by Mark Lingane
“You know me, Commander, I’m good to me word. And I’ll be a part of any accident where there’s a profit. Me and the crew of the Defiant.”
“How appropriate a name for our—I mean your—voidship. You could’ve renamed it. It’s good to know that, in these turbulent times, some things remain the same. I hope you’ve been good and have my information.”
“Are you going to pay?”
“You have the bird. How about I get Parker to let your monkey go?”
Andana ummed and aahed. When the large tattooed man fell to his knees, he finally acquiesced. “Good men are hard to come by. Bad men, even harder.”
“Strange, that’s what Parker’s ex-wife told me once.”
Parker gave Nikola a wink and released the thug from his grip.
“Are you sweating, Parker? Don’t tell me you’re losing your touch,” Nikola said. “Andana, walk with us along the promenade.”
The men trekked off down the ancient wooden decking. Half a dozen voidships were docked, and supplies were being loaded and unloaded.
“Explain the situation, Andana,” Nikola said.
“Barricades have been set up in the upper suburb. They’re good. None of them freaks have been able to sneak in. The lower areas are pretty wild, but they’re calming down because the freaks are all dying out. Although there’s a constant trickle in from the east, keeping up the numbers. The clans are getting low on supplies.”
“How desperate are they?”
“They’s going the way of the eastern towns. This one’s in line to fall next.”
“How long?”
“Depends. They get some extra time if they sign the treaty. Otherwise, I reckon they’ll last six months.”
“You know it’s got to end.”
“We’ll see what happens.” Andana tipped his hat to them and sloped off to have a cigarette.
Parker and Nikola walked further along the promenade. Several street vendors tried to sell them food.
“I’m going to talk to the city officials,” Nikola said. “Privately. As a group, none of them will want to look weak in front of the others, but individuals might buckle if I can get them behind closed doors. With a knife to their throat,” he added.
“Are you sure it’s a language they understand?”
“Everyone understands a sharp edge,” Nikola said.
“But what about that woman? She can’t be in her right mind. How insane would you have to be to give up a daughter?”
“Is that Melanie up ahead?” Nikola walked off toward the figure sitting at the end of the promenade.
Parker called out after him, “I’ll leave you to it. Captain Peck’s offered me a viewing of their voidship, the Confederate. It’s got all the latest weaponry.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Nikola waved and made his way toward Melanie, weaving between the windbreaks and sunshades. She was deep in conversation with Albert. He hesitated before interrupting them.
Albert spotted him and waved him over. “Ve vere talking about family and friends.”
Nikola laughed. “Always a great topic. Have you decided what you’re going to do, Melanie?”
“Run away from home and join the circus,” Melanie mumbled.
“Some would say you’ve already done that. You need rest. Why don’t you stay here, recuperate, and make up your mind. You might be a perfect asset to the corporate world, something they won’t expect.”
“I’d give them something unexpected, all right.”
“You need to be true to yourself, Melanie,” Albert said. “If you don’t believe you’d fit in, there’s no point in putting yourself in that situation. But, you have to be honest.”
“To be honest,” Nikola said, “I think the worst is behind us. Sebastian will enjoy the trip with us. We’ll all enjoy some quality time before we tackle the Hunter.”
“You can’t take Sebastian there,” Melanie said. “It’s too dangerous. It’s a perfect example of why I should be around him.”
“He’ll be okay. We know what’ll happen. The Omegas have foretold it.”
“What do you mean ‘foretold’? Is it just me, or aren’t they great big flaming arcs in the sky? How can they foretell anything?”
The men shifted uneasily.
She looked at them suspiciously. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
The men glanced at each other.
“You’d better tell her, Albert.” Nikola glanced at Melanie. “But make it the introductory level.”
65
ALBERT CLEARED HIS throat. “The Omegas vere created during the Hadron experiment, one thousand years ago. In essence, they’re a rip in the time-continuum. They’re a glimpse into another time. But only a glimpse. Nothing can go between.”
Albert’s words washed over Melanie.
“Except for the message,” added Nikola.
“Ja. How many years ago?” Albert asked.
“Eight.”
“Eight years ago, ve received a message from the future.”
“The future? Are you mad?” Melanie was not one for science lectures. “When you said ‘another time’ I thought you were being melodramatic.”
“The burning trails you see in the sky, vat ve call the Omegas, are the actual path the particles traveled in the Hadron experiment.”
“But they’re in the air, not underground.”
“Ja. But in a year, Earth vill be in a different position in relation to the sun. The rip in time reflects that special difference. If the planet vere a year in the future, then all the Omegas vould be underground, in the tunnel carved out by the scientists. These tunnels vere built to find something called the ‘god particle’. Each time they built bigger tunnels, looking for smaller and smaller particles. They vanted to find the essence of creation. Vat they found was the opposite.”
