Long Days in Paradise - The First Book of the Shards of Heaven

by Amos T. Fairchild

Chapter 22 – Mission II

  Together we strive on common ground.

  Alone, such purpose is seldom found.

  I

  Jorden found himself standing in the middle of a highway. The world of dream had been odd enough, now his own world had been turned to nightmare. A car crawled nearby. It was travelling somewhat faster than the average snail, yet it was still no great danger to the three who strolled along the paving.

  Hura led on, Jorden followed, Taf looked about for exciting things to do.

  They walked past several picnic tables to a beach, an ordinary sandy beach that was lined with breaking waves, only these waves were hardly ordinary. The surf was as close to stationary as mattered, a disturbing sight. It did not seem right for the waves to simply stand motionless as if they had been snap frozen in full flight. And they didn't look frozen, of course.

  Jorden shrugged. It was a nice beach, but now what. He guessed that they were on the southern coast of the mainland – that was where Hura had pointed to on the map – and Tasmania was a couple of hundred kilometres out there. But he was here and had absolutely no idea why. He asked, “Why?”

  Hura pointed. “There is a ship out there, and we are going out to it. The ship is at the centre of the disturbance, indeed I believe it is the cause of the disturbance. Unfortunately it is difficult to place, exactly – it shifts slightly from time to time – and the disturbance also makes it more difficult. We will try from here rather than risk a transition on the water, it is only ten or eleven thousand footfall.” Hura held firm to a very dark crystal. “That way,” she pointed with it.

  Jorden frowned. “So what do we do? Walk there!”

  “Afraid so,” Hura smiled. Taf was already testing the water.

  It was firm yet somewhat slippery, and not quite solid, any who stood still for too long would certainly sink. Jorden dug in his toes and climbed a wave, the spray sharp and biting, then slipped awkwardly down the other side. It was possible, but it would be one hell of a walk.

  A walk to what? Jorden wondered what a ship in the middle of the Bass Strait could possibly to do with quakes in dreamland. It was all a little too odd. He walked on, climbing another wave. “This is no good,” he said, “it will take hours like this.”

  Hura nodded. “Perhaps,” she admitted. “But that hardly matters. We have a few hours to spare. Ample time to get there.”

  Ample time perhaps, yet it would still be an eternity to those who were forced to experience it. Jorden looked out over the shimmering reddish horizon. The waves were not as sharp and rugged further on, but they were large... Not as large as the seas the Katerina had floundered within, of course, but large enough.

  “Don't stand still for too long, Jorden,” Hura warned, and he noticed that he did. “If you sink too far then you might be stuck for good, and we'd never pull you out.” Then she shook her head. “Death would be painfully slow in coming.”

  A hell of a long time, Jorden thought. It would take many hours to sink into the near-solid slime and drown... or would he suffocate? He cared not think about it and walked on at a steady pace, not wishing to know the details of such a death.

  The waves were much easier to traverse once the three were clear of the beach. It was calm for the waters of the strait, another reason why Hura had wished to come without delay no doubt, and an easy path was available to those who wound their way amongst the troughs and crests. It was still a long way, too many footfall upon a dim red sea without the chance of rest, but then it was still better than the long days out amongst the polythorn.

  Indeed they walked the equivalent of an entire terrestrial night, or night of the Domain, before the ship was sighted. And it was not just a ship.

  “What the hell,” Jorden murmured. He had not really seen anything of its type, and though he knew he was near the oil fields of the Bass Strait he had always imagined drilling rigs as different structures altogether.

  “A test drill rig, I think,” Hura said in explanation, the ship slowly creeping nearer as they struggled on. “For core samples and seismic studies, or something of that nature.”

  Jorden shook his head. “I thought they used those huge platforms. Things with three fat legs and a dozen helipads...”

  “For actual oil drilling, I believe. This is for some other purpose. Exploration, perhaps.” They came to a high rounded wave crest, the view of the vessel unobstructed. Like the cars of the highway there were no visible lights, even though Jorden knew that it was night. There was just the continuous red glow that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.

  “It has only one funny mast and no sails,” Taf put in. “What a useless ship. Do the crew row for their keep?” And that seemed the least of the vessel inadequacies. There were no outriggers either. It was just a smooth iron shell with a conglomeration of steel decks and towers above. Taf wondered how it floated at all.

