With a bow and quiver slung over his shoulder and a knotty, club-like scepter at his side, Ubaldo stood and studied the lacework of gleaming white paths that arced and swooped across the lumpy green hills before us. They made me think of nicely healed scars, following the contours of the land without ever disrupting its curves.
He strode up to the nearest path and rapped his scepter on the surface.
“Bone,” he said.
“No way!” I rushed over for a closer look.
Oliver was already there bending down and touching the finely-grained surface. The path was about five meters wide, seamless with an off-white pebbly but porous texture. A gradient of larger pores lined the edges
“Yeah. I have to say,” said Olivier. “Sure looks like bone.”
A whirring, clattering sound developed from somewhere over the next rise. Someone or something was coming down the road. Ubaldo whipped his bow around and strung one of the oversized arrows he had liberated from the ship.
A man appeared, riding a six wheeled scooter that was little more than a platform with wheels, a simple backrest, and two curving flanges that came up from the base and clasped his thighs just above the knee.
He pulled within ten meters of us and rolled to a stop. There was not a speck of fear or aggression in his face, just an open and amiable curiosity. He just remained standing on his device smiling and blinking at us.
“My, you all are looking quite authentic. I’m sorry to disturb you, but … is there to be a performance? I saw nothing in the schedule.”
“Excuse me?” said Olivier.
“You are artists, no? Rehearsing here perhaps?”
“Um. Nope.”
He squinted at us. “Oh my.” A bit of worry crept into his expression. His scooter rolled back slowly away from us without any apparent physical effort on his part, as if it were responsive to the man’s moods.
“You all really are quite convincing. You must be method actors. Your wardrobe. Your whole … demeanor. Nicely done. From which domain are you registered?”
“Domain?”
“We are from the other side,” said Ubaldo.
“Of the island? That would be Bristol, perhaps? Canaan? Aleppo?”
“What is your … domain?” said Olivier.
“Well, Loomis, of course. I’m a local. You … you’re not actually escapees, are you? I have to say, your whole mise-en-scène is quite convincing. Where will you be performing? Or maybe … this is it? This is the performance? I must say, it’s bold of you to count on an audience to find you on their own.”
”He suddenly gasped and cupped his palm over his mouth. “Oh my goodness! That’s … that’s a….“ He stared seaward. Karla’s robber fly was there, hovering just above the cliffs.
Panic gripped the man. “What is this? An incursion?” He swiveled abruptly on his scooter, doing an about face. “Your kind are not allowed here!” An unseen engine clicked and whined as he accelerated back in the direction from whence he had come. Ubaldo raised his bow and aimed it carefully, tracking his progress, leading him just enough.
Olivier shoved the bow aside. “Let him go. Maybe he can lead us back to his nest.”
Chapter 63: Loomis
Ubaldo fished a carved wooden device from the depths of his poncho-like garment, apparently some kind of polyphonic whistle.
“I should call the bugs?” he said.
“Nah. Not just yet,” said Olivier. “Let’s go a little farther on foot. Maybe we can sneak up on this Loomis place.”
“We will need at least one beetle to carry the column,” said Solomon.
“Well go get ‘em. We do what we have to,” said Olivier.
Georg went cliff-side to call Rhino back from the beach where he had gone down to forage with the other bugs. Rhino came flying up dutifully and we strapped the cracker column to his carapace while Georg fed him some of the slop he had salvaged from the cisterns on the boat.
By the time we got going, the man on the scooter was well out of sight but we could still hear him whirring along somewhere over the next rise. Ubaldo walked point as usual with Karla and I right behind him. Olivier, Georg and Solomon followed behind Rhino. A case could be made that our sad little expeditionary force was indeed some sort of avant-garde micro-circus. I sure felt like a clown.
Karla kept offering her hand for me to take. I obliged her only because it was the path of least resistance and I did not want to cause a scene. But I dropped it every time I found a reasonable excuse, tightening the straps on my bundle, scratching my nose, whatever.
