by L. Brown
“Here!” shouted Dahkaa, now tossing in a bundle of leather and steel. “Keep them close, but out of sight, use them only if you must! And if you’re found—?”
A frantic alarm interrupted, a last-chance howl.
“Trace!” Logaht yelled. “He’s tracing, forty seconds till he shoots!”
“Listen, David!” Dahkaa grabbed Garth’s shoulder. “If you’re found, tell no one who you are, understand? Do nothing till we arrive! And though I can’t promise I’ll make it, though Logaht and I may not survive, you must live, David, you—”
“Thirty seconds!”
“Must go alone,” said Dahkaa, his words and glare boring straight in. But too crazy to stick, his words dissolved, just fizzed into the rest of the inchoate alarm.
“You’ll make it, David, no doubt remains!” yelled Dahkaa, closing the hatch. “Logaht set your course for the Bloodlands, so you’ll land where it’s pleasing, nice and warm.”
“Alone?” cried Garth, now blocking the hatch with the toe of his boot.
“Alone for now, but—”
“Twenty seconds!”
“But fate will guide you, lead you through the River Afar!”
“It’s not a river!” Garth wailed.
“And when you enter,” Dahkaa continued, “just remember: whatever you feel, you’re not alone. I’m with you, you’ll make it through—”
“No!” Garth raged, still fighting the hatch. “I won’t go, I can’t!”
“You can and you must, it’s why you were born!” yelled Dahkaa, now dislodging Garth’s boot. “You’ll bring our world together, unite Clan and Tribe—”
“Locked!” shouted Logaht, now corkscrewing their craft. “He’s locking our drive!”
“Then somehow, some way,” Dahkaa shouted, still battling the last crack of hatch, “you must lead us in battle to kill the J’kel, do you hear?”
“No!”
“Then hear me now, David, you will prevail!”
Probing projectiles now shaking their craft, Garth fell back. And as Dahkaa slammed the hatch closed, he shouted a last command. “Stay inside, touch nothing and wait!”
A shuddering hit upended their craft, and as smoke and flash obscured Garth’s view, he sensed only mayhem, the shriek of alarms and the howl of the vaalik and the shouts of Logaht and Dahkaa mixing with his own.
“It’s not me, I won’t go!” Garth bellowed. “I refuse!”
The bang hit with a force as explosive as it was unexpected, a dizzying shot of propulsive tumult that shook loose the circus, some childhood memory of a cannon-shot clown. But as the dust of his mind settled back down, as vision cleared and he peeked again through the porthole glass, he wondered what happened, where Dahkaa and Logaht and the V-craft had gone.
Careening through space in a bullet-shaped pod, some conveyance for contraband or solo escape, Garth hurtled toward an inexplicable phenomenon, a galactic passage hopelessly, endlessly dark.
A second impact jolted the pod. Maybe shrapnel, maybe a stray projectile from Atta Ra’s guns, but whatever the cause, the impact caused a hissing, a venting of gas imparting a spin.
Oxygen? I’m losing air?
Haunted by hiss and spinning toward gloom, the river-that-wasn’t about to swallow him in, Garth knew he would die. Yet it wasn’t the unknown he feared, it was the sense, deep in the web of his first winter’s mind, he’d been left once before.
Stars starting to fade, the light in his eyes going absolute black, Garth vanished into the River Afar.
Chapter 8
O Superman
Respiration, fast.
Anxiety, acute.
Sanity crumbling, maybe conscious but likely not, Garth Smith, perhaps David Redhawk, perceived only desolation, an absence of everything in a measureless void.
Am I dead?
He couldn’t tell. And there was no one to ask, no memory of anyone from Ashley to Zack smiled or spoke or even waved goodbye, no one but Ryan. His memory heartened, brought some warmth, but now that he’d gone, abandoned his bro’, Garth felt only guilt.
But was I ever even alive?
Hard to prove, all he had was his fallible mind. And though the proposition seemed extreme, that he just imagined his entire life, what was the alternative, he was taken by aliens because he’s the Son of a King? That was more plausible? Impossible to say, but right now, imagined or not and just like the old man in the hat, his memories were everything, all he had left.
