want to be, but I’ll deal. Already have some experience at it. But I have to be able to count on you. I have to know you won’t go behind my back when you don’t care for the answer I give.”

“Oh? You went behind my back to get access to the
Siyane
.”

“Don’t do that.”

Yes, she was lashing out—but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. “Why not? How is it different?”

He blinked and stared at her, his expression bordering on…yep, there it was. Pained patience…or maybe a slightly more severe, deeper frustration. “For one, the statute of limitations has expired on it. For another, we weren’t married then—we were barely together. I had no idea how far I could trust you, no more than you knew how far you could trust me. For a third, my doing so ended up saving your life…but the last one doesn’t count, does it, unless I want to prove your case for you.”

He dragged a hand down his face, emotion animating it anew. “So I return to my initial statement—given both our pasts, this isn’t easy for either of us. But I would never do such a thing today, and dammit but you know that.”

Her mother had tried to warn her marriage was about give and take, about compromise, about respecting the other person’s position even when you didn’t agree with them. For some strange reason her mother had been concerned Alex would be incapable of managing such things. She chuckled quietly.

“If there is something you find amusing in all this, please let me in on the joke.”

“I was remembering something Mom said to me, about how Dad infuriated her on an almost weekly basis, but he never disappointed her.” She met his distressingly harsh gaze and nodded. “All right. I promise I won’t go behind your back again, and will instead face the wrath of your expressions of pained patience and exasperated frustration.”

He tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “There’s no wrath to my expressions.”

“Oh, yes, there is. And so many, varied kinds.” She took his hands in hers, grateful he didn’t jerk them away. “I realize I still occasionally revert to old habits. I’ll try to do better. I
will
do better.” Her forehead dropped to rest on his. “Just out of curiosity, would you have come with me if I had asked?”

“Depends on how determined you were.”

“So yes, then.”

He sighed, but wrapped his arms around her and drew her closer. “Eventually, yes.”

40

IRELTSE

C
ALEB LEANED INTO THE MASSIVE
desk dominating the center of the office. “Pinchu, this is a two-hundred-
petajoule
anti-matter weapon. Do you even begin to comprehend what that means?”

The Tokahe Naataan lifted his elongated chin so high Caleb could no longer see any of his eyes. “It means it will exact a righteous vengeance upon the Nengllitse for the deaths they caused.”

“It means it will level a city—and I don’t mean cause widespread damage like what they inflicted here. I mean
eradicate
it. Every building, every object and every Nengllitse Khokteh for…” he waited a beat for a size conversion “…fifty kilometers in all directions. Our people outlawed these weapons two centuries ago after discovering the colossal, indiscriminate death they wrought.”

“This is not your world, Caleb Human, and we are not your
shikei
. We have a different history, and a different measure of justice.”

“Believe me when I tell you I know a great deal about justice—about vengeance. Let me ask you: do you want to kill their children? All of them?”

“They killed my child.”

A gasp escaped Caleb’s lips, and he was rendered momentarily speechless. He had begun to subconsciously ascribe human values to their culture same as Alex had, simply because they appeared civilized. Because they walked and talked and ate and slept, lived in homes, were born small and grew up.

While he didn’t doubt there had always been individual humans who harbored such abhorrent thoughts, it had nonetheless been a mistake to assign Pinchu and the Khokteh human values. He retreated a mental step from the situation.

Pinchu took advantage of the brief silence to reaffirm his stance. “This is the weapon the Gods have ordained for our use. They judge our cause virtuous.”

Alex nearly came across the desk then, but Caleb thrust out an arm to hold her back. They had resigned themselves to the reality that trying to convince Pinchu his ‘gods’ were in actuality aliens running experiments on a multiverse of pocket universes, of which his was only one, would be a futile endeavor. Nevertheless, he could sense Alex shaking from holding in the urge to tell Pinchu the unvarnished truth, or whack him upside the head with one of the Khokteh spears, or both.

He stepped in before she lost the struggle with restraint. “And what do you think your enemies will retaliate with next? The escalation isn’t going to stop.”

“It will if we decimate the Nengllitse.”

Alex’s mouth fell open. “Genocide, really? Damn.”

He leaned more forcefully toward Pinchu. “No, it won’t, because the Tapertse, logically assuming you’re coming for them next, will get their benefactor gods—”
which are probably one and the same as yours
“—to bestow on them an even stronger weapon. Pinchu, if you want to protect your citizens, ask your gods for a shield the size of a city—a shield that can defend against the next, more powerful attack. Do not use this weapon.”

Pinchu stood and adopted a proud stance behind the desk. “Caleb and Alex Humans, my friends—I hope I may call you such—I thank you for your insights and the companionship you extended to my family and my citizens, in spite of our initial poor treatment of you. Were Cassela still with us, things might be different…but she is not, and never will be again.” He paused to compose himself.

“What you speak would sound like wisdom to your kind, I have no doubt. But this is my planet and these are my
shikei
, and I know the path which needs to be taken. You may stay for as long as you wish, but I do not want to place you in harm’s way to a greater extent than I previously have, so I understand if you feel you must leave.”