“The crystal room,” said Heidi, “is that the last thing you remember? Before this?”
Manny nodded.
“Damn,” I said. My shoulders sunk slightly. “So you have no idea what you’ve been doing for the last seven weeks.”
“It wasn’t seven weeks.”
This was Carson. He stood slightly back from the bed. He’d been looking at Manny like he’d come back from the dead, the scant few times I glanced in his direction—following Bub and Borrick out of the room and then back in mostly, because otherwise my focus was glued to my brother and likely would be forever now. Clutching his manbag strap tight, he licked his lips, and averted his eyes now the room’s attention shifted entirely onto him.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Carson cleared his throat. “When we rescued Manny, you said you were gone for no more than a few minutes. But from our perspective, you’d gone for over four hours.”
“Four hours and twelve minutes,” Borrick murmured.
“My gates don’t normally stay open anywhere near that long,” Carson went on. “Not without freaking out and wrecking everything. And remember the mist? It was really slow-moving; it hardly leaked into the crystal room at all.”
“Time dilation,” said Heidi suddenly. “Like an Interstellar thing.”
“Right,” said Carson.
“Huh?” This was not adding up to me, at all.
“I think,” said Carson, with a great big steadying inhalation, “that the worlds were both running on very different clocks. The world Manny went into was on a much slower one. That’s why the mist didn’t leak into the crystal room, at least very much anyway, when it should have. It’s why my gate didn’t just swallow up the whole room, or collapse. And it’s why you say you were only gone for a matter of minutes, when to us four hours had passed.”
“So how long was I gone for?” Manny asked.
Carson dropped his manbag. He squatted over it, digging through—I saw a flash again of college materials, and ignored the guilty pang in my stomach—and then: “Ah-ha.” He rose again with a crumpled pad and a pen. “So, fifty-one days, times sixty minutes, times twenty-four … that’s … ah …”
Heidi had her phone in hand. “Seventy-three thousand, four hundred and forty,” she said, reading off the answer from her calculator app.
“Okay. Then, four hours and twelve minutes, that’s two hundred and fifty-two minutes. But Mira, you said you were only in there for a few minutes. Let’s say that it was five minutes? So that’s approximately fifty minutes in our world to a minute in the—the mist world, let’s call it.”
“Fifty point four,” said Heidi.
“Right.” Carson scribbled that down. “So if we divide those, it’s … oh, geez.”
“Just over a day,” I said. “Fifty-one days gone for us … at that factor of dilation, Manny only experienced a day.”
“Maybe not even that,” said Heidi. “Could be as little as fifteen or twenty hours.”
Carson nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.” He stowed the pen in the spiral binding of his pad, and looked again at Manny in the hospital bed—less like he were a zombie back from the dead this time.
Manny glanced between the rest of us warily. “That’s quite the difference.”
But it clicked.
“I think he’s right,” I said. “When I found you, you weren’t far from our gate at all—a couple of hundred meters, if that.”
Manny frowned. “Where was I? You said I stepped through to a void?”
“I thought so, yes,” I said. “At least, that’s what Dad’s compass showed. But it turns out that the voids are actually fractured worlds—the broken places the Wayfarers created, when they were first cutting through. The mist on the compass is … I think some kind of protection mechanism designed for the user—likewise the whole ‘void’ myth.”
Manny’s frown deepened. I didn’t blame him—there was a whole lot for him to take in here, especially with possible concussion fog clouding his mind too.
“Why did I cut through to a void though? Or a fractured world, or whatever?”
“The Antecessors took me,” I said. “There was a crystal, in the middle of the room. When I touched it, I vanished. Poof. But I could see, into the room—the Antecessors showed me—and when I didn’t come back, I guess you just … took a chance. A very, very stupid chance. You damned idiot.”
For a moment, Manny looked befuddled. But at this last part, he smiled, pocking one cheek with a trademark dimple. And again, the heat of tears stung in the backs of my eyes—I’d been so sure I’d never lay eyes on that again. And now here he was, back—alive. Foggy, confused—but my brother was alive.
