“Vell, ven you put it like that.”
We all laughed.
“It is a pleasant change,” Chou said, a smile playing across her lips.
Freuchen stood up, placed a foot on the gunwale, and leaned against the roof of the pilothouse, his eyes fixed on the ever-nearing coastline. “Ve are like the Argonauts,” he said, his tone suddenly reverent. “Sailing toward Colchis, in search of our own Golden Fleece.”
Silas suddenly leaped to his feet. “Captain, I sense something approaching on your starboard side.”
We all turned to look in the direction Silas indicated in time to see a huge shape break the surface ten boat lengths off the Sea Wraith’s starboard side.
“It’s a whale!” I yelled, as the unmistakable form of the whale rose majestically into the air, then fell sideways back below the surface, in that seemingly slow-motion way they have, sending an enormous wave of water rushing our way. The Sea Wraith bounced over the wave and continued on even as the whale dove again.
“Well, that’s a sight for sore eyes,” Captain Joel said, as ecstatic to see the cetacean as I was.
“A blue vale,” Freuchen yelled. “I hunted them for food in the Antarctic.”
“It is a truly remarkable specimen,” Silas said. “I believe that they number in the tens of thous—” He stopped abruptly and said, “Something else is approaching from port.”
“Maybe it’s another whale?” I said, straining my eyes against the glare bouncing off the water.
“I don’t see anything?” Captain Joel called back, his head and shoulders hanging out of the pilothouse window.
I saw the dorsal fin break the surface of the ocean fifty feet off the port side of the Sea Wraith. “There!” I yelled, pointing. Then, “Oh, shit!” I’d had encounters with sharks off the coast of California, seen them closeup at Seaworld too, but whatever this thing was, it dwarfed even the couple of Great Whites I’d seen. The dorsal fin was at least as tall as Silas, and he was eight feet, it cut through the water like a speedboat, leaving a wake of roiling water behind it, and it was heading straight across our path.
“Grab on to something!” Captain Joel yelled.
I saw him spin the Sea Wraith’s wheel hard to the left. While the boat was long at sixty-eight feet, it was also narrow, which made it unstable in the water churned up by the two behemoths, and she slewed sharply, the right side tipping dangerously upward. Chou grabbed the gunwale. Freuchen stumbled backward, his arms flailing. He collided hard with the side of the pilothouse which was the only thing that stopped him from falling overboard.
I wasn’t so lucky.
I flailed for the gunwale, missed and felt gravity take hold of me. I stumbled backward. My leg hit something hard attached to the deck that sent me airborne. I was suddenly dropping toward the ocean. I screamed… and felt a metallic hand grab me by the arm and hold on tightly as the starboard side reached its apex. I swung like a pendulum, caught a momentary glimpse of the sea frothing and foaming beneath my feet, then Silas reeled me to him like he’d just hooked a mermaid. The Sea Wraith gave a violent shudder, the wooden deck creaking and complaining as the giant shark sideswiped us and scraped along our keel, buffeting us like we were riding over rapids. Then it was past us, and the boat slipped back to its natural position, leaving us bobbing on the ocean like a cork.
“What is that thing?” Freuchen gasped.
“Judging by the size of its dorsal fin, I believe it to be a megalodon; one of the largest shark species ever to have existed. It must be hunting the whale we saw. It should not be here,” Silas said.
“What do you mean it shouldn’t be here?” Captain Joel yelled.
“Predators were to be strictly limited to very specific sizes to ensure balanced bio-diversity. I am sure that something of this size was not a part of that plan.”
“Jesus!” I yelped as the whale breached again, astern of us this time, a stream of blood arcing behind it from a ragged wound on its underbelly. The gigantic shark followed right after it—seventy-feet of pure death—then disappeared as both creatures presumably dived toward the bottom of the ocean. Nothing was left behind as evidence to the titanic struggle that had just taken place before our very eyes but churned up ocean and a slowly spreading slick of blood on the surface.
We stood in silence for several minutes our eyes fixed on the receding spot where the two creatures had vanished, but they did not resurface. Finally, I turned to Silas and said, “You said the shark shouldn’t be here. But if the Architect didn’t bring it here…?”
“I can only assume this is more work of the Adversary. Another attempt to disrupt the Architect’s plan.”
Nobody spoke, but I’m convinced that we were all thinking the same thought: if something as big as that shark could be brought here without the Architect’s knowledge, what other unpleasant surprises lay in store for us courtesy of the Adversary? Ahead, the sun rose higher into the sky, sparking off the monolith, which now seemed less mysterious and more menacing, looming over the world, its presence an inescapable reminder that we were nothing more than participants in a game played between two unknown and unseen gods.
