Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (36 page)

“You are a lucky man,” he said finally. “This Mr. Lonnigan must have been a great musician.”

“That was his only hit. He disappeared into obscurity afterwards.”

He waved his hand. “That does not matter. Success does not equally correlate to endowment. It takes something special to write a song that hits the perfect wavelength, one that seeks out its subject and coerces that subject to action. Add to this the fact that the song includes all the basic information you need to complete your task and get home, and I think you should indeed thank Mr. Lonnigan for his efforts. Be grateful for him. In effect, he is your guardian angel.”

I coughed at the absurdity of Ben’s words, which caused a paralyzing spasm of pain to engulf my upper body. I bit my tongue as my body shook. I could hear grunts and groans coming from my mouth but they sounded far away, as if someone else were making them.

Silas pushed himself further into my lap, his eyes showing concern. Ben shot up from his chair and circled the table. He crossed my arms over my chest, pressed his cold steel chin against my neck, and whispered, “Breathe, Ken, it will pass. Simply breathe.”

When the agony of my bandaged wounds subsided, Ben let go of me and stepped away from the table. “I am sorry for your pain, Ken,” he said. “I bandaged you up as best I could, but I never thought about the lingering aspects of your injuries. I, myself, have no processor for physical pain, so sometimes I forget about its existence. Please excuse me while I obtain some medication for you. I will be right back.”

Ben loped gracefully toward the hole in the mountain. A moment later he disappeared into the blackness, leaving Silas and me alone. My boy gazed up at me with eyes that burned intelligence. I wondered if a part of him
wondered what it would be like to live among the likes of Nick Goodman and the dead wolf-girl, if he was conscious that part of his being came from
this place.
This contemplation was thwarted when I gazed into his kind, smart eyes and that blithe doggy smile. He might’ve been smart, but if there was one thing Silas
wasn’t
, that’d be reflective. He never looked back, only ahead. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had a lot to learn from him.

Suddenly Silas hopped away from me and lifted his head to the sky. Giant black shadows crossed over us. I followed his gaze, and what I saw up above us almost made me swallow my tongue.

There were hundreds of creatures soaring high in the atmosphere, blotting out the massive sun. They flew in perfect formation, materializing into a giant black triangle. The Crystal Mountain came to mind, the entrance to this long-lost realm, and I shuddered.

A trio of birds separated from the flock. They descended, flying just above the cliffs that marked the boundary of this boxed canyon. For a moment they disappeared behind the trees, only to emerge again, lower than before. I could now see that they weren’t birds, but prehistoric-looking pterodactyls the size of a car, with sparsely feathered wings and long, curved beaks filled with rows of serrated teeth. The three monsters swerved, grazed the edge of the cliff, and followed the lip, flying in a circle.

Silas jumped into my lap, causing another stab of pain in my wounded chest, and growled. He stared up at the circling creatures along with me. It seemed the three beasts would turn their heads and glance back at us every revolution, as if measuring how tasty we’d be.

They revolved in a tighter circle, approaching the middle of the canyon, until the pterodactyl in the middle ascended briefly, flipped over, and dove. With one hand I gripped my chair’s armrest; with the other, I shoved Silas to my side and covered him with my forearm. I knew, in my condition, that making a break for it was useless. These things were
huge.
They’d catch me no matter what I did. Best, I thought, to simply let them take me and allow Silas to escape – if he would.

The diving creature stared at me with black eyes that bugged out of its head with an impossibly human look of insanity. When its beak opened, revealing its teeth once again, they looked oddly exaggerated, as if the space above us was a huge, curved magnifying glass. Flames licked off its feathers and the thing screamed. The sound echoed all around us. Its descent stopped in mid-air as it erupted into a great ball of fire. I could see it thrashing as it burned, as if it was being skewered on an invisible spit.

The other two creatures, apparently not wanting to experience their companion’s fiery demise, uttered simultaneous squawks and rose up, flying west across the mountains in the direction of their now-departed flock. The one who’d dropped at us, on the other hand, continued its frenzy. It twisted about for another two minutes like a snake on hot concrete and then fell still. The flames engulfing it waned, as did its body mass. In a span of thirty seconds, what was left of the beast rained down like black snowflakes that never touched the ground.

Silas whimpered, sounding almost disgusted with the sight, and forced his large body out from under my arm. This caused yet another spike of pain, but I still couldn’t tear my eyes away as the last bits of the creature’s body dissolved.

“They are quite strange beasts, are they not? It is a good thing this valley is protected by an energy shield.”

I flinched, startled, and saw Ben standing there again, a glass of water in one hand and a small cup with three pills in the other. My chest was on fire.

“Shit, man,” I said with a groan. “Don’t sneak up on someone like that.”

“My apologies, Ken,” he replied while handing me the medicine and water. I snatched them greedily, popping all three pills in my mouth at once and washing them down. Refreshingly cold liquid poured over my swollen tongue down my throat, soothing me from the inside out.

When I emptied the glass I wiped the remaining beads from my chin with the back of my hand. My mechanical cohort stared at me, his blue eyes blazing while he stroked Silas’s fur. He seemed captivated, as if he’d never seen a human being drink a glass of water before.

Ben then reached down, lifted a bundle of material off the ground beside his chair, and handed it over to me. “You best put this on,” he said. “The sun will be setting soon, and it will get cold.”

