by George Tome
They reached a layer of pitch-black rock, the walls of the horizontal gallery being covered with tiny crystals shining in myriad iridescences. For about fifty yards, a burst of yellow sulfur crystals precipitated in rivers of fire, alternating with black stripes of the other mineral.
They stopped on a platform close to a parking lot for magneto-jets. From there, it seemed they had to travel on foot.
“Put your helmet on!” the voice ordered on his holophone.
Gill hesitated to do so, failing to understand the reasons of the hidden Antyran. Why did he ask such a thing? Were they about to enter an area without air so far from the battlefield? Or maybe he wants to keep me hidden from the other townsfolk? The disturbing thought stung him. Regardless, Gill was convinced that asking for an explanation would be in vain because the voice wouldn’t bother to answer. Therefore, he slowly sealed his helmet and followed his companions.
The path led to a fairly large tunnel excavated into the familiar blue layer, following the meanders of the ore vein. After another door, he stepped on a narrow street bordered by rooms dug directly into the rock. Their front walls were adorned by rivers of tiny lights whirling in strange patterns. He suspected that the lights were some sort of orientation devices in the underground. The rivers had different hues and usually led to a larger building painted in the same shade as them… maybe the famous game nests he had heard so much about… Gill wanted to look inside, but his guards rushed him to hurry his steps. A couple of times, though, he managed to glimpse the gamers coiled in colorful nests or directly on the warm floors, all connected to the virtual world.
The road gave way to an impressive square. A massive two-story dome resembling a pair of coils placed one on top of the other stood right in the middle of it.
One of the guards entered the building, so Gill followed his steps. It took a while to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but then he saw several groups of Antyrans lying in niches carved into the walls, all of them immersed in a deep trance, totally unaware of their presence. A real trance for once—unlike his guards, who, although sleeping, were able to move around just fine.
They walked upstairs to an acajaa storeroom. The first guard touched an empty shelf, which promptly folded into the floor, exposing the wall behind it. The soldier stepped forward, vanishing through the stone! It was a concealed passage camouflaged by a hologram. Beyond it, a narrow corridor descended steeply far below the ground floor. It ended in another tunnel—this time so narrow that two Antyrans could barely walk side by side, yet its walls were over sixty feet in height. It didn’t appear very long, though, but that was just an illusion due to the camouflage. Gill realized that only now he had reached the core of the forbidden city.
Once they passed through another hidden wall, they reached a big cavern resembling a hive, populated by hundreds of ghostlike Antyrans walking in all directions. For the first time, he had the opportunity to meet townsfolk with their eyes open. Sometimes they appeared from a wall, only to vanish inside another rock or descend some concealed stairs. A couple of times, he only saw a head or a torso popping out before it disappeared under the camouflage. Dizzy and bewildered, Gill understood he had no chance of finding his way alone. If Baila could see what his eyes saw, he would realize that any attempt to seize Ropolis by force was doomed.
Behind another camouflage, there was a small tunnel leading to a square surrounded by small stone facades. They weren’t buildings in the true sense, just simple walls closing the holes carved in the sides of the cavern.
They entered one of them, and the guards stopped for a brief moment, giving him a chance to look closely at the Antyrans coiled in nests or in the niches dug into the walls. They seemed immersed in a deep coma, and he immediately noticed something even more disturbing: quite a number of them had artificial feeding tubes coming out of their bellies; a few were connected to devices to keep them alive. Had they been wounded in the fight? Strangely, no one was helping them… But then he noticed that all the intubated were old and wrinkled—mere shadows of their former selves, most likely unable to support their weight on their feeble feet with all the help of the planet’s low gravity… much less carry around a laser lens…
The younger bixanids had no tubes or other devices, save for the interfaces attached to their spikes—they looked just like any other Antyrans of their age.
The two guards pointed to a concealed opening. Gill obeyed the order and walked through the stone, hoping to finally meet the architects.
