“I never said it would be easy,” said Keenan.
Pippa returned to him. “That’s right.” She touched his arm, returned to a state of calm. “Don’t worry; I’ll follow you through the gates of Hell, and beyond, into Eternity.”
“Me too!” said Franco.
Keenan laughed. “It’s good to be among... friends. Come on, back in the Buggy. I get the impression we’ve a long way to go, and Emerald is starting to look... odd. I think this place is draining her, draining what energy or power she has. I’m worried that if we don’t get her to this Factory...”
“She might die on you?”
Keenan nodded.
“And you need your answers, right?” Pippa’s eyes gleamed with silver tears.
“I need revenge, Pippa. I need to make them pay.”
“I’m sure you will,” she whispered.
They climbed back into the Buggy, and Keenan drove fast and straight, following Emerald’s directions. The huge tyres thudded over the slots that had disgorged the swarm of drones. Then they were slamming along to a high-pitched engine scream.
Keenan felt Cam, spinning by his ear. He glanced at the tiny PopBot. “You OK?”
“We’ve travelled a long way together, Keenan.”
“Yeah.” Keenan fumbled out a home-rolled cigarette, lit the weed and took a deep toke. Cam made an annoyed buzzing sound, but didn’t comment. He’d been trying to get Keenan to quit since their time back on Galhari. “And you’ve been a good little PopBot.” He stared hard at the machine. “You did disarm that internal bomb, didn’t you?”
“Of course, Keenan. It was primitive. Mr. Max should have stuck to sneaking up behind innocent old ladies and murdering them with a garrotte. Explosives, alas, were not his forte.”
“Good. I mean, I’m glad you’re not going to explode.”
“So am I. What I want to say, Keenan, is that since arriving on Teller’s World I’ve been experiencing a few tiny malfunctions.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ve run systematic and repeated internal diagnostics on all systems and sub-systems; there are no hardware or hardwired errors. That means I am being subtly altered by an external power source.”
“What power source?”
“The point is, my casing is Special H graded, which means I am built to a set of military standards, and that means that practically nothing can infiltrate my shell. After all, I wouldn’t want to be marooned on a distant world and have me develop a fault—unable, for example, to open a can of beans.”
“Very amusing. You’ve waited to slip that one in, haven’t you?”
“The point is, there is an awesome power source, here.”
“Where?”
“According to my covert and tentative explorations it’s... everywhere. But it’s confusing me, Keenan; the whole damn planet of Teller’s World is just downright odd. It’s not something you can see from the outside... but from the inside...”
“What?” Keenan glanced at Cam.
“There’s something not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. It’s difficult to quantify.” If Cam had possessed shoulders he would have wriggled uncomfortably. “The place doesn’t work right. I’ve analysed mass, velocity, spin, diameter, and gravity: the whole package doesn’t add up.”
“What are you trying to say, Cam?”
“This isn’t a planet.”
Pippa, who had been listening from the passenger seat, snorted a laugh. “What the hell are we driving across? A custard pie?”
“No.” Once more Cam adopted a prim pose. As the Buggy rode chasms and ruts, dipping and riding rock waves, so Cam remained perfectly level between Keenan and Pippa. His flight control was phenomenal, accurate to an nthdegree.
“A jelly donut, perhaps?”
“This is not a planet.” His voice went hard. “It’s a machine. And it’s hiding something at its core: something big, something with the sort of energy output to create worlds.”
“Or destroy them,” said Keenan.
“And that’s why nobody has been allowed to explore this planet; that’s why it protects itself so violently, why millionshave died... to protect the Big Secret!”
“What are you thinking, Kee?” Pippa’s eyes were bright. She placed a hand on his knee, and he touched her gloved fingers; a small sign of affection in a dark cruel place.
