From imh@gardencitynet.co.uk Tue Dec 24 22:40:13 1996 Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 14:44:23 +0000 From: Inga Marie Horwood To: b5-creative@lists.best.com Subject: The Other Hi! I finally got around to finishing this story. Thanks to all those who helped, especially Mary and Lynne. I'd welcome comments. Inga The Other She put off looking in the mirror until the last moment, when she was about to leave the room. Even then she had checked her boots, weapon, uniform first, brushing invisible fluff from the woollen sleeves, tugging the jacket down, fussing over the length of her cuffs. Things she never bothered with normally. Neatness seemed to happen spontanously around her. She only dragged her eyes up to face level in the glass above her washstand at the very end. "The moment of truth," she thought to herself, defiantly. Then, taking in the first glance, "Told you so. Nothing to worry about." The face looked as it should. It looked like her face still. A little reassured, she moved in closer. Eyes her own, black eyes, brow under its short black fringe her brow, nose, mouth hers, all hers. The same as usual. Pale, controlled, the face stared back. No sign of relief visible, also as usual. She was pretty certain that even when she was not watching, her face showed no emotion. She had seen videos of herself at work, small, expressionless, calm in the midst of theft, murder, riot, alien attack. No trace left of the orphan child who had grown up running like a rat through the walk-ways and service tunnels under the domed cities on Mars. Instead she looked, and was glad that she looked, the perfect security guard. It was time to go. She liked to be punctual, was quietly proud that no one ever had to wait for Beti Chang. Even when she was due to take over a duty which actually bored her, or which frightened her. As today. Guarding the Ambassadors' sector. Too quiet, she thought to herself. Much too quiet. This duty would give her much too much opportunity to brood. She spent a good deal of her life avoiding such opportunities, avoiding chances to be alone with herself. She never ate alone, never spent her off-duty time alone, usually managed not to sleep alone. She took one last glance at the glass. The face which looked back did not seem afraid. "Liar," she spat at herself, without changing expression. She welcomed the anger. How pointless this was. She could not explain the fear, so why couldn't she dismiss it? Why let it spoil her big day? Pulling such a duty was an expression of trust, after all. Despite her origins, the corps was using her in one of their most ceremonial, most visible activities. She squared her shoulders. She had won full acceptance at last. It was time she accepted herself, time she recognised that she had nothing to fear. She strode into the corridor outside her quarters, moved along it briskly, trying to tread down the fear. But she knew she would fail. Wherever she was, it went with her. When had it started? That was easy to remember: walking down this metal-clad corridor was enough to remind her. On Mars. She suppressed the memories with the ease of long practice. Just ahead of her she heard the unmistakeable sound of travel tube doors opening, and put on a spurt of speed. In spite of this, she rounded the corner in time to see the doors glide shut. "Damn," she thought to herself, trying for a tone of breezy indifference. She admired people who could face the Universe that way, making light of all the sneaky tricks Fate played. "'Bout time," she therefore commented internally, as another travel tube opened its doors hot on the tail of the previous one. "Typical. Bet there hasn't been one for half an hour. Now there'll be a whole convoy." She attempted to look casual as she boarded, but her movements were as controlled as ever. She was half way to the mess when the power failed. The car jolted to a stop, and Beti only remained upright because she was propped against a wall in any case. The emergency lights came up, burned steadily for a second, then failed as well. She was alert immediately, suspecting anything, ready for any assault. She inspected the car by hand, found the emergency button, pressed it. That worked anyway. "Sorry, power down throughout Grey Sector," some engineer grunted. "Rats in the service ducts again. Won't be long," he promised. Beti snorted. She had heard that before. She settled for a long wait. It was dark. She had grown up under a sky the same colour. If anyone looked up in the colony, it was to see triangles of black plastic edged with strips of white metal. The dome, keeping out Mars, keeping in the air, the light. The same blackness pressed up against any window she had ever looked out of as a child. On Mars one looked in, at the streets, the blocks of shops, offices, factories, flats, at the parks. Not that she had much to do with the surface areas of the colony. "Don't go out there," the old couple who had found her would say. "You'll get us all caught." So Beti, abandoned almost at birth, adopted by a group of illegal immigrants, had grown up careful, circumspect, controlled. It was not she who got them caught, though she could do nothing when they were. She had only seen the true face of Mars after that. When they were