I was pretty sure by now that the rift between us would be permanent, though Karla was still all smiley and coy, acting like it was some minor and temporary disturbance. Knowing that my life was ebbing on the other side only made things worse.
I kept gazing back at the shore hoping to see Urszula and Mikal returning, but the sky remained remarkably empty, considering all of the flying contraptions the Pennies had sent with their invasion force.
Rhino never flagged, but his progress was slow. Three legs pivoted at a time, hoisting his body and payload, thrusting them forward. It was kind of like watching NASA transport a rocket booster to a launching pad with one of those ultra-slow tractors. No way would we ever catch up with the scooter guy at this rate, but at least we had a fix on what direction he was going.
We had absolutely no warning of what would reveal itself over the next rise. The landscape was too green to call barren or desolate, but it was certainly under-populated. But when we topped the hill, at first I thought were looking at a mountain, a very jagged and glaciated mountain, full of icy spires and splintered bergs. But there was an order and regularity to the design that told us this was a creation of humans.
The city (or domain) of Loomis was arranged as neatly as a crystal. Layer upon layer of orderly polyhedrons rose in tier from a bedrock base riddled with uniform grottoes carved into the stone. The structures ranged from low-slung villas with little gardens to pale skyscrapers that seemed carved of ice or frosted glass. The tallest had jagged roofs that stabbed at the heavens like sword points. Their shadowed facets were tinged with blue and green highlights, like the seams of an ancient glacier.
A ring of lakes like a moat lie between us and the bulge of hill that held the city proper. Paddocks crammed with strange sheep-like creatures cross-hatched the slope leading down to the lakes. Something about their blunt snouts and big, sad, sentient eyes spooked me. These were not ordinary sheep.
“Jesus! What the heck kind of animals are these?” said Olivier.
“They are not animals,” said Karla.
“God help them if the bugs get wind of them,” said Georg.
“We can set the column right here,” I said. “The quake would probably reach.” I was thinking: get this thing done, get out of here and I could concentrate on fading and what to do about the damned ricin spreading through my body on the other side.
“Nah,” said Olivier. “Let’s get a little closer. I want to take that whole fucking place down like they took down Luthersburg. I want them to have a full swig of their own medicine.”
We came to a branching of pathways and chose the steepest, most direct route to the valley bottom. It led to a causeway across one of the lakes, whose surface was almost flush with the water level. Still, there was no indication of any kind of guard post, defenses or surveillance of any sort. Penult had the markings of a land that had known only peace and order within its borders.
Well, that was all about to change. Olivier rushed ahead, eager as a kid on Christmas morning. Even I was getting pretty excited about setting off the column.
We caught up with Ubaldo and Olivier at the causeway where they had paused to assess the approach to the city. The causeway was seamless and made of the same bone-like material as the roads. The lake was crystal clear revealing a multitude of stripy fish with peach bellies browsing among water weeds.
Several scooters zipped by on one of the roads upslope, but no
one seemed to notice us. A couple appeared on the meadow just above us, just strolling along hand in hand. There stares showed more amusement than fear. It all seemed too good to be true.
“We should call the bugs, before we start the quake,” said Georg. “We don’t want to be on the ground when this thing goes off.”
“Your beetle can carry four of us no problem,” said Solomon. “And James has the wings.”
“My wasp will come when I need her,” said Ubaldo, tapping the device around his neck.
“I’m thinking … we should try and get a little closer still,” said Olivier.
“I don’t see why not,” said Ubaldo. “We have yet to be challenged.”
So we started across the causeway. It made me a bit nervous to be so exposed. With nowhere to run but directly forward or back, it would have been the perfect to strike us with their falcons.
A scooter rider stopped to watch us. Another and then another joined him until a small gaggle had accumulated.
Olivier couldn’t stop grinning. “Look at these people! Nobody’s got a clue what we’re all about. I bet we could stroll right up to the city gates.”
“We should set the column here,” I said.
