Dark Beyond the Stars Read online

  “Fascinating.” He’s still staring at the ceiling, his world rocked by the thought that, at twenty-seven, his career might be over. The concept of the thespian disturbs him more than the very real possibility that he might be locked up in jail on the planet rotating below us for the rest of his dirtbound life.

  He has forgotten to act.

  Sloppy.

  “Daveen, tell me again about your relationship with Ming.”

  “Creche-mates. He played opposite me in a couple buddy films on the two tours we were on together. Stole an Oscar from me two years ago.”

  Two hundred years ago, Ming Barrymore’s film was the overwhelming favorite to sweep the Oscars. Ming’s win shouldn’t have been a surprise to Daveen, unless his producers had lied to him about his chances in order to manipulate him into doing something else.

  “Did that make you angry?” I ask. “To lose to Ming?”

  He shrugs. “It’s a popularity contest. Evidently, now it’s a technology race, too. Did Ming have one of these thespians?”

  “No. You killed him a hundred years ago. The thespians were only approved for human implantation about eighty years ago.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. Ming was the type to cheat,” Daveen muses, staring at the ceiling. “I’ll bet he got one somewhere.”

  My hands are perfectly steady, and my heart plods at its customary pace. I don’t even blink beyond what’s normal for me, not even when Daveen doesn’t deny killing Ming.

  “About the advances in forensic technology,” I continue, “we can do a lot more now than we used to.”

  “Good for you.” Daveen still stares at the ceiling.

  “Using air displacement detectors with algorithms to cancel out known interactions, we can virtually see into the past. The images kind of look like sculptures of dust, the way the computer reconstructs the actions.”

  “You said that nine people have lived in my room. Good luck canceling out a century’s worth of people walking through there.”

  I pick up my tablet and consult it casually. “We’ve already done it.”

  “Then you would have already arrested me.”

  Two admissions of murder. “We saw you do it.”

  “Where?”

  “We’re not playing a game here. We’d like to know your motivation, though.”

  “Now you sound like an actor.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Typical. “If you had killed him, why would you have done it?”

  “That’s very hypothetical.”

  “It is.”

  “I didn’t hypothetically do it.”

  “All right. But you were angry at him. We can’t hear what you were talking about, not yet, but we saw your movements. We saw the fight, and we saw you with your hands around his neck.”

  “Whatever.” His hand waves dismissively.

  “By the time you get back next time, a year for you but a century for us, we’ll be able to hear you, too.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “We’re on the brink of it now.”

  “You’re lying.”

  I look straight at him, a blasé smile on my face and my heart rate as unperturbed as a metronome. “Do I look like I’m lying?”

  The smile slips from his face, and his dark green eyes widen.

  Right now, Daveen Kelly is watching how entirely unconcerned I am. To his very trained eye, it looks like I’m telling the absolute truth.

  I bump my thespian to pull a little more adrenaline out of my bloodstream, and an even more serene calm settles over me.

  There’s no such thing as an air displacement detector with an algorithm to cancel out the other people who have walked through that room, but someone who’s been isolated on a near-c spaceship for a hundred years won’t know that.

  “If I were to give you a confession,” Daveen asks, “and an excellent motivation, what kind of a deal could we consider?”

  My smile might be a little smug, but there’s nothing to tip him off that I’m lying my butt off.

  I may not have attended the Academy, and I may not have my thirty-thousand practice-hour certificate or anywhere near enough money to buy a berth on a century ship, but I recognized the value of a thespian when interrogating actors right after we moved here.

  That’s why I can close cases on the Backlot.

  Because these over-trained, immortal artists never dream that I can act.

  Q&A with Blair C. Babylon

  Where did this story come from?

  A few years ago, I was noodling around with the idea of near-lightspeed ships, because I’m old school and I don’t believe in FTL. I had been watching the attempts at the privatization of space flight, most notably Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic program, and a news program was discussing who was rumored to have bought tickets on Branson’s first private, commercial space flight. The passengers included Katy Perry, Russell Brand, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Brightman, Justin Bieber, Brian Singer, Lady Gaga, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

  I thought, yeah, that makes sense: celebrities have the disposable income to buy interstellar spaceship tickets and are vain enough to want to be eternally young. No one else would leave their families and friends to die while they lived forever. So I started writing an SF murder mystery novel (unfinished due to other project commitments) with the throwaway working title Kardashians in Space.

  When I was asked to be in this anthology, I went back through my notes for that universe and fashioned this detective story.

  How does it relate to other books you’ve written?

  It doesn’t. Not even a little. I’ve published a police procedural, The Angel of Death, but it’s a contemporary suspense/mystery, not SF. This was just for fun.

  Tell us something we might not know about you.

  I like to make quilts. I haven’t had time to work on my blocks for a while, but I’m working on a Baltimore Album quilt. Also, I may have created a deadly strain of chickenpox virus during my PhD research.

  How can readers find you?

