by Joe Mahoney
“Bad? It sounds worse than bad. It’s about as clear as a fortune cookie. Why don’t you give it to me again in quatrains, or iambic pentameter? I might get more out of it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wildebear,” Sebastian said. “If Mr. Rainer were to override my security protocols perhaps I could be more specific.”
“Those security protocols are there for a reason. If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Schmitz and I will be right beside you.”
I snorted. “What good will that do?”
“Harold knows as much about Necronians as any man alive.”
I could accept that, given Schmitz’ handling of the raver. Still, I didn’t like the idea of being accompanied by a homicidal maniac. Busy nudging the dead monster at his feet with the toe of his boot, he ignored me.
“What about you?” I asked Rainer.
“According to Sebastian I go with you.”
I waited. “That’s it? Sebastian says you go and you go?”
“I’ve learned the hard way not to argue with Sebastian’s prophecies.”
I wondered how long Rainer had been allowing Sebastian to make his decisions for him. Had Commander Fletcher died because Rainer had ordered him through the gate, or because Sebastian had suggested that Rainer order him through the gate? Had Rainer not ordered Fletcher through the gate, what then? Would Fletcher have lived—or would something worse have happened?
I shook my head. “Not good enough. We’re going up against Necronians here. I’m going to need an entire squadron. Which I couldn’t help but notice you just happen to have at your disposal.”
It was Rainer’s turn to shake his head. “We know we’re just going to get captured. I can’t risk any more of my people getting hurt. Besides, we know that’s not how this plays out.”
Not that long ago Sarah had told me that the future couldn’t be changed. But she had also said that the future was the inevitable result of the choices we made. If the future was indeed the sum total of our choices, we needed to make better choices.
I crossed my arms. “Come on. It’s stupid for just the three of us to go through the gate.”
Sarah chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
Rainer was smiling too. “It’s just that—Sebastian said you would say that.”
I scowled. “Did he mention the part where I take a screwdriver to him?”
Sarah placed a reassuring hand on my arm. Perhaps she could tell that I wasn’t feeling well—had there been an intact chair in the lab I would have sat down. Wondering how she was holding up, I noticed faint but discernible bags under her eyes. Heck, I should have been the one reassuring her. In an attempt to do just that I forced a smile. She smiled back, and the world became an ever-so-slightly better place.
“You can do this, Barnabus,” she told me. “You will do it.”
“Because I have no choice?”
“Because you choose to. Ansalar will be invaded if you don’t.”
I sighed. She was right—I would do it. I could not allow Ansalar to be destroyed. The Necronians could not be allowed a foothold on Earth. They could not do to Earth what they had done to the T’Klee on C’Mell. And Ridley needed a place to come home to.
But if it was a choice it sure didn’t feel like one.
I turned and faced the gate. It hummed in my mind the same as before. Except this time I was not in control—something else was. A Necronian. I could feel tiny but potent intimations of filth leaking through the gate, making me want to shower, brush my teeth; floss even.
Tentatively, I tested the gate, afraid to tip my hand—if my Necronian counterpart became aware of my presence it might close the gate only to wreak havoc somewhere else. I considered the situation. Why had the Necronians left the gate open at all? Were they planning to send some other monstrous creature through it? If so, why hadn’t they done so already? What if they sent something through and we passed it on the way, inside the gate? Passing a raver in the gate would strip me of all reason. Mindless and frothing at the mouth I would lose control. We could wind up anywhere, if we survived at all.
Although Sebastian had not suggested such a fate, he had left much out and obfuscated the rest. Rainer was keeping a few secrets and I would have liked to know why.
“I can get us through,” I told the others. “But we’ll need to be quick about it.”
Sarah’s soldiers had brought in two duffel bags full of gear while I was concentrating on the gate. They handed Schmitz, Rainer and I warm, down-filled vests, black Ray Ban sunglasses, and knapsacks filled with plenty of survival goodies. Sarah held something else as well: my own copy of the book.
“I can just use this,” I told her, referring to the version of the gate already open in the lab.
“You’ll need this one too,” she said.
“But according to Sebastian we’re just going to get captured. I’d be delivering another copy straight to the Necronians.”
Realization slowly dawned.
“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “Okay look, obviously they get their copy from somewhere. But I’ll be damned if they get it from me.”
Sarah shrugged, hung onto it, and handed me my vest instead. Something in her expression made me wary. I chose to ignore it. I zippered up the vest, slung the knapsack on my back, and pushed the sunglasses up on top of my head.
“Iugurtha,” I said, directing the invocation toward the Necronian version of the gate, uncertain whether it was necessary, what with that version of the gate already open.
The gate expanded according to my wishes, despite the influence presumably exerted by my Necronian counterpart. Instantly I felt calm, in control. The wider view revealed that the grey we were seeing was a boulder. Oddly pockmarked, it looked to have hardened in place in some distant epoch, perhaps the result of volcanic activity, though I am no expert. It was one of many such rocks scattered haphazardly in a meadow of something resembling grass, only fuzzy and wine-coloured. Swollen trees lined the meadow, their leaves glittering in the sunlight, the least of them twice as tall as any tree I knew of on Earth.
