Chapter 17:
Drake’s eyes opened, and he realized that he had eyes again. His vision came back along with the sensation of him falling into his body. The weight and solidity of his flesh and bone startled and confused him. He had blown apart, he had felt himself blow apart, and so how was he a whole man again?
Lornia stood there, her face shining and more honed and sharper than ever. Drake looked down at his body, his hands brushing against his chest and then lower. He gave his crotch a covert squeeze, unable to resist. Everything was in place it seemed. He glanced back up to see Lornia grinning at him. He said, “Go ahead and laugh it up. If you were a man, you would’ve checked too.”
Lornia said, “Oh, believe me, I was checking a few things myself when I came to.”
He blinked a few times. “Did that actually happen? It felt like I was being taken apart one piece at a time and then turned to dust. Was that just a hallucination or did it happen?”
Lornia nodded. “Yes, you did go to pieces, as did I. It happens in that kind of travel, I think. I felt all of my skin being peeled away, and it was so painful I thought I would die before it ended.”
Drake went to her and wrapped her in his arms. Their bodies collided together, and he felt again the familiar press and shape of her body against his. Desire stirred within him, and he whispered, “Where are we?”
She said, “Tralam. Only not Tralam. At least it’s not the one that you saw. This one is much different, but it’s also the very same.”
He didn’t know how to make sense of that. He knew that Tralam was a creation of the machine that was, in turn, an invention of that older race. How they had managed to re-make it after it had blown apart was a mystery, but he rather suspected that it had something to do with the weapon being drawn to Tralam, and Tralam forming around it.
He looked around. “It’s not falling apart. That’s something.”
“I think,” her tongue came out and wet her lips. “I think your kind never came to this Tralam. If they had, it would be changed and turned toward the way it was after they came.”
His kind.
Humans.
His lips touched against her temple. The fine blue veins there pulsed a bit below his lips, confirming that she was indeed alive. “My kind has done a great amount of wrongs to yours.”
Lornia said, “Mine did a great deal of wrong to yours.”
He stepped away, a frown between his brows. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to make love to her. He sensed that she was ready to talk to him now about her race, something that she had not been willing to do for so long. “What do you mean?”
She turned her head and looked around them. The hallways seem to wander on forever. The walls were high and unbroken. Rooms lay in all directions and uneasiness filtered through his system. They were there, but they were alone there. He had no idea how long he could live in a place where time did not exist. Would he be willing to stand it?
His gaze moved back to her face and his heart said yes. For as long as he could live and be with Lornia, he would need no other.
She said, “Walk with me.”
Her hand came out, and he took it. Her long fingers twined around his shorter ones, and he felt the warmth of his skin transferring itself onto her flesh. They began to walk, side-by-side, and down the long and echoing hallways. Again, that uneasiness came in, but again his heart said that it did not matter. That being alone with her for eternity would be no chore at all, it would be a blessing.
He said, “Your race created mine.”
Lornia said, “Yes.”
He should have been floored by that yes, but he wasn’t because deep down he had known that for a very long time. He asked, “Why?”
“We wanted slaves.”
That hit him hard, but he bore up under it. Slavery was an evil that had always existed and likely always would. Nothing seemed to change the need to own things, not even other beings. It seemed to be something hard-wired into every being. While some species and races had evolved beyond it, they still had slavery in their pasts; some of those pasts were distant and dim, and others were very close by. Slavery did still operate all over the universe, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when every single planet in every single system outlawed that terrible thing—and if it were outlawed, if it would truly be eradicated.
Slavery was a shameful thing but those who were determined would find a way to enslave others, and there were legal ways to own people.
The Federation had made slaves of all who had allied themselves with that organization after all, and they had done it by touting freedom and peace and the law.
“When your race left the other universe, you brought humans to the universe I knew?”
Her long hand waved in the air as if she were trying to conjure up a picture for him. “We brought all kinds of beings. Our universe has much the same life. Or did. It has changed, probably, over the centuries since I have been there. But yes. We decided to try again. To create life in a dead and uninhabited universe in order to escape the wars that raged on and on in ours.
