Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 52

There was triumph in his foremind. "Then stay, and fulfill your programming."

"I have no place here!"

"Your bloodline is as precious to Braxi as my own. Even more so. You would be welcomed."

"Braxi would destroy me-or vice versa. As for you and me-"

She shut her eyes, and he thought he saw her tremble.

"I'm Azean, Zatar, enough to give that special meaning. Tau checked the codes, and they're all there. Any intimacy would bind me to you in ways you can't imagine, ways I can't accept. Already-"

She stopped herself, and he thought he saw the promise of tears. "There's an alternative," she said hesitantly. "I wasn't sure whether I would offer it, but it seems to suit both our purposes."

He was suspicious, and let her feel it. "What do you propose?"

"Are you willing to risk real contact with your people? I could give you insight into them, such as no man has ever had. I wonder if you'd dare to use it."

"I'm not afraid of your power."

"If so, it's because you don't understand it."

He thought of his sessions with Feran.

"That's nothing," she said to him. "Children's exercises, at best. So he showed you the Disciplines, shared some sensitivity. . . . Ask why he didn't come back.

Zatar. Ask why he was afraid to face you again!"

"Tell me," he dared her.

"First understand, that Feran had a theory. He believed that environment, not genetics, supplied the trigger for telepathic awakening. That Llornu had a high rate of psychic development not because of its breeding programs, but because the children there were exposed to psychic activity every day of their lives, until during a time of physical and emotional trauma-such as p.u.b.erty-their inherited s.h.i.+elds broke down. The potential had to be there, of course, but potential is common. You of all people should know that," she added meaningfully.

He had the sudden sensation of being on the edge of a precipice, about to fall.

"What do you mean?"

"After all that contact with Feran . . . didn't you notice a change? I can sense the difference in you, even without trying. Though if he hadn't warned me about it, I would have attributed it to my imagination."

He saw where she was leading, felt the bite of fear-and elation-in his soul.

"There are no Braxin psychics," he said quietly.

"Because your people have always killed them. But only the ones they discovered. What happened those who learned to redirect their power, to channel it into what you call image, what we call charisma?Wouldn't they thrive?

Wouldn't they reproduce? In your culture, which encourages a man to dominate others, wouldn't they rise to the top of the social hierarchy . . . just as you've done?"

He found he was afraid. It was not a feeling he relished, but he could not seem to master it. Worst of all, he knew that she was aware of everything that went on inside him. and was savoring his fear.

~ I can give you immortality, Zatar-bv guaranteeing the strength of vour dynasty. By giving you such insight that you'll be able to negate Azea's psychic advantage. I can even give you the key to discovering whatever power remains among your own people-while showing you such pain that you'll regret this meeting for the rest of your life. I can make you a ruler, Zatar, such as no ruler has ever been!-and I can and will cause you such suffering that at last my hunger for vengeance will be satisfied.

How her black eyes gleamed, how the emotion poured forth from her! Hatred upon his mind like a welcome caress, the touch-of a familiar lover.

"Feran showed me how," she told him. "I'm not a Probe, so I can't do it cleanly; any contact we have will be tainted by my experience. But he set the patterns in my mind, and showed me how to work them. To give you power, Pri'tiera Zatar.

To restore the balance between Empire and Holding once more. To fulfill my conditioning-which will give me my freedom." She whispered his Name then, a sound rich with pain and longing. "The choice is yours," she whispered.

He came to her across the silver carpet, in front of the ancient painting that declared their kins.h.i.+p. "It was made long ago."

She offered her hand to him; he took instead her arms, and her body, and held her as a lover might, with hatred and l.u.s.t combined. "My enemy," he murmured, as the sharp, bittersweet essence of her enveloped him. "Do your worst."

Were there tears in her eyes? Perhaps in her mind . . . or in his.

"I will," she whispered.

Memory: * * *

Glorying in freedom, and in thoughts of conquest; free in the Void, with a handful of chosen companions and a dream, the dream, for sustenance.

Taste the planet, stroke its surface: Ceylu, it is called, and its crust teems with five billion human lives, all devoted to your cause. Watch them, guide them, relish their existence, for they are the tools of your vengeance, and therefore more precious than any treasure.

Was ever a planet so beautiful? True, the crowded streets are thick with smog, and the oceans choked with the refuse of these careless, stupid people. But clear skies and fertile earth have never appealed to you; this is true beauty, the colors of progress. Does the very air stink from man's abuse? It will soon be scented with triumph, which is the sweetest odor of all. Does the night sky glow with unwholesome light, when airborne debris reflects the illumination of cities? In two hundred years it will be the ultimate battlefield, washed clean by the blood of the enemy. Have patience and wait, for vengeance is yours; you have planted the seeds of death on Ceylu, and Braxi will reap your harvest.

