Deathstalker - Twilight Of The Empire Omnibus Part 28

"Right here, Captain."

And suddenly he was standing on a narrow stairway, its cracked marble steps falling away into infinity.

Carrion stood beside him, calm and unruffled. The cold wind stirred his hair, and his cloak swirled around him like billowing wings. He looked down at the endless drop, and then looked at Silence, unmoved.

"I did warn you, Captain. Trips like this are always dangerous."

"Trip?" said Silence, his voice harsh to hide the uncertainty. "Where are we, Carrion?"

"Where you insisted I take you. Inside Diana Vertue's mind."

Memories returned in a rush. Diana had seen the marines die, ripped apart before her. Horror and survivor's guilt had overwhelmed her mind, until the only way to save her sanity had been to deny it had ever happened. She forgot it all, until she was forced to remember. And then, rather than face the horror again, she'd shut herself away inside her own mind, where nothing could reach her and nothing could harm her. She shut herself down and stood staring blindly, mute and comatose, safe at last.

Carrion couldn't reach her with his esp, but he did have one suggestion. It was risky and uncertain, dangerous both to him and the espers, but he could drop his shields and join his mind directly with Diana's. Make her pain his own.If you're going in there, I'm going in with you , Silence had said.After all, I am her father . Carrion had argued, and Silence hadn't listened. He had no choice. He needed the esper if he was to complete this mission successfully. And she was his daughter, after all.

Lights blazed in the darkness, guttered, and were gone. Voices came and went, shrill and inhuman. And the wind rose and fell, blowing out of nowhere.

"Every light is a thought," said Carrion softly. "Every voice a memory. And the rising and falling of the wind is the force of her will. We're a part of her mind now, as vulnerable as she is. Either we find a remedy for her madness, a way for her to live with her memories, or we'll never leave here."

"Where did the stairway come from?" said Silence, as much for the comfort of hearing his own voice as anything else.

"It's a construct created by our joined minds; a symbol of constancy, to help us feel more secure. You must expect strange things here, Captain. The mind deals in symbols. Particularly when dealing with things it doesn't really want to think about."

He looked down, and Silence followed his gaze. The stairway suddenly came to an end not far below, in a shimmering silvery plain that stretched away in all directions further than the eye could follow. And there, at the foot of the stairs, was a great white-walled house with strange lights burning in its windows.

"That is Diana's consciousness," said the outlaw. "Or how she perceives it. We have to enter the house and put right the damage there, if we can. We'd do well to make haste. Time isn't a factor; a few days here can be only a few seconds in the real world. But the mind is a dangerous place to visit. All the things we really fear are here, with nothing to protect us from them save the strength of our own wills. There are no rules here, Captain, only varying degrees of necessity."

"Then let's get on with it," said Silence, and he started down the stairs towards the great white house.

The house drew close by slow degrees, as though reluctant to accept any visitors. Silence began to get the feeling there was something else in the darkness with them. He looked un.o.btrusively about him, but the dark turned aside his gaze with contemptuous ease. He heard slow, regular breathing, and what might have been the flapping of giant wings. The sounds came first from one side and then the other, growing steadily closer, nearer. He sensed a hot, arid presence watching from the concealing darkness.

"Ignore it, Captain," said Carrion softly. "Whatever it is, we don't want to meet it. Concentrate on the house. Just the house."

And suddenly they were at the foot of the stairway, the house looming over them, shining like a moon.

The great structure looked old-fashioned and curiously stylized, as though built more for viewing than actual use. The strange lights were gone, and the windows held only darkness, like so many watching eyes. A sudden chill stabbed through Silence as he finally recognised what he was looking at. It was the doll's house he'd bought Diana for her fifth birthday. When she'd still been his child, before the Empire took her from him. He looked at the door before him. It was a great featureless slab of wood, without knocker or handle.

"What do we do now?" he asked. His voice seemed to echo on and on, falling away into disturbing whispers.

"We go in," said Carrion evenly. "And then we talk to Diana, or whatever part of her she chooses to show us. We can't force her to come back with us. We have to persuade her. If we can."

He stepped forward and knocked firmly on the door. The sound was flat and empty, not at all like a door should sound. It swung slowly open before them, revealing a brightly lit hallway. Silence looked at Carrion, who gestured for him to lead the way. Silence stepped resolutely forward, Carrion a step behind him. The door closed behind them with a solid, final sound. The hallway stretched ahead of them, impossibly long. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, and doors led off from the hallway at regular intervals.

