Enki was bobbing a few feet away. Zeke could see the man’s lips moving but heard nothing. So there was air, but no sound.
“I can’t hear you,” Zeke shouted.
A puzzled look crossed Enki’s blubbery face.
Now what?
No sooner than Zeke thought those words than a cold dread filled him. Something was coming! He could sense it.
There was a speck, far away in the nothingness. A fuzzy white speck. It was coming closer. Zeke’s heart skipped a beat.
Please, not him!
The speck grew larger, spinning slowly. The Spiral. A mess of tentacles, rotating, spreading, growing. And at the dead centre that octopus beak, snapping hungrily. The great enemy. The demon from the another universe. The endless hunger. The evil beyond evils.
Zeke didn’t know what to do. He flapped his limbs, an attempt to swim away. It was useless. He didn’t move a centimetre.
The Spiral was enormous now, the size of a house. The beak was as large as a man. But it stopped. In the dark it was hard to judge how far away. A few metres? A few hundred? But it was definitely at a standstill.
One long tentacle reached towards him. Zeke bit back an urge to cry out.
That too stopped. The tip kinked against an invisible barrier, as though there were a glass wall between them. It prodded harder. A second and a third tentacle shot out only to hit the wall. If it was a wall.
“You see, Zeke, you’re safe.”
Zeke’s body tingled with a million volts of fear. The Spiral was talking in the voice of Professor Magma.
“Would you prefer this one?” It was in Jasper Snod’s this time.
Zeke shook his head.
“Very well,” Magma’s tone went on. “Are you pleased to meet me again?”
“Not really. How come I can hear you?”
“I’m talking in your head. And Enki’s.”
Zeke glanced over at Enki, who was staring at the Spiral. His eyes were as wide as saucers. His face was blank. Zeke didn’t like that.
“Yes, he’s succumbed already,” the Spiral said. “Humans are so easy. All he sees now is my glory. My great, twisting patterns.”
“But you can’t get him, can you,” Zeke said, with a flash of insight.
The tentacles, or fronds, or creepers or whatever they were, tensed. The beak snapped. Yet the voice in Zeke’s head laughed. “Not yet, that’s correct.”
Again a tentacle poked at the invisible wall. “A barrier a few atoms thick, and yet impenetrable,” it explained.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Zeke said.
The Spiral throbbed. “It does. The Hesperians did this.”
Zeke frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“They made the pool. Afterwards, they destroyed it. This caused it to break off from your universe. Swallowing a chunk of the landscape in the process.”
“How does that allow me to see you? When you’re in another dimension?” Zeke asked.
“You can stand on one mountain and look across to another. You can stand on Mars and look across your galaxy to Alpha Cephei.”
Zeke clenched his fists. Don’t let it engage you!
The voice laughed again. “I’m reading your thoughts. That’s all. My universe can let a little light through into the pool. And thought waves. No different to the way you saw the Particle Beast back at the mine. But I can’t physically cross over. The subatomic gaps are too small. Otherwise you’d be dissolving in my belly right now.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Void
It was too much to take in.
“What are you?” Zeke asked at last.
The Spiral shimmered. “A survivor, an energy.”
“I mean, where do you come from?”
“Another place.”
Zeke’s fear ebbed a little, only to be replaced by anger. Was the Spiral playing with him? He stared at the monster hard, as if he had x-ray vision and could see into its gristly body. He stared harder. If thoughts could penetrate the barrier between the two universes…
Images flitted into Zeke’s brain. Creatures running and screaming. The chaos of a stampeding crowd. The images were fuzzy, but he saw pinchers and segmented legs. The Hesperians. The ancient Martians in their final moments. As the Spiral sucked them up like a malevolent black hole. The same fate that was now waiting for humanity.
Zeke gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to see this. The picture faded and another took its place. But what? It was indescribable. Gigantic tornadoes of burning plasma storming across a cosmos. Lightning strikes as large as a solar system, blasting apart the fabric of space. Fireballs of molten metal the size of moons. And in the darkness, swarming, slithering, such foul things. Could this be Hell?
“You can call it that,” the Spiral said, disturbing Zeke’s vision. “I call it home.”
“Of course,” Zeke muttered. Another universe! One that existed long ago, made up by totally different laws of physics. Scuff’s String Theory believed that all kinds of alternative universes existed. Some so radically different, they were violent and short-lived. Such a place created the Spiral, and then he escaped it. But how?
A rumbling passed through the pool.
“Your bubble is about to burst. Whatever the humans are doing on Mars, it’s weakening the foundations. This tiny cosmos will collapse like a house of cards.”
House of Cards? It was a very human simile. But the last time they met, the Spiral absorbed four humans. It knew everything they did.
“Let me in, Zeke, and I can save you.”
“I’d rather die!”
“And your friends too?”
Zeke’s heart stopped. Pin and Scuff were going to die if they stayed in the pocket universe.
“Only I am able save you now.”
“You’re lying.”
“You can open up a path for me. With psychokinesis. I’ll show you how.”
“Never!” Zeke cried, but his tone rang hollow. He swivelled around and tried to swim away. Nothing.
