Thirdspace, p.9
Thirdspace, page 9
"Understood."
They headed out into the corridor, and as they went Sheila said, "By the way, not to change the subject you understand... but what the hell is that huge black thing outside the station?"
"It's called 'space.' "
"Ha, Ha, Mister Funny," Sheila said, unamused. "You know what I'm talking about."
He shook his head. "No idea," he told her. "I think that's what all these IPX people are running around about. No one knows what it is or where it came from."
"Well it makes me nervous," she said flatly. "I wish, wherever they got it from, they'd put it back there."
"Relax, Sheila," he tried to soothe her. "Do you think they'd be fooling with it if they didn't know what they were doing?"
She looked up at him unwaveringly and said, without hesitation, "Absolutely."
Chapter 8
The comparison to ants drawn by Dr. Franklin had not been far off as the technicians busily constructed their anthill around the artifact.
All the while keeping a safe distance, so as not to have any of their equipment ruined, the IPX personnel were-through a combination of ships and 'bots-constructing a large framework around the alien structure. From that they would be able to hang lights, create close-up watch stations ... even build scaffolding or anchor points that would allow their fellow technicians to walk upon the surface of the artifact. Under ordinary circumstances they might utilize gravity boots, but with the device apparently capable of draining energy, they were going to have to use something as mundane, but reliable, as cables and clasps. In short, they were treating it as if they were preparing to scale a mountain. A totally alien mountain in a zero-g environment, granted, but a mountain nonetheless. The available light was cast by huge lamps situated in some of the already-in-place rigging. It played off the surface of the artifact, suffusing it with an eerie glow that, at that very moment, was not at all being witnessed by Lyta Alexander. Aside from the fact that Lyta's quarters had no viewing ports, the tele-path had gone to bed.
She was not, however, sleeping soundly. Then again, dreams of approaching death, destruction, and Armageddon will tend to rob even the most deep sleeper of his or her peace of mind.
And Lyta felt. ..
[Floating.]
She is floating, and all around her the stars are calling to her, just as they did when she was waiting/hoping/praying for the divine intention of the Vorlons to save her life.
Below her is the artifact, the strange alien device. She moves through it, seeing it even closer now, its angled spires and strange geometries. She does not know what to make of it, is not supposed to know, for it is totally outside of her frame of reference.
So why does she recognize it?
Why does she know it, as if it calls to her from another lifetime?
There are the hieroglyphs, and they contain its secrets. They glow to her, taunting her, and she is reaching for them. They are just beyond her fingertips, except she cannot see her fingers either, for her hands are glowing and they have become immaterial, unable to touch anything.]
You feel nothing.
[But the light is there...]
It is not.
[But the other voice, the dark voice that seems almost desperate to keep her in ignorance, is starting to fade. There is danger. Do not forget, there is danger, danger is there, that is why you have fallen asleep, for you wrote all upon your wall, over and over, wrote yourself into complete exhaustion, wore out your body but your mind is not asleep, your mind calls to you and we call to you through it. Know what you must do, what must be done...]
Lyta sat up.
She looked around, and there was no confusion in her. The way was quite clear to her. The knowledge of what she had to do was there, right there, and she felt almost embarrassed for a moment that it had taken her so long to comprehend.
She was outside of herself, beyond herself. Everything in the world was clearer than it had ever been.
She had trouble remembering why she was confused. She even had trouble remembering her own name at that moment. But what she did indisputably remember was the job that she had to do. She remembered the danger. There was nothing else real to her, nothing else remotely relevant. The danger, her job, and that was it. The rest had fallen away into a haze of disinterest and irrelevancy.
The danger was known. The job was known. And the proper execution of the latter would dispense with the former.
Zack Allan could not remember a longer shift. It was as if the IPX people were everywhere, all of them needing a crash course in the regulations of, and safe negotiations through, the Byzantine station called Babylon 5. There'd been half a dozen incidents of petty crime, plus an assortment of accidents caused by rushing about. One fight involved a Drazi clonked in the head by a passing technician, who'd been in such a hurry that he hadn't even realized he'd struck anyone-although when the offended Drazi started trying to shove the techie's arm down his own throat, the techie had abruptly become aware of his indiscretion. Zack hoped that as the IPX people settled in, things would calm down to their normal state of insanity rather than the current accelerated lunacy.
He stepped up to the transport tube that would take him to his floor and, when the doors opened, he found Lyta Alexander standing there.
Immediately he flashed back to the old days with the Chief. He remembered that Garibaldi had spoken fondly of another telepath-Talia Winters-a woman who'd undergone a bizarre and unfortunate change in personality. Garibaldi had liked her, Zack could tell that. And Garibaldi had spoken with amusement about the fact that, whenever Talia had gotten onto a transport, it always seemed as if he, Garibaldi, was already on it, "waiting" for her. He'd allowed her to think it, even made amusing "paranoid" comments about it to her, parlaying a couple of chance meetings into Talia's always wondering if he was going to be lurking about. In that way, he'd occupied a premiere space in her mind.
In the end it had worked out tragically ... but still, Zack couldn't help but feel that maybe there was some sort of kismet between security chiefs and telepaths, for here they were again, late night on a transport.
