by Paul Crilley
The tunnel opened out, the walls curving away to either side. Their footsteps echoed, the sounds coming back to them from distant walls.
And then there was a final, horrendous roar behind them as the roof finally collapsed. A cloud of dust exploded past them, engulfing them in a choking miasma. They pushed ahead, trying to get beyond the suffocating blanket.
They followed Molock off the path and onto a lip that ran around some sort of colossal interior cavern. It receded into the distance and dropped away into darkness. The dust cloud drifted up toward an invisible roof.
Tweed had only the briefest glimpses of all this before he felt a sharp prick in his neck. He whirled around to find Molock stepping away from Octavia, who rubbed her neck and frowned at the Hyperborean.
“What was that?” she said.
Tweed blinked. He suddenly felt very, very tired. He lifted his hands to his face and saw them blur in and out of focus. He locked eyes with Octavia and fell to his knees.
“I'm so sorry,” said Molock, but his voice sounded slow and drawn out. His words came out as, “I'm-m s-o-o s-o-o-o-r-r-r-y.”
Tweed's eyelids were too heavy. He thought it would probably be nice to sleep, to have a bit of a rest. Yes, that would be the best thing for everyone.
He fell forward and closed his eyes.
Octavia slipped in and out of consciousness, hovering in that in-between state of waking and non-waking that she usually found so pleasant. But this time there was something sinister about it, something unsettling. She opened her eyes, blinking at the hazy, odd-colored sunlight. She told herself to get up, to pull herself back into the waking world, but then her eyes drifted closed again and she gave up the fight, sinking back into oblivion.
But that feeling of gentle sleepiness soon faded, replaced by a throbbing headache that pulsed and prodded her brain. Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth. She tried to lick her lips but there was no moisture there.
A gloriously cool trickle of water flowed into her mouth. It wet her tongue, but was then sucked away like a single drop of rain in the desert. More water came. This time she grabbed the wrist of whoever was holding the flask, not letting them go. She greedily swallowed as much as she could.
“Slowly,” said a voice. “You'll get sick. Can you sit up?”
Octavia cracked open her eyes. Shards of bright light stabbed between her lids. She squinted, waiting, and after some moments tried again.
A dark green face appeared before her. She jerked back before realizing it was just Molock in his natural, Hyperborean state.
“Apologies,” he said. “I didn't mean to startle you.”
Octavia waved this away. She tried to sit up, but felt weak and dizzy. “What…what happened?”
“Ah,” said Molock. “Um…yes. About that.”
His tone was embarrassed and contrite. Octavia forced her eyes open wider and looked directly at him. “What?”
“Well, you see, it's a law in our world. No outlander has ever been allowed to see any entrance into Hyperborea. It is forbidden. So…I may have drugged you a bit.”
“You what?”
“Just a little bit. At least, that's what it was supposed to be. But…the thing is, our physiologies are a bit different. A tiny dose for us turned out to be quite a large one for you and Mr. Tweed.”
Tweed! Octavia quickly looked around and saw him sleeping on a wooden floor. She felt his pulse. It was beating strongly.
Octavia sat back with relief, for the first time looking around. They appeared to be in some sort of boat. Actually, it was more a long skiff, constructed from what appeared to be brown clay, or perhaps even stone. Angular pictures had been carved into the surface.
She stood up and braced herself against the side of the skiff. She looked over the edge, expecting, as one would, to see water.
Instead she saw empty air, and far, far below them, dark green jungles.
The skiff was skimming through the sky just like a Tesla-powered airship. She looked in amazement at Molock.
“How are we flying? Do you have Tesla technology?”
“Hmm? Oh, no, no. I'm not sure of the exact science, but I think it has something to do with mercury suspended in some sort of closed system and spinning rather fast.” Molock frowned. “I think that's what my scientists told me.”
The heat against Octavia's skin was heavy and humid. She was sweating already, beads of perspiration forming on her arms, her back.
