So yes, I knew there was a civil war brewing back home. I knew every trick the other side would try to use. And somehow, I had to find a way to counter that, so that there would be some hope of my people surviving long enough to escape the coming destruction. My biggest problem, however, was convincing people what to do when I wasn"t even there...and contrary to popular belief, I am mortal, and will not live forever. Certainly not for the full three hundred years my messages need to survive.
~Ia After several silent seconds, Thorne shook his head slowly. "Nothing is happening."
"Yeah," Fyfer agreed, frowning. "Aren"t we supposed to be seeing the future again, or something?"
Ia shook her head. "That"s not what raw crysium does, though I"m glad to see it confirmed. No, it was during the battle to free my superiors and fellow sergeants that something strange happened to my sword."
"The crystal one we shipped to you?" Fyfer asked.
She nodded and patted the lump hiding in her thigh pocket. "The one and the same as the bracelet-thing you just held. I kind of had to reshape and hide it after...Well, what happened was, I kind of lost my grip on it, dropping it, and one of the Lyebariko guards got ahold of it just as I grabbed the blade."
Both men hissed. Fyfer wrinkled his nose. "How long did it take for the Marines to reattach your fingers?"
"He didn"t actually cut them off," Ia corrected, flexing her fingers absently. "Luckily, I had managed a pressure-grip on the sides to stop him from slicing completely through, and I reshaped it so that I had the hilt. But...I think some of my blood was incorporated into the crystal when I reshaped it. So. We are going to test this theory."
Picking up one of the clear crystals from the ground, she reshaped it with just a few thoughts into a short, sharp blade. Fyfer"s eyes widened, while Thorne"s narrowed.
"You"re going to cut yourself again, only this time deliberately?" her older brother asked.
"More to the point, I"m going to ask you to cut yourselves. Hand me the spheres," Ia ordered.
"Are you out of your mind?" Fyfer protested.
Ia leaned over and plucked the spheres from her brothers" hands. "I need control samples." Softening and prodding each one with her fingertip, forming a small divot, she handed Thorne his sphere and the blade. "Just a few drops, that"s all I need."
He gave her a dark look, but accepted blade and ball. "You"re asking a lot."
"I know." A beeping interrupted her before she could say more. All three of them jumped. Fyfer"s wrist unit beeped again. Feeling foolish since she"d forgotten about it already, Ia lifted her chin, giving her brother permission to answer the call.
Knife in hand, Thorne addressed her under his breath while their brother flipped up the battered grey screen and greeted his caller. "Are you going to heal this when I"m done?"
"Of course," she snorted. "For one, you know where I"m currently sleeping. For another, you"d probably sic both our mothers on me."
"Nice to know you didn"t lose all of your wits when you joined the military," he quipped back, carefully cutting into the edge of his palm. Ia shifted forward again, rocking onto her knees to help catch the trickle of crimson seeping from the wound in the crystal. Pinching the crysium shut over the sample of blood, Ia concentrated, molding the crystal with her gifts until it was a h.o.m.ogenous shade of translucent pink.
Covering the cut with her free hand, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her brother"s body. It wasn"t easy to heal others, particularly as it was a matter of "convincing" his body to speed up the natural healing process, but her brother was familiar, despite the last two years of separation. That, and his body responded well to psychic stimulation, given how they shared a father. It didn"t take long for her to pull her hand away, showing a sealed cut instead of a seeping one.
Fyfer ended his call, snapping shut the viewscreen of his cheap plexi wrist unit. "Okay, so they know I"ll be there tonight, and that I have some unspecified news to share." Sighing, he raked his free hand through his dark, shoulder-length curls. "But honestly, Ia, a lawyer? Me? Why not him?" he asked, gesturing at Thorne. "I could"ve been a s.p.a.ceport organizer, you know. I am quite brilliant."
Both Ia and Thorne quirked their brows skeptically at that. Fyfer flushed and grumbled under his breath. Shaking her head, Ia corrected him. "Both of you are brilliant, but in different ways. Thorne is better at organizing things, keeping track of business details, handling the accounting and the economizing. You are better at public speaking, rousing enthusiasm, and keeping track of people-based details. There are reasons for every choice I am asking you to make...and reasons for you to accept and embrace them. Now cut yourself."
Thorne cuffed her, making her yelp and rub her bicep. "Say "please" and "thank you." You"re not in the military right now, you know."
