Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  “We?” Balam said, and looked from Leena to Hieronymus and back.

  “We'll explain later,” Hieronymus answered, and turned to the Atlan. “Leena is right, Eduro.”

  “Oh, very well,” Eduro said impatiently. “Come with me.”

  The Atlan spun on his heel, and glided across the floor to a far entrance, the trio following close behind.

  After a winding course through the citadel city's corridors, they reached the singularity chamber, where the black sphere still hung in midair, surrounded by coruscating flames.

  Eduro went to stand beside one of the metal pedestals, and rearranged the gems on its tabletop surface. “Atla, full display.”

  The faceted walls of the singularity chamber were immediately illuminated with images, one for each faceted face. One showed the foot of the mountain, where the being called Per spoke blood and thunder to the massed metamen. On another could be seen the Stair, up which the war engine slowly climbed. Another displayed the higher reaches of the Stair, swarmed with armed metamen, intent on destruction. Still others showed views of the plaza garden beyond the citadel walls, and of the chambers and corridors of the city itself.

  Eduro picked a small green gem off the pedestal's top, and then turned to face the trio, who watched the scenes playing out on the crystal walls all around them.

  “I will leave the processes running,” Eduro explained. “When the calculations are complete, Atla will open the wormhole and provide you with its location. As soon as you are done with the wormhole, merely place this onto the center of the control panel”—he handed Hieronymus the green gem—“and the encasement will reconfigure such that the singularity bleeds off into the higher dimensions, and the war engine will be left powerless.” He posed, and then sighed wistfully. “I only hope that the wormhole calculations are complete before the war engine is brought near enough to be recharged, or this discussion is plainly moot.”

  “Won't you be here to do this yourself?” Hieronymus asked, looking with an expression commingling confusion and disgust at the gem in his hand.

  “No,” Eduro answered, “I must excuse myself now, I'm afraid. It was a distinct pleasure meeting you three, I'm sure.”

  “Where are you going?” Leena asked.

  “I must go and meet this Per, or Ikaru, or whatever he chooses to call himself. I have always wanted to encounter one of the ancient probes, and this may well be my last opportunity.”

  Eduro turned, and walked back to the doorway. At the threshold, he turned his head over his shoulder, and smiled at the trio. “You know, I will be the first Atlan to leave the citadel city in more than a millennium. How strange.”

  With that, he passed through the doorway, and was gone.

  On one of the faceted walls of the singularity chamber, nearly an hour later, the trio watched as Eduro stepped out into the plaza just as the first wave of armed metamen poured up over the top step of the Stair.

  “He'll be killed!” Leena shouted.

  “Perhaps,” Hieronymus said. “But perhaps not. Watch.”

  On the projected image, they saw Eduro touch the gem on his forehead, and as the first of the metamen was almost within arm's reach, a faint aura of shimmering green suddenly appeared around the Atlan's form.

  “Hmmm.” Balam nodded appreciatively as the metaman swung at Eduro's head with a cudgel, only to be buffeted back forcefully by the green aura.

  “A kind of personal barrier,” Hieronymus said admiringly. “Must come in handy.”

  Eduro continued across the plaza, the ranks of the metamen dividing before him like a river bending around a promontory, and finally disappeared from view, climbing down the Stair.

  “He might have mentioned this barrier to us,” Leena said, sighing with relief. “Of course, in short order, we'll have the metamen to contend with, assuming that the city's processes ignore them as they did us, on our first arrival.”

  The first of the metamen reached the entrance to the citadel city, and the trio watched on the crystal display as they stormed inside. Balam jumped, startled, when a quartet of Sinaa hove into view, a male and three females.

  “Gerjis,” the jaguar man spat. “And my sisters, with Menchit in tow.” Balam turned to Leena and Hieronymus, his expression imploring. Hieronymus nodded, solemnly. “I understand, friend. Go ahead.”

  Balam took a heavy breath, and then stepped forward, taking Leena in a crushing embrace.

  “Should we not meet again, Leena, know that it was a pleasure to travel at your side.”

