Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

  “No. But we had to try.”

  Zhang caressed Victoria’s brow.

  “From now on, you keep your scabby hands off my friend. Understand? Too many of my people are already questioning the wisdom of this alliance. I’m beginning to think they have a point.”

  “What’s done is done. We will trouble her no more. Though, I suggest you be careful about how much you free her. This one is bitter. And her heart remains with Penult.”

  “You let us worry about her,” said Zhang, casting disappointed looks at me and my fellow conspirators Olivier and the Old Ones.

  Olivier hauled me to my feet. He kept a hand on me to steady me. I was still feeling a little wobbly. There was an emptiness in the pit of my stomach that could have accommodated a black hole.

  “You went off on a tangent there, kid.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nah. That’s cool. Some things you just gotta do. Did you work things out with her?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Olivier gave me a worried look.

  “Come on, let’s get you some food in you. You’re looking kind of frail.”

  ***

  Olivier arranged for some bees to come and share their nectar with us. This nectar was different. It had a purplish tinge and there was something stimulating about it. A couple sips and I was buzzing around like I had drunk a double espresso.

  He led me down into the warren and took me directly to my quarters where a pair of Duster gals were arranging a platter of manna and pollen cakes for us. We sat and chatted a while, before he excused himself.

  “Don’t you fade on us now. We need you here,” he said, as he left my entry.

  I didn’t care if I faded or not. My trip through the Singularity had taken a lot out of me, and that included any shred of motivation for raiding Penult. Karla’s words left me hopeless in both worlds, though I think she was only aiming for one.

  I dragged myself into the stony nook and collapsed onto the sleeping mats, half wishing that the Singularity would invade my dreams again and give me another glimpse of Karla, another chance to reason with her.

  But there was to be nothing of the sort. I slept the sleep of a stone. And my dreams were merely dreams. Apparently the Singularity had enough of me for one day.

  Still, I could sense its presence hovering all around my consciousness. I was more attuned to its presence now, or at least no longer tuning it out, the way people with tinnitus or who live next to a freeway learn to do to keep from going insane.

  I could never feel truly isolated or alone again knowing that a superhighway of consciousness surged all around me, only a mood swing away.

  ***

  I slept early and I slept long. In the morning, I awoke to a veritable crowd of guests. A honeybee sat on my windowsill eager to share its fresh cargo of purple nectar and yellow pollen. Meanwhile, Olivier and Urszula sat on my stone bench snacking on the bowl of manna chips intended for my breakfast. I salvaged a few before they were gone. They might look like peeled off scabs, but they tasted wonderful, sort of like a cross between fruit leather and beef jerky.

  Urszula had encased herself in full Duster battle gear, with clinging scale-like armor and a peaked helmet. Olivier had washed his thinning hair and put on a neatly-woven Hawaiian shirt, khakis and flip-flops—not exactly the attire of a warrior.

  “Are we … we’re not raiding Penult today are we?”

  “No. Not today,” said Urszula. “Yaqob is not ready. He is still indoctrinating his steward.”

  “Indoctrinating?”

  “Reznak,” said Olivier. “He’s showing him the ropes.”

  “What did you do with your saddle?” said Urszula.

  “My saddle? Um. I must have left it up in that meadow.”

  “What? You need to take care of your things. How am I supposed to teach you how to ride Trigger?”

  “Tigger,” I corrected.

  Urszula’s eyes widened and a rare smile gripped her. She looked like a little girl who had spotted a pony.

  “Your bug, he is listening to me now. I got him to come down. He obeys me but only when I am with Lalibela.”

  “Sorry Urs, but I’ve got first dibs on him today,” said Olivier. “We’re going straight to the grotto. Maybe he can fetch another saddle from the armory and you can give him his flying lesson down on the lower terrace. But not till we get some shit done.”

  “Why are we going to the grotto?” I said.

  “Because … Yaqob insists on you making some cracker columns to bring with us on our raid … when we go … if we ever go.”

