by Mark Hodder
We talked for a little longer, then bade the Yatsill farewell and led the Koluwaians up and out of the bay. Gallokomas and the colonel floated down to greet us. I drew Kata aside and said, “Each of you must decide whether to remain on Ptallaya or go through the hole in the sky to Koluwai. Those who choose to stay will be taken to the land near the Zull eyries. It is fertile and wooded and the Zull are very kind. They’ll help you to build a village and you’ll be able to live in peace.”
She nodded slowly and put her hands up to cover her heart. “And for those who’d rather go to the other world, sir?”
“We’ll try to send them, but I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. I should warn you, too, that the Blood Gods pose a danger to Koluwai. If we fail to stop them, the population of the islands will become their prey.”
“I will talk to my people.”
The islanders gathered together. It didn’t take them long to reach a decision. Kata returned to us and reported that the entire group had elected to remain on Ptallaya.
“None who arrived here from Koluwai remains, Mr. Fleischer. We were all born on Ptallaya. It is our true home, despite the traditions.”
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “I think you’ve made the right choice. Gather food from the farms. Eat, then rest a while. We have a long journey ahead.”
We didn’t linger for long. The Heart of Blood was almost two-thirds sunk and time was running out. Shortly after the Koluwaians had filled their stomachs, the Zull flock descended and picked them up. We raced back to Thoomra.
The islanders were deposited a little to the west of the eyries, among the rolling hills and verdant forest. A large number of Zull remained with them and immediately set to work building houses in the trees and clearing land for vegetable farms. The rest of us continued on and found the eyries buzzing with activity. Thousands of Zull had gathered and weapons were being distributed among them. These “frequency cannons” had two parts. The first resembled a long straight tube. From the rear end of this, coiled cables stretched to the second, a box—ornate, in typical Zull fashion—with dials on its top and a plunger-like handle projecting from its side. To operate the device, one Zull balanced the tube on his shoulder and aimed it, while another, wearing the box strapped against his stomach, took readings and pressed the plunger to fix the sound output at the appropriate frequency.
Pistols, the same as those given to Clarissa and me, were also much in evidence.
I estimated that we had the equivalent of at least twenty-four hours to spare, so we returned to our house, where Colonel Spearjab immediately plunged into his bath and began to snore.
“He has the right idea,” I said. “We should sleep.”
Clarissa looked at me strangely.
“What is it?” I asked.
She stepped closer and rested her hands on my chest.
“You’ll really join the fighting?”
“Yes, of course. Our world is threatened.”
“Our world? Is it? I feel we belong here now. I don’t want to go back.”
My heart began to race.
“No. No, Clarissa. You’re right. I don’t want to return to Earth either. Nevertheless, we can’t allow it to be invaded.”
“But when the conflict is done, we can settle here, with the Zull?”
I thought about the man I’d been when she’d arrived on my doorstep, and recalled my parochial little vicarage in Theaston Vale with its dusty library and stultifying dullness. It filled me with disdain. It felt far more alien to me now than this world of three suns and bizarre creatures.
I put my hands over hers. “Yes, we can make our home here.”
“Together.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
She sighed. “What you said.”
“Said?”
“When we were escaping from Phenadoor.”
I tried to respond but found myself unable to speak.
Clarissa smiled.
“I love you, too, Aiden Fleischer.” She leaned forward and put her lips to mine, then took me by the hand and led me into her room.
Clarissa was already awake, nestled against my shoulder, when I opened my eyes.
“You are most definitely not the man who answered the door to me all that time ago,” she whispered.
“You’re a fine one to talk,” I said drowsily. “Look at you!”
She giggled, and, after stretching a shapely leg into the air, sat up. “My metamorphosis is cosmetic, Aiden. As is yours—” Turning, she ran her fingers across the muscles of my stomach. “But with you there’s something more. A far deeper change.”
The last vestiges of sleep cleared. I propped myself up onto my elbows and looked into her startling eyes.
After a moment of thought, I said, “Cain and Abel.”
One of her eyebrows arched at this unanticipated turn in the conversation, creasing the skin around the little bump above it.
