Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  “You recall the properties of the plasma generators, which drive the light soldiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will recall, then, that there is a projector initially applied, followed by an amplification signal. It is a variation of the projector that is employed here. Instead of light we project … matter.”

  “Where …”

  The Machine Master regarded her with something akin to amusement, though amid his placid demeanor and dreadful physical appearance it might go unnoticed to someone who had not worked as closely with him as Visid had.”Where did I go?”

  “Yes,” Visid whispered.

  “Merely to the other hemisphere of Mars. The Utopia Planitia province, I think. It was rather cold, and they are having winter there at the moment.”

  Visid said nothing; and now the Machine Master turned back to his workbench, prying the cover from the hand controller to poke at its innards with a slim instrument.

  “It is not yet suitable for my purposes,” he said, either to himself or to Visid—she wasn’t sure.

  Taking a deep breath, Visid dared to ask, “And what are your purposes?”

  He said nothing, but continued to work; after the longest minute Visid had ever lived, he asked quietly, “Component board number eighteen, Visid.”

  She scrambled to get it for him, placed it gently on the workbench, and stood back.

  He worked for an hour, during which Visid busied herself around the shop, wiping nascent moisture from machine cases, dusting, tracking down the occasional squeaking mouse to his hole and there laying a trap.

  Another hour passed, and she was hungry, but said nothing. She was used to these conditions; during her free time, she was allowed her own putterings, in a far corner away from the Machine Master on an old workbench she had cleared for herself. She amused herself with an old intensity lamp, projecting white light through a scavenged prism to break it into its spectrum.

  “Visid, come here, please,” he called.

  She looked up; the light slats in the ceiling were darkened with night. It might be four in the morning; it might be that a day had passed and they were heading into another night.

  She went to the Machine Master’s side.

  On his workbench the hand controller lay open; many of the components that had been inside now lay in a scatter nearby. A rogue tool was clipped to a portion of the controller’s innards.

  Visid stood silent, waiting, while the Machine Master, seemingly having forgotten that he had summoned her, picked over a pile of slim, tiny old electronic components that resembled ruby spiders; each was a garnet nub with delicate silver wires protruding.

  Visid stood; and though her feet ached and her stomach growled for food, she said nothing.

  The Machine Master continued his search—and then finally plucked from the pile a crimson part with a tiny green jewel embedded in its center.

  This he put aside.

  Still Visid waited for his orders.

  He unclipped his tool from its place within the hand controller, lay it aside, and suddenly turned to Visid, his huge lidless eyes brimming with tears.

  “Not suitable yet for my purposes,” he said, choking within his lipless mouth.

  “Sir?”

  She reached out to touch him, but he recoiled from the possibility; his hands, which had laid flat on his lap, drew up to his breast and crossed there.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Visid gasped.

  He stared at her for the longest time, and then his gaze seemed to pass through her, to his previous thoughts.

  “But soon it will be suitable,” he said finally. “It will, you see, reach to Titan, or wherever Wrath-Pei hides at the moment. And we will have our long-postponed interview.”

  Chapter 12

  At Mel Sent’s bidding they met beyond the Kuiper Belt, at the very outer reaches of the Solar System beyond even the Oort Cloud.

  Since their last meeting, the traumatic one within the ring of cometoid material that was the Kuiper Belt, Kay Free had sought loneliness; indeed, if Mel Sent had not been so insistent now, she would have refused the meeting and stayed, a pale shimmer of light, facing away from the sun and out toward there. Only in this position could she hope to find solace, if not answers, to her questions.

  And it was with a heavy heart that she met with the others today.

  Mel Sent, uncharacteristically early, met her not with a greeting but with a characteristic shout of complaint.

  “You would not believe what happened to Mother!” Mel Sent nearly shouted.

  Pel Front, the last to arrive this day (it would be, it seemed to Kay Free, a decidedly uncharacteristic meeting), was greeted with the same announcement:

  “Pel Front, You would not believe what happened to Mother!”

  “I have no wish to believe what happened to your mother, Mel Sent,” Pel Front said waspishly; it was obvious that he had been undergoing his own form of self-exile and, lacking Kay Free’s politeness, felt no compulsion to be quiet about it. Kay Free did note that behind his peevishness there was the same weight of sadness that afflicted her.

  Mel Sent, unburdened as she was by such feelings, waited impatiently for one of her companions to inquire what it was that had happened to Mother. In the interest of ending the present rendezvous as quickly as possible, Kay Free offered, “So tell us, Mel Sent—is Mother all right?”

  “She will be, in time, I’m sure. The fact was, she was practically frightened out of her wits by one of the creatures.”

  Kay Free’s interest was mildly pricked. She asked, “Where has she been staying?”

  “On the farthest planet. The double one, with the weak light and the dry cold that Mother finds so pleasant.”

  “The one they call Pluto,” Pel Front interjected, the snap of his tone conveying his continued impatience.

  “Yes!” Mel Sent said.

  “And what creature there did she encounter? One of the white bears? A mountain cat?”

  “No! Not one of those—do you think I’d stir you from your self-indulgent mopings for that? A creature! One of the cognizant ones!”

