The Hellhound Consortium

by B A Simmons

  “Satellites,” Doctor Morris said.

  “What?” questioned both Rob and Poulustus.

  “They are artificial satellites. Devices that orbit around a world. They can be used for gathering and transmitting information.”

  “Those dots are devices?” Rob asked.

  “They represent devices. This globe is like a map. A map made by electricity. The table is the controlling computer for the globe. It allows us to add layers of information about the world.”

  “And the sat-lites make that possible?”

  “I’m not sure. As I said, the satellites could have any number of different functions. One thing is for certain, however. The ancient Duarve possessed more technology than we had thought.”

  “Power is wrong word, but I do not know correct word,” Poulustus said.

  Doctor Morris was again acting like an excited youngster. “I agree with you. Power is a vague word in Engle. It can have many meanings.”

  “This word in old Duarve language is like word we use now for lines of light in sky during a storm.”

  “Lightning?” Rob said.

  “Electricity,” Doctor Morris corrected. “They are not stars for power; they are electrical satellites.”

  “You mean the satellites use electricity to function.”

  “Yes, but what is their function? Poulustus, does this tell you anything else about the satellites?”

  “I do not know. I will try other selections.”

  It turned the knobs again. They watched for some time as nothing seemed to be happening. Then slowly, the green shapes they had come to understand as land began to shrink. The small islands disappeared into the blue and the larger shapes were broken into smaller islands. Doctor Morris gasped. Rob stared intently at the red circle, which was still over the yellow dot. The green around that dot shrank and parts of it were invaded by blue. It was broken up into smaller islands and these began to look familiar.

  Aruth, Big Nose Isle, Fallen Dome, the Disappointment Isles . . . and the yellow dot, now located on the western edge of what looked like Kudo Isle.

  “By Ayday. This is our world,” Rob said.

  “There’s little doubt of that now, is there?” Morris agreed.

  Poulustus said something in his tongue. What startled the two humans was when another Duarve tongue answered.

  They whipped around to the doorway. Standing there, holding an odd object in its arms, was another Duarve.

  It spoke again, and though he couldn’t understand the words, Rob didn’t like the tone of its voice. Poulustus placed its arms out with the fingertips extended. Rob thought he heard the ambassador to Aruth say its own name. His eyes looked at Doctor Morris and saw that the teacher held his own hands up in the air as if to show that he was unarmed. Rob copied the motion, being careful not to move too quickly.

  After some very tense moments, Poulustus spoke in Engle to its two companions.

  “It is Yskiu Dhicid. It claims to be guardian of K’ork-eatop.”

  “What’s that it’s holding?” Rob asked, eliciting a look of incredulity from Morris.

  “A weapon to defend itself. Do not move before I tell you.”

  Yskiu spoke again, aiming the device at Rob. Poulustus responded, and it lowered the device again, but still held it threateningly.

  “I told it that I am leader of our group and you both are my followers. It fears we are here to steal de-vices of this place. I am attempting to convey that we are not.”

  “Would it help if we bowed to you?” Morris suggested.

  “Duarve do not bow to show respect.”

  “Yes, but we aren’t Duarves.”

  “It doesn’t know what you are. It has never seen humans before. Now stop talking.”

  Poulustus moved forward, still holding out its hands. The two Duarves engaged in rapid dialogue as Poulustus tried to convince the guardian of their peaceful intentions. It appeared to Rob that engaging in the rite he had seen Poulustus do with its assistant on Aruth was essential to this. Rob repeated a silent plea for it to set aside the weapon and touch Poulustus’s fingers.

  While speaking constantly, Poulustus moved directly toward the other Duarve who did not move for what seemed an exhausting amount of time. With the weapon pointed directly at its chest, Poulustus placed its fingers on the Duarve’s smooth head. A moment later, it dropped the weapon and brought its own hands to Poulustus.

  Rob and Morris both exhaled in relief and lowered their arms.

  The two Duarves stood for a long period of time with their hands on each other’s heads. Rob wanted desperately to turn back to the globe but didn’t want to seem disrespectful. And as Doctor Morris did not look away, Rob chose to be patient.

