Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  “We’ll see about this,” Benel said.

  And so began a six-month campaign to track the Ghost to his lair. Two months for Benel to find, and install, a superior surveillance system, salvaged from Martian equipment partially damaged by raser fire; Benel had to design circuitry to replace what was blown out in the Martian rig; it took two weeks alone to find a single Venusian part that did what an inefficient Martian one, with twenty times the components, had done. In the end, though, Benel Kran had his camera and had it mounted so that it could cover the landscape to the horizon. It could almost reach into space, so sensitive were its optics.

  But then the Ghost didn’t come.

  Four more months passed, during which time Benel struggled with his miniaturization problems. He still longed for a plasma soldier to test the rig, as bulky and unwieldy as it was. Eventually, the Ghost slipped from Benel’s mind. Occasionally the security system, overly sensitive, was set off by a high-flying bird and, once, by a groundhog appearing in the mouth of its burrow a half mile away. The system became an annoyance, and Benel determined to dismantle it.

  And then the Ghost returned.

  A darkening, gray, cloudy day this time, with rain promised for later. Benel was not even in the lab, but had given himself a day off, to be spent trying to come up with something new to eat. He was in the recreation center’s supply closet, going over cartons and cans of dried foods, trying to figure out a way of spicing up their various combinations, when the chime of the security system went off out in the lab.

  “The groundhog returns!” Benel said to himself; but the chime was insistent.

  Sighing, Benel went to the lab.

  And there, on the Screen, was the Ghost.

  Benel stared for a moment, openmouthed, not so much at the appearance of the Ghost but at the sensitivity and excellence of the equipment Benel had installed. He was nearly looking into the Ghost’s tunic pockets, so good was the camera’s resolution. And yet, the figure’s features were still a blur. Benel squinted his one good eye at the Screen, but the best he could make out was a face oddly blackened and a scruffy beard. The man’s tunic was positively filthy; Benel was sure that he had not looked this unkempt before. His hands were palsied, and he walked oddly, as if sure where he was going and yet still tentative.

  “Zoom on face,” Benel ordered, and the camera tried, but the Ghost had already turned away from the recreation building and was shuffling toward the edge of the city.

  “Follow,” Benel commanded.

  And the camera did so, splendidly, keeping the Ghost’s back centered in the picture and anticipating his reappearance when he was blocked from view by an occasional building.

  At the edge of Frolich City the Ghost did not stop; he was heading for the feeder station.

  “Amazing,” Benel said.

  And even more amazing: when he reached the outskirts of the station, where plasma soldiers could plainly be seen on station, their thin yellow bodies made of light standing like sentries, the Ghost was able to continue unimpeded into the feeder station itself; the camera followed the Ghost’s slow progress up catwalks and into maintenance buildings, passing sentries without acknowledgment or challenge—as if the Ghost really were a ghost.

  After some time—hours may have passed, but Benel was so absorbed in this strange drama that he paid no heed to time—the Ghost left the feeder station and reentered Frolich City, taking a different route than he had formerly, which would give him wide berth past Benel’s lab.

  Benel’s first impulse was, suitably armed, to confront the Ghost on his return trip; the street the Ghost was walking was a wide thoroughfare only a few blocks away, and Benel could be there in ambush in plenty of time; he had even put this plan into effect and was outside the lab, bearing a large pipe, when a sudden thought struck him.

  Dropping the pipe, Benel ran back to face the Screen once more: there was the Ghost, face partly averted, shambling up Frolich City’s main street, named Frolich Avenue; the wide boulevard looked dusty and empty, a few abandoned vehicles, some on their sides, pushed up against the curb: a suitably empty street for an empty world. The Ghost looked, indeed, like the last man on Venus: alone, wandering, yet purposeful. Benel thought he, too, might look this way to someone else.

  Benel followed the Ghost’s progress through and then out of Frolich City. The afternoon wore on, grayer and darker yet devoid of rain, as clouds built over distant Sacajawea Patera’s cone, toward which the Ghost seemed inevitably drawn.

