Selecting Allies
"Caroline? Maybe we should go somewhere else."
"Yeah, I agree. Is this a good time even?" she asked. "I mean are you busy?"
"Nothing I can't do some other day," he replied.
She nodded.
"Gosh, how long have you lived anyway?"
"Lets see. I've lost track. Sixty-five years as myself, four as Feodor Prozorovsky, twenty as this G'Kem... I'm nearing a hundred!"
"Well you look great I'll say."
They laughed.
"If I don't count Susan in this universe, I've lived fourteen, four, twenty... I'm 48," she said. "I've grown up. I haven't been Caroline since I was fourteen but I've grown up anyway! Caroline has grown up as two other women!"
"Amazing isn't it," G'Kem said.
"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this anymore in public," she interrupted.
"Want to come to my place?"
"Sure," she said.
"There's something I don't understand, G'Kem."
"What's that?" he asked.
"Where's the real G'Kem? You can't be him, even though you look like him."
"I know. That's what's puzzled me ever since I ended up here. The real G'Kem is living on the other side of Zion. He's here somewhere. I've been trying to avoid being where he is very hard."
"I don't think there's another Darya because I was there on the ship and I saw what happened to Susan as if I was the one who did it, and everything went... too out there in public to not belong in the real time line."
"Yet none of this really happened to me, so I have to be a duplicate G'Kem. Gee, I look like myself but I'm not really myself. It's kind of disheartening."
"Listen, I don't want to interrupt the mood but I think we need to talk about what we're doing here. Why we're skipping around in the five dimensions. Maybe even six dimensions since we're changing bodies," she said.
"There... is... no... such... thing... as the Army Of Light Telepaths. I've done some pretty in-depth searches, gotten my nose in some pretty secret places," he told her.
"Me too. I've found nothing either."
"Then where did the title come from?" he wondered.
"I don't know."
"But I do have an idea as to who might be part of it, wherever she is."
"Who?"
"I don't know her last name," G'Kem said slowly, "Her first name... what was it? Angie. Maybe also the original G'Kem's kind-of-girlfriend, Ashley Bester. Still I can't risk contacting Ashley without running into my other self in the process."
"I could do it," Caroline jumped in, "We need time to figure this out before we bring other people into it though."
"But we only have three years to do that. 2290 is our deadline. That's the year I went back in time to give Susan the extra life energy and the whole thing got started."
"If we can get hold of this Angie person, we can probably do something. You want to brainstorm?" she suggested.
"Now?"
"Yea." She began to pick up his hands to link minds.
"Uh, Caroline, maybe we could do it the old fashioned way. Talk out loud," he said nervously.
"Why?" she asked. "It's much slower."
"I know, I know. I just think that... well I don't know."
"Well if you want to talk, I'll do that."
"Good. Thanks."
She didn't think much of it. People had days in which they didn't want to link minds with anyone. She sighed and leaned back.
"So where do you think Angie is?"
"I have no idea. I mean I know where she will be three years from now but she could be anywhere. I mean she might not even be on the planet."
"Let's assume she is at the moment. If we don't find her on the planet, maybe she's out there somewhere, but for now, let's just hope she's on Zion."
"Sure," G'Kem said quietly.
"You don't seem too enthusiastic about all of this," she observed.
"I--I don't know. I just think that we have the right not to do this. I mean what proof do we have that history can be changed? What if we just did nothing? What would that do?"
"G'Kem, you know what the deciding factor of the Shadow War is just as well as I do--when and how Ganya Ivanov and in turn Jeffrey Sinclair die. Common sense will tell you that by keeping Ganya from drowning, the time line will be preserved."
"But Susan already saved Ganya from drowning, and you saw Old St. Petersburg too. Something didn't work. What if that something was what we are going to do?"
"Or what if we were getting a taste of what would happen if didn't do something?" Caroline argued.
There was a long silence as if he were running the conflict back and forth through his head.
"Alright. Fine, we'll figure out where Angie is."
"I hope you'll work with me, G'Kem. I'd hate to have to do this alone."
He stood up. "I have to go to the bathroom."
