Josh remembered Alixia’s warning; that they would come looking for him, and he should find somewhere to lie low — at least until he understood what the threat might be. There was something ominous about being the Nemesis — this wasn’t like the Paradox: this seemed to be more sinister.
‘Who’s Daedalus?’ asked Josh, joining Lyra and Caitlin at the exhibit.
‘The father of Icarus,’ joked Caitlin.
‘Nobody knows for certain, but there are a few theories,’ corrected Lyra.
Sim joined them. ‘It has to be Belsarus. The crazy old coot spent years trying to find a way into the future — he was bound to blow himself out of the continuum at some point.’
The girls both laughed while Josh just looked confused.
‘Belsarus was an inventor obsessed with finding a way past the frontier. He created all these crazy machines that never worked, and usually ended with him blowing something up,’ Sim explained.
‘Usually the house,’ Lyra added with a chuckle.
‘He’s related to Caitlin somehow, third uncle or something.’
‘Second uncle, and no I don’t think he’s Daedalus, because he doesn’t exist.’
Josh stepped over the velvet rope and went to take a closer look at the old skull. ‘It could be anyone. How do you even know it’s really him,’ he said, placing his hand on the glass.
‘Because the archaeologist that found it was one of ours,’ whispered Sim. ‘Now come out of there before one of the Daedalans shows up.’
‘Daedalans aren’t anyone you want to mess with,’ Lyra agreed. ‘They’ll cut your heart out and burn it as a sacrifice to Azeroth.’
Josh laughed. ‘They sound like a friendly bunch.’
‘Don’t be a dick,’ said Caitlin. ‘You’ll get us all into trouble.’
Josh couldn’t remember Caitlin ever being scared. They all were, there was something about the Daedalans that frightened them.
‘How do they feel about the Nemesis?’ he asked, stepping back over the rope.
‘They believe his blood will lead them to Daedalus.’
‘You mean like a bloodline?’
‘No,’ Lyra said quite matter-of-factly. ‘They believe the Nemesis must be sacrificed to appease the gods and resurrect their master.’
28
Chapter House
The dining room was by far the easiest place to find in the Chapter House of an evening. No matter where it was located, there was always the scent of meat charring nicely to guide him.
Josh was relieved to find the long table lined with unfamiliar faces; all too busy chatting or eating to take any notice of him. Sim and Lyra were in their usual positions — as far away from their parents as possible and talking over each other while shovelling forkfuls of food into their mouths at the same time.
Caitlin was nowhere to be seen.
Sim stood up and waved to a seat next to him. Josh smiled. If there was one constant in this random universe, it would be the kindness of Sim. Lyra gave him a wary smile and turned back to finish her conversation with a girl next to her.
‘It’s Carpathian boar,’ Sim said, nodding at the enormous pig that was slowly turning on the spit.
Josh had to fight back the urge to say, ‘I know.’
‘Dad has it brought from the tenth, says they don’t taste as good since the end of the Dark Ages.’
Methuselah and Alixia both nodded demurely to Josh as he sat down. They were sitting with a group of serious looking men whose uniforms looked familiar.
‘Draconian Twelfth Legion,’ whispered Sim, offering Josh a large plate of steaks. ‘They’re here to interview Dalton.’
Josh glanced over at Dalton who was looking even more pleased with himself than usual.
‘He’s being considered for the trials.’
‘What trials?’
‘Are you kidding? The Draconian Defence Squadron. Cat’s livid.’
Why would Cat be angry? thought Josh. He knew that her parents had disappeared on a Draconian mission, but he couldn’t see how it would matter whether Dalton joined them or not — unless...
‘Are they an item?’ Josh asked, half wishing he hadn’t.
Sim chuckled. ‘What cave have you been living in? They’ve been together for years!’
Josh lost interest in the food, this timeline really was beginning to get on his nerves. He wondered whether he shouldn’t just go back and start it again.
