Vontaura

by James C. Dunn

  As he had done many times now, Peter climbed the hill to convene one last time with the Light, the oldest and purest structure left of the magnificent race. And there together they discussed a great many things. Both agreed that Anna’s part was unique and unclear. Both agreed that she should not return to Earth as she so desperately wished to do. The bracelet in her keeping was more important than she realised.

  ‘Anna’s role,’ the Shilvar told him, ‘is greater than any have so far seen. We observe: she is one with the Gilaxiad.’

  Then she will remain here, Peter thought. She will have peace? She will be happy?

  ‘She will be safe here until the next step is taken.’

  What is the next step? Will you tell me? He waited patiently, but he did not know the answer, which meant that the Shilvar did not know either, or simply that they would not tell him. He felt most secure with the latter. He trusted the Shilvar down to their deepest roots – the Sonii too. They possessed a harmony and a kindness he had never felt before.

  When Peter broached the subject of Earth and the threat now facing its inhabitants, the response he received was not the one he had expected.

  ‘Your task,’ the Light spoke, ‘is to carry a gift unlike the one you have carried thus far. This gift is a curse. You must give it to Anna Berenguer and Antal Justus.’

  I do not understand.

  And then he saw.

  So that they must meet? I see. So that they will see what is going to happen before it actually does. The gift of foresight? They saw each other long before they met. Is this why?

  He felt a shadow cover him. ‘A cost,’ they told him. ‘There will be a cost. Foresight, our gift to them, will cost them everything.’

  Their family, their friends? Every last one? If I give them this gift, they will eventually lose everyone they love.

  ‘You understand our insight. For Anna it has already happened. For Antal, it is happening at this very moment.’

  I can’t!

  ‘You already have. It has already happened. It is always happening. It always will.’

  I can’t be responsible. Anna has lost everyone she loves. I can’t.

  The Shilvar before him faded. He stared down at himself, physically identical to the Peter he was now. Yet, he was so much younger. So much stronger. So much braver. He stood at the forefront of a battalion, five-million strong. They followed him. They loved him. A time before even the Iástrons existed. A time when he refused to share his gift and take responsibility for the pain it always caused. A time when he recalled being so passionate and determined.

  Not like now. Now when he withdrew and laboured alone.

  ‘You, Peter Marx, must find yourself again. You must rediscover that passion and strength if you want to fight. If you want to win.’

  I don’t know how to find my strength. I don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore.

  ‘And that, Peter Marx, is why you lose.’

  He opened his eyes, felt the cold stems squash down upon his shoulders, slip across his clothes, and rise up into the tree-line. They slunk down, back across the ground as if they were serpents retreating from threat.

  His thoughts, however, remained with him. It was the Shilvar which facilitated those reflections, allowing him to locate and reveal the very best from deep within. Realising what he must do. The Shilvar itself perceived him, and he knew one thing above all was clear.

  ‘It is me that will go to Earth.’

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  DAYS AND NIGHTS passed.

  Anna spent most of the time with her Sonii companion, walking the woods and speaking to the creatures she came across. She never thought it possible, but she felt at home. Gílana and Ruben and Callista seemed like distant memories. Sad memories, but here they couldn’t hurt her. When she wasn’t with the Sonii, she paced the picturesque gardens below Cádrabie with Peter.

  On her seventh day upon the Blue and Green World, as she wandered a section of the nearby woods with several Sonii, a voice could be heard calling behind. Peter approached her, grave and solemn. ‘It is time,’ he said.

  ‘Time for us to do something?’

  He nodded and turned. Anna left the Sonii and followed him to the top of the great hill; and there among the Shilvar’s roots they spoke.

  ‘We need to talk about Gilaxiad,’ Peter said. ‘Do not be surprised, Anna. It has been with you for so long, as it has been with me. In our thoughts. In our dreams. In our very souls. And, until a short time ago, neither of us knew what it meant.