I went on, “It’s said that evil begets evil. I’ve always believed that, but it caused a crisis of faith in me, for, as you once pointed out, if you trace evil back to its source, you can’t stop at Cain but must continue on to God.”
“And how can we worship a God who’s capable of evil?” Clarissa responded.
“We can’t. And as the creation of one who begets evil, would we not all be Jekylls, liable to transform into Hydes at any moment?”
She suddenly blinked rapidly, gave a small exclamation, and said, “Gallokomas has just arrived on our terrace.”
The Zull’s voice sounded from my wrist. “Fleischer Thing!”
I pressed the tattoo and said, “Yes, Gallokomas?”
“The flock is gathering. Will you and your companions prepare yourselves, please?”
“Very well. We’ll be with you in a moment.”
Clarissa and I got up. She entered the washroom while I went to alert the colonel. When I rejoined her, I continued our conversation. “The Quintessence offered a solution to the dilemma. It suggested that, rather than being a product of God, evil is an entirely equal and opposite power.”
She wiped her face with a towel and gave a disdainful snort. “That doesn’t surprise me at all, Aiden. The Quintessence considers itself perfect. It makes the Mi’aata slaves to a moribund society in which all construction is nothing but pointless repetition. True creativity is suppressed. The trinity is blind to the iniquity of such a system. For the Quintessence, wrongdoing always comes from an exterior source, never from itself.”
“Which is why I can’t give credence to the notion of opposing deities,” I replied. “It makes of us a battleground and allows us to disavow all responsibility for what happens.”
We finished washing and re-entered the bedroom where we began to dress.
“Nor does it answer the essential question,” I continued. “Which is, if God didn’t create evil, what did? Something else? Do we now have to deny that God is the creator of all things? No, it won’t do.”
I buckled on my flight harness, feeling the comfortable weight of the pistol on my right hip and the sword on my left.
“What then, Aiden?”
“A chain of logic. If God is the epitome of good, there can be no evil in Him. If all things spring from Him, then they, too, must be comprised wholly of good. Therefore, evil is not a thing.”
“Have you forgotten London? Jack the Ripper was unquestionably evil!”
“We have to make a semantic transmutation. We must say, instead, that Jack the Ripper was catastrophically lacking in goodness.”
My companion scrutinized me thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said, slowly. “Yes. I see the implication. Altering the perspective suggests a richer purpose to the business of living.”
“Precisely. If you consider goodness as a spectrum, then at one end we have the unadulterated rectitude of God’s creation, and it is toward this that we must travel in our thoughts and actions. But if we become selfish, if we indulge in our lusts, our gluttony, our greed, or any of the other deadly sins, then we turn awa
y and move in the direction of diminishing virtue. Thus life challenges us to resist temptation and do the right thing. Every correct moral decision moves us closer to God. Every moment of weakness takes us farther away.”
“Have you found faith at last, Aiden?”
“I can’t have faith in God any more than I can have faith in the sky. He may be goodness manifest, but I’ve seen nothing to suggest that He’s an interventionist. You were right to suggest that I’ve changed. I have. I’ve realised that, whatever world we happen to be on, we cannot afford any degree of dependence on a divine plan. It’s up to us to address iniquity and injustice, and to succeed, we must indeed have faith—not in God,” I placed a hand on the hilt of my sword, “but in ourselves.”
Clarissa smiled and murmured, “The voyage is complete.”
11. Battle
“We have never fought before,” Gallokomas said. “You must guide the flock.”
I looked up at the dense cloud of Zull circling overhead and said, “Yissil Froon is directing the Divergent, so the primary objective must be to locate him and break his mental domination of them. I reserve that particular mission for myself. Like all of your species, whether they are at the Yatsill, Mi’aata, or Zull stage, he can sense my emotions but not my thoughts. I hope that’ll give me an advantage.”
“Humph!” Colonel Spearjab interjected. “I owe the blighter a thrashing. A thrashing, I say! You’ll allow me to accompany you. Remember, I can help you to locate him. What! What!”
By way of illustration, the colonel lifted the pikestaff we’d brought from Phenadoor and jabbed at the air with it.
