Oddlands Magazine: I of the Beholder by Rebecca M. Senese
Delin Sabin Umlar coughed, rubbing dust from his eyes. Five minutes before, this room had been a normal holding chamber, off white walls, grey tiles of interlocking plasti-steel, the door as thick as the length of his hand. The explosion had torn out the door like a piece of paper, ripping it off its hinges and imbedding it in the opposite wall. Two of the guards had been crushed by the door; Umlar remembered seeing their bodies on the way in.”We think she had a mega-gun,” the sergeant said. He shook his head. “She was thoroughly searched. Don’t know how we missed it.”
“You’d miss it if she wanted you to,” Umlar said softly. He snorted away dust and walked along the far wall, one hand trailing along its rough surface. With the sergeant hanging around, he couldn’t get an accurate reading but it didn’t make much difference. There wouldn’t be anything useful.
“We’re holding all transports in dock,” the sergeant said. “She won’t get off base.”
Umlar smiled to himself. That would be inconvenient for the transports, stuck at a tiny way station in the middle of the Bolariano Nebula, the middle of nowhere. But he couldn’t release them now. After almost three years hunting her down, he wasn’t about to make the mistake of underestimating her again.
“Your cameras caught the escape,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” the sergeant said. “Recorded about twenty seconds worth then quit. Damn things always on the fritz. Too old, but they won’t give us the money to replace them. Budget cuts.”
The sergeant grumbled but Umlar ignored him. Twenty seconds. Getting better. Last time it had taken her almost a minute to disable the camera. It made him wonder, not for the first time, or the hundredth:
What were they going to do once they caught her for good?
He pushed that thought from his mind. He wasn’t a judge or jury, his job was only to find her and take her into custody. Then she was somebody else’s problem. And he would find her. He’d found everyone he’d ever hunted. A perfect record, not a blemish. Until her. He clenched his fists and turned back to the sergeant.
“How many ships have you got docked?”
“Almost seventy. Busy time of year.”
Umlar nodded. “Let’s get started.”
A compliment of ten guards followed him to each ship but Umlar didn’t let any of them aboard. He would go alone, boarding after the crew had left and been positively identified as themselves. They couldn’t take any chances. She could fool the men, possibly even fool the machines, the retina scanners, DNA readers, fingerprint filers, but she couldn’t fool Umlar.
Umlar had trained at the finest Academies, been privy to the mysteries of the Single Oneness. Joining the elite Tele-Hunters Mission, he’d sweated over numerous exams, readings and scans before he was deemed worthy. He’d endured the facial tattoos, old ink ones injected with ancient bamboo shoots. He was a Hunter One and she was an untrained renegade. An abomination to everything he believed in.
Before the first ship, Umlar paused, orienting himself, performing the Trinsu exercise, realigning himself in the universe, in reality. He closed off the echoes radiating all around him and focused only on her, only on the one reading of her he’d managed to find, the only clear picture he’d ever found.
Young, maybe ten, brown hair too long, hanging in her face. Eyes staring in horror at the woman fumbling with the door lock. Pounding from the other side, harsh voices calling through the door. The woman rushing forward, scooping her into her arms. The woman’s crying more frightening than the pounding and harsh voices. She struggles in the woman’s arms. “Run,” the woman whispers, but her mouth doesn’t form the words, doesn’t need to, the girl knows already what she would say. But fear makes her hesitate. The pounding, louder now, dents appearing in the door as they start to batter through. The woman finds her voice and screams: “Run!”
Over ten years running now, seven others tracking her before him, burning out before they caught her. He’d managed to catch her once. Her escape then had left an even bigger mess.
She wouldn’t escape this time.
One final, deep breath and he stepped inside the ship. Long metallic corridors stretched ahead, lined with seams like badly made trousers, dull and grim as only transport ships could be. The lighting was too dim for his eyes, but he wasn’t looking with his eyes.
Emptiness, no life echo. Scanning the crew, he was able to block any of their echoes in the ship. That would leave only her, only him. He slowly tracked through the corridors, the cramped living spaces with worn metallic hammocks, the work stations cluttered with tools and disks. He extended throughout the ship, seeing, hearing, smelling, willing himself along every surface but he couldn’t see her.
Not here.
