Spires of Infinity (11 page)

“Wingless,” Gabriel whispered, activating the gunfighter jewel. A strange

sensation flowed into him, like a broken pathway in his mind was reconnected. A floodgate seemed to open, and all sorts of information about caring for guns, types of guns, ammo, how to aim, everything that a gunfighter would need, merged into his thoughts. It was not exactly pleasant, but at the same time it felt strangely good, like working a long unused muscle. Probably the best part about it was that when he used the Sa’Dhi, the nagging voice of his father, telling him he was worthless and good for nothing, vanished from his mind completely.

When the time limit expired, all of that knowledge would flood out of him as

though it was never there. Try as he might he wouldn’t be able to remember any of it, and when he tried to use any of the skills that had come so naturally with the jewel activated, the results were laughable at best.

Drawing one of his pistols in the quickdraw fashion from old westerns, Gabriel aimed along the barrel. The sight at the end had been filed off to keep it from snagging when it was pulled from the holster. With the Sa’Dhi active, he didn’t need it to aim. It was more a matter of sighting down his arm, using other points of reference and intuition.

Until the jewel’s effectiveness expired, Gabriel practiced sighting different

objects on the horizon, and drawing and reholstering each of the pistols. He was almost up to two hours now. Extending the time limit was just like leveling up in an old school RPG video game like the ones he’d spent hours of his childhood playing to escape from his father’s abuse. In his opinion those were the best video game adventures, before 3D

graphics and “fresh” innovations started spoiling them.

In those games you had to use your skills against monsters to gain experience, which made you stronger. If you hadn’t fought enough foes by the time you got to the dragon at the end of the dungeon, you were screwed. You’d have to go back and level up your character to make it strong enough to win. He’d always liked to fight everything along the way to make sure his character was strong enough to win the fight at the end.

Practicing diligently, Gabriel equated the video game experience to the gunfighter jewel. Sooner or later they were going to run into one of the many dangers Sam kept bemoaning, and he was going to need to use all of the skills that the jewel contained. If he ran out of time at an inopportune moment, he’d be just as screwed as he’d been in those games if he wasn’t strong enough to defeat the dungeon nasties. And in real life there was no going back to the last save point to try again.

Holstering his pistols, Gabriel realized that Sam was watching him.

“Twenty,” she said to him, pulling her cathor closer to his.

“What?”

“Twenty,” Sam sighed, looking away from him. “It’s my age. You wanted to

know how old I am. Like I said, NVM slows aging. I really am older than I look, honest.

So, uh, you know, just so you’re not uncomfortable thinking I’m just a kid. I’m a grown woman, even if I don’t look like one quite yet.”

“What is this NVM thing people keep talking about?”

“Fine, if you wanna keep playing your from another world game. Still not funny, by the way.”

“It’s true!”

Sam’s shrug spoke volumes of disbelief and humoring him for the sake of a less painful journey together. Grabbing her tail in one hand, she shook it at him so he was sure to see. “This is Nano Voluntary Mutation. NVM. I wasn’t born like this. I used to be human like you, though I was more like seventy-six percent pure. My mother wasn’t exactly as concerned with purity in her child as I am.”

“You did that to yourself,” Gabriel asked, thinking of all the people he’d seen in several towns that had animal bits like Sam. It had to be at least a tenth of the world’s population. “But why?”

“The sun is dying,” she said, nodding to the large red orb in the sky. “The world has grown very cold, and there’s still so much radiation even after six hundred years.

Even with immunity inoculations, it still mutates and kills people.”

Gabriel felt a pang of sorrow at her bleak tone. She sounded so hopeless, like she believed it was only a matter of time before everything she knew and loved would be taken from her. When had he started caring about other people’s feelings so much? That was just
so
not like him.