"The mind is a labyrinth," said Carrion. "Let's hope we don't meet the Minotaur."

"There might not be one," said Silence.

"There's always a Minotaur. If we're lucky, there'll also be a guide."

As though the house had been listening all along, and waiting for the word to be spoken, a door opened not far away, and a young child stepped out into the hallway. Diana, six years old, in her party dress.

There were electrode burns on her forehead.

"Do you recognise the image, John?" said Carrion. "Do you know why she chose this of all her selves to show us? This is what she looked like when the Empire was training her how to use her esp. Or to be more exact, when not to. The first thing all espers have to learn is obedience-to use their esp only when ordered to. Espers are controlled through pain-avoidance conditioning, a long and painful process whose only justification is that it works. No one uses the word torture. Espers have no rights. They're a commodity, to be used and discarded as needed. And if that means attaching electrodes to a young child and turning up the voltage, well, you can't make an omelette, and all that. No, Captain; don't look away.

This is your doing."

"I didn't know," said Silence.

"You didn't want to know. You closed your eyes to evidence, and your mind to rumours, and told yourself it was all for the best. You sent your daughter to h.e.l.l, John, and part of her is always there, endlessly suffering, endlessly screaming. And we're going to have to walk through it to reach her."

Carrion leaned forward, his voice gentle as he spoke to the child before him. "Diana, we need to talk to you. Can you talk to us?"

The child turned, put out her hands for them to take, and led them down the hallway. The small hand was warm and soft and very real in Silence's grasp. Ghosts came and walked in the hall with them, pale and silent people who had been important to Diana in her short life. Silence didn't recognise any of them.

There was no sign of him among the ghosts. They filed past in eerie silence, their eyes preoccupied, their thoughts somewhere else. Some of them bore the mark of the electrodes on their skin. Some were screaming soundlessly, some were clearly insane, and too many of them were children.

Silence looked away, studying the doors they pa.s.sed. Some were closed and some were open. The rooms held moments from Diana's past, endlessly repeating like flies trapped in amber. Most were scenes of suffering, mental or physical and often both.You sent your daughter to h.e.l.l, John . Silence wanted to look away, but wouldn't let himself. And then they came to a closed door, behind which a small child sobbed endlessly, without comfort or hope, and Silence stopped. Carrion and Diana stopped with him. Silence stared at the door, his hands clenched unknowingly into fists, and it seemed to him that if he opened that door and stepped through, he could save his daughter and undo the evil that had been done to her. Carrion looked at him sharply, and there was something in the outlaw's eyes that might have been fear.

"There's nothing you can do, John. What you're hearing is the past. It's already happened. In some deep part of our mind everything that ever hurt or scared us is still there, waiting for a chance to attach itself to us again. If you open that door and let loose what's in that room, you condemn Diana to h.e.l.l again, and us with her. Come away, John. The odds are you'll have to face worse than this before we reach the core mentality-the deep hidden centre of Diana, the self that never sleeps."

"We shouldn't be here," said Silence. "This is more than just an invasion of privacy. There are things no one should have to see or remember."

"You're right," said Carrion. "But we don't have any choice. Diana's gone too deep into herself to find her way out again without help. I'm not even sure I can get us out of here without Diana's cooperation. If I try it alone, I could destroy her mind, or worse. I told you all this before we came here. It's a bit late to be getting an attack of scruples."

"She's my daughter, Sean."

"No, John. You gave up any claim on her, or her on you, when you handed her over to the Empire mind-techs. We have to go on, John. We have to go deeper."

Silence nodded stiffly, and allowed his daughter and the man who used to be his friend to lead him on down the hall. Ghosts swirled around them, lost in the past, and there were doors beyond number.

Silence came to another closed door behind which came screams of hate and fury. Something huge and powerful slammed against the door, rattling it in its frame, splintering the thick wood. Diana pulled insistently at Silence's arm.

"Don't stop here. It's dangerous. She might get out."

Silence allowed her to pull him away from the door, and they continued on their way. The light grew gradually dimmer, and the floor no longer seemed as solid under his feet as it had. And then, out of the darkness, Ripper and Stasiak came striding forward, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y footprints behind them. Silence stepped to one side to let them pa.s.s, but they stopped before him, blocking the way. They stared at Silence, and tears of blood ran down from their unblinking eyes.

"Why did you do it, Captain?" Stasiak whispered. "Why did you bring us down here and then abandon us? Please, Captain, I want to go home. Don't leave me here in the dark."

"They're just images," said Carrion. "Your mind gives them strength. They can't harm us, unless you let them."

