The Exodus Towers (56 page)

No one had spoken since the object came into view. Ana was frozen in her seat next to him. He could feel the presence of Pablo and Vanessa over his shoulder as they crowded the small cockpit to see forward.

Several kilometers in front of them, nestled between two picturesque rolling hills, was a perfect dome. The half sphere was purple in color, opaque, and had a milky pearlescent sheen that rippled and swam across its surface like some shifting reflection of the cloudy sky, banded in ephemeral rainbow hues. It looked like a giant blob of purple liquid held inside a soap bubble shell.

“Land here,” Pablo said. The sound of his voice, even with the constant roar of the engines, made Skyler jump.

Ana cleared her throat. “Good idea.”

Skyler sat motionless. An answer formed and died on his lips. He couldn’t bring himself to look away from the massive purple globe. It had to be at least three hundred meters high, he thought, as the top of it seemed level with
La Gaza Ladra
’s nose. From this distance he couldn’t decide if it was solid like steel, or as thin as glass.

“What … God, what is that thing?” Vanessa asked.

The scar left by the towers’ passage across the landscape led straight into the center of the sphere. On instinct he raised
the aircraft another hundred meters, revealing more of the dome’s base. Soon the tips of black towers became visible. The objects were spaced evenly at the edge of the dome where it met the ground, their bases half-submerged inside the purple orb.

“No idea,” Skyler said, his voice hoarse. He swallowed again and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Whatever it is, at least we’ve found the towers.”

“One group, anyway,” Ana said.

“What now?” Vanessa asked.

Skyler flexed his fingers on the throttle. “Tania and Karl would want us to turn back, report what we’ve found.” He felt his three crew mates, his friends, staring at him. “I think I want to take a look around.”

Ana sighed in relief, and he heard murmured agreement from Pablo and Vanessa.

The sound of engines under strain finally tugged him back to the business at hand. He dipped the nose and turned in a slow circle. The landscape below consisted of rolling golden fields of overgrown weeds, laced with dense forests of impossibly green trees. It reminded him of the Azores, except there was no coastline nearby. The hills seemed to stretch out forever. Here and there he saw signs of small towns and villages peeking above the hills and forests.

Nearby he spotted a wide field more flat than most, with a barn and small house on one corner and a dirt road that led off into the nearby trees. With no better option in sight, Skyler descended and set the aircraft down in tall grass that bent over in rippling circles as the plane neared the ground. He aimed the nose of the plane uphill, took a breath, and killed the engines. The screen before him indicated a capacitor level of 80 percent.

“It’s almost dusk,” he said to the others. Pablo and Vanessa had not bothered to return to the cabin for landing. “Let’s clear that house and barn, and use it for shelter while we’re here. Nothing against the Magpie, but I’m getting sick of sleeping in here.”

They mumbled agreement, their disappointment clear. As
bizarre and terrifying as the alien dome was, they wanted to explore it now.

“We’ll hike out to that bubble first thing in the morning,” he added. “If there’s any of those armored bastards lurking out there, I’d rather face them after some solid sleep and a good meal.”

“I could find us some fresh meat,” Pablo offered.

“Good, do it. Stay nearby if you don’t mind, until we’ve got a sense of this place. Vanessa? I’d like you to prep our gear for the morning, and make sure the Magpie is locked up tight. Ireland’s a big place compared to San Miguel, and I don’t want anyone or anything sneaking in here while we’re asleep.”

“I’ll just stay in here,” she offered. “I don’t mind. Those chairs are as comfortable as any bed when reclined.”

“Okay,” Skyler said. “Ana, let’s check out that cottage.”

With dawn came a brief summer shower, before brilliant sunlight banished the clouds.

Skyler woke, stretched, and stood. He and Ana had slept on the floor of the small home’s common room. A quaint space with wooden wainscoting and antique furniture.

A pair of corpses lay in an infinite embrace in the one bedroom. Two skeletons under a blanket, their arms about each other and their foreheads touching. Ana had wept at the sight and broke into quiet sobs a few more times throughout the evening. He’d tried to hold her in the darkness that night, but she’d turned away, said it didn’t seem right. Skyler had not argued, but after her breathing became deep and even, he reached out and held her hand. The elderly couple in that room affected him only a little. He’d come across similar situations hundreds of times. Well after midnight he realized the scene might have reminded her of the first time they’d seen each other. The courtyard in Belém, where she’d danced with total abandon for the world around her, in front of an audience of two skeletons locked in an embrace, with Skyler hiding in the shadows.

She’d tried to shoot him for that. In the dark Skyler took his earlobe between two fingers and rubbed it where the bullet’s
wake had tickled the skin. A few more centimeters over and everything would be different now.

When Skyler stepped outside he saw the flicker of firelight coming from the barn. Pablo waved at him when he entered and handed him a plate of roast hen and some potatoes grilled with a heavy dust of garlic powder. Before Skyler could say thanks, a mug of coffee was shoved into his hand and he raised it in cheers. Pablo nodded and returned to the portable stove.

Vanessa emerged from
La Gaza Ladra
a little later, and without being asked she went into the house and woke Ana. Skyler had been caught between his desire to let the girl sleep and his burning interest in the alien dome. Waking Ana was not something he ever looked forward to doing, and when the two women entered the barn he gave Vanessa a quick wink.

As if some pact had been made, no one spoke all morning. Fed and caffeinated, Skyler stood first and went to the aircraft. The others trailed in behind him and began to strap on their gear. Skyler opted for a light, comfortable load: his compact rifle with grenade launcher, a Sonton pistol, and a light backpack stocked with a medical kit and one day’s water and food.

The others took their cues from him and equipped similarly.

