Pandemonium

by Warren Fahy

  Sasha screamed as the windows were blocked by the pink and yellow skin that surrounded them like the ribbed insides of a dirigible.

  “We can’t get past that pulley inside this thing,” Geoffrey shouted.

  “Look!” Nell said. “Its walls are lined with quilted bladders that must contain hot air to keep it afloat.”

  “Do we have any concussion grenades?” Dima said.

  “If we rupture those gas bladders, it should fall,” Geoffrey agreed.

  “I saved one, just in case,” said Abrams. He pulled one out of a pack on the floor. “Where should I put it, Doc?”

  “Up its belly, and aim high!” Geoffrey said.

  “Duck!” Abrams pulled down the window and hurled the grenade into the floating whale, a perfect lob that detonated at its apogee, shredding the two large bladders that kept it afloat and shattering two windows of the gondola, as well.

  The giant sank like the Hindenburg, losing its grip on the gondola as its thin fabric was finally ripped away before they reached the pulley hanging from the ceiling, the last one before the end of the line.

  Passing down the other side of the wheel, they could see the far shore as they sank toward the water.

  Hender shivered next to Nell, and she stroked his back reassuringly.

  As they approached the far shore, they saw the band of salt crystals crusted above the waterline, which had already lowered a few inches as the subterranean sea filled the city of Pobedograd.

  The gondola stopped then, and it swung gently back and forth, not moving forward. “What now?” Nastia said.

  “The motor may have overheated,” Abrams said. “Or run out of fuel.”

  After another few minutes, it was apparent that they were not going anywhere.

  00:17:03

  They hung there, rocking, with two windows now gone. They smacked at the nudibats that fluttered in trying to take a nip at them.

  They were trapped a hundred feet over the lake and a hundred yards from the shore.

  “OK, we’ve just got to zip-line the rest of the way,” Dima said. “We double up that thick nylon rope we kept. Come on,” he said. “Abrams, you go first, OK?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Got a better idea?”

  Abrams looked at the crude loop of nylon rope in Dima’s hands. “The friction on that cable will burn right through that rope,” he said.

  “Then what do you suggest?” Geoffrey said.

  “OK.” Abrams broke off the halves of the armor over his arms and legs, except for the shell on his injured calf. Then he duct-taped and roped each half shell over the cable so it could anchor a rope line.

  The others looked worried.

  “This armor is bulletproof, fireproof, and shatterproof,” Abrams said. “And it’ll slide down that cable like greased lightning.”

  “Tie it in a loop so we can sit on it,” Dima said. “I don’t want to have to hang by my fingers all the way to the shore.”

  “OK, that should be easy enough,” Abrams said as Geoffrey already started to measure off another length of rope and taped another half-shell of armor to it. Hender joined in, copying him with two more sets of hands.

  Abrams tied the ends of the rope together on the first loop. “OK, there you go, Dima. Let’s go! We’ve got about fifteen minutes left, man.”

  “OK, OK,” Dima said, and he took the lines above, sitting on the sling of rope as he pushed forward out of the gondola’s window.

  They watched him pick up speed until he hit an upswing that slowed him down before he finally dropped onto the stone landing of the gondola station on the jagged shore. He waved, and Nastia cheered as she saw him through her night vision binoculars. “He made it!”

  “You’re next,” said Abrams.

  Geoffrey and Hender re-created improvised harnesses in an assembly line.

  Nastia sat nervously in the loop of rope and Abrams shoved her out the window. She was stone-silent and still the entire way down the cable until Dima caught her in his arms on the landing.

  “How is Ivan going to get there?” Sasha yelled.

  “Geoffrey, can you carry him across if we strap him to you?” Abrams asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good, ’cause we’re not leaving a dog behind if I can help it.” Abrams cast the next rope over the cable and jerked the armor collar over the cable. Then he tied the sling below with a sturdy knot.

  “OK, honey,” Nell said to Geoffrey as he climbed in.

  He reached out to hug her.

  “No, Geoffrey!” Hender shouted.

  “Right. I can’t touch you,” she said. “But I’ll see you on the other side.”

  “OK. Bye.” Geoffrey embraced the dog as Abrams tied him securely to Geoffrey’s chest.

  “Ready, buddy?” Geoffrey reassured Ivan.

