Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3

by Gillian Andrews

  The doors, she saw, were closing again, and the cage started on its way away from the Summit Platform, and down the other side. The next stop, she knew, would be her last.

  MILES BACK ON the Blue Ray Platform the next cage which slid to a halt turned out mercifully to be empty, and the group hurried to finish collecting every single droplet of orthogel into the box, which they then manhandled inside the cage. The rest of the party shuffled into the rexelene inner compartment, and stood uncomfortably waiting for the doors to close. They all had things to think about, and nobody had much to say.

  The doors finally closed, and the cage began to ascend. It seemed to go interminably slowly, and one or two of them looked towards the Xianthan with raised eyebrows.

  “What?” he asked, before realizing what they wanted to know. “Oh – the speed. Well, there are six stops, each of ten minutes – including the base of the Xianthe. So we have six cages, which travel between the stops in equal times. The distance from the ground to the Long View platform, on the way up and the Lost Valley platform, on the way down, are much larger. Then the distances between those stops and the Blue Ray, the Summit and the Lightning Corner platforms are much smaller, so the cages travel this part of the journey much more slowly. The first two stages take you through the clouds, where there is less to see and the speeds they reach are much higher. It always takes half an hour between stops. The whole trip takes four hours.”

  There was a general nod of appreciation, but still nobody spoke. The sights outside the cage were unforgettable in their intensity and colour, if anybody had been looking at them. But on this occasion eyes were looking blindly inwards, unaffected by the brilliant colours which lit up the sky in front of them. The sprites and the elves passed by unremarked.

  Ledin and Six were examining the cage. But there was no chance of climbing outside – they would be dead within seconds without the life support. And the cage Grace was in must be many miles away. Six shook his head, hating his failure to find a way out, hating this desperate sensation of impotence.

  They all jumped when the Xianthan cleared his throat. His multi-coloured raiment was in direct contrast to his white face.

  “There might be … that is … I don’t know …”

  The other occupants of the cage were all looking at him now. He had their maximum attention. Ledin stiffened, and a glimmer of hope leapt into Cimma’s eyes.

  “Go on,” she encouraged. “Anything is better than this.”

  “It is just that … the canths … I have sometimes felt that there is some element – a connection … to the canths. Maybe each of us should try to contact his or her canth.”

  Six stared at the Xianthan in disbelief. “You want us to commune with a horse? Even if we could, what could they possibly do about it?”

  The man who kept canths shrugged. “I know,” he said. “I am most hesitant in suggesting such a thing. I feel that if we could contact them, maybe they could contact the orthogel entity, on Valhai. It is impossible, of course. I freely admit that. But it would seem that there is no other solution, would it not?”

  Six glanced around. None of his fellow-travelers looked very convinced by the idea that they could get in touch with the canths.

  Diva looked at Six. “Remember what the visitor said, Six? About the canths being a 2a species? If they are, then maybe we could get them to do something.”

  Cimma pursed her lips. “And they do know when we die,” she said slowly. “Which I suppose would suggest some sort of a connection to us, wouldn’t it?” She raised her eyebrows at the others, obviously hoping for a positive reply. She didn’t get it. Six and Ledin still had expressions of utter disbelief. “Well, what else can we do?” she went on.

  Diva sighed. “There is nothing else we can do,” she agreed, finally putting everyone’s thoughts into words. “So I suppose we might as well sit here trying to contact our canths as sit here staring at our feet, as sit here watching the famous sprites and elves.” She straightened her shoulders, and looked with decision at the Xianthan. “After all, Arcan told us that any sign of non-locality had to be quantum. So the next best thing to Arcan over here will be the canths. Let’s just hope that they really are descended from the lost animas of Xiantha.” She turned to the canth keeper. “What do we have to do?”

  He gestured for them to stand in a circle in the centre of the cage. “Touch hands – as if you were giving the traditional salute – to the person to each side of you.” They obeyed, all looking uncomfortable. “Now, simply try to think of your canth, and transmit your feelings to it, transmit that we need help, that something terrible has happened and that something even worse is about to happen if they do not help us.” He gazed at the group sternly. “Believe that you can do this. If you believe it firmly enough, at least some of us should feel a touch in our consciousness, a gentle feeling of contact. If you do, then repeat the need for help over and over and over again, try your very hardest to transmit our need.” He looked around once more, waiting for a faint nod of acquiescence from each of them, and then himself gave a brief nod to signal the start of the attempt. They all dropped their heads, and tried to concentrate on calling out to their canths.

  Six felt nothing at all. He simply could not close his mind off to everything that was happening. It insisted on reliving the situation over and over again, and adrenaline was pumping through his body, ready to act if his brain could come up with the solution. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut, trying to force his mind to attend only to the matter at hand, but it was completely useless. Against his closed eyelids he could only see occasional sparks, as if he were receiving photons through the barrier of skin.

  Diva tried again and again to call out to her canth. She felt nothing at all. I will believe this is possible, she told herself fiercely. I will believe it. But however many times she tried, she made no progress. She was calling out to an empty void, she felt, and there was no answering cry back. Her spirits fell further and further as the black minutes ticked past.

