Unmarked Journey

by Dexter Findley

ago.'

  'Nah, I wouldn't say that,' he countered, 'you have to pick your moments. Unless we’d seen all this first-hand, we wouldn't have the impetus we need to make things change.'

  'I really hope this works, you know,' she mused, placing her head on his shoulder.

  The plane turned on to the runway, its nose pointing towards the stretches of tarmac in front like a bullet in a loaded gun.

  'Of course it will. Nothing like the fires of youth to get an engine started. Once we’ve told him what the Wise are up to, how they let Elra treat us, Tamarlane won't stop until he's taken the fight all the way to Tanzania.'

  'Should we let him?'

  'Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We may have to rein him in before he gets too carried away - '

  ‘It's about time we dethroned those pacifist weaklings and showed the world the true power of Knowledge,' she interrupted.

  'Well, he’s definitely the man for the job: apparently he’s become quite a personality over there. Has a gang of devoted followers - ‘

  ‘He needs direction.’

  ‘Our cause will give him direction.’

  ‘Yes it will. You know, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather do this with,' she replied, looking up into his eyes with a slight smile playing on her lips.

  The plane's engines opened up fully, forcing them both back in their seats; they catapulted down the runway and rose up into the sky.

  Forty-five

  It took a few days for Kai to fully recover. In that time he seemed to do nothing but eat: he wolfed down meal after meal of goat meat and maize porridge, five or more times a day, until his famished frame started developing a healthy fill. Color returned to his cheeks, his lively attitude was re-awakened and eventually he was able to walk and run again.

  What had troubled Elra the most were his marks: his palms were burned and his mark tattoos seared, as if his hands had been struck by mini lightning bolts. The wounds healed over fairly quickly, however, leaving raised, discolored scars in their place. She had made a point of spending as much time with him as she could, when she wasn't busy planning with Olympia.

  This was the plan they'd concocted. Morwen, Kai and Elra would be the go-team, with Morwen's unique pairs of marks facilitating the return journey and any spatial 'jumps' that may be required when they got there (to cover large distances quickly, for example), and Kai providing his Body Knowledge for practical and defensive purposes. Between them the only thing noticeably lacking was decent Mind Knowledge. Morwen, however, was as proficient as any non-Wise person with it, so she should be able to learn any forms the Founders taught them easily enough.

  Elra would take them to the time of the Founders by opening a rift in the cave they had arrived in, as Olympia and Morwen were certain she could tap into the latent energy of its ancient marks and focus on the moment they'd first been painted. What would be waiting for them on the other side nobody knew: archaeology (and reason and logic) suggested a very surprised group of early humans, but Elra had a sneaking feeling that it wouldn't be as simple as all that. Either way, they'd decided to be open with the people they met on the other side: about their intentions, their current problems, and current events; because after all, people back then would have been just as intelligent and just as curious as modern humans, and not communicating leads to misunderstanding.

  Finding a way to communicate with them in the first place was going to be a problem, however. But with the shared language of Knowledge, Olympia was sure they'd manage to get their intentions across somehow. Plus, smiles and open, friendly gestures speak of friendship more than any words could.

  This didn't stop Elra being more nervous than she'd ever been before. Far more nervous than when she first entered the Tower Bridge hideout, and even slightly more than when she confronted Barry and her mother, all that time ago. They decided, if anything went even minutely wrong, they were to abort the entire expedition: Morwen would scribe a hasty version of the anchor mark in the present and Elra would get them out of there.

  Come to think of it, had it really only been days since she'd confronted Barry and her mother? It felt more like years or, more specifically, like another lifetime ago, as if time in its normal sense wasn't applicable. It was like it happened to someone else, to a character she read about in a novel, or a protagonist in a film: minor characters in some other drama.

  Half-remembered, like a dream after waking.

  Forty-six

  Hiero was all alone in Tower Bridge for the first time in months. My, did it feel good to have Zhen and Harland out of the equation for a little while.

