The Sin of Moloch

by Andrew Gordinier

  “Randomly trying to eat plants sounds like a good way to die.” Yvonne said flatly.

  “I know this sounds gross, but people are always eating bugs and worms on those survival shows.” Radha said as she watched an ant crawl across the leaves, it was dragging a dead moth five times its size.

  “Let’s hope we find something before we eat bugs.” Yvonne stretched.

  “I doubt we are gonna find a cheeseburger tree, but we should-“ Deanna stopped suddenly, and they were all transfixed by the sound of a distant growling roar.

  “We should keep moving.” Said Radha standing promptly.

  “Yeah, we’ll worry about food later.” Yvonne said quickly.

  “Best idea ever!” Deanna pulled out their compass and pointed the way that they hoped would lead to civilization, and away from the roaring.

  Chapter 26

  John peered down the thread carefully to see where he was going next, and couldn’t. It was as if the thread stretched out forever. That couldn’t be true, could it? John often wondered about what limits there really were and why they seemed to make so little sense. He laughed to himself gently. Here John was floating over a rouge planet in deep space, in a spacesuit built using magic and cutting edge technology, worried about things that made sense. He peered down the thread that bound the Primers again, paying closer attention than before, looking for a trick or deception. On the third try, John noted that the thread wasn’t going straight, that it started to curve slowly, then quickly began to spiral tighter and tighter. Most disturbingly, he realized that it was also stretched thinner and thinner, like pulled taffy. John decided to be careful and jump well short of where it started to curve, best to avoid a trap, and hope that he could keep track of where Finley had gone. The long trip home was on John’s mind too, but without some way to rescue Radha, there was no real point to going home. John cleared his mind of those worries the best he could before teleporting

  Upon arriving, he understood immediately what had gone wrong. He saw that even magic was nothing before the vast forces that worked in and shaped the universe. The immense glowing disk of gas and dust spiraled down into the impossibly tiny and dark core of the black hole. John could see the gravity destroying the patterns and very matter of the objects falling into it. The geyser of x-rays escaping at its poles was massive. It spilled radiation dangerously close to where he had arrived. The suits indicators told him he was safe, for the moment. John used that moment to stare in amazed horror and wonder at the raw power of nature before him.

  An astronomer would have looked at the cosmic event unfolding before John and noted that the black hole was small, by cosmic standards. John did not see it that way. To him, it was massive and left him in terrified awe. He could perform wonders and bend the very nature of reality to his will, he could teleport out past the edge of the galaxy, out into the universe. But, this was something that showed him how pointless and petty he and all his efforts really were. What was the ability to create and destroy on a tiny human scale, when the universe could create and destroy on such a level as this? John could see shattered planets at the edge of the debris, it was easy to imagine that those once held life and civilizations. Here they would soon break into small gravel, dust, atoms, and eventually nothing.

  “Dust to dust.” The softly spoken words escaped his lips in a sad tone that would never escape the confines of his helmet. They were enough to rattle him, and he started looking for a safe place to teleport to. He needed to think about how to track Finley, needed some time, and he was not going to get that floating so close to this voracious beast of the void.

  Looking around, John spotted a dim brownish star floating in the distance. It had already fallen into the gravity well of the beast below him. Still, it had years in a slow death spiral, long enough for John to get a grip on his situation. John teleported closer and saw a lonely planet orbiting the tiny star. Another short hop and he was over the planet.

  It was tiny, smaller than the Earth’s moon. It was scared and beaten by numerous impacts. To John, it looked old and weathered, but safe. John arrived on the surface, and the gravity was low but higher than he had thought it would be. Putting his pack down, John sat on a rock and looked at the sky. This was a safer distance, but the slowly spinning cloud of dust and gas still filled much of the sky of this world. It was a horrifying and inspiring sight.

