Ode on Shadow and Form

by Aris Merquoni

Being the adventures of a Shadowminion after he has perished, and the revelation of several grand conspiracies and many secrets of the universe. The plain text version on my website has the original, intact formatting.

2. Act 2: Antistrophe

Act 2: Antistrophe. 2264.

The system was called "Ahzken" in the oldest manuscripts that he could find, and its fourth planet was a glorious desolation. From space the biggest continent looked like a broken piece of agate, all swirls of green-brown with occasional clouds for contrast. Abandoned cities littered the banks of the rivers, long gone to rot of the wood-beetle and creeping vine sort. When Morden landed his borrowed techno-mage flyer outside the largest city in late 2262 he scared off a colony of predators that looked like a cross between a platypus and a liati, but found nobody to answer his signals. For the next year and a half he broke into buildings, marveled at the preservation of many of the interiors, and looked for an explanation. When he found it...

The database was a black box, about two feet by three by one. Accessing it wasn't a problem. Along with refreshing his skills in excavation, he'd spent the last two years playing with the new powers at his disposal. He was sure he still hadn't discovered all of them, but he'd learned enough that interfacing with electronics was a trivial exercise. The electronics of his former associates were easier than most. The box was certainly theirs, and it told him enough.

It told him why the Vorlons and their allies had never attacked Ahzken 4.

It told him why the Vorlons and their allies had never wiped out the Shadows completely, or vice versa.

It told him why the Vorlons and the Shadows were fighting in the first place.

Morden slammed his fist into the table next to the database, stood, and started pacing. He'd spent the last two years in research, and in trying to come to terms with exactly what he'd done.

Galen had come to him with the conclusion that the Shadows had been controlling him with his own endocrine system, using his brain to play mind games with him. The kid had been right, but only partially. Morden remembered what it had felt like to be in contact with the Shadows, and he remembered how it felt when they spoke to him--the absolute, crushing certainty they'd had that what they were doing was right. They'd turned everyone who had worked with them into zealots. If everything the Shadows were doing was right, then those who carried out their orders had to be right, as well.

But the Shadows had gone. Their communications had gone. Their subtle drugging had gone. And looking back at his actions over the course of the War, Morden couldn't countenance any of it.

He glared at the database again.

He couldn't countenance it. And he never would have done any of it if he hadn't been drugged and brainwashed, no matter what he'd promised on Z'Ha'dum.

Morden's eyes kept flicking to the featureless black box of their own free will. He stopped in the center of the room, closed his eyes and put his hands to his head. He couldn't countenance murder on that scale. Santiago, Adira, Refa, the techno-mages, the millions of Narns and Brakiri and other races... he couldn't. Millions--billions. Dead. Directly his fault. He couldn't believe that he'd choose the same of his own free will. It had been easy when he'd been working for them, but after, when he'd come to his senses...

He was staring at the database again.

He stalked over and slammed his hands down onto the black surface, accessing frantically. Billions of years of recorded history. Art, music, sculpture, speeches, literature, philosophy. Names and faces. The physical forms of all the old races. The jumpgate makers. The quiet progress of technology. The meetings of the old kind. Ahzken 4, the neutral ground. The discovery.

The discovery.

The truth.

Morden jerked his hands away. No. He'd been lied to so often, why should he believe this?

But, a voice whispered inside his head, doesn't this mean they didn't die in vain?

No. He had been wrong. That was all. He should have had the strength of character to throw away the promises and accept his fate at the core of a ship. He should have fallen on his sword instead of causing so much death.

He shuddered, remembering Sheridan when she'd left the ship. Cold. Distant. Broken. No wonder her husband had seen straight through her. Morden couldn't imagine living his life like that.

Again, the database. Why?

Why else?

His hands were shaking. He forced them into his pockets. There was a bookshelf lining one wall of his workroom, filled with trinkets and note pads and a glowing orange sphere. He went over and reached out a hand, touched the surface of the sphere gently. "Henrietta?"

"... Morden?"

He closed his eyes. He'd never been able to get a good image of her, but he could see fragments, brief snatches of color, eyes, hair. "Henrietta, I've found something... worrisome."

A swirl of colors, darker now. "Bad?"

"I don't know." He took a deep breath. "I need your help."

"Help... I don't... I don't know if I can help you."

"I have to know something, Henrietta." He paused, winced as he realized how much he was asking. "I have to know what happened when you made your jump."

Everything was still for a long moment. Then her sphere went dark.

"Henrietta, please..."

A low moan. "They were looking at me..."

He winced again. "I know. I need to see."

"I don't want to look..."

"Please?"

For a long time, nothing. Then a glimmer. A shape.

It hit him with the full force of liftoff...

"This is Frederik Pohl to Gateway Base. I am go for ignition. Shall I proceed?" She is holding her hand over the small silver button. Above and ahead, the canopy of stars stretches far and away. It's taken weeks to get past the orbit of Jupiter, but she's finally here, ready to take the giant step for mankind. All that stands between her and history is the final confirmation order.

It's quiet, in the dark, watching the stars. She's getting lost in her thoughts. The crackle of the radio brings her around. "This is Gateway Base to Frederik Pohl. You are go for ignition. Proceed." A quiet second. "Godspeed."

She swallows against sudden dryness. "Thank you, Gateway Base. Until my return." Her return seems a tenuous, fragile thing against the vast darkness before her. Her hand seems disconnected as it reaches out and turns off the signal key, then returns to the button.

She closes her eyes. "My God," she whispers, in her own private ritual, "It's full of stars."

She punches the button.

Her eyes snap open. With a brilliant flash, she is elsewhere, her view suddenly filled with shifting tides of red and black--(Hyperspace, Morden thinks, we got there before the damn Centauri found us)--and then back, the stars suddenly different, and then elsewhere again, for long enough to track some of the shifting patterns, back in realspace, time enough to snap a picture of the stars, if she'd had a camera, and then flash, gone, flash, back, flash, flash, flash...

After a long enough exposure, the human mind gets used to anything. She watches the flashes for almost an hour before she drags her eyes away and watches her screens. That's when she sees it, sitting on her six like a dark bird, following her path through the jumps.

It's bigger than her ship, but she can only see its outline in the gravity compensator, She watches it, frozen, through a long series of jumps, and it follows her effortlessly, never left behind by the whiplash speed of her transitions. She watches it with growing fear, because Dr. Terre never said that a photino cloud could do this, could follow her through her transition, get caught up in her wake.

Until now, she has only been scared of coming into realspace off course, unable to compensate for this thing that is following her. But now as she watches, the great black shape changes. Like some dark omen, it flaps unseen wings, and as the Pohl hurtles onward toward its programmed end, the dark ship reaches out and brushes through the delicate instruments.

The drive keens like a dying swan and shatters, thrusting the Pohl back into realspace, and Henrietta can only grip her console and watch as sparks fly and her monitor reads nonsense words and her air recycler, her only line of defense against her own metabolism, shorts out and dies...

She was sobbing into his shoulder. Morden held her, tightly, feeling the flashburn of memory fade and most of the fear with it. He buried his face in her hair and told himself it was past, it was gone, and it wasn't even his memory, but the black void of space and the blacker creature that had swatted the Pohl out of the sky remained hovering on the edge of his mind.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to take Henrietta's memory as proof. He didn't want to take anything as proof. But...

Morden paused in his thoughts. Then he reached up and stroked Henrietta's hair. "Hey?"

She sniffed, pulled away slightly, blinked back tears. "You believe me?"

He smiled, tried to be reassuring. "Of course."

"What does it mean?"

He lost his grip on the reassurance. "It means... I have to think about a few things. About what all the First Ones were really doing."

She shook her head. Her hair was blonde, and curly, and it brushed against her shoulders. "I don't understand." She stared into his eyes. Hers were deep, startling green. "Who are the First Ones?"

"I used to work for..." his breath caught as he suddenly understood. She frowned. He looked back at her, mentally wincing. "I just realized something."

"What?"

"You're still inside the Soul Hunter's sphere. I'm still out there."

"Oh." She stepped back. She wasn't crying any more. "I... oh." A twisted smile. "I guess that means you have to go back."

He nodded.

"Okay. I can deal with that. It's... all right." She blinked a couple times, fast. "Can you come back?"

"I don't know how I got here in the first place." He shrugged awkwardly. "I don't know."

"Right, right..." She turned away and started pacing.

He took the time to study her, now that he had an image. She was only a few inches taller than he was, a rarity. She was dressed in some sort of uniform, one he didn't recognize, dark grey. Her movements were military, but with a slight edge of hysteria, like a toy soldier wound three settings too tight. She paced until her spring wound down, then turned and looked at him, her breathing now even. He awkwardly shoved his hands in his pockets as she nodded, thoughtful, composed.

"What are you going to do?"

Going to do. God. As though he hadn't already done enough. "I don't know that, either."

She tilted her head to the side. "Well. You have to do something, right? What do you think you've found out?"

"I think..." He couldn't keep looking at her. "I think I've found out the reason for the War. The real reason. But only the First Ones really know."

"So go ask them."

"I can't!"

She crossed her arms and gave him a challenging look.

He shook his head. "The galaxy's big enough as it is. And the First Ones are somewhere outside it."

"Surely they left some trail?"

"I... maybe." The beginnings of a plan glimmered. He wasn't sure if he believed it. "Maybe..."