"Please, Captain," said Ripper. "Don't leave us here."

"Whatever happens," said Silence steadily, "I swear I won't leave you in Base Thirteen. One way or another, I promise I'll set you free."

He started forward, with Carrion and Diana, and the marines stepped aside to let them pa.s.s. Doors came and went, and ghosts walked, but finally the hall ended in a single huge door. The child Diana let go of Silence's and Carrion's hands, produced a large bra.s.s key from somewhere, and unlocked the door.

She pushed it open easily, despite its apparent weight, and gestured for the two men to enter. They did so cautiously, and found themselves in a small, comfortably furnished room in which a small fire crackled pleasantly in an open hearth. Diana, age nineteen, her rightful age again, sat at her ease in one of the chairs by the fire. Silence looked slowly about him, frowning. The child was gone. The door shut quietly behind them.

"I know this place," said Silence. "I remember this. Elaine and I brought Diana here when she was very small. It was our last holiday together."

"Probably why she chose this particular memory to hide herself in," said Carrion. "She felt safe here. The last place she ever felt safe and protected from the outside world."

They looked at Diana, sitting relaxed in the large, overstuffed chair.It wasn't really that big , realised Silence.She just remembers it that way because she was so small . Outside, he could hear rain falling.

It had rained all through that holiday, and he and Elaine and Diana spent the long days playing games and charades and stuffing themselves with good food. Not much of a memory to make a heaven out of. But when it's all you've got . . .

"Diana," he said finally. "It's me. Your father. I've come to fetch you. It's time to go."

"I don't want to go," said Diana. "There's something out there. In the dark. It frightens me."

"You can't stay here," said Carrion. "The longer you stay, the harder you'll find it to leave."

"I don't want to leave," said Diana. "I'm safe here."

Something moved outside the shuttered windows. Footsteps, slow and steady, pa.s.sed by the window, heading for the door.

"Who's out there, Diana?" said Carrion.

"My mother. She was here too."

All the color drained from Silence's face as a cold hand clutched at his heart. "No, Diana. No. Your mother's been dead five years now."

"Not here," said Diana. "You were here and I was here, and Mother was with us. We're all going to be together, and we'll never have to be alone again."

The footsteps reached the door, and stopped. There was a feeling in the air of something final and irrevocable about to happen.

"The door's locked," said Carrion. "Concentrate, John. The door is locked if you believe it to be. John, listen to me. She mustn't be allowed to complete the memory, or we could be trapped here with her."

"Elaine," said Silence. "You never met her, Sean. You would have liked her. She was bright and funny and very lovely. She died in an attack-ship ambush, out by the Horsehead Nebula. They never found the body, but we held a funeral for her anyway. I miss her, Sean. I miss her so much."

The door handle rattled. Silence looked at the closed door, and then at Diana. Carrion clutched his arm tightly.

"John, Diana-don't do this. The more real you allow your past to become, the more power it has over you. You're in control now, but it won't last. Everything that ever made an impression on you, for good or bad, is in here with you. For the moment, all the things that frightened and hurt you are safely locked away behind closed doors, but once you lose control, the doors will start opening. And then, it won't be Elaine rattling the door and wanting to come in. John, talk to her, dammit. Convince her. You said yourself that Elaine's been dead for five years. What do you think is out there? At best, you're faced with an eternity of child's games and charades. At worst, you're facing an eternity with a woman you know is dead."

Silence looked at the door again then back at Diana. She smiled at him serenely.

"Diana, we can't stay here. You have to come with me now."

"No. We're going to be together again. For ever and ever and ever."

"Diana . . ."

"Something happened," said Diana. "I don't remember what, and I don't want to. I'd rather die than remember."

"No!" said Silence. "Diana, please. Listen to me. We need you. I need you. I've been alone so long. . . .

I've got to go. Please don't leave me alone again."

She looked at him steadily. No sound came from beyond the door. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath. Diana reached out and took Silence by the hand.

"Look after me," she said softly. "Keep me safe. Promise."

"I promise," said Silence, forcing the words past a lump in his throat. "I'll never let anything hurt you again." He took her in his arms, and she hugged him tightly, her face buried in his chest. Silence looked at Carrion, his eyes bright with unshed tears. "Get us out of here, Sean."

A new light filled the room, bright and blinding, washing away all details in its glow, and then it faded away and they were back in the corridor on Level Three. Back in another labyrinth, with a different Minotaur, held together by newly discovered love. Carrion hoped it would be enough.