“We were foolish. We were arrogant and stupid in our decision to flee the wars instead of trying to broker peace in our own universe. Not just because we honestly thought, and by us I mean my kind because again that was before I was born, that we had the ability to grow a universe from the darkness and make it one of light. We forgot what we had learned the hard way. That war will always be there.”
He knew that was true. “Even here, and in Tralam.”
“Yes. War did not come here until we opened the doors. We had no choice but to work together in Tralam. We had something very precious to protect. Something that we discovered with Tralam. Something that we had to ensure stood no matter what.”
Drake let his hip brush against hers. Just that light touch made his heart race and his pulse pound. “You mean the weapon.”
“The weapon was only the start of what we were protecting.”
Every single time he thought that he understood the whole thing, she told him something he had not known. “What could have been more precious than that weapon? What else could you have needed to protect?”
Lornia said, “The race who created Tralam—or rather the machine that creates Tralam, they also possessed the Orb. That Orb was the doorway to this place. And from this place, we could control every universe. Not just yours and not just the one that lies beyond it, but all. We found the Orb when we arrived and after they were all already dead. They hid it away, and once we were here, we understood the magnitude of what we had found. Once we found the Orb, we understood what the weapon was intended to protect and why.”
His feet stopped dead on the stones. His mouth hung open. His body swiveled so that he could look her in the face. “I think you’re going to have to repeat that.”
Lornia tugged at his hand. Drake wanted to balk, to refuse to move until she explained all of that rather astounding statement to him. He sensed that she wanted to walk in order to sort out her thoughts, so he continued along beside her. His curiosity was not sated, however.
He said, “What do you mean all the universes and that this is the doorway? I thought this was the prison for the weapon.”
Lornia said, “It is, but that came later. It came into being because that race knew there would come a day when Tralam fell, if not in this universe, then in others. I was young when I came, and I never understood their language so we didn’t know, not for at least five centuries, just what it was—that Orb.
“We didn’t know until the founding members of the Federation came, and once they did, we understood that we could never let it be given over. That we had no choice but to allow them into Tralam because they would have killed us all and taken what they could. They would have taken the weapon, yes, but, more importantly, they would have taken that Orb. I have spent so many hundreds of years protecting that secret, the secret of the Orb, and I’m tired. I trust you, Drake. I love you, and I trust you as I have no other in the millennia that I have been alive and in Tralam.”
That really astounded him. He had never heard of this Orb. She was talking about things he could not fathom. He was not sure how Tralam could still be standing even though he had seen it destroyed and he was not sure how they had gotten there. He had the rudimentary idea that the machine had recreated Tralam in order to house her because she was the weapon. He had known that she would be unable to stay if she loosed the power of the weapon. But the Orb? What was it?
Because he could not sift through all of the things that she was saying and telling him now and because he was so touched by the words she had said, that she loved and trusted him, he found himself uttering out the words, “I love and trust you too, Lornia. I don’t think I have ever known real love or trust before I met you. I waited my whole life for you, and I didn’t even know it.”
They paused. Their mouths met again. His hands found her skin and his tongue teased hers until hers answered. That kiss was slow and deep, life-affirming. It said everything that they had not said yet between them.
When the kiss broke off, he asked the question largest in his mind. “Lornia, how long can I stay with you?”
Lornia’s fingers twisted together, and she looked down at them. Her head shook from side to side, stirring her silver hair across her shoulders and along the stones of the floor. “It may not be as long as you would like. The founding members of your federation came here in the hopes of finding absolute immortality. Such a thing does not exist. They did live longer than they would have. Time’s strange here. It passes differently, and it always has as Tralam exists outside and yet within space and time.”
He said, “I want to live long enough to love you until there’s nothing left of me. I hope that takes a very long time. Now, about this Orb. What is it and why did it have to be protected even more than that weapon?”
She said, “Come. I want to see the gardens again.”
