Penult (61 page)

It took me a while to process what had
just happened. I felt terrible that my attempt at mercy had been
negated, my promise violated. Maybe someday I’d get to apologize to
the Hashmal in whatever realm the souls of Pennies moved on to when
they left the Liminality. Was it Heaven? The real deal Heaven? The
Deeps was more likely, like the rest of us peons.

Ubaldo and his hornet went whizzing by
on their way to the front of the formation. We formed a tight
little group now, the beetles well surrounded by six escorts. There
was no way this column would not reach the shores of Penult now,
and I had to say, the thought of deploying it in the homeland of
its makers gave me a little shiver of glee.

***

The darkness that closed around us
felt more like a security blanket than something to fear. Hour
after hour, we cruised along. A headwind had kicked up to stir the
sea below. Moonlight frosted the white caps.

As we cruised along, Tigger kept close
to Lalibela’s tail. Dragonflies are diurnal creatures. I wonder how
the Dusters got them to fly at night. I guess people train dogs to
go against their nature and not chase squirrels. Why not get
dragonflies to pretend they were moths?

The beetles seemed to have a much
easier time of it now that they were sharing the load. It’s not
that the columns were heavy but hauling them through the air
created lots of drag. So far Rhino was looking strong and
fit.

A strange and unexpected calmness came
over me. The storm in my head had finally reached a stable
equilibrium. The multifactorial stress that had consumed me earlier
had dissipated. Whatever happened, happened. Anything bad stuff be
tolerated or overcome. If anything good came of this, it would come
as a pleasant surprise.

I leaned forward and rested my chin on
the forward hump of the saddle, watching the sea swells rise and
fall like the breath of a slumbering dragon.

***

Dawn came quick. Too quick. I must
have fallen asleep in the saddle—a disconcerting thought
considering that we were flying high and I wasn’t strapped in. I
grabbed onto the handholds that fringed the saddle and gripped them
tight as a wave of vertigo shuddered through me.

Land was now in sight. The island was
much larger than I pictured. Its shores stretched out of sight in
both directions. A line of clouds, tinged coral and pink by the
rising sun, hovered over the central highlands like a misty
halo.

Apart from a rim of pale cliffs
buttressing the shore, Penult seemed mostly a bunch of rolling
meadows punctuated with a few widely-spaced clumps of trees, sort
of like a giant golf course. A lacy network of pale roads and paths
stretched over and through every hill and hollow. Apart from these,
I saw no evidence of civilization—no cities, towns, not even a
solitary structure.

Ubaldo was the first to reach land.
Blazing far ahead of us on his glorious wasp, we watched him pass
over a broad strand of windswept beaches and some low, chalky
cliffs, to the first expanse of meadows beyond, touching down
beside a road so smooth it glinted in the morning sun.

Karla and Mikal landed next, followed
by the rest of us providing close escort to the beetles, whom Georg
and Solomon guided down gently to avoid damaging their precious
payload. I hopped down off of Tigger onto the spongy grass, glad to
have solid ground beneath me again.

“
There is nothing here,”
said Ubaldo, scowling as if he were angry to have nothing and no
one to fight.

“
That’s a good thing,” said
Olivier. “Gives us time to pick a good target.”

“
There are cities, I assure
you,” said Urszula.

“
Where we are now, is this
not one of the places you scouted?”

“
No,” she said. “There were
no cliffs where we came ashore. Just marshes and lagoons and … a
city. A port.”

“
Any idea how to get
there?”

Urszula shrugged. “It is somewhere on
this coast.”

“
Obviously.”

“
But I cannot tell which
direction.”

“
Some of us can go and
look,” said Mikal. “I volunteer.”

“
You go East, Mikal. I will
go West,” said Urszula.

“
Sounds like a plan,” said
Olivier.

Urszula reached down and tightened the
cinches of her saddle. She glanced at me over her shoulder. “If we
do not come back, do not wait for us.”

“
Why wouldn’t you come
back?” I said.

“
I am just
saying.”

“
Watch out for those new
falcons,” said Olivier. ”Those damned things are nasty
quick.”

Urszula returned a wicked smile.
“Maybe they should watch out for me.”

Mikal buzzed away on his robber fly.
Urszula leaned over, slapped Lalibela’s pronotum and her gleaming
dragonfly rocketed off into the sun. The clear membranes spanning
the cells of her wings twinkled like diamonds.

Before I could even think to grab a
hold of his lead, Tigger zoomed off after them.

***

We unsaddled the bugs that remained,
turning them loose to do a little foraging on the beach. I felt a
bit nervous about being stranded without Tigger, but Karla offered
to let me double up with her if need be. She seemed to enjoy that
aspect of my predicament.

When she was preoccupied with stashing
gear I went over and discreetly asked Olivier if I could carry the
Seraph wings he had just unlashed from the scorpion fly as mine
were still attached to Tigger’s saddle. He gave me an odd look, but
assented without hesitation.

I bundled them up and tucked them
under my arm. They were bulky, but no heavier than an armload of
bamboo.

My blunt and blackened sword I slipped
under my belt. I wondered why I still bothered to carry it. The
thing was heavy and not very useful as a sword anymore. I could do
just as well with a stick. But I couldn’t bring myself to toss it
just yet. It had sentimental value going back to the tunnels of
Root and my first days in the Liminality. At least I didn’t have to
worry about cutting myself on the damned thing.

We concealed our tack and supplies in
a shrub-congested gully that carried a rushing freshet down to the
cliffs. The water was cool and sweet—a welcome change to the stale
lagoon water we carried in our skins.

With a bow and quiver slung over his
shoulder and a knotty, club-like scepter at his side, Ubaldo stood
and studied the lacework of gleaming white paths that arced and
swooped across the lumpy green hills before us. They made me think
of nicely healed scars, following the contours of the land without
ever disrupting its curves.

