Kahran looked up. He shook his head. “Try again. Try from across the circumferential sea.”
Ehrin opened his mouth, but no words came. At last he echoed fatuously, “From across the circumferential sea?”
Every child in Agstarn was taught that the world was a platform, which floated in the grey void. At the very edge of the platform was the circumferential sea, beyond which was a continuation of the grey, which went on forever without end. As a boy, Ehrin had tried to envisage eternity, grey without end, going on forever and ever, but the concept had dizzied and frightened him.
Now Kahran was telling him that another platform existed beyond the sea, and that this strange creature hailed from there...
“But how do you know? I thought you said you went to Sorny—”
Kahran smiled at him. “Your father and I paused at Sorny, then ventured beyond. Hard though it is to imagine, we went with the blessing of the Church. Velkor Cannak and a colonel in the Church militia accompanied us.”
Ehrin held his head in his hands and stared at his old friend. He had known Kahran for so long, and yet had hardly known him at all. “Beyond Sorny,” he mouthed in wonder. “Tell me...”
Kahran smiled. “We flew over the sea, to another world—”
“Another platform?”
“Ehrin, we don’t live on platforms. Imagine...” He stared into space, attempting to summon a suitable analogy. “Imagine a series of beads on a bracelet. Each bead is what we think of as a platform, except it isn’t a flat plain but a cylindrical bead. There are many of these beads side by side, and between each one is a sea.”
Ehrin felt his pulse pounding in his forehead. He was aware of his facial fur standing on end. “A cylindrical bead... But that must mean—let me think about this... But that means if you travel far enough in one direction, then you’ll eventually arrive back where you started!” He laughed aloud at the astounding concept. His mind was in a spin. “And how many of these other worlds exist out there, on this great bead in the grey?”
Kahran shook his head. “That I don’t know. We only ever travelled to the next one, to Zor as the natives called it. For all I know there might even be a dozen or more. The Zorl we met spoke of at least two others they were aware of...”
Ehrin stared at his friend. “And you told no one about this?”
Kahran’s smile was sad. “How could I, with the Church threatening me with death if I so much as breathed a word?”
Ehrin closed his eyes, his head filled with bizarre visions. To think of it, that his own father had actually stepped onto the soil of another world...
“Why did the Church want to visit this other world? What did you see, Kahran?”
The old man shrugged. “The Church was led by a different Prelate back then. He was as much a bastard as Hykell, in fact a bigger bastard, but he at least had curiosity. He wanted to know if what the Church taught was the literal truth. Hence the voyage. As to what we found beyond the sea.” He looked up, into Ehrin’s eyes, and his expression was bleak. “We found an advanced civilisation of beings...” He gestured to the unconscious alien on the couch. “The Zorl. But their world was devastated. They had fought a war between themselves with weapons so powerful and terrible that we cannot imagine their like, weapons that laid waste to entire cities, killing millions in one strike, and which left a lingering illness in the air which eventually accounted for the survivors.” He shook his head. “The sights we saw, your father and I, the devastation, the piled remains of beings long dead in the ruined cities that lined the coast... There were survivors, pitiful souls living like savages among the debris. We communicated with them as best we could, but of course they didn’t speak our language. We found...” he paused, then went on, “we found strange flying machines, and what we took to be the weapons of annihilation, tall columns that we guessed were launched like firework rockets. My lasting image is of the people who survived, who lived among the objects of their world’s downfall. They were as pitiful as animals, Ehrin.”
Ehrin recalled what his father had written in the letter to his mother, fifteen years ago. I have neither the space nor the time to describe here the terrible things K and I have seen today...
“My father wrote to my mother, hinting at the things you saw...”
Kahran said, “Imagine, Ehrin. We were no young pups, wet behind the ears. We were learned men of the world. For all our experience, however, we knew nothing. Imagine discovering the truth about the universe, that we were not alone, and then discovering a race that had all but destroyed itself?”
Ehrin shook his head. “I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to witness at first hand.” He looked up. “And then you returned, and the Church swore you to secrecy?”
Kahran nodded. “We protested, of course. We argued that the truth had to be told—if for nothing else, then as a warning to ourselves what the folly of power might wreak upon civilisation. But the Church wanted none of that; it had power, and supposed knowledge, and anything that subverted that knowledge with contrary facts of course threatened to weaken that power.” He looked down at his right hand, from which the fingernails had been ripped, and Ehrin was shocked to see tears in his old friend’s eyes.
He looked away, and his gaze rested on the creature—the Zorl—on the control couch. He took in the array of consoles that filled the craft, the sleek workmanship, the baffling instruments. “And now this,” he murmured. “A Zorl from across the circumferential sea has come to our backward world.”
“A return visit, as it were,” Kahran said.
“But if its world was devastated as you said...”