“About eighty years ago, the Emperor’s scientists found a laboratory where some of the Old Ones had been studying a way to deal with falling temperatures and radiation before they died out,” Sam explained. “They derived the NVM procedure from the records that they found. They inject microscopic machines into your body and they rewrite your DNA, making you resistant to the cold and radiation. But as a bit of a side effect it doesn’t work without giving you animal traits. I chose a wolf because they’re just so pretty. They’re all gone now, but I saw pictures in a book once.”

“There are that many people that want to do
that
to themselves? Why?”

Sam looked confused. “What do you mean? Who cares if you don’t look the

same as you once did? What’s that compared to being immune to radiation and being able to go outside and stand in the sunlight without feeling the cold? It quadruples your life span too. I was lucky. Mister Mittens paid for me. Otherwise I could have worked at my job as a waitress for a thousand years and never been able to afford it.”

“If you’re immune to radiation why are you so afraid to go near the Quarantine Zone?”

“
I
may be completely immune, but
you
aren’t. Immunization shots only go so far.

Plus there’s mutants, bandits, the Children of the Chosen, and even the army all the way out here to worry about. Radiation isn’t the only thing that can kill you.”

She touched her wolflike ears and then her tail. “These are kinda like status symbols. It shows the rich that I’m one of them, and the poor that I’m better than the are, even if it’s not exactly true. Who wouldn’t want them? And they’re just so cute! Come on, admit it, you think my tail is hot.”

Gabriel eyed her tail, hanging limply over the side of her saddle. “You know

what a video game is?”

Sam nodded.

“Well, once upon a time I played this video game where all of the characters were controlled by different people all over the world. I met this girl with a tail. She was the perfect woman, liked everything I liked, didn’t think I was an idiot, and that CG body of hers was smoking hot. I finally got her to come meet me in person and, well, let’s just say that she had a little something extra between her legs.”

Sam burst out laughing so hard that she nearly fell from her saddle. Mister

Mittens had to jump from her shoulders to perch on the rump of the cathor to keep from being thrown off.

“Ever since then I’ve been wary of girls with tails. They have a nasty habit of turning out to be men.”

“I assure you,” Sam managed through her laughter. “I’m one hundred percent

penis free. Look at how tight my pants are. Where would I even hide one?”

Every time Sam’s laughter would begin to subside, she’d look over at him and

burst out into fresh gales. It took her some time to regain control of herself.

“Tell me about this world. I don’t even know what it’s called.”

“We call it Ethos. And what is the imaginary world you come from called?”

“Earth.”

“Earth? Well that’s a dumb name for a world. Might as well call it dirt.”

Gabriel shrugged. “I didn’t name it.”

Chuckling, Sam pointed up at the planet in the sky. “That’s Altima, the Celestial Mother, and that’s Teven, the Father Sun. They’re lovers that meet in the sky and turn out their light so that none can intrude while they’re getting jiggy with each other. Those are their children.”

She pointed to each of the moons in the sky in turn, giving them a name. “Eos, Sirra, Mavren, Qotail, Eamon, and Cir. Then youngest and most treasured of them all is Ethos. There used to be another moon, Lusifar, but it disappeared about the time of the Great War, and nobody knows why. In the times before the Old Ones, ancient people used to worship Father Sun and the Celestial Mother like gods. Silly, isn’t it?”

Eyeing the alien sky, Gabriel could imagine ancient tribes looking up and seeing divinity. With such a spectacular array of heavenly bodies what primitive wouldn’t worship them. Ancient civilizations on Earth had worshiped the sun, the moon, and even the stars. If they could have seen what he saw now they would have creamed their pants.

“For future reference, clean water freezes at this temperature. Only poisoned water still flows. If it’s not frozen, it
will
kill you unless it’s been boiled and purified.

Even then I wouldn’t trust it very far. It has to be completely frozen to be safe. Even if it’s got ice floating in it, it’ll still kill you, just slower.”

“Good to know.”

An awkward silence settled over them for a few minutes before Sam broke it

again.

“Don’t go,” she said, looking at him.

“What?”

“Don’t go. I don’t want you to leave.”

