Penult (64 page)

A flurry of wing beats punched through
the clouds of chalky dust wafting over us. I shrank away, expecting
it some last ditch, spiteful and vengeful assault by the Pennies on
their falcons. But the familiar glint of compound eyes reassured
me. These were our insects! In quick succession, Karla’s robber
fly, Olivier’s scorpion fly and Ubaldo’s wasp landed on our little
refuge.

Blood streamed down Karla’s face and
one of her eyes was blackened.

“
What happened to
you?”

“
Just get on!”

She didn’t need to ask me twice this
time around. Wincing with every move, I staggered over and climbed
onto on the back of her fly, hauling myself up between its gangly
and bristly hind legs. Karla grabbed my wrist to help me aboard,
surprising me with her wiry strength.

Olivier was in no shape to walk or fly
on his own. Ubaldo lifted him up and carried him over to his wasp,
lashing him into place on his saddle. Olivier was so weak that he
was barely able to raise his head. Solomon was already in the
saddle of Yaqob’s trusty scorpion fly.

Karla twisted around, her eyes aglow
with awe.

“
You knew. You planned this
thing all along. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have
stayed.”

“
What? You mean my sword?
No. I had no idea.”

“
Stop with the pretend
modesty. We both know, this was you.”

“
No. Really. I had no clue
any of this would happen.”

Maybe I
shouldn’t
have been so surprised,
given my experience with ‘miracles’ in desperate times, but I was
still in a state of shock over what we had just witnessed. I was
too dazed to feel happy or victorious, though from the size of
their grins, Ubaldo and Solomon did not share my
inhibitions.

“
Hold on!” said Karla. She
stomped twice and the robber fly jetted off the hillock, rising in
a wide, banking arc back towards the ocean, giving us a sweeping
view of the damage below.

The land was torn apart for miles
beyond Loomis. Further inland, yet another city skyline looming
over the horizon also showed signs of disruption, with towers
leaning or toppled, their formerly shining facades
dulled.

Deep, gorge-like rifts had spread in
all directions like the rays of a terrestrial supernova. Thick
swaths of roots surged up through the gaps, like stuffing poking
out of a battered teddy bear.

Several of the newer, quicker falcons
shadowed us from afar, too shy to take us on, perhaps wondering
what other tricks we had up our sleeves, though in truth, we were
unarmed and defenseless.

Karla leaned back and kissed my cheek.
Her lips lingered close to mine, expecting to be kissed in return,
but I was too discombobulated to reciprocate even if I had
wanted.

She hissed into my ear.

“
You. Are. Amazing! See?
This is why we needed
you
. No one else could have done
this.”

I didn’t know what to say so I said
nothing. This really wasn’t my doing. Sure, it was my sword that
had been turned into a doomsday weapon, and I was the one who had
activated it, but all of the art and craft that had gone into
making it what it was had come solely from the mind of
Victoria.

I had caught Victoria in the act of
applying her enormous skill to modify the captured column,
converting a simple utilitarian cracker into a superior weapon of
mass destruction. Its power would have gone far beyond those that
had laid waste to the pitted plains, the mesas and Frelsi. When she
had turned her attentions to go after me, the intentions of her
subconscious will, in all its complexity, had been misdirected to
the sword I had pointed at her, trying to summon one of my own
feeble and reluctant emissions of will.

And then, while the defensive avatars
of Loomis had destroyed the original column, they were unable to
detect the presence of its miniaturized but just as potent
replica—my humble sword.

I had to wonder if Victoria had been
on our side the whole time, acting as a double agent. Somehow, that
didn’t seem likely. She gave every indication she was committed to
the enemy’s cause when I had tussled with her in the grotto.
Perhaps, she was just a good actress?

***

We landed just beyond the zone of the
most serious root quake damage, on a windswept stretch of white
sand beach littered with wave-sculpted bits of what looked like
bone.

Olivier was still bleeding badly. We
laid him out on the sand and Solomon tightened his tourniquet,
while Karla attempted to re-wrap the horrific gash in his calf with
scraps of scraggly cloth.

“
Jesus Christ!” said
Olivier, through gritted teeth. “It had to be my leg, it’s always
the legs!”

“
Fate,” said Ubaldo, his
eyes raised to the sky.

We were the sorriest looking bunch of
raiders now. None of us carried a weapon of any sort and all of us
but Karla were naked beyond the few shreds of partially unwoven
cloth dangling from our collars and waists, exposing every bruise
and scrape and contusion.

Solomon kept looking up at me. I stood
with my arms held out at an odd angle, and I kept shifting my
weight and grimacing.

“
Are you
uncomfortable?”

I bit my lip and nodded.

“
Took a hit to my middle.
My ribs got a little messed up.”

“
I am thinking there is
something wrong with your eyes,” said Solomon.

“
Yeah, well, I got kind of
knocked in the head, too.”

“
No worries. He will fly
with me,” said Karla.

I plopped down in the sand and brought
my knees up to my chin, staring down the coastline at the freshly
fractured bluffs. It bothered me that Urszula and Mikal had still
not returned from their scouting missions. As time went on, the
prospects of them returning grew ever bleaker. But I knew Urszula
to be tough and resourceful. All hope was not yet lost.

“
Okay. He is patched,” said
Solomon. “I think we are ready to go.”

“
Shouldn’t we wait for the
others?” I said.

Karla shot me one of those looks.
“Don’t be silly. We need to go.”

“
What if they come back and
nobody’s here? What if they need help?”

“
If they are not here by
now they are not coming back,” said Karla. “There is nothing to be
done.”

