Behind the Kaleidoscoped Door

  Behind the Kaleidoscoped Door

  By

  Peter Heaton

  © 2017 Dreams of Darkspace. All Rights Reserved.

  For those who dream in dark and in light

  We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.

  —Morreion by Jack Vance

  Contents

  1 Long Way to Kill a Man

  2 In a White Embrace

  3 Black and Blue, Silver and Red

  4 Push the Button

  5 Kiss of the Lystere

  6 Finger Crawl to Oblivion

  7 At a Higher Frequency

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One—Long Way to Kill a Man

  Like a starship struggling against the pull of a massive planet, Izaac’s gaze was constantly drawn to the slaver’s craterous face. Nabaldian’s mouth quivered—almost perversely—as he struggled for words.

  “I thought you’d give up,” the brute finally uttered.

  What waited for Izaac’s eyes: two empty pools of black, hinting at the hidden horrors of the space beyond the universe. Here, upon Kakaras, Memory Hold, things merely teetered on the edge.

  Over the slaver’s right shoulder the kaleidoscoped door hummed and buzzed, constant as the waves of an ocean, mercurial as any storm. Lights spun across its surface, forming shapes, taking them away—seen or unseen, it did not matter.

  “There were days . . .” Izaac started, the weight of the chase—for the man sitting across from him—coming out with his words.

  “Long way to kill a man,” Nabaldian agreed.

  Reminded of his purpose, Izaac’s hand slid across his canvas pants, feeling the familiar surface, smoothed from much training, of his pistol.

  Ibor Nabaldian—Greentooth—shifted in his seat, his dull-brown frockcoat hiding his great frame underneath. He was not blind.

  Not like we don’t both know, Izaac thought, still pissed at how quickly all his training had been undone. He was tired, and there was nothing that ate away at discipline more. But now that he was here, he found that it didn’t seem right. He’d lived this moment before—in his mind a million times—but now, before the man, he was unnerved and careless.

  The kaleidiscoped door hummed, reminding him that there were other moments he’d lived. Was there coincidence this far from the center of the universe?

  “Didn’t expect we’d end up on the edge of it all,” Izaac admitted. He resisted the urge to wipe the sweat gathering on his gun hand against his pants. Nabaldian motioned behind him to the kaleidoscoped door and the Hall of Memories that lay beyond. The slaver’s eyes never left Izaac, still staring at him—through him—past him—all at once. Whatever it was, all he knew was that he didn’t like not being able to tell.

  The gentleness in the slaver’s voice was unsettling. “I left something here.”

  Me too, Izaac thought. It had been almost a decade since he had come to Memory Hold, something done entirely on impulse, driven by his graduation from the academy. Another reminder: Kelli’s face intruded into his mind: round, brown cheeks, hazel eyes, petite nose. She wasn’t smiling.

  “What was it like?” the slaver inquired, the obsidian pools staring at Izaac over a crooked and mountainous nose.

  “Huh?” Izaac searched the man’s face, his eyes tracing the heavy wrinkles on either side of the slaver’s mouth; the labor worlds orbited a harsh, golden sun. Was it acceptance of his face that had etched in those deep lines?

  “Your memory. I see the way you look at the door. Only someone who’s been here before looks at it that way.”

  Izaac shrugged. This was not how it was supposed to go.

  The slaver smiled, something disfigured and distant. “I’ve spent the past year feeling my freedom slowly leak away. It was like constantly waking from a dream where you met this . . .” he paused, his eyes narrowing, but still staring through, “beautiful person. They are perfect; you’ve created them. You’ve made them everything you could ever want.”

  Izaac felt his fingers slipping from his gun. He hadn’t expected—hadn’t been prepared for the slaver to want to share his experience.

  The hulking man continued, “Then you wake up from this beautiful, powerful dream, and suddenly this person that perfectly complements you is gone. Taken.”

  Forget the gun, Izaac thought, knowing exactly where he’d have to reach and how much room he’d need to get his knife into the spot beneath the slaver’s elbow when the man undoubtedly would make his move. He’s not sharing, he’s putting you to sleep.

