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An orderly came into the observation room. “I need you to follow me, Ms. Nor,” he said.
He whisked her off to a room where several officials from the Justice Bureau were waiting. They gave her instructions, but she felt suddenly almost overcome with nervousness.
“Remember to be concise in your answers,” one said.
“If you are uncomfortable answering a question, you do have the right to refuse,” another said.
“Can I just refuse to go out?” she asked.
“You may,” one told her carefully. “But there may be repercussions for refusing such a summons. I highly recommend that you consider the service you will be doing for
the Sapient Union. This is part of your duty as a citizen.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling light-headed.
They told her other things that she immediately forgot, then took her through a door. She found herself in the courtroom, and her knees felt weak.
With exaggerated motion, she forced herself to move with confidence. Never show weakness, she thought to herself. Pretending she was back on Vitriol, in an area rife with cutthroats and thieves, helped. She couldn’t ever show weakness back then, and she refused to now.
Just because these people were government officials with more power than her entire civilization . . . well, that line of thought didn’t help.
It seemed ungodly loud as she sat down in the chair behind the witness stand. All the eyes were on her.
“Apollonia Nor of New Vitriol, you are hereby sworn in as a material witness,” the Chairman told her. He continued on, but her mind caught on a point.
“Excuse me,” she said, once he had stopped. “I’m an SU citizen now. Please note that.” Her head swam with nervousness; she’d just corrected the triple-centenarian master judge.
There was a silence at her words for a moment, and she imagined everyone was looking at her with horror, contempt, or a mix of both.
“So noted,” Chung said with a nod. He seemed entirely undisturbed by her correction. “Do you vow to tell only what you believe to be the facts and truths of what you have witnessed?”
“I -I do,” she said, swallowing heavily.
“Very well. If the Tribunal has questions, they may now pose them.”
Kernos spoke first. “First, Ms. Nor, may I offer the apologies of this tribunal for having to take part in such a difficult event as this, when you are such a new member of our Union.”
“Ah . . . thanks,” she replied.
“Now, if I may – what happened on MS-29? I know you may not have all the information, but I would like to hear in your words what transpired.”
She hesitated, trying to collect her thoughts. “We went to the station. Captain Brooks wanted me to come along to meet Verena Urle – Dr. Urle. Something felt really weird about the place. It was . . . dark.”
“Dark?” Kernos asked. “Do you mean in some sense related to your Cerebral Reading abilities?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “No one else seemed to notice it. Except Ambassador Kell – on approach it agreed with me that it was weird. Cursed, is the word it used to describe the feeling.”
That got some interest; Nuuan’s crest rose, and so did Cressin’s eyebrow.
“When you went onboard was when you had an episode and passed out, is that correct?” Kernos asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I see. Do you have any idea why?”
“I thought at the time that it was the suffering on the station. It was very, very real, but my perception of it wasn’t clear-cut. Not like a dark room and a lighted room. After awhile I realized that the darkness wasn’t just on the station, and it wasn’t coming from the place – it was just coming from Michal Denso.”
She shook her head, the feelings and memories so alien, so against her own real experiences that they seemed false even to her. Yet she knew they were real, would have sworn everything on it. She had.
“Denso was . . . he was something else. I worked up my courage to go onto the station and tried to . . . well I tried to convince him to not do what he – it? – was doing. It didn’t . . . it didn’t work.”
“Excuse me,” the woman, Cressin interjected. “Is ‘him’ Michal Denso?”
“Yes,” she clarified.
“From what we have heard, you did not have such a conversation with Michal Denso. When do you say this happened?”
“When I went into the room with him. Dr. Urle was with me.”
“It is Dr. Urle who says that no such communication took place,” Kernos added, frowning. “Are you saying that she is lying?”
“What did she say happened?” Apollonia asked.
No one answered, merely staring at her.
Idiot! They wouldn’t tell her what someone else said if she wasn’t cleared to see it . . . And clearly Verena had not told them of the communion with whatever Denso was. There were only three witnesses of that, after all – Verena, Kell, and herself. At least still alive.
“I mean – well, I’m a CR,” she said. “It was . . . I don’t know how to describe it – spooky action at a distance?”
“That phrase was once used to describe quantum entanglement,” Cressin noted. “I do not believe it serves here.”
“Well it’s the best . . . phrase I can use to describe it,” Apollonia said, catching herself mid-sentence, trying not to sound hostile.
“Some kind of extra-sensory communication method?” the Dessei, Nuuan, asked. His voice sounded dry. “Like telepathy?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it that,” she said. “But I suppose like that.”
There was a moment of people looking back and forth, mumbling to each other. She looked at Brooks, who regarded her calmly. Seeing her gaze, he offered a soft, reassuring smile. It did make her feel a little better.
“Were you then, responsible for Michal Denso’s seeming death?” Nuuan asked her.
“No,” she said.
“What was your goal?”
“To convince him to stop what he was doing,” she said. “He was . . . changing.”
“Please elaborate,” Cressin commanded.
“That wasn’t Michal Denso. I don’t know what else to call it, but the man who was called that was . . . mostly gone. Subsumed . . . or . . . maybe consumed? He was something else. Something . . . from the Dark.”
She’d never considered herself religious, but the terminology came to her readily. A part of her felt suddenly humiliated for even bringing it up, but then – it was true. That thing wasn’t Denso. Or at least, it mostly wasn’t. Maybe he was in there in a sense, she couldn’t even parse it all out in her own mind.
“What do you believe this being wished to do?” Nuuan asked.
“Be born,” she said. “It wasn’t in our reality. But it wanted to be . . .”
She saw Director Freeman’s eyes glint with excitement. He was leaning forward in his seat.
“If it was, though, it would have killed everyone on MS-29,” she continued. “Not even because it wanted to. It was . . .”
“It was what?”
“It was a baby Leviathan.”
Other Terrestrial 