Penult (20 page)

I saw Kitt come strolling out of a
shop, cradling a long and crusty baguette.

“
Yo!” I waved and she
veered over to meet us. The dog panted and wagged just a real dog
would encountering a friend.

“
Your turn, I see,” she
said, smirking. “Good luck with him.”

“
Are you going back up
top?”

“
Eventually. Going to try
to catch a few winks. But I’m kind of due for a fade back. It’s
been a while. Not looking forward to it.”

“
Where do you live … back
home?”

“
South Carolina,” she said.
“Not the best family situation. But you know how that goes here.
Everyone’s got a sob story, or else they wouldn’t be
here.”

“
Any idea what Luther wants
from me?”

“
You’re in his bubble.
That’s enough reason to want to see you.”

“
Mr. Moody is an honored
guest,” said Mr. Meredith.

“
Whatever. Later guys.” She
strolled off with her bread.

Mr. Meredith led me across the
‘square’ to the ‘palace,’ which had no doors or windows. Maybe
someday Luther would get it to look like his last abode, but for
now I guess one just had to use their imagination.

Mr. Meredith placed his palm over a
small hole in the wall and the aperture curled open into a gaping
cavity large enough to step through. The walls were at least a foot
thick and formed of densely packed roots. The dog stayed
outside.

Inside was a large, open space
furnished like a gentleman’s drawing room, with paintings of long
dead men hung over dark wood paneling. Persian carpets covered a
floor strewn with bulging armchairs upholstered in brown leather
interspersed with crimson velvet chaises and couches.

Luther, Olivier and a weathered old
Duster sat facing a pale man spread-eagled on the floor, his limbs
embedded in a thick slab of clear gel. I had learned to expect
anything around Luther. This could be some kind of performance art,
for all I knew. A conversation starter.

It was startling but gratifying to see
Olivier with a full set of limbs. I had known him in the Deeps only
as a quadruple amputee.

Luther watched me intently as we
approached, maintaining a steady, subtle smile. He wore none of the
cosmetic improvements I remembered from previous encounters in
Root. He looked pretty much like the old man I had met in that
nursing home in Geneva, with a little more hair, a few less
wrinkles and much more vigor and mobility.

Mr. Meredith took a seat next to
Olivier and motioned for me to take the one empty
armchair.

“
So … Mr. Moody. We meet
again. What brings you here this time? Did your dog
die?”

“
Karla wanted me to come
and see. And then she … disappeared.”

“
And so this makes you …
sad? Is that why you’re here?”

“
I guess,” I said, but of
course, it was the only reason I was here.

“
If I knew that’s all it
would take to bring you back, I would have arranged for an earlier
disappearance.”

My stomach churned. My fingers curled
into fists. “Was it you guys? Did you take her?”

“
No. It wasn’t us. We don’t
do such things, though maybe we should, the way things are going.
Anyhow, now that you’re here we can get down to business. You might
have noticed that there have been some hostilities up on the
surface world.”

“
Wait. Don’t you even care?
What happened to her?”

“
Why should I?”

“
She’s your own
grand-daughter.”

“
So? She never cared for
me. Her parents turned her against me from an early age. I was the
freak of the family. Once she got older, she blamed me for their
father being the man he was, as if I could control what became of
him.”

“
But you must care about
her even a little bit. You gave her shelter once.”

“
Of course. I am not going
to turn my own grand-daughter away to become Reaper chow. A
grandfather has certain obligations.”

I couldn’t help but stare at the guy
embedded in gel. He seemed more bored than distressed. I wondered
how and if they let him to go to the bathroom, or if creatures like
him even had to worry about going potty.

He was human enough. His body might
have been sculpted by Michelangelo. He was not overbuilt, yet every
muscle in his body was perfectly defined and fully developed. He
had no wrinkles, no blemishes, no head hair, body hair or
eyebrows.

Luther caught me staring. “Isn’t he a
pretty one? What we have here before us is a genuine Seraph. Petros
is his name. He hails from Crete. He lived on Earth in the early
twentieth century and passed into Penult during the Second World
War. We captured him as he and his Cherubim attacked my city on the
plains.”

“
What are you going to do
with him?”

“
That … has yet to be
determined. We hoped he would agree to consult with us … but … he
has proven incorrigibly stubborn. A ransom is out of the question
because his so-called ‘brothers’ refuse to speak with us. They
murdered one of our envoys. Poor Alec escaped only by the skin of
his teeth. But Master Zhang is hoping we can trade him for one of
our own.”

“
My brothers will come for
me,” said Petros. “You will meet your ends in these caves. In
time.”

“
Your brothers are too
busy,” said Olivier. “I hear our friends are making a stand up the
valley.”

“
Mere pests.” Petros
sneered. “Their eradication is inevitable.”

Olivier stood and prodded the gel with
his thumb. “Considering the casualties they inflicted against your
first wave, and the fact that they retain much of their strength,
I’m not so sure. I predict a protracted stalemate.”

“
We will prevail in the
end. Our might is infinite.”

“
See this young man?” said
Olivier. “He’s the one who took down your last Horus and opened a
channel from the Deeps. Now you have the likes of him to contend
with.”

“
And
… he brought my grand-daughter back from death,” said
Luther.

“
Nonsense,” said the
Seraph.

“
It’s true! Tell him,
James,” said Olivier.

“
Actually, I thought it was
your will-bomb that did it,” I said. “I was just a
bystander.”

“
Ah, but you were the
catalyst,” said Olivier.

“
None of it was any of your
doing,” said Petros. “So don’t fool yourselves. We know the
interface to be faulty. It has failed us before.”

