The Journeyman

by Michael Alan Peck

  A series of loud grunts. The waves in the water became choppier, slapping into one another in a panic. The grunting came from the pelicans as they pulled out of dives or flew up out of the water onto the rocks—even the rocks close to Zach.

  They were more afraid of whatever was making the waves than they were of him.

  A huge, scaly back broke the surface of the water—like a fat snake the size of a submarine. One giant flipper came into view and vanished beneath the surface, then another.

  The pelicans weren’t safe for long. One unlucky bird chose the wrong rock, which was different from the others in a terrible way.

  At first, the pelican was well above the waves. Then the rock under it sank, leaving the bird bobbing and flapping in the water.

  With the benefit of a few more seconds, the pelican might have gotten up into the air. But it didn’t have them.

  A crocodile-like snout the size of a bumper car rose up out of the water beneath and took the bird in one piece. It was gone in a squawk.

  And the lizard-fish’s head continued to emerge from the water.

  It was that big.

  “Mosasaur,” said the farmer. Zach hadn’t pulled his string.

  The beast rolled toward Zach, one massive eye rising from the water, and looked right at him. It appeared to be grinning, but this wasn’t a creature that smiled—or inspired anyone else to. It was all teeth.

  “Mosasaur,” the farmer repeated.

  Zach wanted a bathroom. Even more, he wanted the thing to stop looking at him. He wanted it to leave.

  After a long time, it did. With a watery crash, it dove.

  Another grunt from farther away. A distant rock sank, depositing its pelican into the water before it could take off.

  It met the same fate as the last.

  The bird and the rock that betrayed it were too far away for Zach’s mosasaur to have gotten over there so fast. There were more than one of the lizard-fish.

  The lake was big. It could hold many big things. Many.

  The farmer spun on his own again. He stopped on the door. “Egress.”

  This time, Zach followed the farmer’s finger beyond the toy. In the distance, something rectangular jutted up a rock. A real door.

  A grunt from behind was followed by splashing before it was cut off. Another rock, another pelican.

  The rest of the birds got the message and launched themselves into the air.

  Zach looked at the rocks nearest him and then at the door in the distance. He needed to jump from rock to rock to get to the door, but he didn’t know which rock would hold him and which would drop from sight, feeding him to the monsters.

  The bathroom feeling came back when the rock Zach was standing on shook, tipped slightly, and then tipped back. It wasn’t enough to make him fall, but he nearly dropped the Farmer Says toy. The rock vibrated a bit, then stopped.

  It was going to happen slowly, but it was going to happen.

  A moment later, all of the farther-away rocks sank beneath the waves, along with some of the ones nearest him. That left only a perfect circle of them around Zach’s rock, all within jumping distance.

  It was a puzzle. A game. Zach had to jump to another rock before the one he was on sank.

  Whenever he turned to check the position of one of the monsters, the little farmer pointed to the icon on his wheel and spoke up. “Mosasaur,” he said.

  And when Zach turned to face the far-off door, the little farmer spun and pointed to the picture of that. “Egress.”

  He couldn’t decide where to jump.

  The boulder he was on shook slightly.

  “Mosasaur,” said the little farmer. “Egress.”

  35

  The Shrine of the Lost

  They appeared in a box canyon lit by a combination of daylight and a golden luminescence issued by the rock surfaces. Paul felt none of the dizzying effects of Porter’s jumps now.

  The morning sky was the rippling blue of a turning opal—a coruscating ceiling. It was a peace Paul didn’t want to disturb, not even with the sound of his breath.

  The walls were high—and filled with name plaques all the way to their tops. At the canyon’s center, a reflecting pool held a mirror image of the sky, its surface pierced by a shaft of sunlight. A small stone bench sat beside it.

  “What is this?” Rain’s tone was subdued. She, too, was reluctant to break the stillness.

  “Unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than of sons and daughters,” Porter said. “I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.” He leaned on his staff. “This is The Shrine of the Lost.”

  “The lost what?” Paul said.

  “Souls. Journeys. Envoys who gave up along the way. The lost purpose of all those Brill has taken—and those left behind. Husbands. Wives. Children. Friends.”

  Po’s sigh shivered off the stone. He was crying.

  “My friends and I built this,” Porter said. “An Envoy named Audra Farrelly invited that sunbeam in. It’s never left, and that was a long time ago. As a creator, I may enter to admit the worthy who have fallen, but only then.”

  Porter led Po to the bench, and they sat. The Envoy closed his eyes, and the monk followed suit.

  Faint voices filled the air around them, rising in volume until words could be heard. Mothers called for girls who would never come home. Whistles trilled for long-gone boys to return from the park. Ringing phones would not be answered. An old woman cried, “I’m trying!”

  Lonely zephyrs.

  The sunbeam heeded Porter’s and Po’s meditation, widening over the water to embrace them. Slivers of light broke away to highlight two of the plaques on the walls, one bright and new, the other tarnished with years.

  “Khentimentiu: friend,” read the first. “Honorable always, honored now.”

  The old plaque was much higher on the wall, but Paul could read it as if it were right in front of him. The light granted him that. “John Vincent Porter, b. 1927 - d. 1931,” it said. And on the line below: “Have you news of my boy Jack?”