Then Caitlin walked in.
Josh could tell she was upset: her bottom lip stuck out slightly more than it should, and from the way her jaw was moving, he knew she was grinding her teeth.
‘Cat!’ bellowed Dalton. ‘There you are! We’ve been wondering where you’d got to.’
She dutifully came and sat beside Dalton. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her on the neck.
‘How’s the head?’ he continued in his over-loud voice as if he was rehearsing for a play.
Josh didn’t hear her reply, but he could tell from her body language that she wasn’t comfortable with the way Dalton treated her — like she was his possession.
‘So what are these trials?’ Josh asked Sim without taking his eyes off Caitlin.
‘Belioc’s Balls! What epoch have you been living in?’ Sim jibed. ‘Every twenty years the DDS are allowed to recruit from other guilds. The elite get invited to try out, while the rest of us mortals have to apply. Many fail — it’s an honour even to be considered.’
Josh studied Caitlin, trying to catch her eye, but she kept her head down and focused on her food. His stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten in a while and he helped himself to a large slice of meat.
Dalton was bragging to anyone who would listen about his invitation to the DDS. ‘The trials are notoriously difficult, you know — they say you have to face a monad.’
‘Really? No, surely not a monad?’ Lyra teased Dalton from across the table.
‘Yes, in the final trial,’ Dalton replied, utterly unaware of the sarcasm.
‘Well, you’re awfully brave. I can’t think of anything more frightening than fighting those nasty monsters,’ Lyra fawned. ‘Cat don’t you think he’s a hero? You must be so proud!’ Lyra was pouring it on a little thick now, goading Caitlin into responding.
‘Cat doesn’t agree with my decision. Do you pumpkin?’
Pumpkin! Josh nearly choked on his food. The Caitlin he knew would have punched Dalton’s teeth out for that.
‘You want to go fight the maelstrom, it’s your funeral,’ Caitlin snapped, her cheeks flushed. ‘Just don’t expect me to weep at your grave. Not that there would be one — since your body will never be found.’
‘Charming!’ Dalton took his hand off her shoulder.
At the far end of the table, the Draconian officers stood up and bowed to their hosts. As they turned to leave, Josh thought he recognised one of them from the rescue team back in the Mesolithic cave. They all wore the same solemn expression of men who had seen too much.
‘Dreadnoughts,’ whispered Sim in Josh’s ear, ‘the elite of the Draconian Defenders.’
The entire room fell quiet as the officers walked up to Dalton, whose arrogance seemed to fade as they approached. Josh thought he looked a little pale when he stood up and obediently followed them out of the room.
29
DDS
‘How do you get onto the trial?’ Josh asked, climbing the stairs up to their rooms.
‘To the DDS?’ scoffed Sim. ‘Why an earth would you want to do that? Haven’t you read Daedalus? Protecting us from the maelstrom is the most dangerous job in the Order.’
Josh didn’t care. The moment he’d recognised the Dreadnought officer, he knew what he needed to do. He couldn’t explain to Sim about losing the colonel, but if there was even the slimmest chance that the old man was alive somewhere inside the breach — he owed it to him to try.
‘I need to. I can’t explain it. It’s like my destiny.’
Sim frowned. ‘Don’t use that word.’<
br />
‘Why not?’
‘Er, maybe because I’m a Copernican and we don’t believe in it?’
‘So how do you get in? Without an invitation?’
‘You needed to apply — like ten years ago,’ said Sim, using a tone that meant the conversation was over.
When they walked into Sim’s room, Lyra and Caitlin were waiting. Lyra was combing Caitlin’s hair and singing to herself.
‘Hey,’ Caitlin said, and sighed without looking up from the book she was reading.
‘What’s up Cat? You missing him already?’ Sim asked, sitting down next to her.
‘Yeah right!’
‘She’s thinking about her parents,’ answered Lyra in a sing-song voice.
