The Cauldron

by Jean Rabe

  Carl got in and moved the seat back to accommodate his long legs.

  “Hurry!” He spat the word. “Ellen, let’s get out of here.”

  Ellen nudged the passenger seat forward and slid into the back. “Why don’t you just … zap us away somewhere … through that magic fog?”

  He didn’t answer that.

  Jerrah stood there, looking indecisive.

  “Come or not,” Carl said, reaching over as if to close the passenger door. “In half a second I’m going to—”

  Jerrah hurried inside and slammed the door, dripping water everywhere and making herself look small and wilted in the seat. The car smelled of stale beer and cigarettes, and Carl rolled down his window despite the rain coming in. He was quick to pull out and get on the road.

  “The drunk shouldn’t be driving anyway,” he said as mild justification for the theft.

  He expected at least Ellen to say something about him stealing a car, but she had her head canted back on the seat, eyes closed, maybe trying to wish all of this away. She still hadn’t noticed she’d lost some of her years.

  The engine was a high-performance V8, Carl could tell by the way it revved. A low-end muscle car with bucket seats that made it feel like he was sitting in a hole, it maneuvered well enough, but the tires were in bad shape, lacking enough good tread to solidly grip the slick road. Its instrument panel showed a tachometer, and a speedometer that went to 150. He spent several minutes getting used to the feel of it and its column-mounted three-speed manual transmission.

  He headed southwest, farther away from Morgantown, a feeling of relief creeping in that he was on the move. It might be more difficult for the shipkeeper to find him this way.

  So he was and wasn’t Carl Johnson, and had and hadn’t been John Miller before that. False identities, both of them … all of them … Petey the Clown, Esbiorn the Divine Bear. The identities were tiny islands surrounded by centuries of mystery.

  How many centuries? How far back did the memories go? Gold mining. Witch trials. A fragment zipped past of him hunting bison with a bow and arrow. And there was something much earlier.

  I’m not even human, stranded, shipwrecked on Earth for—what?—hundreds of years? Longer? He believed it all, and everything Melusine had said, something told him it was true. The memories of his being Delphoros and of training to be a navigator, his body having been altered. A nightmare—but a real memory.

  “How many lives have I lived?” he asked Jerrah. “How long have I been here?”

  How many tiny islands had he occupied?

  He glanced at Jerrah. Her eyes were wide, and they were riveted on his face, but her expression, emphasized by the tenseness of her body, was of someone poised to jump out of the car and flee.

  There was a flood of memories out there in the darkness, waiting to wash over him, he sensed … if only he would open the gates to his mind and let them in. But some part of him wanted to keep them at bay, keep all the little islands separate.

  When John Miller had come into being, it had been simple. He’d taken Tina with him through the fog, and she’d become Ellen. Had he brought her along with him before?

  “Oh, what the hell.” Suddenly he opened the gates to his mind and gripped the wheel so hard he thought it might crumble in his hands. His breath sucked in with a hiss and the world around him vanished, sending him whirling through emptiness. And then his nightmares were enveloping him, drowning him.

  There was the solid, crystal clear memories of John Miller and Petey. But around these memories hovered an aura of vagueness and unreality, the scenes and sounds, so many thoughts had been his at one time. They belonged to him, but they were not a part of him now.

  There was the name—Delphoros, so familiar and at the same time alien and distant. His tongue could not form it properly. And there was the world with the pink-tinged sky, Elthor, which seemed like a watercolor rendered by a drug-addled artist. It was another person’s world, not his.

  There was the icy, shifting grayness: otherspace. Dark matter. Something that could not precisely be defined but through which it was possible to travel exceedingly fast to other stars. Something which only one in a billion Elthorans had been able to navigate.