Beyond the rock was a small, darkened room… and no welcome committee. Another prison, even smaller and more unwelcome than the first one. Ridiculous! He had no time to waste with foolish riddles. Gill turned back to exit through the hologram, but he banged his head on the door.
He rubbed his spikes, which were pulsing in pain, and stretched his hands to find a way to open it. His fingers disappeared into the camouflage and met the coldness of a metallic wall. He was captive! Furious by the finding, he banged his fist on the wall and shouted from all his gills, “Open the door!”
No one bothered to answer, so Gill abandoned the futile attempt to get out. He looked around his prison and saw two nests filled with a pinkish synthetic fluff of poor quality. He wasn’t alone, as he thought: someone was coiled in one of them. Gill approached cautiously, but his companion was a skeletal old Antyran sunk into a deep trance—his body pierced by feeding tubes and other machines whose functions were not entirely clear to Gill.
There was a holophone near the small holotheater dug into the floor. He had to admit, he had never seen something that old—surely a device brought by the first wave of colonists. The room had no windows, except for a tiny skylight ten feet from the floor, a tired propeller spinning slowly in it. He carefully pulled the space in front of the opening and looked through the distortion. There was a small, deserted street bordered by several rooms.
While contemplating the street view, he realized that the room became brighter. Gill turned in time to see a hologram materialized without warning in the holotheater—a rudeness hard to accept under normal circumstances.
The visitor was visible down to the waist, and nothing of his room could be seen in Gill’s holophone—which again was a serious lack of manners according to the Antyran protocols. He could clearly read the message: they treated him as a prisoner and not as their guest.
His companion had a face slightly rounder than the average Antyran, with smaller but very expressive eyes. The thick spikes on his head betrayed an extraordinary robustness. Overall, he looked more like a fighter than an architect.
Gill welcomed him with the standard salute by turning his palm up and down, but he received no reply other than an icy gaze that seemed sharp enough to drill out the secrets locked inside his skull.
“I’ve two questions for you,” the Antyran started dryly, without introducing himself. “How did you get here, and why?”
The voice… it was the one he heard in the holophones of the sleeping rebels. Maybe he judged him wrongly, maybe he was one of the city’s architects… However, Gill only needed a glance to decide he didn’t trust him a bit. The Antyran was precisely the last being on Antyra he would entrust with the secrets of the Sigian bracelet.
“I’m Gillabrian,” he replied, pretending he didn’t notice his coldness.
“I’d be astonished to find one Antyran who doesn’t know who you are after the prophet’s fine efforts!” the Antyran exploded. “That’s not what I asked!”
“If you know who I am, and if the ritual of the palm has any meaning for you, I demand to know who I’m talking to,” he said, deciding to fight back. He had nothing to win by appearing weak in front of such a bully. True, the events were not under his control, but they weren’t entirely under his questioner’s will, either, even though it seemed he entertained the idea.
“I’m asking the questions here! Restrain yourself from asking anything, and give me the answers I seek!”
“In that case, I’m afraid we have reach
ed a dead end,” Gill said, raising the stakes. “I refuse.”
“All right! After all, I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. My name is Ugo. Now, answer my questions!”
“I ran from Alixxor in one of the transporters that attacked Ropolis and I… I ended up down here,” he babbled, realizing he had no way to give a plausible explanation without involving the Sigian artifact.
“Let me get this straight: you left Alixxor hunted by millions of tarjis in one of Baila’s own ships, you jumped into the crevice in the middle of the fight, and then you stepped into Ropolis alive and well—unlike the other servants of the prophet who all lay mangled on the bottom of the rift. Are you a nifle?” Ugo exclaimed mockingly.
Gill’s biggest worry—that he would be considered an agent of the temples—became true. Surely, Zhan’s angry eye painted on his chest didn’t help much…
“You think I’m Baila’s agent?”
“How else would you be here?” Ugo grinned.
“I want to talk to the architects. But not through this installation. I want to meet them in flesh and bones,” he said firmly.
