The Devil's Triangle (33 page)

‘Easy on the ribs, Mum!’ he squeaked. ‘I’ve picked up a lot of bruises today.’

‘Sorry!’ she apologised, easing off the pressure. She had tears in her eyes as she spoke again. ‘It’s just so good to see you. Once I realised what had happened, I never thought I’d see you again. But how did you get here? Where are Matt and Niamh?’

Sam felt his face redden as he answered.

‘Me and Callum here sort of borrowed Dad’s boat to go fishing

‘What do you mean, “sort of borrowed”?’ she interrupted, holding him at arm’s-length and raising an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me your father has let you turn into a thief?’

‘No, Mum! Don’t think that. Dad’s been great. It’s just . . . well, he kept disappearing off and leaving us on our own while he looked for . . . He’s never given up on finding you, Mum. I was bored, so I thought I’d take Callum out fishing. We were only going to be out for a couple of hours and I planned to get us back long before Dad got home. There was a strange-looking patch of water and . . .’

‘. . . you crossed over to this place,’ Claire finished. ‘Poor Matt! First me and now you as well! He must be beside himself with worry. The damned Imperium have a hell of a lot to answer for.’

Sam thought about that for a moment. From what little he knew, her accusation didn’t make any sense. Claire saw his confusion and laughed. She drew him into another hug. He didn’t mind at all. Hugs had never felt so good.

‘To be fair, Sam, it’s not really the fault of the current crowd,’ she admitted. ‘But they’re as bad as the original culprits for closing their minds to what is happening. The Bermuda Triangle phenomenon is the fault of the raptors and it’s not limited to that region. The effects of what they’ve done are most concentrated there and in the waters off the Japanese coast that some have dubbed the Devil’s Sea, but there’ve been incidents right across the globe. And it’s getting worse.’

‘Sorry to butt in, Mrs Cutler,’ Callum interrupted. ‘Before he was killed, our friend Brad told us about the raptors pumping radioactive waste into the Earth’s core causing the crossings, but he said it was just a rumoured theory.’

‘Mum, this is my friend Callum Barnes,’ Sam offered by way of introduction as he eased free of her embrace.

‘Nice to meet you, Callum,’ Claire replied, giving him a warm smile. ‘I’m not sure what your friend told you, but we believe we’ve got enough evidence now to prove to any who are willing to listen to the facts that the magnetic storms are to blame for the rifts forming between dimensions. As far as we can tell, at the heart of the most intense storms magnetic disturbances form that are so strong, they literally slice through the fabric between universes.’

‘So do the rifts work both ways?’ Callum asked eagerly. ‘Do you think we could get back to our world through one of them?’

‘We don’t know for sure,’ Claire said carefully. ‘People have tried, but to our knowledge no one has successfully managed to penetrate safely to the eye of a storm at the peak of its strength. That’s when the rifts form. As far as we can tell, the rifts are normally short-lived. To make a successful crossing would mean getting to the eye of a seriously powerful storm, locating the rift and crossing through it during a relatively tiny window of opportunity. Don’t think I haven’t considered trying. I would have given anything to get back home to you, your sister and your dad, Sam. Believe me, I would. But the storms are so unpredictable and to try in any of the boats we’ve built here would be suicide.’

Sam looked at his friend. Callum looked thoughtful, but Sam could see that he had not been put off the idea by his mother’s explanation. Callum was still in information-gathering mode.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is our current headquarters. We should be safe here, so we might as well get comfortable as I try to answer some of your questions. It might take a while. There’s a place to sit through here.’

She led the boys away from the trapdoor, which had now been sealed again. The raptors and men had dispersed through three different doors. Claire walked into a room that had been furnished for human comfort. There were several seats of varying size and design, a large central table and several smaller ones. A large bookcase on one wall was full to overflowing with a mixture of hardback and paperback books in several languages. Some of the books appeared leather-bound and very old. Others were very recent. Pictures adorned the walls, two of which looked to be from Earth, but most appeared to have been painted locally.

The boys sat together on a bench-like seat covered with cushioned material that was surprisingly soft.

‘Would you like a drink, boys?’ Claire asked, opening a cabinet to reveal shelves of cups and bottles. She picked up an earthenware flagon. ‘This is a local cordial that’s tasty.’

