by George Tome
But the time passed, and nothing happened—no one came to scan him and trigger his riposte. Soon, he’d have to make a decision: Escape through the skylight, or keep waiting for an attack that might never come? The second option would bring him closer to the moment when he’d have to abandon his tired body to the softness of the nest…
What about the old Antyran wandering in the virtual worlds, the realms of legends that attracted him like a magnet? It was a possibility, but he’d have to go into a trance to reach him.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that escape was the worst idea; he ran away from the initiates, but the Ropolitans would prove more formidable enemies. He couldn’t forget how they had repulsed Baila’s attack; a world of holograms and mirages populated with trance soldiers and metal licants wouldn’t give him much of a chance to hide. Therefore, he decided he’d meet the old Antyran to find out who the architects were and how to reach them. He’d stay connected only for a short time, and with a bit of luck, Ugo wouldn’t have time to do anything nasty while he was unconscious…
He reached for the seed box near the nest, hesitating. The drug, bixan, allegedly resulted in a strong dependency. The drug or the other world? He had no clue which of the two, but he saw with his very eyes the ones who forgot to disconnect… Gill had an overwhelming feeling that he was pinched by the tail to do it, that he was manipulated to enter the forbidden world. Had he been in Alixxor, he would have never done such a folly—even if he had lost his smell. But here was no Alixxor.
The box was oval, yellowish-brown in color. It didn’t have the standard shape and wasn’t carved from tekal wood to preserve the aromas over time, as the aromary tradition requested. Under normal circumstances, any Antyran would have been too offended to use it, but Gill couldn’t afford such trifles. He opened it and searched for the yellow seeds. There were plenty of them at the bottom; he grabbed one in his palm and smelled it. A pungent stench invaded his nostrils—bixan didn’t smell very pleasant.
After checking his fellow prisoner’s interface, he attached the suckers on his head spikes and immediately felt how they began to buzz warmly. He pressed the seed between his fingers until it snapped; a clear gel oozed onto his fingers. Slowly, he took his hand to his nostrils and inhaled deeply. A stinging pain invaded his lungs and left him without air. But then, the feeling of discomfort disappeared, and a surprisingly pleasant tingling ran through his veins in all directions, leaving a trail of deep relaxation behind—as if thousands of tiny invisible hands massaged him from the inside. For the first time since the madness began, he felt relaxed. Still, a bit dizzy. Dizzy and light as fluff…
He managed to coil sluggishly in the nest and plunged into a deep sleep.
Gill was sleeping so well after all the commotion of his arrival in the caverns that he didn’t notice the annoying scratches. Soon, however, he couldn’t ignore them anymore: something was walking shamelessly with its tiny feet on his recessive gills. He barely opened his eyelids, heavy as neutronium, and glimpsed about five adult licants fluttering their lazy wings to take off from him, leaving behind a web of sticky trails.70 Disgusted by the prospect of finding his head spikes messed with the same substance excreted by their tail glands, he touched them… but he found the interface. What the… Then he noticed his surroundings. The green meadow where he lay on his back was covered by a spectacular blue sky, with no trace of the purple misty bacteria.
Thoughts hardly came to his numbed kyi, but he gradually remembered everything. He smelled the bixan after he had connected the interface, and he fell asleep… Now, he woke up here. He was somewhat puzzled that the suckers were still attached to his spikes, but after all, why not? The cups didn’t lead anywhere—each had a small tail of about six inches, curved backward.
The meadow was on a gentle slope of a hill bordered on its sides by two deep, dark valleys framed by ravines; beyond them, other meadows dotted the undulating landscape. Unidentified brush laden with beautiful pink flowers covered the upper part of the hills. Right on the hilltops, clumps of large trees shadowed the grass with their opulent canopy.
Enchanted by the beauty of the world he had entered, he forgot the unpleasant awakening. He had never seen grass like that: the plants had a small stem, which ended in one single disk-shaped leaf of about two inches in diameter. Its top surface was dark green, whereas the belly was light. The whole meadow seemed covered in millions of green plates, neatly scaled one over the other. Now and then, a gentle breeze caused small ripples in the two colors, changing the orientation of the scales.