  “Screen, zoom,” Benel ordered, and the surveillance camera did its best, as the Ghost’s figure diminished, but not before Benel was sure he saw it board the lift at the volcano’s base, taking it up to the Piton, the facility set like a spike into the peak’s breast, a hundred yards from its summit.

  “Zoom, Screen!”

  “Camera is at peak zoom factor,” the Screen reported dispassionately.

  But the camera did follow up the side of Sacajawea Patera, and then, as it focused on the darkened Piton, Benel was rewarded with the lights flaring on within the structure, which was bordered on all sides by glass; like a wife seeking the return of her wandering husband, the Ghost had lit a lamp in the window.

  “Screen off,” Benel said—which was just as well, since it had started to rain in the near distance between the volcano and Frolich City, making the picture awash and indistinct.

  But the lamp was lit.

  And Benel knew he was the wandering husband, who would make the trip to that wayward lamp.

  Having retrieved his lead pipe and packed food for a good day’s trip, Benel set out for Sacajawea the next morning, before the sun rose.

  It had rained for only a few hours, and late in the night a cold front had moved the clouds away and dried the air and sky.

  Earth was up, blue and bright, with the tiny chip of its Moon riding its waist. The air was refreshingly chilled. Benel knew he would be unmolested on the trip; before leaving, he had, just to make sure, checked the feeder station, comforting himself with the fact that all of its light soldiers stood unmoving at their posts, yellow smudges against the darkness. There might be animals to contend with, a rogue dog or mountain cat come down from the Patera looking for food; but most of these were not desperate or large enough to attack a man, since there was still plenty of game and food around for even a bad hunter.

  Benel had thought briefly of lugging his light soldier degenerator with him, perhaps pulled behind on a cart; there might, after all, be plasma soldiers at the Piton—but had dismissed the idea as foolish. He had, however, taken the precaution of dismantling the various components and hiding them in separate places around the lab. A little caution was worth much deflected pain.

  By starlight, he had no trouble making his way from the city. He cut over to Frolich Avenue, as the Ghost had, and was soon in the scrubby area between the city and the volcano.

  It occurred to him that he had never dared visit the Piton before—and it occurred to him now that even if the Ghost wasn’t there, or proved to be a real ghost and thus invisible, the trip would be worth it for the salvage possibilities alone.

  Thus buoyed, he made progress faster than he supposed he would, and, as dawn began to break, shedding night’s stars and the blue coin of Earth and its diamond moon, Benel Kran found himself at the foot of Sacajawea Patera, scouting for plasma soldiers that did not exist.

  The lift tube was not in good shape; it had been damaged, no doubt, in the One-Day War, and gave an ominous repeated creak on descending, which caused Benel to hide in the shadows until it stopped and opened, empty.

  He climbed in, helping the door closed when it seemed incapable of performing the task itself, and spoke into the lift’s activator, “Rise.”

  With a reversed tone, the former creak returned, repeated every few seconds as the lift lurched upward.

  At one point there was a horizontal rather than vertical lurch, which greatly alarmed Benel; through the lift’s clear glass he saw that a portion of the tra
ck had been blasted away, burned black around the edges—but after a moment of strain the lift continued upward and gained its destination.

  Benel had spent very little of the trip enjoying the view of the valley he had just traveled, now bathed in rose dawn that led back to Frolich City and, to its right, reflecting new light on its glinting surface, Lake Clotho Tessera, and the stillborn community on its shores, Lakshmi Planum; most of his attention, rather, had been spent on the dangerous cage he rode.

  But now that the lift had reached the Piton, Benel turned full attention away from machinery and landscape and waited for the doors to open.

  They did not, groaning against their mechanisms; and, try as he might, Benel, once again giving his full attention to machinery, could not get them to open. Giving up for a moment in frustration, Benel was startled to hear a soft voice from the other side of the door:

  “You must kick it at the bottom.”

  Benel did as he was told, gripping his lead pipe all the tighter as the doors suddenly sprung open.

