The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4)

by Zen, Raeden

  Reanaearo, Underground South

  2,500 meters deep

  Hot air swept across the Visea Wharf and the temple built into the clay cliff formation at the city’s edge. The heat visibly vibrated off the polished archways of stone. A carbyne ship swayed in the Visea Basin, a network of deep prehistoric caverns that served as a runoff for many natural underground rivers and streams. The caverns flooded entirely when the commonwealth constructed the Zwillerzweller and Archimedes Rivers. Kimmeridgian Consortium engineers fortified the caverns with compressed diamond pillars and widened them such that Connor, standing upon the wharf at the edge of Reanaearo Territory, couldn’t see as far as Jurinar, the territory he and Father were headed to.

  A flotilla of ships swayed on the horizon, their white sails fluttering in the man-made breeze, which carried the smell of honeysuckle and jasmine over the docks.

  “All aboard!” a sailor bot said.

  Other bots unfurled the sails.

  Connor and Jeremiah boarded. They wore opaque bodysuits with dark green capes over them, and dark galoshes tied up to their ankles. They looked like river merchants.

  Father mingled with tradesmen while Connor looked out over the Granville horizon to an endless blue sky, thinking about the future. Father hadn’t told him much, just that they were traveling to Navita by way of the rivers.

  By the time the ship docked at Wenlock City, the constellations decorated the Granville sky. Connor and Father walked down a row of crescent-shaped buildings, their green towers built with carbyne, garnet, and plastic. Steam billowed on the other end of the pedestrian pathway, and Connor heard the chorus of splashes from the waterfalls into the Archimedes on the other side of the waterlogged city. Turquoise water flowed on either end of the Jurinar Citadel steps. Father didn’t allow Connor to listen to the conversation with the minister. He waited with the Citadel Guardsmen, who didn’t seem to notice his presence.

  How does Father deceive them? Connor wondered. Though Connor had carried a recaller to disrupt Marstone’s connection to his consciousness and used Vitamin T eyedrops to block his scent from Lady Isabelle’s tenehounds, neither could keep him invisible to the guardsmen or the Janzers, who should recognize him on sight thanks to his status as a highly sought terrorist.

  Next to Connor, a raven landed upon the bust of Chancellor Masimovian. Something about the sculpture, and the bird, made Connor think the chancellor was watching him. He made sure his recaller was activated.

  When Father emerged from the glass doors behind the guardsmen, Connor stood. “How’d it go?” he said. His father grunted and nodded onward. Connor asked several more times. Several more times, Father grunted. They moved down the spiral vine-and lichen-covered steps behind the waterfalls. At the base, a row of rafts awaited.

  “In one of those?” Connor said. They were far smaller than the one they had taken down the Zwillerzweller River, made of cedar instead of carbyne. He could smell them from where he stood. “How will we make it?”

  “You have hands and arms. You’ll learn how to use them skillfully during this trip.”

  Connor didn’t know how far they’d gone. He couldn’t feel the blisters on his hands any longer. And Father neither rowed nor used the ZPF to power the raft like he’d done on the Zwillerzweller. How did he expect them to get to the Great Falls of Navita this century?

  When they neared the docks of Pragia Village, Connor said, “How can you do nothing?”

  “I’m doing something.”

  “You’re reclining.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “My arms feel like they might fall off.”

  “Yet still you row. We’ve made splendid progress without interference.”

  Connor stopped rowing and held out his palms to make a show of his blistered hands. “I’m taking a break.” He sat across from his father. “What did you do to those guardsmen? What did Minister Cisuralian tell you in Jurinar Citadel?”

  “Would that I could tell you, but your mind isn’t developed enough yet, should Lady Isabelle apprehend us.”

  “She’d at least know you met with the minister, wouldn’t she?”

  Jeremiah put his hands behind his head. His beard had begun to grow back, swooping from ear to ear the way Connor remembered. “For sure, but then I think she might fear Minister Cisuralian more than he fears her.”

