Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

Sav felt ashamed. Reaching over, he closed his fingers around hers. “That’s not true.”

She turned to him. “I wish it were not so. Speakers have no friends but other Speakers. So now I have no friends at all….”

“We’re in this together.” And, much to his surprise, Sav realised he meant it. In all the time he’d spent with Josua and the others, he’d never been able to say that because he didn’t feel it. Perhaps with Liis he might have-only she’d been too distracted by her own problems to appreciate what he could have offered. “You said the Pro-Locutors wish to make a gesture of goodwill towards me,” Sav said. “If I were to vouch for you, might they not reconsider?”

“No.” She spoke with certainty. “Unless-” She stopped, furrowing her brow. “That is, if you….”

“Go on,” Sav urged.

“Bh’Haret,” she said abruptly. “If you choose to return to your home world, I could go with you.” She looked at him, hope brimming in her eyes. “If you make the request, I believe the Pro-Locutors might be persuaded.”

“You want to go back to Bh’Haret with me?”

She lowered her gaze. “My choices are…limited. Death or exile.”

I can save her life, Sav thought. He stared at the Speaker, turning the possibility over in his mind. It didn’t seem so far fetched, returning to Bh’Haret with her. Alone, there had seemed little point in going back. But with Lien, the prospect suddenly seemed far less unappealing….

Or was it another trick of the Polyarchy?

Might this be an attempt to send him back to a dead world with a Speaker to keep tabs on him? Had everything since the detonation of The Viracosa-or perhaps even before-been carefully scripted to work on his feelings of responsibility and guilt? He looked at Lien, but could see nothing in her expression to answer his doubts. Instead, she looked guilelessly into his eyes, waiting for his answer. He returned her gaze as resolutely as he could, although he was frightened by the uncertainty of his belief in her motives.

“I trust you,” she said. “We trust each other, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess we have to. Who else have we got?” Who else, indeed? he thought. But despite his assurance, the doubt lingered. Is it too late, he wondered, for me to learn the trick of trust?

“Your friend is alive.”

“What?” Lien’s non-sequitur startled Sav. “You mean Liis?”

“That is what you called the tall woman, is it not?”

“Yes. What’s happened? Why-”

Lien raised a hand. “The situation is not clear. There have been deaths among her party…. And that is as much I was told. I doubt anything else will be forthcoming now that your ship has been destroyed.”

Sav nodded. “I understand.” Liis is alive, he thought. Or was twelve hours ago.

“I thought you would want to know.” She paused. “Before you made your decision.”

Sav nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks for telling me.”

She squeezed his hand, but so lightly it would have been easy to believe he’d imagined it.

Trust. He studied Lien, a Speaker for the Polyarchy of Nexus, a woman who, if they returned to Bh’Haret, would in all probability be his sole companion until death. There would always be the seed of doubt.

But then trust has to begin somewhere, Sav thought. Doesn’t it?

SJH1231-K, The Relay Station

The Speaker was Yilda’s twin.

As Yilda had shot him, his two comrades had looked up, horror written in their eyes. In that moment Liis registered the similarity of their faces too. She swung around, stared wildly at the other naked, prostrated Speakers. Men and women alike, they all resembled Yilda: soft, rounded features, with thick lips and high, wide foreheads. It was as if she were looking at Yilda as he might have been as a teenager, a middle-aged woman, a man in his late twenties, a plump, aged woman with grey hair….

And she recalled the disturbing familiarity of the barely pubescent woman Yilda had shot when they’d first arrived. That Speaker, too, had shared these same nascent traits. Liis turned back to Hebuiza who showed no surprise at the resemblance the man bore to Yilda. But then Hebuiza’s face was like that of a predator who’d caught the scent of blood; the pupils in his eyes were unnaturally dilated and his nostrils flared. His long thin limbs seemed to tremble with barely suppressed energy-although his head showed none of its usual side-to-side swaying motion. Perhaps whatever stimulant Yilda had fed him had rendered him insensible to anything but the hunt. He still pointed the barrel of his gun at the wounded Speaker, as if daring him to make an attempt to escape, even though the man was naked and unarmed, his mind hopelessly scrambled and his blood leaking copiously from the wound in his thigh.

Yilda rolled one of the incapacitated Speakers off the couch and onto the floor, revealing a large brown stain where the Speaker’s bowels had emptied. Using his rifle as a lever, he quickly dislodged the other Speaker. To Hebuiza he said, “Bring one of the functioning ones here.”

Hebuiza grabbed the young woman by the forearm; she gasped in pain as he pulled her from the arms of her companion and jerked her to her feet. The other Speaker whimpered and hugged the body of his wounded comrade. Hebuiza dragged the woman, stiff-legged with fear, across the floor to Yilda.

“Put her on the couch.”

