Daughter of Time 1: Reader (9 page)

Execrable son! so to aspire

Above his brethren, to himself assuming

Authority usurp'd, from God not given.

He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,

Dominion absolute; that right we hold

By his donation; but man over men

He made not lord; such title to himself

Reserving, human left from human free.

—John Milton

I should explain how it was I became able to “see” the events around me. The descriptions of the events to come all depend on this ability I first tapped into on Earth during my first meeting with the Sortax. It was in visiting their home world during our first real navigation that this skill blossomed within me so that I could recognize what I was doing and control it at will. Perhaps being among them again, in the presence of so much that was alien, helped to trigger it. This skill has allowed me to compensate for my blindness.

The power to visit the past, which had not only provided me with an education but also a refuge in which to hide from the painful realities of my life, offered something immediate and practical: the power to form images of things around me. It was as if my mind could weave a tapestry from memories so that my new, strange sense could wrap its impressions in the visual metaphors of my lost sight. These are what
visions
are for a Reader, the blending of our sixth sense with the efforts of our mind and imagination. It is a painting of the impressions of this sense in a manner we can understand. Perhaps if we had developed the ability to Read as infants, we would not need to do this: we would “see” in this new way just as we see with our eyes and smell with our noses without needing to frame the experience with another sense. But our abilities begin near puberty, when the rest of our brain has already been shaped and is far less plastic than it once was.

In the beginning, I had used this sense to learn of things I could not have known any other way. The further from my own personal experience, the harder it was to “see,” as if such things were at a greater distance. Naturally, many of those things I was most interested in were very far away and required great concentration, and I had to practice my skill to perceive things in any useful manner. The significance of things very, very close, those things that were very easy to perceive, I had initially failed to comprehend. I had ignored them— things that were obvious to me for many other reasons, and that were also part of the world I was seeking to escape emotionally.

Then the Sortax came to Earth, and in the panic, the fear of being near the truly alien, my survival instincts focused my awareness, focused it tightly to Read moments, milliseconds that were only recently past and that were very close to me. If you Read so close to the present, it is very little different from
seeing
the present, except that you have the power to see not only what you might have seen with eyes, but also beyond that, to all the events you chose to explore through space-time. And so it was and became again as we descended through the turbulent atmosphere of the Sortax home world. My mind focused, and this time I understood what I was doing. This ability served me tremendously from that point on in my life. It was also the starting point for the next obvious step – the exploration of events not only moments past but also short times in the future, and from that, the much harder and powerful deliberate search into the future of events to come.

Once through the clouds, the vastness of the planet became clear. Perhaps three times the size of Earth, the entire surface was covered with purple water, and through a descending orbit that traversed nearly two-thirds of the circumference of the world, no sign of land, not even a small island, was present. It became obvious that there would be nothing to “land” on, and that these creatures lived beneath the waves, and under them we would be going.

The ship soon arced sharply over the sea and then made a swift dive down toward the violet water, shuddering as impact was made. The howling sounds from streaming across the atmosphere were replaced with the churning flow of liquid outside the walls of the ship, and quickly the sounds of pressure on the walls could be heard as a soft groaning as we plunged deeper and deeper into the ocean. The Sortax must have lived terribly deep in these waters, and I wondered how creatures like us of fragile flesh, bone, and air could survive at the depth and pressures of their underwater cities.

After what seemed like hours, the ship, now more a submarine, stopped descending, and the metal-on-metal clunk of our docking rang throughout our small room. Then there were several moments of silence as the terrified breathing of those around me punctured the air. Once again we were placed into the alien and unknown: alone and powerless. This time I was less afraid, assuming that there could hardly be anything worse than what had happened to us so far.

I could not have been more wrong.

The door to our chamber opened, and our human Shepherds instructed us to follow them out. The Sortax must have exited through another location this time, likely one designed for their underwater lifestyle. Our exit was under atmosphere, and we were not given any suits to put on. Instead, the ship had docked with a corridor that led deep into the recesses of our new submerged city, or a small air bubble within it. As we walked down the tunnel and then into the many chambers that were maintained in these Earthlike conditions, I was amazed that these aliens had gone to so much trouble for our survival. I was soon to learn, however, how wrong I was to think this was all for us.

“Into the examination room,” barked one of the Shepherds, as he pointed to a large chamber to our right. The architecture was disturbingly unlike anything a human mind could have designed. The walls and ceilings undulated as they curved toward the domed ceilings; the material was some type of metal never seen on Earth, a pale green that seemed almost to give off the slightest glow. Illumination came from what seemed to be a moss-like substance embedded in the metallic walls themselves. The floor was of a similar metal, but more brown, and it was incredibly slippery so that several children had fallen already.

As we entered the chamber, we had our introduction to the Dram. Tall, insectoidal soldiers that were right from out of my earlier vision. Several stood at what seemed like attention beside large pieces of equipment, carrying long objects that even in their alien form could only be weapons. Smaller Dram, marked with symbols on their thorax regions that I could not decipher, crouched down, adjusting elements of the machines.

