“The padras?” asked Jonah.
“Yes indeed. The boss-man, you could call him. He wants to see you. So you can ask him yourself. Fancy a little trip up the mountain?”
“Up Ararat?”
“All the way,” said Mikhail and pointed at the black clouds.
Jonah groaned. The thought of more trudging through the snow made his head ache. And judging by the twilight that was fast descending he’d slept the best part of the day.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked.
“Erm, no,” said Mikhail. “No choice at all. Follow me!” he said cheerily and started to walk across the flagstones towards a gap in the courtyard’s wall.
Jonah paused, wondering how he’d survive another long walk, especially at night. The wind was now finding a new level of chill around his ears.
“Come on then!” barked Mikhail, who stood with his hands on his hips.
Jonah trotted over and followed Mikhail through the courtyard door, rounded a corner, then stopped, astonished. The man was standing in front of an airship floating over a steep drop. The aircraft’s sausage-shaped balloon was stitched together with multi-coloured sheets of canvas, while underneath a giant bird’s nest of cane and wire banged against a steel gangplank. It was attached by ropes to stone gargoyles.
“The Kus!” said Mikhail cheerfully and Jonah laughed, thinking the whole ensemble could have belonged to Captain Weitz’s circus.
“Wait there,” instructed Mikhail, crossing a narrow gangplank and disappearing into the bird’s nest. Seconds later he emerged with a hat, mittens and knee-length suede coat. Jonah eagerly dressed himself and felt warmth return to his body.
“All aboard then, eh?” said Mikhail. They teetered across the gangplank and closed a flimsy door behind them.
Mikhail rang a bell, and from far above, Jonah thought he could hear a reply but it may have been his imagination. The Kus jerked and bobbled slightly then separated from the gangplank with a clank and began to rise. Tethered to a cable that disappeared into the cloud above, the airship slid slowly at first, then with increasing speed, up the mountain. From such a height Jonah could see the scale of the settlement. It was a town of fifty or so buildings, all joined by narrow paths and bridges. A stream tumbled into a small lake just above the town and the lower slopes flashed patches of green. Save for another balloon-craft, which descended into the misty valley, the town looked isolated from the rest of the world. It was a perfect place to hide, he thought.
The Kus was now rising fast and soon the buildings vanished in a cloud that seeped through the cane-work walls and rubbed against the windows like a cat. Jonah shivered. The temperature was falling as fast the ship was rising and the wind, at first gusty and unpredictable, became a steady squall.
“Hold on,” warned Mikhail, who had tied himself in a harness to the side of the ship. The wind buffeted the balloon, bumping it against the rock face so that Jonah was forced to hold both hands on the rust-coloured rail. They’d only just left the little town but it quickly felt a world away as the screeching gale began to swing the cabin, knocking Jonah off his feet.
“Ho, ho! Steady on,” said Mikhail and he lifted Jonah up. “Better get you into a harness too.” And he tied Jonah into some old leather straps, creased from years of use.
For thirty minutes they climbed the cable, swept by a tide that smashed the balloon against the cliff-face. Each sideways blast was followed by an updraft that rattled the floorboards.
Outside it was black now. The only light came from a weak dome on the cabin roof. Jonah was plunged back to the ocean, tossed from wave to wave with only a vague hope of rescue. It was only thanks to Tria’s tenacity that he’d survived the escape from the Nautilus. He wished she were with him.
“Land-ho,” said the man, shaking Jonah from his thoughts.
He noticed that the wind and mist had eased. The rock wall revealed itself in patches and he could see that above them loomed a dark shape which he first thought was a cloud but then saw was an outcrop directly in the path of the ship. Jonah glanced at Mikhail. He seemed relaxed. The balloon showed no sign of slowing.
The black ledge grew closer yet the Kus rose and Jonah’s heart began to pound. The balloon seemed on a deadly collision course. The outcrop cast a massive shadow as they disappeared into its lee and Jonah winced, expecting to hear the fabric rip. But instead the wind suddenly dropped as they slid into a massive hole, hidden in the folds of the rock. They were entering some kind of port.
