Beyond the Horizon

Chapter 1-1

Jack stared at the cube, mesmerized by its iridescent color. One part of his mind calculated how long it would keep him in smoke while another part mocked him for thinking iridescence a color.

Two inches to a side, the cube stared back at him from the middle shelf of a contraption known as an oven.

He swore it stared, seeing deep into his soul, tracing his past through his three failed marriages, his four bankruptcies, his multiple encounters with the Imperial Patrol, and his constantly smoking himself into oblivion.

Ivory swirls sloshed across its surface, like laughter. The cube knew him.

Twenty minutes earlier, he"d dropped from orbit in his Salvager to sniff through the ruins of Canis Dogma Five, the old Circian homeworld, for something he might hawk to the junk lords for a few hundred galacti. He"d found someplace to park the Scavenger out of sight from the constant patrols, his ship almost as derelict as the ruins he explored. Then he"d worked himself between the decrepit doors of an apartment building, one of the few still standing amidst the ruins of a city that had once housed a million people, minimum. Two floors up, he"d cracked a flat whose stale air bespoke its millennial inoccupancy. The oven was a perfect find, as valuable in its current state as it would be after being dropped out a window. I"m not carryin" it down two flights of stairs, he"d thought indignantly, bending to look inside. The dusty glass pane obscured the interior, so he"d opened the door.

And stared at the cube inside.

Before he could think, he snatched it from the oven.

* * *

A scene filled his sight and a voice rang in his ears.

He was in a cavern, and a man stood before him, dressed in sequined silks of multiple colors, upon his head a slim, simple circlet, in one hand a two-inch silvery cube.

“I am Lochium Circi the Ninth, Emperor of Circi, a civilization that once reached to the outer arms of the galaxy.” Behind the figure was a small table, on it a vial filled with orange fluid, and a large stone slab atop one-foot pillars. “Welcome to my final resting place, Traveler. You have now been selected for a sacred duty. You see me because you have been chosen to wield the Ghost cube.” Lochium Circi the Ninth ceremoniously held up the silvery, two-inch cube. “With this modest device, the Circians spread their influence throughout the galaxy.”

A remote rumble shook the chamber, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. “And now our influence is dying. Barbarians bombard Canis Dogma Five into oblivion as I speak.

“You, Traveler, have been chosen to become the next Emperor of the Circian Empire, with all the privileges, responsibilities, and obligations thereto implied, and to bring together again all the remnants of our once-great Empire under the auspices of one government, to live peacefully until the end of time under you and your successors.

“The cube has chosen you, Traveler, because you are worthy and noble and pure. May the billion suns of the galactic core light your path with brilliance.”

* * *

His head spun and his face stung.

“Hold it by its edges,” the girl told him.

Jack did as she bade him, the cube threatening to suck him elsewhere again.

He stared at her, she who had slapped him. She who knew what he held.

Because it was hers.

He wondered where she"d come from. The apartment had had the feel of having been vacant for a very long time. He also wondered why she hadn"t just taken it from him. One part of him already knew, and another part ridiculed him from not considering for a moment handing it back to her. He"d be stupid to give up something that might keep him in smoke for the rest of his life.

She stared back at him, much as the cube had.

Jack saw what she was thinking. Me, Emperor?

The thought was beyond ludicrous and passing farcical.

She laughed softly, shaking her head.

He was a wretch, through and through. No amount of wealth, schooling, or breeding could remedy that. All a charm school might do is teach him how to insult people without their knowing it, something he now did without intending to.

He frowned at her. “I"m Jack, but you knew that, didn"t you?”

She nodded. “Misty.” She didn"t extend her hand.

He might have been a leper. “Pleased.”

“Likewise.” Clearly she wasn"t.

“This is yours, isn"t it?”

“It was,” she said, shrugging. “Or more accurately, I used to be its.”

“And now I"m its?” He frowned at it in his hand.

“You catch on fast.”

“What is it?”

“A Gaussian Holistic Oscillating Subliminal Tesseract, a ghost cube.” She suddenly stood and beckoned him to follow. “Now that you"re here, I need your help.”

He climbed to his feet slowly, as though he"d been sitting for several hours. The quality of light through dusty panes hadn"t changed appreciably.

She led him up several floors, some of the stairwells difficult to navigate, their steps mangled by time and inattention. He wondered as he followed her up what an eight- or nine-year-old girl was doing in a decrepit ruin like this by herself.

“It"s been a couple weeks,” she said, stopping outside a door at the end of a hall. “So he doesn"t smell very good.”

Not smelling very good was an understatement. He could barely hold his gorge. “What do you want me to do?”

Grief wrecked her face. “Help me bury him.”

He knew without asking that just leaving the corpse wasn"t a choice. He also knew that just leaving the girl wasn"t a choice. A tantalizing lifetime of smoke-filled nights receded inexorably from his grasp. And right now, he really needed to smoke.

