The Third Side of Life
"Where are you taking me?" she asked as they pulled her roughly down the hallway of the ship. Her ship, if she thought fifth dimensionally.
"The ship isolation policy doesn't cover the transfer of prisoners of war," one of them said slyly.
*I didn't do that!* something wailed in her head. *It wasn't me who did that to Susan! It wasn't Caroline Infante-Sheridan, it was Darya Freeman, Amelia Earheart, whatever she calls herself now, but not me! I'm sorry! But it's not my part to apologize. Oh rats...*
They dragged her to a cell and threw her in. A moment later a woman appeared, grabbed her arm, and injected her with a sleeper. Caroline wasn't too thrilled to imagine what a dose that big would do to someone who had probably never had the drug in her system before.
"You're not doing anything here," she hissed. The woman shoved her against the wall and stalked out of the cell.
Caroline, dazed and feeling slightly disoriented from the sleeper, sat down on the floor. She let herself lean over and fall asleep.
When she awoke, she was clearly not on the (her...?) ship anymore. She no longer had handcuffs on. This ship was smaller and had neither Minbari artificial gravity nor a carousel, and she floated in zero-gee. Climbing along a wall, she saw through a window that the ship was in hyperspace. There were several other people swimming around near her, all wearing the rogue telepath patch, like herself. She stared at them silently, and they returned her gaze. She tried to use Darya's telepathy, but she couldn't do it, so it couldn't have been more than a week... a month.
She couldn't help it. She started crying. She cried because she had ended up here just a minute too late. She cried in realization that Susan would hate her, and that she remembered hating Darya herself. How long would she have to be Darya? Why was she here? She cried for all those who had died in the telepath war on all three sides, and in all wars. She cried because the Shadow war was not over, would never be over, refused to end. It would continue to live in the strange ins and outs of the five common dimensions. She cried for G'Kem. Where was he? Had he switched over as well? She shuddered to think that he had become himself as a boy. She cried for her mother and father, so far away. She cried for herself--the only child in the most famous family on Minbar and in the Alliance, who couldn't even manage to live in the four normal dimensions. She cried just because of the burning sensation in her ears, which was probably from the Sleeper.
No one in the room said anything.
"It's very simple Ms. Freeman. We want to know what you know. If you don't tell us, we'll just have to get a telepath to scan you. It's a lose/lose situation for you, so you might as well tell us and spare yourself the pain of a scan."
Caroline strained to see the man standing in the dim light of the interrogation room.
"I don't know anything," she repeated. What else could she say? It was the truth. "You can scan me all you want. I don't know anything."
"Very well, as you wish, Ms. Freeman."
Another man entered the room, as if he had been waiting outside. He would scan her, she knew, and he did.
She had nothing to hide. She would end up just looking confused, with all her memories overlapping through the five common dimensions and back through time as Susan Ivanova.
"Sir, she knows nothing," the telepath announced at last. "No more than anyone would. Nothing of value. But there is something else on her mind. She's thinking of Captain Susan Ivanova."
"Yes. Her. Earthforce has decided to leave the decision of what to do with her for another time."
"Sirs," Caroline interrupted cautiously.
"Yes, Ms. Freeman? Have you decided to co-operate?" the interrogator asked, talking down to her.
She took a deep breath. "Yes sir. I will work for you under one condition."
"What... condition?" he asked rigidly.
"I will work for you if you convince Earthforce to let Captain Ivanova keep her command under all circumstances."
"Funny request given that it was her," the telepath pointed to Caroline, "Who sent Ivanova's fitness to command a starship into question."
"That will be all Mr. Gray." The interrogator turned to Caroline. "What we do with our officers is none of your concern. We will decide where she stands without your influence."
"But consider my request," Caroline said, "I'm a strong telekinetic and a P8 telepath. I could be of very good use to you. I know you need more natural telepaths on your side." She hoped she wasn't getting herself into too much. Darya Freeman was a very valuable telepath and telekinetic, but she was not Darya Freeman. Perhaps she could use what Susan knew about telepathy, but telekinesis. well, it wasn't the same thing.
"Very well. I will discuss it with my superiors as soon as possible."
He walked militaristically out of the room, leaving the telepath alone with her.
"I could tell when you scanned me that you're a strong telepath, maybe even a P12. Why aren't you with the Psi Corps?" she asked, knowing that he could ask that same question of her or any rouge telepath.
"Hah!" Gray laughed. "Damn the Corps and all its cops! I always wanted to serve in Earthforce! Here's my chance."
She nodded.
She wasn't handcuffed anymore. She dug around in her pockets for anything to look at in her boredom and to distract her from the anxiety. Her hand fell on a small, metal object. Praying it wasn't anything that would get her in further trouble, she pulled it out cautiously.
It was a small pin. At first she mistook it for a Starfury pilot's insignia, but at a second look it was clearly something else. Something she recognized from a long time ago. She tried to remember where she had seen it before.
G'Kem's birthday party. Sophie Ivanova had shown it to her when she was Susan. Maybe Susan hadn't studied American 20th century aviation history too carefully, but Caroline recognized the name. The mystery of Amelia Earheart's airplane had puzzled people for centuries, despite a discovery of what could have been (and most definitely was not, given the circumstances) her airplane, in the late 1990's.
