by James Frey
Her magazine is empty. Her trigger finger aches. Firing the grenade would be suicidal.
But if she’s going to die anyway, she might as well try to kill this fucker too.
She applies pressure to the grenade’s trigger as the pale face of an alien—not 22b, but one of his kind—appears in front of her like a phantom. And before she can squeeze all the way, the world goes light and dark simultaneously and she’s gone.
All she’s aware of in that last moment is the cold.
The terrible, terrible, freezing cold.
19h 16m 52.2sii
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, SHARI CHOPRA
Approaching -21.6268, 129.6625, Yuendumu Hinterland, Northern Territory, Australia
Hilal and Shari walk southeast through the red sand grassland of the Australian outback. Nighttime. No people. No moon. No breeze. They weave through stands of mulga trees and creep around mounds of grassy spinifex, some of which look like earthbound corals. They walk silently, listening to the clicks and coos of insects and bats and other small animals plying the night for food and shelter.
The stars are out, and they are brilliant. The duo’s eyes have adjusted from the inside of the plane, which they left 4.7 kilometers to the north, and the starlight is all they need.
Hilal has been to the southern hemisphere many times—to the bush of Zimbabwe and Mozambique and Botswana—but he has never seen stars like this.
He would talk to Shari about the stars if she had not ordered him to be silent before they set out for the ancient Koori monument. “I am angry beyond angry at you, Aksumite.”
He did not argue with her. If he were in her position it would take every ounce of his will not to slaughter him where he stands.
But the stars. If he could talk he would point out Achernar, a few degrees above the horizon, the final star in the wandering constellation of Eridanus. Next to it, rising from the earth itself, the Phoenix takes wing. And to their right is Acrux, the bright white star that anchors the Southern Cross. From this constellation he arches his head back and follows the glowing swath of innumerable pinpricks and pink and blue and yellow clouds that stitch the heart of the Milky Way together. There is the Centaur, and Lupus the hound, and Norma and Circinus and Ara, and directly overhead are Scorpius and the archer, Sagittarius. Between these are the thickest and brightest star clouds, marking the center of our galaxy, 26,092 light-years away. If he were speaking to his companion he would spin around and point his machetes toward Vega, which glows brightly, even through the Abaddon dust that begins to sully the northern and western skies. This star belongs to the constellation Lyra, and flying next to it is the long-necked swan, Cygnus.
He would talk about all of them.
Of course Shari is probably equally enthralled and knowledgeable. Maybe she looks up and places her departed loved ones among the stars. Certainly she hopes that she can save her Little Alice from returning to these stars.
For that is where they will ultimately return, just as it is from where they ultimately came.
To the stars. From the stars. Like every atom of every thing.
Shari is 10 paces in front of him and she comes to a sudden stop. Hilal cocks an ear but only hears the same thriving nocturnal buzz of the bush that has accompanied them since the plane.
Before leaving their Bombardier Global 8000, they consulted Wayland’s book to see if any ancient monuments had been destroyed or otherwise affected by Abaddon. The book showed that the Olmec monument had indeed been damaged, as well as the Minoan monument, which was curious since it was so far from the impact zone. Hilal reasoned that perhaps Wayland’s brotherhood had reached it and converted it to ruins.
Shari didn’t appear to care.
“All I want is to see my daughter and hold her in my arms.”
Again, Hilal could not argue with that.
But he is not thinking about that right now. He wonders what Shari senses as they stand stock-still in the Australian outback. She carries a holstered Glock 20 and pistol-grip Mossberg 500 Cruiser tactical shotgun. Hilal clutches a suppressed Colt M4 Commando in his right hand and the machete named LOVE in his left. The other machete is sheathed on his hip. He also carries Wayland’s book in his pack. It is too precious to leave anywhere.
Shari kneels and runs her fingers over the dirt. She inches forward without standing. Hilal doesn’t move. The ground underfoot slopes toward a dense thicket of wanderrie wattle that they can’t see past.
