The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) (30 page)

The
Aurelius
and the Wanderer floated beside each other in interplanetary space. In comparison to the vast alien device, the faerie vessel was as a grain of rice compared to an orange. Oberon tried to communicate with it, but to no avail; it either could not or would not answer. At the helm, Oberon, Blackwood, Sophia and Castaigne looked at the region of space where the King in Yellow had last been.

‘Can you tell if the thing is still there, Sophia?’ asked Blackwood.

‘It is,’ she replied. ‘It knows it cannot defeat its nemesis, and yet it is reluctant to leave the Solar System: it doesn’t want to wait for the thousands of years it would take to travel through normal space to the next planet on its menu.’ There was a tone of bitter disgust in her voice as she said this.

Then we are at an impasse
, said Oberon.
I confess I am uncertain how to proceed
.

‘I am not,’ Sophia said.

Before anyone realised what she was doing, before they could make any move to stop her, she strode past Oberon to the edge of the aftcastle, crouched down and then launched herself into space – directly towards the colossal, winged entity beside which the Aurelius floated.

‘
Sophia!
’ Blackwood cried. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

As her figure tumbled off into the distance, her voice crackled in his and Castaigne’s helmets. ‘This creature has been tracking the King in Yellow among the stars for thousands of years, like a bloodhound on the trail of its quarry… but the trail has suddenly gone cold. It knows its enemy is still nearby, but it cannot sense the precise location.’

As she said this, Blackwood began to understand what she was about to do. ‘Oberon,’ he said. ‘Get her back. Get her back now!’

The Faerie King looked at him with an expression of immense sadness, and slowly shook his head.

‘Do you realise what she’s doing?’ he cried.

Yes, Thomas, I realise. This is our last chance to rid ourselves and the universe of the King in Yellow. We must let her go
.

‘No,’ Blackwood said. ‘For God’s sake, no!’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Castaigne. ‘Why is she doing this?’

‘It’s quite simple, Dr Castaigne,’ Sophia said, the electrical crackle of her voice increasing as she drifted closer to the Wanderer. ‘The entity needs a fresh scent to pick up, and the King in Yellow is still partly inside me. If we make contact, perhaps – just perhaps – the entity will be able to follow the scent to its source…’

Sophia had now diminished to a barely discernible dot against the spherical bulk of the Wanderer, a tiny mote drifting towards something colossal, implacable, silent, incomprehensible.

The others heard her breathing grow more and more rapid as she drifted into the angle between two of the gigantic, flesh-coloured discs of which the Wanderer’s body was composed.

Blackwood made to run to the edge of the aftcastle and launch himself into space after Sophia, but instantly, Oberon’s powerful hands were upon his shoulders, preventing him from moving.

You cannot bring her back, Thomas. Your environmental suit does not possess the necessary equipment to navigate through the void of space.

‘I cannot, and you
will
not,’ Blackwood replied. ‘She’s going to die out there, and I can’t let her face it alone. I have to be with her, Oberon, can’t you understand?’

I understand perfectly. And
you
must understand that if she dies, it will be for a greater good, but if you give up your life simply to be with her at the end, you will have squandered it to no true purpose. It would be a futile gesture, Thomas: gallant, but utterly useless
.

‘He’s right, Thomas,’ said Sophia’s voice in his helmet. It was now almost completely drowned out by the crackle of static. ‘You are a Special Investigator for Her Majesty. Your destiny is to continue with your task of defending the Empire and the world. My destiny is slightly different.’

‘No, Sophia,’ he whispered. ‘No…’

‘Thomas,’ she said, her voice barely audible now. ‘I want you… to… know… I… you… very much…’

‘What did you say? Sophia! I didn’t hear all of that. Please say it again!’

But now Blackwood could hear nothing but the crackle of static in his helmet.

‘She’s gone,’ said Castaigne. ‘Poor girl. Poor, brave girl!’

At that moment, a flicker of light reached their eyes: a thin frond of pale blue arcing between the two discs between which Sophia’s trajectory had carried her.

So great was Blackwood’s grief that he barely noticed how the flicker spread across the surface of the Wanderer’s body, until the strange entity was completely enveloped within a glittering filigree of blue light. He closed his eyes, sank to his knees and buried his helmeted head in his gloved hands.

It was Castaigne’s excited cry that brought him up and forced him to regard what was now happening. A vast fork of blue lightning flashed silently out from the colossal sphere of the Wanderer’s body. The fork extended into the far distance before splitting into claw-like branches…

No, Blackwood thought suddenly, they didn’t look like claws… they looked more like the bars of a spherical cage…

Like a tendril composed of fizzling electrical light, the blue lightning fork appeared to contract, pulling the cage towards the Wanderer, and as it did so a scream of rage, pain and terror filled the awareness of all aboard the
Aurelius
.

That scream sounded very familiar to Blackwood: it was the same scream they had heard when the Anti-Prism had been destroyed on Carcosa.

It was the scream of the King in Yellow.

Like some mysterious, outlandish predator of the deep oceans, the Wanderer continued to reel in its lightning-tendril and the glowing cage to which it was attached. As the cage drew nearer, those on the
Aurelius
saw that it contained a wildly-thrashing mass of ragged, tattered yellow.

The beast’s shield has been destroyed
, observed Oberon.
It is defenceless, now
.

