Desperation thrust them out of the timeplains. Thrust them out of the water. Thrust him physically and mentally away from her, off of the bed. He hit the wall with an oof and thumped to the carpeted floor.
Once again, she had chosen the ice over the fire. To drown, rather than let everything burn. And it hurt. It hurt because this time, she had seen the personal cost to her...and to the one she loved. Now Ia knew why she hadn"t been able to see him in Time. Not because he somehow didn"t exist, but because he was the single greatest threat to her plans. Her gifts had protected her by sheer instinct, until now.
Love was the one thing that could sway her from her path, as well as keep her on her self-imposed course. Love for this wonderful man, a very concrete, tangible, and real love that would be returned wholeheartedly...versus love for the untouchable, unknowing, uncaring, unrequiting universe.
Love that could save her sanity, or love that would steal it away.
Tears welled up and spilled over in a silent rain of regret. On the floor at the foot of the bed, Meyun groaned, recovering from his stupor of too many visions, too much information. "Oh, G.o.d...oh, G.o.d...what...what am I seeing? Ia, what am I seeing?"
Concerned by his dazed demand, she scrambled to the end of the bed, scrubbing at her tears. He had pushed himself onto all fours, but his dark brown eyes gazed through the foot of the bed. He wasn"t seeing anything in this world. Warily, she extended a hand. Her fingertips brushed against the locks of his hair, connected with his brow.
He was still on the timeplains, immersed in the waters of his own multiple lifestreams. Of their multiple lifestreams...
Shock s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back from his brow. Panic sent her mind racing. This was nothing she had experienced before-none of her brothers, none of her followers, no one she had touched had ever been trapped on the timeplains once she withdrew her touch.
"Ia?" he asked, pushing up onto his knees, only to sag to one side, visibly disoriented. "Ia? Why can"t I see you anymore?"
"It...it"s going to be alright-I can fix this," she muttered, mind racing in frantic circles. "I can fix it...I think..." She castigated herself a moment later. Stupid stupid stupid!
Closing her eyes, Ia blocked out his sightless gaze, his groping hand. The first step was to fix herself, to stop the useless, energy-draining panic. Reaching for the old centering exercises, she breathed in deep, gathering in her scattered sense of self. Exhaling, she reabsorbed her fragmented thoughts, her faceted personalities, and pushed out the negativity and fear. In again to blend, out again to cleanse. By the third breath, her thoughts were stabilized. By the fourth, she was calm.
Or at least calm enough to act. Slipping off the end of the bed, Ia caught his hand. He clutched at her, mind still racing too fast, too full. Cupping the side of his face, she insinuated her thoughts into his. Dove gently back into the waters, rather than plunging without control as before.
...He was swimming. Stormy waters crashed and sloshed, and he was barely afloat, but he was somehow swimming. Ia swam as well, used to the waters. Getting close to him, she reached for Meyun"s hand as lightning flashed, bringing with it another stream of possibilities.
"I can help you out!" she shouted, trying to catch his attention as well as his hand. "Meyun, I can get you out of the water! But you have to trust me!"
That focused him on her, not on the visions swirling in the waters around them. "You? Trust you?" he shouted back. "You"re going to leave me in here!-You"re going to leave me to die!"
"Shakk that, I love you too much to let you die!"
Grabbing his hand, Ia pulled them out of the raging lake the timestreams had become. By sheer force of will, she separated each potential-probable-possible future back into its own unique, disparate streambed. Holding on to him grimly, she reorganized Time itself, water and wind whipping around them, gra.s.s and storm and streaks of light forced into separation until the amber-drenched gra.s.slands unrolled around them, resettling into an orderly network of life and light.
"What...what is this place?" Meyun asked her, peering at the rolling fields and interweaving waters.
"Time." The word echoed as it always did, like thunder, though this time it darkened the skies in memory of the storm that had swept him up and held him prisoner. Ia forced the skies to stay clear and free of dusk"s gloom, to brighten in the golden light of afternoon. "I"m never quite sure if it"s all in my head...or if I"ve somehow tapped into the actual dimension...I never told you what I am, nor what I can do. I couldn"t risk it. I didn"t...
"Meyun, I couldn"t see you," Ia confessed awkwardly, looking at him warily. "Of all the lives and life-choices around me, of all the possible, potential, probable paths in the future, I couldn"t see you." She looked down at the waters beyond their feet, orderly streams of images like liquefied vids. Rippling snapshots of existence, they surfaced and sunk almost randomly. "Any grey spot, any blank, any anomaly, was and is a danger to my task."