They took off walking again, and he stared around himself. The fortress was splendid and clearly meant to house many. Their footfalls echoed however, and all of the rooms lay silent and still. Misgivings came up, and he knew that he would have them for quite some time. He loved her enough to stay, enough to be happy to be there, but that human part of him—that part of him that craved social life and everything that went with it, would always rear its head from time to time. Okay, so be it. He could live with that.
Lornia said, “The race that was older than mine, the one that created both the weapon and the machines that kept Tralam from falling, was not immortal either. They created this place because they were… I suppose you could say they were gatekeepers. They alone knew the secret of crossing all universes. I know you think that means just the universes that we find in space, but that’s not true. Every universe has a universe beside it in a universe beside that in a universe beside that. It’s rather like when you stand in a hall full of mirrors and see your reflection in each one, constantly growing smaller but always there, shading toward infinity.”
That last sentence stunned Drake so much that his mouth fell open and a weak little sound came up, but it did not translate into a word. He snapped his teeth together, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Are you saying that parallel dimensions truly exist? They’ve been in question for centuries. Science makers often spend their entire lives trying to prove that. Nobody ever has. It’s always proven to be false.”
Lornia said, “That is because the race before mine that held this fortress locked all the alternate universes away from those which originate them. They believed that if someone had power over every parallel universe connected to the universe in which they live that they could wage war on single universes, universes wherein the parallel dimensions were not known, and come out the winner. Think of it. If a warrior of renown and note passed away in one but not in the other, and was brought back from that other place to boost the morale of his soldiers, that in itself would be a mighty weapon.”
Drake couldn’t imagine it. It literally boggled his mind. He was a strong man, for all his faults, but his imagination had never been great, and he knew it. Tralam had been about as far as he could imagine and to know that there was so much more and so much more possible astounded and staggered him.
He spoke with real caution. “So you are saying that this place didn’t just exist for the weapon; it existed to protect those dimensions. I understand that. Why did your race bar the door between the universes? Why not just allow the, what did you call it? The Orb?” At her nod, he continued, “The Orb to do its work? I’m guessing that the Orb is the thing that keeps the other universes from being seen. I mean the other dimensions. You know what I mean.”
Lornia said, “Indeed I do. It’s a good question. The weapon was never intended to be used against the universe in which you move or the universe in which I came from. We prevented it. My race did that. We first thought as an answer to our prayers, and then we thought of it as something that must be hidden away lest your Federation find it and destroy everything in its path with it. Which they would’ve done eventually.”
Drake found he had no argument against that one. He asked, “Speaking of the Federation, where did they go?”
Lornia smile was grim. “Into the universe from which my race originated. The one beyond this one. I should not tell you, because I saw it all once the machine woke up and the weapon came to life under my skin, but that universe is also at war. And the Federation will not survive over there. I am sorry.”
Drake said, “Why would you be sorry for that?”
She said, “Because you are a good man and you have a conscience. At some point, you will mourn those deaths if you are not already. I know that too. I also know that you could not have prevented this. This was intended to happen.”
Drake took a deep breath. “Are you saying this was fated to be?”
Lornia said, “I am saying that, eventually, it would’ve happened. If it had not been you that came for me, it would’ve been someone else. Eventually, somebody would’ve commanded me to deploy the weapon. Somebody would’ve fired the weapon. And if the person who commanded me had been the Federation, death and destruction would’ve followed behind. So what I am saying is that it was destined, yes, for me to become the weapon and for me to be commanded to loose the weapons powers.”
They stopped walking again. His fingers lifted and rested on her face and he brought her in close to him for another long and lingering kiss. Her lips warmed beneath his, and their tongues met and twisted. Desire snaked through him again, stirring every cell in his body His dick hardened, and his balls tightened. Heat coiled into his belly and then flushed up and down his thighs. God, he wanted her so badly.
The kiss broke off, and understanding hit. The Orb. That was what Tralam had been built to protect and keep. The Orb: that was a key; it was some kind of key that would unlock every universe and its parallel dimensions.
“The Orb will take us into other dimensions. That’s what you’re telling me, what you’ve been trying to tell me.”