She held the pin tightly, protecting it almost as if it were an Isil'Zha, a Ranger badge. It was Darya's one link to the Vorlons and back to G'Kem. G'Kem. Caroline's thoughts went back to him. Perhaps he had returned to who he really was. She had nothing to disprove that hope at the moment.
"You know what? You are weird," Gray said.
"Don't scan me. Pu-lease."
"I'm only reading your surface thoughts to make sure you don't try to escape."
"Where could I go? I don't even know where I am," she grumbled.
She tried to think of something more normal. She forced herself to think of her home. Where she was Caroline and everyone knew her to be that person. She tried to recite history from the turn of the century on. Then she realized that Gray wouldn't know that history either. She grouched a bit, looking for something else to think about, but at that moment, the people who were holding her decided they needed the interrogation room for something else, and two guards led her out.
They took her to a cell. She was still worried what they would do with her, who had apparently done something to Captain Ivanova. On the other hand, if they wanted her to work with them, they would have to realized that Ivanova was lucky to be alive and many rouge telepaths weren't that merciful.
The two guards posted outside her cell didn't seem to be telepaths, or at least they weren't scanning her any more. She was free to let her mind chatter be confusing to someone who didn't know what had happened to her.
"What do you think is taking them so long?" Caroline asked the man she still didn't know the name of.
"I don't know," he said, shivering. "Yeesh, it's freezing in here."
"I don't see why you think it's so cold. I like it."
The man gave her a dirty look. "It's cold I tell ya."
It was strange that he would be the one thinking it was cold. Darya was pretty skinny. Maybe she had spent long enough in St. Petersburg in drafty buildings that she wasn't affected by the cold so much. She shrugged and let the man have the last say.
She had given up trying to figure out her predicament about a year after she became Susan. There was no explaining to why she was ending up as other people she knew.
Again she remembered what Gari had said: "It's not all lost." After all, it couldn't be all lost if she was here in the time line that she remembered. Or was she? What was real anymore? Had she ever really been Caroline? Perhaps Susan from the alternate time line had simply had a vivid dream about what if the Minbari hadn't conquered Earth?
Oh well. She pulled a paper napkin out of her pocket. They had let the sleepers wear out, and she had been experimenting with her telepathic and telekinetic abilities. She crumpled up the napkin and placed it on the table.
She focused all the surrounding object fields around the napkin and it lifted up about a foot. She was getting better at it. She gave the napkin a push higher with a distance swipe of her hand. There was something magical about it all that made her feel special. Susan had no telekinetic abilities and a low teep rating, and Caroline had only a small bit of empathy that she had inherited from her father.
In a moment of inspiration, she grabbed the napkin with several opposing forces and ripped it to shreds. Darya was a specialist at tearing things, it seemed.
The man was staring at her, wide eyed.
*Never seen a teek do her stuff eh?* she thought with satisfaction.
"You're her, aren't you?"
"Who?" she asked.
"I got a portable net link. I check the Earthforce news regularly for anything that might slip out about their war plans. There was an article about Captain Ivanova this week."
"What's your point?" she shot back.
"You did a really good job," he said.
She slammed her head against the wall. She was shocked. This man was congratulating her for what Darya did! Personally saying, "I'm glad you took away Ivanova's freedom of movement. I'm glad you crippled her for the rest of her life."
"Thanks," she forced herself to say. That simple word. It could have been the worst thing she ever said had she meant it. "Forgive me Susan," she whispered so softly that even she couldn't hear it.
No, she couldn't take it. She lost it there. She whipped around and shouted, "No! No thanks! Never! How could you like what I did? I won't take what you said! Do you know how much I wish I hadn't done it? I never wanted to!" Caroline didn't care that the man was seeing her cry.
The man looked up from his net link. "Alright alright. Chill out."
"You better shut up because I could do it again if I wanted to! Maybe higher up if I wanted to! I bet no on around her cares enough about you to get help before you died of the pain or suffocated or-"
"Man, I'm beginning to see how a person could get so angry as to do what you did. Try focusing your anger on the Corps."
"I said shut up!"
She had never known herself capable of such anger. Still, what was she angry at? The man was only a bit obnoxious. She was angry at Darya, she realized. It would have been easier had she not been Susan in a past lifetime. Much easier if she had never felt Susan's anger as well.
She tried to calm herself down. She went into a Minbari meditative state. She could almost see Susan's face reflected in someone else's eyes.
"G'Kem, where are you now?" she whispered.
A woman in an Earthforce uniform walked in. She handed a transparency to Caroline without seeming to notice her reddened eyes. Through her tears, she saw that her interrogation had gone well, and she had been accepted to spy on the rogue telepaths under heavy watch. One condition on her part: Captain Susan Ivanova keeps her command. Their condition: Darya Freeman co- operates completely.
*Prophecy attends to itself* she thought *History will attend to itself as well. Susan will keep her command.*
She hadn't done much by the time Earthforce retreated from the war scene. Oh, a spy mission there, a scan there. Nothing much.