“Perhaps they have rebuilt, or areas of it survived annihilation.”
“Are you sure that this creature is a Zorl? Could it not be from a world beyond Zor even?”
Ehrin stopped and stared, for the creature, perhaps disturbed by their words, was stirring, attempting to lift itself into a sitting position upon the couch. It blinked huge black eyes at Ehrin and said, “We are Zorl,” in a thick, almost incomprehensible dialect.
Ehrin found himself backing away, pushing himself even further against the wall, the hackles on the back of his neck bristling with fear.
Kahran was staring at the creature. “You... you speak our language?”
The being looked from Ehrin to Kahran. Its crumpled, wrinkled features were expressionless. It possessed eyes, nose, a mouth and ears, as did Ehrin’s people—but its nose was a squashed affair, mere nostrils on the surface of its face, while its ears were small and flattened against the side of its head. Ehrin had never seen anything as ugly in his life, and that included the wild mountain zeer.
It spoke again, a gravelly rumble. “We have been watching you from afar. Some of us studied your language.”
Ehrin wanted to ask why, and what the Zorl wanted here, but something stopped him. He stared at the pilot, down its silvered length to the buckled mess of its right leg.
The Zorl followed his gaze, its liquid black eyes focusing on the limb. He gestured to Kahran. “There. On the wall. Pass me the...” He said a word Ehrin didn’t understand, but he was pointing at a square of material as black as the rest of the ship’s fittings.
Kahran detached it from the wall and passed it to the Zorl.
Ehrin watched as the alien, grunting in pain, managed to straighten the broken limb. Then he took the dark material and wrapped it around his injured leg; it appeared to tighten, compress, and the Zorl lay back with a sigh of relief.
He looked from Ehrin to Kahran, then reached out and touched something on a console to his right.
Beyond the corridor, the hatch eased shut with a hiss.
Ehrin’s heart skipped a beat.
“A precaution only,” said the Zorl.
Ehrin found himself nodding, as if to placate the alien. If its physical appearance were not alarming enough, Ehrin found the advanced technology it had at its disposal even more disturbing.
The Zorl moved its huge eyes bet
ween Ehrin and Kahran, and said at last, “Are you in the employ of the Church?”
Ehrin could only shake his head. “Why... why do you ask?”
The Zorl stared at him. It moved its lips in an odd grimace. “I need to know my enemies,” he said.
Ehrin exchanged a glance with Kahran. To the alien he said, “You... your enemy is the Church?”
The Zorl did not reply, but instead pulled something from the breast pouch of his silver suit. The device was small, square and flat, like a slate. From its glossy black surface depended two thin wires.
If it were a weapon, Ehrin had never seen its like before.
The Zorl inserted the end of the wires into an inlet in the arm of his suit, then held out the black plate to Ehrin. “You. Touch this when you reply to me. Do you understand?”
Ehrin nodded, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Now,” said the Zorl, “are you in the employ of the Church?”
Hesitantly, Ehrin reached out and rested his fingertips on the plate. It pulsed with a slight heat. He said, “Technically, we have been hired by the Church to explore the western plains. But...” Here he looked at Kahran, as if for support. “But we are opposed to the Church and its regime in Agstarn.”
As he spoke the plate grew warmer.
The Zorl pulled another of its odd lip-grimaces, and said, “You speak the truth, friend.”
Ehrin stared at the plate. A device that could divine truth from lies...?
The alien said, “How far are we from your capital city?”
“Perhaps six hundred miles—a long day’s flight from here.” He stopped, realising the stupidity of his words. “But your ship could do it in a fraction of the time.”
“The ship, my friend, is incapacitated. Even such a short journey is beyond it.”
Kahran leaned forward. “You wish to go to Agstarn? For what purpose?”
Ehrin stared at the alien, wondering at the reaction of the Church to the arrival of the Zorl in the capital. He felt a thrilling pressure of excitement in his chest.
The alien was silent for a time, then replied with a question of his own, “Can you help me reach the capital city?”
Ehrin gasped and looked at Kahran, who said, “That depends on your mission there, my friend.”
“My mission,” the Zorl said, “is to locate a weapon your Church took from my world, a weapon of terrible capacity. Then I will destroy it.”
“A weapon?” Ehrin echoed.
The Zorl continued, “My world fought a terrible war in the recent past. We who survived, we who rebuilt our world, renounced violence... But your Church took something from us, and if they were ever in a position to use it,” the alien closed its fist in a gesture that had meaning only to itself, “then the Zorl would mourn anew.”
A silence followed his words. Ehrin looked across at Kahran, who was staring into space, his mouth open as if in shock.
“Kahran?”
As if in a daze, his friend mouthed, “The deathship?”
The alien stared at him. “You know!”
Ehrin shook his head. “What? How do you know? A deathship?”
