The mayan prophecy (Timeriders # 8) (28 page)

At once familiar – that featureless white. But slightly different in that there was no sensation of falling this time. She was not flailing with her arms. Instead there seemed to be something beneath her feet. Not firm floor, but soft and yielding, like the elastic of a trampoline.

As always, it was silent. The only noise she could hear was her own ragged breath, the rhythmic thud of her heart in her chest.

She cupped her hands round her eyes and narrowed them against the brilliant white, knowing from past experience that this seemingly blank, milky froth surrounding her did yield
some
form and detail when you shielded the glare a little. Now the empty white became a faint pattern, splotches, areas, slightly brighter and slightly darker. She thought she detected the faint movement of thin strands of something rising from the ‘ground’ and fading into the fog above her, like souls rising from cemetery dirt to the heavens above.

She wondered if she might just be seeing the faint ghostlike forms of future humans busy in transit along this projected conduit of chaos space. The Archaeologists, coming and going through history, quietly observing, cataloguing and archiving information about their long-lost ancestors.

‘Helloo!’ she called out. Her voice was deadened in here. No
echo or reverberation. No hard surfaces off which sonic waves could bounce – indeed, no time or space in the normal sense for those sonic waves to travel through to find any hard surfaces to bounce off.

The smothered sound of her voice against the absolute silence was still alarmingly loud. She squinted at the ghostly forms rising from the ground around her. Some of them seemed to be only a few feet away from her. Curious, she was tempted to step towards the nearest and try wafting her hand through the denser mist. But what effect might such a careless act like that have? Would it cause some poor far-future human to emerge – on the way to or from an errand – completely mis-formed? To be turned inside out?

She’d said to the others that she wondered if this artificial tunnel of chaos space had some kind of flow,
direction
, that would carry her somewhere; that would decide on her behalf where she was to go. Perhaps these ghostly forms were showing the way, that she needed to travel upwards like them? Perhaps ‘up’ was the way to go? And what did
up
lead to? The future? The past?

Uncertain what to do, she tried calling out again. But this time calling for Sal.

‘Sal! SAL!! You there?!’

None of these rising forms seemed to hesitate at the sound of her voice. She wondered if sound carried at all in this place anyway. She called again. And again.

And waited.

The ‘wraiths’ passed up around her, seemingly unaware of her – or, if they were aware, then they were utterly uninterested. She was about to cup her hands round her mouth and try again when she picked out the faintest sense of movement working against the uniform upwards motion.

Looking directly at it, it seemed to vanish, merged into the mist. But on the periphery of her vision she detected something curling down from above. Now it was on her level, at her height, moving slowly, horizontally, around her. Circling cautiously. Drawing nearer and now more distinct.

‘Hello?’ she called again.

The ghostly form seemed to hesitate for the briefest moment at the sound of her voice.

God, it heard me
.

‘Hello,’ she said again. Her voice deadened and lifeless. ‘Who is that? Is that you, Sal?’

The form remained motionless. Maddy tried to discern the outline of this silhouette. But it changed from moment to moment, as intangible as candle smoke caught in a draft. Whatever, whoever, it was – it seemed to have reacted to her voice. It had heard her.
Definitely
heard her, and now it seemed curious.

‘Are you another … 
traveller
?’

The form shifted slightly. Maddy thought she could see tendrils of smoke emerging from the densest area, tendrils that seemed to reach out and taste the air, then evaporate into disassociated curls of mist.

‘Can you hear me?’ she asked. ‘Can you understand me?’

The form drifted closer to her. More distinct now, closer in fact to Maddy than any of these ‘wraiths’ they’d all admitted to seeing at one time or another had ever been.

Closer still.

Now she could see this thing was more than just a denser patch of mist. She could discern the faintest surface details, texture. And these details, the texture, seemed to be in a constant state of flux: patterns that suggested the creases of leather, the grain of wood, the scales of a fish, veins of marble … as if this
thing was choosing what it wanted to be crafted from, second to second. It reminded her of how the pigment in a chameleon’s skin cells can oscillate through colours and patterns and assume any camouflage in a matter of seconds.