“Soon,” said Olivier. “Let’s just get just a little closer. Up on that road, maybe. It looks pretty important. Well-traveled.”
We made it across the causeway. Karla again reached for my hand. This time I took hers gladly. I was getting nervous and in need of a little human contact. I glanced at her, and she looked right back, unsmiling. She was looking worried, too.
“What’s wrong?” she said. I kept my lips pursed tight. Her question startled me. I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. Was she talking about us or just things in general? I just kept lips pursed tight. Either way, there was nothing I could say that would portray the full complexity of my anxieties.
As we started up the slope, something clanged and chimed in the distance. It was a pretty sound, like church bells sounding a mildly dissonant chord in unison. The white spires of the city underwent a subtle change. The blue-green glacial tint of their more shadowy recesses turned purplish, like veins behind pale skin. The Pennies who had stopped to watch us scurried off abruptly, looking a bit panicky and confused.
“Shit,” said Karla.
“Okay people. This is it!” said Olivier. “Raise the column! They’re onto us.”
Chapter 64: Demons
Georg released the clingy straps that secured the column to the beetle and let it slide off Rhino's back. It clanked like tone wood as it bounced and rolled into one of the shallow ditches that bordered the roadway. Ubaldo grabbed a U-shaped block from Rhino's back and leapt into the ditch, hammering it into the ground against the uphill side of the column. Georg attached one of the cables affixed to loops halfway up the column while the rest of us grabbed the other lines and hurried uphill until they went taut.
“Go easy now,” said Olivier. “Equal tension. Keep it centered.”
Slowly, we raised the column, like colonists hauling up the corner post of a barn. Loomis continued to clang its polyphonic alarm. The spectators had scattered and were fleeing back to the city on their scooters.
When the column was vertical, I dropped my line and rushed over and retracted the lowest ring of spikes, rotating the bottom segment until the nubs lined up with those just above it, just as I had seen Victoria do. As I worked my way up segment by segment, the cracker came to life. Air hissed through its myriad channels. The outer surface grew hot and began to shimmer and ripple, cycling through a complex series of textures. Spiky supports sprouted from the base and drilled their way deep into the dirt and chalk beneath.
I glanced up-slope, half expecting to see an army of Cherubim charging down at us. The towers of Loomis had gone all gunmetal gray tinged with purple and veiled with mist. The mist swirled and grew until it shrouded the tallest of the buildings.
“This ain't right,” said Olivier. “This cracker's not shaking nearly as much as it needs to. Are you doing it the right way?”
“I ... I thought so.” I stared at the segments, noticing one ring that wasn't quite perfectly aligned.
I grabbed onto the spikes and yanked. It wouldn't budge.
“It's ... stuck.”
“That cloud! It's coming this way!” said Karla.
There was a granularity to the mist now that told me that its individual components were much larger than I first thought. It was made not of water vapor but of objects. They looked like birds from afar, but they moved like bats, their bodies withered and spare like origami doves.
Several strands swirled up and converged into a huge clot of white that arced upward forming a parabolic trajectory that peaked and dove like a huge, white amorphous fist slamming towards us. I tried to ignore it as I fiddled with the cracker, twirling the control rings one by one.
Olivier tried to help but had not absorbed the lesson as clearly as me. The fist of doves accelerated, whistling like those screaming meemie fireworks that used to freak me out when I was a kid.
As the fringe of lone fliers preceding the main swarm was about to hurtle into us, Olivier thrust out his staff and conjured a spell. I suppose he had intended to raise a shield but diffuse field that sizzled out the splintered end of his stick, wiggled in the breeze like a giant soap bubble before popping and splattering bits of plasma on the ground.
I had no choice but to divert my attention from the column and stuck my sword out at the oncoming threat. Spells happened now without my having to think, which was good and bad. Spontaneity was nice but my instincts did not always make the best decisions.