  Jorden shook his head. “It has engines... machines that move it through the water. Quicker than sails, I'm afraid.”

  Taf frowned. “It isn't moving very fast now.”

  The outsider thought to argue, yet the aestri was smiling and prepared for a battle of illogic and there were more important matters. “Okay, so we're here,” he said as he tried not to stand still while at the same time not move to far from the side of an all but stationary Hura. “What I want to know is why.”

  Hura pointed. “To stop that thing, of course. If it is not stopped soon then the Domain will be gone in a few of their days. They have come in contact with some transition point, or some lock or connection between worlds, or they are very near to such a thing. The blasts and subsequent disruptions to the strata have brought the quakes, a warning of far worse to come. Their work in other areas of this ocean over the past thirty cycles has devastated several of the shard worlds. Perhaps they test new equipment that has not been used previously. You must stop it, Jorden.”

  He stopped walking and looked first to the rig and then to the witch-god. “Stop it! How the hell am I supposed to stop a drill rig? I'm not an engineer.” Or saboteur.

  Hura sighed. “You have surely more chance of stopping it than I do. The last time I was here I succeeded only in terrifying a few of the crew and scratching the paintwork.” She looked to Jorden's stationary feet, then her own. “Keep moving. We can talk when there's solid deck under foot.”

  II

  Eventually there was...

  “It's already stopped working,” Taf said with a smile, glancing down upon the busy workspace.

  It was more than just not working, it was a waxworks museum of oil exploration. The three offworldly entities walked across the death silent decking amongst the statues of the seaman and labourers to a gallery surrounding the base of the rig, a drill rig that seemed to pierce the centre of the ship. There was some movement: the clock-like creeping of a partly exposed shaft, the blue vapour puffing from a rusted exhaust like cloud from mountain ridges, the fan of water-lace that sprouted from a high pressure nozzle... It was not the familiar movement of reality.

  There was undoubtedly quite a lot of damage that could be done by three entities who could move like lightning, Jorden just wasn't sure exactly what that might be. And although they could move about the ship much faster than the frozen corpses in the pit below the gallery, he reminded himself that anything they touched was as hard as stone or heavy as a lump of lead that was a hundred times larger than the article.

  Move like lightning. It was impossible, even Jorden knew that. The whole dream of the Domain had been impossible, yet dreams were always that way. This, however, was supposed to be reality surrounding him. He couldn't pretend he was dreaming, not any more, but they should be breaking the sound barrier every time they moved.

  Something clicked. “We're not really here, are we?” Jorden said. He was sure that they were, he could see that, yet he knew they weren't. It was the only thing that made sense. “We can't be.”

  Taf looked at him in the way
she often did, thinking to call him silly yet again. She was surprised by Hura's response. “Yes and no... I'll be honest, Jorden. Even I don't know for sure... We are here, but not actually in a form that can be affected by the physics of this world. If it were not for the power of the crystals of the tower then we would have no influence here whatsoever. We would simply be the formless ghosts who often come to look over this strange land.

  “The forms that myself and Taf possess are not forms that can survive in this world, but unlike yourself, Jorden, Taf and I do not have another form, another body if you like, that can exist here.” She smiled an impatient smile. “Now if we can just finish our mission before we have a failure...”

  “Other body?” Jorden returned, then he noticed the frown of Hura, an ancient woman who was quick to rage and his only ticket home as a real person. “Okay, so what's the plan?”

  The witch shrugged. “I hoped that you could tell me that.” She pointed toward some of the tools and machinery below. “When I was last here I tried to damage one of those and failed. They don't seem to be that important anyway.”

  Jorden frowned. “One of them is a welder, I think. You'd have to knock out a lot more than that if you wanted to put an operation like this out of action.” There were at least thirty men in the pit or hanging from the superstructure, and plenty of equipment to deal with almost any conceivable breakdown.

  “I have thought of setting fire to the ship, there are tanks of volatile liquid on deck, but I fear that there would be a substantial loss of life. The crew would never...”

  “No!” Jorden shot back and shook his head. “It would be a fireball that could be seen from Melbourne, if not the Domain. There's got to be a better way.”

