Chapter 32

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Chapter 32: What ends here, begins there

Sellis led me away from the wreckage, taking me to one of his dig sites. "Recognize any of this?" he asked.

I looked down into the hole. Several men were at work with brushes and small shovels, trying not to damage anything. Metallic fragments were exposed here and there. Looked like spacecraft wreckage. How is that possible? I wondered.

"I have no idea what any of this is," I admitted. "Looks like a ship crashed here. I can't tell anything about what kind of ship it was, though."

He drove the muzzle of his pistol into my back. "I want to show you something. Keep moving."

So, I kept moving. He led me around the large dig site, toward the far end of it from where the Darrex ship had crashed. "I don't get it, I thought you said you were looking for something here. If you found ship wreckage, isn't that it?"

"The debris only proves that what I'm looking for actually exists. It's not the wreck I'm interested in so much as what was done with it." We stopped over another hole. Only it wasn't a hole. There were skeletons. Human ones. Several of them. A mass grave.

"Okay, so some people died here."

"At the site of a spaceship crash," Sellis added.

"So? How do we know it was anywhere near the same time?"

"We've already begun dating the remains and ship fragments. All this is about twenty thousand years old. We can't pin down an exact date, but the bodies were here, too. And these aren't the bodies of prehistoric humans."

"They're not?" Now he was capturing my interest.

"No. They're modern." He knelt beside the pit, looked up at me. "These people shouldn't be here."

"We can agree on that," I said. How did modern humans crash a spaceship here 20,000 years ago?

"There's one other thing. Two, actually." He reached into one pocket, pulled out my charm. Yeah, fine. I already knew he had that. He stuck his hand in another pocket, though, and pulled out a second one--identical to mine. He held out both hands, displaying the metallic pieces to me. "We found one of these on one of the bodies."

I raised my eyebrows. I had no idea what to make of it. "As far as I knew, mine was unique. I never would have expected to see another one. Have you analyzed it?"

"Briefly, yes. We confirmed it's made of the same substance as yours. An alloy we lack the industrial processes to reproduce, along with some internal features that may or may not be circuitry."

"Weird."

"Very. But, as I said, there was another thing. We extracted DNA from the body that possessed this."

"Yeah?"

"It matches yours."

"You're kidding me."

"No, I'm not. This is why I asked you what you knew. This person, whatever it is--a twin, a time duplicate, whatever you'd like to call it--was here twenty thousand years ago. Crashed this ship. A device was built out of the wreckage. All we know is the Oolian word for it, which translates as 'Focus.' That's what I'm looking for, Robert. You must help me find it."

I crossed my arms and narrowed my gaze at him. "Not until you tell me who you really are."

He stood up, got a little closer than I'd have liked. He didn't want to answer, but he knew he had to. "The information I gave you before indicated there are two types of Koraxians--Rationals and Emotives. But there's a third type--the Changers."

"Let me guess--they're shape-shifters, and you're one of them."

"That word makes it sound so simple and straightforward. It isn't. This form is permanent for me. The real Maury Sellis died so that his memories and personality could be merged with mine, in a body identical to his. I am as much him as he ever was, simply made out of different molecules."

It all began to make sense. Sort of. "What about my parents?"

He nodded. "They're Changers, too. Don't feel bad for failing to recognize them as such--as I said, they have the same memories and personality. It's just the mind at work that's different--a synthesis of the original, and the individual Changer."

"Call me crazy, but didn't they age the same as my parents, too? I thought Koraxians lived for thousands of years."

"Unless they are templated, like myself and your parents. Then, our lifespan becomes equivalent to the species we mimic."

"And you do this voluntarily?"

"In this case, yes. Our kind of have been used, abused, and persecuted by Korath's government for centuries. The rebellion itself is genuine. I only hid our motives from you."

"Well, maybe if you'd asked nicely, all this could have been avoided."

His eyes cast downward, a little sullen. "You're right. We have been unwilling to seek true allies. Trust is difficult to build. Koraxians are hated all over the galaxy. Even our so-called brethren--the Pap'rians, the Salmaxians--they ignore our pleas for help."

That little bit was news to me--I didn't realize those three races were related. It only furthered my conviction that a lot of our so-called "allies" had been playing us for fools for years. The Oolians kept secrets from us, even ones buried right under our noses, and now this. But who could I trust? I'd not forgotten that "Sellis" had just assaulted me only a few minutes ago, seemingly out of his mind. And how he was calmly explaining the plight of his "people." Even so, our own allies seemed to be in on this--whatever was happening, everybody wanted a piece of the action. And I was stuck in the middle of it.

I had little choice but to feed him a little information and test his reaction. Either he'd value my help and I could get closer to what his true goals were, or he'd brush it off and I'd be just as useless as before. "I think you should know that the Oolians are closing in on us right now. They picked up the Darrex ship's signature. Said something about the way we vectored in, they hadn't seen in a long time."

"Yes--in about twenty millennia. I'm not surprised they were watching. This is all about them, you see."

"I'm not done. The Koraxians are coming, too. I don't know when they'll get here, but my piratical friends gleaned a lot from trading band comm traffic. A Koraxian fleet is trying to locate Earth. If you and your kind could get here, I don't see why your oppressors can't, but whatever. If what you say is true, they won't be very happy to see you."

"They are probably trying to find an obscure route here, to avoid large patrols. They wouldn't want to lose a large portion of their fleet before they arrived."

"Which means they're ready for a fight."

"And with the Oolians and your fleet here, there will be one."

"Then we need to work quickly, right?" He agreed. But there was one thing he hadn't told me: "What, exactly, does this Focus thing do? Why do you need it? What good does it do for your people?"

He stepped away for a moment, pondering how to answer me, and ordered several men to start digging around the crashed Darrex destroyer. Then, he came back, facing me. He tilted his head toward the grave. "Think about what's in there. Things that could not be, but are. The present is defined by the past. Our present is broken, Captain."

"You can't be serious. A time machine? That's what all this bullshit is about?"

He shrugged. "How else did you end up in a grave, twenty thousand years ago? I had my suspicions when we began this project. I knew the Focus held great power. Now, I know what kind of power. I am not telling you this simply because I intend to dispose of you. You have an opportunity here. Help me find the Focus, and you are helping to ensure a less destructive Koraxian Empire. Think about it--we could go back, stop all this at the source. Korath's cruelty is what has stained this galaxy in blood for so long. This war would not have happened. Billions of lives would be spared."

Sure, who hasn't thought of going back in time, making things right? On the surface, it always sounds like a good idea. In practice--or at least, speculation--it always falls victim to weakness. You can't know everything, be aware of every variable. Few could resist the temptation to rewrite history in their own image. Assuming it was even possible--and there was no guarantee the Focus even existed or still worked--I didn't want a mentally unstable Koraxian masquerading as a human masterminding such a scheme. If nothing else, I'd go along just far enough to secure the damn thing and take Sellis out of the picture.

His hand was outstretched. He looked sincere. Maybe he was. But it was too much power for any one man, or green blob pretending to be a man. I shook on it. I'd help him.

And then I'd kill him.