In Other Worlds

by Attanasio, AA

  "They're not showing up on radar," the reply came.

  The technician with the lance and the chip stood before them.

  Commander Leonard looked into Carl sternly. "You're the criminal who caused all this evil. None of us wants you to have your power back. But you're the only hope of stopping this invasion. Do you want to help us?"

  "Yes-I'll do anything to make up for what's happened." He bustled with sincerity.

  "Turn around, Carl," the commander ordered. "Let's hope this works."

  Carl' couldn't believe it. They were giving his armor back to him. But could they? They, weren't Rimstalkers. They were just desperate. Carl prayed with all his vital fibers and the hollowness they held, praying for connection. Please, God-give it back to me.

  1 won't trip up this time. Please!

  The gloved technician peeled off the thick bandage at the back of Carl's head and inserted the chip in the plastic-prised incision there.

  Dazzling pain kicked Carl forward, and the guard holding him staggered. A red-blue spark jumped from the incision like a viper, and everyone stepped back.

  Carl's headache wisped away. Colors seemed to go brighter.

  Space became translucent with energy. Some thing like a steel, spring coiled tightly inside him, and the inspiriting began. The fires of his body gusted with the internal force of the armor, and when he turned about and faced the commander, he had the visage of a chieftain.

  "Where are we?" the armor asked through him.

  "At a missile-firing range on the tip of Long Island,"

  Commander Leonard responded. She took the lance from the technicians and handed it to him. "We're a thousand feet underground. The elevator will take you out."

  The touch of the lance quickened him with bright force, intoning the urgency of his mission with the drive to move. He strode into the elevator and jabbed the top button.

  On the ride up, he caught himself in the gap between his feeble humanity and the armor's power. He felt like the muddy center of the universe. How had he come to this? He was Carl Schirmer, the avatar of ennui, the eternal ephebe, always more eager for ambience than destiny. He had never expected, much less asked, for his fate, least of all the ravishments of Evoe. It was losing her that had driven him mad. He was a false hero, a fool at the limits of reality. But his love for her was real. And he was thinking of her when the elevator stopped and the door opened.

  Dawn gashed the sky. Carl settled into the embrace of his ribs, leaned back against his spine, and stepped out of the bunker onto the wide, saltgrass-tufted field. His armor came on, and like a piece of the sun, he lifted into the blue sky.

  Needlecraft flitted in every direction, and the armor spun him, punching out with laserlight. The sky erupted with blue and green roses as each of the zotl craft was hit. The rumble of their destruction zeroed in

  all directions. Carl circled about, waiting for more craft to come through the lynk.

  The atmosphere above him limbed with a startling luminance,and a bulbous, spidery shape of gluey blue fire appeared overhead.

  Carl wanted to fly off, but instead the armor lowered him to the rock-strewn range. The sandy ground was flat to a horizon rimmed with sand bluffs. The silverblue spider landed in a torrent of dusty light. And just looking at it, Carl knew. the lance would be useless. This was Rimstalker armor fitted to a zotl.

  With grim resoluteness, Carl's armor stalked toward the fang-grinning abstraction, and Carl went brainless with fear.

  The zotl snapped forward. At the instant of contact, the two light lancer armors flashed with molten sparks. The armors grappled, and their tormented shapes . flexed larger than life, quaked brightly, and disappeared.

  Carl's bare feet stunned onto the rocky terrain, and the salt air gripped him. His rusty hair and the loose material of his hospital gown jumped with the clap of wind that followed the armor's shutdown. A stink of soured flesh slicked by, and he reeled backward at the sight of the unarmored zotl that appeared before him. The male and female zotl were not together. The bulging sac of the female was an arm's length away, the orange slug-mawed crown drooling its vomit stench as it gilled the planet's thin air.

  Carl looked swiftly about for the male. It was hovering just behind him, and as he turned, it slashed forward. Its blade-curved beak gouged his scalp, and the hook-spurred legs dug into his face and neck. Carl beat the spidershape with his lance, and it sprang loose and jumped over him. He dodged instinctively, and the.

  creature's sharp beak hacked the air just above his ear, its jabbering mouthparts flaying his scalp and chewing mad sounds in his ear. He batted it away and swung toward the barrelshaped female.