She was supposed to meet Angie a half hour ago. She hadn't shown up. Neither had G'Kem. Perhaps she had gotten the time wrong, or the place. G'Kem had been the one who had gotten hold of her.
"Caroline!" She turned around. At last.
"Where is she?"
"I just got a message from her. She can't come."
"Why not?"
"I'm not sure."
"Did she give any hint?" she asked.
"I couldn't tell."
"Did she just decide not to come? Decide she didn't want to get into this?"
"I don't--I don't know."
"G'Kem, you're keeping something. What is it? Just tell me."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, I've known you for several decades."
"What are you getting at?" he demanded.
*Just tell me what it is. You can trust me. We're soul mates. We realized that a long time ago. Remember the night after your fiftieth birthday party? You gave me back Susan's--*
"Get out of my head!" He began to run.
She ran after him, but he was faster. She hadn't even been scanning him. She had only been talking on a telepathic level. Why was he so sensitive? Why had he never let her into his mind after the first casual meeting? She gave up and stopped. She wouldn't pry if he didn't want her in his mind.
Still, it was strange. In their other lives, they had been so close. Why was G'Kem suddenly running away from her? She longed for the olden days before all this began. She had shouted about the night after his birthday party without thinking. That was the night they finally realized what their relationship was. Too bad. Susan died not long after that...
Susan had spent the night at G'Kem's after the party. She hadn't been able to sleep because she kept turning over in her head what G'Kem and she had said at the party.
*Why didn't you tell me you went back in time?*
*Because I didn't think you would want to know when you were going to die. Life energy acts strangely when it's not the energy you've had from birth. It doesn't quite fit into your biofunction as naturally. That was why John died so quickly, not as naturally. That'll probably happen to you too. You're not only living on Marcus's life energy, you're living on mine. I only gave you enough to live long enough to save Ganya, and a little longer.*
*Because I didn't think you would want to know when you were going to die.*
*Londo Mollari knew when he was going to die.*
*Whatever.*
*Oh hell, I'm not going to go to sleep.*
She had gotten out of bed to find G'Kem sitting on the couch with quarter light.
"You couldn't sleep either?" she had asked. G'Kem had shook his head slowly.
They had sat on the couch together. G'Kem had put his arm around Susan. At long last, she had said, "How long did you mean when you said I wasn't going to live much longer?"
"Not much. Maybe a couple months. I don't know."
No reply.
"Isn't it great Susan," he had said quietly, "For so long, you wouldn't let anyone love you. Now look. You have me. You have David and Stephanie. You even have your mother again. You're not going to die alone or unloved."
"There's only one thing missing."
"What?"
She flicked her fingers on her right ear lobe.
"Oh well. I guess that can't be helped," she had said, laughing quietly.
"No. Wait a minute, Susan."
"What?"
"Through all my career, I've helped people remember their past lives. But up until recently I've never tried to remember any of my own. I think seeing Sophie flipped a switch in my mind. She seemed to know something that I was just discovering, and she gave me this."
G'Kem pulled off the earring from his one pierced ear. Susan took it from G'Kem.
"It's a match," she had breathed after she took the earring from her other ear to look at it.
"Take it."
"I can't, G'Kem. This earring doesn't have a match anymore."
"It does Susan. Did you know that souls return to loved ones lifetime after lifetime? I don't know if I really have the right to give this to you, but you can take it if you want to."
"No wonder you were afraid of Minbari ships when you were little," she had observed.
Caroline fingered her ears. She had them because Susan had, in her will, given "David and Stephanie Infante-Sheridan's unborn daughter" that pair of earrings. Susan in St. Petersburg probably had them from before the war. But how did Darya come to possess them? It was a mystery. She was glad that she had the memory of the party night though. How long they had known each other! They had been Susan and Ganya, Susan and G'Kem, Caroline and G'Kem, Susan and Feodor, and now Darya and G'Kem. Maybe longer before that. What had gone wrong?
*Where are you, G'Kem?* she thought.
Who could she trust? G'Kem hadn't been acting like himself for weeks, and he wasn't helping much at all. Something was wrong, and if it had to do with their time jumping, then she had the right to know. She was Renla'Ir'Zha. If the fate of the galaxy had been put on her shoulders, she would work with it to the best of her ability.
