by Dana Fredsti
“Wow,” she observed as they began to move. “They built things to last in the twenty-third century.” She accelerated. “Come on. Let’s find Merlin. We’re nearly there.”
* * *
“Oh.”
The word slipped out of Amber’s mouth and hung in the hot, still air as she looked down at Merlin’s corpse. His violet eyes stared unseeing at the sky, the cascade of tiny stars still falling… but with no life behind them. His Jedi robe was gone, but the gray slacks and top still remained, a small hole punched through the shirt above his heart, blood soaking through the fabric.
“Oh no,” Amber whispered.
There was no word for the howling emptiness that ripped through her. She knelt there, as if her entire world had been ended…
They had been here before, after a Roundhead had shot Merlin in the chest. He had been dead—there was no other word for it. But technology from his time had saved him. Nanites in his system had rebuilt the damaged tissue, recirculated blood after it had stopped flowing. Now, however, the silver hexagons were missing. No magical technology knit the wound together. The stars in his eyes fell into emptiness.
Merlin wasn’t coming back this time.
She felt Cam’s hand on her shoulder. It was warm and comforting… but not enough. If Merlin hadn’t transferred his nanites to Cam to save the Celt’s life… well, there was no point going down that road, because then Cam would be dead. Given the chance, would she trade his life for Merlin’s, or vice versa?
Amber didn’t think she could make that choice.
She knelt by the dead man’s side for what felt like hours, her tears slowly falling on his body, letting despair and grief have their way while taking what comfort she could in Cam’s presence. She cried silently—the last thing she wanted was any of the predators to find them. Finally she squeezed Cam’s hand, getting to her feet.
“We need to bury him.”
Cam frowned. “We don’t have the tools to dig a grave. To do it by hand would take hours. If there were enough stones to be found, I would build a cairn over him, but…” He gestured at the surrounding savannah.
It struck her that the world might very well have received its death knell with Merlin’s passing. Without him, and without the Vanuatu, they might never find his lab and reverse the event.
Looking around, Amber’s gaze fell on the abandoned aircraft. They made their way down the low hill to inspect it closer. Camouflage coloring swirled and moved across the craft’s smooth metallic skin. The instrument panel seemed more advanced than anything from the early twenty-first century. On the other hand, it seemed much closer to her time than the twenty-third-century marvels of the Vanuatu.
The fuel gauge was nearly empty. If whoever had flown it was responsible for Merlin’s death—and she was sure the imposter was both pilot and murderer—it seemed fitting that his vessel should give shelter to Merlin’s corpse.
“We can put him in there,” she said. “He’ll be safe from the animals… at least for a while.” Together, they placed Merlin in his makeshift tomb, and then continued on.
They had no other choice.
* * *
Several hours later, they finally reached the northern edge of the veldt shard. They halted on a rise overlooking the vast sea of sand that encompassed their lonely island of grasslands and lakes. The afternoon was growing late, the setting sun already repainting the sky in dusky pinks and scarlets.
By unspoken assent, they took the luxury of a few minutes to watch the sunset. The rover waited with unflappable robotic patience. Cam lowered his eyes and murmured something. Amber realized he was praying to the veldt’s animal spirits, the Sun, and the unfamiliar gods of the dune sea that lay before them. She watched him in silence, wanting to say something about Merlin, but no words would come.
Gazing out at the spectacular vista, she felt a bewildering mix of emotions. A raw numbness punctuated by sparks of giddy exhilaration. She’d faced off against a monster out of her nightmares, and won. She’d saved Cam’s life—no one had to rescue her this time around. A slowly budding confidence helped bulwark against the uncertainty of what might lurk in the seemingly empty desert. At the same time, however, she felt both the loss of Merlin and the crushing responsibility of what would occur if they didn’t reach the South Pole.
