by Jack Conner
“Is that … ?”
“A stairway,” Sheridan said. “A stairway to nothing …”
“But I don’t understand. What for?”
“Yes, what could they be going to, up there? Did the rest of the structure just fall away, or is that all there was?”
“Some sort of religious thing,” ventured Avery. “Going up the stairs to pass something to the gods. Maybe a sacrifice.”
“But wouldn’t the sacrifice just fall off the end of the stairs? That would rather give the game away.”
“Unless … unless it didn’t.”
That notion seemed to disturb her. It did Avery.
“Keep yer voices down,” Janx said, speaking in a whisper.
With a nervous glance to the base of the pyramid to make sure the large bird hadn’t noticed them—it hadn’t; yet—Avery said, “Let’s put some distance between us and this place.”
Once they were clear, Sheridan said, “I think we’d better stop for the night. We’re going to get ourselves eaten or break a leg.”
“I could use some rest,” Avery agreed.
They pressed on, beating their way through the bush while the rain drenched their clothes and chilled them to the bone. Janx and Sheridan both popped a couple more pollution pills each. They searched for a cave or an abandoned house but found nothing except a place where the wind had uprooted several trees, so that a group of fallen timbers had sprawled across another dead one. The three humans were able to crawl into the hollow space created, but they had to share the area with several raccoons on the other side. Avery was reassured to see some animals he was familiar with, and glad that they weren’t infected.
He and Sheridan huddled side by side, him wrapping his arms about her, both taking refuge in each other’s body heat. Janx had only himself. He dragged a few large fronds over him and closed his eyes. After a while, Avery thought he went to sleep, though how anyone could manage such a thing in this maelstrom he couldn’t imagine. Overhead thunder split the world to the accompanying blasts of lightning.
“Quite a show, isn’t it?” said Sheridan.
Avery turned. She lay very close to him, her lips maybe an inch away from his. Her breasts pressed against him.
“Yes,” he said, aware of the hitch in his voice.
She sort of smiled, but it was a tired smile. Instead of kissing him, she leaned her head against him, and he could feel her wet hair on his cheek … as well as the swell of her breast. He noticed himself beginning to stiffen.
“This isn’t how I pictured my life,” she said, a sigh against his neck. “Holed up under a tree, with you, at the end of the world.”
“It’s not the end,” he said, hoping he sounded more reassuring than he felt but doubting it.
“It’s the end of our world,” she said. “The beginning of theirs. The Atomic World.” Her voice filled with bitterness. “Well, fuck the Atomic World.”
He stroked her back. “Yes,” he said, his voice soft. “Fuck the Atomic World.”
Suddenly her anger turned to passion. She lifted up her chin, and he saw defiance in her eyes. She pressed her lips to his, and he pressed back, tilting himself so that his belly touched hers, and his cock poked beneath her navel. She gasped into his mouth. He cupped a breast, squeezed it, and then he too gasped. His cock strained painfully against his pants.
She freed it, and he could feel her surprisingly warm fingers stroking up and down him, gripping him firmly but not too firmly.
“Wait,” he said. “What about Janx?”
She stopped, and they could both hear the regular snarls of the big man snoring, not quite as loud as the thunder but quite noticeable just the same.
“He’s fine,” she said, then squeezed Avery down below. “He’s fine, too.”
She grabbed his sides and rolled him over, so that she was on top. The hollow wasn’t large enough for her to rise up, and her face pressed very close to Avery’s. By the blast of a blue span, he saw the flush in her cheeks, the desire in her gray eyes.
“Oh, Jess,” he heard himself say. “I think I love you.”
She stared down at him. Thunder rolled. “And I you, damn it.”
She impaled herself on him, crying out at the initial penetration. He pumped up, slowly, then back down again. She moaned.
“Oh,” she said.
