Prime of Life - 47 chapter Space Opera novel

Chapter 5

Reavus, like all the trade ships, had taken more than a thousand years to build, and was still a work in progress. Unlike the others, which plied wares from star system to star system through similarity tunnels, Reavus was the communications hub of the Galactic Trade Network. The sympaths there relayed messages instantly by quantum entanglement across the vast distances. On the planets, it was said God himself placed his calls through Reavus--an aphorism not heard on the Trade Ships, since all contemplation of a supreme deity was currently forbidden in the Network.

Yarek, a highly trained Reavus sympath, focused his consciousness on a message arriving with a code he'd not seen since his youth. At the same time his subconscious mind continued to manage several thousand other communications.

"Yarek. Remember me? How's it going."

His empathy field flickered as he made adjustments. The lush jungle--his chosen primary schema--faded to half density when the visible similarity image formed. He saw a naked female body stretched between two indistinct appliances in a well-lit location. The undercurrent of distress was strong. Could it be her? "It's going better with me than you, apparently," he said.

The entanglement matrix in his mind came from Trade Ship Bratus. It mattered not a whit to a sympath that the two artificial planetoids were halfway across the galaxy from one another. Yarek, trained from a young age to regulate quantum motifs, clarified the simulacrum. It was her!

She was stretched lengthwise in the air between a heavy chair thick with wires, and a data console. Her wrists were held by shackles to the chair arms. Bare toes, Yarek guessed, had been the means to send the message, via the console.

"Tani!" Yarek said, old memories flickering.

She smiled through a face strained with effort. "Hey. Just testing new keypad designs. Got the toe model here." The comm-link was holding, so Tani half-slumped, feet now on the floor. "Problem is, it's incompatible with this new executive yoga chair. Forces the healthiest positions, but I had a hell of a time punching your code. Gotta let them know this piece of pkmmta ain't gonna sell."

When Yarek had first met Tani, she was standing at the abrupt edge of a chasm in Reavus' largest park, jagged rocks and twisted trees defining the drop to the river below. Though only a neopath at the time, before the amygdala and hippocampas modification phase of his training, he had yet felt her aura and known her intent. Wait, he had said, let me go with you. She had turned. What? Your suffering is my suffering, he had said. I want to die with you.

Yarek had not been lying--even as a fledgling sympath, he knew what to say and how to say it. The misery inside this young woman was clear, and underneath it he felt the horror. But he knew he could save her. He would not have to die with her. Taking her hand, he massaged the strings of her heart, a misuse of his training yet not so grave as to end his career. Beneath the frozen hatred in her mind, he saw beauty. "You are lovely," he had said then, as he said now.

Yarek did not plan, desired nothing, felt deep oneness with life. The uninitiated often saw these quantum conduits as unworldly persons, dispassionately channeling the substratum of the universe. The truth was, their training built their emotional centers to a fever pitch--it was only fierce emotions that could constrain the chaos spewing from similarity tunnels. Yet with training these forces were potently bound.

When he'd met Tani, the bonds were still incomplete. She had almost captured his heart. Almost. They'd spent one frenzied cycle together, impassioned and impulsive. Talking, feeling. Loving. He gave her a yellow ersthm, having seen this thorny-stemmed fragile flower to be synonymous in her subconscious with her own essence. The next cycle, as planned, his brain palps were inserted and engineered viruses injected. He'd left her alone and disappointed, he knew, but she was no longer suicidal.

"So what can I do for you?" Yarek said to the bizarre image in his primeval habitat. "I'm certainly not going to order one of those chairs."

On the console monitor, Tani's view was of Yarek's schema--he was in his jungle, seated on a mossy rock with shafts of sunlight amid dark foliage. "Well, my pal here on Bratus has more in store for me than yoga. And no safeword. He stepped out for a moment. You and me," she winked, "we're both from planets originally--thought you might work up some of that old alpha male aggression for your one true love."

Yarek smiled. Aggression was far from his current phase space. Back then, Tani had said hate is easy, love is hard. Even now, with his empathy boosted to the stars, he could not define love. Yet that was his job. Tani would have thought it odd, had she known how it was done, but it was empathy with the chair and the console--love of a sort--that allowed Yarek to access safety controls and tamper with inner workings.

As the door in front of Tani opened, Yarek saw a tall man in uniform enter the room. Seeing the contorted woman, the soldier drew a sidearm.

I'm too late, Yarek thought. The techs had removed fear, anger and worry from Yarek's psyche, yet now he felt something new. Unknown. A strange blaze. He looked down at his hands, remembering he had a body, not just a mind. He felt...hot...cold...then he knew. A fraction of Tani's heart remained in his! And his in hers? How could the psychotechs have missed it? Circumstances of the times back then...his mind half-baked, hers pushed over the edge...a situation the specialists had never encountered before?

On a deep mind level Yarek sensed the soldier's finger compress against the weapon's trigger. I'm too late. What would happen if Tani died? Would the piece of her in him explode, exempt from the shackles of his training? Or would she live on inside him, forcing him out of the order of the sympaths? Thoughts of the future were unheard of for the likes of him! Sweat broke out on his forehead.

Yarek's conscious visual display was imperfect: he saw the two bodies suddenly trade places. What did it mean? He dove deeper into the lower levels of his brain where the quantum details lay...The cuffs retracted--the chair had obeyed him! Tani flipped forward onto all fours, facing the door. She stood briefly on her hands, then vaulted into the air as the soldier's weapon spat a projectile beneath her. She came down hard, knocking the gun aside, and landed on her feet face to face with Commander Vhss.

"Bkkr t'rmol," Tani shouted as she put a quick fist to his throat. She grasped his neck and pivoted his body over her shoulder, landing him in the chair. The reversal had taken all of a second or two.

"Thanks." Tani grinned up at Yarek on the monitor. "Again. Let's make this a habit, you saving my life."

Relief? Joy? Emotions Yarek wasn't supposed to have. Though he was risking expulsion, the skilled sympath felt no impropriety as he utilized the Reavus plasma layer to embed a top level password in the distant Bratus computer network. "Got another present before you go," he said to Tani. "Ersthm. Like you. Thorny and fragile. Now it's your personal password. Use with care--looks like you've got some rough characters there."

Had Yarek the ability to see the future, he might have added, "Good luck."