"All right," said Silence. "This is the plan. It's very simple. Simple plans are always the best, because that way there are less things to go wrong. Diana, you're going to use your esp to contact the alien. The thing itself, the beast in the sh.e.l.l; whatever it was that first came here from the crashed ship. You're going to act as bait, to draw the alien out from wherever it's hidden itself. It'll come to you, because it perceives you as a threat. Your esp makes you especially dangerous, and it knows that. You don't have anything to worry about; Investigator Frost will be with you. She'll keep both of you alive, and the alien distracted, while Carrion and I track down the heart of the system it's built here. There has to be a centre, a place that holds everything together. Destroy that and the alien will be isolated and much more vulnerable to attack.

"Carrion will use his psionic invisibility to keep the alien from knowing what's happening till it's too late; once we've broken the connection between the alien and the Base, Frost should have no trouble in dealing with it. But Diana, you must understand that once we've started this, we have to finish it. You can't disappear behind your psionic invisibility, and hide; you're the bait. You have to hold its attention while Carrion and I destroy the heart. You'll be in no real danger. Frost will protect you."

"d.a.m.n right," said the Investigator. "Never met an alien I didn't kill."

Diana nodded jerkily. "I understand, Captain. Let's do it."

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift up and out. The Base roared around her in a thousand voices, some human, some not. The human components of the alien system were still alive, though their minds or what was left of them now followed alien paths. Diana concentrated on blocking out the babbling voices one by one, searching for the dominating alien presence at the centre of its web. It found her first, blazing in her thoughts, but she held her ground and kept the alien firmly at the edges of her mind. She felt its interest in her grow as she continued to hold it at bay, and its thoughts crawled across her shields like worms across her face. Its probes grew stronger and more threatening, but Diana had been trained to withstand far worse.

Her confidence increased as she realized the alien wasn't really that strong in itself; its true strength lay in the sh.e.l.l it had built around itself, in its domination of the living components of its web. Diana shut out every other voice, concentrating on the alien, showing it her strength. Its thoughts seethed at the edges of her mind, dark and complex and utterly inhuman. Try as she might, its thought processes made no sense at all. Diana concentrated on projecting a single message.If you want me, you're going to have to come and get me yourself. Your web can't see me, and if you don't come to me, I'll come to you.

And I'll destroy you . The alien broke contact sharply, and Diana dropped back into her head and opened her eyes. The others looked at her questioningly, and she nodded firmly, trying hard to look professional and in command of the situation.

"It knows where I am. You'd better get moving, Captain. It'll be here soon."

Silence smiled and nodded. "Just give me a direction, Diana."

Diana projected the map overlay the AI had given them of Level Three, and indicated their position and that of the centre of the web. Silence and Carrion acknowledged the information, and Diana broke contact. Silence waited patiently while Diana familiarized herself with the new lamp the Investigator had found, and then he and Carrion set off down the corridor, their lamp bobbing along above them like an oversized will-o'-the-wisp. Diana and Frost stood together a moment, awkward in each other's company, and then the Investigator sat down on the floor, drew her sword, and laid it across her knees.

"Might as well make ourselves comfortable, while we wait for the alien to put in an appearance. I take it your esp will give us plenty of warning?"

"Of course, Investigator." Diana hesitated, and then sat down beside Frost. It didn't feel particularly comfortable, but it was good to get off her feet for a while. "So what do we do now, Investigator? Just wait?"

"Pretty much. Nothing we can do till the alien gets here. Relax. Save your strength. You're going to need it."

"What do you suppose it'll look like?" Diana asked hesitantly. "I've never seen an alien. In the flesh, as it were."

"Could be anything," said Frost easily. "None of this fits in with anything I've ever seen before. Probably really ugly. Most of them are, to our eyes. Don't let it worry you. As soon as it shows up, I'll blow a hole through it with my disrupter, and then you can help me cut it up into bite-sized pieces. No problem."

"How can you be so calm, so confident?" Diana asked. "This creature slaughtered every living thing in the Base, and then tore their corpses apart to fashion them into a living computer network. This isn't some rogue animal we're dealing with; it's a powerful, sophisticated ent.i.ty, and it's heading right for us."

"I'm an Investigator," said Frost. "I'm trained to deal with situations like this. Are you scared, Diana?"

"Yes," said the esper. "Yes, I am."

"That's good. Being scared will give you an edge. It gets the adrenalin pumping, and sharpens your reflexes."

"Are you scared?"

"I suppose so, in my way. Investigators don't really have emotions, just pale echoes of what we remember as emotions. Our training sees to that."