The Sigian Bracelet Page 19

  A giant Antyran in front of the pack had the best chance of winning the great prize. One step… another one… He’d reach him in a moment. But then something weird happened: at his next step, the floor gave way as if a crevice had opened under his feet!

  The perplexed Antyran found himself a good fifty feet in the air, near the ceiling, and the cries of horror trailing from above while he was tumbling down, although not consoling, were a hint that he wasn’t falling alone.

  A cascade of twisted bodies opened in front of Gill, the last ones landing on top of their companions. At least three or four survived the fall, groaning in pain.

  Looking angrily at the tarjis who came inside after the first pack, Gill roared like a wounded guval. Seeing the pile of Antyrans lying motionless in front of the mad archivist, they screamed in terror and ran out of the building, pushing aside the ones who were trying to enter through the broken door.

  He was able to move again, freed from the invisible shackles—and it looked like he was left alone. Or maybe not, he had to admit grudgingly after he noticed the silhouettes of three Antyrans on the high gallery around the distribution floor, watching his moves from above. He looked at them, astounded by their boldness, but he quickly realized they were a different tail altogether—most likely trained killers from the Zhan’s Children coria. They wore headphones glued on their gills, on which they were feverishly reporting what they witnessed.

  Why didn’t they flee for their lives? Reckless Antyrans… Without wasting any more time, he walked toward the two closer ones who were standing near the top of the stairs. Seeing this, they both pulled their weapons. To his surprise, they were not inductors, but lasers.

  “Don’t let him get away!” the third agent screamed from the aisle behind him. “Shoot him in the legs!”

  A blurry haze covered his eyes, and Gill knew, more than he felt, that his hearts were close to bursting. He saw them aiming at his feet, but at the same time, he perceived the painful expansion of the time continuum flowing throughout his whole body. Suddenly, the assassins started to move ridiculously slowly; he looked around for something useful—he felt he had enough time even for a nap—and spotted a long, solid pipe on the floor, a fragment from a destroyed jet.

  He pulled the space to grab one of its ends, and in the same fluid move, he jumped thirty feet up to reach the edge of the pool. Still in the air, he made a step sideways to land on the aisle, not far from the attackers. His speed was faster than the shadow of a nifle,54 and the agents couldn’t see more than a flash of color.

  Before they had time to figure out his intentions, Gill hit the air with the pipe in his hands while he was still some fifty feet from them. The Antyrans expected many things, but nothing prepared them for what followed: the bar savagely smote the head of the agent to the right, for Gill had deformed the space to ensure his skull was on the pipe’s trajectory. The agent flew a couple of feet, tumbled over the railings, and crashed with a thud on the floor as Gill made another two huge leaps, passing behind the other Antyran.

  The second agent knew all too well what was about to happen, but nevertheless, he felt obliged to put up a fight. Trying to guess the archivist’s next attack, he turned swiftly to the left, gazed Gill from the corner of his eye, and leaped back to fend off what he thought was another invisible assault. The unfortunate move would cost him his life; he fell through a distortion trap that transported him some thirty feet above the aisle. He fell right over the handrail, broke his spine, and rolled another thirty feet to land facedown on the hard floor of the distribution center.

  The last Antyran slowly drew his weapon, but he lost Gill from his sight. He hopelessly spun on his heels trying to find him, but the archivist made a couple of long jumps to stay out of sight. Gill landed quietly on the aisle forty feet behind the agent; he pulled the space between them, and with a loud groan, he struck him as hard as he could.

  At first, the agent felt only a vague numbness, but when he looked down, he saw one end of the pipe coming out of a horrible gash on the right side of his belly. Gill released the space along with the pipe, which remained stuck in the Antyran like a thorn in a fleshy licant. The assassin dropped his laser lens and fell to his knees. Without a word, he collapsed on the floor in convulsions. The last thing he saw before darkness engulfed him was Gill’s merciless gaze, which had nothing of an Antyran anymore. It was Arghail, who won again.