  Maybe this is how a man acts when he faces death and isn’t set to incoherent babbling. Izaac didn’t think a year was long enough to make peace with what was coming to the slaver; he’d been trying all his life to accept his own uncertain end. But perhaps it was easier when it was right there in front of you.

  Izaac was conscious of the nearness of the brute but trusted himself to be faster.

  “And you think that you will never see them again because it is better than the realization: that they will be there when you fall asleep and you’ll lose them all over again come morning.”

  Izaac was racking his mind, trying to reconcile what he knew of the slaver with what the man was saying; the empty, red slaver transport gave no answers. He felt like he was missing something. But there was part of him that understood Nabaldian’s babbling.

  It had been like that with Kelli, once. But it had been taken from him.

  His mind felt the presence of the kaleidoscoped door. No, he’d promised himself he would leave it buried.

  Izaac felt the pull of the slaver’s inky eyes. He watched as the man’s cracked lips shaped more words: “All I’ve wanted to do was get it back—but we both know that can never happen. It’s funny—funny’s not really the word for it—I never pictured it all, none of it, like this.”

  No, Nabaldian, Izaac thought, neither did I. Thousands of times Izaac had watched himself put a bullet in Ibor Nabaldian’s head. His journey to darkspace had been filled with many dark thoughts.

  A few moments passed before Izaac realized the man was waiting for him. “So what? You want to know what it was like . . . chasing you?” Izaac asked, reaching to scratch a persistent itch that had buried itself in the mess of his beard.

  “I’ve shared with you the reason why I came here—dragged you along like a fly on rotted meat. So, yes, if you would.” Nabaldian leaned forward.

  Izaac gave himself some space, avoiding the heat of the man’s breath, but unable to look away. His hand had slid back down to the handle of the gun. It was stupid to be this uncertain.

  Behind them, somewhere, the kalediscoped door hummed and spun, splashing light into the hallway behind it.

  “Tell me, hunter, has it become as much a part of you as it has for me?”

  “Like a dog chasing his tail.”

  The slaver frowned, clearly waiting for more. The white noise—the other patrons in the cafe, who had taken no particular notice of them—grew to an angry din, gnawing away at the silence between them.

  I wonder if he’s disappointed that I’m no poet.

  Izaac shifted away from the man, deciding he had underestimated the strength of the slaver’s cracked and calloused hands. His pistol was hot in his hand. The sweat had become almost unbearable.

  The slaver leered at him, noticing that Izaac’s hand had gone back to his gun. “I was certain you’d quit,” he commented again, this time to himself. He leaned back against his seat, resigned.

  This is it, Izaac thought. Time to be done with this and go home. He slipped the pistol out of its holster entirely. The slaver did not react. Izaac could fee
l the moment around him—cracking, ready to shatter into countless pieces. This was how he had expected it.

  “If not me, it’d just be someone else,” Izaac remarked, flexing his hand absently, his mind trying to prepare itself, knowing the moment was coming when he’d have to pull the trigger. He still remembered the mess aboard the slaver’s ship. It had gotten to men more experienced than him—Hawk even; it was no wonder that moment had leeched into his soul. The man deserved to die for what he’d done.

  “Times are changing. They’d not be so eager to chase me all the way into darkspace,” Nabaldian responded, his word’s triggering a voice from another time—Hawk’s face, out of focus, as if the details did not exist, as if they didn’t matter: You’re not great at what you do, but you care. I think, sometimes, that can make up for it. That past Izaac whom Hawk had spoken to was unrecognizable now. But the words still rang true.

  “How does it go now?” the giant man asked.

  Kelli’s face looked at him one last time before he managed to push her from his mind. The question was written on her features even as he forced her into his subconscious.

  Being here now, he did wish he had given up. Unconsciously his gun hand wiped itself dry on his leg. He could feel the moment beginning to slip away; already his mind was finding the reasons why he shouldn’t kill the man. Something about the dream the slaver had mentioned had reached deep into him, stirring up things he hadn’t wanted stirred up.