She was nodding. He looked up and smiled, trying to be reassuring. "I think I know where to go. We'll talk more on the way, all right?"

"Right." She was smiling bravely, but her knuckles were white from clenching her fists. Then she dissolved, he was outside, and he was staring at the database again.

Dammit.

He scooped up Henrietta's sphere and tucked it into his pocket, then turned sharply on his heel and headed for the ship, leaving the black box on his desk. The Shadows wouldn't need to see their own history.

His ship, which he only tentatively thought of as 'his', used to belong to the techno-mage Galen. Galen had left the ship on Z'Ha'dum, which meant it had been caught by the Eye and moved to somewhere convenient.

He'd found out that Z'Ha'dum had been destroyed during his sojourn on Epsilon 3. Draal showed him the recordings. It made for a depressing afternoon. But the next planet in was a convenient dumping ground for lost ships, including Galen's techo-mage flyer. With only a little coercion he'd called the ship to Epsilon 3 and used it to start his new career.

He'd give it back if he ever ran into Galen again. If Galen had survived, which for some reason felt likely.

Techno-mages used tech built by the Shadows, which gave Morden the only advantage he had in piloting the ship. He pulled away from the lonely world and set the ship in a quiet orbit. Then he closed his eyes and tried to figure out where the First Ones had gone.

The last battle of the Shadow War had been fought at Coriana 6. He'd been able to get that out of Draal before he left. There were a few abandoned techno-mage probes in orbit around the planet. He accessed them through the ship, flipped back a couple years, and looked for the departing Shadow ships. The Vorlons used jump points, but it was possible, just, to tell which way the Shadows were going by their exit velocities.

He pulled up a map, plotted the course, wondered if he could trust the results, and ordered the jump to hyperspace.

It was a long time spent waiting. Morden spent his time divided between explaining galactic politics to Henrietta and not thinking about what he'd found in the Shadows' archive.

Whether it was his ministrations finally paying off or finally forcing a confrontation with her worst memory, Henrietta was clearer than she'd ever been and much easier to talk to. The conversations went all right, until she raised an eyebrow during one of his explanations of Centauri machinations during the War and asked, "And how did you find all this out? What were you doing during the War, anyway?"

What was he doing during the War, anyway?

He didn't talk to Henrietta for days. When he'd stopped the shaking in his hands and picked up her sphere again, she didn't ask any more questions about his work.

He was spending some quality time not thinking when the alarm rang to signal the end of his journey. He checked to make sure Henrietta's sphere was still in his pocket, then told the ship to drop out of hyperspace.

The blueshift of the vortex cleared to reveal the sparkle of distant galaxies ahead, and the wide band of the Milky Way behind. Slightly to starboard and almost three million light years away, a few more members of the local group of galaxies hung suspended.

Morden stared at the vast emptiness ahead and wondered how the hell he was going to proceed from here. He only had one clue--a direction--and one piece of solid information, that they weren't in his galaxy any more. The whole plan seemed suddenly like a colossal waste of effort and time. He should go back, ignore the black box on his desk, and try and look for more information.

He'd just turned away from the viewscreen in disgust when the proximity alarm shrilled. Startled, he turned back, and found himself staring down the main cannon of a full-sized Vorlon warship.

Well, he had been looking for First Ones... summoning his courage, he activated the comm system. "This is the ship... uh... God Only Knows to Vorlon warship. I need to... talk to someone. In charge. I need some information confirmed. I mean no harm."

He didn't have to wait too long for a response. "Techno-mage."

"No, no," he said. "It's a techno-mage ship, but I'm not one. I'm Mr. Morden. I used to work for the Shadows."

Well, that did it, he thought as he watched the main cannon power up and the communication channel snap closed. He closed his eyes.

The blast ripped the tiny ship in two, and everything went white.

It stayed white for a long time.

Late afternoon on the New Jersey shore. The waves crashing against the beach, the sound of seagulls crying in the sky. He was fourteen and taking a well-deserved break from working on school. It was cold, even for early October. He lay back, fingers trailing in the sand, and tried to forget about life. He wasn't ready for responsibility. He just wanted to lie here and let everything drift away.

"You're going to have to wake up sometime, you know."

He knew that voice. He didn't want to wake up. He was going to lie here until he was cold enough that facing his parents was a reasonable option. If he waited long enough, they'd just ignore him when he snuck back into the house.

"You have as much time as you'd like, of course, but people have been asking about you. I'd like to give them a more heartening answer than 'still sleeping on the beach.'"

He knew that voice. But he hadn't heard it until... until after...

Babylon 5?

No. He knew where he was, when he was. He was home, New Jersey, and he'd come here after a particularly bad fight at home, over his grades, and he was going to stay here until everything had calmed down.

The same voice sighed, then said, "You're a long way from New Jersey, Morden."

"No..." he answered blearily, then blinked his eyes open.

Ambassador Sinclair was standing over him, smiling sadly. The air was clear, the sky blue. Morden looked around. They were on a long stretch of empty beach, surf pounding shore only a few meters behind the ambassador.

He looked at Sinclair again and stared, as the Minbari held out a hand to help him to his feet. "Entil'zha Valen," he finally said, and accepted the help.

"Mr. Morden," Valen replied. "And it's just Valen, or Sinclair, or Jeff. Come on. Now that you're back on your feet, there are some people who want to see you."

Morden looked around, stalling for time. When he'd caught his breath he asked, "So, am I dead?"

Valen grinned. "No more than you were before you got here."

"You know what I mean."

"No, this isn't any sort of afterlife. Not in any metaphysical sense, anyway. The lines get a little blurry." He gestured toward the dunes. "This way."

Morden shook his head and started trudging up the sandy slope. Valen fell into step beside him. "So... where are we?" he asked after a minute.

"In a song called the House of Light and Turquoise. Physically, we're on the surface of a topographically interesting Dyson sphere surrounding the galaxy M32, one of the satellites of Andromeda."

Morden stopped walking. "Sur... surrounding?"

Valen smiled. "Sure. M32's only about eight thousand light years across, but it gives everyone who wants to live here plenty of real estate to play with. We got lucky; Lorien managed to negotiate a prime spot for the folks from our galaxy to settle. Just look up."

Valen tilted his head back, and Morden followed his gaze. For a moment, all he saw was the endless, deep blue of sky. Then, as though layers of paint were being stripped away, the blue pulled back, the sky opened, and he could see everything.

Andromeda, the spiral galaxy, was blazing across the open sky in hues of white and violet and blue, stretching its arms wide to brush fingertips of pulsars and white dwarfs against either horizon. He stared, openmouthed, until he felt a hand on his shoulder and pulled his focus back to the beach, Valen, and the dunes around them.

"You got lost for a minute there. Don't tell me you want to go back into a coma."

Morden stared at him. The sky was blue again. "What's going on?"

Valen laughed softly, not unkindly. "It's going to take a while to explain everything. But you came here to talk to the First Ones. And they want to talk to you. But they're very busy with their own plans, so they put you here to recover."

"Recover from what?"

"Well, for one thing, the Shadows fixed the halfassed job they did on your implants."

Morden's hand went to the back of his neck, on reflex. "The, uh, weapon thing?" Another thought struck him and he reached into his pockets. Empty. "What happened to... mmm, I was carrying a Soul Hunter--"

"Henrietta's fine," Valen said, holding up a hand. "In fact, she's better than when you last saw her."

He was starting to remember. "The Vorlons fired on me. I thought I was dead."

"No. They're very good at... moving things. People. They just wanted the ship destroyed. It's standard practice that people who come here don't get to go back."

Morden mulled that over as they walked. Once they were over the crest of the dune, the going got easier. He paid little attention to their surroundings until he realized they were walking on a tiled path through a garden.

He spun around to check. There wasn't even the suggestion that they'd been near a beach a few moments before. Valen waited as Morden forced down a minor panic attack and stared at the pathway, the trees, the flowers.

"We were just..."

Valen nodded.

"And now we're not."

"Sort of. As I said, the lines are a little blurry."

Morden sighed in exasperation and turned in another circle, taking in the layout. Squares within squares, and lots of tiny archways, like an Escher monograph squashed into proper dimensions. "This is a Markab garden."

"Yes, it is." Valen sounded pleased by his recognition. "There's a pretty big Markab population here. It's somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty million."

"Rescued from the plague?"

"Not all of them." Valen started walking again, and Morden followed quickly, realizing that if he got lost in this place he was going to stay lost for a while. "Most are actually descended from people in the Shadow ships that survived the last war. The one a thousand years ago. The Shadows were taking a lot of them for processing units because they reacted better than any other race."

Morden looked sideways at him. "Don't tell me, they all came from the island of Drafa."

"You're good at that guessing thing."

"Thanks. I always assumed I wasn't hired for my looks. And I'm going to guess that this means there must be a way to get people out of a Shadow ship without... breaking them."

Valen nodded.

"Ah," Morden said, as they came to the edge of the garden and the world changed colors. Under his breath, he muttered, "Damn."

The beach had been bathed in late afternoon light, the Markab garden in the glow of dusk, and this new space was filled with early morning mist and sunshine. Their path led down a terraced garden to a plateau over a creek, four tables set under the open sky, one of them occupied by a pair of women facing away from the trail. Valen started down the path, Morden at his heels. "What's with the lighting changes?" he asked.

"Mostly it's the topography," Valen answered. "The suns move, but we're covering a fair distance with each tesseract we make."

