The guests were brought drinks of iced water and some fruit juice that had a sweet tang before being served soup by the palace staff. The staff had lusterless skin and wore blank expressions, and they shuffled as if they had little energy. Their presence made Brigid uncomfortable, reminding her of corpses, and she asked about them.
“Don’t let the Gene-agers worry you,” Queen Rosalind told her, patting her hand over Brigid’s on the table. “They have no desires of their own, other than to serve us. They won’t hurt you.”
That was when Kane had posed his question about King Jack and his people being technologists.
“Not really,” the king told him. “Although I can see that it may look that way to an outsider. We’re really just searchers—what you see here is the application of technology we’ve scouted for across the globe.”
“I suspect you’re being coy, Your Highness,” Brigid said as she took soup onto her spoon. “We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s very advanced.”
King Jack laughed. “We employ what we find in a number of ways. We’ve been...fortunate.”
“What you ‘find’?” Kane inquired, placing special emphasis on the word.
“Let me ask you this, Kane,” Jack began. “How did you get here? Where did your air vehicles come from? You didn’t develop them, I can tell you that. They’re found technology. And that’s what we have here—found technology. Do you see?”
Kane nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of the soup. He was beginning to understand what was behind this city of miracles. Found technology, much of it alien, the detritus of numerous alien excursions onto planet Earth.
The Cerberus team had spent most of its existence repelling the plans of an alien race called the Annunaki who had been manipulating mankind since the very dawn of recorded time, posing as their gods when the human race was very young. There had been others, too—the Tuatha de Danaan, a peaceful race who had emphasized the spiritual in their music and their art, and who had supplied the Annunaki with much of their more elaborate machinery; the Archons, or First Folk, a race derived from the Tuatha de Danaan and the Annunaki as a bridging gesture between the species, and of whom Cerberus’s ally Balam was the very last.
There were doubtless others, too, like the Naga, whose role in the development of human society might only have been tangential and whose place remained in the shadows even now. For the people here in this hidden city to pillage and reuse that tech was both incredible and logical.
It was like a cargo cult from olden days, where the inhabitants of a remote island would come to rely upon and worship the strange artifacts that were washed ashore from passing ships in error, and later dropped from the air during periods of strife such as the Second World War. Primitive islanders in New Guinea and Micronesian societies had formed whole religious rituals around the acquisition and safekeeping of such objects from the more technologically advanced quarters of the world, believing them to be gifts from the gods themselves.
The people of Authentiville seemed likewise enamored of the forbidden tech of alien visitors, and they were employing it in a far more sophisticated way than the usual cargo cult society.
“I thought I recognized the matter-transfer system as an adaptation of something we’re...familiar with,” Brigid said, but Kane shot her a warning look. He was unsure how much to tell these people, despite their apparent friendliness.
“You mean the Ion Bridge?” Jack laughed. “I haven’t been on that in a long time.” As he spoke, he finished the last mouthful of his soup and smiled, delicately wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“You seem to know a lot about us,” Grant said, gently replacing his spoon in his empty bowl. “Where are you guys from?”
Rosalind snickered. “Oh, Earth—like you. Only it was a long time ago. So long, I can scarcely remember how it looked.”
“How long, exactly?” Kane pressed.
The queen shook her head, the rays of blue neon swinging to and fro like sunlight seen from beneath the ocean. “Time is...” she began, then changed tack. “The years flow by and none of us are bothered by their passage. Isn’t that right, darling?” she said, locking eyes with her husband. There was love there, Kane could see—genuine human emotion, despite the strange clothes and trappings of these people. Clothes maketh the man, perhaps, but love gave his life purpose.
“I supposed that once our son, Neal, settled, our need to go surface-side became less pressing,” said Jack wistfully, and his eyes took on a faraway look. Then he peered around the table at his guests and smiled that broad, engaging smile he had first shown them when they had entered his throne room. “My son hasn’t walked these halls in many years now. You’ll forgive an old, old man his reminiscences.”
The Cerberus team waited while the main course, which consisted of some kind of meat and vegetables, was served by the emotionless waiting staff that Rosalind had called Gene-agers. They were thorough, performing their functions without a word.
As the staff filed out, a young woman dressed in a long dress of metallic purple that clung to her slim figure like paint hurried into the room and spoke discreetly with the royal couple. King Jack dismissed her and addressed his guests as she hurried out of the room.