“It already has. That’s how we came here, to this Tralam. The Orb brought us here. It brought us here because the weapon was a singular thing. It was one of a kind and built to never be able to be replicated in any other dimension. I don’t know how they did it. That tech they had was old before they died and yet it was so much more advanced than any we had ever seen. It’s still far more advanced than anything seen in any other universe, or dimension.”
He said, “If it is so precious, and precious it is indeed, why should we pass it along?”
And there it was again. That crisis of personality within him. Part of him wanted to scream that the Orb must be kept with them. He could feel the power of such a thing, and he knew that he would always feel that rush of power around something so huge and important. And that was why they must pass it along.
He looked into her eyes, and he saw a brief sadness there. She did know him well. She knew him well enough to know that he would not be able to withstand the corruption of the Orb. He had been able to withstand the corruption that the power of his being, the one who could control that ancient weapon, had brought into his soul, but only because he had loved her more than he had loved power.
But something that could control every single universe and every universe beyond those universes? Now that was true power.
She said, “I will tell you who we must pass it to, and I need you to understand why. The weapon is still within me, and one day I will be called upon again, but so will many others. The ones we will have to fight when war comes again are the last of the race that created both the weapon and the machine that created the doors that prevent any from entering into parallel dimensions. Our races do not know how to enter there, but they do. When they come, blackness will come with them. A blackness such as has never been seen before.”
Drake took a deep breath. “You are saying that the race that made the weapon and the machine that built Tralam had a civil war and some of that race was peaceful and good, and others were not. And that the good of the race is dead—and those who would possess the Orb for its power are all that are left and that they will eventually come to take the Orb back.”
“Yes.”
He stiffened. “Will I be at your side when that happens?”
Her answer was soft. “I can’t see the future Drake.”
No, she couldn’t. None could. “How do we keep them from coming here?”
Her eyes held his. “They can’t come here without the Orb, but they can enter other worlds that are not protected by its power. When the weapon launched in your world, it tore away the Orb’s protection. It must go to that world. There’s no other choice as to who to trust with it. We need someone capable of holding secrets tightly to his chest.
Blade. She meant Blade. That old resentment tried to come up. Blade was always the one given the power.
And why not?
Blade knew too well the cost of power, and he was imbued with the need to make things right, to set good into motion and to fight back against the evil and darkness that lurked in every shadow.
Drake did not even have to consider it. He already knew what universe would be the first to have to fight. The one he hailed from. Why that universe had to be so burdened was a question he could ask forever and never get an answer to. “I already know. I know, and I understand. Now let’s go look at those gardens of yours.”
She smiled at him, a radiant and real smile, and he could see that the rage and hurt and grief that had sharpened and honed the weapons lethal power had faded out of her now. There was only her now. Lornia. Gentle and soft, a believer in peace. A being who wanted only to live and to love and to make things grow.
She said, “I know you’re worried about being here alone with me. I knew that before you knew that you would be.”
His eyebrows angled toward his hairline. “Please tell me that you cannot read my mind.”
Her laughter was real and true. “No, I cannot. I just know how I felt alone here. Even if there were the two of us, we would eventually need other people. It’s simply a condition of having a soul. We must have others like us around us in order to feel whole.”
They came to a large center hall just then, and he heard the sounds of voices in the distance. His brows drew together, and he peered into the hallway. “Did I just hear that?”
Lornia nodded. She drew him onward, and he went willingly. The center hall was vast and there, right in the center, lay the machine that ran the fortress and held it fast. It was, like everything else, shiny and vibrant, well-oiled and running smoothly. It would withstand centuries and centuries and centuries of time, and he stared at it as they passed. He had never seen such a complicated, complex, and marvelous creation in his entire life. That a race so ancient had had the technology, so many millennia ago, to create such a thing was staggering.
That some remnants of that race survived, that the ones who had created the fortress had probably done so to keep the Orb and the weapon that they had wanted to use to protect it from the others of their race—those who would hold that power for themselves—frightened him all the way to the core.
Could those that they passed the Orb to truly keep it safe? Could they really fight back something so determined and advanced and do so without falling?
He had to hope that they could.