  The room before him looked empty—filled with dawn’s new light, which washed up through the quartz-windowed floor and streamed into the other windows—a room of light.

  No ghost.

  Yes—there he was:

  The Ghost was there at the farthest jutting of the Piton; there was so much new light in the room that it refracted around the Ghost, making him nearly invisible.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the Ghost said quietly, hands behind its back; it did not turn, but seemed to be staring at the rising Sun before it.

  “Please,” the Ghost said quietly, “come stand beside me and talk.”

  Still clutching the pipe, Benel made his way cautiously through the room, negotiating the wreckage within—knocked-over tables, piles of blueprints ripped in half, the wreckage of numerous meticulously built models, now dashed and crushed and pushed into corners.

  Still not at ease, Benel waited for something to jump out at him from behind an overturned table, perhaps; there were, after all, places for light soldiers, or other ghosts, to hide.

  “You needn’t be afraid,” the Ghost said, sensing his caution. “We’re alone here.” There was eerie calm in the Ghost’s voice, which made Benel even more cautious.

  The Ghost held out a hand, still not turning. “Please.”

  Benel stepped up beside the Ghost, who put a soft hand on him, testing his own corporeality, perhaps.

  “Yes, you’ve come,” the Ghost said, with something like peaceful relief.

  Even through the ravaged features, Benel knew who the Ghost was now: Carter Frolich himself. Even behind the dirt, and crusted blood, and through the growth of filthy beard, and madness, Benel recognized Venus’s founder.

  Frolich smiled, his soft hand still on Benel, the trembling fingers barely touching, afraid to proceed or let go, perhaps. His mouth smiled slightly, his sightless, empty, blood-dried eye sockets continuing to stare at the rising magnificent Sun, which hurt Benel’s eyes, making him avert his gaze.

  “Yes, you’ve come,” Carter Frolich said. “I read King Lear, you know, and knew that you would visit if I did that. Thank you for coming,” Frolich continued, and Benel was amazed to see a tear forming in the corner of one of the man’s ruined eyes. “Venus is safe,” Frolich continued. “I just wanted to tell you that myself. Venus is safe. After all, that’s all I ever wanted. And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Benel flinched as Carter Frolich grabbed him suddenly by both arms, bringing his crying face close to Benel’s own.

  “I’m sorry, Targon!” Frolich pleaded, and Benel, caught in the man’s madness, could do nothing but listen. “I’m sorry, Targon Ramir!”

  Chapter 20

  As easily as they had boarded Wrath-Pei’s ship, they disembarked it.

  Dalin Shar and Shatz Abel found themselves, on Titan, no closer to their destination or to their other goals. During their weeks on Wrath-Pei’s vessel they had never come close to facing Wrath-Pei himself; had never, despite numerous attempts, been able to even locate Wrath-Pei. His ship had been a labyrinth of both physical and hierarchical design; no one seemed to know where Wrath-Pei was at any time, and the layers of command were both shifting and amorphous. The closest they had come to Wrath-Pei was a brief encounter with Wrath-Pei’s protégé Lawrence, who, his head wrapped as always in his communications helmet, had passed by their workstation once—but by the time they gave pursuit, Lawrence had hobbled away, lost in a matrix of corridors.

  “Well, we learned little enough,” Shatz Abel said, making his way with Dalin and a hundred other black-clad workers into Titan’s streets on leave. A handful of soldiers passed them by, slapping either Shatz Abel or Dalin or both on the back and wishing them well.

  “See you in two days, boys! Enjoy your leave. It’ll be the last till after the war!”

  Feigning heartiness, Shatz Abel called after them with greetings, mumbling under his breath after they had gone that he would rather have wrung their necks.

  “Learned little enough?” Dalin said, when they were at last alone. “How can you say that? We know everything there is to know about bilge pumps, and waste backups, and blow tubes.” With a disgusted sound he tore off his gloves and threw them into the nearest waste bin. Shatz Abel followed suit.

  “Let’s find some real clothes, then, lad,” the pirate said.

