by James Gurley
Tad leaned on one elbow and faced her, though she was invisible in the gloom of night. “What do you mean?”
“He acts so differently. He has always spoken to me openly about his plans, what he hopes to find. Now, he is withdrawn. He never talks to me and acts as if he knows what we will find. He is eager to continue. I don’t think he would turn back even if we ran out of supplies.”
“He’s a scientist,” Tad reminded her.
“No, it’s more than a simple need to understand the unknown. Even before deciding to come to Charybdis, I think he has suspected what we would find.”
“What is that?”
“God.”
“God?” Tad repeated. “I thought the Saddir believed in no God or gods.”
She shook her head. “To him, God is the Ultimate Force, the glue that binds the universe. He is convinced an extremely advanced race, the Core Beings, creatures with no need for corporeal bodies, created the Dark. I think he believes that through knowledge of the Dark, he will find this Ultimate Force and become one with it, as they have.”
“For what purpose did they create the Veil?”
“To help others become like them, to unite all sentient creatures.”
Tad mulled this over for a moment. He thought of his own religion and Christ who rose from the dead to join God. “He wants to ascend to Godhood?”
“I think he wants all of us to ascend. His is a quest for immortality.”
“That’s absurd!” Tad burst out.
She cautioned him to silence with a soft hiss. “Perhaps, but it is driving him and has divided the friendship he once shared with Daret. I believe Daret is here more to protect me than to help Father. As an astrophysicist, he could learn just as much about the Dark by remaining on Scylla.”
“I wish you had spoken of this earlier at the Monastery.”
He heard her sigh. “If I had been sure, I would have. It is through watching him these past weeks that I have become concerned by his behavior.”
Tad bit back on a retort about Ket’s sanity. “We must watch him carefully to see that his zeal does not place us all in danger.”
After a few moments, she whispered. “Thank you, Tad. I knew I could depend on you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He responded by pulling her toward him, but she broke away. “Not now.” She returned to her bedroll.
With so much rattling around inside his mind, including thoughts of Lousa, Tad doubted he would sleep, and was therefore surprised when he awoke to full daylight. Daret was cooking breakfast over the embers of the previous night’s fire. Whatever he was preparing, Tad’s nose and stomach thought it smelled delicious. Ket was atop the ridge taking notes. Tad went to help Daret.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Bring water.”
“How long has the sun been up?”
Without looking up, Daret answered, “One hour. First, a soft glow hovered on the horizon, and then the sun shot up so quickly I could barely follow it. The darkness lasted five and one-quarter hours.”
“You didn’t sleep?”
“I thought it best to observe the sun. Ket has gone to make notes on my observations. He did not sleep either. Unlike him, I do not believe we can count on a regular defined pattern of daylight. There are too many variables.”
“Then we should leave now,” Tad suggested, “While the sun shines.”
“We eat first. A hot meal will revive us. Leaving this half-consumed wood would be a waste.”
Tad could not fault Daret’s logic. Ket descended the ridge triumphantly.
“The terrain will change soon and traveling will be less difficult.”
Tad looked at him. “You saw this from up there?”
Ket’s wordless smile made him shudder. Perhaps Lousa had been right after all and her father did know, or at least suspect, what they would find. If so, and he kept this knowledge secret, how could they trust him? Ket grabbed a hot biscuit and went back up the ridge. He noticed that Daret’s eyes never left Ket even while making gravy for the biscuits.
Dissention in the ranks had doomed many an expedition, or so Tad had read in one of the Library’s books. Who did he trust more—Daret or Ket? Even Lousa’s motives were suspect, tailored more to saving her father than to successfully completing the expedition. King Karal’s prophecy predicted betrayal. Betrayal by whom? Simios had said trust to his instincts. His instincts said RUN. Should he abandon his mission and take Lousa with him even if she refused to leave her father? Would that be the act of betrayal? He sighed. He should have stuck with his quest for the High Gate of Tomorrows.
