City of the Falling Sky (37 page)

Sanfarrow narrowed his eyes. “As far as I was
aware, that logo was an original design by artists at Endrin. But
the project is, indeed, based upon the acquisition of Seckraman’s
power.”

“
Seckry,” Eiya said
suddenly. “That’s why they stole Hindglubber’s illusional time
theories, isn’t it? Darklight wants to use the helitonium extracted
from the innoya to create a wormhole, go back in time, and steal
Seckraman’s powers. Hindglubber was saying they wanted to steal
something from the past and bring it into the present. It was
this.”

“
You’re almost right,”
Sanfarrow said gravely. “But Kan does not simply want to steal
Seckraman’s powers, even if there were a way to do so. No, he wants
to steal Seckraman himself and bring him to the present. He wants
to keep him in a vegetated state, and constantly draw the power out
of him, provided it’s in limitless supply, powering the city for
years to come without the need of a single, expensive power
reactor.”

“
This is just . . . insane!”
Seckry said, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “This is the son of
Gedin we’re talking about!”

Sanfarrow kept a serious face. “Darklight has
no ties to religion. Sacrilege has no meaning to him.”

“
But Seckraman prevented the
Great Meteor from hitting the earth, didn’t he?” Eiya said,
confused. “If Darklight theoretically stole Seckraman from the
past, wouldn’t the meteor hit earth?”

“
That is the most dangerous
and devastating outcome of this Gedin forsaken experiment, yes,”
Sanfarrow said, disgust in his voice. “Of course, nothing like this
has ever been attempted before. If this thing somehow works for
Darklight, then he will be the first person to turn Hindglubber’s
radical theories into reality, and he will be the first person to
alter history.”

“
But . . . why would
Darklight want the meteor to hit? Wouldn’t it wipe out
everything?”

“
Kan is insisting that he
will be able to steal Seckraman after he has destroyed the meteor,”
Sanfarrow explained.

“
He’d be willing to risk the
fate of the entire earth for the sake of powering the city without
the need for reactors?” Eiya asked.

“
Unfortunately, yes,”
Sanfarrow said.

“
But . . .” Seckry cut in.
“We’re all talking about this as if it’s possible. Is time travel
even a reality?”

Sanfarrow breathed in slowly. “Most people
would say not. But then most people aren’t aware of the existence
of helitonium, believing it to be something of myth and
legend.”

“
You believe he can do it?”
said Eiya. “That Darklight can go back in time using
helitonium?”

“
Yes . . . I believe so,”
Sanfarrow said.

“
Mr Sanfarrow,” Eiya said,
after a while. “I think I’m an innoya.”

Sanfarrow cocked his head slightly.

“
My earliest memory is of
waking up in the Endrin compound, which is when Seckry found
me.”

Seckry took a moment to briefly explain why
it was that he was inside the compound himself.

“
And those worms were put on
a train, never to be seen again? Dear Gedin and Gainstop, it’s even
worse than I imagined . . . but more pressing as of right now, you
say you have no memory before that point?”

“
Nothing,” Eiya
confirmed.

Sanfarrow considered this.

“
Erasing the memory of the
innoya was never a part of Darklight’s plan, as far as I knew. And
you say you came into consciousness in the cultivation unit, above
ground? I just can’t see how Darklight would have been so careless
as to let somebody escape.”

“
When I was at Endrin,”
Seckry said. “Jenniver showed me security footage of the night I
rescued Eiya. She showed up as a really bright light on the camera.
Jenniver said that the tape was even damaged from the light. She
said a team of experts had to work to restore some kind of
picture.”

“
Bright light?” Sanfarrow
said, perplexed. “Innoya have certainly been captured on film
before, and they are depicted like anybody else. They certainly do
not emit any light. From the looks of it, you’ve already attempted
to use the innoya detection device I have down here. What were the
results?”

Seckry and Eiya gave each other a slightly
guilty glance.