“And if he applies his powers to you?” I asked.
“Harrumph! Harrumph! Granted, he controls the Divergent, old chap, but shocks and revelations have placed me in a unique position. I know what I was, what I am, and what I shall be! I rather think that gives me a better sense of myself than the bounder can handle. Ha ha!”
I smiled, but shook my head. “No, Colonel. When I confront him, I hope Yissil Froon will become sufficiently distracted that his hold over the Divergent loosens. I’d like you to move among them and help them reorientate themselves—have them abandon their weapons.”
“Ah! Humph! I see. Well, orders are orders! What! What!”
“And me, Aiden?” Clarissa asked.
“We’ll put you on one of the foothills overlooking the forest. You’ll be out of harm’s way, but with those remarkable eyes and your telepathic ability, you’ll be able to follow the movement of the rupture and warn the Zull away from it. I don’t want any of them sucked in and flung to Koluwai.”
“Out of harm’s way?” she protested. “After all we’ve been through, you consider me too delicate to engage with the enemy?”
“Of course not. I simply intend to make the best use of your specific talents, Clarissa.”
She folded her arms angrily, glared at me, then, a moment later, relaxed and nodded. “Very well. I’ll do it.”
I turned to Gallokomas. “What of closing it? Have your scientists developed a method?”
“Regrettably, they have not, Fleischer Thing.” He took Iriputiz’s crystal from his bag and handed it to me. “This resonates only with the part of it that opens onto your world. We cannot use it here.”
I felt myself go cold. “Then I have no choice. The only option is to do as Iriputiz intended, but rather than drawing the opening to a populated area, I must relocate it somewhere remote—even more remote than Koluwai—where no one will wander into it.”
Clarissa murmured, “We’ll go together, Aiden. I’ll not be separated from you.”
I smiled at her. “We can return to Ptallaya the moment the path becomes active again.”
I hung the crystal around my neck.
Gallokomas looked toward the East. I followed his gaze and saw a wide band of orange light brightening the horizon. The Eyes of the Saviour would soon reappear. How I longed to see them!
“It is time,” the Zull said.
The Heart of Blood had almost completely set by the time we reached the Forest of Indistinct Murmurings. Only its tip showed, and directly overhead the sky had deepened to a band of such an intense purple that stars were visible in it—the first I’d seen from Ptallaya. The four moons, clustered closely together, shone brightly in the East, where the heavens were afire.
The flock soared over the dripping forest. The atmosphere was thick with steam. Thousands of tiny creatures bobbed lazily over the canopy, tethered to it by silken threads. Many of the trees were burdened with what appeared to be giant fruits.
“Do you see all the pupae, Colonel?” I shouted, pointing down through the mist.
“I do! I do! What! What! I hope they’ll not be damaged! Harrumph!”
Led by Artellokas, the flock continued on, passed over the beach, and headed out to sea. Meanwhile, Clarissa, Colonel Spearjab, Gallokomas, and I, having veered to the left, landed on one of the foothills at the northernmost tip of the Mountains That Gaze Upon Phenadoor. It gave an unrestricted view over the entire forest.
Clarissa pointed to the northeast. “I see the rupture. It looks different. Unstable—like a quivering tube extending into the heavens.” She pulled her goggles down over her eyes, then pushed them back up again. “We may have a problem. The light of dawn is becoming too bright for me. I shall have to wear my protection soon, and I can’t see the rupture through the glass.”
“Hold out for as long as you can,” I said, “but not so long that you damage your eyes.” I raised my arm to show the tattoo on my wrist. “And give me frequent reports.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment before turning to Gallokomas. They looked at each other and communicated silently. The Zull then said to me, “Miss Stark Thing will also speak to me through her tattoo, and I shall use my mind to pass her directions on to the flock. We—” He stopped as a jagged line of energy suddenly sizzled over the forest. “We will avoid that!”
“Or, to be more accurate,” Clarissa said, “the mouth of the rupture. The storm might spread across the whole valley, but the mouth itself appears to be a fairly small phenomenon that moves about within the disturbance.”