  I love to chat with readers. Please feel free to email me or hang out with me on Facebook or Google Plus. The best way to hear about new releases is tosign up for my mailing list. You get an anthology of free Blair Babylon ebooks as a gift to you immediately just for signing up!

  Works in progress?

  In addition to science fiction, I write in several different genres. My urban fantasy series, some of which are based in the UF world of SM Reine, are available on my website.

  If you like thrillers about police snipers vs. terrorists, you might like to check out The Angel of Death(Police Snipers and Hostage Negotiators, An Angel Day Novel). If you like a lot of romance with your death-defying thriller action, you might want to check out the list of my several long series on my website.

  I also plan to publish a couple new science fiction and urban fantasy stories in the next year. If you’d like to get a quick email when they come out, pleasesign up for my mailing list.

  2092

  by Rysa Walker

  Chapter 1

  Elisi Shuttle Alar

  Date: 9023.19.11

  “That’s only eight. What about the final candidate? XE7, I believe?”

  All eyes are on me now, so I flash a nervous smile at the nine other Voshti, whose faces are lined up in a neat row on my comm screen, and glance back down at the report I’m holding. I always dread finding a positive match, even though we desperately need them. So much can go wrong. And this planet is going to stir the pot a lot more than usual thanks to the extra incentive I discovered—one that I’m pretty sure several committee members will find irresistible.

  “The planet has low to moderate supplies of four elements we seek, including one on the priority list,” I tell them, and then return my gaze to Vosht Baydel. Although the Voshti is supposed to be a democratic body, Baydel is the oldest, not to mention the largest, member. His opinion g
enerally turns the tide.

  “But XE7 is remote,” I continue. “It’s also small, and far from unified. We’d be dealing with more than a hundred separate governments. Many are still prone to war. I doubt they’ll be easy to unite.”

  “Well, we can’t know that until they’re tested,” Baydel says. When I don’t concur immediately, he gives me a verbal nudge. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mila?”

  My jaw clenches automatically, and I quickly try to cover my reaction with a polite smile. He should have called me Proctor Alta. It’s possible that using my personal name in this formal setting is nothing more than a slip of the tongue—Baydel is my mother’s oldest friend, and he’s known me since I was an infant. I’m certain he pulled a string or two in order to get me under his command when they started drafting cultural anthropologists for the Testing Division, and he made sure that Ryn and I were stationed together. But he also knows me well enough to be aware that my opinions on this issue may not mesh well with his own, and he’s certainly capable of condescending on purpose, just to be sure I remember my place.

  What I really want to do is end the meeting now. Tell them I’ll do the damned test. If the planet fails, the Voshti might, just might, decide that the relatively low level of resources means XE7 isn’t worth the bother, and the Elisi Alliance will move on to the next planet. There are twelve more possibilities on my list alone, and I’m far from the only proctor.

  I could just forget the little pulse that showed up on my screen when I entered the planet’s atmosphere. Just ignore it, and hope no one digs through the logs and realizes what it means. There’s a really good chance that the adjutants they assign that sort of task wouldn’t even recognize a chronotron pulse anyway, so I’d probably get away with the omission.

  But failing to mention the issue would be a gross dereliction of duty, so I’m going to hope for the best. Maybe I can convince the Voshti to take another route, just this once.

  “Under most circumstances,” I say, still avoiding Baydel’s gaze, “I’d argue that this planet isn’t worth the effort of a formal alliance test. I’m not sure they can unite. There are deep societal divisions, and their collective security arrangements are extremely limited. I believe the testing will be a waste of our time. But…” I take a deep breath and move on to the next bit, the one that will push this little planet all the way to the top of the testing list once they realize what it means. “XE7 is one of five planets that has shown a history of chronotron… disturbances.”

  They all look up, and they all look confused. Even Baydel seems momentarily puzzled as to why I’d suggest this as a positive factor. We normally avoid entanglement with planets that muck around with time. The last thing you want in any alliance is to have reality constantly shifting beneath your feet.

  Baydel puts the pieces together first, and a gleam that borders on predatory lights up his eyes. “So that’s why the name seemed familiar. XE7 is the one that managed to contain a temporal disturbance. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  I push the next set of visuals I prepared out to the Voshti. As soon as the small lights above their faces click on to confirm that everyone can see the data, I continue.

  “XE7 had a series of major chronotron spikes over an extended period, peaking about fifty of our years ago, which is around the year 2015 on their local calendar. As you can see from the nexus on the map, much of that activity occurred inside the planet’s major economic power, which was also the predominant military power. After 2015, the chronotron distortions disappeared. There’s nothing to suggest that the technology has been actively used to alter their timeline since then, although long-range sensors have picked up a few minor pulses on occasion, and I can confirm firsthand that there have been two surges since my shuttle came into range. At least one of the temporal alteration devices is located within the capital city of the nation I mentioned earlier.”

  “Do you have a precise location?” It’s the Vosht whose image is just to the right of Baydel, a mousy woman whose name I can never remember.