He pumped again, and gasped. She felt so tight around him. She ground her hips against his, and he had to mash his lips not to cry out. He didn’t want to wake Janx. He waited for another peal of thunder, then thrust into Sheridan again, timing his moan with another titanic roar. Sheridan played along, too. They timed their movements to the thunder, and as the storm raged all around them, smashing and crashing as they grunted and gasped, a storm built inside Avery, and built.
Sheridan rocked above him, slow, then fast, then faster, then slower, then fast, fast, fast, fast. At last she cried out in time to a furious blue-green detonation overhead, exploding like crazy fireworks. He began to erupt. She felt it and hopped off, then helped him with her hand—neither wanting her to risk infection—as he came, shooting his load high and far out, sticking to her hand.
Panting, he blinked up at the storm, and she smiled and rested next to him, rubbing her hand against the bark. As the storm expended its fury all about them, they held each other and tried to sleep.
Chapter 3
They found a Core town by the middle of the next day and hired a man to drive them to the nearest city. They had no wealth except their guns and their sap, but Avery wasn’t willing to part with that, and it took handing over Avery's sidearm to secure the deal. Avery was just glad the townsfolk had modern vehicles. The town had looked quite old-fashioned, although it had at least boasted an electric grid.
The city turned out to be fairly modern, if maybe a couple of decades behind on certain amenities. The people were beautiful, with, just as Janx had said, golden skin and amber eyes, and shorter than what was normal in Ghenisa. Even the country mechanic who’d driven them possessed flowing chestnut hair and shining, seemingly poreless skin. But now, being surrounded by so many of the local people as the car trundled through the busy city streets, Avery found himself awed.
Janx seemed to feel it, too. “It’s like bein’ swarmed by fairies.”
“It must be the alchemical elements that did this,” Avery said. “That transformed them. Ygrithan buildings alter the world around them, creating unnatural elements. It must be the result of their extradimensional technology … or biology. Some by-product of it. Just seeing these people … these golden people, just like you said … it strongly argues for the presence of the Monastery, independent of any other evidence.”
Several needle pyramids jutted up from different parts of town. Sure enough, Avery could see something that might have been stairs curling up from at least one of them. The tops of the other three were barren, but perhaps they’d sported stairs once, too. They were fragile things and would have been the first things to succumb to the ravages of time. The people of the city must have been distracted of late, their city services taken up by other issues, as a riot of ivy had laid claim to the lower portions of two of the red spires, flowers winking pink and yellow from all the green.
“What were they?” Avery asked the man who’d taken them here. “The pyramids?”
The fellow spoke, his accent thicker than those of Ri’ithla and harder to understand. But, with some concentration, Avery made out, “Those are the Teeth. Built back in the time of the Overlords.” He made a gesture which might have been religious and would say no more of it, despite Avery’s repeated prodding. “I must get some supplies and go back,” he said at last. “I can take you no further.”
They were downtown, near the intersection of two busy streets, and as they climbed out Avery studied the buildings around them. They were seedy and many showed signs of neglect, broken windows, missing tiles, doors that needed painting. The faces that looked out of the windows, though, were that same golden color and showed n
o signs of infection.
The three stopped and asked directions several times, and confused pedestrians gave them conflicting answers—not, Avery sensed, because they meant to mislead the group, but just because the sight of the outsiders had temporarily driven good directional sense from their minds. At last the group found the needed pawn shop, though, and Avery was made to wait outside (a sign in the grimy window read “No Tainted!!”) while the other two ventured inside with Sheridan's gun. They returned with a palmful of the local currency in its stead.
In celebration, they bought a meaty treat off a streetside vendor (fried bird-something wrapped in overly yeasty bread and smothered with pickle sauce; Avery was not impressed) and munched on it while they explored methods of travel.
A train ran to Vinithir, so the three used half of their remaining money to buy tickets. The train proved bumpy and jarring, but this came as no surprise. Everything on the island so far was second-rate, if colorful. Their economy had languished and seemed to have been weak for a long time. It was amazing, really, that they lived in as advanced a state as they did. They’d existed in state of semi-siege for centuries, after all, constantly at war with the infected people of the Rim, and their civilization retained only one port, located in the capital, to link them with the outside world.