“I’m thinking that what started as a simple quest for knowledge has turned into insanity, a maze of complexity: GodRaces, Forbidden Planets, awesome power sources at the core of machine worlds... All I wanted was a simple life. All I want is to commit a bloody act of retribution; then I’ll die a happy man. But it’s as if God is laughing at me; he keeps throwing random variables into the damn mixing bowl and expecting me to cope. I’ve pretty much had enough of this shit. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m ready to go home.”
“Settle down?” asked Pippa.
“That’s right.”
“You still want me by your side?” Her voice was a lullaby.
“If you’ll have me,” said Keenan.
“I think we’d make the perfect couple.”
“What, you with your psychosis, me with my smoking habit?” He laughed. “We’d make a fine couple of lunatics.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Maybe in another life,” said Keenan, turning his eyes back to the road.
Pippa said nothing.
Keenan halted the Buggy with a grinding of stones on a high ridge. Before them, the world fell away, a vast scoop carved from the rocky internal plateau on which they travelled... and in the distance, something sparkled with a bright, jewelled clarity.
Emerald climbed from the Buggy, and stood on the lip of the drop beside Keenan and Pippa. A breeze caressed her dark ringlets. Franco joined them, but Betezh remained in the Buggy, his face a thunderstorm of raging unhappiness.
“The Lake of Diamonds,” said Emerald, reverently.
“We could be rich!” grinned Franco.
“They are not for the taking,” said Emerald, “on pain of death.”
“Not even a handful?”
“No.”
“What about a few? Just a few sparkling diamantes? Just to bring a smile to old Franco’s face? Eh? Eh? What about it?”
“No.”
“One?”
“No.”
“A half?”
“Franco, how can you steal half a diamond?” said Pippa quizzically.
“Cut it, with a Vibro Saw. I’ve seen it done. Worked right well, it did.”
“Let’s get moving,” said Keenan, holding his ribs in pain. “The sooner we get this thing done, the sooner we can go home.”
“You really believe that?” said Pippa.
“No, but I’ll die trying.”
“That’s why I love you,” said Pippa.
Keenan’s eyes met hers, and he saw the shining light that had haunted him through so many years. Their relationship had never been stable, but he saw hope there. Something hardened inside him; after all, in a few minutes they might all be dead.
“Let’s move out.”
They climbed into the Buggy, and Franco nudged Betezh, his eyes gleaming, his lips slick. He rubbed at his ginger beard with rustling sounds. “We could be rich,” he muttered, face displaying wily cunning.
“You still taking your pills? After all the ones we gave you back at Mount Pleasant?” said Betezh.
“No! I don’t need no pills!” But Betezh caught it, the lie.
“Good,” said Betezh, settling back into the bucket seat and fixing his gaze on the back of Keenan’s head. “Well, let’s see what finale this adventure can bring, especially when you don’t take your medicine. You sure you feel OK?”
“Why?”
Betezh smiled. “Oh. No reason.”
“Bugger off.”
“Tsch. Tetchy.”
“Bugger off!”
Betezh shrugged.
The Buggy surged ahead, tipping over the lip of the near-vertical descent and ploughing down with a sudden screaming acceleration. Suspension crashed, tyres squealed and squirmed, and the Buggy’s occupants held on for life as the vehicle clattered and smashed its way to the distant rocky floor... where it levelled out, and Emerald called a halt.
“You must follow my directions with care,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“The ground is created from a cold liquid rock. I will guide you through.”
Keenan followed Emerald’s instructions, and as they cruised down invisible pathways they glanced nervously over the sides of the Buggy. The rock, very slowly, and very subtly... flowed
.
It looked solid enough until closely scrutinised, but it was a liquid, viscous, moving, and deadly as quicksand.
“Nasty,” said Keenan after a while.
“A trap for the unwary,” said Emerald, voice sombre. She threw a glance at Franco, “And the greedy.”
As they came close to the Lake of Diamonds, a glittering white light gradually filled the horizon, spreading out, making the cavern grow with brightness and clarity; the light grew, dazzling Combat K with sparkling shafts of iridescence.
