by Dana Fredsti
“Whosoever pulleth the sword from the stone is rightful king of England,” Blake said softly, mulling it over. He nodded. “It’s not the daftest notion. Well done, Sherlock. Let’s give it a go.”
“Have we all gone mad?” Harcourt said, sputtering. “Entertaining poppycock about spells and incantations. Ridiculous!”
“You might do well to listen to the heathen savage, you old charlatan,” Nellie said. “It’s ingenious, and there’s no harm in it—especially if one of us knows more than he’s letting on.” She cut him a dirty look.
He stared at her, aghast. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that one of us could be behind this? Impossible!”
“To be perfectly frank,” Nellie shot back, “I scarcely know what’s possible and what’s not anymore. But enough blather. It’s all we’ve got, and there’s only one way to test it—here goes nothing.” She faced the door. “Ship, I order you to open this door at once!”
“I’m sorry, but I am unable to accommodate you.”
Nellie raised an eyebrow at Harcourt. “Now you try it.”
“Utterly preposterous,” he blustered.
Blake leaned forward. “Ship, open sesame,” he said. “Unlock the door.”
“I am currently unable to allow your entrance, Mr. Blake, but I appreciate your literary reference.”
The soldier turned to Cam and waved a hand to allow him forward. “Your idea, your turn.”
Cam cleared his throat. “Hear me. I, Camtargarus, son of Cattus, say let me in.”
“Please take no offense that I am unable to comply.”
“Well, Professor?” Nellie put her hands on her hips and stared him down.
“Well, what?” Harcourt glared at her. “I categorically refuse to take any part in your ridiculous little parlor-game. We don’t need another inmate in this asylum.”
“It’s alright, Harcourt,” Dr. Meta said diplomatically. “No one really thinks you devised a way to hijack the ship—but we don’t have any better leads to pursue. For the sake of the experiment, please give it a try.”
“I find this entire distasteful jape a capricious and arbitrary obfuscation,” Harcourt muttered. “It only creates unnecessary suspicions in our ranks.”
“Easy enough to dispel them, then,” Nellie snapped.
“Look, Professor,” Amber said, “we’ll all do it, and then it’ll be settled.” Facing the bridge, she added, “Ship, open the door, please.”
“I am pleased to comply.”
The door slid open.
* * *
Amber turned back to the others, face pale, eyes wide with shock. They all stared at her in disbelief—even Merlin. With a shake of his head, he quickly entered the bridge. Ahead of him lay the broad curve of a window through which they could see clouds racing past.
Slipping into the pilot’s seat, he quickly ran through an inspection of the instrument panel. After a few moments, he sighed, and looked over at the rest of them crowded around the door, his expression grim.
“Controls are completely locked.” He turned to Amber. “Ms. Richardson, would you care to do the honors?”
Wincing at the cold formality of his tone, she shook her head. “Please, I swear I didn’t do this. I don’t know anything about any of this!”
“Please.” He held up a hand. “I need you to unlock these now, if you will.”
Amber closed her mouth. “Ship,” she said in a quiet, resigned voice, “please release the controls.”
“Navigational functions restored.”
“Ha!” Professor Harcourt folded his arms in righteous indignation. “Explain yourself, little Missy!”
“But—I didn’t do it!”
“The facts speak for themselves.” Harcourt said with the air of a prosecuting attorney resting his case.
“Let’s not rush to judgment just yet, Harcourt,” Merlin cut in. “The Vanuatu should have something to say about all this. Ship, tell us who initiated the course change and lockout.”
“Apologies, I am currently unable to provide that information.”
Merlin turned to Amber with a reproving look, and she spoke up again, her voice uneasy.
“Ship, please tell everybody whatever they want to know.”
“Course change was laid in by Amber Richardson four hours and thirty-two minutes ago.”
Nellie gasped. Professor Harcourt stretched out an accusatory finger.
“You perfidious flying trapeze-jongleur. Duplicitous brazen tart! Bloody American!”