She realized that she never exactly knew how strong a telepath G'Kem was. Simple logic would point to him being weaker than her. She, or rather Darya, was his mother. He had gotten his telepathy from her. As far as she knew, she was "full" telepath. He, on the other hand, had inherited the mundane gene from his Narn father as well.
The question really was: Could she break down his mind blocks?
She invited him to her apartment.
"Alright, G'Kem. Let's just put this time travel stuff aside for now, not talk about it."
"Fine with me," he said.
"But I want to say that... I still care about you, and if there's something wrong, I want to know."
She took the earring out of her right ear.
"Are you giving this back to me because you don't believe we're soul mates anymore?"
"No G'Kem! I'm giving it to you to remind you that we are!"
"Thanks," he said.
"I'm beginning to miss being Susan," she admitted.
"You miss that life she had?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"What do you mean?" Caroline asked.
"Who was she?"
"I don't get you. You know who she was. What kind of question is that?"
"As a Vorlon child, who was she?"
"A serious 'who'?"
"I've been wondering for a long time," he said.
"I think I have an idea."
Before he could react, she sent a thought to him. It was the most casual of telepathic thoughts. G'Kem might have even mistaken it as one of his own creation, but it was enough. She hadn't meant to. She pulled out something of his, a sloppy accident.
It was a deep-rooted thing, not a casual passing thought. It brought her chills, and fear, and worry. It was a word. One word. It was "Renla'Ha'Zha". A good example of one would be Mr. Morden. Whoever this man was who was sitting with her in her home, he was not G'Kem, and he was in league with the Shadows.
God, god, Valen. What was that woman's name? She was on her own, working to find people, even though she knew that the Shadows knew she wasn't on their side. What was that woman's name? The one Susan had met near 4-post just before her time jump. If she was working for the One at that time, she might be a good person to hook up with now. Rose... Rosa... Rosanne... Roxanne... Rosanne. Tell... Teller... Tall... Tallman... Tellman. She argued back and forth with herself, wanting to find the right name. She couldn't quite remember.
She sat down on the couch. She stared at the wall, not blinking. At first it was just a wall. Then she began to see patterns. The room began to glow, and her peripheral vision became clear and in focus. She never blinked once, but she felt no pain. She wasn't looking at anything, yet she could see more than her normal scope of vision, almost 360° around.
*Talk to her, talk to yourself.* The words her past life coach had told her always to remember came back to her after so many years. *Talk to the one you were. She's still a part of you. Imagine that you are still her.*
*Susan, who was it? What was her name?* she asked herself. She never actually thought the name "Susan," but rather her personal thought impulse for her. She was so out of practice, she almost had to think to remember it.
"What is the first thing that comes to mind?" her coach would repeat, again and again.
Caroline: *Tellman.*
Susan/Caroline: *Brown haired, looked part Asian possibly, had very light skin like she had been in space for a long time.*
Caroline: *What else do you remember?*
Susan/Caroline: *You're not focusing. You've forgotten how to completely believe that you can do this.*
Caroline: *I was afraid of that.*
"Hello. I'm Caroline Freeman. You don't know me, but when you have the time, I'd like to talk to you. No I'm not trying to sell you anything."
That was the message she sent to Ashley Bester. She thought it best to call herself neither Darya Freeman nor Caroline Sheridan, to stay unconnected with anyone else. G'Kem--the real G'Kem, had often said that Ashley had been a fully active member of the operation that had been doing the time travel business.
It was weeks before she got a reply. She had been staying at home more, to be able to pick up a call at her terminal.
"Ashley Bester. I believe that you wanted to talk to me, Ms. Freeman?"
"Yes," Caroline tried to collect herself. "I do."
The part of her that was still Susan wanted to scream. Ashley was the spitting image of her father, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, and the way she showed her teeth when she talked.
*If you're going to have to work with her, you'd better learn to look at her,* Caroline thought.
"What I'm going to ask you requires that you just answer my question. I don't think you'll consider this personal."
"Alright. Shoot."
"Well, have you ever heard of a group called Army of Light Telepaths or Telepaths on the Side of Light?"
"Excuse me?" she asked. "I have heard of the Army of Light, but Army of Light Telepaths? No."
