Time of Breath

by Paul Mannering

  I looked around. “We have been stopped. Goat! We’re not moving!”

  Goat snorted and woke from his reverie. “Goat?”

  “We’re run aground!” I yelled.

  Goat ran to the rail and looked over. He dashed back to the odd collection of containers that stored his possessions and retrieved the rusty axe. With the weapon held high over his head, he ran to the various ropes that bisected the rail. Swinging wildly, he severed a goat hide rope and then looked over the rail.

  With a growl, he took another swing. This one bounced off the harpoon cable and spun him in a circle. Goat steadied himself and smacked the rope with the axe again. This time the axe cut through the cable and buried itself deep in the wooden rail.

  The airship bounced upwards and caught a prevailing wind, which sent us racing across the city at a fast walking pace.

  Now freed from the restraining rope, Goat marched across the deck, murderous intent clear on his face.

  “Easy, Goat,” I intervened.

  “Anchor…man,” Goat snarled.

  “Weird how he’s sometimes in the here and now, and other times he’s on an entirely different page,” Eade said.

  “Maybe you should go,” Drakeforth said.

  “Promise me you won’t ruin everything,” Eade insisted.

  “I don’t do promises,” Drakeforth replied.

  “He only ruins everything sometimes,” I added.

  Goat snatched up a coil of goat hide rope and pushed past me. He dropped a loop around Eade’s waist, binding her arms to her sides.

  “Hey, Goat, no!” I yelled. He brushed me aside and lifted Eade up. She yelled in terror and he casually tossed her over the rail. The goat-hide rope zipped out of its coil and we all rushed to grab it. Goat waited for a moment and then stamped a foot on the line. It went tight and creaked.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Harenae said cautiously. “She didn’t hit the ground, and there are some people untying her.”

  The line went slack and Goat reeled it back in. With an indignant sniff, he put the coiled rope back in its place amongst the rest of the detritus on deck.

  I felt an awkward silence settle into place. Drakeforth walked off and started rummaging in the various shelves and boxes of debris that Goat had collected over time.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “That picture Goat had. The one of The Tree.”

  With little else to do, I helped him search.

  We found the rolled-up skin in a battered metal trunk tied to one corner of the deck. Unrolling it on the table where Goat served tea, we stared at the crudely painted white shape on the smooth side of the skin.

  “Well, there it is. Now what?” I asked.

  “I had a thought,” Drakeforth replied.

  “You actually thought about something? Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. Remember how you said that The Tree was connect­ed to everything?”

  “I saw it… I think I saw it. The Tree is a conduit for empathic energy. An infinite number of streams endlessly cycling… Ohhh…”

  “Exactly,” Drakeforth replied. “The trick is finding it.”

  “Which we can’t do because of the quantum properties of The Tree.”

  “You found it last time by not looking for it at all,” Drakeforth said.

  “It would help if we knew we were on the right track at least.” I straightened up. “Harenae! Can you come here for a sec?”

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Pathologists know the path, you said. What if the path isn’t a road or a path at all? What if it is something else?

  Harenae smiled. “You ever look at a map?” she asked. “I mean really look at it. Study a map long enough and you see beyond the lines. A map is a network, like the veins in your skin or the cracks in pyramid paving stones. Everything is connected. Pathologists can always follow the path until we arrive where we want to be.”

  “This drawing shows The Tree—you’ve heard of it, right?”

  Harenae nodded and leaned over the rolled-out skin.

  “This,” Harenae said, pointing at the image of The Tree, “is out there.”

  “I hope so. Where, exactly?”

  “Everywhere,” Harenae replied. “The Tree is Living Oak. The paths are all around us.”

  “Empathic energy flows through the paths of The Tree…” I whispered.

  “Could the Knotstick Order be using the interconnectedness of The Tree to transmit empathic energy to the pyramids?” I asked Drakeforth.

  “Hardly seems like Godden Energy Corporation technology. They are more about the practical applications of double-e flux.”

  I felt a chill. “Which is why they need the Knotstick Order. Faith generates empathic energy, and The Tree allows them to move it across Pathia. How can that work?”

  Drakeforth gave a rueful grimace. “Faith works in mysterious ways, Pudding. It happens because they believe it happens.”

  “Can we stop them” I asked.

  “Stop people believing in something? Unlikely. We can illuminate, educate, and create doubt. That’s enough work for anyone.”

  “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life, they say,” I replied.

  “Depends on what you love.”

  Something in his tone made me feel uncomfortable. I turned to the Pathologist. “Harenae, can you guide me? I want to follow the path to The Tree. I want to go everywhere, all at once.”

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah, nah,” I said.

  “That means no,” Harenae grinned.

  “Nah, yeah?” I tried again.

  “That just sounds weird. Follow me.”

  Harenae took my hand and placed it on the skin map. She took my other hand and turned towards the bow of the ship. I felt a chill ripple up my arm and, like an energy current, it pulsed through me and then exploded into perception.