“I have clearly missed a lot,” he said.
“You have. But I’m going to spell it all out to you. We’ve got the time.” I gripped his hand, emotion threatening to overcome me. I would hold it together, damn it.
He squeezed me back, smiled.
“One more thing, though,” he said. Shooting a sideways look at Doctor Fiennes, he said, “Are you joining forces with all the bad guys in your life now? Because I had to wade in to help fight off these Harsterran guys when they came for you in London. They’re on our side now too?”
“I told you,” I said, “Tyran Burnton and I ended up on good terms.”
“Even better terms after he saved us from the robot,” said Heidi.
“Robot?” Manny echoed.
“Oh, yeah. Huge one.”
“It was massive,” Bub agreed.
“Your mum and dad set it on us,” said Heidi.
“Mum and Dad?” His eyebrows were halfway up his forehead.
I grinned sheepishly at Manny’s bafflement. “It’s a long story.”
“Right,” he said slowly. Shuffling backward into his pillows, he folded his arms, and brought his knees carefully up in front of him. “Well then, Meer, go ahead—fill me in.”
21
Harsterra, it turned out, rotated at quite a chaotic rate—once per fourteen hours, said Carson. I would have known that if I’d paid attention to the million-world clock, when we brought it up before, or indeed had any real knowledge of astrophysics; gas giants often rotated at a frenetic pace, despite their vast size.
I did not care, except that one Harsterran night passed, a full day, and then another by the time we finally made it to our targeted destination, coming into the second dawn since returning from temple numero two. And dawn was a strange time on Harsterra.
The brownish atmosphere had dialled down to a muted, murky color. It had a touch of grey about it, sort of like an old sepia photograph glimpsed through a translucent, spidery curtain. But the winds were fiercer now, buffeting us as we stepped onto the Velocity’s top deck, me and Manny and the rest of my companions, led by Tyran Burnton and his second-in-command and a complement of even more of his cookie-cutter pirate clone army.
“Ah,” said Tyran, sucking in a great lungful of breath. “You know what that smell is, gang?” he asked, tossing a look back over his shoulder.
“Ammonia?” Heidi muttered, wrinkling her nose.
“It is adventure.”
The winds shifted direction, bringing a particularly potent slap of the adventure to the face. Heidi coughed. Carson spluttered alongside her, and Alain sported a similarly displeased expression.
“It smells like public toilets,” he said.
“What? Of course it doesn’t,” said Tyran. But he was not sure of that—his confidence wavered, and he exchanged a glance with Commander Greco. “It doesn’t, does it?”
Greco cleared his throat. “It, ah, it may, sir.”
“Oh. Ugh.” Tyran flared his nostrils. He blew out a hard breath, then another, and a third, like a horse snorting—trying to rid his lungs of the pee smell he’d so readily and happily inhaled.
The Velocity cruised toward a far-off, dark cloud. Winds whipped from it though, this new storm, higher than the one from yesterday—no, two days ago, using the Harsterran clock. In the early mo
rning light, the sun’s rays yet to illuminate this portion of the atmosphere, the storm was only a half shade darker than the surrounding cloud cover.
“You realize there’s a storm in our way,” said Heidi, “don’t you?”
“Of course,” said Tyran proudly. “My eyes are sharp. I see it perfectly clearly, perfectly clearly indeed. Just there, yes?” He pointed forward.
“So why aren’t we changing course?”
“Ah.” Tyran turned a winning smile toward us, pearly whites gleaming. “Well, it’s what’s within the storm that’s important. You see, that there—Storm Jericho—is our destination. That is where we will find the Spoon of Abundance—and where we will give this Presley Botswain what for.”
Borrick rolled his eyes. “I’ve told you …”
“Don’t bother,” said Carson. “He’s not going to take it in.”
“Storm Jericho,” Tyran went on, oblivious, “has been a feature of this world for over two hundred years—”
Heidi muttered, “Which is probably about thirty days, in real-world time.”
