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  HOBART L. BURROWS, III, A LAW CORPORATION

  REDUX

  A Tale In The Encircling Belts Of Tirano Saga

  by Shawn B. Thompson

  Copyright 2013 Shawn B. Thompson

  -1-

  I boarded the plane in Paris relieved that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life in a French prison. But when I stepped off the plane in San Francisco, I found a worse punishment waiting: Never again when I emerge from the concourse would Keiko be standing on her tiptoes looking for me. Never again would I be able to embrace her and kiss her lips. Instead, I would spend the remainder of my life in one universe and she in another, and my son with her. A son I would never see.

  By the time the car service dropped me off at my home in Mill Valley, the sun was setting behind the green pinnacle of Mt. Tamalpais. When I was a child the orange glow of the sunset over the mountains always made me happy; it meant Santa's elves were baking cookies. I no longer believed in Santa and his elves, nor could I believe I'd ever be happy again. In the last three weeks I had lost the two things that had defined my existence: my partnership in Lott & Pembroke and the only woman I'd ever loved, Keiko. It only deepened my misery that the night before she left, Keiko told me she was pregnant with our son.

  Of those three weeks, I'd spent the last two locked up in a cold cubicle in a French jail. Except for a few catnaps, I couldn't sleep. Who could have in my place? The French cops had accused me of killing six people.

  I didn't want to think about any of that misery. I wanted to go to bed and sleep without remembering the nightmare of the last few weeks, so I took two sleeping pills. The little pills worked. Within minutes after I trudged into my house, I collapsed onto my bed's soft duvet.

  I slept like a baby until she appeared. Keiko's image hovered like a human-sized Tinker Bell against the background of the blackness of sleep. She wore the vermilion trumpet gown of Tirano's High Sibyl. She was as beautiful as ever with her almond-shaped hazel eyes, enchanting smile on glistening pink lips, and silky black hair with a loose strand curling around one ear. I could even smell the musky perfume she always wore.

  "Hobie, do you remember the moment before the shuttle left for Tirano when I lifted my pendant to your implant," she said in her lilting accent that emphasized the last syllable of most words.

  I remembered the pleasant tingle when she'd touched my implant. She'd promised that we'd be together again someday. My heart beat faster and chased away my three-week long gloom. My wish had somehow been granted. She'd returned.

  Her fingers rubbed the fire opal pendant on her trine necklace. "I promised you some of Vision's Archives so you could understand why Caykondra the High Sibyl returned to Tirano when Keiko Nidara would never have."

  A black void swallowed my joy. "You're not back, are you? You're only memories downloaded to my implant. It'll be just like it was with Quincy's implant of his Tarnlot memories. The only time I'll be able to see you is when I'm asleep. I'll only have virtual reality dreams of things from the past."

  She gave me a tentative smile. "It will be better. My download is interactive. We can discuss anything we want. Like why it's taken you so long to return?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I set my program to activate when you returned to Mill Valley, but my chronometer shows it's been more than two weeks since I left for Tirano. Where have you been? What happened?"

  I took a deep breath. "It's so complicated I don't know where to start, or if I even want to talk about it right now."

  She gave me that half smile that always melted my heart. "Please. For me."

  "You know I can never refuse you when you look at me like that."

  She held her smile.

  "After you left, I turned myself in to the Avignon police."

  Her smile faded. "Why?"

  "Because of the report Brad and Morgado filed with the police that we'd assaulted them and killed Quant. I knew I'd never get out of France otherwise. And even if I did, the police would track me down in Mill Valley. Since Brad and Morgado weren't around to follow-up and Quant's body would never be found, I figured Zhun'Mar had been correct; that the police would think their report was a hoax and I'd be released in a few hours. I have never been more wrong."

  "Oh, Hobie. What did they do?"

  "I couldn't believe it at first. They locked me up and accused me not only of killing Quant, but also you, Brad, Morgado, Zhun'Mar, and Mirae. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in a French jail."

  "But you're here now. How did you get out?"