That too was a question he could ask forever and ever and never get the answer to.
The sound of voices grew louder. Drake’s heart lightened with each step. He asked, “Who are they? These people that are here.”
Lornia said, “My race came to Tralam once, and we were many. We died, yes, as all things do, but not all of us. In that Tralam, there was a war with the beasts. The beasts created by Franchine, the Federation’s first founder in his attempts to achieve immortality. He killed the rest, all but me. But here—here they still live because that event did not happen here and if they do come here, I know what they did there—and will repel them with everything I have in me.”
His teeth chewed at his lip. “Time. They may not have come here yet. This Tralam may be in a different time and a different dimension, one the Federation had no way to enter. But they could enter it if they had the Orb.”
“As could any race who possessed the Orb.”
Then they would hide that Orb as her race had done for so long. He asked, “How do you know that you are not here already?”
“If I were, I would have already died. The thing is, only those who are of a single nature, beings like the machine, who exist only in one place and no other, can cross the dimensions. If I had ever lived here, I would not be here now, and neither would you.”
That he was of a single nature shocked him. “There’s nobody like me anywhere in any universe or other dimension?”
Her grin was impish. “No.”
“And there’s nobody like you either.” He wanted to kiss her again but she was already moving on again, and he went with her, treading down the hallway toward the sounds of life just beyond.
They exited the great hall at that moment and stepped into a smaller, but no less wide room. His mouth fell open as he stared at the rows and rows of cryo-chambers positioned on the walls. Within them were people! He found he couldn’t breathe. “How is this possible?”
Lornia said, “They sleep, but only some. Mostly because they need to sleep in cycles to prevent the gardens from giving out. They grew in number, you see, but the machine only has so much energy, and the rest is up to them. But they need a keeper of the gardens here as one has never yet existed within this Tralam. I am not here, you see, and I was the one who grew them.”
He felt a sense of sheer awe. This was beyond what he had imagined, what he had thought was possible. “The gardens that were in the old Tralam, can you grow them here?”
“I can.”
She could. The weapon had not stripped that talent away from her, and he believed her. He believed that she could and would regrow all the lush and beautiful greenery that had been in those gardens and the greenery that had stung his soul with its beauty, much as Lornia herself did.
Faces turned toward them. Mouths opened as Lornia walked forward, her voice ringing with authority. “My name’s Lornia. I too am an Eldern.”
An Eldern. That word was one he had never heard before, but he understood it now with his rudimentary understanding of her language. They, his race, had called her kind the Speakers because they had not had a word in their known languages that would simulate the one she had just used.
He stood there, staring at them all. Lornia said, “And this is Drake, who commanded the weapon against those who would have breached Tralam at its weakest point. That Tralam is no more. I am the sole keeper of the gardens, and I’ve come to keep yours.”
Gasps rolled through the hall. Then came a shout of pure victory and hope. Then they surged toward them. Drake found himself being met with cheers and rapid speech, much of it he could not understand or respond to yet, but he would. He had a lot to learn, yes, but he had much time to learn.
A feeling Drake had never known before washed over him, leaving him flooded with gratitude and exhilaration.
He had given up all of the power of one universe, and he had found himself possessed of something far sweeter.
Love. Home. And the people of which he could be a part. A family.
The night had come to Tralam. It hung across the sky, which was visible outside the windows, and Drake stood at one of the windows, his hands still on the sash as he leaned close to the thick panes that held the atmosphere of space out, and the wind as well.
Lornia stood behind him, her eyes locked on his lean frame. This was the being that she loved, and they had somehow managed to stay together despite the pull of space and time and everything in between. That they would stay together from now on was not something that she doubted.
She went to him. Her hands slid along his shoulders, and he said, “It’s beautiful out there.”
She looked out the windows. It was beautiful. The machine had created that outer view, all rugged mountains and long vistas of sky. They were there, yes, and they could leave the fortress now to go to them, something that had not been possible for so many centuries.
This Tralam was not exactly like the old one. It was a different one, one that had never known the beast wars, the perfidy of Franchine. In this universe, the Federation’s founding fathers had never come, and she had never become the weapon that she had been in that universe where Drake hailed from.