She had been mentally keeping track of Susan. She was probably back on her ship by now. Why had Susan been so eager to leave Minbar? It was such a pretty planet...
She was homesick, she realized. Up until this point, Minbar hadn't been an easy place to try to get to. In St. Petersburg, it had been 100% impossible. Now, the thought that she was free from Earthforce and could now get back to the planet of her birth made her even more homesick.
"Please, can I get a ride on your ship?" she asked a Minbari cargo shipper.
"Why? We are not a passenger ship."
"Most of the ships going from the Earth colonies to Minbar have been stalled due to the war."
"Why do you want to go to Minbar?" he asked suspiciously.
"It's a beautiful place."
"It is not a tourist attraction either."
"Oh come on please," she begged. "I love Minbar. It feels like a second home to me." That she said in Minbari. Perhaps that would convince him that she wasn't just a casual traveler. "I'll give you this." She held out Darya's flyer wings.
"Alright alright. I will give you a ride, but keep your decoration. I have no use for it."
It was strange to be treated like such an alien. She hadn't gotten a chance to look in a mirror much, and she still was caught up thinking that if she wasn't Susan anymore, then she must be Caroline, who was half Minbari. People had always accepted her as one of them.
It was good to speak Minbari again. Andronotto was her first language, and she didn't want to forget it. After four years having spoken from her fifth dimensional subconscious knowledge of the Russian language, she had picked up enough into her surface knowledge to be accustomed to speaking it. She wasn't sure, but she thought that she might have a bit of an accent.
"I leave in three hours. In your own interest I suggest you do not bring anything dangerous," the man said, with a bit of a threatening edge to his voice.
"This is all I have. Just myself. And thank you again." She waved the greeting sign of the worker caste and climbed into the ship.
It was good to be back in the crystal cities. When the sun broke through the morning fog the light reflected off the tops of the buildings and was split into rainbows. It made her homesick for her parents, whom she would so often see against this kind of background. But she knew she could never see them again until G'Kem made contact with her and invited her to his birthday party in thirty years. How long was thirty years to wait? She had only lived twenty in her life, so she had no way to judge the length of time. Perhaps she would only spend four years as Darya, like she had as Susan. Where would she go after that? Home? Her real home?
The Minbari weren't too big on carpet, which her parents had always had in their house. The house she had moved into had none. To save some money, she was laying it down herself in the bedroom, which was the smallest room. The rest she would have done professionally.
At the moment, she was in the living room. She laid the carpet out on the floor. She cut steadily for several minutes. Just as she started on the last side, the carpet cutters snagged on a tough fiber. The cutters slipped and she ended up with a nice bloody gash on her thumb.
"Yeeesh!" she shouted and ran to the bathroom, dropping the clippers. She washed the cut out at the sink. She was about to get a bandage from the cabinet when something inclined her to stop. She looked at her thumb.
The blood was already beginning to drip out again. She wondered what would happen if she pushed it back in? She was getting subtle with her object forces. She held the blood with one force current and looked at the rest.
It came naturally to her, unnaturally easily, like her knowledge of the Russian language. She saw how that cell could fit right there, and that one there. It was like a puzzle, fitting the cells back together. After several minutes of looking at the cellular level, she took a step back.
It was an obsession started with feeling helpless about what Darya had done to Susan. It was an obsession that she worked on whenever she could. She had tried not to accept that nothing could be done about what had happened. Now, theoretically, possibly... There was a slight hope, a possibility. Something that was even too complicated for modern science to undertake at a scale that the public could benefit from.
As she took a step back from the cellular level, she saw that she had rewoven the tissue on her finger. She wouldn't have even noticed it had she not been looking so carefully. She pressed it gently. It hurt only a little bit. What had been a deep gash that might have required stitches was only a faint line in her skin. She wondered what else was possible.
The Psi sign was being taken off of the top of the former Psi Corps headquarters in Geneva. Telepaths stood around respectfully at the building as the final symbol of their organization was removed.
Caroline stood in the crowd, not out of respect, but out of satisfaction. The Psi Corps wasn't fashionable any more. They couldn't keep tabs on the telepaths after all their records were destroyed.
She was also curious. She was curious about the emotions running through there. A mix of sadness for such a powerful organization at its end, mother and father gone at last, and the joy of being free telepaths. There were some who felt nothing either way.
Many telepaths still wore the gloves. They did have a practical use after all. Still, that didn't count with those who still wore the psi pin. There always would be those hangers-on to the old tradition, even when the new Psi Corps was founded in 2298, and whose members wore neither gloves nor the pin.
Even some of those in complete joy over the end of the Corps cried as the head Psi Cops removed their pins and handed them over to the president.
The ceremony lasted more than two hours. Caroline, who had never had a fondness for speeches, left early. She could still hear the crowd two blocks away where she saw someone standing on the sidewalk, against the wall of a building. Between her fingers she held a gold psi pin. She was crying without tears. She seemed to be having a two-way conversation with herself.
Caroline dared to listen to her surface thoughts. There was something about this woman that interested her.
Voice #1: You're dying!
*Am not.* Voice #2 was a whisper.
Voice #1: You're dying!