  “My last descendant,” Porter said. “No more.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rain, wiping away tears of her own.

  “Thank you. As am I—for the heedless time that led to my own Journey long ago. Sorry that Brill has kept me and those like me from guiding others and redeeming ourselves and sorry that he’s destroyed so many who’ll never have the opportunity.” He stood and looked up at the illuminated names. “For John, for Ken. For Paul and what he bears. For all of us.”

  The light faded from the plaques, which blended in with their brethren again.

  “Oh, but I’m the grim one, eh?” Porter said. “There’s some good fortune in the loss that carried us here. Ken’s sacrifice was a gift greater than he knew.”

  “How so?” Paul said.

  “Like Austen’s Nightlights, the Shrine is not a constant place. It opens only to mark the passing of one who’s earned its notice. Because of Ken, we’re much nearer to our destination. This is accessible from anywhere in The Commons, which means we can go anywhere from here. It’s a roundhouse—a waypoint.”

  Po rose, eyes dry now. He was prepared.

  Paul wasn’t. Leaving The Shrine was like the loss of someone dear. They weren’t meant to stay, but it felt as if he’d found a thing long missing, reflected in his mother’s eyes in her photo, whatever she saw when turning to look at it. Now it was being taken from him. “To where?”

  Porter held out his staff in answer. They put their hands on it in the same order as before, Paul pausing to look around once more before taking hold of it.

  The sunbeam twitched, and Ken’s plaque glinted in response—a star passing through their group, touching all of them in turn, Po last of all.

  Porter gave his staff a turn.

  They arrived in the center of a road that crossed a sweeping playa, its asphalt bleached and fissured from years of abiding the sun’s abuse. The dotted lin
e bisecting it was nearly invisible.

  It was twilight. The opal had turned again; the air was now coral and plum.

  Across the expanse of the playa’s sands, mammoth dunes rose from the floor, reaching toward mountains beyond. The sky over the peaks was thick with black clouds, the heavens a purple crown.

  “Gaia?” Paul said.

  “Journey’s End,” said Porter. “I’m not permitted to continue—I must send you on without me.”

  “Alone?”

  The Envoy looked at Po, then Rain. “I don’t think so.”

  “This is where it ends.”

  “No. This is where it begins.”

  Paul watched the rolling ink of the clouds. “Whatever it is, I’ll handle it.”

  “Wherever would we be without the hopes of our youth?” the Envoy said sincerely.

  “We’d disappear,” said Rain.

  Porter held his staff out, and they all grasped it in their customary order. “When you arrive, Paul, there may be no one with you. But I think one of us will be—whoever’s meant to.”

  Paul searched the gray man’s eyes for guidance.

  “Whatever you face, whatever fight you find, stay true,” Porter said. “You cannot go astray if you do.”

  “This isn’t just about me, is it?”

  The Envoy watched the heavens stir and weighed his answer. “What I’ve seen you do here reflects an ability unmatched, except by that of Brill himself. I’ve been out of the game, but I trust what I feel and know.” The clouds tumbled in the fading light. His eyes never left them. “I believe you’ve tapped into the fundamental Essence of The Commons, as he does. The difference is that he’s stolen it, whereas it reaches out to you. He’s addicted to his power—and doesn’t know that. You can serve yours without being yoked to it. That’s the key to mastery. You cannot serve what you do not know, and you cannot know what you do not respect. It’s chosen you, but you don’t own it. Gratitude is your strength.”

  “Chien li ti kwei yu yi shuay,” Po said. All three of them started at the sound of the monk speaking. “An ant may well destroy a whole dam.”

  Porter eyed the monk with an even greater appreciation than before and nodded in agreement. “Serve or misuse? That’s the question. Your answer? You’ll know it now.”

  He gave the staff’s wood a twist.

  Paul and Rain arrived, just the two of them, on another flat expanse of desert. They stood under the canopy of black clouds, separated from Porter and Po by the mountains and dunes.

  All around was Gaia, a temporary city of themed camps, tents, and intricate works of art. A matchstick cathedral awaited the faithful. A graveyard of tombstones in Day-Glo blues, reds, greens, and oranges represented those who’d miss the service.

  “Hey,” Paul said.

  “Yeah.” Rain’s confidence had deserted her again.

  The tent camps and shelters were marked by painted-wood and neon signs. Void, Comix, Script Kitty, Pagan Rights, Atro-Fee, Body Shot, Zen-Sation. The tubes of the signs were dark, without power. The tents were empty, as if the party had only just ended, its revelers departed in haste.

  Surveying it all, bathing it in a glow of lavender, cinnamon, and buttercup, was the titular Gaia herself, a fifty-foot wood-frame woman in a state of advanced pregnancy. The light from the neon tubes outlining her was the only illumination in all of Gaia.

  “Paul?”

  A woman’s voice from behind the Comix tent.

  He took off running.

  “Who do you think built—“ Rain said. By the time he rounded the tent corner, she was yelling his name.

  Beyond Comix sat a big-top-sized tent-building: a framed-canvas carnival mansion.