  “But you were there with me in Victoria’s head. I have no clue where to start. Do you?”

  “Nah. But the Pennies don’t know that. Yaqob figures if we bring along some fakes … and I mean some convincing replicas … we can better protect the real one. Fake them out with some misdirection while we plant the real one. And who knows? We build something close, maybe we can tweak it and get it to work.”

  I sighed. “Alright. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Midday,” said Urszula, her eyes admonishing as she clambered up and over a wall. “We have appointment. Clearing outside of armory. You be there.”

  Chapter 46: Replicas

  Dazed and lost in thought, twice Olivier had to ask me to come with him before I dragged myself off my mats. I could not stop thinking about my encounter with Karla in the Singularity and her admission that Wendell had nothing to do with her disappearance. So she had gone off on her own. I had suspected as much. I understood what drove her to do it. But I could not quite get my head around how I was supposed to feel about it.

  I still missed her badly. I wanted and needed to be with her. But I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed, though that betrayal did not change how I felt one iota. My heart still longed for her. I the only way to hasten our reunion was for me to continue to do my best to help the resistance.

  I took solace in believing that failure was an option. If things didn’t work and New Axum fell and we were all driven back underground, she would know I had given it my best shot. She would have no reason not to come back to me. The only way I would lose her would be to completely give up on this quest. Then Wendell might enter the picture and make sure we stayed apart. But Karla would never forgive me if I didn’t at least try.

  I don’t know what I was going to tell the ladies of Brynmawr whenever, if ever I got back to Glasgow. How would they take the news that Karla need not be found anymore? They were having such a blast on this missing persons hunt. It would be such a letdown for them to be sent back to Brynmawr without finding her.

  And maybe I held out the slightest hope that they would succeed, that we would find Karla somewhere in Scotland, and that would trump her scheme to keep me in the Liminality. If only we could see each other in person I knew I could make her see the hopelessness of ever defeating Penult. Maybe then some gears would shift in head and she would accept the possibility of life with me in the living world.

  Olivier led me through the warren with the surety of someone who had lived here all his life. Some people just had a knack for navigation. Me, I could get lost wandering a mall, and I had, frequently, back when my mom used to take me shopping in Orlando.

  The Old Ones manning the cliff top were just as silent and oblivious to our presence as the night before. I could only hope that they would respond a little differently if some cherubs happened by.

  Sounds of battle echoed across the cloud forest on the rim of the lower terrace.

  “Just a skirmish,” said Olivier, continuing down the stairs. “No worries. We still hold the high ground.” Three mantids came diving over the cliff edge, their spiked forelimbs ready for action. “Not to mention air superiority.”

  As we made our way down, Urszula came swooping across the cliff face on Lalibela’s back. Tigger trailed close on their tail like a fledgling duck.

  “I don’t know why she’s fussing about lessons,” said Olivier. “It’s not
like she’s teaching you how to pilot a Piper Cub. These dragonflies pretty much fly by themselves. Even the babies. It’s probably easier than riding a horse.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’ve never ridden a horse.”

  “Honestly? Not even a pony ride? Such a deprived child.”

  We reached the bottom to find the entrance to the grotto well-guarded, including a new pair of bunkers flanking each side. There was a gouge in the floor where they had pried Victoria free of the stone. It was studded with bits of hardened root, traces of her woody cocoon.

  “Zhang’s not really gonna set Victoria free, is he?”

  “Jeez, I hope not,” said Olivier. “He still thinks she can be rehabilitated. Personally, I think she’s a lost cause.”

  The saw horses that had held the cracker column were empty but there were still pieces of damaged columns strewn about the armory, some cleanly broken off at the segment, others crushed or torn apart.

  I went up to one of the larger chunk and studied it, intimidated as always by the sheer complexity of its internal structure. Bundles of unmodified root writhed in sacks beside it.

  “How many of these things does he want us to make?”