transferred to the security facility to be processed. She had huddled in a corner of the shuttle, but could not avoid seeing a blood red landscape running with indigo shadows, a sky which lightened from dark purple at the horizon to violet directly overhead. She saw her first stars then, too. Somehow, those had comforted her, inspired her. To live among the stars. She had liked the thought of that. When, unexpectedly, they had offered her a choice they did not offer the other, older illegal immigrants, to be deported back to Earth or to join the Security Corps, she had been quick to opt for the latter. "Poacher turned gamekeeper," the officer had commented. A hard-eyed man, who had paid particular attention to her psi scores before making his offer. She couldn't see why. They were a little higher than average, but not nearly enough to interest Psi Corps. "You'll do well enough, just don't expect early promotion." She hadn't. She was here, that was what counted. Not on Earth, nor on Mars, not on Io nor any planet. On Babylon 5, the next best thing to being on a star ship, because like a star ship it was at home among the stars. Beti snapped awake. She had been in the dark too long. She had let her memories take over. Memories of the dark, of the service passages, maintenance shafts, airways under the colony. Rats ran in that dark, and perhaps in her head too. Chewing at the control systems, exposing bare wire. She prayed for the travel tube lights to come on, for the car to start moving again, shuddered in relief when it did. Stepping off the car, she checked her reflection covertly in an inactive view screen. Still her face, though shiny with sweat. It had been hot in the travel tube, she realised now, and wished she had thought to take off her jacket. She wiped her face with a swift pass of her hand, wondering if she were not, in fact, paler than usual. No time for breakfast, she thought. As if she could eat one. There was just time to get to the Station House for morning briefing. Walk steady, breathe deep - the old routine. It usually worked, usually served to suppress, or at least to disguise, the fact of her fear. But the memories were skittering through her head again. Memories of the fear, and the way the fear started. Basic training for the Security Corps, seven years ago. She had woken up much too early one morning, surrounded by the dark and by the cold walls of her cramped quarters. There had been a dream, she thought, just before she awoke. A dream full of lights flashing by overhead as though she were lying on her back and passing under them. A dream full of the the hard-eyed recruiting officer, of more, brighter lights, shining into her eyes, of chairs with straps, and of insistent voices, sometimes loud and sometimes soft. A dream full of needles and the sense of something boring new tunnels through her brain. A dream she had had several times. When she opened her eyes now, she was certain that she was not alone. Someone was with her. Another presence, one which had just spoken, which was about to speak again. She had fumbled for the switch, seen the bare, empty room. Then: "Behind you," spoken so soft the speaker must be almost inside her ear. "Not there, over here," and again, when she was pressed against the door, stabbing wildly at the pad which released it, "behind you." And for the first of very many times, she suppressed this terrible fear: that someone was sharing her head. She had told no one, of course. Who could she tell? She was looking at Zach Allen, reading the orders of the day. Nice enough: decent but not bright, a fair minded man. But she knew what he would say if she shared her secret with him. Basic training included enough psychology to provide an explanation. The Corps would not accept a recruit who was, the lecturer had mouthed the term without conviction, mentally unstable. Looney, a schizo, they had all thought. Then it would be back to Earth with the other illegals, a camp, forced labour, starvation. Not much of a choice, not when she was sure she could deal with it herself. What more did it require than constant vigilance, for which her training also equipped her? She would just always have to regard herself as being on duty. Against herself, if the voice in her head was another self, though when she imagined the face it looked different. Confident, arrogant, nothing like her. Always smiling. Pleased that Beti was keeping it secret. "Suits me. If you told, they'd terminate both of us. What a waste of my life that would be." Guard duty, Beti reflected as she boarded another travel tube. She had had a faint hope that her orders would be changed, that she would pull something else after all. But the station was quiet at the moment. Not good. Especially now, when the voice was speaking again. She had not heard it for several years, was hoping that she had cured herself somehow, got rid of the sneering invader. But here it was, back again, and muttering such terrible things. As though the idea of being near the Ambassadors had awakened it. She needed activity, preferably demanding physical activity. Instead she would have to find another way to distract herself. Running over the Security Code might do the trick. She was one tenth of the way down its initial protocols