From: Jakhel@aol.com
Subject: Infinite Regress 1c: NexusPoint -- Part 5 of 10(?)
Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 14:26:30 EDT

Continuing the exploration of what might have happened if a certain Shadow 
had NOT been scragged at Z'ha'dum, flavored with hooks to other fanfic 
timelines.

Disclaimers in Part 1, complete (to date) version at 
http://members.aol.com/irwebsite, feedback to Jakhel@aol.com.

Part 5
Babylon 5, Z + 21 days

On his way back through Red Sector, Garibaldi came up behind a massive, 
purplish figure in the corridor. He quickened his pace, and slapped the 
encounter suit jovially on what was probably *not* a shoulder.

"Ulkesh, old buddy, how's it hangin'?  Oh, that's right, we're supposed to 
call you 'Kosh', aren't we?" he corrected himself, as the Vorlon's 
hammer-shaped headpiece swiveled to peer at him.  Disregarding the creature's 
obvious affront, he leaned in confidingly.  "Just between you and me, don't 
you find that a little *morbid*?"

The encounter suit swayed to a halt, the headpiece rising to glare down at 
the bald man.  A multiplex, coruscating voice emerged from within its robes.

"#Your leash is long, Human.  Do not choke on it.#"

"Why, Ambassador, is that a *threat*?  Tsk, tsk, tsk.  Let me just point 
something out to you, Ulkesh.  You don't mind me calling you Ulkesh, do you?" 
He looked ostentatiously up and down the empty corridor.  "It's not like 
there's anyone around to go telling tales out of school, if you know what I 
mean....*But*," he hastened to add as the Vorlon's iris suddenly opened on a 
purple, lightning-shot haze, "my associates *are* keeping very close tabs on 
me, one way or another.  And if anything were to happen to me, well....you 
know, when they took out your buddy, that was just business -- nothing 
personal -- I'm sure you understand that."  The iris narrowed, and the 
headpiece sank back onto its collar.

"But if I were to...have an accident, shall we say?" Garibaldi continued,  
"Well, I'm afraid they WOULD take that rather personally.  And you really,  
REALLY don't want to be on the receiving end of a *personal* grudge on their 
part.  In fact," he mused, "If I were you, I might just consider this a good 
time to take a little vacation -- unwind, hang out with the other 
energy-beings, chase a little tentacle -- avoid any chance of 
inadvertent....misunderstandings...."

The mingled chimes of the Vorlon's voice did not resolve into English for 
several moments, leaving the Human with the unmistakable impression of a long 
string of unprintable characters.  At last a translation emerged --
"#A flawed tool may destroy its wielder.#"  The encounter suit pivoted and 
swept ponderously back down the hallway.

"Yeah, same to you, pal!" Garibaldi called after it, somehow feeling less 
triumphant than the situation seemed to warrant.  After a moment, he shrugged 
and walked on.

Coming at last to the Zocalo, he poked around a bit, then wandered into a 
tiny tobacco-and-herb shop run by an elderly Human with laughing eyes and 
extravagant muttonchop whiskers.

"Hey, Winston," Garibaldi called out.  "How's business?"

"Not bad, not bad.  Haven't seen you around here in a while, Mr. Garibaldi.  
Is everything okay?  I mean, aside from the war and everything."

The bald man laughed shortly.  "Aside from that, just fine.  A little busy, 
that's all.  Hey, do you carry Morley Exoticas, by any chance?  A friend gave 
me a coupla packs, and I kinda developed a taste for 'em."

"Morley Exoticas, huh?  I dunno, there's not much demand for those out here.  
Let me check in back, though."  He ducked through a curtain into the back 
room.  Garibaldi watched the passers-by, hands in his pockets, rocking back 
and forth on his heels.  Two little girls, a Centauri with bright green eyes 
and a Human with tumbled black curls, stopped to check out the window 
display.  When they saw Garibaldi, they consulted, giggling, then waved 
shyly.  Garibaldi waved back with a smile, and they ran away laughing.  
Slowly, his smile faded into a frown.  Something seemed to stir in the back 
of his mind...something he had forgotten...something he'd lost...

"Here we go," Winston came out carrying a single long, rectangular box sealed 
in gold mylar, with the red-and-white Morley logo across the top.  "One 
carton -- came in a couple months ago as a promo with a shipment of cee-gars. 
 Hey, you wouldn't be interested in a box of those, would you?"