  Hura held to the chilly rail and sighed. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Taf sniffed and looked down over the statues, certain that she could wreak havoc amongst the machinery if given the chance. “Just break a lot of things. That would be easy.” And fun, she thought hopefully.

  “And they fix them, also quite easy.” Although it was a suggestion that had merit. If they pulled enough levers and turned enough dials and threw enough switches, then they were certain to cause plenty of damage, but it wouldn't put them out of action for long...

  Crap!

  Jorden was beginning to think. For a moment he considered himself quite brilliant, a very brief moment. They didn't need to put them out of action for long. A breakdown of a few days was probably months of grace to those of the Domain, a week might well have been years.

  Hura wasn't telling all, she couldn't have been. There had to be more, a lot more.

  “You don't need me,” Jorden said at last. He was angry, and considered that he had every right to be. “Taf could disable this rig for weeks without even trying, and you could do a lot worse without knowing one stupid thing about machines.”

  The witch continued to lean on the rails and ignored the flash of anger. “I could dump those fuel tanks I told you about,” she said quietly. “This rig would be littered with more environmentalists than workmen. They'd be out of commission for months while the inquiry went on.” She sighed again. “I've thought of that one. That's about the best one. It would be decades before I would have to worry again.”

  Jorden stared. She was exactly right, but he was surprised to hear her say it. “Then if you know...”

  She shrugged “They might cover it up. Perhaps it would never be noticed, not a minute slick like that, or at least not soon enough for it to be any help. The Domain could be dust before anyone saw anything, and that is if they ever saw it at all. This isn't several million gallons of crude we're talking about.”

  She still sounded evasive, Jorden still confident she did not need him. “So you do a little damage to the rig to slow them down, and leave a note with the nearest conservationist. You still don't need me.”

  “True,” she said, and there was no hesitation or doubt, just a faint smile. “But still, doesn't it make you feel great to be needed.”

  Jorden began to darken to an odd shade of red. He was furious. He couldn't think of adequate abuse to bestow upon the Levi-clad witch who smiled so stupidly in front of him. This was it, he'd had enough crap from the Domain and its weird inhabitants. He was getting the hell out. He was going home and leaving this insane nightmare...

  Yes, of course. He could walk home across the frozen ocean and hitch a ride on a truck that might just get him three or four metres down the road before he starved to death.

  “If you want the truth, then I'll give it,” Hura said eventually, her face stern. “Partly you are here because it was inevitable. I know something of our future, and you were always here. You might say that we have met before on another plane of existence. But more relevant to our current situation, you are simply here to balance a transition equation and not a lot more. On my last journey I was able to stay about five minutes before I found myself rather painfully back in the tower. Once upon a time I could do it, but not now.

  “Now I need a local,” and she pointed toward him, “a tie to this world to balance out the energy requirements. You are like a piece of elastic which draws us here. As there were no fresh locals in the Domain, I had to look for one, one who hopefully had a little mechanical experience to show me the best way to delay this drilling, one who wouldn't be missed and one who wouldn't miss his home all that much. I killed a lot of birds with one little green stone, Jorden Miles.”

  Hura chuckled as she looked upon the dropped jaw of the outsider. “I'm a little do-good, you see, always out to help those who are in need, whether they like it or not.” She shrugged. “The prerogative of a god-figure. I give you something to live for, balance my equations and get engineering advice all in the one operation.

  “You should have listened to my private secretary. I am ruthless.”

  “And I found a friend that few aestri could hope for,” Taf added. She hugged the man. There was no tingling or stone flesh, just warmth and comfort.

  “You bitch!” Jorden said. He didn't shout, he was thinking too hard to shout. “I've nearly been eaten by every species of monster in the Domain, caged and nearly drowned, and forced to eat raw rat meat and sleep in wet slimy trees and watch Taf turn into a cat and...”

  “What would you have done otherwise in your tedious world?” Hura smiled. “And I was looking out for you, sending the right messages to the right people at the right time. I have been kind. I could have let you wait in the queue for weeks, or perhaps left you for the dragon...”

  Jorden glared. “You're mad. You're a raving megalomaniac.”

  The witch just shrugged. It was difficult to insult someone who had already heard every possible form of abuse over several lifetimes. “When you get passed ten centuries you're allowed a little insanity, and what minor god doesn't suffer a touch of megalomania.”

