Aja glanced at Siry. “Who’s that?”
Siry didn’t move. He must have been in shock. After all, he was in the presence of a legend.
“His name is Siry. He’s a Traveler.” “From where?” Aja asked, sizing him up. “From Ibara.”
Aja shot me a stunned look. “Did you say-” “Yeah. Ibara.”
For once the brilliant Aja Killian was speechless.
“There’s another turning point on Veelox, Aja,” I said. “It’s over three hundred years from now, and it’s on Ibara. Ever hear of it?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that answer,” she said firmly.
“Here’s another answer for you. It’s time. You’ve got your second chance at Saint Dane.”
A few hours later the three of us sat in the central core control room of Lifelight. This was Aja’s domain. It was the master control area for this particular Lifelight pyramid. Aja had given us a delicious (not) helping of rainbow gloid, the gelatin-like food that was the staple on Veelox. It was exactly as I’d remembered it. Fruity, unfulfilling, but energizing. Siry was reluctant to try it until Aja looked him square in the eye and ordered, “Eat!”
He ate it all like a trained puppy. It was good to be a legend.
I filled Aja in on most of what had happened since I left Veelox. I didn’t go into great detail, but told her enough so she understood that the thing Saint Dane called the Convergence was about to happen, and the launching point was going to be Ibara.
I went into a lot more detail describing Ibara. Siry helped me there. He was getting more comfortable with Aja and actually seemed to enjoy sharing tales of his home. It was a home that Aja planned. He wanted her to know how she was (would be) considered a hero for having conceived of it.
Aja liked that.
The flume had brought us back to a time when Aja’s plans for Ibara were already formed. She knew that it was only a matter of time before Lifelight would fail. People had already started dying. She hadn’t yet chosen the forty colonists, but had selected Ibara as their destination. It was fun telling her how the plan was going to work beautifully. Ibara became an idyllic, flourishing society that didn’t rely on technology. The population was renewed. Veelox was on the verge of rebirth.
It wasn’t so much fun telling her of the Flighters, and the destruction of the pilgrim ships, and ultimately about the dados that were going to swarm the island. Her plan worked… up to a point.
“It’s the turning point for Ibara,” I concluded. “Saint Dane convinced the Flighters to attack and destroy the pilgrims. The dado invasion won’t be far behind. That’s why we’re here.”
Aja paced. She didn’t waste time fretting over past problems. She was already looking for solutions.
“It’s simple,” she declared with confidence. “I’ll change the equation. If the people are going to follow my plan, I’ll make a better plan. I’ll get them to build stronger ships. Or arm them with weapons. Or better, the pilgrimage should begin earlier.” She was getting excited. “This is incredible, Pendragon,” she said, her eyes wild with enthusiasm. “I know what’s going to happen, so I can counter it from the past! I can control the future. “
“No, you can’t,” I said flatly.
“Why not?” she argued. “We’ve got the tools; we should use them.”
“It won’t make a difference. That’s the whole point. Halla has become fluid. If we change one thing today, Saint Dane will counter by changing something else tomorrow. He has the overall vision of Halla. It’s how he found all the turning points. No matter what we do now, Saint Dane will counter it. If you tell the people to build stronger ships, the Flighters will get stronger weapons. If the pilgrimage begins earlier, the Flighter attack will come earlier. I tried to get Courtney to stop Mark from inventing the dados. It didn’t work. Uncle Press always told me things should play out the way they were meant to. That’s exactly what Saint Dane is trying to disrupt. He’s making sure nothing happens the way it’s supposed to, by tearing apart the natural order. Convergence. Chaos. When Halla implodes, he’ll rebuild it the way he sees fit.”
“So then, why did you come here?” Aja asked.
“I’m going to fight him, Aja.” I pointed to Siry and said, “We’re going to fight him with the people of Ibara. His rules. His war. He said the destruction of Ibara will kick off the Convergence. Fine. That means we have to stop it. Not by skirting it or trying to do something clever by changing history, but by meeting him dead on and beating him with his own tactics.”
