Penult (36 page)

“
Any progress with those
devices?”

“
I … uh … we … uh ... had a
close look at them,” I said. “They're … uh …
complicated.”

“
We had a few distractions
this morning,” said Olivier. “First the assault, now …
this.”

Zhang cocked an eye. “Are you
suggesting this war council is a waste of time?”

“
Not at all,” said Olivier.
“Just … explaining our lack of progress.”

“
I see. Well, no worries,
we'll adjourn soon and let you get back to work. But first, we need
some suggestions as to how to proceed. Anyone? Is it really wise
that we abandon our right flank? Is a counterattack
possible?”

“
That's what they're
expecting,” said the pretty boy Frelsian officer. “They retreated
to the first barricade but clearly from the disposition of their
forces, if we try to take it back, they're ready to
pounce.”

“
Alright then, what else
can we do?” said Zhang. “I am open to suggestions.”

“
Retreat? While we can?”
said A Duster—a woman—I did not recognize. “Our marshlands are
ringed with defensible hills. And they can accommodate a much
larger population than what is already there.”

The look on Zhang's face sufficed to
rule that option out, at least for the Frelsian
contingent.

An Old One coughed and rose to his
feet. He held up one finger and raked it across the attendees. “The
city will not fall,” he croaked.

Yaqob and Hailay looked at each
other.

“
You can stay. Axum … will
not … fall.” His eyes panned the council with a defiant glare
before he settled back down to his seat and seemed to drift off to
sleep.

Zhang and Yaqob looked at each
other.

Urszula pushed forward to the table.
“Why wait for them to come to us? I say we take the fight to
them.”

Hailay shook his head. “Ridiculous. We
can't attack them head on. We've all seen what happens. They turtle
up, absorb the blow, and then swarm out and counterattack. And we
don't have enough air capacity to transport a force of any
significance around their flanks.”

“
I do not mean for
attacking their front. I mean for attack their rear.”

“
You mean … the beaches?
Same problem. We can't transport a large enough force fast
enough.”

“
No. I mean attack their
home. We go to Penult. They think is untouchable. If we touch it,
maybe they think again what they do, how smart. How
stupid.”

“
How? And with what? None
of us has ever seen it.”

“
We know they come from
across the water. We know some come by boat. It cannot be so far.
With wings, no problem. And we need no big army. Just for raid. And
it will make them think.”

“
Crackers,” said Olivier.
“We hit them with their own crackers.”

“
That would be well and
good,” said Zhang. “If we had more than one. And if we knew how to
deploy the one we have.”

“
Just touching them is
enough,” said Urszula. “A small raid. These Lords believe Penult is
untouchable. This will make them think how smart it is to make mess
with us.”

“
Interesting,” said Zhang.
“You will need mantids and dragonflies for such a raid. Do you have
them to spare?”

“
Not mantids,” said Hailay.
“They don't have the range. Not if we're to cross a
sea.”

“
We have some dragonfly
nymphs coming of age soon,” said the Duster woman who had advocated
a retreat to the marshes.

“
And wings,” said Olivier.
“James and I can make more.”

Zhang looked at his advisers. “It
seems our only choice, other than an active defense of New Axum.
How do you suppose the Lords would respond to an attack on their
shores?”

Urszula grinned. “They will not be
happy.”

“
A commando raid using
crackers. I like it,” said Hailay. “It might make them question the
wisdom of this whole campaign.”

“
Sounds like Mr. Moody has
some work to do,” said Zhang. “I suggest we adjourn and begin to
make our preparations.”

Chapter 36: The
Pillars

Natural ledges blended seamlessly with
engineered walls to form the rocky knoll harboring the council
chamber and bunkers. Most of the upper terrace was visible from
this vantage, but I could only see one small corner of the warren.
The walls obscured the rest. Oliver and I left the council chamber
together and made our way down a series of steep ramps.

“
So how are you feeling?”
said Olivier.

“
Fine,” I said, thinking it
a funny question to ask. I was pretty much healed up from my battle
wounds. Bodies mended quickly in the Liminality.

“
You’re not gonna go and
fade on us, are you?”

“
I don’t think so,” I said.
“Not that I can tell for sure. Seems like I’ve been sticking around
a lot longer these days.”

“
Because …
Karla?”

“
Not sure what she has to
do with it.”

“
Because you know she’s
here. Your soul is attracted.”

“
Yeah, but … I don’t even
know for sure it was her I saw.”

“
But if she’s as committed
to this place as you say, I’m sure she gets here often.”

“
I guess.”

We paused at the base of the knoll and
stood blinking at each other. I wasn’t in the mood to think about
Karla.

“
Think you can find your
way back to the grotto without me?”

“
Sure. It’d be a lot
quicker with a pair of wings. Any idea what happened to
ours?”

“
Don’t worry. I’m sure
they’ve been tucked away for safekeeping.”

“
Guess I’m just
spoiled.”

“
I’ll join you later,” said
Olivier. “I’m going down into the ravine and check on our refugees.
See what’s up.”

“
Did Bern and Lille ever
make it up here?”

“
Don’t think so,” said
Olivier.

“
They still fade, those
two. And when one goes the other usually waits until they come
back.”

“
But I haven’t seen any of
the other folks who came with us on foot. I’m not sure what the
holdup is, but I plan to find out.”

We parted ways at a fork in a broad
cobbled avenue that divided the city all the way down to the rim.
Olivier took a short cut through a mass of temporary structures of
re-fabricated root. Some of the newer residents were building homes
in a section of ruins too obliterated to repair.