“It’s not true!” Amber shouted. “How could I, even if I wanted to? Why would I?”
“That’s enough, Harcourt!” Blake said, glaring. “Stand down!” Cam stepped to his side, crossing his arms.
“You heard what the mechanical-man said,” Harcourt grumbled. “The girl has deliberately sabotaged us.”
Nellie shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think I know Amber. The two of us may not have enjoyed a long acquaintance, but I’ve traveled with her long enough to know she’s no liar. If she says she’s innocent, I believe her.” Amber gave her a grateful look.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Merlin said thoughtfully, resting his chin on steepled fingers. “I also trust Amber—she’s been brave, and honest, and she saved my life.”
“Thank you,” Amber said. “I don’t know how any of this happened, but…” She stopped as a thought struck her. “Ship, I hereby turn control back over to Mer—” She corrected herself. “I mean, Dr. Meta.”
“Understood. Authority transferred to Dr. Jonathan Meta, Ms. Richardson.”
“Thank you, Amber,” Merlin said. “There’s more to this,” he said, addressing the others. “As far as I can tell, Amber has neither the expertise nor the motive to pull off this diversion. Which, unfortunately, leaves us with several pressing questions.
“Someone wanted to pull us off course,” he continued. “Someone who knows about us, knows where we are going, and possesses the expertise to employ our own navigational system against us. A person who can carry this out without our being aware.” He shot a glance at Amber. “What that someone wants, however, remains a mystery.”
Though she kept quiet, Amber thought he left out an important point.
Someone on board this ship.
* * *
“What can we do?” Cam asked after a moment’s silence. He hated the uncertainty, that there was no immediate enemy to confront. For the sake of Amber’s honor, he would take on the entire Roman empire itself.
“For now, I need to think,” Merlin replied. “Before we go any further, I think we need to land and run a quick diagnostic on the ship’s system, to make certain there are no other surprises in store for us. It will give our generators a chance to recharge, as well.” He looked over the panel in front of him. “It’s just a matter of finding a good landing site.”
He waved a hand toward the vista spread out below them. “It’s interesting—if you look closely, you can make out the individual shards. It’s subtle, but even though it’s all one desert, each one has a slightly different hue. And look, you can see where the sand fused into glass along the edges, separating shards from different eras.”
“Like a jigsaw puzzle for giants,” Nellie marveled.
“These sections seem very large,” Blake noted. “Larger than what we’ve seen so far.”
“Yes,” Merlin agreed, nodding. “I suspect the larger shards are from further in the past, whereas the ones closest to the time of the Event are much smaller. The fracturing appears to have been most intense around 2219—specifically from the day my Omnia Astra project launched. That may explain why we don’t seem to be finding many shards from the twenty-second or twenty-third century.”
“Look at that one over there.” Blake pointed a finger to the horizon. “What’s wrong with it?” At first he seemed to be indicating a dark blotch on the edge of their peripheral vision, but as they flew nearer, it appeared markedly different from the rest of the desert tableau. Rather t
han the brazen reds and gold of the surrounding sands, this one was green.
“I think we’ve found our landing spot,” Merlin declared, steering the Vanuatu toward the oasis.
10
A Prehistoric Shard, somewhere in North Africa
Midmorning – Six days after the Event
All around the anomalous shard was a sea of unending sand, threatening to swallow it up again. But for now, green savannah grass held sway. The Vanuatu’s passengers looked out the windows as the ship gently touched down into what seemed to Amber a magical garden, filled with a riotous diversity of life—at least viewed from her current safe vantage.
Flamingos dotted the lakes. Large herds of grazing animals strolled across the plain—antelopes, gazelles, giraffes, rhinos, and more. Monkeys chattered from the isolated stands of leafy trees. Flocks of small birds blossomed into the air at their arrival, as the ship folded its wings, powering down the projectors that emitted its feather-like energy fields and the prismatic spearhead at the ship’s nose.