  “Teach me to use the ZPF the way you use it, the way you … tamed Nero.”

  Jeremiah leaned closer to his son. “So, you think the ZPF is about violence?”

  “It’s about power. And Lady Isabelle has it, and I don’t, and I’m sick of it, I’m tired of feeling the ZPF but not being able to control it …”

  Jeremiah stared at his son with his bright reddish-orange eyes, and Connor felt as if his father looked right through him, to his soul.

  “… I mean,” Connor continued, “not use it the way Zorian does. I don’t want to be like Zorian—”

  “You’re not like him.”

  Connor didn’t answer.

  Father doesn’t know, Connor thought. How could he? Zorian didn’t arrive with him until after I’d killed all those Janzers, and he was barely awake …

  The Janzers had removed Murray’s synsuit plates before they split him in half. And Arty, the only father Connor had known for most of his life, had been burned to death after the Janzers used a pulse launcher to blow his transport to bits.

  I was too unpredictable, Connor thought, letting my emotions control me instead of controlling my emotions the way Aera taught, and they died because of me—

  “And I’m here because of your determination and persistence and fortitude,” Father said. “You were the one who formed the interrogation strategy with Captain Barão and his striker. And whether you want to admit it or not, you did what you had to do in Permutation Crypt.”

  Connor turned away from his father, who ever snooped in his head. He folded his arms, holding himself. He felt terrible about what he’d done. It’s not what Hans, or his mother, would’ve wanted, if they still lived. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.

  Father spun Connor around. “Connor,” he said, surprising Connor, for he’d never called him by his real name, preferring his alias, Allesandro Armond. “I wouldn’t be here if the BP and Broden and Nero weren’t convinced your plans could work and if you didn’t protect Aera and Nero during the raid—”

  Connor snapped away from his father’s grasp. “How do you do it? How do you know my thoughts, my past?”

  “You’re always speaking in the zeropoint field.”

  “I’m using a recaller.”

  “That technology’s only as effective as its creator, and I didn’t create it without understanding how to penetrate its defenses, or how to adjust it constantly for Lady Isabelle’s advances.”

  “What other secrets are you hiding from me, Father? Why didn’t Lady Isabelle kill you when she had the chance?”

  “Dock the raft,” Father said. “Your arms need rest, as does my mind.”

  Connor tied the raft to a limestone post. Nighttime and starlight befell the river tunnel. Streaks of silver bioluminescent bacteria streamed along the banks. Ships moved in a line along the lanes amid hundreds of rafts, some crowded, some as lonely as Connor’s, but all moving swiftly with or against the gentle current. None, Connor noted, used oars.

  Father stood in front of Connor, and Connor felt a rush as if the sun’s energy flowed through him …

  … Connor stood in an alloy enclosure lined with gray gears and pulleys, Father beside him. Water flowed along the ceiling to a hump, where it fell into barrels on a conveyor belt. Connor stared at his slender limbs and hands and didn’t recognize them. Then he realized this was his likeness as he had been seven years ago, before he grew tall enough to blend in with the developed transhumans, before his hands hardened from hauling seafood out of his submarine all day. Father wore a bodysuit and transparent lab coat, his hair long rather than short. A trimmed beard still ringed his face, ear
to ear.

  “What is this place?” Connor said.

  “My mind, projected into yours.” With two fingers, Father pointed to his eyes, then to Connor’s. “Together we are one.”

  “I’m so … young,” Connor said, still staring at his arms.

  “This is all about you, Connor. You’ll need to hone your use of the field if you’re to command BP sorties.”

  “Command?” Father’s words sent a tingle down Connor’s spine.

  A mist filled the room.

  When it cleared, Connor and Father stood upon an ocean. Clouds on the horizon darkened and took on various shades of violet. The silhouette of a planet hung close in the sky, and beyond, another planet rimmed with rings.