The Kus slowed and pin-pricks of light appeared above them. Soon Jonah could see that the rock was a hollow triangle, like the bow of an ancient ship that was wedged so tightly into a crevice it had petrified and become part of the mountain.
They were crawling upwards now, and a platform supported by timber trusses emerged from the gloom, with a single figure, wrapped in furs, standing with hands outstretched ready to grab the basket as it floated to a stop.
Mikhail, his harness already unbuckled, slid the door open and leapt onto the deck. “Come on then!” he instructed.
Flakes of snow fell into the darkness as Jonah jumped out of the Kus. Mikhail pulled him from the edge and soon the three stood in a tight circle, stamping their feet to keep out the frost. They were on the lower deck of what must have once been a magnificent boat, more than twenty metres wide with a high ceiling and bow beams that vanished into the darkness. Icicles hung like candle wax off the beams and water fell from the ceiling, giving the whole space a misty ambiance. It felt like a cathedral.
“Follow me, and touch nothing,” barked the new man, who had a broad face and a nose shaped like a mushroom. Not a mutant nose, thought Jonah, just very large. He led them into the bowels of the ship and directed them up a narrow spiral stairway made of rusting steel. The way was lit by old-fashioned lamps that Jonah remembered from his holohistories of subway stations.
The first level held a surprise. As they climbed he could hear machines grinding and the roar of a waterfall echoing off the walls. Sure enough, as his feet hit the first floor, he saw a large cast iron box, clanking with gears and pulleys connected to a thick, spinning shaft that disappeared into the darkness of the cavern wall. A mist of cool water drifted across the stairwell. It was a turbine, he surmised, being driven by a waterfall somewhere inside the crevice.
They trudged upwards, their heavy boots clanking noisily on the metal stairs, and Jonah started to sweat, the air temperature becoming warmer with every step. As their heads emerged into the second level, a warm gust of wind blew the remaining ice from their hoods and they were forced to unbutton their coats. The source of the warmth was a vast array of vacuum tubes, like Jonah once saw in an old amplifier at school, only these ones were scattered over the entire second floor like a field of crops. Electric crops. Thousands and thousands of the glass tubes thrummed like a beehive and cast a golden glow against the timber ceiling.
“This here,” whispered Mikhail, “is an electrical grid that could produce enough power to light up a whole town. Or at least that’s what they tell me.” Jonah hadn’t seen any electrical wires or devices in the Ararat village and wondered just what the power was being used for. In the glow of the thousands of tiny lights he spied cables climbing the wooden walls and disappearing into the roof. The power, whatever it was for, was being directed upwards.
The grumpy leader barked at Jonah to keep up and he resumed the tiring climb, reaching the third floor, which was slightly narrower and housed a communal dining hall, with the same intertwined circles hanging from the walls as decoration. To the side, a rack of hooks and benches suggested a place to hang their heavy coats. Sure enough, Mikhail and the man removed theirs and swapped their boots for simple leather shoes. He saw no one, but the smell of food wafted across the dining hall.
No sooner had the shoes slipped over his toes than the man urged them on. They’d climbed a hundred steps already and Jonah was starting to feel the effects of the thin air again. Nausea threatened and his head developed a
dull ache. Each step felt heavy and he used the rail to start dragging himself up. The man was now far ahead and it was only with the help of Mikhail, who propped his shoulder under Jonah’s arm and half carried him up the remaining flight, that he finally made it to the fourth story where he nearly stopped breathing altogether.
“What on Earth ...” he gasped.
Lit by the subway lamps, the stairs ended at a short landing with a path that split into multiple routes, all of which disappeared into a mass of tropical bush. Jungle, in fact. The jungle formed such a looming canopy of mottled green that Jonah couldn’t see anything of the roof. He stood, confused by the incongruity of finding a jungle in a mountain of ice and wondered if he’d just experienced another Leap. But he had no time to ask as the men vanished into the undergrowth.