‘Yes, please,’ they answered together.

‘Here you go then,’ she said, pouring two cups and passing them across. She sat down next to Sam. ‘Now where to begin? Tell me everything you can about the last nine years, Sam. Which school are you in? How’re Matt and Niamh?’

Sam did his best. He had never been a particularly good storyteller, but prompted by frequent questions, he spoke for quite a long time before he was finally allowed to ask some questions of his own.

‘What about you, Mum?’ he asked. ‘I think Dad might have a fit if he saw you carrying all those guns. What happened after you crossed into this place?’

‘Well, you’ve crossed, so you know what that bit was like,’ she said. ‘The storm we emerged into was terrible. My work colleague, Jane, didn’t make it to shore. She was swept overboard by a wave, but I couldn’t even say when it happened. At the time, I was so focused on keeping the boat afloat that I didn’t notice her go. I felt terrible when I realised that she wasn’t onboard any more, but I didn’t dare turn the boat round and look for her. Starting my life here with her death on my conscience wasn’t a great way to begin.’

Sam placed a hand on her arm and she squeezed it gratefully.

‘When I finally beached the boat, I found myself in the Reserve. A couple took me in and looked after me until the storm passed. They told me enough to prepare me for my first encounter with the local raptors. Initially, I was frantic with worry about you all. I was desperate to try to get back, but by the time I got back out to my boat, the raptors had stripped it so thoroughly that it was no longer seaworthy. I had no way of going out, which with hindsight was probably a good thing. I tried to convince some of the other humans in the Reserve to help me build a boat, but they all said the same thing – it was hopeless. There was no way back. When the raptors realised I was a scientist, they were very keen to get me here to the City of the Imperium to work alongside their people looking for solutions to the problems they’re facing with their ecology. To begin with, I was naïve. I thought they wanted real answers and I worked hard to find them. Turns out what they really wanted was to find a way to blame us humans for what was happening.’

‘Figures,’ Callum said, nodding.

Claire perched on the edge of a nearby chair and thought for a moment. ‘You can’t have failed to notice by now that the raptor civilisation is highly technologically advanced. In many areas, their scientific knowledge and engineering skills are significantly ahead of our own. From what I’ve learned, raptor scientists first developed nuclear power about eight centuries ago, but they made many mistakes and suffered several catastrophic disasters.’

‘Brad didn’t mention nuclear disasters. That’s not good,’ Callum noted.

‘Sure isn’t!’ Claire agreed. ‘But they were unwilling to give up such a powerful source of energy and so they persisted. Eventually, they not only overcame the more obvious problems, but they expanded their use of nuclear energy until it was in everyday use throughout raptor society. There was a price though.’

‘Nuclear waste,’ Sam said.

‘Precisely! They’ve generated vast quantities of it over the years. To begin with, they dumped it in the deepest parts of their oceans, but soon they began to notice strange mutated creatures appearing. Some proved incredibly dangerous and so the raptor scientists, terrified that mutations might somehow begin to spread through their own population, began to look for alternative solutions. So, as your friend told you, they started to pump the waste into the Earth’s core. The idea was to reduce the raptor dependence on nuclear energy, safely dispose of the nuclear waste and develop a clean, new energy source – the Earth’s natural magnetic field – all in one fell swoop.’

‘That’s how they have such advanced technology like the train we travelled on to get here?’ Callum asked, frowning.

Claire Cutler nodded. ‘Spot on. Clever lad, isn’t he?’ she noted, giving Sam an approving smile.

Sam nodded. ‘But the scientists couldn’t have achieved that overnight.’

‘No. It took centuries. That’s part of the problem. The raptors have invested so much time and energy into creating this supposedly clean energy system, that they’ve closed their eyes to the ongoing and increasing catastrophe that makes our global warming problem back home look like a storm in a teacup.’

‘Wasn’t it dangerous, pumping the nuclear waste into the magma?’ he asked.

