by Alex Deva
“Aram,“ said Lawry.
“No, really. It’s been over two thousand years, why the fuck are you asking me what a Quickening is?“
“Because we don’t know.“
Aram looked at her with incredulity.
“You don’t know.“
“You misunderstand. We do not know what you mean when you say ‘take them to a quickening’. Perhaps your English…?“
Aram rolled his eyes. “My English has been good enough so far. Come on, people.“
“If I may,“ said Tiessler. “English is not my native language either. According to my dictionary, ‘quickening’ refers to a moment in a woman’s pregnancy — namely, when the mother begins to feel movement of the foetus.“
“What? Fuck are you on about?“
“I’m afraid that’s the only definition in English, mr. Aram.“
“I didn’t even know that one,“ mumbled Lawry.
“Never mind pregnancies,“ said Aram, who by now was fairly annoyed. “I’m talking about the Ancient Refuge. The Hole in the Time. The Safe Empty.“ The looks around him were more and more astounded. “You guys really don’t know what I’m talking about? Have all the Quickenings disappeared in the last two thousand years?“
“What… hole in time?“ asked Dahlberg. “Can you describe it?“
“What’s to describe? It’s a big, round nothing. You can see through it, but if you know how to enter it, you’re safe because foreigners can’t touch you. They just walk through it as if it wasn’t there. Then you can just grab a Firebark and kill them. Sometimes it can heal you too, but it depends on the disease. That was my thinking — get Mark and Zi into a Quickening before they’re fully dead, fix them up, maybe even try a Firebark on that Square fucker — I’d be really surprised if it could take a direct hit.“
“Have you gone mad?“ asked Lawry, stupefied. “Do you… I mean, need help or something?“
“Hey, fuck you, Lawry,“ said Aram, irritated. “I don’t know what the problem is here. You really have no idea what I’m talking about?“
“Nobody here has ever heard about what you describe, and believe me, we wouldn’t be sitting here today if we had ‘firebarks’. What is that, is it like a cannon?“
Aram frowned, and said, in confused tones: “It’s a kind of a bracelet with a wolf’s head. You clench your fist and the wolf barks fire. It’s good to a few hundred paces… erm, metres I mean. It punches a nice, big fuck-off hole into anything. Smells like burnt, and fir trees.“
“Air ionisation,“ said Tiessler, watching Aram intently. “Tell me, mr. Aram, where might one find such a Quickening?“
“The one my people knew about was down in a forest by the river Maris, a few kilometres in. I could show you the place, but it’s probably changed since then. You guys have built a lot of stuff lately.“
“Lieutenant Lawry, kindly show mr. Aram a map of central Romania and pass to me whatever coordinates end up under his finger. But not now,“ said Tiessler.
“What? But this is… This can’t be real,“ said Souček. “I want to know about these places. Where did you say they were?“
“Not now,“ insisted Tiessler. “Your plan is terribly interesting, mr. Aram, but it has one or two rather large snags.“
“We don’t know where that Square is,“ said Aram, unhappy. “So even if he dumps them for dead, we won’t know where to find them. And we’d need to find them really quickly, before they’re really gone.“
“When you say ‘really gone…?’“
“Well, I was thinking I’d go back in their dream, and, you know, knock them out. I mean, they’re on the verge of losing it anyway. It wouldn’t take much. Once they lost consciousness, I guessed that they’d be disconnected, ‘cuz you can’t have telesentience without the sentience part, or that’s what I’m thinking. So it’d be like shooting two rabbits with one arrow.“
Souček was surprised again.
“That is, in point of fact, an outstanding idea,“ he said. “The transceiver may be locked and encrypted, but the connection will time out if, as our friend puts it, the subject’s consciousness stops flowing through it. That would be our best hope to get them out, and I honestly wish I’d thought of it.“
“Nobody would have thought about killing them in order to save them,“ said Lawry.
“If we recovered their bodies quickly enough, they would not die. We may not have access to a… Quickening — although I really want to see one for myself — but we can do amazing things with modern medicine.“ Souček seemed excited.
