Armies of Light and Dark (14 page)

"You were wrong, that's all."

"So you say. And so you will keep saying, probably to your grave." Galen sighed softly. "Very well, since it is the end we desire, I shall provide you with the means that you desire. But when you do return to Centauri Prime ... it will be with this."

He held out his hand barely an inch from Vir's face, and there was a flash of light that made Vir jump back. At that, he saw Galen's face register grim satisfaction. Then Vir frowned as he saw a triangular, black device in Galen's palm. He couldn't be sure, but the way the light played across it, it seemed to be shimmering.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Shadow technology," Galen told him. "Defies detection by any and all sensory devices you would care to name. Once you have returned to Centauri Prime, as you walk around the palace, or anywhere on the planet, this will supply readings that will inform me of Shadow technology on your Homeworld. The detection range is, unfortunately, limited – Shadows hide themselves quite well. So you will have to be on top of the Shadow tech for this device to work."

"And how will I tell you what I find?"

"You will not. The device will. Wear it anywhere on your person, and it will do the rest. And this," his hand flashed again, this time revealing a cylinder inside a small case no larger than Vir's thumbnail, "will enable me to contact you during the hunt. Insert it into your ear before you arrive on Centauri Prime. It will be undetectable. You won't be able to communicate with me, but I will be able to tell you where to explore if there are any readings that elicit further inspection."

Vir took the cylinder, tucked it into his pocket, then turned the triangle over in his hands.

"You're looking for hard evidence that there are Drakh on Centauri Prime."

"We know they are there, Vir Cotto. What we do not know is how pervasive their presence is."

"Why can't you look for yourselves?"

"We have our reasons."

"How did I know you were going to say that," Vir said sourly. "So tell me if there are Drakh and they find me with this thing on me ... what will they do?"

"Almost certainly, they will kill you."

Vir sighed heavily.

"How did I know you were going to say that, too?"

"If they do kill you, Vir Cotto ... you can take solace in one thing."

"Oh, really? What would that be?"

Galen smiled mirthlessly.

"Mariel will mourn for you quite spectacularly."

And with that, he turned and left, his long coat sweeping across the floor and yet, oddly, stirring up none of the gravel that lay about.

Vir had consumed half a bottle of liquor when she arrived. The damning thing about looking at Mariel was that, every time he did so, he desperately wanted to put aside all that he knew about her. He wanted to believe once again that, when she looked at him, he was all that mattered in her mind and hearts. That he wasn't simply some tool, a buffoon she was manipulating as adroitly as she manipulated everyone. He couldn't do so, however, and he fancied that – despite all her skill in covering what was going through that scheming mind of hers – he could now see the duplicity in her eyes.

"Vir!" she said quite cheerily as she placed her bags in the quarters that they had been sharing for nearly a year. "Vir, you're here!"

"Vir, Vir, Vir is here," he echoed, sounding more drunk than he had realized. Some of the words were slurred. "It has been ages, darling," she said, and she reached down, took his chin in her hands and kissed him lightly.

Vir wondered when Galen was going to put the spell on her. Then he looked into her eyes, really looked ... and she was looking back at him in a most curious manner. It seemed to him, as paradoxical as it sounded, that her eyes were misting over and clearing at the same time. As if ... as if she was seeing him for the first time ... but seeing him only under very specific circumstances. Great Maker, Vir thought, he already got to her–

And then she lay down on the bed beside him, began to do things to him. Extraordinary things, and he felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. Sensations pounded through him that he lad only experienced in the vaguest of ways, in the most nebulous of dreams, and never did he think that there was anything like that in real life. Mariel was everywhere, and he twisted and turned, actually trying to get away from her, but it was impossible. There was no holding her back, no holding himself back. His entire body pounded as if there were too much blood in his limbs.

"I love you," she whispered in his ear, over and over again – "My dear, my sweet.." He tried to push her away, but he couldn't muster any strength. He felt as if his mind was overloading, and finally desperation gave him power. He shoved Mariel off before it could go any further, and rolled off the bed. Scrambling backward to the nearest chair, he hauled himself onto it and looked at her, still curled up on the bed, now half naked. Her luminous eyes were full of love, and she started to move toward him once more.

