Penult (65 page)

“
Easy, Sophia. Take it
easy.”

“
I didn’t know your wasp
had a name.”

“
Why shouldn’t
she?”

“
I don’t know. I just …
didn’t know.”

Sophia settled down and preened her
antennae.

“
You and the girl. Karla.
You still have problem?”

“
Well, yeah. We did,” I
said, a little surprised by the question. “But it’s no big deal
now. I’m over it.”

He just nodded and sat down beside me,
saying nothing more, as if that were all the explanation he
required. The crash and rumble of shifting rocks began to ebb. The
root quake was finally winding down.

“
Where are you from,
Ubaldo?”

He gave me a queer look like it was
the last thing he expected me to ask.

“
Does it
matter?”

I sighed. “Just making small talk. You
don’t have to—“

“
When I die, I was in New
York. Upstate. By Hudson River. I worked in a brass mill. Making
wire. But I come from a small island, smaller than this one.
Filicudi. You know it?”

“
Can’t say I
do.”

He frowned. “No one ever does. It is a
small place. Isole Aeolie. Near Lipari.”

Something large glinted above the
remains of the bluffs where we had just seen the falcons
patrolling. It was coming at us fast.

“
Shit!”

I tried to rise but only got as far as
my knees but a sharp jolt of pain in my middle kept me
down

“
No worries,” said Ubaldo,
smiling. “This is one of ours. A dragonfly.”

***

My heart leaped, thinking it was
Urszula returning safely, but the bug coming our way had striped
wings and bore no riders. It was Tigger, which was great, but I
kept watching the bluffs, hoping another bug would appear around
them. But it was all in vain. Tigger came alone.

He seemed lost, tacking aimlessly back
and forth over the far end of the strand. Ubaldo hopped on his wasp
and took off. When Tigger spotted them in the air, he immediately
made a beeline over to us. On arriving, he hovered low over the
beach, using the stiff and steady the sea breeze to help keep him
aloft with minimal effort. He refused to land, maybe still spooked
by the root quakes.

Ubaldo came back down and together we
tried to encourage Tigger to descend but it was no use. The poor
dragonfly seemed really agitated. He had some goop stuck to his
huge compound eyes, partially obscuring his vision. I could also
see a crack in his hind femur and some singe marks on his abdomen.
I feared the worst for Urszula.

More falcons appeared at the bluffs.
This time there were four.

“
This is not good,” said
Ubaldo, keeping his eyes on the sky as he climbed back into his
saddle. “We must go now. Before they come.”

I hesitated. I still kind of wanted to
stay and see if Urszula came back or not. Maybe, find out what
happened to her. It didn’t matter to me if the falcons came after
me or not.

In fact, the more I thought about it,
the less I cared about what happened to me anymore. It had been a
while since I had held such a strong death wish, but the feeling
was building again. To hell with life. Maybe enough was enough. Or
maybe I was coming to terms with my inability to deal with the
ricin percolating in my real body back in Wendell’s car.

Of course, the idea of suicide no
longer had the allure it did back in those Florida days when I
thought it meant relief from the burden of existence. Now I knew it
just made for a change of scenery—continued existence in another
form, in a potentially even less desirable place.

“
Come! We go now! Call your
Tigger.”

Grudgingly, painfully, I dragged my
butt off the sand.

I looked up at Tigger drifting in the
wind. “Um, Tigger doesn’t usually come when I call.”

What the hell? I give it a shot,
clapping my hands and whistling. “Here Tigger!
Tigger-tigger-tigger!”

The dragonfly did not react one bit to
my call. He just faced out to sea and bobbed in the wind, his
membranes rippling in the air currents.

Ubaldo glanced over at me and did a
double take. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.

“
What is that on your
arm?”

“
Huh? What do you
mean?”

“
The black.”

I lifted my arm. Lobes of utter and
absolute darkness were spreading slowly across the skin of my
forearm. These were not stains, not transparencies, but voids as
dark as the gaps between stars.

“
Am I … is this …
fading?”

“
No. This is not a fade. It
means you are dying. On the other side.”

“
Fuck!”

“
You are not dead yet or
you would be gone. But the transition is coming. You are becoming a
shade.”

“
A shade? What the fuck’s
that? Where the hell do shades go?”

He shrugged. “Many places. Lethe.
Avernus. And of course, the Deeps. Depending on the state of your
soul.”

Two of those names were news to
me.

“
These other places, are
they better? I mean, better than the Deeps?”

“
No. Avernus is not good.
Lethe, at least you have some chance. Avernus, never. Avernus is
doom.”

“
Oh, bloody
hell.”

Ubaldo’s eyes suddenly swarmed with
purpose. He shifted back and slapped his hand on the front of his
saddle “Come now! Sit here. You ride with me on Sophia.”

“
But … why bother?” I said,
the defeatist in me taking full control of my psyche and abandoning
what few shreds of ambition and hope I had left.

“
We will take you up. High.
Get you away from the core!”

Chapter 68:
Above

While dragonflies have powerful flight
muscles, evolution had supercharged the wings of wasps. It was the
difference between a World War II fighter and an F-14. Sophia
accelerated upward, generating G forces on our bodies worthy of a
rocket launch. I felt myself slipping in the saddle. I clung so
desperately to the saddle’s loops that my fingers ached.

The air was frigid on my naked skin.
Ice crystals stung as we hurtled through the frozen mists. Frost
collected in my stubble.

Tigger gamely came alongside and tried
to keep up, but he was a low altitude cruiser and Sophia kept
soaring to heights no dragonfly could tolerate. Tigger fell back,
dropping down to just below the few puffs of cloud that graced the
sky.