  And there was all that had gone on with his being that one in a billion: One Who Sees. Privileges, protection, the near-immortality that was partly a gift of science and partly a result of entering otherspace. Each time he entered otherspace it was a form of death, and the subsequent emergence into time-and-space was a form of rebirth. The rejuvenation effect spilled over to his physical body; it was why he’d never suffered the vagaries of growing old, and why Ellen had lost a few decades from her form. It was sort of a mind-over-matter that kept him the same—incarnation through incarnation: Esbiorn, Petey, John Miller, Carl Johnson.

  “Finding me here, Melusine, is it like finding a resurrected Merlin, still able to perform his spells for Arthur after a thousand years in the grave?”

  She stared at him mutely.

  “How many lives have I lived, Melusine? Do you have any way of knowing?”

  “No.”

  “Then can you tell me what happened to the other navigators? Why I’m so damned important because—”

  “As I have said again and again. There are only three left that I know of.” She talked haltingly. “The one on our ship above, one the Alzur stole and is on their ship, and you. Fewer and fewer with the gift were born on Elthor, navigators, a species going extinct.” She paused: “Soon all of them to be extinct unless you can be used to—”

  “Create more?”

  “That is a possibility.”

  “Like breeding stock, eh? So that’s the real reason why I’m so damned important. I’m breeding stock.” He gestured, taking one hand off the wheel. “Stud service.”

  “We have other ships, they just can’t travel through otherspace without a navigator, only real, physical space. And we have marooned crews, ships where the navigators must have died, as we’ve lost all contact with them. None of those crews successfully rescued, the ships probably following routes programmed into them or gone rogue. Travel between worlds is so limited now. But otherspace—”

  “And your shipkeeper wants to limit it even more by killing me.”

  “I do not know why, or what is going on. I cannot return to my body. And I cannot contact the ship.”

  “Wrong,” Carl said, drawing the word out. “This is all very wrong. So why can’t you contact your ship? Just what do you think went wrong?”

  “I have no answer.”

  Carl stared at the road ahead and forced his eyes wide. He was tired, very, and his stomach rumbled from hunger. “Could what’s going wrong have anything to do with that man who showed up outside the resort, the shipkeeper, the one with the … weapon … that I—”

  “—sent into otherspace?” She shook her head. “Yes, that was the shipkeeper. Maybe he only wanted to talk, and—” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Talk? With a gun or whatever the hell it was? Maybe he’s why you can’t contact the ship. Maybe he doesn’t want you to. Maybe for whatever reason he wants otherspace travel to end. Not a bad notion, by the way. Maybe—”

  “His mind perhaps has become fouled; it is said that otherspace can warp the senses of some individuals. He might think you are powerful, maybe too powerful, and therefore must be weakened.”

  “Weakened? How about killed?”

  “Perhaps he thinks Delphoros is not a boon, but a threat. I get a sense of that from Jerrah’s thoughts. The shipkeeper left impressions. I can tell that you concerned him. He considered killing you with a knife, or maybe just seriously hurting you, weakening you. It is confusing. He is frightened and—”

  “So why would he keep you from contacting the ship? Or the ship’s navigator maybe?” Carl scowled. “Maybe he thinks you and your navigator would try to stop him from killing me.”

  “There is no way to know,” she said. “I cannot contact the ship, and theref
ore I cannot talk to the navigator or the shipkeeper.”

  “Well, maybe I have a way to find out.”

  ***

  Chapter 39

  The Navigator

  He urgently wanted to speak with the shipkeeper. Something terrible was transpiring, weapons were firing and being energized again. A battle, certainly. Against the Alzur. He’d taken the ship through otherspace to get closer, at the shipkeeper’s request.

  To better communicate with them.

  Had the Alzur broken the treaty and fired? Had this ship returned fire? It certainly had fired at something, exhausting the energy reserve; everything had been thrown into the blasts. And it was getting ready to do so again. The navigator could feel the crew stoking the reservoir in the deck below. He could feel the shipkeeper pacing, hovering near Melusine’s station, and then pacing again. He could sense the nervousness—in the crew below, in the shipkeeper, and in the ship itself. Nothing from Melusine. She must be absorbed with the liaison.