“Fifteen years ago, my friend,” Kahran said, addressing the alien, “I came to your land, saw the destruction. We were led by agents of the Church. We found the deathships, only one of which was functioning.” Kahran looked at Ehrin. “The Church coerced your father into working on the ship, fathoming its mechanics. While I was returned to Agstarn, your father remained on Zor until the ship was airworthy once more. Then he flew it to Agstarn.”
“My father...?”
“He had no say in the matter.” Kahran addressed the alien, “The Church, as you might know, is a force of evil on our world.”
The Zorl made its lip-grimace again. “The fact that it possesses the deathship fills me with dread,” he said. “I must reach Agstarn and destroy it.”
Kahran leaned forward. “I can help you, my friend. The Church has a hangar in the mountains, where they keep the deathship.”
The Zorl reached out with the truth plate, offering it to Kahran. “You truly know where the deathship is located.”
Kahran reached out and touched the plate. “I know where it was fifteen years ago. I see no reason why the Church would have moved it.”
The alien lay back on the couch, gripping the padding with its hairless black fingers. “Then all that remains is for me to reach Agstarn and find the hangar...”
Ehrin looked at Kahran. He said, “We could take him back in the freighter, conceal him in the hold, and then hide him in the foundry until it’s time to find the deathship hangar.”
Kahran nodded. “Very well. But what about this craft?” he asked the Zorl.
“Leave it here. It has served its purpose.”
Ehrin stared at the alien. “But how... how will you get back to Zor? I mean, once you’ve destroyed the deathship, how will you...?”
The alien was staring at him with an odd intensity. “My return was never calculated in the scheme to destroy the deathship,” he said simply.
Ehrin closed his mouth and nodded, his mind racing. “We could learn so much from this craft,” he said in a small voice. “Why, it’s years, decades ahead of anything we might create...” He puffed his chest. “I run a dirigible factory, designing many of the ships myself.”
“This is an interworld ship,” the Zorl said. “It can fly into space, through the vacuum, to the worlds on other levels.”
“Other levels?” Ehrin repeated.
The alien lip-grimaced again. “Later, I have much to tell you about the universe beyond your present understanding,” he said. “Meanwhile, if you would help me reach Agstarn, then the ship is yours.”
“Mine?” Ehrin could only gasp. He turned to Kahran. “I have a suggestion. Hear me out. We take both the Zorl and the ship back to Agstarn...”
Kahran stared at him. “The ship too?”
“It will be easier to hide the alien in the ship, and the ship in the hold of the freighter, than to conceal the alien in the hold without him being discovered.” He turned to the Zorl. “You can lock the hatch, and somehow cover the viewscreens so that it’s impossible to see inside?”
The Zorl reached out, and the viewscreen beyond his head turned as black as the surrounding fittings.
Kahran said, “There is the little difficulty of getting the craft aboard the freighter, Ehrin. And how do you propose to keep the geologists from telling Cannak about the craft?”
“I’ll talk to Kyrik. If he wants to hire the Telsa ships at much reduced rates in future, I’m sure he’ll agree to keep quiet.” He turned to the alien. “You said the ship is incapacitated... Would it move just a little, a matter of yards? We have a transporter nearby, with a cargo hold large enough to take the ship.”
“The secondary drives are working—enough to allow the ship to hover. It’s a component in the primary drive that suffered damage.”
“In that case, if I position the freighter closer to the ship, can you manoeuvre it into the hold?”
The alien reached out, touching a series of glowing panels on a console above his head. Disconcertingly, the craft lifted quickly, bobbing in place perhaps a yard from the ground. He hit another panel and the hatch opened with a hiss.
“Before you go,” the alien said, gesturing to his chest. “My name is Havor.”
“I am Ehrin.”
“Kahran,” said the old man.
The alien grimaced again and inclined his head. Ehrin nodded to the alien, then hurried from the cabin. He jumped to the ground, assisting Kahran, and arm in arm they leaned into the wind and trudged back to the freighter.
Minutes later they stood side-by-side at the controls as Ehrin lifted the dirigible into the air and eased it fifty yards across the plain so that it sat before the hovering Zorl ship.
Kahran touched his shoulder. “Ehrin... what we are doing, if the Church found out, you do realise what they would do to us?”
Ehrin stared at his friend, and n
odded. “I’m prepared to take that risk, Kahran. And you?”
“What do you think?” Kahran smiled. “You remind me so much of your father, Ehrin.”
They left the gondola and stood side-by-side in the wind-driven snow as the Zorl ship eased itself slowly into the hold. They followed it in; the alien settled the ship in the far corner of the chamber, where it occupied a quarter of the floor-space.
They boarded the interworld ship again and crouched before the alien. “Is there anything you need? Food, water? You’ll be shut up in here for a day or so, until we get back to the foundry.”
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