Voice #2: I can live without you.
Voice #1: You can never live without Control. You're dead!
Voice #2: I'll never die before you.
Voice #1: You're weak, you know.
Voice #2: You're the one who's dying. The Psi Corps is dead! You're dead!
The woman caught the pin in her left hand and clenched her fists tightly. Then she threw the pin into her right.
Voice #1: That's where you're wrong, Talia.
Voice #2: Then why am I here?!
Voice #1: How should I know? Why is SHE in here?
Caroline leaped out of the woman's mind. The woman stared at her for a moment and then went back to debating with herself.
Voice #1: I feel it now, you're dying.
Voice #2: Never...
Voice #3: Both of you! You're acting like children!
Caroline was startled. Had she said that? She didn't think so.
Voice #2: Help me!
Voice #1: Don't listen to her.
Voice #2: If you care about me, help!
Voice #1: No! You know she doesn't deserve to live!
Caroline: Who are you?
Voice #1: Talia Winters.
Voice #2: No! I'm the real Talia! Help me!
Voice #1: Pay no attention to her.
Voice #3: You know that's not a good answer to "Who are you?"
Caroline: But it's what I meant. How do you identify yourself? What do people call you?
That was directed at Voice #3.
Voice #3: What?
Caroline: Who?
Voice #2: You don't know who that is, Caroline?
Caroline: No, I don't.
Voice #1: That's so typical.
Voice #3: You be quiet, Control. By God, you be quiet. To Caroline: I'm sort of Talia's guardian angel.
Caroline: Okay... huh?
Voice #1: IT CAN'T BE!
Voice #2: Look who's scared now.
Caroline: I still don't understand.
Voice #2: It's Jason Ironheart!
Caroline: Who?
Voice #1: The little weakling has a guardian angel, how sweet.
Voice #2: You're only saying that because you're scared, and you should be.
As she stared, Caroline saw the shape of a man standing next to Talia, his hands on her shoulders. This was weird. This was very weird.
Caroline: If you don't mind, I'll just leave now, I never should have interfered.
Voice #2: Don't go! I like you!
Voice #1: Good riddance.
Ironheart: T(AOL)eeps.
Caroline: What?
She was never good at telepathic shorthand.
Ironheart: Army Of Light Telepaths. Get with them if you want to go home. The--
She had broken too quickly. Home? What had Ironheart meant? What home? Could he possibly mean back to her family on Minbar in the 24th century? Out of this time?
She tried to get back in. As strong as a telekinetic as Darya was, she really wasn't such a great telepath. She pushed in.
Caroline: Tell me more.
Ironheart: The Army Of Light Telepaths. On Zion.
Caroline: I've never heard of them.
Ironheart: That's because you've been living on Minbar when you should have been living on the new telepath home world. You're a telepath, Renla'Ir'Zha, not a Minbari anymore.
Caroline: Renla'Ir'Zha? Disloyal entertainer of the Shadows?
Ironheart: They think that you're working for them. You must work around them without them seeing. But you must go. Get to Zion. You'll need the T(AOL)eeps.
Talia launched herself across the street as she began yelling at Control and back at herself again. The last thing Caroline heard was "Susan! I'm here again! Forgive me, love!"
Caroline lost her grip again. She stood there for several minutes, until Talia was lost in the crowds of people flooding out from the Psi Corps ceremony.
It had to be real. What she had been told had not been an invention of her own imagination. Jason Ironheart had been inside Talia. That she knew from god-knows-where, most likely from Susan's memory. In her next off period, when she wasn't busy offering her services as a teek on Minbar, she would go to Zion, and find these Army Of Light Telepaths.
She was getting very disheartened. She had been on Zion for how long had it been? Ten years before she permanently moved to the planet, and another ten after that. She wished she could go back to Minbar, but she was stuck looking for the telepaths that she was looking for. But something would come her way very soon.
She was walking down the street coming from several errands, her head immersed in the telepathic chatter all around her.
*Oh yes, it came from that nice little shop on Byron Way, you know the one that's all hip about Hampton-Garibaldi Industries on Mars supporting the Boy Scouts, yes that one.*
*I told you before, I have an appointment on Monday...*
*Does anybody know where I can find a bathroom? I really gotta go...*
*Where do you want to eat? There's an inex(cheap)pensive restaurant near here.*
She wasn't quite looking where she was going and before she knew it, she had ran into someone.
"Oh, so sorry!" she said out loud. Suddenly she recognized him. "G'Kem!" It just came out. She shouldn't have said it, but her thoughts had probably betrayed her anyway. She wasn't supposed to know him yet.
"You know me?" he asked.
"N*yes*o."
"You say no but you think yes?" he said politely.
"I really have to go."
She was all prepared to run as fast as she could and still look unsuspicious, when a telepathic word sent by G'Kem caught her. It was a cautious test of sorts.
"What do you mean 'Renla'Ir'Zha'? Where did you hear that?" she demanded.
"You know it too?" he asked. "You know me and you know that word?"
*Yes,* she thought.