  The fight was over before it even started. The tarjis didn’t rise to Baila’s expectations. Gill grinned, imagining the Prophet’s disappointment. Well, if they had no intention of coming into the dome after him, he was going to bring the fight to them outside. The last charge of the Sigians! A few more piles of bodies and he could join his long-gone friends in the shadows. They would no doubt be proud of how he fought for their world!

  On his way out, he looked at his hands, puzzled; they were covered in blisters. At first, he didn’t understand how it happened, but then he realized the pipe must have been hot and burned his skin. In his rage, he didn’t even notice this small detail.

  He walked into the street nonchalantly, as if nothing happened, even though he was feeling like a compressed spring, ready to start the madness all over again. The tarjis, however, were waiting at a healthy distance from him, not at all keen to share the fate of their companions.

  The ephemeral peace was shattered by the whistling reactors of two air-jets hovering above the domes. If he didn’t approach the barriers, the barriers were coming for him.

  Just as he concluded that there was no way to avoid the inductors on the air-jets, his eyes were drawn to a manhole several feet from him, its cover blown away by the blasts. Why didn’t he think of it earlier? The network of magnets running under the streets! He had no clue how he would handle the darkness below, but he had a strong suspicion that anywhere would be better than where he was now!

  Before the jets could raise their black spheres, he pulled the space and fell into the manhole, along its metal stairs. As expected, the landing was rough. He rolled a couple of times in the mud, but at least this time his knees managed to stay away from his ruined face. He stood up and hurried into the darkness, running on the plastoceramic grill that covered the stinky ditch of the city’s sewage system.

  As he moved deeper into the tunnel, the light was fading quickly. He had to touch the huge pipe holding the magnets to move forward, not exactly the best way to run away from the tarjis.

  After a few more steps, the darkness became too thick to see anything. He was again feeling the desperation growing inside his kyi, but after a left turn, he saw a glimmer of light in the distance.

  The light couldn’t be coming from the tarjis. Thanks to the firewall, flashlights weren’t readily available on the Antyran worlds—it was hard to believe they could get their hands on some on such short notice.

  When he approached the source of light, he realized that the glow came from none other than the ubiquitous purple bacteria of the Antyran atmosphere! Attracted by moist and warm places, it created a muddy, bioluminescent film around the pipe fittings. He should have expected this because they loved moisture more than anything and had the nice habit of growing in the most unwelcome places. Antyrans had used them since antiquity to find the damp spots in their domes, lately using ultraviolet lasers to search for their colonies.

  Obviously, the sewage system was the perfect place for them to take over and multiply. He remembered the childhood stories about the cold fires lighting the vats of the water-treatment plants built under the cities. Of course, Gill didn’t know for sure if they were true or not because the few who had the courage to enter there—namely, the sewage workers—did nothing to deny them, whereas the others steered clear55 from the tubes.

  With all the comfort brought by the feeble patch of light, it wasn’t much of a help. Yet, in spite of his rush to run away from the tarjis, he couldn’t force himself to leave it and sink again into the cold darkness.

  Driven by a sudden sniff of inspiration, he
touched the colony and saw, delighted, how his fingers became glowing purple. Trying to ignore the awful smell, he spread the sticky paste on his tunic. Once the whole patch of slime had been moved to its new home, his clothes were shining so nicely he could find his way around much easier.

  Not far from there, he found a second and then a third patch, both larger than the first one. Soon, he was giving off enough light that he could even run in the tunnel without fearing that he might smack his head on a wall!

  At the next bifurcation, he changed his direction toward the city center, after which he changed it again to the left. Now he was running along a massive pipeline to the west.

  After about an hour, he decided he had enough stink lodged in his nostrils to last him for a lifetime. Without thinking too much, he climbed to the surface on one of the metallic stairways. He cautiously looked around to make sure the place was deserted, and then he crawled out of the manhole, fixing the cover in place to leave no clues for the temples. He was near a magnetic bridge at the western outskirts, close to the fields where the gods had landed.