I unfolded the bundle. It was the gray, prison-style jumpsuit Ben had been wearing when we found him sprawled out in the command room. They looked smaller, though, and when I brought it to my nose, I sensed a light, flowery smell.

“Aren’t these yours?” I asked.

“Yes, they were,” he replied. “I do not need them any longer, however. I washed them and made some alterations so they will fit more snug.” His glowing, telescoping eyes moved to Silas. “Unfortunately, I could find nothing for your
gi-faht
.
”

“He’s fine with what he’s got,” I said. I swung around in my chair, took off my boots, spread out the jumper, stepped into the pant legs, and then gingerly stood up, sliding them over my blood-stained jeans. As I coaxed my trembling hands into the arm-holes I said, “I’ve heard that word a lot the past few days.
Gi-faht
.
What does it mean, anyway?”

“Oh, it is a wonderful term,” Ben sang in a sweet, cheery tone. “It is an endearment reserved only for the closest of the close, for two beings tied together by fate and loyalty. Two beings who share between them a piece of their essence. It is a beautiful concept, one that I, being of an artificial nature, will unfortunately never experience.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought it meant dog in German or something.”

Ben laughed. “Oh, no, Ken, not at all. In fact, it is a collective idiom. The Lupine is your
gi-faht
, and you are his. It is actually also used to describe the two of you together. It is many things, all wrapped into one. It means that you belong to each other. Forever.”

“I see.” I sat back down – it was amazing how warm Ben’s jumpsuit was, like fleece – and went about re-lacing my boots. When I finished I placed a hand against my ruined chest. It hurt less now, more like a notion of pain than actual pain, for which I was thankful. I wondered what had become of my shirt, the one that had belonged to Paul Nicely, and another question came to mind. “Ben, if
gi-fahts
are connected and loyal forever, then would Paul’s betray him?”

“Are you speaking of the Lupine Nick Goodman?” asked Ben.

I nodded.

“Ah, a conundrum,” he replied, tapping his fingers together. “You see, the Lupine did not betray his
gi-faht
.
In fact, in his own way, the Lupine was trying to save him. He left Paul out for the Dreadnaught to snatch away because he was told that Paul had turned his back on his mission. To the mind of a Lupine, being disloyal to one’s fate brings about a loss of soul. The Lupine felt that the only way to reinstate his honor was to complete Paul’s mission himself.”

“How could you know all this?” I asked. “I still don’t get it.”

“After Paul was brought here and fitted with the regulator, he had a lot of free time on his hands. He talked to me often, told me all about his life, what he’d been told to do, why he felt he could not go through with it, and your role in stopping this. Of course, he assumed he was speaking with Nell, but being that my power cells were necessary for her to stay operational she allowed me access to her sensors. I appreciated it greatly. It can get quite lonely having no one but a computer to talk to.”

I chuckled at the irony of the statement and said, “So why were you in there, anyway?”

Ben sighed, strange for a thing that didn’t need to breathe. “Unfortunately, just like the rest of my past, that is a mystery. Even Nell did not know. All she understood was that she had been dormant for two hundred years and then she wasn’t. Certain aspects of her memory were erased, as well…though she retained most of her historical documents.”

“Like what?”

“The history of this world, the Elders, the man who created my class of artificial human, and how the realm was evacuated. That sort of thing.”

I leaned forward in my chair. Amazingly, the wounds on my chest didn’t hurt at all anymore. The pills had done their job beautifully. “What else can you tell me?” I asked.

Ben glanced at the sun. “It is getting late,” he said. “You two must be departing soon. So I will simply tell you this: Approximately five hundred years ago, after the collapse of the world economy, the globe was saddled with great conflict. That marked, in this reality, the rise of our version of Kaiser Wilhelm. Countries who had been allies came to be at war. It was a dark time for humanity. The ensuing battles killed more than three quarters of the world’s population and laid waste to the infrastructure. This went on for six years, until Nelson Nash, the first Elder, came out of hiding in what had been called the United States. He was a great man, a brilliant individual who created many helpful things. He pleaded for an end to the war, which did not happen until the oceans overflowed, suffocating low coastlines and killing off more large sections of the populations of
all
lands.

“When the war did end, everyone looked to Nelson Nash for guidance. He formed the Great Council, a gathering of minds like himself, and decided to re-form society in a new way. No longer would money be the driving force of humanity, but
advancement.
He and his Council formed universities all around this land and others, where some of the most exceptional creations ever thought of came about.
Old Crone
, the first Oracle, was Nelson Nash’s contribution to the collective. It was his crowning achievement, but also his downfall.

“
Old Crone
assisted in this newfound hunger for knowledge in so many ways. Through its calculations, the nature of the universe, of
reality
, became clear. Nash discovered that the Earth is not alone in the universe, though not in the way he expected. What he found out is that there are thousands upon thousands of Earths, all floating about in close proximity. Also, he discerned that these realities interact with each other on a constant basis, that the actions in one directly affect outcomes in the other. He saw that there were small gaps in the barriers that separate these different realms, weak spots in the membrane. He ascertained a way to widen these fissures and step through. The rest of the world, starving as the oceans swallowed up their natural resources, cheered this discovery. Never again would people need to starve or freeze if all one had to do was step onto a different Earth and take what was necessary.