“My newfound friends,” he said, “you came here seeking your companion. Ursula tells me she’s just entered the building and will be with us momentarily.”
The Cerberus field team looked at one another with surprise. They had become so used to things being difficult in their travels that to meet someone so genuinely engaging and helpful was...well, unsettling.
A few minutes and a mouthful of food later, Domi entered, accompanied by a posse of sentries dressed in the same manner as the ones who had kept pace with Kane’s team in the throne room. She wore supple armorlike clothing in a dark jade that covered her torso, arms and legs, leaving only her pale hands and face uncovered. Her usually bone-white hair had been streaked with highlights of purple and, for once, she wore boots on her feet. She also wore a pair of artificial wings on her back, folded in on themselves now but of the same type that Ronald had called pegasuits. Strangest of all, she was wearing an expression of absolute bliss.
Chapter 11
Elsewhere
Even now, Wertham could see the shapes that hid themselves from human eyes: alien geometry, dazzling in its brilliance.
Wertham the Strange was in the brightly lit bedchamber of his cell, sitting hunched over on the bed. They called it a cell, but it was more like an apartment, albeit one with no doors. The walls were clear, and highly advanced monitoring systems functioned to keep tabs on his movements even when his guards weren’t watching. It didn’t matter to Wertham. He had had a long time to figure out the angles of the cell, a long time to apply his “strange view” to this tiny corner of the world.
There were places, even here, that were hidden from view if only one knew how to find them. The shadows in the cup of a man’s hand never went away; they could always be drawn upon to hide small items like the ones Wertham worked with now. There were two items there, each no larger than a penny.
One was a capsule with a colored strip across its center, one end green and one end white.
The other was flatter, square in shape with rounded corners and roughly the size of a man’s fingernail. The flat item was colored the dull brown of worn copper and had a streak of bright gold running down its center. This split at one edge to form a fork pattern. This was a miniaturized circuit.
Wertham manipulated his thumb joint, rolling the circuit over to study its reverse. Ronald had passed this to him in one of his meals some weeks before, and he had searched his stools until he located it, away from the probing eyes of the guards who were understandably repulsed by such behavior. Once he had found it, Wertham had hidden it, sticking the circuit to the flesh of his chest where sweat and a fold of material held it in place until it was required.
He had always sought knowledge, and as he had matured he had placed fewer restrictions on what that term should encompass. He had been an engineer once, and he had been highly regarded in the court of King Jack. Latterly, he had worked not with physical objects but with the human mind, applying alien substances to alter a man’s perceptions and change his potential.
There were numerous alien substances out there, foods and drugs and things that had been grown. The Annunaki, for example, employed a kind of organic engineering in much of their technology, which, in the hands of a skilled horticulturalist, could be grown and manipulated to achieve staggering results.
To many, Wertham’s greatest achievement was his work on the Chalice of Rebirth. Wertham had broken down the formula and figured out a way to reproduce its effects. Furthermore, he had manipulated it for human usage, so that it did not simply repair damage but retarded ageing, the one great battle that, it was thought, no man could avoid losing. The whole of Authentiville relied on that advance now; without his insights they would be a city of old men languishing in the crawl space between worlds.
But it had just been a task to Wertham, another assignment, a puzzle to solve. In the years after that, with the residents of Authentiville safe in their near-immortal lives, Wertham had looked at what the limits were on the human condition. He had experimented with drugs, alien substances that had acted to expand a man’s primate mind, others that could tap the vestigial reptile responses that still remained hidden in the human soul. At first, Wertham had used the Gene-agers and their ilk for his experiments, but that could only show so much. Ultimately, his thirst for knowledge had driven him further, and he had turned those drugs on himself and seen the world in a whole new way.
The good people of Authentiville had locked him away for what he saw, unable to share in his colossal vision. Not at first, of course. At first, people had been drawn to him, an innovator, an imaginaut exploring the realms of possibility, just as the city’s founder, King Jack, had explored and created new paths in reality.
