Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 : Средь звезд, подобно гигантам - Гэрет Уильямс

Well, this one wouldn't. Not forever. Eventually she'd beg him for mercy, and then after a bit longer she'd beg him for more. That was what he wanted. A fine noble's daughter begging him for things.

He chuckled and crossed to the other side of the room. There was a lot more here. A lot more. Books, jewellery, riches. He had taken a lot from Gorash. Not as much as he should have, though. The others had tricked him, taken his share. Just because they had the ships and the weapons and the soldiers and knew where to fence the items, that meant they thought they were better than he was. All of them, even that loathsome alien monster Moreil. Oh, he might have said he was taking nothing, might have said he was not interested in plunder, but Rem knew differently. Moreil was scamming him, taking what was rightfully his.

Wasn't he important enough to them? Hadn't he told them all about Gorash? He'd spent enough time there. He'd told them where the Governor's house was, where the nobles lived, where the museums and galleries and craftsmen's quarters were. What would they all have done without him to guide them?

And what did he have to show for it? A few pathetic baubles and one girl. He deserved more than that.

No, patience, he thought to himself. His time would come. He could wait and all things would come to him eventually. He wasn't going to fence his treasure. He didn't want money. He didn't want mercenaries or liquor or any of the things the others bought. He wanted treasure. And he would have it all.

He turned, and started as he saw someone in his room. In his room! In his private sanctum! It was the Centauri. The former Lord-General. He was standing next to the girl, touching her cheek and looking into her eyes. He was touching Rem's property! Just like a nobleman. He thought he could take anything he wanted just because he had had a title. Well not here! His title didn't mean anything here! The laws of the order promised him a fair and equal share. Oh, the others had tried to trick him out of that, and they'd pay for it later, but no one was going to take something that was rightfully his from his own sanctum.

And now he was cutting her down! How dare he? How dare he!

"Leave her alone!" he shouted, moving across the room. "She's mine."

Marrago looked at him and he drew back for a moment. It was not fear, no. He was not afraid of the man at all. He was just like any nobleman. Too weak and too reliant on his servants to stand up to a real man. No, Rem was just…. taking his stance, not being too eager and overconfident.

"She belongs to herself," Marrago was saying. "No one else."

"She's mine!"

He finished cutting through her bonds and she fell limply to the floor. He caught her effortlessly and gently lowered her. He then removed his coat and wrapped it around her.

"She's mine!" Rem moved slowly sideways and picked up the kutari beside the wall. One of his little treasures from Gorash. He'd never been allowed one of these before. He remembered touching a nobleman's sword once as a child and being flogged for it, but now he had his own sword. It was his!

Just like the girl was, and this nobleman wasn't going to take either of them from him.

He charged forward, holding up the sword and screaming. He would defend what was his. He was entitled to defend what was his.

The nobleman must have tricked him. Yes, it was a trick. Nothing else could explain how he had moved so fast, knocking the sword out of his hands. It was all a trick. Rem felt the cold touch of Marrago's kutari against his face, and the warmth of his blood trickling down his cheek.

"She's mine," he said.

"I should kill you for what you've done to her, and elsewhere. But this is a different place, and different rules apply.

"But come near her again, and I will kill you, and to hell with the consequences."

It was not fear that made Rem stammer like that. Not fear at all. It was…. a bluff. He was lulling Marrago into a false sense of security. That was it. Let the nobleman think he was helpless, and then….

It was a testament to his acting skills that he was still trembling a long time after Marrago had left with the girl.

Rem Lanas finished his garbled story and Moreil looked at him. "She's mine!" he said again. "You've got to help me get her back."

Moreil had no further time or patience for the fool. "Go," he said.

"But she's mine! You have to get her back for me!"

"I said go! Recover her yourself if you are strong enough, but trouble me no longer."

Moreil did not watch him flee. The lordling was of no concern to him any more, but this Marrago was.

It was past time the two of them had a little talk.

"You aren't dead."

"No. I am not."