  The navigator flashed the light above his tank. He could not verbalize his questions. He’d lost the ability to talk after being submerged in the nutrient fluid. The fluid constantly filled his throat and nose; he breathed it and swallowed it and eliminated it. But he could talk with his mind, when the shipkeeper or Melusine connected to the liaison. Though he craved their company, rarely did he ask for the connection.

  He asked now, however. He wanted to know what transpired. He could see the light flashing, and he urged it faster and brighter as if that would be the equivalent of someone shouting: “Here! Talk to me!”

  But neither the shipkeeper nor Melusine approached his tank. He’d sensed Melusine at her post some time ago, but he could not sense her now. This troubled him that she would be with the liaison for so long. He could “feel” the shipkeeper, and the crew on the deck below. He could feel the pulse of the ship. But nothing from Melusine.

  “Here! Talk to me!” his mind screamed. The light blinked so fast now it appeared one sustained glow. “Here! Here! Here!”

  The shipkeeper came close, and the navigator prepared to link with his mind through the liaison. So many questions to ask. But then the shipkeeper padded away, and the navigator felt the buildup of energy beneath him, followed by the release.

  The weapons had fired again.

  The ship was moving, though not of his doing. The shipkeeper was taking it somewhere in time-and-space. The navigator was only necessary for traveling in otherspace.

  “Here! Here! Where are we going?”

  The weapons fired again and again.

  A whine filled the navigator’s senses and he had the sensation of falling. The ship was landing somewhere.

  His light went dark for several minutes; he put all his effort into sensing what was transpiring. No Melusine, and after a time, no shipkeeper. The ship’s heart-engine hummed, and the navigator guessed at the passage of time. Then he sensed the shipkeeper return again and felt the ship rising.

  The shipkeeper was anxious about something, and angry.

  “Here! Here!”

  He knew the shipkeeper could see the flashing light and that he was requesting a conversation. But the shipkeeper continued to ignore him.

  Why?

  The navigator decided to force communication. The shipkeeper could not pilot the ship in otherspace; that was the navigator’s realm. He would take the ship there and hold it. He would be defying the shipkeeper, something he had never done before and had never considered.

  He tried one last time to get the shipkeeper to talk to him.

  “Here! Talk to me.”

  But the shipkeeper padded farther away.

  And so the navigator took the ship into otherspace … before the shipkeeper could give him an order. The shipkeeper ruled in time-and-space, and the navigator always obeyed him then. But otherspace? He had some measure of freedom there. Even though he remained in his nutrient tank prison, he was temporarily free from following orders. He knew that at best his move was a stalemate. The shipkeeper would be helpless as long as the navigator held the ship in otherspace. In turn, the navigator would become helpless the moment he allowed the ship to return to time-and-space … at which time he would face the shipkeeper’s wrath. But he would hold the ship in otherspace until the shipkeeper talked to him.

  This time he noticed shadowy shapes in the fog of otherspace. He’d seen the shapes before, a few times, but never so many, and never so close.

  He flashed his light faster to get the shipkeeper’s attention.

  You will talk to me now, he thought.

  ***

  Chapter 40

  Carl Johnson

  The sun was high, the towns becoming fewer and farther between. He’d taken a route away from the interstate, going from one country road to the next. The drunk might have had the presence of mind to call the police and report his car stolen, and so taking the busier roads, where chances were greater of seeing police or sheriff’s deputies patrolling, was not an option. He’d stopped for gas at a speck of a town shortly after dawn, the attendant announcing there were no restrooms for the customers.

  The hills began to rise more steeply, and the string-straight stretches of worn blacktop that were common to the northern part of the state were replaced by ever-sharper curves. It would be another fifty miles or so before all traces of the plains were gone, swallowed up by the hills and valleys that dominated the southern third of the state.

