The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [11]
“They say most of your brain shuts down in cryosleep. All but the animal side.”
With an effort, he dragged his eyes open. A glance showed that he was as alone as before. Screens and telltales working silently did not supply the information he expected to see there. Something was wrong. Or if not wrong, at least not right. He had heard a voice. He did not mistake such things.
There was a reflection in one screen. A suggestion of movement. Nothing on the ship ought to be moving. At a touch, the pilot’s chair spun around.
A lesser individual might have screamed at what he saw. Or started babbling uncontrollably. Riddick did neither. Just sat there, tubes and connectors still leeched to his body, staring, studying, trying to make sense of the sight before him. He was having a hard time doing so.
He was, after all, no longer alone.
Though slender and attractive, the woman conveyed an inner hardness that was more sensed than seen. He felt he ought to know her even though he had never seen her before. The impossibility of her presence registered strongly. It was negated by the fact that he knew he was not insane. Dreaming perhaps, but not insane.
Behind her, the ship was gone. It had been replaced by a world of trees that were utterly alien yet somehow oddly familiar. Small skittering things darted furtively through the undergrowth while lightning-fast fliers zipped between the peculiar branches. The ground was littered with objects whose purpose and shape had changed little in thousands of years: gravestones. He had no time to study wildlife or monuments: the woman was talking to him.
“I am Shirah. Think of this as a dream, if you need to.”
His mind fought violently against what he was seeing even as his senses accepted it. As he struggled, more and more of the ship vanished, to be replaced by additional forest and more gravestones. There were a lot of the latter. Too many. Where ship met specter, perception blurred.
“But some know better. Some know it isn’t a dream. Some of us know the true crime that happened here, on Furya.” Drifting dreamily, one hand indicated the nearest of the gravestones. “We’ll never have them back. But we can have this world again. Someday.”
Riddick’s brain had been tuned to coping with the unlikely, the unreasonable, the unacceptable. It refused to dismiss the information his eyes and ears insisted on conveying.
“Once you remember, you will never forget.” Placing one hand over her chest, the woman waited until it began to glow softly. Riddick thought he could catch glimpses of the bones of her fingers. Approaching, she reached toward him, fingers extended . . .
Something jolted him awake. Hadn’t he been awake? A dream. He’d never had a dream where the other occupant had told him to think of the experience as a dream. What he knew to be true conflicted with what he knew ought to be true. Priding himself on his ability to resolve seeming contradictions and unable to do so this time, he grew tense.
A glance at the ship’s instrumentation solved the problem for him. He was closing on his destination. Now was not the time to ponder the source of implausible visions.
Clearing its electronic throat, the ship’s communicator snapped him forcefully back from nebulous realms inhabited by memories of distant dreams and fading visitations.
The voice that barked at him via the communicator was an odd mix of emphatic and anxious. “Repeating . . . all spaceports and all landing facilities of Helion Prime, including those designated for emergency service, are closed to flights that have not originated from this locale. Unauthorized craft are prohibited from landing. Infractors will be fired upon. These regulations are in force until officially countermanded by the government of Helion Prime. Repeating . . .”
Something went bang and the merc ship bounced violently. As it had not yet entered atmosphere, this was more than disconcerting. Whatever had struck Riddick’s craft had blown a chunk of communications gear right off the front. Hopefully, that was all that