Nightworld ac-6
Page 43
"GLAEKEN!"
The stark terror in the voice and the ripping sound that accompanied it jolted Glaeken. He looked up.
Rasalom was near, clinging to the arch, his outstretched talons only a few feet from Glaeken's face, yet he was receding, falling away. And then Glaeken saw why. He'd cut through the remnant of the fourth support and now Rasalom was dangling over the pit, clutching frantically with arms, legs, and tentacles to the swiftly tilting remnant.
The entire structure—the new Rasalom, the central disk, and the remnant of his sack-like chrysalis—was now supported entirely by the third arch. And Glaeken had already damaged that near its union with the disk.
After all these ages, Rasalom's end was at hand.
Or was it?
Rasalom was suspended head down over the pit, but he was scrabbling backwards along the remnant of the arch, up toward the disk.
"You cannot win, Glaeken! Not this time! It cannot happen! I won't allow it! I'm too close!"
His movements were shaking the entire structure, exerting enormous pressure on the lone arch. It began to bob like a fishing pole that had hooked an enormous Great White. As Glaeken hobbled back to the rim of the cavern and made his way toward the final arch, he heard it begin to crack where he had started a cut near its distal end.
Rasalom must have realized it too, because even in this dim light Glaeken could discern a frantic desperation in his movements. But it was too late. The end of the arch was splitting, angling down at its wounded tip. Breaking…
A cannonshot crack signaled the end. The disk lurched downward suddenly to a vertical angle, twisted crazily. Rasalom was there, clutching the disk's upper edge with his taloned fingers. Other appendages, spiny, rickety arms with clawed tips had broken free of the gel along his flank and were blindly questing for purchase while his tentacles stretched toward the end of the arch, reaching.
And then the final threads of the final arch gave way and the disk, the sack, and Rasalom plunged into the abyss.
No—not Rasalom.
Glaeken groaned as he realized that Rasalom was still there. The rest had fallen away but he was clinging to the final support by one of his tentacles—and pulling himself up!
Glaeken forced his wounded leg to move, to half run, half stagger to the base of the third arch, climb upon it, and hobble along its wavering length. He didn't have time to cut through this one. He had to meet Rasalom at its terminus and stop him there before he regained his footing.
"This is what it's always come down to, hasn't it, Rasalom. You and me. Just you and me."
Rasalom's reply was to snake his other tentacle upward and loop it around the shaft of the arch next to the first. He used them to hoist himself higher until his taloned hands could grip the arch. That done, new tentacles began to spring from the great gelatinous mass of his body to join the others in coils around the shaft.
He's going to make it!
Glaeken clenched his teeth against the pain in his leg and increased his speed. He didn't hesitate when he reached the first tentacles—he slashed at them with the weapon. Blinding flashes, greasy smoke, and thick, dark fluid spurting from the amputated ends. The world narrowed to Glaeken, Rasalom, the arch, and the weapon. Closing his eyes against the flashes, choking on the smoke, he slipped into a fugue of pain and motion, moving in a fog, operating on reflexes as he severed coil after coil and kicked their writhing remnants aside, then moved on the next group.
From below him came a thunderous roar as Rasalom kicked and thrashed in inarticulate pain and rage.
Spiny, spidery, pincer-tipped arms rose on both sides and snapped at him. Glaeken lashed out left and right, scything them down as he kept pushing forward.
Until finally he was at the end of the arch and Rasalom swung below him, suspended only by his yellow-taloned hands, one of them already missing a finger.
"Glaeken…no…please!"
And in the instant of that plea Rasalom yanked his body upward and lashed at Glaeken with the three fingers of his good hand. Glaeken ducked as the talons raked the air inches above his head. He swung the weapon upward, over his head. The impact with Rasalom's wrist and the simultaneous detonation of brilliance as the blade sliced through skin and muscle and tendon and bone nearly knocked Glaeken off the arch. He threw himself flat and hung on as Rasalom thrashed and howled and waved his partially severed, black-spurting wrist in the air.
Up ahead, near the shattered tip of the arch, Glaeken saw that Rasalom's only remaining hold on it was the two surviving fingers on his damaged hand. He crawled quickly forward and slashed at the nearest with the weapon, severing it with another flash of light. The talon of the last digit scraped along the surface of the arch, scratching a deep furrow as it slipped slowly toward eternity. Then it caught in a small pit near the edge.
"Glaeken!" came the muffled, agonized voice from below. "You can't! This can't be happening! Don't!"
Glaeken was about to raise the weapon and sever that last digit but thought better of it. Instead he rolled over and swiveled his body around; he flexed his good leg all the way to his abdomen.
His foot shot out and knocked the talon over the edge.
No final farewell to Rasalom, no verbal send off. Nothing more than a contemptuous kick.
Rasalom's scream was loud, almost painfully so. It echoed up from the glowing depths long after his tumbling, mutilated form had been swallowed by the mists.