  “You’re sure he can’t get loose?” Sasha cried, and Ivan barked, thrashing suddenly.

  “Shhh!” Abrams said to her, holding a finger to his lips. “Don’t upset him.”

  Geoffrey whispered in Ivan’s ear, then grabbed the lines, and Abrams gave him a push out the window.

  “I’ll go next,” Hender said, and he jumped out after Geoffrey, without a zip-line, cartwheeling under the cable all the way to the shore.

  “Wow!” Sasha shouted.

  “Your turn, girl,” Abrams said.

  “She should go with you,” he said to Nell.

  “She can’t go with me. Remember? Nobody can touch me,” Nell said.

  “Oh yeah.” Abrams slung the last two harnesses over the cable and tied both into loops. “Ladies first,” he said.

  “No, you go. I’ll go last,” she said.

  “OK, then. Come on, sweetie. We’re going for a ride, just like Ivan. I’m going to tie you on to me, but you hang on around my neck, OK?”

  “Just do it, Abrams,” Sasha said.

  “OK, then.” Abrams looped the rope to secure Sasha to his chest. “Good workin’ with you, Doc. Good luck. Come right behind us now!”

  “I will! Get going,” Nell said.

  “OK. You can close your eyes if you want to, Sasha. Here we go!” Abrams stepped onto the ledge of the window and plunged down the line over the glimmering lake.

  “I hate you, Abrams!” Sasha shouted.

  The last one in the gondola, Nell gripped the heavy-duty nylon rope and stood on the bobbing edge of the gondola’s window. She saw a squadron of man-of-wars drifting toward her as she jumped.

  She sped over the lake’s surface behind Abrams, and as they crossed over the landing ahead of her, she heard Sasha cry, “I love you, Abrams!”

  As Nell rapidly approached the shore, she saw a deep, dark patch of water at the lake’s edge where no animals were visible. She let go of the harness, plunging into the briny water.

  She swam as fast as she could through the warm water, fueled with adrenaline and moving violently, spinning and kicking forward. At last, she climbed out on the ledge.

  She ran up the rocky shore and hoisted herself onto the gondola’s concrete landing with the others as Dima and Abrams shot down several man-of-wars that were chasing her. Nell ran to Geoffrey and embraced him, soaking wet. “I had to get them off me,” she whispered.

  “Oh!” he whispered back, and he squeezed her to him. “That’s why I married you.”

  “Come on, you guys!” Sasha said.

  They all ran up a flight of stairs chiseled into the hard limestone that ended at a steel hatch in the cavern’s vertical wall.

  Hender cranked the hatch’s wheel with four trembling arms, and they all pulled, bursting the door open through layers of corrosion and rainbowfire. Inside was a tunnel as dark as midnight that cut through the rock.

  Geoffrey pulled the hatch closed and turned the dog wheel behind them as Abrams lit a flashlight and led the way through a twisting tunnel that climbed almost straight up through the mountain’s bedrock.

  After twenty minutes, they had begun to wonder if they would ever find a
n end to the spiraling passageway, when they finally spotted what looked like a dead end a hundred feet above them.

  Abrams yelled as a door materialized in the light of his dying flashlight.

  As they reached the hatch, their excitement grew, and Hender, Geoffrey, and Abrams all grabbed the wheel, pulling it hard, finally turning the handle. They pushed the door until it yielded. And as it opened, a cold gust of fresh air met them, and they saw blue sky.

  Squeezing through the gap, they found themselves on the northwest face of Mount Kazar, and they laughed together as they pushed the rock-covered door closed and it blended once more into the mountainside.

  Geoffrey gave Nell his sweater as they ran down the slope that was covered with blindingly bright patches of snow. They looked up at the sky, eager to pull that open expanse into their eyes and breathe the crisp air blowing over their faces.

  “You probably lost all your natural microbial defenses, too, in that salty water, honey,” Geoffrey said, limping on his right leg.

  “Guess I’ll have to roll in dirty sheets for a night to get them back.”

  He smiled. “We need a honeymoon.”

  “I agree, Dr. Binswanger.” She took Geoffrey’s cell phone out of his sweater pocket and punched in a number. “Hey! It works!”

  JUNE 23

  2:14 P.M.

