The Vanity of Hope

by G W Langdon

  The shuttle rocked violently from side to side over the Aiakar River and vanished into the mist. It skimmed above the port rooftops and thumped onto the boulevard. The front thruster carriage collapsed and a trail of sparks and small flames erupted from the deep grooves scoured into the cobblestones. The shuttle careened sideways, chopping a streetlamp clean through and ground to a halt.

  Reuzk plucked a gun from the cockpit rack and kicked the twisted exit door fully open as the shuttle tipped onto the starboard wing. “Everybody out, now. Another lightning strike and we’re fried.” The two front Vipers loaded up and jumped clear.

  Tom unbuckled and looked over his shoulder. “It’s still here,” he said to Choen, cocking his eyebrow at the compressed padding in the rearmost seat.

  “Move out,” the last Viper said and bullied them down the aisle.

  Reuzk looked to the back of the shuttle then grabbed two extinguishers from the emergency locker and jumped. He hadn’t seen a lightStorm this bad outside a Gania event. Hundreds of wildfire lightning bolts jagged into the heart of Nu’hieté as far as he could see into the darkness. Sheets of rain lashed his face and a chilling wind swept in from the east.

  “How long before the rescue team gets here?” he asked, handing over the extinguishers and assessing the situation.

  “Too risky to fly in, but they’re on their way.”

  “I want defensive positions, front and back. When trouble comes, we’re ready.”

  Curtains wrapped close and the doors opened to investigate the uproar, quietly clicked shut. Shadows from the occupants inside the shops flickered in the thin rectangles of light that escaped around the shutters.

  The broken shuttle hatch creaked open.

  “That thing gives me the creeps,” Silak said, nudging Tom.

  “It seems very protective of you,” Choen added.

  Tom stood transfixed by the impossible storm raging above.

  The rolling night mist fingered around the building corners and curled into the side street doorways, changing the old, dilapidated buildings into places of treacherous ambush. Small craft shops with peeled signs above their barred doors shrank into the growing gloom.

  “This place reminds me of the London docks.”

  Choen searched above the river mist for landmarks.

  “We must be in Nago, built by the First Arrivers—before the Federation got involved. She runs affairs around here,” he said, pointing away from the storm, towards the queen’s castle across the river, brooding in the ghostly glow of the night’s two moons. “No wonder Reuzk is full Indigo.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Our first monastery was in the Caves of Nu’hieté before we built the Grand Monastery in the eastern quadrant.”

  Reuzk and the Vipers drew their guns and targeted the tumbling movement on the other side of the street. A piece of litter briefly wedged in a doorway then swirled up in a draught and wrapped over a street-light.

  The raging storm loomed above them like an angry monster. Fingertips of lightning flashed into the street and thunder rattled the window frames. A tremble ran through the cobblestones and the river mist agitated higher into demonic shapes.

  “It’s here,” Reuzk said. “Where’s the extraction team?”

  “They’ve arrived in the port,” Amie said, through the static from the lightning.

  A ghostly silhouette grew inside a cocoon of heavy, river fog.

  He raised his gun. “Vipers take aim.”

  A menacing growl rumbled over them.

  An armored bioMech Evac arrived and a dozen soldiers sprang from the side doors and locked weapons down Reuzk’s aim line.

  “Unleash hell.”

  A dazzling fireworks of high-energy laser beams crackled through the damp mist and sparks showered off the brick walls. Windows blew out and the curtains inside caught fire. A bolt of lightning shot from the receding storm clouds and catapulted the Evac vehicle into the air. Fire erupted inside the wreckage and huge clouds of white smoke billowed out the doors and broken windows. Self-detonating heat-seeking retardant bombs exploded and covered the Evac and the hotspots on the shuttle in foam. The shadow diminished, leaving an empty footpath beneath a scorched wall. There was no corpse or any sign there had ever been something there.

  “Where’s Tom?” Choen said. “Silak?”

  “I thought he was with you.”