Albert cupped his hands together and lowered his voice in dramatic fashion. “The god particle turned out to be time. But not as ve know it. For us, time is cause and effect, action after action. But for the universe, time is defined by the decay of energy. These particles control the decay of everything. Controlling these means you can slow or speed time. You can only go forward, of course. But, ve get distracted. The message. It vas about Sebastian. The message said he vas dead.”
“But you said it came from him.” Her face crunched up with the effort of abstract thought.
“Ja.”
“Do I have to believe in ghosts now?”
“He dies collapsing the third Omega. And by my calculations, he does this one year from now. Roughly.”
“Can that ‘roughly’ be plus or minus a hundred years?”
Albert shook his head. “Minutes. Hours possibly.”
“Sebastian will be dead in a year?” The shock hit her full in the face.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, wait. People are always talking about the future not being set. If something happens, or doesn’t happen, we can change the course of history.”
“You can’t mess vit causality. I don’t mean that as a threat, but as a reality. There’s only one timeline. If ve know something is going to happen, it vill happen. Death, taxes, these are unstoppable, preordained things. Time moves inexorably in one direction, and cause and effect follow. Everything decays.”
“Oh, my god.” Her legs turned to jelly and she sank down to the ground. Her hand leapt to cover her mouth. “I must find him.”
“You can’t tell him,” Nikola said. “Well, you can, but it won’t do anything except cause unmitigated depression.”
“Where will it be?”
“In another country. In a place called New York.”
“Well, that’s easy. I’ll make sure he never goes there.”
“You’re not listening,” Albert said. “He vill go there. He already has in the timeline.”
“No, he hasn’t.” Her voice was beginning to break.
“He has,” Albert insisted, “but in the future. The timeline is vat it is. It cannot be ch
anged. Fate, physics has spoken. There is no past. There is no future. Vat vill happen has happened. You can’t change the future any more than you can change the past. Ve are made up of the stuff of stars. Death, decay is vat happens. It is encoded into every single particle in the universe. In essence, it is written in the stars.”
“But how can he tell us he’s going to die when he’s already dead?”
“That we do not know,” Nikola said. “It’s beyond our current understanding, especially since the great library’s been destroyed.”
“What about the cyborgs, do they know?”
“Do you mean their library in the Hive that was blown up? If it was there, then that’s where it’ll stay,” Nikola said.
Melanie held her head in her hands. “I can’t take this now, after everything that’s happened. I’ll never believe it. It’s cemented in my mind where I need to be, and that’s by Sebastian’s side.” She turned and ran.
The two men watched her go. The warm wind blew in, buffered by the windbreak, and drifted around them. Nikola kicked a small rock off the edge of the promenade. It bounced off the old rail tracks, already beginning to rust through disuse.
“And how do you feel about it?” Albert asked him.
“Like the Omegas. Great flaming arcs tearing everything apart,” Nikola replied. “I notice you didn’t tell her about the other part of the message.”
“It’s hard to tell someone standing in front of you that they’re going to die. Especially if it’s in a veek.”
Behind the windbreak, having a quiet smoke, Andana had a thoughtful expression on his face.
Nikola and Albert walked back down the promenade, with Albert stopping occasionally to examine the renegade voidships.
66
MELANIE SLAMMED THE bedroom door and threw herself on the bed.
“Oh, Sebastian,” she said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Why are you hugging me?”
She burst into tears and held him close.
“Okay, this is getting a little weird. You know this isn’t Sebastian, only your pillow that you’re projecting me onto.”
“Well, you’re not here. And I can never tell you.” She sighed and put down the pillow. She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “No,” she whispered.
She rolled over and hugged the pillow again.
Parker came running through the camp. “Nikola, they’re putting together the treaty with the Hunter.”
“What!” Nikola looked up from the mound of paperwork he was working through.
“They’re putting the free-trade deal together. And they’re agreeing to all his terms. All of them.”
“Oh God, tell me they haven’t given in to his demands. They’re fools if they think they can rationalize with that madman.”
“They’re desperate. They haven’t reacted well to our threats—I mean negotiations.”
Nikola grabbed his sword. “We need to talk some sense into them.”
They stormed out of their quarters. Sebastian was standing outside, looking thoughtfully off into the distance.
“Sebastian, we’re going to knock some heads together at this treaty meeting. We might be some time. Can you keep an eye on Melanie while we’re away? She needs a friendly face at the moment.”
Sebastian nodded. “We can talk and stuff. She seems to be coming to terms with her loss.”
“Good boy.” Nikola put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder and squeezed. He gave the teenager a quizzical look. “Have you been secretly working out? You seem bigger than you used to be.”
“You’ve been looking pensive—that means thoughtful—for some time,” Melanie said. She waved her hand in front of his vacant stare.
“I have to go soon. I have a mission to complete.” The thoughts of the old witch swirled around his head.
“That sounds more exciting than lying around in a bed.”
“I’ve been enjoying our time together. You never know how these things will end up.”