As I strode down the steep avenue I
was startled by an Old One sequestered in a stone nook near a
fountain that had long gone dry. That I had stumbled upon an Old
One was not so surprising. They were strewn all over this damned
city. For every one that waddled about there were ten captured by
the long sleep. But this guy was different. This guy I knew. This
guy was Mr. O

***

I took care not to disturb him. As
much as I wanted to pat his back or give him a hug, I didn’t dare
touch him. I sat down on a low shelf of stone and sat with him for
a bit.

Mr. O was special to me. Though I felt
bad at the time for waking him, the raid on Frelsi would never have
happened without him and his buddies being awakened. Of course,
Karla would never have been infested with the Fellstraw that killed
her, but that wasn’t Mr. O’s fault. It was just a matter of her
being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

These awakenings proved valuable to
the Old Ones as well, saving them from abuse by those who thought
they were dead. I had heard that the Singularity also benefitted,
allowing it to interact with the realms in ways that had been lost,
offering a sensual and physical conduit for this vast sea of
interconnected souls.

Mr. O didn’t look quite as ancient now
as when I first saw him. The lichen that had crusted his face had
flaked and crumbled off. His skin was more supple, his muscles less
withered.

I wondered how long he slumbered these
days. Had his naps become permanent? Some Old Ones, I heard, became
immune to reawakening, those who had become too connected to and
dispersed through the Singularity to ever leave it.

I got up off the bench, resisting the
urge to pat him on the back.

“
Take care,” I
said.

Who knows, maybe he would have enjoyed
coming out of his sleep to greet me, but I wasn’t going to take the
chance. Maybe he had heard me from the Singularity. Maybe he was
right there with me, hovering over my soul.

I continued on down the avenue,
heading for the promenade and the main stairway in the center of
the rim.

***

I was alone in the grotto, apart from
a few guards who wandered in now and then. I spent the rest of the
day communing with those pillars, meditating on the intact column,
study every square inch of its surface searching for clues on how
to operate the damned thing.

I studied the shattered ones too,
piecing chunks together, pulling them apart to reveal their inner
structure. In some ways I felt like a Model T Ford mechanic brought
in to troubleshoot a Tesla. I wasn’t anywhere close to
understanding these things. The nap I tried to take to tempt the
Singularity to come and help me brought me nowhere near the sea of
souls.

Instead, as I lay in the pup tent they
had set up just for me, I dreamt of home, or what used to be home.
Fort Pierce. Disney World. Alligators. Mosquitoes. My mom’s mac and
cheese.

At one point a work party of Frelsians
and Dusters interrupted my reverie to deliver several sacks full of
undifferentiated roots that were meant to be raw material for some
copied columns.

The stuff they brought me was the best
grade of root the Liminality had to offer. Pure and malleable.
Never modified. Half-inch diameter strands all squirmy and itching
to escape.

It was simple enough to shape them
into pillars and get their surfaces to mimic the finely crystalline
stone that made up the cracker columns, but in the end it was all a
sham. My columns were nothing more than fancy pissing posts. The
insides were smooth and blank. I doubt they could have held up a
roof never mind take down a mountain.

When the shadow of the upper terrace
began to spread over the forest, I said goodbye to guards and made
my way back up to the upper terrace. I entered the warren at dusk,
fearing I would never find the quarters they had originally
assigned me, just hoping I would find some vacant place to
crash.

But then I remembered the layout of
the place from my overflight in search of Karla, and it helped me
navigate to the general area where my quarters had been. And then
it was just a matter of trial and error, ducking my head into
random spaces until I found it.

While I was gone, someone had fixed it
up good, replacing the musty bedding with something fresher. The
floors had been swept, the walls scrubbed, and a dewy metal pitcher
full of spring water sat on the table next to an empty glass and a
bowl of manna.

I collapsed onto mats now thicker and
softer, pulled the covers over me. I was beat. I didn’t care where
my soul took me this time as long as I could sleep.

***

Un-summoned, the Singularity chose to
visit me that night.

Typical.

This time it was Mr. O, or at least
some facsimile of him, that served as my wordless tour guide,
drifting through the nether spaces of the realms beside me. He
reduced us to the size of gnats’ pimples and we flew through the
microscopic ductwork of a cracker, a network as intricate as the
tunnels of Root.

And this time I could detect a pattern
to all the twining and diverging even though I could not discern
how it all worked. With the wing joints, pattern was all that
mattered. Build it and it sprung like a spring. But there was a lot
more going on with this thing. How it was supposed to interact with
the matrix of roots completely eluded me. The more Mr. O tried to
show me, the more befuddled I became.

He eventually recognized my confusion
and frustration and backed off, letting me drift away from the
model of a cracker column they had erected to instruct me and let
me satisfy my more selfish desires.

I flitted from soul to soul on the
terraces and valleys, searching for Karla or for those who had seen
her. And while I sensed there were some here who knew her, and even
a few who had interacted with her recently, I did not get the
impression that she was here at this moment in the
Liminality.

So I went beyond, blowing through the
boundaries, piercing the interface between the worlds, gliding
through and between cities, searching among the millions of souls
for the one that resonated so uniquely with mine.

The Singularity could not help me this
time. It was almost as if Karla no longer existed, though I knew
that could not be true. Souls might be mutable but they could not
be destroyed. She existed in some realm, somewhere. Someday I would
find her.