"Renla'Ir'Zha?" Caroline queried. She wasn't about to take Ashley's answer as the truth immediately.
"Renla'Ir'Zha..." Ashley said thoughtfully, "You do know something. Something."
"So you do recognize that word? Would you mind telling me where you heard it?" Caroline asked politely.
"A friend of mine said she had heard it in some sort of dream. We're trying to find out what it means. Could you help us?"
"I don't know. But I'd like it if we could talk again."
"Of course. We'd both like to figure out what Renla'Ir'Zha is all about."
"So could you tell me what you know about the word Renla'Ir'Zha?" Ashley asked.
A flash of Psi Cop Alfred Bester. Flash back to Ashley:
*Well actually I think it would work better if we work this way.*
*I wouldn't have expected you to want to have me in your head, Miss used-to-be-Susan-Ivanova.*
*I can tell you faster this way, and fast is important.*
*Why?*
*Flash of what Caroline had learned.*
*Flash back what Ashley knew.*
Ashley did know about the Telepaths on the Side of Light. In fact, she was a member of it. She had just been waiting to be sure that Caroline was in the right business.
Ashley: *The Shadows know about this already? This is bad.*
Caroline: *I think they do.*
Caroline: *A memory flash of Susan, Caroline, Susan, Darya.*
Ashley: *This is a terrible development. What do you suggest?*
Caroline: *Stick to that G'Kem of yours, and when the time is right (flash of right time), have Juan(Silent One)ita tell him what he needs to do. That's what did happen.*
Ashley: *We knew there was something we needed to do with the time anomaly. We've already been out there for two years, we were just trying to find what it was.*
Caroline: *I'm glad I could be of help.*
Ashley: *You may have just helped us save the galaxy. I won't try to thank you. And I'm sorry about my father.*
Caroline rolled her eyes.
"You say what?!" Caroline demanded, not meaning to speak out loud.
*Yes,* Juanita said, *We have reason to believe that you should be the one to do the time traveling. To try to get rid of whatever the Shadows may try to do.*
*You mean like the Time Tracker, for example?*
*Exactly.*
*I have to go to 4-post,* Caroline said to herself.
*I believe so.*
So she had to go time traveling also. How fun. Why had she been so careless with G'Kem and assuming she could trust him? Maybe if she had never let him in on it, this could be done without the Shadows sending the Time Tracker.
"Do I get a time stabilizer?" she asked expectantly when she arrived at the listening post on the edge of the time anomaly.
One of the workers took a small box out of his pocket and opened it up. She took the device from it, and clipped it onto her belt. She had been practicing flying a shuttle for several months now, and was fairly confident that she could get to Earth herself.
"You won't need this until you get inside 2237 Earth Space," he told her.
"I know."
"But take this." That was an order.
"What is it?"
It was a light green disk, fairly translucent like sea glass, about half a centimeter thick and five in diameter.
"It's a Great Machine data crystal with special information on it. It will be absolutely necessary that you keep it with you at all times. Put it in your sealed pocket and lock the zipper."
She did what she was told.
"What does it have on it?"
"It's hard to explain, but you'll know when you get to your destination. Good luck." He smiled and shook her hand. "Good luck."
"Thanks."
"Ready to jump," she told 4-post as she got to the selected co- ordinates.
"Confirmed."
As the mirrored time anomaly opened in front of her shuttle, she felt a sense of deja vu. She remembered Susan's trip with Zathras. That hadn't happened yet, but they were both going to the same coordinates in time. It was a strange thought.
After two hours of thinking something was strange, she finally got to the Earth transfer station and realized it was her hair. She looked at it. It was dark brown instead of Darya's dirty blonde. She was so worried about this development that as soon as she had docked the ship, she ran to a bathroom.
She pushed open the door nervously. At first she didn't dare look in the mirror. At last she brought up the courage to do so, and when she did, she nearly burst into tears at what she saw. No longer was she Darya Freeman, no longer was she Susan, no longer was she Caroline.
The face that stared back at her was a familiar one. One she had seen often in the passing. It had dark brown hair and gray eyes. The eyes of a telepath.
She had become Sophie Ivanova, someone she had never been before.
