The red light pours over your face . . . red as a sun at sunset with the onset of night beckoning .. . red as blood . . .

  Ivanova sat up, the sheets falling away from her blue nightgown. The door to her quarters ...

  ... is open and beckons you. You rise from your bed, step through the door. You emerge from your quarters and find yourself in your full uniform, and this does not seem odd to you. You step out onto dirt, and it seems as if it has been ages since dirt crunched beneath your feet, but that does not seem odd to you either. No, it all seems to make perfect sense to you. The wall through which you've stepped is solid rock, and in the distance you see the Black Tower, the centerpiece of a much larger city, rising into the sky, its spire is a twisted and gleaming darkness which slides off your eye with ease.

  You feel a brief chill, and something seems to be tugging at the outer reaches of your consciousness. You ignore it. It calls to you again and you push it away, because this is simply too . . . too incredible. Too beautiful. Too perfect. . . .

  Yes . . . too perfect to be true. For your disposition does not permit you to take things at face value, yes, that is understood. Not all come willingly. Some must be forced. You will be forced. It would be preferable if you were not.

  Here. Here is someone who has embraced the Tower willingly. Who embraces the vision without question, who understands the truth of it and is willing to reap its benefits. You see him, standing next to you . . . next to you and also very far away.

  It is Vir. You can trust him, as you can trust us.

  You shout to Vir, and he does not respond at first. He doesn't respond because he is closer to us than you, and you must try again. "What is it?" you call, feeling as if you are pumping every bit of air from your lungs to make your question heard.

  He turns slowly toward you, seeing you for the first time. "It's . . . beautiful. I want to go there. I want to be there."

  You see? He understands. He knows. He is closer to the truth than you . . . you, who are another seeker of truth, but one who is kept down by her skepticism.

  "What is it?" you demand again. This is becoming . . . annoying. Do you not understand? Do you not see the harm in asking such things?

  Vir understands. Vir knows. "You shouldn't ask questions like that," he scolds you.

  Good Vir. Wonderful Vir. Excellent Vir. Vir, who shall be rewarded. See? See his reward? See the Centauri women who cluster around Vir? Their arms move across him, their lips whisper his name, their bodies insinuate themselves against him. They are perfect, as perfect as the Tower, as perfect as this place. You do not understand, but you will. You must.

  Feel the nearness of us, drawing nearer every moment. We love you, Susan. We love you in a way that no other can. Feel our nearness, feel our heat and our cold. Feel the beating of our heart, feel the coolness of our touch, stroking the side of your lovely face, lovely Susan. . . .

  Ivanova sat up, a scream dying within the constriction of her throat. Her nightgown was soaked through with sweat, and from everywhere the shadows had taken form, were leaping at her. She looked around frantically....

  ... And the room settled down. The objects within, even in the dimness, took on their normal aspects. No monsters, no creatures, no Black Towers, just... just furniture. A chair. Some reading material piled over in a corner.

  Nothing. Just... nothing.

  She let out a long, trembling sigh and flopped down in her bed. Her sheets were drenched with sweat as well, but she didn't have the energy to get up and change them. She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, unable to fall back to sleep.

  Sheila awoke to hear the word "beautiful."

  She propped herself up on one elbow, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and saw that Leo was staring straight at her. He had an expression of total peace on his face, and he was smiling and saying, "So ... beautiful."

  She felt herself blushing like a young girl, and couldn't quite believe it. "All the years we were together, Leo ... you never said I was beautiful. Not once. Pretty, that's what you said."

  She rose from the couch and went over to him. Since it was dim in the room, she didn't realize that his eyes weren't really focused on her. She took his face in her hands and kissed him, and he seemed incredibly startled, jumping under her touch. He blinked and looked into her eyes in confusion. "Sheila... ?" he asked.

  "I know, I know. You're wondering what I'm doing here."

  "To ... say the least, yeah."

  She patted his cheek. "We'll talk about it over breakfast. There's a lot to talk about, I think. May I use your bathroom 7"

  He gestured toward the door, still clearly befuddled. She headed toward it and stopped once to look affectionately over one shoulder and say, "And thank you for the compliment."

  "You're welcome," he said reflexively, and as she entered the bathroom and closed the door behind herself, he sat there scratching his head, not only wondering what she was doing there, but what the hell compliment she was talking about.

  Chapter 12

  Bill Morishi wasn't expecting to find himself under scrutiny that morning. Scrutiny, in fact, that seemed to border on the threatening. What he had anticipated, instead, was a simple, not-particularly-fancy meal at the Eclipse Cafe while he took the quiet time in the morning to go over some reports. The information that Dr. Trent had provided thus far was nothing short of amazing, and he was extremely excited over whatever else she might have come up with during the night. After all these years, he knew her far too well to think that she'd actually done something as radical as getting some sleep.

  And then he began to have the oddest feeling that he was being watched.

  He'd read about such moments, in works of fiction: the sudden suspicion that strange eyes are upon you, observing your every move, studying you for some sort of nefarious purpose. He'd chuckled over the absurdity of such notions. How would you ever sense someone was observing you unless you were a telepath, which he most assuredly was not. There was nothing intrinsically physical about a gaze. "Sensing" such a thing ... it was ridiculous.

