Fata Morgana

by Steven R. Boyett

  She kept walking and did not look back. Farley let go of Yone and ran. His leg still pained him from the fall into the crevice. Behind him he heard Yone’s voice. Like a whisper in his ear but far away. He looked back but Yone was gone. Farley was on the cavern floor.

  He felt dizzy and looked forward again. Wennda was no longer there. He stopped.

  “It’s here. The heart of the locus.”

  Farley turned. The voice had been Yone’s but Wennda stood a few feet behind him. The two of them were on a railed catwalk a hundred feet above the cavern floor. A long, pegged pole rose high up from the center of the catwalk to a small railed platform. Like a cherry picker. Its bucket poised before a long, narrow cone that tapered to a point before a sheet of blinding green light in the center of the floating octagon. The cold light wavered and rippled like water, a vertical eight-sided pool.

  He was on the machine.

  Wennda brought her smartsuit’s visor to her eyes and looked up at the curtain of light. “Can you feel it?” she asked.

  Farley felt a plunging fear. “Wennda. We have to go.”

  She raised the visor and looked up at the curtain of light. “Can you feel it?” she repeated.

  Farley stepped forward and grabbed her wrist. She turned to him and her face was all hard reflections and he was terrified and then he saw that she had activated her visor. “Look,” she said, and held out the visor.

  “We have to go.”

  “Look,” she said, and held out the visor.

  The time was stuttering.

  Farley took the visor from her and held it over his eyes. For a moment he did not understand what he was looking at. Then he realized that the view was highly magnified. He lowered the visor from his eyes and oriented himself on the point of the cone in front of the insubstantial platform on its spindly pole and raised the visor again. The green light was much dimmer, filtered by the visor. He could see something in the middle of the sheet of light, directly in front of the cone. A bug in the ointment. It wavered and shook, and Farley held his breath and forced himself still.

  There. A small hemisphere with a stem emerging from one end, like a mushroom or a top.

  “What am I looking at?” Farley asked.

  “The thing that brought you here. To my world. To this room. To me. The locus.”

  “That thing?”

  “Not a thing. An area. A set of equations. Coordinates. Instructions. Laws. It connects realities. Times.”

  “It’s the size of a jawbreaker.”

  “It destroyed the world.”

  Farley pulled the headpiece off and stared at Wennda. She had sounded exactly like Yone when Yone had started sounding crazy.

  Farley felt a sudden certain horror. “Wennda,” he said. He glanced at the mote in the cold sheet of light. “Is that you talking to me?”

  Near the bottom of the stairs Yone vaulted the rail and ran in the direction of the dynamo. Farley missed a step and grabbed the rail. He was certain he had just seen himself on the floor of the huge room, looking up at himself and Wennda running down the stairs.

  Wennda nearly ran into him. “You all right?” she asked.

  He pushed open the door and stepped out onto a small platform at the top of a narrow staircase bolted to a sheer stone wall several hundred feet high. A space that would fit a dozen typhon repair bays. Distant walls. A machine the size of a battleship. Sudden vertigo. Wennda pushed a workstation chair into the doorway. “Here,” she said. Farley let go the door and stepped in. A small man stood before him. Scabbed face, limpid eyes, filthy jumpsuit.

  “We are at the heart of the locus,” Yone said. “I am so glad you found me.”

  “We have to go,” said Farley.

  “Look.” Wennda held the visor out to him.

  He held it to his eyes and looked. The silhouette hand flickered as it reached toward the light. Floating in front of the cone was a small object shaped like a mushroom or a top.

  “The thing that brought you here,” Wennda told him. “Did you feel it?”

  “I felt something. I don’t know that I’d say it was alive, but it was something.”

  “A set of equations. Instructions. A bunch of chemicals that organize into cells that evolved to combine and grow and reproduce. Entire machines made out of millions of little machines. Independent pieces programmed to work together. A consensus. It connects.”

  Farley lowered the visor and looked at her. The jumbled letter blocks of time and event were spelling out a message.

  “It’s trying to communicate with us,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Is a baby alive? Aren’t you a hammer that decides what to hit?”

