Age of Unreason Read online

  Then again, maybe an old quote she had once read was indeed true, that confessing to strangers was easier somehow.

  “Critical stresses,” Carol said, biting her lip.

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s what I was thinking about.”

  Ian surveyed their surroundings. “This ship may be old, but it’s a war horse. No worries of it tearing itself apart.”

  I wasn’t talking about the ship, she thought. And in that moment, something changed in his eyes. He seemed to get it without her having to speak a single word.

  Sighing, Ian shook his head. “There is no order to the universe, only chaos.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, if a beautiful and clearly extraordinary woman like yourself can be so stressed, so burdened by hardships, how can this be anything but an age of unreason?”

  She grinned at the play on words. They chatted for several hours, Carol revealing her position with the S.C.E. and recounting a few of their less harrowing recent adventures—avoiding Galvan VI altogether—while Ian said very little, his attention fixed solely on her. She did learn that he was a “quality inspector” for a major ten-world corporation, and that after she was dropped off on Caliph IX, he would continue on to a client meeting on Pacifica, some ten days off.

  “So, a conference,” Ian said.

  “I know. What could be more boring than a hundred cultural specialists sitting around talking, giving lectures, handing out awards…”

  Ian’s brow furrowed. “Why do you do that? This is something you’re excited about, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then why run it down like that? Why assume that someone who’s interested in you would not be interested in what’s important to you?”

  Carol shrugged. “I guess I’ve just been in what a friend of mine would call ‘negative space.’”

  “I understand.”

  “To be honest, it’s been years since I’ve been to one of these,” Carol said, feeling herself perking up.

  “Really? Why so long? Has work interfered?”

  “No, not really. It’s just…it’s going to sound stupid.”

  “Carol.”

  “But it is.” She hesitated. “There was a man. Martin Mansur. I thought he was a friend. It turned out he was a thief. He took my ideas and built a presentation around it that won him the highest honor possible among our professional association. Since then, he’s bilked it to become famous on a thousand worlds.”

  “I always thought that guy looked like a fake.”

  “You know who I’m talking about?”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen his holos. I wasn’t impressed.” Ian leaned closer, his hand almost, but not quite, touching Carol’s leg. “As I said, what impresses me is truth.”

  Carol slowly eased her leg upward, edging herself toward his hand. Would it be so terrible of her to simply indulge herself for once? To lose herself in a momentary fling, a bit of passion, just to have some time to forget all that had happened aboard the U.S.S. da Vinci, the fate of Duffy, McAllan, Barnak, and a score of others, the sorrow of the surviving crew…in point of fact, getting away from it all while the ship was being repaired was the entire point of booking this journey. That, and finally being able to attend a conference where Martin-the-thief wouldn’t be around. He’d canceled at the last minute, leaving the way clear for Carol to take his place.

  A figure appeared in the doorway. A scruffy young man with dull, tired eyes. One of the crew. “Carol Abramowitz? There’s an urgent communication for you from a Montgomery Scott, I believe—”

  Scotty, Carol thought. Good lord. What happened now?

  “Why don’t we pick this up later?” Ian suggested as Carol rose.

  She hesitated. “I don’t think there’s going to be a later. Not for this.”

  And she was right.

  Chapter

  3

  Before the day was out, the Lionarti had been met by a Federation runabout, and Carol was back on active duty, winging her way to the planet Vrinda, Bart Faulwell at her side. With the exception of a few polite words here and there, Carol had been silent for the entire trip. It wasn’t until the runabout was approaching Vrinda’s atmosphere that Bart spoke up.

  “You’re pouting,” he said.

  “I don’t pout. It’s not in my nature.”

  Bart smiled. “Concurrent sentences. I’m relieved that’s actually possible.”

  Carol looked away. “I’ve been reading the mission briefing.”

