The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (31 page)

“No, my lady.”

“Do you think I cannot see with your eyes, hear with your ears, or lack insight into your … unworthy impulses?”

“No, my lady.”

“Do you understand why you’re in these classes?”

“For the good of the commonwealth, to prepare for the Harpoon Exams, to attend the Harpoon Auction, and discover how I will serve Chancellor Masimovian in the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni.”

Isabelle turned until she faced Oriana. “We’ll find out whether you’re truly worthy of the title Harpoon Champion.” She leaned forward. Her breath smelled like rose water. “Sooner than you think.”

The Harpoon insignia disintegrated, revealing a Granville sphere and a world beneath it. Inside, fiery columns plumed, topped by round alloy platforms. A giant candlestick, as wide as a transport, as long as Masimovian Tower, hung over a pit of flame, spinning, dripping wax from wicks burning at either end. A narrow carbyne plank positioned beside and below the candlestick was secured at either end to carbyne pillars, while an alloy platform, wide enough for three transhumans and leading away from the candlestick, was attached to the left pillar.

“What is this?” Oriana said.

“Choices,” Isabelle said, her voice booming, “will determine your fate in two days. But why wait so long?” Softly, to Oriana, she added, “Why don’t we find out what those who would break the chancellor’s precepts might do in—”

“Leave
them
alone,” Oriana said, nodding to Nathan and Pasha. “They had nothing to do with the archive—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Isabelle smiled, and Oriana felt suddenly nauseous. “I own you until the auction. Not a scientist, not an engineer, not a trader.
Me
.”

“I understand, my lady, please, I chose poorly, I should suffer the consequences, not Pasha, not Nathan—”

“Oh no, child, you haven’t yet chosen …”

… Oriana now stood inside the holographic world, dressed in a dark bodysuit and full-body armor made of synthetic diamond, like the Janzers’ synsuits. Her feet rested on an alloy platform that dropped away before her. Flames rose in powerful bursts ahead, hundreds of thousands, even millions of flaming columns, topped by rounded sheets of alloy. The columns rose and fell out of the pit as if timed against a dark sky. Above the pit, and far away from her, the candlestick hung, candle wax falling in drops bigger than transhumans at each end, where Pasha and Nathan stood, teetering on either edge!

Your balance could use some honing.
Oriana heard Isabelle’s voice, without Marstone’s moderation.
Your brother and your friend stand on opposite ends of the candlestick. They are not permitted off this candlestick on their own. If you fall in the pit, or if they do, I can assure you the traders in Navita will have no idea that you even completed the first half of the Harpoon Exams.

That’s not how the Harpoons work!
Oriana sent.
We’ve been preparing double time after the … Communiqué and we—

You should hurry, child. Unlike me, the candle won’t live forever …

The fiery columns raged ahead of Oriana, topping out at different heights. When they burned out, the platforms they held fell with them, suggesting she’d have to time her jumps, platform to platform. This was far more difficult than the Granville world Falcon Torres had conquered on the first day of classes.

She extended her consciousness and determined that some columns elevated to the height of the platform where she stood, others to as high as one hundred meters above it. She was ten thousand meters from the candlestick, and the ends burned two thousand meters apart at a rate of two hundred fifty meters per minute.

Eight minutes until the candle disappears
, Oriana thought.
My synsuit will protect me from the heat, but if I run nine point three meters per second, I’ll reach the candle in eighteen minutes
. The candle wouldn’t last that long. Oriana wanted to punch something. She couldn’t alter this Granville world.
Damn Lady Isabelle. Damn her!

Oriana focused on the flames. If she could jump from flame to flame in synchronization with the bursts, she might be able catapult herself farther, faster. She focused with her enhanced vision. Pasha appeared to be running sideways, and so did Nathan, for the massive candle burned
and
spun. She also noticed they, too, were wearing synsuits.

Another problem. She’d calculated the distance to the candlestick’s center, not the hypotenuse to either side, which was ten thousand fifty meters long and changed continuously with the long candle’s burn rate. How could she reach them in time? What was she missing?

Oriana’s heart hummed. She tried to communicate with Nathan and Pasha through the ZPF but couldn’t.

I’ll just have to run faster
, Oriana thought. She plotted a course for Nathan. She’d grab him first, then count on Pasha’s creativity and dexterity to get them through the time crunch. She dashed along the alloy ground and hopped from platform to platform, letting them guide her up. The temperature in her suit held steady.
I’m a champion.
She jumped, and jumped again, faster, diagonal and forward, forward and sideways, closer and closer to the candle.
I’m Champion of the Harpoons!

Nathan fell and rolled near the candle’s waxy edge and burning wick.

The long candle began to seesaw.

Oriana screamed, moving faster. Nathan backflipped, and the candle tilted down on his side, spinning. Somehow he didn’t fall off.

Pasha handled himself well enough, though it wasn’t clear to Oriana what stopped them from moving to the center and escaping along the plank to the outer platform.

She timed her jump with the next flaming burst, and, crouching, waiting for the fiery column and platform to reach its apex, she vaulted through the air, swinging her arms and legs.

She landed on the next platform, rolled, and rose. She spied the maroon lasers that crisscrossed above the candle. This, apparently, prevented the men from running to the center of the candle and escaping along the plank to the platform.