  “And some real food,” Dalin said. Making a face, he continued, “I never was completely sure that what we were eating wasn’t … human.” He rubbed at the clipped area around his eyes. “Given Wrath-Pei’s predilections and all.”

  Shatz Abel nodded, “Nor I,” he said.

  They stopped to watch, behind a phalanx of troops, the disembarking of Queen Kamath Clan and, behind her, in a cagelike box born by four men, her raving son, who clutched at the bars of his prison, pulling his legless torso forward and screaming, “I am King! War is upon you! Prepare to die!”

  Howling in pain that turned to laughter, the prince and his haggard-looking mother were escorted away, under Titan’s lights which gave an illusion of day.

  “Will Wrath-Pei keep them alive?” Dalin asked soberly.

  Shatz Abel nodded. “He’ll do that, and worse. Especially with war coming.”

  Dalin said, “I wish Tabrel were here on Titan.”

  Again the pirate nodded. “At least it would give us a reason to be on this mudball. Instead of a reason to leave.”

  The two men searched for an apparel shop, the sooner to shed themselves of the uniforms they wore.

  “I will ask you again, Queen Klan: where is Tabrel Kris?”

  Back in the queen’s own lodgings, Wrath-Pei thought that Kamath Clan might feel more inclined to speak, but this was not so. He knew Jamal could no longer be used as a bargaining chip; for his part, he felt almost angry at himself for not waiting. But when he had seen the boy, lying whole there as he had been on Jo, untouched, whole, something had overtaken him. He had envisioned the moment for so long that when it finally came, he could not help himself. He had given himself a present.

  The queen now knew that what Wrath-Pei had begun he would never stop—and therefore it was useless to try to fool her by promising to leave Jamal alone.

  Oh, well: that did not matter. It may have worked quicker, but he had another means of obtaining what he wanted.

  Wrath-Pei leaned forward in his gyro chair; the chair’s gimbals whirred and adjusted, and, behind the chair, Lawrence’s faceplate brightened briefly with data flowing across its inside surface.

  “Queen Clan,” Wrath-Pei said in a conspiratorial whisper, “I was not, ah, shall we say, lying regarding the success of my experiments on our friend Quog.”

  The queen’s expression did not change.

  “What would you say,” Wrath-Pei continued, drawing from a pocket next to his shears on the chair’s side a thin, long silver tube, “if I were to tell you that I had, indeed, been able to … simulate Quog’s essence?”

  Now there was a fl
icker of interest; the queen’s glance darted for a moment to the silver receptacle.

  “Even were that true,” Queen Clan said, her voice flat, “it would make no difference. I have reached a plain of acceptance—”

  “I know, I know,” Wrath-Pei said impatiently. “Spare me the religious claptrap about how you no longer require what I have. The truth is, you were addicted”—He motioned to two leather-clad soldiers, who flanked the queen and now put their hands on her, to force compliance as Wrath-Pei opened the thin flask and brought the contents close to Kamath Clan’s resisting lips—”and will soon be addicted again.”

  With a look of distaste, Wrath-Pei handed the silver tube to a third soldier for administration; he watched for a moment the queen’s failed resistance and then motioned for his chair to be turned away.

  “Let me know when she is fully under the influence,” Wrath-Pei said, to which the soldiers immediately assented. “She will then tell us where the girl is. Until then I will be … occupied.”

  Wrath-Pei’s hand fell to the holster on the side of his chair; already his thoughts had turned to the queen’s son.

  In new clothes that made them comfortable but noticeable, Dalin and Shatz Abel made their way to the Ruz Balib section, only to find that most of the pirate’s old hangouts had been either closed or recently converted to military installations. All of Titan was on alert; and those citizens or soldiers they passed in the street had a grave, determined look on their faces. Even in the Ruz Balib section, where commerce had always existed side by side with government, there was a new seriousness that worried Shatz Abel.

  “This isn’t the Titan I remember!” the pirate marveled. “This used to be a place where you could get something done right on the table! Face-to-face! Now all the businessmen are gone! These people all look like … warmongers!”