  The male dove at Carl in a frenzied attack, cutting the flesh on his right hand and making him drop the lance. The jointed legs dexterously retrieved the .lance and flung it away.

  Carl-tackled the female, pulling the thing over by the shocks of its ape-thick hide. It took him down with it, and the male's legs ripped into his, shoulder while its feedtube desperately lanced at his throat, seeking the carotid. His right arm was pinned under the female's bulk and his left hand cramped with pain as it reached up and lay hold of the frantic sticklybacked thing.

  The hot blood spilling over his face blinded him, and he squeezed shut his eyes and contorted the length of his body to avoid the spider's scissoring jaws and razored feedtube. With terror's adamant strength, he tore the zotl from his flesh. He held the mad, writhing shape in his gory grip, away from his face, as he heaved the female over and freed his right arm. Its cries throbbed in the air.

  Carl clenched a handy rock, the earth's first weapon, and pounded it into the spiderbeing. Spurts of black blood slapped him, and a haggard wail bawled from the female. It was rolling and twisting, spewing putrid ichor in long convulsive arcs. Carl picked up a flat, two-handed rock and used it to crush the zotl.

  The work was ugly. The inside of his face was scalded with the sick smell, and the gash wounds on his body screamed with pain. The rock slab beat down hard on the. split chiton and jumping viscera of the monster until his armor snapped on with a crack of lightning.

  He recovered the lance and bathed himself with anesthetizing pulses. The armor directed the lance, and the wounds were sonically cleansed and cauterized. Miraculously, no tendons or major bloodways had been

  cut. Then with the sun spread out on the horizon like a red river, the armor lifted him and ricocheted him off the sky.

  Ames, Iowa, was untouched. A few of the townspeople had seen needlecraft arrowing through the sky that night, but none had landed and none had been seen since. Carl's armor detected no zotl activity any-, where. He was glad for the miles of unsullied land that surrounded Ames. He was sick from the zotl killing and was grateful that no humans had been killed, including himself.

  The sight of the lynk warehouse was a relief. Carl was sure it would have been a target, but the zotl in the short time before his armor was returned had obviously never found it.

  He touched down before the partly open sliding door. His wounds were glossy, lacquered with the first sheen of scabs.

  "Zeebo!" he called out as he entered. Beer-colored klieg lights gushed from the arched ceiling over the expansive interior. The living quarters looked lived-in: The giant TV was on, glowing with coverage of the worldwide UFO sightings.

  He turned the screen off. "Zee-where are you?"

  Carl roamed through the kitchen and sleeping quarters to the back of the warehouse. The lynk field tingled over him as he approached the hill of tarpcovered pig dung. He rounded the far end of the mound and was frozen by what he saw.

  A bloated human figure was bent over a zotl female, face forward in its ooze-bubbling mouth. The male was clasping the back of the bruise-stained head. The body jerked upward and pivoted about. Through the blue-puffed features and the gangrenously swollen body, Carl recognized his friend. It was Zeke. The

  agonized eyes nailed him, and the-turgid body careened forward.

  Carl glimpsed a hip-high
parabola of glassy metal--a lynkre he dodged Zeke. A silvergreen light streamed through the parabola; which he could just see beyond the stout shape of the zotl female. He fired an inertial pulse at it, and the barrel shape burst apart.

  Before he could fire again, Zeke grabbed him. They struggled across the floor of the warehouse to the back wall.

  Zeke had Carl in a headlock, and Carl was hooking back with his legs, trying to trip him. He beat the lance against Zeke's sides, not wanting to fire on him. Their locked forms smashed against the back door of the building, and it burst open under the impact. They fell through, and Carl twisted out of the powerful grip and rolled to his feet.

  Zeke was on his hands and knees, cumbersomely rising.

  Carl fired a carefully aimed pulse to the back of Zeke's head, and the zotl spider fell away, its feedtube sliding out of the skull slick with blood chime.

  Carl rolled Zeke over. The blue thick face was crazed, the eyes yellowed, unfocused. The lance magnetically soothed the brain and sheathed the body in a flux of vitalizing energy.