Morden was trying to think of an acidic enough response to this unhelpful answer--what the hell was a tesseract?--when they came around a switchback and he could make out the faces of the women at the table. One of them was Henrietta. The other, possibly more surprising, was Dr. Elaine Scott, one of the team from the Z'Ha'dum dig.

They had been talking, but they turned to watch as Valen led him to their table. "Hello," he said.

"Hi," Henrietta said. Her eyes were wide, slightly nervous. "We were just talking about you."

"No wonder my ears were burning." He nodded across the table. "Dr. Scott."

"Dr. Morden. Good of you to join us." She smiled, suddenly. "Sit. Nobody's going to bite."

He was surprised by how relieved he felt. "That's the best deal I've gotten all week," he said, pulling out a chair.

"Well, you know. We were all in things together."

"Some of us more than others."

"I've been getting stories from people," Henrietta said. She hadn't taken her eyes off him. "I have to admit it's a little spooky."

He shrugged, stiffly. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"I know about that sort of deal."

"Look," he said, impatient to get out of this conversation, "it's great to talk about old times and all, but I came here for some information." He glared at Valen, whose expression was still neutral.

"Information," Valen said carefully.

"These... photino creatures, or whatever. The ones that she saw--" he pointed at Henrietta, "the ones who wrecked her ship."

"They're real," Dr. Scott said quietly. The fine lines around her eyes deepened, perhaps involuntarily.

"And they don't like us?"

Dr. Scott shook her head. "I'm no astrophysicist, but apparently what they don't like are supernovas. Or other unstable stars."

"So," Morden said, his earlier formless terror returning, "They're shortening the lifespan of the known universe? By several billion years?"

Valen and Scott traded a glance. Henrietta was still staring at him.

Morden scowled. "Where are the goddamn First Ones?"

Presence. "Here," a voice said, as he whirled out of his seat, the chair legs making no more complaint than a hiss against the ground. The Vorlon hovered, twisting in the air, its form slowly coalescing in golden light. "I am here," it repeated, "And I will answer your questions."

"You lied to us," Morden said, angry and terrified and shaken. It was hard to focus on the twisting shape and he fought the instinct to close his eyes.

"Yes." The Vorlon suddenly solidified. Its form was that of a giant, coiling snake, six eyes like coals in an elongated head and glowing a muted orange all throughout. It was, Morden realized, a simplified version of what the Vorlons had looked like before their species had decided to transmute themselves to pure energy.

He added it to the list of amazing things he'd never be able to tell anyone about and focused on the Vorlon's reply. "Why did you lie to us?"

"We feared the consequences of the truth. The younger races are unpredictable in their speed, and causing panic throughout the galaxy would have been counterproductive."

"So you slaughtered us instead?" He was yelling. "You waged wars, enlisted millions--billions to die, instead? Narn was flattened by the Centauri, Brakir was nearly as bad, the Markab were wiped out by your plague, seven planets don't exist any more, and just as many are missing the first few layers of crust--THIS WAS BETTER THAN THE TRUTH?" He was screaming. He knew he was screaming. "THE SHADOWS WERE RIGHT?"

He didn't know wasn't looking behind him but they had to be staring at him and the Vorlon just sat there and cocked its head to the side and said "Yes."

He was past screaming. Past it. "You... fucking..." he stepped forward, and held up his hand, and there was electricity like lightning curled around his fingers. "I can't believe you..."

Someone backhanded him across the face. Not literally. "Calm down," said the Vorlon.

He clenched his hands into fists. "You expect me to, after that?" But he was already relaxing, already loosening his fingers, breathing slower.

Embarrassed, he looked around. Scott was staring. Valen looked slightly distressed, but unsurprised. Henrietta, for a wonder, was smiling. "Sorry," he said.

"Tell the fuckers off," Henrietta said, and when Scott turned to stare at her she bared her teeth in something that bore only distant relation to a grin. "This is deep shit we're in, and I think the human race can take the news."

Morden grimaced and sat down. "I don't know," he said, thinking through the hole where his rage had been a few moments before. "People do all sorts of stupid things when they panic. But... dear God, billions of people are dead because of that war." He glared at the Vorlon. "You didn't have to use the planet killers."

"Response is faster to an overwhelming threat than to a moderate one," the Vorlon said. "The impulse to create a united front was only fully realized when the enemy became truly impossible to reason with."

"Wait. I think I'm missing something." Morden held up a hand. "Sheridan's little alliance was the point of this whole thing?"

"Sheridan's quite large Alliance," Valen said quietly. "And yes."

"Ah." He looked around. "How much time do we have and what are we doing about it?"

Valen smiled. "Nice to have you on board."

"We're all on board."

"We have approximately five hundred million human years," the Vorlon said.

Morden pinched the bridge of his nose. "Funny, how a few months ago that would have sounded like a really long time."

The Vorlon laughed--laughed?--and said, "For your races it seems so, does it not? That gives us hope."

"You're rather well-spoken for a Vorlon."

Valen smiled. "Whandall here is the head of relations between the First Ones and the inhabitants of the song called the House of Light and Turquoise. I'm serving as something like his attache."

"Whandall?" Morden turned around so he could stare at the Vorlon. It stared back. "Your name is Whandall?"

"Yes. It is a good approximation."

"Ah."

"And to answer your second question," a slightly less rattled Dr. Scott said, "Those of us who have any engineering skills are putting them to use learning and designing things. We might be able to figure out some way to communicate."

"Or escape," Henrietta said. "There's talk of finding another universe that's younger than this one and moving in."

He raised an eyebrow. "How come you know so much?"

"I got the full tour a couple days ago." She grinned shakily in Valen's direction. "Met aliens for the first time. That was a kick."

"Uh... hunh." Morden turned to Valen. "A couple days? I was asleep for a couple days?"

"Not quite." The Minbari held up his hands. "The Vorlons and the Shadows both wanted to look you over and make sure you were all right. You've been through a lot."

"Understatement."

"And then the Shadows wanted to fix the implants."

"You said." He grimaced. "Can't say I feel much difference."

Valen gave him a disapproving look. "You've been awake for less than an hour."

"Fair enough. And then I was put on the beach?"

"Yes. Where you slept for fifteen hours."

"Wow." He smiled, but it didn't feel quite right yet. "No wonder I feel like hell. Can I get some coffee in this place?"

"Ha!" Dr. Scott said. "I knew it."

Amused, he replied, "You drank coffee, while we still had it."

"Yeah, sure, but not seven cups a day. I don't know how you can hold your hands still with that much caffeine."

"Mmm," he answered. "Well?"

"Here," said Whandall, much to Morden's surprise. He stared at the Vorlon, who 'handed' him a cup of coffee. He blinked a couple times, then decided it would only be polite to try it.

"Thanks," he said shakily after a sip. "This is pretty good."

Dr. Scott shook her head. "'Pretty good.' Where have you had better recently?"

"Actually, Draal makes really good coffee." He took another sip, looked around. "So how many people are here?"

"Many millions," Valen said. "The human population's pretty small, but all the scouting parties that Earthforce sent into Vorlon space wound up here."

"Did anyone else from the Icarus make it?"

Scott was looking away, down at the table. "Not many. Razor, Standish... a bunch of the techs. Captain Hidalgo didn't make it." Her mouth twitched in a grimace. "It's been rough."

"What was it like?" Morden asked softly. He didn't want to know. He really didn't want to know. But he had to know. Had to ask.

"Oh..." She ran her fingers through her hair, white tufts sticking through haphazardly. "It was... I don't really remember all that well." She looked up and met his eyes, frowned at what she saw there. "Really. I think they did it on purpose. It's all hazy, dreamlike. I mean, I remember... I remember being... I was happy. More than that--I was really ecstatic, all the time. It was like digging up a whole new civilization every day."

She shook her head, pulled out of the reverie. "But that's really all I remember. No specifics."

"Probably for the best."

It was quiet for a while. Morden turned to look out over the water. It was peaceful, across the fast-flowing stream, meadowland giving way to deep forest, oak-likes and elm-likes and undergrowth around the fringes. The sun was moving up into the sky, deepening the light blue of morning into the rich cerulean of noon. The blackbody radiation from the sun was peaking seventeen nanometers longer than Sol's and the absorption spectrum was lacking a lot of iron. Morden closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and wished fervently that the Shadows had just left him alone.

Mars. He should never have gone to Mars.

"... Morden? Everything all right?"

That was Henrietta. "Fine," he answered, looking back and trying to smile. "Getting better all the time. I think those implants are kicking in. Is there any way to walk around here without getting irrevocably lost?"

"The river is a constant," Valen said, waving at the creek below. "There's always a trail next to it, and it's easy to backtrack." He grinned wryly. "My son Tammis spent three years hiking downstream to prove that it's really one huge loop."

Heartwarming and completely uninteresting. "Sounds nice." Morden stood, nodded as courteously as he could manage. "I need to clear my head..."

"I'll stick with Henrietta," Dr. Scott said. Her expression was wary, and maybe a little concerned. "I should be able to find you, or vice versa. Just ask around."

He forced himself to not look back as he followed the path down to the edge of the creek. It was deeper than he'd thought, looking down; the current ran fast and smooth and sapphire in the center. The soft rushing of the water was the only sound other than his footsteps as he started downstream, and the quiet was like a blanket over the landscape that he was disturbing every time his feet landed on the path, kicking up small clouds of dust that settled quickly behind him.

