4
Lornia woke again some hours later. Restlessness had followed her into sleep, and as she sat up again her limbs twitched and her eyes sought out the familiar shape of the walls and the damaged ceiling. That sense of foreboding, of something coming toward her, filled her. She felt that way before, not so long ago. She’d run through the fortress, her hopes dashed when she reached the ends and found the door still closed tightly and herself still a prisoner behind it.
She knew, because she had seen it with her own eyes, behind that door was only space. That space somehow twisted there and formed a sort of rough knot that held the door and place and the fortress as well.
Once upon a time, that door had been breached, opened by them. Those who had fled their own universe and the thing they had created within it. They had called themselves the founders of the Federation. They had been peacemakers, and they had known how to open the door. They had been allowed to stay and that had been the first mistake that she and her kind had made.
Those humans, they had been made in the very likeness of the race that she was from. The humans called them the Speakers simply because there was no word for their language for what her tribe really was. And of course, humans could not be bothered to learn the language that she had grown up with, and so they had had to learn the humans’ language instead.
These humans that claimed to want only peace had sought much more than that. She should know that as well. Franchine had been human, and his being human had been what he hated most about himself.
The things he had done to her race as they slept in their cryo- chambers…
A slow shudder worked its way through her body. He had lived long, that mad and arrogant human, because he had found some way of taking her blood and the blood of the others of her race and transforming it into something that would give him life. But he had done more than that. He had implanted parts of the machine within her and so ensured that the machine would live forever.
Or as long as she could bear to live.
That feeling came back, making her nipples stiffened and her stomach go both loose and hot. Her mouth went dry. When the humans had first come behind the door, she had felt the same urgent and slightly sick feeling, and she felt it again not long ago. It had felt as if someone were pushing toward the door and unable to open it. As if they were unable to untangle the web of space and time that held the door fast and closed.
Could someone have been trying then to enter? Could they have failed and gone away? Could they have been returning?
“I have to stop hoping. I do myself only harm. The days will be lonelier than ever once I realize that there is nobody coming.”
But she had realized that long ago, hadn’t she?
“I have never reconciled myself to it perhaps. Perhaps if I did, perhaps if I finally set myself down and said to myself that there is no hope left and that if I choose to continue to live, that this shall be my life, maybe then I shall be able to allow myself to die.”
There was truth in that. But there was more to it. She’d seen too many of her race die, and she’d sworn to hold the secrets of the weapon away from other humans. If any ever came. If that meant living for an eternity in order to protect life, that was what she would do.
If only it weren’t so lonely! If only there were even one other person there to stay with her, to speak to her and to help her rebuild the fortress into something beautiful and sustaining.
The gardens were still there, of course. Despite her immortality, she had basic needs to be met. Food being one of them. The gardens still bloomed as if there were an entire colony needing to eat when there was only her. She’d learned very clever ways of keeping that garden alive over the centuries. These gardens had nearly given out once; after the beast wars there had been precious little left. That was part of the reason why they had gone into their chambers to slumber. To give the garden lands time to heal from being scorched into nearly nothingness by weapon fire.
What had not been scorched and charred had been devastated by the beasts. Since she had been able to slumber for a century or more without food, as had the others, they had decided that length of time would be appropriate. That the fertile land could come back on its own if left undisturbed and implanted.
One of the first things she had done when she had reawakened to find herself so changed, was to re-instate the gardens.
Her feet hit the floor in an eerie repeat of her earlier rising. She stood there, her hands tucked under her armpits and her golden eyes fastened on the wall. She strained to hear any sound out of the ordinary, but of course, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The desolation there was complete. Everything was gone. What would it matter if it all fell to rubble? The humans didn’t even remember that the weapon was there, or that the place that ever existed.
She was sure of that. She was sure that if she simply moved into the machine room and placed her hands on the beating heart of that machine and then tore it out, it would not matter at all. That she could die. That this world they had created could die and it would make no difference.
Nothing would change, and no human would ever again be able to use her race and their knowledge.
Oh, but what if they found the way to the door opening and then their way into the other world? The one that had finally bloomed and blossomed and became just as terrible in its new life as it had been in its old life?
Then universes would be at war and all because she had been unable to hold onto her vows, the vows that they had all made when the door had been created originally.
If peace could not reign over the universe, then they would make sure that war capable of destroying an entire universe would also not come.
A sharp cramp hit her brain. The machine let off a low whine that set her teeth on edge.
That vow had been made, and she’d meant it. She’d made the vow to nobody but herself in the end. She’d stood over Franchine, who she’d killed with her bare hands, and sworn no human would ever again possess such power.
Humans were too weak to know how to handle that power. She had seen humans who had fled from the power they had created, and other beings as well, in the forms of those who had sought to hide themselves within the door so they could remain alive long enough to formulate some plan that would allow them to return to their universe one day and put right what had gone wrong.
The same thing her own race had done, and she’d tried to tell those fools from the Federation that then, but they’d been afraid. Afraid of their mortality, afraid of their creation. Afraid of war.
She blew out a breath. That low, persistent thrum stayed within her mind. Fire and ice, water and blackness. Those were the things any who came had to cross, and none had since the Federation, who had somehow stumbled into the key that had been given out as a signal when she and the other members of her race had retreated behind the door that they’d discovered.