She wondered, if this was another person, then this must be how she would appear to them, something equally mysterious, equally alien and disturbing. Perhaps sound, though, perhaps her voice, wouldn’t be corrupted into something so weird by chaos space. Perhaps she would sound human to this thing.

‘Hello,’ she said again, her voice quieter and softer. It was close enough that she felt she didn’t need to shout. ‘Can you hear me?’

Yes
.

She wasn’t sure whether she actually heard that answer, or merely imagined it. It didn’t seem to have come from any particular direction, certainly not from this undulating cloud of indecisive matter hovering just feet away from her.

‘You can hear me?’

Yes
.

‘Understand me?’

I understand you
.

Maddy struggled to not let out a yelp of relief. To be able to communicate with this thing – this
person
? – was somehow reassuring. Not some animalistic or unfathomable alien mind, but quite possibly another human, albeit in chaos-space form.

Incredible.

She wondered what question to ask this fellow traveller first. What question? What question?

‘Are you … are you a person? A human?’

The form drifted around her, she sensed it was trying to understand her too, perhaps also seeing another amorphous form and frightened by it. She wished this thing had something
analogous to eyes – eyes that she could meet, address her conversation towards.

Yes
. It replied as it shifted form, tendrils spinning out like tissue strands in water.

Yes
.
Human. Once
. The voice sounded sexless. Ageless. Emotionless. Like an averaging-out of all possible voices, the very definition of neutral, impossible to read … and yet, in its bland voice, Maddy thought she detected a hint of – grief? Sadness?

‘Are you someone else … in transit? A time traveller?’

No answer.

‘Are you one of the people who built this displacement field?’

The being shifted textures. In places its ‘skin’ thinned and became gossamer, a semi-opaque membrane revealing even deeper complexities of curling texture and form within. It reminded her just a little of the interior of a time wave.

Once, just once, she’d been up close and had her eyes open as a time wave had swept past her, just inches away. She’d witnessed the churning, roiling sea of possibilities inside: millions of souls seemingly screaming in torment at lives they would never lead; structures, cities that would never be built; kings that would never rule, empires that would never have a chance to rise and fall.

The entity answered her.
Travelled through time. Long ago
.

She shuddered as a thought suddenly occurred to her. Perhaps it was something like this entity that Waldstein had witnessed, perhaps even spoken with, on his very first trip through chaos space.

‘Are you from the future?’ she asked. She realized as soon as she voiced the question how stupid it was. How would this traveller know how to answer that? If it didn’t know when Maddy came from, it couldn’t say if it was from her future.

‘Are you from beyond the event that wiped us all out? Beyond the year 2070?’

It drifted a little closer to her. She noted several bacilli-like tendrils of vapour reaching out towards her. She felt nothing as they seemed to touch her skin. Maybe this thing was seeing tendrils reaching out from her as well; perhaps these wisps of vapour were a visual representation of thought, curiosity expressed in an ethereal form?

Future, past, present, there is no difference. There is now. There is an eternity. That is all.

There seemed to be a bottomless, weary grief folded into that answer. She wondered if this could be a traveller who had got lost, some fool who had stupidly walked into a portal without having an exit window arranged.

A stupid fool just like her, she realized. No. She had an exit arranged. The others would open the column in four hours. Although she had no idea what four hours of ‘real’ time would be to her, stuck in this place.

‘Are you lost? Are you trapped in here?’

Trapped?
It shifted form and glided around her.
From here all possibilities can be seen. Seen so many things in here.

She wanted to ask this creature about Sal. But how to ask and what to ask?
You seen my friend walking around? She’s five foot two, about a hundred and twelve pounds, dark hair.
Perhaps she would ask about Sal soon. But first she needed to know
what
it was, even
who
it was, she was communicating with.

‘What have you seen?’

Beginnings, endings and all between. Everything that could be, and never was.