"Caroline? Maybe we should go somewhere else."
"Yeah, I agree. Is this a good time even?" she asked. "I mean are you busy?"
"Nothing I can't do some other day," he replied.
She nodded.
"Gosh, how long have you lived anyway?"
"Lets see. I've lost track. Sixty-five years as myself, four as Feodor Prozorovsky, twenty as this G'Kem... I'm nearing a hundred!"
"Well you look great I'll say."
They laughed.
"If I don't count Susan in this universe, I've lived fourteen, four, twenty... I'm 48," she said. "I've grown up. I haven't been Caroline since I was fourteen but I've grown up anyway! Caroline has grown up as two other women!"
"Amazing isn't it," G'Kem said.
"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this anymore in public," she interrupted.
"Want to come to my place?"
"Sure," she said.
"There's something I don't understand, G'Kem."
"What's that?" he asked.
"Where's the real G'Kem? You can't be him, even though you look like him."
"I know. That's what's puzzled me ever since I ended up here. The real G'Kem is living on the other side of Zion. He's here somewhere. I've been trying to avoid being where he is very hard."
"I don't think there's another Darya because I was there on the ship and I saw what happened to Susan as if I was the one who did it, and everything went... too out there in public to not belong in the real time line."
"Yet none of this really happened to me, so I have to be a duplicate G'Kem. Gee, I look like myself but I'm not really myself. It's kind of disheartening."
"Listen, I don't want to interrupt the mood but I think we need to talk about what we're doing here. Why we're skipping around in the five dimensions. Maybe even six dimensions since we're changing bodies," she said.
"There... is... no... such... thing... as the Army Of Light Telepaths. I've done some pretty in-depth searches, gotten my nose in some pretty secret places," he told her.
"Me too. I've found nothing either."
"Then where did the title come from?" he wondered.
"I don't know."
"But I do have an idea as to who might be part of it, wherever she is."
"Who?"
"I don't know her last name," G'Kem said slowly, "Her first name... what was it? Angie. Maybe also the original G'Kem's kind-of-girlfriend, Ashley Bester. Still I can't risk contacting Ashley without running into my other self in the process."
"I could do it," Caroline jumped in, "We need time to figure this out before we bring other people into it though."
"But we only have three years to do that. 2290 is our deadline. That's the year I went back in time to give Susan the extra life energy and the whole thing got started."
"If we can get hold of this Angie person, we can probably do something. You want to brainstorm?" she suggested.
"Now?"
"Yea." She began to pick up his hands to link minds.
"Uh, Caroline, maybe we could do it the old fashioned way. Talk out loud," he said nervously.
"Why?" she asked. "It's much slower."
"I know, I know. I just think that... well I don't know."
"Well if you want to talk, I'll do that."
"Good. Thanks."
She didn't think much of it. People had days in which they didn't want to link minds with anyone. She sighed and leaned back.
"So where do you think Angie is?"
"I have no idea. I mean I know where she will be three years from now but she could be anywhere. I mean she might not even be on the planet."
"Let's assume she is at the moment. If we don't find her on the planet, maybe she's out there somewhere, but for now, let's just hope she's on Zion."
"Sure," G'Kem said quietly.
"You don't seem too enthusiastic about all of this," she observed.
"I--I don't know. I just think that we have the right not to do this. I mean what proof do we have that history can be changed? What if we just did nothing? What would that do?"
"G'Kem, you know what the deciding factor of the Shadow War is just as well as I do--when and how Ganya Ivanov and in turn Jeffrey Sinclair die. Common sense will tell you that by keeping Ganya from drowning, the time line will be preserved."
"But Susan already saved Ganya from drowning, and you saw Old St. Petersburg too. Something didn't work. What if that something was what we are going to do?"
"Or what if we were getting a taste of what would happen if didn't do something?" Caroline argued.
There was a long silence as if he were running the conflict back and forth through his head.
"Alright. Fine, we'll figure out where Angie is."
"I hope you'll work with me, G'Kem. I'd hate to have to do this alone."
He stood up. "I have to go to the bathroom."
She was supposed to meet Angie a half hour ago. She hadn't shown up. Neither had G'Kem. Perhaps she had gotten the time wrong, or the place. G'Kem had been the one who had gotten hold of her.
