by YS Pascal
“We only limit what is limited,” Heron explained once we’d taken in the scene. “Natural resources are finite, imagination is infinite. Discussions, debate, communion. All cost us nothing but time.” He picked up one of the tablets from a shelf and turned the screen towards us. “Information to spur creativity and thought. Boring? We’d need twice the hundred and twenty years we live to absorb all the knowledge and lore at our disposal.”
I could see Spud brighten. “May I possibly obtain access to these data?” he asked, striving to keep his tone even.
“Of course,” Heron responded, pulling another tablet off a shelf and handing it to my partner, who eagerly began manipulating the inputs on the display. “Knowledge has even more value when it is shared and seeds synergy. We encourage and value open information exchange and review.”
I snorted. “Some fundamentalist religions would disagree with you.”
A frown creased Heron’s brow. “We came to this country to find freedom from religion. Except as a historical oddity, of course. Dogma is the antithesis of discovery.”
“Can’t argue with that,” John chimed in. “Though I prefer to physically visit new worlds rather than virtually think them up.”
Heron laughed. “I envy your certainty that that is what you are doing, Visitor. I daresay you’ll find plenty of the similarly beguiled in Nea Romi when you return.”
Anger flashed in John’s eyes. “What the—“
“Yes,” interjected Spud, laying a restraining arm on my brother. “Heron is correct. When does the next airship depart for the Atlantic Coast?”
“Tomorrow morning’s flight is to Nea Athina. From there, the train takes only three hours to get to Nea Romi. If you’d like, I can arrange beds for you tonight next to this library. You can continue your studies after you sup.”
I frowned. I was about to ask, “Shouldn’t we try heading west, towards our homes in L.A.?”
After signaling us to be quiet, Spud flashed an atypically warm smile at his host. “Yes, seats to Nea Athina would be excellent. We would like that very much indeed.”
* * *
I had to admit that even I couldn’t wait to see what Spud had discovered—and what he had in mind. He refused to talk about his research until all the supper dishes were processed, and the three of us were walking back towards the library.
“I shall be continuing my research during the night,” Spud informed us. “But there is light.”
“Mind shining some of that light over our way?” John said, looking less than pleased.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence,” Spud returned. “I suggest you take advantage of the sleeping arrangements Heron has made, for we shall resume our journey in the morning.”
“Journey? Journey to where?” I asked.
But Spud was already far ahead of us. Without looking back, he entered the library and disappeared.
* * *
Our sleeping quarters were in a corner of another auditorium. Only pony walls made of bark separated us from the snoring men in the next cubicle. I’d visited Japan on a publicity tour for Bulwark last winter and marveled at the tiny human drawers that some travelers used to catch a nap at the airport. With three mats on the floor, the cubicle in which we sat felt just as claustrophobic.
John was stretched out on the mat against the wall, his head resting on a feather pillow. I laid down next to him, my arms folded across my chest, my eyes glued to the thatched ceiling above us, unsure of how to begin.
“I couldn’t do it any more.”
I rolled over on my side to face him. “What?”
“Be a hero.” He sighed. “Your hero.”
“Wow.” I swallowed an uninvited giggle. “Never asked you to.” I rolled back onto my back, and stumbled on the words. “Just wanted my brother.”
I heard his smile. “You have four others, you know.” A hint of a chuckle. “George is enough brother for all of us.”
“But he’s not you.” My voice cracked. “It’s been almost three years. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. Especially you.” Another sigh. “Peas in a pod.”
“Like hell.” But a stealth grin did pull at my lips.
We said nothing for a few minutes. John had a point. He’d carried our whole family, all nine of us, for years after Grandpa Alexander passed. He deserved a break now that Connie and George could fill his shoes. A chance to do something for himself.
But, this? A futile quest in collusion with the most hated terrorist in the Zygan Federation. Why had he really chosen this path? Was he working undercover like Wart? Misguided, as I’d thought Nephil Stratum had been? Or obsessed with scoring a ticket to paradise like his loathsome mentor?
I turned on my side and asked the question.
“I’m on secret assignment for Zygint,” he whispered.
“Ha.” I waited. Silence. A long silence.
Finally. “What do you want me to say?”
“That you’re on secret assignment for Zygint.”
“Works for me,” he said, with a wink. “It’s good to know the right answers, isn’t it?”
I hesitated for a moment. “In the Plegma—“
John sat up. “You went to the Plegma?”
“Uh-huh. Inside, there was this creepy guy, Mel, who tried to seduce us into staying—no, not that way.” I laughed when I saw his alarmed expression.
He laid back down, frowning. “He showed me like a 3-D holo, solid, of us, our family, all around the table. You were there, healthy, and—“ my voice cracked—“so was Grandpa Alexander.”
Both of John’s eyebrows rose.
“He looked so robust. Like I remember him. How old was he?” I asked quietly. “In the end?”
John shrugged, “Grandpa? Thousands of years, I’d say. Never really knew. None of us ever thought he’d transition so soon.”
“And you’re trying to find him? In Level 3?”
John met my eyes. “I expect to when I get there. That is where the Helianthi live.”
