"It paid off. You made it." He fingered one of the trophies on the wall. "I took a chance on you. I thought you had the right instinct for command. Do you have a conscience, Skyla? Do the things we've done ever haunt you? Does it bother you that so much blood is on our hands?"
She studied him, lips pursed. "I've always accepted your
goals as being legitimate. There have been times in the past when I've been unable to fathom your logic, but as things unfold I see the strategy behind it. Honestly, I can't see any other way to unite humanity than through warfare."
"The ends justify the means in your eyes."
"I never knew you involved yourself in questions of teleological ethics. Did some Seddi mystic get a hold of you? Is that why you've started asking questions like that?"
He settled down on the scarlet couch. "The enigmatic Seddi." The key to the whereabouts of my son. But how do I contact them? How can I ask them — who have tried so hard to assassinate me all these years — for help?
She straightened her legs and considered her words before speaking. "I knew one, an old man. At the time, he was running for his life, too. Gone to ground in the streets like so many of the rest of us criminal types. They wanted to kill him because he was Seddi. Authorities don't like radicals, especially if they're preaching human liberation. The bulls almost caught him once. They got a shot into him — low power. I got him away and cared for him until he died. He told me things I didn't believe. Things about how they talked to beings of light and asked questions of God himself. I remember he told me as he was bleeding to death that life was only illusion. Only now really existed— and it was all tied up with the nature of the quanta. To the Seddi, the quanta are a reflection of God's thought pervading the universe. God exists in an eternal now — and time doesn't mean anything. I thought he was raving since it wasn't an illusion that had ripped his side open. He mumbled on about the quanta, and chaos, and how they reflected God's. What's wrong, Staffa?"
He barely heard her, Skyla's words bending around his sudden images of Targa and the Seddi turmoil. / must go alone. Seek out the Seddi by myself. Any other way would be disastrous. And along the way, I can learn to deal with my new self, learn what it means to be human.
"Staffa?" Skyla asked again, but he was already laying his plans.
Chapter 7
Skyla pushed back from her comm and tapped long fingers on the desk. She sat in her personal quarters where she'd been going through the daily reports. An unusual number of requests had been routed through her comm. By the Rotted Gods, hadn't Staffa taken care of anything?
She scowled at the monitor, then okayed projects and reports one by one. These were Staffa's responsibilities, not her. Worry built. Mental triggers? Depression? Conditioned memories and improper neural pathways? What did that imply about Staffa's ability to function as the leader of the Companions?
"He'll bring us through. He always has. and when he was under more stress than this." Despite her self-assurance, the nagging worry didn't subside.
She tapped in a request for more information on a materials request from Tap Amurka and then shut down the system. Standing, she paced for several seconds before asking the room comm, "Comm, give me a security patch. Where is Staffa right now?"
"Observation dome A-6," security replied.
Skyla pivoted on her heel and slapped her door patch. She burned up some of the frustration as she pushed herself forward with long strides. People saw her coming, recognized the look in her eyes and slipped out of the way.
She darted into the lift, slapped the controls, and stood with arms crossed, toe tapping as it hustled her across the complex. The keen edge of her anger was blunted by her anxious concern over Staffa's behavior. Damn it, of all the times for him to turn flaky, this wasn't it.
Why am I so worried about him? Because I meant it that day on Chrysla when I told him he was my best friend Rot it all.
"And you can't stand to see him this way."
She stormed into the A-6 dome to find Staffa sitting on one of the benches, staring out at the Twin Titans where they whirled around each other in a cerulean dance. The flickering of the bright light cast double shadows over the curve of the white wall behind his brooding figure.
Silently she slipped up behind him, aware of the preoccupied expression on his face. He didn't seem to notice, attention lost in his own thoughts.
"Staffa?"
He looked up then, vision clearing. "Yes?"
Skyla rubbed the back of her neck and tugged at her braid in frustration.
"I handled the daily reports. I also checked the medical records. You haven't been by psych yet. Are you still enjoying your binge as a manicdepressive?"
He smiled at that. "I suppose. No, I'm trying to deal with a new me. I'm learning, attempting to cope with who I'm becoming. I've been giving a lot of thought to the concepts of responsibility, trying to decide what I owe myself."
"What?" Damn it, Staffa, what happened to the old arrogance? The eerie premonition of trouble grew within Skyla. Give him time. He'll come around. Don't push. not yet.
"I want to know what people are like." He cocked his head, frowning. "I mean real people."
"And the Companions are made up of illusion? Ark seemed pretty real last time I looked."
"No, I mean people out there." He waved in the direction of Free Space. "You know that we'll end up ruling them, one day. You're smart enough to know what my final objectives are. But who are they? What are they like? You've known them. I haven't. I've lived all my life in a cocoon. On Myklene, I was chaperoned everywhere. I only dealt with the elite, the scholars, generals, Councillors, and scientists. I never had kids my own age to play with."
"What about when the Praetor smuggled you off planet? Weren't you on your own then?"
Staffa shrugged. "What of it? Even then I had my bodyguards — for that's all the crew was — just bodyguards to keep me out of trouble. And yes, we turned pirate for a while. Do you think I dealt with real people then? I was an armed robber, nothing more. My dealings with my victims
were at gunpoint, not exactly a social gala. Even as I began collecting the Companions, I still remained aloof. What did I care about who they were so long as they could perform. One by one, I removed the Praetor's bodyguards — for obvious reasons — and replaced them with my own security. In all my life, I've never walked down a street alone."
Skyla gave him a hard stare. "Yeah, well, don't. They'd pick you clean in a minute."
Staffa growled something to himself, and added aloud, "You and I have different thoughts concerning that. What could be different in dealing with Tybalt, or Sassa, or Roma? It's all negotiations, be they for a loaf of bread or the dispositon of an empire. Human thought patterns are the same, whether a free man's, a monarch's, or a mendicant's."
Skyla seated herself before him, taking his hands in hers. "Listen," she probed him with her blue eyes, seeing his frustration. "I've been out there. It's. Staffa, I can't explain. I guess it has to be experienced, but it's not like dealing with Sassa the God-Emperor. It's, well, the rules are different."
He nodded, but she wasn't sure he'd heard. "But people. trust, don't they? I've seen the holos where people do things without constantly… I guess I don't know how to say it."
"I think I understand. You mean like the Companions do. They have a code of behavior — shared values. Yes, and trust. Among the Companions, we care for our own, depend on each other. So do people out there, but you have to know the subtle rules of the game." She paused. "Staffa, what brought all this on?"
He glanced past her, seeing something in his mind. "My Achilles' heel."