Out of the Darkness

chapter 11

“Happy birthday, David!”

David Sheridan squirmed as his mother planted a kiss on his cheek. He wiped it off as quickly as possible, then howled in anguished laughter as Michael Garibaldi kissed him just as aggressively on the other cheek. “Uncle Mikey!” he managed to get out as he quickly wiped the drool from his face. “Oh, yuck!”

“‘Oh, yuck’? Is that all you have to say?” Garibaldi asked him in mock offense. “And after the terrific present I’ve gotten you?

They were gathered in Sheridan’s den, a more private room for study and contemplation. It boasted an assortment of mementos from earlier in the careers of both Delenn and Sheridan, and the room overall had more of an “Earth” feel to it. At least, that’s what David was told. Having never actually been to Earth, he could only take his father’s word for it. “Present? Is it the trip? Finally?” Davidasked. Delenn rolled her eyes, as if this were a subject that had been broached a hundred times before… and indeed, perhaps it had. “David, we said eighteen…”

“What is the big deal about eighteen?” he demanded. Knowing that his mother was a dead end, he turned to his father. “Dad, I’m sixteen now. Would you please tell Mom that she’s being paranoid.”

“You’re being paranoid,” Sheridan told her promptly. “So you’re saying I can go.”

“No, you can’t go. But it’s your birthday, so I figured I’d humor you.”

David sighed in exasperation. He turned to Garibaldi, his court of last resort. “Can you believe this? They won’t put me on a shuttle by myself to go visit you on Mars. To go anywhere! What the hell is going on?”

“Language,” Delenn said primly.

“Sorry. What the bloody hell is going on?”

“Attaboy,” Garibaldi said.

“A reminder here, David,” Sheridan said. “You’re ‘sixteen’ on a technicality. Minbari years are shorter than Earth years. By Earth standards, you’ve still got a ways to go.”

“Okay, fine. But I’ve also got some Minbari blood in me, so that should count for something.”

“Yeah. Don’t get too attached to your hair, for one thing,” Garibaldi cracked. Delenn, who was busy slicing the white—and—chocolate cake that had been brought in minutes earlier, shook her head. “You, Michael, are precisely no help whatsoever.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Here,” and she shoved a piece of cake at him.

“Look, I gotta tell you, the kid’s got a point, that’s…. Garibaldi said. He took a bite of the cake, then said, “Who baked this?”

“I did,” Sheridan said. “I figured it’s never too late to try something new.”

“Well, guess what. You were wrong.” He put the cake aside Sheridan scowled. “It’s just that… well, the kid’s sixteen years old and he’s never so much as flown on a shuttle by himself? Aside from a trip or two to Babylon 5, he’s spent practically his whole life on Minbar. He should get out, have a chance to see the galaxy. My God, when I think what I was up to when I was sixteen…”

“The imagination fairly reels,” Delenn said.

“It’s a different situation, Michael, and you know it.”

Sheridan lowered his voice and glanced at David, as he said to Garibaldi, “And I don’t know if now is the best time to—”

“Discuss it,” David interrupted. He had finished his piece of cake, his teenaged taste buds apparently not the least put off. “God, I can’t think of the number of times I’ve heard that. When is it going to be safe to discuss things in front of me, huh? How sheltered am I going to have to be?”

Sheridan looked to Delenn, but she shrugged slightly in a “What—else—can—we—say?” manner. “It’s just… different,” he said. “How?” The question came from both Garibaldi and David. “Because,” Sheridan said patiently, “I’m the president of the Interstellar Alliance. And the fact is that there are people out there—some of them outside the Alliance, some of them, I hate to say, part of it—who might well desire to put pressure on me any way they can. To say nothing of the numerous people I’ve piled up over the years who have individual grudges with me. And my son would be a terrific prize to acquire in that regard.”

“Wow, you really are paranoid,” Garibaldi said.

“And so are you. Don’t you remember? It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you.”

“And paranoia has its time and place,” Garibaldi admitted. “That being all the time and every place,” Sheridan replied. “True enough. But don’t you think there should be some balance? Like I said, when I was sixteen—”

“You were already bumming around the galaxy, I know. Snagging rides wherever you could, exploring colonies, getting into trouble. And it made you the man you are today.”

“God help us all,” Garibaldi said cheerfully, “The point is,” Sheridan continued, “David isn’t you. You could do whatever you wanted, get into whatever trouble you wished, with relative anonymity. David had the bad luck to be my son.”

