Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra

by Stephen Lawhead

  “Your capitol is in flames, and your escape routes are cut off,” Pizzle was saying. “Unless you have a secret escape plan, your only chance is surrender. That’s the game!”

  “Wait! What was that?”

  “Your empire is ashes.”

  “No, I mean—listen!” Treet cocked his head to one side, and the sound came again. “What’s that?”

  “That’s just an acceleration signal.” Pizzle cleared the screen. “Want to play another game?”

  “No.” Treet got up. “I want to find out what that signal is.”

  “I told you—” Before Pizzle could finish, the chiming signal changed, becoming louder, more insistent.

  “Come on,” said Treet. He entered the gangway and turned toward the cockpit. By the time he reached the flight deck, the signal had become an alarm, a blaring, raucous buzz. Treet tumbled into the cockpit and Pizzle after him. “Is this it? Is it happening?”

  Crocker sat frozen over the navigator’s instrument panel, his long-billed cap lowered over an orange oval screen. Yellow numbers flashed on the screen, changing to red as he watched. Without looking up he said, “I… don’t know yet…”

  Treet glanced around at the instrument panel. Several buttons were flashing red, and at least two screens spelled out the word WARNING! in crimson letters across their faces. Fear tugged his muscles taut, but Treet forced himself to remain calm.

  Pizzle, standing beside him, whispered, “Could be a meteor field the vipath beam’s picked up.”

  This was meant, no doubt, as a reassurance, but Treet’s mind flashed the image of a million moon-sized chunks of rock hurtling into their tiny fragile craft, smashing it into a smoking tangle of twisted space junk.

  “Sweet Julius!” said Crocker, spinning around to face them. “This is it, boys. Event horizon.”

  “The wormhole?” said Pizzle. “So soon?”

  “We’re still six weeks away,” added Treet lamely.

  The pilot shook his head, spinning back to his instruments. “Evidently we’re in its backyard, and it’s coming to meet us.”

  “Coming to meet us?” Treet stepped behind the Captain’s chair and peered over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “Two A.U. and closing fast,” he shot back over his shoulder.

  “How fast?”

  “You’d better get strapped in.”

  “How fast?” Treet demanded, gripping the chair with both hands.

  “At the rate of one hundred thousand myms per second. Get back to your compartment and get strapped in—now! Both of you. Get going.”

  Treet backed away, reluctant to turn his eyes from the flashing screens. He felt Pizzle’s hand on his arm, pulling him away. “Let’s go. I switched on the holoscreens—we won’t miss a thing.”

  They dashed back to their rooms, their feet barely making contact with the deck. Pizzle ducked into his compartment, grinning. “See you on the other end!”

  “I sincerely hope so,” muttered Treet, throwing himself onto the couch. His hand smacked the console, and the couch angled into flight attitude. He drew the seat belt over him, and safety harness too, for good measure. He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to compose himself for whatever would happen next, and thought—what about Yarden!

  Unhooking the belt and harness, Treet leaped from the couch and dove for the gangway. He reached Yarden’s door a split second later and pounded it with both fists. “Yarden! Can you hear me? Open up! It’s happening! The wormhole—we’re going in! Did you hear? Open up!”

  There was no answer. Likely she could not hear him. He pounded harder on the padded surface. “Yarden, open up! It’s Treet!”

  “Treet!” The overhead speaker barked at him. “Get back in your harness! She’ll be all right. Move it!”

  “Crocker, she doesn’t know!”

  “She knows!”

  “But—”

  “Get back in your harness, Treet!”

  With a backward glance at Yarden Talazac’s sealed door, Treet hurried to his room and rebelted. He had just snapped the harness buckle closed when the holoscreen before him pulsed with a bright light. Then the cabin lights dimmed, and Treet found himself staring into the mouth of the wormhole.

  ELEVEN

  The wormhole, as viewed through the 3-D projection of the holovision, appeared as a quivery purple spot in the center of the screen, expanding rapidly, blotting out the light of stars around its spreading rim. It glowed, according to Belthausen, because of something called Cerenkov radiation, which Treet did not pretend to understand. It had to do with the rotation of the Schwarzchild discontinuity exceeding the speed of light, the mechanisms of which Treet also failed to grasp.