Shari points at the ground, running her finger in a straight line.
Hilal sees it. Two grooves etched in the parched dirt, joining in a point at Shari’s feet. The grooves run as straight as arrows, the angle between them appearing to be exactly 60 degrees. Inside these lines is the gnarled and dense shrub, outside is sand and earth.
“It is in there,” Hilal whispers. “We need to find the entrance.”
Shari holds out her shotgun, indicating that she wants Hilal to take the lead. He does this without thinking twice. He knows that a large part of Shari wants him dead, and he will not fault her at all if she decides to strike him down.
He will accept it as a price paid.
But she does not strike him down.
He walks due south, toward the Large Magellanic Cloud seeping over the horizon like a milk stain. The two Players curve around the edge of dense wattle. Hilal sees that the grooves in the ground depict a star, such as one would find on the Seal of Solomon, roughly 30 meters in diameter. As they reach the northern side of this star the earth rises on their left to head height, forming an amphitheater for the star shape, and when they reach the northern star-point they find a low but clear path through the plantlike wall.
They will have to crawl.
Hilal takes off his pack and disappears into the thicket. Shari follows him immediately.
Half a minute later they emerge not in a star-shaped interior, but in a 15-meter circle created by the foliage. They stand on the edge of this circle, shoulder to shoulder, and Hilal is almost afraid to step forward. Both he and Shari know that they are in a sacred place.
Luckily, they appear to be the only ones there. No members of Wayland’s brotherhood. No Koori men and women guarding it.
Strangely, the sounds of the outback that were so present outside the thicket are nonexistent here. The breeze that brushed over their faces from the west is gone. The fine sand underfoot is pebble- and rock-free and has recently been swept by a rake, making a pattern of centimeter-wide concentric circles whose center is the ancient and gnarled trunk of a dead tree. This rises two meters from a bowl-shaped depression. The inside of the bowl appears to be coated in a metallic substance.
“This is the place Stella told me about,” Hilal whispers. He steps forward. The ridges and valleys of the circles drawn in the ground are flattened and rearranged into a bootprint. Hilal adjusts his grip on the machete named LOVE. Shari stays rooted to her spot.
A sudden sound overhead, like the wind has picked up. The air grows perceptibly colder. A dark flicker like a bird taking wing at eye-level. Hilal raises his machete and wheels, and Shari spins in a semicircle, flashing her shotgun, but both are caught off guard as the bush itself comes to life.
Hilal is grabbed at each wrist and his arms are yanked outward, like Christ on the cross. He tries to kick, but a snare has jumped from the dirt and encircled his ankles. Strong hands twist his weapons backward, forcing him to release them. His other machete is lifted out of its sheath, and just like that he is unarmed. He is bound, his back brushing up against the coarse leaves of the shrub.
He would call out to warn Shari, but he can see that she is already similarly incapacitated.
All of this happens in less than three seconds, and all of it without a sound save that of a few rustling branches and their leaves.
Hilal feels a warm breath on his neck. A blade—one of his own—flashes below his face and he feels the hairline metallic edge grace his Adam’s apple.
“Wait,” Hilal says.
The
metal pushes into his flesh.
“Kill me if you must, but please spare the other. Shari Chopra is her name. The Harappan. She was friends with Alice Ulapala, your line member. Shari is mother to Sky Key. She deserves the chance to see her daughter again.”
The metal pushes in more. Hilal feels a bead of warm blood trickle down his neck and settle in his suprasternal notch.
“Stop,” a raspy female voice says.
The blade is removed. Hilal would fall if the hands restraining him did not prop him up.
