Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I said. “I don’t want to put you all in harm’s way. I mean, it’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Karla’s father. He’s … a threat. And … not just him.”

  “It’s true,” said Jess. “These Sedevacantists. Izzie told me that they’re heavily armed. They practically have their own militia.”

  “Not a problem,” said Britt. “I served three years in the SAS. Helen can stay back with Fiona. Us tough gals can help the lad.”

  “Tough gals?” said Fiona, cocking an eyebrow.

  “You don’t think I’m tough enough?” said Britt.

  “You, maybe. But Jess?”

  “What? How am I not tough?” said Jess, gaping in mock indignation.

  “You’re a girlie girl like me,” said Fiona. “Yes, you worked on a goat farm but … I can’t see you fighting anyone.”

  “Why should you two have all the fun?” said Helen. “What are me and Fiona supposed to do? Stay home and do needlework?”

  “I suppose we could close the gallery for a week or two,” said Britt. “Declare a holiday.”

  “That settles it, then. We all go!” said Jess. “I’ll go online and book us some train tickets to Glasgow.”

  “A search party!” said Fiona. “This is going to be so much fun.”

  “Fiona! Please! Be serious,” said Helen. “There may have been a kidnapping.”

  But Fiona could not hide her excitement. She was practically buzzing with thrill. As for me, I had serious doubts whether this was a good idea but I did not have near the energy to blunt their momentum.

  Chapter 24: Flying Lessons

  I dragged myself back up the attic stairs and crawled back into my shell, curling up on the futon while the ladies banged around downstairs, putting away pots and pans, packing their stuff. I didn’t have much of my own stuff to pack beyond a change of clothes and a tooth brush, so I just stayed and wallowed in my little stupor.

  When they called me down for tea, I ignored them at first, pretending to be asleep. But after some cajoling from Helen and a kick in the pants from Britt, I made my way downstairs for some finger sandwiches and a salad with olives and pickled artichokes. I didn’t think I was hungry but the first bite proved me wrong. I polished off a bunch of the little sandwiches and an extra helping of salad.

  Helen squinted at me over her tea cup. “You might want to shower before we go, hon. Your hair is sticking up every which way.”

  “Sorry. I haven’t been feeling well.”

  “Understandable. But now’s the time to pull yourself together. Today we do something positive about the situation!”

  “Hear, hear!” Britt raised her mug and clinked it against Helen’s.

  “Wait … we’re going today?”

  “You have exactly one hour before we’re off to the station.”

  I slid back my chair and made my way back to the attic to get my shit together. I felt so damn heavy, like a deep sea diver slogging down the middle of the Marianas Trench. Even the simplest actions had become cruel ordeals. This was not my usual brand of blues. This was something deeper. Was it … grief?

  I slammed the door to the bathroom and peeled off my sour, slept-in clothes, and set the shower on scald.

  ***

  The hot shower helped my mood a bit. I was still plenty sluggish and humorless but at least it got my blood flowing.

  We left the house to walk to the train station. Helen carried an overnight bag slung over her shoulder, Fiona and Britt their matching Jan Sport packs while Jess dragged a purple and flowery carry-on with wheels. I carried a plastic Boots sack with my last fresh pair of undies and a sweater. I decided to leave my dirty clothes behind. After all, I still had that ivory credit card burning a hole in my pocket.

  The ladies walked four abreast down the pavement, arm in arm, singing nineties pop songs. I followed a couple strides back, silent. I was regretting letting myself get talked into this excursion. But how could I say no? They all knew and loved Karla. They were eager to help.

  I didn’t really believe going to Glasgow would accomplish anything. The chances of Karla being there, and the chances we could find her, were impossibly slim. But at this point I didn’t dare dampen their morale by voicing my reservations. I remained compliant like a leaf in the breeze.

  When we reached the station, we staged our gear while Helen dashed off to buy soft pretzels for everyone while Fiona and Jess went to use the wash room. Britt and I stood watch over the bags.