But it too had its problems and sorrows.
Drake drew her into his side. His fingers stroked across her arms, and then he turned her into him for a long and lingering kiss that left her shivering and loose of limb.
Fire started within her and kept building. This was her mate, her man. The one that she loved and wanted in her bed and life.
His kiss brought the taste of sweet water and the nut breads that grew in this Tralam as well, the favored food of her people. His teeth tugged at her bottom lip gently, and his body pressed closer, bringing the feel of his hardening manhood to her lower belly. Her body responded, and her back arched so that she could rub closer to him.
That urgent press of his stiff cock made wetness start and spread through her body, made her lips part further as his tongue plundered her mouth and then teased her tongue into a long dance that made her breath come in rapid waves.
His hands traveled down her body, and she moved closer. Her hands shucked his garments away, and he stood there naked before Lornia as she dropped to her knees. Her fingers reached for his erection and that hardened flesh trembled and then grew harder still as she put it into her mouth, letting her tongue run over the silken skin of the head of it. A slight and thin drop of fluid came welling up from the slit at the top of his member, filling the back of her throat with that salty flavor that was just his.
The scent of his body, clean and yet slightly starchy, all male, filled her nose and his thick pubic hair brushed against her nose’s tip as well, tickling it a little. He filled her throat, every inch of him throbbing and stiff and so delicious that she let him go all the way down her throat and then she rested there for a moment, her fingers rising to tickle at the flesh directly between his asshole and balls.
Drake groaned and pressed forward again, cutting off her breath. He withdrew, and she took in a long breath and then took his dick back into her mouth, her tongue tracing the raised bas-relief of the veins that wrapped around that heavy shaft. Her fingers moved to his sac, and she stroked her thumbs across that flesh, feeling it lift and tauten with each suck of her lips and flick of her tongue and caress from her fingers.
Drake moaned out, “Oh my God. That feels so good. So goddamn good.”
His nails raked through her hair, leaving her scalp tingling and her skin feeling like it was aflame with the desire that raced all through her body as he pumped his hips back and forth, using her mouth.
He pulled out of her mouth with a wet pop and hauled her to her feet. His hands gripped her upper arms and then she was on her back on the bed, and he was there, right there with her. The mattress sagged below their weight and her nipples stiffened as his tongue found the light pink peaks and bathed them, then his hands gripped the fleshy globes around those nipples, squeezing them gently, then harder, his touch roughening as he sucked her nipples harder, his teeth scraping over them and bringing pleasure to her in huge waves.
His dark head moved lower. His hands measured out the distance between her ribs and then spanned her waist. Her body opened, her legs spreading wider as his head ducked lower still. His tongue parted her wet flesh, and then his fingers pierced her body, going deep within her core as his tongue slid around her clit and made it rise and stand, trembling and erect, under the pressure that sent shivers across her skin and a cry from her mouth.
“I need you inside me.”
The words broke from her lips. He moved swiftly, unable to resist that plea. She parted her legs yet again, and he slid between her legs, his cock pressing into her in one long and swift motion that left her spinning toward climax. He was so heavy and thick, so long and wide, and he filled her in every way, and all the way to the ends of her body and desire too. Her hands found his clenching ass cheeks and held on, riding him as he rode her. They raced toward completion, both of them breathing hard and fast, both of them groaning and sweating now as they strained together one final time before their bodies pulsed and arced toward each other and stayed there, meeting and still reaching.
The orgasm sent her body back into the mattress, her heels digging in deep and her eyes closed, then opened again as he carefully balanced himself up above her on one arm to keep her from having to bear his weight. That was such a small thing, and yet it made her happy because it was so him, that small but important consideration.
He moved away from her, and she curled up next to him, slinging an arm over his waist while one of his hands rested on her breast. She said, “Will you be happy here?”
“I will be happy here, and if you have to leave here, I will be happy wherever we go.”
She said, “Let us hope it does not come to that. I do not know about you, but I do not want to ever make that trip again.”
