Heresy 55

Tylha

The blackout lasts only a fraction of a second... yet things seem to have changed in its wake. Something is wrong - I can't see where, but something is wrong -

That's it. My senses. I can see just fine, but my antennae... nothing is registering, no feeling, no taste to the air. As if I've gone numb from the forehead up. And somehow the light is - wrong....

It's disorienting, but it's not going to stop me. I raise the pulsewave and point it towards T'Nir. Her eyes are open now, and she studies me, smiling faintly. Then other things start to click -

Stiak's eyes are wide open, too, and he is standing... and his attitude is one of abject fear. And the table, that held the katric ark... the table is empty, now.

"It's over, T'Nir," I say, and my voice sounds hollow and weak.

"A gun," T'Nir says. "You think you can stop me with a gun."

I press the trigger. The pulsewave makes a faint whining sound, but nothing else happens. T'Nir's smile widens.

"Vice Admiral Shohl." Stiak speaks now. "You - you should not be here."

"No," says T'Nir dryly. "Indeed not."

I work the gun's action, loading the secondary function - the grenade launcher. There's no way to set a photon grenade to stun, and at this range it will turn T'Nir's unprotected body into hamburger. I know I'm supposed to take her alive, but I have a dreadful fear of this situation - I pull the trigger.

The grenade drops out of the end of the barrel, hits the stone floor with a dull ringing sound, and rolls away.

"A monster," says T'Nir in a voice dripping scorn. "A monster with blue skin, and odd-shaped ears, and antennae... and of course a death ray. So feeble. An image to frighten schoolchildren."

The voice is... wrong, as if it carries overtones of someone speaking in a different register. And besides, T'Nir knows me, knows what an Andorian is.... My skin crawls. "You're not T'Nir," I say.

"How perceptive of you. Actually, some of me still is. Enough to use... enough to fool people."

"You're Bresar."

"Silly little monster. Of course I am."

"There was enough left," Stiak says softly, "to deceive me."

"You," says the thing with T'Nir's face, "wanted to be deceived."

"It's still over," I say. "I don't know what sort of damping field you're using on my weapons, but it won't stop a strike from further away. I have a ship in orbit - for that matter, this building is surrounded right now -"

T'Nir throws back her head and laughs at that. The sound is chilling. "Oh, dear," she says. "This building is surrounded? However did they manage that?"

"Look out of the window, Vice Admiral Shohl," says Stiak in dead, hopeless tones.

I step across the stone floor, carefully skirting T'Nir and her three silent acolytes sitting behind her. Between two tall bookshelves, a window opens onto the garden beyond. I look out.

The garden is still there, the plants still green and verdant. Above them, the sky - the sky is glowing yellow, and cut with gleaming facets. I swallow, hard, and turn to Stiak.

"We're inside the katric ark?"

"The important part of you is," says T'Nir. "The mind. The meat is left in the outside world, of course. One may last a long time without meat. I survived unimpeded for more than two millennia." She sniffs. "And you should not refer to this device as a mere katric ark. It took six psi-artificers of the house of T'Sirn a year to create this artifact - it would not have been possible, even so, had I not used some arts I know to enhance their intellectual capacities -"

"We know of these arts," Stiak says. "The cerebral amplification, sooner or later, burns out the brain."

"In a good cause. My cause. I have never shrunk from using the technique. Silly little monster, are you planning to hit me?"

I let my arm fall to my side. I thought it would probably be futile.

"You have destroyed my material power," says T'Nir, "but you cannot touch me. I assure you, the artificers of T'Sirn made quite sure this vessel was indestructible. No one before or since has had such skill in working kironide. I made sure of that. Preserved, in here, I am safe forever. And, sooner or later, I will find other minds, who will let me re-emerge into the material world - if and when I wish it."

"You were defeated before," I say. "You fled from Vulcan, all the way to Chara V - and you died there, Bresar. Talk all you like, you're still dead. Dead and gone."

"How little you understand. I did not flee. The people of Vulcan showed ingratitude, so I left. And how have they fared without me? Squabbling and brutalizing each other, then finding a sterile unity under the philosophy of a bloodless pacifist... then going out into space and mingling with the likes of you." She laughs. "I wish I could have seen their faces, when my descendants first discovered your kind. Intelligent life among the stars! How disappointed they must have been, to find nothing but a cheap caricature of life, an image from a child's picture book walking around and pretending to think...."

"At least we're better than you," I say hotly. "You think you're the only psychic vampire the Federation's ever encountered? You're not even the first one I've run into. You can be beaten, Bresar, and you will be. By us. The cheap caricatures."

"Vice Admiral Shohl," says Stiak, "be careful."

"Oh, quite," says T'Nir. "You cannot harm me, or even anger me, but you could very easily bore me, and that would be worse, for you."

"Why?" I ask. "Are you planning to bore right back at us? On the current showing, I admit, you'll be good at it."