Palm fronds and spiked leaves brushed against him as he struggled to keep up, the soft light revealing delicate succulents and thin grasses with bright orange flowers. Trees with berries and nuts were nestled in the deepening gloom and he thought that he may have even seen a parrot perched on a branch just arms-length from the path.
The air was thick and wet, as if they were in a giant hothouse, and he could hear insects buzzing around. The thin mountain atmosphere had been replaced by rich, oxygenated air, which filled Jonah’s lungs. He could feel his energy returning and the dull ache in his head was replaced by a lighted-headed joy.
The path meandered playfully through the jungle and he was almost disappointed to come to the edge of the ship where the jungle ended at a petrified, wooden wall seeping with water. “Condensation,” he said to himself and sure enough the timber was cold to touch, as if it had become one with the frozen mountainside.
He was bursting to ask Mikhail just how the ship arrived on the mountain and what or who had constructed such an elaborate habitation. But each time he caught up to the others, the man with the mushroom nose urged them on.
“Quickly now,” he said and he led them across the clearing to the foot of yet more stairs, this time a series of long, straight flights with multiple landings that provided panoramic views over the vast fourth story. From this higher position Jonah cold see that the entire space was blanketed in rich, viridian jungle. Near the top of the last flight the heat and humidity became almost unbearable and the three of them were glowing with perspiration. They struggled up the last few steps to a reach a platform where the man was waiting beside a heavy wooden door. “You’ll need this,” he said firmly and handed them thick, grey cassocks, with a hood and a simple rope for a belt. Jonah laughed as they donned their monkish costumes. But the man glowered. “Speaking is forbidden in the Summit Garden.”
The stern-faced man waited for them to be fully dressed and then drew back a solid steel bolt and cracked open the door.
Cold air rushed over them. The fourth floor was breathtaking but this new level startled Jonah even more. They stepped onto a single path that again vanished into vegetation, but instead of tropical jungle it was a tangled mess of northern hemisphere oaks, pines, brambles and hydrangeas, blazing in autumnal reds and yellows. Dried leaves crunched underfoot and as they moved slowly forwards Jonah’s cassock caught on the barbs of a blackberry vine. The sudden drop in temperature turned the sweat on their faces to cold beads. It struck Jonah that they were now in the open air and must have climbed not just to the ship’s top deck but also through the clouds to reach the pure atmosphere.
Mikhail and Jonah walked in silence through the enchanting forest until they reached a broad, grassy oval, edged on three sides by trees and, on the far side, by an icy pool fed by the trickle of a half-frozen waterfall from Ararat’s rounded peak.
Jonah drew a breath of crisp air and stopped to marvel at the sight of the Milky Way spangling above them like a fairground. A crescent moon inched its way over the summit, flooding the pond in a bluish glow. The air tingled.
As Jonah’s eyes adjusted to the night light he saw that two hooded figures sat on stone chairs near the water’s edge. Their breath blew out like smoke.
Mushroom-nose told them to wait and walked down to the lake and bent low to talk to one of the figures.
“What is this place?” Jonah whispered to Mikhail.
“We call it the Summit Garden. It’s the top of the world,” he replied.
The exchange with the hooded figures was brief and the man returned with instructions: “The padras requests us to leave.”
Jonah felt gutted. “We’ve only just got here,” he complained.
“Not you,” the man said curtly. “You are to continue along the path. Speak only when spoken to. And speak the truth, Salvatore!”
Jonah was taken aback; first, that the man knew his name and second that he would even consider that Jonah could utter a lie in this magical place. The idea felt incongruous.
“Be strong, Jonah,” Mikhail whispered and gave him a brief but firm hug.
Jonah watched them depart and stood awkwardly for a moment. The cracking of the iced-up waterfall seemed to grow louder and he felt the hair on his neck prickle. Was it fear? No, but something flipped in his guts. The cool breeze bit against his sweaty neck.
Be strong. Why had Mikhail said that? Jonah shuddered as he stepped onto the cobbled path and walked gingerly towards the lake. He felt safe here, at home, but he also felt watched.
