Home at Last

by Alex Sapegin

  The disputants finally got tired of proving their truths to one another and dispersed to different corners of the hall, where everyone took up their own business.

  “We’ve got it,” one of the operators grumbled.

  “Come on, Nick,” another guy entered into the conversation. “the guys think they’re still in kindergarten.”

  “Tim, if they screw up the test launch, they’ll wish they could crawl back in the womb.”

  “Oh, gimme a break,” Tim said. “I’ve had some experience. Don’t be nervous. Nerve cells don’t regenerate. Everything will be perfect.”

  Nick looked at his wristwatch and tapped his fingers on the table. “Five to seven. Did they fall asleep, or what?”

  “Oh, don’t growl,” his partner said lazily. “The technicians will report soon, and we can get started. Well, what did I tell you?” Tim picked up the intercom phone. “The guys are finished. Note in the journal the time technical maintenance was completed.”

  “One sec.”

  “Not ‘one sec,’ take the journal and write in it. Don’t forget, the better your records on paper, the safer your butt. You can start warming up the external circuit.”

  “Hold oooon. Let’s wait for the others…”

  Fifteen minutes later, five more people joined the group of four. The room was completely up and running now. The last chord confirming that the apparatus was awakened from hibernation was the rippling on the main screen.

  “Where?” Tim asked Nick, cracking his knuckles.

  “Ilanta.”

  “Won’t that be far for the test?”

  “It’ll be fine. At the same time, we can drive the apparatus to the limit load regime.”

  “Whatever you say, master. You’re in charge today. If anything goes wrong, Chuiko will have your hide.”

  “I’m not an animal who could have its hide removed. Especially since Chuiko isn’t at the site today, and we need to practice.”

  “Come on…”

  “You already said that!”

  “Come on,” giggled Tim.

  “Tim!”

  “Okay, okay, okay. Shall we begin?”

  “Yes. Attention, prepare yourselves! Five minutes to launch!”

  After he completed the proper pre-start procedures and accepted the reports from the posts, Nicholas gave the command to start the apparatus. The lamps were blinking as usual. The apparatus, concealed behind a rock bed in a separate room, was enveloped in a grid of frequent electrical discharges. The air was filled with the smell of ozone. Filling the huge room with a rumble, the blades of the intake and exhaust ventilation devices started to rotate. With each second, there were more and more discharges. After a short while, the apparatus blocks completely disappeared under the luminous dome, followed by a characteristic crackling sound. Space and time broke down. A picture of a different world appeared on the main screen in the operators’ room.

  * * *

  “What are the aborigines gossiping about?” asked one of the staff, examining two guards standing in the shadow of a canopy on the gate tower of some small provincial town.

  “The one with the scar on his right cheek says it must be hot right now at the capital. Someone named Olmar cleared out all the garrisons and took all the… uh…. the staff linguist winced. “I don’t know that word; it’s not in the translator’s database. In short, that Olmar took ‘those things’ with him.”

  “Soooo,” Nick drawled, “if I understand correctly, the locals have had another scuffle. They’re fast, gotta hand it to them.”

  “Nick, they’ve been there for almost three days. Don’t forget about the difference in the time flows,” Tim said.

  “Exactly. According to objective time, the apparatus underwent maintenance for twenty-four hours. Who are the aboriginals fighting again? I suggest we move to the capital. Valentin, be so kind as to bring up the map on the screen. Well done.” Nick rubbed his hands. “Tim, steer to the north.”

  “North it is,” the operator said, biting his pencil between his teeth, and touched the joysticks gently. The fortress wall and the talkative guards were far behind. Under the belly of the camera, they saw forests, rivers, small and medium-sized settlements sweeping by with enormous speed. On the left side, the surface of the sea continually fell into the camera lens.

  “Tim, hold your horses at a point of about three hundred miles,” said Valentin, verifying with the grid.

  “Got it, Val.”