“No one knows how life will end up. Let me know when you’re going.” She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m thinking it’ll be soon. Like today.”
“I’m in!”
“You stay here. I’ve got to go save the universe—on my own.” Sebastian stood up and looked bravely into the wall.
She laughed out loud. “There’s no way you’re going without me.”
“It’s something I need to do alone.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.” He frowned.
“We could go on like this all day unless you give in and say I’m right. I’ll use violence to get my point across if I have to.”
He sighed. “Oh, all right. But I’m warning you—I’ll have to leave you at some point. Where I need to go, you can’t follow. It’s not physically possible.”
“Listen, boy, I’ll break through the veil to the netherworlds to drag you back. There is no place I will not go, no person I will not punch, no furniture I will not break or shoot to get you.” She raised a warning finger at him. “Then I’ll beat you up for leaving me behind.”
Melanie returned, covered in grease and soot. “I’ve disabled the other vehicles,” she said. “It’ll take them days to get them fixed. We should’ve saved the world by then.”
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“To be honest … yes.” She sighed. “I’ve been lying in my bed feeling sorry for myself. It’s time to get on with life. I’ll be all right as long as you’re around to annoy.”
They got on their steambikes and ignited the engines. They lowered their goggles.
Melanie turned toward Sebastian and gave him a nod. “Just you and me now. This is how we started.” She smiled. “It’s how it should be.”
For days, they traveled at full speed, pushing the bikes to their limit. Day and night, they forged on into the east until their heads began to sag and their bodies became exhausted. When it became too dangerous, they rested for a few hours before continuing.
On the fourth day, the flat plain gave way to a large mountain range.
The sun went down behind them as the city loomed on the horizon. The remnants of old wooden houses, nothing more than rotting piles of wood, in small plots of land streamed past for miles. They crested a hill and before them lay the remaining glory of man’s conquest of the terrain.
“I’ve never seen a city this big before,” Sebastian said. His voice was hushed.
“Me neither.”
Huge monoliths towered above the surrounding hills, dwarfing the landscape. The setting sun reflected off the huge walls of glass that shaped the edifices that paid homage to man’s engineering endeavors.
Melanie elbowed him and pointed to the northeast. The sky was boiling. Dense, dark clouds tumbled around each other. Lightning crackled in the black maelstrom. As they watched, a large, even darker hole, opened up in the heart of the clouds. There was a boom so loud the ground shook. The hole twisted into a whirlpool and was sucked into the darkness.
“Is that the void?” Melanie said.
“I guess so.”
“And you want to go into that?”
“Not yet. Not ever, really. But I have to.”
Darkness crept over the hills toward them. The sun disappeared, leaving them in the twilight.
“Do we go into the city tonight,” Melanie said, “or wait for morning?”
In his peripheral vision, Sebastian caught something flashing past on the left. A scuttling noise, followed by the clattering of metal falling from a height, pulled him back to the other side.
“Do you think it’ll make a difference?” he said.
She shrugged. “Would you rather have your beauty sleep or not? Obviously, I don’t need it.”
“Beauty or sleep?”
She gave him a smile. “I have taught you well.”
67
THEY MADE THEIR way through the broken buildings that were covered in vegetation until th
ey emerged on a cracked and uneven road that followed the snake of the river. The bikes rumbled along smoothly, bouncing over the fractured surface.
“I think we should stay near the river,” Sebastian said. “That would limit their attack possibility to one side.”
“What if they come crawling up out of the water?” Melanie looked suspiciously at the brown and putrid river crawling past. She turned up her nose. “Although, you’d think the smell alone would keep them away.”
A large mosquito buzzed around Sebastian’s head. It landed on his arm and sank its proboscis into his flesh. He smacked it, smearing blood over his arm. “I’m not staying near the water,” he said. “Not if these things are around.”
“Next best option is height. Do you think any of these buildings are not about to fall down?”
Sebastian pointed to an old, brown four-story building. Melanie shrugged, and they made their way toward it. Most of the glass windows in the lower levels had been smashed and lay scattered at the base. The top floor remained intact.
“Should I be suspicious that only one floor is okay?” Melanie said.
“Let’s see.”
They dismounted and pushed their bikes behind a low wall.
They made their way up the short flight of stairs and into a large, dark foyer. Sebastian kicked something that rolled away. He looked down. Several human bones lay scattered on the floor. The twilight gloom was becoming impenetrable. They unclipped their lanterns from their backpacks and fired them up. The soft glow radiated out ahead, exposing a floor covered in bones.
Sebastian looked at Melanie. “Should we be worried?”
“They look old. Whatever happened here happened a long time ago.”
They moved further into the dark. To their right was a series of small chambers. They looked in, then up. The chambers reached high up into the building. Long metal cables hung down. Melanie reached out and grabbed one, shaking it. It was secured top and bottom.
“Could be handy if we need to escape quickly,” she said.