Yet if he felt such isolation and despair, at least that proved he still lived. But if so, then where was he? Was this a gap between life and death, an overnight stay between existing and not? Did his consciousness ride this infinite Ganges just to simply, pointlessly drift? No dawn or dusk, no ticks on a clock — wherever he was, time passed only in juxtaposed thoughts, in Dahkaa’s words and Atta Ra’s chains and everything read in his spilled-open file.
Had his mother tried to save him, is that why she died by Atta Ra’s hand, why she was stabbed not once, but twice?
And his father, was he truly a king? More important, why did he leave; were the woman who saved him and his very own son really less important than a faraway war?
Questions went nowhere, just spiraled tighter in, and as emotions frayed and hope flickered out, Garth wondered if he was just invention, some comic book character papering the void. But if so, then he wasn’t alone, so trying to hold on, he called to his friends, his oldest and best.
Superman?
He waited for an answer, some incoming shout or snap of the cape.
You there?
But nothing, no shout or snap came. Busy, perhaps, so he tried someone else.
Spidey?
Garth knew this one would come, would any moment swing in, but the webslinger no-showed as well. Perhaps he hung inverted, was still in that kiss, so Garth called out to more, to every gaudy riff of bug, man, or beast ever drawn; yet despite all plea, no franchise hero came. Not that he ever believed they were real, but he did have hope, never lost faith in perhaps.
Yet all ignored.
Is nobody there?
Silence, the reply, the answer held firm. So somewhere along the galactic way, with no one to care and nobody left, Garth Smith lost his hold and fell toward death.
Not suddenly, nothing quick, his demise felt more like the slow roll of a train, the end of a fourteen-year ride. But sensing a great unraveling, every atom coming undone, he yielded to a final urge, a reflex common to many last arrivals, perhaps nearly all; and he whispered, Oh, God.
Expecting nothing, he received no more or less. No visions or thunder, no parting of imagined clouds, nothing stirred but his own last gasps, hyper-ventilations that eased, oddly, into the breathless rhythm of an old Laurie Anderson song, something about — a judge?
Garth never got Laurie Anderson. Yet here she was, singing away while he slipped his mortal bonds, so with nothing else left, he listened, just sifted her words. He couldn’t unpack them, their meaning escaped, but the song’s relentless meter did remind of running, of fleeing Atta Ra toward downtown Detroit. And though the streets were still empty, inconceivably dark, something was happening, was defying the night.
No longer bleak, Michigan Central Station shone as if new, a place ablaze with glow and alive with sound. A music never heard, it mesmerized not just with song, with voices inexpressibly sublime, but also with evidence, with proof he wasn’t alone.
Desperate to enter, to discover the source now stopping his fall, he instead felt an exit, an explosive wrenching from nothing to something to blinding white pain.
Chapter 9
Ice
Bursting forth in a paroxysm of flash, Garth left the galactic flow both electric and afire, at least so it seemed. Agony, the transition, and though every cell blazed and a billion nerves lit, he reclaimed mundane existence in waves of exhilaration, a pummeling rush.
I’m alive?
Astounding, if true. But Garth wasn’t quite thinking, not yet, and as wits realigned
and his mind spun up, he wondered why, exactly, he floated in a pod with polar bear fur. The pelt’s tactile feel did wake thoughts of a cave, smoky recollections reeking of fish, but as for who he was or why he was here? Still jumbled, too much mental noise, and at the moment, his hopper of a brain held nothing but vague bags of stuff, faces and voices and murmurs of fate.
Stupefied, this Garth in a pod. Which was lit, he noticed, by soft orange light, something glowed behind a stray flap of hide. Curiosity pushing, lifting his hand, he grabbed the hide and tugged it back, then stared at a porthole of stars. And realized, dimly, he floated in space.
Events flickered, began to come back. But even as recollections of the V-craft returned, they didn’t explain the source of the light, so with anxiety rising — am I near the sun, about to burn up? — Garth eased to the porthole, then peeked out.
And marveled a moment, just wondered what it was. Too dull for the sun, the great orb ahead was therefore a planet. But which one? Facts and memories glinting like sparks, he recalled old pictures of Mercury and Mars, yet this heavenly body with the burnt-orange face seemed different, the stranger in town.