Aja kept her eyes on me. I was ready for her to argue. “You’re not the same person, Pendragon.” “I’ve grown up.”
“That’s not it,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m sensing, I don’t know, anger. Bitterness. Are you letting your emotions cloud your judgment?”
“It’s hard not to be angry after seeing what I’ve seen,” I answered honestly.
“I get that,” she said. “You know how badly I want to beat Saint Dane. But I haven’t lost my ability to operate logically.”
“I am being logical!” I snapped.
“Then I’ll ask you again, why are you here?”
“I need to know everything about Ibara. It was once a military base. I need weapon information. And maps. Anything you have. If we’re going to defend the place, I want every advantage there is.”
Aja nodded thoughtfully. “There are old plans of the island that describe miles of underground tunnels and give a complete listing of its defenses.”
“Perfect!” I shouted. Things were looking up.
“Is that all?”
I wasn’t exactly sure how to say what I needed to say. I counted on the fact that she was going to be as logical and unemotional as always, because what I had to tell her was going to hurt.
“I want you to come back with us. We need you. The people of Ibara need you. This is the last stand, Aja. You should be there. It’s your second shot at Saint Dane.”
I watched her, hoping she would give me a simple, “Sure!” She looked up at the master control panel of Lifelight, turning the idea over in her head.
“I can’t,” she finally declared. “What would we tell the people? That I’m a ghost from the past? A time traveler? Talk about mixing territories!”
“We won’t tell them who you are,” I countered. “We’ll say we found you in the ruins of Ibara. Yeah, that’s it! You’ll be a Flighter who changed her ways and wants to helps us beat the dados.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Aja scoffed.
“I know why he wants you to come,” Siry said softly.
“No, you don’t,” I barked at him.
“Talk to me, Siry,” Aja said.
Aja was right. As usual. The plan didn’t make sense. I should have known she would see through my flawed thinking. We had to tell her the whole truth. Siry gave me a sheepish look. I shrugged, giving him the okay to go on.
“You’re going to be assassinated, Aja,” Siry said. “Just before the forty colonists leave for Ibara, you’re going to be killed. You’ll never set foot on Ibara. I’m sorry.”
Aja stared at the wall. I had no idea what was going through her head. How could I? Imagine opening a fortune cookie that said: “You’re going to die soon. Enjoy your egg rolls.” Talk about a buzz killer. Nobody said anything for a long time. Aja needed to input this information and calculate her choices. That’s the way she worked.
Finally Aja looked at me and spoke softly and clearly. “You’re right, Pendragon. Saint Dane is all about disrupting the natural order of Halla. I agree that trying to change history would be a mistake. At best it would be futile, at worst a disaster. For that reason I’m having second thoughts about giving you the maps of Ibara. But I can justify it, because the maps exist in the past of Ibara. Who knows? Maybe the tribunal already has them. So I’ll give them to you, but I won’t go with you. If I’m supposed to die, I should die. Who knows what I’d mess up if I didn’t play out history the way it was meant to be.”
I fought back tea
rs. I couldn’t imagine life without Aja Killian.
“We all have to die, Pendragon,” she added. “I want you to go back there and rally those people, the way I know you can, and destroy him. Destroy his robots. Destroy his evil. If you do that, this war might finally be over.”
We spent the night in the home of Evangeline, Aja’s acolyte. We needed the rest, and there was no rush to get back. I explained to Siry that it wouldn’t matter how long we were gone, the flume would put us back on Ibara when we needed to be there. That’s why I told Genj and Telleo that we would be gone for only a few hours. He understood, sort of. Heck, I didn’t understand myself. But I believed.
