by Mark Jeffrey
Giovanni eyed him with a quivering beady orb. And then shaking, he grabbed the boy Ragazzo by the throat and said, “Well, we’ll see about that!”
A STORM POUNDED the lighthouse that stood on the great cliffs overlooking the roiling ocean beyond. Lightning smashed the sky with great bangs and vicious thunder.
And Ragazzo, in chains, knelt in the mud before the great mound on which the lighthouse was built. Giovanni stood behind him, oblivious to his own soaked garments.
“Oriana. Bonfilia. Jina. All dead,” Giovanni said, voice quaking. He could barely keep his torch lit in the rain. “Venetia will be next. And then will come Allesandra, for they are both covered in boils and shivering with unbearable heat and chills and fever.”
It had been two days since Giovanni had confronted him about the mound.
And it had taken Appius and his men very little time to locate it. One of them had seen the stone door, uncovered, before time and moss and soil had buried it. Like so many structures, the lighthouse, built relatively recently, was constructed on top of an existing, far older, structure. A foundation of several hundred tons of stone blocks that no one recalled how to move and build with today.
The lighthouse stood upon a Niburian outpost of old — and now Appius and his men had cleared it away. A stone door with strange markings stood before them, closed, sealed like a tomb.
“You will open this door,” Giovanni said. “Or you will die.”
They had been at this for a full day now. Both Ragazzo and Giovanni were utterly exhausted by this contest of wills.
While they engaged in this, the centurions tried every conceivable method of forcing entry into the mound. Every lever and battering ram they knew how to employ snapped or broke. The scale of the Niburian stone foundation was laughably larger than anything known to any of them.
Giovanni looked like a completely different man than the one who had so jauntily plucked Ragazzo from the streets of Cyranus. Gone was the easy manner. Instead, here was a gaunt man, a gray man, filled with seething hatred. Even his legendary good looks had grown thin.
Appius eyed Ragazzo with a rage and disgust equal to Giovanni’s. It had been his family as well that had been cruelly killed by this plague.
The old Roman bent now to Ragazzo’s ear. “You are one of the faery folk, as Giovanni tells it. And this is one of your faery mounds. I’ve seen the insides of one of these before, on that accursed island. And that experience robbed me of my own time and family, as you know.
“But Giovanni says this mound is different. This mound can restore his own dead. It’s not too late. Laughing Oriana and clever Bonfilia and pretty Jina. Sweet Eleonora and bright Allesandra and shy Ventia — he can bring them back from the dead! Only if you open this door. Only if you let him inside. Why will you not?”
Ragazzo shook his head. “He is wrong. The dead are dead. Nothing in that mound can bring them back. The only thing in that mound is disaster, cataclysm, waiting to happen again.”
Appius struck him hard across the head. Thunder banged in echo of his blow.
“You are an accursed boy,” Appius said. “You who live and live. You, whose kind made us what we are, ghosts of a dead Empire, made to walk the earth.”
“You will have to slay me,” Ragazzo said. “I am commanded and I have taken an oath.”
Appius gaged his gaze: he knew men and oaths. Then, he turned to Giovanni and pulled him away a short distance for a whisper. Giovanni nodded several times and then looked at Ragazzo.
And the only words Ragazzo caught on the slashing winds were, “Yes. You, are right Appius. Perhaps that would work.”
Eight: Snake Island
THE PASSAGEWAY WOUND down into the depths of Mount Griswold. A dusty stone stairwell twirled into the endless underworld below.
Timson told the rest of Planet Furious kids that he would take it the rest of the way from here — they should go back to camp. The others nodded and vanished into the night.
This descent continued for nearly an hour, so far as Max could tell. Then, the passageway leveled off. Eventually it became damp; rock slicked with dripping water rose on all sides.
As they walked by flickering flashlight, Max caught a glimpse of Marvin Sparkle. His eyes swam with worry. He hunched his massive form forward protectively, clearly longing to be free of the acres of stone surrounding them in every direction.