  Choen turned and stumbled over the prone body of the rear-guard Viper. “Tom,” he yelled, then bent down and picked up the staff.

  Reuzk shone his gun sight into the surrounding doorways and checked the sensor array in the scope. “He’s gone—they’re gone. Curse you, Lauzen. He confronted the Evac team. “Use every search algorithm you have. They can’t have gotten far.” He glared at Choen. “You’re on your own.”

  “As we all are, General Reuzk.”

  #

  Tom squeezed his jaw tight and rested his forehead on his tucked-up legs, hoping that might ease his pounding head. His shoulders and legs cramped as the cubicle pressed in. How had matters gone wrong so quickly, so badly? He’d come to Heyre with the hope in his heart of being with Sarra again, and the opportunity for a mind-expanding journey into great knowledge. He rubbed his neck that hurt where it had touched him. Any more of these shenanigans and his head would explode.

  “Let me out,” he yelled, banging his elbow against the wall. “I must get free.”

  The cubicle door slid back.

  He craned outside to see who was there and something grabbed his collar and hauled him onto the street.

  “Quiet or you’ll have Reuzk after us.”

  “Show yourself,” Tom said, fighting to break free against the resilient strength.

  An indefinite figure appeared.

  “I am Ba’illi. I’ve come to help,” he said, offering a pile of neatly folded clothes and a pair of half-boots. “Change into these. We have fooled the Federation for now, but they remain on the streets.”

  Tom held the suit up to the streetlight. “How did I get here?”

  Ba’illi gave a small shudder. “Please hurry, before they come. Your wet robe and boots off, now.”

  “I have to get back… to Reuzk, and Sarra.”

  “We don’t have time for this. You are to come with me. Those are my orders.”

  He wriggled into the suit and closed the front zip. Ba’illi pressed the circular tag on the collar to seal the suit and helped him with the ankle-wrap boots. He fitted a pair of night vision glasses. And put the robe and boots inside a carry bag.

  “This way.”

  Further along the narrow side street, Ba’illi bent down and lifted a section of the footpath.

  Tom peered into the black hole. “Down there?”

  “Hurry.”

  He backed his way into the porthole and paused on the steel ladder. Across the street, a torn poster for a fight between Great Fury and Full Rage flapped in the breeze. It was now or never. He started climbing out of the porthole.

  Ba’illi pressed down on his head. “No, you don’t. Down you go.”

  He fought back then resigned himself to his fate. As he was against the alien hunter, he couldn’t win against these superior beings. However, one day he would strike, after he’d learned everything he could. For now, he would continue to run.

  Inside the musty tunnel, he raced in a half-crouch to keep up with his nimble-footed jailer who never stumbled or put a foot wrong, despite not wearing glasses. Did Ba’illi have eyes like an owl?

  The tunnel ended in a large cavern that smelled of fish and rotting meat. Across the gloom, beyond the echo of dripping water, a large animal stirred as it changed its resting position. Two yellow eyes blinked across the choking abyss as Ba’illi reached the bottom of the short ladder and checked ahead.

  “Come. We mustn’t linger. They can smell us.”

  “There’s more than one,” Tom said, stretching his back at the bottom of the ladder and gasping for air in the cavern’s stale humidit
y.

  “It’s too early for feeding, but we won’t tempt them.”

  The next tunnel was taller but much steeper.

  “How much further?” Tom asked, as his leg muscles burned.

  Ba’illi halted and held his hand on a flat wall pad. “We’re out.”

  A disguised door opened and dawn light exploded into the tunnel. He ripped off his glasses and shielded his eyes. “Where am I?” he asked, blinking hard into the blinding glare.

  “You’re inside the castle grounds of her majesty, Queen Lillia,” Ba’illi said, nervously watching the sky. Four guards waiting in the shadows stepped forward on long-legged steeds.

  Choen handed over the staff. “Good to see you made it, Thomas.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “The easy way,” Silak said. “We walked across the bridge.”