  “Two different locations since I’ve been in orbit. One is the primary legislative building, located in the city’s center. The other appears to be a university research lab.”

  “Could you transfer those over, please?”

  I glance at Baydel for confirmation. When he nods, I pull myself closer to the comm and transfer the data.

  After a moment, the woman—Wirth, that’s her name—says, “Do you think it’s two different devices?”

  “No. It appears to be someone carrying a single device from one location to the other. I’ve recorded two surges, about twenty-four hours apart, both times when it was at the assembly building. Each time, shortly after the surge, the signal travels back to the university location.”

  There’s a moment of silence while they look over my data. I may not get another one, so I jump in with my proposal. “Perhaps we could consider working with that country alone, rather than going through the formal testing procedure? I know that’s outside of the usual process, but—”

  “Call for votes to submit XE7 for full and immediate testing,” Wirth interrupts, not even looking up at me. Her position isn’t the least bit surprising, given that she’s directly connected to the ongoing war effort. But there are others in the assembly who are more reasonable.

  “I know it’s outside of the usual process,” I repeat, “but as I noted, I don’t think this planet is capable of uniting. And the other resources aren’t really plentiful enough to—”

  “Seconded,” Baydel says, cutting off all possibility of debate.

  I clench my teeth, biting back the rest of my statement. Any interruption on my part now would result in a reminder that I’m here to inform the assembly, not to assist in deliberations.

  I knew there was a chance this would happen, that they would rush in as soon as I mentioned the possibility of time travel, but the small voice at the back of my head continues to protest. It’s not just that I dread pulling these small planets into our conflict. I’ve almost—almost—reconciled with my conscience on this point. The Lor wouldn’t think twice about it, and they no longer bother with piddly things like tests and alliances. They come in full force and take whatever they want. Objections are noted and those expressing them are promptly killed, along with a few hundred others for good measure.

  This time travel device, however, raises an entirely new set of worries. From the information we have, it seems that one of the governments on XE7 was wise enough to use time travel judiciously. That doesn’t mean the leaders of the Elisi Alliance will be as wise, especially in the middle of a war that we’re losing badly.

  Will they be content with a mere warning message about the escalating power of the Lor? Or will they decide to tweak history in a few other ways? An extra change here and there to make sure we’re never attacked like this again. Another alteration to increase the power of one of the clans. Maybe one of the Voshti regrets a youthful indiscretion, or wishes his grandparents had invested more wisely so he could purchase a larger vacation home.

  Once something like this is unleashed, will they even be able to control it? As the proverb goes, even the strongest cage cannot hold the wind.

  Unfortunately, it also takes a stronger force than the Elisi Alliance to hold back the Lor. We’ve been pushed back sector by sector, a new planet every few cycles. Adding the resources of this tiny world will do little to tip the scales in our favor. XE7 will be of no use in actual combat, given that they’ve yet to master interstellar travel. More to the point, assisting us will almost certainly alert the Lor to XE7’s presence, when otherwise their smaller size and remote location would mean they’d stand a decent chance of hiding in the shadows.

  I feel like I’ve just placed a tiny, defenseless creature in the jaws of a massive beast.

  The assembly’s vote is unanimous. The silence that follows over the next few minutes is so complete that for the first time in weeks I actually notice the hum of my shuttle’s engines
. Then Wirth pushes my visual back to the rest of the group, with alterations.

  As I expected, XE7 is now at the top of my testing schedule.

  “Begin testing in one centicycle,” Baydel says. “Level Three.”

  “Level Three? I proposed Level One! Why can’t we—”

  But Baydel is gone. Off to supervise some other committee, no doubt, debating another decision where thousands of lives hang in the balance. I wouldn’t want his job.

  Still, which is the harder task? Making the hard decisions, or being the one stuck implementing them?

  I don’t really want my job, either.

  The other members of the committee blink out. That leaves just me for several moments until an adjutant, one of several minor functionaries who’ll play intermediary between me and the Voshti for the rest of the mission, pops onto one of my screens.

  “This isn’t enough time to plan a Level Three,” I protest.

  “The Voshti acknowledge that this is a tight schedule. The usual casualty limits have been doubled.”

  This particular adjutant is twenty years my junior, and he doesn’t have any real authority. He’s simply a go-between, taking my messages to the Voshti and bringing back their responses. Still, he clearly gets off on being close to power, because he wears the same self-important smirk as most of his colleagues.

  I’m so tempted to point out that casualty limits have been a joke for the past year, but I bite down the observation, since it would almost certainly get back to my superiors. Preventing accidental deaths used to be a real consideration in any test of Alliance candidates, but I haven’t heard of anyone being reprimanded for exceeding casualty limits since the Lor entered the sector next to ours.

  Plenty of proctors exploit that laxity. They can’t vent their anger on the Lor directly, so they use the inhabitants of these hapless little planets as a proxy.