Red Sun Also Rises, A (32 page)

I gritted my teeth. I had a score to settle!

The rocky terrain flattened into broad savannah. Herds of animals moved far below us—most, it appeared, fleeing from predators. Off to our left, I saw eight Yarkeen drifting slowly over a patch of forest, their tendril-like appendages ripping at the foliage.

We flew at a terrific speed. The air, which now held the odour of burned toast, whistled past my ears. As far as I was able to estimate—though I must admit that by now my sense of time was almost entirely lost—it took us less than two Earth days to cover the same distance that the Ptall’kor had required perhaps months to traverse.

We landed just once. Clarissa, the colonel, and I stretched and worked the kinks out of our shoulders, ate a light meal, then rested for a short period before Gallokomas ordered the flock back into the air.

More savannah, then the Mountains That Gaze Upon Phenadoor rose over the horizon, silhouetted black against the harsh purple sunset. The terrain became increasingly familiar to me. The Yatsill farms slid into view.

“Let’s set down in the fields,” I shouted to Gallokomas. “We should take a look at the nurseries.”

While the rest of the flock circled overhead, my companions and I spiralled down and came to rest beside one of the papery structures. The Zull and Mi’aata both hastily backed away from it.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Gallokomas moaned.

“Dashed uncomfortable, what!” Spearjab agreed. “Familiar, though, I must say. Harrumph!”

“You’re repulsed by the nursery,” I noted. “Excellent!”

Gallokomas twitched his mandibles. “Excellent, Thing? Why excellent?”

“Because if you’re made uneasy, then the nursery must be occupied.”

“Ah, I see. It is very queer, this aversion.”

I gripped a fold that served as the structure’s door and eased it open. Moist heat was expelled from within. Squinting into the darkness, I saw a crowd of Yatsill squatting motionlessly, apparently asleep, though their fingers were moving incessantly.

“The children are safe,” I told the others. “This is very good news. When the yellow suns rise, they’ll make their migration to the Cavern of Immersion. Some will be made Aristocrats. They’ll transmit a degree of intelligence to the rest, and in generations to come, as the Mi’aata and Zull populations are slowly restored, so too there’ll be more seed parasites, until, at some point in the future, all the Yatsill young will play host to them, and the life cycle will be healthy again.”

“Which means we must never again return to this area,” Clarissa commented. “When this lot are made Aristocrats, I don’t want them delving into my mind and overreaching themselves like their forebears did. This new generation will be free of Pretty Wahine and must also be free of me.”

After we’d checked on two more nurseries and found them similarly well stocked, Gallokomas and Colonel Spearjab rejoined the circling flock while Clarissa and I flew out over the devastated city.

The campfires were still burning on the fifth level. We made our way down to them, gliding above the awful rubble and mud until we reached the flat space where the Koluwaians and surviving Yatsill had gathered. They greeted us as we landed, and Baron Hammer Thewflex—
sans
mask—and Kata pushed their way to the front of the crowd.

“Hallo! Hallo!” the baron exclaimed. “You’re back, hey! Indeed you are!”

“Hello, Baron,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.” I addressed the Koluwaian. “Kata, we’ve come to take you and your fellow Servants away. We can’t allow you to remain here as food for the Blood Gods.”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Good show!” the baron exclaimed. “I think the bally invasion is over, old chap, but of course the fiends will return after the Saviour’s Eyes have looked upon us once more. Take the Servants, by all means. The poor things have been very unhappy since the city was destroyed.”

“And you, sir? What will you and your fellows do?”

Thewflex removed his top hat—careful not to catch it on his curling horns—and brushed dust from it. He waved it at the ruins. “We cannot rebuild here. No indeed! Even if we cleared away the debris, the land itself has slipped. I have it in mind to settle at the edge of the jungle on the other side of the farms. It’s not too far from the sea, and there are still a few Quee’tan in the trees. Perhaps we could capture the jolly old things and breed them. What do you think about that, hey?”

Clarissa said, “It sounds like a very good idea, Baron.”

Thewflex looked down toward the sea, where many of the Working Class were still frolicking in the water near the shore. “Perhaps if enough of the children are made Aristocrats, we’ll be able to restore some wits to that confounded rabble.”

We talked for a little longer, then bade the Yatsill farewell and led the Koluwaians up and out of the bay. Gallokomas and the colonel floated down to greet us. I drew Kata aside and said, “Each of you must decide whether to remain on Ptallaya or go through the hole in the sky to Koluwai. Those who choose to stay will be taken to the land near the Zull eyries. It is fertile and wooded and the Zull are very kind. They’ll help you to build a village and you’ll be able to live in peace.”

She nodded slowly and put her hands up to cover her heart. “And for those who’d rather go to the other world, sir?”

“We’ll try to send them, but I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. I should warn you, too, that the Blood Gods pose a danger to Koluwai. If we fail to stop them, the population of the islands will become their prey.”

“I will talk to my people.”

The islanders gathered together. It didn’t take them long to reach a decision. Kata returned to us and reported that the entire group had elected to remain on Ptallaya.

“None who arrived here from Koluwai remains, Mr. Fleischer. We were all born on Ptallaya. It is our true home, despite the traditions.”

I placed a hand on her shoulder. “I think you’ve made the right choice. Gather food from the farms. Eat, then rest a while. We have a long journey ahead.”