  “I don’t know,” said Olivier. “It would be nice to have a couple replicas, at least. Then we could do a little three card monte with them.

  My eyes traced the intricate patterns of ridges and bumps, the practically seamless junctures between segments, the perfectly inlaid rings of spikes that unfolded when the device was deployed, like so many crowns of thorns.

  “I … I don’t where to start.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re making replicas, remember? We just gotta make them look good. Realistic.”

  Olivier crouched and tried to lift a cracker fragment off the mat. He raised it easily, without having to strain.

  “Holy Christ! It feels like Styrofoam. Like a movie prop.”

  “Yeah. They’re basically hollow with lots of space in their internal structure. Billions of tubes, one molecule thick. That much I could see.”

  “Tubes, huh?”

  “And they’re wrapped around each other in spirals and helices.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re getting it.”

  “Not really. That’s about as far as I can go in describing them.”

  “Don’t overthink it. It’s probably something simple. Like those wing joints turned out to be.”

  “This is still about making replicas. Right?”

  “Yeah, sure. I mean … whatever. Make them look real and that’s fantastic. If we luck out and get one that actually works, well then, that’s … gravy. But don’t think about what you can’t do, think about what you can. Otherwise you just psych yourself out.”

  “I thought weapons were your specialty?”

  “Me?” Olivier shrugged. “I know me a few tricks. I can raise a dust cloud that never settles. I can make will bombs. But that’s about it.”

  Something crashed into the trees ringing the clearing below us. As Olivier pulled aside the curtain to see what was going on, another projectile came hurtling over the lower rim. Both guards ducked inside but Olivier stood calmly as it struck the cliff wall somewhere above us, sending a shower of rubble cascading down over the entrance. When the avalanche ceased Olivier stepped outside to peruse the cliff face.

  “Oh shit! That hit just took out the up staircase. No worries, though. The other set looks okay.”

  “Do we need to clear out?”

  “Nah. You keep at it, kid. Our forces have firm control of the lower rim. I’ll let you know if things get out of hand. Besides, Urszula’s out here. We can always evacuate by bug.”

  The fighting kept me uneasy, but I tried my best to ignore it. I unstrapped one of the many bundles of extremely lively, unconsolidated roots that apparently had been gathered somewhere in the lowlands. Most roots up here in the heights fixed and ossified into structures that were difficult to undo. In fact, after what Victoria had done to me, I was pretty sure that most in not all of the stone we saw was nothing more than transformed root.

  The lowland roots proved extraordinarily malleable. Sword in hand, I easily stirred them into place, aligning and tightening them into a column that approximated the girth of the cracker I was using as a model. I unwrapped more bundles and stirred them into the structure, lengthening it until it was about twenty feet long.

  Once I had myself a pillar of about the right size, I went to work on the surface texture and internal structure, adding a pebbly grain, dividing the fibers, hollowing them out, twisting them around each other the way they were inside the column the Singularity showed us.

  I was mighty pleased with how my work was going until Olivier came over and tried to lift it.

  He strained to get it off the ground.

  “Whoa! This is like ten times as heavy as the real one. No was a bug is going to be able to carry this.”

  I sighed. “I can work on making them lighter. This was just a start.”

  “Yeah, sure. Keep at it, kid. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  But once I broke my train of thought, my progress slowed. I thinned up the walls of each tube and removed a bunch of weight. I carved deep indentations at the juncture of each segment, but couldn’t figure out how to make them rotate without screwing up the central core. The column looked pretty realistic if you didn’t get too close, but this was about the best I was going to be able to do.

  Olivier stayed by the entrance, mingling with the guards and monitoring the progress of the battle raging outside. It was hard to tell what was going on through the thick forest, but from the way the mantid riders in the treetops kept retreating in an ever wider arc, it sure looked like the enemy had established a beachhead.

  “Jimmy boy, we might need to clear out of here real soon. I’m not liking the looks of things out there.”

  I tried lifting the copy. It was much lighter than wood now and raised up easily off the ground.