  He watched with dread fascination as the thing drew swiftly closer. Swelling. Turning.

  The wormhole filled the screen, the glowing singularity so violet that needles of pain pierced the retinas. We must be at the very edge of it, thought Treet. We’re going in!

  Crocker’s voice shouted over the sound system. “Brace yourselves! We’re … one … two … three … NOW!”

  Nothing happened.

  This is it? wondered Treet.

  Treet closed his eyes, expecting to feel something—a shudder through the ship, a spinning sensation, violent rocking motion, the collapse of the known universe—anything.

  He felt nothing.

  Then the first gravity waves hit the Zephyros. Treet experienced a heavy tug in his gut; his eyesight dimmed as blood drained from his head. He was weightless an instant later, and then squashed into his flight couch by a monster sandbag flung onto his chest. A split-second later he was floating in zero-G, lighter than air; the very next instant his bones were changed to lead. Gravity rippled over him. His stomach wriggled; his heart lurched against his ribs.

  The disturbing effect subsided gradually. He opened his eyes and looked at the holoscreen and still saw the sharp purple, but something else as well. In the center of the screen a bright white dot of light shone like a single sun, very far away. The light at the end of the tunnel, thought Treet. Not so bad after all.

  The white spot of sun grew slightly larger, though it gave the appearance of moving in the same direction as the ship, so that apparently the end of the wormhole receded as they approached. Still, the fact that it was getting bigger, however slightly, meant that they were traveling at a faster rate and would overtake it eventually.

  Treet lay motionless and watched the screen, wondering whether the gravity waves would commence again, or whether they had entered the theorized gravity-free core of the displacement tube. Aside from the queasy anticipation, he felt just the same as before. If anything, shooting the wormhole was a big anticlimax, about as exciting as—what was it Crocker had called it?— riding a trolley through a tunnel.

  By slow degrees, the spot of light in the center of the screen blossomed and Treet saw that it was not a disk, but rather a ring, hollow in the center—a donut of light. The donut continued to grow larger as the ship came closer and eventually swallowed the craft as it entered the hole in the center.

  Instantly upon entering the donut of light, the holovision flared white. When the screen cleared, Treet was peering into an endless tube of soft blue-white light. It was like flying through a fluorescing neon tube.

  Occasionally streaks of light—red, violet, deep blue, and green—flashed by them, disappearing in a lazy spiral down the tube. As Treet watched the brightly-colored streaks, it dawned on him that the walls of the tunnel were moving. In fact, they were woven of trillions of microscopic light particles spiraling along the inner walls of the tunnel around them.

  The significance of this stunned him when he finally realized what it meant. That they were overtaking the tiny streaks meant that the Zephyros must be moving at a rate faster than the speed of light! Or very nearly. The larger colored streaks shooting past them—like artillery tracer bullets burning through the night—must be ultrafast particles of some sort: tachyons or accelerated photon bundles, someho
w sped up by the phenomenon of the wormhole.

  Faster than light? Could it be? Belthausen’s book had described the possibility of light beams being caught in the wormhole, being bent and distorted—though the significance of this now eluded Treet—but he recalled nothing specific about the possibility of a vehicle traveling beyond lightspeed. That was supposed to be plainly impossible for a number of very good scientific reasons. But then, so were giant wormholes.

  Treet could not take his eyes off the screen; he watched it greedily, studying the image before him. The walls of the tunnel undulated slowly, he noticed, bending like a tube flexed by the wind. Yet, the ship stayed on a perfect course through the exact center of the wormhole.

  He heard a sound emerge from the speakers overhead. It sounded like Crocker’s voice, but something was wrong. The words were garbled—chopped up, mixed together, and overlaid so that what came out of the speakers had the sound patterns of a voice, but none of the recognizable features of speech.