  A server approached their table. Izaac waved him away. “Some privacy, please,” he said, his eyes releasing from Nabaldian’s for a moment.

  “Of course,” the man replied, turning without another thought. There was a faint blare—an alert from the Custodians’ computer system that a new session was about to begin.

  Izaac, looking back at the slaver, couldn’t help himself. “What was it?” he blurted.

  Nabaldian’s thick, white eyebrows arched up in a questioning look, intrigued.

  “The memory you left here.”

  A great smile spread across the slaver’s face. His bottom teeth were stained green.

  “Just a moment.”

  “Something special?”

  The slaver’s smile disappeared. “At the time.” His left hand was out on the table, his thumb methodically touching the tips of his fingers. “It was a happy one.”

  Izaac watched the fingertips kissing. The sudden shift in demeanor sent a dozen alarms in Izaac’s mind. Who wouldn’t be nervous? But something told him that this wasn’t the place to do it.

  “We can go somewhere quiet, if you want,” Izaac offered. Nabaldian looked around; the lounge was buzzing with others who had made the trip into darkspace—all in the hopes of kissing the lystere.

  “Verzatz is here.”

  At the mention of the name, his hand went back to his pistol. Izaac inhaled deeply, searching the air for any hint of the mellow, earthy scent of yazzat.

  He reached out for the comfort of his neural link; his connection to the creature that was wrapped up on his left shoulder, his skin warm where the six tentacles clung to him. The creature unwrapped itself from his shoulder and floated up in the air, examining the faces of each person in the lounge while testing the air for any scent of yazzat compounds.

  Nabaldian chuckled when the creature peeled itself from Izaac’s shoulder. “You’d already be dead. Your pet can go back to sleep.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Just like you’re here for me, he’s here for you,” the slaver explained, threatening a grin.

  Izaac cursed his body; he could feel the sweat and the heat from his hand as it clung to the pistol. Maybe he’s lying, he thought. “Well, he’ll find the same thing you’re going to,” Izaac noted, trying to get the moment back.

  “What’s that?”

  “What dying’s like.”

  “Oh?” the slaver took on a wounded smile. Izaac thought he could hear skin splitting when the slaver spread his lips. “I thought we were being cordial.”

  “We were. But not with him,” Izaac snapped.

  “He is a strange creature, isn’t he?”

  “Creature. That’s a good name for him.”

  Maybe I should just do it now. Izaac started to ease the pistol out of the holster. Nabaldian’s right hand went still, his left reaching up from his lap to grip the edge of the table, his knuckles paling with the effort.

  A thought from the seeker interrupted Izaac: Verzatz is not in the room.

  The pistol slid back into the holster. He thought of Kelli again, directed to her even though she’d never hear it: I guess this won’t be the end after all, darling. He didn’t need that now, but he couldn’t stop it.

  When he’d found the slaver sitting alone at the table, he had convinced himself that this was it, that he was finally going to end all the chasing.

  The worst part was he was thankful. He wasn’t ready to go home. It wasn’t just Kelli waiting for him. It was her and that damned question. It was always there, chewing at his mind, tiny fish frantically nibbling away at his sanity. There’s something wrong with me. It’s been two years since she asked. I wasn’t stupid enough to not see it coming all those years before. And still I can’t answer it any better than that first night. He remembered a hotel room with a raw, red moon lingering on the other side of the glass. That had been the second time he’d seen that angry rock through that very window. The first time the vermillion sphere had seemed so bright and beautiful.

  Nabaldian’s voice, almost a whisper: Has it become as much a part of you as it has of me? The memory grabbed Izaac and tugged him into the present.

  The slaver was talking about Verzatz. “I found him on one of the immigrant arks trying to make it to Layden’s Peace from Bozren.” Let him go on, maybe he’ll give me something I can use to find Verzatz. “We managed to intercept it out in the dead region between the systems. Pulled the ship out of interspace. Nothing but kids.”