*This is horrendous, all this bumping around. We need a password, Caroline, in case this ever happens again.*
*So where have you been all these years?*
"Where are you taking me?" she asked as they pulled her roughly down the hallway of the ship. Her ship, if she thought fifth dimensionally.
"The ship isolation policy doesn't cover the transfer of prisoners of war," one of them said slyly.
*I didn't do that!* something wailed in her head. *It wasn't me who did that to Susan! It wasn't Caroline Infante-Sheridan, it was Darya Freeman, Amelia Earheart, whatever she calls herself now, but not me! I'm sorry! But it's not my part to apologize. Oh rats...*
They dragged her to a cell and threw her in. A moment later a woman appeared, grabbed her arm, and injected her with a sleeper. Caroline wasn't too thrilled to imagine what a dose that big would do to someone who had probably never had the drug in her system before.
"You're not doing anything here," she hissed. The woman shoved her against the wall and stalked out of the cell.
Caroline, dazed and feeling slightly disoriented from the sleeper, sat down on the floor. She let herself lean over and fall asleep.
When she awoke, she was clearly not on the (her...?) ship anymore. She no longer had handcuffs on. This ship was smaller and had neither Minbari artificial gravity nor a carousel, and she floated in zero-gee. Climbing along a wall, she saw through a window that the ship was in hyperspace. There were several other people swimming around near her, all wearing the rogue telepath patch, like herself. She stared at them silently, and they returned her gaze. She tried to use Darya's telepathy, but she couldn't do it, so it couldn't have been more than a week... a month.
She couldn't help it. She started crying. She cried because she had ended up here just a minute too late. She cried in realization that Susan would hate her, and that she remembered hating Darya herself. How long would she have to be Darya? Why was she here? She cried for all those who had died in the telepath war on all three sides, and in all wars. She cried because the Shadow war was not over, would never be over, refused to end. It would continue to live in the strange ins and outs of the five common dimensions. She cried for G'Kem. Where was he? Had he switched over as well? She shuddered to think that he had become himself as a boy. She cried for her mother and father, so far away. She cried for herself--the only child in the most famous family on Minbar and in the Alliance, who couldn't even manage to live in the four normal dimensions. She cried just because of the burning sensation in her ears, which was probably from the Sleeper.
No one in the room said anything.
"It's very simple Ms. Freeman. We want to know what you know. If you don't tell us, we'll just have to get a telepath to scan you. It's a lose/lose situation for you, so you might as well tell us and spare yourself the pain of a scan."
Caroline strained to see the man standing in the dim light of the interrogation room.
"I don't know anything," she repeated. What else could she say? It was the truth. "You can scan me all you want. I don't know anything."
"Very well, as you wish, Ms. Freeman."
Another man entered the room, as if he had been waiting outside. He would scan her, she knew, and he did.
She had nothing to hide. She would end up just looking confused, with all her memories overlapping through the five common dimensions and back through time as Susan Ivanova.
"Sir, she knows nothing," the telepath announced at last. "No more than anyone would. Nothing of value. But there is something else on her mind. She's thinking of Captain Susan Ivanova."
"Yes. Her. Earthforce has decided to leave the decision of what to do with her for another time."
"Sirs," Caroline interrupted cautiously.
"Yes, Ms. Freeman? Have you decided to co-operate?" the interrogator asked, talking down to her.
She took a deep breath. "Yes sir. I will work for you under one condition."
"What... condition?" he asked rigidly.
"I will work for you if you convince Earthforce to let Captain Ivanova keep her command under all circumstances."
"Funny request given that it was her," the telepath pointed to Caroline, "Who sent Ivanova's fitness to command a starship into question."
"That will be all Mr. Gray." The interrogator turned to Caroline. "What we do with our officers is none of your concern. We will decide where she stands without your influence."
"But consider my request," Caroline said, "I'm a strong telekinetic and a P8 telepath. I could be of very good use to you. I know you need more natural telepaths on your side." She hoped she wasn't getting herself into too much. Darya Freeman was a very valuable telepath and telekinetic, but she was not Darya Freeman. Perhaps she could use what Susan knew about telepathy, but telekinesis. well, it wasn't the same thing.
"Very well. I will discuss it with my superiors as soon as possible."
He walked militaristically out of the room, leaving the telepath alone with her.
"I could tell when you scanned me that you're a strong telepath, maybe even a P12. Why aren't you with the Psi Corps?" she asked, knowing that he could ask that same question of her or any rouge telepath.
"Hah!" Gray laughed. "Damn the Corps and all its cops! I always wanted to serve in Earthforce! Here's my chance."
She nodded.
She wasn't handcuffed anymore. She dug around in her pockets for anything to look at in her boredom and to distract her from the anxiety. Her hand fell on a small, metal object. Praying it wasn't anything that would get her in further trouble, she pulled it out cautiously.
It was a small pin. At first she mistook it for a Starfury pilot's insignia, but at a second look it was clearly something else. Something she recognized from a long time ago. She tried to remember where she had seen it before.
G'Kem's birthday party. Sophie Ivanova had shown it to her when she was Susan. Maybe Susan hadn't studied American 20th century aviation history too carefully, but Caroline recognized the name. The mystery of Amelia Earheart's airplane had puzzled people for centuries, despite a discovery of what could have been (and most definitely was not, given the circumstances) her airplane, in the late 1990's.