Wertham was second generation. He had been born within the embrace of Authentiville itself, back when it had still been just a village really, a village that popped into and out of phase with reality as the general populace understood it, peeking out from the quantum ether. Jack had discovered the parallax system, utilized it at first to hide his horde of treasure, and later to build his own kingdom, far from the envious eyes of lesser men. Wertham had been born here, long after Jack’s ascension to the throne, long after godhood had been imparted to him in the form of a crown—a crown made of nothing more than ideas. Wertham understood that, saw how ideas flourished here, how the scavenged alien detritus could be retooled into greater and greater shapes. The drugs had shown him shapes that men were never meant to see.
When Wertham had come out with his ideas, some had believed him to be a visionary. All had believed he was harmless; even Jack and Rosalind had welcomed his ideas in the early days. It was only later, when the fallout from the Titan suit had hit a whole nursery of newborns—only when that the high-ranking officials of King Jack’s court had seen the results, the deaths,
the twists—
that Wertham had been branded “the Strange.”
Incarceration followed. Ironically, this was the strangest thing of all that had happened to Wertham the Strange, for Authentiville was a society without prisons. Until that moment, the need had never arisen to lock a man away. King Jack had feared that Wertham’s ideas might seduce the innocent. Perhaps they had already begun to do so. That was why he had to be locked away by a society that had never had a prison.
On pronouncing sentence, Jack had assured Wertham that no harm would come to him, that he would be treated fairly and well, that he would live in comfort, albeit in solitude. That had been seven hundred years ago.
* * *
D
OMI
GRABBED
B
RIGID
around the shoulders and hugged her close.
“Brigid! You’re here,” she cried. “You’re all here. You made it.”
The sentries accompanying Domi into the room hurried to keep pace, discreetly remaining a few steps from the triple table.
“Domi, it
is
you,” Brigid replied, emotion welling within her.
Domi was the most sensitive of the Cerberus team, and she was easily riled by changes in temperature or atmospheric pressure. She was also highly alert to dangers that other people missed, in the same way that animals can sense an eclipse or a storm before it occurs. Many of the more scientifically minded personnel at the Cerberus redoubt considered Domi more animal than human, and they kept their distance unless specifically ordered to work with her.
Brigid, Kane and Grant didn’t think of Domi that way, although they all knew how uncannily aware of her surroundings she was. In fact, they’d had that alertness to thank on a number of occasions for saving their lives. As such, seeing her so at ease—so downright happy—here in this ville tucked in a quantum pocket both pleased and amazed them.
“Hey, Domi,” Grant said as the albino woman reached across to hug him. “How have they been treating you here?”
“Just wonderfully,” Domi sang. “They have so much here you wouldn’t believe. I flew—on my own! In the air! Oh, Grant, it’s so good to see you.”
They had a history these two. Back when he had been a Magistrate in Cobaltville and Domi had been Guana Teague’s sex slave, Grant was instrumental in securing Domi’s freedom and protecting her life. Domi had nursed an infatuation for Grant for a long time because of that, seeing him as her knight in shining armor, the great hero who had freed her from her life of servitude and misery.
That had just been one part of the series of events that had led both Grant and Kane, along with Brigid Baptiste, to leave the ville and become outlanders, people with no ville to call home. It had also been the start of their alliance as the organization that had grown into the Cerberus of today, and Domi had joined them, albeit as an outsider.
As her relationship with Lakesh matured, so had her respect for Grant as a person, rather than some idol to be worshipped. For his part, Grant had taken Domi under his wing a little, looking out for her and doing whatever he could to help her adjust to life in what was, at heart, a military operation, although one that played by its own rules. While he considered Kane a brother and respected Brigid as a comrade in arms, Domi would always seem the little sister of their strange family, wayward and a little unpredictable, but loyal to a fault.
Grant smiled, hugging Domi back with just a smidgeon of his exceptional strength. Who, he wondered, would ever have thought I’d be putting my neck on the line and scouring infinity for this girl?
Kane eyed her for a moment, appreciating the cut of the armor and the way it was molded to her delicate frame. Kane had never seen her look so formal. She looked resplendent. “You look...all right,” was all he could think to say.
Domi laughed as she hugged him. “Thanks, Kane. I still can’t believe you guys came. Have you seen this place?”
“Briefly,” Brigid told her.
The albino woman was so full of life, it had taken everyone aback.
“We came over here via some kind of...monorail, I guess it was,” Grant explained.