Furrowed brow. That word again. Helianthi. Unfamiliar from my Zygint uploads, my Zygan cosmology. “Who—what are the Helianthi?”
“Benedict never told you?” Genuine surprise.
Come on, John. “Benedict and I were never exactly on the same side.”
I saw John hesitate. “Maybe you’d better ask Gary. I don’t want to be telling tales out of school—Mingferplatoi Academy, that is.”
My turn to be surprised. John didn’t know that Gary, our former Head of Earth Core, another Benedict ally, had died trying to make a dimensional crossing. I echoed, “Benedict never told you?”
John shook his head.
I looked away. “Gary didn’t survive his last attempt to transition to Brane 5 or wherever we just were.”
John’s shock was palpable. He turned his head, brushing an errant lock of hair away from his eyes. I pretended not to see any lacrimal liquids.
“Maybe he finally made it to Level 3,” I ventured. “That was the goal, wasn’t it?”
No answer.
I waited a few minutes, until John cleared his throat. “So here’s my other question. Who was the red-haired woman at our table?”
Confusion on John’s face.
“In Mel’s mirage. Sitting next to Grandpa Alexander, there was a red-haired woman.”
“Andi?” A beat. “Our little sister.”
I rolled my eyes. “In her forties? Hardly. No, she was somebody else, somebody familiar, though I don’t remember meeting her before.”
John extended his hands in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture.
“Maybe she was Stacy?” When Wart and I had gone to the RAM on Zyga to steal back Anesidora’s neurocache for Benedict, my time loop avatar had shouted that I should ‘find out about Stacy’ just before she’d been vaporized by the Chidurian Sentinels guarding the chamber. But I hadn’t been able to discover who she was.
“Don’t know any Stacys,” John muttered. �
�With red hair or any other color.”
“You don’t think maybe…?” I led. No response.
The thought had flashed into my mind. I suppose I should’ve considered it sooner, but my memories before age six were misty after more than a decade. But John had been 14. “Our parents? Is that what this is all about?”
I could see the blood drain from John’s face. He moved to speak and then fell silent. After an eternity, he turned to me, his expression sober. “Shiloh, I have something to tell you.”
“Capital!” Spud appeared standing over us, aiming his tablet down towards our mats. “The library evidence proves my theory correct. We shall depart in the morning for Nea Athina.”
Chapter 13
Led by Zeppelin
Spud’s arrival silenced John for the rest of the night. Spud insisted we attempt to sleep, as, lacking functioning Ergals--or jet planes, we would be traveling for two days by airship. As in blimp.
My nudges and whispers for John to finish his remarks were ignored, though they managed to annoy Spud and earned me a number of glares from the locus of his mat. Looked like it would be a while before John and I could pick up our conversation.
Spud, somehow, was up before dawn and ready to go. Heron was another early bird, arriving at our inn with sandwiches made of pumpkin bread, vegetable slices, and cheese. One each.
I gave half of mine to John and followed the men down the road towards the launch field. I was surprised to see how many of the Nea Alexandrians were up and about on the streets.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes man healthy and wise,” Heron advised.
“You forgot ‘wealthy’,” John grumbled.
Heron’s expression resembled that of a man who has stepped into something fecal on the street. “Wealth is not a virtue,” was all he managed to say.
Spud, ever polite, thanked Heron for his hospitality and assistance--with our accompanying nods.
“I had to ask,” I said to Heron, “How did you find us in the first place?”
“That is my contribution to the Koinotis,” Heron explained—a little. “I serve as a scanner, patrolling the hills and glades and welcoming our visitors.” His tone was guarded, as he added, “Though we are centuries past the Years of Transition to peace, there are still Xenoi who might represent a danger to our way of life.”
“Sounds ominous,” I said, trying to appear empathetic. “Barbarians at the gates. You’d fight back, right?”
Heron frowned, “We are not barbarians.” He took a visible deep breath. “We would sedate them and deport them, of course. The Barbarians are free to build the societies they desire in Oceania, oceans away from our havens and ports.”
John snorted, “That’ll last long. Watch your back, folks. They’ll return someday. Aggression always aggresses.”
“Aggression, my dear guests,” Heron returned, “is not only not a virtue, but a crime.”
The sun’s rays were teasing the horizon as we arrived at the field where the massive silver ship was moored. At least several hundred feet long with a semi-rigid frame. The gondola was the size of a large van and could seat a dozen. “Helium, I hope,” I said to Heron, remembering the Hindenburg’s fiery crash in the 1930’s.
He nodded. “We used to use hydrogen but we lost the Osiris with a lightning strike outside Nea Romi thirty years ago.”
“Zeus was in one of his snits again,” joked a tall woman wearing earmuffs around her neck as she passed us, on her way to the ship.
“Hypatia will be your pilot,” Heron explained, chuckling. “The Nea Romaians weren’t quite so sanguine about the tragedy, seeing as they get so many tourists from both Greater Romi and the Philaic states. So, helium it is.”
“Indeed,” replied Spud, sounding as if he understood all Heron’s references. John and I just did synchronized eye rolls.