A massive stranger, and though Garth had never actually seen his world from space, not quite, this planet approaching could, it seemed, swallow earth twice. Yet what it boasted in size it lacked in looks, for despite all squint, Garth discerned neither ocean nor cloud, no hint of blue or green; and if its first impression was massive, the second was dead, dry — and cursed?
More mental sparks tossed, the memory of cursed shook loose C’raggh, the name of the world of the Man of Scars. Dahkaa, was that who he was? Threads of recall now quick-stitching his past, Garth heard him speak once more, relate the tale of a planet split between light and dark, between the Tribes of the Hot side and the Clans of the Cold. A world nearing its end, it had been invaded, overwhelmed by the invading G’mach. Atrocious, that name, G’mach scuffed the ear; but their look, Garth recalled, was unspeakably worse.
The soiled face-wrap and owlish eye now coming back, Garth hoped Logaht was only imagined, some hit-and-run dream. But then came the chains with the midnight glow, and as he shivered at the memory, no doubt remained, both Logaht and the Wraith were real. True, Logaht seemed an ally, but Atta Ra had killed Garth’s mother and father, the latter a king in the world ahead.
Ominous, the view. Yet while the planet kept growing, revealed more texture as he hurtled closer in, even more unnerving was Dahkaa’s summation of Atta Ra’s Quest, why the G’mach invaded this world and more. And the reason, if he could trust his unsteady mind, was a search for unending life, some Northwest Passage around the cold sod of death. But then it got murky, Dahkaa’s tale veered into primeval muck, for according to legend, some Promise foretold, the way past death didn’t spring from a Fountain of Youth, no — the secret lived with a Savakerrva, some Son of a King now hurtling through space.
Delirium, all of it. Maybe that plunge through space-time addled his brain, maybe every memory was simply made up; but if so, then what was that?
As thin and straight as a taut black hair, it looked like a meridian marked on a globe. But this was a planet, a real one, and the hair-like strand belting its girth reminded less of a globe and more of snow, the sphere Dahkaa shaped, then scribed with a line. A serpent, he’d called it. Hopefully just a metaphor, but as Garth struggled to recall its name, he also worried about time; didn’t Dahkaa say it was nearly complete, that in just forty moons, its head would reach its tail?
And then?
Garth slammed against a bulkhead wall. Dazed a moment, he felt the pod decelerate, and pressed to the wall, he also heard a hiss. The noise reminded of river entry, his wild spin into the black, and while that awful vertigo had stopped, this slowing was possibly worse, for as deceleration increased, so did the light through his porthole glass. Couldn’t be happening, insanities like this just didn’t occur, yet as the incoming light blazed his face in orange, the madness was inescapable, he was falling into C’raggh.
Just along for the re-entry ride, Garth streaked into the world of his father, the planet of Clans and Tribes. And maybe it was the reentry fire just outside, maybe it was the awful foreboding welling up within, but Garth couldn’t look, all he could do was hide in the pelt until shaking lessened and the ride smoothed out.
Unsure what it meant, quite sure he didn’t want to know, he surrendered, eventually, to reality. He had no choice, but he did have the pelt, so clinging to the fur, he dragged himself to the porthole, peeked out — and beheld what could only be an illusion, a trick of the transported mind.
Ten miles tall and maybe much more, saw tooth freaks gouged the planet’s high, airless fringe. Mountains, by definition, but these just astounded, demoted every Himalayan pretender to the rank of petit. Black-hooded rogues of baked, gnarled stone, they rose from seas of burnt-orange sand and glinted, here and there, with honeyed veins of copper or gold.
But as Garth sped by and the peaks fell back, so, eventually, did the sand. Turning his head to see what next, he squinted a bit, but whatever he thought would come, he never expected green.
Grasslands, by the look, then came the trees, and as forests painted this rock of C’raggh in shades of lush, Garth recalled what Dahkaa had said, the buffer between Hot side and Cold. The Bloodlands? Seemingly ill fit, the recollected name apparently described just a very thin slice of this bipolar world. But wasn’t this also the land of the Worms, those who helped the G’mach?