The walls of some tall mountains in the distance were proudly watching over the hill. He didn’t recognize them—in fact, he was pretty sure no treatise had ever described them because they were conceived by the fertile imagination of this world’s inhabitants. They didn’t seem nearly as huge as the Roch-Alixxors, but they were perhaps even more beautiful, their mile-high vertical walls of red sandstone being dented by deep valleys and surrounded by dark woods or green meadows like the one in which he rested his tail.
After he got to his feet, he turned to see the place around him. In the next second, an exclamation of astonishment came from his throat because not far from him, the earth ended. It ended in the most literal way, and nothing took its place. He was standing on the most bizarre form of relief possible—an island, one of many such patches of land he could see. They didn’t float in the waters of an imaginary ocean but in the atmosphere of a planet larger and more absurd than imagination could conceive. Surely the atom’s laws wouldn’t allow for such a place to exist in reality—and, in addition, a planet that massive would bathe the environment around it in a blanket of deadly radiation, instantly killing anyone so close to it. But in a virtual world, the architects didn’t feel bound to follow all of Zhan’s laws…
The meadow was near the edge of the island, separated from it by a stream that flowed in parallel with the shoreline before disappearing in a golf of air—no doubt forming a spectacular waterfall hidden from his view—and a small dune right on the coast.
Looking through the gulf of air, he could see, dozens of miles underneath, a blanket of translucent brown clouds enveloping the surface of the giant planet in a death shroud that stretched forever; his eyes couldn’t reach the horizon. It was an eternal mist, a sinister, toxic smog that enslaved the surface of the planet. Certainly life—even a virtual one—couldn’t grow roots in such a terrible place…
The clouds beneath were far from homogenous, but their movement didn’t have the slightest resemblance to the known weather patterns. They appeared animated by a will of their own that made them twist and rise toward the sky islands like the hideous, sprawling fingers of a giant monster hidden in the mist. Much lower, there was a second layer of gray fog that licked the ground along some invisible valleys, avoiding higher areas and without mixing in any way with the brown clouds.
From place to place, huge slabs of rock were visible through the gaps in the cloud blanket. They looked like broken pieces of stone columns, crippled and tumbled, stuck in grotesque angles, resembling the remains of colossal temples worn by the passing millennia. In other places, he could glimpse long, jagged rock edges that looked like rusty sarpan blades abandoned on a long-forgotten battlefield—fault lines eaten by unnamed deluges.
It was like the planet’s surface had piled up all the madness of destruction, ruin, and decay caused by Antyrans over millennia of warfare, perhaps even imagined by legends, perhaps repeated over and over again in countless versions and endings, mixed with a million years of the unrelenting fury of nature. The ugly scars in the bedrock displayed all the telltale signs of global glaciations and catastrophic flooding when the ice dams of the glacial lakes were breached by the whims of the planet’s axial tilt.
When he raised his eyes from the frightful sight, he found that things looked much better at his level. The crystal-clear blue sky was dotted by countless islands like the one he was standing on, hovering at wildly different heights. Due
to the incredible visibility, he could track them until they reached ridiculously small sizes—little more than specks of dust lost in the almost infinite depths of space.
The floating worlds were irregular pieces of land of various thicknesses, seemingly pulled by a mad giant from the planet’s crust and thrown up into the sky. Under the cover of the fertile soil, ancient rock strata or sediment layers of different colors were clearly visible.
Each island was different from the others. One nearby was almost entirely covered in water and dotted with small, rocky islets, surrounded by sharp reefs that broke the fury of the waves. Enticing sand beaches stretched behind these barriers, and lush vegetation invaded the interior.