  “No, you’ve been staring at a screen. And you’ve been pouting.” Bart hesitated. Then, “Look, I was supposed to go to Starbase 92 to see Anthony. But, like Captain Gold says, when you wear the funny-looking A on your chest, you dance where they tell you, even if you’d rather be wallowing in grief. Heck, even Soloman’s not quite himself over this. He’s meeting us planetside, by the way.”

  “I’m fine,” Carol insisted. “You know me. I’ve never been one to give in to my emotions. You know how uncomfortable I am around all that business.”

  Bart looked at her strangely.

  “What?”

  “The mission briefing,” he said. “I think you should look at it again. And this time, you might consider actually reading it.”

  Carol was about to protest, but Bart was right, she hadn’t really read it. So her gaze fell back to the screen, and this time, she read what was there.

  “Oh,” she said, growing a little pale.

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Bart followed a series of automated commands from planetside and guided the runabout into the planet’s atmosphere.

  It was midnight when the runabout set down on a docking pad atop Farhan Tanek’s keep. They were greeted by a dozen men, and half as many women, all wearing heavily padded leather armor with steel trim. Weapons that looked somewhat like ancient cross-bows but pulsed with alternating green and amber energy were held at the ready. Each guard carried an identical and very recent scar, a single gash from forehead to chin, beginning above the right eye and ripping downward across the mouth.

  A particularly brutish guard stepped forward and greeted them. “There is no joy, no sorrow, no pain so great that the heart cannot tolerate.”

  “I…grieve for fallen friends,” Carol admitted, hesitantly.

  “As do I,” Bart said grimly.

  The guard grunted. “The last off-worlder who followed our traditions so well revealed himself as a betrayer, a thief, and a murderer. He was of your sect.”

  “A member of the Federation, you mean,” Bart said softly.

  “Blood calls for blood,” the guard said gruffly. “I am Alhouan.”

  Carol and Bart introduced themselves and were told that Soloman was in a different quarter of the city, reviewing technical specifications for the job at hand. Alhouan led them down two stories and through the ancient stone keep. Seemingly incongruous bits of technology were scattered about: viewscreens, replicators, and more.

  I feel like I’m in King Arthur’s court, Carol mused, if he’d been visited by aliens who liked to spread their tech around….

  “We have not forgotten the souls of our ancestors,” Alhouan said, gesturing down a darkened hall at the thick set of heavy wooden doors. “The traditions and beliefs of five thousand years are as healthy for us today as they were in times long ago. However, advances in science and new discoveries of the fabric of time and space are inevitable, and we are not above the use of a few conveniences. Does it anger you that we primitives have toys that are so advanced?”

  Carol would not rise to the bait. According to the mission briefing, the entire Varden society was highly ritualized and based primarily on the myriad colors of emotion. It was for this reason she and Bart had been forced to reveal an emotional truth when greeting Alhouan.

  “I see only splendor,” Carol said without emotion. “A harkening back to what our people would consider a simpler time…only with a handful of improvements. I assume you have running water?”
/>   Alhouan laughed and clasped Carol’s shoulder. “Indeed. And you must try not to find yourself accidentally drowned in it.” He pointed to the end of the corridor. “Identify yourselves to the guards before Lord Tanek’s door. They will grant you access.”

  The guard, whose grip would leave a bruise, released the shaken Carol and stalked off in the opposite direction. Carol looked to Bart.

  “I feel like we’ve been dropped into a lunatic asylum,” he whispered.

  “You don’t hear me arguing the point.”

  Upon giving their names, they were led into Farhan Tanek’s private chamber, a surprisingly sparse affair that also doubled as his bedchamber. Tanek wore armor similar to that of his guard, only his muscular arms were exposed and his vest offered a glimpse of his equally muscular chest, covered in ringlets of auburn hair. The man stood near a throne set beside an open window, moonlight bathing his regal, but very tired looking form.