  Once Poulustus and Yskiu came out of their shared trance, the former turned back to the two humans.

  “I have told it our intentions and it will help us get information we desire. There is condition. Once we have what we desire, we must leave and never return.”

  “We can agree to that,” Morris said.

  With Poulustus as translator, Yskiu took them on a tour of the facility. The next room down from the globe room held three large machines. The first two did not seem to work, but the third glowed red and emitted a low hum. It was a power generator. Large pipes connected the generator to other parts of the facility. The largest pipe, however, went straight up into the vaulted ceiling.

  “Where does that pipe go?” Rob asked, assuming it carried electrical power somewhere.

  “To the tower of sending,” Poulustus translated.

  “What is that?”

  “It sends the power out to the stars of power—the sat-lites.”

  “It sends the power? How? If the satellites are way up in the sky, there are no wires that can reach that far.”

  There was a pause while Poulustus translated, as best it could, the questions. Yskiu responded.

  “It is accomplished using waves of power. There is no other explanation than this,” Poulustus said.

  Yskiu moved on to an explanation of how water was collected from mist and snowmelt and used to rotate turbines. These turbines produced electricity. It was a concept that Doctor Morris understood, albeit only in theory. He wanted to see the turbines, but Yskiu refused. Apparently, trust was not completely built up.

  Down another corridor, past more unused rooms, was a device unlike any Rob could have imagined. It was big, larger than two wagons put together. There was an area in the center covered by a thick tinted glass that held two Duarve-sized seats. Four large glass spheres were positioned, two in the front and two at the rear. Their blue color reminded Rob of the globe. The sleek shape of the machine denoted to Rob that it could slip easily through waves and, therefore, he thought it was a kind of submersible vehicle.

  “Perhaps in the time before the world flooded, there weren’t so many sea creatures and submersibles were how the Duarve traveled the seas,” he said to Doctor Morris.

  “No, given the Duarves’ dislike of voyages along the surface of the sea, I doubt that they would travel under it. Rather, use the process of elimination. As you see, there are no wheels. What’s the only other way this vehicle could move about without being towed?”

  Rob’s first idea seemed so incredible he hated to say it out loud. Yet nothing else made sense, so he blurted out, “The sky?”

  The old teacher smiled at him to confirm this answer. It was as if he could see the thousands of thoughts racing through Rob’s mind as he considered all the questions that created as well as their possible answers.

  “I can’t fathom how that should work.”

  “More perplexing to me is how they got it in here,” Morris said. “You can see that the door is far too small and the corridor too narrow, but there aren’t any windows or such in this room.”

  Yskiu showed them tools and weapons abandoned there by the ancient Duarve. Most of them no longer worked, but a few brought new marvels to Rob’s attention. Yskiu also explained how it had been raised
by its parent to be the guardian of K’ork-eatop as its parent had been and so forth—back four generations since the time that humans arrived on nearby Aruth.

  “These guardians have hoped to understand these things,” Poulustus translated, “that Duarve may have advantage over human invaders. Yet, after only few years, most Duarve leave K’ork-eatop and only one guardian remained.”

  Yskiu paused, then said something as it raised its hands into the air with fingers outstretched.

  Poulustus interpreted, “Yskiu says it is happy to see that humans are learning to live with Duarve. Such weapons might not be needed after so long.”

  Rob considered his own circumstances. Here he was, exploring the world and just beginning to understand it, while men all around him sought to subjugate it. What would the Falcon Empire do if they discovered this place? The vessel that might actually sail the skies, electricity, a three-dimensional map of the world that showed its weather patterns as well as its geologic history? He shuddered to think what they would do with such wonders. No, he knew the answer. They would all become tools and weapons to aid them in their goal of a world united under the double-headed Falcon.

  He considered telling Poulustus and Yskiu of their common enemy. Would it ruin Yskiu’s newfound hope in humanity? Before he could say anything, Doctor Morris brought out the tablet taken from Hellhound Isle. He addressed Yskiu:

  “Do you know how we might connect this to the power, so that we might learn what it contains?”