  Ellen napped in the backseat, or pretended to, Carl thought. He and Jerrah/Melusine shared the front.

  Since leaving the rest area, neither of them had spoken. Carl had driven automatically, following his feelings. And with each turn he took, the feelings had grown more pronounced—until now, even before the next branch in the road, he was already anticipating the direction he would take. To the left, ever farther south, ever farther into the hills.

  For an instant the world seemed to waver around him, as if he looked through warped glass. He blinked, giving his head a momentary shivering shake.

  “Did you—” he began, then stopped as the wavering returned. Ahead, at the top of the hill they were climbing, a barn and other buildings seemed to melt and to shift as if they were cloud formations on a windy day. And the road—

  Carl slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed loudly and the car swayed, then swerved, almost out of control. Carl felt like he’d been wrapped in a frigid cocoon. The car skidding on the shoulder now, the tires scraping along the gravel, until finally it came to a stop and the world returned to normal. The farm buildings were solid, as was the road and the car itself. The hillside pastures on either side were once again steady, and the only motion was a cow that looked up and stared placidly at them from a hundred feet away.

  “What?” Ellen was sitting bolt upright in the back seat. “What happened?”

  Carl blinked again and took his foot from the brake and placed it tentatively on the accelerator. The car inched slowly toward the top of the hill.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Everything seemed to waver. But it’s all right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, Ellen.” He gave her a half-amused snort. “As sure as I am about anything.”

  “Has it happened before?” Jerrah looked concerned.

  “No. Just a bit of dizziness.”

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Yeah, Ellen. I think so.”

  “Do you want me to drive?” Ellen rubbed at the sleep in her eyes.

  “No. Not for a while anyway.”

  The car topped the hill and began to accelerate to normal speed again.

  Ahead there was a cluster of trees, a half-dozen picnic tables, a small concrete building, and space for a dozen cars. It was a well-maintained county park, and the baseball field behind it had been recently mowed, the bleachers painted grass-green. A good place to stop.

  Carl’s feet crunched over the gravel that led to the restrooms. The soles of his feet were cracked and bloody. He curs
ed himself for not putting shoes on when he’d run that night from Jerrah. Maybe he could stop at a K-Mart and buy some. He gave another clown laugh. He’d left his wallet back in the cabin that had been obliterated.

  Maybe he could steal a pair somewhere.

  It was shaded by elms, oaks, and a single large weeping willow. He heard cars whooshing by on a main road on the other side of the park, the occasional rumble of a truck, and in the brief silences between, he heard the wind rustling the leaves and his own breath.

  “Maybe the shipkeeper was just trying to scare you,” Jerrah/Melusine had suggested before they pulled in. “Back at the resort, when he fired the ship’s—”

  “Scare me by blasting Ellen’s house into slivers?” Carl raised his voice. “By coming down here with his ray gun or whatever the hell it was—”

  “—I just can’t believe he would want you dead. I mean, I think he was trying to kill you, hurt you, but I just can’t …. You’re so very important,” Jerrah had said. “I know it looked like he tried to kill you.”

  “Important? He’d prefer I was dead.”

  Jerrah caught up to him outside the door to the men’s room. Ellen stood there, looking at them, then went around the other side to the ladies’ room.

  “I have been thinking, Delphoros—”

  “Call me Carl,” he returned. “That’s my name.” Now, he added to himself.

  “Carl, you have taken us through otherspace. Twice. Can you use it to go to the ship?”

  He pushed open the door and went inside. She followed him. It was cool in here, damp from yesterday’s rain, and smelling of urine and cleaning products.

  “I don’t know. Until yesterday I had no control over going into the fog. It just happened. Yesterday … last night … was different. Yeah, I feel certain I could go into the fog again, if I tried. But going to your ship? How the hell do I find it? I only ended up near the resort, and then at the rest area because I’d been there before. They were familiar. I’ve never set foot on your ship.”