  The New Light

  Just before the last spark went out, a new light came. Now sels are free in a much bigger world. Humans saved us: we saved each other.

  Hender took three hands off his keyboard as he got a Skype call. With all three hands overlapping, he could type 180 words per minute without seeming to move his fingers. He clicked his mouse with a fourth hand and opened one window on his computer screen in which was Mai waving at him.

  “Happy birthday to your little one, Hender!” Mai was sitting on the roof of her penthouse on the island of Manhattan, where she had become a celebrity.

  “Thank you, Mai. Wait, I’m getting another call.” Hender clicked open another Skype call and saw Plesh, sitting in his home in Japan, where a giant mountain rose, nearly filling the window behind him. He was holding up his painting of Andrewshay, Hender’s golden child.

  “How do you like the painting, Hender?”

  “Beautiful!”

  Nell entered. Hender rose to greet her.

  “Come downstairs, the guests are here,” she whispered.

  “OK. Plesh and Mai, I have to go!”

  “Nid says happy birthday to Andrewshay,” Plesh said.

  “Nid is in Ireland recording a birthday song for him,” Mai said.

  “Thank Nid for me. Now, bye.”

  Hender ended the calls and held still for a moment. He looked out through the flowered jungle at the twinkling blue Pacific as the breeze ruffled his coat. Everything had changed since the verdict of the humans had come in: the sels’ symbiants were deemed to be strictly clones that could not mutate into derivative species, so the humans let them keep their nants. And the humans kept their word and set them free.

  Hender went down to the kitchen and found Geoffrey, Bo, and Joe, as well as Nastia and Dima, who were now newlyweds. Sasha and her aunt Kyra had come, and Abrams, who had just arrived through the security gate around their well-guarded compound. Sasha, tall for a girl of twelve, smiled brightly and ran to hug Hender.

  “You are much bigger now,” Hender said, his coat popping with color. He put her down. “I love you, Sasha!” he said, both his guava-sized eyes looking into hers with three pupils.

  “I love you, too, Hender.” Her face was content, older, leaner, her glacier-blue eyes showing the hopeful aftermath of a distant nightmare.

  “Hi, Pops!” Andrewshay jumped up.

  Hender cradled his child in four of his arms. “Happy birthday.”

  “Did you get that, Zero?” Cynthea Leeds said, as her business partner, cameraman, and boyfriend, Zero Monroe, videoed the party.

  Zero turned his head to her, grinning. “Yup.”

  Nell and Geoffrey’s one-year-old son sat on Geoffrey’s arm, laughing and waving at Hender with both hands. Both their children were celebrating a birthday, though Andrewshay was only one year old today, having gestated for 21 months. The two families had separate homes on their estate on the garden island of Kauai.

  They moved onto the wide redwood deck of Hender’s home. The canopy was decorated with crepe paper streamers and multicolored balloons. Ivan was chasing a feral chicken through the trees below, the white dog barking excitedly. Hender loved his secluded home overlooking Hanalei Bay.

  He reached down to the fernlike sensitive plant, which Nell called “Mimosa pudica,” and which grew wild here. Hender had planted some in a pot. Its tiny jade leaves fringed featherlike branches that surrounded little pink flowers. As he touched it, the leaves crumpled closed and pulled away from him, and Hender smiled.

  MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WARREN FAHY is a lifelong science enthusiast who started digging fossils at age eight. After studying physical anthropology in college, he immersed himself in natural history, incorporating original theories in his fiction. Working as a film journalist and database architect, he was lead writer for Rock Star Games’s Platinum-selling Red Dead Revolver and most recently was lead writer for Wowwee® Robotics, creating dialogue routines for robots. Fragment, his debut novel, was a New York Times bestseller published in seventeen languages. He resides in San Diego, California.

  Find him on www.warrenfahy.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  PANDEMONIUM

  Copyright © 2013 by Warren Fahy

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Drive Communications, New York

  Cover photos © 2012 Shutterstock, © 2012 iStockPhoto

  Map and illustrations by Michael Limber

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Fahy, Warren.

  Pandemonium / Warren Fahy. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3329-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-0053-3 (e-book)

  1. Biologists—Fiction. 2. Evolution (Biology)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3606.A275 P36 2013

  2012038821

  e-ISBN 9781466800533

  First Edition: March 2013