  “You…too…” Leena managed, scarcely able to breathe.

  “Good luck,” Balam shouted, releasing his hold on her. Then he turned, fangs bared and claws out, and raced off into the diamond citadel, bent on revenge of his own.

  From their vantage in the singularity chamber, Leena and Hieronymus watched as the metamen, bloodlust and righteous fury driving them, destroyed one gallery after another, the servitors trying in vain to repair the damage in their wake.

  It was some time later that Balam finally caught up to the tide of destruction, in the chamber of the sleeping Atlans. The metamen had reached the room only a few moments before him, and had already begun to slaughter the sleeping Altans, mercilessly.

  Leena shuddered as she watched the screen overhead. On it, Balam skidded into the room, eyes flashing, just as the quartet of Sinaa led by Gerjis savaged an unconscious, insensate Atlan, pale blood staining their claws and fangs.

  “The calculations are nearly complete,” came the voice of Atla from the walls of the singularity chamber. “Only a final million permutations must be examined before the traversable wormhole can be opened.”

  On the crystal screen overhead, Hieronymus and Leena saw Balam cut down his cousin Gerjis with a mortal blow, only to receive a vicious cut to his left leg and arm from one of his sisters.

  Blood flowing freely from his wounds, Balam faced off against his sisters, a grim smile on his face, a knife in either hand. A short distance away stood Menchit, watching intently but immobile. Leena thought that perhaps the young Sinaa was experiencing some conflicting emotions, watching her aunts and her father locked in a duel to the death.

  “The fissure opens.”

  A few meters from where Leena stood, a gleaming sphere coalesced into existence, hovering two meters off the crystalline floor. In contrast to the larger black sphere high overhead, this one was no larger than a man's fist, and shone mirror bright.

  “Verification follows.”

  From the doorway appeared another of the servitors, but unlike the scuttling spiderlike creatures they'd seen so far, this one was surmounted by a set of metallic, clattering wings. It advanced on four spindly legs, and when it stood directly beneath the shimmering sphere, the servitor's wings began to beat, as invisibly fast as those of a hummingbird, and the little machine lifted gracefully off the floor. It rose straight up towards the gate, and as soon as it touched the sphere's surface, it seemed to recede from view, and then was gone.

  “Transmission received.”

  One of the crystal facets of the chamber, which before had provided a view of a far-off corridor, now changed, and Leena and Hieronymus could see projected a wide wheat field stretching under a clear blue sky, with men and farm machinery in the near distance. A road sign, barely visible towards one side, clearly showed words written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

  “It's a farm collective in the Soviet Union,” Leena said, almost breathless.

  “Confirmed.”

  “In that case, Leena, I believe it is time for you to leave,” Hieronymus said, his mouth drawn into a tight line.

  “No!” Leena turned to Hieronymus, her eyes wide. “Come with me! We don't know that Per will reach the summit with the war engine. Perhaps Eduro can stop him, or reason with him, or—”

  “No,” Hieronymus answered, shaking his head sadly. “I'm sorely tempted, but we can't take that chance. If I'm not here to shut down the city's power before the engine is brought near, Per is liable
to destroy most of Paragaea, all for his mindless revenge. Besides”—he flashed a weary smile—“I can't leave Balam to face his mortal enemies alone, now can I?”

  The two drew near, and Hieronymus gathered her in his arms.

  “I don't…” Leena began, and her voice choked off in her throat. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to go through the gate. “Oh, Hieronymus. If I could stay…”

  “I know.” Hieronymus stepped back, and took her face in his hands, staring deep into her eyes. “You have your duty. I understand. I served a flag once, long ago and far away. Now, my only duty is to myself and my friends, and were I to be the cause of you failing in your mission, or my friend Balam's needless death through inaction, I wouldn't deserve to count either of you my friends. So you must pass through the gate, and I must be here to close it.”

  He pushed her reluctantly away from him, holding her shoulders in his hand.

  “If I can,” Leena said fervently, “if it is possible, if there's any way at all, once I fulfill my duty I'll return to you.”