"What task is that?" he challenged her, gaze fixed on her face. "I saw horrible things. Destruction, death..."
It was the same conversation she"d replayed hundreds of times with others here on the timeplains. She looked away from him, off to the future and the desert in the distance. "As melodramatic as it sounds, I"m trying to stop the galaxy from being destroyed. I"m setting up a path of dominoes, each to be knocked down at the right time and place, to prevent an extragalactic invasion centuries from now. I am...I was supposed to be ignoring the side possibilities that would otherwise lead away from that path. Including things like dating."
He looked at her. "But I know we could have a good life...good lives..."
Ia shook her head slowly, still not quite looking at him. "I told you I never wanted to hurt you, Meyun. I knew when I was fifteen that I"d have to give up quite a lot. But I never foresaw you. And...I would beg your forgiveness, but I suspect you aren"t in a mood to forgive me for what I have and will have done."
"Get me out of here," he growled. "Return both of us to sanity-to reality!"
Sighing, Ia complied. Grasping his hand, she flipped both of them inside and up again, pulling them out of the golden light of the timeplains, and back into the half-shadowed light of their rented cottage bedroom.
Meyun shuddered as he came back to himself. A moment later, he flinched away from her fingertips. Away from her. Ia let him move away. While he sagged back against the base of the wall, slumped and struggling to deal with whatever he had seen in Time, she rose and padded over to the closet.
Shrugging into one of the complimentary robes that came with the use of the rental house, Ia brought the other one back to him. When he didn"t reach for it, she dropped it onto his lap, letting the nubbly white fabric pool over his knees. It did seem to give him something to focus on. His hand shifted to touch the material, fingers first resting, then clenching. A frown of confusion creased his brow.
"You"re going to Antarctica."
"What?" Ia asked him, confused. The statement had come out of nowhere, a non sequitur in an already unstable moment.
He looked up at her. "It was one of the things I saw. I had a...a vision of you, an older you, and you-we-were in Antarctica."
"That"s impossible," Ia said flatly.
"No, it felt real," he argued. "I was there, at your side. Or will be."
She shook her head. "No, I mean that"s impossible, because I"m going to walk away from you."
He pushed to his feet. He fumbled and clutched at the robe, shrugging into it, and faced her. "I know what I saw. You were a ship"s captain, I was a commander, and we were going to...to steal schematics for something from a...a place you called the Vault of Time-why would you walk away from me? Away from us?"
Ia shifted back a step, putting distance between them; his demand had made her flinch, and she didn"t like what his vision implied. He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. His hands caught at the sleeves of her robe, holding her in place.
"Ia...why can"t I see you?" Meyun asked her, staring into her eyes. "Why can"t we be together?"
She could see him now, in the timestreams. Not always clearly, but she could finally see the consequences of allowing him to stay with her. This is going to hurt..."Because you"ll distract me. You will distract me so much that I will fail. And failure is not an option."
"Shova v"shakk!" he swore. "You may only think you know-"
"I have known for five years!" she snapped back. "I can see every possibility, and I have searched every corner of Time itself for some other way to get through to what must be done. Do you honestly think I would be in the military if I had any other choice? I grew up wanting to be a singer. A singer, Harper! Innocent. A civilian. With unstained hands."
She lifted her hands, fingers curled into claws at the memory of all the blood she had spilled so far, and in warning of all the lives she had yet to take. His hands slipped from her sleeves at the movement, letting her clutch the air between them.
"I dropped out of school and spent half a year of my life trying to find any sane path that would stop the coming invasion and save our galaxy-you spent a minute in the timestreams!" she scorned. "What do you know about the path I need to take? Or sacrifices I"ll have to make? Or the ones I"ve already made? Yes, I will walk away from you. For two reasons. One...because the feelings I have for you are a distraction and a liability. Because my sanity is on the line. I cannot, dare not fail because I"ll have a trillion screaming lives echoing in my brain until the day I die!
"And for the other...I promised I wouldn"t hurt you." She held his gaze fiercely, willing him to understand. "If I tried to divert the future so we could stay together, I"d hurt you a lot more than I already have. A lot more."
He started to argue the point. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes unfocusing for a moment. "Suicide..."
"I"ll be driven mad. Literally mad. And worse," she agreed quietly. "Meyun...I may not have wanted to go into the military, but when I realized what course the future would have to take, I made a pledge to myself. As long and as strong a vow as that which any soldier makes to defend their country, their people, and their beloved homes. I swore a solemn oath that I would do anything to save the future of our beloved homes. It"s the only way I can retain my sanity."