  "I decided my only chance was to tell the truth about what had happened, and they-"

  Keiko cut me off. "The whole truth?"

  "Yeah."

  Her eyes widened. "You told them that we were aliens?"

  I nodded.

  "Whatever possessed you to do that?" Keiko's finger wrapped a strand of her hair around her ear. "Surely, you had to realize they would never believe you."

  "I couldn't think of anything else. One of the first things they asked me was what happened to you and Monsieur and Madame Courtois. I knew that if lied and made up a story that I'd have to pile falsehood on falsehood. Sooner or later I'd stumble and tell some inconsistency they'd exploit to show I wasn't telling the truth. It'd only make it look like I had in fact killed all of you."

  I took a deep breath. "I've always told my clients to tell the absolute truth when they testify. I decided to follow my own advice and tell the truth no matter how outrageous it seemed."

  Keiko shook her head. "Oh, Hobie. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to hide the truth. If I had told you a month ago that I was an alien, you wouldn't have believed me. How could you expect them to believe you?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Somehow telling the truth worked. When the gendarmes finished questioning me, they called in three shrinks to interview me. I thought the shrinks were trying to decide if I was insane or a cold-blooded murderer. Even they must have believed me because it turned out the third one, Dr. Michel Avril, was really a cosmologist in the French government. He believed my story that Tarnlot showed me star maps of the fissure's cycle and that you, Zhun'Mar, and Mirae returned to Tirano through the fissure."

  Keiko wrinkled her forehead. "Why would they call in a cosmologist from the government, and why would he believe you?"

  "According to Dr. Avril, the French tracked your shuttle until it disappeared. They didn't know what it was, and the American government accused them of developing a stealth missile. I drew a star map of that night and your ship disappeared exactly where I showed Avril the fissure opened. He thinks he can eventually convince me to reveal the fissure's periodic openings so that the French can travel to your universe."

  Keiko's eyes widened. "Did you tell them? Is that why they let you go?"

  "Nope. I told him to go to hell. I wasn't going to take a chance that the Radani could access my knowledge of the fissure's cycles and destroy both Earth and Tirano."

  Keiko nodded. "But why didn't he keep you in custody until you agreed to cooperate?"

  "He threatened to, but I guess he realized I couldn't be coerced and changed his tactics. He tried to bribe me by promising I could go through with the first ship so I could make contact with you. Of course, I still refused, but he thinks I'll eventually change my mind. As a show of his good intentions, he released me."

  "Isn't he afraid that you'll contact NASA with the information?

  "He thinks I'll go to the CIA. He said the French would know where I was at all times and would never permit me to contact anyone but them."

  Keiko squeezed her pendant. "Are you scared."

  "Not really. The French can follow me forever, but I
have no intentions to go near a CIA or NASA facility or any other government intelligence agency."

  "Good. I don't want anything to happen to you."

  Keiko rubbed her pendant. "How are you going to explain everything to our friends? Won't they be suspicious about my disappearance?"

  "Avril took care of that. He released a news story that Hale and Morgado abducted you and Mr. and Mrs. Courtois in order to blackmail me. Supposedly, all of you died in a plane that crashed into the Mediterranean and the plane was never located. The story may serve to deflect suspicion from me, but I still don't know if I can face all the questions about what happened. But I'll worry about that later. All I want now is for you to snuggle to me so I can hold you tight."

  "I'd hoped for that too." A tear formed in the corner of her eye. "1But the neuro Quincy implanted in you isn’t capable of processing my virtual holo program by itself. I can appear like this, but I can't take a physical form."

  That damned implant. First Quincy's Tarnlot memories that I never wanted, now this new torture. "So I'll be tormented by seeing you, talking to you, but never being able to touch you. I should have known that Tiranoan technology would grant my wish to see you again and thereby increase my sorrow."

  Her tear trickled down her cheek, followed by another. "I couldn't have left for Tirano if I didn't know that at least this small part of me would remain with you. But I can't stand to see you so forlorn. If my being here like this makes you feel worse, I can uninstall the program and leave you in peace."

