Time's Dark Laughter Part 22

"Our friendship isn't over yet," she protested; though she knew somehow, as he did, that it would be a long time before they saw each other again.

They hugged a hug to last until the pa.s.sing of millennia.

Finally, Beauty said good-bye to Josh. They were, had always been, would ever be, each other's friend. Through years of separation, tests of will, trials of faith, times of forgetting and of remembering, they were enduringly this for each other.

"So much," Beauty whispered to Josh as they stood face to face. His voice cracked.

Josh smiled with tears in his eyes. "And so much more," he whispered. They held hands tightly, each memorizing the other's face; then separated-now, more than ever before, perhaps, forever.

Ollie's leave-taking of Josh was brief. Arm around shoulder, a quick hug-and they parted.

D'Ursu Magna chose this moment to lumber into camp, rubbing his eyes, yawning, and scratching. "The Earth has been groaning for days," he grumbled. "A fine trick, indeed. Where is Beaute Centauri? And what's going on?"

Beauty trotted over to his old friend and laughed. "Have you had a good rest, then, Bear?"

"No. Who could sleep well through all that?"

"Then perhaps you were not destined to sleep this winter."

"Destiny is for Humans," the Bear spat. "I would rather have sleep."

"Perhaps you are right," Beauty chuckled. Then he told the Bear chieftain what was happening.

D'Ursu scratched his cheek, ruminating for a minute, then grunted. "Mhh. I have decided. I will let you take me as far as Newport in your boat. You will gain the benefit of my company, and I will join my King more quickly. A fair trade, I think."

"Fair enough," Beauty said, smiling, and took him to where Josh was watching the western horizon. "Joshua," said Beauty, "you will recall D'Ursu Magna, friend and Bear chieftain, whose aid in the Forest of Tears you remember well, and of whose more recent exploits on our quest you have been told. He has risen, and will favor us with his company until we reach Jarl's army."

"Of course I recall." Josh smiled. "Welcome, D'Ursu Magna, and thank you. Beauty's told me all you've done. Your strength is legend."

The Bear smiled, straining. "Yes, I think I remember you. You had an animal way about you, for a Human." And with no further salutation, D'Ursu ambled away toward the stream, to prepare himself for their departure.

Jasmine gave them one more piece of advice. The Mo-sian Firecaves were deep in glacier country. With all that intense heat in the middle of all that ice, the wind blew continuously out from the center in all directions. So if anyone got separated from Beauty, they could always find the Firecaves by walking into the wind.

And with that, the six adventurers set off.

Aba put the test tube on a thong around his neck. From another cord hung a tiny vial of Paula's blood-to remember her, to protect himself, with this token.

Finally, when there was nothing more to do but leave, he spread his wings and flew, deep into the sea of night.

She stared after his receding figure, and thought to herself. He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost jn darkness and distance. And then she said, in a still, quiet voice, "And I am alone, again."

The child sat alone in the blackness of her room, Who am I? What am I? Her arm feathers were longer, darker. Her breast was stained with a sticky crust of blood. She rocked on her haunches, her lanky arms around her doubled knees, and rocked, and rocked.

Will no one tell me what I am?

Her mind spun through the ether, whirling in vertiginous loops, singing the stars, dancing with infinity. Yet still, she was only a child.

Will no one tell me what I am for?

A frightened child, staring into the Void. Laughing and crying. She was taller now by a foot than she had been several hours before. And her eyes, mirrors of the universe, were darker than they had been; more recessed, hi shadow. Black fire.

Mother-Ether, what am I?

She reached out to the stars for affection, which she craved deeply. But the stars were not affectionate. Gentle friends, he had said; but where were the gentle friends for such a one as her? She was alone. No one had ever been so alone.

In rage, she generated a flux against the walls that surrounded her. But only the roof exploded off into s.p.a.ce; the walls stayed erect, unaffected. To quiet her brains, she twisted at Tune, to hold it back, to stop it all. But it only speeded up for a while, and only near the eastern wall, so that the stones there rapidly crumbled with age into an archaic pile of rubble. She tried to make the sun explode, and it did. But it was a distant sun, in another eon.

She screamed, and it rained.

She knew she could effect enormous changes-it was within her power to do so-but what changes? And how? And when, and why, and for whom?

For Joshua, perhaps. Her father-creator. She felt a bond to him, not like with Osi, and not the same as with the Mother-Ether; but a bond, still. A warmth. Tenderness? What was that? A special wavelength, part of the Epsilon Field. Something in the nature of electron spin-spin interactions. Was that it? No.

