The Zeta Project | Book One | Predestination (Revised Edition, Nov. 2003)
Dedication: For my Captain, whose feet were always firmly planted in the storm, and who rode courageously upon the sea. C.H.D. 17/7/96 – 04/9/02
Original A/N: A long, book-length fanfic, which is the first I've ever written. If you'd like any extra information about the story, how I wrote it, or what something means, feel free visit the website address in my profile or mail me. My sincere thanks to the TZP fans who've taken the time to read this.
A/N 26/11/03: Now that this book has stretched out to accommodate five follow-ups, I thought it was time I paid it a little attention. Since the story has run so deep, I've returned to the beginning to add a few ideas that I didn't think to add before, also to repair as many typos as I could. Although I think of it now as a 95,000-word prologue to the rest of the series, it seems to have its own simplistic charm. My hope remains that someone will read it again and enjoy it again, and that someone reads it for the first time.
"Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade." -- Tennyson, Locksley Hall
Part One
1)
Ro Rowen closed her eyes, inhaled deeply the fresh, still night air, with all the spicy scents, and the hint of some late-blooming wildflower, almost like jasmine, perhaps a late-blooming lily. Despite being unable to see where the path beneath her heavy, sore feet led her, she was unafraid and was able to keep moving. The more she thought of walking with her eyes closed, the more it pleased her; it was like a challenge, a game that one could play with oneself. But she began to stumble her steps, from far too much thought, too tired a brain to be productive, and reached out her arm to Zeta's, just in time to balance herself. She was forced to fling open her eyes.
"Are you all right?" Zeta asked quietly. He halted his steps, observing his friend in calm trepidation.
All that Ro saw before her was a tree-lined pathway, a wide dirt road that lead no where particular. A road, therefore, like a lot of the roads she'd seen. The leaves of roadside trees hung loosely at the tips of the branches, flittering ever so slightly in the late August breeze, and occasionally one leaf would flicker, momentarily touched by the beams of the bulbous moon high and distant overhead. She thought only of the moon, the loneliness of it, and consciously ignored her concerned companion until he spoke again.
"Are you tired?" Zeta persisted in his questions, reluctant to keep following Ro as she moved onward, her gait steady and unwavering. "Do you want to stop for the night?"
She looked over her shoulder at the synthoid, in his normal young-man hologram mode. The dead black eyes gaped in a patient attentiveness. The deadness of his eyes sometimes haunted her. She saw it in herself sometimes, yet she was human. "I'm fine. Let's just keep going. I was just thinking, and lost my footing for a second. See what happens when you think?"
Zeta promptly caught up with her, and they walked side-by-side in silence for some time. Out beyond the hills of lower West Country, a barnyard dog howled and barked. Zeta's ears perked at the noise, like he was himself canine. Ro had no doubt he could transform to one if he set his hologram to do the chore. She'd probably seen it before, but couldn't remember. His images blended into each other after a while, like their days of being on the run.
The dog was forgotten, and Zeta rested his glare to Ro. "What were you thinking?" He thought she looked sad and--what was the word?--homesick? For what home? She had known so many places, but so many places did not make a home.
"The seasons are changing," she said, most sullenly, her voice weak from over-use through a long, thirty-six-hour day. "Fall will be here soon."
"Fall?"
"Autumn. When the leaves fall. We call it fall."
"Of course. And after fall comes winter. I believe it's called the Winter Solstice, generally celebrated by pagans and others on December twenty-first, or, in astrological terms, the day the sun goes into the mutable sign of Sagittarius."
Ro growled. "Have I told you lately, Zee, that I love your prolific sense of detail?"
He noted her sarcasm. He was very used to noting her sarcasm by now. "I'm sorry. I was only trying to help. What is it about fall that makes you sad?"
Ro suddenly stopped, and Zee took one step forward before turning to face her. She snickered, and when she spoke her tone was her characteristic snide. "I'm not sad. Have you ever known me to be sad for more than ten minutes together?"
"No," he said, after running through his memory banks. "Occasionally you would be woebegone, but never sad. You're also never poetical. You were talking of autumn as though you were a poet."
Ro smartly began walking away from Zeta just as he started to spout out a poetical work, which mentioned autumn and a lake, other words she didn't pay attention to. She huffed, annoyed. Zeta wouldn't understand what she was remembering, and she didn't want to explain. It would take too much time, too much energy, rehashing the past, and the past--her past--wasn't worth the breath she would waste telling it.
A few meters later, they were out of the thick night woods and the ceiling above their heads became clear, the sky visible. High corn fields ran along each side of the deserted dark road. Ro was glad to have her personal synthoid bodyguard along for her protection. The roads could be dangerous, with robbers, the occasional wild, rabid animal, and not to mention the fact that she was geographically lost without Zeta's built-in atlas. She needed him to get around.
