Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  Shatz Abel was running toward the lately opened surface of the water.

  “What are you doing?” Dalin shouted in alarm. The pirate ignored him, and drove himself forward.

  “Sire—water!”

  Dalin saw the serpentine movement of a tentacle under the ice beneath him; he needed no other incentive to move and soon stood beside Shatz Abel, who had fallen to his knees and was scooping cold water into his mouth from the shrinking ice hole.

  “Water!” Dalin shouted, and drank his fill before the ice battled his hands and the hole swelled shut with a thickening film of ice crystals.

  The two men stood, panting.

  “That tasted like liquid gold!” Shatz Abel said. Dalin nodded.

  In the near distance, there was another shudder of ice and two tentacles thrust up before dropping down again.

  “Beginning to believe in tall tales, Sire?” Shatz Abel asked.

  Wiping water from his mouth before it froze in place, Dalin said, “Yes.”

  A day later, further refreshed from two close-by water openings, they climbed the far shore of the lake and left it behind. Another series of hillocks led them to a broad, snow-swept valley—and then, suddenly, there in the distance was Tombaugh City.

  “It looks huge!” Dalin said, studying the skyline.

  The pirate laughed. “It’s little more than an outpost! You’ve been living in the snow too long!”

  What had appeared as a green glow from the distance now resolved itself into a brightly lit town bookended by two tall buildings. In between was a dotting of homes and lower structures; and, on the edge of the valley that separated them from the city, a port. As they watched, the needle-nosed shape of a freighter pulled upward in a burst of flame and was gone in a moment. Backdropping the city, hugging the horizon as if always on the rise, was the dark curve of Charon, Pluto’s moon, half as big as the planet itself and locked in synchronous rotation around its parent.

  Shatz Abel ignored Pluto’s moon and pointed at the port. “That’s how we get off Pluto,” Shatz Abel said.

  The valley, boulder-strewn and treacherous with ice and snow-covered craterlets, proved more difficult to negotiate than they thought it would. Once, Dalin had to pull Shatz Abel from Pluto’s version of quicksand, a seemingly benign patch of snow that effectively hid a deep pit bottomed with icy slush. The king was able to keep his grasp on the big man and haul him out; after that mishap, their progress was even slower.

  But, a day and a half later, marked by SunOne’s stately warm progress above, they staggered, hungry and once again thirsty, to the fence that bordered Tombaugh’s port.

  This they circumvented, being careful not to be seen, and made their way into the city itself.

  It was now that Tombaugh’s bright lights, which had provided them with a beacon on their journey, proved to be a detriment. Their appearance, hungry, unshaven, dirty, bruised, and exhausted, not to mention without money, would have landed them in custody on the main street in a matter of moments. Shatz Abel was chagrined to see that Tombaugh was well patrolled by Wrath-Pei’s forces. Though it made their task more difficult, it by no means made it impossible.

  They kept to the shadows and darkened ways between buildings, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. They picked a spot in the center of town, amid the gambling spots and bars. It was now that Shatz Abel’s confidence soared.

  “Sire, I’m finally back in my element!” he crowed, looking happier than Dalin had even seen him.

  And soon an opportunity did present itself, as a portly gentleman left the gambling establishment across the street and negotiated the icy main thoroughfare; he would pass right by their hiding place.

  “A chicken ready for plucking,” Shatz Abel said, rubbing his hands together.

  Dalin took hold of his shoulder. “No! I won’t have you assaulting a common citizen.”

  Shatz Abel turned on him with surprise. “What! How do you think we’re going to get clothing and money?”

  Dalin said, “Pick someone more … worthy of assault.”

  The pirate furrowed his brow. “In my business, Sire, everyone’s worthy of assault!” he added, “Except for yourself, of course.”

  “Just find someone who deserves it more.”

  The pirate shook his head in resignation and watched in frustration as the fat gambler, singing to himself, waddled by their hiding place and moved safely on.

  But, in a moment, the pirate’s eyes glinted with pleasure at the sight of another pedestrian approaching.