“When I get to the Spires of Infinity,” Gabriel asked, and she nodded. So
that
was why she’d been so upset. She didn’t want him to leave her. But they’d only just met! How could she have possibly gotten
that
attached to him?

“I, well, let’s just say I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with.

You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had. Things were going so well with you. You didn’t think I was vulgar and uncultured like everyone else does. You don’t care that I spit when I feel like it, or scratch myself. You accept me. I don’t wanna lose that, even if you’re
clearly
insane.”

“You barely know me. You don’t even believe my story.”

“So talk about yourself, and your world. Tell me so that I
can
believe you, so that I
can
know you.”

“If I can find a way home, I’ll leave without a second thought. This is like a nightmare compared to my world. I can’t stay here. It’s not for me.”

“Then why come here in the first place? What’s so great about Dirt anyway?”

Gabriel smiled at her joke.

“The city I come from, if you include the suburbs, covers hundreds of square

miles. Millions of people live there. There are buildings so tall that they stretch into the sky. Next to the city is a huge lake of fresh water. To the south are flatlands and rolling hills covered with grain and corn. It’s green and lush. The sky is a little boring compared to here. There’s only one moon and the sun is smaller, and yellow, and warm.

During the summer everything is hot, and so humid that you’re soaking wet five minutes after going outside. During the winter things get miserably cold sometimes, but it always warms up again in the spring.”

“Sounds like a place out of a story. I can see why you wanna go back. With that wonderful place to return to, why would anyone choose to stay here with me.”

Sighing deeply, Gabriel had a peculiar feeling of doubt about his desire to return home for the first time since arriving. What was wrong with him today?

“There’s no telling what we’ll find at the Spires of Infinity,” he said. “The doorway to other worlds might just be a kiddy story after all.”

Sam was quiet, not looking at him. He had the impression that she was

embarrassed for spilling so much to him.

“I don’t belong here, Sam. You know that as well as I do.”

“Neither do I,” Sam muttered.

For probably the first time since his father left, Gabriel was almost feeling bad for another human being. Empathy was something of a new experience for him. He could imagine being in her place, meeting someone that was civil and generally friendly toward her, only to have him leave her behind because he wanted to go home. He was still leaving the second he found a way off this radioactive rock, of course. Knowing that there might be a way home had given him a sense of purpose he’d not felt since his arrival. He wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way until he was drowning any memory of Ethos away in as much vodka as he could get his hands on.

Chapter 11: Ruin

When the very pull of gravity holding her feet to the ground lurched, Kari knew that there was something very wrong. Between one step and another she seemed to weigh twice what she should, and then light as a feather. Stumbling, she fell with a very queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The strange fluctuation in gravity lasted only a split second and then it was gone, but in it’s aftermath the ground shook, and the sound of crumbling stone came from far off.

Helping her up, Michael placed a hand on each of her shoulders to make sure she was steady, before letting go. Nodding gratefully, she tried to scrub away the stench of sulfur permeating the air away from her nose. She almost expected her fingers to come away bloody it was so strong. To someone that relied heavily on her sense of smell to identify people and sense their moods, having her nose so deadened by the stink was like being blinded.

“What was that,” Jonathan looked on the verge of vomiting.

Scanning their surroundings, Kari was shocked to find they’d arrived on their first seemingly lifeless world out of the dozen they’d visited so far. Nothing even resembling plant life could be seen amidst ruins of a great city that spread out as far as the eye could see in every direction around them. No birds flew across the burnt orange sky. Not even bugs crawled along the ground. The world seemed utterly dead beneath her feet.

A blood red sun shone from the sky as if viewed through a haze. The queer light gave little illumination, leaving much of the ruined city around them bathed in dark, threatening shadows. Craters and other unmistakable signs of war pockmarked the land.

Some were only a pace across, but others engulfed entire districts of the tidy grid that the streets seemed to follow. Toppled towers leaned on neighboring structures, or completely crushed them, ending in jagged, broken off stumps. Some buildings looked untouched by the destruction, while others were completely flattened, or in various states between.