  He thought that-right up until the very moment when he slowly looked up, in response to some sort of stimulus that he couldn't even begin to place.

  Two or three people were watching him.

  He frowned and turned to see if there could possibly be something behind him that had caught their attention. He didn 't spot anything, but couldn't quite wrap himself around the notion that he was the sudden focal point for a group of total strangers. In a mild act of self-denial, he shrugged it off as some sort of bizarre misunderstanding and went back to the report he'd been reading. He turned a page and then, out of morbid curiosity, looked up again.

  Half a dozen people were now watching him. They weren't all Humans: there was a Minbari in the group, and a Drazi. And there was no doubt now that they were looking straight at him, as if he had become a subject of incredible interest.

  "I'm sorry ... is there something I can do for you?" he asked.

  Nothing. Not so much as a word.

  Perhaps they were from some sort of... of odd tour group or something. He decided, though, that whatever the reason, it was clearly their problem and not his. He had his own matters to attend to, and if they wanted to stand there until their heads fell off, they were welcome to do so.

  Considering that it appeared to Morishi that they were trying to commit every aspect of his features to memory, he muttered, "Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer...."

  He turned another page, and one after that, and then realized that he hadn't read either one. That's how distracted and rattled he had become. He decided to say something to the rude people, to tell them that they should either say what's on their minds, or go the hell away. To his shock, though, a half dozen more had joined them, bringing his personal cheering section to an even dozen.

  How long is this going to continue? Morishi asked himself, and then-unexpectedly-the unspoken question was answered. A man stepped forward, a very scruffy individual whom Morishi did not recognize.

  The scruffy individual spoke. And he said the same words that he had said much earlier that morning, except this time he spoke with quiet confidence, comprehending the words now, understanding everything. In his twangy voice, Deuce said, "You're not moving fast enough. You have to go faster. You have to make it work."

  There was an air of menace that Morishi could not even begin to articulate. He tried to think of something to say, and also tried to find a way to deal with the rising sense of dread that he felt in his gorge. Then, just like that... it was over.

  If they had been joined in a single, ominous purpose only seconds earlier, now the crowd dispersed. They did not so much as glance at each other; it seemed for all the world as if they were utterly unaware that each of the others existed.

  Morishi sat there, his reports now completely forgotten, his coffee getting cold. What in the hell had just happened? Was it some soft of... of bizarre joke? Was that it? Somebody's sick idea of a prank on good old Morishi, the guy who could take any sort of ribbing no matter how odd?

  He waited to see if there was any sort of recurrence, but there was none forthcoming. A minute or two later, one of the people who had been in the crowd walked past Morishi and didn't even give him a first look, much less a second.

  "What was that all about?" Morishi muttered to himself. Unfortunately there was no one around to give him an answer.

  And he realized that he couldn't let it go.

  He got up from his table and, picking one of his observers at random, he followed the scruffy individual who had been telling him that he had to go faster.

  Deuce, for his part, didn't appear to notice Morishi at all. In fact, he didn't even seem fully aware of his surroundings. He was walking along, looking upward, stiff and rigid with his arms at his sides. Every so often he would bump into someone passing by. The injured party would invariably utter some sort of profanity or tell him to watch where he was going, but they might as well have been talking to a sleepwalker, for all the good that it was doing.

  Morishi couldn't quite get over it. It was as if the man was in a walking coma of some kind.

  He saw the man step into a transport tube and realized that he had no choice: if he was going to stick with his subject, continue his "scientific" observation, then he was going to have to get into the transport tube with him. Morishi had no idea how the man would react. He might ignore him, he might engage Morishi in conversation, he might turn violent: one guess was as good as any other. Nonetheless, Morishi steeled himself and followed him into the transport tube, the door hissing shut and closing him in. When Morishi had entered, he had done so on the pivoting of his heel, and had turned his shoulder so that he would be momentarily facing away, just in case his subject tried to prevent him from entering the transport tube. Once in, with the lift car safely-"safely" being a relative term-under way, Morishi stayed toward the back and studied the unremarkable-looking man with intense curiosity.

  For his part, the man didn't even seem to be aware that he was there. Morishi was almost tempted to snap his fingers or, in some other way, draw his attention. Finally, yielding to temptation, he cleared his throat just to see if the man so much as stirred.

  Nothing. He just simply stared straight up.

  But Morishi noticed something odd: as the transport continued to move, the man's sight line started to change. He wasn't simply staring off into nothingness, Morishi realized. He was looking at a fixed point in space, and as the transport's position changed in relation to wherever or whatever it was, so did his eyes'. Morishi watched in amazement as his subject's gaze continued to shift. It was subtle, but detectable. The lift door opened and the man walked out with what seemed to be true determination. What it was that the man was planning to do was a complete mystery to Morishi, but he felt that if he was in this far, he might as well see it through.

  He followed his subject into the Babylon 5 maintenance area. An assortment of doors and corridors led off in a variety of directions, and they all had something in common: they bore signs that warned, in the most severe of terms, that only authorized personnel were permitted to touch anything. The prohibitions were listed in a variety of languages, and Morishi was quite certain that they weren't there simply because someone had some leftover signs he felt like sticking up on the walls.