“Trust me, Zeke. I’ll never harm you. You’re too special.”
Zeke crammed his hands against his ears. He knew how persuasive the Spiral could be.
“I’m your only option. Don’t throw your life away. Let me rescue you all.”
“Only for us to end up as your next meal.”
“Can you be so sure of that? Give me a chance.”
Close your eyes! cried Zeke’s inner voice. Instead he looked back. He couldn’t help it. The Spiral was rotating a little faster. Round and around and around. An endlessly repeating pattern. Round and around and around.
Zeke felt calmer. Not so scared. Maybe he should stare a little longer. Just to be sure. After all, if there was any chance of the Spiral helping, he had to check it out. And still the Spiral kept spinning. In a way, Zeke supposed, it was fascinating. Not beautiful, but strangely appealing.
“The barrier can’t be lifted from my side, Zeke. But you can do it.”
Zeke tried to speak. His words were sluggish. “I’ve no idea.”
Wasn’t there something urgent to do? Zeke couldn’t remember. Whatever it was, it could wait.
The Spiral picked up speed. “You don’t know how talented you are, Zeke. But I do, the very first time we met, I could tell.”
Zeke felt a glow of pride. His muscles relaxed a little. “Me? Special?”
The Spiral pulsed and throbbed. “The greatest psychic ever. King of the Mariners.”
Zeke smiled. “No way.”
“It’s a fact. I can prove it.”
“Really?”
“Very few Mariners are strong enough to open the way between these realms.”
“Is that even possible?”
“For you it is.”
A thrill danced t
hrough Zeke. A spasm of joy. A strange, intoxicating feeling. Ah, that was it. The delight of surrender.
“Only you can let me in, Zeke.”
Zeke took a deep breath. “Yes, I can do it. I’ll let you in.”
An image flared in Zeke’s mind. Lutz Four. Her face haggard, her eyes gleaming with a dying light. The words from their final meeting echoed in his head.
‘How? How does the Spiral get back?’
‘A portal is opened.’
‘Who would be stupid enough to do that?’
‘You would.’
Lutz’s voice was a bucket of ice water. It splashed across Zeke’s mind. The fog lifted. He shielded his eyes as though the Spiral were a blinding sun.
“Nice try,” he said.
The Spiral hissed.
Another shockwave buffeted the void, like two trains colliding.
I have to go, and now, Zeke thought.
“Too late,” began the Spiral. “It’s begun.”
“What has?”
“Your bubble universe. For eons it’s floated alongside the main universe. Tethered by a safety rope of molecules. No longer.”
“You mean—”
“It’s imploding.”
Panic screeched like a siren inside Zeke’s head. Spiral or not, he had to get out of there. And he had an idea how. After all, hadn’t his enemy just reminded him he was psychic? But first…. Enki was a few feet away. If he could only reach out and grab him. He started paddling.
Zeke gasped.
Enki was drifting lifelessly in the void. But his eyes! They were twisting spirals.
“I’ve wiped him clean. While I was distracting you.” The Spiral gave a deep, bestial laugh.
“He can’t let you in. He’s not psychic. Give him back his mind.”
“No. But you may take him with you if you wish.”
Enki smiled inanely, his eyes turning. Zeke’s blood froze. Enki couldn’t return. Whatever the Spiral had done, Enki was now too dangerous. Zeke could tell. And yet he felt horribly guilty. He was leaving Enki to die.
“We won’t meet again,” Zeke said to the Spiral.
“We will.”
Zeke closed his eyes and concentrated. Light flared in his sockets. The cave, the cave, the cave!
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Cave of Immortality
Zeke was back at the pool. Three tremors shook the cave, each stronger than the last. He teetered on the pool’s edge, struggling to keep his balance. The last thing he needed was to fall back in.
A thunderous crack deafened his eardrums. A slab of the roof collapsed in a cloud of rock dust. Zeke found himself on the ground.
“Now what?” he wondered, scrambling up and snorting out dirt. He righted the photon lamp and peered through the mist.
“No!” The entrance was gone. The slab was blocking the way. A great chunk of basalt, the size of a small hover car. Zeke was trapped.
“No problem. I’m a Mariner.”
Zeke closed his eyes. He pictured the other cave, where his friends were hostage. He translocated. But when he opened his eyes, he was still in the same spot. Zeke tried again. He squeezed his eyes tight and thought as hard as possible. The glow from his retinas warmed the inside of his sockets.
Still the Cave of Immortality.
“Rats!” Zeke stepped over the debris and touched the boulder’s side. Could it be? Was the iron content too high? He recalled Knimble’s lesson. It was impossible to translocate through iron. That had to be the explanation. The cave was hewn from basalt so iron rich, it acted as a barrier. He was unable to translocate.
Another tremor shook the cave.
Think!
The pool was bubbling and foaming. Was there a way back through there? No. All he had seen was darkness and the Spiral. That way led to death, he was certain.
A large bubble formed on the pool’s surface. It elongated into a tendril and reached up and out of the pool. Slowly, it began stretching back up the path, like a tar-covered snake. The tendril probed the rubble, as if searching for something.
Zeke’s skin crawled. It was searching for him.
