Second Veil

by Wilson, David

  They climbed back in and rolled into the city. The air tower was down the road to their right. There was a main road that ran the perimeter of the city. It joined the different exits leading off to other cities, and had once been alive with commerce. Now it was like a last barrier between the city and the veil. Very few had a reason to cross it unless they were making their way to the airship towers, or assigned to the crews checking the seals.

  It had become a superstition; no one wanted to be any closer to the dead air beyond the veil than they had to. It was better to stay sealed up in the buildings than to risk being too far from fresh air to make it back. Euphrankes knew that, regardless of what happened with the patch, this was going to make it worse. Now they would stand in their windows and doorways and stare into the sky. They would wonder what moment would bring that next chunk of debris. He couldn't blame them. Until now, it hadn't even occurred to them.

  Euphrankes wanted to reach out beyond the Second Veil. He wanted to find something else – something better – but despite his dreams he had never considered reversing the process. If there was something out there – a place, or another race, who could help their dying planet…what else might there be? If something could break the Second Veil and escape into space, why couldn't something fall in?

  And if something could fall in, and if Euphrankes could fly out into space – who might fly in, and would they be friendly when they did, or would they take what they wanted, or needed, and leave? Suddenly the rich metal deposits and the pockets of Freethion gas were harder to take for granted.

  "If we get through this," he said to no one in particular, "a lot of things are going to have to change."

  Aria glanced over at him, but didn't reply.

  "Look!" Lyones cried.

  Euphrankes slowed the tracker, and they all looked in the direction Lyones pointed. Just to their right was the parking lot surrounding the air towers. There were concentric mobs surrounding the base of the tower. Men and women poured in and out of the area, some rushing off to try and find easier safety in one of the main roads before they were sealed off, and others just arriving, hoping to be among the few who could be carried away in the airship.

  There was no way for anyone to get safely down from the ship, and Euphrankes could see that no portal had been opened through the veil.

  "Gods," he said. "They aren't going to let Zins out of the ship! We could use his help, and if they try rushing the tower, people are going to get hurt. They can't take his ship without his cooperation, but if too many get on the platform and they try to break the seal, they could cause the same damage we're here to prevent, just trying to escape."

  He stopped the tracker and climbed out of his seat.

  "What are you doing?" Aria asked.

  "I'm going to do what I have always done," he said with a sigh. "I'm going to go and try and talk sense to The Council. We need Zins on this, but if we can't get him, at the very least we need to make sure as few people are hurt as possible. If we save the city, I don't want to spend the next week cleaning up dead bodies beneath the towers."

  "They won't listen," Slyphie said. "They have never listened."

  "This time, I think they will listen," Euphrankes said. "They aren't locked away in a big empty room, they are out in the open, and the people will hear. They will see what we've already accomplished, reopening the road. They have to listen, or we are all lost. Maybe not today – maybe not in this crisis – but soon, and as surely as if it all ended now."

  He slipped out of the cockpit and opened the outer hatch. A moment later, he was gone, and the others watched him make his way across the pavement and into the outer ring of the crowd.

  "Keep the motor running," Aria said.

  Then they sat, and watched, and waited.

  ~ * ~

  The crowds saw the tracker first. It was probably the only thing that got Euphrankes safely through the first wave of refugees and in near The Council. They were still surrounded by their guards, and though the crowd had begun to press forward, the circle held. The only weapons allowed in Urv were in the hands of The Council guard. It was going to take a deeper level of panic for the citizens to charge the circle, but that was only a matter of time.

  Euphrankes walked up to the circle and stopped, and then he called out.

  "Cumby! High Councilor Cumby!"

  At first there was no response. The guards moved toward him menacingly, but he held his ground, glaring back at them, and waited. Then there was a commotion behind that armed line, and he saw Cumby just beyond the shoulders of the guards.

  "Let him in," Cumby cried. "Don't you see who it is? Let him in."

  Euphrankes was slightly taken aback, but when the opening appeared in the circle of guards, he stepped through without hesitation.

  "Euphrankes!" Cumby cried. "Have you brought the Vector? Where did you dock? How…"

  "We repaired the road," Euphrankes said. He didn't allow Cumby to speak, but plowed ahead. There wasn't time to explain everything. "We have a new process…it repairs rifts in the veil. I think we can save the city, but you have to let Maester Zins debark – and you have to back away from his ship. There is no time to discuss this. If we move quickly enough, I believe we can seal whatever tear this – thing – makes in the veil. If we succeed, we can help open all the great roads. You have to help me."

  Cumby started to speak. Then he glanced over Euphrankes' shoulder into the mobs beyond, and he nodded.

  "I'll do what I can. We can hold the base of the tower. If Maester Zins and his crew can get down here and their people can seal off the ship, I'll do what I can to get them out through the crowd."

  "You know the point of impact?" Euphrankes asked.

  Cumby nodded. "Of course."

  "Get him there. It may not be too late for Urv, but there has never been a bigger need for speed. I'm going to go on head with my people. We will get things into position and seal ourselves against the blast. You should get these people into the other roads, or seal them back into the buildings. "

  "I will try," Cumby said. "We all will." He glanced over his shoulder at the frightened, huddled council. "I think it's about time we did something for the city."