“Oh, it’s beautiful here,” Nellie sighed. Cam nodded his agreement, nose pressed against the window, looking more like a teenager than a warrior.
“We can’t stay here long,” Merlin cautioned, “so try not to get too enamored with the scenery. Besides, if we succeed in repairing the timeline, it will be as if none of this ever existed.”
“Can’t happen soon enough to suit me,” Harcourt muttered.
“Well,” Nellie said, “we’ll just have to enjoy it for the few moments we have, then.”
“That’s very Zen of you,” Amber said wryly.
Nellie cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll have to explain that to me while we’re admiring the view.”
“I know the lake looks inviting,” Merlin said with a worried frown, “but please resist any temptation to leave the ship while we’re here.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Amber shot him a look. “We’ve been up-close-and-personal with what’s out there.” She shook her head, remembering the swamp. “No thanks.”
“Of course,” Merlin murmured ruefully. “I apologize. None of you are children, after all. If you want, you can go up onto the sundeck and enjoy the view from a safe vantage point—but keep an eye out for Pteranodons—or worse—and pay attention to any alerts from the ship.” A hatch in the ceiling slid open, and a motile blob of ship-stuff formed stairs leading up. Nellie, Cam, Blake, and Harcourt moved toward the stairs, and, as Amber started to follow, Merlin stopped her.
“Wait a minute, Amber,” he said. “I’d like to take a moment to discuss your… situation, before I get started on the navigational diagnostics.”
Raising a questioning eyebrow, she followed Merlin back to the common room. He took a seat and she sat across from him. The physicist leaned back in his chair and looked at her thoughtfully, until the silence began to unnerve her.
“So,” he said at last, “we have two anomalous circumstances, with you as the common factor.”
“‘Anomalous’ is one way to put it,” she replied.
“Indeed.” He leaned forward. “Somehow, it appears as if you changed the course of the ship, and in doing so locked out both the bridge and instrument panel—tasks you shouldn’t have been able to accomplish.”
“You know it wasn’t me, though,” she said anxiously. “Right?”
“Certainly,” he answered, and she thought he sounded sincere. “Which leads us to an even more troubling conclusion—that some unknown party seeks to divert us from our mission, for reasons equally unknown. Worse still, this person possesses the requisite computer knowledge to carry out this sabotage, and perhaps the ability to use you to facilitate the process—entirely unbeknownst to you—in your sleep.”
“Oh,” Amber said, her skin crawling at the thought.
“Worst case scenario,” he continued, “would be that our nemesis can do this to any of us. At the very least, however, we know with certainty that you appear to be vulnerable. My recommendation is that we have the ship watch you closely, and perhaps lock you in your quarters at night—if you have no objections.”
She nodded.
“Which brings me to the second point,” he said. “From what you have said, you’ve been having strange dreams about me—dreams that began before we even met—in which I am calling out for your help. Can you perhaps describe them in greater detail?”
Amber frowned. “I guess it began with me finding this underground bunker. I was walking through a patch of Ice Age when I crossed into this freaky dead land shard. All scorched as if the whole place had been gone over with a flame-thrower, or—” She stopped, throat suddenly dry as a thought occurred to her. “Or as if it was nuked. Oh god, what if it was nuked?” Panic clawed at her stomach.
“Ship, please check Amber for radiation,” Merlin said. Immediately, a line of blue light projected from the ceiling and ran down Amber where she sat.
“Initial exposomic scan reveals no atypical radiation for an early twenty-first-century North American biopattern.”
“Oh my god…” Amber nearly collapsed with relief. “Thank you, Ship.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Richardson.”
Taking a deep breath, she continued. “So in the middle of this dead zone I found a hatch and was able to open it—and that was weird, too. I mean, the whole time it felt like I was being guided to it. There was a combination, these moving geometric shapes…” She struggled to remember them, but the details flitted away.