Bottling up an urge to scream, Zeke threw himself against the boulder and desperately tried to budge it. His muscles strained and sweat dripped from his face. He clenched his teeth and pushed harder.
Zeke’s legs buckled and he tumbled over. Useless! He was useless. The strongest man in the world couldn’t lift a rock that size. The cave was his prison and he was going to die there. That meant Pin, Scuff and Bartie would die. He was going to fail them.
Zeke thumped the boulder. There had to be a way!
That’s when Mariner Chinook’s words flitted through his memory.
But did he use muscles to raise the feather?… He employed his brain cells…nothing to do with weight… think that the rock is light as a feather and have confidence…
A Hesperian motto echoed in his brain. Kakehlyth silliatrngth. Loosely translated it meant ‘faith shapes the cosmos’.
The tar-snake was ten metres away and slithering nearer.
Thoughts somersaulted across Zeke’s brain. The iron wasn’t magnetized. So there was no magnetic field to cancel out his powers. Rather, the iron’s atomic structure prevented him slipping through. He couldn’t walk through it, but he could still lift it. Psychokinetically.
Zeke jumped up.
The slab was smooth and ochre. Zeke guessed it to be three metres long, two wide and one thick. Half a tonne? A full tonne? Either way it was too heavy for even two men to lift. He’d never do it.
You can!
Zeke drew a deep breath, considered the slab’s great weight and pictured himself embracing it. Then, grunting and gasping, he imagined himself lifting. Millimetre by millimetre, in his mind’s eye, he raised it off the floor. He could feel his biceps aching. His legs actually trembled under the load. Higher and higher and—
Nothing. The slab didn’t budge a nanometre.
The tar-snake was three metres away.
What was he doing wrong? Nothing to do with weight…think that the rock is light as a feather and have confidence. That was Chinook’s advice.
“I’m going about this all wrong.”
He had to stop thinking of the slab as heavy. All those neurons and cells that made up his consciousness, they couldn’t be fooled. If he thought heavy, it was heavy. He had to think light!
“Alright, you pathetic lump. You’re nothing but buzzing atoms, you’re more space than solid. I’m going to lift you.”
It wobbled!
But he was going to need more, what his teachers called a mind metaphor. He clicked his fingers.
“You may look like rock, but actually you’re painted Styrofoam. Like a fake boulder on a film set.”
The tar-snake was two metres away.
Zeke stared at the slab.
“Come on, you flimsy rubbish. Up you go.”
The slab budged! Creaked. Levitated a couple of centimetres off the ground. Then another. But Zeke was sweating just as much as before. After all, it wasn’t really Styrofoam. That was just an image. It was impossible. No! The slab crashed with a resounding bang.
One and a half metres.
But you just did it, his inner voice said. Come on!
He drew a deep breath and silently recited the Mariners’ mantra. Gravity, magnetism and thought are the forces that bind the universe together. And of these three, thought is the most powerful.
Lift!
The slab slowly rose. A half a metre this time, hovering in midair. Zeke’s mind strained under the weight. His eyes were shining, his head felt ready to pop. He was going to drop it again.
You idiot! Look how high you’ve managed. It isn’t heavy at all, that’s all in your imagination.
He stared at the slab
. Styrofoam is practically weightless. And think of all the space inside it, between atoms. It was weak, light, insubstantial. Zeke’s mind cleared. His task became easy. He could do it!
The slab yanked upwards, bobbing like a balloon. The outside beckoned from beyond the cave. Cold air cooled his cheeks. But the tar-snake was less than a metre from his ankles. A black, faceless worm.
Zeke smiled. “Zhshg kaka.” Hesperian for goodbye. His eyes closed.
A sensation of falling, floating, then solid earth forming underfoot. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Scuff, Pin-mei and Bartie was sitting against the wall. Ricasso stood nearby, a huge hulking ape of a man. He lifted the ferromagnetic rifle, aiming at Zeke.
“No—”
Ricasso squeezed the trigger and fired. Even as the word ‘translocate’ shot through the synapses in Zeke’s brain, it was too late. A torrent of magnetised ions exploded out. Invisible but effective. They smothered Zeke, erasing his powers.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ricasso’s Cave
“You idiot!” Zeke shouted, clenching his fists. “We need my powers to get back.”
Ricasso’s gorilla face scowled. “Shut up and sit down.”
“Don’t you get it? This place is doomed!”
“I knew it. Those tremors,” Scuff remarked.
Zeke nodded. “This whole world is collapsing.”
“How?” Pin-mei asked, her eyes wide.
“I’m not sure exactly. What I do know is that we have minutes to get out of here.”
Ricasso spat. “You ain’t going nowhere till the Doc gets back.”
Zeke glared. “Enki’s not coming back.”
For the first time, Ricasso wavered. “You mean—?”
Zeke hesitated. How did he explain, and quickly, Enki’s fate?
“No, though he might as well be.”
“Nice try, kid,” Ricasso scoffed. “Now, sit down before I make you.”
“Enough!”
A single word. It reverberated through the cave, loud and strong. Everyone turned in its direction and gawked.
The Particle Beast Page 16