‘You mean alternative timelines?’

Yes
.

‘Have you seen what happens to us, to humanity after we destroy ourselves?’

The entity took its time answering that.
There is a future beyond that way.

‘We
do
survive then? We go on? We rebuild?’

Only on that way.

Maddy pondered that curious choice of words. ‘
That way …
you mean the timeline in which we wipe ourselves out?’

Other ways … it is dark. Nothing to be seen. Empty.

‘Why?’

There can be only one way out.

‘One way out?’ What the hell did that mean? One way out of
what
? Chaos space?

We
are
all trapped. For eternity.

The entity’s surface phased momentarily, revealing ghostly images within itself. She saw images she could comprehend – this thing was showing her pictures,
thoughts
, to help her understand: a dungeon, the padded cell of an insane asylum, a face locked behind an iron mask, a prisoner sealed in a buried coffin, screaming, scratching at the wood.

Were those metaphors it was showing her? Was this a warning? A caution of what might be? Or what already was?

‘Are you showing those things to help me understand?’

No answer.

‘What do those images mean?’

All trapped. Only one way to be free.

She thought of Waldstein again. ‘We have to destroy ourselves? Is that what you’re saying? To be free we have to destroy ourselves?’

It stirred, shape-shifted. She had a sense the question was confusing it. Distressing it.

‘Are
you
trapped? Can you leave here? Can you leave this place?’

No answer.

‘What about me, can I leave?’

Its membranous surface became opaque again, hiding the turmoil of images within. Somehow,
guarded
. She sensed it was becoming suspicious of her, wary.

‘I came in here looking for someone. Another person like me – another traveller. She entered just before me.’

No before. No after. Only now. Only eternity.

The entity retreated from her. Becoming less detailed in the mist.

‘Please!’ she called out after it. ‘Don’t go away. Don’t leave me alone.’

She tried to keep sight of it as it grew fainter. ‘I can get out! I can come out the way I came in! There’s an opening nearby. You could come with me!’

Out of the mist a long thin tendril of vapour rapidly coiled towards her, hovered just inches short of her face. Its thin end expanded, mushroomed, and then on its undulating surface she saw the fleeting images of tormented faces. Dozens morphing one after the other in quick succession.

Then one last face. One she recognized. Sal’s face, contorted and stretched as her mouth opened impossibly wide with a dreadful scream that seemed to fill the space around them. In one shrill raw wail, there was rage, grief, insanity, agony … yearning.

‘Sal?’

LET ME OUT
.

Just then, Maddy felt the flow change. Something pulling at her softly, insistently. The thin and faint tissue-like forms, travelling upwards, stirred and spun like jellyfish, like water-borne
debris tugged by a fresh current. As if a plug had been pulled from a bath tub, and all that was free-floating was now drawn along by the flow of vacating water.

Maddy backed away from the tendril as it retreated into the mist again. She could smell the ozone-like odour. Air charged with energy.
Rage
as pure energy.

She backed away in the direction that the current was pulling her. Quick step after quick step across the uncertain, giving surface of the ‘floor’.

Then one foot settled on a hard, unyielding surface. She turned round and found herself staring into darkness. Her eyes adjusted to reveal a smooth floor, and emerging out of the gloom, several approaching figures …

‘Maddy!’ Adam reached out for her. He looked relieved. ‘My God, you’ve been gone days! We didn’t know whether to –!’

‘Close it!’ She gasped for air as she staggered past him, several yards away from the column, and then finally came to a halt, doubled over. ‘Need to close it!’

He joined her, shook his head. ‘Still haven’t worked that out. It closes on its own –’

‘Jesus! Then –’ Her laboured breath came in wheezing, ragged gasps – ‘we – got to – run!’

The others had gathered round her. Liam had a half-cocked smile stamped on his lips; utter relief and growing concern wrestling with each other. ‘Mads! I thought we lost you! Two days we’ve been waiting! Did you see Sal?’ He stopped himself and looked at her pale face. ‘What is it? You look like you’ve seen a –’

She finally caught her breath. ‘RUN!’ she screamed. ‘WE HAVE TO RUN!’