It was a relief to know that the gate led to C’Mell. Considering it had been spitting out Necronian horrors only shortly before it could easily have been a direct pipeline to the Necronian home world—not exactly number one on my list of tourist destinations. Not that it made much difference. Trails of slime crisscrossed the meadow between piles of what looked to be animal carcasses rotting in the sun. Peering more closely at those piles, I realized with a shock that these weren’t just any animals. Stack upon stack of faded indigo pelts were tossed haphazardly on top of one another. These were T’Klee. Half Ear might have been right about the fate of Sweep’s family after all. I wrenched my eyes away, sickened by an abrupt awareness of just how evil the universe could be.
Directing the gate elsewhere, anywhere but at the distressing view across the meadow, I scanned the world before me. Even without the Necronians this world was far from perfect. I couldn’t really say I missed the place. The bugs were bad, and although there were plenty of creatures, creature comforts were few and far between. Most of the time I’d spent on C’Mell I’d been either lost, paralyzed, or trapped in the mind of an alien cat. But I’d become awfully fond of that particular cat, and no matter what I thought of this planet it had been her home. It was the home of her people. The vile Necronians had stolen it from them, and done horrible things to them, which both saddened and angered me.
Schmitz jostled past me through the gate. It was not a smart move. It was all I could do to maintain control without homicidal maniacs with bad breath bumping into me. I glared after him as he traversed worlds, and then, to my horror, I found my hold on the gate wavering. I couldn’t hang onto it. I clutched at it mentally, desperately, but to no avail. It winked out, leaving not a trace of its existence behind. Leaving Schmitz stranded on the other side, alone
.
“Oh my God,” I said to the others. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
Sarah held out my copy of the book.
I knocked it out of her hands in my haste—I needed to open it before forgetting the coordinates fresh in my mind.
“Iugurtha,” I said before it hit the floor.
To my relief it opened to the exact same scene as before. Except—Schmitz was nowhere to be seen.
“Go!” I said to Rainer, wanting to get this over with before anything else went wrong.
Rainer went.
My pulse was pounding. I needed to calm down. Thus far I’d found the experience of travelling through the gate both bizarre and unsettling. I’d done my best to be prepared this time, yet here I was, already in a fine state. I shook my head and took a deep breath.
Sarah took my hand and looked into my eyes. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. My spirits buoyed, I returned my attention to the gate.
Rainer was already through, standing safely on C’Mell. I steeled myself and limped forward. And for once, I found the process surprisingly straightforward, stepping from one planet to another as easily as walking out the front door of my house.
Once on C’Mell, however, confounded by the ease of the transition or by some unseen obstacle, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. Ahead of me Rainer didn’t appear to notice. Embarrassed, I refused to look back through the gate—I didn’t want to know whether Sarah had witnessed my clumsiness. Only when the book thudded to the ground behind me did I turn on all fours to pick it up. My dignity might have been compromised, but Ansalar was secure—for now.
I stuffed the book in my knapsack and struggled to my feet. Rainer stood scanning the horizon. I stepped up beside him. Squinting in the intense sunlight, I slipped my Wayfarers over my eyes. I felt acutely uneasy. There was plenty of evidence of Necronian activity but no actual Necronians. Every bone in my body told me that they weren’t far away. One had been controlling the gate from this very spot, presumably from a short time in the future. No doubt we would be encountering them soon.
No sooner had I thought that than I became aware of a singular scent in the air. It immediately put me in mind of my school’s hockey team, the Palmerston Pumas. The players enjoy a well-deserved notoriety for exceedingly poor hygiene. But even those teenaged misanthropes had nothing on this foul stench.
“There,” Rainer said, pointing.
I looked. A Necronian had just slithered out of the woods. It was approaching us slowly through the meadow. Several tentacles writhed in orbit about the creature, which oozed a trail of sickly yellow mucous behind it. A single gaping orifice yawed in the middle of the gelatinous mass that passed for its head. Like others of its kind it carried a wand, but unlike others of its kind it did not wave this wand rhythmically before it. Instead, one of the creature’s tentacles pointed the wand directly at us.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
It would mean abandoning Schmitz but we could come back for him later. Without waiting for a response from Rainer, I flung the book in the air. “Iugurtha.”
The book crashed to the ground. I stared at it uncomprehendingly.
“Iugurtha,” I said again, but it was no use. The book refused to become the gate.
I couldn’t have outrun the Necronian with my bum leg. Still, it was odd that I didn’t even try. Maybe I was just feeling fatalistic about the whole thing. Whatever the reason I just stood there, staring dumbly at the creature’s slow, inexorable progress across the meadow. When at last Rainer and I succumbed to its noxious fumes, we had nobody to blame but ourselves.
XVII
Interview with a Monster
I awoke lying on my back. I tried to sit up but I was lying on something soft and gooey, barely rigid enough to support me, like Jell-O only messier. When I tried to prop myself up, my hands plunged straight through the stuff. I had the sense that it was deep. I thrashed about until I found myself face first in it. It was sticky and lime green and tasted awful, and I would drown in it if I wasn’t careful, so I rolled over on my back again—whatever it was it would only properly support me as long as I distributed my entire mass over it.
