Гэрет Уильямс - Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 - Средь звезд, подобно гигантам

And when, at the end of the Earth year 2262, Ulkesh came to see Him in His hidden sanctum, as he had more than once in the last year, He asked the same question He had on every other occasion.

"Tell me. Have you found Cathedral yet?"

The answer was always the same.

It was so quiet. So new. Crafted fully formed from hopes and aspirations and dreams. Every bit of metal, every bolt, every door, every room, every piece of equipment.

It was all so new, and yet it seemed haunted.

As G'Kar walked slowly through the corridors of Babylon 5 he could not shake that feeling. He had not used to believe in ghosts. But that was before. Before he had met Londo. Before the Machine. Before the War.

Now he thought he believed in almost everything.

It was finished. Babylon 5 was finished, almost ready to go on line. Oh, there would still be improvements and modifications to be made, little bits of tweaking here and there, but for the most part it was done.

And was it worth it? Was it worth the expense? And not just in financial terms. The Drazi had rebelled partly because of this station. He had heard reports from Centauri Prime of famine and drought exacerbated by the crippling payments made to the Alliance. There were whispers of protest from Narn.

And was it worth it? What price peace?

He could not find an answer.

He walked into the room that had been designated as the conference hall, the place where the representatives would meet, where the decisions would be taken, where the fate of worlds would turn.

The Vorlon turned to look at him. Its encounter suit was pure white, unmarked by any other colour, unsullied and clean. G'Kar understood that in some cultures white meant purity and virtue.

All he could see in that gleaming whiteness were bones. Bones of the dead.

A light twinkled in the Vorlon's eye stalk and G'Kar took a slow step back. For one moment it had looked as if a skull was smiling at him.

He placed his fists together on his chest and bowed his head slightly. As far as he knew he was one of the first people on Babylon 5 apart from the construction crews, given permission to survey the new base for the Alliance. The others would come later, either being too busy to inspect it now, or not wishing to do so. G'Kar alone wanted to see the finished station as soon as possible.

He was not terribly surprised to see that the new Vorlon Ambassador had got here before him.

There was a rush of air, and a sound like dry leaves rustling across a marble tomb. it said.

G'Kar said nothing in reply. There was nothing to say.

The Babylon 5 station became operational at the end of 2262. The first meetings there took place early in 2263. It was always hoped and believed that Babylon 5 would be a consolidation of the peace that the Shadow War had ultimately brought to the galaxy.

Unfortunately, this was very far from being the case.

LAKER, A. (2293) A Shining Beacon in Space. Chapter 14 of The Rise and Fall of

the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the

Third , vol. 3, 2262: The Missing Year. E d: S. Barringer, G. Boshears, A. E.

Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.

With Babylon 5 complete at last, the Alliance is ready to enter a new age, a golden time of peace and prosperity. But in a galaxy that has known only war, the concept of peace is hard to grasp. The new age brings many challenges, not learning how to fight, but learning how to live. Some seek that understanding through work and labour, others through continuing to build a better world, while for some there is no understanding, only continued war. And across the dead vastness of space, ancient ships continue to move, gathering for a purpose no one can comprehend.

The Alliance had been shaken in 2262, the Drazi Conflict representing its first real test since the end of the Shadow War, but ultimately it had held. The union of the Blessed Delenn and General John Sheridan, the Shadowkiller, kept the disparate Alliance together through months that were largely marked by peace and optimism. The completion of the Babylon 5 space station at the end of the year was meant to mark a new beginning for the galaxy.

And it did, although not in the way anyone could have foreseen. Babylon 5 comes later, though. The early weeks and months of 2263 were distinguished by activity elsewhere, by a slow building of forces, by steadily burning tensions.

And by the continued absence of Primarch Sinoval.

NEY, S. E. (2295) The Birth of a New Dream. Chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of

the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the

Third , vol. 4, The Dreaming Years. E d: S. Barringer, G. Boshears,

A. E. Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.

And at the same instant, they all woke up.

They were spread out across the galaxy; rich people, poor people, powerful people, helpless people. They were the people who shaped the galaxy, in one form or another.

And they all woke up at the same time.

Londo Mollari awakes from a dream he can remember now, wet tears on his face. He is a young man again, standing alongside Marrago and Urza and Dugari and Malachi and so many others. He is boasting in the way that only a young man can, and the others are agreeing with him. "I am going to be Emperor one day," he says, and they laugh. And then he looks up at the throne, and Refa is there, nailed to it by his own kutari. And then he looks back and sees Dugari covered with blood, coughing up more blood with each breath and taking those awful cough tablets of his which are covered with blood. And he looks back and he sees Marrago is not here any more, and Urza is dead and Malachi is dead and they are all dead except him and only his enemies are left, and Cartagia raises a mocking toast to say 'I won' and Elrisia combs out her long beautiful hair and Kiro plays an open flame across his fingers and it does not burn him and Mariel and Daggair laugh and plot and Morden is behind them all, smiling as he always does and saying, 'You owe me a favour, Emperor or Minister or peasant or wanderer, you owe me a favour and a man must always pay what he owes.'

And Emperor Londo Mollari II wakes up, carefully, so as not to wake Timov, and he goes to a window and looks out over the many lands of his domain.

Dexter Smith awakes from a dream. He was poor once, born in a slum of lost hopes and dead dreams to a mother who barely spoke to him and a father he never knew. Now he is a Senator, a man of importance, a man who is known and respected, a war hero, a champion of the people. But in his dreams he sees green eyes fill with blood as he kills her again and again and each time he hears the voices blaming him.

And Senator Dexter Smith wakes up and lies in his bed for many hours until dawn comes and he has things to do that will make him forget.

David Corwin awakes from a dream he does not want to remember. He cannot move, or think, or even remember his name. All he can do is scream, and there are so many people walking directly in front of him, Susan and Lyta and Mary and John and Delenn and Carolyn and none of them can see him or hear him and he is left to scream alone, the sounds echoing in his mind.

And David Corwin, once a captain but no longer, wakes up to the sensation of the sun on his face, but it is so cold and the sky is full of dust and the water is full of mud and his waking brings him no joy.

Talia Winters, who has more names than friends, awakes from a dream in which she is with her family. Abby is there, and Al, and they have more children, and she isn't wearing gloves, and she has only the one name, but she cannot remember what it is, and everyone is calling her different names.