Hebuiza flung her there like he’d have flung a sack of dirty laundry. She pulled herself into a fetal ball, her small frame shaking. Stepping out from the middle of the couches, Yilda barked out a single word in an alien tongue. The Speaker looked shocked. She buried her head completely in her arms. Yilda jabbed her in the ribs with the snout of his rifle and she let out a yelp of pain. Yilda repeated the word.

The Speaker peeked over her arms, her eyes wide with terror. Yilda spoke again, this time touching his rifle and pointing towards the quivering bodies on the floor. The woman glanced at her comrades and shuddered. She returned her gaze to the dark rifle hovering in front of her; she made a puling noise. What followed were more incomprehensible words from Yilda in the Speaker’s guttural language, then a pause in which he seemed to be waiting for an answer. After a moment of hesitation, the woman responded with a single, quavering syllable. Yilda gestured, sweeping his hand to indicate the length of the couch. Slowly, reluctantly, the woman unfolded herself, stretching out her thin body. Shivering, she closed her eyes, lying perfectly still, her hands curled into tiny fists, her little breasts flattened. She looked small and pale on the wide couch. Yilda rested the snout of his rifle on her temple. “Watch carefully,” he said. It took Liis a moment to realise he was speaking to her. To Hebuiza he added, “And you watch he doesn’t slip away,” inclining his head in the direction of the Speaker still hunkered against the wall.

Hebuiza needn’t have worried. The male Speaker seemed to be in a state of shock. His eyes were wide with fright; he looked like he was incapable of rational thought, let alone of escape. Liis turned her attention back to the scene at the centre of the room.

The woman’s fists had uncurled and her hands now lay flat on the dark material of the couch. Her small breasts rose and fell with her deep, rhythmic breaths. As Liis watched, the Speaker’s face went slack, the fear and tension falling away from it like a loose veil snatched by the wind, making her appear even younger. No, Liis thought. Not younger. Ageless. The transformation continued apace, changed her features from those of a frightened girl to an exquisite creature, half-human, half-ethereal. A soothing white noise, like the hiss of surf, filled the chamber, obliterating all sound but its own. At first Liis thought it emanated from the woman; but then she realised it had no clearly identifiable source, washing over her in waves from different directions. A diffuse glow spread over the woman’s skin and her lips parted in ecstasy. Whatever force infused her, she had given herself completely over to it. Amazingly, she didn’t flinch when Yilda placed his hand onto the slight swell of her belly.

Liis glanced at Yilda’s face-and was shocked to see he had also fallen into same kind of trance. His face had gone slack, a flabby blankness replacing the habitual sulk. With his hand still on the woman’s belly, he seemed to be teetering on the edge of whatever she was experiencing. Yet he was clearly holding himself apart. Liis watched in astonishment.

Several seconds passed. Then Yilda’s eyes snapped open. Yanking his hand away from the woman’s belly, he slapped her hard across the cheek; her transcendent expression collapsed, the white noise falling away at the same instant. The woman blinked rapidly like an animal stunned by a bright light. Her gaze fell on Hebuiza, then Yilda, and comprehension seemed to return. Fear reappeared on her face; she clasped her arms around her torso and shuddered. But this withdrawal was only momentary. The woman appeared to force herself to uncoil, as if she were determined not to let her fear master her. There was something else in her expression now that hadn’t been there before. Wariness, Liis thought. And hatred. The woman watched the Facilitators through slitted eyes, raising a hand to cover her reddening cheek.

“That,” Yilda said, “is how a Speaker looks when she is transmitting. Her masters at the Hub now know we are here, but little else.” He turned to Liis. “In close proximity thoughts pass between Speakers as easily as conversation passes between us. That I do not care about. But if they wish to reach light years out, they must focus their energy as she did. You are not to let her or the other one fall into that state. Strike them to break their concentration. If necessary, render them unconscious. But do not kill them. We need both for the negotiation.” Yilda pulled the woman from the couch and onto her wobbly legs; he shoved her back towards the male Speaker. The woman stumbled the first few steps and regained her balance. She walked unsteadily back to her companion and lowered herself to the ground with as much dignity as she could muster. Sitting slightly apart from the male Speaker, she pulled her knees up to her chest, clasped her arms around her shins, and glowered openly at the Facilitators.

“There are eleven Speakers still at large,” Yilda continued. “Unfortunately, they’ve been apprised of our presence by our friends here.” He nodded in the direction of their captives. “So it may take me a while to track them all down. If you must sleep, set up watches to spell one another while I am gone. And keep an eye on the corridor outside-I don’t believe the others will attempt to rescue their friends, but you should be watchful nonetheless.” Yilda started towards the doorway.

Liis stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

“You’re one of them.”

Half a head shorter, Yilda looked up at her. His eyes were flat black in their orbits, cold and lifeless, indecipherable as a corpse’s. The snout of his rifle hovered in front of her face. “These sheep?” Yilda snorted. “No.”

“Then you were one of them once. That’s how you know all the things you do