"Or rather, we"re not," Fyfer amended, accepting the blade from his brother. He wiped it on the gra.s.s, then on his dark blue trousers, then carefully cut his hand in more or less the same spot as his brother had his. "If you"re right about me knowing how to handle people, then here"s some advice. Nectar catches sticker-bugs faster than vinegar or water."
"Please cut yourself and donate a few drops of blood to my experiment, Brother." Ia helped him collect the blood, then molded it into his sample sphere, too. "Thank you."
"Aren"t you going to heal him?" Thorne prompted her.
Ia nodded, setting down the second sphere. Covering Fyfer"s hand, she focused her kinetic inergy into the wound, that peculiar not-electromagnetic energy all psychics could tap. When she pulled her hand away, his cut was clotted, though not quite as healed as Thorne"s now looked.
"Okay...now what?" Fyfer asked when she sat back.
"Now we see if there"s anything unusual about your sphere." Picking it up, she tossed it at her younger brother.
He caught it in his cupped hands, blinked, then held it, rolled the ball between his fingers, and finally shrugged. "It"s crysium. Pink, slightly cloudy crysium. How you made it a ball, I don"t know, but it"s hard and cool to the touch, and that"s it. No images, no future impressions, nothing."
He lobbed it at Thorne, who caught it, held it, and shrugged as well. Thorne tossed it back to their sister. "Crystal. Nothing more."
Ia caught it and set it down by her right knee, the side Fyfer was sitting on. Picking up Thorne"s blooded sphere, she tossed it at Fyfer first, wanting to see what his reaction would be. He bobbled it for a moment, trapped it against his chest, then held it. Fyfer started to shrug, then paused, frowned, and scratched at the edge of his left hand...then looked at his skin, frowning.
"What the...slag? Look at that, it"s healing faster." He shrugged and scratched his head. "At least, it itches like it"s healing fast."
"Pa.s.s it to Thorne. Please," Ia added. He complied, and their eldest sibling held it, frowned softly, and rubbed at the side of his hand. "Well?"
"I"m not sure, but...I think he"s right. Maybe. Here," he said, handing it back to Fyfer. "You hold it in your left hand, and if your cut heals faster than mine, we"ll know it"s the crystal. I"ve always healed faster than you, naturally."
"Thanks to a very minor biokinetic propensity," Ia murmured, nodding in agreement. Both of her brothers looked at her. She shrugged. "It was nothing strong enough to bother with getting you trained, but I knew it was there-don"t go there," she added, lifting her finger to cut off Fyfer"s indrawn breath. "That"s the wrong line of inquiry, and it would be dangerous as well as fruitless if you tried to look for the right one. Let it be, Brothers. No one must know how to manipulate and amplify crysium until it"s the right time. No one but me."
"You know, you"d think it would be great, having a sister who could literally foresee the future...but no. It"s more of a pain in the asteroid," Fyfer quipped sardonically. "Will there ever come a question where you give us the full answer?"
"Maybe." Her lips curled up in a wicked grin as he groaned.
"So, what now?" Thorne asked her. "Are you going to cut yourself, or is that torture reserved just for us?"
"Hush, I"m developing a theory," she muttered, thinking. Picking up one of the untainted, clear pink spheres, she studied it. "I think first...I should try and turn this into another torus. Bear with me. And don"t touch me."
"Trust me, we know better," Fyfer muttered.
With the sphere gripped lightly in her hands, Ia focused her mind down and in, flipping it fully onto the timeplains. The blue and purples of the forested hills around them, the golds and pastels of the crystal sprays, and her brothers, Thorne in shades of dark green and Fyfer dressed in dark blue, vanished from view. In its place, a sunbaked, gra.s.sy plain undulated in all directions to the far, far horizon.
Stepping up out of the waters of her own timestream, Ia focused on finding the right path. Off in the future, downstream by three hundred or so years, most every life-stream ended, destroyed by the invading might of the Zida"ya, or the Soor, as they had been nicknamed by their ancient enemy. One stream, however, one convergence of actions and destinies, broke through that desert, saving and restoring the rightful lives of all those future generations.
Skimming the waters, their surfaces glimmering with glimpses of different moments in time, she followed that path, or rather, tangle of paths...then came back to herself with a deep indrawn breath. Ia opened her eyes as she exhaled. She knew her gift was strong, too strong to risk anyone touching her when she ventured fully onto the timeplains. The bracelet-like object now cradled in her hands told her that, combined with the peculiarities of crysium, her precognition could activate her other gifts as well, and do so without conscious thought.
