Eschaton

by Andrew Hastie

  She scoffed. ‘What if you’d never given the tachyon to Fermi.’

  ‘He stole it,’ Josh corrected.

  ‘Yeah, and changed the course of humanity.’

  Josh went to pull his arm away, but she held onto it tightly.

  ‘You have no idea what it was like,’ he said.

  ‘I do. You were trapped between two worlds. The one you’d grown up in and the new reality of the Order. It happens to us all; it’s a kind of cognitive dissonance.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Holding two opposing concepts in your head at the same time and believing both of them.’

  ‘Like believing England could win the World Cup?’

  She smiled. ‘They have, twice.’

  ‘Once. In 1966, my gran used to go on about it all the time.’

  ‘And 1998, against France.’

  ‘Not in my timeline. That I would remember.’

  She lifted her head up to look at him; her eyes were sleepy. ‘I keep forgetting you’re from an alternate.’

  ‘So what would you do?’ asked Josh, changing the subject before she asked any more questions about her other self.

  This was apparently the question she’d been waiting for. She took her time, chewing her bottom lip and pretending to contemplate the answer.

  ‘Well there are many possibilities that come to mind, but the most likely is that I would have stopped my parents from leaving.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Although I’ve no idea how. They were even more stubborn than me, and at ten-years-old, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to convince them.’

  ‘But you can go back any time you want.’

  She sighed. ‘I have, many times, but there’s nothing I can think of that would make them change their mind. I want to believe that they were doing it for me, and the only way to save me was to leave — yet there’s another part that really wants them to admit it was a stupid mistake.’

  He felt her body tense as she turned her head into the pillow, the small shudder in her shoulders as she cried.

  ‘Cat, don’t,’ he whispered, ‘they love you. I’m sure they wouldn’t have done it if there was another way.’

  ‘They left me!’

  ‘At least you had them. I’ve never known my father. Can you imagine what that’s like? To wonder every day who your dad was?’

  ‘No,’ she said sullenly, wiping her eyes.

  ‘None of us had the life we wanted, or deserved, and we get what fate gave us — as my gran used to say. All we can do is make the best of it. Crying over what we never had is just a waste of good tears.’

  ‘She sounds like a very wise woman.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Maybe one day I’ll let you meet her.’

  She turned over and took his face in her hands. ‘Really, you would?’

  ‘Yeah. She’d love you to bits.’

  She kissed him hard on the mouth in a way that signalled this was definitely not a ‘just hold me’ moment.

  51

  Decompression

  Da Recco, Lyra and the Makepieces were all sitting in the central area of level three. The rest of the floor was deserted, a grand spiral staircase in the centre winding up into the higher levels like a nautilus shell.

  It was as solemn as a church. No one felt like talking. The journey from the temple had been a simple portal jump, which as far as they could work out had taken them somewhere deep inside the maelstrom. Thomas and Juliana had lots of questions for the Augur reception committee, but no one had given them any answers, especially about what the Citadel was for.

  The medics had taken Rufius away immediately while the rest were instructed to wait in quarantine. They had no idea what they were being quarantined for, and the chamber they were escorted into was like an enormous decompression chamber.

  ‘A decompression chamber for demons?’ Lyra’s voice echoed off the copper walls as the airtight door was closed behind them.

  ‘Please do not be alarmed,’ came a voice through a small metal speaker.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t until you said that,’ muttered Juliana, taking her husband’s hand.

  Three hours later they were released and escorted to level three — no one was quite sure what the quarantine had actually achieved.

  Everyone stood when Alixia and the founder came out of the ward.

  Alixia’s grave expression answered the question on everyone’s minds.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ said the founder. ‘From what Alixia has told me you’ve all taken great risks to bring Daedalus here, and for that, I am eternally grateful. He’s in the best place, the only place in fact, that may be able to help him.’

  The old man bade them take their seats and took out a clay pipe, lighting it with a long taper from one of the many candles that hung from the high ceiling.

  ‘This is the Citadel, a place that I’m quite sure none of you has ever heard of.’

  They all stared at him blankly.

  ‘Good. It would be catastrophic if you had. The Citadel has been a secret for as long as the Order has been in existence.’

  ‘Why?’ Lyra asked the question everyone was thinking.

  The founder smiled, and smoke drifted from the sides of his mouth.

  ‘My dear Lyra,’ the founder said benevolently, ‘if only everyone was as direct as you. This is the headquarters of a shadow guild, created to observe our timeline for specific events, ones that couldn’t necessarily be detected from within.’

  ‘To watch us?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘To some extent, yes, but it’s also a monitoring station hidden deep within the maelstrom.’

  ‘Looking for signs of the Eschaton,’ said Juliana.

  The founder puffed on his pipe and blew out a large cloud of blue smoke. ‘That is its primary objective. It has other duties, but they are of no consequence now. Suffice to say you are currently the guests of the honourable guild of Augurs.’

  ‘I knew it!’ blurted Thomas, turning to his wife, who simply glared at him.