“I don’t think of it as bad luck, Dad.” David sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t put words in my mouth.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s got so many of his own they just kind of spill out all over the place into other people’s mouths.”

“Don’t helpme, Michael,” Sheridan told him. “The thing is, you’re right about one thing,” David said. “One thing.” Delenn laughed. “My, my. That’s an improvement of one hundred percent over most discussions you two have, John. You should be proud.” I “Don’t help me, Mom,” David deadpanned. He turned back to his father. “The thing is… you’re the president of the Interstellar Alliance. To all intents and purposes, you’re the most powerful man in known space.”

“A bit of a high—flown description, but I’ll accept that Sheridan said.

“But why is it, then… that the most powerful man in know space… has the most powerless son?”

Sheridan looked down a moment and sighed. “David… I wish the situation were different. I wish we lived in other circumstances.”

“We live in the circumstances that we make, Dad. You can’t create a certain set of circumstances, and then moan about it and chalk it off to the doings of fate.”

“He has a point, John.”

“Et tu, Delenn?”

“I’m not saying that your concerns aren’t valid. Just that his are equally valid. There is no easy answer,” she replied.

“When is there ever?” He thought about it a moment, and then said, “Maybe when you’re seventeen…”

“Forget it, Dad,” David said impatiently. “Just forget it. I’ll lock myself in my room and come out when I’m fifty, and maybe that will be safe enough.” Before Sheridan could respond, David turned to Garibaldi. “Okay, so what is your present, then?”

“David, you raised the subject; we can’t just let it drop,” Sheridan said. “You know what, Dad? It’s my birthday. If I want to drop a subject, then I think it should get dropped.” Sheridan put up his hands in an attitude of submission, where—‘ upon David looked back at Garibaldi. “So? My present?”

Garibaldi reached into his jacket and pulled out a PPG. He handed it to David, and said proudly, “Here you go.”

David took it and turned it over reverently, feeling its heft “Wow,” he whispered.

Sheridan’s face was so dark that it looked as if thunderheads were rolling in. “Michael,” he said stiffly. “May we speak privately a—”

“Oh, calm down, John. David, pull the trigger.”

“David, you will do no such thing!” Delenn snapped. “Will you guys trust me? After twenty—plus years, you’d think I’d’ve earned that. David, point it over in that direction and pull the trigger.”

Before his parents could stop him, David did as he was told. He braced himself and pulled the trigger. There was not, however, any of the expected recoil. Instead an image instantly appeared, floating in the air, materialized there by a steady stream of light from the end of the “PPG.” It was a scantily clad young woman, life-sized and in glorious holographic 3-D, performing a dance that could only be described as extremely suggestive. A grin split David’s face. “Wow! Who is she?”

“God, I wish I knew.” Garibaldi sighed. “Happy birthday, David.”

Delenn cleared her throat loudly. “Michael… I don’t know that it’s particularly appropriate…”

“If you’re going to keep the kid nailed to Minbar, the least you can do is let him get a view of what’s out there. Am I right, John?” He paused. “John?”

Sheridan was staring at the holograph. With an effort, he binked himself back into the moment. “Oh… right.”

“John!” Delenn sounded almost betrayed. “Delenn, it’s harmless.”

“Harmless! It teaches him to look upon women as physical creatures, rather than complete beings of spiritual and…” Her voice trailed off as she watched the gyrations.

She angled her head slightly. “Are those… real?”

“Absolutely,” Garibaldi said immediately. “You can tell.”

“How? No, on second thought, I don’t want to know,” she amended quickly.

“That’s probably wise,” Sheridan said judiciously. Then a thought struck him. “Oh! One other thing.” He crossed to a cabinet and opened it. David watched in curiosity as his father delicately removed an urn. Walking carefully, as if afraid he would trip and drop it, Sheridan brought it across the room and settled it on the table in front of David where his other presents lay. David looked at it skeptically. “It’s an urn,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well… that’s nice,” David said gamely. “I was figuring I’d finish off the evening by having myself cremated, so… now I’ve got someplace to put me.”

Sheridan laughed, and Delenn told him, “This is not just any urn. It was a gift from Londo Mollari.”

“Before he became an asshole,” Garibaldi added.

“Michael!” Delenn scolded.

“Okay, okay, you got me. He was an asshole already.”

“Michael!”

“Oh, come on, Mom, it’s not as if you speak highly of him.”