  “Well, I’ll be …” The pirate chuckled.

  “I thought I told you—” Dalin began.

  “This one I know, Sire. And we’ll need neither money nor clothing from him. But as for that meal I promised you …”

  As the man passed them, Shatz Abel reached out a meaty fist and pulled him into the alley.

  “Remember me, old friend?” Shatz Abel said, grinning into the man’s startled face. For emphasis, the pirate lifted him so that the man’s feet barely touched the ground.

  “Why, Shatz! Shatz Abel! My friend! H-how h-have you been?” the man stammered, while trying to keep his feet on the ground.

  “Not as well as you, Peyton, I’ll fancy,” the pirate said. “How is the restaurant business these days? Care to give an old friend a hearty meal—and whatever other help he asks for?”

  “Of course!” the man said. “It’s b-been a long time, Shatz Abel!”

  “That it has,” Shatz Abel growled, setting the man down. “And a debt is still a debt.”

  “Of course!” Peyton grinned, with a hopeful and strained look.

  “And I’ve not forgotten your role in my capture,” Shatz Abel said, causing the color to drain from the other man’s face.

  “Th-that was unav-voidable! Wrath-Pei—”

  The pirate grabbed Peyton’s tunic front up in his clenched fist, causing the proprietor to partially levitate once more.

  “Don’t mention Wrath-Pei in my presence again,” Shatz Abel hissed. He brought his face to within inches of the other’s.

  “N-never!” Peyton stammered.

  “Good.” The pirate dropped the man back to his feet, but stood towering over him. “Now, this is what I want…”

  Twenty minutes later found Dalin and his pirate cohort seated in a back room at the most lavish table either had ever seen. Even in Dalin’s court days he could not remember a meal so magnificent, from the Martian goose and Earth roast to the Titanian cheeses. There were wines from all four worlds, a new Plutonian beer with a distinctive flavor, and desserts from one of the finest bakers—a local man—that Dalin had ever come across. If he had still been on Earth and in power, he would have hired the man immediately.

  “And now,” Shatz Abel said, standing and belching, “I will attend to our accommodations.”

  “For the night?” Dalin asked languidly; he knew he would pay dearly later, after the years of lean living, for the rich meal he had just devoured—but he didn’t care.

  The pirate laughed. “No, my king! If we stay on this rock much longer we will be caught and dropped back in our ice cave in no time! There’s nowhere to hide on Pluto—even for the night. We’re leaving now!”

  Dalin showed his obvious pleasure with a belch of his own. “Excellent!”

  The pirate then left, meeting Peyton at the door to the back room and grabbing the man once more by the scruff of the neck—and leaving Dalin to the dregs of the wine and the crumbs of the desserts, which he proceeded to devour with relish.

  And then, in no time—they were off Pluto!

  In a whirlwind, Shatz Abel returned, grabbed Dalin by the arm, causing him to drop the last bottle of beer, and dragged him through the restaurant, out the front door, and into the open door of a dark-windowed ground transport. In what seemed like no time at all they had reached their destination and were hurried from the transport straight into the open hatch of a freighter. Still groggy from both the speed of their escape and the quantity of wine
and beer he had consumed, Dalin was barely strapped into his couch in the freighter’s hold before the ship was thrown from its pad and shot straight up.

  Blearily, Dalin turned to the nearby window and watched Pluto quickly recede, turning from a blue-white sheet of ice pocked by Tombaugh City and its environs—Dalin could just make out the valley between the mountains he and the pirate had traversed, and, beyond it, the hills and ice plain, before swirling dust and distance obscured the view—to a shiny marble circled by a dark moon half its size and SunOne, its artificial source of heat and light.

  Yawning, he turned his sight from the window and lay back against the couch’s headrest; he felt drowsiness overtaking him, and noticed how cosily warm the freighter’s cabin was.

  Sleep.

  His eyes were half closed when a commotion up at the front of the freighter commanded his attention—it sounded like pots and pans were being thrown around.