  Hieronymus smiled sadly, and slowly stepped away. “I'll be waiting, then.”

  Leena could not wait any longer. It took all the will she could muster, but she turned around and walked to stand before the gate hovering silently above the crystal floor.

  Leena reached out her hand, but just before her fingers touched the gate, she turned to Hieronymus, her eyes misting. “Good-bye, love.”

  Afraid to wait a moment longer, for fear that she might lose her resolve, Leena held her breath and leaned forward. Her fingertips brushed the surface of the sphere, finding it surprisingly warm to the touch. Then she felt a strange sensation deep inside her, as though she were weightless and pulling multiple gees, all at once, and there came a blinding moment of darkness.

  She fell more than two meters before she hit the ground, landing with a thud that drove the air from her lungs. She pushed herself up on her elbows, and glanced distractedly at the farmers rushing towards her, hoes in hand, shouting in Russian.

  She was home.

  Leena sat on the unforgiving seat of the hardwood bench, the corridor cold and empty. The door to the committee chamber was closed, but through the heavy wood, she could hear the muffled voices from beyond. She shifted uneasily. Her uniform, starched and pressed, seemed confining and restrictive, the jacket too tight across the belly, and the collar itched her neck.

  This would be her tenth appearance before the committee, and her last. She would make one last attempt to convince the committee members, and then wash her hands of the whole matter.

  When she had appeared in Moscow, weeks before, no one had believed for a second her account of another world, of ancient science and jaguar men and giant beasts. Most of the officers and agents who had interrogated her in the weeks that followed thought that she was mad, that she had crash-landed more than two years before, and then wandered in a haze of delirium in all the long months since, dreaming of her other world. Some few who'd spoken to her were convinced that she was a traitor, having spent the time since her disappearance among the Americans, selling national secrets, and that she was now being sent back among them like a snake slithering back into a bird's nest to steal more eggs.

  Whichever view, in the end, held sway, Leena knew she would never be hailed as a returning hero. The committee would likely send her to an asylum, or a prison, or, at best, to a posting well out of the public eye, in Siberia where there would be few to hear her mad tales, and fewer still to believe.

  But Leena would give them one more chance. One last opportunity to hear her testimony and be convinced of its truth, and then she would put her plans into motion.

  The door to the committee chamber opened, and a young, fresh-faced private peered out into the corridor. He smiled sheepishly and motioned to Leena. “Lejtenant Chirikova?”

  Leena drew a heavy breath, and climbed to her feet. She paused for a moment and laid a hand on her swelling belly. It would be a few months still before she would begin to show, and by then she would either have been exonerated by the committee, or she would be somewhere far, far from here.

  Leena crossed the corridor, and stepped into the committee chamber for the final time.

  Leena stood on a London street, holding the little girl's hand and staring intently at the blue door, as snow fell in flurries all around them.

  “Mat',” the little girl cried, catching a snowflake in her outstretched hand. “Snezhinka!”

  “English, Sinovia,” Leena scolded, shaking her head. She looked down at the child who could never have a future in Russia, but might well here in England. “Remember, always English now.”

  The little girl twisted her mouth into a moue of concentration for a moment, and then said, tentatively, “Snowflake, Mother?”

  “Very good, Sinovia.” Leena nodded, and leaning down, picked the little girl up. Only two years old, she seemed to be getting heavier by the day. Leena shrugged her shoulders, repositioning the straps of the pack on her back, which held their every worldly possession. “Snowflake.”

  The little girl held in her arms, Leena crossed the street, walked up to the blue door and, pausing only a moment to collect her thoughts, rang the buzzer.

  A young woman opened the door, her stomach slightly swollen in contrast with her slight frame.

  “Is this the Bonaventure residence?” Leena asked, having almost lost all trace of her Russian accent.

  “Yes,” the woman answered.

  “Are you…are you a Bonaventure, then?”

  “Not quite yet,” the woman said with a confused smile, cradling her belly, “but I will be by next month.” She turned, and called over her shoulder, “Stephen.”

  An unassuming man with unkempt hair and glasses appeared at the woman's side. “Yes?”