Drake began to laugh. “Me either. I have to admit it was the worst trip I ever took.” His eyes searched her face. “Can you be happy here?”
“Yes.”
“Because your people are here.”
“That is one reason, but there are others. Here, the Federation never came, and they are gone now, and they can’t return. Not from where I sent them.”
He propped his head up on one hand and surveyed her face again. “Tell me.”
She played with the edges of the sheet, her lips compressing. “Are you sure you want to know?”
He caught her hand. His voice was firm. “I do. If I hadn’t, I would not have asked you.”
Had he asked? It had sounded a lot like a command. She did not dare look at him to say what she had to say just then. She was afraid she would see horror on his face, but she did not want to lie to him either. Never that, and she also did not want to spend their lives not trusting him with every secret she held. “I created a sort of Tralam for them.”
She looked up at him then. He didn’t look disgusted or even particularly upset. He said, “What do you mean by that exactly?”
“I mean I created a place, a singular little pocket of space and time, and put them into it, and there they will stay until they all go extinct.”
He blew a soft whistle from his lips. “I see. You do know that they may live a long time, yes? The ships have food printers. They could recyc water for a century at the most though, and that depends on just how many were aboard those ships. They will likely mate and have children who will be raised in that…in that version of this place. But how do you know that they will never escape from there as you left Tralam?”
“Because unlike Tralam, there is no map, and no legend. As far as anyone knows, they were simply blown away. Because, unlike Tralam, there is no way in or out. I did not leave that or make that for them. It is sealed from all sides and even if they could get out, there would be no place for them to go.”
He understood what she was saying then. “My God. No, not you. It was not you that did that, it was the weapon and the machine working together within you, and with the Orb. You created an entire dimension for their prison.”
She asked, “Do you fear me now?”
“No.”
That allowed her to breathe again. She nestled close to him. “I know it is cruel, what has happened to them. I know there were people and beings on those ships who did not deserve that fate…”
“They did. The minute the stepped onto those ships, knowing what the ships were going to do, the second they closed their eyes to the truth of what sort of mission they were on, they were guilty. They had already done that very same thing in other systems, and so they too owe that debt. Do not ever let yourself feel as if you are guilty of harming innocents.”
“People on the planet’s surface died from that blow I dealt. That I do regret.”
She did. She had had no way of controlling the power. Maybe one day she would learn how to, but since she had never had to use herself in that way before, she had not known how to stop it once she had loosed it upon the world. But he had known. Somehow he had known to reach past the weapon and find her, to make her come back to herself in order to stop the rest of what she might have done if she had been left to loose that power unchecked and unbound.
He said, “I know. I regret much too. I regret that I did not know then, when we met, that power was what I wanted. That I was so weak and riddled with anger over a childhood I had left behind a long time before. That I did not have the heart to do what I should have done earlier that day, when we may have been able to save more of the people on that planet. I went soft, and I regret that, but not the reason why.”
“You were afraid for me.”
“I was afraid I would lose you forever.” He slanted her a smile. “I still worry that that might happen. I mean, you are still the weapon and one day you may be called upon once more.”
No. She would be. There was no maybe to it. She had seen that too during that hellish calling back of the weapon to a fortress where it and the Orb could be protected.
War would come again.
That ancient race that had warred with itself had been so advanced, and they remained so even though they too were trapped in a dimension far away from the universe that Drake had called home for so long. The universe right next to his, and a universe that would open soon because when her Tralam, the one she had hidden and sheltered and been imprisoned within, had fallen, that door had slid open, something she had to tell him—but not yet Not while there was nothing that either of them could do to protect the ones he had loved and left behind.
She would find a way to make sure he could help them. She would send him back, and with the Orb, as soon as she figured out a way to use the Orb to let him travel without her.
That too would come to pass. She had seen it too. What she had not seen was the life they would have together because that still had yet to be written.
And they would write it together.
They might be forgotten one day, but that would not matter to her. They would never forget each other, not even after death came for them and took their bodies from the world.
They had a love that was so strong it could cross space and time.
What was death in the face of a love like that one?