Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Not precisely, Frolich,” the High Leader said. “There’s been a coup of sorts on your home planet, Earth, and though it really was needed, it seems to have made things worse. And Wrath-Pei vexes me.”

  “Oh?” Frolich said politely, though he had absolutely no interest any longer in what went on on Earth. Venus was his home now—no, was his life; and only Venus’s welfare concerned him.

  “I was wondering, High Leader, if you’ve been able to consider my requests for that feeder tube upgrade project—”

  With a wave of one metallic hand, Cornelian dismissed Frolich’s concerns. “Not now. Perhaps next week. You don’t have any trouble to report to me, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. Since the deactivation of half the Plasma Corps last month, I was concerned there might be … trouble.”

  Frolich had never seen the High Leader so preoccupied. To his diplomatically acute mind, it seemed the perfect time to ask for what he wanted.

  “High Leader, do you think the power from the deactivation could be diverted to the Maat Mons plan—”

  “Don’t bother me with your toys!” the High Leader erupted.

  “I’m sorr—”

  The High Leader’s quartz orbs stared straight into Frolich through the Screen. Through his anger, the High Leader spoke slowly and distinctly: “Just tell me plainly: are things quiet on Venus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  The Screen went mercifully blank, leaving Carter Frolich staring at it for a moment, before all but forgetting that the High Leader had even spoken to him. All that mattered was Venus.

  Carter turned from the blank Screen to the rest of the cavernous chamber. It was the perfect place to work and dream: the Sacajawea Center’s Piton Room, set four hundred feet high into the flank of the extinct volcano Sacajawea Patera like a jewel. It was an eagle’s nest, jutting out nearly a hundred feet, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a panorama out of Eden: Lake Clotho Tessera to the east, on its shores Lakshmi Planum, which would one day grow into a city; in the middle distance other communities, which, though disrupted in their growth, would one day prosper; and below, almost in the shadow of the volcano, was Frolich City, destined to be the planet’s largest. It had been named over Carter’s violent objections; briefly, he wondered if its former citizens, mostly dead now, would have argued so assiduously today in favor of that appellation.

  Bypassing the ranks of worktables holding architect’s plans, stacks of engineering documents, miniature models of facilities—oxygenating stations, feeder tube plants, water purification terminals, transportation depots, and a hundred other projects and dreams—Carter walked to the edge of the Piton’s jutting windows and surveyed this paradise he had done so much for.

  Murdered so many for.

  The thought drove briefly through his mind, but he pushed it aside. Yes, he had done what had been necessary to save his Venus; many had died in the process.

  Targon Ramir’s face rose briefly in his thoughts—Murdered.

  He drove Targon’s face from his mind, just as he drove away all the other ugly acts that had been necessary.

  What price is too much?

  Staring out at the streets of Frolich City below him, where dust blew through empty streets and through backyards where children used to play—

  The children gone, their parents murdered, cut down in their homes on Eden—

  “That’s not the way it was supposed to be!” Carter shouted suddenly, his voice echoing in the empty room. Here it came again: the attacks, the voices in his head, the screams, it seemed like the core of Venus itself screaming at him, calling him murderer.…

  “No!”

  Frolich fell to the floor, holding his head with his hands; if only the devils would leave him alone, the demons in his memory.

  “I had no other choice! You were going to kill my planet!”

  Targon Ramir’s face, placid before death, his body battered by Prime Cornelian’s torturers, his face stripped of flesh, bleeding like any martyr’s, again came to haunt him. He had loved Targon Ramir like his own son, had shared his vision of Venus, of paradise, with this boy—and then Targon had betrayed him. Ramir had sought to destroy all they had worked for together; would have blown up every feeder tube on Venus, punching great brown plasma explosion holes in its beautiful oxygenating atmosphere and sent the planet reeling back to its hellish past for hundreds of years.

  “I couldn’t let you do that, Targon!”

