by Joe Mahoney
“Don’t worry about that. You’re not the only one who can use the gate.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think we can count on Iugurtha to help us out.”
“Not the entity. Schmitz.”
“Schmitz? What does he—” I’d almost said that idiot “—have to do with anything?”
“He can operate the gate too, when he’s not on his meds. He’ll be off his meds by now if he’s still here.”
I thought I’d been the only one able to operate the gate, aside from Iugurtha. That Iugurtha had chosen me for a reason. That there was something special about me. To learn that I shared the ability with someone else (let alone Schmitz of all people) was something of a blow.
Worse, I realized that it was Schmitz’ breath I’d been thinking of. The thought of my breath smelling like his was intolerable. “What do you mean Schmitz can work the gate?”
“The entity gave him the ability before you. Once it used him up, it moved onto you.”
Suddenly there seemed to be a whole lot less air in the tunnel. “What do you mean ‘used him up’?”
“You can only use the gate for so long before it begins to exact a physical toll. It looks to me like you’ve reached your limit.”
“You’re telling me the gate’s making me sick?”
“We’ve been through this already with Schmitz. He developed even more symptoms than you. One of our scientists managed to synthesize a medication that eliminates most of them. You’ll be fine as long as you start taking the medication. And stop using the gate.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’ll get sicker. Eventually you’ll die. But we won’t let that happen.” She held the pill out again, pinched between her thumb and index finger.
I was sorely tempted to swat it out of her hand. “You knew the gate would make me sick.”
“We didn’t put it in your head.”
“You encouraged me to use it! I don’t remember you offering me any pills then.”
“You would have refused them. You would have insisted on using the gate whether it made you sick or not. To go after your nephew. You know you would.”
She was wrong. I hoped that I was that kind of man, but I didn’t know it. “How do I know this pill is what you say it is?”
“You don’t trust me?”
An uncomfortable silence ensued during which I updated my feelings toward this woman who only moments before had tried to fell me with a tranquillizer dart and who had once slipped a drug into my cola. The artfully placed freckles atop her nose—did I still find them appealing? Check. The hourglass figure barely contained within her snug-fitting uniform—did it still make my heart race? Check. Her devotion to defending the Earth—did it still inspire respect? Check, though the extent of her zeal concerned me somewhat. Did a part of me still hope that one day she might elevate Barnabus J. Wildebear to a cause worthy of such devotion? Check. Did I trust her, even a tiny little bit?
Nope.
Sarah sighed. “Of course you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But Barnabus, this pill is what I say it is, and you need to take it if you want to get better.”
“All right.” I deposited the pill in my pocket. “Just—not right now.”
I couldn’t take the pill, regardless of whether she was telling the truth or not. If she was lying, I couldn’t risk incapacitating myself. If she was telling the truth, I couldn’t risk compromising my only exit strategy. Schmitz might well be capable of working the gate now, but I had no idea where he was, or whether he was even still alive. Even if he did show up and somehow manage to wrest the gate from Iugurtha I highly doubted that he would make it a priority to take me, Ridley, or anyone else with him.
Obviously not pleased, Sarah pursed her lips but kept her opinion to herself.
“Why can’t we just use the gate to get where we’re going?” I asked Iugurtha when we caught up to her.
“It’s not far,” Iugurtha said. “I do not use the gate indiscriminately. It takes a toll, as you now know. Also, it draws too much power. There is only so much power in the universe.”
“Really? How much is too much?”
“The energy required for certain applications would be enough to power this star ship indefinitely.”
That didn’t tell me much. I had no idea how much power a star ship required—it could be as much as a city or as little as a toaster. “Where does it get all this power from? Some kind of internal power supply? Like a battery?”
“From the nearest energy source of sufficient power.”
Interesting. Aside from the star ship itself I wasn’t aware of any technology on C’Mell to speak of, unless the Necronians had built something. “You mean like a nuclear power plant, or a hydroelectric dam?”
“I mean like a sun.”
“Huh.” Iugurtha was right to be frugal. It wouldn’t do to burn out any suns, especially one upon which life depended. I resolved not to use the gate any more than absolutely necessary. Hopefully I would only require it once more, to get Ridley safely back home to his father. Surely that wouldn’t take too much of a physical toll, or make a dent in any suns.
We walked until the walls of the tunnel conspired to meet, creating a seamless wall before us. Iugurtha’s eyes turned crimson. She waved a hand. The wall fell away to reveal a lavender landscape lit by a sky of luminous rock. I recognized the gigantic cavern in which I had last seen Ridley.
We strode out of the tunnel, down a stone ramp, and into a field of cherry red grass.
Beyond that stood a lush forest.
And before that, an army.
XX
Dull Human Archetypes
Beside me, Iugurtha took the gold ring off her finger and threw it in the air. On the way down it became the gate. The army surged forward with a ferocious cheer. Sarah gasped and clutched my wrist. Because the gate was invisible from behind, Sarah might not have known that Iugurtha had opened it. Probably it appeared to her as though hundreds of slightly deranged humans and T’Klee brandishing deadly weapons were about to mow us down.