“
We don’t think it worked
properly,” Eiya said. “It showed nothing. There were no red or blue
particles on the projection.”

Sanfarrow lowered his bushy eyebrows and
headed back into the room that held the device. Seckry and Eiya
followed him hurriedly.

“
In all the years I’ve had
this thing, not once has it failed on me. I believed it to be
unbreakable.” Sanfarrow slid open the glass cylinder with a thud,
stuck his one arm in, and then flicked a load of switches on the
control panel with lightning speed.

The machine whirred into action and a few
minutes later, a diagram appeared of Sanfarrow’s arm, glowing pure,
bright red.

“
Looks fine to me,” he said,
with an air of relief. “Eiya, is it? Would you please be so kind as
to step inside once again?”

Eiya stepped in cautiously and put her hands
to her sides, looking nervous.

But when the projector fired up once more,
they were presented with the same faint outline of Eiya’s clothes,
and invisible space all around them.

Sanfarrow slowly made his way over to the
wall which held the projection and put his hand to the image.

“
What in the name of
Gedin?
” he whispered to himself.

“
What does this mean?” Eiya
asked from inside the cylinder.

But Sanfarrow didn’t answer. He disappeared
into the main room and began rifling through stacks of books,
tossing things aside, flicking through huge, dusty tomes, and
finally smoothing out the page of a particularly old looking
hardback.

Eiya stepped out of the machine and slid the
door closed behind her before she and Seckry followed
Sanfarrow.

“
Could it be?
”
Sanfarrow muttered to himself. He flicked a few pages, and then
flicked back again before looking up and getting to his feet. He
surveyed Eiya with awe.

“
Before I make any
conclusions,” he said. “I just want to be sure of the facts. You
say you were found by Seckry in the cultivation unit, in the mud
that was above the Divinita chamber? And you showed up as a bright
light on Endrin’s security camera footage? And you have no memory
whatsoever of anything before that night? And nothing has come back
to you since, no flashbacks or anything?”

After Eiya confirmed all of his questions,
Sanfarrow took a deep breath.

“
Then Eiya, the reason why
you have no memory beyond that night, is that you had just been
born.”

“
What?” Eiya said quietly,
her expression held firm.

“
It is believed that
helitonium, in extremely concentrated conditions, can create
matter,” Sanfarrow said. “I have never seen it happen, and neither
has anyone since the twelfth century, I imagine. But it is
chronicled. It is also chronicled that during the creation process,
the object emits high levels of radiation, which is what would have
caused that film footage to pick up a bright light.”

“
I was created that night?”
Eiya said, to herself more than anyone. “I don’t
understand.”

“
There was an unbelievably
high concentration of helitonic particles amidst that mud in the
cultivation unit. The worms, luckily, were eating up most of the
toxic, modified ones that the Divinita machine was spewing out,
that’s why the worms were there, to neutralise the toxicity. When
Seckry arrived and started overturning all that mud, he was exposed
to pure helitonium. Whatever was in his mind at that moment would
have affected the particles around him. Whatever Seckry’s mind was
looking for, whatever he wanted right then, whatever he needed,
could have translated into the morphing and modelling of something
just a little distance away from him.

“
Wait,” Seckry said, “I was
looking for the worms at that moment. That’s what I
wanted.”

Sanfarrow smiled briefly. “Ostensibly, yes.
But let’s not forget the power of the subconscious. Something
inside of you, something a lot deeper than the want for those
worms, wanted this girl right here.”

Seckry’s face exploded with prickles of
embarrassment.

“
You mean . . . I was
created out of Seckry’s imagination?” said Eiya.

“
That’s right,” Sanfarrow
replied. “Which is why you can speak fluent Unilan. Your vocabulary
has been taken directly from Seckry’s own.”

Eiya’s wide eyes met Seckry’s and she opened
her mouth to speak a few times, but nothing came out.