“
We don’t know that. Not
for sure.”

“
Mr. Olivier needs a flesh
weaver or he will lose his leg,” said Solomon.

“
Not again, Goddamnit!”
said Olivier.

“
Then take him back. I’ll
stay.”

“
You have no bug!” said
Karla. “And the Pennies will be coming for you! What
then?”

“
Let them come. I don’t
care.”

“
What is wrong with you?
You act like I killed your mother or something. Why do you hate
me?”

Karla’s eyes bulged as she struggled
to contain an outburst.

“
This is not about
you.”

“
Urszula! You are worried
for that Urszula!”

“
And Mikal … and
Tigger.”

“
You are unbelievable!”
There was fire and confusion in her eyes. But I just wanted her
gone. It hurt my head and heart just being around her these
days.

“
I will stay with James,”
said Ubaldo. “You three can go.”

“
We will send you an escort
from the other side,” said Solomon, as he helped Olivier into his
saddle.

“
Remember. Go east of north
when you cross,” said Olivier. “That will keep you away from the
beachhead.”

“
Do not linger here too
long,” said Karla, her cheeks suddenly damp with tears. “Come home
soon.”

With a tremendous crash, a cliff-face
crashed into the sea a short ways down the coast. Karla kept her
eyes on me as she mounted her insect. Solomon squealed like he was
calling a hog and the bugs exploded off the beach and out into the
strait.

Chapter 67: The
Black

We watched the flies and their riders
grow smaller and smaller until they dipped below the arc of the way
too near horizon and vanished beneath the waves. I wondered if I
would ever see the other side of this strait again.

My head was a bit muddled on the topic
of my continued existence. Part of me wanted to cling to life with
every ounce of my strength. The other part wanted to just let go
like Gandalf clinging to the ledge in the mines of Moria, even
though I had no Hobbits to save from Balrogs.

It didn’t really matter to me what
came next. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about any of my future
prospects, at least none of the practical variety as in—likely to
happen. Sure, I’d love to be a rock star or a famous writer or a
billionaire inventor, but mere pipe dreams could no longer sustain
my taste for life.

But that was okay. I was calm and
accepting of whatever freight train full of fate was coming my way
in either realm. No use freaking out. What good would come of
that?

I mean, what was the worst that could
happen? That I might blink right out of all existence? Was that so
bad? At least that would get my head finally clear.

Vanishing into nothingness was
actually one of the more favorable options available, but also the
least likely to happen. There were worse places to end up than
nowhere-ville. But many better ones, too.

Back when I was suicidal, nothingness
was a big draw. But Root turned out to be way cooler than I
imagined. So was the Deeps, for that matter, though that might be
pushing it. But it was tolerable, unlike my life at
times.

Knowing that souls more often than not
keep on trucking regardless of what happens to their mortal shells
really changed my perspective on things. It quelled a lot of my
life and death. It lowered the stakes immensely, made risks less
risky.

Yeah. Sure. I would prefer to live.
Who wouldn’t? But if that simply was not going to be possible, then
no biggie. Odds were good I could manage to find a semi-comfortable
realm somewhere out there.

True, I might just as easily get stuck
in some shit hole place, difficult if not impossible to wriggle
free of. Like the Horus of the Deeps, that great trash compactor of
spirits. And then there were also those creepy, de-souled Cherubim
to think about and keep me from being completely at ease with the
universe.

On the other hand, the unbounded
freedom of the Singularity might be pretty sweet. Where souls
roamed like winged wild horses, impossible to rein.

Wild or not, let’s not put the cart
before the horse. I still lived. And life is life. Accept no
substitutes, if you can avoid it. Though, that last sentiment was
starting to ring hollow.

Cool wavelets lapped at my toes. The
tide was coming in, which was news to me. I didn’t even know that
this place had tides. It had a thing that looked like a moon but I
could never be sure that it was real.

I was probably due for a fade, so it
was time to take Olivier’s advice more seriously. I sat
cross-legged on the damp and gritty sand and practiced how I might
exert my will to track down and neutralize the poison in my body.
Why not give myself every option instead of slamming the door on
life?

So I sent my will probing down to my
fingertips and toenails. It was a clumsy and uninformative process,
like sticking a plumber’s snake around the bend of a dark drain
pipe. My perceptions of my inner workings remained distant and
vague. I’m not even sure I would be able to discern self from
non-self.

In the Liminality, bodies were
different in fundamental ways than the ones we possess on the other
side. Here, if I wanted, I could stop my heart and make my blood
flow backward. This place was not life, just an approximation, one
step removed from the real thing. The Liminality allowed biology
and physiology to break some of the usual rules without
repercussions. That’s why the Old Ones could enter the long sleep,
practically mummify and then pop up years later all spry and
nimble.

Probably, the key to licking this
poison would be to reach out and get the Singularity to help me. I
had difficulty imagining where this ricin would go in my body,
where it would disperse and how it would look at the cellular and
molecular level. My will needed a visual or conceptual target to
latch onto in order to exert any influence. That, only the
Singularity could provide.

The Pennies were starting to get a
little bolder. A pair of unusually sleek and jaunty flying
contraptions with swept back wings bounced in the turbulent air
along the fractured bluffs, but curtailed their approach before
they reached our stretch of beach.

“
I wish they would come,”
said Ubaldo. “Only two. You and me, we could kill them.
Easy.”

“
Um, yeah.”

Ubaldo’s wasp chittered and fanned its
wings, all fidgety and antsy to leave. He went over and rubbed the
plate between her eyes and mandibles.