  Pushed by a burning impulse, he ran to the place where the Rigulian ship had landed, following the trails left by the hordes of tarjis. The deserted fields gave him hope that he wouldn’t be spotted, but on the other tail, the lack of tarjis could only mean the aliens had left…

  Gill reached the middle of the field. The huge square was surrounded by ritual bowls, a few of them still smoldering. As he suspected, the Federals were gone. Nothing suggested that the Rigulian envoys had once passed through there.

  He fell on his knees, drained of energy. He knew he had to leave quickly to avoid being detected by the space platforms. However, he had no idea where he could hide from the billion Antyrans smelling his tracks…

  ***

  “Great Baila, the news isn’t good,” said the hesitant voice of the freshly minted ratrap to Baila’s hologram.

  “What do you mean, Harut? Explain it to me because I don’t understand. You have millions of tarjis under your command. Are you saying you were unable to get him?”

  “A… a… Your Greatness, he hid in the sewerage system,” Harut mumbled.

  “So? What are you waiting for? Go after him!”

  “Your Greatness,” babbled Harut, bowing his head, “I gave the order but… they hesitate. It’s… dark in there!”

  “Harut, are they afraid of Gillabrian?” Baila said in his trademark falsely gentle voice, which obviously didn’t bode well for Harut. “More afraid than of Zhan’s fury?” he screamed, boiling in rage. “And mine?”

  “Your Greatness, without lights, we can’t find him. He could be anywhere; he can hit us as he wishes! He’s in Arghail’s nest! I’ve heard terrible stories. We’re fighting a monst—”

  “Well,” Baila interrupted him impatiently, “how long does it take to bring lights?”

  “We’re searching, Your Greatness, but till today, we didn’t know what night was. We don’t have li—”

  “Harut, make sure you guard the manholes.”

  Harut shouted several orders to the initiates around, and then he turned to Baila’s hologram.

  “There are many manholes; it will take time to find all—”

  “Move quickly! Anyway, I don’t think he will hide there. I know exactly where he’s heading. I want you to aim the space platforms on the western fields, where we met the… gods. I’m sure Gillabrian wants to greet them in the flesh,” he said, grinning broadly.

  “I see, Your Greatness! I’ll send the chameleons and the air-jets after him!”

  “Make sure he won’t escape this time. I don’t think I can bear any more bad news, ratrap,” he said in an icy voice.

  ***

  Gill’s attention was drawn by the nearby spaceport, where two large ships were taking off with a deafening noise. For a brief moment, the orange flames of the fusion engines shone brighter than a hundred stars in the middle of the day, blinding him. The sound was so intense it would have killed anyone near the launch pad. Other ships were neatly aligned on the loading ramp. He spotted one with its belly open, apparently awaiting its cargo. No one was around, not even the cargo handlers—which was understandable, given the takeoffs.

  Maybe the ships were flying to meet the gods in orbit? Or rescue the tarjis from Antyra II? Wherever they went, they were the best hiding place in the world. What sane Antyran would have the tail to hide from the temples right in the middle of their army?

  He walked near the spaceport’s fence, hidden in the tall grass. Even though he could cross it without problems, he had to be careful not to be spotted by the guards. But since the first brilliant thing that the temples surely did was to delete the artificial intelligences, the most formidable defenses of the spaceport were a thing of the past.

  He made sure that the place was still deserted and that no other ship was about to take off before he pulled a rectangle from above the fence. He stepped inside it and found himself falling to the ground. In the middle of the free fall, he pulled another area from above the ground and landed near a pile of boxes. I’m getting better and better with this! he thought, delighted that he didn’t break his face. Another step and he reached a half-full trailer. The next jump carried him right into the open belly of the space carrier.

  Gill walked into the cargo bay, which seemed to be full of weapons and crates. This didn’t smell good, and not only due to his stinky tunic, still dripping with slimy bacteria. Who goes on a rescue mission taking the entire Antyran arsenal with him? Well, it made no sense to tire his kyi too much on the subject because he couldn’t turn back anyway.