She looked up at the sun. At least, she thought it was the sun. It certainly looked like the sun. Except it was a lot smaller, and shone with a whiter light.
“Is that…?”
“That is Tak'al. Our source of life.”
“What is it?”
“I've no idea. No one does. Anytime we try to get close to it, we're pushed away. It's as if it has some sort of magnetic properties that oppose us. The harder we try, the more power we use, the more violently it repels us.”
A wave of dizziness washed over Octavia. She frowned.
“How long have we been out?”
“Ah…About two days. Yes. I think that's about right. Two days.”
“Two days!” Octavia shouted. “You've had us drugged for two days? How dare you!”
“I know! I'm so sorry. I had no idea it would affect you that way. Believe me, if I'd known I'd have simply knocked you on the head instead.”
“You…” Octavia didn't know what to say to that. She just shook her head in amazement.
“But how remiss of me.” He gestured proudly over her shoulder. “Miss Nightingale, allow me to welcome you to Hyperborea.”
Octavia turned around and let out a gasp of astonishment.
Away in the distance a series of pyramids thrust up from the jungle. They were huge, easily ten times the size of the ones at Giza. And they were stepped, looking more like the South American pyramids than the Egyptian ones. Even from this distance she could just make out vehicles flitting through the air around the huge structures.
“That is Thrace, our capital city. Where I once ruled.” He smiled painfully. “We won't be getting any closer, so if you want Mr. Tweed to get a look you should probably wake him.”
Without taking her eyes from the sight before her, Octavia reached down and felt her way up Tweed's chest, moving across his face and onto his ear. She tweaked it painfully.
Tweed sat up suddenly. “The gun's on the mantelpiece!” he shouted. He blinked and looked around sleepily. “My tongue feels like a furry hedgehog is living on it.” Octavia turned his head so that he was looking at Thrace. “Ah. I'm still asleep. Jolly good.”
He tried to lie down again, but Octavia kicked him.
“Get up, Tweed. We're in Hyperborea!”
Octavia heard herself say it, but she still didn't quite believe it. She stared at the massive city, and she thought, I'm not here. This isn't real.
“We're actually not far below London, you know. Thrace lies just to the north of your city.”
Tweed stared in amazement at their surroundings, then turned back the city. “How many people live there?” he asked.
“Tens of thousands. It used to be a lot more, but…well…the sickness.”
As if in response to his words, the light suddenly dimmed. It was like a thick curtain had been pulled across the sun. Octavia looked up and saw that Tak'al had faded to a dull grey. Small dark spots roiled across its surface.
“Why is it doing that?”
“That is what happens now. It seems to coincide with your busy periods, but it is staying like that for longer and longer periods.”
The skiff moved on. Octavia and Tweed watched Thrace recede into the distance like a city swallowed by the dusk. Molock dropped the skiff lower and steered them north over the jungle canopy. Now that Octavia looked closer she could see that a lot of the plants and trees below her looked diseased. The leaves were black, and whole section of the jungle had vanished, the outer edges of these spaces rotting, like gangrenous wounds eating up everything
around them.
“You see?” said Tweed. “Kind of makes you sympathize with Sekhem and Nehi.”
Octavia rounded on him angrily. “Stop saying that.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't like it. It's like you're siding with them, with people who tried to murder me—murder us,” she added, waving at Molock.
“But…I can't help it,” protested Tweed.
“Oh really? And would you feel so sympathetic if they had succeeded in killing me?”
“No. I—”
“And will you still be sympathetic when they unleash their weapon? When they've killed untold thousands?”
Tweed didn't answer this time.
“You can understand them,” said Octavia, “but that's not the same as sympathizing with them. And if you do still sympathize with them keep it to yourself because I don't want to hear it.” She turned to face Molock. “And I would like to see my mother. Now please.”
He nodded. They flew north for the next hour or so. The dim light seemed to be affecting the skiff. Every now and then it would slow down, dipping alarmingly in the air. Molock would then fiddle with an odd control panel made up of colored stones and the vehicle would reluctantly lift higher and pick up speed once again.
