Eden's Jester (11 page)

I didn’t even think. Whatever was in here was certainly bad news--myself excluded, of course. Hopefully, it would pass by. It appeared to be moving slowly, but it was hard to tell with no reference point. I was amazed that it could move at all. I suppose if you had been here long enough, you’d learn a few tricks.
 

The thing was monstrous, and I mean that in the most negative way. It was huge. As a latticework goes, it was a big one.
 

The thing was the Flying Dutchman of souls. Pieces hung at the edges in tatters like old sheets hung out to dry, forgotten, and eaten by time. Some pieces were barely connected to the whole. What were normally brilliant crystalline patterns looked more like ancient cobwebs, still murmuring with life.
 

Insane life.
 

As it crept along, its course changed. It had spotted me. This was the last thing I needed. But all I could do was wait.
 

When the thing had come much closer—for I now understood that it had been very far away—I saw that its size dwarfed mine. The haphazard construction of the thing had no order or reason to its makeup. It looked like a twisted arts and crafts project from turn-of-the-century Transylvania.
 

I waited.

When it got nearly on top of me, it stopped. Malice and greed oozed from it. This was not an unfortunate soul who had been unjustly and mistakenly trapped here by some whack job. This
was
the whack job. I hoped it didn’t want to play.

But it spoke. Dang.
 

“Clean . . . ,” it said. Its voice rumbled and chirped and skipped like a broken Isaac Hayes album being played at various speeds. The lattice quivered with excitement. Small pieces broke off and floated free. The effect was very cool. I was perfectly creeped out.

“Unclean,” I said. “Go away. Shoo!”

“Give . . . to us,” it moaned.
 

Looking at the crazy construction of this thing up close, I could easily understand why it might be schizophrenic.
 

“Sorry, I left all my loose change in my other body. Can’t help you. Try me again next week.”

“We will take it,” it said with more clarity. It seemed that the idea of coherent action, no matter how evil, gave it enough focus to drive the nutso out of the whacko--for a minute, anyway.

“Take what?” I asked. My brain worked frantically to come up with a plan. My only idea was to keep it talking. Maybe it would reveal some weakness I could use.

“Life . . . essence . . . you,” now I heard many voices moaning. I swear one or two were screaming for me to flee.
 

No kidding.

“You want to eat my soul? Nope. That’s not allowed, in case you hadn’t heard. There are rules against that. The powers-that-be will give you a big fine.”
 

It became still, then erupted.
 

“PATRON!!!!!” it bellowed. The psychic force of it actually moved me back, or it back. There was no way to tell which. “WE SHALL DEVOUR! WE SHALL AVENGE! PATRON!”

“Patron, huh? Never heard of him,” I said. “If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
 

As I looked at this horror’s inner selves, I could see that it wasn’t simply insane. The regions of its soul were completely heterogeneous. It was made up of more than one soul. This thing had learned how to tear apart a soul and assimilate it into its own being. It was a Psychic Duel champion of biblical proportion. I wondered what advantage eating a soul had. It clearly had disadvantages to the victim. The devoured souls gave it strength, but by the sounds of this thing’s inner ravings, those poor souls had not completely passed away--though I’m sure they wished they had. This thing was the Legion of the Abyss.
 

“We have smelled you . . . you can never escape us. We will always find you. Give . . . to us. You want to . . . you want to . . . you want to . . .,” it said, over and over.
 

I braced myself, but then . . . nothing. I surmised two things. First, it needed my permission, which it wasn’t getting this millennium. Second, after a millennium of listening to it badgering me, I’d probably agree, just to get it to shut up.
 

More voices entered the chant. They pressed into my mind and made it difficult to think. Then the attack came. The tidal wave of its will swept over me. I doubted I’d last a millennium.
 

This wasn’t my first Psychic Duel. I threw up every type of wall I could manage to keep this nut-job out of my head. Its attack, however, was not typical. Blades of willpower hacked at my mind, cleaving my thoughts from me. Each slice left me a little less of myself. It extracted memory as though it were a tumor. I was being dissected.

I fought to find any vulnerabilities, but its multiple personalities revealed only a mess of neurotic confusion. Crazed, it cut away any continuity my mind had possessed. It was mutilating me, and the marks would be permanent.

Just when I thought things were hopeless, they became worse. The ferocity of the attack increased, a new sense of urgency driving the beast into a frenzy. Tentacles like dusty black cobwebs tore at my defenses and thrust sharper and more frantic bursts of psychic energy into my mind. The beast was about to overwhelm me.
 

Then I saw what was happening. Several more, dozens more, of the beasts had arrived. Sharks in a bloody sea, they had smelled the carnage of my soul and were coming for their portion.
 

Wow, I really hated this place.

A tornado of beasts twisted around us. Legion refused to share, but the sorry savages wouldn’t give up with food on the table. Clouds of grey obscured the area as black bolts of psychic energy thrashed in a chaotic lightning storm of frenzied hunger.
 

Momentarily forgotten, I watched from the center of the mass melee. Instead of a typical Psychic Duel of will against will, the beasts were dueling surgeons, each racing to dissect his opponents before being mentally disemboweled himself.

They were trying to eat each other. I guess that made me dessert.
 

As I floated there in the grey of the Abyss, I witnessed the impossible: souls being torn apart, consumed, and assimilated. The sight evoked fear coupled with burning anger--these were Aeson’s “friends.”
 

With the whole gang bent on annihilating one another, my best chance for escape was now. But for that I needed energy, which I didn’t have. At this point I’d take whatever I could get. As I said, souls don’t contain energy, so tearing off a piece of Legion wouldn’t work, and it probably didn’t taste like chicken, either.
 