The only light was an eerie glow cast by the slightly phosphorescent goo itself. I could see just well enough to discern that I was in a tank of some kind, about the size of my house. There were no doors or windows that I could make out—I looked to be a prisoner, just as Sebastian had predicted. I had no idea how I had been deposited here. The last thing I remembered was holding my nose, watching the Necronian approach, and marvelling that anything could stink worse than Humphrey’s cigars. By the time I realized the stench posed a threat it was too late. Although the Necronian itself undoubtedly stank, the stench it had been projecting had been something else altogether: a weapon delivered by the creature’s wand. Because of those fumes I could now add “headache” to my ever-increasing list of physical woes.
Making matters worse, my cold had migrated from my throat to my nose, which dripped like a leaky faucet. With no tissues handy I was forced to wipe my snout with the back of my hand. Because my hands were already covered in goo, I wound up smearing it over half my face. Disgusted, half submerged in what for all I knew could be a latrine—the accumulated excretions of an entire Necronian encampment—I let loose a series of high-octane expletives toward whichever cockamamie deity considered it amusing to place me in such a revolting predicament.
Unless—it suddenly occurred to me—I had the sniffles for a reason.
It was so obvious I could scarcely believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier. Maybe, just maybe, I could use the cold as a weapon. It had certainly worked for H.G. Wells in the War of the Worlds. If I could just get close enough to a Necronian, maybe I could infect it with a well-placed sneeze or cough. It was a long shot, but if I was successful and the cold was sufficiently virulent it might lay low the entire Necronian invading force.
First, though, I would require exposure to a Necronian. Which, if I had been left alone to rot in this place, could prove problematic.
Soon, though, it became apparent that I might not be alone after all. Several seconds of intent listening confirmed that there was another pair of lungs present. I passed a tense moment scanning what little I could see of my surroundings. Had one of my travelling companions been imprisoned with me after all? If not Rainer or Schmitz, then who?
And if not Rainer or Schmitz, what had become of them?
Then a shock. Near the wall—eyes. Staring straight at me. Little by little I made out a head and body: that of a small, bookish man almost but not entirely obscured by thick layers of green goo. Probably he had been watching me the entire time.
“You scared me,” I told him.
He cleared his throat. I thought he was going to say something but he didn’t.
“Barnabus Wildebear,” I told him. “I’d shake your hand but—”
The line failed to elicit the smile I had hoped for. Given the circumstances I guess I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m Walter Estevez,” he said.
“Don’t worry, Walter,” I said. “We’re gonna get outta here. We’re gonna be rescued.”
He perked up a bit at this news. “How do you know?”
“I—” I halted. I knew it because I knew the future. Or at least, I knew somebody who knew the future. Or something that knew the future. Something that said it did, anyway. And now on the verge of explaining it aloud, I realized how far from comforting this was. Sebastian had been pretty skimpy on details, after all.
“It’s all part of a plan,” I said, trying to sound more optimistic than I felt.
“A plan,” Walter repeated. “I had a plan, once.”
“What was it?” I asked, figuring it had something to do with escaping. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
He was staring past me at some vista only he cou
ld see. “A little chess over lunch. Work on my schematics in the afternoon. Then back to my apartment for supper with my wife and daughter. We were going to have meat loaf,” he added wistfully.
“Meat loaf,” I repeated, lying on my back there in the goo. I loved meat loaf. I hadn’t had it since before my sister died. “What happened?”
“It came out of nowhere.”
“The meat loaf?”
“No! A door. To another world. I should have run away. Instead like a damned fool I got up to look at it. I reached out to touch it and then I must have tripped or something because suddenly I was falling, and dizzy, and I thought I was fainting but then I was in a whole other world, and some awful creature was waiting for me, and touched me with a metal rod and the next thing I knew I was its prisoner.”
I felt a sudden chill. Chess at lunch. Wife and daughter. Estevez. I had heard all that before, not that long ago.
“Have—have you been here long?” I asked him.
“Days, weeks—don’t know. It’s hard to tell. A lot of weird stuff happens in Ansalar. But it’s not supposed to happen to me.”
Walter Estevez.
Could this be the very man—or thing—that had scared the living daylights out of me in Giorgio’s makeshift lab in my basement? If so, a terrible fate awaited him—a fate I could not change. I wanted to reassure Walter, tell him that he would be okay, that soon he would be reunited with his wife and family. But I said nothing because I had a bad feeling that things would never be okay for Walter again.
We descended into awkward silence. Walter was clearly traumatized. I attempted to dredge up some small talk to take his mind off our plight, but it was difficult to know where to begin. I could just make out his shoes there in the dark, in the goo: a pair of fine black loafers. They looked quite comfortable, just the thing for a long day in the classroom. I thought better of remarking on it though—the goo had no doubt ruined the pair.
My second impulse was to ask him about his family, but he obviously missed them terribly and I couldn’t bear hearing about a wife and daughter that he would never see again. Succeeding only in depressing myself, I wound up saying nothing. Maybe I should have tried harder, but small talk has never been my forte. If Walter had anything to say he knew where to find me.