Lawrence Watt-Evans: In the Empire of Shadow

“Mrs.?” the clerk asked again.

“Ms. It’s a word we use back on Earth.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” The clerk noted something, then looked up again and said, “Could you come with me, Miss Jewell?”

“Why? And where?”

The clerk did not answer; instead he said, in a surprisingly definite voice, “I was told to bring you at once.”

Amy sighed, and decided not to argue any more.

* * * *

“Mr. Deranian?”

Ted ignored them, and the two men cast knowing glances at one another.

“You take the right arm,” one of them said. “Be careful, though-the doctor said that besides the head wound, his ribs aren’t completely healed yet.”

The other nodded.

Side by side they advanced, and grabbed Ted by the arms.

“Come on, Mr. Deranian,” one of them said. “Dream’s not over yet.”

* * * *

“Miss N’goyen?”

“Nguyen,” Susan said, without moving from her cot. She was lying facedown; the burns on her back no longer hurt all the time, but lying on them was still not a good idea. Her time as a slave on Zeta Leo III had been very rough on her.

But then, having been a refugee as a child, she’d survived rough times before. She’d thought that she was finally through with all that when she’d made it through law school, passed the bar, and joined the firm of Dutton, Powell, Hough.

Obviously, she’d been wrong.

When Amy Jewell had called on her to provide legal assistance in dealing with the spaceship that had crashed in her back yard, Susan had not expected it to lead her to this.

The messenger tried again, and almost managed to pronounce the name.

“What is it?” Susan asked.

“Could you come with me, please?”

Susan raised her head and looked at the messenger. “Do I have a choice?”

“Not really.”

She sighed, sat up, swung her feet to the floor, and stood.

“Lead the way,” she said.

* * * *

Pel took the seat on the far left, and Amy settled beside him. Pel noticed that she was no longer wearing heavy make-up to hide the bruise on her face; the discolorations had faded to a faint, sickly yellow tinge. Pel knew that his own injuries, too, were no longer obvious.

Ted was led in, unresisting, and seated on the far right; the fresh bandage on his head was smaller than the one Pel had last seen there, and the visible cuts and bruises had healed. There were scars, of course.

Susan, arriving last, took her place between Amy and Ted. A long-sleeved tunic hid the bandages that still covered much of her back and her forearms.

That was all of them, Pel thought, all four of them-the only living Earthpeople in the entire universe, according to the Galactic Empire.

At least, in this entire universe. So far as Pel knew, there were five billion others back on Earth, all blithely unaware that any universe but their own existed. And he secretly harbored hopes, despite his own better judgment, that his wife and daughter might still be alive somewhere. Their deaths had been reported to him, had been confirmed repeatedly, but he hadn’t seen either of them die, hadn’t seen their bodies.

He knew, intellectually, that they were both dead, but accepting it emotionally was another matter.

Nancy and Rachel weren’t here, though, even if by some miracle they weren’t both dead. The four of them, Pel and Amy and Ted and Susan, were the only Earthpeople here at Base One. Pel found something peculiarly amusing in the thought that half of them were lawyers, here because they had been representing the other half.

The Galactic Empire didn’t seem to care about lawyers, though. Ted wasn’t representing him here, and Susan wasn’t representing Amy; they were all here on their own. Pel looked around, wondering why they had been gathered.

This was a new room to them all. It was small and bare, with walls of whitewashed stone-that meant it was within the asteroid itself, rather than in the later additions, where everything was steel. The tiled floor might once have been white, too, but was now a dull gray. The four steel chairs were not particularly comfortable. The purple-painted lectern bore the lion-and-unicorn seal of the Imperial Military-but then, so did any number of objects scattered about Base One.

It looked like a small briefing room. That was, at least, an improvement on the debriefing and interrogation chambers where Pel seemed to have spent most of his waking hours for the past ten days.

The door opened, and a man in the familiar purple uniform of an Imperial officer marched past them, papers in hand, and took his place at the lectern. Pel was beginning to learn the insignia; he placed this character as a major in the political service.

That was mildly unusual; up until now they had mostly been bothered by people in Imperial Intelligence.

“Welcome to Base One,” the major announced, in jovial, booming tones that were almost painful in so small a room. “I’m Major Southern.”

Pel winced, not just at the tone, but at the words. He and the others had been here at Base One for over a week-Pel, without a regular cycle of sunrise and sunset, had lost track of exactly how long it had been, but he knew it was over a week. They didn’t need any more welcoming speeches.

Ted grinned foolishly. “Major Southern,” he said. “I like that. Glad I thought of it. Southern, warm, friendly-a summery sort of name.”

At that, Amy winced.

“Now, you’re all intelligent people,” the major proclaimed, in somewhat more moderate tones. “You all know what the situation is.”

Pel glanced at Ted, who grinned back and winked broadly at him.

“We’re fighting a powerful, mysterious enemy,” Major Southern continued. “A force that has conquered an entire universe, and that now threatens two others.”

Ted nodded, smiling happily. Susan sat in polite and motionless silence. Amy’s lips tightened. Pel could almost hear her thoughts-he could imagine her muttering, “I haven’t seen it threatening Earth.”

“This force called Shadow uses methods we don’t understand, methods that are impossible in our own universe; the people of Shadow’s world call it magic, and that’s as good a name as any. It’s used that magic to send its agents, its spies, and its monsters into our universe. It has attempted to subvert the Galactic Empire, which has brought peace and security to all mankind-at least, in this reality.”

Amy’s lips twitched, and Pel could easily guess the cynical thoughts running through her mind.

All mankind, except where it hadn’t gotten yet, which was far more than the Empire cared to admit-all of the little group had seen more than they wanted of the odd corners where the Empire had no dominion. And the Empire might bring security to man kind, perhaps, but not necessarily women. It also helped if the men were white.

Just how different was the Empire from Shadow, really? Both were imperialist; Shadow just seemed to be a little farther along in its conquests.

Of course, as one point in its favor, the Galactic Empire was run by humans; nobody knew just what Shadow was.

“You know that we have representatives of Shadow’s universe here at Base One,” the major said. “Lord Raven of Stormcrack Keep has taken temporary refuge here, and he and his party have fought against Shadow all their lives.”

“So they say,” Amy muttered, and this time it was not just Pel’s imagination.

He thought this might be carrying cynicism a little far; Raven and his man Stoddard and the two wizards had certainly seemed sincere enough.

The major either didn’t hear her, or chose to ignore her. “They’ve sworn to continue that fight,” he said, “and to join their efforts to ours, rather than to continue operating independently. In just a few days, we’ll be sending Lord Raven and the others through a space-warp, back into their home universe-and with them we’ll be sending a squadron of our best men, and a trained telepath. This combined force will be the first step in taking the battle onto Shadow’s home ground, the first step in overthrowing this unnatural tyranny and freeing the oppressed people of Shadow’s realm.”