  ‘Oh, I heard the word Gilaxiad. It was also in my dreams. For many years before I arrived upon Erebus. There the darkness took my gift, kept it at bay, but Gilaxiad was always there. And the Zinn knew it too. Below Tempest-Beta they screamed the word, having heard the legend themselves.

  ‘When I asked them what it meant, they said: Gone are days of peace and hope, in their place death and darkness rain, lost are memories of power once owned, and through the one may they once more gain. The rest, Anna, I heard from the Sonii, and from the Shilvar:

  ‘Xenolith lures them across the abyss, in courage and strength to refuse the masters. A deadly host to place the deathly kiss. Darkness for one. Light comes hereafter.’

  ‘It’s a riddle,’ she said. ‘A challenge?’

  ‘Of a sort. But it goes deeper than that, more profound.’ He repeated the lines again. ‘It’s the same in every great language I know, Anna.’ And he translated the prophecy into Áluna, the language of Earth’s moon:

  Grigin abpat ach elta pos

  Immalat ach izaram urcha pin

  Leysanat fil grin abdu mar

  Ach-ent ar iyn avar maran

  Xuran ya volick-ent ar deep

  Ico-dact ach prat mar yell Masta

  Ar fudim tatwal ar blu at

  Dazal ann iyn. Silris somos

  He spoke the same words in the language of Crilshar.

  Gilaxiad.

  The language of Enustine, Bravoral, Samos, Canopus, Titan, Mars, Xidaberg, and Scimaran, and many others besides.

  Gilaxiad. Gilaxiad. Gilaxiad.

  ‘I don’t understand, Peter. The words they said are the same in every language? How is that possible?’

  ‘The Sonii explained to me,’ he replied, ‘that the old prophecies appear in the prominent languages of the day in which they are said to occur. For those they effect the greatest. They say it’s not a prophecy in the sense we understand it otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said.

  ‘Listen to it again.’

  He repeated it, slowly and forcefully.

  ‘I see it!’ she said, before he had finished. ‘The first letter of each phrase. G-I-L-A-X-I-A-D.

  Gone are days of peace and hope

  In their place death and darkness rain

  Lost are memories of power once owned

  And through the one may they once more gain

  Xenolith lures them across the abyss

  In courage and strength to refuse the masters

  A deadly host to place the deathly kiss

  Darkness for one. Light comes hereafter

  ‘So that’s what it is? Gilaxiad is a prophecy?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, at first. But after conversing with the Shilvar it appears we are only correct in part. The old prophecies – the old “iad” as they seem to call them – they each referred to creatures, to people. And so the Gilaxiad refers to a living person. Through the one may they once more gain.’

  She breathed out slowly.

  ‘Yes, Anna. It’s you. We sent the Sonii for you. You are the one that will do as the prediction foretells.’

  ‘But what . . . what can I do?’

  ‘Lost are memories of power once owned. Through you, Anna, the change will come.’

  ‘What change? For who?’

  ‘That is all to come, child.’

  A flash of Callista, of baby Ruben, of Justus and Gílana and her uncle and parents—

  ‘No! I can�
�t!’ She stood and at once fell back upon the swelling roots. ‘I was supposed to be going to Earth. What point is there if everyone is gone?’

  ‘They won’t be, Anna. We will do something.’

  ‘Do what? There is nothing we can do! I’ve been here days. They’re all gone!’

  Peter smiled. ‘All these days you have been patient.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘In your own manner, yes. You have trusted me. And you would be wrong to think I have been idle. I have spent much time deliberating with our friends here. The Shilvar are a power and a light like no other. You spoke with them only briefly. They have seen within you. They have told me what I must now do.’

