"I'd better not hear anyone laugh," Johnson rumbled. "Anybody laughs, I'll kick his ass."
"Now, would we laugh at you, Lieutenant?" Andrews asked, all innocence. He lounged in a well-padded easy chair. On the sofa, Henderson hid a smirk behind one hand.
Meditation. Makepeace had never had so much as an inkling of that facet of Johnson's character, nor would he have guessed it from the lieutenant's past behavior. Wasn't meditation supposed to be a calming, relaxing experience? "Relaxed" was not a word Makepeace normally associated with Daryl Johnson. Granted, Johnson's knowledge of meditation techniques had been acquired part and parcel with a previous girlfriend. He'd probably given it up as soon as the relationship had ended. He hadn't actually said that, though. Did he still practice? The image of bad-ass Johnson sitting in a lotus position, chanting mantras and communing with his inner child, was more than a little entertaining.
Johnson directed a quelling glare at Andrews and Henderson. "You two keep your ugly gobs shut, or we'll never pull this off." He turned a suspicious eye onto Makepeace, who immediately wiped his own smile from his face. "You ready to get started, sir?"
"I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be." Makepeace shifted in his overstuffed armchair. He tried to delude himself that it was the alien upholstery that was bothering him, but one could only lie to oneself for so long. Relax, he told himself. Johnson promised you'd have complete control over the entire experience.
To distract himself, he stared down at his stockinged feet and wiggled his toes. Johnson had decreed comfort essential, so Makepeace's boots and belt had come off and the rest of his clothing had been loosened. He felt almost like he was ready to go back to bed.
"Yo, Godfrey," Johnson called out, looking off at a corner.
"Did you require something, sir?" responded a cultured male voice.
Makepeace stared, and finally understood why Andrews had given the hologram its name. Godfrey had changed its—his—look. Gone was the misty, indistinct hologram that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be male or female. Instead, a replica of William Powell stood in the corner, big as life and wearing a traditional butler's monkey suit, looking exactly as he had when he portrayed the title character in "My Man Godfrey." He even had the supercilious expression down pat.
Johnson said, "Godfrey, can you lower the lights a little? It's too bright in here."
"How much light reduction would you like, sir?" Godfrey asked. Damn, it even sounded like William Powell. "Will ten percent do?"
Johnson shrugged. "Yeah, try that."
"Reducing lighting by ten percent," the natty hologram replied.
Makepeace watched, fascinated, as the rain-splattered windows grayed and darkened. The lights dimmed enough to shroud the room in hazy shadows.
Godfrey asked, "How is that, sir?"
"A little more, I think," said Johnson. "Make it another five percent."
The shadows grew as Johnson and Godfrey fiddled with the lighting. When the lieutenant was finally satisfied, much of the color had been leached from the furnishings and carpet, and everything had that grayish cast that accompanies the twilight hours.
"Will you be needing anything else, sir?" the hologram inquired.
"No, I don't think so," replied Johnson.
"Very good, sir." Godfrey vanished.
Johnson pulled up a small chair next to Makepeace. "Are you ready, sir?"
Makepeace nodded.
"All right, then. Close your eyes."
Swallowing his misgivings, Makepeace obeyed.
At first, Johnson simply ran him through a standard but effective set of relaxation exercises. Deep breathing, then the usual sequence: toes, feet, legs, continuing on up to arms and shoulders and finally finishing with his neck and head. Johnson had modulated his voice to a series of low, almost musical tones. Makepeace went with it, letting himself drift along with the deep, soothing sounds.
Now Johnson had him imagine an empty black sky, a great bowl of darkness that was devoid of light but for a single, bright star. Earlier, they had agreed on a script for the meditation, a loose outline based on what Makepeace remembered from his nightmare. Johnson would begin with the star, then move on to Sitala and the radiation. If necessary, he would adjust the script based on whatever imagery Makepeace reported.
The image of a dead black night only evoked the same mildly disturbed feelings that Makepeace had felt two nights ago, when he had stood watch under that terrible void. But when he pictured the lone star, he felt the alien dread from his dreams creep over him. The longer he held the vision in his mind, the more the dark emotions grew. He tensed, fighting to keep his mind from purging the star from his thoughts.
Johnson must have noticed. He shifted the focus back to deep breathing, floating sensations, and the empty night. When Makepeace relaxed, the lieutenant once again added the star.
It burned in space in solitary glory, and this time Makepeace kept his fear at bay. He let the star's cold, yellow light wash over him as long as he could. Finally, though, he was forced to turn away.
Instead of the blackness of space, he beheld a shining planet, a beautiful blue-green jewel wreathed in cottony white clouds. He felt himself drawn toward it. It called to him with clear music and a promise of fulfillment, and he couldn't help drifting in closer.
Suddenly, something reached out, caught hold of him, and pulled him down. He fought against it, but his actions were no longer under his control. He plummeted toward the aquamarine planet, summoned by an unrelenting force that seemed both alien and achingly familiar. Fast and faster he fell, spiraling downward, and no matter what he tried he couldn't stop or even slow his descent.
"What's happening?" he heard Andrews ask, followed by Johnson's strained reply, "I don't know."
He tried to hold on to the words, use them as an anchor to reality, but he was falling too fast and they were wrenched from his fingers.
Then Johnson's voice was gone, whipped away by roaring winds. Makepeace was sucked down, down through the atmosphere, through layers of earth and sediment and rock, into the planet's very heart, where he was surrounded by incandescent light and liquid fire. The burning radiance filled and consumed him, stole his identity and possessed him, until he was one with the World—more, he was the World. He could feel its rhythms, the ebb and flow of the waves of its oceans, the raging intensity of a thunderstorm on a far continent, the rise of a river and the warm sunlight on a field of ripe grain, the zooming of aircars and the Zand-Faylakk transports to and from the great cities, even the seasonal migrations of the tiny creatures the People called koomii.