  Tanek looked to the newcomers and dismissed his guards with a gesture. The door was closed and locked, sealing the off-worlders in with the burly man, whose eyes seemed to capture the moonlight and hold the power of the stars.

  Carol raised her chin imperiously. It wasn’t in her nature to be intimidated by the physical presence of another being. The sensation annoyed her terribly.

  “You were the best they could send?” Tanek said darkly as he looked her up and down.

  “I am eminently qualified,” Carol said, flushing with anger despite her predilection for avoiding strong emotions. “I was under the impression the listing of my accomplishments had been forwarded to you. I have been told that you are without a permanent advisor. I wonder if the file wasn’t simply misplaced or not read—”

  “I meant that if these are the end days, as I believe they are, it might have done to have had a prettier face than yours to look upon.”

  Carol was stopped for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Was Tanek simply testing her? From the look in his eyes, she felt reasonably sure he was not, or, at least, that placing her in a crucible was not his primary objective, but instead, perhaps, an act that was second nature for him with any unknown quantity.

  “You’re not my type, either,” Carol said flatly.

  At this, Tanek returned his gaze to his visitor. He almost looked amused. “I think we may get along after all.” He gestured to Bart. “And this one? Your slave? Your concubine—or would it be ‘consort’ in your culture?”

  Always trying to get a rise, Carol noted. “Not hardly. As I’m sure you know, Bart is a top linguist. We have been assured his skills were necessary.”

  “‘Necessity’ may be too strong a word,” Tanek offered. “To me, it suggests the possibility of success in your current endeavor. This is a notion I find dubious at best.”

  Carol shrugged. Tanek looked like a barbarian, all right, but his tongue was sharp, his mind agile and ever seeking openings for verbal onslaught or retaliation.

  “We are here to help,” Bart said. “Perhaps if you could tell us, in your words, what this is all about?”

  Laughing, Tanek settled in his throne. “The seditionist did not explain all in the message he sent?”

  Carol shook her head.

  Tossing his head back, Tanek laughed a full five minutes, practically until he was hoarse, or on the brink of hysterics, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Carol and Bart stood frozen, transfixed by the disturbing display.

  “Then let me show you the problem. Much has changed for our people in a very short period of time,” Tanek said, holding up his arm and displaying an ornate wristlet sparkling with jewels. “For example…”

  Carol started as someone tapped her on the shoulder from behind. That’s impossible, we’re alone in this chamber—

  The sight that greeted her as she spun was even more impossible. The figure behind her was Tanek. She looked back to the throne and saw that the ruler hadn’t moved an inch. She looked back and forth several times. This was impossible. He was in two places at once!

  “All right,” Carol said. “Some kind of holo-technology—”

  “Much more than that,” Tanek said from his throne. “You, Faulwell. Come here and take my hand.”

  Bart did so.

  “Real, yes? Flesh and blood?”

  “Indeed.”

  Tanek did not release Bart’s hand as he instructed Carol to try to touch his duplicate, who stood behind her. She reached out to the figure—and her hand passed through the second Tanek, as if he were a wraith.

  “I don’t—” she began, then “oofed” as the wraith suddenly became corporeal and shoved her back a few feet.

  “Total control,” Tanek said. “To touch, but not be touched.”

  Bart wrested his hand from Tanek’s grip. “What are we looking at here?”

  “This is a working prototype made from the plans your man stole from us, which we retrieved, but not quickly enough,” Tanek said. “The technology in question has many possible uses. Some are benign. Others…quite deadly.”

  Carol gasped as Tanek’s duplicate drew a knife and charged at her with a bloodcurdling war cry, vanishing an instant before his blade could cleave her heart.

  “The mystics call it astral travel,” Tanek explained. “The ability to send your soul or consciousness out of your body so that it might instantly travel to any place imaginable. Though many have claimed such a thing was possible, it was never quantified. Not until recently.”

  “So…this began as a way of spying on others,” Carol said, still catching her breath.