"Me? Smokin' cigars?  Are you *nuts*?  Come on, Winston, you know I'm not 
that kind of a guy!"

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have taken you for a cigarette smoker, either.  Now, 
a nice pipe, maybe..."

"Nah, I like these.  Kinda...sophisticated, you know?  A guy can always use a 
little sophistication."

"Yes, and some of us could use rather a lot," a sophisticated British accent 
drawled.  Winston looked up and smiled as the dashing, dark-haired Ranger 
entered, his swirling duster taking up the rest of the available floor space. 
 Garibaldi looked around with the merest flicker of wariness in his grey eyes.

"Now *I* happen to think a pipe would be *just* the thing."  Marcus picked up 
a large Meerschaum carved into the head of a Drazi, hung it out of his mouth 
and 'puffed' meditatively.  "Well?  What do you think?" he mumbled.

Garibaldi cracked up.

Catching sight of his reflection in a glass case, the Ranger did likewise.  
"Mmph.  Excuse me," he said, wiping spittle off the mouthpiece.  He handed 
the pipe back to the chuckling proprietor.  "Then again, perhaps not," he 
decided reluctantly.

As Garibaldi was about to comment, his link beeped.

"Garibaldi here," the Security Chief acknowledged.

"Chief, Corwin here.  Just wanted to advise you, the Vorlon Ambassador has 
requested jumpgate clearance."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No.  But then, he never does.  Is there...anything I should do?"

"Nope, not a thing," Garibaldi replied.  "Garibaldi out." 

"Well, well," the Ranger said.  "I wonder where *he's* off to."

The Chief shrugged, fishing his identicard out of his jacket pocket and 
trading it for the carton of cigarettes.  "Science Fiction convention, maybe? 
 At least he's out of OUR hair for a while."

"I can't complain about *that*," Marcus agreed.  "Speaking of conventions, 
I'm late for a meeting with the Val'na.  I'll give him your regards, shall I?"

"Sure.  I'll need to get with him and the others soon -- set up a time, will 
you?"  The Ranger nodded and swept out.  Garibaldi looked after him 
thoughtfully, then turned to Winston.  "While you've got that, why don't you 
put this on it, too."  He picked up the Meerschaum.

Winston looked up.  "A present?" he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.  

Garibaldi smiled a conspiratorial smile.  "Something like that," he agreed. 

Outside the station, the jumpgate opened and the Vorlon Ambassador's ship 
leaped forward into hyperspace.

********
Deep in the shifting red *otherness* of the roads ships took between star 
systems, half a dozen dark, spidery shapes converged on a single squidlike 
organism.  Screaming in agony, it defended itself bravely, but was ultimately 
carved into exploding fragments by livid beams wielded with deadly accuracy.

Its screams did not go unheard, however.  An unmeasurable distance away, in a 
hidden fold of hyperspace, gigantic ships began to move.

********
Z'ha'dum, Z + 15/16 days.

Delenn finally admitted to herself that she was tired.  They had been 
trudging though these tunnels for hours -- outside, it would be deep night.  
The Commander was hoping to find a chamber large enough for all of them to 
rest in, though, and was reluctant to stop before she did.

It was fortunate, in a way, that they now had the use of all four gravcots 
for baggage, although the reason for that was a mixed blessing.  One of the 
wounded Rangers had been killed during that last, helter-skelter scramble 
down into the crevasse, with the shadow fighter swooping down upon them.  
Ivanova and the others had managed to shoot it down, though -- they had seen 
it plummet, smoking, from the sky to disappear behind the hills.  Another 
good reason to get far away from the area as quickly as possible.

The other wounded Ranger, a young Human woman, had been determined to walk 
again, although she reluctantly accepted the assistance of her fellows as the 
hours wore on.  There were not enough handlights to go around, and the 
Commander ordered that only half of them be used at a time, to conserve 
power, so their progress was slow and depressing in the flickering darkness.

Ivanova herself, with Lennier, was scouting ahead, relying on her newfound 
link with Lyta to warn the main party of danger.  So far, there had been 
nothing -- no signs of life except the oddly smoothed floors of the tunnels, 
no cave-ins or treacherous cracks, just unending darkness and the occasional 
knife-sharp outcroppings in the walls.  Delenn had slipped back, to bring up 
the rear, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the handlight of 
the group in front of her in sight. Setting her jaw determinedly, she hurried 
onward.