  She stood on the cliff top before the artificial sun went out. And she stood outside the door to the control room. And she held the rail on the staircase platform. And she pointed at the locus from the ledge of the machine. Can you feel it? And she looked at him and smiled.

  And the green light flared and the world paled out to white.

  thirty-six

  Broben took a deep breath and pressed his throat mike. “Pilot to flight engineer. You’re sure about this.”

  “Flight engineer here,” came Wen’s voice. He sounded like he had marbles in his mouth and the world’s worst nose cold. He had insisted on manning the top turret even though his nose was broken and one side of his face looked like he was storing nuts. “The bugs’ll come through for us, lieutenant.”

  “Uh-huh.” Broben nudged the throttle underhanded and the Fata Morgana began to roll toward the huge blank wall of closed main door directly ahead.

  “Tail gunner to pilot,” said Francis. “There’s one of those milk trucks headed our way at six o’clock. It’s got a big antenna on top.”

  Broben looked up at the overhead panel and held his palms out. “Milk truck at six o’clock, roger,” he said. “Open fire the second it’s in range. Go for the bowl or the tires. Martin, get back downstairs.”

  “Back in the ball, roger.”

  Broben turned on the running lights and saw that the hangar door had begun to move. A slit of outside canyon slowly widened. Wen’s crawly little friends had come through after all.

  Beyond the opening door Broben saw the troop transport returning from its encounter with the demolition team. It was headed straight toward the Morgana.

  Broben deathgripped the control wheel. God damn it. Friggin glaciers move faster than this door. He needed a hundred and four feet and it had opened maybe thirty.

  A brief burst of loud jackhammering from the back of the bomber.

  It’ll have to do, thought Broben, and shoved the throttle full forward and let off the brake. The engines roared and the brake shoes squealed and the Morgana lumbered toward the widening exit. Broben gritted his teeth. It was going to be awfully—

  The left wingtip brushed the door as it swept by. The bomber transitioned from smooth floor to canyon ground. They were out. They were out.

  A bright red thread shot past the bomber and a patch of ground erupted ahead of them.

  “Top turret here,” came Wen’s voice. “We’re taking fire from the wall.”

  “Right waist gun,” said Everett. “Sten says it’s their automatic system.”

  Broben headed straight toward the approaching troop transport. “Come on, sweetheart,” he told the bomber. “Just give me ten feet.”

  At the last second he pulled back on the yoke. The nose came up and the bomber lifted. The transport shot beneath the ball turret and the tail wheel rolled across the transport roof. Then the bomber dropped back down to the canyon floor.

  “Holy crap that was close,” came Martin’s voice.

  Broben steered past boulders barely visible in the bomber’s up-angled wing lights and looked for a long stretch of level ground.

  Something hit the top of the fuselage hard enough to rock the aircraft. Broben forced himself not to look away from the canyon floor. “Pilot here, what’s the damage?”

  “Flight engineer here,
we took a hit, no idea what. Rochester’s taking a look.”

  “Who the hell is—” Broben began, then remembered who Rochester was. “Roger,” he said, and tried to focus on steering the bomber. They were jouncing hard now, and Broben had to back off on the throttle until he found ground he could use as a runway. The Morgana may have been a great bomber, but she was a lousy bus.

  There. A long flat stretch of level ground, right where he remembered. Thank you, Jesus, I promise I’ll stop gambling when I’m back.

  The engines didn’t sound anywhere near loud enough, but the RPM gauges rose smoothly, the manifold pressure looked good, and the bomber was accelerating quickly.

  “Top turret to pilot. That zap truck’s gaining, lieutenant.”

  “Unless they got wings, I don’t give a shit.”

  The throttle was full forward and the RPM hit 2500. The control wheel began shuddering. Broben surveyed gauges: Tachometer; fuel, oil, and manifold pressure; oil, engine, and carb temperature. Everything was sweet as could be, and the engines were purring like kittens. The airspeed indicator read eighty. Now we’re talking. The ground ahead looked clear.

  “Top turret to pilot. I dunno what they got under the hood, but they’re catching up.”