The blood of the World warmed him and fed his strength, giving him the power he needed to maintain the World. The breath of the World was in his lungs, and he controlled every aspect of weather for purposes that ranged from watering crops with rainstorms to creating shimmering rainbows and pleasant summer afternoons. The body of the World was his own, and he minimized quakes and calmed volcanoes, channeling the pressure along deep, remote paths until it eased. He performed thousands, millions, of routine tasks that kept the World functioning with seamless precision.
His existence, his entire purpose, was to maintain the World for the People, and keep them both safe. It was what he had been created for. Without the World and the People, life had no meaning. He held them both in a loving embrace, taking care of all needs, protecting them and allowing the People to continue their pursuit of perfection.
Except soon there would be no more People to care for. An alien star had come into the sky, and it had brought with it death.
Voidship travel was not unknown, though the People had never developed much need to build machines that could venture beyond the orbit of the World. There was nowhere to go. Indeed, in the distant past all had believed that nothing else existed but their own small system.
Civilization had progressed apace in spite of this lack. A few probes had been launched to examine the Sun and the occasional comet, and satellites were put into orbit to study the World and provide for industrial needs. Some of the People enjoyed watching the rare meteor showers. Otherwise, science and technology had all but ignored space in favor of more useful subjects.
Then, in the Second Epoch, a star had appeared in the sky. It had been an alien voidship, something unheard of in that time. The ship had carried a group of explorers, who had placed the Chenvwathd Gateway upon the World. They taught the People its use then left, never to return. It was the People's first awareness that they weren't alone in the universe. The social disruptions had nearly destroyed them all before the horrifying truth was commonly accepted and civilization could move forward again.
Those who were both curious and adventurous journeyed through the Chenvwathd Gateway. Many never returned. Those who did brought back strange stories, peculiar artifacts, and tainted knowledge. Three thousand years later Gateway travel was standardized and monitored, and a small trade in exotic alien goods was developed with certain of those strange beings who lived beyond the blue event horizon. But even after so much time, most of the People still gave the Chenvwathd Gateway a wide berth, distrustful of where it led, wisely avoiding those Other places as too dangerous for contact. The majority of the People preferred to keep the World isolated.
Those first aliens had had mysterious and perhaps benign intentions, but they weren't loved or appreciated. Their activities—their mere existence—had wrought discord and uncertainty. A new word was coined: xenophobia. An orbital defense system was devised, but in the Epochs that had followed no other alien voidships had appeared in the sky. The Chenvwathd Gateway was put under strict control, enclosed in an impenetrable housing so any alien who came through uninvited found itself trapped with no recourse but to return home. Gradually, the trade in alien goods ceased; the Chenvwathd Gateway fell into disuse. Over time, the People relaxed their vigilance. By the Fifth Epoch, the defensive satellites were untended and their orbits degraded, until they crashed into the oceans in blazes of meteoric glory.
Now, in the Sixth Epoch, a new star burned in the heavens.
These new visitors were not well-intentioned, although at first they claimed they were. A being of unsurpassed ugliness calling herself Sitala said she had come to negotiate a trade agreement for an alien ruler named Nirrti. It had been a ruse, to give her people time to tailor her plague and seed it across the World. Her misshapen form reigned triumphant as death rained down upon the People.
An engineered and targeted virus, the plague was fast acting and always lethal. It induced fever and uncontrolled hemorrhaging, and such terrible pain that death was a release. There was no immunity, no preventative vaccine, no cure. Within days, all the People were either dead or in the last stages of dying. None were spared.
The tailored virus remained, poisoning the World. If it had no hosts to infect, the virus simply waited, deceptively dormant, in the soil and the water. Animals and plants were unaffected by its presence, but none of the People would ever again live on the World.
He watched, enraged to madness, as Sitala's great pyramid ship landed and her minions emerged to loot the World, to defile his body, his being. They took technology and art alike, kicking aside the dead, ignoring the cries of the dying. The aliens took control of the Chenvwathd Gateway and called more of their own through it. They spread almost as swiftly as their bioengineered disease had, destroying buildings for sport, torturing for amusement those of the People who could still scream.
For the first time in the two Epochs of his existence, he knew hatred. His duty was clear. The World had to be kept pure: the contamination, the alien abomination, would be excised. The World would be purged of the virus, freed of the aliens.
It would be cleansed.
From deep within his own body he summoned the fiery manifestation of his hate: ionizing radiation intense enough to destroy all biological functions instantly. It rolled out over the planet, emerging from every access point he had available. Oceans, atmosphere, land masses—all became suffused with the agent of purification. Buildings and other structures were charred by the radiant heat. Those that weren't damaged he destroyed himself, with earthquakes and thunderbolts. Nothing would remain for the aliens to desecrate but the Zand-Faylakk road system, and that he deactivated.
He left only the Chenvwathd Enclosure intact. The reinforced structure was the only way to keep aliens who came through the Chenvwathd Gateway away from the World. He sealed it shut, using controls that had been designed for just that isolationist purpose.
The cleansing onslaught proceeded unabated. Oceans heated, lakes boiled, continents burned, and everything died.
Leaving its own dead behind, Sitala's voidship rose from the planet and headed back into space.
Wave after wave of the lethal radiation continued to sweep out, sterilizing and re-sterilizing everything in its path.
Inexorable.
Final.
Until he was alone. And only then did he end the outflows of radiation.
The virus was gone, its presence utterly eradicated.
The World was free.
Purified.
But now nothing lived upon it—no plant, no animal, no microbe. His life had no purpose. Overwhelmed with grief, he shut himself down.