  He saw her. The color of her hair. She was walking away from him, down the long scarlet carpet of the tent’s front entrance. Overhead, a canopy of crimson-striped canvas and ornate black fringe, small gold flags atop its peaks, sheltered her as she abandoned him.

  Again.

  Her hair was the red of the photo.

  “Mom?”

  Rain found him just as Jeanne, his mother—his mother—vanished into the tent’s interior.

  “Are you crazy?” Rain said. “You don’t just take off like that.”

  Only minutes before, her worry would have meant everything to him. Now he had no room for it.

  His mother.

  “Hello, Paul.”

  A thin white-haired man in a business suit stood at the near end of the big tent’s walk. He wouldn’t step beyond its border. That wasn’t permitted.

  Rain took Paul’s hand, her palm damp.

  “Welcome,” the man said. “My name is Gerald Truitt.”

  36

  Time Will Tell

  Annie tapped into the network—and almost lost her mind.

  Wrangler John’s setup lacked the buffers and niceties of Mr. Brill’s. There were no shields to safeguard her from the potency of the information that engulfed her when she made contact.

  Just as bad was when that information realized it was hurting her. It reversed itself and withdrew, nearly yanking her consciousness right out of her head.

  As a teenager, she’d jumped into a hard surf on Nantucket, the first time she’d been in the ocean in years. She’d assumed that because she’d grown bigger and stronger, she’d be able to handle whatever the water was capable of dishing out.

  The first wave took her over its crest and drove her into the carved-out sand beneath the foam. Then the undertow had tried to make the lesson permanent by drawing her out to sea.

  Tapping in, getting swamped by data, and having the data retreat was much the same as being body slammed by the Atlantic.

  Only worse.

  “I don’t know the particulars,” Wrangler John said.

  She forced herself to keep peering into the red goggle-like thing he called a Virtual Boy, or VB. The name he used for it depended on how fast he was trying to explain one step in the process before moving to the next.

  “A lot of people took on a lot of risk to get your boy to where he is,” he said. “You know the drill. No single one of us knows the whole scheme, which keeps us from giving it away if The Ravagers come calling. But that means there’s no one to tell you how this works. I can get you started, but you’ll have to figure out where to find him. He needs help. And he needs it now.”

  She rolled her chair back from the VB and the table on which it sat. Half her brain remained in the red landscape. “Where is he?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know.”

  She looked him up and down for soft spots.

  He took a step backward. “You find him, and you help him. You’re the only one who can. That’s all they told me. Honest.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Who is everyone? What does that mean?”

  “You. Me. All of us. You have to see for yourself, or you won’t believe me.”

  “What about Brill?”

  “Him, too, which is why we have to stay on the down-low while we work. That’s the risk. We all came out of safe places to do this because in the end, nothing’s safe with Brill in power.”

  She held him in a hard stare.

  “That’s all I know.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Good question.”

  She marked her spot on his body visually without lingering long enough to tell him what to protect. Targeting was a comfort.

  So. The Virtual Boy. This time, the joining was more gentle, as if the force there expected her return and had adjusted for it.

  “I think—” said Wrangler John.

  “Shush.”

  The VB goggles presented a purple-on-black cartoon reef. Blocky, pixelated starfish bopped across it, dancing to a tune only they could hear.

  The longer she watched, the more convincing the reef became.

  Gradually, greens and yellows were introduced, then a clumsy illusion of three dimensions that slowly grew lifelike.
She was immersed in an undersea realm.

  The reef was real. It had been when she’d encountered it in her cubicle in Mr. Brill’s offices, too—but not like this. Here, she was one with the waves washing through the structure, united with the creatures who called it home.

  A blenny peeked out of its hiding spot, then disappeared when she looked at it. Parrotfish scored the coral near a colony of psychedelic shrimp.

  It was absolutely beautiful. Yet she was about to pull away again and demand that Wrangler John help her find Zach when she was rudely interrupted by an inability to breathe.

  She was underwater. Real water. And she wasn’t a fish.

  Her choked whoop was filtered by the sea around her. She sounded exactly like she would have expected someone inhaling an ocean to sound. And just as one couldn’t look cool riding a merry-go-round or eating spaghetti, she was sure she came off as very silly while drowning.

  Wrangler John said something and touched her shoulder.

  She flapped her arm, shaking him off.

  For the first time since quitting the pinkies, she wasn’t aware of any pain in her knee. Mainly because she was about to black out.

  The nautilus appeared. And just like that, she could breathe.

  She had no hint of its approach. It went from absent to present, and then she was sucking wind like a sprinter.

  It wasted no time with pleasantries, didn’t wait for her to catch her breath. It began spinning into the coral, as it had when it led her to Charlene. But it moved faster now, and she didn’t need to ask why.

  Something was wrong. They had to hurry.

  “They told me they could keep him safe for a while, but you have to take over.” Wrangler John’s voice bled through the salty water and foam.

  She ignored him.

  The nautilus twirled into a blur, and Annie, still giddy from lack of oxygen, recalled those old black-and-whites where the front page of a newspaper spun toward the screen and stopped, its headline announcing a new plot point.