“I’m living proof,“ said Lawry.
“Yes, well, exactly.“
“But we still need to know where they physically are, first,“ Dahlberg pointed out. “Any ideas in this respect? Where did they vanish from Geneva?“
Souček bit his lower lip and shook his head. “The tunnel’s hot,“ he said. “We couldn’t send anybody in yet. The temperature at the mouth, in the ruins of the laboratory, is over seventy degrees. We sent a probe down and it measured a hundred and fifteen before it stopped working. At the time we didn’t have anything more resilient to high temperatures. We shot a laser beam to the bottom of the well and the rock there is about three hundred degrees.“
“Why so hot?“ asked Tiessler.
“No idea. Whatever that alien uses to drill through rock really heats up the air that follows into the tunnel.“
“Three hundred degrees Celsius,“ repeated the German.
“Yes. Not much machinery can withstand such temperatures.“
“So we can’t go in after them.“
“I don’t see how, especially if it gets even hotter.“
“But we can get a bearing?“
Souček sighed silently. “My Bishops sent down a laser scanner packed in ice. It survived for about a minute. The scan showed a tunnel about four kilometres long, then a bend. Lasers don’t follow bends, as you well know. We couldn’t get a temperature reading, either — it was an imaging scanner. The bend turned north, but whatever happened after it is anyone’s guess.“
“How deep underground lies this tunnel?“ asked Aram.
“About a hundred metres under sea level, on average.“
“How large is it?“
“Roughly three and a half metres in diameter.“
“Wow. Straight through rock?“
“Yes, mr. Aram. Straight through rock.“
“And the equipment — cylinders, computers — aren’t shaking or anything?“
“You saw proof with your own eyes; you talked to them. Whatever the means of underground transportation, it’s smooth as butter.“
Aram was silent. He tried to imagine a ball of fire, as tall as two men, flying through the Earth without as much as trembling, and found it hard even to his mind’s eye.
“They left eastwards, right? What’s in that direction?“
Souček shrugged. “Five hundred kilometres of rock, and then the Atlantic Ocean.“
“And then?“
“Well. In a straight line… the United States, I suppose. But there’s an awful lot of water in between. Not to mention that bend. They could’ve gone in any direction.“
“The United States,“ repeated Aram, nodding. “The United States. Where that bastard Gaines was from.“
“What are your thoughts?“ asked Dahlberg.
“Who on this Earth would pay most to have Mark?“ wondered Aram out loud.
Dahlberg looked across the table at Lawry. She met her gaze unflinching.
“Who wanted Mark to be taken apart by the, what was it? Office for Naval Intelligence?“ continued Aram. “Who nearly killed Doi? And whose bones did Mark and I break because of that?“
“Steven Gaines,“ said Tiessler.
“Your old friend,“ said Souček.
“Yes,“ agreed Tiessler. “My old friend from the Academy, whose face has been all over the news until the Darkness.“
“That’s where they’re headed,“ said Aram with conviction. “Th
ey’re going to the United States.“
“If they are, then it’ll take them a few weeks,“ observed Souček. “But, after what I’ve heard today, nothing surprises me anymore. So the ancient Dacians had Quickenings and Firebarks, and an orange alien square is drilling under the Atlantic holding hostage a three-hundred-year-old man whose mind is being sent to a far-away virtual reality by a mysterious starship run by a twelve-year-old, while our own planet is being held hostage to an artificial solar eclipse.“ He smiled humourlessly, sighed and looked up.
“Sure, I’ll run some numbers,“ he said. “Maybe we can, I don’t know, triangulate them using some oceanic floor seismometers.“
“That’s the spirit,“ said Aram.
“Then, all we have to worry about is getting to them, under a few kilometres of water and a hundred metres of rock.“
“Ah, about that,“ said Aram again. “I have an idea.“
XXVII.