Specifically electrokinesis, drawing energy out of the crystal to soften its otherwise impermeable surface, and telekinesis, shaping it into this rippling ring thing. Her battle precognition had without a doubt been trained by her efforts to work in tandem with her other abilities during combat, dodging shrapnel, firing at targets, whatever it took. But this was proof it could happen outside of any conscious need as well.
Ia picked Thorne, offering him the ring. "Here. See if you can sense anything."
Taking it from her, he started to say something, then hesitated. Thorne blinked and stared at nothing. After a long moment, he shook it off. "It"s...not as strong as the ring. The first one, I mean. But...I could see things. Little hints of things. I couldn"t place them in time though. Nothing pinpointed to a specific hour or date."
He offered it to Fyfer, who took it, hesitated, and stared. It took him longer to come back to himself, and when he did, their younger brother quickly dropped the ring on the ground. It chinged off a piece of rock and thumped into a patch of dirt.
"Something wrong?" Thorne asked.
Fyfer scrubbed his right hand, then quickly shifted the translucent pink sphere out of his left hand. "Ah...yeah. Sort of. The cut"s almost healed...and whatever this trick is, Ia, you have to put in some sort of time-limit modifier," he warned his sister. "This one wasn"t as strong as the first ring, but it took effort to pull away from the images I was seeing. The previous one...it was too intense. I couldn"t stop looking."
Thorne nodded.
"Duly noted," she murmured. Leaning forward, Ia picked up both the clear ring and the blade. The ring, she put into her other thigh patch-pocket. Then she carefully cut her hand and bled onto a clean sphere, molded the blood into the ball, and flipped her mind onto the timeplains.
This time, she limited herself to key moments-nothing specific, just whatever caught her eye in the shifting images of the streams she pa.s.sed, soaring through the amber-hued skies in her mind-and limited herself firmly to just a few minutes. When she pulled out and came back to herself, the pink-clouded sphere had become more of an oval-shaped ring.
This time, when Fyfer tried it, he stayed enthralled for only a little while. Glancing at the chrono on the bracer-style wrist unit covering her left forearm, Ia timed it. Two minutes and thirteen seconds Standard later, he came back to himself and set the ring on the ground. Thorne tried it as well...and came back to himself after only one minute forty-nine seconds. The moment she announced that in a puzzled murmur, both her brothers frowned. Fyfer s.n.a.t.c.hed up the ring again.
"Time it again," Fyfer told her.
"...Two minutes, two seconds," Ia told him when he blinked out of whatever it was he was seeing. While Fyfer recovered, Thorne tried it a second time. Ia monitored the length of that session as well. "And your trip was two minutes, thirty-six seconds this time."
Thorne frowned, rubbed at the nape of his muscular neck, then shrugged. "I suppose that makes sense, since I saw something different this time. It was important, but not the same. You?"
Fyfer nodded. "Something different each time," he agreed. "The question now is what good is this peek-into-the-future ability for anyone else? We know what you can do with it, but anyone else?"
"Well, I"m hoping to make use of it in convincing people to follow me when I"m no longer around to give directives," Ia admitted. "But...I have very little clue as to what I"m doing. I know I"ve seen something like this in the timestreams," she added, lifting the latest, wrist-sized ring. "But it was sized to fit on someone"s head, and there were two types: one to encourage people, and one to discourage them."
"So just ask your future self how to make them!" Fyfer groused, rubbing at the edge of his palm. "Why bother experimenting on us?"
"Because I can"t ask my future self how to make them. It"s like...like watching a vid with the sound turned off," Ia offered, groping for an a.n.a.logy her brothers could understand. "You can kind of get the gist of what"s happening in the show, but without the words and the noises, you"re just as likely to get only parts of it right and parts of it wrong. Only in this case, I can see the sights and hear the sounds, but I cannot be inside my own head, listening to my own thoughts, when crafting these things.
"Which I"ll do at some point in the future. Even my abilities have their limits." Dropping the ring on the ground, she sighed. Idly, she touched one of the remaining, undifferentiated crystal b.a.l.l.s. The transparent sphere didn"t do anything special, other than look pink and round rather than crystalline and fractal.
"Predestination paradox," Fyfer offered, making her look up. He shrugged. "You"re the only one who knows how all of this weirdness works, so you"re the only one who could possibly crack open the mysteries of it...which means you actually have to do the work." Leaning forward, Fyfer smirked and poke-tapped her on the forehead a couple of times. "No cheating by copying someone else"s notes on this life-test, Sister."