But Glaeken did not wait and watch and listen as he dearly would have loved. Instead, as soon as the arch slowed its bobbing from the release of Rasalom's enormous weight, he began crawling back toward the cavern rim as fast as his limbs would allow
Rasalom was falling into eternity. When he passed the point where his presence no longer influenced this sphere, the old laws would begin to reassert themselves. Nature would awaken from the coma Rasalom had induced and begin its recovery, regain its control.
And this cavern had no place in nature.
As he reached the end of the arch, the walls began to shake. The rubble choking the side tunnel began to tumble free, revealing the opening. If he could reach that granite passage, he might survive.
He was almost there when the roof caved in.
The crowd quieted as a new sound overwhelmed their chants and songs. Carol's voice had given out a while ago, so she was already quiet.
They'd spilled across the street and into the illuminated sections of the Park, and were swelling further. But the sound had frozen them all in their tracks; and now they stood half crouched, looking up, looking around, looking at each other. Carol hushed those near her.
A basso drone, a thunderous buzz, a monstrous flapping in the air all around the widening cone of light, growing louder, vibrating the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings.
"It's the bugs!" someone cried. "They're coming back! Coming to get us!"
"No!" Carol cried, her voice a ragged blare above the growing fearful murmur of those about her. "Don't be afraid. They hate the light. As long as we stay in the light they won't come near us."
She, too, was afraid, but she hid it. What was happening? She glanced at Bill and he shrugged and held her close.
Then she saw them. Bugs. An immense horde of them, thickening the air and swarming along the ground around the cone of light. Some of them were forced to dip into the light by the crowding but their wings and bodies began to smoke where the light touched them and they darted back out.
No concerted attack, no suicidal kamikaze bug rush to wipe them out. Rather, a mad, blind, panicked dash toward the hole. The cone of light had reached the edge of the bottomless opening and she could see the countless horrors diving into the depths beyond the light, the winged ones spiraling down, the crawlers leaping from the edge.
"They're going back!" Carol said, as much to herself as to Bill. "They're going back into the hole!"
As a cheer roared from the crowd and she pressed forward for a better look, the earth began to shake—violently. Cheers turned to screa
ms as people were knocked from their feet and thrown to the ground. Carol's hoarse shout of alarm rose with the others as she was hurled to the pavement with Bill atop her.
From the blown-out windows of the top floor, Sylvia watched the pandemonium below with growing alarm. Jeffy had soiled himself and so she and Ba had brought him upstairs for a change of clothes. Now she held onto the sill with one hand and Jeffy with the other as the building shook and creaked and groaned around them.
An earthquake! she thought. She'd never been in one, but this had to be how it felt.
And there, down on the near edge of the Sheep Meadow. The earth was cracking open.
Another hole!
This was it, then. The growing light, the sense of impending victory, the return of the bugs en masse to the original hole—it was all a false hope, an empty promise. A new hole, unafraid of the light, was opening closer to the building. And what new horror was going to issue from that?
The sudden changes could mean only one thing: Glaeken had failed.
The tremors worsened as a deep rumble issued from the first hole in the center of the Sheep Meadow. Clouds of what looked like dust or smoke were spewing from the opening. Sylvia reached for the field glasses and focused on the hole. The edges looked ragged—they seemed to be crumbling, breaking away, sliding into the opening, choking it.
Yes! It was closing! And below—she shifted the glasses—what was happening with the new hole?
But it wasn't a hole yet. Maybe it never would be. More like a depression, a cave-in of some sort.
The tremors stopped.
Then silence. Sylvia lowered the field glasses and paused, listening. Silence like no silence she could ever recall. Not a bird, not an insect, not a breeze was stirring. She could hear the rush of her own blood through her arteries, but nothing else. All the world, all of nature paused, frozen, stunned, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
It lasted one prolonged agonized moment. And then, for the second time tonight, the light began to fade.
The silence was shattered by a burst of cries of renewed terror from below, then the chant began again. She heard Ba begin to repeat the words behind her. Sylvia joined him, whispering the litany as she raised the glasses and scanned the roiling crowd for Carol or Bill or Jack—anyone she knew.
The chant was failing this time. Despite thousands of throats shouting the words at the tops of their lungs, the light continued to fade.
We've lost!
Somehow in the dying light she managed to pick out Carol's familiar figure at the edge of the new hole, or depression, or wherever it was. She wanted to shout down to her to get away from there. That was where the new threat would arise. But Carol was right on the edge, pointing down at the bottom of the depression. She was jumping up and down, hugging Bill, hugging everyone within reach. What—?
Sylvia refocused on the bottom of the pit. Something moving there, struggling in the loose dirt. She strained to see in the last of the light.
A man. A man with red hair.