It was hard to avoid thinking in the stillness, the only other thing to occupy his mind being the act of putting one foot in front of the other. As he trekked halfheartedly downstream Morden could only think of how easily the Vorlon had brushed his anger aside, and how little he knew of the Shadows, and how much he was still in thrall to them. A dull ache was starting to grow in his shoulders.

He tried to pay attention as the scenery changed, but there was a haze over his senses as he took the final step and found himself under bright sunlight, a different sun, a different river. Steep rock walls hemmed in the world around him, red-orange tapering upward to a seam of royal blue. The sun beat straight down onto the rushing river, which was cascading over rocks with a steady roar. It was hot. He slipped out of his jacket and started forward on the trail, a narrow ledge which slowly climbed and fell along the canyon wall.

Thirty meters in the trail swooped down to meet sand where the canyon wall widened, the river bellowing outward to form protected nooks of calm water where the swift-running current passed by. For the first time, he heard bird song.

There was someone else here. Warily, he stepped around the corner and came face to face with the ship.

Too small for a ship; it was a boat, a work of art, a glass butterfly perched on a tapestry of gold and green and white. Tapered sails of blue crystal raised over a shallow platform, ash-blonde wood inlaid with tiles in intricate mosaics, pure white railings curving like sea spray. It couldn't possibly have been buoyant enough to carry its own weight, but it settled gently on the surface of the water with only slight ripples in its wake, most of those from the woman who sat trailing her feet in the water.

She looked up and blinked almond eyes, smiling. She was physically small, black hair pinned up behind her head, dressed in an ochre shirt and matching pants rolled up to mid-calf and still speckled with water. "Hi," she said, after a moment. "Need a ride?"

He considered for half a second. "Sure."

There was a pile of filmy green fabric piled beside her on the deck; she took a corner and flung it towards him. It settled with a whisper into a pathway on the water. Morden toed it briefly, found it solid. With a little trepidation he walked across to the boat, on a surface that felt like nothing more than deep pile carpet.

He took a seat on a low bench on deck as the woman pulled the fabric bridge back from the water. It wasn't even wet. "So," she said as she bundled the miracle back up and stowed it beside her again, "you must be Morden."

"Must I?"

She grinned and held out her hand. "I'm Catherine, Valen's wife."

"Ah." He shook her hand. Rough calluses, strong grip. For an instant he was reminded of someone. "Yes, I'm Morden. Nice to meet you."

"You, too." She looked back over the water as the boat drifted into the center of the canyon, toward the stronger currents of the river. "So, how are you finding our humble abode?"

"Somehow I thought there'd be more people around."

"Oh, there are. But they're all in the cities. This is pretty far out into the wild, here, and people don't tend to travel here unless they want to be alone, or be alone with someone." For a moment Catherine sounded wistful. "Or discuss business, which is what I expect you were doing."

He mulled that over. "More or less."

"Oh, that kind of business?"

"Which kind?"

"The not-so-imminent demise of the universe." She looked up with deep, dark eyes, and smiled wryly. "I assume you're in already, or you wouldn't be here."

He sighed. "Yes, I am in. And yes, that's what I meant."

She looked back at the water. The canyon walls were sailing past smoothly, swiftly. The bird song was lost again. "Sometimes I wonder if they could ever have had our best interests in mind. The death, the destruction, the manipulation... all to create some dream of peace that might create some spectacular new achievements before stagnating." She smiled to herself. "Strangely enough, the Vorlons are really big on not stagnating. They fear they did it themselves for too long, and now we're paying the price."

"Sounds pretty unfair to me."

Catherine laughed. "Then, of course, I think it probably doesn't matter if the First Ones are using us, as long as we get survival out of the deal." She looked back at him again. "I know, it's very Machiavellian of me."

He grimaced. "I just have to wonder if the ends justify the means. I mean, I have to."

She quieted immediately. "Of course you do."

He turned away and watched the water for a while. "Of course," Catherine said after a minute, "if we hadn't been pushed for so long, we might have ended up like the First Ones, only completely out of time."

Morden shot her a glance. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it took them a few billion years to go from the printing press to a computer, that's all. If we'd been moving on the same timescale we'd never have gotten... anywhere."

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling the bottom plummet out of his understanding of the universe again. "Did you say a few billion years?"

"Yeah. I did the calculations when I heard the figures, 'cause I couldn't believe it myself. They moved slow." She grinned. "Which means, in a few hundred years, the younger races will be light-years ahead."

"If we don't blow each other up first."

"Well, depends on if the Interstellar Alliance holds together. That happening decreases the probability of our imminent destruction, or so I'm told." She flashed him another grin. She had nice teeth. "Of course, there's still the thriving community of artists and engineers around here, so hopefully even in the wake of a galaxy-wide nuclear firestorm we'll be able to propagate the species imperative."

Morden laughed, bitterly, since the moment seemed to call for it. Several billion years...

"I still can't believe how much they lied to us," he said after a moment. "I mean, everything. Everything was a mockup, an act. For thousands of years."

"Millions," Catherine agreed grimly.

"And the Shadows... they were deliberately cruel to people in order to build up their reputation." He sighed. "I probably can't trust anything they ever claimed."

A vision: hyperspace, twisting, folding; a pocket, a ship; voices, screaming, pleading...

"Oh, you can probably trust some of it."

He laughed again. "Right. Which parts?"

"That's the challenge, right there."

They were silent for a while. Suddenly Catherine said, "I wish I had a better name for the Shadows. Even though I haven't seen one since I arrived. They're hardly causing chaos and destruction in this galaxy."

"Well, they have one." He grimaced. "It's just ten thousand phonemes long, and it'll be tough to translate."

"Ten thousand. What does that work out to?"

He broke off his train of thought, which was already reaching after metaphors to try and put English words to the endless stream of Shadow letters in his head. "Uh? Good question. Ever read the Iliad?"

"Homer's Iliad?" She blinked in surprise. "Once, actually. It was a challenge."

"Yeah. The catalogue of ships is about ten thousand letters long." He stopped, thought about that for a second. "Well, in Greek, it is. It's a little longer in English."

She stared at him blankly.

Morden sighed and tried again. "It's like Tennyson's 'Ulysses', five times over."

"Ahh." She grinned. "That one I recognize. That is a lot to translate, from an alien language."

"It gets worse." He pinched the bridge of his nose. Shadow characters, millions of them, floated past his mind's eye. "All of the letters show up with different stroke widths in different places. With normal people, that's just standard variation. With the Shadows, it's important sub-textual information."

She was nodding, politely. He broke off with an effort of will. "I'm sorry. This is dull."

"No, honest. I just don't know much about the field." She smiled. "If you want dull, I can go into the practical techniques of an environmental survey."

"Thank you but no."

"So, do you have any of it translated?"

"I..." There was so much of it... "Well, I know a little, just the surface. Something about the stars..."

He closed his eyes and called up the memory, the whispers of the spoken language, the layers and layers and layers of intonations that never got translated by the simple machine in his head, and the thousands of characters under his fingers as he pored over documentation. "We came... for the stars? From the stars? We were called, and taught, for the stars. We came for guidance, and wisdom. We joined, for destiny..." The words ran, and he ran after them, stumbling, "For destiny is all our voices joined in concert, all forces acting together to choose our path.

"We came with the others to create... something... We sacrificed... something in the city of light, and our great crusade went forward until the end of time, waiting."

He opened his eyes. "That's the first pass, anyway." He looked around. "Where are we now?"

They were still surrounded by cliffs, but these were gigantic growths of crystal, lightly tinted blue, with white sand and black rocks lapped by the river at their base. Morden could make out stonework, carvings in the walls, too far up to see clearly. Wind was whipping through the towers, sounding a weird music that tugged on the edge of his memory. It was colder, the sun hidden behind clouds. He was inexplicably reminded of the old Catholic church at the edge of town back home, with broken stained glass that let in angry rain the time he'd snuck in with some friends from school. He slipped his jacket on again and tugged it shut.

"The Minbari call this place Tai'eela. They pretty much took it over." Catherine was rolling down her sleeves, paying only slight attention to the scenery.

"Yeah, looks like them." A thought crossed his mind. "Do you and Valen stay here?"

She shook her head. "No, Jeff and I have a place in the city."

"Ah." He replayed bits of the earlier conversation in his head. "The city? You mentioned 'cities' earlier."

"There are two big ones. An Vatoll and Alfanne. Most of the nonMarkabs live in An Vatoll, and that's where Jeff and I stay, most of the time."

"Ah," he said again. He attempted a smile. "How much does an apartment cost?"

"Nothing."

"Sorry?"

She shrugged. "There isn't any mode of exchange, so there's no cost. There's plenty of space."

"Everything's free?"

"Everything your heart desires." She looked up and grinned. "Want to see the city?"

The river went everywhere, and it went to An Vatoll. A sprawling, unplanned community, the city buzzed with light and motion. Other boats appeared on the river, from tiny one-man kayaks to gigantic branching constructions that looked more like trees or coral than anything meant to carry passengers or cargo. The city sprawled in all directions on the banks; into the water and into the air, buildings and walkways arching and tumbling. The river was wide and calm, reflecting the light of the dimming sunset and golden lights sailing past for hours.

