Free Branegate by James C. Glass

within a month. You have one month to show progress, Fedor. The responsibility is now yours. You’re an old friend, and it would grieve me to make a symbol out of you.”
    Fedor stood. “I will not fail you, Excellency.”
    “A positive attitude is a good attitude,” said the Emperor of all Gan, and he turned towards his desk.
    Fedor hurried from the room and closed the doors softly behind him.
    His armpits were soaking wet.

CHAPTER 7

    E verything happened the way his father, in the guise of Petyr, told him in the dreams, or whatever fugue state Trae was now experiencing with increasing frequency. Mostly it was like daydreaming, a lapse of consciousness of only seconds, but something would happen. He would become aware of a face, a scene, a sequence of numbers flashing past his consciousness so quickly he could only recognize their presence before they were gone.
    Trae slept soundly each cycle on the way to Ariel II. If there were dreams, he didn’t remember them, but each time he awoke to find Petyr watching him, and each time the man would ask if he’d learned anything new. Trae answered patiently, realizing once they’d left Gan his teacher and guardian had no plan to follow, and was relying solely on his ward for direction.
    Two days out he told Petyr about how it was his presence in the dreams, now, his Immortal father using a soldier of The Church as a kind of familiar disguise. Petyr seemed pleased. “I’m flattered, but I wonder why he doesn’t use his own face. It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”
    “Everyone knows his face,” said Trae. “It was in every cubicle in the caverns. But some mistakenly worship him as The Source.”
    “He’s a part of it, and so are you,” Petyr said reverently.
    “And you?”
    “No. A soldier of The Church is not an Immortal. The Immortals come from The Source, and bring us a new way of life if we’ll accept it. We don’t know what The Source is, or where It is. It could be beyond the stars.”
    “I don’t have time to get there,” said Trae, and his vision blurred for an instant. “It will have to come to me. I have the feeling right now it’s not important. It’s not even important I find my father right away. What I need to do first is find other Immortals and convince them I’m who you say I am.”
    “Who I say you are?”
    “You say I’m the reincarnated son of Leonid Zylak, an Immortal man who left us seventy five years ago. That makes me an Immortal, and now I’m supposed to save the Lyraen people from an Emperor who’d like to kill them. I know I’m different, but I don’t believe in reincarnation, Petyr. I really don’t believe what people are telling me, but here I am, following directions from visions I get in my head. I’m feeling The Immortals are waiting for me. I have to find them, and that’s why we’re going to Galena. It’s not about raising an army, either. It’s about money. Economic power. Not one Emperor, but several, a League of Emperors.”
    Trae put his hands on the sides of his head. “It’s a babbling. It comes and goes.”
    “Confusing,” said Petyr, and smiled.
    “Bursts,” said Trae, “like just now, and it’s already fading. It’s getting worse.”
    “Relax, and listen. All comes from The Source in various ways. You’re being given what you need as you need it, but we still have to do our part.”
    Trae still didn’t know what that was when they docked at Ariel II. Nobody was there to greet them. Petyr got off first to scan the people near the port, then came back for Trae. They walked the long tunnel to the lobby to stretch their legs. The cylindrical tunnel walls glowed a fluorescent light blue, and there was a breeze with a scent of pine in it. The lobby had four levels, and they came in at level one. They took an elevator up to level four for ticketing. There was no line at Station Six, and Trae walked right up to the young man checking in passengers there. The man smiled.
    “You must be