  Yskiu took the tablet as Poulustus translated the old man’s question. Without answering, the guardian Duarve removed the back panel and examined the damage Doctor Morris had done to it back on Engle Isle. It muttered a few expressions in Duarvish that Poulustus decided were either unimportant, or perhaps inappropriate, to translate. Then it took the tablet to a workstation near the wall of the room. There, it connected the tablet to exposed wires that jutted out from a broken pipe.

  After some tinkering, they saw the glass panel on the front light up. More Duarve characters appeared, and instead of flickering off as it had done in the inn at Port John, the tablet remained lit.

  Morris immediately rummaged through his pack for something to write with. He spent the next few hours with Poulustus going over every bit of Duarve language contained on the tablet. It was, as they discovered, interactive. Using the glass buttons, they told the tablet what they wanted to read and the device brought more information onto the screen.

  As Yskiu went to bring them food, Rob busied himself making drawings and writing descriptions of as many devices as he could, beginning with the Duarve airship.

  For two days, they talked, ate, slept, and recorded as much as they could at K’ork-eatop. Rob delighted in the knowledge he was gaining. He discovered that not all Duarve were vegetarians as Yskiu brought them slugworms and other unidentifiable meat. Yskiu used a rifle that shot small darts to kill winged creatures that nested in the ruins. Rob noted that there were many differences in custom as well as personality between the two Duarves. He found it hard to think of them as anything other than people.

  It was toward the end of the second day that it happened.

  While Rob sketched out an unfunctional tube that lay before him, he noticed a red light illuminated on the device. He was positive that light had not been on before. After a moment’s hesitation, Rob picked it up. He had looked through the ends of it before, believing it to be a type of far-see, but had seen nothing. Now, as he raised it to his eye, he was met with a blurry but definite image of colors. Blue, yellow, orange, and red were displayed in contrast and as he moved, so did the image. After some amount of experimentation, Rob concluded that it was a type of vision-enhancing device, though it didn’t magnify the images.

  In true scientific method, Rob conducted a few experiments with the tube. He then presented his hypothesis to Doctor Morris who ran the same experiments. Together, they determined it to be a heat imager. That is, the lenses in the tube changed the light entering it to detect heat sources. Rob was more astonished when he pressed a button on the tube and the colors changed again.

  The tube was not the only device to suddenly begin working that day. While Rob ran his experiments on the tube, Doctor Morris noted that the blue globes attached to the airship glowed brighter and brighter. As they did, the airship lifted from the floor of the chamber and had it not been for the ancient steel cables attached to its underside, it would have collided with the vaulted ceiling. Yskiu explained that the globes contained a gas, which when infused with the power of lightning, became lighter than the air. A vessel such as this one could carry people far into the sky, as long as it had this power.

  Other marvels occurred that day, both seen and unseen by the humans and Poulustus. It was tragic that their attention was pulled away from these by a voice calling for them from the entrance.

  “Haloooo! Doctors Rob and Morris? Are ye there?!”

  It was the voice of Archie Cavanaugh.

  Rob’s eyes showed his immediate horror as he realized the consequences of Archie’s sudden appearance. Yskiu disappeared around some dark corner as the other three ran to stop Archie from delving any further into the secret Duarve station. They found him at the top of the stairs, sniffing the air to determine which way to go. He held his bow in one hand and his long knife in the other.

  He smiled as he saw the three of them walking briskly toward him.

  “I have to say, it’s cozier in here than I thought it would be. No wonder yee’ve all been in here so long.”

  “Archie!” Rob called out. “Why are you here? You said you’d wait for us in the forest below.”

  “Yeah, I said that for two days. It’s been almost that, but there’s a great storm welling up. I can feel the air getting heavy and the wind picking up.”

  “You can NOT be here, Archie Cavanaugh!” Poulustus shouted. “This is sacred Duarve place!”