  ‘But what do I do?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said, and Anna remained upon the ground. ‘I mean to say that the Shilvar have not seen fit to share your future with me. It is too delicate a matter, I think. You will speak to them alone soon, and they will explain everything. They will have to. If it exists, you are the Gilaxiad. You present our greatest hope.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have no idea. Maybe I never will. But have hope. The journey’s not yet over. The Shilvar have, however, shared with me what I must do. My part comes now. But in order to do it, I need something from you. I have explained to you everything I can. Now it is your turn.’

  ‘What can I tell you?’

  ‘Tell me everything. Tell me what happened on Titan. Tell me what you saw.’

  And so they sat all evening, and Anna explained the attack upon Titan with as much detail as she could. She would have avoided talking about her uncle or her sister if it were possible, and she could tell by Peter’s reaction that it hurt to hear her speak of it, but the events were so connected that it was impossible to tell it any other way. She described their deaths, alongside the arrival of the beastly army, the coming of the great being, almost human, and revealed how it disappeared as though into the air itself after being shot down by Ferranti and Kramer’s craft.

  At that point Peter asked her to stop, and he seemed to take great interest in the creature’s ability to vanish into thin air. She explained that Kramer and Ferranti had arrived just in time to stop the thing from killing her, that Ferranti had shot it many times, taking its arm completely off below the elbow. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It is possible to kill it.’

  ‘Is there anything else, Anna?’ he asked. ‘Anything else of importance?’

  ‘I . . . no.’

  ‘I see.’

  And then a thought and a sound hit her. ‘Well, there is one thing, I think.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘When it disappeared, the thing, it said something.’

  ‘What, Anna? What?’

  ‘Three times it shouted. It shouted “return”.’

  Peter smiled. ‘I see.’

  ‘What was it then, Peter? The thing that attacked Titan, the thing that looked human, that came for me, that spoke to me . . . what was it?’

  ‘It was a creature of the race known as the Gilaxath, Anna. Not to be confused with the Gilaxiad, but connected in part. The Gilaxath are a powerful race. Masterium of the galaxy. The true Masters.’

  ‘Masters of the Zinn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On the planet, Tempest-Beta,’ she said. ‘When the Zinn made a connection with Erebus, they shouted those words. They shouted Masterium.’

  ‘The vessel we know as Erebus was an ancient thing,’ he said. ‘The old Zinn abandoned it and went into something of a hibernation on the planet below. They lost their connection with their ship and therefore any way to return to it. Until you arrived. When you placed that bracelet upon your wrist you triggered a succession of events which has culminated in what you have all experienced. The Zinn, in bonding once again with Erebus and the power at its centre, were able to communicate with those they left behind. They were calling their masters.’

  ‘And their masters came.’

  ‘From the other side of the galaxy, they came.’

  ‘But everybody thinks that the black asteroid, the black ship, that it is Erebus itself, come for us.’

  ‘It is not Erebus, Anna. It is something far worse. It is them. The Masterium. The Gilaxath.’ He sat in silence for some time. ‘These creatures are organised hierarchically. The powerful at the top. The weak at the bottom. They are more like us than I could have imagined.’

  ‘Only worse.’

  ‘Only worse,’ Peter agreed.

  ‘The Alignment is gone,’ she said. ‘It’s all lost. Everything.’

  ‘No, Anna. We can stop them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The Instant Cannon.’

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  ‘WHAT IS THE Instant Cannon, Peter?’

  He laughed. ‘I could have procured a thousand better names. But Instant Cannon is the most direct translation the Sonii provided. It’s a hard thing to explain, but I’ll do as I can in the time we have, which is not much. Follow me.’

  He led her down the hill into the area of wood walled off by thick shrubs of sharp pink. Several Sonii dangled down from branches above them, watching and waiting as though on guard. At the bottom, through a grove swirling strong streams of air around them, Peter stopped.

  A clearing stood beyond, in the middle of which lay a great mound of wood. Not wood. The bark of the Shilvar.