The sliver of moon was almost fully past the summit now and the two figures were bathed in lunar glow. He felt sure they’d noticed him but they sat motionless as he approached. He stood, not sure what to do.
“Come, sit with us, Jonah,” said one of the figures eventually, gesturing to an empty chair. His voice was hoarse and high-pitched. “I am Padras Simeon,” and he pulled back his hood to reveal a long face, etched with lines like tree bark, and a brown head with wisps of dark hair. His forehead was ingrained with ink of the asterisk tattoo and when he pointed to the chair, his fingers emerged boney. Jonah guessed the man was old, though just how old was hard to say. His skin looked weathered but his eyes sparkled.
“I hope you liked the journey through our ark,” he breathed. “We have almost every species of flora known to humans and then some more. Inside these mountains are the seeds of three million plants: grasses and trees and mosses and flowering perennials and evergreens and tropical ferns and even some marine corals and anemones. It’s a refuge, a keep-safe for a time when the Earth is ready once again to receive its creation.”
He stopped and looked lost in his thoughts for a moment, but then turned to Jonah.
“Do you know why you are here?”
Jonah shifted nervously and shook his head.
“Come now, you are among friends. Tell us, why do you think Commander Agassi sent you?”
Jonah glanced at the second figure, the hood still hiding its face.
“I know about Abaddon.”
“Yes, you do. So do we now, thanks to you. But that’s not the reason why you’re here.”
“Am I being punished?”
“Goodness me, no,” he laughed dryly and coughed.
“Is it because I’m in danger?”
“Ah, now that’s closer. You are indeed in grave danger. Your knowledge of Abaddon has made you a risk, but one that your grandfather was prepared to take so long as you played the game. But you didn’t, Jonah. Why not? Why did you flee to Juan Baptiste?”
They already know all about me, Jonah thought. Agassi has relayed his story ahead of him.
“My grandfather lied to me,” Jonah said. “He lied about Abaddon. He lied about Nassim and he lied about Metricia.”
“Lies upon lies,” the man sighed. “And the truth matters to you, does it Jonah?”
“Well, yes. Doesn’t it to everyone?”
The man harrumphed and scratched his wrinkled head. “Well it does, eventually. Some, like your grandfather, prefer to keep it secret as long as possible.”
They sat for a moment, listening to the cracking ice-fall echo off the mountain walls.
“So, I’ve been sent here
to hide,” Jonah concluded. “While the others fight I’ll heroically run away to a mountain and hide in some kind of ancient boat.”
“Ha! Is that what you really think? Have you considered that the reason you are in such danger is that you yourself are dangerous? The tiger must be caged not because of its captors. Your role in this war is still to come!”
Jonah looked at the wizened face. “It is? I don’t understand. I thought I was being sent away for safety. To get me out of the way.”
“Out of the way? The plants we nurture here and the seeds that sit in thousands of rows inside these mountains are not hiding. They’re growing. One day they will repopulate the Earth. You’ve been sent here because together we can defeat the evil that grows in the Council and shut down Abaddon and its kind forever.”
“But how?”
“Because of this,” and the man reached arthritically towards the second stranger, and uncovered the face of a handsome, blonde man, whose warm eyes glistened with tears.
Jonah was suddenly flushed with emotion and his stomach made a sickening leap. He could barely speak. What came out was a whisper.
“Dad?”
Petreus’ face cracked into an uncontrolled grin and he dragged the boy into a fierce embrace.
“Jonah, my boy!”
“Dad! Dad! Dad! You’re alive!”
It took an age before Jonah loosened his grip. And even then, he pinched his father to make sure it really was him.
“Yes, it’s me. It’s really me,” Petreus laughed. “And stop pinching. It hurts!”
“But how?” Jonah was incredulous. “How! You were killed in the Terror blast. I was there. We had a funeral.”
“You said it yourself, Jonah,” said Petreus, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “GK lied. He lied about Abaddon. He lied about Metricia. He lied about me.”
The enormity of GK’s deception was finally laid bare. It was hard to fathom. But so was this! “I don’t understand. How did you escape?”
Road to Abaddon Page 19