  “Roger.” Flaps up, rudder neutral, elevator trim minus nine percent. One hundred miles per hour, and the canyon walls were rolling by. One-fifteen.

  Arrivederci, chumps, Broben thought, and pulled back on the yoke.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed forward on the wheel and looked to see if anything lay in their path. “Shorty, get up here!”

  “On my way.”

  “Boney, call out anything in front of us!”

  “Roger,” came the bombardier’s laconic voice as he sat in the front bubble. “Looks good up ahead.”

  Shorty climbed up from the pit. The left wheel hit a bump and he grabbed at the copilot seat.

  “Siddown!” yelled Broben. “Grab the folder by the seat and read the top page.”

  “Tail gunner to pilot,” came Francis’ voice. “The truck’s a thousand yards and closing.”

  “Roger.” Broben glanced at Shorty, who was frowning at the sheet. “Out loud, genius,” he said.

  “Um—” Shorty frowned at the checklist. “Form 1A—checked?”

  “Skip it.”

  “Controls and seats—checked?”

  “Yeah yeah.”

  “Fuel transfer valves and switch—off.”

  Broben glanced at the controls. “Check.”

  Boney’s voice crackled in Broben’s headset. “Big rock, eleven o’clock, two hundred yards.”

  Broben glanced out the forward window. “Bombardier, don’t report anything unless we’re gonna hit it or fall into it.”

  “Roger,” said Boney. “We’re not going to hit it.”

  “Mr. Dubuque?” said Broben.

  Shorty tore his gaze away from the window. “Sorry. Uh, intercoolers—cold.”

  Broben looked. “Check.”

  “Top turret here; they’re five hundred yards and closing at six o’clock.”

  “Gyros—uncaged.”

  Broben didn’t look. “Check,” he said.

  “Fuel shutoff switches—”

  “Open,” Broben interrupted.

  “That antenna’s aiming at us.”

  “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Broben ordered.

  “Roger,” said Francis. The tail gun hammered.

  “Gear switch neutral?” Shorty said.

  “Yes, god damn it.”

  From the top turret Wen opened fire on the pursuing transport.

  “Bombardier to pilot, there’s a ridge dead ahead, three hundred yards.”

  Broben glanced out the window. A frozen lava ripple ten feet high and hundreds of yards long lay directly ahead.

  “Elevators unlocked?” asked Shorty.

  “Darn,” said Francis. “I’m jammed.”

  “Say again, Shorty,” said Broben.

  “Um—” Shorty glanced at the sheet. “Elevators unlocked?”

  “Bingo!” Broben reached out and unlocked the elevators. He pulled back on the yoke and the bumping stopped and the ground drained from the windshield as the Fata Morgana left the alien ground.

  thirty-seven

  The cliff rose flat and smooth from dense white mist, too regular to be natural. Its top was flat and bare, too level and too square. Identical cliffs rose in the distance, little islands in an even fog, floating rocks on top of clouds. Castles in the air.

  The sky was blank.

  Farley sat on the edge of the cliff with his feet dangling and looked down on the undifferentiated carpet of mist, following it out until it blended with the jejune sky. No horizon could be seen.

  Beside him Wennda said, “I like the view.”

  As he turned and saw her face he felt her fingers twined with his and knew she’d been here all along. Her hand cool and familiar and welcome in his. Her face home to his wayfaring heart.

  He smiled at her. “I’m afraid there isn’t any view,” he said.

  “There is from where I’m sitting.”

  He laughed and squeezed her hand and looked around. Their surroundings incomplete and unconvincing. “Are we really here?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure that here is really here.”

  He turned toward her at a sudden fearful thought. “Wennda. Are we—”

  She put a finger on his mouth. “I think we had to do a lot more than climb a hill to be alone this time,” she said.

  Farley kissed the finger and took it from his lips. “But—how can we be at the Dome?”

  Her hair moved languidly as she shook her head. “More like somebody’s bad memory of it.”

  “I don’t understand.” He held up a hand. “I don’t want to understand. Just—” He made a leveling motion.

  She smiled. “You don’t want me to save you, Joe?”

