04 Dark Space (52 page)

“He’s an AI, not a god,” Ceyla replied. “Besides, this place might look like a paradise from above, but you saw how much of the city lies below that shield. I’d bet a month’s pay the people down there are much less convinced that Omnius is a benevolent god—to say nothing of the netherworld where he locks up all the mortals. I wonder if everyone living down there really is there by choice? It sounds like a prison to me.”

“So where do you think they’re taking us? And what do you suppose that is?” Atton jerked his chin toward the mysterious golden dome.

A hand landed on Atton’s shoulder and squeezed. He turned to see his father and Alara walking behind him, their expressions grim. “It’s some kind of lift tube, but a whole lot faster,” Ethan said. “And as for where we’re going, my bet’s on either of the two netherworlds.”

“Two? Omnius only mentioned one.”

“Yea, but there’s two shields. If life were so great below the
Celestial Wall,
then why use a shield to keep people out of the upper city?”

“There could be a lot of reasons for that,” Atton said.

“Sure, plenty. We have walls in our society, too, but they’re drawn with distance, and that distance is measured in a horizontal space rather than a vertical one. No city planner worth a damn puts the bad neighborhoods right next to the good ones unless he can somehow keep them from mixing. Omnius didn’t have a choice because you can’t waste space on a world with so little to spare. In my experience, for there to be so many
haves
up here living in the lap of luxury, there’s got to be a whole lot of
have-nots
slaving away to keep them there.”

Atton thought about that as the soldiers guided them under the hovering golden dome. They were led into the middle of a glowing green circle on a raised black podium. Galan Rovik entered with them and raised his hands as if praising his god. With that, the inside of the dome began to glow with ever-increasing radiance, and the soldiers retreated from under the dome. As soon as all the soldiers were standing outside, Galan dropped his hands, and the dome fell over their heads with a
boom.
It became so bright inside that Atton was forced to shut his eyes. A loud whirring noise filled the air, and a strong wind gusted through the dome.

Ethan called out, “Brace yourselves!”

Suddenly the blinding light was gone, the whirring noise replaced with a ringing silence punctuated only by the
hiss
of escaping air, and the
tik-tik-tik
of cooling alloy. A cold, musty breeze swept in. Taking a deep breath, Atton risked opening his eyes. . . .

And he beheld the netherworld for the first time. Except that it wasn’t a netherworld. It was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.

Chapter 36

E
than grabbed Alara’s hand and walked up to the edge of the dome in shock, dumbstruck by the view. When he reached the edge, he stepped back with a gasp. Once again, the roof of the dome hovered overhead on four shining pillars of light, revealing a panoramic view of where they were now. That view was at once startling and breathtaking.

A carpet of tufted clouds stretched out to the horizon, shining gold in the rising sun. Those clouds whipped by underneath them at a frightening speed, and the sun hung just above them, a blinding red eye peeking out over the tops of the clouds. Overhead, the sky was a deep indigo, still glinting with the diamonds of the night. Below the edge of the dome where they stood lay nothing but open air. If it were being carried by something, Ethan couldn’t see what it was. They seemed to be floating high above Avilon and racing after the sun at a considerable speed. A cool breeze was sweeping in, but it was not nearly as violent as it should have been at the speed they were moving.

“How did we get up here?” Alara breathed, her nails biting into his biceps as she clutched his arm with both hands.

“I don’t know,” Ethan whispered. A moment ago they’d been standing still on a rooftop in the middle of the night, and now they were high above the city and racing after the sun at sunrise. He thought he knew how that must have happened, but he was reluctant to accept the truth. The golden domes, which he had assumed to be some type of lift tubes, didn’t actually move people from one point to another, they
teleported
them instantly. That explanation also meshed nicely with how the Avilonians had mysteriously managed to board his corvette without having to dispatch a shuttle.

Ethan heard the others gasping and shouting out with fright as they realized where they were.

Then came the gravelly voice of Master Rovik. “Do not be afraid!” His voice was somehow louder and more resonant than before, as if he was speaking into a microphone. “We are safe here.”

“Where is here?” Atton asked.

“How did we get here?” another added.

