The League of Doorways (A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic) (The Doorways Trilogy - Book Two)

by Tim O'Rourke

  The tail whipped backwards again, snatched up the piece of track it had left behind, and hurled this down in front of itself again. Over and over, the scorpion’s tail snaked through the air, so it had a continuous path to follow.

  As the bizarre-looking train reached the centre of the cavern, its tail twitched and rattled, coming to rest poised over the length of its own body. As it slowed to a halt, the creature omitted a hissing sound, as it locked on its brakes. Jets of steam oozed from beneath its scales.

  Suddenly, Zach felt a sharp prod in his back and he heard Neanna shout, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  The group whirled around to discover they were surrounded by a group of creatures, all of which were pointing sharpened staffs at them. Zach, William, and Neanna instinctively reached for their weapons, but the creatures were too fast and jabbed at the three of them with their staffs.

  “Okay! Okay!” Neanna said, slowly raising her hands above her head.

  Zach and the rest mimicked her actions to show the hostiles they meant them no harm. The creatures had bodies similar to humans with two arms and two legs, but on closer inspection, Zach could see differences. Their skin was the same colour as the rock which covered the walls and floor of the chamber. It was red and rusty-looking. The texture of the creatures’ skin closely resembled that of rough sandpaper. Their eyes were yellow and sat vertically on either side of two gaping holes which were their nostrils. The only facial similarity they shared with humans was the shape of their mouths, although their teeth looked like pieces of jagged stone. The tall, red creatures were hairless and instead of ears, they had two folds of skin on either side of their head, which pursed open and closed at regular intervals like gills.

  With their staffs, they gestured in the direction of the strange-looking train. Zach and the others turned around, and the very rocks they had hidden behind began to unfold into four of the red-skinned creatures. Bom groaned again, as he realised they were now totally surrounded.

  A side panel in the scorpion slid open, and a set of steps extended to the ground. In the doorway appeared another of these creatures. He paused momentarily, and then made his way down to ground level. Although Zach’s first thought was that all of the creatures looked the same, this one was different. Whereas the others all wore the same rustic-looking uniform, this creature’s clothing was black in colour. Around his sleeves were a series of intricately-woven braids. On his shoulders there were three stars. Like the others, he carried a long staff, but this one was ornately carved and the top of it seemed to glow a warm orange colour. It looked as if a tiny light had been hidden inside. Zach suspected that this creature held some importance in this race’s hierarchy.

  It walked slowly towards the group, its bright yellow eyes fixed on them. As it drew within a couple of feet it stopped, and Zach realised he had seen this creature before. It had been in the photograph with Der Cribbot.

  Zach and his friends stood perfectly still, their arms above their heads, none of them wishing to antagonize the creature. It looked them up and down with interest, then spying Faraday standing amongst them, the red coloured creature said, “Doctor Cribbot,” in a dry, rasping voice, “It’s so good to see my old friend again.”

  Faraday lowered his mechanical arms, stepped forward and said, “You are mistaken, I am not Cribbot, I am Faraday. You are Tamrus Turanion?”

  “Yes,” Tamrus said, his narrow yellow eyes staring curiously at Faraday.

  Sensing Tamrus wasn’t a threat, Zach lowered his arms and the others copied. The other Boulder men now stood to attention, their staffs held firmly by their sides.

  “Who are these others?” Tamrus asked Faraday.

  “They are my friends,” he said.

  Then looking back at Faraday, Tamrus said with a wry smile, “So if you’re not my friend Der Cribbot, who are you?”

  “A question I have recently been asking myself,” Faraday replied, again showing no emotion.

  “You look half ACT-Droid and half…” Tamrus mused peering through the semi darkness at Faraday. Then, making a rasping noise in the back of his throat, he said, “You did it, you really did it!”

  “Did what?” Faraday asked him, his dead, black eyes fixed on Tamrus.

  “You created a mechanical man, Der Cribbot,” Tamrus gasped, the gills on either side of his head opening and closing.

