by James Axler
“Gather them!” North commanded, pointing to Kane and Durga.
Gibbons and Makoba grabbed the Nagah prince, and Domi and Brigid both seized Kane by the shoulders. The whole sensation was not dissimilar to the way that the mat trans would crack open the walls of reality in her experience, but this was much more outré, even wider and more unreal than her first times standing in the presence of the interphaser. There was something primal about how this gemlike construct pulsed and unleashed its energies to open its wormhole, something that normally required the effort of nuclear generators to power.
Then again, there were many aspects of Annunaki technology and culture that made Brigid’s skin crawl, things she couldn’t forget, and cruelties that she could not excise from her memory. These things were living, if not in the sense of how a human lives, but not nearly as inert as a plant. The Threshold was simply another aspect of a society with a running thread of decadence and cruelty, one rife with the enslavement of “lesser beings.”
All this flashed through her mind as the rest of the universe simply ceased to exist for a moment. Then, instants later, things were back in order, and they were in the “break room” back at the Zambian power station.
North seemed drunken as he set down the Threshold, then collapsed into a nearby chair. He put his hand to his forehead, eyes closed in obvious discomfort. Brigid made a quick count, and everyone was present, a little more bewildered than they had been back in the Harare installation. Makoba guided the insensate Durga toward a chair where he could sit. Brigid noticed that with a little push, the comatose Nagah could move his feet, and support his own weight.
Brigid gently urged Kane to walk toward another chair, and helped him to sit.
“Everything working,” Domi noted. “Just no Kane.”
“Something happened with Nehushtan,” Brigid mused. She looked to Nathan, who still wielded the staff.
“Should we touch him with it?” the young man asked.
“I don’t think that’s too smart. It left Kane a vegetable,” Grant muttered. “What if the next contact kills him? Because this stuff has been getting progressively worse.”
“It’s a dilemma that I truly do not care to ponder. The only seeming cure is the staff, which to date has shown the ability to take Kane no matter what. However, it seems not to have any detriment to either Nathan nor myself,” Brigid mused. She twirled a lock of hair around one finger, thinking about this. “There was something present this time that was not accountable during the first use.”
“Kane looked as if he’d been run over with a Sandcat the time he used the stick to heal Nathan,” Grant mused. He thought about it. “But you’re right. It wasn’t the staff’s fault. This had been his first time channeling that kind of power. He wasn’t used to it.”
“Which means the persons present...”
“What the hell are you people doing here?” Lomon bellowed, interjecting his voice into the conversation. “Good grief, more of those snake people.”
“We had to beat a hasty retreat from Kariba station,” Nathan explained. “We were under siege by the kongamato.”
“One moment this place was empty, the next, the room is full of people,” Lomon told them. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Alien technology,” Brigid answered. “Courtesy of...it’s a long story. Let’s get behind those vault doors first, before our enemy figures out that we left them.”
Lomon hit the radio for downstairs and more men appeared, not just Shuka, Jonas and the CAT team.
“These are the rest of my people,” Sinclair said as they arrived. “Plus some guests. Is that...”
“It’s Durga. Comatose, just like Kane,” Grant concluded for her.
“What happened?” Sinclair pressed, even as she helped guide people to the vault doors.
“We made contact with the kongamato, recovering this one.” Brigid pointed toward Thurpa, who was assisting Durga alongside Makoba, having taken Gibbons’s place. “And then we found the Kariba station, where these fools had their monsters turn on them.”
“The fate of all mad scientists,” Sinclair muttered. As if to punctuate her observation, she noticed North handling the Threshold. It was not a surprise to see him, but it was a slap in the face considering the memories of her youth. North had styled himself, and still did, after a daredevil movie hero she’d had a crush on as a girl. The truth that he was a conniving man who’d murdered and bullied left a bitter taste in her mouth. It had been made even worse because she’d been the one to debrief him, to try to get inside his mind when he’d first arrived on scene.
It had been hoped that a little flirtation would help him slip up, loosen some words so that the others could observe him more deeply, get a better handle on who and what he was. Even so, the forensic evidence on the man’s whip, full of blood and muscle tissue, had been enough to paint the picture of him as nothing less than a coldhearted snake.
Being the target of his interest made her feel dirty in retrospect. It was her hope to avoid him, but he was there, and he glanced at her, cheeks darkening in a blush at a reaction to her glare.
Sinclair fought the urge to look more closely at him, to study him, uncertain of whether she was harboring a crush on this man, and thus seeing things that weren’t there, or if his “blush” was something more sinister. After all, after the terrible war in Garuda city, North had been “gifted” with an interface with one of Enki’s old computer networks, an accessible storage grid of information that, of late, also allowed him to jam communication signals.
Sinclair wasn’t a fool. North might have been in intensive concentration, doing something untoward. Perhaps even his brain’s enhancement was behind the fate of Kane and Durga. If she continued to pay attention to him, then she might get his attention, draw his suspicions. No, she’d tell Brigid and Grant later on about what was amiss.