“The answers will come clear in time!” Rovik replied. “Move to the edge of the transporter,” he instructed, and Ethan saw in his peripheral vision that the Rovik was himself doing exactly that. His cape fluttered softly in the wind, and again it struck him that the wind was far too gentle to correspond to the speed that the clouds were rushing by below.

Ethan crept as close to the edge of the dome as he dared and peered down on the tufted clouds below.

Alara hung back, trying to pull him away from the edge. “Ethan!” she shouted. “Get back here!”

Rather than listen to her, he turned to Master Rovik. “What now?” he asked. None of the others had dared to venture as close to the edge as he.

Rovik inclined his head and smiled, as if in appreciation of Ethan’s bravery. The Avilonian’s glowing blue eyes were wide, but Ethan suspected that was from exhilaration rather than fear. “Now we trust that Omnius will catch us!” Rovik said, and with that, he dove off the edge of the dome.

People screamed. Ethan’s own eyes widened with shock as he watched Rovik falling swiftly toward the clouds, his blue cape fluttering as he fell.

“What the frek!” someone said. It sounded like Razor.

A moment later, Atton stepped up to the edge where the Avilonian had been standing. Ceyla was with him, and Ethan noticed they were holding hands.

“I’m not jumping,” Atton said, looking up to meet his father’s gaze. “You were right, but this is a lot of trouble for Omnius to go to just to kill us.”

Ethan frowned. “He wouldn’t send one of his own to die just so we could all follow him to our deaths.”

“No? Maybe he doesn’t care. His people can’t die, but
we
can.”

“Atton’s right,” Alara said behind him. “Get away from the edge, Ethan.”

“Not yet . . .” He was still watching Master Rovik fall. Something wasn’t adding up. Then, all of a sudden, he realized what it was. The Avilonian wasn’t falling anymore. He was
flying
. “Hoi!” Ethan pointed to the blue speck which was the man’s cape. “Look!” Rovik was now skimming low over the tops of the clouds, arms outstretched as he flew toward the distant sun and horizon.

“What is it?” Alara asked.

“I don’t believe it . . .” Ceyla whispered.

“Just because he can do that, doesn’t mean we can,” Atton added.

“No,” Ethan shook his head. “This is an illusion.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, it’s not real!” Ethan shouted so that everyone could hear him above the whipping wind. “If it were real, don’t you think at the speed we’re moving we’d be ripped right off this platform? Not just that, the air would be too thin to breathe, and it would be much colder than it is.”

Atton’s jaw dropped and he began nodding slowly. “You’re right. . . .”

“I know I am,” Ethan said, taking half a step toward the edge.

“Ethan!” Alara screamed, yanking hard on his arm to pull him back.

He turned to her. “Trust me,” he said, using one hand to pry the other loose from her white-knuckled grip.

Alara shook her head. “No,” she mouthed to him.

“On three?” Atton asked from beside him.

Ethan backed away from his wife, and shot his son a grin. “On one.”

With that, he spread his arms wide and dove backward off the edge. He heard Alara screaming after him as he fell, but soon her voice was stolen by the wind whipping past his ears. His eyes began tearing, the clouds rushing up to greet him. The exhilaration of free fall reminded him of ejecting from a starfighter, only much more frightening. At least an ejection seat had grav lifts to slow its descent. His body was falling like a rock, faster and faster. The speed and heart-stopping acceleration stole the breath from his lungs and the tears from his eyes. As he drew near to the shining carpet of golden clouds below, he felt a stab of doubt. What if he’d been wrong? What if this really was an elaborate way to get them all to jump to their deaths? Ethan spread his arms wide, trying in vain to slow his free fall.

Then, all of a sudden, something changed—he felt his descent begin to slow, as if the clouds were somehow repelling him. He leveled out to skim low over their tufted golden tips as he raced toward the sun. His eyes were still tearing from the wind, but now he was no longer free falling—he was flying!

Ethan let out an exhilarated whoop of delight. He twisted around to see if anyone had followed him, but no one had. Now flying on his back, he stared up into the indigo sky to see the shining golden dome that had teleported them all here—wherever here was. As he had surmised earlier, the dome was not supported by anything, but suspended in midair. The bottom of it was rounded like the top, but with a series of glowing white portals—
grav lifts?
he wondered—radiating from it.