  Archie looked stunned at the cold reception. “If I can’t be here, then why can they!”

  “Look, Archie, we haven’t got time to explain,” Rob said, as he glanced around for Yskiu. “It’s . . . it’s complicated.”

  “Well then, I hope the matter of paying me isn’t too complicated. Ye owe me for two days.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll go and fetch your fee,” Doctor Morris said, and he turned to find his pack but made it no further. Rob noticed the humming sound just as he saw Morris’s hands go up in the air. He turned to see Yskiu holding its weapon on them again.

  It spoke to Poulustus though it was watching all of them.

  “What is that?!” Archie shouted.

  Rob’s mind raced, the few moments that followed seemed much longer in his memory than they actually consumed in time.

  A bright light erupted from the end of the weapon and shot past the three of them at Archie. The old hunter and guide was more agile than Rob had supposed. Somehow, the light missed him as he ducked back down the stairs. Rob reached for Yskiu’s weapon but the small Duarve moved nimbly away and then in one fluid movement brought the weapon down on Rob’s head.

  He stumbled back, his eyes refused to focus and white stars popped everywhere.

  Someone was shouting, “No, wait!” but Rob was unsure who. The sounds of Duarvish words and phrases followed and suddenly Yskiu was standing over Poulustus with the end of the weapon pressed against the ambassador’s head.

  There was silence. No, Rob heard voices. Yskiu was speaking softly to Poulustus. Poulustus said nothing in return, but stared at its fellow Duarve with its black, unblinking eyes.

  Then, suddenly, there was something protruding from Yskiu’s back. Rob had to squint to recognize the hooked point of a longbow arrow. Yskiu stopped speaking and fell sideways onto the floor. The weapon still hummed as Doctor Morris rushed to check the fallen Duarve for signs of life.

  Whether he meant to or not, Archie had struck the heart. The last guardian of K’ork-eatop was dead.

  “Poulustus, are you all right?” Rob asked as he touc
hed the throbbing lump on his left temple.

  “Yes, I say this. And no, I am not well, Rob Engle-man.”

  Rob looked to see Archie standing there, another arrow nocked and ready.

  “Archie, it’s all right. There’s no more danger.”

  “What is that?” Archie demanded.

  Unsure whether he meant the Duarve or the weapon it still held in its hands, Rob didn’t answer.

  Poulustus went to Yskiu and began chanting in a low voice. The words were unknown to the humans, but the intent was not. The Duarve was mourning its fallen comrade, lamenting its death and wishing it a speedy voyage to the Duarvish afterlife.

  “It is dead because you came here, Archie Cavanaugh,” Poulustus said once it stopped chanting.

  “I’ll be along then, just as soon as I get my payment.”

  The guide was paid and the storm hit within an hour. The wind howled and the rain fell in great cold sheets. The three travelers took shelter next to the power generator, protected but alone.

  21 – East of Alimia

  The Old Man and Alphina both sat off the northern shore of Engle Isle. Next to each was a long fishing skiff, borrowed from the Engleman and Turl families. The beach ahead of them was only a couple hundred feet of rocks and sand before the hacklebushes barricaded off the rest of the island. Over the years, the islanders had chopped several paths through this barricade, yet as most fishing was done in John’s Bay, these paths were unknown to many of the residents. Charlie ordered a detailed map of the island to be created so as to better plan the defenses with Roger. The map included all the roads, trails, and goat paths around the island, as well as draft marks around the shores.

  These two men now stood on the beach with forty members of the Engle Island militia. These volunteers had trained for six weeks and to the credit of their island, only a handful quit the training after Charlie’s grueling regimen.

  On command from Pete, the two swivel guns were fired. It was just powder, but it served to scare the militiamen lined up on the beach. The rowers began moving the skiffs forward toward the beach. Each skiff held twenty armored warriors. They were the mercenaries from other islands along with the best of the militia. Pete stood astern of one to direct the rowers toward a safe landing point. Trina and Jacob each crouched at the prow of a skiff. They’d be the first to jump ashore and face the militia.