Peter David - Out of the Darkness

“That’s quite all right, sir,” Senna spoke up. “I don’t ‘get’ any of you, either. And I’m speaking largely as an outsider. But what I do see,” and she looked around the table and actually smiled, “is a group of people who would very much prefer to like each other… but have been through so much, they don’t know if they can.”

“This is quite a perceptive young woman you have here, Vir,” Delenn remarked. “You would do well not to let her get too far.”

“Thank you,” Vir said. “I’ll see that she doesn’t. Oh… Senna. Do you have the drawings?”

“Drawings?” Sheridan asked.

“Senna’s been busy,” Vir said, by way of explanation. “She has untapped talents.”

Senna had unrolled several large sheets of paper, and she handed them to Garibaldi. He endeavored to maintain his surly attitude, but in spite of himself, he raised an eyebrow upon seeing the illustrations. “Fairly decent likenesses of Londo and G’Kar,” he said. “I like the way they’re standing there, with their backs to each other. Seems symbolic.”

“It’s quite rough,” she said.

“What’s this area between them?”

“That’s the city. I told you it was rough.”

“The city?” Then he understood. “These are statues. Designs for statues. My God, they’re huge.”

“Statues?” Sheridan leaned over, as did Delenn. Franklin got up and came around the table to get a better look. “You’re thinking about building statues to Londo and G’Kar.”

Vir nodded. “At either gate of the main city. Part of the rebuilding of Centauri Prime.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe. It seems that just yesterday we had to rebuild from the Alliance attack. Now we’re looking to the Alliance to help us recover again.”

“The Alliance will be there to help,” Sheridan assured him. “That much I can promise you. And this…” He shook his head and tapped the drawings. “If you’d told me twenty years ago that there would be a statue of G’Kar… of any Narn, for that matter… built right on the edge of the city…”

“It is a most remarkable concept,” Delenn said. She tapped the paper. “I am curious, though. Why are they both facedaway from the city? It almost seems to say that they have turned their backs on the Centauri people.”

“No, Delenn, not at all,” Garibaldi told her. “Takes an old security warhorse to understand: they’re standing guard. You can’t stand guard if your back is to your enemies.”

“That’s exactly right,” Senna said. “Although it’s also more than that. Londo…” She seemed to know what she wanted to say, but had trouble putting it into words.

Vir stepped in. “We have Londo facing away from the capital that he inhabited for so long… obsessed over for so long… that it was all he could see. He didn’t look to the long—range results of his decisions, because he was so blinded by his poor decisions.”

“So instead,” Senna said, “we’re positioning him the way I think he would have wished he had been. He’s looking away from the city and, instead, to the horizon.”

“Very nice,” Sheridan said. “And something tells me that G’Kar would have appreciated the irony of protecting the capital city of what were once his enemies.”

Garibaldi commented, “And the way that you have them positioned… they’re really watching each other’s backs.”

“As they did in life,” Delenn said. “It has a symmetry to it. Well done, Vir and Senna… very well done.”

“I just wish they could have lived to see it,” Sheridan said.

She put her arm through his, linking them. “You know, John… I think, in a way that we’ll never understand… they did.”

Senna and I returned to Centauri Prime today. The reception was muted, which is to be expected. We are still burying our dead, and naturally it’s a little difficult to get all worked up over the arrival of the man who has been promised to be the next emperor.

The fires have long been put out, but the damage remains. The smell of burned flesh still hangs in the air; if I take a deep breath, my gag reflex kicks in. Upon my arrival, the first thing I did was walk through the streets of Centauri Prime, surveying the damage. It was as if I were wandering through a ghost town, except the ghosts were out and about. People looked at me with haunted, almost vacant expressions. Despite my brief holographic appearance, they likely didn’t know who I was. I have not yet taken to wearing the white. I don’t know when I will. I think there’s a long way for our world, our people, to go before we start assuming the outward vestments of the past.

The palace, of course, remains untouched. Naturally. For the Drakh, it was a symbolic stronghold of their influence, second only to the Tower of Power they engineered. Sheridan showed me a picture of a tower on an Earth desert, constructed by insects and swarming with them. That’s what the Tower of Power was: an infestation. We exterminated that infestation. But, like any number of insects, the inhabitants of the Tower turned around and stung us. It will take us a long time to recover from such a severe stinging.

On the shuttle from Minbar to here, I brought some acquisitions that Sheridan and Delenn were generous enough to give me. Books and some assorted pieces of furniture, including several tables, chairs, and a large wardrobe. All very old and Grafted in the Minbari style. Their generosity is amazing.

I have had initial discussions with my ministers. I intend to make General Rhys minister of Internal Security. He told me he didn’t want the job. That’s more than enough reason to give it to him.

When I arrived at the palace, Dunseny was waiting for me, as were Caso and Renegar. Renegar handed me a crystal that, when I played it, revealed a communication from Gwynn and Finian on it. Both of them looked… tired. As if the events that had transpired had taken a lot out of them. I couldn’t really blame them, I guess. I think we all felt that way. But the fact that they were technomages should have… I don’t know… protected them somehow.

“It’s over, Vir,” Finian told me. “But it’s also just started. And Gwynn and I both want you to know… that if an emergency ever presents itself… if there is ever some catastrophe facing you as you proceed on your path as emperor of Centauri Prime, trying to pull together the shattered remains of your republic… in short, if there’s ever a situation in which the talents of the technomages are required… then both Gwynn and I want you to know…”

“That you can forget it,” Gwynn completed.

I actually laughed out loud at that as the picture blinked out. One had to credit them: technomages habitually spoke in a manner so oblique, so indecipherable, that it was a pleasure to see that they could say exactly what they meant when they put their minds to it.

As the day drew to a close, I held Senna close to me and watched the sun turning red on the horizon. So much to do. So many things that needed attending to. And I found my thoughts turning to Timov, the former wife of Londo. Word had reached us that she had passed away quietly, of illness. Apparently she had hung on for far longer than the doctors had believed possible. She died on the exact same day that Londo did. On the one hand, there is certainly no reasonable way she could have known. On the other hand, considering the formidable woman she was, it might be that she was simply so stubborn that she felt she had to outlast Londo, no matter what.

And naturally, thoughts of Timov turned me to Mariel.