She’d do that in private, and they’d have their Commtacts off, because if North could jam communications, then he could also spy upon those radio frequencies.
Sinclair, as an officer in the United States Air Force, studiously followed operational procedure, sharing no more over radio comms than necessary, and being almost paranoid in watching for slips of vital information that could endanger her team.
As it was, she had her hands full, literally, with Kane as they guided the small troupe behind the redoubt’s doors.
She glanced back as the heavy panels swung closed once more, thick steel bars extending within, forming the hinged doors into one solid, continuous piece, capable of withstanding all but a direct nuclear explosion.
And now, with North among them, Sinclair wondered if they were protected, or trapped in a killing box.
* * *
KANE AND DURGA had no physical bodies at the moment, but that didn’t take away from the aches that they suffered. If Kane had not been on the horrific journey that the void being had sent them on, he would have thought the situation impossible. As it was, he could only liken the “terrain” where they landed as being akin to a tumbling nightmare of confusion. There were eerie, almost living outcroppings and paths stretching for miles and miles, often interconnecting, some segments simply floating in the air. There were spheres and globes that shimmered against a spacelike purple background, giving the impression to Kane that some were planets, while others floated close to him, no larger than a ball, yet covered with clouds, continents and water.
The scene was oddly familiar, but Kane could not concisely recall the last time he’d been godlike in size and stature against such a backdrop of planetoids. He fought to keep his mind focused as the paths shifted about him, some seeming as fluid as spilling water, yet looking as firm and stony as the steepest of cliffs. Here and there he could spot tangling tentacles of some living creatures, and branches and briars rustling at the corners of his vision.
There wa
s also Durga. While outwardly he held his original form as a tall, youthful cobra man, there were blurs and smears of other figures dragging along in his wake, as if Kane could peer through aeons of history, seeing what bodies and lives Durga had been born into.
Kane recalled the fever dreams that stayed with him after he had been squirted into a place between universes as he and Brigid Baptiste had sought Grant, lost in time, on an earlier mission. The details were fuzzy, but he now remembered the odd, uneven reality that had enveloped the two of them. He tried to concentrate, remembering what he could of that excursion.
“Where the hell did he throw us?” Kane asked.
“North?” Durga suggested.
“The void that was where he was supposed to have been,” Kane responded. “I’m not certain that he was controlling that thing. After all, why would it disguise itself when it tossed us to our deaths?”
“Our deaths?” Durga countered. “You and I are very much alive.”
“We are?” Kane asked. “We might as well be dead. We’re phantoms. This isn’t reality. We are lost, and probably millions of miles, if not universes, away from our bodies.”
Durga looked around. He reached out for one of the hovering balls, fingers splaying to grasp the object. Kane moved in front of him, preventing him from touching it.
“What?” Durga growled.
“That is a world,” Kane answered.
“All the more reason to examine it,” the Nagah responded. “Or are you squeamish?”
“It looks as if it has liquid water on it. If that’s the case, it might have life,” Kane said. “And if it has life, I’m not letting you screw with it.”
Durga’s eyes gleamed with anger at this sudden act of defiance. “We’ll never return to our bodies if you continue to stymie my curiosity.”
“My life for a living world?” Kane asked. “Not a big trade. And your life? I wouldn’t rate it as worth a slice of a microscopic planet like that.”
Durga held Kane’s gaze. “You try my patience.”
“The feeling is mutual, scale face,” he snapped. “But like it or not, we need each other.”
“But you’re going to be in that scaly face,” Durga growled back. “Even if I have an idea that might aid us.”
“How about living by the doctrine of ‘first, do no harm,’ for a few hours?” Kane asked. “Would it kill you?”
“You never know, Kane,” he responded. “I’m loath to take that risk.”
Kane couldn’t help but smirk at his slithering response. “At least you’re keeping a sense of humor about this.”
“Who was joking?” Durga asked, blinking innocently.
Kane pointed up one of the paths. “As far as I can figure, we flew from that direction.”
Durga glanced that way, then looked back at the man. As much as Kane would have loved to dig into the Nagah traitor, his allies were out there, somewhere, without his aid. As much as it galled him to think of himself as truly important, he was one-third of a remarkable team that had prevailed against menaces from simple cold hearts to armies to gods themselves.
Even if his presence weren’t a part of Lakesh’s alleged “confluence of circumstance” that allowed them to be so lucky, Kane knew that three sets of eyes were better than two, and he had years of experience watching their backs. Sure, Domi and the rest of CAT Beta were with them, as well as Durga’s men, Nathan and the Zambians, but Kane felt derelict in duty.
He protected his friends, and they protected him. Kane needed to get back to them to feel whole again.
He’d been afraid of Nehushtan and its potential to strip him of his personal identity. But now it had been something else that had wrenched him from his skin, tossed him across a universe, stranded him with a man who was once his enemy and far from those he considered his family as they were about to come under siege from an army of unholy beasts.
