Penult (26 page)

“
Um … I’m not sure exactly.
But I did have this … this … vision.”

“
A vision?”

“
Yeah. The … uh …
Singularity … might have given me some help.”

Luther’s mouth dropped. He turned to
Olivier, who took a seat beside us. Kitt remained by the
door.

“
Did you hear that? This
one communicates with the Singularity on his own without the long
sleep and without the need to channel through an Old
One.”

“
I’ve been telling you,
he’s an old soul,” said Olivier. “He may be young, but he’s no de
novo incarnate.”

Luther sighed. “Now I wish you were
not leaving us. With the skills you possess, we could do some
amazing things together. But I already promised Zhang you would be
coming. Might you … return … some day?”

“
I don’t know,” I said. “I
never wanted to come here in the first place. I have no idea what’s
going to happen to me next.”

“
You know … I can help you.
It may be I can find Karla’s whereabouts … for you … for us. I
still have connections with the family. If Edmund has his hands on
her again, I could surely find this out.”

“
That would be … great,” I
said, without a trace of enthusiasm. I had already resigned myself
to several of the worst case scenarios regarding her disappearance.
Even if she was still roaming free, it would not be long before
Wendell found her and put her away for good.

“
I worry that your passage
may be challenged,” said Luther. “Zhang’s contacts with Penult
could not guarantee your safety.”

“
We have a hostage,” said
Olivier. “That should help prevent any ambushes.”

“
They are a haughty and
righteous bunch, these Seraphim. I would not put it past them to
try to take Petros back by force.”

Olivier shrugged. “Let them try. I’ll
be keeping their boy on a short leash. If they raid us, I take him
out, send his soul to wherever, and that’s that.”

“
If we travel mainly by
dark we would have a better chance of avoiding trouble,” said Kitt.
“For whatever reason, they ain’t very active at night.”

“
But now Reapers roam the
badlands after nightfall,” said Luther. “There is nothing to keep
them in their tunnels anymore.”

“
We’ll be fine,” said
Olivier. “Have a good core of fighters with us. Bunch of refugee
types, too, but with James along, we should be able to handle
things.”

“
Thirty-two,” Luther
glowered at the floor. “When you all leave, that is what I will be
left with. Thirty-two souls plus … whoever we can harvest from the
pods. I have to say, there were far more quitters than I ever
expected.”

“
They’re not quitters,”
said Olivier. “Not everyone wants to live in a cave.”

“
But why expose one’s soul
to such risk? And how is a gaggle of cripples and claustrophobes
going to help the resistance?”

“
Not everyone needs to be a
warrior,” said Olivier. “There are others ways to help the
cause.”

“
Never mind,” said Luther.
“Those who remain behind with me will get to reap the benefits of
our work. We will make Luthersburg all it was before and more.” He
stuck out his chin defiantly.

“
We’ll refer more souls
down to you when we can,” said Olivier. “I’m sure we’ll find some
folks who are tired of living up there under siege all the time. At
least we can tell them down here, it’s safe.”

“
Alright! We are done
here.” Luther waved his hand at the misty images flowing across the
walls surrounding the courtyard and they went instantly to black.
“Finito! Nightfall approaches. You’d best be on your way before
this one fades on you again.”

Chapter 25:
Outside

Olivier and I made our way across the
settlement, wings packed and bundled and slung over our shoulders.
I caught a glimpse of Bern’s garden and was pleased to see a patch
of perfect zinnias that only an hour ago had been Brussels sprouts.
The door to the cabin was open, but I noticed that the tweed
suitcases were gone form the porch.

We found the expedition party waiting
for us at the far edge of the bubble, near the portal that Kitt had
led me through when I had first come here. Olivier’s assistant,
Trent, kept watch over Petros away from the main group, the Seraph
hobbled by shackles on his ankles and wrists.

“
Got your wings? Awesome!”
said Kitt sharing a high five. “Yo Det! Everyone’s here. Let’s get
this show on the road.”

“
Hang on,” said Detmar. He
went up to the wall and pressed his ear against it.

“
What’s he doing?” I
whispered to Kitt.

“
Checking for Reapers. They
sometimes like to pounce on us right outside the
bubble.”

Bern pushed through the group,
rattling the pans and tea kettles that dangled from his pack frame.
He presented me with a long bundle wrapped in chamois.

“
My … sword?”

“
We tucked it away for you
when you faded.”

“
Thanks!” I said, taking it
from him. I had forgotten that I even owned a sword. Somehow the
dang thing kept finding me no matter how much I neglected
it.

Bern moved back to be with Lille, who
was busy adjusting a young woman’s footwear, fixing a bad weave
job.

“
Hey Bern!” I
shouted.

He glanced back at me.

“
Nice zinnias!”

He tossed me a wink.

“
All clear!” said Detmar,
and he slammed his palm against the dark spot in the center of the
wall. The roots peeled back, revealing crisscrossed layers
increasing in thickness and density out through the outermost
shell.

Detmar and Tyler hopped through and
took flanking positions as the rest of us rushed through the
aperture.

“
Keep it moving!” said
Olivier as we rushed through the tunnel. “No stopping till we reach
the surface.”

Kitt kept at the head of the column.
She knew all the routes topside, having made the climb every day
since Luther had led his flock back underground.

We passed through tunnels narrow and
wide, took shortcuts through the interstitial spaces and some
smaller bubbles some other enterprising residents of root had used
as encampments and settlements and subsequently
abandoned.

A hiss and a groan greeted us at a
juncture between two tunnels. We had surprised it and it drew back
and lunged, arresting its charge when it realized how many of us
there were ready to impale it with sharp objects. It backed off,
slithering off into a side tunnel to let us pass.