"Such as it is," Meyun shot back, though without much heat. He stared at her for several seconds, then flipped his hands helplessly, taking a step back. "So you"d just walk away? No second thoughts, no looking back, no hesitations, or even a single regret?"
"I didn"t say that," Ia retorted, folding her arms over her robe-draped chest. They glared at each other for a moment, then Meyun lowered his gaze. Ia let out a shaky breath, looking away. "All I wanted...was one moment of peace. A moment to call my own. Some...some semblance of everything I must otherwise give up-the same things I"m fighting a race against Time itself to give to everyone else.
"Something to warm my heart when the days ahead grow long and cold...but that one golden moment has turned to useless dross and slag. Regrets? Oh, yes, I have regrets. But no matter how much I love you, I will not be distracted from my task," she stated roughly, slashing a hand between them. "If you cannot understand just how important this is, or at least how important it is to me...then we have nothing more to say."
He wrapped his arms tight across his chest. "It"s not like you"re giving us-me-that much of a say, anyway."
"I wish I could, Meyun," she confessed softly. "But you"ve only had a small taste of what it"s like to be me. A single bitter drop from my ocean of misery."
"An ocean of misery?" Meyun challenged. "Well, you seem to be fully capable of enjoying life."
"Well, maybe I"m just a good actress. Or maybe I"m just a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t," she offered.
Meyun snorted at that. It wasn"t entirely mirthful, though her quip did feel like it had softened some of the sharper edges buried in the mood between them.
Shaking her head, she gazed at her former roommate and brief lover. "I"m sorry I hurt you, Meyun. I truly am. I"d give up a lot to be able to go back in time and not hurt you. I just...I cannot give up the universe. I cannot give up my conscience, and I cannot give up my duty, and I cannot give up the future. I"d gladly give you my heart," Ia offered, "but my life is no longer my own. I"ve already traded that."
Meyun gave her a sarcastic look. "Trade it for what? Your sanity?"
"That, and saving the lives of everyone else." She gave him a lopsided smile. "You could say I got a real bargain."
"You"re going to throw away your life for people you don"t...even..." Faltering at his own words, he hung his head. "You"re doing what I"m doing. What any soldier would do."
"Just on a larger, far more complex scale." She started to say more, but a horrified look widened his eyes.
"You...you"re going to have your ovaries removed?" Meyun stared at her as if she had grown a second set of arms, Gatsugi-like. "Why would you do that?"
She didn"t realize that was one of the visions he had seen in the timestream flood. Uncomfortable, she tightened the arms folded across her chest and gave him the truth. A modified piece of the truth. "One set will be donated to my homeworld, the other to the heavyworld genetics repository, to be distributed to worlds like Eiaven and Parker"s, and other 2G-plus planets. Since I don"t plan on having any children myself, it makes sense to send them where they"ll be of use."
Shaking his head slowly, he leaned back against the wall behind him. "How can you...how can you just give up something like that?"
She wasn"t about to tell him how much her younger self had agonized over this choice as a teen. "Some people are born to be mothers. Others aren"t. I"ve never been maternal, but there are women out there who would literally do anything to be fertile. Why should I hog all my eggs to myself, when they actually want them?"
It seemed to take him a few moments to absorb that idea. Ia gave him the time to think about it. Finally, Meyun shook his head. "That is just...not the choice I would have made. I, ah, can respect your reasons, but..."
"It"s the best choice, really." She didn"t know if she was trying to convince him, or reconvince herself. Ia shrugged. "I"m career military, heading into an unofficial war zone. They"ll be removed between flight school and shipping out to the Salik Interdicted Zone-thank you for respecting my right to choose what to do with them."
Meyun shrugged, then raked his hands through his hair. "What else could I do? It"s your body, not mine. Though a part of me..."
He didn"t finish that thought out loud, just shrugged and folded his arms across his chest again. Moving to the bed, Ia sat on its edge. She tucked the edges of her robe over her legs. "So...What do we do now?"
"What do we do? What do you mean, what do we do?" he retorted. "Can"t you already tell?"
She gave him a chiding look. "Meyun, I above all others know that the future is fluid. And I told you, I cannot see you clearly. Or I couldn"t. Now I can sort of see you in the future. Some of the potential possibilities, but not all of them. I think it"s my mind trying to protect me from myself..."
That earned her a confused look. "What do you mean, protecting you from yourself?"
Ia shrugged, tightening her arms protectively under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "If anything happened to you, I"d...want to prevent it, whatever it was. Which could upset the delicate flow of events that must progress, if I am to achieve my goals. Which means if we stay away from each other, there"s less of a chance I"d be tempted to veer off course."
