Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (43 page)

And how might it assist her in locating the device Jelch had told her about?

She told herself to stop worrying and concentrate on boarding the ship.

She threaded her way between the parked vehicles, the drivers, British and Indian, chatting and smoking casually. She marvelled at their nonchalance – then realised that she probably knew more about the Vantissar ship than most of the people around her.

Seconds later she passed into the shadow of the vessel.

It was as if she had stepped from one world to another – from Earthly territory to that of another race. She felt a shiver run down her spine as she increased her pace. She heard shouted commands from uniformed officers up ahead, the everyday appearance of the British soldiers contrasting with the oleaginous brown innards of the alien craft.

She came to a halt on the threshold. Before her was a long smooth lip, like a length of brown bakelite, and beyond it an expanse of ribbed decking made from the same material. She looked about her, as if expecting even now to be assailed. The workers and drivers in the clearing yard went about their business loading trucks or waiting to move off; stentorian shouts echoed in the cavern as if on an Aldershot parade ground. Smiling to herself, Jani stepped forward and climbed into the alien ship.

There was no direct sunlight in here, and she realised the necessity for the arc lights that dotted the interior. It was as if the chitinous brown material from which the ship was built absorbed the light, drank it in, leaving the vast echoing cavern in a strange, otherworldly gloom.

She walked slowly, staring about her. Just as the outer panels had been removed, so had those on the inside. Great curving sections of the chitin – or whatever it was – were missing, revealing the coiled, intestinal complexity of the tubes and pipes beneath. The true size of these coiling columns only became apparent when she saw an overalled worker high above her examining a tube three times his height.

As she walked on, she wondered if the ship was like this all the way to its stern, a great hollow shell – and she wondered if it had always been like this, or if decks and bulkheads had been removed by the British, little by little, over the decades. It was too dark up ahead to see more than a hundred yards before her; after that, the space was a blur, like looking into cloacal tunnel of a subterranean sewer.

She wondered when this apparition or ‘program’ might make itself known to her, and how.

From time to time groups of British workers hurried past, hauling wheeled trolleys bearing covered goods; they were accompanied by men – and the occasional woman – in white gowns, who were referring to clipboards as if inventorying the mundane stock of a London warehouse. A line of Nepalese and Indian porters, supervised by armed guards, ferried sealed containers from the shadowy interior of the ship and out to the goods yard.

She peered into the gloom before her and made out a series of ramps. They were constructed from the same sleek, brown, chitinous material as the walls, and curved up and around – each one at a steeper gradient – to a succession of tiered decks that rose before Jani in cross-section.

She felt something stir within her, an odd feeling akin to joy. It was almost a bubbling sensation of confidence, at once affirming yet disconcerting. At the same time she knew that she must approach the curving ramp to her right and ascend to the third level. She wondered where this certainty came from, wondered if the ‘alien entity’ was directing her with arcane mental powers.

She climbed up and around, pausing halfway up the ramp. She looked back down the length of the ship towards the proscenium of the entrance, a dazzling stage filled with sunlight and the tiny figures of the workers and their vehicles.

When she turned and resumed her climb, the receding interior of the ship appeared all the darker. She ascended, her pace slowing. There were no arc-lights up ahead, and no sign of any scientists or engineers. She felt very alone. The sensation of euphoria bubbling in her solar plexus gained in intensity.

She came to the third level and paused, staring ahead.

Before her was a wall or bulkhead, and as she stared at it she made out a pattern in the structure of the wall. It was a honeycomb, rows of large hexagonal cells, each one as tall as herself and receding from her like a tunnel. She hesitated, but something propelled her forward, the same certainty that had made her climb the ramp. She stepped forward and approached the honeycombed wall, her inclination to stop before it overridden by the command to keep on walking. She did so, and gasped as she hit the soft, yielding surface of a membrane and stepped through. She continued walking along the corridor, the walls illuminated by a soft, lambent light.

She wondered why she did not feel frightened, or even apprehensive. But the fact was that she felt only a numinous sense of awe at what she was experiencing, as well as anticipation.

She seemed to have been walking for an age when the lighting of the corridor intensified up ahead. She squinted into the brightness.

Her pace slowed as she approached the dazzling glow. She felt a familiar, cloying resistance and realised that she was passing through another membrane. As soon as she was through, the bright light dimmed and she found herself standing on the lip of an amphitheatre like a vast, white porcelain bowl.

She looked up, and the amphitheatre was mirrored above her; the entire chamber was sleek and smooth and featureless, and she had never seen anything like it in her life.

She had the conviction, then, that she had arrived at her destination.

She looked around her, turning in a complete circle, as if expecting to meet her interlocutor – or the entity or program Jelch had mentioned.

But she was totally alone in the chamber.

Something moved, down in the very centre of the amphitheatre. She stared as a slight bulge appeared in the porcelain floor. It grew slowly, domed and almost fungal, emerging from the floor at a steady rate, gaining height and breadth. When it was perhaps five feet tall, and as wide as a pillar box – but as white as the surrounding chamber – it ceased its growth.

Jani had to move towards the thing. She took a step down the shelving slope and approached the object.

She paused before the white column and became aware that a subtle transformation was taking place. The column was changing shape, taking on the form of a being, naked and pale – a being she recognised.

She murmured, “Jelch?”