  Tim simultaneously slowed down and raised the “window” three miles above the ground.

  “Tim, now let’s get to the left,” Nick ordered.

  “There’s a sea, and a city is straight ahead.”

  “I saw it, I’m not blind. I’ve spotted a whole fleet from the corner of my eye; I wanna check it out.”

  The operator shrugged and made the window move toward the Long Sea. From a bird’s-eye view, it was evident that dozens of vessels were cutting the surface of the water, all of which were heading toward the islands that were visible on the horizon.

  “Zoom in on the ships.”

  Tim carefully led the window to the sailing fleet.

  “There are women and children on the ships,” Valentin said in surprise. “I don’t understand. Seems like…” He thought for a moment.

  “An evacuation. It looks like an evacuation,” a voice came from the back of the room, where the “consultants” from the secret service were. “I recommend we switch our view to the capital.”

  “He recommends,” Tim whispered, but his fingers obediently touched the joystick. The image jerked. The invisible camera flew high into the sky and headed for the capital of the state of Tantre. “It’s gotta be awful there since women and kids are being evacuated.”

  The city appeared unexpectedly, surfacing sharply from around the narrow strait that fenced the Gulf of Kion from the sea.

  “Darn, what is that?” the consultant asked, pointing to a dark cloud over the city. “Steer over that way.”

  “Griffons, holy mother…” Nick breathed out.

  Hundreds of griffons with riders on their backs circled over the city, chaotically at first glance, but once they looked closely, they could notice a certain system and order. Waiting for a signal, the living cloud began to move, and all their initial assumptions about the randomness crumbled. From the general mass, clear V-formations began to separate, each one containing up to a hundred half-feathered, half-furry individuals. The half-birds kept clear intervals between each other. The wedges clung close to the ground, heading north-east.

  “Follow them,” said Nikolas.

  Tim nodded his head and led the window behind the fantastical monsters.

  “Mommy!” he gasped in amazement as the giant armies, lining up for battle, flashed in front of the observers’ eyes. The griffons, without stopping, flew over the fighting ranks of the first army and circled in a deadly dance over the enemy.

  The people on the half-birds’ backs, pulling at leather laces, opened the valves of long tubes and saddlebags attached to the griffons’ sides. Dozens of small balls with bright sparks inside poured out onto the enemies. The magical bombardment made an impression, but not as much as it would have seemed. The time had passed when the observers used to go pale from the bloody scenes in front of them. The generation that grew up on Hollywood films, action and horror, quickly adapted to the bloody images. It had been a long time since anyone went pale and ran into the corner to empty his stomach. Yes, it was sometimes terrible and unbearable to look at people being cut by sharp blades or torn to pieces by a combat spell, but the blood became something unreal for them. Other people’s pain on the screen no longer touched the scientists. The observers watched the military actions for a long time, involuntarily hardening their souls. Some looked at the battles as exciting Hollywood productions with hyper-realistic special effects, but the pictures opened up before their eyes overshadowed anything they’d seen before. Suddenly, the screen started rippling.

  “Tim, g
o back or up; the instruments detect a sharp jump in the load. It seems the local people are using some kind of powerful magic,” said the operator responsible for the apparatus’ power supply.

  “I don’t really see anyone actively using magic down there.”

  “Tim! Stop commenting and zoom out! The load here’s jumping like crazy! Do it or the circuit will get out of sync, and the apparatus will shut down!”

  “Watch the instruments. I’ll take the window out, and you tell me when the thing stabilizes.”

  While the scientists were trying to determine a safe area for observation, the armies got moving and rushed towards each other and towards death. Tens of thousands of arrows shot up into the air. Thousands of horses, hasses, and vargs clashed in deadly combat on the flanks. In the center, a bloody massacre began. From ten miles up, the crowding and crushing were perfectly visible. Many died not from the sword or the enemy’s spear, but from falling to the ground and being trampled down. The scientists looked on in horror as huge wooly rhinoceroses ran into the solid human mass and then tried to break out of the trap, trampling the soldiers of their army, because the warriors of the other army showered the animals with pots of boiling oil. The distraught and burnt rhinoceroses, tearing themselves out of the fiery hell, trampled almost more soldiers than during the initial attack.