"Is that what you want?" he asked tersely.
"No. But it"s what I need to do." Sighing, she ran a hand over her short locks. "I should pack and go to the Afaso Headquarters..."
His eyes widened at that. "No...no, if you go there, you"ll die! I"ve seen it, in one of the visions. A hovertaxi accident." Dropping to one knee, Meyun caught her hands. "Don"t go to Madagascar."
Even knowing it was really the wrong response, given the intensity of his reaction, Ia couldn"t stop the laugh that escaped her. She squeezed his fingers. "Meyun, don"t worry. What you saw was just one of the many possibilities that could happen if I ever go there. Trust me, I"d see it coming, and take a completely different cab. I have no intention of dying anytime soon."
He squeezed her fingers in his, holding her gaze intensely. "Don"t you ever die, you hear me?"
That made her roll her eyes. "Meyun, everybody dies. Even the Feyori, though it takes them a few thousand years." She started to say more, but honesty prompted her to tilt her head and amend, "Well, everyone except for the Immortal, but technically she can be killed. She just keeps popping back to life afterward. Which is why the Feyori think she"s so dangerous, and why they want her destroyed somehow."
Brow creasing, Meyun gave her a confused frown. "You...We"ve had this conversation before. Or...will have had it...? In the Vault of Time-Ia, what is the Vault of Time? And what is it doing here on Earth, if it"s the creation of...of some sort of Feyori?"
"Don"t ask-don"t," she a.s.serted. "Don"t go there, don"t try to get inside, don"t even think about it. Just put it from your mind. As much as having you around would be a severe distraction and a danger to my goals, having the Vault"s owner take an interest in anyone even remotely connected to me would be an outright disaster."
"Why? Would she try to stop you?"
Ia shook her head. "Worse. She"d try to help."
He started to speak, then sighed. "Right...because some kinds of help end up being far worse than the problem at hand, don"t they? Is that why you don"t want me at your side? You think I"d mess things up for you?"
Instinct warned her this was one of those questions. One she had to answer carefully. Ia opted for honesty, because that was the one course least likely to stab her in the back, later. "I think...I know you"d want to help me. I think you could actually be helpful. But..."
"But?" he prodded her.
"There is no way that our paths will cross in the next few years," Ia told him bluntly. "Even if you weren"t such a huge distraction, our orders will keep us apart. You"re headed to the TerranTla.s.sian Border for the next six months, whereas I"m headed off to flight school for the next three, then being shipped out to the Blockade. We won"t get within four hundred lightyears of each other, Meyun," she told him. "Not unless the probabilities shift you to that seventeen percent chance that you"ll wind up on Blockade for your second tour of duty. But even then, we won"t be on the same patrol routes. Trying to keep something going between us would be an exercise in futility and frustration. A distraction for both of us."
He looked down and away at that. With her fingers tucked into his, she could sense the press of the thoughts racing silently through his head. She did not pry, though she could sense him coming to some sort of conclusion, and the resolve backing it. When he lifted his head again, she met his gaze steadily, gripping his hands.
"Fine. We"ll part ways, as we originally planned. But not without a cost," he warned her. Dropping her hands as he rose from his knees, he pushed her back onto the bed. "I"ve never considered myself as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d type before now, but I plan on making d.a.m.n sure you will regret walking away from me."
Trust me, I already do, Ia promised him silently, arms already lifting to help bring him back down to her.
CHAPTER 13.
The stress and performance pressure required of Service personnel serving on the Blockade were such that, per capita, it had the highest ratio of psychologists, psychiatrists, and parapsychologists to soldiers in the Terran s.p.a.ce Force. I suppose it was similarly high in any of the Alliance races serving to keep the Salik confined to their worlds, but I can only speak from the Terran Human perspective with the greatest certainty. Blockade Patrol personnel cycled through much more rapidly than in any other position, with roughly half serving two duty posts in a row, and less than 20 percent serving for a full year.
I"ve been asked many times through the years, how could I remain stable, constantly exposed to danger, violence, death? I am stable because I not only know I can do something about it, I am doing something about it. My code of conduct will allow nothing less. My duty and my conscience will permit nothing less.
That, and I had my own personal chaplain-counselor officially a.s.signed to me by the DoI by the time I left flight school. They wanted to make absolutely sure I remained stable, in the hopes I could prove to be all that they wanted me to be. Luckily for them, I"ve always tried to be all that they"ve needed me to be.
~Ia JANUARY 1, 2494 T.S.