“Never mind that,” Kane butted in. “What about you? How did you come to be here? Mariah was pretty frantic when you disappeared—what happened?”
“I was exploring that spaceship,” Domi began. “She tell you that? Well, turned out it was an Annunaki lifeboat—the guys here think it may have jettisoned from
Tiamat
back when she blew up while in orbit.”
Kane, Grant and Brigid all remembered the incident well. They had been battling with the deranged dark goddess, Lilitu, aboard the Annunaki mother ship when the self-destruct sequence had been initiated. They had barely escaped the ship in time, and they had watched from Earth orbit as
Tiamat
exploded in the heavens. Kane could still feel the pinch of Lilitu’s claws on his throat as she had tried to prevent him from leaving the doomed mother ship.
“They guess it got buried,” Domi continued. “Must have been there quite a while, too. But it turned out the Authentiville scouts had spotted it in one of their sweeps and were set to hoist it up to their storage and analysis facilities when I happened aboard.
“Basically, your standard case of bad timing on my part,” she concluded, rolling her eyes expressively.
“So, what do you do once you have this alien tech in your possession?” Brigid asked, addressing the question to King Jack.
“Our scientists, like Dr. Ronald, whom you’ve met, break it down into its component parts and then they begin to analyze the various applications to which it might be put,” the king explained.
“You make it sound easy,” Kane said with frank disbelief.
“My boy,” Jack said, “we have been doing this for a very long time. Far longer than you’ve been on the planet, I assure you.”
Kane believed him, though he couldn’t say why. There was something in the king’s nature that implied honesty, and while Kane couldn’t put his finger on it, he knew enough to trust his instincts.
“Once we’ve finished our meal here I’ll show you the Happening,” King Jack concluded. “That will help make everything clearer.”
As the king spoke, his blue-haired wife beckoned Domi over and insisted that she join them for the rest of their repast, apologizing for not waiting for her arrival. Domi readily accepted. It wasn’t often that she found such welcoming hosts—she could count on the fingers of one chalk-white hand the number of times “normals” had invited her to a meal.
Elsewhere
W
ERTHAM
THE
S
TRANGE
looked at the items hidden in the shadows of his hand and saw the shapes forming, the ones no one else could see. He had waited seven hundred years in this enclosed apartment space, seven hundred years of never seeing past the walls of his prison. Not, at least, in any conventional sense. The time was now.
“Guard,” Wertham pronounced, not bothering to even raise his voice. He knew they were monitoring him, knew that they would hear him. “Guard, I feel faint. Dizzy.” He sagged to the bed, palming the twin items away as he listened for the clattering feet of the guards.
It would not be long now. Placing the capsule on his tongue, Wertham closed his eyes and entered the fight trance, letting the sense of serenity wash over him, the ultimate calmness of the faux death. Hidden in the shadow of his cupped hand, the circuit clicked and shimmered and buzzed and burrowed into Wertham’s palm, disappearing in the folds between the flesh where the drug had made it supple.
Eyes closed, Wertham listened as his guards hurried to see what had happened. He counted three of them moving, discussing what to do.
“He’s collapsed,” one was saying, his accent purebred Authentiville.
“What happened?” said another.
“Open the door and alert Dr. Ronald,” said the third.
“We shouldn’t open the door—”
“That man needs our assistance. I’m not standing here and watching him die.”
“He won’t...”
“Open it!”
There was a sound like a birdsong, a little chirrup of electronics as the lock’s configuration was altered. Then came the abrupt sound of rushing air as the transparent wall was parted, creating a sliver of vacuum that filled in the blink of an eye.
Footsteps. The guards were in the cell, one leading the charge, the others tentative, following a few steps removed.
“Hey, Wertham? Wertham. Wake up.”
A hand touched Wertham’s shoulder then, pushing at him gently, then more firmly as the words came again.
“Wertham?”
He felt himself being rolled over and laid out on his back on the cot. Hands touched his body, fingers brushing his face.
“I don’t think...” the guard just above him said. “I think he’s stopped breathing.”
“Are you sure? Let me see.”
Another guard came forward. Wertham heard the boot heels clip-clopping on the floor as he approached, felt a strong grip on his forearm, something press lightly but firmly against his chest.
“You’re right,” the second guard agreed. “He doesn’t appear to be breathing.”