"Caroline!" She turned around. At last.
"Where is she?"
"I just got a message from her. She can't come."
"Why not?"
"I'm not sure."
"Did she give any hint?" she asked.
"I couldn't tell."
"Did she just decide not to come? Decide she didn't want to get into this?"
"I don't--I don't know."
"G'Kem, you're keeping something. What is it? Just tell me."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, I've known you for several decades."
"What are you getting at?" he demanded.
*Just tell me what it is. You can trust me. We're soul mates. We realized that a long time ago. Remember the night after your fiftieth birthday party? You gave me back Susan's--*
"Get out of my head!" He began to run.
She ran after him, but he was faster. She hadn't even been scanning him. She had only been talking on a telepathic level. Why was he so sensitive? Why had he never let her into his mind after the first casual meeting? She gave up and stopped. She wouldn't pry if he didn't want her in his mind.
Still, it was strange. In their other lives, they had been so close. Why was G'Kem suddenly running away from her? She longed for the olden days before all this began. She had shouted about the night after his birthday party without thinking. That was the night they finally realized what their relationship was. Too bad. Susan died not long after that...
Susan had spent the night at G'Kem's after the party. She hadn't been able to sleep because she kept turning over in her head what G'Kem and she had said at the party.
*Why didn't you tell me you went back in time?*
*Because I didn't think you would want to know when you were going to die. Life energy acts strangely when it's not the energy you've had from birth. It doesn't quite fit into your biofunction as naturally. That was why John died so quickly, not as naturally. That'll probably happen to you too. You're not only living on Marcus's life energy, you're living on mine. I only gave you enough to live long enough to save Ganya, and a little longer.*
*Because I didn't think you would want to know when you were going to die.*
*Londo Mollari knew when he was going to die.*
*Whatever.*
*Oh hell, I'm not going to go to sleep.*
She had gotten out of bed to find G'Kem sitting on the couch with quarter light.
"You couldn't sleep either?" she had asked. G'Kem had shook his head slowly.
They had sat on the couch together. G'Kem had put his arm around Susan. At long last, she had said, "How long did you mean when you said I wasn't going to live much longer?"
"Not much. Maybe a couple months. I don't know."
No reply.
"Isn't it great Susan," he had said quietly, "For so long, you wouldn't let anyone love you. Now look. You have me. You have David and Stephanie. You even have your mother again. You're not going to die alone or unloved."
"There's only one thing missing."
"What?"
She flicked her fingers on her right ear lobe.
"Oh well. I guess that can't be helped," she had said, laughing quietly.
"No. Wait a minute, Susan."
"What?"
"Through all my career, I've helped people remember their past lives. But up until recently I've never tried to remember any of my own. I think seeing Sophie flipped a switch in my mind. She seemed to know something that I was just discovering, and she gave me this."
G'Kem pulled off the earring from his one pierced ear. Susan took it from G'Kem.
"It's a match," she had breathed after she took the earring from her other ear to look at it.
"Take it."
"I can't, G'Kem. This earring doesn't have a match anymore."
"It does Susan. Did you know that souls return to loved ones lifetime after lifetime? I don't know if I really have the right to give this to you, but you can take it if you want to."
"No wonder you were afraid of Minbari ships when you were little," she had observed.
Caroline fingered her ears. She had them because Susan had, in her will, given "David and Stephanie Infante-Sheridan's unborn daughter" that pair of earrings. Susan in St. Petersburg probably had them from before the war. But how did Darya come to possess them? It was a mystery. She was glad that she had the memory of the party night though. How long they had known each other! They had been Susan and Ganya, Susan and G'Kem, Caroline and G'Kem, Susan and Feodor, and now Darya and G'Kem. Maybe longer before that. What had gone wrong?
*Where are you, G'Kem?* she thought.
Who could she trust? G'Kem hadn't been acting like himself for weeks, and he wasn't helping much at all. Something was wrong, and if it had to do with their time jumping, then she had the right to know. She was Renla'Ir'Zha. If the fate of the galaxy had been put on her shoulders, she would work with it to the best of her ability.