Ro lifted her eyes again, but kept up the trick of walking without looking where she was going. She squinted to the midnight-blue firmament, speckled by bright stars and far away planets.
Zeta rose his head up too, and kept up Ro's slow, night-time pace well enough. He had noticed, while they were traveling together, that while walking at night she always walked slower, less on her guard--less afraid agents from NSA were after them. Normal humans, Zee noted, kept sleeping hours of a rigid schedule, opting to be awake while the sun was up, and sleep while the sun was down. Ro was not a normal human.
"I see the Pleiades," he said, pointing. "A beautiful cluster of stars in the neck of the constellation Taurus the bull. They are also called the Seven Sisters. In Greek mythology they were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. They were pursued by Orion and transformed into a constellation to save them. That's why they're huddled together like that. Seven Sisters. A family of stars."
"Zee, listen up," Ro said, and he recognized her harsh, cruel voice. "Can't you just look at something and not even see it for what it really is?" Ro swooped her left arm to encompass the horizon before them and the awing space overhead. "Can't they just be stars for once?"
"I'm sorry," he apologized, knowing it was right to do so. "Don't you think it's a nice story?"
Ro sighed. "You're hopeless, tin man. You know that?" She knew that if Zeta was human, purely human, he would be a studious, serious sort of man, forever a connoisseur of internal thought; he would be a sentimentalist to the very core. Ro tried to keep from frowning, but too much of the day had been a great disappointment. But they had gotten away, hadn't they? Escaped yet again. She watched Zeta with interest, since nothing ever phased him, not physical exertion, and for that she was scornful and jealous. She hated to admit her teenage body was feeling like a load of bricks, tired as she was growing. It'd been so long since she'd slept she couldn't even remember back so far. But Zeta was untouched by time. He looked at her playfully, whimsically, as an excited little boy.
Using one of his hologram tricks, Zeta procured in his clenched fist a gleaming object, and the yellow and white beams shone out between his tight fingers as he lifted his arm before Ro. The light was so bright, it reflected as far as the corn along the roadside and disappeared between the thick sheaves, and moths and insects glinted in the light as they flew through. Ro stared at the light from its hidden place, mesmerized, even though she knew it was a mirage, but the light was so beautiful, so clear, it soothed. Zeta turned up his hand, opened his fingers slowly, exposing the bright, beaming star floating gently above his fake human palm. He lifted his hand to his lips and blew gently. The star floated up, like a bubble caught on a soft breeze, up and up, until it was a mile or so above. Suddenly, the star exploded in a quiet brilliant flash, and thousands of little stars broke off and fell, tiny sparks of heavenly light, into the endless country fields surrounding them. Ro thought it looked like the sky was snowing starflakes.
"Well," Ro spoke, feeling a calmness over her tired nerves, smiling kindly at a hopeful Zeta, "you do have your fine points."
"They're only tricks," he chided himself modestly.
"If I could do parlor tricks, I'd have left you to fend for yourself long ago. I'd have it made in the shade," she laughed at herself, "as they say."
Not far off, they found an old abandoned barn, just a few steps from the road. Zeta determined it would be a fine place for Ro to rest for the night. Though she was stubborn, saying she was fine to walk until morning, Zee wouldn't hear of it. Somehow she was thankful.
Typical of him, he expounded on his reason. "Humans must have a normal state of unconsciousness to function properly, to think clearly."
"And I need all the clear thinking that I can get," Ro said. "All right, I get it, I'm going." She began to climb the rickety ladder that led to the upper level hay loft. Zeta remained on the dirty wooden floor below, as if to keep watch. Ro rolled her eyes, wondering what in the world he might think would be out in the middle of no where. But, then again, if they were out there, what else could be? She heard that strange mechanical noise, a static sort of sound, which told her he had changed from his man hologram into his synthoid self: a tall, scarecrow-like frame of nearly indestructible platinum-colored metal, and a narrow, featureless face, save for the two white hollow eyes.
"Zee," she called, after stumbling over the last ladder rung and into the dusty loft. There they were, those two white eyes, round and circled in black.
Zeta tilted his face to hers. His light sensors adjusted to perceive Ro in adequate illumination. "Yes?"
"Wake me up at the first signs of dawn, would ya? It's been a while since I've seen a sunrise."
"Of course, Ro. My internal readings tell me that sunrise tomorrow will occur at six-fifty-one." He cut off his speech abruptly when his companion appeared disinterested. He paraphrased instead. "Sunrise. Yes. Goodnight."