by Ewing, Al
Ull opened his mouth to speak, and the King shushed him with a gesture. “Two – that’s not the whole story. The human race doesn’t die out. For centuries, things are terrible, but people rebuild. They pick themselves back up. Except this time they have to do things differently. Technology isn’t an option – they ruined that, and it’s a shame, because it could have been great – but that doesn’t mean they can’t still grow.” He smiled. “That’s the wonderful thing about humanity. Whatever happens to it, the human race can still evolve. By the twenty-fifth century, you’re got agrarian societies beating hell out of each other between lynchings – still not good. By the five hundredth, they’re enlightened Buddhists. By the thousandth, they’re beating hell out of each other again – it’s a rocky road. Peaks and troughs. They don’t have immortality to keep them nice and unchanging through the millennia.”
“It sounds hideous.” Ull shuddered. “What makes that world worth destroying ours for?”
“It’s got potential. Ours doesn’t. We’re just going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs until the final heat death of the universe – although, Maya being Maya, she’s set up the solution to that too.” He sighed. “Poor bastard...”
“What?”
“Never mind. Like I said, we’re in a loop that never ends. But you know who’s living on that other Earth now, the one only savants can see? In the year one million and change? A race of hyperintelligent zen monks who communicate telepathically. That’s how we learned about mental linkage – watching the dreamworld. And do you know what they’re doing, these guys? They’re immortal too, just like we are. And they’re using those superminds of theirs to explore and map the nine billion countries of heaven. And the whole history of their Earth, and of the infinite possible Earths that aren’t theirs. And bring it all together.”
Ull blinked. “That’s impossible –”
“Odds are fifty-fifty they’ll do it. My favourite odds.” The Red King smiled to himself, looking into Ull’s eyes. “You know I’m not lying.”
Ull shivered. He knew.
“So what do you think? Are they going to make it? Do we take the risk and maybe all end up in heaven at the end of the story, Maya and El Sombra and Pluto and Doc Thunder and two Ben Franklins and Johnny Wolf and even the bad guys all together in one last happy ending? Or do we play it safe?” He grinned, leaning back on his throne.
After a long silence, Ull spoke, not without compassion. “I’ll take one of those Stones now.”
The Red King’s face fell for a moment, then he managed a half-smile. “Want me to tell you which is which? That’s the game. Heads or tails. True or false.” He pantomimed pointing to each of the twin blue stones in turn: “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo...”
“My tracker unit has the exact atomic structure of the Stone on file,” Ull said, flatly. “I knew which one it was all along.”
The King’s face fell. “Oh.” He shrugged. “Well, I guess you’d better take it.”
He scowled angrily, curling up in his throne like a petulant child.
“And don’t let the psychetecture hit your ass on the way out, you sneaky little cheat.”
CHECK AND MATE.
More like stalemate. Forever.
Oh, you don’t need to map Heaven, Lars, you’d never get in. And there’s no need to be such a grouch just because you lost –
Did I?
He knew which Stone was which, Lars.
Yes, he did. He knew which was which. And he made his choice.
MAYA WATCHED THE Zor leave, sailing out of the hangar bay on the first leg of its journey, laden down with the Shaper, the Weeper, the Princess and the Keeper – and the Stone that bound them all.
And a Sacrifice, of course. The first of many.
She remembered those early days – the brittle arguments with Munn and Unwen, desperately trying to rush into the role of Queen before she was ready – then the long millennia in the jungle, growing into herself, making her plans, founding the Kingdom of Zor-Ek-Narr.
Zor-Ek-Narr; in the language of the Habitats, Long live the Zor.
She’d commanded battlecruisers the size of suns, and star-yachts that had flowed through the cosmos like dreams, but the Zor was still her favourite ship, and it always would be. Oddly enough, it was named after the Forbidden Kingdom. Where did that name come from, then? Where was the Stone from, originally?
She supposed it didn’t matter.
As the Zor reached sub-light speed and winked out of sight among the stars, a terrible thought struck Maya. It was a thought she’d never had before, not once in the billions of years she’d been alive, and it felt like the bottom dropping out of the world.
Maya Zor-Tura, the Red Queen, stood watching the stars, and she thought, What happens now?
...OMEGA
EVENTUALLY, EARTH DIED.
The stars went out and the planet crumbled to dust as entropy claimed the universe; and from out of the centre of the dust that had once been a planet, there drifted the egg.
The Being within the egg had been dormant for countless aeons, patiently waiting until all life in the universe had died a natural death. He liked being alone.
Although He had never been short of company.