And, although he hated to admit it-even to himself-he felt something for her. He'd kept it neatly tucked away, but it was there. Even as he nodded to her and stepped into the transport, he knew he couldn't say anything to her about it.
Except... why not?
Because it was a transport, that's why not. The things he wanted to discuss with her... you didn't just bring those up on a transport between floors, on the fly with thirty, maybe forty-five seconds to say what's on your mind.
"Red twenty-five," he said, then stifled a yawn because he didn't want her to think that she was boring to him. "Lyta," he said conversationally as the doors slid closed. "Long day, huh. Seems like they just keep getting longer every day. You look like you've had one of those days yourself."
His mind told him, You sound like an idiot! You sound like you 're making conversation! Its painful and stilted and forced! Ask her out, you moron!
And while his mind was busy chewing him out, Zack didn't notice that Lyta's lips were moving silently, as if she were talking to herself... or to someone very, very far away.
"Believe me, I understand," Zack said. "One damned thing after another."
Thereafter followed an uncomfortable silence, and he realized that if he didn't say something soon, she'd be departing and that would be pretty much that until the next coincidental run-in ... and who knew when that would be? Steeling himself, he said, "Listen, Lyta... there's something I wanted to..."
And that was exactly the moment when the lights went out.
The transport came to a halt as the emergency lighting kicked in, providing them with a very modest, but nonetheless usable, illumination. They were little more than silhouettes to each other, but at least they could see something. "What the hell?" Zack said as he tapped his link. "Security to C and C."
"On line."
"Yeah, we got a power failure in Tube Nine. What's the story?"
There was what sounded like a knowing sigh from the techie in C&C. Zack had a feeling that he wasn't the only one registering a complaint. "We've been having power fluctuations for the past couple of hours. We'll get it back on ASAP. Just be a minute."
Zack nodded and toggled off the link. "Just be a minute," he said to Lyta, on the off-chance that she'd gone stone deaf in the past forty-five seconds and hadn't been able to hear his conversation.
They stood there in silence that was so complete he thought he could hear his heart beating, and hers for that matter, and Zack couldn't help but wish that Lyta was facing him down holding a PPG on him. Were that the case, he'd know what to do. That'd be easy. But just looking at her standing there ...
... And he grabbed her and kissed her passionately....
... And he grabbed at her and she slapped him-----
... And he thought such powerful, romantic thoughts that she picked up on it, turned to him and jumped into his arms, her hands pulling at his uniform and doing things....
He cleared his throat loudly, embarrassed by everything that was going through his mind and hoping to hell that she didn yt track what he was thinking. He suddenly began to glom onto the possible hazards of involvement with a telepath. Hell, you couldn't get away with anything, right? Romance with Lyta Alexander? What was he thinking? Well, that was the question, of course. What was he thinking?
He checked his watch. Exactly fifteen seconds had passed. Seemed like fifteen days. At this rate, if they were in there for five minutes, he'd die of old age.
This was ridiculous. This was just ridiculous. They were adults. She was a gorgeous woman, and he was a reasonably good-looking guy. Breath smelled okay. Long hard day, but the pits were holding up. So what's your freaking problem, Allan, he asked himself.
He looked at his watch once more. Two more seconds.
Screw it.
"Well, as long as we're not going anywhere," he told her, "I wanted to, y'know, I wanted to ask you ... do you want to go out sometime? I dunno, get some dinner, maybe catch a vid?"
She didn't answer immediately. He still didn't notice that she was talking, apparently to herself, her mouth moving but no words coming out.
He took a deep breath and pushed into the heart of what he wanted to say. "Bottom line is, I like you. I've liked you ever since you got here."
She didn't react immediately. In fact, she didn't seem to react at all. He'd half expected her to look at him in an appalled or surprised or even amused or contemptuous manner. But she was still looking straight ahead. Clearly she wanted him to say more.
"I know things have been tough for you lately, and I know I could do right by you."
He didn't like how that had sounded. It had seemed egotistical, self-aggrandizing, as if she were waiting around for some big hero like him to come along and save her from her difficulties. He backpedaled, his words picking up speed as he continued to speak until they were tumbling over one another. "I'm not the captain, I don't bring down the big bucks, and I'm nothing to write home about, and there's a big gap between us and the kind of life you lead that I could never understand...."
Stop it! His mind shouted at him. He'd gone too far in the other direction. Now he sounded self-pitying, needlessly tearing himself down. He was making himself sound like such a lousy catch that not only would she not be interested in spending time with him, she'd probably be willing to gnaw her leg off at the knee just to get out of the transport. "Well, maybe I could understand if I try," he amended, but he had still done himself major damage. He was positive of that.
Compliment. When in doubt, when all else fails, when you feel like you're spiralling in flames... compliment her. "You're the kind of person that makes a guy want to try," he said, and he was extremely pleased with that. It sounded sincere, probably because it was. That was the key: sincerity. He'd once heard Garibaldi cynically comment that the entire key to life was being able to fake sincerity. Once you had that down, you were golden.