We didn’t linger for long. The Heart of Blood was almost two-thirds sunk and time was running out. Shortly after the Koluwaians had filled their stomachs, the Zull flock descended and picked them up. We raced back to Thoomra.

The islanders were deposited a little to the west of the eyries, among the rolling hills and verdant forest. A large number of Zull remained with them and immediately set to work building houses in the trees and clearing land for vegetable farms. The rest of us continued on and found the eyries buzzing with activity. Thousands of Zull had gathered and weapons were being distributed among them. These “frequency cannons” had two parts. The first resembled a long straight tube. From the rear end of this, coiled cables stretched to the second, a box—ornate, in typical Zull fashion—with dials on its top and a plunger-like handle projecting from its side. To operate the device, one Zull balanced the tube on his shoulder and aimed it, while another, wearing the box strapped against his stomach, took readings and pressed the plunger to fix the sound output at the appropriate frequency.

Pistols, the same as those given to Clarissa and me, were also much in evidence.

I estimated that we had the equivalent of at least twenty-four hours to spare, so we returned to our house, where Colonel Spearjab immediately plunged into his bath and began to snore.

“He has the right idea,” I said. “We should sleep.”

Clarissa looked at me strangely.

“What is it?” I asked.

She stepped closer and rested her hands on my chest.

“You’ll really join the fighting?”

“Yes, of course. Our world is threatened.”

“Our world? Is it? I feel we belong here now. I don’t want to go back.”

My heart began to race.

“No. No, Clarissa. You’re right. I don’t want to return to Earth either. Nevertheless, we can’t allow it to be invaded.”

“But when the conflict is done, we can settle here, with the Zull?”

I thought about the man I’d been when she’d arrived on my doorstep, and recalled my parochial little vicarage in Theaston Vale with its dusty library and stultifying dullness. It filled me with disdain. It felt far more alien to me now than this world of three suns and bizarre creatures.

I put my hands over hers. “Yes, we can make our home here.”

“Together.”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

She sighed. “What you said.”

“Said?”

“When we were escaping from Phenadoor.”

I tried to respond but found myself unable to speak.

Clarissa smiled.

“I love you, too, Aiden Fleischer.” She leaned forward and put her lips to mine, then took me by the hand and led me into her room.

Clarissa was already awake, nestled against my shoulder, when I opened my eyes.

“You are most definitely not the man who answered the door to me all that time ago,” she whispered.

“You’re a fine one to talk,” I said drowsily. “Look at you!”

She giggled, and, after stretching a shapely leg into the air, sat up. “My metamorphosis is cosmetic, Aiden. As is yours—” Turning, she ran her fingers across the muscles of my stomach. “But with you there’s something more. A far deeper change.”

The last vestiges of sleep cleared. I propped myself up onto my elbows and looked into her startling eyes.

After a moment of thought, I said, “Cain and Abel.”

One of her eyebrows arched at this unanticipated turn in the conversation, creasing the skin around the little bump above it.

I went on, “It’s said that evil begets evil. I’ve always believed that, but it caused a crisis of faith in me, for, as you once pointed out, if you trace evil back to its source, you can’t stop at Cain but must continue on to God.”

“And how can we worship a God who’s capable of evil?” Clarissa responded.

“We can’t. And as the creation of one who begets evil, would we not all be Jekylls, liable to transform into Hydes at any moment?”

She suddenly blinked rapidly, gave a small exclamation, and said, “Gallokomas has just arrived on our terrace.”

The Zull’s voice sounded from my wrist. “Fleischer Thing!”

I pressed the tattoo and said, “Yes, Gallokomas?”

“The flock is gathering. Will you and your companions prepare yourselves, please?”

“Very well. We’ll be with you in a moment.”

Clarissa and I got up. She entered the washroom while I went to alert the colonel. When I rejoined her, I continued our conversation. “The Quintessence offered a solution to the dilemma. It suggested that, rather than being a product of God, evil is an entirely equal and opposite power.”

She wiped her face with a towel and gave a disdainful snort. “That doesn’t surprise me at all, Aiden. The Quintessence considers itself perfect. It makes the Mi’aata slaves to a moribund society in which all construction is nothing but pointless repetition. True creativity is suppressed. The trinity is blind to the iniquity of such a system. For the Quintessence, wrongdoing always comes from an exterior source, never from itself.”

“Which is why I can’t give credence to the notion of opposing deities,” I replied. “It makes of us a battleground and allows us to disavow all responsibility for what happens.”

We finished washing and re-entered the bedroom where we began to dress.

“Nor does it answer the essential question,” I continued. “Which is, if God didn’t create evil, what did? Something else? Do we now have to deny that God is the creator of all things? No, it won’t do.”

I buckled on my flight harness, feeling the comfortable weight of the pistol on my right hip and the sword on my left.

“What then, Aiden?”

“A chain of logic. If God is the epitome of good, there can be no evil in Him. If all things spring from Him, then they, too, must be comprised wholly of good. Therefore, evil is not a thing.”

“Have you forgotten London? Jack the Ripper was unquestionably evil!”

“We have to make a semantic transmutation. We must say, instead, that Jack the Ripper was catastrophically lacking in goodness.”

My companion scrutinized me thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said, slowly. “Yes. I see the implication. Altering the perspective suggests a richer purpose to the business of living.”