  Kay Free made what passed for an intake of breath with her kind. “A human?”

  “Yes! The fragile, clumsy thing nearly fell on top of her! It was falling into an ice hole or something at the time—you know how vague Mother can be.”

  “And did she—” Kay Free began.

  “Of course she touched it! She saved the wretched thing—what else could she do?”

  “But did she—”

  “Enter it—no! Do you think Mother’s become senile?”

  “There’s been some question of that,” Pel Front said sharply.

  Mel Sent turned on him with similar sharpness: “She’s not senile! And she acted properly. What’s more, she said there was an … aura about this one.”

  Now Kay Free’s interest was complete. She said, slowly and carefully, “What do you mean, Mel Sent?”

  “I don’t know, exactly; you know Mother and her ways of explaining things. She merely stated that there was something … special about this one. Yes—that’s the term she used.”

  “Special …” Kay Free said. She looked at Pel Front, who was trying to hide his own excitement.

  “There is a possibility … ?” Pel Front said, after a moment.

  “Yes, it would explain much,” Kay Free said.

  “What are you talking about?” Mel Sent said. “You don’t mean …”

  Her two companions regarded her with an even expression, and, after a moment, understanding blossomed fully within her.

  “And to think it was Mother!” she said. “She will be thrilled; I must tell her—”

  “Say nothing to her until we have a calling. There is nothing at all definite about this now,” Kay Free said.

  “And that decision is unanimous, is it not, Mel Sent?” Pel Front said harshly.

  After a moment Mel Sent threw in the towel. “All right, I shall say nothing, for the moment. But i
f and when the calling comes regarding this, I shall rush off to Mother at the instant and tell her. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Kay Free said immediately, knowing that this was the best promise they were likely to get from Mel Sent. After a much longer pause, Pel Front also exclaimed, “Agreed.”

  “Good!” Mel Sent said. “Well, until the calling, then—good-bye!”

  “We should wait, to see if it comes now,” Kay Free said.

  “But I have things to do! Places to go!” Mel Sent said. “And even though I can’t tell Mother this news, I still have to attend to her needs, you know—she is old.”

  “Do what Kay Free says,” Pel Front said, all traces of sarcasm gone.

  Mel Sent huffed, then said, “Very well.”

  They waited; yet nothing happened; no calling came.

  “There, you see?” Mel Sent said. And then, saying nothing more, she took her leave of them.

  Pel Front, too, took his leave, after at least giving salutation.

  “We’ll meet again—soon, I hope.”

  “Yes,” Kay Free said. “Soon, I hope.”

  Kay Free was alone.

  But now, drifting on the very edge of what was allowed as her existence, in a place that shame and lack of understanding had driven her to, with her back to all she had been commanded to abide, she felt a new sense of possibility fill her.

  She turned, briefly, to face Sol once more.

  Chapter 13

  As had despots since time immemorial caught in a growing spiral of anarchy, Prime Minister Acron responded with the one thing he knew and understood: terror.

  His was not a novel brand of terror—only the weaponry had been updated, and even that was new merely to Earth. After months of begging, Acron had finally convinced the High Leader that the only way to stop the growing revolt on Earth was to crush it with the same brutal finality that the High Leader had used himself when consolidating power on Mars.

  “You mean you would use it on your own people?” the High Leader said, with what Acron took to be incredulity.

  “Didn’t you, High Leader?”

  “Yes, of course. But I’m … me.”

  Acron had no idea if he was being made fun of by the insect creature on the Screen; he was ready to debase himself if that was what was needed to get the weaponry he craved.

  The High Leader said lightly, “I see you have set up a little map room—having fun with toy soldiers and such?”

  Acron turned, distracted, to see what the High Leader was referring to: the room was, indeed, set out as a war room, with numerous maps pinned to tables, showing government advances and defeats.

  The High Leader said, “There seem to be an awful lot of black markers on your maps—I hope that’s a good color for you?”

  “Rebel forces,” Acron said, turning back to the Screen. Willing his voice to hide impatience, he added, “Please, High Leader. Give me the plasma soldiers I request!”

  “Out of the question. Once in your hands, you could do with them whatever you wanted. And you would have the technology to duplicate them—do you think me a fool, Acron?”

  Even with all the distance between them, the prime minister still felt a tinge of fear in the pit of his stomach when facing the mechanical man. And while his anger at not being addressed properly was in proportion to this fear, the fear, as always when dealing with Cornelian, had great weight.

  Prime Minister Acron said, “A concussion strike, then. From the air. By your people.”

  Seeming to ignore the prime minister’s request, the High Leader said, “I’ve been mulling over our cotton agreement, Acron. I think there’s room for improvement.”

  Instantly forgetting all pretense to diplomacy or patience, Acron said, “Anything you wish, High Leader. And about that concussion strike?”

  The High Leader’s metal countenance was unreadable, but after a moment he said, “That is a possibility.”

  “When—”

  “I will think on it, Acron. I’ll be in touch. Go back to your strategies, or whatever. Work on getting those little black markers off your maps.”

  With that, the Screen went blank, leaving the prime minister with the same mixture of rage and hope he had had before the conversation.