She held the pin tightly, protecting it almost as if it were an Isil'Zha, a Ranger badge. It was Darya's one link to the Vorlons and back to G'Kem. G'Kem. Caroline's thoughts went back to him. Perhaps he had returned to who he really was. She had nothing to disprove that hope at the moment.
"You know what? You are weird," Gray said.
"Don't scan me. Pu-lease."
"I'm only reading your surface thoughts to make sure you don't try to escape."
"Where could I go? I don't even know where I am," she grumbled.
She tried to think of something more normal. She forced herself to think of her home. Where she was Caroline and everyone knew her to be that person. She tried to recite history from the turn of the century on. Then she realized that Gray wouldn't know that history either. She grouched a bit, looking for something else to think about, but at that moment, the people who were holding her decided they needed the interrogation room for something else, and two guards led her out.
They took her to a cell. She was still worried what they would do with her, who had apparently done something to Captain Ivanova. On the other hand, if they wanted her to work with them, they would have to realized that Ivanova was lucky to be alive and many rouge telepaths weren't that merciful.
The two guards posted outside her cell didn't seem to be telepaths, or at least they weren't scanning her any more. She was free to let her mind chatter be confusing to someone who didn't know what had happened to her.
"What do you think is taking them so long?" Caroline asked the man she still didn't know the name of.
"I don't know," he said, shivering. "Yeesh, it's freezing in here."
"I don't see why you think it's so cold. I like it."
The man gave her a dirty look. "It's cold I tell ya."
It was strange that he would be the one thinking it was cold. Darya was pretty skinny. Maybe she had spent long enough in St. Petersburg in drafty buildings that she wasn't affected by the cold so much. She shrugged and let the man have the last say.
She had given up trying to figure out her predicament about a year after she became Susan. There was no explaining to why she was ending up as other people she knew.
Again she remembered what Gari had said: "It's not all lost." After all, it couldn't be all lost if she was here in the time line that she remembered. Or was she? What was real anymore? Had she ever really been Caroline? Perhaps Susan from the alternate time line had simply had a vivid dream about what if the Minbari hadn't conquered Earth?
Oh well. She pulled a paper napkin out of her pocket. They had let the sleepers wear out, and she had been experimenting with her telepathic and telekinetic abilities. She crumpled up the napkin and placed it on the table.
She focused all the surrounding object fields around the napkin and it lifted up about a foot. She was getting better at it. She gave the napkin a push higher with a distance swipe of her hand. There was something magical about it all that made her feel special. Susan had no telekinetic abilities and a low teep rating, and Caroline had only a small bit of empathy that she had inherited from her father.
In a moment of inspiration, she grabbed the napkin with several opposing forces and ripped it to shreds. Darya was a specialist at tearing things, it seemed.
The man was staring at her, wide eyed.
*Never seen a teek do her stuff eh?* she thought with satisfaction.
"You're her, aren't you?"
"Who?" she asked.
"I got a portable net link. I check the Earthforce news regularly for anything that might slip out about their war plans. There was an article about Captain Ivanova this week."
"What's your point?" she shot back.
"You did a really good job," he said.
She slammed her head against the wall. She was shocked. This man was congratulating her for what Darya did! Personally saying, "I'm glad you took away Ivanova's freedom of movement. I'm glad you crippled her for the rest of her life."
"Thanks," she forced herself to say. That simple word. It could have been the worst thing she ever said had she meant it. "Forgive me Susan," she whispered so softly that even she couldn't hear it.
No, she couldn't take it. She lost it there. She whipped around and shouted, "No! No thanks! Never! How could you like what I did? I won't take what you said! Do you know how much I wish I hadn't done it? I never wanted to!" Caroline didn't care that the man was seeing her cry.
The man looked up from his net link. "Alright alright. Chill out."
"You better shut up because I could do it again if I wanted to! Maybe higher up if I wanted to! I bet no on around her cares enough about you to get help before you died of the pain or suffocated or-"
"Man, I'm beginning to see how a person could get so angry as to do what you did. Try focusing your anger on the Corps."
"I said shut up!"
She had never known herself capable of such anger. Still, what was she angry at? The man was only a bit obnoxious. She was angry at Darya, she realized. It would have been easier had she not been Susan in a past lifetime. Much easier if she had never felt Susan's anger as well.
She tried to calm herself down. She went into a Minbari meditative state. She could almost see Susan's face reflected in someone else's eyes.
"G'Kem, where are you now?" she whispered.
A woman in an Earthforce uniform walked in. She handed a transparency to Caroline without seeming to notice her reddened eyes. Through her tears, she saw that her interrogation had gone well, and she had been accepted to spy on the rogue telepaths under heavy watch. One condition on her part: Captain Susan Ivanova keeps her command. Their condition: Darya Freeman co- operates completely.
*Prophecy attends to itself* she thought *History will attend to itself as well. Susan will keep her command.*
She hadn't done much by the time Earthforce retreated from the war scene. Oh, a spy mission there, a scan there. Nothing much.