“—and it has remained in this very location for that entire time period. Tell me—is that not peculiar? Of course it is!” he boomed, before either of us could agree that yes, stationary storms were pretty odd, although not particularly exciting when viewed through the lens of every other crazy thing in the Seeker multiverse. “So I, Tyran Burnton, spent some time recently checking it out. And what should I discover inside? What indeed. What indeed.” He grinned at us. “You’d like to see, wouldn’t you?”
“Is the storm what’s dredging up the scent of piss from the planet’s core?” Heidi asked. “Because if so, absolutely not.”
“Something’s inside,” I said, “isn’t it?”
Tyran nodded winsomely. “It is—an arena. Several arenas, in fact. The final stage of this questline.”
“Brynn Overson’s crypt?” asked Manny. He was up on his feet again, had got up quite quickly in fact. But he was also slow. Though he’d been out of action for only as much as a day in his own timeframe, the presumed head trauma that had knocked him out was slow to cast off its grip. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have let him be part of this. Once he was brought up to speed, though, and knew what was at stake—Preston Borrick gaining parity with the Antecessors, and every possibility that entailed—he insisted.
I agreed, with one condition: “Do NOT cut any gates and step through them without consulting with me first. Got it?” He'd rolled his eyes, but agreed, albeit reluctantly.
On the deck now, Tyran shook his head. “The crypt is not here. No, that objective lies ahead, beyond this one, a concern for another day. For today, we must think only of this place, past Storm Jericho’s walls.”
“We’re flying through it,” Heidi muttered. “Aren’t we?”
“But of course,” said Tyran happily.
“Right. Well, I will be inside.” And Heidi turned on her heel and made back for the Velocity’s inner deck, quickly.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Tyran called.
Heidi arrowed a look back over her shoulder. “Excuse me?”
“Commander Greco? Please demonstrate, for our new comrades, our latest installation.”
Greco nodded. He retrieved from an unseen pocket a controller of sorts, not distinctly different in look than a plus-sized iPhone. The screen did not light, but nevertheless Greco tapped away at something—
The Velocity hummed suddenly beneath us—or rather, a new hum joined with the blast of the engines toward the craft’s rear. More high-pitched than the engines’ combined sound, it pitched up shrilly over the course of a couple of seconds.
A faintly blue dome lit over our head. Cast from the very edge of the top deck, it rose high, this oversized bubble, enclosing us all.
The winds abruptly died. The sour smell that was all too reminiscent of urine dissipated too.
Tyran grinned. Arms extended and hands out, he said, “Well then! What do you think?”
Heidi stalked back, looking livid. “You mean to tell me that you called the lot of us out here, to bask in the smell of pee, when all this time you could have put that force field up to block it out?”
Tyran nodded. “Well, I thought it would be quite impressive if you got to see it switch on. I had a hand in designing it, you know. Well—I didn’t. But I signed an endorsement deal for them, just recently, and I think that’s the marketing campaign we’re going to go with. And it really does work! Look. Commander, your shoe please.”
Commander Greco’s lips downturned. Nevertheless, he bowed and removed a shoe, then passed it to Tyran.
“Phew!” Tyran made an overexaggerated show of waving away a foul scent. “Greco, you really must wash your feet more often.”
“Yes, sir,” said Greco flatly.
“Now then,” said Tyran. “Ready? Watch.”
He twisted, out toward the prow of the Velocity. Cranking his arm back, he gave it two comical twists, like a cartoon character powering up a punch. Then he pelted the shoe across the deck.
It smacked into the force field. A blue glow flashed at the same time as it gave a hollow thunk and rebounded.
“See?” Tyran asked, beaming. “Isn’t it just marvelous?”
Her eyes tracking Commander Greco across the deck to his shoe—Tyran had made no such move to pick it up—Heidi grumbled, “I would have found it a whole lot more marvelous if I hadn’t been subjected to pee smell from the storm. I endure that enough with London public toilets as it is, thanks.”
“They do not smell so bad to me,” said Bub quizzically. “It’s quite a subtle odor, in fact, compared to orc outhouses.”