  The Feheri circled in closer and jostled them forwards as Ba’illi set off down the wide pathway. “We must keep moving.”

  “What kind of wonderland is this?” Tom said, catching glimpses of the castle gardens between the legs of the Feheri. Beds of flowers burst with every color of the rainbow between the clipped lawns that seemed to go on forever. White marble sculptures stood in the center of gushing water fountains and birds, like swans but bigger, paddled on the pond, and storks, as tall as a man, pecked in the shallows. Fish leaped high into the air and dropped back with a loud splash.

  He stopped on the brow of a small hill. “I don’t believe it.” A castle the shape of a tall spinning top spiraled into the awakening sky to a black-ringed spire that glowed orange in the early light. The castle’s warm, welcoming whiteness beckoned to him. The three hundred foot tall trees around the castle were small and inadequate in comparison. Here was a place of unquestionable greatness. A place where he could expand without limit to fulfill his destiny and regain Sarra.

  “It’s more than I could’ve ever thought possible.”

  Choen’s gaze narrowed. “Do not assume your days here will be easier than they would’ve been with General Reuzk. Quite the opposite, knowing her.”

  Ba’illi turned around. “Keep going,” he snapped. “Reuzk is capable of anything.”

  Chapter 12

  Tom held the magnifying glass six inches above the tabletop and examined the wide growth rings. Even for such a big tree, it was still growing fast when they cut it down, if Earth could be a reliable guide of the way things grew on Heyre. Microscopes, gyroscopes, and telescopes; thermometers and calipers were only a fraction of the instruments for science precisely spaced around the lower floor on benches, cabinets, bookcases, and wide shelves.

  His new residence was three times the size of the cottage back home. Two massive pillars and wooden beams similar to those in the Bentley church supported the high ceiling. A wide stairway with an ornate iron arm rail, curved around to an upper balcony in front of the rooms for sleeping and bathing on the second level. At the end of the balcony that came out halfway over the lower floor, a narrow staircase curled out of sight to the upper-level meditation hutch that was no more than a cushion on a mat, candles, and a paper scroll hanging on the wall of Goral’s Eight Tenets.

  The residence was thirty-six strides long from the entrance door to the kitchen. Intricately woven rugs and smaller mats covered the marble floor along the main walkways. Plants from the tall palms and cacti down to small, single flower roses were kept in clay pots around the residence, upstairs and down. The perpetual waterfall from the trunk of the large stone Tyronal sculpture drained into the conservatory and into an intricate network of micro creeks for the dozens of exotic plants, flowers, and climbers.

  The empty fireplace in the middle of the room had to be for winter. Five lightSpheres spaced evenly above the tables hung on long cords from the roof. Too high to reach, unless standing on the table, the lightSpheres were half-filled with a fluid that when asked produced a soft light, and more oddly the spheres knew which one he was talking to.

  Despite the features and furniture, bookcases, and shelves of scientific instruments, a double set of enormous tables, and a remarkably comfortable reclining chair, the spacious residence had an uncluttered, almost austere, feel—in a comfortable way.

  He entered the conservatory and narrowed his gaze through the magnifying glass upon the miniature trees and their twisted roots, covered in lichens. He scratched the back of his head. There was something irregular in his personal world of nature. The trees looked very old. Impossibly, the conservatory, and looking around, the entire residence, felt as though it was prepared long before his arrival. Or perhaps the room had a previous tenant with the same tastes.

  He trailed his hand along the window-sill that ran the length of the residence. Up close, and side-on, the window appeared fifteen inches thick with a bulge in middle like the lens of a giant eye.

  On the grounds, far below, teams of tireless gardeners tended to the flower beds and trimmed manicured hedges with whirring blades and masterful strokes. He set the magnifying glass down beside the telescope. He focused the telescope through the tops of the tallest trees and beyond the castle boundary to the Aiakar River. Fully rigged dhows plied the far edge of the mile-wide river to make full use of the light breeze sucked inland from the coast by the heating desert. Dhows laden with decks full of spices, crafts, and small delicacies drifted downstream under the bridge to the port further down from the bridge. Busy steam-powered paddleboats in the middle of the slow-moving waterway passed lines of boats returning with heavy consignments of livestock and raw foods from the Outer Domains. The tunnel from the Nago must have passed underneath the mighty river. No wonder his legs hurt by the time he’d climbed up this side.