“Ease up on your mother, David. And Michael, please… for once,” and he made a quick throat-cutting gesture before turning back to his son. “David… I know that we’ve made some less-than-flattering comments about the Centauri in general and their emperor in particular. And God knows Londo has made some incredibly bad choices in his life. Then again… we all have.”

“Not me,” Garibaldi said. “Not a single mistake.”

“Single, no. Numerous…”

Garibaldi clutched his heart as if stabbed by Sheridan’s comment. Sheridan returned his attention to David. “The fact is that Londo brought us this urn before you wereborn. He told us that the Centauri tradition dictates that this be given to the heir to the throne when he comes of age.”

“Like a Christmas fruitcake?”

Sheridan blinked. “What?”

David chucked a thumb at Garibaldi. “He told me that the was only one Christmas fruitcake ever baked. And no one wanted it. So it gets passed around from person to person, throughout history, every Christmas.”

“You’re just a bundle of information, aren’t you, Michael.” Garibaldi grinned. “Boy’s got to learn sometime.”

“Yeah, well, hopefully what he’ll learn is to stop listening to you. The point is, David, that—at that time, at least—we were the closest thing to family Londo ever had. He felt a… a connection to you. You were a sort of surrogate son, I guess. He was reaching out to you and, in so doing, reaching out to us, as well.

“And then he spent the next sixteen years trying to conquer the galaxy.”

“I don’t know how much of that is Londo, and how much of it is his advisers,” Sheridan said. “In any event, they’ll never succeed. We have some intelligence—gathering facilities of our own…”

“And they’re not what they once were,” Garibaldi said.

Sheridan glanced at him in amusement. “You mean since you left the job, it’s gone downhill.”

But Garibaldi obviously took the comment quite seriously.

“If you want to know the truth: yes. You’re depending on what other worlds are telling you. Except I know that palms have been greased, that people have found it to their advantage to look the other way, and no one truly believes that the Centauri are capable of trying what I think they’re going to try.”

“Londo may be many things, Michael… but he’s not insane, Attacks on individual border worlds are one thing. But if the Centauri get it into their heads to make a fullblown strike at the allies, they’ll be smashed to pieces.”

“Londo may not be insane, but that prime minister of his is a few anvils short of a chorus,” Garibaldi replied. “The problem is that he’s ignorant and arrogant. Ignorance you can deal with, you can outsmart ignorance. Arrogance you can likewise get around. Arrogant people, you can appeal to that arrogance and set them up for a fall. Ignorance and arrogance is a deadly combination. Now, if the other members of the Alliance want to stick their heads into the sand, that’s their choice, of course. But I’m hoping that you, Mr. President, aren’t turning into one of those, or letting a gift from sixteen years ago soften you in your concerns toward the Centauri. Because I’m telling you: They’re a threat.”

“Believe it or not, Michael, I haven’t lost sight of that,” Sheridan said patiently. “But I also haven’t lost sight of the fact that, once upon a time, Londo Mollari was our friend. God willing, he may be again someday. And in hopes of that time… here,” and he slid the urn closer to David.

David picked it up, turned it over. “The bottom part is sealed,” he noted.

“Yes, we know,” Delenn said. “It’s supposed to contain water from a sacred river that ran in front of the palace.”

“It’s kind of okay,” David allowed. He turned the vase over, For some reason it felt… comfortable in his hands. Even though it was the first time he had seen it, he felt as if it had always been his. “It’s nice.”

“Kind of okay? Nice? From you, David, that is high praise indeed,” his mother teased him. He hefted the vase once more, then glanced at the leftover cake. “Mom, is it okay if I have another piece?”

“My God, he likes it,” Sheridan said, amazed. “Absolutely—”

“—not,” Delenn told him flatly.

David’s “Mom!” overlapped with Sheridan’s slightly less anguished, but just as annoyed, “Delenn!”

“You know how I feel about gluttony,” she said. “Besatisfied with what you have, David. The rest of the cake will be here tomorrow.”

“I sure as hell know I’m not going to take any of it,” Garibaldi piped up cheerfully.

“I don’t recall anyone asking you,” Sheridan told him.

David found that, the longer he looked at the urn, the more trouble he had taking his eyes off it. “Dad… would it be okay it I sent a message off to the emperor? To thank him?”

“I think that would be a very nice gesture,” Sheridan said “You may have to jog his memory a bit. He never had the opportunity to meet you, after all.”

“Who knows?” Delenn said. “If the situation changes for the better—perhaps you will have the opportunity to meet the emperor face—to—face someday.”

“And won’t that be wonderful,” Garibaldi said.