Other floating realms were covered by tangled jungles of fantastic trees, barren or forested mountains with steep walls, deserts streaked by deep canyons, or volcanos in full eruption; several were sunk in shadow or even in their own personal night—basically, the air around them was dark. Gill could still discern thousands and thousands of lights flickering into the night. Probably campfires spread throughout the licant-infested valleys. The realms of the games! Each island was a different game? His eyes couldn’t pierce the thick darkness, but he imagined huge virtual armies gathered in the hearts of the night, thousands of soldiers holding torches while preparing to commence nocturnal battles under the orders of the bixanid players, to live again the legendary sieges of the ancients…
Maybe in the light of the fires, sweaty orzacs tied the straps of their moulans, screwed the metal sheaths on their tail spikes, dressed in their cold armor, and left to attack. They left to tear down again the white walls of Zagrada, the capital of the grahs, and conquer one by one the stockade altars of Pixihe, Colhan, and the other fake gods of the ice worshipped by the ancient Antyrans and grahs before Zhan’s coming. The passion for ancient history of the archivist inside him urged him to be in the middle of them, to fill his nostrils with the stench of their moulans and feel the cold sweat of the battle anticipation oozing under the scales of his armor.
The nearest island was larger than the others, a frigid world with tall mountains and massive glaciers, their ice tongues forming vertical walls several hundred yards tall, right on the shoreline. The rivers that sprang from the central peaks burst into light through the translucent blue walls, giving birth to milky waterfalls that fell for miles in the abyss before turning into clouds and then disappearing altogether. The real Antyra must have been so frozen before the firewall. And that’s how it will look shortly, he thought as he remembered the terrible madness raging outside the serene borders of the virtual world. The bracelet! Ugo! Suddenly, the memory of the awful meeting came back to his kyi like a cold shower—and along with it, the image of his inert body abandoned like an offering in the greasy fluff of a cave dug in the incinerated crust of Antyra III. He had no time to waste with the breathtaking scenery, so he regretfully turned his back to the gulf of air and rushed to search for the old Antyran.
Gill found him not far away, lying under a tree. The old Antyran was lazily chewing a mouthful of discoidal grass and didn’t seem to be thinking of anything.
A detail immediately struck Gill: he didn’t resemble his real-life double. If the nest in the catacombs hosted a skeletal creature, kept alive by a bunch of devices and feeding tubes, under the tree was an Antyran about twenty years younger. He had a lively, expressive face and strong spikes, covered by the transparent cups of the interface.
Gill’s thoughts were running at full speed—so many questions and so little time! He wished he had a way to immerse himself in all his companion’s experiences in this fascinating world, all the knowledge accumulated in his long existence connected to the interface, all the games, the bixan’s perfidy—he wanted to smell all of them at once. He hesitated, now knowing how to begin, but something slowed down his excitement: the Antyran looked at him calmly, without the slightest surprise on his face. He knew all too well that Gill was going to arrive! Hmm… Ugo said he was a traitor, but that obviously didn’t mean anything. He wondered if the old Antyran was a prisoner or a part of Ugo’s plans for him…
“Rascal little ones, aren’t they?” the Antyran questioned him without bothering to introduce himself.
Gill was starting to get used to the Ropolitans’ blatant lack of manners—after all, it was the land of the miners, Antyrans as harsh as the planet’s crust from where they plucked the mineral wealth—so he decided to ignore his companion’s rudeness. As for him, he didn’t have to worry: like Ugo, he doubted there was a single Antyran still unaware of his name, unless he or she was completely isolated from the madness outside—a bit hard to believe. But what about the “little ones”? Following his gaze, Gill noticed the old Antyran was watching a greedy licant stalking their gills.
“On Zhan’s eye, what sickly kyis brought these foul creatures here? Isn’t it enough they exist in reality?” Gill exclaimed, pointing at a hungry creature flying around them.
“Errr, that would be me,” he answered without appearing offended by Gill’s question. “The bixan is so relaxing that many forgot to wake up before we invented the portal spheres. The licants are the drug’s guardians. But how come you don’t—” He stopped suddenly, and with a sparkle of understanding, he gazed at him, astounded. “You’re not from Ropolis!” he exclaimed. “Any Ropolitan would know this already!”
“What question is this?” Gill asked, annoyed. “You don’t know who I am?”