  Unspeaking, Targon Ramir’s ruined face regarded him placidly, then faded away.

  Through the floor’s windows, Carter Frolich stared wide-eyed at the dust-blown streets of Frolich City; a line of plasma soldiers marched mindlessly by near the city’s feeder tube facility; the soldiers looked like fire ants.

  All the other cities, all empty, all full of dust. Venus is no longer people.

  If that was the way it must be, then so be it.

  Slowly, Carter Frolich rose from the floor and straightened his tunic. He turned his back on the Piton’s windows, walked unsteadily to the nearest worktable. On it was a tiny, beautifully scaled model of Aphrodite Port; fragile representations of freighters and transports were lined in a row on what would be the largest port on the Five Worlds.

  One section of the facility was still unfinished; nearby were modeling materials, tiny sticks of plastic, a thin raser knife to cut them with.

  Carter pulled up a chair, adjusted the lighting onto the model, fitted a close-up lens over his eye for the exquisitely delicate work.

  He picked up the raser in his hand.

  Regarding it for a moment, he pushed the tab that activated the pencil-point-thin cutting beam.

  Pushing up the sleeve of his tunic, he burned a straight line into his flesh, until he could smell his own corporeal self roasting, as he knew he would roast in hell when his time on Eden was finished.

  There were many such lines on his arms, and thighs.

  He had thought of burning his eyes out, but knew that he needed them for work and that his visions would nevertheless continue unabated.

  His finger, rock steady, lifted from the raser’s firing tab; for a moment he regarded the singed flesh, giving off a blackened smoke.

  He let his tunic fall back over his arm.

  He bent over the model, and began to work.

  Chapter 9

  Remember.

  Within the labyrinths of Kamath Clan’s mind, withdrawal was beginning to take hold. She had always told herself, with the rock-hard certainty she held to all things in life, that if this moment ever came—as it inevitably would when Quog passed from life—she would be able to abide it. But she was wrong. Quog had become such an integral part of her existence over the years that now, when his essence was finally denied her, the depths of her addiction were all too apparent.

  There had been other, shorter periods when she had been denied—or had tried to abstain. Denied: when Quog, in one of his periodic fits of temper or madness, had refused to see and provide her. Abstinence: when she had resolved, years ago, when it first became apparent that her reliance on Quog was becoming too strong—a danger for any ruler open to blackmail or extortion—to give up the pleasure altogether. Always she had returned to Quog and always, in the end, he had accommodated her.

  It was only now that the bill was coming due, that the danger in her failure at both denial and abstinence was all too apparent.

  She both cursed herself for her weakness and wished with all her being that Quog was here before her.

  At this moment she would do anything he asked, debase herself however he demanded, if only he would furnish what she required.

  What her withdrawing mind needed.

  “Ohhhhhhhh.”

  Kamath Clan’s head was on fire, felt as if the synapses between her brain’s cells were lit with hot chemicals. None of her potions had eased the growing pain, the growing need; nothing she had done, no mantra of Moral Guidance, no secular
prayer of her ancestor, Faran Clan, could remove this blight from her mind.

  Remember.

  But she could not!

  Her brain screamed for memories, for the sweet, relived times on Earth, happiness under a sapphire-blue sky, the bright, washed smell of a puppy wriggling in her bosom, the towering safeness of her mother and father standing against the warmth of a perfect summer day; the nearness of Sol, hot on the skin, the smell of cut green grass, and the gasp-inducing stark wet look of a healthy apple tree against that perfect sky on that single perfect day.…

  “Ohhhhhhhhhh!”

  But none of it came! None of it was there! While her brain cried to relive that one perfect moment in her life before everything became hard and changed forever—that one, single, perfect instant when she was six years old, the timeless frozen moment of pure happiness that Quog had stretched out for her all these years of unhappiness and hardness—there was only fire! Heat instead of memories! Living death instead of reliving!