The extreme altitude gave me a new
appreciation for symmetry and beauty of the road systems and urban
networks of Penult. Nestled in a broad valley among the hills was a
sprawling metropolis worthy of Paris, Rome or Tokyo. Loomis was a
mere hamlet by comparison. The larger city seemed relatively
unscathed by our root quake.

Ubaldo had Sophia level off at an
altitude that seemed to me like overkill. We must have been far
above the height of the glaciers over Frelsi. My breathing
quickened as each breath seemed barely adequate to oxygenate my
body.

The blackness seeping through my limbs
had not spread much since we left the beach. I took some solace in
knowing that my death was not all that imminent. We had time. But
that time was also a problem.

Sophia could only generate so much
heat from her flight muscles. She would only hold out so long in
these freezing temperatures before her cold-blooded organs began to
fail. And even warm-blooded creatures like Ubaldo and I were at
risk of hypothermia if we stayed up here too long, especially since
neither of us had much left of our clothing by this
point.

None of this seemed to bother
Ubaldo.

“
This is good,” he said,
smiling smugly. “I am certain the core does not reach us
here.”

“
Baldo, it’s
freezing!”

“
No worries. I can handle
it.”

“
Listen. It ain’t
happening. Not any time soon, anyhow. Maybe we should go back
down.”

He wrinkled his brow. “But … you have
the black.”

“
I know, but ricin kills
slowly, they tell me. Let’s go down. A little bit, at least. For a
little while? Warm up a bit?”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind to wait.
But … okay.”

He scraped his heels against Sophia’s
side and she dropped like a meteor, catching me off-guard and
nearly leaving me behind as I had loosened my grip on the saddle
loops.

We plunged to a level to just below
the lowest layer of clouds where the temperature was much more
moderate. My skittish dragonfly gladly joined us, tailing Sophia
the way he had often done with Lalibela. If only Tigger could
speak. He could tell us what had happened to Urszula and
Lalibela.

There was a lot of activity in the sky
now over what remained of Loomis. A large number of bulky and slow
flying contraptions were landing and taking off from every flat and
rubble-free space in the ruins. I couldn’t tell if they bringing
relief supplies or evacuating souls. Maybe both?

“
How are you feeling now?”
Ubaldo said, glancing over his shoulder. “You should check yourself
again.”

I held up my hand and it
was the weirdest mosaic. I was a calico cat. Patches of normal skin
were now interspersed with black blotches
and
transparencies. I was not only
dying. I was dying and fading.

“
Holy shit!”

“
What’s wrong? Is it
happening? Should we go back up?”

Before I could answer him, I was
whisked right out of his world.

***

I faded off right to the
back seat of Wendell’s Bentley. We were on the road again, weaving
around tourist buses and Sunday drivers along the shore of Loch
Ness. The strangest sense of d
éjà vu
struck me queasy. This was the same road we had
taken after my rescue from the basement of Edmund’s church. I had
been in bad shape then, as well, on the verge of death, but oodles
better than how I felt now.

After a time, we turned away from the
lake on a road that rose through a pass in the hills. I felt beyond
horrible. There was a pain in the pit of my stomach and a nausea
that no amount of dry heaving could relieve. Acid splinters jabbed
at my every joint. My head throbbed harder than my worst hangover
ever.

“
He’s back,” whispered
Jessica.

“
Is he? Cool,” said
Wendell, peeking up into the rear view. “How’s he
doing?”

Jessica squirmed around in the front
seat, her expression grave.

“
Not so good.”

“
Yeah, well ricin will do
that,” said Wendell. “As quick as it’s happening, looks like they
weaponized it. Some kind of quick-release formulation. Hang on.
We’re almost there, kid.”

“
Guys. I was told this
might be treatable.” My voice was ragged. I practically coughed the
words.

“
Pfft. Who told you that?”
said Wendell.

“
My friend. Olivier. He
said the toxin could be neutralized, the way we transform paper …
and wood ... stuff.”

“
That’s different,” said
Wendell. “We’re talking molecules here, kid. Individual
molecules.”

“
I know, but … could you …
do you think you could help me?”

Wendell swerved onto the shoulder and
pulled up next to a clump of wind-sculpted fir trees. He loosened
his shoulder belt and twisted around in the seat. Jess was already
staring at me. She seemed stoic enough, but a stray tear had snuck
out of her left eye and clung to her cheek.

“
Kid. You’re grasping for
straws. Get over it.”

“
Why can’t you help me?” I
said, my voice cracking. “You’re a master too.”

Wendell’s eyes lost their focus. He
seemed to be searching something. His mind? His soul? The
Singularity? When his gaze returned, so did a frown.

“
Kid. This ricin stuff. No
matter where they injected you. It’s spread. If we had tried
something right after, maybe there would be a chance. But by now
it’s all diffused.”

I clamped my eyes and did some
searching of my own. I took inventory of every weird twitch, pang
and ache afflicting my body. I homed in on the specific areas being
affected. I could feel how things worked, even at the cellular
level. My self-awareness went far beyond any normal perceptions of
my body functions, but as I had feared, my consciousness failed to
gain on purchase on anything tangible. I might as well have been
trying to tackle a greased pig with soapy hands.

And so, in desperation, I prayed. To
no one and no thing in particular. I didn’t expect an answer, but
somehow my outreach found its way to a familiar place that I had
come to realize is always within and around me, the countless
mingled souls of the Singularity.

It was the first time I had ever made
contact with it while awake and without the presence a tapped-in
soul to serve as a medium and guide. It understood immediately what
I needed, and endeavored in good faith to show me what I sought to
learn.