‘As it turned out, yes,’ Claire answered. ‘But not as directly dangerous as you might imagine. The one scientist’s plan to despose of the waste worked exactly as he had anticipated. Unfortunately, what he hadn’t predicted were some of the nasty side-effects. He had expected increased vulcanism. That was an obvious one really. Heat the magma, it expands and the pressure has to go somewhere.’

‘And volcanoes began erupting all over the world. Brad mentioned that too,’ Callum replied, shaking his head. ‘I’m guessing that was easy enough to dismiss as a natural phenomenon.’

‘Right again,’ Claire said, giving him an approving smile. ‘That’s exactly what the Imperium did, but it wasn’t the worst of it by far. What the raptor scientists failed to anticipate was that the increased magnetic field of the Earth is accelerating the mutation process among their population just as surely as dumping nuclear waste into the ocean or trying to bury it in remote sites, maybe even more so. Oh, it’s not as dramatic or as quick, but it’s happening. And worse, it’s happening right across the globe, not just in localised areas.’

‘So how are the raptors combating it?’ Callum asked. ‘Surely they know what’s happening.’

‘Yes, they know,’ Claire confirmed. ‘They’ve known for centuries. That’s why the bulk of raptor society lives in these especially designed geodesic structures. Another of their scientists worked out that within a structure like this the inhabitants are protected from the effects of the increased magnetic field. It acts like a sort of protective cage, channelling the magnetic effects through the structure.’

‘But not all of the raptors live under the domes?’

‘Correct.’

‘And the storms?’ Sam asked.

‘Are the other major side-effect,’ Claire confirmed. ‘The raptors’ historical records show that the level of storm activity around the globe has been steadily increasing ever since they started pumping the waste into the core. In turn, the number of rifts forming between dimensions is increasing too. The Imperium has chosen to blame the storms on the unfortunate humans who have crossed here because they are stubbornly refusing to lose the benefits of the blend of nuclear and magnetic energy. They keep the general population in the dark about what is actually happening, but they know.’

Callum and Sam looked at one another for a moment, but neither said anything for some time. It was an amazing situation.

‘At least in our world people are doing something to combat global warming,’ Callum said eventually. ‘All right, it might not be much and it almost certainly isn’t enough, but they are doing something.’

‘It all comes down to political will,’ Claire said firmly. ‘When I delivered the findings of my joint study with the raptor scientists, the Imperium decided to ignore them because the truth was too bitter a pill to swallow. I quickly discovered that my work was being swept under the carpet and I questioned why nothing was being done. This turned out to be less than wise.’

‘What happened?’ Sam asked.

‘A series of attempts on my life followed,’ she replied, her blue eyes narrowing with cold anger as she momentarily relived the experiences. ‘But I was lucky. Two of my fellow researchers were raptors who had recognised the truth in my findings. They protected me and risked their lives to help me escape. We three became the founder members of AIM – the Anti-Imperium Mob – and we’ve been fighting the Imperium and its agents ever since.’

‘Nice . . . I think.’ Sam looked at his mother’s face. She was clearly passionate about what she was doing. ‘So were those raptors who chased us here Imperium agents?’

‘Maybe, but not necessarily,’ Claire answered, frowning. ‘Raptor politics are perhaps more complex than those back home. Take that scarred raptor who led the chase. He’s an officer in a sort of secret police force allied to one of the many Imperium subfactions. I’ve run into him a few times before.’

‘We think he killed our friend Brad,’ Callum said.

She nodded. ‘That wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ she said. ‘There is always a good number of his organisation monitoring the Reserve and quietly killing off humans whenever possible. He and his group seem to have an irrational hatred of us and of raptors who are sympathetic to our welfare.’

‘So what exactly are you doing?’ asked Sam. ‘Assassinating Imperium members and their agents? That’s pretty radical.’

‘No! We try to minimise the use of violence,’ Claire said quickly. ‘The problem is that whatever peaceful protests we make are met with violence. It’s the raptor way. As they’re so fast and strong, we humans stand little chance of survival without the advantage of advanced weapon technology. Guns are the obvious solution to protect ourselves when we have to. Raptors don’t use them, but they’ve come to recognise their potency. What we try to do is to get messages broadcast on the public networks, interfering with the Imperium channels at peak times. Or we sabotage pumping stations and magnetic conversion units, forcing them to shut down.’