  “We’ve traveled to the other end of the Milky Way Galaxy.” Father paused. “Or did we?” Connor didn’t know what to say. “It’s your consciousness that brings the objects around you into being. Nothing in Beimeni, nothing on or in the Earth, nothing in the galaxy exists independently of your perception.”

  “So we are standing on a planet on the other side of the galaxy, or aren’t we?”

  “At all times, you and I and every other Beimenian create our world.” Father pointed to a setting star, to where it streaked its orange, white, and violet light through the alien atmosphere. “All matter in the universe is interconnected by waves, and these waves are sprawled through space and time, on to infinity. They unite us. They guide us. They can also be manipulated.”

  “Explain.”

  “What you see is what the zeropoint field allows, through my mind, through your eyes.”

  “I know how the field works—”

  “But you can’t control it, otherwise you could override my senses and pull me into your mind. Go on, try it.”

  Connor reached with his mind. “I can’t.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I can’t!”

  Father snapped his fingers, and the scene shifted.

  Connor now stood upon dark marble tiles. A pedestal sat in the center of the space, enshrouded by a blue-tinted fog. Behind the fog, a ball of plasma spun and emitted bright blue, white, and red light. Many scientists surrounded it, wearing biomats. Connor recognized his father and Atticus Masimovian, though he didn’t look like the chancellor, and Father also looked different. The chancellor had shaved his goatee and had trimmed hair rather than long, curly hair. His face, like Father’s, looked drawn, as if they’d not imbibed the spices and gene therapies at the Fountain of Youth in decades. The chancellor shook Father’s hand.

  The movement in the laboratory froze, including the swirling energy and the scientists. Father held up his hand toward the sphere.

  “Meet the second variety of Marstone.”

  Connor crinkled his brow. “You built Marstone?”

  “I built this commonwealth.”

  “You built Marstone.”

  A mist swirled around them, and when it cleared, a laboratory emerged as high as heaven, surrounded by the village in Livelle city-state. Livelle’s flag, ivory splashed with a crescent of golden stars, hung from watchtowers. A crowd gathered in Centaurus Square with its marble fountains and roaming merchants. Chants danced over the air. People shook bottles filled with dark liquids, ignited wicks that hung out of the tops, and threw them. Explosions and flames rose up, and the crowd cheered. Livelle burned.

  Dozens of Livelle Guards rushed the crowd, shackles in hand, and the crowd splintered. Some threw food. Some threw stones. Men and women charged the dais, where a man clad in a golden gown and shawl slathered with Livelle glyphs cowered. The district ministers ducked for cover. The strike teams ignored the chancellor’s call to arms.

  A pulse blast echoed throughout the city-state, and the chancellor collapsed. The surviving Livelle guardsmen surrounded his dead body.

  “This is the assassination of Chancellor Hardington,” Connor said, “at the end of the Dark Age, After Reassortment.”

  “See me there,” Father pointed to one of the cowering ministers, “two hundred years ago. After this, the shot heard round the world, I watched Minister Masimovian ascend the dais of Centaurus Square. He pledged himself that day to the people of Livelle and all the Underground Realm, promising to unite humanity for all time. At the end of his speech, he said, ‘Henceforth, there shall be thirty precepts by which thirty territories of a Great Commonwealth of Beimeni shall live.’ He’s been elected each five years since then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a minister?”

  “I was a lot of things to a lot of people at a lot of times. Eternal partner to the perfect woman, minister of the Science District in Livelle, supreme scientist covering Reassortment and third in line to the chancellorship, father to three sons.” Father turned to the subterranean laboratory, then back to Connor. “A supreme scientist betrayed by my own brother-in-development.”

  “Broden Barão?”

  “Atticus Masimovian.”

  Connor halted midstride. “What did you say?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You helped him! You could have stood up to him, or killed him, or …”

  “I did what I did because I loved you and I loved your mother and brothers, and I didn’t want any of you sent to the Lower Level. And the chancellor’s ideals, his visions for his newly created commonwealth matched my own, at first. We desired expansion, intellectual enlightenment, space for humanity. I sought to move east, Masimovian west. He won, and we hollowed out Angeles, at the border of the continent.”