  I'm no computer techie, but I knew what uninstall meant. I had to choose which would be worse. The pain of never holding her or the bitter-sweetness of seeing her in this way. If she uninstalled, I'd lose everything. I couldn't bear that.

  "No, stay. If I can't have all of you, I'll take what I can get. This small part of you is better than facing life with nothing of you. I never want to face that gaping maw of emptiness again."

  We stared at each other for the remainder of the night, neither saying a word. We did the same for the next two nights. During the days, I'd sit around the house doing nothing. I ignored all phone calls and stared blankly at the television. I'd slip off to a fast food place when I was hungry. I didn't even drink any wine. It would only have brought memories of happier times with Keiko. As soon as the sun set, I'd take two sleeping pills and go to bed.

  On the fourth night Keiko spoke. "Hobie, you can't go on moping around all day, every day, doing nothing. You've got to accept that I'll only be with you at night."

  "The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I'll see you when I'm asleep. Nothing else matters. I want you so much that I'm tempted to reveal the fissure's cycle to Dr. Avril so that I can be on the first ship to your universe. Then we can really be together every night."

  "Oh, Hobie. Don't do this to yourself. Even before I left, we weren't together every night. We never lived together, and even if we had, you were often out of town on business trips anyway. On those nights we were happy merely to talk on the phone. Just pretend that I'm on a business trip and this is our way of keeping in touch. Isn't this much better than a telephone call?"

  "I know you're right, but how can I ever live with my choice to stay?"

  "By drawing on your willpower. It took a strong person to make the choice the pinhole in time revealed to you. A choice that will save two universes from devastation by the Radani, provided I can bring my projection to reality."

  I wrinkled my forehead. On Tirano, Sibyls perform computer probability projections to predict the future. I had no idea what she was talking about. "What do you mean? What projection?"

  Keiko took a deep breath. "A projection made long ago. I had forgotten about it until I found out I was pregnant. I was afraid to show it to you because of what it contained. I thought it meant you were going to die."

  My face must have shown that I had no idea what she meant.

  She cupped her fire opal pendant in her hand and lifted it in front of her face. She rotated it in her fingers. It flashed yellow, then a vivid red that matched her trumpet gown. My implant began to tingle. In a few moments the creeping haze of sleepiness was replaced by kaleidoscope of colors that swirled until forming a rich azure sky. I seemed to float in the sky with a panoramic view of a vast city of stone buildings with spire roofs. Thousands of people streamed through five broad red bricked boulevards. Each boulevard lead to a mile wide square surrounding a white stone building. A building I knew from my dreams: Arvor Castel.

  People swarmed into the square until several hundred thousand had squeezed into every available space. Small children perched on the nooks and crannies in the statues and fountains in an effort to view Arvor Castel. Thousands more remained behind in the boulevards, standing shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye could see. Only a black wrought iron fence surrounding the palace and a double row of stone-faced Vhirko guards kept the multitude from surging forward to the Castel’s walls.

  The multitude radiated a mood as festive as their vibrant robes of emerald, crimson, saffron, or deep yellow. A horn sounded a long low note followed by a short higher-pitched note and then another long low note. All movement stopped and the multitude hushed to silence. The horn sounded the notes a second time and all heads raised toward a small balcony at the center of the bleached-ivory tile roof of Arvor Castel.

  The black steel portcullis leading to the balcony slid open and a tall black-haired man with a close-clipped, gray-streaked black beard walked onto the balcony. When he came into full view I recognized Zhun’Mar. A teenager walked on each side of Zhun’Mar: one a tall blond-haired girl with eyes the color of the sky and the other a diminutive boy with close-cropped red hair. Zhun’Mar stood for an instant on the balcony and then spun slowly in a circle. His brocade robe with golden vines embroidered on its right front flowed as he turned. The girl wore a similar ivory gown and without hesitating, she spun also. The boy inhaled, his eyes wide. The fire opal medallion hanging from the chain around his neck rose and fell on the front of his azure robe before he also turned in a circle.