Quadriceps: they raise and then push forward the entire leg. Big muscle, easily convinced. Calf muscles: they maintain the direction of the leg’s movement and support the weight of the body while the other leg is in mid-air. Then, the hamstrings. They do the opposite work as the quadriceps, so it’s important that they do not tense at the same time. Gluteal muscles… used at the very end of the back motion, in preparation for balance.
Then, balance — tiny tunings in nearly all dozen or so major muscle groups. But that’s alright, because you can cheat by shuffling your feet so you’re never holding balance on a single support.
And, of course, diaphragm. So you don’t choke and die because you forgot to breathe.
After a while, it turns into a poem. Like a song you sing in your head, spreading orders around in your body, a song that rings louder and louder, until the entire act of walking becomes a mindless — and yet, completely mindful — act that happens simply because there’s no other choice.
One year before Mark had departed history, a captain from the Royal Signals had died on Brecon Beacons, during SAS Selection. When the news reached his squad, Mark remembered the place clearly, up on the Corn Du mountain. In fact, Mark remembered the whole day. In the morning, Andy Murray had fought Novak Djokovic in the men’s final of the Australian Open. The Serbian had won, becoming the first man in history to win the Open three times in a row. Hurrah for Djokovic.
And just as he scored a game against Andy Murray in Melbourne, Dublin-born captain Carnegie gave his last breath, frozen to death, less than a klick from A470, a major South Wales motorway.
Just half a year later, two more servicemen died in the same area. It had been summer; they died of heatstroke. In nearly 30 degrees, with full gear, they simply pushed on until they collapsed and died.
Once more, Mark remembered his own Selection. Years before he’d been caught and tortured by the Al Nusra in Syria, he learned what torture was in the Welsh forested mountains. He remembered screaming alone, fighting to squeeze between trees that were so tight together that he had to climb up to go between them. He remembered wiping sweat from his eyes so he could see the needle on his tiny compass and the digits on his watch. But, most of all, he remembered the tunnel vision, the laboured breathing, the mindless determination with which his brain stubbornly sent signals to his legs: keep running. Keep running. Keep running…
This was nothing like that.
Or it was entirely like that, depending on how one wanted to see it, if one had time for philosophical reflections.
For one thing, he was not running. He was shuffling.
For another, he was not alone. A Rook, a fellow special forces soldier, was by his side. They were supporting each other, trying to walk at unison to preserve momentum, in a stupid and unfunny brotherly dance.
He did not have tunnel vision, there was no heat and there was no chill, either. In fact, there was no weather at all. He did not feel any pain. There was no burning fire in his lungs. There was no clock, and no corporal waiting for him with a stamp and a paper, telling him whether he’d been disqualified or not.
But it was entirely like Selection, in that, at every point, he could simply give up. He could simply whisper “I can’t do this anymore,“ lay down and quit.
And then, again, it was nothing like Selection. Quitting Selection would not even affect his military career all that badly. But quitting this… it would mean dying. And dying would mean sacrificing everybody else, too.
So he played the song in his head: quadriceps, calf, diaphragm (breathe in), hamstrings, balance, gluteal, diaphragm (breathe out). His brain, awake for nearly half a week, physically lying in a vat somewhere far away, could no longer mitigate the circumstances it found itself in. Far from adapting to them — talking to the body via lasers and intergalactic connections never was part of the human DNA — it rejected the situation, and reacted by gradually shutting itself down.
But the one thing harder than shuffling was talking.
The aliens who were still in the Complex had reorganised themselves. The ones who had elected to stay — and been able to — tried to turn the situation to their advantage. Like in a stock exchange, the new situation, even if temporary, presented an opportunity.
Deals that would have been very cheap before, when supply was large, suddenly became expensive. Whereas a stubby-looking three-winged creature would normally have found plenty of Stuff X from any one of a hundred ambassadors before, it was now reduced to dealing with only two or three, and those had nothing against increasing their profits thousand-fold. Depending on the urgency of the need, even million-fold.
