The Eternals Page 9
With nothing else to do, I decided to investigate. Already being at the rear of the Zeppelin, or so I surmised, forwards seemed the way to head.
Strolling through such a vacuous bulk was akin to walking around the inside of a giant egg. The airship was of enormous proportions and roughly elliptical. A strange smell of glue assailed my sinuses, which I presumed down to not being able to use screws and nails on the leviathan's bulk. The ship was unfurnished, a husk. As a consequence, I walked straight into a blacked out doorway which was in turn part of a blacked out dividing wall. Cursing, I tried the handle and emerged into an almost opposite environment. Men ran around willy-nilly attending to flashing lights and strobing beacons. Everything was all noise and motion. The crew's incessant chitter-chatter more like the chirping of starlings, those most infuriating of nature's survivors, than Britannian vernacular. Captain Scott sat with his back to me in a rather plush chair. A set of metal steps ran from his seat up into another level. The balloon was even more enormous than I'd first imagined. I had to admit, to accommodate more than one floor in such a craft was quite a feat of engineering.
“Ahem!” I cleared my throat to gain some attention as the milling men made a concerted effort to avoid meeting my gaze.
“Good evening, Jean,” Scott said spinning round in his seat.
“Good evening. Everything seems a little hectic in here at least to the untrained eye.”
“Yes, well, we're having a bit of an Alpine situation.”
“Situation?”
“It's nothing to be worried about. One problem of running in stealth mode is that all the power we generate goes into the metaphasic cloaking technology – that's invisibility to the likes of you and me. For all intents and purposes the Zeppelin is running without engines.”
“And?”
“That means we're doing little more than floating. At this particular moment in time we are not floating quite high enough.”
“Can you not turn the cloaking off?”
“Not if we don't want to be shot out of the air. Lord Worthington is not especially well liked. I expect someone would find it good sport to take a potshot at us.”
“I know the people of the Rhineland have their moments, but I don't think they would resort to acts such as you speak. Shooting someone down whilst savouring the vista from the top of the Eiger, or such like, just isn't the done thing.”
“We are not yet in the Rhineland.”
“But we have been flying for hours, well into double figures. We must be three quarters of the way across The New Europa Alliance by now.”
“Well, you'd think that!” Scott rubbed at his close-cropped hair, a weak grin playing across his face.
“Yes, I would think that.”
“The problem is, as I mentioned, if you'd been paying attention, that we are floating not flying.”
I took a pace closer to the captain allowing a hint of anger to flash in my eyes. A hint of something completely different flashed in his own. “So where are we then?” I persisted.
“Passing over the back end of the Carpathians and about to drop down towards New Washington in more than the literary sense if we don't gain more height.”
“How can you be sure? There are no windows in this infernal machine.”
“Technology, Jean. We have a gadget to tell us everything from which way the wind blows to the amount of black squirrels running around in the treetops.”
“There are no black squirrels, or hardly any wild animals for that matter.”
“That would explain why it reads zero then!” Scott laughed out loud at his own wit. “But like I said, we are not high enough.”
“No gadget for actually keeping us afloat then? Maybe that was a little too obvious for whoever constructed this flying carriage.”
“Oh, I wouldn't know, Jean. Nobody builds things these days, they're all inherited. We wouldn't even know what the hell a metaphasic this or that was if humanity hadn't liked to label everything.”
“Well, whoever taught you to fly it requires a harsh word.”
“Nobody taught us how to fly it,” he said with a laugh. “That was more luck than anything. If you push enough buttons and make careful note of the order you do so, then things start to happen and all that.”
I was about to make my feelings better known when the cabin door opened and a bewildered looking Sunyin stepped inside. The little fellow had a touch more colour but still looked dreadful. His bloodied form had an immediate effect on those about him.
“Who the hell's this?” screeched Scott. He pointed to my little companion in near hysterical fashion. “We've got an intruder, boys, get him!” he shouted.
Two of the closest crewman made a lunge for Sunyin who stepped back into the hanger bay and ran for it. More followed and quickly cut the distance between he and they.
“He's with me!” I roared.
Whether I was ignored, or the blood that covered the monk's clothing drove the men to frenzy, who knew, but it didn't stop them.
I sprang through the door in their wake catching men as I went and tossing them aside until I reached the prone Sunyin. He was laid beneath three of the crew who'd already sunk their teeth in him.
I saw red and tore into the Britannians with the ferocity of ten men. My fingers dipped into Eternal flesh with repetitive ease; my teeth tore at skin, and my fury knew no limit. Pieces of crewmen flew about; I did not care. The inside of the balloon filled with the shrill voices of dying men; I did not care. Blood spattered everywhere as I shredded all before me; I did not care. Until all that remained was the writhing body of Sunyin and the dismembered parts of former crewmen.
Seeing Sunyin in so much agony, soaked in his own blood, was terrible. It wasn't because of his pain, but the pain I felt in resisting the urge to dive into that blood and drink. My insides contorted with the effort as Sunyin heaved one final breath. And for a second, a fragment of time, I knew what it was to be mortal. The experience was not pleasant.