  “So what the hell do I do now?” John whispered to himself. He had been talking to himself more and more lately, he was lonely and knew it. Even the sound of his own voice gave him some comfort and company in the vast, nothing that he was traversing in leaps and bounds. John had a new respect for the lonely explorers who had steadily mapped the world, and for those who would eventually map the universe.

  Opening his pack John pulled out his tablet and keyed up the video chat, perhaps Conrad could offer some advice? What John really wanted to hear was that Radha had been found, that he could turn home, and give chasing Finley’s crazy-ass across the universe. The tablet paused in thought for a moment and then declared that there was no wireless service available. John blinked for a moment. He was stunned and shocked. He examined the patterns he had altered on the wi-fi antenna to connect it permanently to his router at home, they seemed intact. Dull blue threads that twisted and pulsed as they curved up into the sky towards the…

  “Oh, hell.”

  The threads ran towards the black hole. And why not? It was common knowledge that light couldn’t escape one of these monsters. Why should magic be able to? Still, it seemed odd to John. So much about magic violated the laws of physics that when it did finally bend to them and obey, it was shocking. It made John wonder again about the rules and laws that governed it, why didn’t they make sense?

  As John considered these things, another idea took shape. What if Finley had not survived the black hole? What if the thread had not been captured by the gravity? But it went there because that’s where the Primer was? John wouldn’t be able to prove anything to the Censor, and he would have to find another way to rescue Radha. John decided that he had better be safe and search around the black hole to see if there was another thread leading away, a needle in a haystack, but what choice did he really have?

  Chapter 27

  Conrad awoke slowly and reluctantly. He grumbled and complained as Eric shook his arm. Conrad knew deep down that it would take a severe emergency for Eric to wake him up, and he was not in any hurry to face any crisis.

  “Leave me alone.” He grumbled and growled like the old mage he was, but somehow it still sounded like a kid unwilling to wake up for school.

  “Conrad, this is serious. The other representatives are calling and screaming, they want to know what to do.” Eric did his best to hide his frustration.

  “Do about what?”

  “A cargo ship was just sunk off the coast of England. Its last transmission said that it was on fire and sinking after being hit by missiles.

  “Were there any survivors?” Conrad slowly sat up and reached to the nightstand for his glasses.

  “No.” Eric handed Conrad’s glasses to him.

  “Whose ship was it?”

  “It was registered in Denmark, but it belonged to an American company, and the crew was mostly American.”

  “Damn. Is anyone claiming responsibility?”

  “Sort of. There is an unofficial leak from the Royal Navy that the ship was in restricted waters. I’ve got a couple of operatives trying to figure out where that came from. It hasn’t hit the news yet, but this is not going to go well.”

  “No, it isn’t. I suppose that’s what they want.”

  “You think they sank the ship on orders?”

  “I think it was sunk and made to look like a missile attack. It was a… what's the term?”

  “False flag operation.” Eric was upset he had not thought of it first.

  “Right.” Conrad sat up and rubbed his chin. “I suspect you will find the source of the leak has ties to one of the Regents or was pa
id. I think we can also count on that leak getting worse. Odds are we will find it was a couple of mages that staged the attack.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Find out who the leak is if they are unimportant, they can meet with an accident. Otherwise, we will have to be creative.”

  “It’s been a long time since you told me I was gonna have to kill someone.”

  “I hope it will be a long time before I have to do it again. Now let me get some coffee. You can tell those panicked fools to calm down and look at a history book.”

  “The Lusitania.”

  “Correct, our opponents are either not being very creative, or they just don’t care.”

  “There is another possibility.” Eric said as he walked towards the door.

  “Yes?”

  “A group of mages acted on their own to provoke a conflict.”

  Conrad thought about this carefully for a moment. “Find the leak. Get the answers we need, I want to know who’s pulling strings. Then plug the leak.”

  “I’ll get my people on it.”