But Zack realized that he didn't have to fake it. All he had to do was honestly tell her what was on his mind. Certainly that was the way to go; after all, even if she wasn't scanning his thoughts, she'd probably be able to tell if he was being insincere, right? "There's something about you," he said, "something about you that... I'm nuts about... so, uh..." He looked down at his shoes in the dimness. "I think it would be great if, you know maybe I could see you once in a while." No response. She was probably considering it.
"Hey, listen," he said quickly, "you don't have to answer now. Take your time, think about it for a while.... Not to imply that you have to have an answer, you don't owe me one, that's for sure. I think, uh, I could care for you. You've been through a lot. I guess I just want to do for you ..."
His voice trailed off and he came to the awful realization that he had completely and totally blown it. She wasn't even looking at him. She was probably offended by his entire endless, rambling dissertation as to how much he wanted to spend time with her and why he wasn't remotely good enough to do so. Hell, she'd probably even register a complaint with the captain. Here she'd been, stuck in this emergency situation, and the chowderheaded head of security had been coming on to her. Had taken advantage of the fact that she was a captive audience and bored her to tears, or made her uncomfortable, with his lengthy and ill-timed, not to mention nauseating, proposition.
Nah, he realized. She wouldn't go to Sheridan. She had too much class for that. But she'd probably look at him with nothing but contempt in her eyes every time she saw him for the rest of the time that they spent together on the station. He had to do something to try and make amends. He had to fix the muddle that he'd made of it all.
"I'm sorry," he said as sincerely as he could. "I shouldn't have said anything. I didn't mean to offend you. This was probably the wrong time, both had a hard day, you know how that goes. It's just awkward. So maybe you're right, maybe it's best we don't..."
At that moment, the full lights in the transport came back on once more. The floor shifted slightly under their feet and the transport resumed its course as if nothing had happened. "Looks like they fixed it. Now I can't remember where I'm going," he said with a laugh that really didn't have much amusement in it. "My brain jumped the track, it does that."
Still no response from her. She must really be furious with him, doing a silent burn. He was incredibly regretful that he had brought up the entire thing, and desperately wished he hadn't. Panicking, he realized that there was only one way to make things right with her: to pretend that, in fact, he hadn't brought it up.
"Like I said, I'm sorry," he told her. "I shouldn't have said anything. So let's just pretend this didn't happen. This way you won't be embarrassed, I won't be embarrassed, and I promise I won't ever bring it up again, unless you bring it up first."
The transport slowed and Zack managed to unscramble his brain sufficiently to recall that this was, indeed, where he was planning to disembark. It was, after all, Red 25, the level on which his quarters were situated. "Well, I guess this is where I get off. Listen, I hope I wasn't too far out of line, Lyta. I hope. Good night, Lyta."
He stepped out of the transport and the doors shut behind him. He sighed loudly and said to himself, "Well, maybe it was for the best. Three dates, I probably would have married her." He walked away, convinced that his desire for Lyta was doomed from the start for one simple and inescapable reason: they had absolutely nothing in common.
He was not correct, however. At that moment in time, there was something that they had very much in common, and that was obliviousness. He was oblivious to the fact that Lyta Alexander had never heard one damned word he'd said in all that time. And Lyta was oblivious to the fact that Zack had ever been present in the transport. Lyta's obliviousness was further reaching than Zack's, though, for she was oblivious of everyone and everything in the station. The only thing that she was aware of was the great, dark menace that hovered perilously close to Babylon 5, and the necessity of destroying it completely and utterly. And that was something that she was more than prepared to do.
The IPX technicians were working in shifts around the clock. Absolutely no time was being wasted in the construction of the framework around the artifact. At that moment, a flying forklift was approaching the gargantuan object, although keeping a respectful distance. A flying forklift was really rather similar to a Starfury, but it was specially customized with loading and transportation forks that enabled it to move large pieces of equipment about. Forklift One, as it was designated, had a fairly substantial beam locked into its transport equipment, with heavy-duty front-mounted lights illuminating the path. Soon, very soon, the framework would be fully lit, and that would greatly facilitate its completion.
A number of maintenance 'bots hovered motionless in space nearby. At this particular stage, they were limited in what they could do. But very soon they'd be turned loose on the partly completed structure and would be able to finish within hours what it would take a team of Humans days to achieve.
The pilot of Forklift One was a heavy set, bearded man named Kuehler. He was a longtime IPX man, a shift leader. One of his greatest assets was that he wasn't impressed by anything. He realized in a distant sort of way that that was kind of sad, really. He became involved with so many fascinating things that would be considered awe-inspiring by others. To him, however, it was just a job. Routine stuff. His mental distance was a major plus for his job ... and was something of a minus on a personal level. Then again, since Kuehler more or less had no personal life, he didn't feel as if he was suffering from it overmuch.
"Moving into position," Kuehler told Baldwin over in Fork-lift Two. Baldwin, a junior member and one of the newer members of the team, was eager to learn but continued to be somewhat sloppy on many of the basics. Kuehler thought that Baldwin had potential, but felt the need to stay on top of the kid and make sure that everything was checked and double-checked. Kuehler was far too blase about everything to ever be anything less than utterly methodical.