Seckry was trying to deny that he had been
imagining anyone like Eiya when he was digging for those worms, but
. . . it made sense. He hadn’t realised it at first, but from the
moment he saw her he had begun to fall in love with her. Had she
really been formed by his own desires?

“
There is one, very
important thing that I have to tell you both before we continue
discussing this,” Sanfarrow said, his voice suddenly grave. “The
reason why Eiya showed up as invisible on the innoya detection
device is because matter formed by helitonic particles doesn’t
exist in the same way that everything else does.”

Seckry and Eiya were both silent, waiting for
Sanfarrow to continue.

“
It only exists
temporarily,” he said. “It is constantly being fed life by its
original source. If the helitonic power that created it is
extinguished, then it will simply . . . dissipate.”

Seckry’s body felt as though it suddenly
weighed seven ton. “Wait a minute,” he said, swallowing hard. “What
are you saying?”

“
I’m sorry,” Sanfarrow said,
looking towards the ground. “But once Darklight has completely
drained the innoya of their helitonium, Eiya will cease to
exist.”

Seckry’s mind wouldn’t accept what he was
hearing.

“
Eiya’s not going anywhere,”
he said. “We’re going to stop Darklight tonight. No one is going to
kill the innoya.”

Sanfarrow shook his head, defeated.

“
The extraction has already
begun. Darklight will have opened up a wound in each of the innoya
months ago and there is no way to heal it. Even if there were a way
to destroy the Divinita machine, the innoya would still die. They
have been reduced to a vegetated state. They are no longer
conscious and they never will be again. The brain damage they will
have suffered from Darklight’s extraction is irreversible and if
Darklight doesn’t murder them with the Divinita machine, then they
will die from their wounds.”

Eiya was staring into space.

“
I’m sorry . . . I truly
am,” Sanfarrow said quietly.

The following hour for Seckry was like
watching his own body from a distance. Nothing felt real anymore,
nothing felt grounded. His mind couldn’t seem to comprehend all of
the things that Sanfarrow had told them, and he didn’t know whether
he was dreaming or awake.

It was only when he closed the door behind
himself in Sanfarrow’s makeshift bathroom that his legs gave way
and he slumped down the wall, his eyes streaming hot tears
uncontrollably.

He didn’t know how long he was in there for
but at some point he heard light footsteps outside and Eiya’s
small, pink hand reached slowly out to him underneath the door.

Seckry squeezed her index finger and smiled
through his tears.

When he eventually let himself out, Eiya
wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him as tight as she
could.

“
I’m scared, Seck,” she
said, in barely more than a whisper. “I’m scared of never seeing
you again.”

Seckry swallowed the lump in his throat.

“
I’m gonna find a way to fix
this,” he said, and he had never meant anything so much in all his
life. He was going to do everything he could to save Eiya, even if
it meant he would die trying.

“
We need to act tonight,”
Seckry said determinedly, after another hour of discussing
practicalities.

Sanfarrow averted his gaze.

“
You know there’s no
way–”

“
I don’t care what’s
supposed to happen,” Seckry cut in. “I’m going to find a way to
save those innoya. There has to be a way.”

Sanfarrow seemed to debate something in his
own head for a long time, before saying, “Look . . . the only thing
that could even come close to being able to heal a wound like that
is the blood of this special animal over in Phary.”

“
What?” Eiya asked
desperately.

“
There’s no physical way we
could get the stuff onto these shores in time, never mind into our
hands. It’s impossible. And the samples haven't even had proper
testing.” He paced around the room. “Across the Phary Ocean they
have a species of gimmypug unheard of over here, the long eared
gimmypug . . . It’s blood . . . It has very strong healing powers.
I mean in theory, if some of that were to be injected into a
wounded innoya . . . It’s not for certain, who knows? But it’s
madness. There is no way of getting any of that blood. Only a few
long eared gimmypugs still remain alive over there, and it would
take weeks for the stuff to arrive here, even if they’d accept
payment for it. Why are you looking at me like that?”