She realized that she never exactly knew how strong a telepath G'Kem was. Simple logic would point to him being weaker than her. She, or rather Darya, was his mother. He had gotten his telepathy from her. As far as she knew, she was "full" telepath. He, on the other hand, had inherited the mundane gene from his Narn father as well.
The question really was: Could she break down his mind blocks?
She invited him to her apartment.
"Alright, G'Kem. Let's just put this time travel stuff aside for now, not talk about it."
"Fine with me," he said.
"But I want to say that... I still care about you, and if there's something wrong, I want to know."
She took the earring out of her right ear.
"Are you giving this back to me because you don't believe we're soul mates anymore?"
"No G'Kem! I'm giving it to you to remind you that we are!"
"Thanks," he said.
"I'm beginning to miss being Susan," she admitted.
"You miss that life she had?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"What do you mean?" Caroline asked.
"Who was she?"
"I don't get you. You know who she was. What kind of question is that?"
"As a Vorlon child, who was she?"
"A serious 'who'?"
"I've been wondering for a long time," he said.
"I think I have an idea."
Before he could react, she sent a thought to him. It was the most casual of telepathic thoughts. G'Kem might have even mistaken it as one of his own creation, but it was enough. She hadn't meant to. She pulled out something of his, a sloppy accident.
It was a deep-rooted thing, not a casual passing thought. It brought her chills, and fear, and worry. It was a word. One word. It was "Renla'Ha'Zha". A good example of one would be Mr. Morden. Whoever this man was who was sitting with her in her home, he was not G'Kem, and he was in league with the Shadows.
God, god, Valen. What was that woman's name? She was on her own, working to find people, even though she knew that the Shadows knew she wasn't on their side. What was that woman's name? The one Susan had met near 4-post just before her time jump. If she was working for the One at that time, she might be a good person to hook up with now. Rose... Rosa... Rosanne... Roxanne... Rosanne. Tell... Teller... Tall... Tallman... Tellman. She argued back and forth with herself, wanting to find the right name. She couldn't quite remember.
She sat down on the couch. She stared at the wall, not blinking. At first it was just a wall. Then she began to see patterns. The room began to glow, and her peripheral vision became clear and in focus. She never blinked once, but she felt no pain. She wasn't looking at anything, yet she could see more than her normal scope of vision, almost 360° around.
*Talk to her, talk to yourself.* The words her past life coach had told her always to remember came back to her after so many years. *Talk to the one you were. She's still a part of you. Imagine that you are still her.*
*Susan, who was it? What was her name?* she asked herself. She never actually thought the name "Susan," but rather her personal thought impulse for her. She was so out of practice, she almost had to think to remember it.
"What is the first thing that comes to mind?" her coach would repeat, again and again.
Caroline: *Tellman.*
Susan/Caroline: *Brown haired, looked part Asian possibly, had very light skin like she had been in space for a long time.*
Caroline: *What else do you remember?*
Susan/Caroline: *You're not focusing. You've forgotten how to completely believe that you can do this.*
Caroline: *I was afraid of that.*
"Hello. I'm Caroline Freeman. You don't know me, but when you have the time, I'd like to talk to you. No I'm not trying to sell you anything."
That was the message she sent to Ashley Bester. She thought it best to call herself neither Darya Freeman nor Caroline Sheridan, to stay unconnected with anyone else. G'Kem--the real G'Kem, had often said that Ashley had been a fully active member of the operation that had been doing the time travel business.
It was weeks before she got a reply. She had been staying at home more, to be able to pick up a call at her terminal.
"Ashley Bester. I believe that you wanted to talk to me, Ms. Freeman?"
"Yes," Caroline tried to collect herself. "I do."
The part of her that was still Susan wanted to scream. Ashley was the spitting image of her father, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, and the way she showed her teeth when she talked.
*If you're going to have to work with her, you'd better learn to look at her,* Caroline thought.
"What I'm going to ask you requires that you just answer my question. I don't think you'll consider this personal."
"Alright. Shoot."
"Well, have you ever heard of a group called Army of Light Telepaths or Telepaths on the Side of Light?"
"Excuse me?" she asked. "I have heard of the Army of Light, but Army of Light Telepaths? No."
