Past Dark

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 42978 Olinda

Tabitha landed the Epsilon at the spaceport without incident. We all managed to pass through security, and I called a flitter cab to take us home. To my home. I couldn’t believe I was bringing a Nosferan home. By the time we climbed in, the sun was coming up. Drac pulled out a thin dark hood, a Nosferan shroud, and let it float down over his head. The smart fabric hid his features and—for him—rendered the world into a twilight landscape comfortable for his dark-adapted eyes.

Once I'd given the flitter the address, I leaned back and closed my eyes. The inside of the flitter glowed with the mingled light from our bodies. Each of us contributed to the molecular illumination of the space, Drac's pearly glow streamed off of his body, sitting beside him Tabitha radiated a peachy and electric blue aura not quite the same as the non-organics that I've encountered. I added a golden color streaked with greens from the C'lacktal hand.

That was the disadvantage with the Euzebian scent-sight—I couldn't ever really close my eyes anymore and just sit in darkness. I always saw what was around me, or even what had been there, since there was a time-based element to the scent-sight. I could walk into a room and actually see someone who had been there, a sort of ghostly imprint left behind that faded over time.

The walls of the flitter were darker, bluish and opaque to the scent-sight. I couldn't see the landscape below, but I knew it intimately. From the spaceport we would fly up over the harbors and crags of Olinda, heading up into the higher, gentler plateaus where I lived. It wasn't a long ride.

“Where are we going?” Tabitha asked.

I opened my eyes, and she solidified in my sight. The scent-sight was still there, but my enhanced vision took precedence. When I'd first added the scent-sight, it had taken time to integrate both, for a time I had to wear a blindfold until I adapted.

“My home,” I said. “I need to take care of a few things. It's too early to catch Shanley at the office anyway.”

Drac hissed softly and didn't comment, but streaks of black sputtered through his faint glow.

“Remember,” I said to him. “I'm talking to Shanley first.”

“He won't remember,” Drac said. “He has forgotten who he is.”

“To learn what it's like to be human?”

“A waste of time,” Drac said.

He surprised me. I thought that the Nosferans practically worshiped the Galactics. “Shouldn't he know whether it is a waste of time or not? Are you wiser than him?”

Drac made a sputtering noise as the fleshy lips of his nose fluttered in and out in agitation. The shroud didn’t hide his features from my scent-sight, it was like a thin black fog over his head, damping but not eliminating details. I didn't need my scent-sight to pick up the sour smell of his irritation. I'd gotten plenty of that living among the Nosferans.

That was all a long time ago. I didn't like dwelling on the past. Orlando Pike's nanowires had caused me to relive portions of my past. Tabitha had removed the web before I got to that point in my life, before my time on the Australia and after.

The first time I'd seen a Nosferan, we didn't call them that, not then. They were alien invaders attacking the ship.

I remembered a familiar orange and black face, monstrous, towering over a beautiful woman while I fought four of the attackers.

I jerked in my seat, my heart suddenly racing. Tabitha frowned.

“What's wrong?”

“I just remembered something.”

Drac's ears swiveled beneath the shroud to focus on me. “What?”

“It was a long time ago, on the Australia.”

Drac's nose flared wider. He showed his teeth. The shroud rose and fell from his breath. The Australia had a bad reputation—not only among his people.

“The Australia, you were there?” Tabitha said.

“Yes.” It wasn't something that I thought about often. I was as guilty as anyone of not wanting to think about bad times. “But so were Muriel and Dyami.”

“You remember them being there?” Tabitha gestured, opening holographic screens from her implants. “There isn't any record of them being there.”

“I saw them.” I thought about it carefully, replaying the moment in my mind. It was brief, just a moment during the fight but one of them had yelled my name. It was real. “They were there, I saw them when the ship was first boarded.”

“They stole the device,” Drac said. “They were seen!”

That was true, it was his evidence that gave me a clue as to where they had gone, when they had gone and sent us after the tach field generator. It was Galactic tech that Drac claimed had been given to his people and stolen by Muriel and Dyami. It was never recovered until we tracked it down to the Enhancer's colony of Proving.

“The thing is,” I told them both. “I didn't remember seeing them before. Until you came to me with the image, I didn't know what had happened to them.”