  I leaned against a vending machine and stared out across the platforms, scanning the station crowd for the usual suspects – those solitary young men who stood apart from the crowd. There was always one in every station, and I found him quickly, a guy with a scraggly beard leaning forward on a bench, expressing no interest in any train. I wondered what these guys thought of me.

  I spotted a crumpled religious tract someone had tossed at a waste bin and missed. A piece of my will possessed it, unfolding it remotely, refolding, reshaping, reconfiguring it molecular structure until it became a sort of origami hummingbird, hollow within, but fully functional and sensual. I blinked and for a second I was down on the station floor looking up at myself through Billy’s eyes.

  “Go!” I mouthed without voicing.

  I set Billy loose to follow his whims which were my whims I supposed. But no strings attached. No duties, no responsibilities. Billy was a free bird. No one noticed him flutter off and out of the terminal except the scraggly-faced loner across the tracks.

  “Time to board!” said Britt, glancing at the departures display as the others returned. I was slow in reacting. Jess had to drag me away from the vending area. I could already feel the roots begin to prowl the periphery of my consciousness. I was not long for this world.

  The ladies took facing seats sharing a table. I sat across the aisle by myself. The train left promptly. We had barely left the station before the roots came and took me.

  ***

  Back in Bern and Lille’s subterranean garden, I lay sprawled between rows of thick green stalks studded with knobby buds resembling miniature cabbages. Brussels sprouts? Whatever happened to the zinnias?

  There was a kid sitting at the corner by the fence, rocking back and forth on a stool. Upon seeing me, his eyes popped. He leapt to his feet and knocked over the stool. Slipping through a gap in the fence, he took off running towards the main settlement.

  I was naked as usual, but Lille and/or Bern had anticipated my returning to this very spot and had left me a nicely folded stack of my preferred attire in the afterlife: a pair of black Levi 501s complete with an authentic-looking label, a blue Hanes pocket T-shirt and a grey hoodie.

  I was zipping up my jeans when Lille stepped out of the cabin. Two tweed suitcases, an overloaded pack frame and several cloth sacks were piled together on the stairs.

  “He’s back!”

  Bern limped out behind her, beaming. “That didn’t take long.” His smile quickly vanished. “Must be bad news.”

  “No word from Karla?” said Lille.

  I shook my head.

  “So what do you think of our garden now?” said Bern. “Coming together nicely, is it not?”

  “Looks great,” I said, as I slipped on the T-shirt. “But I thought you guys were leaving.”

  “Just killing time. We have to keep the old skills honed, don’t we? Turns out the zinnias were the problem, not my weaving. I just didn’t have a good feel for zinnias, I guess.”

  “But with Brussels sprouts, he’s a savant, a veritable vegetable whisperer. Go figure,” said Lille. “In any case, they made a nice addition to our stew. Hungry, James?”

  “Actually … uh … I just ate.”

  “That was there, this is here, silly,” said Lille. “Different realm, different body. You have two mouths to feed, remember. Even here we benefit from some nourishment now and then.”

  “For the pleasure alone, if nothing else,” said Ber
n.

  The young man who had fled from the garden reached the edge of the main settlement. He turned a corner and vanished into the heart of the Burg.

  “Who was that kid?”

  “Oh, that’s Trent. Olivier sent him to look out for you. I suspect he’ll want us to be on our way. But first you’ll need to have your flying lessons. “

  “Flying lessons?”

  “They can wait till after supper. Come up on the porch and sit with us. Tell us what’s going on in your world.”

  ***

  We were having our stew, when shouts from the settlement caught my attention. A huge and ungainly winged creature flapped out of the plaza and went swooping and veering over the settlement like a butterfly being chased by a swallow.

  “I must say that was some pretty nifty weaving, James,” said Bern. “They took your joints and installed them into four pairs of new wings. I believe that would be Mister Tyler taking one up for a spin.”

  “Wow. You mean they actually work?”

  He flicked his chin towards the aerobatics display. “You tell me.”