“Anyway, the hatch opened onto this underground shelter place. There was—this is going to sound crazy, too—there was this glassy black floating pillar thing. Like a stretched-out diamond shape, thicker in the center and then narrowed out at both tips, and it was hovering in midair.” Like something out of a Hellraiser movie, she thought, but didn’t say. Her story was outlandish enough, like a dream that doesn’t make sense. Merlin seemed to be listening without judgment, though, which encouraged her to continue.
“When I came closer, it started to glow and spin slowly, and I… well, I felt this crazy urge to reach out and touch it. My palms tingled and then the whole thing lit up like a spotlight and blue-violet electricity was crackling everywhere, running between it and my fingertips like Dr. Strange, and then it was all around me.” Her voice rose as her recollection grew stronger.
“Next thing I knew I was floating in air, paralyzed with my head and spine bent back, my arms stretched out—like I was crowd-surfing on a lightning bolt. And then, just like that, it was over, and I dropped back to the ground.” Shaking her head, she added, “I know this all sounds nuts.”
Merlin gave a small chuckle. “After what we’ve been through the last few days, very little sounds nuts.”
“This is weird, too,” she said, the memories still coming. “I just woke up all of a sudden, and I was walking through a sunny meadow. At first I didn’t know if what had happened was real, or if I’d just dreamt it.” She paused, then continued. “But I kept having more dreams, that made me remember what had happened in the bunker. They were mixed up with other things, too.”
“What kind of things?”
“A—a boy I met.” Amber began to feel as if she was on a psychiatrist’s couch. “His name was Gavin. When the Event hit,”—she flashed on his dead body, sliced in half—“he was killed. I saw him, and I saw a book that had pictures of you near the Pyramids, dressed sort of like the Grim Reaper—kind of like when I first saw you in your Merlin outfit. It was definitely you. I mean, I could see your eyes, with the little stars falling in them. It was as if you were trying to talk to me through the words in the book.”
She waited for him to say, “And how did this make you feel?”
“How do you mean?” he asked.
Close enough.
“The words started as nonsense lines, but as I read them they would twist and move around and rearrange themselves into phrases.”
“Fascinating.” He looked as though he meant it. “What did they say?”
“Weird
things. They said everything was broken, that it was hard to talk to me like that. You said you would try to help me, but that I needed to come find you. You asked me for help. There were more dreams, after that, and you kept asking for help—even after I found you. And… the dreams haven’t stopped.” She paused. “What do you think it means?”
“It’s difficult to say.” Merlin spread his hands and shrugged. “Perhaps they’re just natural reactions to all the stress you’ve been under. It’s possible they’re side-effects from the Event—an energy surge struck extremely close to you, after all.” He frowned. “What I fear, though, is that someone out there is trying to manipulate you, perhaps gain your trust so they can sabotage our attempts to restore the timeline. But if that were the case, who are they? How are they controlling your dreams?”
She shuddered as he said that.
“And most importantly, why would anyone want to stop us?” He gave her a bemused smile. “I’ll need to think on this. For now, why don’t you join the others on their safari watch? I need to check our ship’s brain.”
“Good luck, Merlin.” She paused at the stairs and turned back toward him. “I have one other thought about the dreams.”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s a little out there, but what if they really are from you—but from our future, trying to reach us here now and warn us? She looked at the floor, choosing her words carefully. “Maybe our future selves are here somewhere, trying to stop us from going to the South Pole because something will go wrong there.” She looked up again. “Is that possible?”
Dr. Meta’s face was pale.
“I’ll… have to think about that.”
11
Amber did as Merlin suggested and joined the others up top on the sundeck. They were all leaning against the railing and admiring the view. She was eager to take a look for herself.
It was a spectacular sight, although the more she saw of the wildlife around them, the more apparent it became that something wasn’t right. It was as though they were looking at a painting of an African vista done by a medieval artist who had only heard vague rumors of what the animals looked like. Or maybe he had a quirky sense of humor, and decided to combine a few here and there.