Kitt stuck her tongue out and waggled
her fingers at it as we passed.

“
Chicken!”

Before long, we were charging up a
ramp into a space where the fetid emanations of the tunnels mixed
with fresh breezes.

“
Nice. It’s already getting
dark,” said Kitt. “That should keep the Cherubim off our
backs.”

“
Weren’t we guaranteed a
safe passage?” asked a woman, pushing a small wheeled cart the size
of a wheelbarrow.

“
That was never confirmed,
ma’am,” said Kitt. “If so, that’s great, but I wouldn’t count on
it.”

Rumbles of displeasure passed through
the group.

“
Calm down, people,” said
Olivier. “We have the means to defend ourselves. You have to trust
us.”

We remained at the bottom of a deep
crevasse. Kitt and Tyler climbed it first, securing lines and
pulleys for hauling up the group’s baggage. Thus unencumbered, all
were able to negotiate the steep wall of shredded root and rubble
without much assistance.

There were faint lights in the
sooty-grey sky, specks or radiance that I could not be sure were
stars along the smooth, un-cratered blotch of glow that passed for
the Liminality’s moon. For all I knew this could be just another
larger bubble in the underground and these celestial bodies were
just as artificial as those that Luther conjured across his
domes.

The wind swept over the rumpled
plains. Reapers roared in the distance. Those of us bearing wings
undid their lashings and deployed them.

Soon Kitt and the boys were hovering
over our little caravan as they regathered their gear and began
plodding across the dark wastes. I lagged behind, still struggling
to get my wings strapped on properly.

“
Yo James. Get your ass up
here,” said Kitt, circling back.

“
I’m working on
it.”

She landed beside me and helped get
the cage-like harness fitted across my chest.

“
What about Olivier.
Where’s his wings?”

He’s gonna stay grounded for now. Make
sure Petros doesn’t try any hanky panky.”

“
Who are we exchanging him
for?”

“
Beats me. Some Frelsian, I
guess.”

My wings finally on, I flicked my
shoulders and away I went. I couldn’t help but feel proud of myself
for being the one who had weaved them. But then again, the credit
really belonged to whoever came up with the original design for the
device. Compared to them, I was just a mere
counterfeiter.

She came flying at me and I flinched
away, thinking she was going to slam into me and we would go
tumbling in a mass of membranes and harnesses to the ground below.
But she pulled up, nimbly and hovered before me like a
hummingbird.

“
Tyler’s flying point to
check for ambushes. Detmar and I will watch the flanks. How about
you bring up the rear?”

“
Um. Sure!”

I loved the idea of me being all the
way back. I was a coward at heart, and had no interest in being the
first among us to encounter trouble if I could avoid it. Of course,
trouble could always sneak up behind us, but I tried not to think
about that.

The ‘moon’ shed enough glow to reveal
the overall lay of the land while many of the severed roots exposed
in the upheaval blinked and flashed faintly, delineating the
landscape in millions of tiny sparkles.

The ground party moved at a pretty
decent clip over the rough ground, considering Petros was shackled
and Bern was limping. Olivier was great at reading the terrain,
even without the benefit of wings. He made sure they always took
the path of least resistance, often diverging from our primary
heading to favor ease of travel.

A dark blotch in the sky came hurtling
towards me. I flinched away before realizing it was Tyler. Kitt and
Detmar came in from the flanks to join us for a little conference
in the sky.

“
There’s a formation of
Cherubim smack in front of us,” said Tyler. “Three, four hundred.
They’re all kneeling on the ground. No Hashmallim or Seraphim
about. Didn’t even look up at me when I buzzed them.”

“
That’s how they sleep,”
said Kitt. “I don’t think we need to worry about them.”

“
We could really fuck them
up if we wanted to. They’re sitting ducks,” said Tyler.

“
Nah. Leave them alone,”
said Kitt. “Just because we haven’t seen them fight at night
doesn’t mean they can’t.”

“
How about once the ground
party gets by them?” said Detmar.

“
I’d rather not,” said
Kitt. “I’d rather we kept a low profile. There’s too many of them.
Things could get out of control real quick.”

“
Fine. Then I’ll go and
warn Olivier,” said Tyler, swooping down to the head of the column
below. Olivier had already spotted them, it seemed, and was
detouring the band into one of the dry channels of the broad and
braided riverbed.

The relief party was in great spirits,
all chatty and ebullient. Everyone seemed relieved to be out of the
tunnels again and looking forward to the freedom they would find
behind the lines of the resistance.

We crossed into the remains of the
alluvial delta at the mouth of the main river valley. It was gashed
with rifts, but some of the lower hills flanking the entrance to
the valley remained. The table lands upriver, however, were barely
recognizable. Most of the mesas had been leveled, towering pillars
of stone reduced to jagged stubs poking through heaps of rubble.
Every bluff that had harbored a Duster settlement was gone. The
destruction had been systematic, because some of the uninhabited
mesas remained.

When we turned into the valley, we
found the river basin littered with the rotted out exoskeletons of
ants, dragonflies, mantids, bees and the innumerable bodies of the
Dusters who tended them.

A great battle was fought here and
lost by the resistance. At first I thought at only Dusters had been
involved until we came across the heaped carcasses of
Frelsian-modified Reapers. The bodies of armored Frelsian warriors
littered the flood plain behind then. Clearly, the Dusters and
Frelsians had fought side by side.

It disconcerted me that I saw
absolutely no remains of Cherubim on the battlefield but then it
occurred to me that it was only the victors who had the ability to
recover their casualties. Apparently they thought so little of
their foes that they let them rot where they lay.