A facsimile of her erstwhile companion stood before her, the same oddly articulated legs and elongated torso, attenuated ribcage and flattened face.

The being stared at her and spoke – or rather did not speak. Its face lacked animation; it merely stared at her. Its words, however, sounded in her head.

Not Jelch, but an iteration of him. A copy, if you will
,
which Jelch created in the vessel’s nexus before he left.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

Your understanding is not a prerequisite to your presence here.

She realised something. The being was staring directly at her
.
“You can see me, despite...?” She reached up and touched the helmet.

I can see you, Janisha
.

“You know my name.” She wondered why she was surprised by this; it was the least of the wonders she had experienced so far.

I know your name, and your exploits in getting here.

“But how can you know all this?” she asked.

Jelch was in contact with me.

“Jelch...” She felt a painful throb of emotion as she said his name. “He told me that I would be met. I didn’t understand the words he used to explain who or what you were... but he said that you would instruct me, that you would tell me what to do.”

That is so.

She stared at the entity before her, this copy of Jelch. It was not him, she could see now – it lacked his depth of facial features, the lines of experience that had etched his old face. It was like an ill-defined statue, granted a semblance of life.

“He told me about the Zhell, and that he and a companion – a fellow Morn – assisted the Vantissar in fleeing here. He said he tried to alert the powers-that-be on Earth to the danger approaching from the stars...”

Not from the stars, Janisha; the Zhell do not come from the stars, just as this vessel did not travel through space, from a far star, to reach here.

“But...” Jani felt dizzy; it had taken a considerable leap of imagination, not to mention credulity, to adjust her thinking to the idea that somewhere out there among the stars existed other beings. And now this iteration of the Morn was telling her that what Jelch had said was not true.

But had Jelch ever said that he came from the stars, she wondered? Or had that been her own interpretation?

“Then where?” she asked.

Janisha,
the being spoke in her head,
imagine a book, a very thick book, a volume with numberless pages.

“Very well,” she said, doing just that and wondering where the explanation might be leading.

In fact, so many pages that they extend to infinity... more pages than it is possible to imagine...

She smiled. “I am trying to imagine that,” she said.

Now imagine that each page of this vast book is a separate reality
.

She closed her eyes, opened them and shook her head. “A separate reality?”

Imagine that everything you know of your world is in fact but a page of this vast book, separated from the next page, or reality, by nothing more than a complex weft and weave of sub-atomic particles or strings – a curtain, if you like.

She said unsurely, “I can conceive that my world, my reality, is the page of a book, yes.”

Now imagine that, for the sake of argument, your reality is page eighteen, and that the Vantissar’s reality is page nineteen. Now, the reality of the Morn is page twenty. Page twenty-one is where the bellicose Zhell reside... except that over the centuries they have succeeded in devising a way to pass through the pages of the ‘book of reality’ – or the multiplicity, as we call it – and invading various realms, both before and after their own ‘page.’

“So the idea that they came from the stars...?”

Is erroneous, but an understandable mistake.

She felt weak at the knees. “So... so Jelch and his companion... they moved from their own ‘page,’ their own reality, to that of the Vantissar, in order to warn them?”

They did, and that peaceful race had time only to equip this ark, as they called it, and with Jelch’s aid make the transfer here.

“And how did Jelch and his companion manage this?”

The race of the Morn were technologists, scientists, who had studied the fabric of reality for centuries. They invented a means by which to break down, temporarily, the fabric of the sub-atomic weft and weave of reality, in order to enable passage from one ‘page’ to the next, in much the same manner as the Zhell did. They also devised a means to close the fabric, and reinforce it, if you will, in such a way as to make it, briefly, impregnable to the Zhell...

Jani stared, open-mouthed, at the figure before her.

The device that allows access between the worlds, or rather part of the device, resides within the nexus of this vessel. You see, fifty years ago, when the Vantissar craft broke through into this realm, a power struggle ensued. A faction of the Vantissar demanded the ‘key’ for themselves, so that they could continue onwards through the book, as it were, to a place of ultimate sanctuary. Another faction, backed by Jelch and his companion, wanted to warn this world of the danger they faced. They calculated that they had fifty years to do this, before the Zhell would work out how to break down the barrier once again.

“Fifty years,” Jani whispered.

Shortly after the ship landed here,
the humans inhabiting this valley made contact with the Vantissar – though they thought them gods. A Vantissar from the faction opposing Jelch fled the ship, taking with it a ventha, a disc, that was a constituent of the ventha-di, the key which facilitates the passage from one realm to the next. In its ignorance, the Vantissar rebel thought it had the entire ventha-di... Jelch and his companion left the ship and searched for the miscreant and the ventha, but without luck. Possessing their own ventha, one each, they did their best to inform the powers that rule your world of the danger they faced... In time, the Vantissar succumbed to the viruses and pathogens of your world, which proved inimical to them, and they died out, and the third ventha was lost.

In a small voice, Jani said, “And Jelch gave me his disc, his ventha – for safe keeping? But... but I lost it.”

As Jelch told you, you did not lose it, Janisha. Your subconscious mind knows very well where it is.

“But...” she began.

Janisha, Jelch gave you the disc lest he should die of his wounds inflicted by the Russians. He wanted you to bring it here so that it could be reunited with the ventha-di. If he survived and found you, then he would continue his onward quest to London.