They ate their hot meal quickly, eager to utilize the remaining daylight. Daret had been right about the meal, at least. Having warm food in his belly helped alleviate some of the anxiety he had been feeling.
As their march progressed, the variations in gravity became more apparent. For hours, Tad felt heavier and more lethargic, barely managing to climb the ridges. Later, after several more ridges had been crossed, gravity lessened and he became lighter, his steps dangerously buoyant. The twin suns overhead moved at a snail’s pace, and then reversed for an hour before resuming their slow journey across the sky. It became impossible to tell time.
Darkness fell twice as they marched, substantiating Daret’s theory. Ket insisted on using one electric torch to avoid delay. “I can tell if it becomes dangerous,” he claimed and Daret relented. They traveled by night and day until they agreed that it was time to rest. The sun made sleeping difficult, but exhaustion eventually won. They no longer bothered with hot meals for lack of firewood. They ate as they walked and drank from their rapidly dwindling water supply.
Ket now moved as a man possessed. He pushed the group to its limits and halted to rest reluctantly and only at the insistence of Daret. Their arguments grew more heated. Tad tried to avoid taking sides, but he felt more comfortable with Daret’s suggestions to move slower.
Day and night became meaningless. They could only judge the passage of time by how often they stopped to sleep. Five sleeps passed before the unfamiliar circadian rhythm began to take its toll on their bodies. Tad grew restless and easily confused, once turning around and walking back the way he had just come until Daret came to stop him. Ket hardly spoke, and when he did, it was only to snap viciously at Daret. Lousa clung to Tad’s arm as if afraid to let go. Tad began to hallucinate, seeing things in the dark that disappeared at daylight. He could no longer trust his eyes. Then, the night things began to speak to him in voices he recognized, Sira’s first.
“Why did you leave me, Tad?” the apparition demanded. “I loved you, but you rejected me. Did you want me to turn to Janith?”
He shook his head to dislodge her haunting face. Then, Simios chided him. “You have abandoned your training. I had great hopes for you, but I see that you were not the one. How very sad.”
Even King Karal came to him, magically healed of his autism. “You were my only friend, Tad de Silva. Now I am a prisoner of the Council of Regents, which rules in my stead. You abandoned me in my hour of greatest need.” King Karal’s eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. His troubled face became a blank mask. Words flowed from slack lips:
“Blood will stain you, power blind you
Friends betray you and fear will bind you.”
As the vision of King Karal faded, Tad wondered if this was a true oracular vision of the king or just a figment of his imagination, words he wanted to hear.
Even in daylight, spectral images appeared to him, impossible images, which he tried to ignore by closing his eyes, but this made walking impossible. If he had been alone, he felt he might have lain down and curled up in a ball with his eyes shut. Only half seen, they were unearthly manifestations of the Tortured Land – lost souls twisted by forces they did not understand, ghosts generated by the fingers of the Veil that permeated the soil over which they now trod, shadows of creatures that once might have roamed the land before the Veil and the coming of man. Even his tired min
d knew the latter could not be true, for no such creatures ever lived on the land. They were indescribable, their outlines morphing into other, even more bizarre shapes even as he watched, as if part of something larger of which he could discern only a small part. He did not know if the others saw their own demons, but his played on his mind until he became dizzy with worry.
It was therefore understandable that he failed at first to realize that there were no more ridges before them. They stood on a featureless, flat glassy plain.
“We’re almost there. I can feel it calling to me.” Ket’s face bore an expression of glee as he rushed headlong across the plain. His steps seemed barely to touch the earth. Tad gradually noticed that he, too, felt lighter.
“Wait!” Daret called, but Ket ignored him.
Lousa collapsed on the ground, too exhausted to continue and too confused to protest her father’s actions. She lay there staring at Tad as if only he could help. He stumbled over to her and kneeled beside her, helping her into a sitting position. She clung to him as if he were the only real thing in her small universe.
“Hold me,” she sobbed into his chest. “Don’t let me go or I’ll disappear, sucked into this land like a will o’ the wisp.”