"Renla'Ir'Zha?" Caroline queried. She wasn't about to take Ashley's answer as the truth immediately.
"Renla'Ir'Zha..." Ashley said thoughtfully, "You do know something. Something."
"So you do recognize that word? Would you mind telling me where you heard it?" Caroline asked politely.
"A friend of mine said she had heard it in some sort of dream. We're trying to find out what it means. Could you help us?"
"I don't know. But I'd like it if we could talk again."
"Of course. We'd both like to figure out what Renla'Ir'Zha is all about."
"So could you tell me what you know about the word Renla'Ir'Zha?" Ashley asked.
A flash of Psi Cop Alfred Bester. Flash back to Ashley:
*Well actually I think it would work better if we work this way.*
*I wouldn't have expected you to want to have me in your head, Miss used-to-be-Susan-Ivanova.*
*I can tell you faster this way, and fast is important.*
*Why?*
*Flash of what Caroline had learned.*
*Flash back what Ashley knew.*
Ashley did know about the Telepaths on the Side of Light. In fact, she was a member of it. She had just been waiting to be sure that Caroline was in the right business.
Ashley: *The Shadows know about this already? This is bad.*
Caroline: *I think they do.*
Caroline: *A memory flash of Susan, Caroline, Susan, Darya.*
Ashley: *This is a terrible development. What do you suggest?*
Caroline: *Stick to that G'Kem of yours, and when the time is right (flash of right time), have Juan(Silent One)ita tell him what he needs to do. That's what did happen.*
Ashley: *We knew there was something we needed to do with the time anomaly. We've already been out there for two years, we were just trying to find what it was.*
Caroline: *I'm glad I could be of help.*
Ashley: *You may have just helped us save the galaxy. I won't try to thank you. And I'm sorry about my father.*
Caroline rolled her eyes.
"You say what?!" Caroline demanded, not meaning to speak out loud.
*Yes,* Juanita said, *We have reason to believe that you should be the one to do the time traveling. To try to get rid of whatever the Shadows may try to do.*
*You mean like the Time Tracker, for example?*
*Exactly.*
*I have to go to 4-post,* Caroline said to herself.
*I believe so.*
So she had to go time traveling also. How fun. Why had she been so careless with G'Kem and assuming she could trust him? Maybe if she had never let him in on it, this could be done without the Shadows sending the Time Tracker.
"Do I get a time stabilizer?" she asked expectantly when she arrived at the listening post on the edge of the time anomaly.
One of the workers took a small box out of his pocket and opened it up. She took the device from it, and clipped it onto her belt. She had been practicing flying a shuttle for several months now, and was fairly confident that she could get to Earth herself.
"You won't need this until you get inside 2237 Earth Space," he told her.
"I know."
"But take this." That was an order.
"What is it?"
It was a light green disk, fairly translucent like sea glass, about half a centimeter thick and five in diameter.
"It's a Great Machine data crystal with special information on it. It will be absolutely necessary that you keep it with you at all times. Put it in your sealed pocket and lock the zipper."
She did what she was told.
"What does it have on it?"
"It's hard to explain, but you'll know when you get to your destination. Good luck." He smiled and shook her hand. "Good luck."
"Thanks."
"Ready to jump," she told 4-post as she got to the selected co- ordinates.
"Confirmed."
As the mirrored time anomaly opened in front of her shuttle, she felt a sense of deja vu. She remembered Susan's trip with Zathras. That hadn't happened yet, but they were both going to the same coordinates in time. It was a strange thought.
After two hours of thinking something was strange, she finally got to the Earth transfer station and realized it was her hair. She looked at it. It was dark brown instead of Darya's dirty blonde. She was so worried about this development that as soon as she had docked the ship, she ran to a bathroom.
She pushed open the door nervously. At first she didn't dare look in the mirror. At last she brought up the courage to do so, and when she did, she nearly burst into tears at what she saw. No longer was she Darya Freeman, no longer was she Susan, no longer was she Caroline.
The face that stared back at her was a familiar one. One she had seen often in the passing. It had dark brown hair and gray eyes. The eyes of a telepath.
She had become Sophie Ivanova, someone she had never been before.