Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5: Средь звезд, подобно гигантам - [13]

A pair of dark eyes and a fearsome voice saying one word.

"Remember."

But most of them forget.

* * *

There are more of them than people think, out there in space. They are the ancients, the forgotten, beings who walked the stars at the dawn of time. Mortals call them 'the First Ones' but they do not understand what it is they have named. They do not understand what it means to walk among the stars like giants, to look down at the younger races, at the mortals, beings little more than ants.

They have been forgotten now, largely. The Shadows and the Vorlons chose the twin paths of helping and aiding the younger races and the others…. they have gone, hidden, pursuing their own concerns, inhabiting their own floating cities and dead tombs. For countless millennia they have stood aloof from the rest of the galaxy.

Things change.

There is a world that no outsider has been to in tens of thousands of years. It has no name that anyone can know. The people who live there are forgotten and unknown. It is a world of cities crafted of air and rivers flowing among the skies. It is a world of hazy mists and whispered memories.

No ship has left that world for a very, very long time.

Until now.

It rises from the greatest city on the world, floating upwards on wings of water. As it leaves the atmosphere, the wings fold up and engines come to life.

And the First Ones' ship makes for a secret destination, far away from the worlds of the younger races. They have been apart from the galaxy for far too long. It is now time for them to return. There is one last piece of business for them to attend to.

* * *

Fear wasn't something he was meant to know. Not him, one of the special, one of the unique, one of the few. Fear was a lesser thing, for lesser beings. For mundane beings.

But as he ran frantically, his breath burning in his mouth, his heart pounding as if to break free from his chest, his blood rushing, Chen Hikaru knew fear. The thought uppermost in his mind was that this was not meant to be happening. He could not be afraid. He was a telepath, a personal agent of the Psi Corps itself.

Telepaths were not meant to be afraid. Not ever.

But he was, and he doubted anyone could blame him. The things chasing him, they were not human, they were not natural. They looked human, they talked like humans and acted like humans, but they weren't, and only one type of person could tell that they weren't human.

The special people. Telepaths, just like him.

This was supposed to be a routine mission. A simple reconnaissance. He had been here for three years, just keeping an eye on things for the Corps, or what was left of it. There was not much to Mokafa Station, at least not much to the public eye. A Brakiri trading station set up across a couple of moderately important trade routes. A layover point for traders and travellers into a few of the less explored regions towards the Rim.

But what the Corps knew but few others did, was that Mokafa held a secret lab making Dust, run by one of the more prominent Brakiri crime syndicates. Such a lab needed watching, and that was what Chen had been assigned to do. Just watch. He had been warned it might be a long time before he heard back from his superiors, and so he had not been unduly worried about the long period of silence. The rumours about the loss of Sanctuary and Mr. Bester going into hiding had troubled him, and he had even heard a whispered report that Laton had been taken and Bester killed, but he had not believed it.

It was only when the strange humans arrived that he realised something very wrong was happening.

They looked no different from any other travellers. There were four of them, a businessman of some kind, a secretary, a local guide and a bodyguard. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. At least, to any mundane person. Chen had sensed something strange from the first moment he had seen them and a subtle probe of the businessman had confirmed his suspicions.

There was nothing there. No thoughts, no memories, nothing but a brilliantly shining light, a light that burned and blazed and raged at him. He had stumbled back before the unexpected pain, and all four of them had turned to look at him. And all four of them had smiled.

That was when he had started to run.

They had followed him, moving effortlessly. He could hear them communicating with each other, not by words, but by the thoughts he had been unable to sense. He could also hear them talking to him, sinuous whispers, soft echoes of childhood nightmares. Come to usss…. Be with usss…. We will show you the light. We will show you beauty and power and an entire universe of majesty and terror.

He wanted to scream, but he did not have the breath. He wanted to fall and collapse crying, but then they would catch him. Somehow he knew that they would catch him anyway.

Something twisted beneath his leg and he fell, his knee striking the floor hard. He stumbled forward and tried to scramble to his feet, but all he did was roll forward a little and hit his knee again.