The blast that issued forth from the tip of my blackened sword was plenty powerful, but much too concentrated, punching a hole through the center of the mass of paper doves, wadding a bunch together and dropping them out of the formation. I might as well have fired a bullet into a cloud of smoke. The vacated spot filled right back up and the mass kept on swarming towards us.
“Take cover!” said Ubaldo.
Solomon dropped to his knees and covered himself with the thick, homespun cloak that doubled as his bedroll and armor. Ubaldo and Olivier pressed themselves into the muck at the bottom of the ditch, while Georg took refuge behind his beetle.
Karla just stood and gawked, mesmerized. I had visions of her walking into that patch of Fellstraw.
“It's okay. There’s nothing to them. They're just paper,” said Karla. “Maybe they are just trying to scare us.”
“Get down!” I dove at her knees and tackled her to the ground.
The leading edge of the cloud came at us in two strands. They curled around and converged over the column and engulfing it in a maelstrom of paper, chewing and slashing like a swarm of chainsaws. The ground around us erupted in a tornado of grit and shredded grass. Karla cried out as one of the paper birds latched onto her elbow and snipped at her with its serrated beak. Georg howled with rage and pain as he lashed out with his scepter, struggling to protect Rhino from the onslaught, but as Urszula had warned, spells did not come easy in this corner of the realm.
I crawled on top of Karla and smothered her, covering every inch of her with my body while the paper demon birds nipped and slashed at my clothes and skin, biting into flesh and drawing blood.
“Goddamnit! I had enough of this shit!”
The reluctant lode of willpower lurking deep in my belly took charge and sprang to life, expanding my force of will outward in all directions, forming an impenetrable, corrosive shield of protection. Scores of paper demons failed to breach it. They burst into flames and crumbled to ashes.
The shield smothered all outside sounds. All I could hear now was my own and Karla's breathing. She twisted around to face me and kissed me on the lips, her cheeks damp with tears.
I felt only numbness inside and pain where the avatars had nicked me. Maybe Karla interpreted my actions as an act of love, but what I had done for her, I had done more out of respect for the memory of what we once had. That feeling
was gone now, snuffed beyond hope of reincarnation. It might be argued that a love that fragile was not worth reviving.
I said nothing and did not return her affections, just held her close and waited out the storm, listening for clues as to what was happening around us. As the shield relaxed it allowed some sounds to seep through the barrier. Anonymous groans. Dying flutters and hisses. A tinkling as chunks of the wrecked column broke off and shattered on the roadway.
It sickened me that we had come all this way and risked so much for nothing. After a time, a cool wind played against my cheek and I knew that my will had receded back into its source. The shield was gone, but so were the demon birds. All that remained were crumpled and brittle remains strewn all over the ground around us.
I stood up and took measure of the situation. Karla, still a little skittish, stayed down. The column lay in pieces arrayed around a jagged stub that remained planted in the ground. The ground around it seemed untouched. He had not managed to activate it sufficiently to conjure anything approaching a root quake.
Just off the road, Rhino lay upended, the membranes joining his thick plates between segments slashed by a thousand cuts, many studded with the remnants of the suicidal paper birds. Yellowish hemolymph gushed from wounds with each upward heave of his plates.
I found Olivier crumpled in a ditch and panting, his face all bloodied. Georg lay lifeless beside him, his throat slashed, his neck broken. Ubaldo and Solomon came staggering over to join me, their clothes shredded and dripping blood.
“Fucking avatars,” said Olivier, grimacing. “We could have made armor, a shelter, something.”
Ubaldo's wasp landed beside her master and gently reached out with her palps to taste his mangled elbow.
“No!” said Ubaldo. “You go! I will call you.”
The wasp obeyed. With a flick of its wings it was off the ground and zooming back towards the shore.
“But maybe we should call the bugs and skedaddle, yes?” said Karla, finally emerging from the ditch. “I mean, what else can we do here?”
Ubaldo stood and stared up the road towards the city whose spires were brightening, shedding their purple tinges, returning to their original palette of glacial blues and greens.