as she took up her post at the entrance to Green Sector. Just today and tomorrow before she was assigned another duty. It would be better then, surely. Things would get back to normal. It was just being here, being alone and inactive. That was what had gone wrong. "But nothing's gone wrong," she insisted to herself. "I'm in control. I'll stay in control." She focussed her eyes on a point just past the travel tube doors, cleared her mind. "No officer may enter any room individually assigned to any bona fide resident of the station without a warrant signed by the station commander or his or her official representative," she droned in her head. "No officer may carry anything other than the side arm approved by Earth Force Security Procurements when on duty, nor any personal weapon when off duty," she continued. "Now there you have it. Bureaucracy poking its nose in where it knows damn all about the real situation on the ground," chipped in the other voice. Beti froze. It might so easily be her own. She had said the like often enough. But she was afraid it was not. She was afraid it belonged to that other face, the face she had dreaded seeing this morning. Beti did not reply. She had never replied. Why talk to something which didn't exist? And always before, the voice would snigger and say, as it had said that first night in the barracks at Syria Plenum, "That's right, Beti dear. I'm not here. You can't see me." Agreeing had been easy enough, even when it forgot itself, whispering in her dreams, sneering at her when she least expected. "Stupid Beti. Stupid rat girl. Even if you're not supposed to know I'm here, I'm far too clever for you. What can you do? What are you doing? Denying me means I am here, you moron. Why should I hide from a fool such as you? This suits me better." Then she would clamp down, distract herself, refuse to believe she had heard it. But now it was different, now the other had changed its tune. "Time to move on, Beti dear, time to get out of this head and let me take over." She had heard it say just these words last night, she realised, in a nightmare she could not wake up from. "No officer may initiate any action, nor deviate in any way from the course of action prescribed by his or her superior officer," she quoted. Damn, she had missed out something. She wasn't sure what, could only press on. "No - " but was interrupted. "That would just suit you. No excuse for initiative. That would take imagination, which you obviously do not have." She tightened her stance ever so slightly, set her will against the taunts. "No officer may allow any personal feelings of whatever kind to influence their actions," she persisted. More paragraphs had gone astray, whole sections. And the voice mocked, "No fear of that. You have no personal feelings. You are just a cold fish, Beti dear. Not to mention a tiny, mindless cog in the machine. Time to make way for me, time to make way for the future. I'll make much better use of this body." Beti shrank: the other was suddenly so much stronger, so sure of itself and its place in that future. She remembered its dream of its future, remembered herself shrunk to a scuttling beast as the voice took her body, and changed it. A raven haired beauty enshrined in a crystalline palace that rang with the sound of tame fountains. A princess of power, who could give life but more often took it. Beti remembered those dreams all too clearly, the torments and massacres seen from a viewpoint low-down among shadows. Beti breathed more deeply, just once, prepared to go on enduring her own inferiority stoically. Instead she felt anger. "Cheap fantasy!" she tossed back at the voice. "Is that it? Is that infantile rubbish the best you can dream?" And whose fault was it, she asked her self defiantly, if she had shut down her feelings, denied herself anything more than professional and fleeting acquaintanceships? Let no one get close. A constant precaution: don't let anyone close. And there was always her duty: she focused her attention on that. She stood as tall as her five feet, four inches would allow, braced into a perfect stance. The travel tube door slid open. Two figures appeared. She almost flinched in dismay. Not now. Not Minbari now. She had recognised the lead figure as Lennier, which made it all too likely that the second was the Ambassador herself. Why had she only remembered now what the voice wanted, when it was almost too late? Her skin felt ice cold. The attache was already walking towards her, his mild face smiling politely while his eyes flicked cautiously from side to side. "The danger you are protecting her from is here, is ahead of you," she wanted to cry out to him. She was looking at Delenn now, was standing clenched in agony as the other tried to take over, tried to make her draw her ppg, tried to make her fire. Sweating under her woollen uniform, her teeth clamped, her muscles rigid, Beti fought as she had fought the previous night. "Kill her," the voice insisted. "That's what I'm here for, to kill her. You shouldn't be here at all. Why aren't you gone? He sent me the password! It's my life now!" But Beti hung on. She was good at hanging on, had been doing so since her mother abandoned her in the passages under the colony at birth. Years of denying the