From within the egg, He had seen and heard them all; everything that had ever walked, crawled or flown, from the smallest amoeba to the great immortals, in their eternal Habitats, and more powerful beings even than they.
He had never considered coming out of the egg until now.
He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone.
He was no longer simply powerful; that was a threshold He’d crossed billennia ago. Now, He was power itself.
Once, He had been called Thunder.
In the universe to come, some would give Him other names.
Slowly, over centuries, the metal of the egg flaked away, and He emerged from His cocoon, no longer human, no longer even humanoid. He cast his awareness to the very edges of the dead universe, and found no life. This universe was dead; there was nothing left of it.
There was not.
Nothing existed, and there was nothing in which to exist.
Over a timeless interval, during which time had no meaning, He considered the situation.
He existed. He was the only thing to exist. That did not feel correct.
He focussed His being, and spoke.
And there was.
AL EWING
Al Ewing has written four previous novels, including El Sombra and Gods Of Manhattan for the Pax Britannia universe. He also writes comics, notably Judge Dredd and Zombo for the British science-fiction anthology 2000 AD, as well as the crime comic Jennifer Blood. In the alternate world of steampunk technology, he is a carnival geek and part-time hunger artist. Despite these reduced circumstances, however, he is still able to afford a sturdy pair of goggles and a top hat with gears on it for no reason.
There is no escape from The Ultimate Reich!
The terrifying Luftwaffe, on their steam-driven wings, have torn apart the sleepy town of Pasito in the heart of Mexico, only to rebuild it as a terrifying clockwork-town where the people become human robots, furthering the nightmare dreams of the Fuhrer.
General Eisenberg and his sociopathic son Alexis control this paradise of horrors. But they are unprepared for the return of a man the desert claimed nine long years ago, a man who has returned from the doors of death and the depths of madness to bring his terrible fury upon their world. With the slash of a sword and a laugh that lights up the night, the man in the bloodstained mask cuts his way through the hopeless, endless routines of the clockwork men to bring new hope to the people. He defies death!
He defies man! No trap can hold the masked daredevil, the saint of ghosts men know as El Sombra!
www.abaddonbooks.com
BLOOD AND THUNDER!
"You're in New York. Protocol went out the window the second you arrived. This isn't a protocol kind of town. This is a town that breeds monsters and heroes, geniuses and madmen. This
town makes gods, and heaven help you, you wanted to be one of us."
While his sidekick lies bleeding out in hospital, city saviour Doc Thunder and Maya, his beautiful companion, attempt to discover the identity of their friend's assailant. The clues lead to secrets altogether older and darker than they could ever have imagined.
The Blood Spider - a name that strikes fear into the hearts of criminals everywhere. But unlike Doc Thunder, this vigilante is willing to kill, and it can only be a matter a time before the two heroes collide.
Mexican masked swordsman El Sombra is visiting the Big Apple, but he's not just any tourist. El Sombra is on a mission of revenge that will take him all the way into the heart of the city's corrupt underworld.
www.abaddonbooks.com
The Choice Is Yours!
Ulysses Quicksilver: agent of the throne, dandy and hero. Heart-broken, battered, mutilated and shot, and driven backwards and forwards in time, but determined to keep his dander up. But appearing in the middle of a crime scene is never the best way to start your visit to Paris...
Introducing a radical innovation in the world of e-publishing! Time's Arrow will be released exclusively in ebook format in three parts, starting with Red-Handed in October 2011. After the first two releases, the readers will be invited to vote in the Abaddon website as to how they want the story to continue.
Once all three parts have been published, the work will be collected and published once again – in both ebook and physical format – as a single volume, which you helped to create!
www.abaddonbooks.com
In which our hero – wanted by the French Police for murder – battles his way across Paris, from the Louvre to Notre Dame, in order to prove his innocence.
But does Ulysses try to contact Department Q for help or does he go in search of the mysterious M. Lumière? And who else will come to his aid in his hour of need?
www.abaddonbooks.com
Teaser
Title
Pax Britannia
Indicia and Dedication
Author's Note
Alpha
The End of the World
The Printer's Devil
The Lonesome Rider and the Locomotive Man
The Eve of War
The Last Stand of the Yodelling Bastards
The Last Enemy
Pluto
Under the Red Sun
Jacob Steele and the Hour of Chaos
One Million Years Later...
The Red Queen's Race and the Red King's Dream
...Omega
Al Ewing
'El Sombra' by Al Ewing
'Gods of Manhattan' by Al Ewing
'Time's Arrow: Red-Handed' by Jonathan Green
'Time's Arrow: Black Swan' by Jonathan Green