  “Where Aera’s from.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now it’s a dead territory.”

  “Not dead. Not yet. The collapse accelerated the commonwealth’s expansion east. We transferred the RDD from Livelle City to Palaestra where my research lab created Marstone for what I hoped would be a better understanding of man’s relationship with the universe, to foster our understanding of Reassortment. Masimo had started the scientific board in 168 and appointed me to its most prestigious position.”

  He laughed sadly. “Atticus told me, ‘I want you to be the one who solves the Reassortment enigma, and I want you to be third in line to succeed me because aside from Carillon Decca, there’s no one else I’d trust to lead transhumankind but you, and with you, Solstice, and your lab team at our sides, we’ll lead humanity into its first millennium of peace and prosperity.’ That was the first, but not the last lie uttered to me by Atticus Masimovian.”

  Solstice was the mother Connor never knew. He felt sad thinking about her. He pushed his hand into his pocket and rubbed the artistic Granville sphere, which could create her likeness in his vision.

  “Your mother would’ve been proud of the young transhuman man you’ve grown into,” Father said.

  “Would she?”

  Father nodded, swiping a tear from the corner of Connor’s eye, then he cleared the illusion, and nighttime on the Archimedes returned.

  Connor took in the stars overhead, the hum from rafts and ships, the seaside smells, the scarlet vines and brick near the docks outside Pragia Village. It was hard to say which world was more illusory, this or the one he’d just come from.

  “You’ve rested long enough,” Father said. He reclined again in his chair, with his hands behind his head. “Now row to Yeuron City, where we will take our rest and I’ll teach you more about the zeropoint field, before the final leg of our journey to the Great Falls of Navita.”

  “Why can’t you use the field to power the boat, or teach me how to do it?”

  “Once you’ve traversed the great underground Archimedes River by the will of your body and mind, what won’t you be able to accomplish?”

  Connor groaned. He grabbed the oars.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Nero Silvana

  Intraterritory Tunnels

  Palaestra, Underground Northeast

  2,500 meters deep

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you led us into a sewer,” Nero said. The smell dizzied his mind and caused go
oseflesh to spread over his skin. He breathed through his mouth to avoid gagging.

  “It is a sewer,” Aera said. “How did you make it through striker training?”

  “Got lucky, I guess.” Nero stumbled after her. He couldn’t see anything in the dark.

  From Cineris they’d traveled along the interterritory transport system to the Phanes Beltway and switched to a transport destined for Underground Northeast. Their faked credentials had been effective, as Aera assured him they would be. In Palaestra City, they gathered intel that Verena was awake and due to be transported to Farino Prison in ten day’s time. Nero noticed Aera saved additional data to a z-disk, but when he asked her about it, she didn’t tell him what it was.

  “It must be a hundred degrees in here,” Nero said.

  “Close to,” Aera said, “with high humidity—”

  “We won’t survive.”

  “You’ve lived too long in the climate-controlled commonwealth.” She knocked her fist on his chest. “You’re transhuman. You’re made for these conditions and worse.” She thrust a canteen into his gut. “Drink if you must.”

  He swallowed a gelatin that should’ve tasted like honey but instead seemed like the mixture of feces and piss that surrounded him. “What is this?” he said. It did cool his throat and help him breathe. “How much farther must we travel?”

  Nero heard nothing in reply, not even Aera’s footsteps in the muck. How did she move without stirring the air or the ground? Many times during their journey through the tunnels, Nero wondered if she had left him, same as he pondered now. Then she’d appear, push him left or right, and whisper, “Go,” and he went where she told him along the walls, feeling for his way.

  He stumbled forward, assuming she’d course-correct him if he took a wrong turn.

  Hours later, he’d long since lost his sense of smell and direction when Aera said, “We climb from here.”