One ship down, sixty-nine to go.
They proceeded methodically, the sergeant’s men adapting quickly to the routine of closing off the area around each ship’s docking coil, transferring the crew for identification and holding until Umlar scanned the inside of the ship.
Empty.
Afternoon dissolved into night. Umlar wolfed down a nutribar and dry swallowed some energy pills. A headache pounded through his temples down his neck, hunching his shoulders. Even the relaxation exercises didn’t help. He was pushing, getting close to the edge, but he couldn’t stop now. Even a rest as short as half an hour could be crucial. He didn’t want to risk her breaking through the net they’d cast. If she escaped into space he’d be back to square one.
“The next ship is ready, sir,” the sergeant said, his normally smooth face lined with tension. Umlar nodded, rubbing absently at his temples, distorting his facial tattoo.
“Let’s go.”
The crew filed out, grumbling about the delay, glaring at the guards and at Umlar with unrepressed hostility. Glancing at him, their hostility was lined with fear; he saw it glowing around them in shades of yellow. They knew who he was, recognized the ritual tattoos on his cheeks, imbedded so deeply no laser could erase them without horribly disfiguring his face. They were his shield, his badge of honor, protecting him from the fearful, ignorant masses that never bothered to try to understand him.
The sergeant finished checking the crew off his log. “All here,” he told Umlar.
They completed the identity verification and Umlar slowly scanned each of them. They were who they said they were, a normal transport crew, tired and annoyed at were being holed up in the middle of nowhere while some arrogant telepath scoped through their brain, invading their privacy…
Umlar shook his head, disengaging from the slouching hulk of a man who stood before him. The hostility was draining after a while and he couldn’t afford to be drained. He wondered if he should risk another energy pill.
The sergeant tapped the vid displayer. “Inside looks empty.”
Umlar smiled. He’d caught the slight emphasis in the sergeant’s voice. Looks empty. That didn’t mean anything. With a grunt, he grabbed hold of the air lock and hoisted himself inside.
Another endless corridor, drab and dull. He’d seen so many corridors he’d be dreaming them for weeks. His steps echoed down the emptiness, reflecting the faint echoes of the crew. As he got more fatigued, Umlar found the echoes slipping past his barriers. He pushed them back, concentrating, remembering only her, only the girl.
He started at the bridge and worked his way back. The echoes of the crew were hardest to ignore in their quarters where every object resonated with their presence. He took several deep calming breaths, forcing the echoes to recede, his hands tracing the patterns of the Trinsu exercise in the air, focusing only on her, on the one echo he was looking for but hadn’t yet found.
Leaving the last of the quarters, a small room packed with an impossible amount of stuff, he walked down the corridor toward the mess. Passing a secondary lift shaft, he glanced at it absently, and then caught something.
A smell, a scent, the barest whiff of an echo.
His breath stopped at the same time as his legs. Whirling, he stared at the shaft, concentrating until his lungs started to burn and he remembered to breathe. He took several deep breaths, trying to still his heart that thudded heavily in his chest. Concentrate.
There. There it was. An echo.
She was here.
He closed his eyes, fighting for control over his rising excitement. To get excited now would make him sloppy and if he gave her any chance she would plough right over him. Just as she had the others.
Quickly he checked the trancer at his belt. It was filled with the highest dose they could risk without killing her. It would bring her down, stop her from playing any of her tricks yet leave her coherent and responsive. One shot and she’d be easier to handle. The dose would last long enough to get her back to Earth, back to the probes.
He started down the shaft, focusing on the echo like a pinhole of light in absolute darkness. So faint, he almost lost it several times and had to climb up two levels before he caught it again.
Fourth level down. Engineering. Very smart, he thought, the most isolated part of the ship, yet still shielded.
The light was very dim, casting long shadows down the corridor. Umlar’s own shadow was like a tiger melting into the brush as he inched forward, drawing the trancer in one hand, trailing his other hand along the wall.
The echo, still faint, led him on. He focused on it, feeling it resonate with his single scan of her. The last time he’d caught up with her, there’d barely been a time for a scan. This time he’d make sure he knew her, inside and out.
He came to one of the equipment rooms, filled with the debris of a hundred repairs. The echo was slightly stronger. He followed it inside, moving slowly into the room. He could barely see in the gloom. Four paces, five…
He spun and grabbed.