Behind them the white glow of the field began to ripple, deform, then bulge. The steady, deep, rhythmic throbbing gave way to a crackling sound.

‘Good Lord,’ gasped Bertie, ‘what is going on there?’

They turned as one to look.

The air just outside the field now shimmered like the flame-heated air above a campfire. Something invisible, super-heating
the area it occupied – a space twenty feet high and just as wide, was causing it to warp and dance.

Jagged forks of static electricity arced from the field, flickered round the edge of the mass of heated air, momentarily, fleetingly, describing an artist’s sketch of its outline. In one blink of an eye, they had a lightning-strike depiction of its form: three thick elephant-like legs supporting the round mass of a giant head. A mouth that looked vaguely human but stretched impossibly, vertically, with a Munch-like scream, like a Halloween mask. A mouth filled with teeth. Above the gaping maw, two small coal-dark eyes that slanted with grief and pity. The mouth was all rage, the eyes were sadness.

Its roar filled the chamber. Not the roar of a predator, but the shrill scream of a chorus of human voices. It swayed, weight shifting from one thick leg to another, the giant head surveying the darkness around it, then turning to look down at them.

‘What is that creature?!’ screamed Bertie.

‘Jay-zus,’ Liam uttered. ‘That’s a – a seeker?’

Maddy wasn’t sure what it was. Explanations could come later. ‘RUN!’

She was the first to turn on her heels and flee, more than happy to lead from the front this time as they raced across the floor, then scrambled for the narrow stairwell that led to the upper chamber. Behind her she heard the crack of gunfire. She halted, turned to see who it was. Guns weren’t going to stop this thing.

Twenty yards behind her she could see Billy shouldering his AK, his torch strapped to the barrel, the flicker of muzzle-flash as he fired shots out into the darkness.

‘Billy! Forget it! Run!’

The seeker had stepped far enough away from the column that the arcing electricity was no longer leaping across from
chaos space to hint at its outline. It was invisible now – the only thing giving its location away, the tell-tale shimmer of heated air. From where Billy was, closer, much closer, he had obviously picked out that faint outline and was now emptying rounds of ammo into it.

Liam stopped beside Maddy and looked back. ‘Billy!’ he cried. ‘GET OVER HERE!’

Billy was shouting as he fired. Curses in Spanish or Tawahka or Zambu.

‘BILLY!’

All of a sudden, their guide spasmed, dropped his gun and was lifted up. He thrashed around, mid-air, screaming with agony and fear. Maddy thought she could make out the fleeting, phasing form of a long arm ending with three claws holding him aloft. Then another one appeared out of nothingness, claws wrapping round the top half of Billy’s torso. One savage twist and the guide was torn clean in half. His separated body hurled casually in two different directions, and the long arms of the monster phased out of sight once more.

‘Jay-zus, help us!’ cried Liam.

Maddy felt hands tugging at her shoulders, pulling her towards the stairwell. Adam. ‘Come on!’ He pushed her on to the stairs ahead of him.

She clambered up the slippery-smooth stone steps; steep steps that had her thighs burning by the top of them. Rashim, Bertie, Becks already there. Liam, Adam and finally Bob emerged from the stairwell behind her.

‘Yes –’ she was gasping for air again, answering Liam’s question of a minute ago – ‘it’s a seeker. Or … maybe it’s several … merged into one mega-seeker. I don’t know.’

Adam looked at the stairwell descending down into the
darkness of the lower chamber. ‘It can’t follow us up that narrow space, can it?’

‘It is constructed from pure energy,’ said Bob. ‘It can change form.’

‘You are not safe staying here,’ Becks added.

They heard something heavy impacting the steps below. Felt the vibration of it through the stone floor, through their feet. Followed by its mournful chorus-cry of tormented human voices echoing through the lower chamber.

Liam looked at Maddy. ‘It’s coming up.’