In the past, when she’d had this many conflicting emotions, Amber would’ve taken a hot bath and relaxed until the world made sense again. She didn’t think that would be an option any time soon. She briefly considered pulling her phone out of the backpack and flipping through the photos, but that fell under “too painful to contemplate,” and she didn’t want to use up any more of its charge. Instead, she let herself lean back against Cam, taking comfort from his presence.
Twilight on the veldt was slightly kinder than the day had been. The air felt cooler on the backs of their sweaty necks and exposed skin, the growing shadows easier on their eyes, allowing them to pocket their polarized goggles. But the night was bound to bring its own dangers. Just as well they were heading out across the dune sea.
“Are you ready?” Amber asked.
“Yes.”
“Here we go, then,” she said, and gave the handlebar a twist to send them off. The rover followed along just above her shoulder.
* * *
The hoverbike had headlights, but once the moon and its accompanying stars came out, they cast the dunes in such a beautiful silver light that Amber left them off. Sailing over the rising and falling of the moonlit sands, Amber imagined they were on the high seas. It was soothing… almost… hypnotic…
“Amber?”
It was the Vanuatu.
“Amber, please adjust your heading. That is the wrong way.
“Amber? You are headed east, not north. Please adjust your heading.”
Amber said nothing. She simply relaxed into the ride and let the road take her where it would. It was such a pleasant way to travel…
She dreamt that the rover was trying to tell her something, but the soothing, artificial voice of the Vanuatu’s avatar faded away as she held the course steady. And then, a new but familiar voice appeared.
Help me, Amber…
It grew louder and clearer.
Go to the Nile and find me.
Merlin.
Help me, Amber…
18
The Vanuatu
Heading North by Northeast
Six days after the Event
Nellie stared at Doctor-Colonel Mehta as he gazed out the window at the point of light on the horizon ahead of them. The uncanny, silent starfall in his eyes was both hypnotic and unsettling. She could only imagine the plans gestating behind those alien eyes.
“That is where we shall start to build our empire.”
“What is that light?” she finally asked. Mehta turned to her, wearing an unreadable expression. His words, however, were clear enough.
“Behave for me and you’ll find out soon enough.” He stepped away from the window and gestured to his companion. “Mr. Blake—” He paused. “No. Not mister. What was your service rank?”
“Sergeant, sir. No. 8 Commandos.”
“Very good. Sergeant, it’s time to let these two rest a while, before we arrive. Computer, I need to place Professor Harcourt and Miss Cochrane into custody.”
A brief pause and then, “Cabin Two has been prepared to serve as confinement.”
Blake raised an eyebrow at Harcourt and Nellie, and without resistance they followed him down the hall to the cabin. Nellie risked a look back at him before the door slid closed behind them—his face betrayed not the slightest hint of sympathy.
The Blake they knew was gone.
* * *
Cabin Two was a perfectly featureless cube of white, without furnishings or windows. Harcourt stumbled to the far wall and put his back to it, slowly collapsing to the floor, head hung low. He sat there, a silent, miserable heap.
Nellie wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against another wa
ll, trying not to think about the newfound friends she had lost. Amber and Cam, Alex and Merlin, and now Blake—they had been through so much in just a few days. Incredible how quickly they had bonded. How horrible that she would never see any of them again.
Finally she shook her head, refusing to feel sorry for herself. She could no longer afford that luxury, because the fate of the world rested in her hands. Hers, and those of the sniveling con artist locked in with her. How she despised him. Of all the people to be trapped with, why did it have to be Harcourt?
She peered over at him. Wretched fraud in his ridiculous top hat. He had very nearly gotten her killed more than once in the short time she’d known him. Did he even realize how close he came to being thrown out the Vanuatu to his death? Or that he owed his pathetic life to her speaking up on his behalf?
Why did I even say anything at all? Better they had chucked him out, and good riddance to bad rubbish.