"This world is as I wish it," says T'Nir. "At least, once I have my full complement of powers." She makes a quiet tutting noise. "I suppose that cannot be put off much longer now. And it is unfortunate... I do not have all that I would wish. Seven wills, you see, seven minds - the artifact is optimally configured with seven coordinated mentalities. You understand now, I take it, the symbolism of the seven-pointed star? Seven rays of power, united to serve my will."

I stop breathing for a moment. Me, Stiak, the three ministers... and T'Nir herself, whatever there is of her... and the mind of Bresar. Is that what awaits me? To be fused into a composite mind, under Bresar's domination, forever?

"Oh, no," says T'Nir. Is she reading my mind, or just my face? "No, you are not suitable at all for inclusion, monster. No more are you," she adds, turning to Stiak. "Your guard technique against mental invasion matters much less than you think... but you are a scientist. Dry, sceptical, passionless little minds. Politicians, now, they are much easier to handle." She gestures at the three silent figures sitting behind her. "Venal politicians have their uses, in the material world; they can be bought. But honest ones - ones who believe in a cause - those are suitable for my purpose. If they believe in something, they can be made to believe in me."

"But -" Stiak's voice has a catch in it. "T'Nir - she was never concerned with - with politics -"

"She believed in something." The voice is gloating, malevolent. "She believed in you."

Stiak makes no reply. His face is ashen. T'Nir rises to her feet, still graceful. "I would have preferred to have the whole of my little... coterie," she says. "But the Romulans failed me. They died, or they fled." She sniffs. "They fled from Surak and they fled from me. Dying and fleeing seems to be all that these Romulans are fit for." She turns to address the three ministers. "Since they are not here, I will require everything from you."

"Of course," says T'Nos in a trance-like voice.

"That is only logical," says Silit in the same tones.

T'Nir stands and looks down on them, and they change. Before my eyes, a faint haze, like steam, starts to rise from their bodies... and it thickens, becomes opaque, hiding the shapes of the three Vulcans from view. I'm reminded, hideously, of the roiling clouds in Storm Command. T'Nir steps forward into the cloud, and inhales, long and loudly, breathing it in, breathing all of it in...

The cloud clears. Silit, T'Nos and Vorruk are gone.

"You two are not suitable." The bass registers of a powerful masculine voice are louder and clearer now, behind T'Nir's words. "And your conversation has already grown tedious... now, you may amuse me in other ways."

I can't help myself; I lunge for her, my hands clawed, reaching for her throat. But she seems to recede, suddenly, into the distance - and the walls, the floor, the whole structure of the library suddenly comes apart, the pieces all flying into a faceted yellow sky, and I fall, and fall....

---

And I land. Hard, on a gritty stone surface, the breath knocked out of me. I roll, and struggle gasping to my feet. The strange light, the blindness in my antennae, are still confusing me.

Nearby, I hear a weak groan. Stiak.

I help him to his feet, then look around, trying to take stock of our new surroundings. We're on a level surface of stone slabs, some narrow, some broad - it stretches out as far as I can see, in all directions, vanishing into a heat haze, beyond which I can see, in the distance, the red rolling desert hills of Vulcan. Stiak is gasping for breath, evidently winded worse than I was. There is no sign of T'Nir.

A grating noise behind me: I turn around. The narrow slabs of stone are rising out of the ground, becoming walls around us, walls that enclose us in a maze of narrow passages. Stiak says, "No..." in a hopeless moaning tone.

"Stiak." I take him by the shoulder and shake him. "What's going on?"

"It is -" Stiak coughs and swallows, hard. "This is the Shifting Maze of Kham-Sen. It was - a place of execution, in the times of the historical Bresar. Or was reported as such - I am not convinced it was ever built, in reality -"

"How does it work?"

"You have seen how it works. Just now. Each section of wall is hydraulically operated; they extend or retract in a random pattern. It is designed... so that the victims believe that there is a way out. So they hurry, endlessly, through the maze, in search of the configuration that they believe will permit them to reach an exit."

"While Bresar looks down from above, and has a good laugh," I say. "Well, where is he, then?"

Even as I speak, the shadow falls over me. I turn around, and look up.

He is a powerfully built Vulcan male, middle-aged, his dark hair lightly touched with grey, his hawkish features seamed and lined. He looks down on us with black eyes, and his mouth twists into an amused sneer.

He is somewhere around fifteen hundred metres tall.

I think we have a problem.

---

"So, he's just going to watch while we... run around," I say.

"There is little point in running," says Stiak. "We know there is no escape."

"We'd better move, anyway," I say. "If we stay here, he'll start thinking we're boring again. And then he'll come up with something worse." I point at random. "That way."

"We should stick close," says Stiak. "The walls may rise suddenly and separate us.... though I do not know what we can accomplish, together or separately."

"There must be something we can do. Besides - we're not really here, are we? This is all some sort of mindscape, a programmed hallucination. Can we die here?"

"I suspect," says Stiak, "that we cannot... but we will feel the normal needs of our corporeal bodies. Starvation, dehydration, lack of sleep... they will reduce us, ultimately, to a mere mass of pain, a mindless survival. In such a state, we will finally be assimilable by Bresar. A sort of... basic foodstuff... for his psyche."