Tabitha dismissed her screens. “You didn't remember them before now?”

I shook my head. “I remember it now, but before this moment it wasn't there, I'm sure of it. I had no memory of that happening.”

That wasn't entirely true. I'd replayed that moment in my mind many times over the years, and always before I only remembered seeing the scientists running away, the ones I managed to save. Except now Muriel and Dyami were there, had I really not remembered them before now?

“Maybe history is changing,” Tabitha said.

Drac rose in his seat, wings spreading out, with an exultant intake of breath. The shroud tightened against his features, briefly revealing them to my normal sight. Tabitha pushed back against his wing.

“Watch it!”

Drac pulled his wings back in and wrapped them around his thin body, covering the pouch where he carried the Mother Sack, the female continuation of his tribe.

I was still trying to make sense of it. “If history changed, why would I notice? Shouldn't it have just been my memory all this time?”

“Time travel shouldn't even be possible,” Tabitha said. “I don't know of any species that believes time travel is a possibility —”

“We do,” Drac said. “It is our salvation.”

“— I think we're a long way from figuring out the rules.”

It wasn't much of an answer, but I clung to the possibility. “Maybe. You could be right. Maybe the past is sticky, if you change something, maybe it changes things now but doesn't replace what happened in between.”

Drac hissed with obvious displeasure at the idea.

“What are you mad about?” I said.

“It makes no sense.”

The flitter started its descent. “Before you get too tied up thinking about it, why don't we wait? If Shanley is actually what you say, maybe he can explain it.”

I don't think he was pleased with the answer, he pulled his wings up over the shroud. It might have also been the bright morning sunlight streaming through the flitter windows, even with the shroud. Tabitha produced a pair of skin-tight wrap-around shades that covered her eyes in an impenetrable stripe of darkness.

I loved the sun. In my youth, I started out on Seabrook, an “ocean world” like Olinda, but it only went so far as the fact that both planets were dominated by oceans. Beyond that, they had little in common. Seabrook was a world orbiting a red giant. Volcanic activity throwing dust into the air, and the star's own light cast everything into a blood-red haze. Sleet was one of the most common forms of precipitation, everything was always icy and dirty, and smelled of sulfur. On Seabrook, nose filters became fashion statements.

Even born there, I didn't feel much attachment to the place.

Olinda couldn't be more different. Temperate to tropical across the equatorial island-continent. Warm waters, abundant ocean life, a relaxed legal system focused on personal responsibility which allowed things like Torlian coffee and Moreau Pods—both illegal on other worlds.

It was a world of pastel vegetation and abundant possibilities. The Olindan system attracted plenty of colonists, but also out in the system itself with its two natural moons, Hansel and Gretel, and the artificial alien enigma that was the Gingerbread House. Plus, all the other settlements throughout the system like the Enhancer's colony at Proving.

Gazing out the flitter window, I didn't want to leave. The prospect of going back in time, back to a time that I thought I had left, wasn't appealing. I wasn't doing it for Drac's reasons, to restore the Nosferan people, or for Tabitha's mysterious quest to find the path for her people in her future role as their guide.

I'd go back if I could, because the woman I loved and my friend were trapped back there. I pictured the moment I remembered in my mind. Dyami was hurt, a burn from a Nosferan rail gun across his thick shoulder. Muriel had looked haunted, with dark shadows under her eyes.

After I'd seen them, Craig Dustin had mentioned them, and I hadn't said anything about seeing them. Instinctively, even then, I had covered for them both. Because they knew me, and at the time I hadn't known how that was possible.

Had I recognized Muriel when we first got together? Thinking back, I didn't believe so. Her eyes had captivated me, even when she was an acolyte in Subha's church. She'd helped rescue me from the bottom of the ocean and one thing had led to another, but I don't think I had ever recognized her.

This memory I had, it was new. It had to have something to do with the past changing, but not everything had changed. Except for that memory, things seemed the same. At least as far as I could tell.

The flitter finally settled down in front of the houses.

My landlady and friend, Sonya Thornton's goats were out in the fields behind the house as we came down, Dancy and Prancy, sadly I hadn’t been helping with them much since all the trouble with Kelwyn. All my focus had been on rescuing Muriel and Dyami. If we were going to do this, I needed to tell her before I disappeared into the past.