“Does Baila truly believe we’re that stupid?” Ugo said with a laugh. “He must have known he wouldn’t be able to set foot in the tunnels, so he devised the perfect plan: make up a nice story about a famous repulsive to soothe our vigilance, send him over to meet the architects, and when we gather together like a bunch of silly licants… boom! You blast us to smithereens with some infernal implant!”
Gill realized he wouldn’t get anywhere with the Antyran. The only progress was that he learned the name of his jailer. Ugo’s distrust was justified, and surely they’d keep him prisoner… Maybe they would even try to scan him for implants, in which case he would have to run to protect the secret of the bracelet. He didn’t want to flee again and unleash another round of unrestrained violence, but lately, he didn’t pick his path…
And he had learned one more thing about Ugo: he said “when we gather together” when he talked about the architects, which meant he was one of them.
“If Baila sent me, don’t you think I would have a plausible story? Who comes with such a dumb plan? You have to believe me!” exclaimed Gill.
“First tell me why you’re here!”
The individual moved his head slightly, and Gill realized something wasn’t right. The movement was very small—a few degrees at most—but the dizzying speed betrayed him. It was too fast for a normal Antyran, and Gill was pretty sure the archaic device had nothing to do with it. Ugo had his own secrets…
Gill closed the thought in his kyi, deciding not to ignore the happening. He would think later of the implications.
For the moment, he had to force a meeting with the others. Whether successful or not, he might learn something from his attempt. Did Ugo represent all the architects or only himself? Perhaps seeing how he escaped the metal licants, he figured that Gill had an unbelievable weapon and wanted to get his hands on it without telling the others. That would explain why he asked him to wear a helmet. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk had no idea about his presence here… Maybe the trance soldiers were mere shells, unable to remember anything when they woke up…
Way too often, even in history’s darkest hours, unscrupulous individuals tried to take advantage of the unfolding events for their own interest. Or maybe he was wrong in all his assumptions. As an archivist, he was aware that in the short time since he had entered the caves, he had no way to understand even a shred of this bizarre world’s ramifications. Unfortunately, he had to march forward, no matter how deep and frightening the darkness became.
“I’ll speak only to the architects! Even through holophone, if there’s no other way,” he insisted.
“If those are your conditions, so be it. You’ll find that we have other methods to extract the truth from the traitors! We offered you the easy way out, but you refused it.”
Ugo reached out angrily to shut down the holoflux, but he stopped and looked insistently at the old Antyran coiled in the nearby nest as if he expected him to wake up at any moment.
“Wait!” Gill shouted.
“You changed your mind already?” The Antyran grinned at the thought that he had managed to scare him so easily.
Gill pointed his finger at the wasted Antyran nearby.
“Who’s he?”
The grin immediately disappeared from the Antyran’s face, being replaced by a disgraceful grimace.
“Another traitor,” he muttered through his teeth.
“When he wakes up?”
“You can talk with him for only one hour a day. But don’t get closer than six feet. And don’t cross the stream in the meadow!”
“The stream in the meadow?” he asked, dumbfounded. What exactly did he miss? Maybe Ugo was mad… Perhaps they were all mad here in the underground. Where could he find a stream in the bowels of the scorched planet?
“Stay away from the trees, and don’t cross the small river in the valley. That’s your perimeter!”
Seeing Gill’s puzzled face, he showed him the suction cups near the nest on the left.
“You’ll find it in the box. The yellow ket seed.”
“Seed?”
“Bixan.”
“And how—”
Without hiding his disgust, as if he could smell Gill’s repulsiveness directly through the flux, the Antyran closed the connection.
Gill was left alone and angry at the way his first meeting in Ropolis went along. He had relied so much on the thought that he could convince the rebels to become his allies that now he felt deeply upset. After only a few hours in Ropolis, I already made an enemy… and not just any Antyran, but apparently, an architect.