“
No use arguing,” said
Luther. “Mister Petros will believe whatever Mister Petros
wants.”

Luther sighed and caressed the
Seraph’s brow. “Oh my dear Petros, whatever will we do with
you?”

“
How’d you catch him?” I
said.

“
Ubaldo here took him down,
knocked him right out of the sky,” said Olivier. “Unfortunately, he
lost his mantid in the process.”

The lone Duster in the room did not
react. He was younger and less weathered than Yaqob, but he had the
stoic demeanor of someone who had awakened from the Long Sleep – an
Old One.

The Duster looked at me like a crow
eying a squirrel. “I’m sure you’ve seen these Dusters do their
thing with their wooden rods … their scepters,” said Olivier. “They
conjure these whirling blobs of plasma, like flying bolos of
stickum. Wreaks havoc with wings.”

Luther bounded up from his chair,
limber and energetic for a man who was wheelchair-bound in life.
“Have you seen their fantastic contraptions?” He strolled over to
the six-winged flying machine they had captured from the fallen
Seraph.

“
It took us forever to
clean the mess off, but the mechanism behind this apparatus
absolutely defies physics. Once it is strapped on, a simple squeeze
of the shoulder blades is amplified a hundredfold to beat three
sets of wings in succession through one complete cycle. This makes
Da Vinci’s work look like the doodlings of a dunce.”

“
How is that even
possible?” I said.

Luther raised his eyebrows.
“Magic?”

“
Science,” said Olivier.
“The material they use to line the wing joints stores energy better
than any spring. We’ve tried our best to replicate them but … no
dice.”

“
Maybe James could help
us,” said Luther.

“
Me?”

“
You do have a reputation …
as a Weaver.”

“
I wouldn’t get your hopes
up. I don’t really have much control over what I do. It sort of
just happens. Usually when I’m under stress. Unless, of course, I
freeze up.”

“
Stress? That can be
arranged,” said Luther.

Chapter 19:
Wings

Olivier brought me into an adjoining
room where they had stashed a collection of war material taken from
the forces of Penult. There was a cracker column, sliced open down
its length, revealing an intricate network of channels and ducts. A
root cannon, flared like a blunderbuss had a bulbous base fed by
diverging pipes that were apparently meant to tap into the root
system below, reloading in place, shaping shredded roots into
whatever property they needed in a shell—density and mass, high
explosiveness, toxicity. Two sets of wings—one crumpled, one
intact—completed the collection.

Olivier showed me one of the wing
joints, a dense agglomeration of intertwining rods and ratchets and
cogs.

“
This one’s the real deal.
We can copy all its parts, but we can’t get the damned thing to
work. Want to give it a shot?”

“
Not really.”

Olivier cuffed my jaw. “Oh come on.
See what you can do. If we make any progress at all then it’s all
worthwhile.”

He dragged a stool over for me to sit
on. The table before me was crowded with at least a dozen failed
replicas of the wing mechanism.

I touched the real one. The material
was waxy and slick. I twisted one the rods and the whole mechanism
responded in force, throwing my hand back into my face. For every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction? In this case, the
reaction was opposite, but far from equal. The stuff responded to
perturbations with an almost spiteful vengeance.

I tried the same with one of the
replicas and it was no more springy than a rubber band.

“
Gosh. This thing
is
like magic.”

“
Which, according to
Clarke, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable
from.”

“
Has Petros given you any
clue what makes it go?”

“
As if he would help us. He
was begging Luther to take his life today.”

“
Isn’t he already
dead?”

“
On Earth. Not
here.”

“
So where would he end up?
The Deeps?”

“
No. Not someone like
him.”

“
Then where?”

“
Some other realm the likes
of us will never see, most likely. Lethe. Limbo. Whatever is out
there.”

“
I’ll never get my head
around this afterland business. Why so many places? What’s the
point?”

“
Don’t look at me. You’re
talking about something way above my pay grade,” said Olivier. He
picked up the real wing joint, taking care not to touch the
business end.

“
The key to fine weaving is
getting a feel for the properties of roots. Their size and shape
and number can be modified without limit.”

“
But this isn’t like making
a napkin into a leaf,” I said. “Nothing like this exists on the
other side.”

“
No, but it exists right
here, right in front of us. We just need to find a way to grok
it.”

“
Grok?”

“
I guess you never read
Heinlein. It’s a term from the sixties, not widely used anymore but
I find it appropriate in describing masterful weaving. It means to
understand something inside and out, intimately and
intuitively.”

“
Why bother?”

“
Because … Penult has the
edge on us right now. We need to even things up.” He slid the
salvaged wing joint over to me. “Keep this close to you. Play
around with it. Get to know it. I’m hoping you’ll have better luck
than me. In fact, I’m counting on it.”

“
Why do we need wings? We
have … bugs.”

“
It’s not about having
wings. If we can figure out how they do something simple like this,
maybe we have a chance to figure out how they do the other stuff.
The root cannons. The cracker columns. Then we have a chance of
making this a fairer fight.”

I just stared at the thing, but
Olivier scooped it off the table and placed it in my
hands.

“
Lights out in one hour.
Here. Take it with you. It’s yours. Just make sure you handle it
with care.”

***

I sat for a while in the dimness of
Luther’s little museum of captured Seraphic tech. The stuffy air
and the way the walls closed in overhead and merged into the
ceiling made me feel claustrophobic. I couldn’t stand the lighting
in the place, washing everything in a yellow pall that could have
originated from a jar of piss.