  Soon Zeke's gaze was focusing and his voice mouthing toward sound.

  '16d--lynk," Zeke rasped.

  "I know," Carl reassured him. "I saw it. I'll go back in and destroy it."

  Zeke clasped a black-fingernaded hand on his arm, .his bruise-quilted face gasping to speak. Before be could, the air shocked to an icy brilliance. The warehouse was filled with an enormous light. The radiance seeped through the cracks of the walls and streamed in great beams out of the windows and the back door. Then darkness.

  The armor filled Carl with understanding: The

  zotl lynk had inadvertently provided the necessary inertia to lynk the pig manure with the Werld-two weeks early. The armor also inspirited the news that unless he got himself into the warehouse within the next few minutes, while the lynk echoes were still strong, he would be unable to lynk at all. He would be permanently stranded on earthtwo.

  He peered down at Zeke, whose tormented face was relaxing toward the semblance of a smile. "Go-" he husked. -He wanted to tell Carl so much-about the. marvels of pain the zotl had revealed-about the supernatural calm inside the emptiness of the spirit where only pain can go-but his mouth barely worked. "Youcan't do-anything for me." His lips hooked toward a smile. "Go-"

  Carl used the lance to radio for help. He made Zeke as comfortable as he could, laying him in paineasing currents from. the lance. If only he could take Zeke with him-but his friend's inertia belonged to earthtwo, not the Werld. Carl's insides were jumping with the eagerness to go, but he still had to force himself to turn away from his friend. At the back door, he looked around and waved. Zeke's finger twitched. Carl walked into the warehouse.

  A moment later, the door and windows flashed with a majestic fulgor. The darkness that settled back was salty with tiny lights for a long time afterward.

  Carl appeared for a few seconds in Rataros. The black flames were frozen, still as megaliths, and in this pitch dark, the animal in him was close. He felt fear like a wetness inside him, cold and electrical. He was alone with that fear within the vacuum of himself. The armor had been taken away again.

  Suddenly, horizons of red clouds appeared. Great strides of clouds! He tumbled into a gulf of skyles and cloudlanes, falling from lynk to lynk on his lightsecond-long journey to the eld skyle. The lance was still in his hand, and he clutched the weapon close to his body. He noticed then that he was garbed in a leather finsuit and strider sandals.

  He was numb with the horror of losing Zeke, yet by the time the sky had brightened to the beaten bluegold luster of the Welkyn and the eld skyle's giant moss-veined walls were turning below him, awe had softened his feelings. The black waters of the eld skyle's lake gleamed deeply as opal. He slid over a fallpath to the wall of the lake. Thornwings were everywhere, cruising low over the water and dropping in dark bales. As he climbed down the wall, he saw the mound of pig manure on the'beach below him. Thornwings were gathering the dung and dispersing it on the waters.- Among the slopes of dung were scattered articles from the .warehouse: a chair, a houseplant, pots and pans, and Zeke's black-and-white-speckled notebook. He picked up the notebook and looked out over the lake, waiting for the eld skyle to speak.

  Nothing happened. He waded into the lake and even immersed himself in the thick water. Still nothing. On shore, while he waited, he flipped through Zeke's journal. He read: "Emptiness. Carl is gone. I'm alone. Really. alone. The connection with the armor has vanished. For the first time in over two years, I am just myself again. No inspelling. No surges. Strangely enough, that doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'm glad. I guess I've finally learned: A man must love his own to stay a man."

  The gravel clacked behind Carl, and he jumped about with a shout. He saw a brown tangle of vines and vetch with a green scar glowing behind a fist-sized

  birdhead. The thornwing's stately walk stopped a pace away;, and its tendriled arms lifted and opened.

  ""You've come for me, my old friend," Carl acknowledged.

  "Okay-we'll go." He looked out over the eld skyle's lake one more time. The other thornwings were still splashing bales of manure into the lake. Somewhere in its depths Sheelagh's strangeness was being digested. And others, too. Someday he might meet them. If he hadn't killed the eld skyle by overloading. it. A pang of guilt cramped through him.