One by one, we were led to these clusters, were stripped, forcibly placed onto a square region in the center of the machinery, completely restrained, poked and prodded in every orifice. Skin, hair, blood, saliva, and mucus samples were torn from our bodies, devices run over different parts of our anatomy, and all the while we lay helpless and terrified as these enormous insects appeared ready to dissect us on the spot. As they removed my clothes, I did not resist them, but I held on to the one thing that mattered to me—the Red Sox hat given to me by Ricky. I balled it in my fists, clenching them tightly, willing to suffer whatever might come if they tried to take it away. Lucky for me, they didn’t seem to focus, or perhaps didn’t care, about the crushed baseball hat in my palm. They were too busy removing all possible dignity from the rest of me.

In all that turmoil, I was unable to recognize the startling fact that the Dram were breathing the same air we were, were living at our pressures and temperatures. If I had noticed, I would have pieced together that these chambers were not for us but had been made long before to comfort the Dram, whose control of all planets in the sphere of the Orbs was near absolute. They ruled with such power over the galaxy that the Sortax had allowed this giant air bubble to be lodged so deep within their undersea civilization.

As they finished with me, a probe came out from the side of the examination equipment. A Dram worker rolled me so that my back faced the probe, and instantly I felt a searing burn across my skin. I cried out, as so many others had, but could not move as the sharp ends of the Dram worker’s many arms held me in place. A small chip had been inserted into my skin that held all the relevant data for those who would be in the market for human Readers: my training certification, physiological profile, estimated age, and expiration date.

Then we were marched off into a second chamber that I can only describe as a human market. One by one, we were placed on a small stage and displayed in complete humiliation: alone, naked, cold, and afraid. Small devices that resembled odd cameras whirled about us. A device would also scan the chip in our backs, all the information presumably transmitted to the bidding aliens who needed Reader services. What I didn’t know was that, based on a weighted formula of many of our traits, we were each given a score. Those with the highest scores would likely serve in pleasure craft of the rich governmental ships or military vessels. Lower scores meant passenger freighters or, worse, the wild and cheap auction market that attracted any of a number of despicable space travelers. My blindness and deformity lowered my score greatly, and as yet they had no inkling of my gifts, no means by which to assess them.

Afterward, I was led by a robotic drone down several corridors and into the storage room, where we were placed into small, coffin-like containers and packaged for delivery to our new owners. I was doomed to land in the hands of some of the vilest criminals of the space-faring races, of a form I never even saw but whose monstrous cruelty almost killed me. Worse still, through all that they did to us, my spirit was nearly shattered. This is the hardest part to tell you. Even now, I become faint and sick just thinking about it.

Suddenly, I began to feel very cold. My breath came out fogged, and a gel-like foam spread over my body, injected from the sides of the pod. It was incredibly heavy, and I could not move it, even as I struggled. And it was
cold
. Ice-cold and burning. I started to shiver, but slowly my panic faded. My shivering stopped. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I yawned. Sleep—heavy, deep sleep descended on me like an enormous blanket, blocking out the pod I was in and my fear. I forgot where I was. All light faded as I tightly squeezed the crumpled baseball cap in my numbing right hand.

15

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. 
—Blaise Pascal

Somehow in that artificial sleep, I dreamed.

I was floating in space. Not in a ship or spacesuit, but floating freely like some child in water, an impossible wind blowing over me from molecules of air that could not exist in this emptiness. I felt no cold despite the fact that it should have been absolute zero around me. The air in my lungs did not rush out into the vacuum and the saliva in my mouth didn’t boil. Nitrogen gas didn’t bubble in my blood giving me the bends, nor did my eardrums rupture. Despite the lack of oxygen, I didn’t get light-headed or pass out. In fact, I felt comfortable. Free.
Was I dead? Was this my spirit?

I looked around. A yellow star shone at a distance, but even though I stared at it without the filtering of atmosphere or protective glasses, my eyes were unhurt, and the intense ultraviolet radiation had no effect on my china-white skin.

Our sun
. Our home star. It was then that I marveled that I could see.

In front of me was a small point of light. Like a magnet it pulled at me, and I felt my body accelerate, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. Slowly the object grew in my field of vision, a small white coin, then a plate, and finally the pocked surface came into focus.
The Moon
. My rate of approach slowed as the white disk began to fill my range of sight.

An unease grew in my stomach. A sense of foreboding, of danger, even of evil lurking on the other side of the disk. Something wrong, something monstrous was hiding behind our Moon, something deadly and murderous. And I felt it, I felt it searching, seeking, trying to peer around the dead ball of rock.
Searching for me.

I knew it was close, but I could hear voices on the other side. Voices calling out in fear, terrible fear and pain. Voices crying out together, like some nightmare chorus, rising in crescendo and sweeping over me like a tempestuous sea, and then, in one terrible instant, silenced.