  “You already have.”

  She leaned against him. His arm across her shoulders. The smell of her hair. The solid reassurance of her the most convincing thing here.

  They kicked their feet at the end of the world.

  The last thing he remembered: Standing on the narrow platform at the heart of the machine that housed the top-shaped thing that frayed the real.

  “We don’t have long,” Wennda finally said.

  “We never did.”

  “Oh, Joe.” The sad acceptance in her voice was heartbreaking. “I really hoped it would be your beach.”

  “It’s all right.” He pulled her tighter. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  The mist below them began to darken.

  Wennda’s back went stiff beneath his arm. She glanced around and then stood up and went to the center of the squared clifftop. Farley quickly followed.

  “It’s not fair!” Wennda yelled up at the uniformly darkening sky. “Why’d you even bring us together?”

  “Wennda—”

  She looked at him. Her expression fierce enough to stop him. Then the anger melted but the intensity remained.

  All was twilight now.

  “Hold on to me, Joe,” she said.

  The naked simplicity of it. Here at the end of everything he took her in his arms and held her close, just as he had mere days ago forever back upon the clifftop in the Dome. The gesture conjuring their fearful wonder at that first admission.

  “Yone was right,” she breathed against his ear. “They made a god.”

  “I don’t care,” said Farley, and he didn’t. Gods, machines, wars, duty, command. None of it. All he cared about was her, here, now.

  “It’s coming apart,” she said, and pressed hard against him. “I don’t know if we’ll still be together when it’s gone.”

  He leaned back and smiled as the prop of world grew dark around them. Her face a map of a country he would never fully know now. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re connected, remember?”

  She laid her head against his shoulder. “We are. Th
ank you for remembering.”

  “Always.”

  She lifted her head suddenly and looked at him. “I want more time,” she said. She looked up. “I want more time,” she demanded of the artificial sky.

  He set a finger on her mouth and leaned his head toward hers and closed his eyes and felt full dark enshroud their imitated world.

  And shred.

  *

  “Captain? Captain Farley?”

  Farley opened his eyes. The ghost of a tornado towered above him, pale green in its silent churning, distorting stars behind it as it flickered in an indigo sky. He lay blinking at it, thinking about gods and powers and manifestations. Pillars of smoke, pillars of fire, voices from whirlwinds, messages to reluctant prophets.

  Someone shook him again. “Captain.” Yone’s voice.

  Farley sat up. He was on a slope a hundred feet above the crater floor. Hard ground and grit against his palms. Cold air, no wind. Predawn light delineating the stark angles of a surrounding horizon of cliff and dark recesses of fissure openings miles away. Yone kneeling beside him, scraped face piebald with dried blood and lined with worry. Wennda curled up on her side and stirring awake.

  Wennda—

  Symmetrical cliffs floating on thick mist. A white sky darkening. A kiss farewell almost.

  Farley reached for her and she sat up gasping as if dashed with cold water and blinked uncomprehending.

  “It’s all right,” said Farley. “It’s okay.”

  Wennda stared at him. “Was I—” She looked around the crater floor, craned her head up at the coruscating vortex. Looked back at Farley. “Were we—”

  “We are outside the well,” said Yone. “Above the crater floor.” He spread his arms.

  Farley realized Yone had heard her ask Where are we?

  “Outside the well,” repeated Farley. He stood and looked upslope and saw that it ended abruptly not ten feet up.

  Wennda regarded him with an expression he could not have named. “Were you there?” she asked.

  “I think I was,” he said. A slanted smile. “I’m just not sure if there was really there.”

  He helped her to her feet and helped Yone up the slope until the three of them stood on its rounded lip and stared down into the well. Its bore a quarter-mile wide at least and mostly dark. Isolated pinprick lights and hardplaned surfaces suggested many levels, a mosaic of scaffolds, stairwells, ledges, ramps, pipes, tunnel mouths. The core of some abandoned city faithfully abiding. “How did we get here?” Wennda asked. “I can’t remember.” But she cocked her head as if trying to reconcile conflicting memories instead of trying to retrieve the true ones.