  Euphrankes had about a thousand comments on the tip of his tongue and managed to hold them all.

  He turned, and the guards parted. Moments later he was elbowing his way through the crowd and back to the tracker. When he was inside, he called up to the cockpit.

  "Get rolling!"

  Aria put the tracker in gear and they rolled slowly away toward the city. There were two hours left until impact. Euphrankes prayed that it would be enough.

  Chapter Nine

  The tracker made good time around the perimeter of the city. Euphrankes knew he could have shaved off some time by cutting across, but there was less chance of running into any unforeseen obstacle on the outer road, and he could crank the engine up to full capacity. Besides, it gave him some small satisfaction to roar through Urv with the engines wide open. Despite the momentary cooperation of The High Council, he had no illusions. They had spurned him too many times for him to trust them so quickly.

  "One quarter mile," Aria said.

  She was bent over a screen, carefully marking coordinates on a chart beside her. Euphrankes knew that she had long since pinpointed the point of impact. Aria used engineering diagrams and mathematical problems to avoid anxiety. He'd seen it any number of times; starting with the first week she'd come to train at The Outpost. He was glad to have her at this point. If they set up even a little off target, the city could be sucked free of its entire atmosphere before they could adjust.

  The plan was simple. They'd brought all of the Imperium they had, and they'd created a thin, impossibly strong membrane. It was set up so it could be pumped full of Freethion, which would draw it up and taut over the edge of the rift. Magnets were attached around the perimeter and in concentric circles moving toward the center. They were precisely calibrated to counteract the Freethi
on and prevent the patch from being sucked through the rift into space. It was a modification from the patches they'd used on the road. For one thing, it was at least ten times as large as the biggest they'd tried.

  The only problem with the design was the placement. They couldn't put it in place until after impact. They would have very little time to get the placement of the magnets right, and once they released the Freethion into the patch, it had to be perfect. Under more controlled circumstances, they could release some gas and loosen the patch, but there wasn't going to be time, and the amount of pressure differentiation was going to be huge. They had a single chance to succeed.

  "I'm going to pull up short," Euphrankes called to the others. "If we get too close, we're going to be in danger from the impact."

  When the tracker had stopped, they clambered out quickly. All of them were in full protective gear with their helmets sealed. They unrolled the Imperium patch, but kept way back from the veil. They were nearly finished when voices rang out from the direction of the city.

  "It's Zins," Lyones cried out, waving.

  "Either High Councilor Cumby was as good as his word," Euphrankes said, "or Zins is stuck here with us, and his ship has been taken. Either way I'm glad to have him here. He's got a lot of experience with airlocks, and though this is different, I'm thinking he may have some insight."

  "Termac is with him," Slyphie said, "and about half a dozen others. Some of them appear to be in the uniforms of Council Guardsmen."

  "Good,” Euphrankes said. “The more, the better. Bring them up to speed as quickly as possible," Euphrankes said. "We have less than fifteen minutes to impact, and we don't want anyone who isn't ready at a moment's notice anywhere near that patch. If they don't seem to be getting it, find them something to do a little farther back."

  Maester Zins came up at a trot, giving Euphrankes a mock salute.

  "At your service," he said. "We got here as quickly as we could. It didn't take too long to get down off the tower, but convincing that crowd to let us leave without allowing them on board the ship was a different matter."

  Lyones and Myklos took off suddenly, running back toward the tracker.

  "What are you doing?" Euphrankes called out. "There's no time!"

  "The debris," Lyones cried. "We forgot. We have to be able to move it out of the way."

  And then they were gone around the corner of the tracker, and it was too late to worry about anything. Brilliance filled the sky. There was a whistling, roaring sound from above, and they spun. The thing plummeting out of the heavens wasn't large, maybe the size of a man, but it was dropping at incredible speed. It still burned, despite the thin atmosphere beyond the veil. Euphrankes had little time to worry over this.

  "Back!" he cried. "Get back."

  And then it struck. The sound was deafening. The object crashed into the veil, moving so fast it pierced cleanly, and hit the ground with a deafening explosion. The shock from the impact drove them back, and they fought for their balance, diving for the edges of the patch.

  Lyones and Myklos reappeared. They were pushing one of the hand trucks before them. It wasn't designed for speed; the wheels were too small and low to the ground. It was meant to slowly transport things too heavy to move by hand. It wobbled and careened wildly, but the two muscled it under control. Euphrankes leaped to his feet and gripped the edge of the patch. The hole in the veil was clean, but it was beginning to spider at the edges, and he felt the pressure of the air being sucked out, forced through that one small exit into the gaping void beyond.

  The others regained their footing and helped him lift the patch. They all saw the problem at once. They couldn't get to the veil! The debris, still burning, lay between them and the hole, and there was no way to get the huge patch around one side or the other in time.