How would Ugo put his threats into practice? The truth was that locked in the dark room, he was vulnerable, very vulnerable. They could use a proximity inductor to paralyze him or poison the air with hallucinogenic aromas. There were so many ways to subdue him and take his bracelet. On the other tail, he could escape at any time by jumping through the skylight… but surely Ugo wouldn’t let him get away that easily. All the madness from Alixxor would move to Ropolis.
The shred of hope he had when he entered the catacombs crumbled away as if blown by Belamia’s winds when he understood what tiny chances he had to protect his secrets. Even if he managed to meet the other architects, they would force him to speak and become exposed to the temptation of the power hidden in the bracelet. Would they fight to resurrect Sigia from its own ashes, to succeed where Kirk’an had failed? He wasn’t sure at all. The Ropolitans certainly wove their own webs, in which he and the artifact risked being sacrificed for some more or less bellicose purposes. And he wouldn’t allow this to happen.
CHAPTER 11.
Antyra and Colhan were the most important gods of the ancient world, before Zhan’s coming. The fertile womb of Antyra—the mother of all creatures—was the planet Antyra I itself. Her only son, Alixxor, was spawned from an egg she hatched for a hundred cycles of the universe.
One day, Alixxor fell in love with Oleia, an Antyran female whose beauty was famous throughout the ancient world. He didn’t want to listen to anybody; he didn’t hear the order of the supreme god to never see her again because she was a mortal of humble condition.
His father, the star god Colhan, took offense at Alixxor’s disobedience. Blinded by rage, he grabbed his son by the tail and tossed him from the heavens with a power greater than anyone could imagine. It is said that where they hit the ground, the god’s bones gave birth to the largest mountain range in the world—the Roch-Alixxor massif. Torn by grief, the mother goddess cried for 160,000 days and 160,000 nights;63 her salty tears formed the huge ocean around the only continent of the world.
Frightened by the result of his anger, like any husband who exaggerated “a bit,” Colhan wanted to appease Antyra. But he had no idea how, and being the star god, he obviously had his pride: he couldn’t simply admit he did something wrong. Therefore, he gathered the other gods, and together they d
evised a secret plan. One day, out of the blue, yellow flakes started to fall across the planet. Soon, millions of tall, green plants called acajaa sprouted from the strange seeds. At first, Antyra didn’t pay any attention, being too busy mourning her son, Alixxor. But after a while, she couldn’t ignore them. There were too many of them—the whole planet was covered. One day, as she walked in one of the acajaa fields, she was pricked by the thorns at the base of the plant. A droplet of orange-colored juice was promptly injected into the goddess.
Due to this deception of the star god, Antyra was impregnated again. She immediately understood her mistake because she was a goddess—and not any goddess, but the mother of earth and fertility. However, it was too late; she was carrying another of Colhan’s puppies in her belly. Because of her hatred for the consort god, she didn’t love the new life inside her. She gave birth to a new egg in the form of a sphere of translucent ice. The ice refused to melt, even when its father took it into the core of the star.
Eventually, Colhan got angry again—and in the worst way possible. He had a “slight” tendency to get enraged rather quickly— he wasn’t exactly renowned for his patience. He grabbed his gorg64 and hit the sphere with all his godly might. With a terrible noise, the ice broke in millions of shards, each splinter becoming a seed from which nightmares arose. The goddess Pixihe was born!
Her first concern was to lock the whole planet in her icy grip; Pixihe’s heavy breathing was colder than the seed of night, and she used it to cover the whole world with eternal glaciers.
The goddess’s whims suffocated the warmth of the star, robbing the inhabitants of their rich harvests. The despairing wails of the ancients climbed up to the heavens; Colhan, fed up with hearing them, went to sleep, deciding to nap till the next cycle of the universe. Many creatures became trapped in the unforgiving ice, forever captive of the mad goddess.
Pixihe then began to hatch her own eggs, and soon she gave rise to a whole army of creatures and ice monstrosities. Even Dedris, the mistress of the legendary glacier Ricopa, was—according to the legends—one of Pixihe’s daughters, born from a statue.