Zero turned. “Right. Nothing personal.”
Stranger’s eyelids drew together in suspicion, but he said nothing. And he heard nothing; Zero’s mind was far too shielded now to read. He watched the needle before them, and the swirl of primaries blending to tertiaries.
Fleur, where are you?
Where am I?
Fleur’s heart lurched into her throat, so sudden and unexpected was her realization. Just a young woman, floating here in the void within the planet that had once held a childhood, a hope, a little stream and ferns and wind blowing in the valley, peace, sunshine. An awful mockery of that childhood swam beside her in this incomprehensible world, a little girl of five, wearing bright pink corduroy overalls and holding in her hand three silver spheres.
Where am I?
Mother smiled that smile, tossed the three projectors to Fleur, who mindlessly caught them and held their metallic warmth in her new left hand, still under warranty. [you’re afraid, little girl.] Mother did not realize the ridiculousness of her statement, a child referring to someone five times her age as “little girl.” But of course, she was ancient, as ancient as the stars, or at least an ancient as those who had conquered the stars before Earth had solidified from the detritus of the galaxy.
“Yes.”
[good. you have every right to be afraid. we’re going to meet some people who won’t exactly welcome us with open arms, people who sent me away a long time ago.]
A machine approached at breakneck speed, hovered dangerously close for a moment, long enough to tousle both Fleur and Mother’s curly locks.
“Bring it back. The room. Whistler and Hank. And Ze—Nine. Nine.”
Mother grinned savagely. [herr freud would be proud, love.]
“Bring it back.” Another machine was fast approaching, this one hauling a nondescript metal phase drive segment that was easily the size of a mountain.
[but don’t you find it beautiful? all of these loyal workers, doing exactly as i tell them? this awful planet reconstituted into something beautiful. his name is gary.]
Fleur was confused, but the confusion was replaced with fear as the machine towing the phase drive passed, close enough to spin her around in its wake. All around them, countless gigantic machines were coming and going.
[actually, the name is guerra, but he prefers being called gary, so that’s what i call him.]
“Who?”
[our ship. gary. would you like to meet him?]
“Do I have any choice?”
Mother grinned. [you’re learning, little flower. you’ll do just fine.]
She grabbed Fleur’s hand, and away they flew, toward Gary the warship.
It was cold here at the center of the planet, much colder than Fleur had anticipated, and the speed of their flight only heightened the sensation, caused gooseflesh to erupt on her exposed forearms, caused her breaths to come in gasps as her body
shivered, he remembered, as the current drew them together, drew him within. That hushed gasp, the lines of her eyebrows furrowing and the feel of fingernails tracing gently at first and then with increasing pain as they began to carve faint furrows into his shoulders and back. Frantic dance of flesh as the waves consumed them both, his eyes opening for a moment to gaze upon that dark spill of curls, a halo around her head and she whispered something in that perfect moment, whispered that word that had haunted him now for months and years and decades and haunted him, just a simple word, whispered in that perfect climax, that perfect moment where he was lost in waves of
“Heaven.”
Zero snapped from the shiver-induced reverie, that half-sleep that so many passengers in shivers had reported, that inexplicable torpor that accompanied the vibration of phased travel. Stranger looked at him disdainfully, as if the sleep reflex was below him.
“What?”
“Heaven approaches. Or rather, we approach Heaven.”
Zero remembered their vessel’s exit from the glass field, but not much beyond. Their shiver was now being escorted by an armada of larger vessels, some shaped like atmospherics, and others definitely spacers. Zero stretched to look out the rear of the vessel, and found that there were already many more orbiting spheres behind the shiver than in front. They had passed without incident through much of the enclosed solar system, apparently drawing a crowd as they passed.
“You needn’t worry about our escorts. They’re just observing.”
Something in Stranger’s voice resonated with its own undercurrent…Zero tasted distrust in that statement, and he caught a brief unshielded image of an accusatory finger pointed at a man in white, or perhaps just a white beard, a soundtrack of that guttural bark that these creatures used as a language. Stranger was definitely hiding something…But Zero could sense already that not all was well under this glass sky.
One of the smaller vessels swooped dangerously close to the shiver, then fell away, phase drives leaving a contrail of blurred space behind it. Stranger looked intently ahead, ignoring the display. Zero, however, watched the smaller vessel move to rejoin the formation of similar vessels that it had been flying with. A brilliant flash and it was cut apart in mid-maneuver by a corvette that came in fast and low. Several destroyers moved to intercept the corvette, and another group moved in close around the shiver. The world inside the snowglobe erupted in a lightshow.
Stranger barked orders at the vessel, which increased speed and rocketed toward the sphere closest to the trapped star. All around them the world was lances of fire and phase and shiver.
“Just observing?”
“Quiet,” Stranger growled back. “We’ve had some trouble since your arrival.”
“Some trouble? All is not well in paradise?”
[paradise?] the word slammed into Zero’s mind with horrifying force. [it’s not been a paradise since the Exile sent us your precious little flower. how dare you speak of paradise when you have the blood of an entire species on your hands?]
The words echoed through Zero’s mind, a sickening sensation much like the shiver. “it’s a civil war. You don’t know what to do with me.”
“That’s right. We’re killing ourselves out there,” he indicated the skirmish taking place around their vessel “Because of you.”
The shiver continued toward the first satellite of the dying star, flanked on all sides by massive destroyers. Corvettes and fighters still swooped in and out of their path, but they were for the most part instantly cut apart by the shiver’s escorts.
The shiver slowed as it entered the atmosphere of the first planet. The surface below them was bereft of signs of life, a black icescape on the side that they approached. Their destroyer escorts stayed in orbit, and the shiver was followed by an array of smaller atmospheric vessels. Zero strained to see the lights of cities or airstrips, but was disappointed. As far as he could tell, there was nothing constructed by humans on the surface of this planet.
“It’s beneath the surface, at the planet core.”
Zero understood then, of course Heaven was at the planet core. Where had they found Mother when the planet had begun to cool and die? The planet core. These creatures were not surface-dwellers; they preferred the privacy of the interior.
“Something like that.” Stranger folded his hands across his chest.
A great gap opened in the darkness, illuminated from within, an immense silver mouth stretching into the planet interior. The shiver fell inside, and the mouth closed. With one swallow, the vessel plummeted into the distant cousin of the Vegas Gate. Pearly gates or not, Zero was on his way to Heaven.
Foreboding, suffocating sense of foreboding.