She had been mentally keeping track of Susan. She was probably back on her ship by now. Why had Susan been so eager to leave Minbar? It was such a pretty planet...
She was homesick, she realized. Up until this point, Minbar hadn't been an easy place to try to get to. In St. Petersburg, it had been 100% impossible. Now, the thought that she was free from Earthforce and could now get back to the planet of her birth made her even more homesick.
"Please, can I get a ride on your ship?" she asked a Minbari cargo shipper.
"Why? We are not a passenger ship."
"Most of the ships going from the Earth colonies to Minbar have been stalled due to the war."
"Why do you want to go to Minbar?" he asked suspiciously.
"It's a beautiful place."
"It is not a tourist attraction either."
"Oh come on please," she begged. "I love Minbar. It feels like a second home to me." That she said in Minbari. Perhaps that would convince him that she wasn't just a casual traveler. "I'll give you this." She held out Darya's flyer wings.
"Alright alright. I will give you a ride, but keep your decoration. I have no use for it."
It was strange to be treated like such an alien. She hadn't gotten a chance to look in a mirror much, and she still was caught up thinking that if she wasn't Susan anymore, then she must be Caroline, who was half Minbari. People had always accepted her as one of them.
It was good to speak Minbari again. Andronotto was her first language, and she didn't want to forget it. After four years having spoken from her fifth dimensional subconscious knowledge of the Russian language, she had picked up enough into her surface knowledge to be accustomed to speaking it. She wasn't sure, but she thought that she might have a bit of an accent.
"I leave in three hours. In your own interest I suggest you do not bring anything dangerous," the man said, with a bit of a threatening edge to his voice.
"This is all I have. Just myself. And thank you again." She waved the greeting sign of the worker caste and climbed into the ship.
It was good to be back in the crystal cities. When the sun broke through the morning fog the light reflected off the tops of the buildings and was split into rainbows. It made her homesick for her parents, whom she would so often see against this kind of background. But she knew she could never see them again until G'Kem made contact with her and invited her to his birthday party in thirty years. How long was thirty years to wait? She had only lived twenty in her life, so she had no way to judge the length of time. Perhaps she would only spend four years as Darya, like she had as Susan. Where would she go after that? Home? Her real home?
The Minbari weren't too big on carpet, which her parents had always had in their house. The house she had moved into had none. To save some money, she was laying it down herself in the bedroom, which was the smallest room. The rest she would have done professionally.
At the moment, she was in the living room. She laid the carpet out on the floor. She cut steadily for several minutes. Just as she started on the last side, the carpet cutters snagged on a tough fiber. The cutters slipped and she ended up with a nice bloody gash on her thumb.
"Yeeesh!" she shouted and ran to the bathroom, dropping the clippers. She washed the cut out at the sink. She was about to get a bandage from the cabinet when something inclined her to stop. She looked at her thumb.
The blood was already beginning to drip out again. She wondered what would happen if she pushed it back in? She was getting subtle with her object forces. She held the blood with one force current and looked at the rest.
It came naturally to her, unnaturally easily, like her knowledge of the Russian language. She saw how that cell could fit right there, and that one there. It was like a puzzle, fitting the cells back together. After several minutes of looking at the cellular level, she took a step back.
It was an obsession started with feeling helpless about what Darya had done to Susan. It was an obsession that she worked on whenever she could. She had tried not to accept that nothing could be done about what had happened. Now, theoretically, possibly... There was a slight hope, a possibility. Something that was even too complicated for modern science to undertake at a scale that the public could benefit from.
As she took a step back from the cellular level, she saw that she had rewoven the tissue on her finger. She wouldn't have even noticed it had she not been looking so carefully. She pressed it gently. It hurt only a little bit. What had been a deep gash that might have required stitches was only a faint line in her skin. She wondered what else was possible.
The Psi sign was being taken off of the top of the former Psi Corps headquarters in Geneva. Telepaths stood around respectfully at the building as the final symbol of their organization was removed.
Caroline stood in the crowd, not out of respect, but out of satisfaction. The Psi Corps wasn't fashionable any more. They couldn't keep tabs on the telepaths after all their records were destroyed.
She was also curious. She was curious about the emotions running through there. A mix of sadness for such a powerful organization at its end, mother and father gone at last, and the joy of being free telepaths. There were some who felt nothing either way.
Many telepaths still wore the gloves. They did have a practical use after all. Still, that didn't count with those who still wore the psi pin. There always would be those hangers-on to the old tradition, even when the new Psi Corps was founded in 2298, and whose members wore neither gloves nor the pin.
Even some of those in complete joy over the end of the Corps cried as the head Psi Cops removed their pins and handed them over to the president.
The ceremony lasted more than two hours. Caroline, who had never had a fondness for speeches, left early. She could still hear the crowd two blocks away where she saw someone standing on the sidewalk, against the wall of a building. Between her fingers she held a gold psi pin. She was crying without tears. She seemed to be having a two-way conversation with herself.
Caroline dared to listen to her surface thoughts. There was something about this woman that interested her.
Voice #1: You're dying!
*Am not.* Voice #2 was a whisper.
Voice #1: You're dying!