Ana powered up the cockpit and tried the comm before departing. It had become one of her daily tasks to try to raise the colony as Karl had requested. As of yet, they’d heard nothing, and assumed their transmissions fell on deaf ears in turn. Still, she rattled off a message giving the location of their landing, the presence of the purple bubble, and the fact that the crew was setting off to investigate it now.

“If we run into any of those armored subs,” Skyler said as the team set out, “we retreat. Understood? We come back here and bring the big guns with us next time. Today is just a scouting mission, nothing more.”

No one debated him. They were all staring at the purple hemisphere on the horizon.

Up close, the presence of the object made Skyler’s breath catch in his throat.

It defied description. He’d look at part of it and imagined it as a diamond-hard mass, as if some alien moon had suddenly winked into existence on this field in Ireland. Then he’d glance at another portion and imagine that he could reach out and pop the thing with his fingernail.

The four immunes stood side by side on the path carved by the purple-lit aura towers, perhaps a hundred meters from the dome.

“What now?” Vanessa asked.

“Let’s just,” Skyler said, “watch, for a bit.”

Pablo took a long draw from his canteen. The pleasant warmth of the day had worn out its welcome after an hour of marching in combat gear. Skyler took a swig of his own and poured a little on his head.

“That thing,” Ana said, with a nod toward the dome, as if anyone might doubt what she was looking at, “it’s so simple. Beautiful. It terrifies me. I think I’d rather face that fog in Belém, and the dark ones.”

Vanessa nodded agreement.

No one spoke for a time. Skyler began to notice flecks of slightly darker areas in the dome’s coloration. He leaned to one side and then the other, and decided it wasn’t an illusion. The small dark patches were inside the dome, not on its surface.

“Someone else has been here,” Pablo said suddenly, in his deadpan way.

Everyone looked at him. Pablo crouched down, focused on the ground in front of him. He pointed. “Campfire.”

Skyler crouched next to it and studied the charred wood. The blackened remnants were waterlogged, and crumbled into an ash mulch in his fingers. “It’s old,” he said. “But not that old. Months old, a year maybe. An immune, then.” He felt a tingle along his arms, and felt the queer sensation of being watched.

“Okay,” Skyler said. “Let’s walk around the perimeter. Maybe there’s a … door or something.”

A bird called overhead. Skyler looked up in time to see
the small black creature fly overhead, straight into the side of the dome. He winced, expecting it to crumple and fall down the curved side as if it had hit a plate-glass window. Instead the purple surface dented inward like a balloon. The pearlescent sheen formed a rainbow swirl around the indent.

The indent warped and, with a sudden pop, returned to its original shape. Skyler caught a faint ripple of rainbow light along the surface of the dome, fading as it radiated outward.

The bird vanished inside.

The whole thing had lasted a fraction of a second. Skyler glanced at his companions, only to find them all still focused on the campfire. “Did you see that?” he asked them.

Ana looked up first, a puzzled expression on her face.

“A bird,” Skyler said. He chuckled. “It was a magpie, I think. It just flew in. It pushed through and went inside.”

“Magpie?” Ana asked. “A good omen.”

Skyler walked closer, until he stood five meters from the dome.

The others hadn’t moved. “Not too close, Sky!” Ana called out.

He leaned, picked up a rock, and tossed it underhand at the milky purple wall in front of him.

The rock clapped against the side as if it had hit solid marble, and fell to the ground with a soft thud.

“What the hell?” Skyler walked closer and reached out his hand.

“Be careful …,” Ana said from behind him.

When his fingertips brushed the surface, Skyler felt a tingle of cold rush up his arm, followed instantly by the sensation of heat. The pattern repeated like some resonating frequency, and when taken as a whole felt pleasant. He watched in fascination as the dome’s surface bent inward. A growing ring of rainbow refraction stretched outward along the purple face. He tried to pause his hand but couldn’t. The current of cold and warm pulses filled his entire body, and his mind seemed to turn to mush. Thoughts mixed, until one was indiscernible from the other. The ring of rainbow light continued to grow as if his finger had touched a star and sent it into a supernova explosion.

I should stop. I should stop. I should stop
.

He must have been repeating that thought because it seemed to crop up among all the thousand others that swam through his mind, as milky as the surface of the dome. His brain told him the dome was enveloping him. That he’d already entered the place. That he was still outside. All seemed valid and without contradiction.

Some thoughts began to stretch on and on, played back in some ultra-slow motion. Shapes before his eyes began to hover in place. He tried to look down at his feet and found his head would only move a millimeter at a time.

The slow thoughts began to multiply. They pushed against his mind as if fighting a war against the parts of his mind that wanted to work correctly. The slow thoughts became the norm, the tables turned. Suddenly he found there were corners of his mind working in overdrive, unleashing a dizzying avalanche of ideas, memories, and desires. They raced and raced until they blurred into infinity.

Then all at once everything rushed back into normalcy.

He was inside, and felt as if someone had been spinning him in circles for a week straight, and then rolled him through a pasta press. A wave of nausea drove him to his knees. Cold sweat erupted from every pore on his body. All Skyler could do was stare at the purple-tinged dirt and shiver while the reaction passed.

A minute later he rose to his feet, stumbled, and righted himself. He found it hard to breathe. The air smelled of ozone and felt humid and still around him, like Darwin on the worst of days. He turned and glanced back the way he’d come. Or, the way he thought he’d come. Everything behind him looked the same. A dark, purple wall that ended a few meters away from him, evenly colored. No milky rainbow sheen. No bands of light and dark shades. He could see where it met the soil a few meters away, and yet when he looked straight ahead the purple barrier seemed as far away as the horizon. There was no hint of the outside, no way to see his friends, to see Ana. He waved anyway, in case they could detect some hint of him within the dome.