  Ledin found himself fervently trying to contact his canth. He had not been close to it for very long, but he forced himself to remember each part of it, to try to recreate its very essence, and to call out to it. At first there was nothing, but after many long minutes, he did feel a twinge, and tiny nudge against his own mind. He wondered if he had imagined it, and then thought of Grace, determining to himself that it had to work, that he had to do this, that it was her only hope. After one or two minutes more he felt again the nudge against his mind, and concentrated on sending a plea for help with all his might, as far as he could. He sent image after image of Grace, tied up on that awful seat, her eyes staring into his soul, his anguish at her plight. It seemed to him that the connection strengthened, and for a moment he was convinced that he had managed to convey at least part of the message to something. Then the trance broke, he was back in the cage, and shakily opening his eyes. He found himself blinking back tears of impotence, having had to relive the last moments he had seen Grace time after time.

  Cimma felt herself falling into a black tunnel inside her own mind, and struggled to make some part of her reach out to her canth. They had known each other for many years, she thought. They had impinged in each other’s lives many times. Surely she would be able to do it this time? To save her own daughter? She tried to empty her mind, make it serene, concentrate on reaching out. After a long time she felt an inkling of a presence, and narrowed her thoughts down to concentrate on that one spot. As the feeling intensified she poured all her feelings into that very area inside herself, imagining her feelings to be a shaft of light concentrating into it, carrying all the knowledge she was trying to convey. And she felt some kind of illumination herself. There was a backwash of intense colour towards her, bathing her, irradiating her. She told the rays of light over and over and over again what was happening, letting the light pour over her until she felt it take over her entire mind, and keeled over in a dead faint.

  The Xianthan, who had been
having some limited success himself, he thought, came out of his own meditations and bent to help her, signaling to the others to keep back.

  “It is a good sign, I think,” he told them. “I believe … I hope that in some way we have succeeded in getting through to them.”

  Six made a face. “Let’s hope so. We are pulling to a stop at the summit, which means that Grace will be about to stop at lightning corner. If they are going to do anything it will be there.”

  They looked at each other and sighed. The doors opened, showing them the summit platform and the planets hanging overhead. They wandered forlornly out, and tried not to think of what might be happening to Grace.

  THE LIGHTNING BOLTS which hammered the cage were terrifying in themselves. The discharge of such huge electric potential left the air ionized, and the occupants of the cages could feel a high tingling sensation, apart from the sheer panic of watching bolt after bolt of lightning smash into the cage. Grace felt the cage coming to a stop, and closed her eyes. Here, then, was the end of the journey for her. She could no longer dissociate herself from the two men in front of her. They were her judges and her executioners, and the universe had telescoped down into this small rexelene compartment, in a tiny metal cage, on this planet and at this time. There was to be no more to her insignificant existence. She tried, despite the gag, to put her chin up. She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing how scared she was, how little she wanted to die, how inside panic was freezing her heart into irregular jumps.

  The doors opened. At Atheron’s signal, Xenon pulled Grace to a standing position, and manhandled her out onto the Lightning Corner Platform.

  “Remove the bindings and the gag,” ordered Atheron.

  His second-in-command hurried to obey. He seemed almost eager to get this over with, thought Grace, all her muscles tensing to resist, despite her best attempts to accept her fate.

  Atheron was fiddling now with the fastenings on the platform. All he had to do, he thought, was to open the rexelene door from the platform to the cage, and then step through to the gate set into the cage and open that. It would only take a moment to throw the girl out, and she would be dead within seconds. If a bolt of lightning didn’t fry her, the cold or the lack of oxygen would only allow her a few lucid moments of regret before her life was snuffed out. And good riddance, he thought. She had given him nothing but trouble. If he had known how much damage she would do, he would have done something about her long before this!

  Xenon restrained Grace, waiting for a sign from his master. Grace smiled up at him.

  “He will do this to you, you know,” she said. “When he has no further use for you. Can’t you see what he has become? And what you are doing?”

  Xenon gave her a shake. “Shut up!” he snarled.

  “Do you really think Father would have wanted you to do this? You are deluding yourself!”

  “He did what he had to. I am only doing the same.”

  Grace smiled again, although she was quivering inside, and feeling slightly sick. “Goodbye, then Xenon. I hope it all proves to have b-been w-worth it.”

  Atheron had managed to circumvent the failsafe device on the rexelene door, and had stepped outside to the metal gate. This was proving to be much easier, for the gate swung open on easy hinges, a gaping invitation to this travesty of freedom. She felt Xenon tense behind her, and Atheron beckoned to him. Already the air in the compartment was racing out into the thin atmosphere, exchanging comforting oxygen for thin sulphurous ozone. I hope they can’t get the doors shut again, she wished to herself. That would serve them right. Then they would suffocate to death up here themselves. A fitting end to the pair of them, she thought.