  Screaming out, holding her head as if it would burst, Queen Kamath Clan fell to the floor in her chambers and sought to drown her pain with blankness. She would think of nothing.

  But still her brain cried out for memories, sucking at the dry teat of reliving!

  Remember.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  From far off, but only in the next room, she heard her son Jamal undergoing his own pains. They would not be as severe, she surmised—doubly for the reason that he had not partaken of Quog’s offering as long and had precious little of happiness to remember. Still, her heart, in the midst of the fire in her head, went out to him.

  And, in lesser measure, to the other.…

  “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!”

  The wave of withdrawal grew higher, carrying her screaming with it, to the point, finally, where she dove up into fiery blackness and lay still on her bare floor, asleep but undreaming.

  She awoke with the artificial light of day streaming through the window. The Screen in her room proclaimed the time as midday. Her ordeal had lasted days. She rose slowly, limbs trembling, from the floor and beheld herself in the room’s mirror; she was herself, only less so, a large figure whose outer skin had shrunk and wrinkled. The fire in her head had, for the moment, abated.

  She examined the room, noting the scattered potion bottles, some shattered. There was a hole in one wall that she did not remember inflicting; the toilet smelled of vomit.

  She straightened up, cleansed herself, changed her clothing, and, breathing deeply, went out into the hallway.

  A guard stood back, looking fearful, but with measured relief on his countenance when Kamath Clan glared at him.

  “You stood vigil the whole time?”

  “Yes, my queen,” he said.

  She nodded, suppressing a shiver. “And the children?”

  “Still in their rooms, my queen.”

  Kamath took an unsteady step forward, her glare hardening when the guard reached to help her. “Stay at your post.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  Kamath Clan opened the door to her son’s room and entered, closing it behind her.

  Jamal lay on his bed, mouth open wide, staring at something on the ceiling that wasn’t there.

  When Kamath stood over him, invoking his name, he said nothing, but his parched lips undertook to move.

  In a cold whisper, Kamath said, “It will be all right, Jamal. You are new to it, and I pray it will let you go more easily. Also, you will enjoy its benefits longer.” Obviously lost in a mixture of pain and rapture, Jamal nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Ta-brel …”

  Kamath said, “Yes. I will see her now.”

  She left Jamal and opened the door separating her son’s room from his inconsummate bride’s.

  Tabrel Kris, in a condition similar to Jamal’s, sat huddled in a corner, eyes staring at nothingness.

  “You are stronger than my son, and it will give you up less easily,” Kamath Clan said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  The girl’s lips moved, and the queen moved close enough to hear the word “garden” spoken in a whisper.

  “Be in your garden, then,” Kamath Clan said; and then, in a gesture that in her normal course would have been abhorrent and alien to her, she touched the girl’s head.

  “Stay in your garden as long as you may, and fight with your nails to give it up.”

  Briefly, and with a flicker of recognition, Tabrel looked up at her; and Kamath Clan, startled, saw defiance.

  In a moment the waning drug overwhelmed her again, and her mouth moved ever so slightly.

  “Garden …”

  “Yes,” Kamath said, all thoughts of tenderness purged, other thoughts of necessity overtaking them. Suddenly she knew what must be done.

  Back in her chambers, the queen activated her Screen and sought to call Wrath-Pei.

  One last time.

  Still, the traitorous pirate would not speak with her. The Screen remained blank, and Kamath Clan could almost hear Wrath-Pei’s laughter.

  She switched the Screen off.

  An image of Quog—alive or dead, it made no difference—flashed before her, and she could feel the aching fire of withdrawal rising within her again.

  “Damn you, Wrath-Pei.”

  He would laugh no more when she was finished with him.

  Quickly, before her brain’s burning became too much for her to bear and she collapsed screaming to the floor once more, she reactivated the Screen and placed another call, one she had never before made. Before long she spoke with Prime Cornelian, High Leader of Mars.

  Chapter 10

  Dalin was doomed—and then he was alive.