  Tyler seemed to have trouble flying straight. He kept drifting to the right. At one point he soared into the ceiling and scraped against the bottom of the dome. He fell into a disconcertingly steep dive before recovering some lift and pulling up for a stumbling landing in the open space just beyond the garden.

  “Luther has been raving about you,” said Bern. “Sheer sorcery, he calls it. I suspect he would love to keep you here to help him make more toys. But what’s done is done. The expedition is all set. There is to be a prisoner exchange.”

  “Safe passage?”

  “That part is not so clear,” said Bern. “The Penult side has been a bit evasive on that point. But they do want their Seraph back and have agreed to return one of ours.”

  “You get to fly with the scouts, James,” said Lille. “The rest of us will travel on foot.”

  “Me? Fly? But I don’t know how to use those things.”

  “Neither did Tyler a mere twenty minutes ago,” said Bern.

  “Better hurry up and finish your stew,” said Lille. “Looks like we have a visitor.”

  Olivier came flapping over the garden, alighting gently between the rows.

  He dropped a tightly wrapped bundle of tubular spars and shimmery grey membranes.

  “Special delivery,” he said. “Meet you on the plaza in ten.”

  ***

  I didn’t dare unwrap the package by myself. I just slung it over my back and hauled it through the settlement drawing stairs from the residents. It was bulky, but much lighter than it looked.

  The plaza was bustling with members of the relief party, assembling weapons and gear.

  Olivier, sans wings, strode over to meet me when he saw me approach.

  “I expected you to fly over here. Why else would I bring you wings?”

  “I … uh … I don’t know how.”

  “Sure you do. You just don’t know it yet. It’s as natural as breathing.”

  Kitt sidled over. “Not quite,” she said. “I mean, we all crashed a few times at first. But once you do get the knack, it’s like riding a bicycle.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” I said, laying down the bundle. “I don’t even know how to unwrap this thing.”

  “Simple,” said Kitt. She reached down and tugged at a knot in the very center. It sprang open instantly, rising up on slender spars, a cage-like array of struts, all six wings perfectly in position. “Now you just climb in and strap it on.”

  “Um. Maybe I should see how one of you guys do it, first.”

  “Don’t be so shy! Jeez!” Kitt shoved me against the harness and started strapping me in.

  “It’s all in the shoulders, kid,” said Olivier. “To take off, you just pinch your shoulder blades together.”

  Detmar, winged, alighted gently beside us. “Like this.” His shoulders jerked and all six wings cycled through one beat sequence, lifting him gently off the ground.

  “First thing that’s important,” said Kitt. “Make sure the wings are cinched tight, or else they might just blast off without you.” She fastened the last strap and stepped away.

  “Okay, now you try.”

  I flapped my upper arms like I was trying to do a chicken dance.

  “Not your arms, use your shoulders. Your arms should stay free enough to carry something, like a weapon.”

  It didn’t feel like a natural thing to do at all, but I did it. I squeezed my shoulder blades back. The mechanism responded instantly. The wings threw me forward and only the flexible spars prevented me from dashing my face into the ground. They caught on the faux cobbles, flexed and bounced me right back to my feet.

  “Try and keep a good posture,” said Detmar. “Like you are trying to balance a book on your head. Do not slouch.”

  I leaned back slightly and tried again.

  Each pair of wings pumped in unison, each of the three sets taking their turn. They tossed me up into the air and I glided straight for Olivier, scraping my bare heels against his head.

  “That’s it. Keep at it, kid! Get some altitude.”

  I rose up higher and higher, hurtling straight forward.

  “How the heck do you steer?” I shouted.

  Olivier shouted back. “It’s all in the shoulders. Twist one way or the other.”

  I twitched my right shoulder and careened towards a steeple under construction at the head of the square.

  “Gently!” Kitt shouted.

  Detmar took to the air and caught up with me, flying alongside.

  “That’s it! You have it. The trick is not to work too hard. Almost like you imagine the movement without actually performing it. The device responds to the slightest motions. It is amazing.”