WHAP!  A head-high obsidian outcrop seemed to leap out of the darkness, 
catching her on the side of her breather.  She staggered, and the light ahead 
disappeared around a bend.  Muttering English expressions she doubted John 
realized she had learned, mixed with a few Minbari phrases Lennier would be 
appalled to know she was familiar with, she flung herself after it, hands 
outstretched to ward off another collision.  Just before she ran into the 
wall, she spotted the light off to her left, and veered to follow.  Up ahead, 
the light stopped.

"Entil'zha!  Are you well?" a voice called in the religious caste tongue.

"Fine!" she called back.  The handlight wobbled, and a slight figure limped 
out of the darkness toward her.  The young Ranger cradled the light in a 
bandaged arm, and one side of his face was covered by a livid bruise, but the 
pain in his eyes was more worry for his Entil'zha than concern for his own 
injuries.

"A thousand pardons, Entil'zha!" he cried. "I thought you were right behind 
me!  Perhaps you should ride for a while..."

"No, Faloon, I will be fine.  Come on, let us not lose the others!"  She 
urged him along, ignoring the fire in her knees, the ache in her booted feet. 
 Suddenly, a scream came from up ahead.  Forgetting her fatigue, Delenn 
thrust her way through the confused Minbari and humans to the focus of the 
disturbance.

The young woman who had forsaken her gravcot was still crying out, struggling 
in the arms of two of her fellows, while Lyta tried to get a hand on her.  As 
soon as she did, the woman stopped, staring sightlessly over the telepath's 
shoulder.  Lyta shook her head, as if dazed.

"What is it?" Delenn asked.

"I'm not sure...it's all hazy, as if she were....drugged!"

"Look here!" cried Anla'Shok Bediver, pointing to where a hose from the young 
woman's breather had pulled loose, allowing the ambient atmosphere to get 
into her mask.  Quickly he replaced it, and they lowered her to the floor.  
Lyta disengaged, nodding.  "She's coming out of it."

"Leilani!" Bediver called softly.  "Anla'Shok Hernandez!  Are you all right?" 
 Slowly, the girl focussed on the tall Minbari bending over her.

"Bediver?  Is that you?  There were....creatures....in the 
darkness...red-eyed beings with wedge-shaped heads....keening in a voice I 
could not quite hear..."

Another Ranger, who had been testing the air with a portable scanner, knelt 
beside them.  "They were not real, Leilani.  Apparently, the air down here 
contains fumes that can cause hallucinations.  Do you remember when the hose 
came out of your breather?"

"No, I...it was fine....I don't know how it could have happened..."  The 
young woman struggled to her feet.  "I'll be all right now, though.  Thank 
you..." she looked around in embarrassment. "I'm sorry."

Meanwhile, Delenn was leaning back against the wall with her eyes closed, 
taking advantage of the opportunity for some much-needed rest.  Her chosen 
life had always been relatively sedentary, and since her transformation, her 
muscular strength had been ebbing, slowly, to a merely Human level.  She 
resolved that if -- when -- they got out of this, she would ask Commander 
Ivanova to help her set up a suitable exercise regimen.  As Entil'zha, she 
must set an example for the others...unknowing, a smile crossed her face as 
she pictured herself next to Susan on the exercise machines, clad in skimpy 
grey sweats and huffing and puffing against the simulated weights...

"Entil'zha?  Are you all right?"  Bediver stood before her, looking worried.

"Fine," she said again, and they started off once more.  Delenn hung back 
again.  She couldn't seem to keep herself from peering into each 
side-corridor they passed.  The rest of them -- even Ivanova -- were fully 
occupied with trying to get *off* this Valen-cursed world, but Delenn had 
never lost sight of their original mission: to find Captain Sheridan, alive 
or...otherwise.  Why she kept expecting to find a trace of him in these 
forsaken tunnels, she couldn't say, but the lure was irresistible.

Eventually, she found herself at the end of the line again.  On and on they 
trudged, down and around and into the darkness...her mind wandered as she 
followed the light bobbing farther and farther ahead.  She thought of her 
childhood, the long years of training, the all-too-short time as Dukhat's 
acolyte, then as junior Satai on the Grey Council, the terrible war with the 
Humans, the eventful years since, leading her, as a river led inexorably down 
to the sea, to her transformation, and to John...

She suddenly came to herself, in darkness.  Darkness, but not silence.  
Whispers crept around her...in the tunnels, or only in her mind?  She had to 
catch up to the others, but which way had they gone?  "This way," came the 
whispers -- was that Mayan's voice?  She followed, unsure.