  “Can we keep that room when we go back,” Taf said thoughtfully, the present conversation rather tedious. “I love that bath... and I'm starving. Some nice fresh...”

  “Damn it, Taf,” Jorden fumed and struggled free of the aestri's grasp. “I've been dragged out of my world by a lunatic so that I could balance her books and offer a bit of entertainment in her monster pit. I'm not particularly interested in food.” His attention returned to Hura. “You are warped, you know that. The Domain is your little plaything, some entertainment to help you live through the decades. That's really sick.”

  Hura thought Jorden would have very little chance of angering her, yet perhaps she was wrong. “If you think that you could come upon a potential hell and produce a world better than my own then you are welcome to try. You have no more power against the Time of Darkness than I, and it was your ignorant choice to walk out of the safety of MY shields and go amongst creatures that have nothing to do with me.” The witch noticed that her voice was raised. It was odd for that to happen unintentionally. She paused to consider that.

  Finesilver turned to the man to await his response, Hura's arg
ument sounding the best to date. She was the Great One, after all, one who had brought the man to her side, and the aestri wondered why Jorden was so upset.

  At the moment he seemed at a loss for words, Taf snatching the opportunity. “Once you wanted to stay with me, but that was before you knew the truth. Now you long for home...”

  “Which is exactly where he can go when we're finished with this mission,” Hura growled. “I thought that he may have been an asset to the Domain, and it seems that I was mistaken. Perhaps my foresight and memory are not as accurate as I would like to think. I'm sorry you were dragged into it, Finesilver.”

  Taf shrugged.

  Hura brushed past Jorden. “At the moment I have more important matters to worry about,” she went on. “Our time here remains limited, and we might find ourselves suddenly, and rather painfully, back in the tower... and it may take weeks to rebuild the generator.” She strode on toward the starboard railing, then turned toward the bow.

  Jorden followed, continuing his argument, now more concerned than ever. “And what about me? How the hell am I supposed to get home?” So close and yet so far away.

  Hura snorted, and actually took the time to face him. “As if I care, Jorden Miles.” Then she moved on toward the solvent tanks she had spoken of.

  Taf stared momentarily toward the man she thought she knew, moist dark eyes that said more than the aestri could possibly manage with voice. Then she turned and followed Hura.

  III

  It took some time to even begin to set the spoked handle of the six-inch gate valve in motion. Hura wondered again why the tanks were on the deck, and what they really contained, and why they had such a convenient drain in the bottom. It didn't matter. She knew that there were four of them and she knew that each one had to carry at least twenty thousand gallons, whatever that was in metric. One would be enough.

  Taf glanced to the frozen man who stood near. He leaned on the outer rail, his gaze toward the sea yet rolling steadily in the direction of the slowly spinning wheel of the gate valve. He would soon see it moving, and soon see the fluid gush forth toward the presently clean ocean. Then he would probably stop the flow. The aestri told the Great One as much, Hura shrugging. There was little else to be done. Even if they disabled the rig for two days it would be of great aid. She could still foresee enough of the future to remain confident. And there was always the possibility that the rest of the crew would believe the poor soul who watched the valve wind itself open. They would leave the ship to its ghosts.

  Jorden came to watch them work. He was now a little more quiet, thoughts turned toward Joanne and Taf, his world and that of Hura's. If it wasn't for the witch-god... “That man will see it open and close it,” he said. That was obvious.

  “Not if I light it up,” Hura said casually. “And I should. I have a whole world to save, a few dozen men and a ship are surely not much to sacrifice.” She watched the valve come to the end of its thread – gate valves being a mechanism that she did understand, even if many in the domain did not – and waited for the spinning wheel to part company with the shaft it spun on. “Of course I doubt that I need go so far. Our man will be more concerned with why than how do I stop it.”

  There was no fluid gushing as yet, but Jorden suspected the time-thickened contents would be slow in coming. “It's going to take a lot more than this to stop them,” Jorden reiterated. “If they want to test this area of seabed then they're going to keep at it no matter what you try and do. You might slow it down, but your never going to stop it.”