As soon as the three arrived in Vinithir, Avery saw that it was the one place in the country that seemed to be thriving, although even it had surely seen better days. Signs of the war abounded, with shelled buildings and cratered roads all around and bird-themed temples packed with praying people, but the three saw no active evidence of fighting—no gunshots, no palls of smoke or soldiers rushing about. However, candles crammed niches along what Avery had learned were called memory walls, and people crowded along these walls to light a candle and pray for their ancestors and lost loved ones. There seemed to be a great number of recent dead, and Avery wondered how many people in the churches were attending funerals.
Signs of evacuation were everywhere. People knew the pirates were coming, and they were getting ready. Some boarded windows or reinforced doors, while others loaded up cars and headed out of town—going east, the opposite direction from the pirates. The streets were full of cars heading out of town.
The city was colorful. The houses were of multi-hued stone, each one of a different shade, the stones around the windows and doors of a different color still, so that a house would be of indigo but with bright yellow borders around its means of egress, or pale blue with lime borders, or something else entirely.
Not only was it colorful, it was exotic, with the statues of bird-headed gods rearing to either side of certain boulevards and with people actually riding giant birds down others. Some didn’t ride them but used them to pull carts or equipment, while others strapped goods to their backs and used them to carry payloads. Avery wasn’t surprised. In the country he and the others had seen ranches packed with ox-sized birds, surely raised for their meat. Birds were used for everything here. There had also been a species of enormously tall, thin bird whose beak might have been harvested for the local equivalent of ivory. Avery had seen the front windows of numerous shops displaying beautiful statues fashioned of some material he’d never seen before; he’d put good money down that they were made of beak.
The train stopped downtown, and as the three emerged onto the city streets the sun beat down, hot and unyielding, and dust clung to the sweat along Avery’s arms and cheeks. He'd gone from being sick of the cold and dark to being exhausted by sun and heat. At least it was a change, though, and certainly for the better.
The three performed some reconnaissance, scoping the town out—not that they were in any way clandestine about it. They couldn’t be. People stared at them wherever they went, proportionately fewer here than in the smaller towns, but plenty enough to be disconcerting. The docks turned out to be inaccessible. Military vehicles and troops cordoned off roads leading that way and questioning revealed that one of the Triarchs had allied himself with the Octunggen and turned against the other two Triarchs. Their combined forces were holed up in the Grand Pyramid along the cliffs leading down do the docks.
A late afternoon sun shown down on them as the three had finished investigating the situation, each assigned a different aspect of it, and a cool breeze gusted in off the ocean to the west. Avery couldn’t see the sea, but he could feel it, taste it on his tongue. The wind billowed his clothes, ruffling the hairs on his body, and he shuddered. Gods, he thought. Not another storm. Just when he was getting used to the heat.
As they walked along, they discussed what they knew, careful to keep their voices low and speak in Ghenisan.
“What are we looking at?” Avery asked Janx bluntly. Janx had been tasked with analyzing the pirates’ invasion plans.
The former pirate didn’t mince words. “Segrul will be here in two days—three if we’re lucky. The island armies that aren’t fighting each other or the Rimmers are tryin’ to hold him back from Vinithir, but they’re worn down and spread thin. Segrul’s well armed and supplied, and he’s got weapons the likes of which the islanders’ve never seen before.”
“I’ll bet,” Sheridan said. “So we have till tomorrow, edging on the side of caution, to reach the transmitter?”
“Evidently,” Avery said. “And there are seemingly no other transmitters on the island.”
"Segrul'll have one," Janx said. "But I don't fancy having a go at it. What I want to know is why the Triarchs are at war with each other, anyway. Hi’il’ichi told us that Jivini was leading what was left of the war effort from the capital, but I still don't get it. What's going on in this damned place?"