She stuck out her tongue at him. He stuck out his in return. Thorne raspberried them both, breaking up their silent fight with a bout of snickering. Calming down, he shook his head, his braid sliding across his shoulders. "Enough. This ground is hard, and my asteroid is growing numb. I"d like to get moving again soon. Besides, a handful of bracelets, or circlet-things, won"t be enough to go around. You"re asking me to plan for a population base of several million. We barely have a third of a million people on Sanctuary right now, and that"s only because Population Expansion is subsidizing large families, with every wombpod in every creche producing full time."
Fyfer sighed and propped his elbows on his knees, plucking at a tuft of something greenish blue attempting to grow up through the dried mud coating the rocky ground. "I would"ve loved to have had a few more siblings. A pity Mom and Ma decided they couldn"t handle another round of pregnancies, and couldn"t afford any more mouths to feed, even if Pop Ex footed the bill."
"You"ll have plenty of kids of your own to look after," Ia promised him. "Both biological ones and ones from wombpod manufactories."
"Yeah, with what money?" Fyfer shot back. "You also said Pop Ex will be in the hands of the Church by then, and all their wombpods with them."
"I told you, you"ll get the numbers when the time is right," she admonished him. "Just keep buying tickets, handpicking each and every set of numbers. Then you"ll be able to afford your own version of Population Expansion."
A quick exchange of looks with her older brother promised Thorne that he would get the right numbers first, and be the one to dole them out at the right moment. She knew the many burdens she was piling onto his shoulders, but Ia had little choice. Fyfer was still too young for the heavy responsibilities waiting for him. How ironic that she, who had so little time to spare, was being forced by Time to be patient.
Changing the subject, Ia gathered up the rings. "Obviously, something in my blood is enough to trigger precognitive episodes. And something in the shape of these lumpy rings does it as well, if not quite to the same degree. But combining the two makes it far more effective than either one alone.
"The question is, how much of a combination will make it effective? I can"t exactly open up a vein and bleed myself to death; that"s counterproductive," Ia stated, mulling through the problem. "I"ll have to experiment to see what size dose of blood is an absolute requirement, and experiment to see what size and shape of crystal is the best. Not to mention the differences between positive and negative reinforcement. And I"ll have to pull it off before I leave...and then figure out how to get enough blood into them...I don"t know. I don"t know how I could possibly fit enough blood into the few windows of opportunity I"ll have, the few times I"ll be coming back here."
"Not without bleeding yourself to death," Fyfer agreed. "I may grumble and gripe, but I really don"t want to lose you. Particularly to something stupid."
She gave him a wry half smile. "Thanks."
Thorne shrugged, rubbing his chin. "Why not...make a whole bunch of tiny little spheres, and just have us ship "em to you? Standardized sizes, each one dosed with a few drops, and you mix "em up, resphere "em, and ship "em back to us? That way you can donate a few drops every day without worry about ma.s.sive blood loss."
"Uh, presuming the blood doesn"t go bad in transit, that is," Fyfer cautioned both of them. "That may be a factor you"ll have to consider."
Ia shook her head, fishing out her original bracelet from its thigh-pocket. "I bled on this one months ago, and it hasn"t changed color, let alone lost strength as far as I can tell. Not that I can tell much, since I can barely sense it augmenting my abilities...but based on your reactions, it"s still quite strong."
"A literal drop in the bucket of your abilities, no doubt," Thorne agreed, eyeing her from head to toe. He lifted his chin at the rings in her hands. "Figure out how much blood you need, and how big a crystal ball or bubble to preserve it, then go from there."
"A ball, I"d think. And...only a marble in size. I can always combine little spheres into large ones, but a bubble would only let the blood spoil. Blending it is what seems to preserve it." Lifting her gaze to the crystals surrounding them, she tried to calculate how much she would need. "I"ll need to convert several dozen mature sprays, at the very least...but that"s a task for another day."
"Have you given any thought as to how you"ll explain shipping all those beads back and forth?" Fyfer asked his sister.
Ia shrugged. "Something along the lines of "holy beads" shaped and blessed by an active-duty warrior, something-something local religious beliefs. I am listed as a Witan priestess in my Service records, for all that I"m not serving as a chaplain."
"We"ll back it up, if anyone calls home and asks," Fyfer dismissed, flicking his hand.