  Then Lyones and Myklos hurtled in front of them, pushing the hand cart crazily. It had a platform with a beveled edge, and they had it lowered as far to the ground as possible. The front of the cart struck the burning projectile and dug in underneath it. Flames shot up and sparks flew. The flames fed on the richer atmosphere of the city, and the fire sucked back toward the hole in the veil. With a scream, Lyones drove into the rear of the cart, Myklos at his side. At first, nothing happened. Slowly at first, and then at a fast skid the cart, and the burning bit of space debris started moving. In only a moment they had rolled it to the side.

  "Now!" Euphrankes cried. The group of them lifted the Imperium patch and raced to the veil. As they placed it over the hole, the pressure of escaping air sucked it flat. Aria slammed her hand down on the valve that released Freethion into the membrane. The reaction of the seal was instantaneous. It snapped tight over the hole and sealed to the veil. The splintering, spidering cracks around the edge of the rift stopped spreading. There was a palpable release of pressure as the leak was patched and the city's pumps began restoring pressure.

  They all stood back and waited, but the patch held.

  "Hey!" Myklos called out. "A little help!"

  They turned and saw that the cart had caught fire, burning along with the space debris. Myklos and Lyones had backed away. The heat was too much now, and if they allowed it to continue burning there would be an entirely new threat to the atmosphere. Open flames were outlawed in Urv for very good reason. They ate oxygen.

  Slyphie and Bonymede were already rushing to the tracker, and a moment later the others heard it starting up and backed out of the way. Moments later, the big vehicle pulled up beside the flaming cart, and a nozzle extended from the side. The foam it released doused the flames.

  They all stood in silence, watching as steam and smoke rose against the side of the veil, leaving a gray-black stain. Then, very slowly, they walked closer, surrounding what appeared to be a jagged bit of metal.

  "What is it?" Zins asked. "Gods, it looks like…"

  "Part of an airship," Euphrankes said. "But not one like any we've ever seen."

  More voices sounded from the direction of the city. A crowd was gathering, and at the front of it, Euphrankes saw the High Priest, Myril, and High Councilor Cumby, being born forward on carts that operated similarly to that they'd just used to save the city.

  "We'd better get our victory speech ready," Euphrankes said. "Then we'd better figure out what to say when they try and blame this on us."

  Zins laughed. "Sometimes," he said, turning to meet the oncoming crowd, "you scare me."

  Chapter Ten

  In the end, there were no speeches, neither of victory, nor of blame. The patch held. The High Council gathered around it, examining the design and congratulating Euphrankes and his people. There were thanks, and it wasn't even mentioned that they'd roared around the city in the tracker, or opened an ancient road back into Urv without authorization.

  They all trekked back to The Council Chamber, where food and drink was served. They passed the citizenry of Urv on their way back to their homes. There were some cheers. Some were still frightened half out of their wits. Euphrankes was impressed with the way the councilors and priests reached out to those they passed and set them at ease. It was a talent that he had never possessed – he was too likely to say exactly what he thought without considering how others might react.

  Behind them, the chunk of debris was being cooled. It would follow them to the main Council Chamber in due time, where they would all be able to study it at length. There was no doubt that it was a chunk of technology. There was also no doubt that there was no one among them familiar with just what it might be, or with any idea where it came from.

  Myril had tentatively suggested that it must be the work of their own protectors, the all powerful beings who'd sealed them within the two veils. He was quickly silenced as he saw that all present, including the members of The High Council, were unimpressed with this idea.

  "Gods, man," Maester Zins said, "you'd better hope not, eh? If this came from The Protectors…who destroyed it?"

  It was a sobering thought. If one bit of fiery debris could
fall from the sky, then why not more? Who had this technology belonged to, and what happened to them? Was it possible that whatever destroyed the original device, ship, or whatever the debris was part of could be heading to their planet? To Urv itself? What would happen if they did?

  "I'd like to point something out," Euphrankes said when there was a moment's silence. "This – thing – fell through our outer atmosphere."

  "Obviously," High Councilor Cumby replied. "And?"

  "And that atmosphere is still there," Euphrankes said. "Whatever the Second Veil is formed of, it is self-repairing. In fact, it would be pretty naïve of us to believe that nothing has ever dropped from space before…it's just that this is the biggest piece we've actually spotted, and it hit the First Veil. Maybe some of the tears in the roads happened this way – we've never explored the damaged areas."

  "We can now," Cumby pointed out. "With your patches, we should be able to open all the roads. The other cities need to know what has happened here."

  "My god," Maester Zins said suddenly. "We have to tell them about the patches! We have to prepare them in case this happens again."

  "I think," Cumby added, "that it's high time we told them a lot of things."

  Everyone turned to him then. Euphrankes squared his shoulders and prepared for another face-off.

  "Our world is dying," Cumby said. He spoke slowly, thinking carefully before each sentence. "For a very long time now, we have watched as our cities, and our roads closed in on us, and we have done little or nothing to prevent it. The only thing that has kept our society alive is the intervention of the very men and women we've ostracized and persecuted."

  He glanced meaningfully at Euphrankes.

  "It may not be enough to spread the word," Zins said. "We need to know more about what happened, and we need to know how to protect ourselves, if possible, or how to fight back. It seems to me that all of the years we've been under the ‘protection’ of whoever built the veils have served more to make us weak than to protect us. We aren't growing – we are dying. Slowly, yes, but surely."