Avery, who had been reading up on this, answered as birds chirped in the fruit trees to the side of the road. “The people of the Core are still governed by the old system, the system of the Triarchs, apparently. Three equal rulers, each one ruling a third of the populace. Each makes their homes here in the capital. Well, for some mysterious reason, one of these Triarchs, Vomi Thisinc, sided with the Octunggen and Lady Jivini during their assault. After we fired the Device and Jivini’s troops were driven back, he and his troops were forced to go on the run with them. He kidnapped the daughter of one of the other Triarchs, a young woman named Ista, and holds her captive so that the mother, the Triarch, will stay out of the fighting. It’s worked so far. Now only one of the Triarchs is left to wage war on Triarch Thisnic and Jivini. He’d got them under siege in the Grand Pyramid.”
“The people of the city can hear them at times, praying and making sacrifice,” Sheridan said. “There are several opinion pieces about it in the papers.”
“Fucking Collossum,” Janx said. “I’m sick of them and their damned sacrifices.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “It isn’t to the Collossum that they sacrifice, Janx. Maybe the Octunggen do, but Triarch Thisinc and his people make sacrifice to those they’ve always worshipped. All of the islanders used to worship them, but few do these days. Most bow to the People of the Sky nowadays. The bird people.”
“Who'd they used to worship?” Janx said.
Avery smiled humorously. "You were right, Janx. We were wrong to doubt you. The ghosts. That's whom Thisinc worships, and makes sacrifices to. The Blue Ghosts, as they call them. The Blue Ghosts and their Masters. I don’t know what the Blue Ghosts are, but their Masters must be the Ygrith.”
"So what now?” Janx said. “Any sign of the Monastery?”
"Sadly, no. There's no alien temple here, no Monastery, at least not one that the people have heard of. This island's large, and so are some of the others in the chain, but not large enough to conceal something like that.”
“Only the Sleeper’s head can bring it back to this world,” Sheridan said.
"So what do we need to do?" Janx said. “How do we get into the Octunggen camp and have a go at their transmitter?”
They crossed a street and continued walking as the sun marched toward the horizon.
“If we could rescue Ista and return her
to her mother, the Triarch, she would gather her troops and join the other loyalist Triarch. Together they could storm the Pyramid and drive out Jivini, Thisinc and their people. Giving us access to the transmitter.”
“We’d have to be on the inside of the pyramid first to rescue her,” Sheridan said.
Avery allowed himself a smile. “That is a problem.”
Janx yawned. “So what ingenious ideas do you two brainiacs have to get us inside the Grand Pyramid?”
“Not us,” Sheridan said. “Not all three of us. Only myself and the doctor.”
"Excuse me?" said Janx.
"I have a plan. But only Francis and I will be able to be granted access."
“Fuck that.”
She laid a hand on his arm, and he fell silent. Quickly she removed the hand.
“What I meant,” she said slowly, “is that only I can get us through this, and by us I mean only the doctor—excuse me, His Lordship—and myself. You must remain behind, Janx. We’ll establish a way to rendezvous later.”
“What's your plan?” Avery said.
“The Octunggen may have a transmitter, but the Town Father indicated that they don’t use it very often. The war effort’s all but ended on the mainland, after all, so that makes sense. They may not have heard of my treachery and will either consider me a hero or will not have heard of me at all. But my codes and pass phrases will still work. They’ll admit me. They’ll admit us,” she added to Avery. “You’ll be my excuse to come to them. I’m sure they’ll have heard of Layanna and the group of humans helping her, you being prominent among them. I’ll be bringing in a notorious enemy of Octung.”
“Won’t they think that a bit odd?” Janx said. “Showin’ up out of nowhere?”
She shrugged. “Odd things happen, especially these days, with the world in as much chaos as it is. Well, Francis? What do you think?”