Then Max realized what was terrifying Sparkle. Madame Europa Romani had told the story of how Sparkle had once defied the legends of his African tribe and climbed the ‘Mountain of Metal’. On that mountain, Sparkle had battled the Sentinel, which Max had supposed was a Niburian automaton or golem. Somehow, Sparkle had prevailed against this thing, entered the mountain, and learned its secrets.
But a terror of underground passages was forever burned into his heart.
Max kept a close eye on him — and their surroundings. They had no way of no whether this so-called Resistance was anything but a front for the Bondsman to trap revolutionaries.
And the Bondsman wanted Max dead.
IT WAS ABOUT two hours later that they emerged from the deeps of the earth.
Clean air splashed their cheeks and whistled in their ears. There was the smell of water. Max’s eyes found dappled blue through the trees. They were on the shore of a lake.
“Where are we?” Max asked Timson.
“Snake Island,” he replied matter-of-factly.
What?
The tunnel had gone beneath Mirror Lake?
But Max pushed this thought away in favor of a more urgent one.
“Snake Island? Are you cracked?” Max spat, eyes drifting skyward. “What about that story about the family? The one killed by the snakes that dropped on you from the trees …?”
“Relax,” Timson said. “They only call it Snake Island cuz it’s shaped like a snake. Of course, it helps that everyone believes that story. Nobody ever comes out here.” He waved for them to follow. Soon, they were in a field of jutting rock that made up the bulk of Snake Island’s interior terrain. He knocked on a round slab; it rolled to one side.
“Great,” Max muttered. “More caves.”
“It’s an old Niburian outpost,” Timson replied.
At these words, Marvin Sparkle stiffened visibly.
“It’s been abandoned for thousands of years, of course. No sign of a Sentinel. Not since we’ve been here, at any rate.”
The place was a labyrinth of rooms and rounded tunnels with a style Max recognized instantly. It was like the innards of a Sky Chamber set into stone. But it had been made into a base of the Resistance. Men and women shuffled around everywhere they looked, all bearing weapons, all looking tired and dirty and war-weary.
This place housed a small army, Max realized.
Fairly soon, the company entered a giant, noisy room that appeared to be a hangar. It was filled with Sky Chambers, something on the order of fifty or so. But they were led quickly through this room into a series of hallways. These seemed to be the living quarters: through a half open door, Max spied a bed with clothes strewn all over the room and a rifle leaning up against a chair.
Then they ascended again for a time and found themselves in a complex of what seemed to be conference rooms before opening into a wide room with a giant table at the center. Cables snaked across the floors and the same sort of primitive computers they had seen at the Shell Hotel were everywhere. But the table held a giant paper map with little markers that looked like Sky Chambers on it.
“Commander Ulrich,” Timson said. A grizzled white haired man turned around. His face was pocked and scarred, as were his lean, toned arms that bulged with muscle beneath a tight green T-shirt and military fatigues. His longish white hair and beard sprang from his gaunt head like a shock; he looked like a madman or a prophet. He wore chunky silver jewelry around his neck that jangled when he moved. He turned and nodded to Sparkle; these two evidently knew one another. Then his bright green eyes fell on Max.
“So. You’re
the famous Max Quick,” Ulrich said. At that, several heads in room turned and surveyed Max with a look of shock.
Max nodded. “I am. I don’t know about the famous part though.”
Ulrich snorted a laugh. “We saw you on television. Oh, you’re famous alright, boy.”
“Not where I come from.”
“The Bondsman’s made sure everyone knows your name,” Ulrich continued, stepping close to Max now. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you the Tale of Max Quick?”
Max looked at Sparkle. There was actually a Tale about him?
Sparkle shook his head. “No. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Not yet.”
“Well, he’s got to hear it sometime. Especially if he’s going to be here with us. Everyone here has heard it since they were a child.”
Sparkle only shrugged his mountainous shoulders.