Now, the Void: search it, caress it, reach out with your senses and revel in it, for it is your lover, your ally, the giver of time and the guardian of your secrecy. The Veil of the Dancer will be Braxi's undoing, for the Dancer is Death, and her music is of your making. Touch the darkness with your special senses and revel in its emptiness- -which has been violated, you realize suddenly; while you were lost in an ecstacy of antic.i.p.ation, the enemy has breached your fortress. Very well, it has been done before; there were scouts once, five of them, and you ran them down and dealt with them as they deserved, before they even left the system. So it shall be with these. Ascertain their numbers, then, and determine their strength- Suddenly you fear, and your body is trembling. Can there really be that many?

Would Braxi abandon its ongoing wars for this single effort, embracing peace on the home front to send its warriors Veilward? You count the wars.h.i.+ps, and they are more than you have ever seen gathered in one place; you taste the minds of the men who run them, and are aware of a ruthlessness which exceeds anything you have known in the enemy. Can you hope to fight them, these hundred wars.h.i.+ps, with but a single Starbird and a handful of psychics?

You must withdraw and you do, into the shadow of a sheltering planet. Here you will not be noticed, with your Starbird lying low in the harsh methane winds.

Here you cannot be hurt, but you are also helpless-and you must wait here, impotent, while they sow your fields with salt. There is no other way.

A hundred wars.h.i.+ps stabilize at subluminal velocity; two thousand fighters spew forth from their wardocks, coming into position about the doomed planet.

Ten millennia ago the Lugastine scientists sought an understanding of Life, and though they could not determine a means of initiating it, their experiments did prove fruitful in one regard: they developed a process which drained and destroyed life, which they called the negation field, which Braxins labeled Zherat.

Turned into a weapon, it is something only the Braxins will use-too terrible a tool for other nations to contemplate, but perfect for the needs of the Holding.

And it is this which they plan to use now-the one tool which will strip this upstart planet of its life, wiping the slate clean for some more humble attempt at evolution.

Slowly the fighters take their positions. Computers have determined their placement, with the intentions of raising a balanced field. At all points surrounding the planet, the intensity of the Zherat must be the same. Only then will the dreaded negation field do its work.

As for Ceylu, it knows nothing. It does not see the enemy, for it lacks the equipment to do so. It does not watch in horror as two thousand fighters take their positions about the planet, nor cry out in fear when the lines of field support are first extended between the s.h.i.+ps. Not until the sky is streaked with a network of burning blue lines does the planet fear- and then it is too late. The work has begun; the Zherat is established. There is only the waiting, now, and Ceylu will be a threat no longer.

Horrified, Anzha touches the thoughtwinds of Ceylu-and is captured by the planetmind, and forced to share its dying. Five billion people; they do not die slowly, nor easily. The thoughtwinds are filled with desperate plans, with the slowly dying vestiges of hope, with the screaming last thoughts of those who would do battle with Death himself, if he would but make himself visible.

Children are dying, and mothers weep; fathers are drained of their caring, and infants starve to death. The Zherat is merciless, and agonizingly slow. Six days are needed to suffocate Ceylu, so that no life remains on its surface. Six days during which people die, and fear-and six days during which Anzha shares their dying.

And they blame her. The hatred rises in torrents, blasting waves of accusation that send her mind reeling, seeking shelter from the onslaught-but there is none to be had, for the dying are everywhere. They have invaded her s.h.i.+p, her body, her soul; their fury is inescapable. For nearly six days they hold her prisoner, tormenting her with their suffering; when they are gone at last the silence is so deep, so absolute, that it is hard for her to regain her bearings, to return to the world of the living.

She struggles to regain consciousness. Her skin is parched, her mouth dry, her body nearly dead from lack of water. She manages to drag herself hand over hand to the outlet, and weakly prods it into activity. Water splashes over her face and hands, and she manages to swallow some; it hurts to drink, but already she can feel life returning to her. Now, to find her crew- She does so, too late to help them. For a while she stands there, stunned, and tears would surely come to her eyes if her body had fluid to spare. As it is she leans against the cabin wall, shaking, despair near to overwhelming her at last.

Siara ti is dead; there are signs of dehydration about him, and perhaps that was what killed him. For Zefire li, death was less merciful. Caught up in a storm of accusation, he became no more than a tool of Ceylu's hate, turned against himself. Anzha looks at his b.l.o.o.d.y form, at the empty sockets where he gouged out his own eyes, and s.h.i.+vers. He destroyed himself, as they all might have done if they had been weaker. The death-throes of Ceylu were that powerful; even now they resonate within her.

