The Soul Consortium (36 page)

“So is there any chance that draining his power completely will make him vulnerable? Would it give us a way to stop him?”

“No. When he chooses to use it, the amount he needs is infinitesimal compared to the amount he has. You’d have to goad him into using it for millions of years to make a difference. He used a significant amount of it to remove me, but even then it was nowhere enough to weaken him. He could use his power much more than he does, but I think he sees every speck of energy as tremendously precious, as though he’s drawing the life-blood from his child.”

“All right, I get the idea. He can’t be weakened. Can’t be killed. The perfect incarceration is the only way to stop him.”

“Regrettably, yes.”

“You still don’t want to tell me why he won’t do the killing himself to get the energy he needs? He’s killed before. I watched him on Castor’s World.”

“And he did it to me on Castor’s World for a few seconds, but he only does it under what he considers extreme circumstances … and I told you to drop it, so drop it.”

“Okay, okay. How long until Vieta gets here?”

“A little over eight minutes.”

“That isn’t long.”

“It’s long enough.”

One last look at the slot. “Then we should get ready.”

W
atching via a small holographic projection of the lower platform surrounding the Aberration Sphere, I force an unsafe jettison between the Central Docking Sphere and the connecting passage just as Keitus Vieta steps off the ramp from his transport shuttle. The result is a collapsing conduit and sphere, their entire contents spinning away into deep space.

The decompression, lack of atmosphere, and absence of heat would have killed a normal human being, and with no operating genoplants, he would have stayed dead. But not this man. For a few seconds, Keitus Vieta drifts away, buffeted and slashed by sharp fragments of metal and glass, then with an angry pulse of indigo light from his cane, he deflects the debris with a shimmering bubble around him and glides effortlessly toward the waiting entrance.

I knew he’d survive, but I had to make it look like I wanted to keep him away. Together with Qod I’ll have to lay a few more traps before I spring the real one.

“He’s making his way along the central gangway, Salem.”

“Show me. Keep the holographic scanners on him. I want to see everything he does.”

The view before me shifts, and I see a bird’s-eye view of Vieta creeping along the passage, the point of his cane chinking against the metal floor with each step. Then he stops, looks upward, and the soft lights of the Consortium reflect off his pallid lips as they draw back to show the familiar rotten teeth. A smile of confident power that I soon hope to remove from his ancient face.

“Which of you shall I attend to first? Fair Oluvia or noble Salem?”

He’s established the audio link as I hoped he would. From now on, my conversation with Qod must complete the ruse. I can only hope Vieta won’t use any of his precious power to look into my mind to see what I’ve planned. Here goes …

“Qod, can Vieta hear us?”

“Unfortunately, yes, but it doesn’t matter. He’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” he whispers, then continues along the passage. “Salem, you and I should continue our conversation. I only wish to know where to find my daughter, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Delete the file, Qod, quickly. He mustn’t get the location of the abnormality.”

“File deleted.”

Vieta pauses before he walks into the next passage, the passage that will lead him to the Soul Spheres. Good, he still believes he can get the information he needs.

“Qod, I think he knows where I am. Keep him away from here. Jettison all the Soul Spheres if you have to, but keep him away from me.”

“It won’t help. He’ll just pull you back, but surely that doesn’t matter now. The location of the abnormality is gone forever … unless …”

I stay quiet, hoping the silence is convincing enough.

“Tell me you didn’t see the coordinates on that file,” Qod says, the urgent pitch in her voice perfect.

“Yes, Salem,” Vieta says, mocking. “Tell her you didn’t see them.”

And now he’s inside the Aberration Sphere with me, the hungry smile widening on his face, the cane illuminating the room like a herald of death. He got in here much faster than I thought.

“Qod, stop him! I don’t have enough time. I need four minutes. Give me just four minutes, and he’ll never get it from me.”

“I’ll do what I can but hurry.”

From every electrical node in the sphere, threads of bright blue death slam into Vieta’s body, rocketing him through the doors. His burnt shell slides back through the passage, and even before it comes to a halt, the ashen particles coagulate, moisten, and group together as Qod continues to unleash a million more volts through him. A skeletal black hand lifts, fumbling for the cane that lies several feet away pulsing with power.

“Now, Salem, now!”

I rush toward the WOOM, dancing between ribbons of light, aiming myself like a missile toward the fibers as they stretch to grasp me, hoping desperately that Control’s next phrase is the only one Vieta fails to hear.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Select.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Multiple aberrations detected.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Override authorized—ID 9.98768E+14.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

Once triggered it will take exactly two minutes for death to take hold. Timing is critical.

“One more minute. Just one more minute, Qod.”

Vieta is back on his feet, robes burning, flesh flaking and reforming as the electricity continues to crawl over his seared tissue. Through the flames engulfing his head, his unblinking eyes fix relentlessly upon me.

Without any more time to prepare, without any further thought for what awaits me, I panic and trigger the internal switch that will end my life. Too early. My timing needed to be perfect, and I’m too damned early.