  Chapter 47

  The pathologist walked ahead of me on a glittering path of light. Silicate grains winked and reflected internal fire. We left footprints that melted and ran like molten gold. Overhead, the stars spun in a time lapse of the Universe. Constellations formed as lines of double-e flux reached from point to point. Light pulsed along a neural network that touched us, moved through us, and left wire-frame structures in retina-burning after-glow.

  The landscape formed and shadows took the form of cats, and the cats took the form of shadows. The Tree came together, as real and permanent as anything else I’d ever touched.

  “We have arrived,” Harenae announced.

  “We never left,” I smiled.

  I walked around The Tree, seeing every mote of empathic energy flowing like sap from the roots up through the trunk and out to the furthest twigs and leaf tips. The energy flowed out into the dark sky, leaving trails of light in an endless cycle.

  Empathic energy arced around my hand when I pressed it against the trunk. I disintegrated into light, particles and waves moving constantly until I reached the pyramids.

  Why they had been built, I couldn’t imagine. The vast spaces inside them were somewhere outside reality. Each a perfect pocket Universe overflowing with the raw energy of life.

  The steady trickle of faith still flowed into the reservoirs. Soon the Godden Energy Corporation would arrive under the guise of some infrastructure project, and then pipes would be laid from the pyramid to the ports. The massive reserves of double-e flux would be pumped out of the desert and shipped overseas. Perhaps a campaign would be run to convince Pathians that empathic energy was the future. The refined particles of life would be sold back to the Pathians to power their televisions and toasters. Their faith in the knowledge they held dear would erode and be replaced by the digital credit system. Eventually the Cre
dit Union would see the new economy they wanted, though I doubted they would recognise it when it came about.

  A young man followed a herd of goats across the desert sand as the dunes and valleys moved under his feet like the ever- shifting waves of a restless ocean. He carried a small pot plant that he tended with what water he could make and the dirt from the goats.

  His hair grew long and matted. The goats made more goats, and he made balloons from the guts of the ones he ate and used their hides as clothes. Scraps of wood and more goats were slowly built into a raft with a growing net of balloons that lifted him up and let him see further horizons.

  The Tree bore persimmons, and he planted more trees. His drifting search took him from one side of the desert to the other, and then in a random zig-zagging pattern he followed the breeze. I saw things in a different light as he lived his nomadic life. Past, present, future, all blending and merging into a fractured mirror of his perceptions. The quest for the source of it all was his only anchor. No wonder he walked a different path.

  A presence made itself felt and She was here as she had been since the moment I became aware in the double-e flux extraction tank at the Godden clinic.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She smiled and ran her fingers through the curling streams. She knew each one, all these lives and all the others. She had been there for each of them in some way, in some guise, and always at the right moment.

  I waited for her to speak, but she remained silent. I felt the pressure building, the remaining reservoirs of empathic energy taking on more than they ever had, now that the first pyramid had been destroyed.

  Drakeforth sat on a park bench, a cat beside him, both pointedly ignoring each other. I stood next to him, staring along the well-lit path.

  “I could release it all,” I said.

  “Yes,” Drakeforth agreed.

  “It wouldn’t change anything. Not in the long run.”

  “It would make you feel better.”

  “I don’t deserve to feel better.”

  Drakeforth stood up. “You have earned any reward you wish. You, Charlotte Pudding, have done more than anyone else has. You have sacrificed more than anyone could expect. For that, you will always have my gratitude and deepest respect.”

  “Drakeforth…”

  “Death is the end, at least of this story.”

  “I’m dead?”

  “Technically, dying. Of course you knew that. This is your final moment, your final breath. It lasts as long as you want it to. It ends when you give it away.”

  The woman with midnight hair and moon-glow skin took my hand in hers.

  “She’s never said a word,” I whispered. “I don’t even know her name.”

  “She never does, until you are ready to hear it. The people of the Aardvark Archipelago call her Our Lady of the Last Breath.”

  “Does she know what comes next?”

  “You could ask her. I don’t think it matters, though.”

  “Will you look after Goat? I think he may have found what he is looking for, and now he will need a new obsession.”

  Drakeforth sighed. “I’m not really the right person to be put in charge of someone else’s wellbeing.”

  “You looked after me,” I said.

  “I was just trying to help while you had your hands full look­ing after me.”

  “Thanks, Vole.”

  “Oh, please, don’t start getting all personal on me. People might think we were friends or something.”

  Drakeforth scratched the cat on the back of its head. It blinked at me and accepted his tribute.

  “Goodbye, Pudding. I wish I could have been there to tell you to not be so damned selfless. She will take you from here. I have to accept that there is nothing more I can do.”

  “Goodbye, Drakeforth. Goodbye, Arthur. Think of me next time you have a cup of tea.”

  “I’ll probably think of you next time I uncover a global conspiracy with horrific ethical and moral implications.”

  “I suggest you ignore it and have a cup of tea instead.”

  Drakeforth extended a hand, I shook it with the warmth of a close embrace, and then he was gone.

  Feeling awkward, I asked, “So… What happens now?”

  She smiled and leaned forward on tiptoes. Her lips brushed my ear and she whispered.