For a while he just watched. There were people everywhere, Minbari and Markab and every so often human, filling up the banks and the streets and the ships. Once they were buzzed by a trio of Centauri on an honest to God flying carpet.

It was organic, it was terrifying, it was exhilarating. It was more welcoming and more alien than any of the First Ones' dead, slow, regulated cities. Even the Minbari seemed to be having a good time.

"I like this place already," he murmured.

Catherine looked up, startled. Neither of them had said anything for over an hour. "Good," she said.

"So where are we going?"

"My place, first, to drop off the boat. Then... something to eat? Or we can find quarters for you."

"Food is all right."

"Great. One of my grandsons runs a bar downtown. We can stop in there."

He eyed her sideways. She still didn't look any older than he was. "Grandsons?"

She caught his expression, then laughed. "One of several."

"Ah." Something fishy was going on here. She'd been around on Babylon 5 as a contemporary. He decided it wasn't polite to ask and watched the steady flow of buildings on the bank.

"Does the river have a name?" he asked suddenly.

That earned him another glance. "Several. Agis Tei. The Tethys. Those are the common ones."

Agis Tei was the Markab equivalent of 'Rio Grande', hardly inspired. "Tethys. Interesting."

"That's from one of the crew of the Odysseus. I always thought that was a horrible name to give a ship."

"I flew on the Icarus. You don't need to tell me about unlucky Greek mythology."

He was getting used to her laugh. It no longer sounded as though she was enjoying a joke while he couldn't understand the punchline.

They sailed into a dock next to a grassy hillock, behind which curled an ornate complex in glass and gold. The grass was long, and lush; bright green. Dew brushed off on his pants as he followed Catherine across to the doors.

The elevator they took went down, and felt like it was moving out closer to the river. The suite it opened into was framed with gigantic windows looking out into the water. They were much farther down than Morden thought plausible.

"Nice."

Catherine grinned, blushed, and muttered something about 'embarrassment of riches.' "I have to get a photo album I promised I'd give Taylor," she said. "I'll be right back."

She ducked down a hallway. Morden strolled over to the window, through a dim sitting room, noticing details. The ceiling was low, and painted a color on the gold side of beige. There were filigrees and mouldings and well-kept carpet, but there were also wear marks around corners and threads pulled from seat cushions. Several bookcases stood in shadows against the walls; they were filled with real books, paperbacks with crackled spines.

Outside in the water a group of humanoids were diving. He stepped closer to the glass to get a better look. They were Abbai, swimming easily without breather units, wearing loose garments that drifted like seaweed and swirled in patterns as they traded places with each other in a slow underwater dance.

One saw him and waved. He raised a hand hesitantly to wave back. She giggled silently, clapping her hands over her mouth and twisting around. The others waved and laughed as well, and then suddenly vanished, sprinting downstream with inhuman speed.

"Ready?"

He turned halfway around to see Catherine standing in the middle of the room, expectant.

"I..." he said, feeling as though a thread of something precious was slipping through his fingers, "You know I never wanted any of this, right?"

Her eyes widened, and then she smiled sadly. "Yeah."

He looked back at the water and sighed. "I feel like I'm in over my head."

"That's life, right?"

"I guess it is." He watched Catherine's reflection twitch a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled a bit. She smiled back. "Okay. Right. We were going?"

They didn't quite use a flying carpet to get to the bar. Catherine had a two-
seater flying machine, a boxy contraption that echoed the lines of her old survey ship. She patted its frame as she got in the driver's seat and Morden climbed in behind her.

The trip was surprisingly fast. Flitting through well-lit streets under the fading glow of sunset, Morden caught a few moments, flashes only:

--A trio of Drazi, playing instruments on the street corner, people dancing--

--A human woman whirling bolas which trailed fire and smoke--

--An intoxicated Markab vomiting in an alleyway--

--An argument between a Brakiri and a Minbari, sideliners enthusiastically placing bets--

--A Narn and a Centauri locked in a passionate embrace--

--A knife fight between two Vree, stilted and formal--

He leaned forward. "I haven't seen any Gaim yet."

"I've met a few. They're weird. They tend to keep to their own. They look nothing like their ambassador on B5, too. They aren't even bilaterally symmetric."

That was... disconcerting. "The Gaim ambassador hit on me once."

"Yeah? Me, too."

Catherine guided them onto the roof of an archway that stretched across several smaller buildings and parked the flyer between a giant swan and a model Minbari flyer the size of a surfboard. The swan eyed them curiously as Catherine led the way to a giant spiral staircase a few meters away which led both down into the center of the archway and up into darkness above. Morden shaded his eyes against the background lights and looked up, barely making out a platform at the pinnacle.

"It's a swimming pool."

He turned to Catherine. "Hmm?"

"Up there." She tilted her chin up at the staircase. "There isn't any other way to get up to it, so it's usually not too packed. But the staircase is a lot shorter than it looks."

"Ah." They were heading downstairs. The stairway was covered in black carpet, deep pile that sank half an inch under his weight. "One of those... tesseracts?"

"Yeah. They're all over the place. Little folds in space."

"Do you people get a map?"

She smiled. "Sometimes."

Morden had been in enough bars in the last few years to know when he was getting close to one. He'd also gotten a sense for quality. As they descended the staircase he heard laughter and soft music; he smelled alcohol and perfume and many sentients crammed into one space, and he filtered his perceptions and came to realize even before he got a look that this place was good. Not upscale, but actually good.

Roomy, and well-lit; more of the lush carpet covered the floor, gleaming in the light; the space was half-filled by tables seating four or five apiece, some covered in game boards and some in bottles, surrounded by sentients of every description (including a few of the Gaim, who were, as advertised, asymmetrical in the bilateral plane,) there was a dance floor tucked away on the other side of the bar itself, which was a magnificent dense curve of a deep red wood that shone golden as though oiled. Behind the bar was a man of mostly human features but with a Minbari crest; it was a crossbreeding he'd caught sight of a couple times out the windows of Catherine's flyer, though he hadn't realized until now how prevalent it was.

"Hi, Taylor," Catherine said, sitting down and pushing a binder across the table. A real photo album, like an antique.

"Hey, gran," he said, or the Minbari equivalent. "Who's this?"

"This is Morden," Catherine said.

"Hello," he said, since it seemed to be the thing to say.

"He just got in," she explained as Taylor reached his hand across the bar for a handshake.

"Oh, hey, nice."

"Yes, so far," Morden said. Taylor chuckled and retrieved his hand.

"So," Catherine said. "How about some drinks for your old gran and our new friend, here?"

"Sure. What do you drink, Morden?"

"Vodka tonic." He gave the bar another brief glance. There were a lot of bottles, thick glass with paper labels. "You have a nice place, here."

"Thanks," Taylor said, flashing a grin as he pulled down a couple bottles from that shelf and started mixing. Morden squinted to catch the label on the vodka. Stolichnaya Nova? Something like that. And free ice, which wasn't always guaranteed on a space station.

It was good vodka, too.

Catherine introduced him to some of the regulars, a trio of Markab who enthusiastically launched into a fairly technical description of the bio-inorganic mapping AIs they were working on. Morden nodded and listened with half an ear while he tried to determine, as an academic exercise, which of them were sleeping together.

"The thing is, the thing is," Dr. Tafar said, "None of the First Ones have experience with so-called programmed intelligence, algorithms, that sort of thing. They never used AI. They never needed it."

"What, never?" Morden finished his drink, slightly surprised at the empty glass. "I'd think they would need to use something of the sort when they developed computers."

"Ah-ah," Tafar's friend Kimil said. He slapped Tafar on the shoulder and nodded at Jilla, the female of the trio. "They didn't use computers like that. Right?"

"Right," Jilla said. "They had remarkable concentration. They discovered how to interface directly using psionics and managed all the controls themselves."

"Isn't that a little inefficient?" They were probably all sleeping together in a weird Drafan tribal arrangement just to throw him off. It would figure.

"Entirely inefficient!" Jilla said. "But that's how they operate. They had the concentration to micro-manage. So they did. It never occurred to them to delegate to a program."

"No operating systems," Tafar said. "Imagine it. It's fantastic. It wasn't until they started working on genetics that they had a conception of creating sentience. And then only as an extension of the normal life process. This is a completely new field to them." The trio grinned at one another, practically beaming.

That was the undercurrent, then. The feeling of discovering something new, that the Vorlons and Shadows and whoever else hadn't yet. Ours.

And just when he caught that, his empty glass threw itself off the table.

He started and looked down at it. Nothing had broken; the rug was that thick. The Markab were staring, surprised. "What was that?" Morden asked.

They blinked and shrugged. Morden sighed and reached down to pick it up. "Falanistal," Kimil muttered under his breath.

Falanistal, roughly translated as 'poltergeist'. Morden silently agreed. Then he looked around for a perpetrator, amazed at the different things he was able to watch if he concentrated. Heat, light, psychic energy...

... Henrietta and Dr. Scott descending the stairs...

Blink back to normal. They were approaching the table. "Hi, Dr. Tafal, Dr. Kimil, Dr. Jilla," Scott said. "Dr. Morden."

"Dr. Scott. Lieutenant Greylark." Tafal gestured. "Please, join us."

"Am I the only one here without a PhD?" Henrietta wondered aloud as she pulled out a chair.

"Catherine was here somewhere," Morden said. "I think she's talking to Taylor."