  He stood in front of the large mark scored on the elevator room's wall, gently running his fingers over its perfect grooves and spirals. Morwen. Such a perfectionist.

  Elra and her rift-making ability was game-changing. Not just for the Marked, but for humanity. He knew it was only a matter of time until unmarked governments and corporations got involved: and they would get involved eventually. The Wise wouldn't see it. He doubted Elra herself would see it, well, until she was thrust into the back of a van at gunpoint.

  Then there was going to be one hell of a change. One way or another, the world would become radically different, almost overnight. If a government reached her first, that nation would become an instant superpower with near-infinite resources and total, instantaneous global reach. If a corporation managed it, they would have a world monopoly on everything within days.

  And what would things look like then?

  Not pretty. Even if dear old Britain got hold of it first, or a peaceful Scandinavian nation, the end result would be the same.

  War. Total war.

  There's only so long you can keep something like that under wraps. And everyone – everyone – would want a piece of it. Or, if the rest of the world found themselves oppressed, exploited or inconvenienced by those who had it, they'd soon take up arms.

  He shuddered at the terrifying prospects the future held.

  There was a solution, for him at least. Find a way out. Go somewhere – or some-when – else.

  He placed his palm in the center of the mark. On his fingertips were a series of small marks that acted as receptors for extra senses: he could determine the chemical composition of objects, their mass, radioactivity, and entropic trajectory, amongst other things.

  He felt the quality of the mark, its character, its entangled partner thousands of miles away...

  But there was something odd. He withdrew his hand quickly, expression quizzical. Something, or someone, was tapping into the entanglement connection.

  Impossible, surely? He replaced his hand.

  But there it was. That unknown something, trying to force a connection.

  Forty-seven

  On the final day before taking the plunge into the past, Morwen, Kai and Elra set off into the savannah to do a trial run. They started at dawn, heading out into the cold morning with their lightweight packs as the rosy sunlight started to dispel the cold of the night. They hadn't brought much, on the principle that their actual trip would (hopefully) only last days at the most, and that large, heavy bags would only slow them down. The first thing they did was rift to the top of one of the hills above the village.

  Elra misjudged it, and the destination rift ended up slightly too far off the ground: when Kai jumped through first he tripped over and fell into a Camel thorn bush. He pulled himself up, swearing, and soon they were all standing on the summit of the hill with an awesome view laid out in front of them.

  'Getting the height advantage is clearly the way to go,' Elra enthused. 'From here we could rift to anywhere that's visible.' And there was a lot that was visible.

  Morwen started scribing an anchor mark on a nearby rock. 'Just in case we get lost and need to get back here,' she explained. The sun-shaped mark in the center of her palm projected a beam of intense light onto the surface of the rock, a beam just like the one which came through the window when Elra and Kai escaped from London. Her hand
movements were minuscule and delicate, and more often than not the beam's direction seemed to move independently of her hand.

  'How...?' Elra asked, feeling a hint of that child-like wonder that she'd felt when Kai demonstrated his electric hands back outside Driesdale.

  'The Sun,' Morwen said, as if that explained it.

  Kai looked equally impressed. ‘Channeling sunlight, and concentrating it into a thin beam. Oh, and moonlight too.’

  'Moonlight is reflected sunlight,' Morwen clarified, as she finished. What was left was a perfectly smooth mark on the stone, its edges and curves as exact as if a machine had made it. Then, rather dramatically, she extended her arm and shot a beam at a small hillock out in the distant plain. It was like someone had suddenly drawn a straight white line from her palm to the near-horizon. This time her arm didn't move at all.

  'Try that,' she said.

  'What?' asked Elra and Kai together, still slightly amazed.

  'Make a rift on the mark I just made.'

  Elra went over to the mark and felt the quality and character of space-time there. She could feel the mark's equivalent out on the hillock, their entanglement connecting the two places. She ripped the rift.

  No falling through this time: the transition was seamless. Elra was sure she saw the barest hint of a smug smile on Morwen's face.

  Now they were out in the middle of the plain, looking at the hills they were just standing on about half a