We settled into cushioned seats in the back of the blimp’s gondola where we could chat. Hypatia distributed earmuffs for us all, promising to turn off the blimp’s whining electric motor after we had reached sailing altitude. At least we’d have a chance to pick Spud’s brain about what he’d discovered or deduced.
I noted that most of the other passengers had brought along their clay tablets, I guess to read, on the two-day voyage. They also carried knapsacks for their togas, and-- “Are they providing food?” I asked Spud.
“Heron was kind enough to donate nutrition for the trip,” he responded, pointing to a small cloth bag which was filled with what looked like energy bars. “Our pilot has water.”
“Awesome,” said John, his tone implying the opposite.
If I wasn’t a Zoom Cruiser pilot I might’ve found the blimp’s takeoff off-putting. We rose at a steep angle of over 45 degrees. Glad to have the earmuffs—the engine strained to get the blimp up to 5000 feet. Hope we wouldn’t need that deafening engine power to handle bad weather along the way.
I must have said that aloud, as one of the other passengers turned to me and said, “Don’t worry. We land if there’s a bad storm and wait it out.”
I smiled and nodded thanks. This trip could take a while… Maybe we should’ve opted for a covered wagon.
We were gliding over Texas, or whatever the USA residents were calling it now, before Spud was willing to fill us in.
“I searched the historical records for three millennia,” he explained. “I was astonished to discover that this rustic library had access to data from much of the planet.”
“And?” I didn’t much care to hear about his research methods.
“It is relevant, Rush,” Spud chided. My partner knew me too well. “Because I observed that the changes we have witnessed did not affect the entire world. For example, the Orient, Japan, China, still exist, though as skirmishing sovereign empires.”
Spud eyed me and my brother. We both nodded.
“Where I did observe earthshaking changes was in the Americas—which do not exist as such—Europe, and the Mid-East.” He paused for effect. “After a particular branching off point.”
“Really?” John frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That up until a certain point, this Earth’s history was our history. After that, the timeline changed.” He cleared his throat. “It took me much of the night to find the intersection as I had to pore over written records from the ‘Coal Centuries’ and the ‘Oil Centuries’, the Moon settlements, the Crusades, and—“
“Come on, Escott, what’d you learn?” John interrupted. And I was going to ask about the Moon settlements.
“That the new ‘Europeans’ have unlocked the riddle of cold fusion. But this continent,” he pointed at the flatlands below us, “still fears the technology.”
“No, dammit, about the timeline.”
Spud bestowed upon my brother an irritated glare. “The timeline shifted within our first millennium. Specifically, in 33 AD.”
I felt a spasm grip my stomach. Had Spud somehow seen that date in the travel cache of my Ergal? I turned my gaze out the window, hoping that Spud wouldn’t notice. But he did.
“Where did you get the Somalderis, Shiloh?”
I stiffened, not daring to answer. He didn’t miss that either.
“Come on, Escott. What’s the Fleece got to do with history?” John interceded.
I had never heard Spud’s voice so arctic. “I have deduced that a young prophet,” he said, “a self-proclaimed religious leader in the province of Judea, was given the Fleece to wear as an undergarment during his tortuous execution. Three days later after his death, he was to return and appear as alive before his followers, inspiring them to carry on his mission.
Spud took a dramatic breath. “But without the Somalderis, Yeshua Bar Maryam could not transport to heaven or resurrect himself to proclaim a miracle. He passed away, as have so many other visionaries, a footnote in religious history.”
Spud’s tone was fierce. “Where did you get the Somalderis?”
“I-I just borrowed it.” I still couldn’t face Spud. “I planned
to return it as soon as we’d rescued John. But it took a lot longer for us to get back than I’d figured.”
Spud’s eyes narrowed. “You stole the Fleece from Yeshua?!”
“You’d understand if you had a brother.” I reached out and took John’s hand.
A flicker of agony flashed across Spud’s features, then his expression turned cold as ice. “You may have a brother, but it is likely that I no longer do. And your foolish actions have likely—I say that when we arrive in Nea Athina, we should take a jaunt to what was Maryland and see if your own brothers and sisters have survived.”
My surprise at the notion that Spud had a sibling was trumped by the sudden shock of realizing that my actions to save John might have risked the lives of the rest of my family. Was that possible? If so, what in the name of heaven had I done? The tears I’d fought to hold back so many times in the past few days now fell without restraint. John, looking stricken, hugged me as I sobbed. Spud remained impassive, frozen in anger, his eyes boring through my waterfall with ongoing accusations of guilt.
Doomed. Or should I say, ‘damned’.
Chapter 14
Truth and Consequences
Somewhere over the USA—present day?
It was the coldest trip I’d ever taken. Our voyage to Nea Athina lasted close to three days. We landed and waited several times along the way due to the tornados and violent spring thunderstorms that were ravaging the Southeast. Hypatia fortunately had stocked some wool blankets that she loaned us so we could cocoon both in the clouds and on the ground. I chose to cover myself entirely with mine for the first leg of the journey, and avoid Spud’s piercing unspoken accusations.