DUALITY: The World of Lies (12 page)

That relay satellite hadn't appeared to be
weaponized, but obviously it was. Shit!

Aru was still remotely viewing the hull
regions where the markings had worn off and identity relief symbols
were beginning to meld into each other like some unrecognizable
alien language. He turned to her with that look... the look he
always had when he was about to suggest something she absolutely
would not like hearing. She knew what was to about come out of his
mouth next, and she nipped it square in the bud.

“No! No fucking way Aru. Don't even say it!
We've got 14 hours.”

After which, should they survive another
ravaging transcoronal journey, the Kinetic would most likely be
rendered an unsalvageable wreck.

“Mei...” Aru cautiously pleaded. “The Kinetic
is melting!”

“So what? This ship was designed to melt.” She
was really just throwing stuff at the wall here.

“No. Mei... no it... it wasn't. That doesn't
even make sense.”

“Sure it does. Melting is better than
cracking, isn't it?”

The persuasive effect of that argument fared
no better than the previous one had. Aru just discounted it
entirely.

“If that tiny satellite is armed with
high-energy, unerringly accurate particle beam emitters, what kind
of reception can we expect from the mystery sphere at the heart of
all this? And how can even we hope to find it with only 8
nearprobes in the sweep and no transmission data from the satellite
ring?”

Mei thought hard and fast. They still had
three more farprobes en route to other satellites in the ring. She
was not sure which were immediately contactable through the
hyper-relay network yet. “System! At what distance was Farprobe 34
from the satellite when it was struck down?”

“1,894.3 kilometers, Commander.”

“And from what maximum tracking distance could
another farprobe obtain an accurate vector reading on a downward
transmission from one of those satellites?”

“3,655 kilometers, Commander.”

“Instruct all three of the Farprobes en route
to satellites to maintain an observational distance of 3,500
kilometers from their targets. We need the time, the vector of the
downward transmission, and a brief recording of it changing
angles.”

And that was all they needed. That would
pinpoint their sphere's location. All they had to get was that one
reading, sail the Kinetic to the location it inferred, and
investigate the sphere -all in a 14 hour window. Investigate?
Hmmm... There’d be no time for that. This sphere was going to be
coming with them.

N
ew boots,
new belt, a sleek bolas to replace that bulky crossbow, and a brand
new water resistant canvas cloak, thick enough to endure all the
chill a southern night could cast on him. Not wanting to cut his
long overgrown hair, he bid the hairdresser to braid and bead it
into a more manageable order. Passing children snickered to see a
man at the salon, but Gahre took no offense to his manhood. A full
mane on the crown warmed the head.

He had the straps replaced on his backsack,
his knives professionally honed to a vorpal edge, a new silk rope,
a variety of herbal teas and basic medicinal, a new firestarter, a
lighter cookpot, bandages, and a sewing kit.

New leggings and a spare shirt. Brass
telescope, new compass? Why not!

After running out of ways to spend Indulu's
credit, he bid uncle farewell and hopped aboard an eastward bound
merchant wagon along the King's Highway. They were honored to take
him on having heard tell of his recent exploits. For two days he
rode the wagon, breaking bread and telling tales. The merchant's
daughter, a maiden nubile yet well developed in her womanhood,
enticed him cruelly with her charms. The patriarch of the family
did not dissuade this either, nor even keep watch of them in the
night. But Gahre knew where that road led, and resisted
temptation.

Two days along the King's Highway to the
capital, Gahre hopped off just before crossing the first bridge
north of “where the two rivers merge.” He collected his belongings,
thanked the merchant, and gave the daughter a friendly wink. Then
he, by way of his map and guidebook, bounded off down an overgrown
trail that followed the river's southern flow.