  “This woman is looking for a Bonaventure, darling.”

  “Hello. I knew another Bonaventure, a relative of yours, I believe, somewhere far away.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, and when I located your branch of the family in London, I thought…I thought I might introduce myself. And I very much wanted my daughter Sinovia to meet you.”

  “Sinovia, is it?” The man reached out and patted the little girl's cheek, awkwardly but with affection. “You know, I've got a nephew just about your age.”

  The young woman beside him placed her hand over her stomach, and smiled at him lovingly. “And we've got a little one of our own on the way. Rodger, if it's a boy; Roxanne if it's a girl.”

  “Well now,” the man said, looking from the woman to Leena and the little girl. “We can't very well leave you outside in the cold, can we?”

  The man stepped to one side, and motioned to Leena eagerly.

  “Come in, come in,” he said.

  Leena passed through the doorway, out of the cold and into the warmth beyond.

  “Where did you say you knew this other Bonaventure, then?” the man asked, closing the door behind them.

  Leena smiled. She would find her way back to Paragaea and Hieronymus one day, but until then, at least Hieronymus's daughter would know her family, in some small fashion.

  Readers of my previous novel, Here, There & Everywhere, may recall that I am the type of reader who, while I feel that stories should explain themselves, likewise feels cheated when “The End” are the last words in a book. I won't, for example, buy a DVD if the “Special Features” are nothing more than theatrical trailers. I like a little extra material to explore when I finish the story itself, a bit of behind-the-scenes business that I can chew over. It's one of the ways I learned to become a storyteller in the first place, by studying the skeleton beneath the skin, as it were.

  With that in mind, I offer the following notes:

  ON THE BONAVENTURE FAMILY

  The dashing Hieronymus Bonaventure, former lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, is a member of a large extended family of explorers and adventurers, the Bonaventure-Carmody clan, which also includes Roxanne Bona
venture (from Here, There & Everwhere) and Jon Bonaventure Carmody (from Cybermancy Incorporated). Hieronymus himself previously appeared in Set the Seas on Fire, a nautical adventure set in the South Pacific in the spring and summer of 1808, shortly before he fell through a traversable wormhole into Paragaea. The full text of this earlier appearance is now available under a Creative Commons license at http://www.paragaea.com.

  The Bonaventure-Carmody family and their associates play a central role in my work, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Leena's daughter Sinovia, briefly glimpsed in the second epilogue, will be featured in a series of books for young readers entitled Young Explorers, for example, while Benu will return in End of the Century, in which we learn what befell him after he stepped through the gate in Hele.

  ON AKILINA MIKHAILOVNA CHIRIKOVA

  In attempting to bring some verisimilitude to Leena's life as a cosmonaut in the Soviet era, I am deeply indebted to James Harford's Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and William E. Burrows's This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (Random House), but especially to Mark Wade for his superlative “Encyclopedia Astronautix” (www.astronautix.com), which is truly without equal. Anyone interested in astronautics owes it to themselves to visit Wade's site and marvel.

  ON THE LANDSCAPE OF PARAGAEA

  As the dedication makes evident, this novel owes a clear debt to the science fantasy I grew up reading. There is in the landscape of Paragaea a familial resemblance to the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs's “John Carter” novels, and to the Mongo of Alex Raymond's “Flash Gordon.” But as much as to either of those, a debt is owed to Sid and Marty Krofft's Land of the Lost television series, and to David Gerrold, who was responsible for everything clever and good about the show. Having watched the adventures of Rick, Will, and Holly Marshall as a kid, I was amazed to discover, watching the series on DVD as an adult, that it was actually better than I remembered. For the first season of the series, Gerrold was actually doing the nigh-impossible, and bringing real science fiction to Saturday morning children's television, and hiring real science fiction writers to do it (including Larry Niven, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, and Ben Bova). The sets were a bit shaky, the acting more than a little over-the-top, but the ideas were first-rate, and the seeds planted in my impressionable mind as I watched week after week, all those decades ago, have finally borne fruit, and I have David Gerrold to thank for it.