  Something’s wrong with Crocker! thought Treet. I’ve got to get to him. He fumbled at the harness buckle and jumped up. Treet’s brain squirmed inside his skull. He saw his hands moving to lift himself off the couch as his legs swung over the edge, but the movement seemed to take forever.

  He watched in horror as his hands smeared before his eyes, elongating, stretching as if made of rubber. He turned his head and his room smeared too, the objects blurring together, fusing, becoming a solid mass of shifting color.

  Treet held his head completely still, and presently the room snapped back to its original shape, as if nothing had happened. Sitting on the edge of the couch, he waved his hand in the air. Again it smeared and stretched before his eyes, but he stopped the motion and held his hand steady, keeping his eyes on it. Treet discovered that the smear was actually made up of an infinity of frozen images, like individual frames of movie film fanning before his eyes—movie frames with the sequence out of order so that some of the frames showed his hand already stopped while others showed it as not having moved, or somewhere in between.

  The effect made him nauseous. He closed his eyes and lay back. Above him the speaker buzzed again. He heard some urgency in the tone, but could not make out a single word; they were all clipped and jumbled and running over one another. The sequence was all confused. Something’s wrong! he thought again. He’s calling for help.

  Treet struggled to his feet and the room shifted crazily, swerving and bending out of shape. He felt the couch behind his legs, closed his eyes, and staggered toward the open door and into the gangway. Holding his head very still, he glanced up the gangway, closed his eyes, and began walking toward the cockpit.

  As long as I keep my eyes closed, I’m all right, he thought, feeling along the bulkhead as he went. He passed Pizzle’s door and moved on, fumbling like a blind man. He reached the cockpit and entered, leaned against the padded doorframe for support, and allowed himself a quick look around. All was as before. Crocker sat in his command chair, strapped in, watching the screens, a look of immense satisfaction on his face. Sensing someone behind him, Crocker turned and Treet saw a most hideous sight—Crocker’s head swerved in the air, his features losing solidity and blending together as if liquefied. Eyes ran together; hair and skin mingled; teeth, lips, and nostrils melted into one another. He appeared to Treet to be dissolving before his eyes.

  The Captain spoke. His words tumbled out of his mouth helter-skelter, an unintelligible mishmash of syllables.

  Treet cringed back from the monstrous sight, and the movement caused the cockpit to spin and smudge crazily. The flight deck buckled beneath his feet and he fell back, unbalanced by the illusion of motion. In the same instant Treet felt the queasy, watery sensation of nausea wash through him. His stomach heaved, emptying its warm contents over the front of his singleton.

  He slumped to the floor, eyes closed, stomach and brain quaking as darkness swam out of the bulkheads to engulf him.

  “I told you to stay strapped in, Treet.” The voice was Crocker’s. “You okay?”

  “Huh?” Treet turned toward the sound and raised his head. “What happened?”

  “We reached wormhole terminus, and you fouled yourself.”

  Treet raised a hand to his chest and felt the sticky wetness there. The stench of vomit made his stomach roll again. He swallowed hard, tasting bile in his throat. “I though you were in trouble.”

  “I was trying to tell you that terminus was coming up.” Crocker knelt over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Okay now?”

  “I think so. Motion sickness. I—how long have I been out?”

  “Out?” Crocker lifted his hand. “You weren’t out. Maybe just a second.”

  “It was terrible. I saw … you looked like a monster.”

  “You don’t look so chipper yourself. Can you get up?”

  “Sure.” Treet placed his hands flat on the floor and pushed up on all fours.

  “Woo! Who puked?” Pizzle came striding into the cockpit.

  “Treet got a little seasick. He’s okay now.”

  “Wow! Look at that! It’s beautiful!” Pizzle dashed by him, and Treet lifted his head to see what had caused the outburst.

  On the mainscreen before them the brilliant white ball of a sun blazed in the upper left, with several hundred other bright spots of stars salted in a sable field. In the center of the picture was the sight that had evoked Pizzle’s ecstatic response: a brilliant green globe, wonderfully round and smooth, wrapped in a near-invisible veil of shimmering blue which thickened to a sparse dotting of puffy white clouds nearer the surface of the planet.