  Chapter 28

  Radha took Yvonne's hand and pulled herself up to the next foothold she had found on the tree. Higher up, Deanna kept their makeshift safety line tight and called down encouragement that Radha desperately needed. Her hands were scraped and bloody, her shoes caused more pain than they prevented, and she was hungry. A kind of hunger that she had never dreamed existed, a desperate need that made concentrating on climbing difficult. Were it not for Yvonne and Deanna, Radha would have given up.

  “No matter what you do, don’t look up!” Shouted Deanna with a laugh that, to Radha, would have fit a woodland prankster in a kid's cartoon.

  “You’re not funny!” Yvonne scolded as she pulled herself up to the small roost Deanna had found in the crux of several large branches.

  “It’s not my fault. You two are no good at banter. I have to take up the slack!” Snapped Deanna.

  Radha climbed cautiously up and found that what Deanna had claimed would be big enough for all three of them was hardly big enough for one. Carefully she climbed to an empty branch and clung to it in tired desperation with her eyes closed.

  “This should protect us for the night,” Deanna said confidently, tying herself to a branch with the remains of a bedsheet.

  “Cats are kinda famous for climbing trees.” Radha pointed out.

  “Yeah, but at least this way we can defend ourselves, and it can only attack from one direction.” Deanna sounded confident, a casual touch of her stolen shotgun helped.

  “Either way, we got lucky finding a climbable tree for tonight. Not too tall, not too small.” Yvonne was imitating Deanna’s knot with her own stained bedsheet.

  Radha carefully turned herself around and leaned gingerly against her own large branch. She felt insecure with just one improvised rope around her waist to hold her to the tree, so she fastened a second one under her arms. No sooner had she finished the knot, and there was a distant growling snarl in the jungle.

  “Damn you, John. Why aren’t you here?” Radha was so exhausted and worn down that she was unaware the words had escaped her lips.

  “What are you some virginal princess that needs rescuing?” Said Deanna with a sneer.

  “Some rescuing wouldn’t be so bad, especially if they brought sandwiches,” Yvonne said dreamily. “And ginger beer! It has to be cold though...”

  “Well?” Deanna ignored Yvonne and looked at Radha meaningfully.

  “I’m not a princess,” Radha said defiantly despite her exhaustion. At first, she had felt brave and courageous fleeing into the jungle, now she felt lost and worn down. And, no matter how she felt, she wasn’t going to admit it to Deanna.

  “Good, then you don’t need Johnny-boy.” Said Deanna.

  “I don’t need him, I miss him.” Radha said quietly.

  “How long have you two been going out?” Asked Yvonne.

  “More than a year.”

  “Really?” Yvonne said, surprised. “He hasn’t tried anything?”

  “I’ve had to tell him to stop on a couple of occasions. Once I had to tell him to leave.” Radha wondered why the issue that she and John weren’t having sex kept coming up. Was everyone else really that obsessed with sex?

  “What did he do? Put his hands where they didn’t belong?” Deanna said cruelly.

  “It wasn’t anything like that, he was behaving himself… more or less. I wanted to go further. I wanted him so badly.” Radha’s voice trailed off as she remembered the warmth of John's breath on her neck and his strong hands on her back.

  “Wow.” Said Deanna gently. “Why stop? You’re both adults.”

  “It’s just how I was raised. I thought I would change my mind when my father stopped talking to me. Or when my mother obeyed him and stopped returning my calls. They are both very traditional and have a hard time adjusting sometimes.” Radha wondered where the strength she had used then had vanished to lately.

  “Your father stopped talking to you because of John?” Asked Yvonne.

  “No. I refused to marry the man they picked for me to marry. I wanted to love, not have an arrangement. “

  “That still happens? I mean in the US?” Deanna seemed surprised.

  “Of course, it does.” Radha was never surprised by the cultural blindness of some white people but always frustrated by it.

  “So, you really love John?” Yvonne asked in a hushed tone.

  “I’ve never met anyone else like him.” Radha paused and looked down at the jungle floor as it slowly faded into darkness under her feet, suddenly feeling uncomfortable that her life was the only exciting topic. “Perhaps we should be more worried about being eaten alive than my sex life?”