  There was no other way to think of it. The sequence of events was a simple one: he had put his weight on the ice shelf; the shelf had given way, causing him to fall to his death; something had shimmered beneath him, and then he was back on the ice shelf, on a solid wide area beside all of his and Shatz Abel’s equipment, as if nothing had happened.

  It was that simple—and that complicated.

  What had the goblin—the thing that saved him—been?

  He had no idea; except that he had felt a tingle on his skin, as if something had penetrated him skin-deep. And then he had felt nothing, and the creature, whatever it had been, was gone.

  He rolled up his sleeve and examined his skin; there was no trace of anything, and nothing unusual, no shimmer, no wave of light, was left anywhere around him.

  By this time, Shatz Abel, nearly mad with concern, had made his way down to the ice ledge; he looked down for a safe place to step and his eyes widened with astonishment to see Dalin looking safely up at him.

  “But Sire! I saw—I mean, you fell—I mean—”

  “Yes, I did fail,” Dalin said. “But here I am.”

  “Goblins!” Shatz Abel said, standing firmly now on the ice ledge. He reached out to poke at the king tentatively.

  Dalin said, “Yes. Apparently there are goblins.”

  “I knew it! We’re doomed!”

  “Hardly,” Dalin said. “After all, whatever it was, it saved my hide.”

  “True!” the pirate said. He edged to the ice shelf’s lip and looked over. “Is it gone?”

  “I think so,” Dalin said. “When it let me go it seemed to melt upward, into thin air.”

  “Goblins! So the stories are true!”

  “It looks that way,” Dalin said. “Shouldn’t we be moving on?”

  Shatz Abel was studying the entire area around them, eyes darting to and fro.

  “I said it’s gone,” Dalin said.

  “Perhaps,” the pirate said, looking at Dalin. “Then again, perhaps not.”

  Rather than stay on the inconstant ice shelf, they began their descent. Below them another hundred meters was a narrower shelf, and they climbed down to it. This time, Shatz Abel went first, driving pitons deep into the ice; they both wore harnesses and trusted no crevice or step.

  Halfway to the next ledge the ice began to dissi
pate; and soon they were descending a sheer rock face. To Dalin’s surprise, he saw that what he had taken to be bottomless had seemed so because the rock’s deepening color had given the illusion of making it look deeper than it actually was. In fact, below the second ledge they soon reached a slope that angled downward into a long valley. Soon they were walking instead of rappelling.

  When they rested, Dalin looked up to mark their progress and was astounded by how much territory they had covered; the black sky above was a faraway slit between towering walls of rock and ice. At the bottom, their valley had nearly evened out; at this rate, they would reach the far side before making camp and be ready to make the ascent up the far wall after sleep.

  “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Dalin said.

  Shatz Abel shook his head. “As I keep telling you, Sire, we’ve barely started. And it’s a lot harder to climb up than fall down.”

  The huge pirate began to study their surroundings closely as they walked; no doubt, Dalin thought, looking for goblins.

  At the base of the far canyon wall, they camped, ate from food tubes and sought sleep. Dalin knew that Shatz Abel was having trouble with slumber—the big man snored like a bellows when he slept, and tonight there was only silence, punctuated by occasional loud snufflings, from the pirates’s sleeping bag. Dalin himself found sleep elusive; here at the bottom of Christy Chasm the wind whistled and moaned, sounding like a cacophony of wailing ghosts. High above, through the cut of rocks that showed the sky, he saw part of an asterism that may have been the Big Dipper; to either side of it a wash of fainter stars brushed the night.

  Knowing the pirate was awake, Dalin asked, “Shatz Abel?”

  The other grunted, then said, “What is it?”

  “Why isn’t there snow down here?”

  “The storm’s are localized. There are times when this arroyo is filled to the brim with snow, I’ll wager.”

  “Are you worrying about goblins?”

  The pirate snorted. “Not worrying. Wondering.”

  “You have no idea what they are?”