  “I said now!” Shatz Abel roared; there came mewling sounds of agreement—and then suddenly the hold’s door was thrown open, revealing a grinning Shatz Abel holding yet another prize by the scruff of the neck: a grizzled old man who looked very unhappy.

  Behind the old man and pirate, muffled, precise voices sounded, and the old man turned angry for a moment, twisting around in the pirate’s grasp to shout back into the cockpit: “Ye two hunks o’ junk! I’ll turn ye into aluminum foil, I will!”

  Shatz Abel stood aside, still holding the old man, and Dalin was treated to a partial view of the ship’s cockpit, manned by two confused and arguing robots.

  Straining against the pirate’s grip, the old man twisted around, trying to kick and punch at the nearest robot.

  “Idiot! Tin shadrool! I’ll trash ye!”

  The pirate shook the old man, turning him around to face Dalin again. Shatz Abel grinned from ear to ear.

  “Sire,” the pirate said, “meet Captain Weems, who also owes me many favors.” Addressing the captain, Shatz Abel continued, “I believe we were considering passage to Europa as partial payment, were we not?”

  “Yes! Yes!” the captain said vigorously. “Whatever ye want, Abel! Ye an’ th’ sprite can go wherever this bucket’lI take ye!”

  “Sprite!” Shatz Abel said, in mock horror. “Is that any way to talk to Dalin Shar, King of Earth?”

  Captain Weems started, then stared at Dalin for a moment. “Aye, it must be him at that. Though the way your sweetheart described ye to me, I’d be expecting more of a boy.”

  “You know Tabrel Kris?” Dalin said hopefully.

  “Aye,” Captain Weems said. “Transported your sweetheart once, three years ago, before Wrath-Pei got his evil hands on her. Tabrel Kris …” He preened, which only managed to make him look even more grizzled. “Think she took a fancy to me, too.” He looked meekly up at Shatz Abel. “I’ll wager this’ll strike us even—eh, Abel? Wi’ the two o’ ye as dangerous cargo, I mean?”

  “We’ll see, Weems,” Shatz Abel said.

  “That we will,” Weems said. “That we will.”

  Behind Captain Weems, over the heads of the two robots piloting the ship up front, Dalin caught a brief glimpse of Pluto, now nothing more than a frozen blue dot.

  Chapter 11

  The Machine Master was not a hard taskmaster, nor a cruel one, but he was difficult in many ways. He kept odd hours, paid attention neither to clock nor calendar, and considered meals an annoyance rather than sustenance. He was sloppy in his dress, as well as in his work habits, did not take proper care of tools, and never put them in their place. Consequently, he spent much time in search of what he needed, and further energy on anger when he could not find it. In these areas, Visid was able to help him; but, though her organization reduced the amount of time the Machine Master spent in search, and seemingly lessened his anger at not having at hand that which he needed, it did not make him any more agreeable, nor less preoccupied. He was, in many ways, difficult. He never smiled; and levity was a virtue he considered a vice. Preoccupation seemed his occupation. When involved with a problem he was anything but of the world; he was outside it, in another place, and could not be reached, even if the normal course of events demanded his attention. When the High Leader, especially, was in need of him, the Machine Master was very often busy and treated the Martian magnate like any courier boy or common attendant. More than once, Visid had (from her own hiding place) seen the High Leader’s wrath build to the point where it seemed he might swoop down on the Machine Master with all of his metal limbs clacking and crush or tear him to bits. And though this had not happened, Visid felt that with each audience the Machine Master, through his own single-mindedness and inattention to anything but his own concerns, walked a tightrope he might one day fall from.

  He was a difficult man.

  And yet, Visid had never felt so alive as she had since coming to assist the Machine Master. Her brain, long used to attending to itself while the boredom of rote Lessons went on outside it, felt on fire with ideas and excitement. Her brain felt like a muscle being flexed for the first time. From the very first day—which she had spent in tasks as mundane as sweeping rat droppings from the corners of the Machine Master’s shop and pushing inches of dust, which fell in cascades to the floor from old machines—she had felt invigorated, alive, as she never had before. And though the Machine Master spent neither that first day, nor any subsequent day, in conversation with her, she nevertheless felt the power of his presence as well as his incrementally growing confidence in her.

