Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Read online

  “If that’s true, then you really are a spy,” Tyra said. “By Etherus’s own admission, he will not be joining us, which means he has no authority here, and neither do you.”

  “So… what—I’m going to spend the whole trip in prison? I think I’d rather go back to New Earth, thanks.”

  “The mind probe will reveal your real motives,” Trya replied. “If you agree to it and come with us, then you may still join the mission—assuming you aren’t found to actually be a spy.”

  Lucien narrowed his eyes at her. At this point suspicion was mutual. “Join the mission in what capacity?”

  “You will join our expeditionary force as a security officer, and become a vital member of one of the teams we send out to explore new worlds. Essentially you’d be doing exactly what you were trained for.”

  Lucien ground his teeth, his gaze flicking between the men pointing weapons at him—and Tyra, the beautiful woman that he’d so utterly misjudged. Despite her youth, she was obviously some kind of leader among the clerics.

  “And if I don’t agree to the probe?”

  “Then we’ll assume it’s because you have something to hide, and you’ll be sent back to the Icosahedron immediately. So what’s it going to be, Lucien?”

  Chapter 5

  Lucien took a deep breath and counted slowly up to five; then he counted backward back down to zero, but he was still fuming. He considered counting down to negative five, but the clerics were starting to look twitchy.

  “Well?” Tyra demanded.

  “All right. Probe away, but if you find naked pictures of yourself, it’s your own fault.”

  Tyra smiled. “I trust your imagination will be flattering. Let’s go.”

  “Ladies first,” Lucien replied, gesturing to her.

  “Mr. Ortane… your armor and weapons please,” one of the clerics reminded him.

  “Right.” Lucien mentally triggered his exosuit’s removal sequence, and it splayed open like a mechanical flower. He walked out in a simple black jumpsuit with red trim and the single crimson bar insignia of a champion third class clipped to the right side of his chest. A glowing Star of Etherus shone brightly from each of his upper sleeves. In your face, he thought at the clerics.

  They gestured with their guns for him to proceed down the boarding tube.

  “You going to leave my armor there for some random nitwit to play with?” Lucien asked. “When they try to fly and end up in a puddle somewhere on Astralis, it’ll be on your heads.”

  “We’ll send someone back for it,” Tyra replied as she strode to the front of the group. “And there aren’t any nitwits here—besides yourself and the other Paragons.”

  “There are others?” Lucien asked as they marched him down the boarding tube. “Are they all getting the same royal treatment?”

  “Yes,” Tyra replied. “We can’t be sure we can trust any of you until we get a look at what’s inside your heads.”

  Beyond the boarding tube and the waiting area at the gate, they marched him straight past the luggage collection area.

  “Hey—”

  “Your bags will be collected for you,” Tyra said.

  Lucien lapsed into an annoyed silence. They reached a bank of elevators and walked into the nearest one as the doors opened for them. One of the clerics punched the number 1 on the keypad, and Lucien prepared himself for a long wait, but the elevator dropped swiftly down, accelerating past more than a thousand decks in just a few seconds.

  Lucien blinked in shock. “How did we get here so fast?” he asked, as they stepped out of the elevator.

  “We’ve made some improvements to grav boosters and inertial management technology,” Tyra said.

  “So why haven’t we adopted those improvements on the other facets?” Lucien asked as they led him to a parking lot and into a waiting hover car. They all sat facing each other in the back of the car. It hovered up and glided out of the parking lot, into a dazzling blue sky, tufted with white clouds.

  Tyra offered him a cryptic smile. “We’ve only begun implementing our new technologies now.”

  “But why not share them with everyone?”

  “Like Etherus shares everything he knows with us? We thought we’d return the favor.”

  “You haven’t discovered anything that Etherus doesn’t already know. All you’re doing is keeping your advances from the rest of humanity.”

  “How much Etherus actually knows is a matter that’s open to debate,” Tyra replied. “But if he has access to the same level of technology, or even to a higher one, then you could ask him the same question—why hasn’t he shared those advances with us?”

  “Where does He draw the line?” Lucien countered. “He could make us all into gods if He wanted to.”

  “That’s a tired argument, Lucien. It’s also dogma. The logical answer to my question is that Etherus doesn’t trust us.”

  “I’m starting to see why.”

  “He started it. If he doesn’t trust us, then why should we trust him?”

  Lucien raised his eyebrows at that. “I thought he started it was only a valid defense for children.”

  “If that were so, then legal precedent would mean nothing,” Tyra replied.

  Lucien frowned and turned away from her. He looked out the window at the scenery as the hover car flew down to the surface. Astralis was clearly a beautiful facet, with an incredible amount of diversity in the seventeen thousand three hundred and twenty square kilometers of surface area on its ground level.

  There were lakes, rivers, forests, plains, and mountains, all blanketed with varying types of flora from what must have been dozens of different worlds. The center of the facet was dominated by one particularly high mountain, and four distinct climate zones radiated from there: a snowy winter wonderland, a colorful autumn forest, blooming fields of flowers, and a sparkling lake with an archipelago of sunny islands, beaches, and tropical jungles.