He strode up to the nearest path and
rapped his scepter on the surface.

“
Bone,” he said.

“
No way!” I rushed over for
a closer look.

Oliver was already there bending down
and touching the finely-grained surface. The path was about five
meters wide, seamless with an off-white pebbly but porous texture.
A gradient of larger pores lined the edges

“
Yeah. I have to say,” said
Olivier. “Sure looks like bone.”

A whirring, clattering sound developed
from somewhere over the next rise. Someone or something was coming
down the road. Ubaldo whipped his bow around and strung one of the
oversized arrows he had liberated from the ship.

A man appeared, riding a six wheeled
scooter that was little more than a platform with wheels, a simple
backrest, and two curving flanges that came up from the base and
clasped his thighs just above the knee.

He pulled within ten meters of us and
rolled to a stop. There was not a speck of fear or aggression in
his face, just an open and amiable curiosity. He just remained
standing on his device smiling and blinking at us.

“
My, you all are looking
quite authentic. I’m sorry to disturb you, but … is there to be a
performance? I saw nothing in the schedule.”

“
Excuse me?” said
Olivier.

“
You are artists, no?
Rehearsing here perhaps?”

“
Um. Nope.”

He squinted at us. “Oh my.” A bit of
worry crept into his expression. His scooter rolled back slowly
away from us without any apparent physical effort on his part, as
if it were responsive to the man’s moods.

“
You all really are quite
convincing. You must be method actors. Your wardrobe. Your whole …
demeanor. Nicely done. From which domain are you
registered?”

“
Domain?”

“
We are from the other
side,” said Ubaldo.

“
Of the island? That would
be Bristol, perhaps? Canaan? Aleppo?”

“
What is your … domain?”
said Olivier.

“
Well, Loomis, of course.
I’m a local. You … you’re not actually escapees, are you? I have to
say, your whole mise-en-scène is quite convincing. Where will you
be performing? Or maybe … this is it? This is the performance? I
must say, it’s bold of you to count on an audience to find you on
their own.”

”
He suddenly gasped and
cupped his palm over his mouth. “Oh my goodness! That’s … that’s
a….“ He stared seaward. Karla’s robber fly was there, hovering just
above the cliffs.

Panic gripped the man. “What is this?
An incursion?” He swiveled abruptly on his scooter, doing an about
face. “Your kind are not allowed here!” An unseen engine clicked
and whined as he accelerated back in the direction from whence he
had come. Ubaldo raised his bow and aimed it carefully, tracking
his progress, leading him just enough.

Olivier shoved the bow aside. “Let him
go. Maybe he can lead us back to his nest.”

Chapter 63:
Loomis

Ubaldo fished a carved wooden device
from the depths of his poncho-like garment, apparently some kind of
polyphonic whistle.

“
I should call the bugs?”
he said.

“
Nah. Not just yet,” said
Olivier. “Let’s go a little farther on foot. Maybe we can sneak up
on this Loomis place.”

“
We will need at least one
beetle to carry the column,” said Solomon.

“
Well go get ‘em. We do
what we have to,” said Olivier.

Georg went cliff-side to call Rhino
back from the beach where he had gone down to forage with the other
bugs. Rhino came flying up dutifully and we strapped the cracker
column to his carapace while Georg fed him some of the slop he had
salvaged from the cisterns on the boat.

By the time we got going, the man on
the scooter was well out of sight but we could still hear him
whirring along somewhere over the next rise. Ubaldo walked point as
usual with Karla and I right behind him. Olivier, Georg and Solomon
followed behind Rhino. A case could be made that our sad little
expeditionary force was indeed some sort of avant-garde
micro-circus. I sure felt like a clown.

Karla kept offering her hand for me to
take. I obliged her only because it was the path of least
resistance and I did not want to cause a scene. But I dropped it
every time I found a reasonable excuse, tightening the straps on my
bundle, scratching my nose, whatever.

I was pretty sure by now that the rift
between us would be permanent, though Karla was still all smiley
and coy, acting like it was some minor and temporary disturbance.
Knowing that my life was ebbing on the other side only made things
worse.

I kept gazing back at the shore hoping
to see Urszula and Mikal returning, but the sky remained remarkably
empty, considering all of the flying contraptions the Pennies had
sent with their invasion force.

Rhino never flagged, but his progress
was slow. Three legs pivoted at a time, hoisting his body and
payload, thrusting them forward. It was kind of like watching NASA
transport a rocket booster to a launching pad with one of those
ultra-slow tractors. No way would we ever catch up with the scooter
guy at this rate, but at least we had a fix on what direction he
was going.

We had absolutely no warning of what
would reveal itself over the next rise. The landscape was too green
to call barren or desolate, but it was certainly under-populated.
But when we topped the hill, at first I thought were looking at a
mountain, a very jagged and glaciated mountain, full of icy spires
and splintered bergs. But there was an order and regularity to the
design that told us this was a creation of humans.

The city (or domain) of Loomis was
arranged as neatly as a crystal. Layer upon layer of orderly
polyhedrons rose in tier from a bedrock base riddled with uniform
grottoes carved into the stone. The structures ranged from
low-slung villas with little gardens to pale skyscrapers that
seemed carved of ice or frosted glass. The tallest had jagged roofs
that stabbed at the heavens like sword points. Their shadowed
facets were tinged with blue and green highlights, like the seams
of an ancient glacier.

A ring of lakes like a moat lie
between us and the bulge of hill that held the city proper.
Paddocks crammed with strange sheep-like creatures cross-hatched
the slope leading down to the lakes. Something about their blunt
snouts and big, sad, sentient eyes spooked me. These were not
ordinary sheep.