  Suddenly, a neon glow appeared in the center of the massacre. The power plant operator shouted something with plenty of colorful language about the new jumps in the voltage and imbalance. Tim hurriedly led the window from the center of the “meat grinder” for another ten miles, and then they saw something incredible happen: a glass wall grew up between the tattered armies. The voltage jumps ceased; no one understood anything. After a couple of minutes, all problems with how the apparatus was working disappeared, and even more strange and incredible things were going on downstairs. Occupied with other pressing issues, the observers missed the appearance of the dragons, but when the mythical creatures hit the lens, even the deaf would have been able to hear how their jaws all knocked against the desktops.

  “Call the bosses,” Tim said to the consultant, but the latter had already dialed the number…

  “How are they flying? Bodies like that simply can’t stay in the air. The wingspan would have to be five times as much!” Valentin put forth a topic for discussion.

  “The devil only knows,” said Tim, “but the creatures are clearly intelligent.”

  “Agreed.”

  “It remains to be seen why they got involved in the battle at the very height of it.”

  “There’s nothing to understand.” The operators all together turned their heads toward the consultant. “Two gangs of kids arranged a fight, messed each other up real good, and then came the big guys and put the fighters in different corners, and now they’ve got to decide what to do—flog them with a belt or confine themselves to verbal punishment.”

  “What? You won’t say!” Valentin laughed, but the laughter was kind of lifeless and strained.

  “Whatever you say.” The consultant shrugged. “Then answer me this: why did a third of the first gang fall on its knees, and the second one’s standing there with their mouths open…?”

  Russia. N-ville. Secret scientific center.

  Third floor below ground. One hour earlier…

  The third level on the base was deservedly considered the “sleeping level” because that’s where the staff’s apartments were located. In one of these apartments, two people were talking peacefully. An outsider might be deceived by the casual conversation, but a more experienced eye would immediately determine that the people were tense and notice how one of them was grabbing a glass of vodka and convulsively overturning its contents into his mouth. For the power-ridden men, who left the condensation-covered half-liter bottle in peace and switched to cigarettes, the conversation was really not an easy one.

  Lighting a cigarette, Colonel Lantsov sat in an armchair and, waiting for the major general to take the second seat, quietly asked, “Are they really hounding you?”

  “That doesn’t begin to describe it, Igor. The bigwigs from Moscow have been unleashed.”

  “Is there a reason for it?”

  “Of course, there is. You know perfectly well what happens when the amount of information exceeds a certain critical level.”

  “What kind of paper this time served as a detonator?”

  “As if you don’t know!” Snuffing the cigarette butt, the general immediately lit another.

  “Did you have the imprudence to send the expedition reports upstairs? Well, you’re an idiot, Leonid!”

  “Igor, don’t try to feed me your dribble.” The general grimaced.

  “Who else besides me could sympathize with your disease? What’s so terrible in those reports that they beat you up over them, because I didn’t really understand our wise men’s writings.”

  “What do you know about the ‘reference points?’” asked the general instead of answering, waving his shot glass.

  “Without going into details, it’s easiest to build portals in them.”

  “There’s a smart guy. Don’t tell me you don’t read the scientists’ data well. So, Igor, several natural anomalies were revealed as a result of the research, which not so long ago had direct communication with other worlds and other points on our globe, and some still open periodically to the unknown.”

  “The Bermuda and Perm triangles, where people often disappear. What do you think of that?”

  “I’m aware. What’s next?”

  “Nothing, except that Kerimov’s guys made calculations based on the information gathered in the magical world and came to the conclusion that soon we’ll be having a good time.”

  “How soon?” A smile slipped from Lantsov’s face. “And why?”