  “My name is Faraday,” he said again.

  “Your name is Der Cribbot, you fool!” Tamrus croaked as if laughing.

  “My name is Faraday,” he said flatly.

  “You did it – you actually did it,” Tamrus said, his voice sounding dry and cracked. “I heard rumours – but you know what the Outer-Rim is like. Not for one minute did I think you would be foolish enough to…Well I never!” he said, reaching out and poking Faraday’s skin with one bony finger. “You did it.”

  “What did he do?” Zach asked, stepping forward and feeling confused by what Tamrus was suggesting.

  “Der Cribbot turned himself into a mechanical man,” Tamrus said. “That’s what he did, dear boy.”

  “But his name is Faraday,” Zach breathed looking at the mechanical man standing beside him.

  Tamrus looked at both of them, then at his soldiers. After some thought, he raised his staff above his head, then brought it hammering down into the ground. The light set in it glared brightly and lit up the whole cavern.

  “All aboard the Scorpion Steam!” he roared, making his way back towards the weird-looking train.

  “You can’t just leave us,” Zach shouted after him. “You have to explain.”

  “I will,” Tamrus said, looking back. “But not here and now, it won’t take long for those dead peacekeepers to figure out what happened to you, and they’ll send reinforcements. We need to get far away from here.”

  “Where are you taking us?” William barked, stepping forward.

  “A Noxas,” Tamrus said, his cracked face forming something close to a smile. “How wonderful! I’m taking you through the Craggy Canyon, to the furthest reaches of the Outer-Rim.” Then he was gone, disappearing up the steps and into the weird-looking train.

  Neanna looked at Zach, and then with a swish of her long, raven hair, she turned and made her way after Tamrus. Zach, with the others close at her heels, followed Neanna up the steps and boarded the train.

  The brakes were released in a flurry of smoke. The Scorpion Steam screeched, its tail flicked backwards, tore up the track that lay behind it, and slammed it down in front. The door to the train slammed shut, sealing Zach and his friends inside. The Scorpion Steam scurried along the track and into the darkness of the awaiting tunnel, a plume of thick, black smoke billowing up from it.

  Chapter Thirty

  The inside of the Scorpion Steam was lavishly furnished, with large, high-backed chairs that appeared to have been crafted from some pale blue hide. Between the rows of seats sat tables, which were covered with intricately weaved cloths. On each table stood an array of beautifully carved candles, which burned red and bathed the carriage in a warm glow.

  In the next carriage along, Zach could see into the scorpion’s head, which doubled as the engine room. Two of the Boulder men, who were stripped to the waist, hurriedly threw shovel after shovel load of rocks into a seething furnace, and the Scorpion Steam screamed and picked up speed. Even though the heat inside the engine room must have been intolerable for the two Boulder men, their skin looked dry and arid, whereas another’s would have been dripping with sweat.

  The continuous ‘thud-thud’ sound as the machine ripped up the track from behind and slammed it down could still be heard, but from within the train, it lost some of its deafening quality.

  Tamrus sat opposite Faraday, while Zach, Neanna, William, and Bom sat around an adjacent table. Zach watched how the candlelight flickered on and off in Faraday’s black eyes.

  “So what’s with the train?” Zach asked Tamrus, curious to know how it worked.

  “I’m not sure that I u
nderstand your question?” Tamrus said.

  “Why does it only run on the same two pieces of track?”

  Tamrus smiled at Zach, his ears flapped open and closed as if drawing the sound of the boy’s words into his head. “It’s designed so our enemies can’t see where we have come from, and more importantly, where we are going!”

  Zach thought about this for a moment, and then said, “Whoa, that’s real clever! Who came up with the idea?”

  “He did,” Tamrus said, pointing across the table at Faraday with one brittle-looking finger.

  “I’m Faraday,” he said.

  “Can’t he change his song,” Bom grumbled, and stuck his empty pipe in the corner of his mouth.

  William and Neanna glared at him, and Bom turned to look out of the window built into the side of the Scorpion Steam.