"Is the sun coming up, then? I can't see. Everyone I've seen tonight is dead. Everyone. I didn't realise I'd killed so many people, but I suppose I have."

"You don't look like a warrior."

"No. I'm nobody. Not any longer. I used to be a soldier, but…. after a while I just couldn't take any more. All of them…. At first, I thought it was…. justified. It was for defence and protection, but then it became revenge, and then it was a new war and it was for defence again and then…. and then…."

"You just did not know how to stop."

"How do you know that?"

"We were the same. I heard…. pieces from the Grey Council. It started in anger and continued in pride, because we were too stubborn to admit we were wrong."

"It wasn't stubbornness. It was just…. we didn't know anything else. Good God, have all those people died for something so pathetic?"

"No. They died for understanding. We know each other better now. We understand each other."

"Are you sure you aren't dead?"

"I am not dead. It feels as if I am sometimes, but no, I am not dead."

"I came here because…. I'd heard the dead came back, and they would answer questions. I hoped they would tell me some things, tell me what I needed to know, but all they've done is haunt me. All they've done. There are so many of them, and….

"You're the only person who's said anything to me all night. The others just looked."

"That is why you came here. For understanding."

"No. For forgiveness. Why did you come here?"

"There was one whom…. I loved very much. I hoped to see him here, to tell him everything I should have said while he was alive. To share one last night with him."

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"There was one woman I was hoping to see. I think I loved her, but I was never sure. I used to wonder if it wasn't more the idea of love than love itself I had with her. I wanted someone who would want to be with me, someone who could care for me, someone who could provide a focus, an understanding of what I was fighting for. Was that love? Shouldn't love be less…. selfish?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. I know only that I wanted to spend every minute with him, every second of every minute. Was that selfish of me? I do not know."

"Nor do I. I wish I'd seen her here. Or maybe I did and she was just a face in the crowd."

"Where are you going now?"

"I don't know. Somewhere they stop talking to me, I hope. Anywhere they stop talking to me."

"You were a soldier?"

"Yes. I was."

"My…. husband was a warrior. Like you, he had fought too much and seen too much and grown tired of it. He found peace at the end of his life, as a worker. He built and he created and he gave up destruction. If you want to, you can come home with me. There is a lot to be done there. I cannot guarantee you will find peace, but it is a place to look."

"It was me who destroyed your home, did you know that? Me, and people like me."

"I do not believe you, but it does not matter. Whatever guilt you carry, justly or unjustly, you can try to work it away. Do you wish to come with me?"

"Yes, please.

"Yes, I think I would like that. Maybe then they will stop talking to me."

It had taken Dexter Smith several hours to stop shaking. In spite of what he had told Julia and Zack his first port of call was not the Edgars Building, but his apartment. Once there he had vomited everything he had eaten that day, drunk several large glasses of Narn liquor, and then vomited again.

A shower, a change and a shave later, he felt a little better, but not much. He could still feel that thing crawling around in his mind.

He'd had few dealings with telepaths. His mother had sometimes spoken to him inside his mind, and he had felt touches occasionally from Talia, testing and probing, but nothing like that. Nothing like that….

…. thing.

A human. Once a human. It had called him 'brother'. It had spoken to him. It had invited him to join it.

'It'. It was an 'it'. Not a 'he', 'it'.

He had known fear before. He had grown up in a nightmare of crime and pain and despair. He had stood in battle. He had faced down an angry mob intending to kill Delenn and he had looked into her green eyes as he killed her himself. He had even looked at a hundred expectant faces as he prepared to deliver his first speech before the new Senate.

He had never felt anything like this. Never this kind of revulsion. The sense of something so…. so Other.

He looked at the mass of papers on his desk. They had to be studied and some signed and others likewise dealt with. The Senate was to debate the new Tax Bill on Monday, with important discussions on the Alliance Treaties following. The Alliance had invited the Proxima Government to submit candidates for the position of Babylon 5's Commanding Officer. There were two new members to welcome formally, meetings of the Reconstruction Committee and the Wellington Corruption Tribunal, not to mention a great many letters to get through. Smith did not particularly want a secretary, but it was growing more and more likely that he would need one.