"So yes." She grinned. "If I hadn't spent so much time in the lab I'd feel really outclassed."

The Markab seemed to be putting the poltergeist incident out of their thoughts. Morden tried to do the same. "What got you into that position, anyway?"

Henrietta shrugged. "Basic gray ops training." At his expression, she smiled slightly and ducked her head. "Ah, I guess confidentiality doesn't matter now. But there's really not much to tell. One day I got offered a transfer to 'experimental and confidential,' and I took it. I was still taking orders, they were just more interesting."

He was going to respond, or one of the Markab was, perhaps, when a troop of Abbai came whooping down the stairs, six carrying a young woman on their shoulders. They were wearing elaborate masks and most had on fake Dilgar uniforms. The woman on their shoulders squealed in mock horror.

"It is Asha Makila's coming of age today," the leader of the women in Dilgar uniforms announced, "And we are ferocious Dilgar warriors who have captured her friend Lasi!"

"Eeee!" Lasi squealed again, completely unbelievably.

"Let's take her to the balcony!" one of the company suggested. The cry was taken up by the other 'Dilgar.' "To the balcony!"

They trooped past the tables, Lasi giggling and occasionally screaming. After a moment another Abbai ran down the stairs, without a mask but carrying a heavily-decorated long knife. "I'll save you, Lasi!" she cried.

"Hey, Asha!" Taylor called from the bar. "You'll need to be fortified if you're going to take on a compliment of Dilgar warriors." He held up a large goblet. It was smoking softly. "Drink this, first!"

She looked at him sideways. "Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure. Happy Daguri."

Asha grinned and took the drink, blushing as the rest of the patrons applauded. She finished it in a triumphant swallow, then raised her dagger and followed the others out to the balcony.

Henrietta was grinning, even though she was confused. "What was all that?"

"It's called Daguri," Morden said. "Abbai tradition, very old, and certain formalities have to be observed. Looks like a lot of fun, though."

"I'd settle for a birthday party. I don't even know what today's date is."

"December 7th, 2264," he said. Then he wondered briefly how he knew that. "But we're a few thousand light years away, so if you look back at Earth you'll see sometime in 736 BC."

"Nice. Happy unbirthday to me."

Catherine had detached herself from the bar and took a seat at their table. "Hi, guys," she said. "Sorry about that."

"No problem." Morden looked around. "But I think I could use some sleep. Real sleep."

"We should find you a place to crash, then." Catherine stood back up and grinned. "Come on, let's go apartment hunting."

"Sure we're all awake enough for that?" Henrietta said, following. Dr. Scott was also on her feet. The Markab opted to stay behind.

"I'm not tired," Morden explained. He grimaced. "I could just use some sleep."

Scott caught his eye for a moment, but was past him, following Catherine up the stairs before he could ask what she wanted. Shrugging, he started ascending up into the starlit night.

The apartment they found was in a building occupied by mostly other humans, including Dr. Scott and Henrietta. It was furnished, in sparse neoclassical style; Catherine assured him there were plenty of places to get furniture around. After a brief look around, he got the key from the database, signed in, and was standing saying his goodnights to Henrietta, Catherine, and Scott.

Dr. Scott hesitated for a moment after the others left. He waited, letting her stay inside the doorway, even though he was starting to crave a little privacy. "Something on your mind?"

She closed the door, quietly sealing them both inside. She stared at her hand on the doorknob and took a breath. "Do you get nightmares?"

Oh, God. "Yes." That didn't seem enough. "Bad ones."

"Me, too." She looked over at him. "How can you stand it? I mean, I know you don't need to sleep any more."

He shook his head. "I tried that once. When I first started getting nightmares, I just gave up on sleeping..."

Black--his blood was black, and that more than the pain made his hand spasm, and the razor dropped to the floor flicking drops of black black blood and he was going to be sick he could taste it, hand clamped around his wrist and doubled over--

"What happened?"

Back. Breathe. He tried to force a smile, and he could tell from Scott's expression that it wasn't working, so he dropped it. "I had a really bad month."

She nodded.

"I think..." He took a breath. "I think that it's the only way to get away from it. And it's better than the alternative. A lot better."

"Even with dead Narns screaming in your head every night?" She rubbed her eyes. "I get that one a lot."

"Me, too."

She sighed. "Oh, well." She reached for the doorknob again. "Goodnight. I'll catch up with you tomorrow."

"Sounds good. Goodnight, Scott."

"'Nite, Morden."

Sheridan had taught him that, he thought as he closed the door. The team always used last names with each other, just to distinguish themselves from the corporate side of the business who forced intimacy by learning your first name and never letting go of it.

Strange he should think of her, in a place like this.

He sighed and turned to his new bed, to terrifying sleep.

Over the next few weeks he tried to overcome his lack of any nesting instinct with Henrietta's urging. He'd never been one to settle in. Not in college, certainly; and in his job he was always trying to get into the field. Rebecca had decorated their house, only occasionally asking his input. And when she and their daughter had died, well... nothing had really felt like home after that.

And, of course, the Shadows had more or less made him cease to care.

He tried to get enthused about staying. He tried to make conversation at Taylor's bar, to meet and get to know some of Scott's friends, but something kept nagging at the back of his mind.

He hadn't seen any of the First Ones since that first day meeting Whandall, and it was starting to drive him mad.

It was Henrietta who finally cornered him. After a few weeks of coaching he he still couldn't understand the technical jargon that doctors Tafal, Kimil, and Jilla used, but he enjoyed talking to them. He was heading out to Taylor's place to do just that when she met him in the hallway, arms crossed and head cocked.

"Something wrong?" he asked, hand still hesitating on the door.

"Mmmmm," she said, which didn't bode too well. "Mind if I come in?"

He shrugged and pushed the door back. She followed him inside, frowning at the interior. "Thought so. You're not even really trying, are you?" She flopped onto a sofa that had been pushed into a haphazard triangle with the other chairs by the viewscreen. The arrangement looked far more organized with her sprawled in it than it did otherwise, which said a lot about his decorating skills.

"Well, it's not like I do a lot of entertaining." He took a chair, cautiously.

Henrietta snorted indelicately. "You've got Feng Shui so bad it could kill a yak."

"That'd be a better use than I normally put my furniture to."

"Seriously, Morden. What's wrong?"

He sighed. "I don't really know."

She was studying him, green eyes narrowed, a thoughtful smile on her lips. He closed his eyes and searched for words. He was a translator; he should be able to come up with a few. "I should be ecstatic. I mean, this is what I wanted, right? A chance to start over, no obligations to anyone."

"But..."

"I feel like I'm abandoning--" he blurted, then stopped, because he couldn't put into words exactly what he felt he was abandoning.

Henrietta frowned, brow furrowing. "The Younger Races?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Yeah. I feel like I'm abandoning us."

"I mean," he pushed himself to his feet. He needed to pace. That meant maneuvering the furniture, but that was a minor obstacle. "I'm a translator. That's my job. That's really my only job. And the only thing I've been working on out here has been the name of the Shadows, which isn't exactly groundbreaking."

"Well, it is to me," she said. "Have you gotten any farther?"

"Not really. Well, I mean, I figured out that the whole first part is kind of a racial history, the whole photino conflict, that sort of thing. But there are some words in there that just don't have equivalents." He shook his head. "That's not important, though. There are things back home which are important."

Henrietta nodded, slowly. "You mean that database."

"Right."

"So... you're saying you want to go back?"

That shook him, right there.

Go back? It was ludicrous. The only reason he'd been left in any peace back in the Milky Way was that he'd stayed away from people, on planets that nobody had even heard about, and kept himself to himself. Was he really suggesting going back and walking up to... oh, John Sheridan, for example, and turning himself and the database over to the government? Any government? Mollari, for example?

It was a stupid idea.

"Yeah," he found himself saying. "I want to go back."

Stupid idea.

Henrietta smiled. "I was waiting for you to realize it." His confusion must have showed, because she laughed and said, "You've seriously got a guilt complex that you're not letting yourself face. And I don't think you really like being out here with the First Ones."

"Am I that obvious?" He glanced at the walls, absentmindedly looking for the energy patterns that meant 'Vorlon' or 'Shadow'. Nothing. "I think it's worse knowing that they're here and not doing anything."

"Yeah." She got to her feet, radiating satisfaction. "So. When are you going to tell Valen?"

He laughed. "Hopefully after I tell his wife."

Morden's first instinct was correct. Upon hearing his plan, Catherine tilted her head back, frowned, and said, "I don't think Jeff will go for it. The whole point is that we're not supposed to go back. But you can ask him, of course."

Valen's response was more to the point. "You want to WHAT?"

Morden reflected that he wasn't helping the situation when he replied, "What part of 'go back to our galaxy' didn't get through?"

Valen sighed and turned away. They were in Tai'eela, halfway up one of the blue crystal cliffs in a small meditation chamber. Catherine had directed Morden there when he'd asked. Now that he was actually here, defending his position, he wasn't so sure about his resolve. But he pressed on anyway. "I figured you were the person to talk to."

"You can't go back. None of us can."

Morden raised his eyebrows. "Who made that rule?"

"The Vorlons." Morden rolled his eyes. Valen frowned. "It's for everyone's benefit. We can't allow word of this place to get out."

"Why? What would be so terrible?"