It was lovely country where old-growth
hardwoods shaded the lush river banks. There were several prized
herbs he sought outlined in the field guide, which was packed
neatly in waterproofed cloth in his pack. He had little need of it
though, having memorized all the herbs attributes and likely
habitats in that stinking cell. God, it felt good to be out of
there. All his disillusionment shed off him as he ventured deeper
in the wood. Ironic, he thought, that he should be so anxious to
profit from this expedition to forage these prized rhizomes, seeds,
mosses, pods and mushrooms, when he had just turned down a fortune
in gold offered at his feet. It didn't matter, he'd been proving a
point, and it had been well worth it. No need to think about all
that now anyway. He was free, doing what he loved. He planned to go
five days into this entirely uninhabited and mostly unexplored
territory. The book described an ancient oak “so enormous a
thousand wagons could rest comfortably in its shade.” There was
even a sketch of the impossibly large tree. The guide only gave a
general location, but he would be passing through there in the days
to come and surely keeping an eye out for it. If it were only half
the size the journal claimed, he imagined it would be hard to
miss.

There was danger in these lands, but the kind
of danger he felt at ease with. Animal sign was everywhere showing
that all that grazed, hunted, or scavenged dwelled here in
abundance. He needed to take care to observe sign, recognize
territory, and shelter himself wisely.

Gahre was a silent strider through the wood
who left little trace of his passing. His new boots were of a
longer shin-high moccasin style, and hurt a bit as new boots always
did during the breaking-in period but otherwise served him well. He
had a keen nose and keen ears and could just as often detect an
animal presence before they detected him, depending as always on
which way the wind blew.

On the evening of that first day, while
scouting along the banks for a suitable site to make camp, he came
into a population of large brown bears fishing in the river where
twenty or so were congregated. They spotted one another at the same
time, and a large male stood menacingly erect and roared at
him.

“Sorry bear!” he shouted back. “I shall detour
around your fishing grounds!”

The bear casually dropped out of his stance
and went back about his bear business, as Gahre patiently hiked
into the interior of the wood well around them, and circled back to
the river in the final waning moments of dusk. He made a fire and
speared a fish, which he skinned and then rubbed a salty herb
mixture into the fillets. He lit a lantern and let the fillets slow
cook on a flat stone burrowed in the coals of his campfire while he
read more of the treatise and its detailed diagrams of the leafy
and rooty prizes he sought after, til the coals died and he with a
full belly swaddled himself in his wonderful new robe and slept
that wakeful alert sleep of a man alone in the
wilderness.

The next morn the rising western sun greeted
him with more fine weather. He thanked Cearulei and
enthusiastically got trekking without delay. By the long end of
noon, he'd reached the point where the two rivers merged. He saw
the islet between the merging rivers the guidebook referred to.
This was one of only three known sites in the world home to the
most precious of the herbs on his list: “a small milky pod that
grows amid the deep mosses of the islet.” The author had also
referred to a rope-pull that his expedition had strung across the
deep and treacherous rapids between the riverside and the islet.
Gahre found only the tattered remnants of a hemp rope tied to a
tree on the bank. It really came as no surprise since the book had
been authored some forty-eight years ago.

If they had strung a pull-rope once, it meant
at least one man had crossed without one. Gahre was a strong and
experienced swimmer. He had never attempted anything quite this
daring, but after surveying and plotting his course, decided it was
a worthy risk. He dropped the bulk of his gear on the shore,
stripped down, and dove in. He had a mighty fight against the
currents, and they got the better of him more than once, hauling
him under and thrashing his body against rocky outcrops, but it was
nothing he couldn't handle. He scrambled onto the shore of the
islet somewhat shaken and battered but otherwise no worse for
wear.

He caught his breath and set about scouring
the islet. It was a wet fuzzy piece of terra, shaded by drooping
cyprus, carpeted with fern and moss. Following the guide he trudged
toward the moss. Sensing something, he preemptively jumped back in
the nick of time as a slick dark adder sprang out and coiled itself
into defense position just a few short feet from him.

He carried with him a rock from the shore just
in case of just such an occurrence and held it back as if to throw
it. “Snake! Pursue me and you will be crushed!” he warned and set
foot again on his way. The snake continued to hold its ground for a
few moments then quietly slid back into the undergrowth to lay in
wait for its next unsuspecting avian prey.