Glaeken? Alive? But he couldn't be. If he survived down there it could only mean—
Suddenly Ba was at her side, pointing across the Park toward the east side.
"Look, Missus! Look!"
In all their years together, she had never heard such naked excitement in his voice. She looked.
The crowd below couldn't see it yet, but from this elevation there could be no doubt. Sylvia didn't need the field glasses. Straight ahead, down at the far end of one of the concrete canyons, a bright orange glow was firing the sky over the East River.
"The sun, Missus! The sun is rising!"
Part IV
DAWN
FRIDAY
IN THE BEGINNING…
Carol stood on Glaeken's rooftop in the bright morning sunlight and wished she had the nerve to remove her blouse. Jack and Bill had pulled off their shirts as soon as they'd stepped out the door. Carol envied the males their casual ability to expose so much surface area to the warm light pouring through the cloudless sky.
Why not me? she thought, reaching for the top buttons on her blouse. After all we've been through together, what difference would it make?
But she stopped after two buttons. If it was just Bill, maybe. But not with Jack here.
I know I've been changed by all this—but not that much. An uptight Catholic girl was still alive and well somewhere within her.
"Still hard to believe it's over," Jack said.
"What a mess," Bill said, looking over the city.
Carol followed his gaze. There didn't seem to be an unbroken window in the city. Ruined buildings were everywhere, some torn apart by gravity holes, some crushed by debris falling from other gravity holes. Above them, pillars of smoke rose from fires still raging here and there about the city. Below, a rare car picked its way through the cluttered streets. Dazed looking people wandered the sidewalks or stood around the huge depression that only hours ago had been the Sheep Meadow hole.
"It's not all bad," Jack said. "When was the last time midtown air smelled this clean?"
Bill nodded. "You've got apoint. I'm just wondering how we'll ever rebuild this."
"Who said we should? And anyway, it won't be 'us' doing the rebuilding—it'll be them. And believe me it won't be long before we're all back to the same old shit."
Carol stepped between them. "Do you think anyone down there knows what you two did?"
"No," Jack said sharply. He suddenly seemed uneasy. He began slipping back into his shirt. "And let's leave it that way."
"Don't want to be a hero?" Bill said, smiling.
"I don't even want to be noticed." He turned toward the door.
"Leaving?" Carol said.
"Yeah. Soon as I find a car with gas I'm heading out to Pennsylvania." A light glowed in his eyes. "Abe's bringing Gia and Vicky back. I'm going to provide the escort."
"Good luck," Bill said.
Carol watched Jack leave. "Heaven help anyone who tries to block the return of the two women in his life."
Bill slipped his arm around her waist and turned her toward the ruined cityscape before them.
"I doubt heaven helps anybody."
"Just a figure of speech. But I do wonder who or what will get the credit for the sunrise."
Bill laughed. "I heard a bunch of guys singing 'Here Comes the Sun' over and over. I'll bet that becomes a new religious hymn. But you're right. A whole new mythology could rise out of this. A new round of sun worship, that's for sure. It'll be interesting to see what develops."
"But whatever it is, it will be wrong. They'll be looking for some deity to praise and thank."
"That's nothing new."
"But what about you? You deserve part of the credit."
Bill shook his head. "No. I just ran an errand." He looked into her eyes. "You're the one who found the real key and put it to use. You saw that the answer was inside us rather than outside."
"It's always been that way, hasn't it? We've always been in charge but we've never taken control. We just let ourselves get pushed this way and that."
"Fear is like a disease, and I guess some of us have better immune systems than others. Sometimes we need a little help from others, but we all have the power to step aside and say I'm not going to be a part of this anymore."
She locked her arms around his waist and smoothed his wind-ruffled gray hair.
"Do you think things will be different?"
He shook his head. "I like to think I'm more optimistic than Jack, but I fear he's right. There'll be lots of talk about a new world and a new brotherhood but in no time it'll be business as usual: the truly capable people, the ones you'd be proud to call leader, will be devoting all their time to the actual rebuilding, while the usual crew of blowhards who are incapable of building anything will be generating hot air and pretending to lead. Nothing changes."
"That's not true, Bill. I'm changed, you're changed, we've all been changed by this."
"Especially Glaeken."
And Sylvia and Jeffy—what about them?
So many questions, so many uncertainties.
She locked her arms around Bill's waist and snuggled against him.
At least there were a few things of which she could be sure—her love for Bill, for one, and the certainty that no one alive today would ever again take sunrise for granted.
And beneath their feet, in the apartment directly below, a young red-haired man with an ageless thirty-five-year-old body was spoon-feeding applesauce to the twisted, feeble-minded woman he loved so dearly and with whom he had hoped to grow old.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 0c04bea5-0224-4b46-bafb-7d0bbe8691e2
Document version: 2
Document creation date: 2009-12-17
Created using: doc2fb, FB Editor v2.0 software
Document authors :
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/