  "Don't worry about me," he heard the eld skyle's voice, far, far within himself. He startled. When he strained to hear, it was gone. Then: "The spores you released were limited. Only eighty thousand or so people will catch light before the number of spores is exhausted. Their strangeness feeds me well. It pulls me away from you."

  The eld skyle thinned o$: Feebly, the voice returned, inside the ringing of his earbones: "But listen. Though the Rimstalkers have taken back their armor, they've left you the lance."

  "Great," Carl grumped. "A sword and no shield."

  "More than a sword," the shadow-thin voice said. "It is a bomb. When you pull o$' the hilt, it will trigger a starfire geyser that will cut off any approach--a wall of impenetrable energy.

  Use it to save your Evoe. The thornwing knows where to take you. That is all I can do for you-all that is left in me of you.

  Goodbye, Carl Schirmer. And glad fortune to you."

  Silence hissed.

  Carl smiled sadly and proudly. He saluted the eld skyle with his lance and stepped backward into the bristly embrace of the thornwing.

  The thornwing carried him through several natural lynks, rolling down a fallpath in the intense, bluegold light of the Welkyn. The pure white and languorous clouds poured through the skyles on their endless spiral climb toward the shear winds of the Eld. Their gray velvet interiors blanked his thoughts, and he burned in the sliding silence with the power of his return. Zeke's notebook tucked into the back of his finsuit and the wounds from his zotl fight were the emblems of his striving. And Evoe was at the end of this journey. The lance in his firm grip was cold. Its alien works clicked and purred. In the open spaces, Carl took shots at rock spires and treetips, remembering the use of the lance. It was difficult without the armor to help him select the lance function and to aim. Then they dove through the Cloudriver for a long time, and there was nothing to see. The emptiness jammed him toward sleep.

  When the clouds burst apart, they were within sight of Galgul. The roots of Carl's blood flinched at the dark sight of the City of Pain. Cindered debris plumed the sky casting a gravelly black pall over the remaining zotl spheres. And though this was the Welkyn, the light was dim and redlong.

  The thornwing hauled Carl through one of the dusty flightlanes that unfurled in carbon-black arcs about the broken city. Galgul was bound in a knot of clogged sky cut by fallpaths. But in the interim since the gravity wave had ruptured these spheres, the fine dust had settled with the heavier mangled shards into. ribboning bands outside the free lanes of the moving fallpaths, and the thornwing could skim over the charred litter toward the core of Galgul.

  Needlecraft cruised amon
g the plasteel debris, but they were no threat. The lance alerted `him with tones to the approach of the zotl, and the thornwing was able to move with the streams of detritus closer to the cracked-open sphere.

  As the shattered spheres neared, Carl glimpsed

  through the cumbering fields of shrapnel one sphere that gleamed. His eyes strained, and his heart pounded with the effort to discern what was ahead, but the rubble had become too dense. The fallpath ahead grinded with orbiting gravel. The thornwing's flight faltered and stopped. It could carry Carl no farther.

  Carl thought of clearing a path with the lance, but nixed the idea when he realized the next moment that it would draw the zotl to him. He would have to go on alone.

  He reached out and took hold of a scorched boulder. The thornwing let him go, and he was left hanging on the edge of the fallpath with the other debris. His weight nudged the housesized boulder, and in the diminished gravity they began a slow rotation. The tumbleweed that was the thornwing rolled toward the clear flightlanes with a farewell squawk and banked out of sight.

  Movement in the distant direction it flew caught Carl's eye.

  He scrambled against the spin of the big rock and climbed to the turning edge where he could see human figures galumphing over the choked edge of the fallpath. Black dust swarmed about them like a haze of flies. By their silhouettes against the ,luminous blue shadow of the Welkyn, he saw that they were Foke and that they wore the black strider tunics of a suicide squad.

  They were approaching, and Carl bent down and walked in synchrony with the rock's movement, staying in one place, .

  ready to drop out of sight. The group bounded through the smoky air close enough for him to see their faces. They were strained with flight, eager to cover distance.

  Carl's focus locked on the blackbearded, gangstergrim face of the chief: It was Allinl The thornwing had .carried Carl to Allin--by its own design or the eld skyle's, Carl had no time to guess. Allin rushed by meters away.