The evil thought instantly shamed her. Of course he knew how close he had just come to death, that he owed her his life. He couldn’t bear to look up at her, couldn’t bear to speak to her. He was no more than a marionette with all his strings cut, a hollow mockery of a man. There was nothing left but a husk of bitter, unrelenting shame. Her uncharitable thoughts, coupled with the new insight, suddenly embarrassed her.
She turned away to gather her composure.
The two of them remained in silence.
“I’ve been in worse straits than this, you know,” she said at last. Harcourt didn’t reply, face still hidden beneath his top hat. Undeterred by his lack of response, Nellie forged ahead. “I once spent ten days in an insane asylum. My paper charged me to investigate it for an exposé—with no clear plan on how to get me in or out. So I spent hours in front of the mirror, practicing how best to look and sound like a lunatic. Disguised myself as an impoverished Cuban immigrant in tatty second-hand clothes, and checked myself into a temporary boarding house for women.
“Such a sad place. Dingy and infested with rats and cockroaches. I stayed up all night playing the role of a madwoman, feigning amnesia and paranoia, scaring the other residents with my ranting about my lost luggage and other crazy talk.” She paused, then added, “It worked all too well.”
A brief sideways glance told her Harcourt was listening, like a sulky child drawn into a bedtime story in spite of himself.
“They took me to Bellevue, the asylum on Blackwell’s Island. It was a human rat-trap—easy to get in, but impossible to get out. The other women brought in with me were no more insane than I am now. One pretty young Hebrew girl’s husband had her put away because she had a fondness for men other than himself. A cook had quarreled with her coworkers over a cruel prank that had been played on her. An immigrant housewife, without one word of English, had no idea why she was there. She begged in German to know where she was, sobbing and pleading for her liberty.
“There was Annie, a young chambermaid, her health broken from overwork. Her family could no longer afford her treatment at a private home. Another poor girl had been told her friends were sending her to a convalescent ward for her nerves. When she realized where they were taking her instead, it was too late.” Nellie gave a reminiscent shudder. “What a tomb of living horrors. If a body wasn’t insane when they arrived, it didn’t take long before they really did lose their wits in that hellhole.”
“How did you escape?” Harcourt asked abruptly.
“After ten days, The World sent an attorney to arrange for my immediate release.”
“So you were never in any lasting peril,” he grumbled. “I daresay that hardly compares to our present quandary.”
“That is not the point,” Nellie said with strained patience. “Nothing is impossible, if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. If you want to do it, you can do it.”
“A fine sermon,” Harcourt said with a dismissive sniff, “when you knew rescue was certain all along.”
“Insufferable man!” Nellie shot back, her temper flaring. “Go back to your sulking, then! Keep pining away for a bottle of your infernal snake oil! See if the world—”
She stopped in mid-sentence, her attention caught by a strange movement. On the blank white surface of the opposite wall, florid lines bloomed into life, swirling to form an intricate Victorian woodblock-style illustration. In a matter of seconds, the black-and-white figure resolved itself into the waist-coated, bespectacled white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
The rabbit twitched its nose and raised a finger to its lips to shush them. On the wall below it, an illustrated roll of scrollwork unfurled and displayed a motto.
Silence is Golden
19
Siu-Tuait – the Star of the Dawn
On the Nile, near Akhetaten, Egypt
56th Year of the Reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (1248 B.C.)
Eight hours after the Event
“We are doomed,” Ti muttered. “We never should have weighed anchor so close to the ghost city. It is accursed.”
Tendrils of gloom and mist rose from the waters of the pre-dawn Nile like a nest of spectral serpents. To the east, the skeletonized pillars of the lost city still stood like ghostly sentries, looking down upon them, silently judging the four sailors in their skiff. The four-man crew all well knew the legend of these ruins. Still, they knew better than to interrupt the old Egyptian steersman as he told the story.
“A century and half ago,” Ti said, leaning on the tiller as he guided them, “Akhetaten had been a shining new capital city, the jewel of the Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, who had foresworn and abandoned all the old gods for the sake of the one—his sun-god, the Aten. Fitting, then, that his city be raised up in the most god-forsaken and sun-blasted region of all Egypt.