He held her and before he knew it, they were kissing. Her mouth felt like fire as she crushed her lips against his. Her hands caressed his chest until her hands felt like burning embers. He knew he should pull away – there were important things to do—but he could not remember what they were. He clung to her, wrapping his hands in her hair. Time jumped, forwards or backwards he could not tell. It could have been moments but felt like hours they kissed. Her body heat combined with his to boil his blood. A fever swept over him. His hands began to explore, or had already explored, her body. He knew it intimately, every freckle, every blemish, and each curve. He no longer cared where or what dangers they faced. The moment was frozen and he wanted to live in it.
Daret pulled them apart, his face twisted in anger but not at them.
“Ket has run off. I could not stop him.”
Daret’s words slowly seeped into Tad’s consciousness. He knew a problem had arisen, but what problem was worth releasing the moment with Lousa? He looked up at Daret and saw the scorn in the Saddir’s tired face. Then, Daret saw Lousa’s tormented features and softened.
“We must follow him. I fear he has become…unstable.”
Tad nodded and tried to stand. Lousa still held him tightly, and would not let him go.
“Let him go,” she snapped. “He has brought me here to die because of his blind ambition. Let him go!”
Gently, Tad pulled away from her and stood. He offered her his hand. After a few moments, she took it and allowed him to help her up, looking embarrassed at her outburst.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just so tired and frightened. We must stop him.”
They gathered up their supplies and set out after him. There were no footprints, but Tad knew which direction Ket had gone. He could feel something in the distance pulling him, calling to him. He could not sense what it was, but suspected it bode them no good. They literally bounded across the plain, their feet alighting only briefly before pushing them back into the air in long graceful arcs. Their pace ate up the kilometers quickly, but they saw no sign of Ket.
Ahead, a glow on the horizon grew brighter as they neared it. Soon, it was so bright that it dazzled their eyes. There they found Ket, immobile, staring into the light. Just beyond him, the plain ended abruptly in a circular chasm so deep it could have reached the center of the planet. The light rose like a shaft from the hole, washing out the colors. The landscape was gray, as were they.
“It is the face of God,” Ket said as he noticed the others approach.
Daret pulled out an instrument and pointed it at the light, and then into the chasm.
“The light is going into the chasm, not coming from it. The chasm gets colder as it descends. At two-hundred kilometers, it is near minus 273 degrees Celsius, 0 degrees Kelvin.”
Tad recognized those figures from his physics class. “But that impossible. That’s absolute zero.”
“It is possible,” Ket said. “Dark matter lies at the bottom of this hole. At such low temperatures, the land became a superconductor and attained super fluidity at impact. It flowed like a liquid; therefore the ripples. This also explains the fluctuating electromagnetic and gravity fields. The Tortured Land is a massive dynamo.”
Tad knew that most of this was above his head, but one question stood out. “How can it affect the suns?”
Ket shook his head and smiled. “It doesn’t. It affects our perception of the suns. Such a massive chunk of dark matter emits time waves as well as gravity waves. The suns do not change, but we do as we are shuttled back and forth in time. We might be standing here now at a time before we actually set out from Fridan. It is beyond our petty grasp of physics, a manifestation of the Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe. We stand before the presence of God.”
His laughter sounded to Tad like that of a mad man.
Daret’s voice was one of reason. “This is not God. It is a piece of the Dark, a splinter of evil thrust in the side of the planet. It is festering, corrupting the land. This place is no dynamo, but a vacuum, consuming the life from this world and all it touches, just as it does the light. We must find a way to pull it out, cleanse the land before it spreads farther.”
“Fool!” Ket shouted. “Blasphemer! Your ignorance astounds me. Have you learned nothing? We must enter into its embrace.” He looked at Lousa. “Come, daughter. Join me.”
She backed away and sought Tad’s hand. She grasped it tightly. “You’re sick, Father. Let us help you.”