“It starts back in 1912,” Ulrich continued.
A flash of panic zinged through Max’s brain. 1912?
“One day back in 1912, there was a cave-in. A hole mysteriously appeared in the streets of New York. Some men rappelled down into the deep cavern that this hole revealed. And that was when the world got its first look at Sky Chambers.
“Black-and-white photographs of the strange craft were published in the New York Times. The world was stunned. The very brightest minds on the globe examined the Sky Chambers, inside and out. They all agreed: it was proof positive of alien life, here on earth. No human could have constructed this – it was beyond any known technology.
“Of course, no one knew what these aliens had been up to in this secret lair of theirs. Or what had happened to the aliens themselves, for not a one of them seemed to remain. But the wreckage of a large contraption or machine of some sort was found strewn about the cavern. The scientists theorized that this device had gone awry and vaporized the aliens themselves, leaving only their technology behind.
“But the point was, now, we knew aliens existed. H.G. Wells and his ‘War of the Worlds’ had been right. We’d been napping! Well. We weren’t going to make that mistake again. The world was on alert now. We’d watch the skies, and we’d watch beneath our cities as well, now that we knew the aliens liked to hide there, like cockroaches avoiding the light.
“Interestingly enough, this alien threat fostered a new age of cooperation between the various peoples of the world. Some historians even theorize that the world might have exploded into a world war sometime between 1912 and 1920 were it not for this threat. Instead, nations shared information and research. It seemed that new golden age of global cooperation was unfolding.
“But that all changed in 1941.”
Max looked up at him. “Oh? What happened? Hitler?”
Ulrich stared at him blankly. “Who?”
Max waved the comment away; evidently, the timeline in this world had not included World War II.
“In 1941,” Ulrich continued, irritated, “the earth was subjected to an all-out invasion from the planet Nibiru.”
Max’s jaw dropped.
An attack?
“Our bombers and fighter planes were useless against the hordes of Sky Chambers. The German Luftwaffe lasted the longest, but bullets and bombs and gasoline are no match for particle beams and anti-gravity and hull armor harder than diamonds.
“In the end, the cities of the world were in rubble. Paris was a smoking pile of ash. New York was a shadow of her former self. Beijing and the Forbidden City were gone forever. The death toll was massive. And for those that still lived, things were not much better. The economies of the world had collapsed: money had no value. There was very little food. People were sick and starving.”
“It was at that moment, with their victory complete, that the Niburian leader made her appearance. She said her name was Jadeth. She –”
“Wait. Jadeth?”
Ulrich nodded. “Yes. Jadeth. Daughter of Enlil, Heir to the Throne of Nibiru. Through some vile technology, she caused her voice to be heard around the world. She told us that she was our new master, and we were her slaves. She told us that we would not revolt, that we could not revolt, for she held a device created in antiquity that would render our free will null and void.
“For Jadeth had recovered a weapon known as the Pendant. And that had been made possible by the greatest treasonous wretch the human race has ever known: Max Quick.”
Anger rose in every molecule of Max’s form.
It wasn’t true!
It was a lie of the most heinous sort.
But he didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak.
“It had been Max Quick — another Niburian — who had located the Pyramid of the Arches. It had been Max Quick who had betrayed an ancient trust, and recovered the Pendant. And it had been Max Quick who delivered the Pendant unto Jadeth, and sealed the doom of all who walk the earth.”
Max felt physically ill. The lies were piled high as the skies.
“Jadeth ruled viciously and mercilessly. The peoples of the world were made to work ceaselessly, sixteen hours a day. Sky Chambers were constructed in vast numbers. She was building a war machine. Apparently, she had only conquered earth so that she could return and conquer Nibiru.
“For seven years, this went on.
“Then in 1948, a hero arose. The one who would save us,” Ulrich snorted in disgust. “Or so we all thought, at the time. Of course, back then, anything seemed better than Jadeth. We had no idea that things could actually get worse.
