Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [94]
The abyss had first opened when the Enterprise had shown up. An abyss of fiction in his mind, of insane hallucinations. The worst part of it was that he himself appeared in these hallucinations. He was a fictional character among the other fictional characters. A central character. The crazy stories were always about him.
If he had to finally lose his grip and let the fictions run rampant in his mind, he was determined he should not do it here, now. He used his own abhorrence of the Allpox, of its devilry, its obscenity, to push the imaginary world back into his unconscious. God will help me, he told himself.
He led the procession up a long stair and arrived at the bridge. As they passed through the glass doors and onto the pavement of the bridge, the Dissenters stopped walking.
They had all seen the video reports and knew this was where Odysseus had died.
Crichton saw what was happening and knew he had to keep the procession moving. No time was to be wasted, no change in itinerary allowed.
But the CS guards didn’t have to be told. They pulled the Dissenters forward.
The security around CephCom was unprecedented, all as Crichton had ordered. Dozens of hovercraft circled the complex, and one-eyes lined the bridge and hung in rank upon rank in the air farther back, like rows of headstones in a hovering cemetery. Above them, mammoth battlefield one-eyes flew in precise holding patterns. Sharpshooters stood at the corners of every roof. There would be no mistake this time. Nothing would happen that Crichton himself did not order.
Rhiannon watched the backs of the CS officers in front of her. Suddenly she desired a last look at the sky. She turned her head upward as she walked.
Vast gray and white clouds moved in stately unison overhead, dwarfing the complex. A small blue space had opened up between them, a minor interregnum.
Rhiannon saw a flock of circling birds, nothing more than specks at this distance, high up in the blue gap.
There were no birds on Rampart.
Rhiannon froze in her tracks, causing the CS officer behind to bump into her. Her face was still upturned, her eyes wide.
“Saushulima,” she said to herself.
Now the CS men around her stopped, and looked up as well.
Crichton sensed the break in ranks behind him and turned to ascertain the problem. He followed the many gazes upward and saw the distant flock of creatures.
Now the entire troop had halted. All eyes were turned up toward the inconceivable. Neither Crichton’s helmet nor those of the other CS officers were filtering out the sight. The military computers controlling the helmets had identified the airborne creatures as a real threat, which the men needed to see so they could shoot at them.
The haguya pulled into a tight arrow formation, so close they almost looked like one united creature. As they began to dive, their formation changed to three smaller arrow shapes. Their groupings were precise.
As they became more visible, and undeniably, extravagantly alien, Crichton experienced his awakening.
Time slowed down to a stop, as if to help him undergo the process.
The haguya seemed to hang in the air in the middle of their dive. The clouds were a painting, and the people around him were statues.
The other person inside Crichton now awoke from his ten-year sleep. He awoke as if he had fallen asleep only an hour ago. He was Captain Alfred Bowles.
He recognized that the fictions trying to “take over” were not fictions at all. They had all really happened. They were his experiences. His ship, a thing that had dominated his psychotic episodes, a ship he’d regarded as mythical, was in truth his ship after all. It was no science fiction. It was the U.S.S. Huxley.
The personality of Crichton, an artificial construct, folded itself into a corner like a piece of furniture. Bowles was now in control. He still had the memories of what he’d done as Crichton, but he knew that the Crichton persona was not his true self.
Now his sense of time came back to him. The haguya were diving at him. They grew from tiny