  But now she was nearly at the metal gate to the cage. Atheron, who was grimly hanging on to one of the bars, caught hold of her left arm, and tugged her towards him. Xenon, struggling to catch a firm hold of the other side of the gate, pulled her other arm, until she was ensconced on the very edge of the gate, with only the void beneath her.

  Atheron opened his mouth, and she knew he must have said something, but she couldn’t hear because of the tumultuous noise of the wind, the air, the lightning. Then he made eye contact with Xenon, nodded, and she felt a hefty blow on her back and then she was falling, falling out of the cage and down into the clouds. She heard an ear-splitting crack and her heart made a frantic attempt to leap right out of her body.

  She felt the freezing cold projected like daggers into her skin; there was still enough atmosphere at this level for her to feel it pushing against her with hurricane force as she plummeted to the ground. She hurtled through the thin gas wrapped in an overwhelming smell of ozone. She found it impossible to force her eyes open, but it didn’t matter – they were incapable of focusing on anything in any case. In the few milliseconds gifted to her before she lost consciousness she was surprised to find her mind taking her back to one particular moment and one particular memory; then she mercifully blacked out and knew no more.

  AS THE GIRL fell, Atheron turned to signal to Xenon to help him to close the gate to the cage. The two Sellite men struggled together, but the gate had swung wide open on its hinges, and it was proving more difficult to shut than it had been to open. Xenon had to hang with part of his body over the void to try to get a grasp on the gate outside and pull it shut. Atheron was clutching at him, in an intent to help.

  There was a huge flash of light as one of the many bolts of lightning forked deafeningly down, fracturing the atmosphere into two parts, seething and spitting as it tore the very air apart. It drove unerringly for the one point where the lightning cage was vulnerable – straight for the open gate. Finding that one weakness in the cage was enough. The protection from the elements was broken, the lightning was free to do its worst. And it showed no mercy, it was completely unforgiving of that one small mistake.

  With strident blasts of electricity bolt after bolt of lightning ripped into the cage, racing insatiably through every piece of metal, turning it to an incandescent red. There was not even time to cry out for the two organic beings who were hanging half-inside, half-outside the cage. They were instantaneously transformed into wizened and blackened corpses, both bodies fused grotesquely to the metal bars they had been holding onto. Neither Atheron nor Xenon were given any warning of their fate. One of the cadavers was carbonized forever with its mouth open, frozen for all time preparing for a cry it could never vocalize. The other hung gruesomely from hands burnt into the metal, incinerated to become part of the cage, a few white hairs still adhering to the odd patches of skin left on its chin.

  What was left of Atheron and Xenon hung lifelessly against the metal bars as the automatic doors activated behind them and the cage began to descend in an orderly fashion to the ground, indifferent to the charred bodies it left behind it.

  Chapter 16

  THE VIDEO CAMERA had been listlessly continuing its examination of the canths, and regretting the necessity of having been left behind, when it first became aware of the commotion amidst the canths. They were jittery, and seemed to be milling around by the ticket office. It was clear that something was very wrong. The Xianthan ticket collector had come out from his cabin, and was unsuccessfully trying to calm them down.

  The globe, blended so that the ticket collector wouldn’t spot it, went in amongst the canths, and tried to find out exactly what the matter was, but there was no visible cause of their discomfort, yet they were becoming more and more edgy. They were dancing worriedly on their toes and nickering in anxiety.

  Back in the small spaceship in orbit about Xiantha, the visitor decided to concentrate his mind. He was telepathic, after all, and that would help to pass the time until the others came down. He was mildly interested in these animals, which, though not particularly intelligent, showed unmistakable signs of being able to utilize quantum non-locality. He tried idly to tune in to them, knowing that if they were upset about something, he would find it much easier, they would be more propense to transmit their distress openly
.

  What he ‘saw’ galvanized him into action. There were clear pictures of Grace being held against her will, less clear ones of the orthogel entity having lost his coherence, very clear pictures of what was about to happen to Grace, and where, and a definite need for immediate action if something were to be done in the time he had before it happened. He flashed a message back to the canths to let them know somebody else was aware of the problem, and thought, as fast as he could.

  His first thought was to contact Arcan, who could have saved her in a heartbeat – but he could get no response from the orthogel entity on Valhai. Atheron must somehow have managed to infect both the part of Arcan on Xiantha and the main orthogel lake on Valhai. The visitor thought that the antidote they had developed would have saved Arcan’s life, but there was no telling how long it would take him to overcome the effects.

  No, the only way Grace could be saved was if he himself acted, though how he could do that was not so clear. He could send the video camera up to the next stop, but it would not be able to function in such a strong electrical storm. Which left him only one possible course of action. He would have to go himself. He should be able to reach the area in time. He was in a very low orbit, as usual – it helped to release and recapture the video cameras he used to examine the worlds he traveled to. But, even if he did manage to reach her in time, the chances of saving Grace were remote. The temperature outside would be sufficient to freeze her to death if she were exposed for any long period, and although he might be able to stop her fall, and might be able to shield her from the wind of her fall, there was nothing he could do about the temperature, except take her lower as fast as he could.