Gentle friendship. What was that? She could not fathom, except in proximity to Joshua. Was that the key? No, surely not. She was the key. The lonely key.

She was alone. Bored. Waiting. Curious. Powerful. Impotent. Darkness. She was the key. But what was the lock?

Mother-Ether, will no one tell me what I am? The universe. The universe comes to all, in time. Who am I?

The bright dark. Time's blinding wheel. Will no one tell me who I am? The node, and the key. Mother-Ether, What am I?

The City lay crumbling, steaming in the night.

Here and there, small fires burned. Once, an entire length of stone wall collapsed and settled. Someone was crushed. It rained for a while, an icy-cold rain, but after it stopped, nothing seemed cleansed.

There was a brief meteor shower. Eighty or ninety white-hot boulders flashed from the ebony sky and sizzled like rockets into the ground inside the walls of the City.

A Vampire, wings flaming, careened into a wall, then lay still.

The air congealed, and for an hour-or maybe longer, maybe an eternity: maybe time, too, congealed-nothing moved; not a creature, not a molecule. Then the rains resumed, and things were as they had been.

Though, of course, things would never be the same again.

In the Bookery camp, the night pa.s.sed slowly. Perhaps here, too, it took forever; for there was a certain thickness to the air, to the time, that seemed somehow impenetrable.

Jasmine, Josh, Rose. They lay side by side, staring at the stars. To look into such depth made Josh dizzy and afraid. Then he would touch one of the hands beside him, and Be calmed.

Jasmine felt Joshua's hand touch hers, and she squeezed it rea.s.suringly. He had gone through so much, this young man-well, they all had. But his test was yet to come, Jasmine sensed.

They would have to destroy the child, of this she was certain. Too much power was being funneled through this one small being-the child was not up to it, whatever its source, whatever its nature.

And what of Joshua, then? Can he be counted on to help? she wondered. To help destroy his own daughter? Daughter of madness, child of the Void; the final genetic monster, out of control. Jasmine thought of the fey series of events that had led the planet to this edge: genetic engineers manufacturing the dreams and myths of a culture exploding with despair and chaos-until out of the ashes of the conflagration, the dream-animals and myth-demons had risen up, taken over the Earth, beat their chests and ranted . . . and finally had turned to manipulating the genes that defined them. They had made the strange, self-destructing Queen, who conjured and produced a child . . . the child. The unfathomable child, who would destroy them all if they didn't end her first. Dreams of dreams of dreams. Jasmine shook her head and held Joshua's hand tightly. It was quite beyond her.

She gazed out into the night, searching for the farthest galaxy. It was only a dim point in the western sky. Many of the suns there had died countless eons before their light first reached Earth. It made Jasmine sad to contemplate: so much meaning, trapped by Time and s.p.a.ce from ever being shared. Communicated randomly; approximated vaguely; but never truly shared.

They were all prisoners of this same keeper, Time; and in the hollow echoes of the echoless night, Jasmine heard him laughing.

CHAPTER 17: In Which Journeys to the City of Ice Are Undertaken, and Completed, but Not Without Loss

Aba flew north up the coastline for a long while. It was a less direct way to the Mosian Firecaves, but he could take advantage of the coastal winds-gliding for long periods to conserve his strength for the strenuous demands the Ice would make later.

He came down low when he reached Ma'gas', and circled a few times to check out the action. Everything seemed more or less status quo: ships in the harbor, creatures milling on the docks, pockets of noise, matrices of shadow. The sun was beginning to rise over the water, and the air was chill and clear. Aba caught an updraft and flew on.

It was hours before he approached Newport. It would be nice to see old friends again, if only briefly; and in any case, he needed a few minutes' rest, and a few pints of blood to stoke himself for his journey. So he flexed his hips, and set himself on a slow trajectory downward toward the seaport town where Jarl's troops were stationed.

There had apparently been a war. Carnage filled the streets; bodies floated in the surf. Corpses of Humans, Bears, Satyrs, Wolves, Griffins, Ursumen, Gorillas and Unicorns stained the ground: Jarl's soldiers, and the Doge's. Buildings burned. Ruin was the victor.

Some of the beasts still lived, but not for long. Jackals ran about, and huge upright Lizards from the contiguous jungle feasted on the wounded or dragged them back Into the rain forest for another meal. Vampires flew from house to house, as well. Flocks would descend on any Human who showed signs of life, devouring the unfortunate, squabbling over remnants, shrieking and flapping.

Rats picked over the bones.

Aba was horrified by the spectacle. His first urge was to run through the city, trying to stop it all; but that was clearly impossible. So he just sat, heavy-hearted, for many minutes, staring at the b.l.o.o.d.y sea.