  ‘There are twelve levels to this establishment, each one dedicated to the study of one of the critical events required for an Eschaton Cascade. The members are specialists in their own branch of the theory and isolated from the others — none of them are allowed to share information with the other departments.’

  Lyra looked confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘To stop any potential interaction between the crises,’ answered Thomas.

  The founder nodded. ‘They operate in cells, insulating the other teams from any potential disaster.’

  Lyra shrugged, looking none the wiser for the explanation. She picked up her tea and turned her attention to the biscuits.

  ‘So who determines whether an Eschaton event is occurring?’ asked Juliana.

  ‘I do,’ came the deep voice of a stranger.

  The founder waved his pipe at the large figure — cloaked in long black robes with a forked white beard — who appeared on the central spiral staircase. ‘May I introduce Michel de Nostredame, more commonly known as Nostradamus or the curator, and the only one allowed to walk the stairs.’

  ‘And a bloody long way it is,’ bellowed Nostradamus, walking over to shake the founder’s hand. ‘It is good to see you, my friend, although I doubt you’re here out of choice, and who are these good people?’

  ‘Friends,’ replied the founder. ‘Friends who need your help.’

  ‘Well it seems to be a day for it,’ Nostradamus said with a gleam in his eye. ‘I have another two waiting up on twelfth.’

  52

  Reunion

  Caitlin rushed into the arms of her parents when they appeared at the door. Josh was glad to see them too, but showed a little more reserve, looking past them for the colonel.

  ‘Rufius is very ill,’ explained the founder, taking Josh to one side. There were dark shadows beneath his blue eyes, and Josh could tell the old man was in grave danger. ‘This place may be his only hope.’

  Lyra came over and h
ugged Josh. ‘He’s not dead yet,’ she whispered in his ear, before going to sit down with the rest of her family to listen to Caitlin’s story.

  Nostradamus and the founder went off to have a serious discussion, leaving Da Recco standing on his own, staring out of the unusual windows.

  ‘How do they do this?’ he said, pointing at the different views.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Josh admitted.

  ‘Is it magic? Or maybe witchcraft? I think not,’ he mused, touching the window frame.

  ‘Probably better if you don’t,’ warned Josh. The scarring on his arm was fading, but he could still feel the tingle of the burn.

  ‘This world is pazzo. How do you know which is today and when is tomorrow?’

  I don’t, thought Josh, realising he had no idea what day it was. The colonel had warned him once that it would become harder to remember when you were, that it would seem less important.

  ‘You just deal with the now, I guess.’

  Da Recco nodded solemnly. ‘I too.’

  ‘Is the colonel bad?’

  ‘Yes. He’s in a coma.’

  ‘Coma?’

  ‘Si. The colonnello is forgetting his past, and without that, what is a man?’

  Josh thought about all the times when he’d wished for a father, wondering what kind of life he was having, and what stories he’d tell of his adventures when they finally met. The colonel was the nearest he’d ever come to having a dad, and it was painful to think he might lose him. It wasn’t a feeling he’d ever experienced before.

  Da Recco seemed to sense his pain and put his hand on Josh’s shoulder. ‘It’s going to be okay. This man will fix him.’ He nodded at Nostradamus.

  Josh wasn’t so sure, there was something about this place that made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  ‘How bad is it?’ the founder asked, lowering his voice.

  Nostradamus gave him a rosary made of twelve beads, four of them had turned black. ‘We’ve passed level four, and according to my latest intelligence two more will fall in the next day or so.’

  The founder grimaced. ‘It was worse than I feared.’

  ‘We have lost touch with the third, too.’

  ‘They’ve gone over to the Protectorate. Ravana has taken control of the Council.’

  The curator nodded. ‘This we know. My spies tell me her son has gone missing.’

  ‘He concerns me the most. His obsession with the Djinn puts us all at risk.’

  ‘The fifth floor are looking into it now. Have you spoken to Derado?’

  ‘Not as yet,’ the founder said, handing back the rosary. ‘But, he’s an honourable man and won’t abandon his post.’

  Nostradamus nodded. ‘So, what ails your friend?’

  ‘His timeline is being systemically corrupted — the only conclusion I can draw is that he’s come into contact with dark energy.’

  ‘Aetherium?’

  ‘I need more time to be certain, but it bears all the hallmarks.’

  ‘The eighth crisis,’ Nostradamus mused, holding the bead between his fingers.

  The founder grimaced. ‘I may be wrong, but there are only so many ways to be certain, and all of them put his life in mortal danger,’ he said, glancing over at Josh.

  Nostradamus flicked the beads over his fingers, feeling each one with his thumb as they passed.

  ‘The Paradox was not what I expected.’

  Josh was trying to stop the Italian navigator from climbing out of one of the windows.

  ‘But he may be exactly what we need.’

  Nostradamus grunted. ‘You’re implying that we’ve grown too set in our ways.’

  ‘We’ve become too comfortable. It’s a flaw in the human condition, and the subtle, insidious nature of regularity leaves us unprepared for change.’

  ‘Except you anticipated it,’ Nostradamus said, looking around the room. ‘You created the Citadel.’