“No honest freemen would willingly go to such a hell. Instead, the prisons spilled out their refuse—criminal scum, war captives and slaves. Such was the army of miserable devils consigned to serve the evil Pharaoh. They made their wretched hovels in caves or dug them into the boulder-strewn hills, like maggots.
“Great wickedness did Akhenaten commit in his time. He closed the temples of all the other gods, disbanded their priesthoods, stole their holdings, and diverted their offerings into the coffers of his cult. He directed that all should now worship the sun-disk Aten, and it alone. He despoiled the idols of all the other gods and even took chisel to their sacred obelisks and monuments, seeking to obliterate all mention of the great gods of Egypt.
“But the vengeance of the gods is a terrible thing,” Ti continued. “The Assyrians of Akkad and the Hittites now conspired together against Egypt with base treachery. Their warriors seized caravans and openly attacked the cities of the empire. The loyal vassal-states cried out for aid, but the Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not hear them. And so all the countries under the king of Mitanni were lost to the Hittites.
“Thus did Akhenaten go to his death in great shame of his failure and weakness, and his beautiful queen Nefertiti mourned him with great sorrow, for she too had lost all. His false sun-god Aten could not save him, nor itself, nor its deceitful priests, who were put to death in unspeakable ways befitting their many blasphemies. The Pharaoh and his weakling successors were forgotten and stricken from all history, for none now dare speak their names, and his once-proud city of Akhetaten lies abandoned, home to the jackal and scorpion, to the lion and ghul, and all manner of night demon.”
The shipmaster of their little vessel cast a scornful eye upon both his aged steersman at the tiller, and then the grim pillars towering above them. He was Kha-Hotep of Thebes, a Nubian by blood. His noble hairstyle and grooming were in immaculate Egyptian style, as was his impressive jeweled wesekh collar, light tunic-shirt, and starched white kilt and headdress, their brightness dazzling against his skin, dark as the night sky. He let out a mocking laugh, as much to banish his own fears as that of his crew.
“Ti, are you an old washer-woman?” Kha-Hotep chided. “Hold your tongue, lest you fill the heads of these two yo
ung idiots with more nonsense.”
The two skinny young deckhands, whose eyes betrayed their growing fears, risked a grin of relief and laughter of their own. The youngest was the captain’s own sixteen-year-old brother, Enkati. The other was Abi, only a year older than Enkati, a dusky-skinned Lower Egyptian like Ti. All three crewmen had close-cropped hair and wore only simple workmen’s cotton kilts, although Enkati was privileged with a collar like his older brother’s, though less opulent.
Ti scowled and shook his head. “I tell you, I awoke last night to the sound and wild turbulence of a most dreadful storm, and the ceiling of heaven was alit with distant fire. It bodes ill.”
“So did we all,” Kha-Hotep agreed. “Yet here we are, all survived to see the dawn and unharmed. So be comforted.” The old steersman nodded, putting a rein for the moment on his misgivings. The captain flicked a finger to Abi.
“Quick now, fetch breakfast. Food will raise our spirits.” The boy went, and returned with a jug of beer and a basket of sweetcakes baked with goose fat, along with dates, figs, radishes, leeks, and strips of dried fish. They dug in, and the meal did the trick. Even the ominous river fog seemed less chilling on a full belly.
Kha-Hotep kept his own concerns private, as befitting a leader on an important and secret mission. Yet he shared the crew’s concerns. Something was very wrong on the river this morning. Perhaps the night had brought more than just thunder, heat lightning, and rough waters. He turned to his young brother.
“Enkati, will you play for us? I would hear sweet music in this gloom.”
“Of course.” His brother, glad for the chance to play music rather than tend to the ropes and deck chores, brought out his lute. Taking a seat in the bow, he played them a love song.
The love of the beloved is on yonder shore.
The river lies between,