"Well for one thing, the Younger Races have to learn that we can find the answers without the Vorlons and the Shadows showing us how to do everything. That won't happen if everyone thinks they've found the secret to life, the universe, and immortality and the Vorlons are keeping it locked up over here."

Morden narrowed his eyes. "Just how long have you been here, anyway?"

Valen gestured a sharp cutoff. "It's not a good idea to send anyone back. Besides, back there you're dead."

"That happened on Z'Ha'dum, too. A couple times. Never stopped the Shadows."

"The Shadows are gone."

"Yeah." Morden shook his head, as much to clear the sudden buzzing of translations welling up in his head--We have been named by the stars and called by destiny to create the something and become the something and follow orders to change our destiny--as anything. "But I have to do this. I just know it."

"We can't take the risk."

"Oh, who am I going to tell? Who's going to believe me?"

Valen smirked. "If you don't get anyone to believe you, you're going to have a hard time doing anything and you might as well stay here."

Morden sighed. "Point. But I'm not interested in leading a migration to come settle in the lap of the gods, here. I want the Younger Races to get things for themselves."

"So why go back?"

"Because all of that history, all of that information is sitting in a database on Ahzken 4, and I'm the only person who knows how to find it or read it." Morden hardened his glare. "And I think that's more important than some trumped-up concerns about secrecy."

A voice behind him said, "I concur."

Morden turned around a bit more abruptly than he would have liked. There was a tall, faintly familiar figure standing in the doorway.

"Lorien," Valen said. "I..."

"You... disagree," Lorien said, smiling. He turned luminous gold eyes on Morden. "But I think Mr. Morden has a quite persuasive argument."

Morden blinked and tried to focus past his feelings of deja vu. "Which one?"

"The wars of the First Ones created boundless change in the younger races. Without them, your races would doubtless have no hope of surviving the coming darkness. But the cost was terrible." Lorien's eyes were almost filling his vision. "Amends can never be made. But reparations can."

That wasn't an answer. Morden put his hand over his eyes, forcibly breaking eye contact and leaving his head thrumming. "Look. I... can I ask you never to use the phrase 'coming darkness' again? I've heard it too many times for it to be really effective."

"Is there another phrase that you would prefer for heat death and oblivion?"

"Oblivion is good. It sounds awfully attractive sometimes." He chanced opening his eyes again. Lorien had turned down whatever he'd been doing. "We've met before, haven't we?"

"Once. You were in no condition to remember me."

That meant... "Z'Ha'dum. After the explosion." He stared. "You saved my life."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Galen asked me to."

That was a surprise. "Strange. The last thing I remember was trying to kill him."

Valen was turning purple. Lorien smiled. "Perhaps he was feeling especially benevolent. Perhaps he saw something of himself in you. Or perhaps the universe truly does have a will which moves us to a place where we can repay past kindness."

"We call that irony." Morden frowned. "What repayment?"

Lorien didn't answer, just tilted his head forward until the red gem in his forehead reflected glare into Morden's eyes. "What would you sacrifice, in order to leave this place?"

"I don't know. I'd have to see the offer, first." He looked away. The gem was starting to remind him of the Soul Hunter, not an entirely pleasant comparison.

"Your freedom?"

Morden looked up again. "What do you mean?"

"Would you be willing to work for us, again?"

"The last time I agreed to that I got my sense of morality switched off. Is this another one of those deals?"

Lorien smiled darkly. "We need an emissary."

"That's the dumbest idea I've heard today."

"You wanted an out, Mr. Morden."

Morden shook his head. "I was an emissary. For the Shadows. Sending me back as your official representative isn't exactly going to help your credibility."

"Credibility is not an issue if we don't plan to return. We require eyes and ears, not someone to argue territory."

Lorien smiled as Morden ground his teeth. "What, exactly, do you want me to do?"

"To go. To translate, and to watch. And to do all other things as you see fit." Lorien inclined his head slightly. "Always remembering that swift change comes with a price sometimes worse than inaction."

He hesitated. "Why did you leave those implants in me?"

Lorien didn't answer.

"All right," he found himself saying. "I'll do it."

"You'll need a ship," Lorien said. "Come. I'll show you the way to the docks."

He turned and exited the small meditation chamber. Morden fell into step beside him in the corridor. "What, I'm not allowed to use hyperspace for my own purposes?"

"That isn't the issue. The issue is that without a Vorlon ship, you won't be able to leave this area of space."

"... A Vorlon ship?" That was momentarily offbalancing. "Nobody else is allowed to leave?"

"Nobody else has any ships."

"Oh?"

"The other First Ones have decommissioned their fleets. The Vorlon ships are around in case of an emergency."

"Wonderful." Morden rubbed his eyes. "You know they shot at me when I got here."

"A necessary precaution. Come, I'll introduce you."

The corridor opened out onto empty space and terraces of crystal, a trail switchbacking down the sheer face. Morden reached out a hand to keep a touch on the cliff. "Those ships don't like me."

"You don't know that." Lorien was leading him downwards, nominally toward where Morden remembered the river to be. Every time he looked down, the next ledges got more indistinct in fog. "I've found them to be rather impartial judges of character myself."

"I'm sure I'll win them over with my remaining taint of Shadow, death and destruction."

"Negative thinking will help no one. You are getting a chance to return home and make amends to a galaxy filled with sentient beings aware of their own common ground as never before." Lorien turned around another switchback, which put him at about eye level with Morden. "The universe does not present us with writs of forgiveness for past actions. Your guilt and suffering are your own to keep for as long as you wish. I hasten to add, though, that they make life in any place uncomfortable, no matter how genial the surroundings."

Morden looked away. Lorien waited for a few moments before he began walking again. After a second, Morden followed. They were completely shrouded in fog, now. Lorien was a dark blur ahead of him in the mist. The cliff wall vanished underneath his questing hand. He took deep breaths and walked slowly forward, and down.

Another hundred feet and the fog thinned, and there were stars everywhere. There was no trace of a canyon now; up and down had only tenuous meaning, a fragile metal causeway under their feet and Andromeda sweeping tendrils of light over their heads.

There were ships among the stars. Lorien raised a hand, made eye contact with something too far off to see, and nodded. A shining speck disengaged itself from a darting school of other shining specks and dived toward them, coming to a silent halt beside the causeway.

Lorien turned to Morden, who was watching the ship with not a little trepidation. "This will be your ship," the First One said. "Introduce yourself."

Morden stepped forward. "Hi," he said. "I'm Mr. Morden."

He didn't know what he expected in response. It was a Vorlon transport, after all. Vaguely flower-shaped, soft yellow-green, alien and disturbing. The spots on its side shifted and rearranged themselves after a moment into three lines of Vorlon text.

Morden shook his head. "I don't read Vorlon."

(Not yet,) the ship spelled out in Shadow-text a moment later.

"Okay," he said, shooting a nervous glance at Lorien, "I'm willing to learn."

(My name is Ar'takkistem'inth!tnekiththvind!timanist.)

"Forgive me if I don't attempt to pronounce it." Morden shook his head. "Mind if I call you... uh... Orestes, instead?"

There was a long pause. (Acceptable,) the ship finally said.

"Good. Good. Nice to meet you." He turned back to Lorien. "Well, thanks for helping me out. I should... er, pack."

Lorien nodded, slowly. "There is no penalty for staying."

He had a dizzying image, for a moment, of walking downstream along the Tethys for ever, lost in thought and not noticing the sea-changes. "I think I'd better go."

"Very well." Lorien turned back to Orestes. "The ship will wait here until you return."

Morden looked over at the ship. "I'll try not to be too long."

(Time is of no importance.)

"I suppose." He turned around and looked back at the endless causeway hanging above the stars. He was getting practice with the tesseracts. If he squinted right, he could almost see them. Just little folds in space.

He took a few steps forward--

And he was on the balcony outside Taylor's bar, looking out on midmorning in An Vatoll. Convenient, indeed. Taylor's was closed, but there was a stairway down to the street, and there was a cafe nearby that he usually stopped for breakfast at with Henrietta and Scott. Hopefully one of them would be there.

Henrietta was, chatting in the mostly empty space in the back corner with two people Morden didn't know, a blonde woman and a black man who turned an intense stare on him as he approached.

Henrietta looked up and smiled as he took a seat. "Hey, did you eventually track him down?"

"Yeah, I did." He nodded an introduction at the other two--a couple, he noticed belatedly. "Hi, I'm Mr. Morden. I don't think we've met."

The woman smiled wryly. "Oh, I remember you. We met briefly on Babylon Five, sort of. I'm Talia Winters. I was the resident telepath when Sheridan had you in custody."

"Now I remember." He shook his head. "For what it's worth I'm sorry... and I don't cause that reaction any more."

Talia's smile turned genuine. "Don't worry. I received a pretty thorough apology already. I don't believe you've met Jason?"

"I don't think so." Morden looked to the black man and found he couldn't smile under that intense look, so he nodded again. "Hi."

"Hello."

"So what happened?" Henrietta said.

Morden shrugged. "Well, he wasn't happy."

"Who wasn't?" Talia asked.

"Valen." Morden shook his head, suddenly dizzy. "I won the argument. I'm leaving."

"Congrats," Henrietta said, as Talia exclaimed, "Wait, what?"

"I'm going back. Lorien argued in my favor."

"Ahh," Jason said, as if something important had been explained. Morden tried to read his expression, but he didn't appear to be paying too much attention. Talia was shaking her head slowly in disbelief, eyes wide.