Then I saw it. A silver line cut across Legion, a flash of life: the delicate thread of the glamour. How did it get from me to Melanthios? If it slipped between the planes I could be lost forever between worlds. But that didn’t seem to be much of setback from my current status.

As I considered my options, Legion severed a piece of soul from one of its rivals. The ashen chunk wailed.
 

Time to go.

The tricky part was surfing the energy in the thread while still being attached to it. If it came loose, it would surely unravel and be gone. But, like I said, surfing is my specialty. I waited for a wave that was timed right for me, and my reflexes took over. The sensation of movement flooded my senses. The thread stretched out before me like some astral roller-coaster, curling and dipping rapidly as I sped along its length.
 

The turmoil of the battle dissipated with distance. I called out to the monsters, falling far behind me, “So long you whack jobs! I hope you rot, JUST LIKE THE PATRON INTENDED!”
 

I didn’t know who this Patron was, but he sure called it when he sent those things here.

CHAPTER NINE

The fog of the Abyss dissipated, allowing a vast, brown plane to emerge below me. It stretched for as far as I could see in every direction. There was no planetary curve to the horizon. The maroon sky above the wasteland was void of clouds and sun. Light appeared to come from everywhere, as if defused through miles of a dust-choking atmosphere. I wondered what kind of light source there might be in a truly flat plane. The physics of spherical bodies orbiting a sun obviously didn’t apply here.
 

Mountain after mountain drifted by, with only an occasional chasm tucked into the shadows. Brown was speckled with spots of black. The blues and greens that accompanied life were absent. The air was sterile, but not stale. A breeze swirled in gentle circles as it wound its way through the valleys and over boulders. Here and there a dirty plume rose far into the sky past a mountain peak.
 

Something at the edge of my vision caught my attention--a straight line. Far below, and to my right, I could make out the shape of several squares. As I glided past, I could see that they were, in fact, large pyramids--five of them, arranged in a square pattern with one very large white one commanding the center. Of the smaller four, each had its own color: red, blue, yellow, and black. A square area around them had been cleared and leveled. All around the smaller structures, I could see movement.
 

There was plenty of ambient energy here. I jumped off the thread and glided down to a crowd of twenty or so humanoids. They had the same basic shape of a human—two arms, two legs, etc.—but were much larger and more squat, like a race of big-time wrestlers, wearing nothing but dirt. At least part of the reason for that was apparent: they had no visible reproductive organs.
 

They milled about, going nowhere but in circles. There was no talking. No one carried anything. They just shuffled aimlessly. They wore expressions of slight concern.

I formed a new body, enjoying the easy access to ambient energy, then approached one of the shufflers.
 

“Hello, friend,” I said. He ignored me as if I hadn’t spoken. I went to another, then another. None of them seemed to be aware of my presence, or perhaps they simply didn’t care. This must be where they send all the dirty robots.
 

I walked to one of the small pyramids. It, like its three sisters, was slightly smaller than those of Egypt. The large one in the center must have been over a thousand feet tall. Closer inspection revealed another difference between these and the Egyptian pyramids. These weren’t made of large stone blocks, but of smaller stone pyramids. Pyramids made of pyramids. Very tricky, and time consuming, I thought.
 

The four smaller pyramids were just that--stone structures. The large one in the center, however, was alive with energy. A fog of white particles glowed with both menace and beauty. It hummed the threat of a storm about to break upon anyone who dared violate its solitude. Whatever the pyramid contained was well protected.
 

The pyramid’s entire surface, perhaps a million square feet, was covered with small glyphs. It was the same script on Aeson’s birdbath, the one I knew so well but couldn’t read, one I spent many years trying to decipher. I laughed out loud, unconcerned that the robotic inhabitants of this place might think me odd. How ironic it was, that the last favor I had asked of Diomedes was to help me read it. Now, here I was sitting in the galactic middle of nowhere, staring at miles of the script, essentially because he had gotten himself in a pickle and needed my help.

I took heart in one more piece of evidence that someone in great power had a pretty good sense of humor.

I walked around the other structures, doing a casual survey of each. They were insignificant in the shadow of the giant that towered above them.
 

Leaning his haunches against the base of the small yellow pyramid sat one of the creatures. He stood out from the rest, not milling about or looking aimless. Instead, he was thinking, or trying to. He was smaller than the others, but still heavily muscled. His hands were more delicate. His fingers were longer. Where the others were squat and rugged, this one was more lanky. His forehead was rounded and large, not swept back like those of the others.

“Hello, I am Elson.” I said in my most diplomatic voice. To my surprise, he looked up and met my gaze.

“Elson.” He thought about it. The wheels were turning, but the road was bumpy. “I do not know that name.” He went back to thinking.

“What is this place?” I asked.

He looked up at me and said with a straight face, “Quadrant Four.”
 

Oh. “What is Quadrant Four?” I asked.

He pointed to his left. “Quadrant Three.” Then he pointed behind himself and said, “Quadrant One.” The area containing each pyramid was apparently a quadrant.

Okay. So not much to work with here. “Why are you sitting here?” I asked.

“We have finished.” He looked as if he was going to say more, but couldn’t find the words to express himself. After a valiant attempt, he gave up and went back to his thinking.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“I am the Tool Maker.”
 

“Okay, can I just call you ‘Tool’ for short?” I asked. He didn’t reply.

“Well, Tool. May I ask what you were told to do?”

He looked at me as if I was asking something ridiculous. “We are not told. We build this.” He waved his mighty arm at the giant pyramids, muscles bulging in unnatural places.