  “I’m almost done, I think. Got one replica made, anyhow. Light enough for a bug to carry. Can probably shed a few more pounds if I work at it.”

  “Any chance we can get it to generate some rootquakes?”

  I looked at him like he was nuts. “Nah. No way. The knobs are just for show. The segments don’t even turn.”

  Olivier tried to hide his disappointment, but I could see it in his eyes and the set of his jaw. His insistence that our only goal was to make a replica had been a ploy. He had just wanted to put me at ease and relax me enough to get me over whatever mental block was keeping me from getting the job done.

  “Alright kiddo. Why don’t you grab yourself a saddle and go see Urszula. She’s right outside with her bugs. She’s been waiting on you all this time. Meanwhile, I’ll arrange to get this transported up top. Take care ,though. There’s Cherubs in those woods.”

  Chapter 47: Bones

  Olivier called down to a unit of Duster warriors being held in reserve in the clearing.

  “Yo! Can I get some volunteers up here? We got a cracker here we need to get up to the plaza.”

  “Why don’t you get a bug to carry it?” I said.

  “What bug? Every mantid they can spare is battling Cherubs on the rim.”

  “There’s always … the dragonflies.”

  I heard Urszula call out from outside the entrance. “Is he finish?”

  “Looks that way,” said Olivier.

  “Tell him to find another saddle and bring it.”

  I scrambled off the floor and went over to the wall where they stored dragonfly saddles salvaged from fallen riders. Someone had swept up the grit that had crumbled off the ceiling of the grotto and dusted off the saddles. The cleaning only made their blood stains more apparent.

  This time I chose one of the larger ones. It looked a little cushier than the others, with extra handholds and storage compartments. It was a little frayed at the corners, but that could be remedied with
a little weaving. They were basically padded benches were meant to be straddled like motorcycle seats. The insects they were designed for were too broad to straddle.

  When I pushed through the curtains that sealed the entrance, the sudden surge of bright natural light stung my eyes. I found Urszula loitering just outside. She popped to her feet and smiled broadly when she spotted me lugging the saddle.

  Lalibela and Tigger were skimming over the cloud forest, hunting leafhoppers scared up by unseen patrols beneath the canopy. Urszula let out a piercing shriek and both dragonflies came winging back to the clearing.

  Urszula grimaced when she saw my saddle.

  “What is this? A seat for some fat man? This is no warrior’s saddle.”

  “What can I say? It looked comfy.”

  Odd pinnacles of stone sporadically pierced the cloud forest, many manned by lookouts. Lalibela hovered over one just outside the clearing.

  “Come.” She picked her way down the rubble-strewn path and made her way across the clearing to the pinnacle.

  She pointed to a puzzled Frelsian manning the precipice.

  “You. Leave.”

  Lalibela alighted the moment the sentry left, digging her claws into the crumbly stone. Urszula skipped nimbly up the ledges and hauled herself onto Lalibela’s back. One slap of her heels and Lalibela lifted off.

  “Now you! Trigger come!”

  She clapped and Tigger took Lalibela’s place atop the pinnacle. I stared up at his stripy wings, amazed.

  “What you waiting for? Saddle him, you fool.”

  I clambered up the pitted rock, my bare feet slipping on the loose gravel, grabbing loops of thick vine to help me ascend. Once I reached the top, I approached Tigger from behind and heaved the saddle onto his back. The dragonfly reacted, beating his wings, threatening to flee before another shriek from Urszula made him stay put.

  “The straps! Tie the straps quick!”

  I crawled between Tigger’s forest of legs and beneath his thorax to fasten the first cinch. Once it was in place, it held together by some kind of nano-velcro. They tightened themselves securely, like shrink wrap under a heat gun.

  “Watch the wings! No block the wings!”

  “I’m … trying,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  There were three sets. I pulled them all tight, and crawled out from under. Tigger wheeled around to face me, touching his mouthparts to my head and shoulder, tasting me, feeling me.