‘It’s okay. They won’t let him anywhere near a breach, not for at least two years,’ said Sim, with the authority of someone who had obviously studied everything ever written on the subject of the DDS.
Caitlin shrugged. ‘They can throw him through an aperture tomorrow for all I care.’
Josh wasn’t entirely convinced by Caitlin’s indifference. It was clear she did care, but he was glad to see that at least her stubborn streak had survived into this timeline.
‘This has nothing to do with him saying that girls aren’t good enough to join the Dreadnoughts?’ asked Sim.
Josh tried to work out what was different about her. She wasn’t anywhere near as feisty as the Caitlin he’d known, more subservient, more reserved and demure — everything the colonel wasn’t. His character must have had a significant influence on her. From what she had told him, the colonel had become her tutor and guardian when her parents had disappeared. Josh had no idea who’d taken his place in this timeline, but whoever it was, they certainly hadn’t taught her to stand up for herself.
‘So, Joshua,’ Caitlin said, changing the subject. ‘Lyra tells me you came back nine-hundred and fifty-years without a tachyon?’
‘I did,’ admitted Josh, hoping she wasn’t about to ask why.
‘And how exactly did you do that?’ Caitlin’s eyes narrowed a little.
Josh was conscious that all of their attention was focused on him now, and as he looked into their familiar faces it was hard to accept he wasn’t back in his own timeline: this one was so similar.
‘I ghosted them,’ he said, glancing at Lyra. ‘I used their personal timelines.’
‘You ghosted for nearly a millennia? Don’t you know how dangerous that can be? How many people was that?’
‘Seventy,’ Lyra intervened. ‘Took me nearly a week to separate their lines.’
Caitlin looked slightly disgusted at the idea of it.
‘I didn’t have a lot of choice,’ Josh tried to explain.
‘And how exactly did you end up in 11.066 without a tachyon in the first place?’ asked Caitlin.
It was the one thing no one had bothered to ask him, pretty obvious when you thought about it, which was another thing he loved about her — she wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.
Josh sat and told them about the polluted worlds of the Ascendancy and the Shade; the schism between Determinists and the Chaotics; the blockading of the past. But he spared them the details of the torture and Caitlin-History-Burner. As they listened wide-eyed, he described their discovery of the gunpowder formulas, how they were being passed down to the Norman alchemists through a breach which led to a thousand years of war and destruction.
It felt like a confession. Telling someone else helped to make it real, no matter how crazy it might have sounded. Josh finished with the closure of the aperture and the disappearance of the colonel and his team.
‘It wasn’t a normal bomb in that sense,’ said Sim. ‘They call it a Hubble Enclosure or an Invertor. It’s a device for ending a branch of time using Chaotic Deflation. He basically ended that timeline and reverted it. You’re lucky to exist; most people who come that close to a Hubble Inverter usually end up eradicated.’
‘It’s not luck,’ muttered Lyra, holding up the Malefactum Maelstrom.
‘Lyra thinks you’re the Nemesis,’ Sim chuckled. ‘She’s read too many books about the maelstrom.’
Lyra pulled a face. ‘There’s more to heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
‘Statistics doesn’t require faith — religion without science is blind,’ quoted Sim.
Josh presumed Nemesis was just another word for Paradox. In this timeline, they’d apparently developed a different set of beliefs, but it seemed to be the same basic prophecy. Whatever they called it, he had no intention of being labelled again.
‘You’re telling me you’ve actually looked into an aperture?’ Caitlin interrupted him, ignoring the others.
‘Yes.’ Josh could still see the figure coming towards him. ‘It was like looking at a merry-go-round, thousands of images spinning too fast for you to make anything out clearly.’
Lyra nodded. ‘That’s why they call it the maelstrom.’
Caitlin stared at Josh as if he had suddenly grown a second head. ‘And you think that someone was using the maelstrom to move through time?’ The way she phrased the question made it sound like the craziest idea ever.