  When the three had completed the spin, the man raised his right arm and clenched his right fist. His ring finger was severed and he wore the Golden Vine Ring on his index finger. In unison the crowd erupted into a deafening roar of approval: "Hakut. Hakut. Tirano." The girl smiled an easy smile and also raised a clenched fist to the crowd. The boy hesitated, tentatively raised his arm.

  Zhun’Mar smiled at the boy. "An awesome sight," he shouted to him over the reverberating din. "The people have reason for joy. The accession of Siniastra as heir to the Golden Vine Ring and your investiture as the first male to graduate from the Sibyl Legist Academy. Siniastra and Kuinsi, new leaders that represent the future of the Tirano."

  A gentle tickling sensation vibrated the back of my neck. I opened my eyes. Keiko stared back at me, a tear in her eye. "That was a projection Vision gave me when I was a small child. Something I thought was a child’s bedtime story she created for me. It wasn’t. The boy, Kuinsi, is my, our, son."

  "Is the girl our daughter?"

  "No, she is Zhun’Mar and Mirae's daughter. The projection was that she and Kuinsi would form a team destined for greatness. She as Queen and Kuinsi as Lord Chancellor. They would rid the galaxy of the Radani menace."

  I smiled. "What a wonderful projection. But why were you afraid to show it to me?"

  Another tear fell from her eye. "The projection placed only me and our son on Tirano. Not you. I was afraid it meant you were going to die, and I didn't want to tell you. Now I know it meant something else: you choose not to go so our son could attain his destiny."

  I tried to collect the myriad of thoughts colliding in my head. I didn't know where to start. "How can you know Mirae is Siniastra's mother?"

  "When I checked Mirae's life signs after her injuries, I discovered that I wasn't the only one who became pregnant in the past few weeks
with a healthy child. I know that Zhun'Mar. I'm certain he'll marry Mirae when he learns she bears his daughter. I always expected they were more than King and bodyguard."

  "From my memories, I know you're correct about them. But I can't piece all of this together. Mhikhel and Tarnlot believed the heir had to be full-blooded Archonan. If Mirae is Siniastra's mother, doesn't that rule out Siniastra?"

  Keiko shook her head. "You've only seen Tarnlot's memories. He never accepted that he knocked down all of the old prejudices and dragged the Archonan into realizing that one need not be pure Archonan to be capable of sitting on the Golden Vine Throne."

  I was stunned. "Tarnlot believed with all his being that only an Arvor of full Archonan blood could sit on the Golden Vine Throne. I know he did whatever was necessary to make sure that could occur. I refuse to believe that he could've been so wrong."

  "The one who changes long-standing prejudices is never aware of what he accomplished. He lives in the past while others accept the future. I won't permit that to happen to you."

  -2-

  When I awoke the next morning, I better than I had in weeks. For the first time since I'd returned from France, I craved a good breakfast and some strong coffee. I didn't have any food at home, so I had to go out. If I went to my usual breakfast spot, The Depot in Mill Valley, I'd probably see someone I knew and have to talk about Keiko. By now, everyone in the Bay Area would have read the news accounts of how she died in the plane crash after Brad and Morgado had abducted her. Some would even be brazen enough to ask me why Brad and Morgado wanted to blackmail me. Hell if I knew what to say; Dr. Avril hadn't bothered to call me to tell me that part of his story.

  I decided I'd drive to a Starbucks in Corte Madera. None of my friends would expect to see me at a Starbucks and I could probably sit in a corner reading a Chronicle newspaper without being noticed. Afterwards, I could find a grocery store and do some shopping so that I wouldn't have to go out to a fast food joint again.

  Even though the Starbucks was mostly empty, I should have known it wouldn't work as I'd planned. I'd no sooner sat down and taken the first sip of my latté when one of my worst nightmares walked into Starbucks: Jane Miller, Brad Hale's secretary. I could see the black rings under her eyes from crying and lack of sleep, probably over the demise of her beloved boss. No way could I offer any condolences. Before I could pull the newspaper in front of my face, she saw me.