It didn’t escape Kane’s notice that these same monsters had been awakened by Durga.
“There’s something about the physics of this realm that I’m trying to remember,” Kane said.
“Such as?” Durga asked. “Even if we are moving at the speed of thought, there is no indication that we could reach our home, our bodies, anytime before the apocalyptic end of the kongamato assault.”
Kane frowned. “Yes. Thanks for that.”
“I sought to control those creatures,” the cobra man said apologetically.
“Control,” Kane repeated. “You set them loose, and they killed and assaulted Zambians who had nothing to do with you or your quest.”
Durga sneered. “And you’ve never fired on savages who you came across.”
“Only when they attacked,” Kane replied. “And two things. The Zambians are a civilized culture with at least as much modern technology as the Nagah. And you were hanging around with a group of raiders who survive by pillage and murder. If they didn’t try to kill you, then sure as hell, normal Zambians wouldn’t have reacted violently to your presence.”
“You have not crossed Africa,” Durga countered.
“I have. In the past,” Kane answered. “And yes, there are pockets of violence, and there are pockets of people trying to survive day to day, and yet are able to show compassion for both neighbors and wayward travelers. Whatever you encountered, you were the instigator of violence.”
“Of course,” Durga said. “And the Millennium Consortium is innocent.”
“That’s another reason why I don’t trust your protests,” Kane snarled. “The consortium share the same kind of prejudices you seem to. Africa is full of savages to be enslaved, exploited or exterminated. It’s their way. And yours.”
“Your bleeding heart touches me,” Durga returned. “I will consent to leave these tiny planets be. But I refuse to listen to any more of your sanctimonious preaching.”
“Fine,” Kane grumbled. “We’re going to have to learn how to fly.”
“Fly?” Durga asked. “You must be kidding.”
“No. I remember this place. I’ve been here, once in my past. It was a time when I was deliberately slipped between dimensions. This is a realm where will is power itself,” Kane said. “Our imagination can move us, if we can.”
“We can fly,” Durga repeated. “Think a happy thought and a little pixie dust...”
“What?” Kane asked.
“Sorry. Something from an old animated motion picture,” he explained. “It was how a group of children learned to fly.”
“Well, we’re not going to grind any pixies into dust,” Kane warned.
Durga rolled his eyes, then spread his arms. “If you said will is power...” Gravity seemed to release the Nagah prince. He rose, gliding slowly upward. “...I was one whose will was the equal of Enlil himself.”
“Good for you,” Kane said with a sneer. “You can float.” He turned his attention toward the horizon. “Try to keep up.”
And in a flicker of time, Kane was a living rocket, hurtling through this nether space, following his instincts along a thin thread back to his loved ones.
He tried not to smile too much as Durga grunted in an effort to keep up.
Chapter 15
Though Brigid Baptiste was not the kind of woman to go overboard with all manner of military security and secrecy, she and Grant both agreed to the logic in Sela Sinclair’s handwritten message to turn off their Commtacts when they met with CAT Beta. With Fargo North in the redoubt, there was little telling the full extent of his abilities to hack into and control technology. They wouldn’t put it past North to attempt to listen to whatever was being said about him.
Sinclair gave her briefing about her beliefs that North had been concentrating on something while they were assembling back in the Victoria Falls redoubt, including the doubts that crowded her mind during the confusion of the
ir sudden arrival.
Once that was done, the Cerberus adventurers put their minds to the challenge of what this could have meant.
Grant frowned beneath his mustache. “As much as I’d love for North to be guilty, so we could beat him like a rug and get Kane back, I’m going to express some doubt. He just interfaced with the Annunaki artifact, and we were all left off balance by it teleporting us back to this station.”
Brigid Baptiste nodded, obviously feeling distaste for an explanation that would let North off the hook. “That is a valid point, but I still can’t deny that North’s presence and proximity to Nehushtan might have been a catalyst for the odd behavior of the staff.”
Domi wrinkled one lip. “Lemme talk to him.”
“We do that, there won’t be much left for answers,” Brigid countered.
“That’s a downside?” Grant asked. Brigid was sure he wasn’t being serious, but she still hit him with a glare of admonishment.
“The barons used to punish on the slightest of rumors,” she retorted.
He nodded. “I remember. I used to be part of that.”
“Same here,” Edwards agreed, his tone glum and somber. “I know we’re taking precautions by turning off our Commtacts, but what if North’s abilities aren’t just limited to radio communications?”
“Thought reading?” Brigid asked.
Edwards nodded.
“If that were the case, then undoubtedly he could have arranged for a system hiccup that would have delayed this meeting,” Brigid surmised. “It’s safe to speculate that our thoughts are still our own, for the time being.”
“Time being,” Sinclair repeated. “In other words, North might be on track to mind reading.”
“He’s exploring the world, and traveling the same path Durga had been on. Durga, we’ve determined, came here initially in search of a means of restoring his body to full health,” Brigid explained. “Now, it has happened, but his mind is...elsewhere.”