At length he got up and walked to the brothel he used to frequent.

"h.e.l.lo," he called.

No response. He walked down the steps, kicked open the door, and entered. It was deserted. Furniture broken, carca.s.ses strewn everywhere. Not a sign of life. Then, the noise.

It came from another room: a sound like a falling plank, and then silence. Aba slipped from room to room like a shadow, until finally he saw them: two Humans, cowering behind a cupboard, afraid even to blink as Aba approached them. They were Ba.s.ses-Born Again 'Seidon Soldiers- soldiers of the Doge.

"Leave us ... leave us alone," one whispered. The other one pa.s.sed out and slumped to the floor.

"You'll be found and eaten alive if you stay here," Aba said. "Come, I'll fly you to safety."

The Human pulled back. "Get away . . ." Her voice was desperate, parched.

Aba came closer, his hand outstretched. In a flash, the woman had drawn a knife and cut Aba's arm-the same one Ollie had slit. The startled Vampire backed off instantly, in surprise, and then in anger. Without thinking, he spread his wings, lunged at the woman with the knife, and knocked her unconscious with a beat of his hand.

The two Humans lay in an unmoving pile on the floor. Carrying one under each arm, Aba walked out the back door, and flew off.

Flying high, he managed to escape the slaughter of the city without being seen; but he didn't get very far. Just north of Newport, a storm was gathering. The icy winds forced him to keep fairly low above the ground for half an hour; and by the time the snow started, Aba was already grounded. Short of breath from the high-alt.i.tude flying, weak from his Human burden and the slight blood loss down his arm, cold, and hungry, he landed. Still carrying the unconscious Humans, he stumbled to a shelter in the lee of a rock slide just as the wind started to wail.

Snow began to fall in a fine, dry powder that barely settled before it was swirled around in frenzied eddies or whipped back up into the sky. Aba wrapped his wings tightly around the three of them against the weather's bite; but soon he was chattering, and the Humans' lips were blue. He felt their pulses: both strong. He looked at their faces: blushed under the powdery frost, they appeared angelic. He swooned, with weakness, and at the thought of what he must now do to these anonymous innocents. Gently, he placed his mouth upon the side of the man's neck; quickly he bit, his teeth like needles.

The man twitched once, at the moment of puncture, but immediately settled back into an exhausted sleep. Aba drank steadily from the man's jugular vein: his eyes closed, he savored every swallow, as a freezing straggler will let a cup of hot rum bring new life. He stopped after he had imbibed two pints, though he was still famished-he didn't want to kill the man; only save himself. He would drink equally from both so that neither should become too depleted-.

He kept pressure on the man's neck for five minutes to stop the bleeding. He examined his own arm now, as well-the wound hadn't really been very deep, and its borders were already congealed. Finally, he looked closely at the woman who had cut him. Like her mate, she also slept like a soldier after the battle-the sleep of one whose body has exhausted its last drop of adrenaline.

Aba licked the snow from her neck, for the wind had diminished now, and the snow was beginning to settle over everything like a shroud. He clamped his teeth down along the big blue vein in her throat; lingered there a minute, filling his nostrils with her warm smells, running his tongue along her skin; and, finally, bit.

The woman's eyes jumped open, her body jerked, she tried to pull free. Aba held tight, sucking as quickly as he could. The woman grunted and gasped, her hands on his face, trying to push him away, to pull off his lips. He held her fast at the neck, his jaw shut hard, his large hands clashed around her head to keep it still. She flopped back and forth on the hard ground-twice, three times-then, finally, lay still. Through all of this, the man never woke up.

Aba kept siphoning the woman's blood until he felt sufficiently nourished. Then, as with the man, he applied pressure to her neck to tamponade the bleeding. For many minutes he sat there, numbly crying. The wind rose again, freezing his tears to his cheek.

He spent the next hour gathering wood and herbs, and the hour after that building a fire with his dragon-tooth flint and a bit of cloth for tinder. He found a dish-shaped rock, and boiled tea from a handful of snow and herbs; and spent the next two hours giving the Humans sips of the broth, warming their hands and feet, and generally nursing them.

When night came at last, Aba gathered them up inside his wings, and the three slept together like that, body to body in the great leather coc.o.o.n, beside the quickly dying fire.

When Aba awoke, it was a shimmering, bright early morning. He opened his wings carefully, slipped out from under his two fellow sleepers, stood, and shook off his mantle of snow.

"Arise, arise, ye drowsy sleepers," he called to the two on the ground. "I must be off, and you two to your own."

But they didn't move. He knelt and shook them, but still they didn't move. He felt for their pulses. They were dead.