They headed for the narrow exit out of the small chamber. Bunched up, they tangled with each other.

‘One at a time!’ bellowed Liam. ‘One at a time. Go! Go!’ They squeezed through the narrow doorway, one after the other, an impatient queue to escape. Liam and Bob the last to go through. Liam turned to look over his shoulder, aiming his torch at the hole in the floor, and thought he detected a thin vapour of shimmering air coiling out of it.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ He pounded at Bob’s fleshy shoulder, pushing him roughly through the gap, then stumbling through after him. ‘IT’S UP THE STAIRS!’ he shouted to the others waiting just outside the gap in the wall. ‘RUN FOR IT!’

They turned on their heels and ran, all of them weaving their own paths through the forest of support columns.

Liam was about to do likewise when he noted Bob, unslinging his antique rifle.

‘Bob? What’re you doing? Come on!’

‘I will be able to delay the seeker at this chokepoint.’

‘Don’t be a flippin’ idiot, Bob. You won’t win against
this
one!’

‘I understand, Liam … but I will provide you with additional time to escape.’

‘The hell with that, you big idiot. Just run!’

Bob shot a glance through the narrow gap in the wall. It was too dark to see anything clearly, but he could sense the energy building up inside that small room as the creature’s distended cloud emerged from the confines of the stairwell and consolidated in the antechamber. The seeker’s form had adapted to the narrow stairs, was now pouring into the room like liquid filling a bottle, breath filling a balloon.

‘Bob? For Chrissake don’t make me smack your big arse! RUN!’

The support unit nodded. Logic making a better decision than some badly timed notion of courage.

‘Affirmative.’

They turned and ran, picking separate routes through the ranks of support columns. Up ahead Liam could see the others had converged on the exit. He saw their silhouettes as they stumbled out of the small doorway and on to the steps outside.

Behind Liam came a loud thump and the crash of shattering masonry. He chanced another hurried glance backwards, flinging his torch beam wildly behind him. The seeker had just exploded through the narrow gap, knocking blocks of sandstone out of the wall, creating a much wider opening. His torchlight pierced through a thick rolling cloud of dust that hung lazily in the still air for a moment, before suddenly it swirled, disturbed, as something unseen surged through it, pushing the billowing cloud to both sides.

A support column that lay between Liam and the ruined entrance to the antechamber suddenly seemed to explode into fragments, as if impacted by a heavy cannonball. Then a few seconds later another one, closer to him, lurched and toppled to one side as though rammed by a charging bull. Several large
slabs of ceiling stone, now robbed of the support from the toppled column, collapsed to the floor.

Shards of salmon-pink evening light speared down through billowing clouds of dust.

The chamber was suddenly filled with a roar that sounded half like the trumpeting of an elephant and half like the mournful, echoing call of a humpback whale.

Panning the torch back behind him, the beam piercing the thickening dust, he picked out movement and, for a moment, the invisible monster phased into view. He caught a glimpse of its form changing shape: the giant head twisting and elongating, morphing from human to an almost boar-like extruded snout; spines and jagged protrusions erupting through its ‘flesh’.

Dark-as-coal eyes settled on Liam, before the beast phased out of sight again. Then a moment later yet another column even closer to him erupted in a shower of dust and fragments.

The thing was heading directly towards him. He turned and resumed running for the faint glow of the exit.

Maddy and the others emerged from the trench into the wan glow of a setting sun. Long purple shadows and stripes of rose-pink sunlight striped the basin of the city. Around the entrance the people were gathered, thousands of them. At the first sight of them emerging from beneath the plaza, voices rose in unison into a shrill, deafening wail, drums stirred to life and beat a threatening rhythm among them.

The crowd surged forward.

‘We have been holed up down below, the last two days,’ said Rashim. ‘Our hosts were getting very agitated outside. But they would not follow us down.’

Becks stood out front, using the butt of her Martini-Henry rifle as a club, jabbing and swinging at the pressing crowd to
force them back, to create a space for them to escape through.