“Where is she? Where is my daughter?” Vieta’s voice crackles like burning gravel as he comes closer.

I feel the nerves in my body shutting down, muscles weakening, head spinning, vision blurring. Sound is becoming a distant echo in my head, but as I drop to my knees feeling my failure, the Control Core renews my hope.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination initiated.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination completion in one hundred eighty seconds.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Soul Consortium file buffer ready.

If I can hold on just a few seconds longer against the inevitable, is there still a chance to win? Still a chance for the file to be created at the exact moment of immersion? There has to be. If my death is too early the WOOM will abort the immersion, but if my death is too late, my file won’t be created, and again, the immersion will be aborted. My death and the immersion must happen at the precise same instant or everything is lost.

In a dreamy haze I am aware of the WOOM fibers slipping into my skin, pulling me upward, ready for immersion. I have to hold on a little longer, but how does one hold back death?

Vieta halts, but it isn’t Qod’s attack that has stopped him. The flames now quenched leave only the bright blue of electrical arcs to compete with the brooding blue of his cane to light the sphere. Through failing vision I can still make out his charred skin as he continues to reform it. His eyes, still whole, watch me from the inside of his smoking skull. “Where are you going, Salem Ben?”

“Too late,” I tell him again, “by the time you reach me inside the WOOM. I’ll already be dead.”

Vieta answers with his cane. A pulse of deep blue almost blinds me, and my body lurches, snapped away from the WOOM. The noise of strained fibers squeals out from above as the core wrestles against Vieta’s power, and at once a surge of vitality races through my blood, quickening my senses and my mind.

“Death? I know how this place works,” Vieta says. “Should you die, all I need to do is live your life to find out where she is. Waiting for the answer would be slow but sure, an inconvenience at worst … Nevertheless, it is an inconvenience I would prefer to avoid. No death yet, then. Not until I have what I need.”

“Qod,” I yell, “do something! He won’t let me die!”

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination completion in thirty seconds.

“I’m trying,” she says. “He’s too powerful.”

“Surely you cannot want to die,” Vieta says, steam coiling from his hot tongue. “You do not want to go where they go or suffer their destiny, do you, Salem?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Qod cries.

“She has not told you?”

“Told me what?”

“No, Salem, don’t!” Qod booms, and the electricity crackles wildly as tenfold power surges through Vieta’s body. He reels for a moment, then stands again.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination completion in … malfunction.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination reassertion.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination completion in one hundred eighty seconds.

“Salem, you have only forty seconds until immer—”

“What hasn’t she told me?” I scream at Vieta.

He roars, “What I am.
Who
I am. I am one; I am many; I am
all
your dead. If
you
die, you will join us. You will join me.”

The revelation hits me hard. Keitus Vieta has come from the “other place” from beyond the veil I have always been curious about, and in all the aeons of time, the people who have died, cycle after cycle, some undetectable part of them, the soul, the spirit, their life essence, has passed over into that place. When Oluvia created the rip through the Singularity, the dead were siphoned back, warped and corrupted, as him.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Termination completion in one hundred fifty seconds.

“Salem, please! Ten seconds left.”

And that abomination he created. A way to stop the universe? A way to stop the never ending cycle of birth and death? A way for the dead to return to …

“Six seconds!”

“Where is my daughter, Salem? I’ll not let you die until you—”

“Five … no time, Salem. No time!”

Four seconds to decide. Do I really want to die? Lost in Keitus Vieta to save life here?

“Four …”

“Everything you’ve got, Qod. Now!”

Like an outpouring of the heavens, Qod unleashes the Consortium upon Vieta, and as the lightning vaporizes him, I lunge forward at the burnt shell, feeling unimaginable force tear through every atom of my body as the end of the blast fills me. Perception slows as death takes me in the last three seconds, and in a state of strange euphoria and fierce pain, I feel the fibers of the WOOM yank me inside for the immersion. My immersion.

I’ve won.

At the very moment of my death the immersion into my own life will begin as my file is created. In my last second, as the WOOM slit closes, I witness the broken remains of Vieta reforming once again. And he’ll still want to know where his creation is. He’ll look for my file, I hope, and believe the answer to be found there by living my life. He will trap himself in an eternal cycle, never knowing who he really is as he walks through the life of each individual, feeling what they feel, feeling what I feel. Trapped forever. And the universe is safe.

“Farewell, Qod.”

“No, my lover, you are mine now … always.”

Is this my final thought?

My final memory?

From black flesh enfolding me to evil dream.

To deepest darkness, the other place does fall.

She forever refusing me,

Death’s mournful call.

S
ubject 9.98768E+14: Select.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Multiple aberrations detected.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Override authorized.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

Is this my first thought?

My first memory?

From evil dream to warm flesh, enfolding me.

From deepest darkness to rose light of womb.

Mother breathing,

Forever scorning,

The beckon of my tomb.