Nathan fell again. Oriana raced for him, guided by the flaming columns and platforms, all the way to the candle, where he lunged to her.

She caught him, and together they hopped to another platform, which shot up. They rode it as high as it went, then separated and hopped around the candle to Pasha.

The candle had melted on either end so much that now Pasha lay on it, rolling, his synsuit covered in wax. He couldn’t stand or the lasers would punch into him, force him off the candle.

“Oriana!” He reached out, begging for her to help him.

Nathan rode the rising platforms with Oriana, on either side of the candle, as they raced for her brother.

Pasha fell into the pit below. Oriana watched him plummet, surrounded by flames.

Her mind reeled. Time seemed to slow down and speed up all at once. She couldn’t hear the flames, or feel her limbs, or see Nathan waving to her, but somehow she made it safely to the platform beside the candle, where Nathan caught her. Trying not to weep in his arms, she felt as helpless as she had during the first day of classes.

Oriana dangled beside Pasha in her harness in House Summerset. She could feel and hear her brother, though her eyes had not adjusted to the light.

“You let me fall,” he said, “on purpose! You’re afraid I might beat you when it matters most.”

“That’s not true,” she said. She was shivering, covered with sweat. She thanked the gods the Summersets weren’t there. They’d just make it worse.

The keeper bots lowered them. The golden phosphorescent light in the simulation room seemed to close in around her.

She blinked until she saw her twin brother. “I’m so sorry.” When she settled on the ground, she reached to help Pasha unlatch from his harness, as she’d done countless times before.

He shook away from her. “Don’t touch me.” The look in his eyes, streaked red and wide, was a combination of hatred and sorrow.

That night, Oriana couldn’t sleep.

She ran the candlestick puzzle through her head a million times. Could she have taken a different route? Could she have saved them both? Nathan seemed weaker, and Pasha always performed steadily with her in their simulations. Until their last maze, he’d never faltered against her! Why did he have to fall? Even with what Pasha faced—the potential that his first-half score could be discounted from his valuation—she couldn’t keep these thoughts from her mind.

Oriana closed and opened her eyes, then closed them again, wishing for sleep to take her. She counted planets throughout the Milky Way
and
Andromeda galaxies, to no avail. Noria told her that her father had suffered from incurable insomnia. Was this how it would start for her? Then she thought about Pasha. How could he sleep if she couldn’t?

She turned to her clock. Sunrise was near. She snuck out of her room and into Pasha’s, where it was as dark as outer space.

Pasha
, she thought. She knew he could hear her, without Marstone’s interference, the way she had heard him during the first day of classes.
I can’t sleep. I can’t think about anything but what’s happened the last few days—

You shouldn’t be here.
Oriana heard his voice in her head.
You’re the champion of the Harpoons, remember?

Come with me, please.

She heard him zip up his bodysuit. He activated the lime-green lighting that rimmed his ceiling. His eyes looked bloodshot. “You made your choice, O. Now I think it’s time I made mine.” He lifted off his bed and moved closer to her. She thought he might hit her, until he hugged her. “I’m going to win in the second half of the Harpoons, not because I hate you, but because I must finish Mother and Father’s work. You’re not up to it.”

She pushed him away.

He activated his Granville panel, rendering the outside of the Ventureño Facility. Sunlight skimmed off rows of garnet pillars, which narrowed to a hollowed archway of golden marble in the center. “I can’t care about what happens to you tomorrow.”

He doesn’t mean it
, she thought.

“I do,” he said calmly.

She overrode his connection to the panel, filling it instead with memories of their first few days of development, when they had been children and played Captains and Aliens, hiding from the Summersets, sneaking into parts of the house they were told never to enter, fighting over the evening’s desserts. Then she shifted to their adolescence, filling the panel with the village’s apex, the flowerbeds surrounding the Redstone Dragon, and a Halcyon sunrise. “Let’s go there again and watch the lagoon the way we did and forget everything that’s happened—”

“I could’ve found all the answers we were looking for if you would’ve just been patient,” he said. “I can search through the archives more efficiently than you ever could hope.” He bit his lower lip. “But you had to take me out of the house and you had to break into the citadel with your boyfriend—”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“And I’m not your brother.”

Oriana couldn’t breathe. How could he be so cruel? When at last her senses returned, she said, “Don’t let Lady Isabelle win.”

“You mean don’t let her beat
you
, and that’s the problem, O, you think everything’s all about you. What you deserve to know! What you deserve to be!” His eyes looked redder. “Do you think I didn’t care about what happened to Mother and Father?”

“I never said that.” She stepped closer to him, but he backed away.

“Don’t you see? There’s a reason why we weren’t allowed to find out, there’s a reason why the Summersets protected us—”

“You mean deceived us—”

“—from our heritage,” he finished, speaking over her. “Now we’ve received the chancellor’s highest form of censure, and Lady Isabelle can control the information flow to the traders in Navita on exam day with the ease of thought, and you still can’t stop!” Pasha wiped his face. “You’re so selfish it’s disgusting.” He darkened his overhead lighting, and the Granville panel, and wouldn’t let Oriana reactivate either. “Get out.”

“Dear brother, I’ve listened to you, now you will listen to me. I would never hurt you, but I must see this through. Never more than after I met with Noria did I understand what we must—”