Twenty-Three
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
―William Shakespeare, The Tempest
A fog-bank shrouded the coast, oozing through fang-like spikes of basalt jutting up from the base of a sheer cliff which stretched for miles and miles and miles to the north and south. Trees lined the top of the cliff like lemmings waiting to leap to their death. At its base, years of broken and rotting pine and oak and yew lay scattered across a narrow littoral of jagged rock. Others teetered on the very edge of the cliff, their roots gradually exposed by the slow but constant erosion of tide, wind, and rain. Pockmarked black rocks surrounded by white foam peeked through the ocean’s surface, making any approach by the Sea Wraith treacherous to suicidal.
“No chance of getting you ashore here,” Captain Joel said. He had throttled back the Sea Wraith’s engine, and now we drifted with the current parallel to the shore.
Chou turned to face Silas. “Do you have any idea which direction we should take?”
“I have no data on this area, I’m sorry.”
“North or south?” I asked Freuchen. “Pick one.”
The big Dane leaned against the rail, his beard shifting with a gentle sea breeze, his eyes moving over the landscape, while overhead gulls screeched and wheeled, occasionally diving beneath the surface only to reappear with a fish between their beaks. “South, skipper,” Freuchen called out with an assuredness that almost convinced me he knew what he was talking about rather than taking a wild guess.
“South it is,” Captain Joel said, throttling the engine up.
It proved to be a good choice. Less than an hour later, the cliff began to descend to a tree studded headland that formed a u-shaped cove with a black-sand beach run through with streaks of saffron colored silt. A boulder strewn incline rose steeply from the beach, ascending into the forest, but it didn’t look like anything we couldn’t handle.
“How’s this?” Captain Joel said.
“Looks good to me,” Freuchen said, leaning over the bow to get a better look at the approach. Chou and I echoed his assessment.
“Let’s see how close I can get you,” Captain Joel said. He swung the Sea Wraith around, so the bow faced away from the beach, then threw the engines into reverse, carefully increased the boat’s speed, edging the craft backward toward the beach while we scanned the water for any submerged obstacles.
“This is about as far as I can get you without risking running aground,” Captain Joel announced when we were still roughly fifteen feet or so from the beach.
“I’ll go first,” Freuchen said. He grabbed his backpack, walked to the stern, and swung himself over the gunwale, dropping down into the water up to his thighs. “Give me another back
pack,” he said, beckoning with both hands. I handed him mine, and he proceeded to wade to the beach. He stood on the beach and waved for us to come ashore.
I turned to face Captain Joel. “Thank you,” I said and hugged him tightly.
“You all come back to us,” he said, solemnly.
I smiled, nodded, and followed Chou and Silas over the side of the Sea Wraith and dropped into the water. We waded ashore, the day warm enough that our clothes wouldn’t stay wet for too long. Standing on the beach, we watched as the Sea Wraith’s engines churned the water and the boat edged away. Captain Joel turned once, his hand raised in farewell.
I started to turn my attention back to my companions who were already shouldering their backpacks when movement at the stern of the Sea Wraith caught my attention. I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but I thought I had seen something drop off the boat into the water. I shaded my eyes to try and get a better look.
“Shit!” I hissed. “Silas, I need you. Now!”
“Vat is it?” Freuchen said, looking where I pointed. “Oh!” he said when he spotted what was bobbing in the water, heading slowly toward the beach.
It was Albert. The kid had somehow managed to stow away aboard the Sea Wraith. He was using something to stay afloat, his legs kicking furiously as he tried to swim to us.
“Would you please go and pull him out of there?” I said to Silas.
“It would be my pleasure,” the robot replied and strode out into the water. He took hold of Albert and lifted him above the water, holding him easily in his arms. With his other hand Silas picked up the object Albert had used to stay afloat, and I saw now that it was an orange life preserver. The boy had probably never seen one before, so he hadn’t worn it when he jumped overboard, but he was smart enough to use it as a buoyancy device.
“What were you thinking?” I snapped, barely able to contain my anger at Albert’s stupidity as Silas placed the dripping wet kid on the sand in front of me. “If I hadn’t seen you, you could have been swept out to sea, drowned, or we could have gone on without you, and you would have been left here all alone with no way back.” I took two steps back, afraid I might be tempted to throttle him.
“That would not have occurred,” Silas said.
“What? Which one?” I said, utterly confused.
“Any of those scenarios.”
“What?” I repeated.
“I was aware of Albert’s presence on the Sea Wraith.”