“Did Tesla do this on purpose?” asked Tweed. “Did he know what he was doing when he created the Tesla Towers?”
“No,” said Molock, “I do not think he knew. I think he accidentally stumbled upon a means of drawing power from Tak'al. He did not question where it came from.”
“We have to tell the Queen,” Tweed insisted. “It's the only way this will get sorted out. She can send scientists down here. They can work with your own people to find a solution to—”
“No!” Molock turned and glared at them. Octavia was rather nonplussed by this. It was the first time the Hyperborean had shown any real anger.
“This will not happen. My people stay hidden. Do you understand? I will stop Sekhem and Nehi. Somehow. They will be tried for their crimes, and that will be the end of it. The Covenant commands it.”
“The Covenant will see you dead,” said Tweed.
“The Covenant protects us,” said Molock. “We must trust in Tak'al. It will see us through these times of trouble.”
Tweed didn't say anything more, but Octavia could see the disgust in his face. He hated blind faith. Hated it with an absolute passion.
The shadows over the sun passed a few hours later as they left land behind and flew out over a vast ocean.
Octavia leaned over the edge. She could see silver-pink fish scudding along just beneath the surface. They leaped into the air, soaring over the skiff and showering them with water. At the top of their arc the fish unfurled wing-like fins and banked to the right, flying a good fifty feet before diving into the water again.
She turned her head to find Tweed grinning at the sight. That made her happy. He'd been too serious these last months.
One of the first things she'd noticed about him was how childlike he was. Not childish—although he could be that—but rather, that he looked at certain things with the naivety of a child.
She missed that about him. Truth to tell, it was the first thing she found attractive about him. It was shortly after noticing it that she found herself looking at him and wondering if there could be more.
She was thinking about it again, even after she'd promised herself she wouldn't. But…she had a feeling that things had changed. That look in his eyes back in the desert. There was no mistaking that look. There was something there. They just had to figure out what to do with it.
After another hour or so of travel, Molock glanced over his shoulder. “Come see.”
Octavia and Tweed crowded forward. There were a series of bumps on the horizon. As they drew closer Octavia realized that the bumps were actually a whole load of ships. Rafts and boats lashed together with ropes and cables. There were about a hundred of them, maybe more, all of them linked by wooden planks and rope bridges, forming a man-made island miles across.
Octavia could see Hyperborean people going about their everyday lives, fishing, pulling buckets of water out of the ocean, washing clothes. She could even see children running between boats, laughing and screaming as they played catch.
“What is this place?” asked Octavia.
“This,” said Molock proudly, “is Hope Springs. The home of many of those rebelling against Sekhem and Nehi.”
“Why doesn't the government shut it down?” asked Tweed. “Come and arrest you?”
“They don't know we're here. Nothing around for miles and miles. They don't tend to leave Thrace much. Too busy trying to catch the rebels who stay in the city.” He winked and tapped his nose. “Misdirection, you see. They think we're in Thrace causing trouble, but our main body is elsewhere.”
There was a narrow lane of water that led into the island, the waterway flanked by two lines of small rafts. Molock set the skiff down in the ocean and coasted into this lane, bumping to a slow stop against one of the boats. He climbed out and helped Octavia up. Tweed followed close behind.
Octavia looked around nervously. Everywhere she turned she saw reptilian faces, their yellow eyes studying them with intense curiosity. The children, especially, seemed delighted to see them, running and leaping over the decks of the boats to land on all fours before them. They seemed more taken with Tweed, taking his hands and prodding his knees and fiddling with his clothes. One of them poked him in the ribs and he burst out laughing.
“Hey! Enough of that. I'm ticklish.”
This was the signal for all the children to try to get him to laugh. He shrieked and batted their hands away, and Octavia found herself grinning. This was the old Tweed. The one who took delight in the irreverent. As she watched he leaned down and started tickling one of the little girls. She yelped and leaped away.