Voice #2: I can live without you.
Voice #1: You can never live without Control. You're dead!
Voice #2: I'll never die before you.
Voice #1: You're weak, you know.
Voice #2: You're the one who's dying. The Psi Corps is dead! You're dead!
The woman caught the pin in her left hand and clenched her fists tightly. Then she threw the pin into her right.
Voice #1: That's where you're wrong, Talia.
Voice #2: Then why am I here?!
Voice #1: How should I know? Why is SHE in here?
Caroline leaped out of the woman's mind. The woman stared at her for a moment and then went back to debating with herself.
Voice #1: I feel it now, you're dying.
Voice #2: Never...
Voice #3: Both of you! You're acting like children!
Caroline was startled. Had she said that? She didn't think so.
Voice #2: Help me!
Voice #1: Don't listen to her.
Voice #2: If you care about me, help!
Voice #1: No! You know she doesn't deserve to live!
Caroline: Who are you?
Voice #1: Talia Winters.
Voice #2: No! I'm the real Talia! Help me!
Voice #1: Pay no attention to her.
Voice #3: You know that's not a good answer to "Who are you?"
Caroline: But it's what I meant. How do you identify yourself? What do people call you?
That was directed at Voice #3.
Voice #3: What?
Caroline: Who?
Voice #2: You don't know who that is, Caroline?
Caroline: No, I don't.
Voice #1: That's so typical.
Voice #3: You be quiet, Control. By God, you be quiet. To Caroline: I'm sort of Talia's guardian angel.
Caroline: Okay... huh?
Voice #1: IT CAN'T BE!
Voice #2: Look who's scared now.
Caroline: I still don't understand.
Voice #2: It's Jason Ironheart!
Caroline: Who?
Voice #1: The little weakling has a guardian angel, how sweet.
Voice #2: You're only saying that because you're scared, and you should be.
As she stared, Caroline saw the shape of a man standing next to Talia, his hands on her shoulders. This was weird. This was very weird.
Caroline: If you don't mind, I'll just leave now, I never should have interfered.
Voice #2: Don't go! I like you!
Voice #1: Good riddance.
Ironheart: T(AOL)eeps.
Caroline: What?
She was never good at telepathic shorthand.
Ironheart: Army Of Light Telepaths. Get with them if you want to go home. The--
She had broken too quickly. Home? What had Ironheart meant? What home? Could he possibly mean back to her family on Minbar in the 24th century? Out of this time?
She tried to get back in. As strong as a telekinetic as Darya was, she really wasn't such a great telepath. She pushed in.
Caroline: Tell me more.
Ironheart: The Army Of Light Telepaths. On Zion.
Caroline: I've never heard of them.
Ironheart: That's because you've been living on Minbar when you should have been living on the new telepath home world. You're a telepath, Renla'Ir'Zha, not a Minbari anymore.
Caroline: Renla'Ir'Zha? Disloyal entertainer of the Shadows?
Ironheart: They think that you're working for them. You must work around them without them seeing. But you must go. Get to Zion. You'll need the T(AOL)eeps.
Talia launched herself across the street as she began yelling at Control and back at herself again. The last thing Caroline heard was "Susan! I'm here again! Forgive me, love!"
Caroline lost her grip again. She stood there for several minutes, until Talia was lost in the crowds of people flooding out from the Psi Corps ceremony.
It had to be real. What she had been told had not been an invention of her own imagination. Jason Ironheart had been inside Talia. That she knew from god-knows-where, most likely from Susan's memory. In her next off period, when she wasn't busy offering her services as a teek on Minbar, she would go to Zion, and find these Army Of Light Telepaths.
She was getting very disheartened. She had been on Zion for how long had it been? Ten years before she permanently moved to the planet, and another ten after that. She wished she could go back to Minbar, but she was stuck looking for the telepaths that she was looking for. But something would come her way very soon.
She was walking down the street coming from several errands, her head immersed in the telepathic chatter all around her.
*Oh yes, it came from that nice little shop on Byron Way, you know the one that's all hip about Hampton-Garibaldi Industries on Mars supporting the Boy Scouts, yes that one.*
*I told you before, I have an appointment on Monday...*
*Does anybody know where I can find a bathroom? I really gotta go...*
*Where do you want to eat? There's an inex(cheap)pensive restaurant near here.*
She wasn't quite looking where she was going and before she knew it, she had ran into someone.
"Oh, so sorry!" she said out loud. Suddenly she recognized him. "G'Kem!" It just came out. She shouldn't have said it, but her thoughts had probably betrayed her anyway. She wasn't supposed to know him yet.
"You know me?" he asked.
"N*yes*o."
"You say no but you think yes?" he said politely.
"I really have to go."
She was all prepared to run as fast as she could and still look unsuspicious, when a telepathic word sent by G'Kem caught her. It was a cautious test of sorts.
"What do you mean 'Renla'Ir'Zha'? Where did you hear that?" she demanded.
"You know it too?" he asked. "You know me and you know that word?"
*Yes,* she thought.
*This is horrendous, all this bumping around. We need a password, Caroline, in case this ever happens again.*
*So where have you been all these years?*