“And why should I know, may I ask? You think it’s carved on your gills?” he asked with sarcasm.
“You mean you don’t recognize me?”
The old Antyran exploded in laughter, which had the effect of quickly enraging Gill. He had no time to fool around, and his companion didn’t seem to have the slightest intent to hurry. Here, on the green hill, time stood still, but surely it was whirling madly around the slimy nest hosting his unprotected body…
“How would I recognize you? Just look at you,” the Antyran told him, continuing to smile.
Gill touched his face, baffled. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it…
“Look here,” the old Antyran said, pulling aside the arched branches of a shrub beside him.
A small hole full of clear water opened near its gnarled roots. As he looked into the water, Gill understood his companion’s amusement. A very familiar, dull mug looked at him from the water mirror—it was the standard face of the artificial intelligences, the ones that drove the taxis and took the food orders. He touched his cheek again. Curiously, his fingers didn’t notice it wasn’t his face. You’re still Gill, they seemed to whisper with a soothing voice.
“Yes, yes, most have a shock on their first visit. But you’ll get used to it in time,” he said, trying to encourage him. “Maybe you’ll even have the chance to activate your sphere if they let you leave this place. Then you can pick the face you like.”
“What do you mean ‘if they let you leave’? I can’t disconnect?” he asked, panicked, touching the virtual contacts on his spikes.
“Come on—leave the prison island, Tormalin, that’s what I meant,” he quickly replied, pointing at the hill behind him. “To jump on the other islands or in the games where the portal spheres materialize.”
He was stuck here, too. Gill began to understand Ugo’s words when he ordered him not to cross the stream in the valley. Barriers everywhere, but unlike in the real world, he was unable to use the bracelet here, to twist the space as he wished.
“My name’s Gillabrian,” he said, introducing himself.
“Ahhh! Now I understand,” the Antyran exclaimed, surprised—quite convincingly. “Gillabrian, one of the five Antyrans who doesn’t need to be introduced anywhere! Please excuse the lack of manners of a poor haggard; my name is Urdun,” he replied affably.
Gill accepted his companion’s excuses with a slight hand flutter. It appeared that he had access to the holofluxes—or at least he had during the last few days—because he knew his name. The Antyran seemed friend
ly, so he decided to say the burning reason why he connected to the virtual world, his spikes congested by the stinging aroma of hope, a hope that—against all logic—Urdun was going to open his mouth and simply tell him how to contact the other inhabitants of the Blue Crevice.
“Urdun, you’ve got to help me. I need to meet the architects!”
“Hmm…”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. The beginning didn’t seem too encouraging…
“They haven’t told you how things work around here? We’re prisoners on this meadow.”
“How do you talk—how do you call someone? Do you have a virtual holophone or some other way?”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any of those. You wait for the guardian’s portal sphere to appear—”
“Ugo!”
“Well, I see you had the pleasure of meeting our jure.”
“Ugo is the city’s jure?” Gill exclaimed, astounded. That explained how he managed to track his moves like a nifle and keep him hidden from the nostrils of the other Antyrans. “I wonder if you have lost your smell to trust this Antyran.”
“He leads our soldiers from Firalia 9, the clone of the city’s catacombs. Ugo is their smell, sight, and hearing.”
Firalia 9 had to be one of the virtual islands… He understood the words—after all, they were in Antyran—but their meaning was deeper than the Cenote of the Purple Stone, colder than the Eger’s whirls, and muddier than Gondarra’s shores. What he saw in the catacombs started to make sense, however unbelievable it may have seemed. During the fight, the drugged rebels abandoned their bodies to the jure! The implications were muddying the springs of reality, as if they weren’t muddy enough even without this problem. Another unknown factor appeared in the Baila–Gill equation—and not an easy one. Ugo was something akin to a god-in-the-making, if he hadn’t reached that level yet, he admitted, finally acknowledging the absurd thought he had during the meeting with the jure. I can’t ignore this possibility, the voice of reason whispered in his gills, reminding him of the strange movement of the strategist’s head, which betrayed his weird consistence.