  Lucien still preferred Halcyon, but he was glad to see that Astralis wasn’t one big sterile laboratory.

  After a while, Lucien noticed they were headed for the peak of the mountain at the center of the facet. At the very top sat a building whose exterior walls were made entirely of cobalt-blue glass. The building was wreathed in clouds. That has to be the Academy, he thought.

  As they drew near, Lucien saw that it was shaped like an inverted square pyramid, with each subsequent level larger than the one below.

  They flew into a garage in one of the lower levels and parked beside a bank of elevators. The doors of the car slid open and they all piled out. Tyra punched the call button for the elevator and everyone stepped into an elevator with a floor-to-ceiling window looking out on the winter side of Astralis. There were trees laden with snow, a frozen lake, and a white wall of clouds that could only be a blizzard. Each distinct climate zone was contained by hazy walls of blue static shields that radiated out from the mountain where the Academy sat.

  Lucien had the sensation of flying as the elevator climbed the side of the inverted pyramid, moving upward and outward at the same time.

  “You live in a beautiful facet,” Lucien admitted.

  “Thank you,” Tyra said.

  The elevator stopped and they walked out into a gleaming corridor filled with bustling streams of people in white lab coats. The clerics he’d come with escorted him down the hall to a door that read: Probe Room 14.

  Tyra waved the door open, revealing what looked like an operating room. A gurney sat in the center of the room, surrounded by monitoring equipment. The clerics took him to the gurney and made him lie down. Then they strapped him down, restraining his hands, chest, and feet.

  “For your safety,” Tyra explained.

  Lucien watched the clerics as they secured his restraints, and wondered what he’d agreed to with this mind probe. He was familiar with the technology on paper, but he’d never been subjected to a probe before—nor had anyone else that he’d ever met. There wasn’t any need for probes on New Earth. If someone
committed a crime, there was never any question of who did it or why, since Etherus already knew the truth, and his judgments were always fair.

  “In this probe we’re going to ask your brain questions directly,” Tyra explained. “If we detect a lie, then we’ll dig deeper until we find the truth. Eventually we’ll be able to learn things that even you don’t know about yourself. Do you understand?” Tyra asked.

  “In that case, this would probably be a good time to come clean,” Lucien said.

  The room turned to ice. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at him.

  “I’m listening,” Tyra said.

  “When I was six years old, I went into the Paragons’ mess hall and I ate all of the cookies. Then I put the crumbs in one of the Gor’s beds, and everyone assumed it was him. Whew! That feels better. I’ve never told anyone that before.”

  Tyra glared. “Are you done?”

  “Well, there was this other time—”

  “It was a rhetorical question. You’ll be awake for the duration of the probe, but when it’s over, you’ll be put to sleep so that your mind can recover, and you won’t remember anything when you wake up. You’ll be given a copy of the report, however.”

  “How will I know that the report includes all of the questions you asked?”

  “We have no reason to hide our inquiries from you,” Tyra replied, “but the report will include a transcript and a copy of surveillance footage from the probe room. Are you ready?”

  Lucien nodded. “Let’s get it over with.” One of the clerics came and injected his arm with something. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A psychotropic agent designed to assist with the probe. Don’t worry. Please count backward from ten.”

  “Ten, nine, eight…”

  Chapter 6

  Lucien awoke staring at the ceiling of another room. His bed was the only one there, and a broad window beside him looked out on the summer side of Astralis. Finding he was no longer strapped down, Lucien sat up and studied the view. Far below, palm trees and white sand gleamed in the sun, and the lake that dominated the quadrant shimmered brightly.

  Lucien swallowed past a dry lump in his throat. He heard doors swish open, and turned to see Tyra walk in wearing a white lab coat. She came and sat on a stool beside his bed. She reached for his hand and smiled sympathetically.

  He leaned as far away from her as he could without falling out of the bed. “What’s got into you?” he asked. “I think I liked sarcastic supercilious Tyra better than touchy feely Tyra.”

  She went on smiling, but released his hand. “Your probe results are back from the lab.”

  “Found what you were looking for?” Lucien demanded.

  Tyra nodded. “You’re clear. In fact, I’ve already recommended that you be assigned to one of the expedition teams.”

  “I see. So where’s the report?”

  Tyra took a deep breath and shook her head. Her smile was gone. “It was determined that you aren’t ready to read the results.”

  “You said I’d get a copy.”

  “I’m sorry, but the mind is layered into conscious and subconscious for a reason. Sometimes there are things hidden in our minds that we’re not ready to learn about ourselves.”

  Lucien felt his skin crawl. “What things?”

  Tyra chewed her bottom lip, considering. Then she looked behind her, as if to check that they were alone. She turned back to him and whispered, “Consciously, you believe in Etherus. Unconsciously, you don’t. In fact, your beliefs are more consistent with people from Astralis than people from Halcyon. I’m not sure how Etherus selected you to be a Paragon, but that seems to be yet more proof that he’s not as all-knowing as he claims to be.”