A diminutive elderly woman in jeans and a dark windbreaker stands next to the tree trunk, her hands thrust into her jacket’s pockets. Her head is wrapped in a white bandanna, her face is pudgy and round, its skin crumpled, her nose turnip-like, her eyes bright and beady. Flanking her are two large figures, presumably men, dressed head to toe in branches and leaves. They look like living bushes. Hilal scans the circle and now understands that the entire interior was lined with these unspeaking sentinels. Three stand around him, and two around Shari, who kneels on his right, her arms also pulled wide, a knifepoint dimpling her temple.
The old woman waves at Shari. “Easy,” she says. The knife retreats.
“Show me Chopra’s face,” the old woman says with a broad Australian accent.
A light shines on Shari. She blinks.
“That’s her.” The woman pokes out her blunt chin. The light goes off. “I seen you in the Dreaming. Seen your daughter too,” the old Koori says. “Been watching yours since Alice zoned in on her. I seen both you and your daughter when Alice died.”
“Where is Little Alice?” Shari demands.
“Dunno. Wish I did. Truly.”
Pause.
“I was there,” Shari says slowly. “In that dream. I saw Alice die, too.”
“That’s the Dreaming all right. You and yours were there like me. Difference was I went there on purpose, whereas you two ended up there on account of, I’m thinking what I’ll call your innate abilities. That or luck.”
“It is never auspicious to see a friend die,” Shari says as much to herself as to the old woman.
“Good words,” the elder says approvingly.
Shari shakes her head. “You’ve seen me before, then?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t seen you, though.”
“Nope.”
Shari says, “I . . . don’t understand . . .”
“You tried to save Alice from that little Donghu brute—remember that?”
“When I saw her die?”
“That’s right, Shari. But while it looked and felt like a dream, it also happened to be—”
“Real,” Shari says, her eyes cast to the ground.
“Yeah,” the old woman says, her voice low and sad.
“I’m sorry. I tried—”
“Weren’t nothing you could do. Me neither. We were like ghosts. That’s the Dreaming for you.”
“I would have helped her if I could,” Shari says quietly.
“And me too. Like I said, that’s the Dreaming for you.”
Hilal says, “Madam, I am sure that I do not understand any of this.”
The old woman says, “No, you wouldn’t.”
“She’s related to Alice,” Shari explains to Hilal. “I’m guessing.”
“You’re guessing right.”
Shari continues, “Alice and I had a connection. I can’t explain it, but it was there. It was real.”
Hilal says, “I see. Madam, may I ask your name?”
“Sure you could ask.” She snickers. “Don’t have to answer, though. But since Alice and Shari were mates, I’ll tell ya. Name’s Jenny. Jenny Ulapala. Gram to Alice, among a couple dozen others. Elder scion of the Koori line, even out here in Yuendumu, where our Warlpiri sisters and brothers keep themselves and the land.”
“My name is Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt, the—”
“I know—the Aksumite. And she’s the Harappan. The one who lost her daughter for no damn good reason that I can fathom.”
“Don’t kill me, Mrs. Ulapala,” Shari says a little out of the blue.
“Not planning on it,” Jenny says.
The guards release Shari’s restraints. The knife that was pressed to her head disappears into a sheath.
The old woman says, “Not sure about you, though. What do you say, Shari?”
Hilal’s heart skips a beat. Shari has found a new ally. She might not need him anymore.
Hilal would plead for mercy, but he knows it would be unbecoming. He also understands that, from Shari’s perspective, he more than deserves her wrath. He was the one who revealed her line’s secret fortress to the other Players, who used that information to kill nearly all of them.
“He . . .” Shari says. “He . . . I want him dead.”
“All right,” the old woman says.
The blade returns to Hilal’s neck and presses into the nick that was made moments before. More blood trickles down his skin.
He closes his eyes. He does not want death, but he will accept it.
“But you should not kill him,” Shari says at the last moment.
Hilal’s eyes shoot open, Jenny flicks her hand, the knife moves away, his life is spared.
For now.
“I suppose I will need all the help I can get to see my daughter again,” Shari explains. “I would rather use your guilt to that end, Hilal, than succumb to base revenge.”
