“The princess is guiding you?”
Valerian made a face. “Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but… it’s like she’s been with me the whole time.”
Laureline came to a halt. “Wait just a minute,” she said. “You mean… you have a woman inside you? Since the beginning of this mission?”
Valerian sighed. The whole thing made him both uncomfortable and confident in ways he couldn’t even begin to articulate. “Laureline, can we keep going and talk about this later?”
“Sure,” she said, and then smothered an impish smile as she extended an arm, indicating that he should precede her. “Ladies first?”
“Hilarious,” Valerian said flatly.
But he stepped forward.
Captain Kris was the leader of Section One. Forty years old, his scarred face was mute testimony to the fact that he had seen his share of battle. He was honored that his unit had been tapped to lead the mission to infiltrate the center of the station and recover the abducted Arun Filitt. The ship docked with the station, sealed, and then the steel door opened. On their captain’s orders, dozens of heavily armed soldiers sprinted inside the station. Kris brought up the rear and moved to one side.
“Captain Kris, Section One operational, General Okto-Bar,” he reported.
“Good,” came Okto-Bar’s voice. “You may proceed. Be advised that a unit of K-TRONs will join you.”
Kris’s lips thinned. He had no fondness for the silent, hulking robots. He had fought enough battles to know that while robots and androids had their uses, in the thick of battle, you wanted a sentient, thinking, feeling being beside you. He admired Okto-Bar’s reputation, but wondered if the general had been away from active fighting too long to understand that sending in a unit of K-TRONs was an insult to an elite team like Section One. “That won’t be necessary, sir. My people can handle this.”
“It’s an order, Captain.”
“Copy that.”
Even as he spoke, the promised unit of robots clattered up. They halted as one, weapons in hand, perfectly still, awaiting his orders. Kris swallowed his annoyance.
“Elite unit, with me.”
They followed his team obediently as he led them into the heart of the station.
Guided by a mysterious, literal “dream girl,” feeling the little tugs inside that said this way and over here, Valerian guided Laureline deeper into the heart of Alpha Station. The desolate landscape, looking as if it had been abandoned for years, did nothing to improve his mood.
He wondered if he should keep his conclusions to himself, but decided not to. Laureline was his partner. She deserved to know.
“We’ve been manipulated from the start.” Valerian’s face was grim.
“What do you mean?”
“Right now, we’re in the middle of the so-called dead zone. And we can breathe normally.”
Little rodents scurried past, pausing to look up at them curiously before scampering about on ratty business.
“We’re that far in?”
He nodded somberly.
“You’re right… and there’s absolutely no trace of contamination,” said Laureline, looking around.
“This whole mission is a set up,” Valerian said, angrily. “We’ve been played, Laureline. Out and out lied to. Everyone has, including General Okto-Bar. The commander was fully aware of what was behind this so-called ‘absolute evil’.”
“What?” Laureline stared at him aghast. He was moving quickly now, following the prods in the back of his mind, and she was struggling to keep up.
Turn here, the inner guidance said.
Valerian obeyed—and the two agents found themselves at the foot of a huge wall. In contrast with the derelict nature of the rest of the surroundings, this barrier looked new and imposing, comprised of large plates of some kind of matter completely unfamiliar to Valerian. As he and Laureline stared at the wall, the plates moved, shifting and overlapping.
Then things grew even stranger when, without warning, a figure—tall, willowy, pale, and quite beautiful—stepped through the wall, to stand gracefully in front of them. Moments later, four others joined him, all beautiful, all luminous and apparently benevolent.
“Pearls!” gasped Valerian.
“Okay,” Laureline said, in an admiring whisper, “that’s not at all how I pictured absolute evil.”
“My name is Tsûuri,” said the first one who had stepped through. He was looking at Valerian with a strange expression—half-longing, half-eager. “I am the emperor’s son.”
“Great,” said Valerian. Two emperors in one day. Emotions were churning inside him, and he knew that some of them weren’t his emotions at all. He was struggling to stay in control of the wave. “How about you introduce us to Daddy?”
“He is expecting you,” said Tsûuri. “Follow me.”
He turned and vanished through the wall. Valerian hesitated, stepped closer, and reached out.
His hand went through the wall.
He squared his shoulders. “Try to contact the general and get everybody down here,” he said to Laureline. “Meanwhile, I’ll try to buy us some time.”
“Uh-uh,” Laureline said, tossing her head. “How about you run backup for a change?” And without another word she strode resolutely through the wall.
Valerian sighed. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, and followed his partner.
He emerged to find Laureline and Tsûuri waiting for him. Inside, everything was completely different from the austere outside landscape and the moving wall. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but wasn’t sure he could even find the words. The closest comparison Valerian could draw was that he stood inside an enormous zeppelin, but its curving, ribbed walls were made not of cold metal, but of organic matter. Large, woven baskets of some sort adorned the walls, looking like they had been crafted from twigs or grass. He wondered if they served the Pearls for sleeping containers, and thought of the beautiful shell houses of his dream.
There were several Pearls present, and it was clear the ship was modeled to be what its people were—simple, in touch with what came from nature, and at the same time highly advanced. Tsûuri led them through this ship that had become a village. All turned their pale, kind faces toward the pair and inclined their heads in welcome. Some bore weapons, deceptively primitive in design, that were surely much more than they seemed to be, but no one made a threatening movement toward the two humans.
Still others clung to the walls, strong and lithe, reweaving, mending, caretaking with a calm and pure focus. Tsûuri led the way to what seemed to be the center of this “village.” Valerian noticed a few small vessels, like the ones he had chased. Nearby, what appeared to be extremely sophisticated machines were hooked up together to create another, even bigger one.
In the center of the village was something that both he and Laureline recognized from their history lessons.
It was the Destiny module, once a primary research lab that had been part of the International Space Station in the Earth year 2001. In many ways, it was the true and perfect center, and origin, of Alpha Space Station.
The Pearl emperor sat in the capsule’s tailpipe as if it were a throne, but he was the most casual, accessible royalty Valerian could imagine. Even more handsome than his radiant son, he smiled gently in welcome. Beside him was a stunningly beautiful female Pearl. They clasped one another’s hand, tenderly, familiarly, and Valerian knew instantly that whatever age these beings were, they had been in love a long, long time.
Then his eye fell to a straw mattress on the ship’s floor.