Frozen to death in the night. Stiff and cold. They looked like toppled statues.

Aba stared at them, trying to suppress the wave of self-loathing that was starting to overcome him. No, he must be strong. Everything depended on him now. He fingered the two vials at his neck-the child's cells in one, Paula's blood in the other. These were his amulets. They gave him strength, and reason. They intertwined with whatever causes there were for Lon's death, and for Paula's love; to abandon reason, grieving for two lost Humans, was to abandon all.

He didn't look at the bodies again. He flew north, and east.

He flew all that day, making variable time in variable winds. First over the North Saddlebacks, then the great plains above the Forest of Tears. Toward evening, he landed at the southern edge of the Forest of Accidents, to rest, to build a fire and warm himself-for it had become brutally cold those last few hours.

Ice covered the ground in brittle sheets that crunched as he walked from tree to tree, collecting the driest of branches. He found a wind-screen, built his fire, ate some snow. He would rest there a few hours, then finish the last leg of his journey at night-it would be easiest to see the red flames of the Firecaves then. It wasn't long before he began to doze.

It wasn't long before he woke. He wasn't certain what woke him, but he was instantly alert, afraid. He crouched in the darkness, wings half-furled, listening for some sign. He heard it at the same moment he saw it: a band of Accidents, closing in on him from four directions. Without a second's hesitation, Aba grinned the ritual attack grin and flew full force into the nearest beast. He put two claws into its single eye and found the leverage to throw it headlong into two of its companions, though in falling, the Accident managed to tear a piece of the Vampire's wing.

Aba raced in the opposite direction-half-running, half-fluttering on his broken wing. Within seconds, the remaining three Accidents were giving chase. Aba immediately pulled ahead. He was faster on his feet; his wings, even crippled, gave him extra thrust; he was desperate. After a time, though, he started getting winded. The Accidents, on the other hand, were known for their brutish endurance. They ran slowly, but they could run forever. The trees were becoming thicker, too, and Aba continually bruised and battered his struts and broke his phalanges whenever he opened his wings too much. The icy wind seared his lungs with every breath.

He came upon Mirror Lake, and again lengthened his lead, for the lake was frozen hard as gla.s.s, and when Aba stepped out onto it with his wings open wide, the wind blew bam across its surface like a ghost in a dream.

Two of the Accidents ran out after him; but their combined weight was too much. The ice broke, and the lake swallowed them up and froze over again almost instantaneously. The last Accident lumbered doggedly around the sh.o.r.e, still on the Vampire's trail.

Aba was slowing in earnest now. He hurt, he bled. The sounds and smells of the foul creature who chased him were getting closer. Aba knew he had no strength left for a fight. He beeped the high-pitched Vampire sounds that only Vampires could scream or hear. But on this inclement night, who was there to hear him? He could only hope that not far from here friends might still exist. Indeed, that was the barren hope that had caused him to run into the forest in the first place. Yet now he could almost feel the Accident's breath on his back; and when he looked over his shoulder, the beast was reaching for him.

They tumbled in the frosted debris, clutching and tearing at each other as they rolled. The Accident was unbelievably strong. It had three arms and a lump that looked like half of a deformed second head growing out of its back. The smell of it made Aba gag.

He managed to jam a small log into its mouth just before it chomped down on his hand, but this gave the thing an extra second to gain a position advantage. It hit Aba in the the head, stunning him. And again.

The last thing Aba saw, as the world faded from his sight, was a horrible freak sitting astride him, bleeding and drooling from its mutant face, beating him senseless with mutant fists.

Ollie, Beauty, D'Ursu, and the three Books made good speed all night and into the next" day. They followed the coast at first, then took to open sea, as their confidence grew, heading due north.

Keeping Joshua's written instructions in front of him, Michael did most of the actual driving-Josh had taught both him and Ollie how to use the controls,- but Michael, a quick study, was able to master the instrument panel within hours. Ollie and Beauty tried to nap, or went over alternate routes to the Firecaves, as the little gla.s.s ship cut blindly through the black water of the winter night. D'Ursu tried to sing sea chanties, but somehow they all came out sounding like dirges.

Eventually, they reached Newport. What they saw of that city from a few hundred yards out to sea laid a grim silence over what had already been a rather subdued crew. Without a sound, they sailed in to sh.o.r.e.

Bodies everywhere; death and destruction. D'Ursu stepped onto the dock, looked around slowly, and loosed a profound wail to the sky, which reverberated to the roots of the city. Beauty jumped ash.o.r.e and joined his old friend.

"Bear, I am sorry."