Thorne nodded in agreement and pushed to his feet, stretching. Ia, still seated on the ground, started gathering up the tainted and clear sc.r.a.ps of crysium, stuffing them into her pockets.
Fyfer stood and stretched as well. He scratched his stomach, then shrugged and tipped his head. "Watching you mold that stuff while you were in your little trance reminds me of an old saying..."
"Oh? Which one?" Ia asked, looking up at him. The slightly bloodied, crystalline knife they had used finished dulling and turning into an oblong, safe-to-handle blob in her fingers.
"That any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. I know you said-or rather, implied-that it"s some sort of special psychic gift," he told her, holding up his hands. "And that we"re not supposed to ask questions or speculate or whatever, but...it looked more like magic than science, just now."
"Well, maybe I could"ve made a great stage magician," Ia quipped, smiling. "You never know, we could have some Mankiller blood in our family tree. Speaking of magic, and thus vanishing acts, I need to make sure I contact Rabbit today. You"ll need a safe place on Sanctuary to store all my "blood beads," for lack of a better term. I figure the best place for that is deep in the caverns, down where the Church won"t find them."
Fyfer lifted his chin at her. "When you do, tell her I said hi, and that I"ll call her soon, alright? Unlike some people who never use their wrist units to call anyone...or rather, didn"t bother to ask for her number."
"I did ask, but I rarely call her because she rarely wears her wrist unit," Thorne retorted. "Which you"d know if you ever bothered to talk with her, instead of just at her."
Ia rolled her eyes. "Stop it. Both of you. She likes you both. She will like you both. This is not a compet.i.tion for her affections, nor can it ever be. The three of you working together as one unit is a force not even Time can stop, and I need you to be that united force."
"Well...you could"ve at least picked out another woman for one of us!" Thorne protested.
"The only other women out there are ones who would resent the demands of your tasks. Rabbit believes as much as both of you do. Be grateful that you will be able to get along so well, and that you"ll all have each other for company. Some people aren"t that lucky."
Fyfer smirked. "Careful, Sister, you sounded almost jealous, there. Haven"t you picked out someone for yourself, yet? You"ve got an infinite number of possibilities to choose from, after all."
Ia merely quirked a brow at him. "When, exactly, would I have time for a relationship?"
"Oh, that"s right, I forgot. The Prophet of a Thousand Years is a slagging martyr. Maybe they should"ve nicknamed you the Virgin Mary, instead of Bloo-OW!" Wincing, Fyfer flinched back from a second backhanded blow. He rubbed his bruised bicep and glared at his stepbrother.
Thorne lifted his arm in warning of a third attack, his stare now focused on the youngest of the siblings. "Get in the car. And think before you open your mouth again!"
"It"s alright, Thorne," Ia muttered, pushing to her feet. "He"s not saying anything I haven"t thought, myself. I am female, Little Brother," she added, fixing Fyfer with a sardonic look. "I do have urges and needs. I just don"t have the time to spare. Or the energy. I do not, however, look upon it as an act of martyrdom. All I"m doing is giving up s.e.x with someone else, not to mention avoiding the risk of that someone being dragged onto the timeplains with me during intimate contact. That"s hardly a life-altering loss, which is what martyrdom requires."
"Says someone who"s clearly never had-I"m going, I"m going!" Fyfer yelped and skipped back as his older brother swung at him again. Not with his full strength, of course; Thorne was readily capable of breaking bones without breaking a sweat. He was also normally quite gentle. Just the swipe of his hand through the air between them was enough warning to make the younger man retreat.
"Leave him alone, Thorne," Ia muttered, dusting herself off. "In the first place, he"s upset that I"m making him go into law school instead of continuing as an actor. In the second, he"s unhappy that I"m encouraging you to flirt with Rabbit. Just like you"re upset that I"m letting him flirt with her, too." Walking with him toward the ground car, she raised her voice enough so that Fyfer would hear as well. "Just...both of you, would you try to keep your heads out of your pants for at least a few more years? Please?
"See?" she added, pressing the latch b.u.t.ton and waiting for the door to swing down out of the way. "I do remember common courtesies. It"s just that usually they have a rank attached to them. The only problem is, you don"t have any rank."
Thorne snorted. "Maybe you should give me a rank, given how I"m supposed to be marshalling all these impending resources for your little colonial survival scenario."
"Dibs on General!" Fyfer called out, ducking into the backseat before either of them could protest.