She jumped back with a cry, losing her footing. She crashed to the floor, landing hard on her rump. Her gun skidded away. She started to dive for it.
“Don’t,” he warned, leveling the trancer at her.
Her eyes were wider than he’d imagined and her brown hair was chopped to a few bristling inches on her head. She wore an ill-fitting space suit, probably “borrowed” from one of the crew.
“Why?” she said. She stared at the trancer.
“You’re under arrest,” he said formally, not that she needed to hear it, she knew that by now.
But her echo, instead of being calm and contained like he expected, bubbled with anger, pain and fear. Tears filled her eyes.
“Why?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’d say the people you’ve killed would disagree with that.”
“I was defending myself. I just want to be left alone, but you people keep chasing me. I haven’t done anything.”
She was quite young, younger than her years. Over half of her life running. And killing people along the way, he reminded himself.
“Did they even tell you why you’re hunting me? Did they give you a reason? Or are you just like some dumb dog, point and you give chase.”
Beneath the fear he heard the harshness in her voice. Her echo was tinged with anger.
“That’s not my job,” he said. He primed the trancer. Better deal with her quickly, the longer he delayed the more of a chance he was taking.
“Do you want to know why they want me?” she shouted. “They want me so they can shut me up because they don’t want you to know that you could’ve been like me.”
She nodded at the cold expression on his face.
“Yeah, I never went to any training facility. I never took any drugs to help me focus my wild talent. They don’t control me the way they control you.”
“They don’t control me,” he snapped.
“Wrong,” she said. “They want you to believe that. They want you to believe that the pain, the nose bleeds, the seizures when you’re fatigued are normal because you’re stressing your brain. And then when you burn out at thirty, you’re dead. But it’s not normal. It’s the drugs, it’s the training. They want to keep you weak so you can’t learn to be strong.”
Her echo was stronger, rising like a flood and almost as irresistible. Her fear vanished, replaced by waves of anger and determination. His head pounded, resonating with the beat of his heart. The hand holding the trancer trembled, and he felt the first twinge of fear.
She was trying to control him!
“No,” he hissed, the word torn from his lips. The hand steadied. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Suddenly the pressure of her echo was gone and he felt a tinge of sadness brush him like a soft breeze.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I could convince you.”
Her eyes, wide and honest, and her slight smile were the last things to fade.
His mouth dropped open as he realized she’d done something he’d thought impossible. She’d fooled a telepath. Fooled him with an image, like he was a child. He managed one step back before the bomb exploded.
Cleanup took the rest of the night. After sealing the air lock, the sergeant ordered the ship blasted away from the station in case of other bombs. The ship’s crew was in an uproar, demanding compensation for their destroyed ship and cargo. The sergeant waved them onto a guard and retreated to his office.
The com displayer chimed as he sat down at the desk. The stern face of an HQ general stared out at him.
The sergeant played a copy of the tape recorded off the pin camera he’d planted on Umlar. The general sat quietly for a moment, tapping his finger on his chin.
“You’re convinced the tape is genuine?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Not even Investigator Umlar knew he was wearing it. There’s no way she’d tell from a scan of him. It looks like she decided not to be taken alive.”
The general sighed. “I want a full report and detain those ships until you can verify everyone on them. Just to be sure.”
“Yes sir,” the sergeant said. He saluted smartly as the general’s image faded.
Leaning back in the chair, the sergeant took a deep breath. Shoulders slumped with fatigue, one hand came up to brush at the brown bristles.
Too bad. She hadn’t wanted to cut off her hair. But it would grow back, once she left the station and became herself again. She smiled at the sergeant’s pug face reflected in the dark surface of the displayer, watching the thin lips curl. Not such a bad face, she thought.
The door chimed and she stood up, ready to resume the sergeant’s duties.
Author Bio:
Rebecca M. Senese’s work has appeared in On Spec, Transversions, The Vampire’s Crypt, Deadbolt, Storyteller Magazine, and Into the Darkness as well as in the anthology Future Syndicate. Her work has been nominated for numerous Aurora Awards and received an Honourable Mention in the 2000 Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology. She holds a Creative Writing Certificate from George Brown College.