"Lennier..." she murmured, not knowing why, knowing he could not hear.  She 
hit a wall, and clung there.  Which way now?  Left, the whispers urged her, 
in Dukhat's voice -- the tunnel continued in that direction, and she felt her 
way blindly, fear rising dark within her to match the darkness without.  She 
breathed deeply, calling on old meditations to calm herself, but the whispers 
only grew louder.  Draal's voice, Sech Turval's....her father's...surely it 
could not be...

Gasping in sudden realization, she raised her hands to her breather, and 
found it -- a small crack where she had struck the outcrop, earlier.  Cold 
terror congealed in the pit of her stomach.  How far had she wandered, led by 
hallucinations?  Was she hallucinating now?

Hastily, she removed the useless contraption -- either she would find the 
others and get a new one, or something else would kill her long before the 
carbon monoxide did.

Frightened beyond fear, knowing she could not know what was real and what was 
not, her only hope was to go on...a light appeared, dull orange and 
flickering.  Could it be the handlight, distorted by the fumes?  She hurried 
toward it, then stopped as she caught a movement out of the corner of her 
eye.  A section of the wall was smooth obsidian, a black mirror glinting 
darkly with reflections of the flickering light ahead.

As she gazed into the murky depths, her reflection swam out of the darkness.  
Mesmerized, she reached toward the image -- it reached back.  Then, as her 
hand touched the cold stone, the light winked out.  She gasped, and turned 
back to where the light had come from.  Quickly, she struggled on in that 
direction.  There it was again, stronger now.  She hurried on around a bend, 
then stopped, frozen, hidden in the shadows.

The chamber beyond was a long oval, stretching out before her.  At the far 
end, guttering flames issued from pedestals carved out of the rock wall, and 
two figures sat by a small fire built in a circle of stones.  One was tall, 
alien, bent in concern toward the other, who was half-reclining and staring 
into the flame.

"Do you have anything worth *living* for?"

Did she hear that quiet voice, or was it only in her head?

"I can't see you any more..."  *that* voice, real or imagined, cut through 
her like a knife, shaken, tentative as even she had never heard it.  The dim 
blur of the man's silhouette leaped into clarity, focused not by eye but by 
the heart.  

"John..." Delenn whispered.  A mist seemed to rise up before her, and she 
fell endlessly into it.

*******
"Here! I've found her!"  

Lennier pushed past the other Minbari to fall to his knees beside the 
unconscious figure.  He raised her dark head, his mouth tightening as her 
pale, maskless face appeared in the handlight.

"A breather, quickly!" he called.  A black-uniformed hand passed it to him.

"Is she...alive?"  Ivanova asked anxiously.

Lennier fitted the apparatus around Delenn's head and made sure it was 
working properly before he answered.  "Yes.  She has passed out from the 
fumes, but..." he heaved a shuddering sigh, relief finally overtaking his 
terror,  "she should recover." Quickly, respectfully, he tested her limbs and 
torso.  "There do not seem to be any injuries.  How did she come to fall 
behind like that?" he asked angrily. 

"It is *my* fault," replied the hapless Anla'Shok Faloon.  "I should have 
been watching..."

"We can discuss who's to blame for what later," cut in the Commander.  "Look 
at this!"

Just beyond where Delenn had fallen, they found a long, oval chamber, big 
enough for all of them to camp out in comfortably.

"Look here!" cried Leilani Hernandez,  scraping at the hole in a carved 
pedestal of stone where a flame had once burned, fed from below.

"And here," added Bediver, stirring the ashes of a long-dead fire.  Lyta ran 
the scanner over both artifacts.

"Someone has obviously been here, but not recently," the telepath declared.

"Like, *how* recently?" the Commander asked, nervously looking around, 
counting the other exits.

"According to this," Lyta replied, "at least fifty years -- perhaps more."

"Well, then," Ivanova decided, "it's probably safe enough.  We'll rest for 
eight hours, then go on....that way.  Fall out, everybody!"

--- To be continued!

Also, check out the Virtual Season 6 website, under construction at 
http://www.darkthunder.com/b5vs6/

-- and the episodes to date archived at the Alternate Universe Today website. 
 Coming in June, Episode 6 -- "A Serpent in the Garden", a collaboration by 
Stephen Barringer, yours truly, and David Goldingay.

AEC.


---