Octavia shook her head. “They don't seem too frightened by us,” she said. “I mean, you'd think they'd be wary of us, by how different we look.”
“Oh, but they're used to humans by now.”
“What do you mean?”
Molock nodded over her shoulder. Octavia turned and saw a crowd of Hyperboreans watching them. There was movement from behind them and the crowd slowly parted to reveal a lone figure.
Octavia blinked. Her stomach lurched as her brain tried to catch up with what she was seeing.
It was her mother.
She looked different. Thinner, healthier. Her skin was tanned, her eyes bright and wide as she stared at Octavia in astonishment. Octavia took a step forward, then stopped, frowning uncertainly, as if she was scared what she was seeing wasn't real.
“Mother?” she said uncertainly.
“Octavia?”
Octavia took a huge gulp of air that turned into a sob and sprinted forward. Her mother opened her arms in wonder as Octavia collapsed into her hug, nuzzling up against her shoulder.
“Mum,” she whispered.
And she knew that everything would be all right now. She would be safe. Because her mother was here. And her mother could fix anything. Octavia felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She had done it.
They had done it.
Her mother started to cry and laugh at the same time, stroking Octavia's hair the way she used to. Octavia closed her eyes and let the fear and uncertainty of the past year drain away.
“Octavia,” said her mother in wonder. “What are you doing here?”
Octavia tilted her head back and looked up into her mother's tear-filled eyes. “Rescuing you, Mum. What else?”
They sat at a table inside the upturned hull of a large sailing ship. The curved walls arched above them. Holes in the hull let in heavy beams of light that crisscrossed through the air.
Octavia told her mother everything. About what she had been doing since the kidnapping, about how she spent months searching for information on Moriarty, how she met Tweed, the events of last autumn. Everything leading up to them arriving in Hyperborea.
As she
talked her mother stared at her in wonder, occasionally shaking her head in amazement. When Octavia told her about the steamcoach chase through the streets of London last year, she actually laughed out loud then put her hands over Octavia's.
“It seems my disappearance has done wonders for the excitement levels in your life.”
“Some of it I could have lived without,” said Octavia. She sighed. “I missed you, Mum.”
Octavia's mother tightened her grip on Octavia's hand. “I know, love. I'm sorry. I've tried so many times to get them to let me go. They just kept saying it was too dangerous. That they couldn't risk their world being exposed.”
“Well, Molock promised. He said if we helped him he'd release you. Then we can go home.”
“How…how is your father?”
“Not good. He's not handled any of this very well. He thinks you're dead.”
The hands slipped away from Octavia's. Her mother looked down at the table, her black hair hanging over her face. After a few moments she looked up and smiled tightly. “Then think how happy he'll be when we turn up on the doorstep.”
Octavia did think about it. She wasn't sure how her dad would react. He might very well have a heart attack right on the spot.
But to be a family again…how nice would that be? Things she used to dislike—being forced to have dinner together, family walks on a Sunday afternoon, her dad playing the piano badly in the drawing room. All those things she once brushed aside as childish she now couldn't wait to experience again.
“Now, tell me more about this Sebastian Tweed fellow. He sounds…singular.”
“Singular. That's a very good description, actually.”
She told her more about Tweed, about his social skills, or lack thereof, about his father, the life they had led, and how she thought he was struggling to find his place in the world since he found out he was a simulacrum.
Once she had finished talking she stood up and moved to the door, pushing it open. Tak'al had dimmed once again, turning the light grey and purple, almost as if a storm was coming.
Tweed was playing hopscotch with the Hyperborean children. Octavia opened her mouth to call him over, but paused. She leaned against the doorframe and watched him laughing with the kids. One of the smaller boys pushed him so he landed outside his chalked square. Tweed shouted in mock outrage and picked the boy up, holding him upside down and dangling him in the air by his legs. The other children shrieked with delight, the upside down boy the loudest among them. Tweed put the boy down, but then the others quickly lined up, demanding to be dangled upside down as well.