“What!” I exploded. “You knew he was right there and you didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell us? Jesus!”
“I’m sorry,” Silas said, “did I do something wrong?”
“Wrong? Nooooo, nothing’s wrong. You just allowed the kid to stow away without bothering to let any of us know. What could possibly be wrong with that?”
“But Albert instructed me not to tell you. He said it would be a surprise. I assumed you would be pleased at learning of his presence.”
I could feel my eyes growing bigger by the second, my face flushing red. “You know,” I said, staring right at Silas, “for a robot with an IQ of, what is it? A gazillion or more? That was pretty stupid.”
“I apologize.”
I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath, held it… slowly exhaled. It had been twelve days since I’d been unceremoniously dumped into this world. In that time, I’d been miraculously cured of my drug addiction, had men try to kill me, seen my first dead body then seen more than I should ever have, joined together with a group of people pulled not only from different times but from different freaking dimensions, fought and beaten Nazis, counted a robot as one of my friends, and found out that I was the key to solving a mystery that held the future of humanity in the balance. I guess it was understandable if I was a little short-tempered. But like I said at the beginning, even if I could go back and change everything that had happened, I wouldn’t. Not now.
When I opened my eyes again, the Sea Wraith had vanished around the curve of the headland and with it any chance of returning Albert back to Avalon. How did that prayer go? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
“I placed a hand on Silas’ metal shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed by my outburst.
“Apology accepted.”
Chou said to Albert, “How did you go undetected?”
“I hid in the hold,” Albert said. “I just… wanted to… be with… you.” His words hitched as he tried to hold back his tears.
I shook my head in mock disbelief as my anger began to subside. I placed my hand on the boy’s hair, then slipped it to his back and pulled him close to me, wrapping my arms around him. When I let him go, I said, “Listen closely: from now on, when any of us tell you to do something, you do it? Understood?”
Albert nodded. “Does that mean you’re not going to leave me behind?” he said, wiping the snot and tears from his face.
“Leave you behind? Here? God, no. No, no, no.” I paused then added with a smile, “So long as you do as you’re told, at least.”
Albert snuffled then smiled meekly.
“Very good then,” Freuchen said. “I think it’s time ve ver on our vay.”
I grabbed my backpack and shouldered it. We stood abreast of each other; five travelers from different times and different realities, strangers from very different shores, bound together now as comrades, all facing the same great unknown. Above us, the sun had almost reached its zenith, creating doppelgänger negatives on the ground ahead of us, and I wondered for a second whether, in some alternate version of this universe, a copy of me would make a different choice than the one I was about to.
“Okay, are we all ready?” I said, turning to look down the line to acknowledge everyone’s nod of confirmation. “Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go see what’s out there.”
A native of Cardiff, Wales, Paul Antony Jones now resides near Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and commercial copywriter, but his passion is penning fiction. A self-described science geek, he's a voracious reader of scientific periodicals, as well as a fan of things mysterious, unknown, and on the fringe. That fascination inspired his five-book Extinction Point series, following heroine Emily Baxter's journey of survival after a very unconventional alien invasion.
The Paths Between Worlds, the first book in Paul’s new This Alien Earth trilogy is now available.
You can learn more about Paul and his upcoming releases via his blog at DisturbedUniverse.com or facebook.com/AuthorPaulAntonyJones
Greetings, Earthlings,
I first began working on this new trilogy close to seven years ago. Back then it was called Otherworld Chronicles, but in the years between now and then, the name has changed and the story has gone through some major alterations. The result is the book you have just read.
So many talented individuals worked on taking the original raw manuscript I sent to my editor, pruning off the dead story-twigs (and, occasionally, entire branches), fact checking, polishing, and finally, tying it all together and presenting it in a beautiful package for you guys.
I’d like to thank Rhett Bruno and Steve Beaulieu of Aethon Books. I’d also like to thank April Taylor, Kelly Graffis, Beverly Lewallen Knobel; Britanny Lee, and Victoria Clemensen.
Special thanks go out to Emma Burns, Steven and Beth Lewis, and Becky and Darren Fleming who helped solve some nautical problems for this desert-bound landlubber.
And, as always, my greatest thanks go out to you, dear reader. I hope you’ll join Meredith and her crew for the rest of their journey.
— PAUL JONES
Thank You!
Thank you so much for reading The Paths Between Worlds by Paul Antony Jones. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. We just wanted to take a moment to encourage you to review the book on Amazon and Goodreads. Every review helps further the author’s reach and, ultimately, helps them con
tinue writing fantastic books for us all to enjoy.
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