Hilal lets out a quiet sigh of relief. “Understood. And I am grateful, Shari.”
A moment passes. The stars turn.
Jenny says, “I’m curious. Abaddon is down. My Player is gone. Why are the two of you here, together?”
“Because we have seen enough of Endgame,” Shari says. “We do not want it anymore. The lines don’t deserve it, and the people of Earth don’t deserve it either.”
“And we are here because we want to find her daughter,” Hilal says with as much sincerity—because he is sincere—as he can muster. “We want to stop Endgame, Mrs. Ulapala. Shari and the Cahokian and the Olmec and the La Tène want this as well. We are working together. We do not Play for what the Makers wanted us to Play for. Not anymore.”
Jenny frowns but she has clearly listened carefully. “What do you Play for, then?”
“Many have gone to the stars today,” Hilal says. “I do not know the magnitude of Abaddon’s destruction, but I feel that it is great. Now we Play to save lives. To prevent more from returning to the stars. Together we can achieve this. We have power and we have knowledge. We even have something that belonged to the Makers.”
“Whachya mean?”
“It is in my pack,” Hilal says.
“He’s telling the truth,” Shari says.
“If there’s something in your pack you’ll have to get it yourself, Aksumite.” One of his machetes whips down on the cord around his left wrist and it is free. A guard gingerly holds open his pack at arm’s length. “No malarkey,” Jenny says. Hilal feels the cold ring of a gun barrel pressed to the back of his head, behind where his ear used to be.
“None,” Hilal says. “I swear it.”
He reaches, feels the cold edge of the book, and slowly pulls it free. “It is merely a book. A Maker book from the first days. I invite you to inspect it.” He holds it by one of the covers and lets it fall open. “It is harmless.”
Jenny leans forward. “Bring it here.”
The guard drops the pack, takes the book, and walks to Jenny. The gun stays pressed to Hilal’s head. His skin warms the metal.
The guard holds the book open in both hands. Jenny turns its pages slowly. She leans forward. Squints. Shines a light on it. After a few moments she glares at Hilal. “Where did you get this?”
“From a man named Wayland Vyctory.”
Jenny grunts. Hilal guesses that she knows who this man is. “You read this book already?” Jenny asks.
“What? No,” Hilal says. “I cannot.”
“And you, Shari?”
Shari shakes her head.
“Can you?” Hilal asks.
Jenny takes the book from the guard and shoos him aside. She continues to leaf through the pages. “You have all heard of the Mu, have you not?”
“Of course,” Hilal says. “Their Player was exemplary by all accounts.”
“They like to claim their line’s the first, only ’t’ain’t true. Oh, their line is old—going back twenty, twenty-five thousand years and more than any of yours. But my line, we’re the oldest. My people been walking these lands on foot and in the Dreaming for forty, fifty, sixty thousand years. That’s when the Baiame—the Makers—first came down and met with us. We’re the original line. We just don’t like to brag about it.”
“Chiyoko did not brag,” Hilal points out.
Jenny says, “Good on her . . .” Uneasy silence falls as Jenny continues to peruse the pages. “Flames above, do you know what this is, Players?”
“What?” Shari asks.
Jenny smirks. “It’s an instruction manual. Called Domination, roughly translated. Here are some section headings, and these are only guesses, because their language is very odd: ‘Explaining Flight to Earth Beings,’ ‘Modern Deification,’ ‘Images and Idols,’ ‘Metals Primer,’ ‘Genetic Lines of Establishment,’ ‘Fear for the Sake of Good.’ It goes on and on.”
Hilal brims with excitement. That there is a person alive who can decipher this text is magnificent.
He can tell by her voice that Shari feels the same. “Mrs. Ulapala,” she says respectfully, urgently, “will you help us?”
Jenny closes the book and tucks it under her arm casually. She takes a step back. “Let ’em go, boys. Keep their weapons. One false move and kill, no questions.”