But the instant Iugurtha had taken the ring off her finger, I’d felt the gate’s power. All physical ailments that had been plaguing me vanished in an instant. I breathed deeper, stood straighter, and felt stronger than I had since, well, the last time I’d opened the gate.
Sarah stood her ground as the army quickly formed a column that marched straight toward us. Iugurtha made the gate wide enough to accommodate one row at a time (quite a bit wider than I could have managed). It wasn’t until the soldiers began to disappear before our very eyes that Sarah relaxed and let go of my arm.
I refer to them as an army but maybe “bunch” would be more appropriate—there couldn’t have been more than one hundred all told. And not all of them were soldiers—some carried equipment instead of weapons. There might have been an equal number of support staff elsewhere in the mountain and ship, but still. This was the force with which Iugurtha proposed to free the T’Klee? This wasn’t a rescue mission: it was mass suicide.
I searched the column frantically for my nephew. Many of the humans had painted their faces to resemble fierce-looking cats—an obvious homage to their T’Klee comrades. I managed to spy the grizzled old T’Klee Half Ear, but no Ridley.
I allowed myself a glimmer of hope. Maybe Iugurtha had accepted my suggestion that he was too young after all. But no sooner had I thought this than I spotted him just before the tree line. Like the other humans he was clad in black, with his face painted to resemble a T’Klee. He clutched the same potent weaponry as everyone else.
The column was moving fast. It wouldn’t be long before Ridley was through the gate. Completely forgetting about Sarah, I ran to him. It was exhilarating, despite the circumstances. Empowered by the gate, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so strong, or run so fast. But I shed health with every step. The further
I got from the gate the worse I felt. By the time I staggered to a halt next to Ridley I was limping with pain and exhaustion.
As I attempted to catch my breath, I couldn’t help but admire Ridley’s goatee, quite a bit fuller than the last time I’d seen it, if still a hair on the scraggly side. Although mere days for me, it had been six months from Ridley’s perspective since I’d last seen him. Yet he did not appear surprised to see me.
“Ridley,” I panted. “You can’t go through the gate.”
He didn’t even look at me.
“Ridley, listen—I found your father.”
He did not seem surprised to hear this. At least it prompted a response. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Gurtha told me. She sent you back for him. Thanks. Listen, did you happen to tell him about Mom?”
“Uh—”
“It doesn’t matter. Look, I know you’re still trying to save me. But you don’t need to. I’m not a kid anymore—I can look out for myself.”
“I promised your mother—”
“Don’t talk to me about Mom.”
“Ridley, it’s been years. Don’t you think it’s about time—”
“I don’t want to talk about her with you.”
“With me? Why not with me? She’s my—”
“Because you’re the one who killed her.”
My face went flush. I felt hot all over, actually. Unable to look at Ridley anymore, I turned away.
“I know you were trying to help her,” he said. “But you failed. Because of you she didn’t take her helmet. She would be alive today if she’d taken her helmet. Face it, Uncle. She’s dead because of you.”
Ridley’s fellow soldiers studiously avoided looking at us. How much of this was just bravado on Ridley’s part? Play acting for the benefit of his comrades? All of it, I hoped.
“I never knew you felt this way—you never said anything.”
“Maybe I didn’t have the guts to come right out and say it. But I said it all right—a thousand times in a thousand different ways. You just never heard me.”
I would have heard but not understood. Not having gone back in time yet, not having made Katerina forget her helmet, not having accidentally made a man trip in front of her motorcycle, I couldn’t have understood. I could think of nothing to say in my defence. There was no time anyway—we had come to the end of the line.
Ridley stepped through the gate without even so much as a backward glance at me. I couldn’t help but wince. There were no two ways about it—the boy didn’t like me much. I couldn’t really blame him. After promising his mother on her deathbed that I’d look after him, I’d failed him in just about every way possible.
But I wouldn’t give up on him. I owed it to my sister. It was the least I could do after having killed her.
I attempted to follow Ridley through the gate but two soldiers barred my way. Rage welled within me. I’d be damned if I’d let them stop me after everything I’d been through. Strengthened by the gate, I was prepared to take on a hundred of them if need be.
Fortunately, such exigencies were not necessary.
“Let him go,” Iugurtha said.
The soldiers let go, and I stepped through the gate after my nephew.
The night was humid and sticky and almost pitch black except when flashes of lightning lit up the sky. No thunder accompanied the lightning, because it wasn’t really lightning. It looked like a gigantic laser beam. I would have asked one of the soldiers near me what it was but they were too busy. I couldn’t ask Ridley because he’d disappeared into the night. Sarah wasn’t there to ask because she hadn’t come through the gate after me. And I didn’t ask Sebastian because I was so frightened that I’d forgotten I was even wearing him.
The gate was disgorging the last of Iugurtha’s soldiers and equipment about fifty feet to my left. It was too far away to be of any benefit to me physically. This was unfortunate because I could now add a pounding heart, sweaty palms, and upset stomach to my litany of physical complaints.
I wanted to be moving, not huddled in the midst of Iugurtha’s army in the tall grass twenty yards outside the Necronian compound not doing anything. But I didn’t dare budge. The beam was incinerating everything in its path, way too close for comfort, and although I was pretty sure it was friendly fire, I was certain it was only a matter of time before it fried me too.