  It was easy to jump around unnoticed because the soldiers were staying in their cabins at the front of the ship. He jumped to a higher floor to sniff the food stores.

  After the last boxes were pushed and anchored inside the ship, he heard the huge rear hatch closing. Soon, the ship sprang into the sky with a mighty roar. They took off to an unknown destination, saving Gill from the prophet and his huge army of tarjis.

  CHAPTER 9.

  The red starlight quivered, reflected by the myriads of sloughs formed in the muddy ground of the forest—a clue that it had rained that morning. It was a wholly unremarkable occurrence because in the subarctic region of the road-making planet-ship, the rain was falling right after star-rise with clockwork precision.

  The rolling creature tried hard to take advantage of the morning breeze, which was blowing with enough strength to dimple the sloughs, to get some extra propulsion. Its shape resembled a pinwheel, largely due to its shell made up of wide scales. These scales rose like little sails when they reached the upper side, the most exposed to the airflow, to catch the wind. Even stranger than the rest of its anatomy were the two pairs of tentacles, holding its telescopic eyes. They stretched sideways to allow it to see while rolling over the rugged terrain.

  The reason for its mad tumbling followed at close distance: a hungry manax56 had tracked the “wheel” for some time, moving as fast as it could over the rotten trunks collapsed on the forest floor.

  Despite the advantage of the wind, the red pinwheel managed to get stuck between two rotten sponges. For a few seconds, it tried desperately to keep spinning, but the only result was to further entwine its scales with the putrid debris around it. Running out of choices, the wheel extended its body to reveal an aquatic creature loosely resembling an Antyran warhok.57

  The creature crawled backward over the fallen trunks, but after a few steps, it stopped again. This time, no matter how hard it scratched, it couldn’t push the obstacle blocking its retreat—because it was a solid wall. The hunter, sensing that its prey was finally cornered, jumped forward.

  The pseudo-warhok tried to fight back by clamping its beak menacingly. Unfazed by this little demonstration of aggressiveness, the manax extended its long, transparent tongue and speared the soft abdomen of the creature. It quickly injected a green poison, which paralyzed the poor victim. Breakfast was served.

  In the swamps—
as a matter of fact, on the whole planet—there were no trees. The grass, however, grew very tall, sometimes reaching three hundred feet in height. All kinds of plants or plantlike creatures took shelter under their broad, fleshy blades. Most of them were huge, spongy spore colonies, mixed with myriads of vines that climbed high on the giant grass trunks. Countless colored fruits hung from the vines—the main staple of the creatures living in the weird forest.

  The wall where the unlucky pseudo-warhok found its demise was a bit more than a simple trunk of grass. It wasn’t a sponge, either, nor anything else of biological origin. It was hard to notice this detail when walking through the forest because its base was covered by a green carpet of spores and vines.

  As the structure went upward, it passed the tip of the tallest grasses and crawled into the sky to the dizzying height of one and a half miles. From up there, it didn’t look anything like a wall, but a giant tower—a whole city built in a single building. And it wasn’t alone in the jungle, for several others could be seen at the horizon. The towers, even though similar in size, were topped with either urban jungles of needle-sharp skyscrapers or gray, puffing balls joined by a maze of silver piping. One of the farthest towers was topped by huge spheres flanked by thousand-foot-tall chimneys exhaling threads of purplish smoke into the planet’s sky. All the tower settlements were connected by transparent tubes suspended in the air at over six thousand feet above the jungle, without any pillars to sustain their weight.

  The meeting room was located at the top of one of the tallest buildings. Eight beings sat around a huge, polished stone, black as the hearts of the night. Six of them, although belonging to the same species, had the wildest height differences imaginable; any Antyran would have recognized them as the weird gods who arrived on Alixxor. One of them, the tallest Rigulian, wore two golden rings on the bony spikes of his shoulders—this being the only piece of “clothing” of the whole group. They seemed to be guests because they had to keep the breathing apparatuses over their “faces.” The Rigulians floated in their individual vats, whose size forced them to cram against one another.