Bertie was doubled over by the entrance, one hand resting against the weathered stone, trying to get air into his lungs. ‘What the Devil …’ he called out, trying to be heard over the clamour of voices and the beating drums. ‘What the Devil was that three-legged monster? That tripod beast?’

She shook her head. She didn’t really know anything about it other than what Foster had once told them. ‘It’s what I told you before about seekers!
That’s
a frikkin’ seeker!’

Adam glanced back behind them. ‘Do you think we’ve lost it?’

Just then, emerging from the low archway of the entrance, they heard a deep boom and felt the thump and vibration of some heavy impact occurring inside. Voices in the crowd cried out in alarm as several sections of the plaza floor collapsed, a column of dust mushrooming up into the sky.

‘My God, it’s followed us up,’ cried Maddy. ‘It’s still coming for us!’

Another shudder, another boom of impact. More sections of the plaza floor collapsed. The belligerent crowd now suddenly seemed far less interested in pressing forward and getting their hands on their unwelcome guests. They began to back away from the entrance. Then they all heard it. The deafening roar of something huge, something tormented, echoing through the upper chamber.

The crowd’s angry chanting disintegrated into thousands of individual cries of horror and panic. The drumming stopped. The press of people around them began to thin as they started to turn and flee in terror.

Maddy looked around at the others. ‘Where’s Liam?’

‘He was right behind me,’ said Rashim.

‘And Bob?’

Another thump. Louder. Closer.

Rashim ducked down and peered back into the entrance, shining his torch into the darkness. ‘I think there is someone coming this way!’

‘Liam?’

Rashim squinted as he played his torch around. He could see the flicker of movement in there; rolling clouds of dust and something disturbing them. Something big. ‘I don’t think so.’

Another loud roar and Rashim turned to look at Maddy. ‘RUN!’

He pushed past her, scrambled up the shallow steps of the trench and up on to the paved thoroughfare. Maddy beckoned at the others to follow.

They were up on the flagstones and now mingled among the few remaining city people. These onlookers were no longer determined to get their hands on the ‘pretenders’ who had deceitfully gained their trust and access to their holiest place, but, like them, their eyes were glued to the small arched entrance to the chamber below – both terrified and fascinated to see what was about to emerge from it.

The small stone blocks around the entrance suddenly erupted. As if propelled by an explosion, shards of stone arced into the sky, dust rolled upwards and outwards like a volcanic pyroclastic surge. The setting sun painted the thick cloud of dust a candy pink as it billowed out over the crowd of awestruck, horrified onlookers.

Amid the cloud, something large raged, stomping and swaying from foot to foot. It was only an outline in the cloud: the mass of the invisible beast displacing dust-thick air. An enormous bulk, twenty feet high and across, three elephantine legs stamping the ground.

From an open ‘mouth’ – if that’s what it was – something long and sinewy shot out. An arm? A tentacle? It extended
quickly and curled round a hapless young man who had remained too close for too long. He was yanked into the air kicking and screaming. The pall of dust had begun to thin and the entity’s outline became harder to determine. Just the faintest edges of heat-seared air.

The young man now seemed to be flying from side to side thirty feet above the ground. A smoke trail followed him as his skin seared, burned; the smell of cooking flesh filled the air. His agonized screaming suddenly ended with a sickening crack. Then his body, ripped in two, was tossed into the fleeing crowd.

One half landed just a few yards from Maddy. The top half, smouldering and blackened by the intense energy; the open ragged ruin of the boy’s torso was almost completely cauterized by the creature’s furnace-like heat.

Oh, God help me … what did I bring back?

Maddy had seen more than enough. ‘Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!’

They joined the people streaming away from the plaza, and quickly found themselves funnelled into a narrow street, all of them now united in terror, united in the direction they were running and the mindless imperative to escape.

Behind them there was another roar, amplified by the curved acoustics of the city, a roar that sounded as loud and all-encompassing as the forbidding rumble of an earthquake.