  “Yesss,” Tanek hissed, regret mixing with anger in his tone. “Then its uses as a means of assassination, even extermination, became evident.”

  “You can travel to any point of reference with this?” Bart asked, gesturing at the wristlet.

  “Anywhere on this planet,” Tanek said. “I won’t tell you how this is possible. It has to do with the interconnectedness of all things, the manifestation of a being’s force of will. What’s important is that the astral self has always been viewed as an ethereal entity, unseen by others, unable to impact the physical world. This is better. With this, problems of every kind can be solved.”

  “You mean…mass killings. Penetrating any walls of defense—” Bart began.

  “Problems of every kind, yes,” Tanek replied curtly.

  Carol crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t understand. I thought this was about forging an alliance between your faction and your enemies.”

  Tanek settled back and turned his gaze to the window. “Because of the interference of your Starfleet compatriot, the schematics for this device reached the hands of heretics at exactly the same moment they were returned to us. Our scientists, and theirs, have built working prototypes. There is a balance of power, which is not what I wanted when I commissioned research on this device. I wanted the Nasnan wiped out. Now…it seems I must find a way to reach an accord with them. This device could bring an end to all our people, and even if this technology can be nullified, and we have good reason to believe it can, we have seen that where one device of mass destruction can be created, so can another. Annihilation will come if things do not change; it is only a matter of time.”

  Suddenly, a figure appeared before Tanek. There were no telltale effects of a transporter beam, no warping of the physical world to allow the intrusion. The figure, who wore a shimmering, light-refracting garment from head to toe, lunged forward, plunging a ten-inch blade into the heart of Farhan Tanek.

  Chapter

  4

  Carol and Bart had not been relieved of their phasers. Each had their weapons out and was calling for the guards as the assassin looked down at Farhan Tanek and drew back.

  The blade had passed through Tanek and buried itself in the wooden backing of his throne.

  “Fare you well, little wraith,” Tanek said, touching his wristlet. The assassin screamed, and it was a man’s voice, clearly, as his body was pulled this way and that, finally shattering like a mirror before disso
lving away into the unseen world.

  The guards who burst into the room leveled their weapons at Carol and Bart, but were quickly dismissed by Tanek. “A test of your alertness, nothing more,” he told them. Shaken, the guards withdrew, once again sealing Bart and Carol into…an empty room?

  “What is real, and what is illusion, have, by necessity, been placed on a need-to-know basis,” Tanek said.

  “Multiple projections. More than one doppelgänger,” Bart said. “You’re not real.”

  “Define reality.” Tanek struck his chest, the blow created a resounding thud. “The flesh and blood from which I was first willed into reality is elsewhere, yes. But even in this form, I could cripple or kill either of you if you were to incur my rage. As to willing into existence more than one version of oneself, that is an accomplishment that only I, so far as I’m aware, have had the strength and discipline to accomplish.”

  “How did you get rid of the assassin?” Carol asked.

  Tanek only smiled. “A short-range burst of the energies needed to nullify the weapon’s power. This is how I know a planetwide null field is possible.”

  “This technology,” Bart said, “it could bring about an age unlike any your world has ever seen.”

  Tanek rose and paced. “Ah, the less deadly uses, yes. It has been considered. Imagine a child is hurt in an accident, and only one physician in the world could save her. But he is occupied saving the life of another. With this technology, he could be in two places at once, performing two tasks at one time. The child would not die.”

  Carol was surprised to hear anything other than talk of blood and death from the man.

  “Or imagine an end to acts of passion,” Tanek said, his volume rising, the timbre of his voice becoming even more passionate, “murders which are, of course, perfectly legitimate and sanctioned provided the emotional state of all parties is properly aligned and the scrolls have decreed it a proper time for such an act…. Worthy individuals have passed from our annals because of being torn between their passion for more than one being. With this device, a man or woman could love and be loved by more than one at a given time, and how could there be jealousy, yes?”