Searching the Starbird, she finds her other two psychics. Both dead. It seems that one killed the other, then turned on herself as Zefire li had done- responding, no doubt, to the incessant hatred of Ceylu. And Tau? he had been on the planet's surface, she realized suddenly, sharing his medical skills with Ceyluans, hoping to win their trust. Did they rend him in their hatred, or did he live to feed his soul to the Zherat? The loss of his loyalty hurts worst than all the rest combined.

I have killed you, she thinks-and the thought is painfully familiar.

Ceylu: she must see it, must come to terms with what happened there. That entails great risk: she is hurt too badly to chance any psychic activity, must brave the Void without searching for enemies first. Perhaps it is her death-wish that drives her forward, into s.p.a.ce which Braxi so recently occupied. But the system is empty. She alone is alive to see the devastation that remains, and as her Starbird spirals down to the planet's surface, she wonders if this loneliness is really any greater than that which she has always lived with.

Ceylu is dead. Even more: it is death incarnate, a monument to the concept of mortality. Everywhere the bodies of the dead lie unburied, human and animal alike. Corpses are strewn upon lifeless gra.s.s, under lifeless trees, felled by the Zherat wherever they stood when the last of their vital strength left them. There is no rot, no decay; even the microbes are dead.

And Tau . . . his body is irrecoverable, lost somewhere among these five billion corpses. For some strange reason, that seems the crudest blow of all.

She kneels on the gritty pavement, overcome by her sorrow. The deaths of five billion people could not truly move her; the death of one man who risked his life out of loyalty to her, and lost it, is suddenly overwhelming.

I failed you, she thinks. I let you die.

She lowers her head and weeps, and for a long, long time there is nothing but sorrow in her universe.

- Anzha. . . .

With a start, she looks up. The mind that speaks to her is familiar, but she is too wounded to identify it. Who else would be out here?

She turns, and she sees him.

Feran.

Suddenly, all the hate that she has been directing at herself has an outward focus; she lashes out at him with all the force her mind can muster, and only when the pain of it leaves her gasping for breath does she accept the truth. Ceylu cost her too much strength; she lacks the power to kill him.

How did you get here? What do you want? . . . Have you come to gloat, Braxin?

He comes to her side and reaches out to her. She pulls away from him, and in the violence of her action, falls. The ground is hard, and the impact sends her senses reeling; she can do no more than lie there, stunned, as the first tendrils of his thought begin to whisper their secrets into her brain.

~ See, this is your heritage . . . not a thing to be ashamed of, but a bloodline rich with history. Witness the truth of it, observe how it will shape your future.

As for Ceylu it is dead, there is no saving it, you must leave it behind. Let it go, Anzha. I am not Braxin, I am not Braxin, / am not Braxin!

He inserts probing thoughts deep into her mind; they feel like fragments of molten steel and she struggles to force them out, to strike at this man who dares to take advantage of her weakness. ~ Relax. Anzha. I'm not here to hurt you-Ar knows I could never do that again, not even if he required it. But there is a way.

Gently, my Starcommander; let me touch you one last time, and I promise you there will be an end to it. She does not want him inside her brain, but she is too weak to stop him; tears of frustration squeeze forth from her eyes as he touches his hand to her forehead, steeling himself for contact.

~ The key is ident.i.ty; master that, and you will control the rest. You can be free, Anzha. I will undo what I can of your conditioning, and then what remains can be dealt with. I have found a way.

"Conditioning can't be undone," she gasps.

There is sadness in his mind. ~ Inst.i.tute propaganda. I can negate my original work; it will require the last of my strength, but it can be done. As for the rest, you must deal with that yourself. A lifetime of habit has reinforced the patterns I set into your mind. You must deal with that directly-satisfy the conditions of your programming, in other words, and then you will be free of it.

"Submit to Braxi? Bear a child of that race for li Pazua to study? I refuse!"

He is not surprised to hear that she knows the exact nature of her conditioning; nothing she does can surprise him any more. ~ Li Pazua is dead; Zatar killed him in your name. The Inst.i.tute is gone and the psychics are scattered. Any part of your conditioning that depended upon him is now invalidated. You need fear no sudden surge of maternal instinct, he a.s.sures her. ~ As long as there is no Inst.i.tute, that part of the conditioning will remain inoperative. As for the rest. . .

He hesitates, and she senses how much this will cost him.

"I have a plan," he tells her. "Listen."

Whispers of thought in her mind, affecting the secret paths of being; she can feel the work being done and she fears it, but there is nothing she can do to either help or hinder him. For a while she is a child again, and the emptiness of her youth comes back to her. Then his voice comes to her, softly, pouring truths into her mind. His truths.

~We are not the lords of creation, though we've convinced ourselves that we are. Sensitivity is a weakness, not a strength, and I'm convinced that nature abhors it. Think of the predator, stalking his prey. What good does it do him to be psychic, if the intensity of his hunger acts as a warning to his chosen victim?