"We don't get to go back," she finally said. "That was what Jeff told all of us. We don't get..." Talia reached up and held her head in her hands, then closed her eyes and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Morden suddenly realized she was working hard at not screaming, or cursing, or something. He sighed, feeling another knot of tension start somewhere behind his ribs.

"I don't understand why I'm so special," he said. "I never asked for this."

"No, of course you didn't," Talia said shortly. She took a deep breath and leaned back, straightened out her arms. When she opened her eyes she had regained her composure. "I'm sorry, Mr. Morden, I shouldn't be angry at you. I just... can you do me a favor? When you go back?"

He was momentarily taken aback. "I'll try."

"I'd like to record a message for someone. I..." she took another deep breath, this time to cover some sort of explanation. Morden didn't press. "I left her rather suddenly, and I never got a chance to say goodbye." She wasn't looking at him, but he knew what sorts of things would be in her eyes. "I want to at least tell her goodbye. I owe her that much."

"Of course," he said, startled by his own vehemence. Talia looked at him, and there was hope there, suddenly, and that was something, damn if it wasn't. "Just get me the crystal. I'll wait for you."

She sat there for a moment, startled, before smiling in relief and standing and excusing herself hurriedly. Her footsteps rang clearly until the door cut them off.

Henrietta was looking at him archly. "Isn't this breaking the rules a bit?"

"Hell with the rules," Morden said. "The Vorlons can just deal with it."

"Good," she said, nodding. "So you're leaving today?"

"I think so." He looked around the cafe. Nobody else had come in. "It's not like I have much to pack. But I was hoping to find Scott before I left."

"I think she's over at Metro, looking at game kits." Henrietta took a drink of water meditatively. "Isn't this a little rushed? I mean, I thought I just convinced you of the idea yesterday. You only had so many hours of running around to find Valen. And you've already got transport?"

"Lorien lined me up with a ship." Morden shook his head. "I don't know. He said something about wanting me to report on what's going on, but they grafted weapon systems onto my spine. Big ones. According to Draal, I could destroy a good chunk of the universe. Does that sound like reconnaissance to you?"

"No," she said, and she should know.

He sighed. "I just can't help but feel like the Shadow War isn't over. Or it's turned into something new, and Lorien's using me."

Henrietta wiggled her fingers at him. "Or he's worried this Photino thing will heat up, and he wants you over in the Milky Way providing covering fire until the cavalry can arrive."

He considered that for a moment. "Maybe."

"Enh. At least you'll have a freer hand." She leaned back in her chair and grinned. "And I will be enjoying all the free cocktails I want, with no hangovers, every night for ever. And probably getting all the tail I want, too. Do you think Taylor likes me?"

"He's Catherine's grandson."

"So? Everyone's someone's grandchild."

He shook his head. "I never got up the nerve to ask her how that happened, when I know for sure she was around on Babylon Five when I was."

"I asked." Whatever his expression was, it made her grin. "Some sort of time-travel rift. She got caught up in it and landed far back enough that she caught up to Valen at that end of his time-loop. Which I think I almost grasp. She gave him a lift to this area of space after his other wife died."

"Right." He closed his eyes to let the facts settle. "Right, because Valen was married on Minbar, of course. There's something in Minbari legend about his children being persecuted."

There was a lull. Morden looked down at the menuscreen, punched for a coffee. Jason was still staring off into space. Morden fought the urge to wave his hand in front of the other man's face while a waitress appeared with his order. He burned his tongue on the coffee.

He frowned, fixed that. "I can't believe this is happening."

Henrietta smiled sympathetically.

"It's a matter of conserving resources," Jason said.

Morden looked at him. He was focused, sharply. "Sorry?"

Jason smiled. "I'm sorry, sometimes I'm somewhere else. Your predicament. It's a matter of conserving resources. It was expedient."

"I guess so." Morden frowned. "What do you mean you're somewhere else?"

"I've Become," Jason said softly. "I've crossed over."

He didn't understand. He looked, and then Jason smiled and dropped a layer of defenses, and he could see--and he shut his eyes fast, from that blinding signature. "Oh. Ow. I was using those retinas."

"Sorry." Jason smiled wider. "I see through people like that--but not you. It's strange."

"Oh?"

"Yes. It's good design. And you're not a telepath."

He was going to get whiplash following this conversation. "I... no, I'm not."

"Not right now. But you could be."

"Comforting, I'm sure." Morden looked down at his coffee, then back up as he heard Talia's approaching footsteps.

"Here," she said, handing him a datacrystal. She took her seat again as he took it and briefly held it up to the light.

"That was fast. Who am I delivering this to?" he asked, tucking the crystal in the inside pocket of his jacket.

"Susan Ivanova."

Well, it was a name he wasn't expecting, to say the least. "Well, if I can get it to her, I will. I think she wants to kill me, though."

"Thank you," Talia said quietly.

"It might be a while before I find her."

"That's all right." She smiled, a little bitterly. "It's been several years since I've seen her. I can wait a while longer."

"Try to not take that wanting to kill you thing so personally," Henrietta said. "It really isn't your fault."

He raised an eyebrow. "'Just following orders' has never been an excuse."

"Ahhh," she growled, throwing up her hands. "Have it your way. You'll have to figure it out eventually. You wanted to go find Elaine?"

The Metro was a shopping area a few blocks away. It was a short walk, and they found Dr. Scott poking through electronics. Her reaction was better than Morden expected.

"You lucky son of a bitch." She planted her hands on her hips and grinned. "Congratulations. Send me a postcard when you get there."

"I don't know if that'll be possible," Morden admitted, "but I'll try."

"It probably won't be possible." Morden looked up to see Valen bearing down on them, a small box in his hands. Valen held the box out to Morden. "Here, this is for you."

"Thanks, I didn't know you cared." Morden unlatched it and peered inside. "What is it?"

"Lorien had me track down a few things. There's a message in there for the Soul Hunters."

"Nice." He pulled out a datacrystal. "That would be this?"

"Yes. He wants you to tell them that they can stop working and come home."

"That... what?" Morden slipped the crystal back into the box and looked up, but Valen's expression didn't tell him anything.

"The full text is in there, but that's the gist."

"Right." Morden pulled out a slim gold case, about the size of a credit card. "What's this, then?"

"That's for the techno-mages."

"I thought they were all dead."

"No, a lot of them managed to escape." Valen watched him fiddle with the box. "It's 'tech', the stuff the Shadows used to provide. Except it's neutral, and it contains instructions on how to grow more from dead biomass."

Morden nodded and gave up trying to work the catch. "That will come in handy, I'm sure." He closed the box, and found it was just small enough to fit in his pocket. "Is there anything else?"

"Make sure Babylon Five doesn't explode while you're in the area." At Morden's curious stare, Valen grinned sheepishly. "As a personal favor."

"Sure." His mouth was suddenly dry. "There doesn't seem to be... I should be going." He turned to Henrietta and Scott. "Say goodbye to everyone for me?"

Scott gave him a reproachful look. "Sure you can't stay a few more hours to do it yourself?"

He wanted to. But he shook his head and said, "I shouldn't keep the ship waiting."

There was a chorus of nods.

Henrietta stepped forward, and to Morden's surprise, swept him into a hug. "Take care of yourself," she said as he awkwardly reciprocated.

"I'll be fine," he said. She pulled back far enough to give him a look. "Honest."

"Okay, then." She stepped back. "Just remember those postcards."

"All right. I will." He looked around at the others. "Goodbye."

It only took him a few steps to find a tesseract back to the docks. And then he was standing there, looking out at the endless deep, next to the transport.

(Hello again,) Orestes said, obligingly still in Shadow rather than in Vorlon. (Ready to depart?)

He took a deep breath, and looked up one last time at the sweep of Andromeda. "I guess so."

The hull quivered, then opened into a passageway. Bracing himself, Morden stepped inside.

He didn't know what to expect. He'd never been inside a Vorlon transport. Shadow ships had been dark, red, and disconcerting. This Vorlon transport looked an awful lot like a standard Earthforce shuttlecraft on the inside.

"Um," he said as he made his way forward and sat down in the pilot's seat. There were no seat restraints, and not many controls, either. "Is this normal?"

(No, but it's comfortable, I hope,) the console in front of him read.

He chuckled. "Well. Thanks." They'd started to drift away from the pier. "So begins the adventure. Hey, we can stop off and see your homeworld."

(That would be impossible.)

"Why? There's some kind of interdiction on it?"

(No. My homeworld was destroyed shortly after we left the galaxy.)

Morden frowned. "After? But that would..."

He trailed off, mind already racing ahead. Ar'takkistem'inth!tnekiththvind!timanist was not a Vorlon name. It wasn't even close to a Vorlon name. It came across in Shadow text because it was originally written in Shadow text because it was the kind of name that the Shadows had...

We have been named by the stars and called by destiny to create the starships and become the starships and follow orders to change our destiny...

"Oh my God," he said. "You're the Shadows. You're... All of you. All the Vorlon ships. We knew they were alive, but we never thought... why the hell were you killing each other? Why the hell were you shooting at your own people? Shooting at your own ships? Why--"

(It was necessary.)

"You were killing each other..."

(Prepare yourself for the jump.)

"Shipwrights," he whispered, "That's what it should be. Not Shadows. Shipwrights..."

The stars ahead turned blue, then violet, then faded into black.