‘The colonel believed it was possible.’
‘What do you think happened to this colonel and his team?’
‘I think they got pulled into the breach.’
She scowled. ‘That’s convenient, since that leaves no one to corroborate your story.’
‘I saw something in there,’ Josh insisted. ‘A person.’
Caitlin shook her head. ‘No one survives the maelstrom, everybody knows that.’
‘Daedalus says...’ Lyra began.
‘I don’t care about bloody Daedalus’s fairy stories!’ Caitlin snapped.
Lyra pouted and went back to reading her book.
‘I need to go in and find them.’
Lyra’s face lit up once more. ‘You want to enter the maelstrom? The realm of the Djinn? Do you seriously think they’re still alive?’
Sim raised his eyes in disbelief.
‘Yeah, but first I need to find a way to join the DDS.’
‘There’s no way you or any of us are getting into the Dreadnoughts,’ declared Sim.
‘I know a way,’ Caitlin said thoughtfully, ‘but you have to take me with you.’
30
Moon Garden
[China. Date: 9.790]
Josh felt a strange kind of peace as he walked beside Caitlin through the garden. The sky was a canopy of midnight blue stretching over the horizon, and with only a half-moon to light the scene it created a solemn, tranquil place where the only sound was the night wind as it moved through the leaves of the darkened trees.
They reached an archway, heavily laden with blossom, and Caitlin stopped to watch the large silvered moths flitting from one jasmine-scented flower to the next. Josh tried not to stare at her, but the moonlight painted her skin with a pale luminous glow.
The sound of water falling over stones greeted them when they stepped into the glade. In the centre was a circular pond with a large stone fountain in the shape of a Chinese water dragon, its wings raised as if about to take flight.
‘I used to come here a lot when they first disappeared,’ said Caitlin with a sigh.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s the moon garden of Emperor Qin Shi Huang — the nearest thing I have to a memorial.’
‘What happened to them?’
She sighed deeply. ‘There was a Pharaoh back in the second dynasty who was experimenting with some kind of dark magic, trying to summon ancient gods. They were on a routine surveillance mission — the records on him were incomplete and needed updating or something. Anyway, he managed to open an aperture, a level seven breach occurred, and they were caught in the chaos that followed. They called it the “Great Breach”. The whole era is cordoned off — no one can go back there.’
‘And you think they went inside?’
She nodded. ‘There was no sign of them, so t
hey must have done.’
‘What were they like?’
She walked around the dragon pool. ‘Brave, happy, fearless. It took me a long time to stop blaming them.’ She fingered the dragon pendant on her necklace. ‘I go back sometimes and watch them getting prepared for that mission; my father looking so handsome in his uniform, my mother fussing over their equipment — it’s all I have left.’
Josh thought about the last time he’d seen his mother and felt the sadness rising. At least she was alive and happy, he told himself. It must be so much worse to not know, and to be left to imagine the ways in which she could have suffered — that would be the worst kind of torture.
A splash drew his attention to the two large albino fish swimming around in the pool. Caitlin knelt down and dipped her fingers into the water.
‘Master Derado gave me these the first time he brought me here,’ she said, as the fish swam lazily over towards her. ‘He said they were like two souls swimming in a pool of uncertainty. My grandfather laughed at him and called him a sentimental old fool, but it helped at the time.’
She took her hand out of the water and watched the ripples scatter across the surface. Josh saw both of them reflected against the dark velvet sky; there were no stars — just the single silver crescent of the moon.
‘Your grandfather looked after you?’
‘Yes, he was the Grandmaster of the Scriptorians at the time…’ Her voice trailed off a little. ‘He was rather old-fashioned. Didn’t agree with women in certain professions. He passed away a few years ago.’
‘And Derado?’
‘He’s the Grandmaster of the Draconians, and my godfather.’
‘Would he let you join the DDS?’
‘He might, assuming he doesn’t still agree with my grandfather.’
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 46