‘What will happen when our friend reels in his catch?’ wondered Castaigne.

I have no idea
, Oberon replied.
But perhaps it would serve us well not to be too close to it when it does.

As if in response to this exchange, another fork of energy flashed out from the Wanderer towards the
Aurelius
. As it contacted the ship, the deck heaved beneath them, nearly throwing them off their feet.

Fascinating
, said Oberon.
The entity clearly has intelligence and compassion: it’s pushing us away!

The
Aurelius
picked up speed as the lightning fork continued to press against its hull. Soon, the Wanderer had dwindled to the size of the full moon as seen from Earth, and the lightning fork withdrew.

The cage containing the King in Yellow was no longer discernible in the distance, and the filament of crackling blue energy connecting it to the Wanderer appeared as thin as a fishing line.

Oberon, Blackwood and Castaigne watched as it was finally drawn into the vast spherical body of the Wanderer, whereupon the entity’s gigantic wings detached from its main body and floated away into the infinite void.

‘What is it doing?’ asked Blackwood, his voice flat and toneless. In spite of the terrible weight in his heart – for he believed Sophia to be already dead – his natural curiosity would not be denied; still his fascination with the gigantic alien entity pulsed like an ersatz heartbeat in his mind.

It is as I suspected, Thomas
, replied Oberon.
It has shed its mode of propulsion because it no longer needs it: the aeon-long search is over; the very purpose of its existence is about to be fulfilled, its mission completed. I am very glad it saw fit to push us away
.

‘What do you…’ Blackwood began, but the words stalled in his throat as the wingless sphere suddenly contracted like a deflating balloon, and then detonated with the force of an exploding sun.

The conflagration was all but soundless in the rarefied atmosphere of the Luminiferous Æther, but the sight of it filled their awareness, blasting away all other thought save the emotions of awe and terror. It was like no explosion Blackwood had ever seen or even conceived of: a rapidly expanding sphere of mottled blue light and seething energy which hurled itself into space, momentarily obliterating the lambency of the distant stars and filling the observable universe with its power and fury.

As the shockwave from it struck the
Aurelius
, the faerie vessel lurched and spun crazily through the void, so that the stars swam and the orb of the Earth whirled about like a soap bubble in a sudden gale, and it was all Oberon could do to regain control and return the ship once again to an even keel.

When they had recovered themselves and looked once again in the direction of the explosion, they saw that it was already dissipating, the bright, livid blue fading into pale strands of diminishing light which drifted off into the interplanetary night.

It is gone
, said Oberon.
And with it, the King in Yellow
.

And with them, Sophia
, thought Blackwood.

The Faerie King caught these inner words and turned to the Special Investigator.
She will be remembered forever in the Realm of Faerie. Songs and poems will be composed in her honour
.

Thank you
, Blackwood said without words.

Suddenly, Castaigne seized his shoulder and pointed into the void. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

The others followed the line of his outstretched arm, peering out at the distant stars. Far away, something glinted: a tiny, moving pinpoint of light.

‘I don’t know,’ said Blackwood. ‘Oberon, do you have a telescope?’

I’m afraid not: we have no need of them. But my eyesight is far keener than yours, and I can see what it is…

‘What is it?’

It is… Sophia!

Presently, they saw that the slowly-tumbling form was encased in a sphere of glowing blue energy which, even as the
Aurelius
was brought about to intercept it, quickly faded away to nothing.

Oberon reached out from the edge of the main deck, grasped the suited figure and pulled it aboard, laying it gently upon the deck.

‘Good God!’ said Castaigne. ‘You were right to say the entity was compassionate, Your Majesty. It must have thrown a shield around her, protecting her from the explosion.’

His mind in turmoil at this sudden turn of events, Blackwood looked over the suit, checking the gauges on the chest-mounted control unit. He could not yet bring himself to hope that Sophia might still be alive, for she had been at the very centre of that colossal detonation, and there was no guarantee that the shield had been effective.

The glass on the gauges was cracked, the needles twisted out of position, so that they were completely useless as indicators of the suit’s integrity or its occupant’s physical condition. He checked the helmet and saw that it was intact. Beneath it, Sophia’s face was completely still, her eyes closed. He checked the rest of the suit for ruptures which would have allowed the life-preserving oxygen to leak away into space, but there was none.

Then another thought occurred to him, and he turned to Oberon. ‘We must get her out of the suit this instant: the oxygen supply may have been interrupted. Can you raise the shield around the
Aurelius
, as you did before?’

‘But what good will that do?’ cried Castaigne. ‘Even with the shield in place, we are still in vacuum!’

‘Damn!’ Blackwood swore. ‘I didn’t consider that.’

Do not be concerned
, said the Faerie King.
I have already put the shield in place, and am filling it with oxygen from the ship’s stores
.

Blackwood and Castaigne felt themselves buffeted by the sudden presence of air where there had been none before.

Blackwood undid the clasps around the suit’s neck-ring and lifted the helmet away. ‘Sophia,’ he said. ‘Sophia, can you hear me?’

There was no response, and Blackwood gently brushed away the hair that had fallen about her face. ‘Sophia… please wake up…’

And then Blackwood heaved a great sigh of relief, and a single tear slid down his cheek, as Sophia’s eyelids flickered.