  “Your real name is Der Cribbot,” Tamrus insisted.

  “So you two go back a long way then?” Zach asked.

  “I’ve known Cribbot since he was a small child…what would it be now?” he mused. “About one hundred and thirty years, I guess.”

  “That long!” Zach gasped, but he knew that people from Endra could live many more years than those from his world. Then looking at Tamrus’s craggy face, he added, “So how old are you then…that’s if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Mmm…let me see,” he said thoughtfully as he raised his red, bony fingers and started to count. “I often forget, but I must be at least five hundred and fifty-ish!”

  “That old!” William woofed.

  “That’s not old! I’ve at least another good six hundred years left in me yet,” his voice rattled. “I’m not even middle-aged!”

  Bom sat and stared out of the window as the red rocky walls of the tunnel continued to zoom past at an alarming speed.

  “So what are you?” Tamrus asked Zach, spying the crossbows strapped to each thigh.

  “I’m a peacekeeper,” Zach said, just above a whisper. Those words sounded strange to him, as deep inside he still didn’t truly believe that he was.

  “Oh!” Tamrus said. “I thought they were all dead.”

  “We’ve seen enough dead peacekeepers to know that they are,” Neanna said.

  Then realising he hadn’t introduced his friends, Zach said, “This is my friend, Neanna, she’s one of the Slath.” Then gesturing towards William, he quickly added, “This is William-the-wolf-Weaver. And the old guy in the corner is Captain Bom. I’m not sure what he is.”

  On hearing this, Bom glanced at Zach and said, “Not so much of the old. And if you must know, my people were the Queen’s Royal Guards. We have been for many years.” He then turned and stared out of the window again. Zach wished he didn’t have to be so grumpy the whole time.

  Then looking at Faraday, then Tamrus, Zach said, “This is my friend, Faraday. We discovered him in the desert. Someone had turned him off, but we switched him back on.”

  “It was Throat who turned him off,” Tamrus said, looking across the table at Faraday.

  “Why?” Faraday asked, not a hint of surprise in his voice.

  “You really don’t remember, do you?” Tamrus said, staring at him with his oblong shaped eyes.

  “Remember what?”

  “About whom you really are. Your true identity,” Tamrus croaked.

  “I’m nothing more than a machine – a mechanical man designed and made by the man named Der Cribbot,” Faraday told him.

  “He’s telling you the truth,” William woofed. “We’ve seen the early prototypes and everything.”

  “They are the models that Der Cribbot – you – couldn’t get to work,” Tamrus said, leaning across the table at Faraday.

  “So why am I called Faraday?” he persisted.

  “Faraday or Humpty Dumpty,” Tamrus sighed at Faraday. “It’s just a name. You wanted to call your first fully working mechanical man Faraday after some scientist from the other side of the doorways. I think his name was Michael Faraday and you claimed that he was the greatest scientist who ever lived. You said he discovered electromagnetic induction and lots of other things that I don’t claim to understand. But what I didn’t understand was your obsession with him and creating the first synthetic human.”

  “He did it though, didn’t he?” Neanna said.

  “Human! He doesn’t look human…he doesn’t smell like a human…!” Tamrus cried, his gaping nostrils twitching in the centre of his face. “And the reason he doesn’t look human is because he has been entangled.”

  “Entangled?” Zach breathed, remembering that Faraday had mentioned that word before. “He told us how the animals that Cribbot brought back from behind his doorway got entangled with the machines and technology he was smuggling. That’s why there are creatures here in the Outer-Rim which are part living and part machine.”

  “That’s right,” Tamrus said, eyeing Faraday from across the table. “But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more than mechanical creatures. He wanted mechanical men.”

  “So he could build any army,” Zach cut in.

  “Correct,” Tamrus said.

  “But why would a scientist want an army?” William woofed, his eyes burning fiercely behind his glasses.