  “Slaver’s jackpot,” Izaac inserted sarcastically.

  “Not really. The labor worlds pay a premium for the ones that have gone through puberty, but most of these were just kids. Their parents knew they’d never turn away a ship full of kids, regardless of their immigration policies.”

  “So they’re better off on a strange world, abandoned by their parents?”

  “You’re oozing naivety. Bozren’s no place for a child. It’s not just the scum the place attracts; sickness spreads like wildfire. So we line the kids up for cataloging. Three of them are missing, the Peace Runner, too. And then we find them. Well, the others were dead, but one boy—Verzatz—was standing there . . . painted red. He didn’t look human, like he was wearing some gruesome, crimson jumpsuit.”

  Nabaldian’s right hand had again started its slow, rhythmic, tapping of thumb to fingertips. “He’s got the Runner’s key for the escape raft and bags of supplies. We found the bodies after. He’d strangled the two other kids and stabbed the Runner’s neck with a stylus a dozen times.”

  “So you kept him for a pet.”

  “He would have thrived on the labor worlds, I think. But he would have been wasted.” For the first time the slaver’s voice gained in volume. “What will to survive! It was literally dripping from him.”

  “And now you’ve turned him into something else. More than a killer.”

  Izaac remembered a bird, smashed with broken wings, and the tumult that was Verzatz’s laughter.

  “I didn’t make him anything he wasn’t already. Taking him from that ship certainly isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  “If it was, maybe I wouldn’t be here,” Izaac replied. Is he trying to scare me into just leaving? He knows that can’t happen—I’m not home until he’s dead.

  “There was something else I found out about him.” The slaver’s lips pulled back, flashing his hideous, green, bitterjack-stained teeth: a snarl and a smile combined. “Loyalty.” Izaac felt a chill of disgust run through him, his fingers again finding the warm handle of his
pistol. “In his mind I pulled him from two shitty futures. Could you imagine a creature like that on one of the Peace-Core Worlds? In return he’s paid me back in unflinching loyalty.”

  “I thought we were being cordial,” Izaac retorted.

  “It wasn’t intended as a threat. Whatever’s going to happen between you two is already written in the stars.”

  “He’s not here to protect you now.”

  “I never said I wanted to be protected. I think I’m ready to pay for the things I did. Maybe my gods will forgive me.”

  “Must be some ugly gods.”

  The slaver spread his arms, presenting himself. “I’m not a pretty man.”

  “So if I shot you right now and walked out that door to my ship . . . ?”

  “Come now, hunter. You took precautions to make sure I wouldn’t be leaving here until you were done with me. Didn’t you?” Izaac remembered the sensation of relief as he’d pressed his disabler up against the slaver’s navdrive. “Verzatz is quite resourceful. You know Bozren doesn’t let an ounce of yazzat out of its ports. But he’s had his release every night for the ten years I’ve known him.” The slaver’s eyes were again on Izaac if he could tell such a thing. They were dead things—pupil-less—all swollen and black, gazing beyond the peaks of the awkwardly sloped nose.

  “So, how does it go now?” Nabaldian asked again.

  Izaac fingered the pistol. He didn’t want to do it here, in front of all these people. They didn’t deserve that. He thought of what Nabaldian had said about the special moment he had stored away.

  When Izaac had tracked him here, he’d known that he hadn’t come here just because of his duty. He had never forgotten the memory that he’d stored here, but he’d told himself he’d never come back to relive it. It was shame mostly—that he’d stored it in the first place, as if he’d known then that things wouldn’t always be that way. Because he’d known then that that was the highest of the highs and everything after that couldn’t compare.

  And now it was right there, just beyond the kaleidoscoped door. Calling to him. He’d told himself when his ship touched down that he wouldn’t—shouldn’t—go into the Hall. It would remind him of how things had changed; how they always changed. But now, so close to it, he knew he didn’t have the willpower to ignore it. He told himself it would help him answer her question.