I watched the atmosphere flicker and flash for a few moments, then said, “Let’s join our fellows.”
Clarissa stepped over to me. “Be careful, Aiden.” She leaned forward and kissed my lips.
Gallokomas made a sound of surprise. “Miss Stark Thing! What was that you did?”
“Something a possessor of mandibles shouldn’t try,” she responded.
“Humph!” Colonel Spearjab added.
The Zull, Mi’aata, and I floated into the air and raced seaward, shooting over the wide beach and across the water until the land had receded so far behind us that only the jagged peaks of the mountains were visible. Ahead, the flock, spread thinly, was wheeling back and forth over a wide expanse of ocean, every Zull’s eyes looking down. We joined the patrol.
Hours passed before anything happened. The sky continued to darken on one side and brighten on the other. The calm surface of the water sparkled purple, red, and orange.
I considered the threat that faced us—a mad creature capable of controlling minds and armed with war machines, hungry for power and intent on invading the Earth. The odds were not in our favour. How could the peaceable Zull possibly oppose Yissil Froon?
Gallokomas suddenly pointed to one side and cried out, “Over there, Thing! A Zull has noticed something moving beneath the water!” He looked behind us. “And there!”
A large squarish object, submerged and only vaguely visible, passed below me. I saw more of them to the right and the left, obscured shapes sliding rapidly over the seabed, speeding toward the shore.
A quarter of a mile to our rear, a sudden explosion sent water bulging upward. Oval lights shimmered under the slowly rolling swells—flashes, indistinct activity, a second detonation.
“What is happening?” Gallokomas called.
Colonel Spearjab swooped in close
to us. “Underconveyances! The Quintessence must be pursuing Yissil Froon’s army! Pursuing, I say!”
A loud sequence of discharges shattered the surface, sending water so high that it splashed over us.
“Back!” I yelled. “To the shoreline! We’ll strike as the machines leave the water!”
Zull engulfed me as, like a single entity, the cloud folded in upon itself, condensed, and streamed eastward. After a moment of confusion, I regained my bearings and rescued the colonel, who was spinning wildly in mid-air, his tentacles flailing. We joined the race, slapping at our gears’ control units until we’d caught up with Gallokomas, hurtling along near the front of the throng. I reached his side and called, “Order the flock to keep moving back and forth along the beach. Let’s not make easy targets of ourselves!”
Lightning flickered on the horizon ahead of us. I pressed the tattoo on my wrist. “Clarissa Stark. We’re on our way back with the invasion force hot on our heels. I can see the storm.”
“It’s expanding rapidly, Aiden—spreading over the central expanse of the forest, about a mile inland. The rupture is at its western edge, moving northward.”
In short order, we came to the shore, spread out over the wide ribbon of sand, and began to fly in a loop from one end of the beach to the other, with our faces to the sea. Behind us, the atmosphere was rent by electrical discharges while, approaching from the west, explosions continued to tear through the water, though they rapidly decreased in number and soon ceased altogether. The Quintessence’s underconveyances had either retreated or been totally destroyed.
There followed a few minutes of tense silence, then, about a quarter of a mile from my position, something rose from the water. Before I could properly get the measure of it, a blinding bolt of energy arced out of it, lashed across the beach, and impacted against the edge of the forest. Wood and foliage erupted into the air with a deafening crack.
More things humped up onto the sand. They were metal machines, each a boxy rhomboid mounted on two very large rimless wheels—comprised of eight spokes ending in curved and studded “feet”—while a third, smaller wheel was affixed to the end of a shaft extending from the back. Twin funnels thrust upward from the rear of the vehicles. These were the first part of the contraptions to break the surface, and as they did so, valves popped open at their ends and thick plumes of steam came screeching out at high pressure, assaulting my ears and casting a veil over the scene for the entire length of the beach. This almost instantaneous pall glowed weirdly, illuminated from within by glowing crystals positioned at the end of short shafts, each protruding from the front of the machines. It was from these gemstones that the bolts of energy were released to terrible effect—the seaward edge of the forest was decimated before the flock could fire a single retaliatory shot.