“It’s beautiful,” said Pippa.
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” chuckled Franco.
“Meaning?”
“If we weren’t facing certain death I’d ask you to marry me.”
Pippa turned. “You serious?”
“Deadly.”
“I think I’d have to turn you down.”
Franco sighed. “It’s the beard, right? I need to lose the beard.”
“Um. Yeah, it’s the beard, and your perverted indoor deviant habits.”
“Ahh, but a good woman would cure me of those!”
“And you think I’m a good woman?”
“I think you’re a... a... a woman.”
“Well, thank you
very much.
”
“Look at that,” whistled Keenan, as the sparkling from the spreading Lake of Diamonds grew in clarity, filling not just their horizon but their world
.
And there, in the midst, sat a bridge, a narrow umbilical, which reared and stretched away, high above streaming diamond fingers of dancing iridescent light.
“The Bridge of Bone,” said Emerald.
“Looks like a spine to me,” snorted Franco.
Everybody looked at him.
“What?” he snorted. “What?”
“You don’t exactly cheer the situation,” said Pippa, finally.
“Just adding input.” Franco scratched his beard. “Is it dangerous?”
“Very,” said Emerald. “Take care, Keenan, the road is as slippery as ice, and the Bridge of Bone moves, it ripples, undulates, shifts as if alive. Move slowly, but never stop.”
Keenan gunned the engine, slammed the Buggy forward and mounted the Bridge of Bone; they soared out over the Lake of Diamonds, high into the air above the shimmering lake, which spread out around them, became the ground, became the glittering air: became the entire world.
They were stunned by the vision, the vista, the panorama. Never had Combat K witnessed such breathtaking spectacle, and just as their awe was reaching a peak, the Bridge suddenly bucked
,
wrenching sideways and dropping towards the surface of the lake. Franco screamed, clinging on with white knuckles as hairs stood on end, and his body tried forcibly to rise from its seat. Grim faced, Keenan, half-blinded by the sparkling sea of jewels, powered the Buggy down, around, wheels spinning and losing traction, the vehicle lurching as it fought and squealed to stay on the undulating bridge, which slammed right, then reared into the air like a live thing: a snake, a dark bone eel. The intensity of the Lake of Diamonds was too much; Keenan felt himself blinded stunned hammered against an anvil of diamond with all the breath ripped from his guts and life smashed from his frame. The Buggy screamed, and went into a sideways skid with engine yammering howling spitting dark oil blood. Franco was screaming, Pippa crying in fear as adrenaline kicked her skull but all turned to liquid turned to light turned to brittle intensity as the world folded over and over, down on itself. Nothing mattered, nothing could fill Keenan’s head like the brightness and the nausea that swamped him, and flooded him, and took him in its fist and crushed him.
Chapter 17
Silver
Keenan opened his eyes. The sky was the colour of copper shot through with rusted iron. A vicious wind blew, cutting across him, chilling him instantly to the bone. He was lying on his back. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as they dug the sharp rock floor, and realised he was on a mountain summit. A cairn of rounded black stones squatted to his left; ahead, the world dropped away to an apparently infinite chasm spreading out to endless mountains, distant, snow-capped, jagged, violent and unwelcoming. Keenan glanced right, and his breath caught in his throat.
“Rachel... Ally...” he murmured, aware this was a dream, had to be a dream, because the two girls were dead, throats cut and cold in a grave on a distant planet, in a lonely universe. The girls, sitting on flat round rocks, looked up; Rachel squealed, and both scrambled up, and ran to him, buffeted by the violent snapping wind. They were in his arms, engulfing him, and tears coursed hot streaks down his cheeks, falling like mercury snowdrops into their hair, and he held his girls to him, held them tight and smelled their hair and felt their warmth and life, and he wept. He wept for a past that was gone, wept for a crime that should never have happened... wept for a criminally unjust loss of innocence.