I'd never cried in my life, not even at my parents' suicide, but something about Sunyin's unselfishness had affected me greatly. As I knelt there, after all those emotionless centuries, the floodgates opened. And I wept crimson tears for my lost companion – if only those tears had been clear. The subtle nuances of shed emotion slipped across my alabaster skin as I wept for the little fellow like I had for no other. I closed his vacant, brown eyes with quivering fingers: he was still warm, a warmth I would never know. Even that quickly faded.
It was the sound of a slammed door that drew me back to reality. I turned to see the cabin resealed: Scott!
I am neither proud, nor bothered by what I did to him. For no locked door, no wall, nor any obstacle could prevent my reaching him, and they didn't. By the time I'd finished, the cabin was unrecognisable in its new shades of red. Unfinished, I then vented my wrath upon the instruments, machines, and every flashing light that twinkled its way into my turbulent misery. It was only when I ripped out the controls of one particular device and the screens that had covered the windows drew back that I stopped. The Zeppelin was heading straight for a mountaintop!
I am not a man prone to panic, so made my way back to the hidden doorway I'd originally entered from in a languid manner. Unfortunately, it was more hidden than I'd remembered. Only a fortuitous brush of my hand against some metal lever released the door mechanism, and a world as of an eagle's eye expanded into the distance. Thinking my only option to jump, I was about to cast myself off into space when a moment of mental acuity reminded me to collect the coffin. I hauled it from the carnage and hurled it out of the door and into the waiting snow several hundred feet below. I afforded myself one last look across the mountaintops, then stepped calmly after it.
I would like to say the fall did not hurt, but it did. One arm hung loose and useless, whilst my whole left side stung from the impact. So it was a rather perturbed me that looked whence I'd come to see the HMS Gloriana sparking blue lightening across its semi-visible flanks. The thing w
as vast when revealed in its entirety. It could have housed many more levels than the two I'd presumed. However, that thought didn't last long, as the front end of the machine struck the mountain peak and both it and the balloon exploded in a quite devastating and brutal way. The resulting aerial bombardment of rock mixed with copious amounts of twisted metal was balanced only by the wall of snow that hurtled rapidly towards me. As the cacophony instigated hundreds of high altitude avalanches, my thoughts turned straight to the coffin. Painfully, but rapidly, I forced my way through the waist high snow towards its vertical landing place.
Upon reaching my home from home, I flung myself around that object of inanimate necessity: salvation. It hurt my dislocated arm terribly, and I cursed out loud in pain, a thing I had not felt for an age. I thought nothing could have hurt more: then the avalanche hit, and I realised I was wrong.
Chapter Eleven
-
Memories
I didn't know where I was, nor when I was. The ferocity with which the avalanche hit swept me and my prize away. Head over heels I cartwheeled as the weight of the snow dragged me down into a white oblivion.
The sensed moon's rising and its traverse across the night sky marked the time I lay there pinioned. All the while that most unwelcome of feelings built as a slow panic manifested. I'd no idea if the snow could cocoon me from the sun's killer rays, and no intention of finding out.
It started with the flexing of a finger, a talon extended. The digit scraped away at my white prison until I'd made enough space for two, then three, then four. And so it went on minute after minute, hour after hour. Only when an alpine breeze stung my fingertips did I realise I'd broken through to the surface. The night sky had never looked so inviting.
I dragged myself, then the coffin from the drifts, and roared into the night as I reset my shoulder for the second time in as many days. Every injustice, every slight that had affected me set my rage to a higher heat, and I knew at some point someone would feel it boil over.
Looking down the mountain revealed nothing but a seemingly endless array of lower peaks. I had but one realistic option, to head up and over that final – I hoped – barrier.
One lash had snapped free of the coffin which forced me to drag it by a single strap. The leather bit deep into my bare palm as my sanctuary caught in the avalanche's ripples. Regardless, I trudged on. Up and up I climbed, the peak remaining remote. A distant illusion, the mountaintop taunted me.
When at last I crested that final ridge and stood atop the world, I might have smiled. If not for being in so foul a mood and resembling a bedraggled crow, I should have gasped with pleasure, but did not. Only one thing was on my mind as I looked down to the white marble of New Washington, that which was once Vienna, to reach Alba.
Unable to risk stopping to rest, I set off half trudging, sometimes sledging, down the far side of the mountain. What a sight I must have made to the casual observer; what an embarrassment to my own kind. How they'd have scoffed at the ragtag figure almost unrecognisable sat shirt flapping, blood stains smudged across pallid skin, silver cross twirling from the end of its chain. I did not care; I never cared. Let them see. They'd only turn their backs as they had to everything else.
The descent passed far quicker than the shorter route up and for a moment I felt sure I'd time in hand to cover the short distance to the outskirts of the city and my old home. However, clear thinking prevailed, and I retained the coffin just in case I was wrong. There was no guarantee that Alba even still lived in our old home or, I'm ashamed to say, that she still lived at all.
Once I reached the flat ground of the city streets I heaved the coffin upon my back, grimaced at the pain from my shoulder, and then trudged towards my old domain.