When we woke up the next morning, Aja was gone. She’d left a note saying how she didn’t want to say good-bye. The next time she heard from us, she wanted it to be all about the great victory on Ibara. In the letter she added a note of caution: “You have fought this war the right way, Pendragon. We all have. We may not always have had success, but we’ve fought for the right. It is our duty to insure that Halla continues to exist in peace, but we must do it in a way that was meant to be. I know you will make the right decisions. Good luck.”
The note was attached to a thick role of paper. The maps of Ibara.
The last line of her note stuck with me. She felt strongly about beating Saint Dane, but also in sticking with our principles and the principles of Halla. I trusted her judgment, but with all due respect, she hadn’t been through what I had. I knew that if we wanted to beat Saint Dane, we had to find a new way. Any way. In other words, we had to stop playing fair.
Siry and I went back to the flume feeling rested and full. It still seemed like the calm before the storm, but there was no pressure, because the storm wouldn’t arrive until we returned to Ibara. We found the manhole, climbed down, and found the star. In no time we entered the gate and stood inside the mouth of the flume, ready to go.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like I was thrown into the middle of a game that everybody’s been playing for a long time, and I don’t even know the rules.”
I laughed. “That sounds about right.”
I held the maps. Siry touched them reverently and asked, “Do you really think there’s enough information here to help us stop the dados?”
I glanced into the flume, then back to Siry, debating about how to answer. I decided to tell the truth. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“But it’s okay, I never thought the maps would be enough.”
“So then why did we come to get them?” “We’re just getting started,” I said, and looked into the flume.
Siry stared at me. “We’re not going back to Ibara, are we.”
“Not yet.” I looked into the flume and called out, “Zadaal”
(CONTINUED)
IBARA
I had two goals for our visit to Zadaa. The first was to avoid Loor. I had no doubt that if she learned of my plan to face off in a battle against Saint Dane, she’d want to come back with us. No, she’d insist on coming back. No, she wouldn’t even discuss it. She’d come back with us.
As much as I would have wanted her to be there for the battle, I didn’t think any one person would make a huge difference, no matter how fierce a warrior she was. I was more worried about what was going to happen after the battle. Win, lose, or draw, if anything happened to me, Loor would be the logical choice to take my place as lead Traveler. There were many times I thought she should have been the lead Traveler to begin with, but that wasn’t the way it was meant to be, no matter how I felt about it. I wanted to make sure that Loor would be around to fight another day.
The flume deposited us in the large, light brown sandstone cavern that I had been through so many times before. I didn’t like most of those memories. Both Loor and Saint Dane were killed there… and came back to life. That’s when I first began to believe the Travelers weren’t normal. Saint Dane said we were illusions. I don’t know what that means. I sure don’t feel like anything other than a normal guy who was born on Second Earth. But I couldn’t deny there was something weird about us. I’ve actually thought that maybe Loor’s dying was the illusion. Maybe we only thought it happened. I know, that makes no sense, but it’s just as wacky as saying that we’re all just figments, right? Whatever the truth is, no way I was taking any chances. Loor had to be kept safe.
The second goal of the trip, the main reason we were there, was to retrieve another tool to help us in the battle.
“Tell me about this territory,” Siry said as I led him quickly across the cavern floor.
I gave him a thumbnail account of the war between the Batu and the Rokador, fought over the underground rivers. The poor guy must have been in information overload. He was seeing more of Halla, faster, than any of the Travelers.
We climbed up and out of the flume cavern using the footholds that were dug into the sandstone walls. I briefly thought that a quig-snake might be lurking in the deep shadows, but didn’t sweat over it. Saint Dane was done with this territory, which meant the quigs were too. We climbed up through the narrow break in the rock roof, which led to a wooden trapdoor and the entryway to the tunnels that snaked beneath Xhaxhu. Most of the tunnels were destroyed when the underground sea burst. The tunnels leading to the flume weren’t touched, I’m happy to say. They looked pretty much the same as they had before the sea gave way.
That was about to change.