I shuddered. I still remembered, all too well, the brief brush with an orc outhouse I’d had earlier this year, on the road to claiming the Chalice Gloria. Yes, I agreed with Heidi that the smell coming out of the storm was pretty nasty—but I also agreed with Bub: it didn’t have anything on orc toilets. I still woke up after cloying, smothering nightmares of that, sometimes. Urgh.
“Well, anyway,” said Tyran, “the dampening field will allow us to pass through Storm Jericho, unfazed.” He paused. “At least, it should.”
“Should?” Manny asked.
“Oh, yes. Well, it’s quite power-intensive, you see. We have to divert some of the power from the engines, to keep it working—if you listen now, you’ll be aware that they’re operating quite a bit below maximum capacity—you hear? A much lower hum than before.”
“I thought that’s because it’s pretty much muted by the whine of the force field generator,” Borrick said. He’d plugged an ear with one finger, looking uncomfortable.
“Is this what tinnitus is like?” Carson wondered. His face was screwed up, a network of lines.
“The force field itself has enough power to make it through,” said Tyran. “But, well, it only really protects the deck. Nothing to worry about, though!”
“What do you mean, it only protects the deck?” Heidi asked.
“The force field keeps the deck secure, stops the winds buffeting us on here. It doesn’t enclose the whole ship though—it comes out of those generators by the railings, you see?” He pointed, at a thin lip that drew a line around the full deck’s edge. I wouldn’t have seen it if not for the blue glow emanating from the force field’s base.
“So what you’re saying,” Borrick said slowly, “is that we’ll be safe from the winds … but the Velocity can still be hammered.”
“Yes,” said Tyran. “Honestly, though, it’s nothing to worry about. Wind speeds out there are minute—no more than a couple of hundred miles an hour, I’d say.”
“A couple of hundred miles an hour?” I cried.
“That’s it,” said Heidi. “I’m gone. Mira, it’s been nice knowing you—”
“Oh, you can’t go now,” said Tyran. “We’re about to pass through the lightshow!”
“That is exactly why I’m going to—leeeeEEEAAAAAVE!”
The last word turned into a shrill
scream. The churning bruise of Storm Jericho had finally reached us. The Velocity’s prow split asunder the roiling vortex that was the churning weather feature. With it, a deep, blackish-red material assaulted the Velocity in a powerful plume. It blasted at the top deck, around us—there was a violent noise suddenly, like an earthquake—the force field turned a dazzling luminous blue as it fought back—
Then the Velocity lurched.
That was when Heidi screamed.
We were falling—
And then I was screaming with her.
22
The Velocity screeched through the buffeting winds of Storm Jericho. Like it had been slapped on the nose, it spasmed downward, toward Harsterra’s core. Red-black gas billowed around the force field, the hum an electric noise unlike the deathly screams of the automatons Mum and Dad had set upon me a fortnight ago. It surged, battering against the force field like it was a physical thing, intent on beating through, to get to us—
We must’ve hit an upward draft, because after what could be no more than a second of lurching downward, the Velocity sprung upward again. It was bucked, my legs flying out below me—
“Manny!” I cried, grappling for him—part of fear that I’d be tossed into the force field, through it, and part because I feared the very same for him. But the noise was so terrific, I could barely hear myself.
He scrabbled with me, hands shooting out. I clenched them tight—
Another buck of the Velocity. It twisted sideways, like it had taken a punch by a giant. The world spun—my feet hit the deck, then jagged, pulled around by momentum intent on spinning me like a top—
Manny clattered to the deck. He grunted—
I landed hard next to him. Stars erupted across my vision—but I’d hit my knees, hadn’t I, rather than my head?—and then a FOOM! nearly burst my eardrums as a fresh wave of claret-colored upwelling material cascaded in a tumult against the ship. I rolled as it thrust us the other way, losing my hold of Manny—
“No!”
—and then hit someone, something—
“I’ve got you,” said a voice.
The Gang of Legend Page 15