The laser beam originated from a spot above the horizon a few kilometres away, atop a dark mass I assumed to be Kimay, the mountain concealing Iugurtha’s star ship. The laser was destroying the Necronian compound with surgical precision, burning the assortment of eccentric structures to the ground with an audible frying sound, leaving small fires in its wake and giving the vomitous stench of the place a distinctly acrid tinge.
I took several deep breaths, trying to pull myself together. Sure I was frightened. But I had a job to do. We all did. Iugurtha was here to free the T’Klee. Her army’s job was to protect the engineers so that they could do their job, setting up an assortment of mysterious looking equipment. Strategically placed snipers performed their job with deadly accuracy, picking off fleeing Necronians. My job was to find Ridley, and then steal the gate from Iugurtha and use it to take Ridley back to his father. That is, if I could make my body—virtually incapacitated by fear and infirmity—do its job.
The laser beam flashed again, cremating a Necronian tower that looked like a giant version of one of their wands. At the tower’s base, a Necronian practically galloped out of a fiery hut on its slimy tentacles. I squinted to make it out better—it looked like Jacques, the Necronian who had interrogated me in the tank. It was difficult to tell for sure since many Necronians looked alike with their gelatinous bulks and large, lone eyes. I had assumed that Jacques was dead, though it was possible that Schmitz had only injured the creature when he’d freed me.
Another flash and the laser scored a near hit on the Jacques look-alike. When my eyes recovered, the Necronian had disappeared and in its place stood a human male. A human male wearing a plaid fleece jacket. I squinted. Could it be? Yes it was—Jack Poirier, the cabbie who had tried to help me save Katerina. What in blazes was he doing here? Squinting, I watched as he shook his fist at the sky. Night descended once more. The next time the beam lit up the compound I could see neither Jack nor the Necronian nor the smouldering pile of ashes I had expected.
Before I could puzzle out the meaning of all this, a great flash of light, the biggest yet, blinded me. When my vision cleared I saw the sky above me glowing myriad colours, like the northern lights, only lower. The phenomenon illuminated the entire Necronian compound before dissipating slowly.
Somebody was talking to me. I remembered Sebastian. It was difficult to hear him over the sizzling of the laser beam a mere hundred yards away.
I held him up to my ear. “What?”
“I said that was close.”
“What was it?”
“The Necronians took a pot shot at us. The engineers managed to get our shield up just in time—a few seconds earlier and we’d have been toast.”
“Along with hundreds of their own people.”
The last of the colours faded from the sky.
“Why doesn’t Iugurtha have her ship fire back?” I asked.
“No point,” Sebastian said. “Wouldn’t even scuff the paint on a Necronian bulkhead. The entity’s updated her weaponry, but it’s still no match for Necronian ships.”
Another flash from a Necronian ship lit up the sky. I protected my eyes from the glare with my hands, wishing I still had my Ray Bans. The shield became a work of art as it transformed the enemy ray into harmless purples and oranges and a rich emerald green that danced and rippled in the sky above us.
“What about this shield?” I asked. “Will it hold, or is it old technology too?”
“I have no knowledge of the future anymor
e. I can only speculate.”
“So speculate!”
“The shield technology is newer. The entity’s engineers estimate it will hold for about eleven minutes under a constant barrage like this.”
“Eleven minutes! That’s all? What then?”
“Even you should be able to figure that one out.”
Vintage Sebastian that, suggesting either he’d successfully dealt with his recent existential crisis and returned to form, or the crisis had entered a cranky stage. But cranky or not he was right. I knew the answer to my question perfectly well. If the shield failed we failed, and with our deaths those we had come to rescue would be lost.
Hearing a familiar whirring behind me, I turned to see Iugurtha’s spider approaching, Iugurtha astride it like a hero from some ancient epic. The gate winked out behind her. Sarah had not come through. Perhaps she hadn’t been allowed.
Without slowing down, the spider picked up an object off the ground and gave it to Iugurtha. Iugurtha slipped it on her finger—the gate in ring form, I was certain.
All weapons fire had ceased. Iugurtha’s soldiers followed her into what was left of the Necronian compound, the humans moving almost as stealthily as the T’Klee. I wanted to follow them but couldn’t quite will my legs to move. No, that wasn’t true—had I bid them run in the opposite direction they would have responded instantly. My entire being was screaming to get away from there. Knowing that the shield was doomed to fail in less than eleven minutes had every hair on my considerably hairy body standing straight up on end.
Several fires raged, eerily illuminating the handful of charred structures still erect in the compound. Necronians began to emerge slowly out of the night, orange and pink sparks trailing from their wands.
Before I could decide what to do, whether to scurry after Iugurtha’s troops or flee into the night, something bizarre happened. One second I was cowering in the grass, the next I found myself completely immersed in water, with no idea which way was up. Not that it mattered—I had no way of reaching the surface because I could no longer feel my arms or legs. Had a Necronian explosion blown my extremities off and carried me clear across the compound into a lake or river?