I didn’t bother closing the wooden trapdoor. I hadn’t changed into the Rokador clothes that were stacked near the flume either. I didn’t care if we were seen. There was only one thing that mattered-preparing for the battle.
With Siry following close behind, I walked quickly through the maze of twisting, narrow tunnels that I knew would lead to the underground river flowing beneath Xhaxhu. It wasn’t long before we made the last turn and stepped into the long cavern where several years before, I had gotten my first look at the rivers of Zadaa.
This river still flowed, fed by the tall waterfall. I wanted to climb out of the underground and see the changes to Xhaxhu brought by the creation of the desert sea. I could imagine Xhaxhu now as a lush, green habitat rather than a dry desert city. It was a huge victory for the Travelers over Saint Dane.
It was history.
When we entered the river cavern, Siry stopped short. I could say he was surprised by the sight of an underground river. Or of a tall, roaring waterfall. He may have been overwhelmed by seeing how such an incredibly beautiful and powerful natural wonder could exist. I could say all those things, but I didn’t think they were true. I knew what he was looking at. It was something unlike he’d ever seen before, and probably never would see again. It was the reason we had come to Zadaa. Sitting near the edge of the river was a round, silver, two-seater vehicle.
“What is it?” he asked in awe.
I answered as we inspected the vehicle. “It’s called a dygo. The Rokador used them to drill through the earth and create miles of tunnels.”
This dygo was one of the smaller models. It was about the size of a golf cart. If you remember, the main cabin was a silver sphere that sat on tractor treads. A circular window wrapped halfway around, so its operators could see outside.
The drilling device was a six-foot-wide hollow funnel that sat in a yoke, and could be positioned at any angle around the sphere. The wide end of the funnel was closest to the operators’ cabin, narrowing down to a hollow tip about a foot across. The drill itself was made up of many rings of sharp cutting devices that spun when activated. I’d seen dygos cut through solid rock as if it were cotton candy.
I opened the hatch of the silver sphere and motioned for Siry to enter. The cockpit of a two-seater dygo looked kind of like a small car. It was cramped but comfortable. I sat in the left-hand seat and buckled the seat belt.
“What is that for?” he asked.
“We’re going to be moving at different angles. You don’t want to tumble out of your seat.”
“Oh,” he said, so
unding sick. He quickly buckled up.
I looked over the familiar controls. In front of me were two joysticks that would control the direction of the sphere. I toggled the starter switch and heard the engine hum to life. I gave a quick reassuring glance to Siry. He smiled nervously.
“Watch this,” I said, and started manipulating the joysticks. The round sphere twisted right, then left, then tipped down. I pulled both joysticks, and we rolled back until we were looking skyward.
“Like I said, we’re going to be moving at different angles.”
“I believe you,” Siry said, sounding weak.
I righted the sphere until we were looking at the raging river. This was it. This was the time. We were about to take a step that meant we had truly thrown out the rules. I was operating on Saint Dane’s level.
It felt good.
Siry sensed my tension. “I’m just trying to keep up with everything,” he said cautiously. “I don’t have the right to question anything to do with Travelers, but I have to ask… are you sure this is right?”
I didn’t want to answer quickly. It was a good question. A huge one. I’d asked it myself a thousand times over.
“The Jakills stole one of the pilgrim ships. Was that right?”
Siry thought for a moment and answered, “No. I think it was wrong.”
That shocked me. I thought for sure he would have said that in spite of what happened, they had made the right choice.
He added, “I was going on emotion and anger. We all were. We fired each other up, convincing ourselves that we were doing the right thing. Now they’re dead and I’m sitting in a strange machine on the other side of somewhere, about to do it again. You tell me. Was it right to steal that ship?”
“It was,” I said with confidence. “If the Jakills hadn’t made that trip, we wouldn’t be preparing Ibara for the attack.”
Siry nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that’s true. I just hope we’re not doing anything that will make things even worse.”
That ticked me off. I was trying to save his home. His people. How could he question me?
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