"I think I'd prefer to avoid that." A grating sound; the walls are shifting again. I hang on to Stiak as the maze changes around us. I should have seen that coming -

"Wait a minute," I say. "Antennae."

"I do not understand," says Stiak.

"Ever since coming in - here - I've not been able to perceive anything with my antennae," I say.

"That is unsurprising. Bresar has no knowledge of Andorian antennae and no subjective understanding of the perceptions you receive through them. So he cannot create those sensations, within this reality."

"Which tells us something. This isn't real, and Bresar is fallible. This mindscape isn't perfect, so it can't be a perfect trap."

The walls change again. Stiak stumbles and falls, leaning against one. "Forgive me," he says, "but I do not see how the fact that you are partially blind... helps us in any way." He moans. "It does not have to be perfect. It only has to be good enough."

"We're inside a psionic artifact," I carry on, doggedly. "All right, Bresar had it made, he knows how it works - but our minds are inside it, too. Surely we can influence its workings, somehow? You're trained in these things, aren't you? In a small way, maybe, but that might be all we need."

Stiak shakes his head. "I do not know how far I can trust my own mind. I do not know how much of - what I have done - was through my own volition, or through the influence of Bresar. That mind is both subtle and powerful, Vice Admiral Shohl."

"Call me Tylha," I mutter.

Stiak turns haunted eyes on me. "Tylha. The Hegemony has done - terrible things. I know that now. And I honestly do not know whether I did them through compulsion, or because I was persuaded by my wife's or Valikra's rhetoric, or because I genuinely thought they were the right thing to do. I do not know how guilty I am."

"Worry about it later. For now, we have to think of some way out."

"But there is none," says Stiak despondently. Then there is a grating noise, as the walls move again -

And, unbelievably, there is another sound.

I look down in astonishment at my chest. My combadge chirps again, insistently. I stare at Stiak, whose eyes are round with amazement too. Hesitantly, I reach up and touch the badge. "Shohl here."

"Holy moly, it freakin' works. Amazing," says a familiar voice.

"Ronnie?"

"Hang in there, kiddo. You are not losing your marbles, this is really me, in the flesh and kicking. Um, except for the flesh part, I guess. And the kicking."

"Who is that?" Stiak asks.

"Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does. Listen, you would not believe what we're doing to get you out of this. My crew and your crew and the Vulcans, it's all go this end, really."

"How are you speaking to me?" I ask.

"Any organic brain getting into the psi field is going to get zonked, pronto. But the androids - your Amiga and my Ada - aren't quite as badly affected. So, we've got a sort of daisy chain set up - Amiga has grabbed hold of you, and Ada's grabbed Amiga, and I get to grab Ada and then use my remaining nanites to make a neural bridge to your cortex. We're using the androids and Two of Twelve as a telephone exchange. And I hope Two of Twelve is really annoyed about it."

I shake my head in disbelief. "OK," I say. "I'm not going to pretend it's not a relief to hear your voice...."

"But you don't need moral support, you need help, fair enough. What's your actual situation?"

"We're trapped - Stiak and I - inside a generated mindscape -" Quickly, I fill her in on what's happening. At the end of it, a low whistle comes from the combadge.

"OK," says Ronnie, "OK. So I get the picture. I suppose the trick now is going to be getting you out of the frame.... Look. Dorok is bringing in some psionic tech-heads from the Vulcan Academy of Sciences, I'll give them what you've told me, maybe they can crack it. Hang tough, kiddo. We will get you out of there. Dunno how, yet, but hey, I'm an optimist. Maybe you can, I dunno, fight Bresar for control of the local reality?"

"Fight him how?" I ask.

"Well, y'know, physically. Direct combat being a metaphor thingy for psychic influence. Kind of thing."

I look up at the towering giant figure. "He's got a bit of a weight advantage," I say. "And reach."

"So find an equalizer. Or use your mobility advantage. Sting like the butterfly, float like the bee. Whatever, you know what I mean."

Stiak has been sitting by me, muttering inaudibly to himself, moving only to keep near me when the walls shift. Now he raises his voice and says, "It may be possible."

"What may?" Ronnie and I ask it together.

"This - link. It is something which Bresar would not permit, were he aware of it. And that means that he is not aware of it. Tylha is right, his control of the perceived local reality is not total." Stiak seems to be gazing into space, theorizing aloud. "If we can find something - some element - to use, which Bresar does not understand or anticipate... ideally, something he cannot use T'Nir's knowledge to compensate for.... Yes."

"Yes, what?" I demand.

"I think I can influence local reality... just enough, for an equalizer. A new factor, whose potentialities Bresar does not know, and which I happen to know... impressed T'Nir." He takes a deep breath. "Tylha, I will need your fullest cooperation."

"All right," I say guardedly. "But what -"

I never finish the sentence, because his hands are suddenly on my head, and there is a roaring in my ears.

"My mind to your mind," is the last thing I hear him say, "your mind to my mind...."