  Lucien’s heart pounded in his chest. He felt sick to his stomach, and his head was spinning. It couldn’t be true. Maybe it wasn’t. His eyes narrowed. “I only have your word for this. If you were planning to tell me the results of the probe, why not let me read them for myself?”

  “Because there’s a difference between hearing something from someone that you don’t trust, and learning it for yourself from an unbiased medium. By telling you this way there’s still enough room for doubt that your mind can protect itself from the truth.”

  “Even if you are right, all you’ve proved is that I have doubts. My conscious mind is where the truth of myself lies.”

  “Where the truth lies,” Tyra said, nodding slowly. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Lucien glared at her. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But ironically, it’s true. The thing about humans, Lucien, is that they’re perfectly capable of lying to themselves. In fact, we do it all the time. Your real reason for coming with us is to answer all of the same questions that we have, but your brain found a more acceptable excuse, claiming that you had to accompany the mission to protect all of the helpless scientists from themselves, and oh yes—to settle other people’s doubts so that we can have lasting peace on New Earth.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Lucien said.

  “It would have to, or it wouldn’t work. Studies have been done on the subject. When our actions don’t match our beliefs, anxiety results, and our brains try to resolve the conflict. This can either result in a change of beliefs, or a justification that somehow matches them. In your case, justification was the result, because you’re not ready to change your beliefs.”

  “Isn’t that just a complicated way of saying that I have doubts, but I choose to believe in spite of them?”

  “Lucien, when your superego was—”

  “My what?”

  “The moralistic part of your brain. When it was suppressed, you told the truth about everything, and there wasn’t one drop of faith left. In fact, you were even more skeptical of Etherus than me. That indicates that the only reason you believe is because the society you grew up in told you that you should. You think belief in Etherus is somehow morally correct.”

  Lucien shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

  Tyra sighed. “Believe it or not, it’s true.”

  As a Paragon, Lucien was taught not to hate, but he could feel the hate pouring through him now, hating every molecule of Tyra.

  “Hey, I’m just the messenger. Feel free to doubt the message. I just have one question for you before you assume that I’m making all of this up—when you were saying goodbye to all your loved ones before coming here, why didn’t you say goodbye to Etherus?”

  Lucien blinked. “I…” He shook his head. “I guess I forgot. I’m so used to having him around, I just assumed he’d somehow still be with me when I got here.”

  Tyra shook her head. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t say goodbye to him because you didn’t want to. You’re happy to be getting away from him. In fact, you can’t wait.”

  Chapter 7

  Tyra walked into the surveillance room. It was shaped like a decagon, with nine of its ten sides windows into recovery rooms. Seven of those were illuminated and occupied. Tyra looked into one room in particular and saw Lucien staring back at her—well, not at her. He was looking at the view from his window, not knowing that the window was actually a holoscreen and that people were watching him behind it.

  Tyra took a seat beside the probe technician.

  He glanced at her. “I thought the point of not telling him was to prevent a mental breakdown.”

  “It was.”

  “So you just wanted to see how close you could get without pushing him over the edge?”

  “This journey is going to test Lucien’s conscious beliefs. I needed to make sure that he’ll hold together, no matter what he learns along the way. We can’t have him freezing up in the middle of a life or death situation just because it suddenly hit him that he’s really a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  The technician nodded. “Well, so far so good. If your needling didn’t do it, then I’d say his subconscious isn’t coming out to play anytime soon.”

  “Good. No adver
se reactions in the other patients?” Tyra asked, glancing around at the other recovery rooms.

  “There was an incident. One of our technicians got hurt.”

  “Oh?”

  “Two broken arms and a dislocated shoulder. You’ll be happy to know we resolved the situation before the patient could rip out the man’s throat.”

  Tyra grimaced. “Let me guess—the Gor?”

  “Your powers of deduction serve you well.”

  Tyra sighed. “I suppose we knew the Paragons would be unstable. They all have to be just as conflicted as Lucien or else they wouldn’t be here.”

  “We could send them back.”

  “No, their training makes them valuable. I have a better idea. It will also help us evaluate their actual worth to us.”

  The technician arched an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to explain.

  “We set up an experiment. How do you test a variable, Doctor?”

  The man frowned. “You isolate it and then test it against a control.”

  “Exactly.” Tyra stood up. “Have all the Paragons sent to my galleon.”

  “To your galleon, ma’am? Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Afraid for my life, Doctor?”

  “Well, not really. I don’t know you, and human concern fades exponentially the farther one gets from the people one knows.”

  “A simple no would have sufficed.”

  “Then no, but I was thinking that maybe you should be afraid.”

  “Your unconcerned concern is noted, Doctor. How long before they’re ready to join me aboard my ship?”

  The technician shrugged. “An hour, maybe two. The Gor is still sedated.”

  “All right. I’ll be waiting.”

  * * *

  “Where am I going?” Lucien demanded.

  “You’ll see,” the cleric escorting him said, poking him in the back with a stun pistol to urge him into the boarding tunnel.