  Only now he was able to show the rage, and turned roaring like a bull to smash his fist onto the nearest map table, sending markers of all colors, mostly black, flying, and a hole in the table and map where his fist struck.

  Seated at a bench, in a camp tent, on a strip of land on the northern border of what had once, in the ancient days, been called Gabon, but which for the last two hundred years had been simply classified as part of the Lost Lands, Erik Peese had much to celebrate. By all accounts, his war with the usurper’s government was going very well. Government forces had been defecting to his cause in growing numbers; and those that refused to cross lines were falling back on nearly every front. Many of the same local officials who had backed the plot to remove Dalin Shar from power had now reversed course; though Erik knew them to be nothing but cowards, sunshine patriots, he had long sought their political help as a tactical move. Now he had it, and more. The counterrevolution was like a stain spreading inward from the outer territories toward the centers of power, and it was only a matter of time now before so-called Prime Minister Acron and his traitorous cohorts were hoisted on a gallows rope. Acron himself had unwittingly aided Peese in his quest by murdering Besh; in one bloodthirsty knife thrust he had made himself known for what he was, a street brawler with no conscience and no plan other than to hold power. That Acron’s power had almost immediately begun to erode had come as a surprise only to himself: his ministers, fearing their own futures, had immediately sought intermediaries between themselves and Peese’s people, seeking to extend their own existences through further treachery. And once Acron’s boat began to spring leaks, as it had, it was only a matter of time before it would sink under the weight of the fetid water it took in.

  But, though Erik Peese had much to celebrate—especially in light of the fact that only a year ago, with the plodding Besh cementing his own hold on power through more traditionally brainy means; by, for instance, providing the commoners with bread and circuses, followed by more bread—he was not in a celebratory mood. For he knew that everything he had worked for these past five years, everything he had hoped to accomplish, had sworn to accomplish, could come to nothing if the butcher Acron was successful in obtaining his fellow butcher Prime Comelian’s terror weapons. Erik feared even the threat of those weapons—they had all seen the Screen views of the concussion bomb effects on the Martian city of Shiklovskii and of Earth’s two former Moon colonies; all three, after their respective attacks, looked as though they had been swept from existence. And Erik knew that his own fighters, dedicated and fierce as they were, would be no match for plasma soldiers.

  Every province governor and local elected official they had made recent agreements with knew that, too—which only pointed to the fragility of those agreements.

  So it was important that they regain power before Acron was able to convince the High Leader to employ his terror weapons on Earth—and it was just as important to return King Shar to Earth as soon as possible, especially now, according to reliable reports, that the king had effected his escape from exile on Pluto.

  So much to think about.

  For a moment, Erik let his mind relax and thought back on that night three years before, when he had helped spirit Dalin Shar from his palace where death had awaited him—and how His Majesty had looked dressed in women’s clothing….

  Erik laughed—and looked up from his bench to see his old friend Porto standing before him, regarding him with amusement.

  “There! I knew it! There were wagers that you no longer know how to laugh, and I bet on you! And I won!” Porto said.

  “You have news?” Erik said, letting his laughter relax into a smile.

  Porto, ever the actor, struck a theatrical pose. “There is a possibility of a truce—with
Acron!”

  “What?”

  “It’s true! The vicious old windbag says he will meet with a representative of our ‘government,’ to discuss terms! He’s packing it in!”

  “Don’t be too sure, Porto.”

  “What else could he want? He’ll ask for safe passage off world, no doubt. He’ll hide his miserable fat carcass on Titan and spend what money he’s able to stuff into his tunic on information about assassination attempts. He’s made enough enemies, that’s for sure.”

  “True. And he’s not the tactician we feared he was. But he’ll be dangerous when cornered, Porto.”

  “Bah! He’s ready to run, I tell you!”

  “Then I’ll speak with him.”

  Porto laughed. “You? That would be treasonous on your part! If something happens to you, everything we’ve worked for will fall down like a house of cards!”

  “I’m just a man. We do what we do for the king.”

  “Of course! But where will he be when he returns if his new Faulkner is not here to greet him!”

  “You honor me with Prime Minister Faulkner’s memory, Porto.”

  “A great man! And so are you!”

  “I’ll go, nevertheless.”

  “Hogwash! You’ll send me, and be done with it!”

  Erik laughed. “You? What will you do—charm Acron with your tricks?”

  Porto, to make his friend laugh, threw himself suddenly forward and boosted himself into the air, standing on his hands. He smiled at Peese upside down. “I’ll juggle for him! Sing! Perhaps act out Macbeth—although he knows that one by heart, I’m afraid.”

  Erik could not stop laughing, as his friend pushed himself off of his hands and stood on his feet again, arms held out for applause, which Erik gave him by clapping his hands lightly together.

  His face suddenly serious, Porto said, “I really think it should be I who goes, Erik.”

  Growing sober himself, Peese said, “It will be very dangerous.”

  “I’ll laugh my way through it!”

  “Reluctantly, I agree with you. I’m more valuable here. The Ethiopian governor is due in, along with secret representatives from five other provinces. With the speed with which things are going, perhaps we should send no one, merely ignore Acron.”