City streets long embedded upon my subconscious remained the same but the scattered dwellings aside them did not. As I suspected, not one sign of life. Even the fractured trees that lined every avenue were husks of their old selves. Loose snowflakes that skated across their compacted cousins was all that broke the silence. A home for ghosts and faded dreams, New Washington stood deserted.
I'd never felt anything but loathing for that most austere of cities and still didn't. The overly grand buildings looked as they had all that time ago; in the grip of ennui.
The city of New Washington had been a precursor to the rack and ruin of the times. Grandeur was all that had mattered, outside appearances meant all. A facade was to be admired, but it would only ever be a facade. When those appearances faded and the newborn city became less and less populated the few who remained slipped away like deer in the fog. Death came early to New Washington, the world would follow later.
* * *
And so it was I laboured into a gravel driveway; my driveway. There was no sign of life. The house, small by comparison to most, yet still mansion sized, had fallen into wrack and ruin. The once beautiful shutters of lemon and white hung limp from broken windows as though struck by one storm too many. Everywhere I looked was in disarray. The garden, Alba's once pride and joy, had descended to wild chaos. Unable to bear it, I cast my eyes to the roof, but it was more holes than tiles. Everywhere, paintwork peeled back from the building like skin from a carcass. It pained me to see it so ramshackle; it hadn't all been bad memories there.
I dumped the coffin on the porch in a puff of dust, and then for some stupid reason straightened out what remained of my clothes. I even combed my fingers through my long, dark hair for what good it did. Then, out of old fashioned politeness, I knocked before entering. If nothing else, it gave the rats chance to flee. I rapped three times upon the rotting, wooden door; the resonating echoes made it sound like a tribe had done so. Ashamed, I wiped away the blood my knuckles had smeared on the door panel as if it made the place unsightly. I gained no response.
I tried three times more but never did a sound emit from within. Looking about to no avail, I decided enough was enough and tried the handle. The door opened with consummate ease as if it had awaited my return and oiled its hinges especially.
The darkness within was total. So dark was it that even I waited a moment for tired eyes to adjust before stepping inside. In a moment of lucidity, I nipped back out to collect the coffin, my burden and saviour, and deposited it in the hallway. I closed the door with a reassuring click and felt the claustrophobia and suffocating effect of my past strike like a hammer. The house was rank with dust, mildew and the abhorrent smell of vermin. There was life then just not that which I imagined. To be honest it was a relief. Past shames were not best dwelt upon.
Tattered cobwebs coated every dilapidated surface, a mirror of their surroundings. I brushed them from my face with a sneer of disgust. Already wishing to be free of the place, I squelched my way over moist carpet into the living area and almost collapsed. It was like a bomb had hit it then got up and done so again. Covered in the detritus of a past I'd long hoped to forget, the room resembled a tip rather than a once elegant abode. Chaos had reigned there for a while, a chaos I couldn't comprehend. Stooping low, I collected one of the many shattered portraits from the floor and turned it over. Shards of glass teemed from the mangled image as I lifted it clear of the carnage. The picture was one I'd painted of Alba. I remembered it well. She sat by a river of blue, not red, in a pretty lace outfit and matching hat. She held a parasol in her right hand and smiled as the sun lighted her pale cheeks infusing them with life. It was of course an illusion, a thing that had never happened, but Alba had liked it so much that she'd hung it over the fireplace so she could view it whenever she fancied. I think Alba yearned for the sun even more so than I. We were kindred spirits that way neither of us content with living a life in the dark.
I placed the portrait back on the floor with a care afforded an antique, stepped over the debris, and out into the adjoining dining area. There was little difference in that room other than the nature of the shattered ornaments and shards of wooden furniture that stuck out from every surface. If the carnage had been Alba's doing, a feat I knew her physi
cally capable of, it would have had to have resulted from great trauma; she loved the place too much to have treated it so even if I had deserted her so disgracefully.
* * *
I'd taken my best black clothing, groomed myself to perfection and left Alba a note on the bed that simply said I no longer loved her. It was a lie as had been most of my life; she was the only thing I'd ever loved. But when I'd learned that the scientists had calculated our sun, the one we couldn't even look upon, to be at the point of burning out, it had hit me hard. What was the point of plans, of love, of living, if the very next moment would be your last? Was that not the one thing that being an Eternal meant, having all eternity to spend as you wished? I became disillusioned with my non-life, almost a mirror image of my parents. I left to live it up, so to speak, when in fact I lived it very much down, way down. Alba made no attempt to follow nor contact me. New Washington became my last home, my last pleasure, and the last of the real Jean. From that point on I became a marionette who allowed his strings to be pulled by any female puppeteer, under the illusion it was he in control. I awaited death with the irony of knowing it coming, whilst feigning indifference: I had become indifferent to far too much. To top it all off that death by blazing explosion had never come, and I had wasted three centuries of my life waiting for something that might never happen. I was a lord without even a bed, and it revolted me.
* * *
The table edge I gripped snapped off in my hands, the splinters digging deep into my palms like stigmata; it was a pain I deserved. I'd wasted so much time, lost everything I'd ever loved, and had nothing but tattered clothes to show for it.