  “Empyrion.” The men’s heads jerked around to see Yarden Talazac standing in the doorway behind them, her eyes too on the screen. “Realm of the gods.”

  “Miss Talazac!” exclaimed Pizzle in a hushed voice. “It was you—” He hesitated and faltered.

  She glanced at Pizzle once quickly—as though to silence him—as she entered the room, and then turned her attention back to the screen. Pizzle appeared slightly embarrassed, then shrank away from her as she came to stand with them.

  For a long time nobody spoke. They merely gazed at the slowly turning world before them on the screen, each wondering what they would find waiting for them down there. Finally a chime sounded on the instrument board, and Crocker moved to his chair.

  “Well, we’re twelve hours to orbit entry.” Crocker spoke softly, almost reverently.

  “How long to landing?” asked Treet.

  “Depends on what the scanners find. We’ll have to locate the colony before going down, but we’ll start broadcasting on the spectrum right away. If they’re listening—and they surely are—we’ll get directions and landing instructions and go right on in. Maybe eighteen hours. No more than twenty-four.”

  “Great!” cried Pizzle, fairly dancing in place. “I can’t wait! This is going to be ultrafantastic!”

  “Let’s just hope we’re up to it,” said Treet, and then wondered immediately why he had said it. Certainly he felt every bit as excited about what lay before them as Pizzle.

  “My thoughts exactly, Mr. Treet,” said Yarden, stepping up beside him. “You must have read my mind.”

  TWELVE

  “This is the sixth pass, Captain, and still nothing on scan—what’s the problem?” Treet stood beside Pizzle, who leaned against the Cyclops housing looking bored. Behind them a great green expanse filled the mainscreen as Zephyros’ cameras scoured the landmasses beneath them, searching for the colony.

  “The problem—for the tenth time—is that we can’t raise them on the radio. We’re having to do a visual which is like …”

  “Like looking for a quark in a quagmire,” offered Pizzle.

  “Why don’t they answer the transmission?”

  “I don’t know why. We’ll just have to be sure to ask them, won’t we?” said Crocker, impatience lending him sarcasm. The last twelve hours had produced nothing but headaches; fatigue slumped his shoulders. “Look, this is going t
o be a long wait. Why don’t you two go and get some sleep while you can. I’ll call you if—when I find something.”

  “Good idea,” offered Pizzle. “Come on, Treet. Let’s leave the Captain to fly his ship. We’re just getting in the way.”

  “Okay, but you’ll call us—”

  “I’ll call you!”

  They filed out of the instrument-jammed cockpit and along the gangway, pausing at Pizzle’s compartment. “He’s right about getting some rest, you know. We may not get much of a chance later.”

  “What do you mean?” Treet heard something in the words and spun on his heel to face Pizzle.

  The close-set eyes darted away quickly. “Oh, nothing—just that, you know, it’s likely to be somewhat hectic down there. First visitors from home and all.”

  “That’s not it!” Treet took a step closer, confronting Pizzle. “Tell me what you meant.”

  “That’s all I meant. I swear.” He turned to go into his room.

  “You meant that something’s the matter down there. Admit it.” “Nothing’s the matter.” Pizzle yawned and shuffled into his compartment. “You’ll see; nothing’s the matter.”

  “Then why don’t they answer the signal?” Treet shouted at his disappearing figure. The door slid shut, cutting off Pizzle’s reply.

  Three meals, four games of Empires, sixteen hours, and nine revolutions later, Crocker called them all back to the bridge. Treet fairly flew down the gangway with Pizzle close on his heels. Yarden came behind them at a more stately pace. Crocker, haggard and showing two days’ stubble on his jaw, sat hunched over the Cyclops keypad, a pile of silver mylex printout tape curling around his chair.

  “Well, boys and girls, I think I’ve found them.” His tone was less than certain.

  The others remained silent, waiting for the pilot to continue. When he saw that no one had anything to say, he went on. “Don’t everyone jump up and down at once! I said we’ve located the colony.”