He knew that was true. “Even here, and in Tralam.”
“Yes. War did not come here until we opened the doors. We had no choice but to work together in Tralam. We had something very precious to protect. Something that we discovered with Tralam. Something that we had to ensure stood no matter what.”
Drake let his hip brush against hers. Just that light touch made his heart race and his pulse pound. “You mean the weapon.”
“The weapon was only the start of what we were protecting.”
Every single time he thought that he understood the whole thing, she told him something he had not known. “What could have been more precious than that weapon? What else could you have needed to protect?”
Lornia said, “The race who created Tralam—or rather the machine that creates Tralam, they also possessed the Orb. That Orb was the doorway to this place. And from this place, we could control every universe. Not just yours and not just the one that lies beyond it, but all. We found the Orb when we arrived and after they were all already dead. They hid it away, and once we were here, we understood the magnitude of what we had found. Once we found the Orb, we understood what the weapon was intended to protect and why.”
His feet stopped dead on the stones. His mouth hung open. His body swiveled so that he could look her in the face. “I think you’re going to have to repeat that.”
Lornia tugged at his hand. Drake wanted to balk, to refuse to move until she explained all of that rather astounding statement to him. He sensed that she wanted to walk in order to sort out her thoughts, so he continued along beside her. His curiosity was not sated, however.
He said, “What do you mean all the universes and that this is the doorway?I thought this was the prison for the weapon.”
Lornia said, “It is, but that came later. It came into being because that race knew there would come a day when Tralam fell, if not in this universe, then in others. I was young when I came, and I never understood their language so we didn’t know, not for at least five centuries, just what it was—that Orb.
“We didn’t know until the founding members of the Federation came, and once they did, we understood that we could never let it be given over. That we had no choice but to allow them into Tralam because they would have killed us all and taken what they could. They would have taken the weapon, yes, but, more importantly, they would have taken that Orb. I have spent so many hundreds of years protecting that secret, the secret of the Orb, and I’m tired. I trust you, Drake. I love you, and I trust you as I have no other in the millennia that I have been alive and in Tralam.”
That really astounded him. He had never heard of this Orb. She was talking about things he could not fathom. He was not sure how Tralam could still be standing even though he had seen it destroyed and he was not sure how they had gotten there. He had the rudimentary idea that the machine had recreated Tralam in order to house her because she was the weapon. He had known that she would be unable to stay if she loosed the power of the weapon. But the Orb? What was it?
Because he could not sift through all of the things that she was saying and telling him now and because he was so touched by the words she had said, that she loved and trusted him, he found himself uttering out the words, “I love and trust you too, Lornia. I don’t think I have ever known real love or trust before I met you. I waited my whole life for you, and I didn’t even know it.”
They paused. Their mouths met again. His hands found her skin and his tongue teased hers until hers answered. That kiss was slow and deep, life-affirming. It said everything that they had not said yet between them.
When the kiss broke off, he asked the question largest in his mind. “Lornia, how long can I stay with you?”
Lornia’s fingers twisted together, and she looked down at them. Her head shook from side to side, stirring her silver hair across her shoulders and along the stones of the floor. “It may not be as long as you would like. The founding members of your federation came here in the hopes of finding absolute immortality. Such a thing does not exist. They did live longer than they would have. Time’s strange here. It passes differently, and it always has as Tralam exists outside and yet within space and time.”
He said, “I want to live long enough to love you until there’s nothing left of me. I hope that takes a very long time. Now, about this Orb. What is it and why did it have to be protected even more than that weapon?”
She said, “Come. I want to see the gardens again.”
They took off walking again, and he stared around himself. The fortress was splendid and clearly meant to house many. Their footfalls echoed however, and all of the rooms lay silent and still. Misgivings came up, and he knew that he would have them for quite some time. He loved her enough to stay, enough to be happy to be there, but that human part of him—that part of him that craved social life and everything that went with it, would always rear its head from time to time. Okay, so be it. He could live with that.
Lornia said, “The race that was older than mine, the one that created both the weapon and the machines that kept Tralam from falling, was not immortal either. They created this place because they were… I suppose you could say they were gatekeepers. They alone knew the secret of crossing all universes. I know you think that means just the universes that we find in space, but that’s not true. Every universe has a universe beside it in a universe beside that in a universe beside that. It’s rather like when you stand in a hall full of mirrors and see your reflection in each one, constantly growing smaller but always there, shading toward infinity.”
That last sentence stunned Drake so much that his mouth fell open and a weak little sound came up, but it did not translate into a word. He snapped his teeth together, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Are you saying that parallel dimensions truly exist? They’ve been in question for centuries. Science makers often spend their entire lives trying to prove that. Nobody ever has. It’s always proven to be false.”
Lornia said, “That is because the race before mine that held this fortress locked all the alternate universes away from those which originate them. They believed that if someone had power over every parallel universe connected to the universe in which they live that they could wage war on single universes, universes wherein the parallel dimensions were not known, and come out the winner. Think of it. If a warrior of renown and note passed away in one but not in the other, and was brought back from that other place to boost the morale of his soldiers, that in itself would be a mighty weapon.”
Drake couldn’t imagine it. It literally boggled his mind. He was a strong man, for all his faults, but his imagination had never been great, and he knew it. Tralam had been about as far as he could imagine and to know that there was so much more and so much more possible astounded and staggered him.
He spoke with real caution. “So you are saying that this place didn’t just exist for the weapon; it existed to protect those dimensions. I understand that. Why did your race bar the door between the universes? Why not just allow the, what did you call it? The Orb?” At her nod, he continued, “The Orb to do its work? I’m guessing that the Orb is the thing that keeps the other universes from being seen. I mean the other dimensions. You know what I mean.”
Lornia said, “Indeed I do. It’s a good question. The weapon was never intended to be used against the universe in which you move or the universe in which I came from. We prevented it. My race did that. We first thought as an answer to our prayers, and then we thought of it as something that must be hidden away lest your Federation find it and destroy everything in its path with it. Which they would’ve done eventually.”
Drake found he had no argument against that one. He asked, “Speaking of the Federation, where did they go?”
Lornia smile was grim. “Into the universe from which my race originated. The one beyond this one. I should not tell you, because I saw it all once the machine woke up and the weapon came to life under my skin, but that universe is also at war. And the Federation will not survive over there. I am sorry.”
Drake said, “Why would you be sorry for that?”
She said, “Because you are a good man and you have a conscience. At some point, you will mourn those deaths if you are not already. I know that too. I also know that you could not have prevented this. This was intended to happen.”
Drake took a deep breath. “Are you saying this was fated to be?”