He had taken the night off for 'Poker Night', and he should be getting back to them by now. Instead he turned away from the mass of paperwork and left the apartment.

He was able to catch a taxi not far away and instructed the driver to take him to the Edgars Building. The driver quite happily talked about films, his wife, the state of humanity today, the Minbari and why trusting them was not a good idea, some businessman he had taken for a drive a few years ago and was now some bigwig on Centauri Prime of all places, and hey aren't you Senator Smith may I get your autograph for my wife please only she's a big fan of yours has all your interviews and everything even the one way back when you were made captain of that ship oh what was it called again be forgetting my own head next the Babble-on no silly that's not it the Babylon yes that's the one here you are by the way sir won't my wife be impressed when she hears about this.

He paid the driver, gave him an autograph and probably an over-large tip, then walked up the steps to the imposing Edgars Building. It seemed to loom above him. Even after the damage done during the Battle of Proxima, when by all accounts President Clark had ordered the building itself bombarded from orbit, the Edgars Building was still impressive. It had already been fully repaired, and Smith was not surprised. The old man had enough in his personal account to pay for it all himself without troubling insurers or the Wartime Compensation Board. The repairs were probably even tax-deductible.

Smith was not surprised to be ushered through the lower levels and directed to the old man's private offices on the top floor. He was even less surprised to reach the new reception area, looking an awful lot like the old one, and find the secretary Lise Hampton there, still working despite the time of night.

He was not surprised in the slightest when she said, "Good evening, Senator Smith. Go right in. Mr. Edgars is expecting you."

The most powerful man in the galaxy closed his eyes and imagined the rain falling on the roof above his head. The gentle pitter-patter sound existed only in his mind, a reminder of long years gone and a life now consigned only to memory.

He was having trouble sleeping. That happened quite often these days, whenever he was apart from Delenn. With her beside him he felt safe and happy and content and reassured that everything he was doing was right. When she was far away, all the old doubts came creeping back.

And he was very far away from her. He was in a part of the galaxy he had never even seen before, following a trail of whispers and rumours and hearsay. He might as well have been seeking King Solomon's Mines, or the source of the Nile, or the Holy Grail.

That was what had first attracted him to space — the sheer vast emptiness of it, the feel that there could be anything out there, anything at all. Uncharted systems, ancient worlds, wonders never seen by human eyes, and he could be a part of it all.

This mission should have been perfect for him. Travelling distant and uncharted courses in search of ships of immense power glimpsed only in shadows and flickers and dead men's eyes.

But something nagged at him, something he could not explain. It was not just the potential risk of one lone ship seeking what might well turn out to be a legacy of the Shadows. It was not even the pain of being apart from Delenn.

It was just that it all seemed so easy.

The rumours had been circulating for years of powerful, ancient ships out there somewhere. The words formed capital letters in his mind. Out There. Not here, not somewhere safe and understood and predictable, no. Out There. In the wilderness, past the frontier, in unexplored territory.

There had always been rumours, but over the last year they had grown. So much so that he had elected to send Dark Stars to investigate. Most had come back with nothing. Some had not come back at all. There was nothing particularly unusual in that. Space was full of dangers after all, both mundane and rare.

But instinct was warning him of something, and his instinct was rarely wrong. Once it had been terribly wrong and he had never trusted it as much since then, but still….

This all seemed too easy. He had taken his ship to some of the most recent recorded sightings and scanned for anything out of the ordinary. At about the third location they had detected a rare radiation trace which led into hyperspace, and they had followed it. The trace remained strong enough to follow even through the swirling eddies and currents of hyperspace, and although it led them far from the beacons the Dark Star could navigate easily enough. It was a ship built almost entirely by the Vorlons after all, and there was little they did not know about hyperspace.