other had made her still better. Not something he could have suspected of course. The man who had picked her up in the Zocalo yesterday night. There had been, she was realising belatedly , something about him, something about his eyes and the way he'd assessed her. But he had seemed pleasant enough at the time. Pleasant enough to distract her. And this was what he had tried to do, that night in her bed, so that he could send a password straight into her mind. He had meant to erase her, had meant to replace her with the other. She understood this now. Why had it taken her so long? His work again, surely. Remembering enraged her once more, made it easier to resist when the other's voice screamed again, "Kill her! She stands in our way! Kill the freak!" And then it was over. Delenn had passed by, her courteous nod echoing Lennier's greeting. Beti wished she could have reached out a hand, could have touched the silken sleeve and begged Delenn, "Help me." She thought that perhaps the Minbari Ambassador would, or would have tried. At least she would not have turned away, dismissed Beti as mad, or bad. There might be salvation there, if only she could make that one, small gesture. But to do so she would have to unlock her limbs, and then the ppg might come out, go up, be fired. She could not take that risk. She had her duty to perform. She had always been perfect in that. The rest of the shift was uneventful. She stood, blank-faced, as ambassadors came out, went in, her control complete again. The voice seemed to have retired, exhausted. And as usual, once it was silent, she had difficulty believing it had ever existed. "I've got it under control," she was assuring herself. "It won't get out now. Why ask for help? I'll lose all that I've gained." Now it was time to go off duty. She made her way to the mess, snatched a late supper, then pushed on to the bars Downbelow. Not to get drunk, but for the bustle, the pressure of others, the distraction of risk, and the chance of company in bed. Last morning. She had not slept at all, had not dared. She completed her checks, set out for Green Sector. "If I'm lucky," she told herself, "I'll be Downbelow next. Where there's small risk of meeting Delenn. Then I'll get my head straight, deal with the other. Somehow." Perhaps she should take some of the leave owing her. Seek out the man who had been playing games with her head. Play some games with him. She took up her post, began on the Security Code again, recited it flawlessly this time. Perhaps Delenn won't go by today, she thought in a corner of her mind. Perhaps it'll be all right. And another corner of her mind noted, wryly, that if it really were all right, she wouldn't have to worry about Delenn passing by. She must have been tireder than she supposed, she thought dazedly, several hours later, emerging from what felt like a doze. But alone in her head. Perhaps she had tired the voice out too. Not that it had ever been there. She felt oddly warm, let herself relax even more. And then her ppg was out, was levelling before she had realised who was coming down the corridor towards her. Delenn, not with Lennier this time, but with Captain Sheridan. She had a faint memory of seeing them as the travel tube door opened, of seeing Sheridan raise one hand briefly to Delenn's face before they both turned to come out. Affection? Love? Nothing she could ever hope for. She had felt such a stab of jealousy, she remembered, and then heard the other snarl in her head, "Yes, why should she be so lucky?" just before it took control. Just before she had opened the door enough with her envy to let it take control. "Stupid! Stupid!" it gloated in triumph as Sheridan, with a courtly gesture, stepped back to let Delenn go first. Lennier would never have been so careless. The irony had jerked Beti back out of the darkness, however. It wasn't fair, she was thinking, as she took in the situation, as rage gusted her back into the light. But there was so little she could do. "Stop her!" she yelled, despairing, while the sneering voice gloated, " Too late! Much too late. You're in on this too. You wouldn't risk your career." She could feel fingers tightening on the trigger. "My fingers!" she thought, furiously, and fought for control. Just one second more of control. In it, in her second, she saw Delenn's eyes widen, first with fear, then with perception. Extraordinary, Beti had time to think. She isn't afraid. It gave her courage. She saw Sheridan begin to move, to throw himself forwards, try to get himself in front of Delenn, unholster his own ppg in time. "He won't make it!" she screamed, and fought on. Trying to put everything right. Trying to buy him a little more time. And she must have done enough, after all. She knew when she saw the muzzle of his weapon jerk once, jerk again, spit flame twice. She felt nothing, though something had knocked her off balance, knocked her back against the wall. She saw her own ppg fire, harmlessly, up at the ceiling. Then she was falling, into the darkness. As she fell she reached out for the other, grappled it close. It twisted and turned, still wanting a moment of triumph, but Beti clung tight. "It was always my life!" she cried, fearless at last. One by one, she could see the bright stars coming out.