Free Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation by Jean Johnson Page B

future.
    This
brain, she could speed up through the process, though it cost her effort and energy. Not for splitting her attention and her abilities in half but for splitting them into three parts: one part cushioned the silicon-based Kzul; one part enlightened the carbon-based Human version; and one part consulted with her other self, the Chinsoiy version of the Prophet. Events in the other universe were not happening quite like in this one, but enough alike for this exchange to help. Together, they targeted and tapped, guided and adjusted, double-checking each other’s timelines as well as their own.
    Ships and worlds burned. Bombs exploded; a planet boiled its seas into the searing sky. A gaping hole in the night slid by as they raced from system to disintegrating system, disturbingly bleak and black even in the depths of space. A
wrongness
that had to be stopped. She would have to stop that hole from happening in her own universe, but she had to show it so that at least one other in each universe would know what was coming, and confirm that the extra steps she had to take were necessary. That certain under-the-table deals had to be made, to stop it from existing, and to stop a war under way.
    A great gray wall approached, lit by the glow of a young sun. Drones robbed planets of their stone and stole stars of their flame . . . and that single, mind-filling wall slowly became two: equally as terrible, and twice as frightening as before. The drones of both avoided that slowly growing void-spot with unseemly haste, even for their great, devouring speed. Avoided it and moved on, stripping system after system with terrifying efficiency.
    Darkness stayed when the machine-wielding locusts left. Not the frightening void-within-a-void of that one little glimpse, but an emptiness nonetheless. Bereft of planets, of stars, of even the tiniest wisps of nebulae beyond the faint, far-flung light of distant galaxies, the utter lack of what had once been a thriving galaxy made the military leader keen and flex his membranes. Made his carbon-based counterpart suck in a discomforted breath through a very Human grimace.
    Not every alternate-reality version of Ia could do this, or would do it, or even needed to do it. Right now, it helped both of their universes, and that was reason enough to cooperate. Dispassionately, third-corner-Ia watched as the other two parts of her mind worked, keeping focus on the two disparate activities. The silicon-based version took a lot longer to wade through everything, leaving her and her fellow Human to stand there on the timeplains. The Human version of Fearsome Leader glanced at her.
    “So . . . you are the Human equivalent of her? A Prophet from another dimension? Why couldn’t you be in ours, rather than settling us with this alien one?”
he asked her, lifting his chin at her counterpart.
“Do you know what we Terrans could do if we had you on our side?”
    Silicon-Ia was murmuring in the liquid language of her kind, explaining what Kzul was seeing as the void shifted into the one timeline, and the bleak emptiness re-blossomed with untouched stars. A desert analogy would have been useless to the Chinsoiy’s point of view, so the Chinsoiy version was using other analogies while explaining the desert’s significance versus the garden’s.
    Carbon-Ia shook her head.
“You were born in that other universe. I was born in this one. This is the
only
place where these two realities touch, outside the grasp of Death itself.”
She turned to face the male Admiral-General, her brow quirked and her mouth twisted in irony.
“Besides, you
do
have me on your side: the Chinsoiy-me.
That
meioa cares every bit as much for carbon-kind as she does her own silicon-based species—I’ll remind you that in
your
universe, just as in mine, the Chinsoiy are
not
being threatened by the very literal Salik appetite for warfare and destruction, yet she is still bending her abilities and guiding her people to act for