“What the hells—?”
“Don’t shoot it again,” Praja Waluu cautioned. “It’s got some kind of refractive exoskeleton. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
We stood there staring at the beast, while for all I know it stared back at us. We could hear the clicking of hundreds of little claws on the stone floor, but it neither advanced nor retreated. The same could be said of us.
“Now what do we do?” Skull asked. He kept his gun pointed at the sluggeth like he expected it to charge any moment. None of us told him to put it down.
I had an idea. It sounded like something Keryl would come up with, so it was probably crazy. No, it was definitely crazy. But Keryl always seemed to make crazy work, so… I turned it over in my mind a couple of times. If it didn’t work, we could be in serious trouble, but I couldn’t see that we’d be in any more trouble than if we just gave up and walked away.
“If we could get it to come out to where the tunnel widens, do you think you and your men could get your lances underneath it?”
Praja Waluu looked around at the walls, then at his men’s armament, and took a few moments to make some mental measurements.
“It would be tough,” he said slowly. “That thing takes up a lot of room. But I don’t see that we have much choice.”
“What if you had help? If somebody could get you started?”
I had his attention now. “What are you trying to say?”
“That thing has eyes.” I pointed at the sluggeth. “That’s why it stopped, because it didn’t like our lights. If we back up, it’ll move forward. Once it’s out of the narrow part, somebody can slip in behind it and try to flip the back end. If we can do that, you should be able to get your lances underneath and turn the rest of it over.”
“And if we can’t, it’s going to turn on that person and eat him,” Skull whispered forcefully. “And how are you going to get behind that thing in the first place?”
I hadn’t expected them to jump for joy, but the more they talked about my idea, the worse it sounded.
“Somebody has to stand off to the side while we back up. He’ll have to press himself against the wall and hope the sluggeth doesn’t pay any attention to him.”
Skull responded with a wordless moan, and Praja Waluu made a gesture of disagreement.
“No. Alone in the dark with that thing? I can’t ask anyone to do that.”
“I’ll do it.”
We hadn’t even noticed that Sanja had made her way forward while we were talking.
“I’m used to hunting in the dark. Besides, I’m the smallest, so I can squeeze into the tightest space. And I can handle a lance or a ray pistol.”
“No,” Skull said, but Praja Waluu and I stayed quiet. We all knew, even Skull, that unless we came up with another plan, Sanja was the only one who could hide in that small area while the sluggeth went by, and our only other option was to give up entirely.
“Did you hear my idea?” I asked her. She repeated it back to me, and I nodded. I’d had a vague idea that I might be the one to volunteer—which would never have worked—but this made the plan sound even worse than before.
“Keep a light in its face,” she instructed, and handed off her torch. While we did our best to find its face, she stepped around until she was just off to its left, leaning into the wall as far as she could. She managed to find a couple of small outcroppings that she could put her feet on and that got her off of the floor, which I thought was a good thing.
Praja Waluu passed the word for his men to retreat slowly, and we did, keeping the lanterns in front of us. The lighted area retreated with us, and Sanja slowly dimmed until she was lost in the dark. It was all I could do not to charge forward again and grab her, sluggeth be damned.
The clicking started up again.
Inching back and holding our torches above our heads while straining our ears and our eyes for any movement from where we had left the sluggeth was a terrible strain. We had no clue how far we needed to go, whether the sluggeth would follow us just beyond the light or pause, or whether it would not follow us at all or simply turn on Sanja, helpless in the pitch blackness…in the space of maybe ten feet, I thought this was probably what it was like to go mad.
Chapter 30
Aiding the Enemy
It is often said that sleep is the best medicine, and I had to hope that this was one of those things that had not changed over the millennia while I held Maire that night and waited for my exhausted darling to find rest. For me, even after she relaxed at last and dozed off, sleep was impossible, for the weight of the world sat squarely upon my shoulders.
Zachary Kyle had warned us that the universe as we knew it could suffer irreparable damage within six months if the man who was straining the timeline was not stopped and somehow persuaded or compelled to remedy his destruction. Rather than devote the enormous resources the Nuum might bring to bear on the problem that threatened all of us, I had been forced to deal with petty bureaucracies, murderous tyrants, and now that I was literally face-to-face with the man responsible for the crisis, I was trapped in his warped mind-games and twisted bid for power.
Far from the least of my problems was the realization that I had no qualms about killing Farren. As Tofan Res put it, although my act could be characterized as an assassination, he did not expect—or want—me to play the role of Brutus to his Cassius; this would be a declared duel that he fully expected me to win. I had tried to kill Farren before, and very likely would have had he not fled. That was not what burdened my mind; given Farren’s crimes, my conscience would survive his execution. And yet, killing on the field of battle or in the heat of a revolutionary coup was different from killing on command.
I suppose that, as an officer in the British forces in France, I could have been called upon to levy summary punishment on an enlisted man for cowardice in the face of the enemy; it was not an unknown occurrence. And I would have done it, even as my soul quailed at the thought, because other souls would have depended on it. An army divided is an army destroyed, and all of us must needs go over the top together or none ever would.