“A masked vigilante, clad in gold from head to toe, even his face, suddenly appeared. The Pendant was useless on him, he declared. And he would confer this same immunity on anyone who joined his rebellion.
“It seemed he was correct. His revolt was swift and sure. His soldiers struck key production facilities and quickly commandeered vast numbers of the new Sky Chambers. Ironically, this was only possible because Jadeth had caused far more Sky Chambers to be produced than she could effectively guard. This man had turned Jadeth’s own war machine back on her.
“He crushed Jadeth and her armies in seven weeks flat, from start to finish.
“The world rejoiced. They were free of the tyrant Jadeth at last. And this vigilante, this golden-clad man, was celebrated by all the people of the world as hero. He was perhaps the greatest hero of all time, they said.
“And now, this new legend appeared on television and radio. His picture appeared in the papers. There he stood, still clad head to toe in gold, a gilded man – but with a grey suit, white shirt, black tie and a grey hat bizarrely worn on top of all that gold.
“He called himself ‘The Bondsman’. He had need of no other name than that, he said. Well, we soon learned the meaning of that name: he placed the whole world in utter bondage.
“Despite the fact the world knew almost nothing about this guy, everyone was all too happy to allow him to take over as their new ruler, the first World Emperor. People were far too gone with their love of him as their savior to realize what he really was. The governments of the world were no more; he would restore order and commerce, he said, if only everyone would give him the power. And everyone did.
“And then he worked the people even harder than Jadeth before him had. But worst part of his rule was that it had a kind of spiritual dimension to it.”
“The Dream,” Max said.
“Yes. The Dream, for one. Ah, so you’re not immune! You have it, same as us. I’d wondered about that. The Bondsman caused everyone to dream the same terrible dream every night. You can’t even get away from him even when you are asleep! Every night, your mind swirled with poison. But that’s not all: he did something to nature, something we don’t really understand. Everything went crazy — storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, all kinds of weird new insects and animals. You’ve seen it by now, no doubt.”
“Yes. Except at the Shell Hotel and the surrounding area. They seem to be okay. Normal.”
“The Elites Families,” Ulrich spat. “Even the Bondsman couldn’t rule the planet without their help. They give him
loyalty, and he allows them to live lavishly on the backs of everyone else. And gives them these resorts, like the Shell, each an oasis from the perversion of the rest of the world. The Veerspikes. The Archenstones. The Calloways. All those damnable families.”
“You know that the Pendant doesn’t actually really work,” Max said, switching topics. “You can’t take away the free will of another being. That’s impossible. The Pendant was an ancient trick of Enki’s, designed to trap anyone who wanted that power badly enough.”
“What did that matter?” Ulrich growled. “Everyone was terrified. Everyone believed it worked. Hell, there were Sky Chambers killing people by the millions and they seemed to work just fine. Why not this Pendant thing?”
“People gave up,” Max said, understanding now. “Of their own free will, they surrendered their free will.”
“And what about you, Max Quick? Have you given up?” Ulrich asked.
“Of course not!” Max responded like he’d been slapped. “You don’t believe that ‘Tale of Max Quick’ nonsense, do you?”
Ulrich regarded him with thousand-mile stare. “Well it’s Bondsman propaganda. That’s for sure. So it’s probably a lie. But about you? I don’t know what to think yet. Marvin Sparkle here vouches for you, which is why you’re here — and why no one has killed you. Yet. And the Bondsman doesn’t seem to like you, which is a point in your favor so far as we’re concerned. But when Sparkle talks about you, it’s clear he doesn’t really like you. It’s like he’s chewing glass whenever he says your name.”
Marvin Sparkle looked away, a glint of anger in his eyes.
“See? There it is. Yet he won’t come clean with us. He knows something about you that stings. So that’s a point against you, leaving us right back where we started.”
“So what is it you want from me?” Max said carefully.
“Come with me. I’ll show you.”