Questions swept by with the savannah below and unnervingly fast, the light outside dimmed from twilight to dark. Worse, he sensed his pod in no hurry to land. But wasn’t that the plan? Hadn’t Logaht set his course for the Bloodlands, isn’t that what Dahkaa had said?
The pod hurtled on. Could he really cross the galaxy, cover trillions of miles to finally, at journey’s end, simply get lost? He could, and now seemingly worse, he heard it again, the hiss. Yet this was different, this gasped and sputtered as if the pod vented its last. Was it trying to turn, get back to the twilight and carpet of grass?
Trying or not, the pod sped on into the most foreboding of nights. Terrifying, the site, but now, so was the scent, the unmistakable smolder of smoke.
Coiling into his nose and eyes, it came from the pod’s cluttered floor. Something was burning, he couldn’t tell what, but he needed to stop it before it fouled the air. So holding his breath, maybe his last, Garth dove through the smoke and uncovered the cause.
Not a disaster, more a culinary first, bear meat sizzled on the re-entry hull.
But before he could sigh, even sample a bite, the pod lurched with a bang, an unexpected kick pitching Garth into the meat. Scorched by it, he pushed back, then peered through the porthole for the violent cause. But instead of the gunship, he saw only billow, something big and round.
A parachute?
Staring at it, Garth wondered if it would save him, dampen his imminent crash. But even if it did, where would he land? Was something waiting below?
Pressing his face to the porthole glass, Garth tried to see. Monsters awaited, they always did, but despite all effort, every tilt of his head, everything below just looked like above. Couldn’t be happening, an impossible result, yet if he believed his eyes, he was falling into stars.
The pod crashed, slammed down hard. Not stars, the landing confirmed, and as he bounced off bulkheads and joined the stir of meat and fur, Garth heard a muffled explosion, a noise simultaneous with a billowing streak passing outside. Just the parachute, he rightly assumed, and though the pod tumbled and rolled, it eventually slowed. Another turn more, now a tentative half, then finally, most implausibly, Garth became a body at rest.
I’m still alive, I’m actually intact?
Thinking a moment, he yielded to yes. But on alien worlds, moments change fast, or so he assumed. Yet even as he sprawled in the pod and clung to the fur, Garth suspected this moment obliterated his entire life of before, for just like Columbus, he’d come to rest on a wild New World. But what can
nibals awaited, what horrors crept in? These imaginings seized, bound up like rope, so infused with dread and stilling his breath, he braced for the welcome, for the monsters of C’raggh to tear off his door.
But only wind called, far whispers and moans. Nothing else stirred, yet the more he listened, the more the wind spoke, formed words, restless tauntings of go back or come out. He ignored at first, then tried to think friendly-wind thoughts, languid palms massaged by a breeze. But the far wind persisted, wore him down, and unable to stand it, he pushed back the dread and eased to the hatch, to the porthole view of the world without.
Mystified, Garth simply stared, just tried to absorb the mirror-like freeze spackled with stars. An ocean of ice unbroken or bound, it spread to a horizon barely curved; then faded, gradually, via an illusion of merge into a cold heaven of stars.
Garth shivered. An errant arrival with an infinite view, he felt, as the far wind howled, a deepening chill. Hunkering under the pelt, trying to ignore the bearish stink, he searched for heat; and also for answers, for what happened up there, his trip through the stars.
Not a river, not even close, but whatever its waves, they carried him here. Yet it was more than a ride, he’d felt something else; still felt it, if he could trust his memory and gut. Though now, despite all focus, only feelings came back, a numbing despair and severance from all. A nightmarish journey, the darkest of trips, yet it ended, oddly, with a memory of — trains? Not exactly, not quite, but as he recalled the old station, he wondered why it looked so wrong; had it ever been joyful, had he ever seen it bright?
The station faded. And with it, so went any notion of warmth. He looked for something, anything besides the polar bear hide, but the pod held no blanket or coat. Its cylindrical interior cold and bare, the pod held nothing but a recessed panel, a faint oval seam.
Huh.
Garth clawed into the seam, then pulled. Wishing for a screwdriver, he popped the panel with a thumbnail tear.
Three switches glowed. Blinking a moment, now leaning closer in, he discerned each wore a symbol; and for the next few minutes, he pondered the meaning of ‘<’ and ‘O’ and ‘>