  Further on, unspoiled nature spread all the way to the horizon across the rolling hills and shallow, misty valleys of stone-fenced fields. He twisted the telescope out to its maximum range and zeroed onto the smoke trails above the village cottages one and a half miles away on from the other side of the river. With careful, steady effort, he could see carts drawn by Feheri-like horses and the black dots of villagers walking about in daily chores; much like they’d done at home.

  Where were the aircraft and spaceships whose models bobbed and weaved in the ceiling fan’s disturbed air? From across the room, the craft had the appearance of independence, but were actually tethered to thin fibers and utterly unable to glide free. When would they come and tell him what was really going on?

  He held a prism up to the sunlight and the colors of the rainbow shone across the table. He waved his hand through the rainbow. Invisible light in and seven colors of light out. Ba’illi said, “You could spend an age studying light and still not know what it really is.” Whatever Ba’illi meant, there was certainly more to light than met the eye.

  A grandfather clock chimed.

  Ba’illi entered with Choen and Silak following. No sign of the robe, as he’d promised. Two days should’ve been plenty of time to make, ‘a few alterations.’

  Something about Ba’illi didn’t sit right ever since the slender servant dragged him from the cubicle two nights ago with a strength that didn’t match his light frame. It wasn’t Ba’illi’s round face with eyes that looked as though they’d pop with a hard sneeze, or his greased, black hair that swept back over his head like sculptured wax. Nor, his perfect teeth, featureless, brown skin, or that he dressed as an elf would in green from head to foot. Nothing odd by themselves, but in combination there was something ‘off’ with Ba’illi in a way the other aliens weren’t.

  “He has an inquisitive mind,” Ba’illi whispered to Choen.

  “He has an inexperienced mind that needs treating with care.”

  “No harm will come to him. His health is of paramount concern to the queen.”

  “You do not know what might cause injury. He’s from a primitive world.”

  “He’s where he’s supposed to be.”

  “My concern is not for myself. He is very trusting.”

  “I can look after myself,” Tom said,
eavesdropping while contemplating the purpose of the black, glass-smooth panel hanging above the small desk. “What does this do?”

  Ba’illi smiled. “It’s a Personal Organizer for Real-Time Accelerated Learning.”

  Choen shook his head. “It’s a portal to help with your education.”

  “It’s your personal window to the world of science and mathematics—the languages of the universe. Cultures and history are there too—Heyre, the moons, Gukre, a little of Tilas, and other worlds.”

  “Religion?”

  “Only how it shaped the early societies: nothing relevant to today.”

  “Enough of your opinions,” Choen said. “Let him make up his own mind.”

  “Ask the portal a question—the first thing that comes to mind.”

  Tom stared outside. “Why is the sky blue?”

  Words appeared in the wall panel.

  “The sky is blue because the molecules of air in the atmosphere scatter blue light more than the other colors. Blue travels in smaller, shorter, waves.”

  “Molecules? Blue light? Waves?”

  Ba’illi took the prism off the table and peered through it. “The sky is only blue in your brain, but such neural matters exceed the parameters of this portal to convey. Other technologies attend to such matters.”

  “How will I know what to ask the portal?”

  “Let your natural curiosity lead you and fortunately, you have the best tutor—me.” Ba’illi glanced at the red dot on the back of his hand. “When we’ve more time I’ll be glad to engage you with a full tour of the portal.”

  Tom scooped up a wooden puzzle and fiddled it one way then the other. If he began right and thoroughly applied himself in this haven of learning, he could eventually become the most knowledgeable human to have ever lived. Aristotle, Plato, da Vinci, maybe Socrates. Yes, even him.