  “But, getting eaten is the best part of sex!” Deanna exclaimed. “You’ll see!”

  Radha glared at her.

  “See? No skills at witty banter and jokes! The two of you need to work on it, or this is gonna be a boring story to tell, and we’ll have no chance at a movie deal!”

  Radha was at least happy that she had forgotten about being hungry for a few moments.

  Chapter 29

  John woke up slowly, unwillingly opening his eyes to the dimly lit confines of his shelter. He had been dreaming of Radha, of sitting in her favorite restaurant while they chatted. In his dream John had been able to smell the garlic and spices as the plates were brought to the table, now John could only smell his own strong body odor as he pulled himself out of his thin, but warm, sleeping bag. He ran a hand over his face, scratching absently at the stubble that was threatening to become a beard. How long had he been doing this now? Days? Weeks? He had to check the calendar on his tablet to know it was two weeks and some odd days. Time was losing it’s meaning to John.

  The dangers and difficulties of traveling through deep space were tedious and repetitive in need of extreme caution and constant attention. Not only to stay alive but to keep from getting lost. John could have teleported away from the black holes dense gravity and intense radiation easily. Finding the thread to follow to his stolen Primer was another issue entirely. No one would have guessed that gravity would break threads and connections, it seemed logical once seen, but it was yet another strange twist to the nature of magic. John had wasted days teleporting around the black hole trying to find the thread that would lead him to Finley. Carefully leaving clues to lead himself back, piles of rocks that he fused together to mark where he had been, and hopefully, point him home. The other problem was that now he couldn’t even contact home, the black hole had also severed his tablets connection. There was no way to call Conrad, no way to know what was happening at home. That word had never before been so substantial and meaningful to John.

  He roused himself and set about packing away his sleeping bag and fading supplies in preparation for the day's journey. The first time John had put on the spacesuit, he felt excited and confident in its technology and futuristic appearance. Now, putting it on was as mundane as
putting on pants and shoes for the day.

  Once everything was packed, and his shelter folded neatly away on his backpack, John was careful to examine the area he had camped in. Looking around the small cave he had made, he double-checked to make sure he had not left anything behind that he might need, or that might come back to haunt him. The scientists had made a point of warning John not to leave behind ANY biological material, no matter how small. He had to sterilize everything before he left any planet. Failing to do so not only would seed life wherever he went but could pose unforeseeable threats to future travelers. John thought it paranoia but was careful to bath the area in flames before teleporting into orbit above the strangely blue planet.

  The thin atmosphere beneath him left mountain tops exposed to the near-vacuum of space, making them look like islands swimming in a blue ocean that never moved. New worlds had not yet lost their wonder to John. He wondered if it was possible to do so. It only took a moment searching to find the thread that lured him so far out into the unknown. It only took a moment longer to peer down it and catch a glimpse of his destination, another planet. This one swam near a star that flooded its system with levels of radiation that would be deadly to unprotected humans. John’s suit would protect him easily so long as he didn’t linger. Looking closer at the world, he was about to teleport to suddenly changed those intentions. Numerous satellites were orbiting the planet, each clearly active and communicating with the planet below. John wondered what kind of life he would find waiting for him on that world, and how alien he would be to them.

  Chapter 30

  The fire did little to push back the night, and the heat was more of a curse than a blessing, but it did wonders for the morale of the three women. They sat huddled on a small rock and watched the flames in silence. The past few days had taken its toll on them, foraging for meager meals that did nothing to satisfy their hunger, and were usually disgusting acts of desperation. Radha confessed to herself in a sad moment that she preferred the taste of termites over the large grubs that seemed to inhabit every tree stump and rotten branch in the jungle. She looked at the fire and thought of the small fiery portrait that John had once made for her to prove that magic was real. That moment seemed like it was another lifetime, like it had happened to someone else, or was perhaps just a dream she clung to in a childish hope.