Talks happened in the open, because the open was all there was. That, and the infinite, pulsing pillar that Mark and Zi used as a reference point, and which was long behind them by now. A bidding system emerged in some places; the two humans had no idea what merchandise was exchanging hands, but focal points had formed in the crowd, and aliens were acting animatedly in or around them.
The two men simply shuffled from one crowd to the next, hoping that the Saudade Conglomerate would be involved in one of the deals, and that the tall, humanoid ambassador Jox would be there.
And then it was time to ask again.
Talking is much harder than walking, and much, much harder than shuffling. Mark didn’t know the names of all the muscles involved, and truth be told he hadn’t even been aware that he had them, until he was forced to discover them. Zi seemed to be a little more advanced in his knowledge of anatomy and physiology, but even he could only list three, even as they approached another group of fantastical creatures.
— Digastric, masseter, temporalis, he’d sent to Mark. Plus a couple of others.
There are, it turns out, no less than eleven main muscles involved in the act of talking, and again, that’s leaving aside those charged with production of the required airflow. The two men may not have known that the muscle charged with elevating and retracting the tongue is the styloglossus, but they definitely became acquainted with it, as well as the other ten, as they tried to say in one voice:
“Saudade ambassador?“
The phrase had originally been “excuse me, have you seen the ambassador for the Saudade Conglomerate?“ but that soon became the Everest peak of talking, so they were forced to simplify as much as possible.
A dog-faced tree branch (if dogs had scales) turned towards them and said “no,“ and then turned back. Mark and Zi each turned towards someone else and repeated the question, in as much as they could convince their vocal chords to raise the ending intonation sufficiently to convey interrogation. They received answers in the negative without as much as a glance.
Then, Zi felt something on his shoulder. He turned, slowly, like a big wounded bear. It was the dog-faced tree branch.
“Sorry, I thought you were asking if I was the Saudade ambassador,“ it said.
“No,“ said Zi, munching through words. “Where?“
The dog-faced tree branch lifted a smaller branch and held it up across their faces, under their noses. At the end of th
e smaller branch there was a pointed claw.
“There,“ it said.
“Sure?“ breathed Mark.
“You mean ambassador Jox, right?“
They nodded.
The alien nodded too. “Come, I’ll take you to her,“ it said. It then leaned forward towards someone else and told him, her, it or perhaps them, a few quick words. Then, it turned and started walking.
“Come,“ it said again to the two humans.
— What do you think? asked Zi.
— Beats walking around randomly, said Mark.
— Trap?
— Fifty-fifty.
— I say seventy-thirty.
— On which side?
“What a mess,“ said the dog-faced tree branch, conversationally. “Everything’s gone mad. Where are you guys from?“
“Burgajet,“ answered Zi.
“Never heard of that planet. I see you have a lower LSC. That’s all right, I’ll walk slower. Lifespeed coefficient gets in everyone’s way. I wish they found a way to get around it, although, of course, time flows at the same speed for everyone so I don’t see how they’d do it. And they have to fix the Complex first,“ the alien went on, without looking at them. “What a mess. Me, I’m from Gabelle. Came here looking for lithium-8. Plenty of lithium-10, but who wants that? I mean, two zeptoseconds half-time? Stuff’s useless.“
— Make that eighty-twenty, sent Zi.
— Let me guess. Which part of Albania is Burgajet in?
— North, but I’m not really from there. Are you kidding? I’m not about to tell the truth to dog-face here. I’m really from Elbasan.
— Of course.
They trudged on, slowly, across the nondescript field. Groups of aliens were visible everywhere; some were closer, some were just dots in the distance. The horizon seemed fuzzy, not because of curvature and atmosphere haze, but probably because it was artificially rendered so.
“How far?“ Mark asked.
“There,“ said the alien, and pointed to a dark mound about two kilometres away. “Not far. Of course, it may take you some time. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a slow life. You get to enjoy things more, I guess. But on the other hand you die sooner. What’s the typical life expectancy on Burgajet?“