  ‘The Shilvar,’ Peter said, ‘have no perception, no sensitivity, to time. To its passing or its effects. From what I deem they come from a place unaffected by such a barrier as we have upon us. A broken clock, almost.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means, Anna, that the bark of the Shilvar not only creates an effect parallel to the ultimatt engines of our vessels, impassive to the light barrier, but also unresponsive to the concept of time. It gives them, and now us, an implausible advantage.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘I have not the energy nor the time now to explain. Perhaps the Sonii will.’

  ‘Why can’t you? I still don’t understand.’

  ‘I have my duty now, Anna. I mustn’t delay. Countless lives depend on it. I go to Earth. How, where, and when I do not know. The past is impossible to reach. I do not know what it is I will find, or do, or see, or experience. I don’t know where I am going. I believe it is Earth. But I must trust the Shilvar, as they trust in me.’

  Anna looked across at the great mound as one-hundred Sonii threw poles of fire upon it. The fire spread, burning with a great light. Peter stood before it, silhouetted against a dazzling flame. And in that moment Anna understood.

  ‘You are the Accentaurian.’

  Peter turned in surprise. ‘I have not heard that name in time beyond count!’

  ‘So it’s true? You are?’

  ‘Yes, I am the Accentaurian. Or, at least I was. I protected the system Accentauria for centuries. I fought the Imperial Wars of Accentaurib. I was named the Accentaurian before I fell, and rose again. But not in eight-hundred years has a soul spoken the name to me. Nor have I thought of it.’

  ‘The Instant Cannon,’ she muttered; then to him, ‘so you are yet to do the things I think you have already done. For me, at least. If not you, then somebody who has used the name. Somebody who has given us hope.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘You haven’t done it yet. You haven’t sent me the message. But you will.’

  ‘Now I do not understand, Anna.’

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘Where’s my backpack?’

  In minutes she had charged to her camp on the other side of the hill and returned to a bewildered Peter. Things were clearer than they had been since she arrived on the alien world, clearer than they had in months. She handed Peter the backpack and said, ‘Take it! I’d forgotten all about it. There are things in here you will need. Four things, in fact.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘A message. You must listen to it first. It was my voice. All that time. I sent it to myself.’

  ‘Just a me
ssage?’

  ‘Edgar Mokrikov’s diary. That too. It explains everything about the Iástrons since Europa fell.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just read it, Peter. Trust me. Kramer’s face-covering is in there too. All the research compiled on Erebus. Don’t you see? We have a way to fight them!’

  Peter reached out and took the pack from her. ‘What was the fourth?’

  ‘The fourth?’

  ‘You told me there were four things in here.’

  ‘The fourth,’ she said. ‘The fourth . . . it was . . . the Gilaxiad.’ Silence as they stared at each other. ‘Me. Send me back instead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not send me?’

  ‘Your fate, Anna, does not rest on Earth, I think, but another place entirely. You are happy here?’

  ‘I am,’ she said, without even thinking. She missed Callista and everyone else. But the pain she had felt on board the Stellarstream was like a distant memory. Yes, she was happy here.

  ‘Okay. But if you can go back . . . can’t you go back and stop us finding Erebus in the first place . . . stop us waking the dark?’

  ‘That is not why I return. You have given me these things. It won’t take your life. We will defeat the Gilaxath and the Zinn with knowledge.’ He walked towards the burning mountain, a bonfire of blessed lumber. Light rolled upwards, yet there was no smoke. It was time.

  ‘Peter?’

  Slowly, he turned. ‘Yes, Anna?’

  ‘Will I ever see you again?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t . . . think so.’

  ‘Then tell me . . .’

  His head tilted to the side. The fire burned louder behind him. ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me something. Anything. All this time, and I . . . how old are you?’

  ‘Too old.’

  ‘But you’re not alone. You’ve not always been alone . . . have you?’

  He frowned, fighting back a deluge of tears. He shook his head.

  ‘I will stay here. But I will see you again, Peter. You won’t be alone again.’

  ‘I was never alone, Anna. None of us are ever truly alone.’