  The handle of the gate valve remained spinning in mid-air, the frozen man gazing blankly toward it. “As I said,” Hura sighed. “Delay is enough. Another chance will come.” She looked back toward the stern and the core of the operation. “And as long as the transition lasts I plan on doing as much damage as possible.”

  Again Taf flashed her dark gaze and jagged smile. “Please help, Jorden. You could do it so much better...”

  Jorden was unsure, almost willing, but he knew futility when he saw it. It was going to take something major to help him or the domain, and he couldn't see things getting any better. At least at that moment he couldn't see things getting any worse. There was apparently still plenty of time do deal with the situation.

  Yet things could always be worse, a good rule of thumb in either the Domain or Reality. Jorden already knew that. It had happened too many times before. As he looked into the eyes of Finesilver, his stubborn stance softening considerably, the aestri spun in a blur and was gone.

  Jorden frowned and tried to call for her yet found his chest locked solid, breath thick in his throat. The air surrounding him seemed hot from the forge and heavy with pain. Jorden braced himself against the unseen fire, finding his lethargic limbs offered no protection.

  The fires cooled. There was a thud, a splash, then the roar of an ocean of reality.

  Jorden collapsed to the deck, finding this the only action within his capabilities.

  IV

  There had been a lot of talk about ghosts on the rig of late, and there were few on board who were quite at ease with the frequent shuddering of the vessel. Peter Nelson just wanted to be as far from it all as possible.

  As he stood on the deck he looked toward the unseen coast – it was too dark to see the mountains – wishing he had firm soil beneath his feet. He also dreaded returning to work, but at least he didn't have to work where it was said that the ghosts stole spanners and threw them against the welders. Nobody believed that, not really, only old Bob, and that was because he had was the one who claimed he saw such things. But there were the flashes of shape that Peter thought he may have glimpsed. Perhaps the ship was haunted. It was an old ship.

  It was about this time that he heard the squeal.

  By the time he turned toward the nearest tank, the valve was already spinning like a top. Then it hit the end of its thread and broke free before he could blink, the handle bouncing off the tank and flying like a Frisbee into the sea. He jumped and shouted before the unknown figure had fallen from the shadows and thudded heavily against the deck.

  Peter's heart raced and he was yet to think of any explanation for the erratic behaviour of the gate valve, but he was certain that the man in the grey suit laying on the deck was no ghost, no matter how much he might moan. He stepped nearer and knelt, helping the stranger to sit. It wasn't anyone he recognized, but company people came and went from day to day. Then he noticed how young the guy in the suit was. He had to be one of the new systems techs. The latest batch to come aboard to work on the new servers all looked like kids.

  Jorden didn't much want to sit up, but he wasn't in any condition to argue. He wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but he was certain it wasn't part of the plan. Hura had threatened that her equipment might fail, and that they might end up in the tower, but nothing was said about leaving him stranded on the ship. And then there was the talk of it taking weeks to fix. Jorden began to panic.

  Peter put it down to shock. “That was a hell of a fall mate. You okay?”

  Feeling like he was deep in enemy territory, Jorden was slow to answer. “Yeah... I think so.” He gingerly fingered a throbbing nose that had never completely recovered from the fight in Saljid.

  It was then that they both glanced to the outlet of the nearby tank. Peter did so because he remained unsure of whether he had really seen what he thought in the limited illumination of the deck lamps. Jorden looked as he knew that there should be a little more activity at the opening than he currently observed.

  Ignoring the crew member who had offered his aid, Jorden crawled nearer and reached into the outlet. It was definitely open. “It's empty,” he said, and swallowed.

  That seemed an all too obvious statement, but Peter had other things to worry him. “Lucky it was,” he managed to say. “A lot of these tanks carry volatile solvents.” He then took some care with his words. He didn't really want anyone thinking he was seeing things. “Did you, ah, open it?”
/>
  Jorden stared back to where the crewman squatted. Now he was in real trouble. While back in the domain he had always had the cushion of fantasy. He could close his eyes and comfort himself by believing it was all a dream, even if it wasn't. But this was reality with all of its real laws and real police and real courts and real jails. He could get locked up for years.

  He looked to the valve, trying to think how the incident must have looked from the crewman's point of view.

  Jorden faked a smile. “Metal fatigue?” he tried.

  Peter wondered if the tech had hit the deck a little too hard.