Still, what Tofan Res proposed was not the same, even if I could not in my sleep-deprived mind pin down the details that made it so. I knew the circumstances were quantitatively unalike, and yet—and yet—I also knew I was prepared to take on the task.
Except, of course, that I had no reason to believe that Tofan Res was telling the truth about any of it. He said he had a method for smuggling Maire and me out afterward and that he could deposit us in another era entirely where we could live the rest of our lives in peace. Assuming such a time existed, would he carry out his promise? He had also said he had been looking for me “everywhen.” What did he mean? Had he been hunting me through time? Why? Surely there was someone else who could remove Farren and allow Tofan Res to assume control of his army. What made me so special?
So many unanswered questions, and I knew he was lying about some of it. Ironically, I did not believe he was lying about all of it. That would have made things too easy, and I could simply have resorted to the prisoner’s first duty: to escape. But I already knew that was impossible. No prison walls had ever loomed so high or bulked so thick as the walls of Time itself, walls that at once hemmed me in and yet gave me the best chance I had to save the Earth.
No matter how long I spent here in the past, I could return to 300 years hence at any point after I had left it. I was as sure of this as I could be, since I had spent twenty years in the 20th century after I lost Maire, but when I returned only nineteen years had passed for her. There was no 1-to-1 correlation between time periods, and I hoped that meant there was no necessary correlation at all. This was when I missed the Librarian…!
But at some point—presumably when I agreed to help him—Tofan Res was going to send me back to “my” time, and I had no idea when he was planning to do so or when he planned to drop me. Even if I killed Farren and escaped, if it happened one day before the universe fractured, all
of my friends would die—along with a sizeable portion of the known galaxy.
Deep in the night, when dreams and waking thoughts traded places like twin boys fooling their teachers, I stumbled upon the answer: I had to steal Tofan Res’s time technology. And there was only one person who could help me do it.
Enlisting that one’s aid, though, would require me to turn my back on everything and everyone I had ever held dear.
In the morning, I met with Tofan Res to tell him exactly how I was going to help him to destroy the Nuum and conquer the Earth.
Chapter 31
A Tumultuous Meeting
I dreaded my rendezvous with Dr. Res with every fiber of my being, not because of what I was about to say, not because of what he might say, but because I was so ashamed of my actions that I had left Maire in our room and snuck out without waking her. When I returned, I would be questioned, and without a doubt the full fury of the fires of Hell would be unleashed upon my head. Nevertheless, my course was set. I must steer it no matter how high the storm, and unlike Ulysses, I could not plug my ears against the siren shrieks.
So preoccupied with my coming doom was I that, of all the myriad paths I had imagined this conversation with our host could follow, I utterly failed to conceive of the route that opened itself before me when I outlined for him my plan. He listened intently, picking over his breakfast, and with a thoughtful nod, he said:
“Thank you, Keryl. That is a great deal more than I expected from you. But no, thank you.”
Even at this early hour, Vanu’A was with him. I wondered if she ever left him. She stood nearby, looking amused. She must have practiced that look; it gave the impression that she was reading your mind. I knew she couldn’t, and it still unsettled me.
“I don’t understand,” I said to Tofan Res. “I am a soldier by training. I lead men into battle. Your men may be good, they may be trained, but they have not been in battle, and I doubt you have, either.”
He twisted his lips, nodding slowly. I took that as encouragement.
“I can teach them things, things they need to know if they are going to fight the Nuum. Where I come from, we turned men into soldiers in three months; we have three years. With my help, you could literally change history.”
He plunged a two-tined fork into a piece of charred meat, looked at it for a moment, and put it into his mouth, where he appeared to swallow it without chewing.
“I appreciate your offer, Keryl, I really do. But my plans are already set. And I have Farren to lead my army.”
“Farren is a fool, and I know for a fact he is no soldier.”
“Nonetheless, he is going to lead my army. He knows the Nuum, knows their weaknesses, their strengths. And he has a warship.” He smiled. “I believe you’ve been on it.”
“But he has no loyalty! No compassion! I have seen his kind! They throw a thousand men into a hailstorm of bullets hoping that one of them will reach the other side of the line! The machine guns will cut them down before they get ten yards!”
My desperation was beginning to overcome my sense, but I knew where it was coming from. For a moment I was back in France, back in no-mans-land, back where Hell was rat-haunted trenches and slogging through the dead until the order came to go over the top and you were lucky enough to join them. Vanu’A could not read my mind, but she had enough perception to see my confusion, and she leaned over to whisper in Tofan Res’s ear.
“He has no idea what it means to be out there,” I finished weakly. “I can tell them. I can train them…”
Tofan Res reached out to place a hand on my arm. “Your concern is admirable, but you don’t have to worry. Farren only has to lead my army to where they need to go; he doesn’t have to train them. They’re already trained. Trained every bit as well as you.”
And yet my inability to persuade Tofan Res to my plan was not the worst blow I was to suffer that day. I returned to my room with a leaden heart, for now not only did I have to confess to my wife what I had done without her knowledge, I would have to admit that I had failed at it, as well.