Ket’s narrowed his eyes. A scowl darkened his face. “Sick? You want to betray me? Come here.”
“No,” she replied.
Ket’s eyes bored into Tad’s. “You did this,” he accused.
Before Daret or Tad could move, Ket pulled out a pistol from his pocket and aimed it at Tad. The barrel wavered between Tad and Lousa.
“You all betray me.”
Daret covered the ten paces between them in a heartbeat, placing himself between the pistol and Lousa. From a distance of less than five meters, Ket fired. Tad’s eyes followed the slow path of the bullet as it flowed through the air and struck Daret, who seemed too surprised to move. It seemed an eternity before a crimson flower blossomed from Daret’s chest. He clawed at his chest as if trying to pull out the offending projectile. He stood dumbfounded, unbelieving as his life’s blood poured out. Lousa’s scream echoed forever in the still air as Tad broke free of his lethargy and ran toward Daret. He caught him just as Daret’s legs gave way and began to collapse.
“Save Lousa,” Daret gasped as his eyes clouded and Tad knew that Daret was gone.
“You murdered him,” Tad shouted at Ket. “Why?”
“It does not matter.” He pointed the pistol toward the chasm. “The Ascended race that did this left it here as a beacon for us to find and as a doorway for us to follow them. Imagine – no more war and no more death. Isn’t it worth a few lives?”
“No,” Tad answered. “Daret was right. Only evil can come of this place. We must leave.”
The gun moved toward Tad. His heart froze, knowing that he was about to die.
“Father!” Lousa’s shouted plea caused Ket to hesitate. He turned to look at his daughter and smiled.
“Don’t do this,” she begged. “Come with us.”
His smile dropped. “You, too?”
Tad, sensing that Ket had gone over the edge, reached down inside, summoning the power he had avoided using since his outburst in Mors Point. He knew he had but one chance. He concentrated on the weapon, hoping to knock it from Ket’s hand. He raised his hand. Ket noticed the motion and squeezed the trigger. A ball of white flame flew from Tad’s hand and enveloped the weapon just as Ket fired. The pistol exploded, shredding Ket’s hand. Ket stood there staring at his bloody stump as Lousa’s screa
m hung in the air like a frozen mist. An insane smile spread across his blood-smeared face.
Tad realized what was about to happen and shouted, “No, don’t!”
It was too late. Ket cast one last glance at his daughter and walked to the edge of the chasm. Staring into the depths, he stepped off the edge. Lousa’s scream began to Doppler Shift up the spectrum as she raced to stop him. Tad leaped to intercept her, grabbing her just as she reached the edge. She struggled violently in his arms, beating him with her fists. He looked down and saw Ket’s body falling slowly into the light, the smile still on the Saddir’s face.
“Father,” Lousa sobbed before passing out.
32
FAILURE
TAD AND LOUSA MADE THE JOURNEY FROM THE DARK SPLINTER in silence. Lousa was in shock, barely aware of her surroundings. She ate when pressed to do so and slept when Tad made camp. Three days passed before she ventured to speak to him. Her eyes still silently condemned him, but her words were softer.
“You alone did not kill him,” she said. “I, too, played my part.”
Tad shuddered at Lousa’s ready assumption of guilt in her father’s death. Patricide was one of the most heinous of crimes, one that could scar her for life.
“I could have confronted him earlier,” she continued. “Now my father and my only friend are dead. I am alone on this world with no one.”
“I’m here,” Tad reminded her.
Her smile alleviated some of his guilt. “Yes, I know. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without you by my side.”
“I didn’t mean to … to do what I did,” Tad muttered, stumbling over the words. “I tried to make him drop the pistol. He fired at me.” He had gone over those few seconds in his mind many times over the last three days and the terror still numbed him. A part of him enjoyed the power he had wielded, not the killing but the power.
“I know,” she replied. “He would have killed you, perhaps both of us. I’m glad he did not, but even so, I did not wish him dead.” She looked into his eyes. “With your powers, could you not have found some other way?”