  “It wasn’t my friend who wanted the army,” Tamrus said with a sense of dread. “It was Throat. Rumours about the creatures which Cribbot had created out here spread across Endra, so the Queen sent peacekeepers to investigate. But Throat arrived first and cursed the peacekeepers on their arrival. Throat told my friend here that the Queen would only send more and more peacekeepers to destroy the wonderful machines he had created.”

  “But why would she have wanted to destroy the machines?” Zach asked.

  “Throat told Cribbot that she distrusted human technology, that she thought it to be dangerous and would destroy Endra like it was destroying Earth. Cribbot feared that his creations would be destroyed, so sensing his fear, Throat convinced him to create an army that would be able to defeat the peacekeepers when they came. He told Cribbot to make an army of mechanical men who would be superior to the peacekeepers who were made from just flesh and blood,” Tamrus explained, as he looked across the table at Faraday. “So Cribbot set about building this army of mechanical men, but the first one failed. Throat was displeased and pressured him to work harder and faster. Cribbot made a second, but that too failed. Each time Throat grew angrier and threatened to curse him. It was at this point I lost contact with my dear friend Cribbot. He became a recluse. Shut away on his remote farm as he tried to create this mechanical man he was going to call Faraday.

  “Cribbot then received a message from Throat. If the rumours and stories are to be believed, Throat ordered Cribbot to meet him in the desert with his mechanical man. Knowing that he daren’t fail Throat again, Cribbot carried prototype three – Faraday – out into the desert. Although Faraday was an improvement on the last, he still didn’t work. The machine was slow, kept falling over, and couldn’t think for itself – it didn’t have a heart. So as Cribbot waited in the desert, fearing what Throat would do to him, he had an idea. So conjuring up his doorway, he took his mechanical man into Earth. On the other side, with tears running down his cheeks, he embraced the machine he had made. Then as if dancing together, the pair of them passed back through the doorway into Endra. But although they both came back, there was only one. The doorway had entangled them. The first mechanical man had been born,” Tamrus said, looking at his old friend.

  Faraday sat and simply stared back.

  “But he seems to know so much,” Zach said, eyeing Faraday. “He knows how to drive the beet-wagons, fly the Butter-Flyers, and…”

  “He is just using Cribbot’s knowledge – tapping into his memory,” Tamrus said, thoughtfully. “I just wish he would remember me – remember himself.”

  “I don’t remember you,” Faraday said without a flicker of emotion. “I am just a machine.”

  “Are you?” Tamrus said. Then, shooting one red hand out across the table, he ripped open the
front of Faraday’s flight suit. Then staring into his dead-looking eyes, Tamrus added, “Does a machine have one of them?”

  All at once, Faraday, Zach, and his friends stared into the hole that Tamrus had made in the flight suit. There was a square mesh of wire screwed into the rubbery looking skin that covered Faraday’s chest. Behind the mesh, they could see something. It was colored red and was beating. It was a heart.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “In my time I’ve seen a lot of strange and wonderful things, but I haven’t heard of a machine having a heart before!” Tamrus said, sitting back in his seat.

  The Scorpion Steam thundered through the tunnels, the sound of the pieces of track being slammed down, and then raked up again.

  “So why did Throat turn him off?” Zach asked, as Faraday sat forward and stared at his heart, which beat bloodily behind his chest.

  “I can’t be sure,” Tamrus said, “But I’ve heard that when he arrived in the desert and came across the mechanical man, he was so displeased with the machine that was waiting for him, that he switched him off.”

  “Displeased?” William howled. “Have you seen this thing in a fight?”

  “I know his arms look like a collection of old spanners and spare parts,” Zach cut in, “but they’re like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “They’re lethal,” Neanna added.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Tamrus said, eyeing Faraday again. “Throat obviously didn’t see Cribbot’s potential.”

  “Please call me Faraday,” the mechanical man said, looking up at Tamrus. “If what you say is true, Cribbot doesn’t exist anymore. There is only me.”

  “You want to hope there is a little bit of Cribbot left inside you,” Bom grunted, as he continued to stare out of the window.