  The founder frowned. ‘Even that may not be enough.’

  53

  Ravana

  Ravana paced the floor of the star chamber, her steps resounding across the tiles as the remaining heads of the guilds watched her.

  ‘We have two problems,’ she began, holding up two fingers of her left hand. ‘The first lies with the Copernicans, whose inability to restart their computational engine is obviously a passive protest, but undermines our ability to determine the best course of action — this is being corrected as we speak.’

  The Copernican grandmaster tried to stand and protest, but two Protectorate officers clamped their hands down on his shoulders, pinning him to his chair.

  ‘Secondly,’ Ravana continued, ignoring his complaints, ‘it appears that my request for an increase in weapon production has fallen on deaf ears. Madame Bullmedrin, how exactly does the Antiquarian guild imagine we will defend ourselves when the tenth crisis arises?’

  The Antiquarian grandmaster bowed her head, unable to look the Chief Inquisitor in the eye.

  ‘Members of the council, this has to change. We’re about to face the worst threat to our existence, and our beloved founder has abandoned us — left us to face the consequences of his poor leadership. We must make ready with what little time we have left. Any disunity now threatens the future of the continuum and will be met with the most extreme punishment.’

  She nodded to the guards, and the grandmasters were led out of the chamber.

  Ravana was running low on patience, and this was the worst possible time for Dalton to disappear. Three days had passed since they’d argued and no one had seen him since. When he was a child, he could sulk for days, finding places to hide in the castle until his hunger got the better of him, but he’d grown out of that kind of behaviour, or rather his father had beaten it out of him.

  His disobedience was an insult to her leadership, and she knew others would have noticed it too. Anger boiled under her cool exterior, but she couldn’t let them see it affecting her. She had to be strong no matter how disappointed she was with him. It was something she’d learned to hide from the very first day they’d discovered he was a seer.

  Ravana had always blamed her husband for his latent abilities, since her family could be traced back through many generations of noble Copernicans, including Malarant Eckhart— the man who designed the massive computing engine. It was a dark day when Dalton was born; no Eckhart had ever shown the slightest abnormality until then.

  And now he was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Ma’am,’ interrupted one of her guards. ‘Inspector Sabien is here.’

  ‘Send him in,’ she ordered, fearing the worst. She straightened her uniform until there was no sign of a crease; it was a routine that helped her to remember who she had to be in front of her men.

  Sabien was a handsome, strong man, one of the finest of her detective division. He strode across the chamber with purpose, holding the arm of a young red-headed Draconian.

  ‘Chief Inquisitor,’ Sabien greeted her, with a small bow of the head.

  ‘Inspector, who do we have here?’

  ‘This is Artificer Bentley, and he has information that I believe you alone will find of interest.’

  Ravana took the hint and dismissed the guards.

  ‘Bentley,’ prompted Sabien when they had left, ‘tell the Inquisitor what you told me.’

  Bentley looked nervously at Ravana, and she could see that what he had to say was going to displease her, so she smiled. ‘I promise I won’t shoot the messenger.’

  The young Draconian described the incident at the church. How Dalton had used him to open a Wyrrm bridge and taken a team into the maelstrom, how he had executed his father to force Bentley to help him.

  Ravana listened intently, keeping her emotions in check beneath a mask of stoicism.

  When Bentley finished, it seemed as if time had stopped. All the years of waiting for the news, like the mother of every seer that had ever been — knowing that one day the madness would come and take their child. It
was the curse they all faced, and she’d already resigned herself to the fact that one day her son would finally kill himself.

  ‘Thank you master Bentley,’ she said. ‘Inspector would you be so kind as to place him under arrest.’

  ‘But —’ Bentley protested.

  ‘I can’t have you telling everyone that my son has walked into the maelstrom, can I? There are many who would use that kind of information against me.’

  Sabien nodded and clapped a pair of handcuffs on Bentley’s wrists before marching him out of the chamber.

  Now I must plan for the worst, thought Ravana.

  54

  Dark Energy

  The founder finished his conversation with Nostradamus and walked over to Josh. Food arrived on simple wooden trays carried by monks with intricate tattoos. Da Recco made his excuses and left the two of them alone.

  ‘What’s with the tattoos?’ asked Josh, watching them laying out the table.

  ‘They’re a form of almanac. Augurs believe so devoutly in their cause that they turn their own bodies into vestiges.’

  ‘So each mark is made in a different time?’

  ‘Exactly. Their bodies are a living embodiment of their missions.’

  ‘They really believe this cascade is going to happen?’

  ‘They do. Professor Eddington convinced me that we should set up this place to focus on exploring the various crises. We kept it secret from the rest of the Order so as to make their work as unbiased as possible. They have spent hundreds of years studying the finer details of the crisis scenarios and finding a way to stop it has become something of a religion to them.’

  ‘I’ve seen what happens to this timeline,’ Josh said with a sigh. ‘In four hundred years there won’t be much to save.’

  ‘You have seen one version of the future. It doesn’t have to be that way if we can avoid it, but tell me what you saw.’