"That's enough," he said. "Just... stay right there. Okay?"

She looked up at him, stricken.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm sure." He stood and tried to pull his disheveled clothes together into some semblance of orderliness. It was everything he could do to focus on what was right and proper, given the situation. And part of his mind sneered at him and said,
Right and proper? You asked a techno-mage to brainwash the woman into loving you, justifying a petty revenge by claiming that it will end up benefiting Centauri Prime. You might as well take advantage of what she's of fering you. You deserve it, and she'll delight in it.
But as quickly as that suggestion echoed through his mind, he blocked it out. Was she truly brainwashed? She didn't have a vacant, thought-expunged expression. That had been a concern ... that she would become vapid, mindless. He could see, though, that it wasn't the case. All the canniness, all the intelligence, all the craftiness that he had come to see and understand was still part of her – all of that was still intact. That came as something of a relief, because otherwise she would be useless to him... ... useless ... to him ...

He pushed that thought from his mind, as well, for he didn't like what it said about him. Yes, the intelligence was there, but the overwhelming emotion that radiated from her was pure adoration. He hadn't planned for what had happened earlier. Some part of him had found it hard to believe that the techno-mage could actually do as he said he would. When Mariel first went for him, a part of him still thought it might be some sort of prank. But the intensity of her fervor had swiftly disabused him of that notion.

He felt dirty. He kept telling himself that he shouldn't. That, of the two of them, Mariel was by far the one with far filthier hands. This was a woman who had used sex and raw emotion as weapons, mere tools in her arsenal. She wasn't deserving of the slightest dreg of pity for having those tools turned back against her. Indeed, she had gotten off lightly, for she didn't know that that was what had happened to her. Then again, it might be that it was her very lack of understanding that made the whole business so repellant to Vir. He had had no intention of bedding her, no matter how tempting the prospect seemed. He had instead planned to keep her at arm's length, make her feel some of the agony, the unrequited emotion he had experienced. Certainly the notion had seemed most attractive when he'd first conceived it. Yet now he was repulsed by its very essence.

He had to seek out Galen, get him to remove the spell. Restore her to normal so that she could... So that she could tear him down again. Lampoon him, spread rumors about him, and make him even more ineffective than he already was.

He stared at her. It was exactly as Galen had said; clearly the woman was ready to destroy herself lest she disappoint him. A far cry, certainly, from what the conniving bitch had been mere hours before. His hearts hardened against her, and if he didn't like the way he felt at the moment ... Well ... he would feel differently tomorrow.

"Do you not want to enjoy me, Vir, my love?" she whispered. "Shall I not show you how much I love you?"

The answer to both questions was yes, but with a determination and strength of will he did not even know he possessed, he managed not to answer truthfully. Instead he said, "I'm sure it would be a really okay experience ..."

"Just okay?" Her disappointment was palpable. "Let me show you. Let me erase whatever doubts you might have and provide you with boundless–"

"What I want you to do ... is not touch me for a while."

"Not ... touch you?"

"That's right."

She looked stricken.

"Not caress you? Not feel your firm flesh beneath my fingers? Not take your wiggling–"

"None of that," Vir told her. "There's, uhm ... there's a lot of things I have to take care of for a while. I need to focus, and I can't be distracted by, uhm ... romantic liaisons. So I need you to keep your distance."

"My distance? My ..." He shot her a look and she seemed to wilt. Very quietly, she said, "All right, Vir. If that is what will make you happy, then it will make me happy. I live for your happiness." She paused, and then said, "Shall I stay away from you at the party tomorrow?"

"Party?"

"The reception. For the Delgashi ambassador ..."