The blanket helped to hold together what decay was rapidly dismantling, but couldn"t shield him completely from the ooze he should"ve expected.

She led him to a wildly overgrown park, two blocks away, where a pit had already been dug.

“I just couldn"t figure out how to get him down here.”

Once he"d finished, organic was the only word he could summon to describe his smell. In addition to the odors of necrosis and its associated fluids, a thick layer of freshly-turned soil now stuck to those stains. The cube was tucked in his pocket.

He"d just chunked the last shovelful to fill the pit when a distant whine alerted him. “Quick! The patrol!” He loped for the nearest building, the girl outpacing him easily and leading him toward a culvert.

They dove into it just as the craft roared overhead. Straining engines whined in complaint as it circled back.

“Stars above, they saw us. We can"t stay here.” He looked at her, despairing that they"d be trapped in the culvert.

Misty seemed unconcerned.

Jack tracked the incoming ship by sound as he looked her over. The backwash of the landing retros buffeted her thin, threadbare clothing, its many rents and tears each carefully stitched. Her hair fell in stringy, ungainly swatches to uneven, hacked-off lengths near her shoulders. Her cheeks were hollow with malnutrition or shock.

Maybe both, he thought. “Why won"t they find us?”

Her eyes glistened with ethereal light. “You"ll persuade them not to.” She didn"t glance toward his jacket pocket, but she might have.

Voices outside approached. “Over here. I told you I picked up a signal of an incoming ship. Probably some scavenger.”

He brought out the cube.

* * *

Jack looked at the culvert. The drainpipe was three feet in diameter, barely room for anyone to have gone in. “We"ve picked up native signals before. Remnants of the old Circian Empire, eking out a meager life among the ruins. If it was a scavenger, where"s the ship?” He turned to look at his shipmate.

The guy shrugged, his uniform immaculate.

Jack knew his own was perfect as well. “You goin" in after "em?” He gestured at the culvert, and then picked an imaginary speck of dust off his sleeve.

The other guy shook his head. “They ain"t payin" to replace uniforms, remember?”

“We"ll set up monitors in a perimeter. If there"s a scavenger, we"ll catch "em on the way out.”

* * *

Jack snapped back into the culvert, his hand coming off the cube.

The voices outside faded.

He"d felt as if he"d been dreaming, on the one hand hearing them talk outside the pipe, on the other doing the talking. Somehow, he"d maintained an awareness of his hand on the cube.

Misty watched him, her eyes on his face.

“What is this thing?”

isShe shrugged. “Grandpa never said, but he did tell me it"s old, very old. My ancestors used it to control the galaxy.”

He brought his gaze up from the cube. “What ancestors?”

“The Circians.”

Archeologists had long wondered at the source of Circian power. A meek, unpretentious peoples, they had somehow spread their influence from a modest-size planet with few mineral resources across the galaxy, dominating multiple constellations with far more natural resources and far larger navies. Even their home system had been insignificant, a two-planet single-star system with a young blue primary sitting astride the narrow neck of empty space between Canis Major and Canis Minor. The Dog Bone, it"d been called by the early spacers who"d colonized the area some ten thousand years ago.

But somehow, Circi had come to dominate first the adjoining Majora and Minora constellations, then the Perseus Arm itself, and then the entire galaxy. Not by conquering anything, either.

All by persuasion.

Jack shook his head at her. “That your grandpa we buried?”

She nodded, looking sad.

“We"ll go say a few words, once it"s safe.”

She smiled at him, looking grateful.

“Where are your relatives?”

Her gaze narrowed in bewilderment.

“You don"t have any relatives?

“Grandpa never mentioned any.”

“Your parents?”

“Died five years ago when the building two blocks over collapsed.”

“There have to be other people around here.”

She shrugged. “Grandpa always told me to stay away. There"s a tribe six blocks to the west, another twelve blocks north. See them once in awhile, but they always run when I approach.”

“What did he tell you to expect once he"d died?”

She brightened unexpectedly. “He told me, "Expect the Universe. You"re the Princess." ”

He was dumbfounded. What kind of upbringing was that? “Princess of what?”

“Circi,” she said matter of factly.

He threw his head back in laughter and hit his head on the inside of the culvert. Laughing even as he rubbed his head, he shook it in wonder, bemused and bewildered.

She looked as bemused as he felt.

“And just how were you supposed to become the Princess of Circi?”

“Become?” She looked even more befuddled. “I already am!”

He roared with laughter all the more.

Misty looked annoyed.

Outside, the roar of engines signaled the patrol"s departure.

He sleeved the tears from his eyes, his hands still grimy with fresh earth. “What the stars am I going to do with you?” He laughed some more at his own predicament, the sudden caretaker of a delightful nine-year-old.

A crusty, renegade salvage-hound too self-centered to make four marriages work, not diligent enough to avoid three bankruptcies, having tangled more times than both combined with the law, and an inveterate smoker, now the guardian of this orphan.