  Morishi's subject passed them all by, displaying no interest in them. His gaze continued to be focused on something beyond the confines of Babylon 5.

  Bill Morishi began to make some quick, mental calculations. His spatial sense was second to none, and he had a photographic memory. Upon arrival on B5, he had taken the time to peruse schematics of the station in order to orient himself. Consequendy, he was able to know at any given moment where he was in relation to the rest of the station. He took into account the station's rotation, then mentally drew a line from his subject's eyes, heading outward, and tried to envision just what might be in his direct line of sight were there no walls in the way.

  He felt a chill descend upon him, and he slowed down, suddenly lost in thought of his own. Thought, and a sort of distant, numbing dread.

  This guy was looking straight at the artifact.

  There was no doubt whatsoever in Morishi's mind, not the slightest scintilla of belief that he could be mistaken. The scruffy-looking, distracted man was not remotely distracted at all. He knew exactly what was on his mind, and he was ...

  ... he was ... what?

  "What the hell is he doing?" Morishi muttered.

  The scruffy-looking man had stopped in front of the air lock bay. For the first time he had shifted his gaze from the distant point upon which he was focused. Now he was studying the massive doors that led out of the station into airless space. Doors which, if opened at the wrong time, would plunge the station into an immediate state of emergency as everything and anything within range would immediately be sucked out of Babylon 5 and into the cold and unforgiving realm of space.

  The man's attention shifted to the controls of the air locks ... and he started to punch in codes.

  "Hey!" shouted Morishi and, on instinct, he charged toward the scruffy-looking man. The man ignored him, continuing to enter codes. There was no way, absolutely no way that he should be able to trigger the opening of the air lock doors. That information was closely guarded and considered top security. Yet to Morishi's horror, not only did the man seem to know what he was doing, but he could swear that he heard huge tumblers start to turn over deep within the recesses of the air lock.

  Morishi banged into the man, and caught a very quick glimpse of eyes that were as cold and inviting as a snuffed-out star. Then suddenly, Morishi was in midair.

  The man had half-twisted, half-turned, and with strength that seemed completely contrary to the man's size, sent Morishi flying. Morishi crashed into the far wall, unhurt but with the breath momentarily knocked out of him. He lay there, stunned and confused, and the man returned to his work.

  But only for a second, because then there was the pounding of feet, and a security squadron charged down the corridor. The scruffy-looking man clearly intended to make a fight of it, but he didn't have a chance in hell as the squadron plowed into him, overwhelming him through sheer force of numbers and driving him to the ground. He remained eerily silent, not uttering so much as a cry or word of protest. It was as if he didn't care... or worse, that he was quietly certain that he would eventually have the final triumph. That this was, at most, a momentary setback.

  A woman security guard moved to aid Morishi. "Are you all right, Mr. Morishi? Do you need a med team?"

  "No, no ... I'm all right," Morishi said. Using the wall for support, he started to push himself upward. She reached out, took his upper arm, and pulled him the rest of the way up. It surprised the hell out of Morishi, because she was half a head shorter than he was, but apparently she had rather wiry muscles and had no trouble at all hauling Morishi to his feet.

  She glanced at the would-be saboteur as handcuffs were slapped on him to make certain that he provided no more resistance. As he had during the entire imbroglio, he continued to be utterly mute. "Did he say anything to you?" the security guard asked Morishi.

  Morishi hesitated a moment and then said, "He came by while I was at breakfast. He ... he said I should hurry up."

  "Hurry up and what? Finish eating?"

  He shrugged. "No idea," he said.

  "Well, if you remember anything else, please let us know," she said, helping Morishi to dust himself off. "You tried to stop him, didn't you."

  "Afraid I wasn't much use," admitted Morishi. "I'm not the world's most physical person. Not much of a fighter."

  "You did your best. That counts for something." She patted him on the shoulder and then tapped her link. "Security Office." "This is Allan," Zack's voice came back over the link.

  "Chief... you're not gonna believe this. Deuce, of all people, was trying to open up the air locks. Came a lot closer than any of us would've liked, too."

  "Bring him up here," said Zack. "This guy, I want to handle personally."

  "Up in five," she replied, cut the transmission, and then turned to the others. "Chief wants to talk to him."

  "I'll bet," said one of the guards as they hauled Deuce away.

  Morishi was left alone in the corridor with his thoughts. And they were not especially pleasant ones. He had considered for a moment stopping the security personnel, going into detail as to just what was on his mind, but all he really had at this point was conjecture and speculation. He didn't know anything for certain, and Morishi was by nature a cautious man. At the very least, he reasoned, he should talk to Dr. Trent about his concerns. He was sure she'd keep an open mind.

  For someone who was a head shorter than Sheridan, Trent made incredible time. Her legs carried her down the corridor at a speed that seemed roughly twenty-five percent faster than Sheridan could keep up with. But he wasn't about to be left behind, nor was he going to ask her to slow down. Unfortunately, he wasn't having a tremendous amount of success with getting anything useful out of her.

 

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