  I soared high above the settlement. As the ceiling loomed, I relaxed and let myself glide. The wings naturally assumed a configuration that maximized lift and minimized the glide slope. The slightest breeze would have allowed me to hover like a hawk. If it was this exhilarating, flying around a cave, I couldn’t imagine how it would feel out in the open air.

  A dog came trotting out of Luther’s lumpy palace and headed straight for Olivier. They seemed to converse briefly and then Olivier motioned for me to descend.

  I did nothing but lean forward slightly and wings did the rest. I overshot my intended landing spot but I managed to keep my feet with the help of the spars. Kitt ran over to help me unstrap the wings. She was beaming.

  “You did great for your first time! Looks like we got ourselves a squadron.”

  The dog was sitting tall beside Olivier, head cocked and panting.

  “Luther wants to see you.”

  ***

  The dog escorted me to Luther’s palace, trotting ahead, tossing occasional glances over its shoulder that creeped me out. Luther’s dogs had a look in their eyes that was far too sentient for a canine, and too complex for a robot.

  Luther had the unique ability to instill autonomous intelligences into clumps of woven root, far surpassing what I could do with avatars like Billy. He was god-like that way.

  My canine escort paused at the portal and glanced up at me expectantly. Two other shepherd dogs were already guarding the entrance. This time the aperture responded to my palm and one of the other dogs followed me inside.

  I found Luther sitting in his courtyard alone, the walls displaying scenes of foggy hillsides. Clouds of actual mist drifted across the space. He was dressed all in greys and blacks and he gave me the oddest stare as I approached, as if he were seeing me in a whole new light. I sensed, or at least projected from that look, a mish-mash of awe, jealousy, confusion and respect, maybe even a smidgeon of fear.

  I pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from him. The dog laid down by his master’s feet. “What’s up?”

  “Those joints you made. They’re … perfect. As good as or maybe even better than the originals. I expected some modest improvement other our attempts. So
me enhancement of the functionality, some insight into the mechanism. An incremental gain. Instead Bernard brings me one dozen perfectly functional angelic engines. How?”

  Voices echoed from the entry chamber. Olivier and Kitt had followed me to the palace.

  “Um … I’m not sure exactly. But I did have this … this … vision.”

  “A vision?”

  “Yeah. The … uh … Singularity … might have given me some help.”

  Luther’s mouth dropped. He turned to Olivier, who took a seat beside us. Kitt remained by the door.

  “Did you hear that? This one communicates with the Singularity on his own without the long sleep and without the need to channel through an Old One.”

  “I’ve been telling you, he’s an old soul,” said Olivier. “He may be young, but he’s no de novo incarnate.”

  Luther sighed. “Now I wish you were not leaving us. With the skills you possess, we could do some amazing things together. But I already promised Zhang you would be coming. Might you … return … some day?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never wanted to come here in the first place. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me next.”

  “You know … I can help you. It may be I can find Karla’s whereabouts … for you … for us. I still have connections with the family. If Edmund has his hands on her again, I could surely find this out.”

  “That would be … great,” I said, without a trace of enthusiasm. I had already resigned myself to several of the worst case scenarios regarding her disappearance. Even if she was still roaming free, it would not be long before Wendell found her and put her away for good.

  “I worry that your passage may be challenged,” said Luther. “Zhang’s contacts with Penult could not guarantee your safety.”

  “We have a hostage,” said Olivier. “That should help prevent any ambushes.”

  “They are a haughty and righteous bunch, these Seraphim. I would not put it past them to try to take Petros back by force.”

  Olivier shrugged. “Let them try. I’ll be keeping their boy on a short leash. If they raid us, I take him out, send his soul to wherever, and that’s that.”

  “If we travel mainly by dark we would have a better chance of avoiding trouble,” said Kitt. “For whatever reason, they ain’t very active at night.”

  “But now Reapers roam the badlands after nightfall,” said Luther. “There is nothing to keep them in their tunnels anymore.”