As he watched, Ethan saw a few dark specks begin to tumble from the dome. They screamed as they fell. He twisted back onto his stomach and flew onward with a smile. Soon their screams would turn to cries of delight as they began flying too. He looked down, reveling in the sensation of unassisted flight. The clouds passed underneath him in a cottony rise and fall of peaks and valleys, like mountain ranges in the sky. The wind whipped past his face, tearing at his clothes and hair, but he was able to keep his eyes open without them tearing too much. Again, he realized that the wind didn’t correspond to the speed he was travelling. A suspicion formed in his gut, and he twisted onto his back once more. He noticed the golden dome glinting above him, no closer or farther away than it had been before. It was following him. He began to wonder if the glowing white portals in the bottom of the dome were grav guns rather than grav lifts. Perhaps they were what was holding him aloft. How the dome stayed aloft was another question. To answer that, Ethan returned to his original supposition—all of this was an elaborate illusion.

One of the specks tumbling down from the dome came sailing down alongside him, and he saw that it was his son, Atton. The boy wore a wild grin on his face, and his dark hair was sticking up at odd angles. “Kavaar!” he said.

“You didn’t jump with me,” Ethan accused with a smile.

“Hoi, just because I’m your son doesn’t mean I’m completely skriffy.”

“Are you implying that your old man’s a skriff?”

Another dark shape reached them then and began flying on Ethan’s other side. He was happy to see that it was Alara. “You’re completely skriffy!” she shouted at him. “I’m going to kill you for this!”

He reached for her hand, and despite her promise of revenge, she grabbed his hand in a vice.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice trembling now.

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Another person sailed down beside them, next to Atton. Ethan turned to see that it was the young woman who’d been holding his son’s hand a moment ago. He sent her a smile, but she was too busy gawking at the view to notice. “This is incredible!” she said.

“Makes flying a Nova seem dull!” Atton added.

“It’s amazing, but what’s the point?” Alara asked. “What are we doing here? And how are we not falling to our deaths?”

Ethan pointed toward the sun, to a series of bright specks flying up ahead of them. “What are those?”

“Birds?” Atton suggested.

More people began dropping down all around them. Ethan craned his neck to look over his shoulder and found that now everyone was soaring through the clouds with them. He turned back to the fore and eyed the bright specks up ahead. There were hundreds of them, all growing gradually closer. Those specks began to resolve into familiar shapes, with arms, legs, heads, and torsos.

“They’re people!” he shouted. “Look!”

In just another few seconds they reached those people, and suddenly Ethan was afraid that they would crash into them, but as they drew near to each other, one or both sets of people began to slow down. Ethan noticed that the others were standing upright in thin air, as if the clouds were made of substance rather than condensing water vapor. They wore shimmering white robes like the ones he’d seen people wearing in the upper city. As he and the others who had jumped from the dome slowed to a stop in front of these white-robed people, he felt something hard and smooth touch his belly, and he flinched as if scalded by it. Suddenly, he understood the illusion—

And he stood up.

The floor under his feet was invisible, as if cloaked, or covered with a projection of what lay underneath—racing clouds. That meant it wasn’t all fake. They were riding high above the surface of Avilon in some type of starship—the walls, ceiling, and floor of which had all been cloaked to hide them from view. Their fall had been arrested by grav guns as he had suspected, and then they’d been held aloft above the invisible deck to enjoy the illusion of unassisted flight until everyone had jumped. As for the wind . . . that must have been generated.

Ethan realized that it was all some type of elaborate trust exercise. Once everyone had literally taken the leap of faith, they’d been accelerated slowly up to the group of white-robed people standing at the opposite end of the chamber—their welcoming party.

Now he understood why the wind hadn’t corresponded to their velocity. Ethan glanced behind him to look up at the golden dome once more. He estimated that it was hovering at least a hundred meters above their heads and perhaps two hundred meters behind them. That meant that the ship they were flying in was relatively large, and the space where they now stood was at least as large as one of the venture-class hangars aboard the
Valiant.