How does an animal manage to hide, when its very fear is a beacon leading to its presence? Only the emergence of an advanced intellect allows us to encourage such a weakness, and even so, we need all the tools we can muster to turn it from a handicap to an a.s.set. The Disciplines. The carefully controlled community. Control, Anzha, that's the key, a control that the primitive mind lacks. For which reason primitive society fears the psychic, as much as it wors.h.i.+ps him. It proclaims him a seer, it clothes him in honor-but it binds him in rituals which set him apart, and more often than not sees to it that he dies without issue.

The Braxana are to be congratulated, for they are the only people honest enough to kill their psychics outright. They fear telepathy, with all the strength of primitive instinct, and will not endure the telepath in their midst. And that is the weakness which you will exploit, in order to regain your freedom. Listen: I will tell you what to do. . . .

Come to me, my enemy, my hated one-come to me and share the richness of my talent, which you have hungered after as avidly as you have ever hungered after woman. Let me open your mind to the touch of the cosmos, the song of thoughts and purposes that makes the Void vibrate with life. Come deep into me where the power lies, in that center of being where the thoughts of others are mastered. Come taste the power, Zatar, which other men dream of, and fear; come make it yours, if you dare, and it shall be yours in truth.

See: the life that is Braxi writhes, its consciousness like a body that is bound, struggling to be free. Shards of agony cut through its awareness at irregular intervals, causing the planetmind to quiver. Here is the sharp spear that is a woman's despair; there the honed edge of a man's tormented impotence. Touch the planet and it pierces you, spear after spear of tortured thought arising from the muddled surface, bits of pain and stillborn dreams and a hope that is only birthed so that it may die. This is the homeworld, the Mistress Planet, the land that the traitor-G.o.d chose; this is Braxi, the planet that the Braxana claimed, the throne world of Zatar.

What can you do for it, my hated one? What can you do in a single lifetime that can alter the pattern of eons? Taste the thoughts of Braxi's women, rich with despair, dark with envy. Taste the pettiness of her men, the terrible isolation in which her people live. Build your dynasty if you will . . . but know that the foundation is rotten. The thoughtwinds of Braxi stink of desolation, and it would take more than one man to correct it. This is reality, Zatar, compared to which your throne is little more than illusion. Is it what you want? Does it satisfy you?

You were my catalyst, in the maelstrom of my youth. You with your velvet eyes, beautiful beyond imagining, pure in your warrior-essence. You drew me out of myself and left me open, like a wound sc.r.a.ped raw, ready for the trauma which would unleash my power. Now I will make the cycle complete, and apply my substance to your fledgling skill.

By your will, Pri'tiera. The choice was your own. Remember that.

The flavor of desire. The touch of consummation.

Fire. He falls into burning, clasped to the heart of her. All about him rages the storm of her being, emotions he tasted once, decades ago, and he drinks in their substance with relish. They are not different, but stronger. Refined by the k'airth.

her hatred is a thing of beauty; he touches it with his own killing pa.s.sion, and lets their thoughts mingle as he sinks deeper and deeper into the fire of her soul.

There is pain, but a welcome pain; he knows it is the price of their union, therefore embraces it as a necessity. And thus he is laid bare, his latent skill stripped of all inhibition, until the richness and anarchy of cosmic thought invade the deepest recesses of his Braxana soul, and exact their terrible price.

He clings to her, his only anchor in a universe gone mad. This is sensitivity as she once knew it, when the trauma of her father's death opened her mind to every pa.s.sing thought; he gave her this terror, and now she is returning the favor. This is the torment that the awakening telepath knows, a chaos so terrible that the mind would rather repress its inborn talent than experience it even for an instant.

It is the birth of the True Mind, the telepath's soul; it is his universe, and he fights to master it.

Order imposed upon anarchy: he focuses on his sense of self, separates it from the primal chaos which surrounds him, and builds walls which will keep the two distinct. How like the G.o.ds, he muses. The sea is quieting, the fire dying. The thoughts of the universe are a song, no more, a quiet ebb and flow of being that caresses his mind with wonder. This is what it means to be psychic; this is what it means to live.

Why have we denied this thing? Why have we feared it? A whisper of thought, carried to him on a gentle breeze of the Voidmind: You will see, she promises him.

Darkness parting, and the s.h.i.+mmer of a silver ocean. He raised his head, heard the wallfleece tinkle in response to his motion. It took him a moment to remember where he was. He looked for her, but she had left. He scanned the nearby region for her mental signature, received no response. Some time had pa.s.sed, then, since the healing darkness had claimed him.

"Lord Zatar?"

He tried to sit upright, lacked the strength. Footsteps came from the suite's entrance, echoed in the tinkling of the rug. A woman's voice: L'resh? What was she doing here?

"My Lord?"