I had rather face that task a hundred times than confront even once more the tableau which presented itself upon my arrival.
Maire still lay abed, the lights brightening as I entered just enough that I could see her. Still, she pulled the covers over her head. I sat on the bed next to her.
“I never thought you were the type to sleep in.”
If I live two hundred years, I hope that I shall never again utter a sentence so ill-fitted to the occasion.
Maire did not stir.
“Sweetheart?” I nudged her gently. “Are you feeling all right?” Looking back on it now as I write those words, I cringe.
“Leave me alone.” Even though they came mainly from her mind and not her face buried under the blankets, her words still managed to sound muffled and distant. Worse, I caught a glimpse of a blackness behind them, a despair like a well so deep that light could never touch the bottom.
“Maire! What is wrong? Talk to me!”
She thrashed around, spinning bedclothes all about until she was sitting up facing me. Her eyes with red-rimmed and swollen as if she had been crying for some time—as if she had been crying all the time I was gone.
“I know what you did.”
My eyes shot wide open. “How could you—? You can—?”
She slammed her hands down on the bed. “No! Of course I can’t read your mind! I’m your wife, damn it! I love you! And one of the things I love about you is that you can’t stand to see anybody get hurt—not when you could stop it.” She stopped to dab at her eyes, poking at them with a blanket so hard I thought she would hurt herself. “Those men we saw—they weren’t soldiers. I’ve seen soldiers, and those weren’t them. Those were men with guns. When my people get here they’re going to mow them down like grass.
“But then along comes Keryl Clee and he’s going to do something about it! Oh, yes! Because he fought in some war a million years ago when they were still using…projectile weapons, and—and probably their bare hands… And he can train them! He can make soldiers out of them so that when the Nuum come, they can fight and maybe they can win and maybe the Nuum won’t take over and maybe I’ll never be born!”
“Maire, stop! You’re screaming. They can hear you—!”
“I don’t care if they hear me! I don’t care if they hear me on the home planet! You’re going to help the Thorans fight my people and you’re going to try to change history—because that’s what you do! You’re Keryl Clee! You free the Thorans! You free the breen! It’s what you do!”
I closed my eyes and prayed for strength. I prayed that I was back on the battlefield. I prayed that I was anywhere but here.
“Maire, I love you. I—”
“Of course you love me, Keryl,” she said in a calmer tone. “That’s the problem.” She threw her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear. “I love you too. And that’s why I can’t be angry about you. Because you’re right.”
I pulled away, puzzled. “I am?”
“Yes.” She bit her lip. “What my people did—what they’re going to do—was horrible. We had no right. If you think you can stop it, you have to try.” She sank back down on the bed, pulling up the covers. “But please don’t ask me to help you. Please don’t ask me to do anything. Not right now.”
I took my leave, kissing her gently on the forehead, waiting until the chamber door was closed behind me before I sagged against the wall. Tofan Res thought I was willing to betray my wife to help my own kind, and Maire, paralyzed by guilt and depression, was convinced that I was an idealistic crusader with a messianic complex.
I allowed myself a long, ragged sigh of relief. My plan was going far better than I had dared to hope.
Chapter 32
The Cave of Light and Darkness
Had Sanja made the slightest sound while we stood there staring into the pitch blackness outside of what now seemed to be the feeble glare of our lanterns, I swear I would have run righ
t back into it, sluggeths and cave spiders be damned. But by even admitting that, I’m insulting her. Sanja was the daughter of people who had made a life in conditions I couldn’t dream of. She’d saved Keryl’s life even though it meant defying her king and running away from home with a Nuum price on her head. She hunted sandclaws, and things that made tiger spiders look like house pets. Sanja wouldn’t make a sound if she was being eaten alive.
Which is exactly what I was afraid of.
It’s ironic that the one sound we could hear, the incessant clicking of the sluggeth’s needle feet, a certain sign that we were being hunted by a nine-foot-long armored nightmare, was the most reassuring thing I could imagine. As long as it was walking toward us, it wasn’t attacking Sanja. And if it came a little bit closer, we’d have it trapped.
If you can call one girl cutting off its retreat by taking up a position in a tunnel too narrow to move in and too stuffed with deadly predators to run away through, “trapped.”
And then a supernova erupted at the far end of the tunnel as Sanja opened her lantern wide and called out, “It’s past me!”
We opened all of the lanterns we were holding at the front of our line and shone them ahead of us. The sluggeth stopped right at the edge of where our lights had been—a lot closer to us than we’d thought. I wasn’t the only one who jumped.
Two of Praja Waluu’s lancers were already working their way past us, professionals who knew their jobs. They both stood on the right side, setting their lances into position carefully so as not to stab someone else in the cramped space. I could see Sanja just beyond the sluggeth, standing on the same side of it but at its far end, her own lance poised. Praja Waluu opened his mouth to give the order.
“Wait!” Sanja hissed. She set aside the lance.
“What are you doing?” Praja Waluu demanded. I thought I heard the tiniest hint of panic in his voice.
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