  When he needed a tool, she was there at his side, bearing it; when his impatient mumblings indicated that he was in want of a certain item of ancient equipment, she knew its location and dragged it out to his side. And though in the beginning there was a tendency for her to get underfoot, which he proclaimed in freezing silence, her quick adaptability to his ways seemed to make a quick and permanent impression on him, and his silences became notes of approval.

  “Visid, Screen three,” he might mumble, and when she had rolled that instrument to him on its casters, leaving it beside him, his silence, punctuated by not so much as a grunt, led her to believe that she had done well.

  As to his appearance: she had soon become accustomed to his ugliness and deformity; as comfortable with it as he seemed to be himself. His permanent smile, afforded by his snipped-away lips, and at first startling and horrible, became, in short time, merely his mouth. To Visid, in time, the Machine Master could look no other way. He sometimes spoke, often in sleep, when their long hours in the shop precluded proper quarters, and a cot might be erected near one of the damp walls, out of direct light from the high cuts that served as windows near the ceiling; and his speech was often in anger at Wrath-Pei, the benefactor of the Machine Master’s appearance. The first of these episodes had greatly troubled Visid—she had briefly considered calling for assistance, until the Machine Master abruptly woke and rose, continuing his work as if nothing had happened. When it happened hence she knew that it was nothing to treat with alarm, only his way.

  He was a difficult man.

  And absolutely, of course, brilliant.

  If this had been merely a damp basement occupied by a lunatic with instruments, Visid may quickly have tired of the novelty and sought release. But the things that the Machine Master turned his mind to were fascinating things to Visid. For the Machine Master’s mind worked in fallow fields, churning up well-tilled soil and exposing treasures beneath. He took what others had cast aside, in both ideas and apparatus, and with the marriage of the two made something new—and useful.

  “Visid, parts cabinet number five,” the Machine Master said today (or was it night? the light drifting in through the high windows was indicative of either twilight or street light, she could not tell which).

  Immediately Visid moved to a far corner of the shop and retrieved the requested part, an ancient computer chassis bursting with electronic components. Some parts had already been expropriated from the cabinet, but though the Machine Master had little idea where
all of his components and tools resided, he knew exactly what parts he owned, and to what use they could be put. On the occasions when new machines arrived in the shop, borne by traders or confiscated by the High Leader (the Machine Master was not immune from asking for help when it was needed—though his asking so often sounded like demanding), Visid was amazed to see the Machine Master pulling covers from old parts, instantly cataloging what he now had at his disposal. He might never give that piece of apparatus another look—but he would know forever what it was composed of.

  With a grunt—the cabinet was heavy—Visid set the requested piece down before the Machine Master and stepped back from the table. Without so much as a glance in her direction or a word of any kind, Sam-Sei proceeded to pull three tiny electronic components from their sockets, holding them up to the light for inspection before setting them down on the table and pushing parts cabinet number five aside. He then bent over a slim device, a hand controller of some sort, opened on the bench before him, pressing one of the components precisely into it.

  Without being told, Visid retrieved the cabinet and brought it back to its place.

  When she turned back to the Machine Master—he was gone.

  And then he was back.

  In a blink of an eye, nearly before Visid could react, the Machine Master once more activated the hand controller; there was a shimmer, during which Sam-Sei seemed to be surrounded briefly by a translucent egg, and then the Machine Master attained invisibility.

  “Sir?” Visid called, but there was no answer. Then the Machine Master was back in place, his huge eyes fixed on the device.

  “It works, as far as it goes.”

  “Sir?” Visid said, unable to keep quiet.

  The Machine Master turned from his project. “You have a question?”

  “I…”

  “I see. You are interested?”

  “You were invisible.”

  “Not invisible. Transferred.”

  Visid kept silent, hoping he would continue.