  “In ten or fifteen years. Everything depends on how fast the magnetic poles change. It turns out we don’t know a thing about our planet, Igor. Crap! Did you know that in the Arkhangelsk region ten thousand years ago there was a real portal? Others were found in Egypt and Mesopotamia, another in the Yucatan Peninsula, and a fourth one was hidden on the continental shelf near the White Sea. The coordinates of the fifth coincide with Stonehenge; the sixth active anomaly corresponds to the archaeological site of Arkaim, the city of the Ariates. A number of interesting places have been revealed in Russia, too. All the centers of the oldest civilizations coincide surprisingly with the anomalies discovered.

  “And now the best part—there’s a 70% chance the change in Earth’s magnetic poles will lead to passages to other worlds opening in these places. It’s very likely that we aren’t the masters of this planet. No one’s ever found a link between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man; we can conclude that the ancestors of modern people came to Europe from another world. Approximately fifty thousand years ago, the planet changed its poles, and during the same period Cro-Magnon paleontological sites appeared, which came out of nowhere. All fairy tales and epics, devils and witches, magical legends—they all have a real justification. Command is concerned about the fact that it’s impossible to control the spontaneity of the process. The center was given the task of directing all efforts to find ways to completely block the planet. It seems to me that this is a Sisyphean labor.”

  “As I understand, that’s not all,” Lantsov stated. The general nodded and leaned back in his chair.

  “You’re a shrewd person, Igor. With your abilities, you should have gone into psychoanalysis, not ‘state stupidity.’”

  “They feed me well here, too.”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “Listen, I don’t want to come clean. I think you can guess.”

  “Kerimov…” the Colonel whispered with a doomed look on his face. The general nodded.

  “We’ve been suspended from carrying out the operation.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Sit down!” the general reprimanded Lantsov, who had jumped out of his chair. “You will hand over the affairs to Reston; the second team of
the third group and Chuiko are reassigned to him.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, or rather, today.”

  “It’s probably Will’s doing.”

  “He doesn’t have the guts,” said the general contemptuously.

  “So, these are your tricks?” The Colonel was hardly surprised at the revelation. “Why did you have to stir up the water?”

  “Because, Igor, I trust you. You saved my butt a hundred times, and now my intuition is wailing about the impending troubles that will come upon us if we contact the boy. We still do not understand the nature of the changes that are taking place with Kerimov’s younger daughter, and now Command is pointing our noses towards the son. You see, Igor, a simple kid can’t turn into what we saw… there… in such a short period of time.”

  “In Ortag,” the Colonel suggested.

  “Yes, in Ortag. My experts don’t see any prerequisites for such serious changes, but the facts speak for themselves. The boy is a mage, a strong fencer, and a fighter from God.”

  “And that…”

  “And that scares me, Igor. I don’t know about you, but it scares me. I don’t know what surprises he’s still hiding.”

  “Yes, Leo, I never would’ve thought I’d hear such revelations from you.”

  “There’s a first time for everything. Splash me a little more.”

  The Colonel shook the bottle and poured some more in the glass.

  “To your health,” the general said.

  “Your health,” answered Lantsov.

  Not clinking glasses, the two men drank. There was a heavy silence in the room. They were both thinking their own thoughts. Life had brought the old friends yet another unexpected turn; who knew where it would go next. Lantsov felt that the general hadn’t said everything. He was waiting for the revelations to continue. He was in no way deceived about his own role in this mess. An “intriguer” like his counterpart wouldn’t share information just like that. If today he were able to help both of them dodge a blow by the big-wigs, tomorrow he would simply demand a favor in return, and that favor would probably outweigh the one rendered to Lantsov. Igor had long-since been cooked in a cauldron of intrigue, having won a certain reputation in this field, never getting sunk in a dubious story. Truth be told, he and the general often played at such games, so the degree of trust between the two was very high, allowing them to consider themselves friends.