"Ohhhh, right. Right." He hadn't paid attention to the social calendar, since he had been planning, until fairly recently, to be gone from Babylon 5 for a while. "No, you should not stay away from me at the party. In fact ..." He started warming to the topic. This was the reason, he remembered, that he had Galen perform his little miracle. "... in fact, you'll in fact, you'll show up on my arm ... and be openly adoring and when you work the room and talk to other ambassadors, you're going to tell them how great I am. How intelligent, how ... how ..." His mind raced, and then he said, "... how ... everything I am. All my positive attributes."

"All of them? That could take a very long time, my love. We might be at the party much later than you had previously anticipated."

"That'll be fine," Vir replied, settling into the chair. "With any luck, we'll have all night and into the next morning. I can trust you to do this, Mariel? Because it's very important."

Mariel looked as if the breath had been knocked out of her. Her reaction was so extreme that Vir wondered for a moment if she were being seized by some sort of fit. When she managed to pull some air back into her lungs, she said, "I will be worthy of it, Vir. Worthy of it... and you."

"That would be fine."

"Would you like me to ...?" She raised herself from the bed and motioned significantly for him.

"No. No, that's quite all right," he said quickly, backing up and nearly toppling the chair as a result. "Just stay right where you are."

"Very well, my love." She arranged the blanket delicately around herself and sat there, perfectly still. Her eyes still large, she regarded him with open curiosity. "Would you not be more comfortable over here, my love?" She patted the bed next to her.

"No. Nooooo, no. No, I'm fine right here," Vir replied. "Comfy COZY."

"All right, Vir."

She lay back down, but that adoring stare remained fixed upon him, and he watched until the lateness of the hour got the better of her. Her eyes closed slowly, but inexorably, in slumber. Vir was left alone in the room, and told himself that he had achieved some measure of revenge this night. That he had managed to take back some of that which had been taken from him.

By morning, the pain in his lower back also had something to say about it from a night spent upright in the chair. Mariel, however, was still asleep, and he watched the steady rising and falling of her breasts with a sense of wonder. "What have I done?" he whispered, and for a moment he half hoped that Galen would magically appear, to answer the question. But instead there was simply her slow inhaling and exhaling, and the sound of his hearts pounding against his rib cage.

The reception could not have gone better, even in Vir's wildest dreams. Mariel was her usual, animated self. No living soul could have detected any change in her demeanor and deportment ... right up until she slapped the Drazi ambassador's aide.

Vir didn't see it happen, because his back was to the incident. He was standing at the bar, pouring another healthy draught. He was amazed, not for the first time, at how his alcoholic intake had jumped ever since he had taken over Londo's position as ambassador. Only a few years ago one drink alone would have been enough to reduce Vir to near incoherence. Two would have knocked him cold and left him with a roaring hangover the next morning. Now it seemed he had to drink several times his old levels just to feel any sort of pleasant numbness.

Behind him, he heard a fairly constant stream of chatter, which was customary for such gatherings. And then, with the suddenness of a blast from a PPG, he heard the unmistakable sound of palm across flesh. He turned, partly out of sheer curiosity and partly out of boredom, for no one had been going out of his way to strike up a conversation with him. He'd even been considering just calling it an early evening. He almost dropped his glass when he realized that the origin of the strike had been none other than Mariel. She was facing the aide to the Drazi ambassador, and her cheeks were brightly flushed with anger. The aide was gaping at her with undisguised astonishment.

"How dare you!" Mariel said, and she was making no effort to keep her voice down. There wouldn't have been much point, really. The sound of the slap had been more than enough to capture the immediate attention of everyone in the room. "How dare you speak so insultingly!"

"But you ... he ... Drazi not understand!" babbled the hapless aide, and Vir immediately knew what the problem was. This was unquestionably one of the many individuals to whom Mariel had spoken so disparagingly of Vir in times very recently past. Yet now she must have been singing his praises, as ordered, and the sudden change in her attitude had caught the Drazi – and no doubt whoever else was nearby him – completely off guard. Immediately, trying to head off any kind of major confrontation, Captain Elizabeth Lochley stepped subtly but firmly between Mariel and the Drazi.