To his delight, the gray moss he came upon was
laden with low green budding plants, with features perfectly
matching those described in the guide. The reader was advised to
collect “only those pods as thick as a man's thumb, as only these
matured buds contain the valued essence in any worthwhile
quantity.” Gahre saw the pods were in various states of
development, ranging from tiny to bulbous, but far moreso on the
prior end of that scale. He also reasoned that his thumbs were
larger than the average man's and thus he could harvest pods that
were slightly smaller. He plucked one and broke it open. It felt
spongy and was possessed of a sour musty odor that didn't strike
him as particularly plantlike and disinclined him to taste of it.
These pods were so valued they would fetch a gold coin apiece from
a specialized herb vendor and twice that from those who had
consumed it before and knew of its virtues.

Before long he'd harvested all the sizeable
pods the patch had to offer, filling nearly half his sack. They
were to be “partially dried and compressed in a sealed container.”
He had only brought along two jars which barely seemed to suit the
volume he had collected, but then realized that after this very
spongy harvest was compressed, just one ought suffice. He had not
counted them, but there were easily over a hundred there -at a gold
apiece! “Easy coin!” he laughed. Easy being a relative term here,
not accounting that it took two days journeying through the
territories of apex predators, braving deadly rapids, and dodging
venomous serpents to retrieve them.

With a better understanding of the depths and
currents, his return swim to the shore was less hair-raising. He
robed up and collected his gear. He then had the good fortune to
spot a river foul, snare it with the bolas, and add it to his load.
It would make for a hearty dinner. The path he was to take would
break off west of the river another 8 kilometers downstream. Though
this area was very suitable for camping and he was anxious to start
cooking, he just couldn't allow himself to waste so much daylight
by remaining here. He set off further south. It became a grueling
hike as the soft river banks rose into the high rocky ledges of a
gorge. He hit the marker by evening atop those ledges but did not
see any trace of the western trail referred to in the guide. Oh
well, that task would have to wait til morning. Compelled by more
immediate concerns, he scouted a suitable clearing and made camp
before the red lanterns of night could cast their glow upon the
world.

He quickly settled in with his clothes drying
on a makeshift line and a fowl roasting on the spit. He spread his
treasured pods out to dry on a warming stone and admired his
bounty. He dug out the field guide to refresh his mind of a
reference: “The Cloudy Moss Pod is a potent mind alterant that
promotes a sense of cosmic unity, opens new pathways, induces
visions, and enhances creativity.”

Gahre was never one for intoxicants or
narcotics, preferring to remain in a state of vigilant sobriety.
But for all he'd done to retrieve this herb, he felt he owed it to
himself to do something more than covet it. He culled through the
seasoned bits of wood in the area til he came upon one suitable in
size and shape to carve into a crude wooden pipe, which he
fashioned, then packed with half a moist pod and topped it off with
an ember. The smoke was thick and acrid but not entirely
unpleasant. It was surprisingly easy on the lungs. He wistfully
puffed away until the bowl was spent. Then he lay back on the soft
ground resting his head upon his satchel.

And by this time the Red Moon and the Fire
Ruby had taken their mantles among the painted celestial clouds. He
entered a dreamy state pondering the heavens. How high was the
redmoon Oberion? It was surely composed of stone, just as the land
beneath him was. And the stars, what were they? What perfection
were the celestial beings, those devas? He imagined them as the
statues of the Dharma temples depicted them: wise, elegant, and
otherworldly, radiating their divine light through the cosmos. He
imagined there were animals in heaven too, but more pure than their
terrestrial counterparts, acting in harmony, singing, creating
idyllic murals of nature. Heaven must be a wonderland, he guessed,
not corrupted by The World of Lies he had been cast into, free from
that disease of the mind that spread itself like a plague through
the realms of mortal men. But then too, he reasoned, heaven must be
terribly boring. How would a journey such as this satisfy his soul
were it made with no pain in his feet or strain on his body? The
beating he took in the rapids gave value to the prize it earned
him. In a way, he reckoned, he had it better than those cosmic
deities who could summon into being their every whim with only a
thought, they who indulged themselves in bliss every moment of the
day and knew no sorrow or pain. Gahre smiled to himself and laughed
at the stars “How very weak and spoiled you all must
be!”