Battle for Earth (19 page)

“And thank goodness you did,” said the android. “Without your attempt to board the ship, we would have been sucked into a Klein fold. I believe Sol registering your entry pulled us back.”

“But I didn't enter,” said Johnny.

“It was enough,” said Alf. “However, Miss Clara is experiencing profound difficulties—it is imperative you come aboard immediately.”

“You're really here … in London?”

“Indeed, Master Johnny. Please hurry—something terrible is happening to your sister.”

“I'm coming—I'm right outside,” said Johnny. He looked up. The guard Colin was standing at the entrance, scanning the crowd. If Johnny made another run for the ship and it proved to be the building again, he was Krun supper for sure, but there was nothing for it. The number of people leaving work had thinned out so he wouldn't be able to hide behind the crowd. Alf had sounded desperate—worse than Johnny had ever heard him. There was no time to lose.

Johnny opened the shuttle door and ran. More guards appeared at Colin's side, their arms spread wide ready to apprehend him. It would be impossible to find a way through. More than anything, Johnny had to pass beyond the wall of blue and, in his hour of need, a memory came to him pushing everything else from his mind.

He was on Titan, by the Fountain of Time, when the clone had been about to kill him. Johnny's double had the ability to fold space and was collapsing that portion of it between him and Johnny, readying his blaster to fire. At that moment, when death seemed certain and, for the first and only time, Johnny had been able to grab a corner of the very fabric of space that the clone had hold of and pull himself just a little further on, to safety.

Now he'd crossed the plaza and was about to enter the
welcoming arms of Colin the guard. Johnny closed his eyes and fought to remember how the folding had happened. He glimpsed space, as though he was no longer part of it—he was watching himself, the row of guards and the spaceship from some god-like vantage point that was quite separate, as though above a squashed flat version of the real world. It seemed to be working. He tried to switch his position with that of the blue line of security men. He opened his eyes just as his head smacked Colin full in the stomach, sending the winded guard sprawling. For a second, Johnny stayed where he was, half-dazed by the impact, aware he'd come close to folding. Several hands reached out to grab him, but he ducked underneath and ran again, leaving the guards trailing behind. He pushed through the revolving doors and knew at once he was inside the
Spirit of London
.

“Hello, Johnny,” said Sol, adding, “Clara is on the garden deck—just,” without his even asking.

He didn't like the sound of that one bit. This time, when he ran into the elevator shaft he hovered for a fraction of a second in midair and then shot upward without even stating his destination. He'd never known Sol to be in such a hurry. Johnny stopped and stepped onto newly laid turf. Bentley was howling—a terrible sound that Johnny would never have thought the sheepdog capable of making. Yet it was obvious why. Clara was hovering halfway between the floor and the ceiling with no visible support, her arms stretched wide apart, bolts of lightning flying randomly from her torso. While some parts of her arms and legs were transparent, others were marked out by the oily blackness that had spread from her eyes and was devouring her whole body. She was laughing and screaming in equal measure. Alf, in the antigrav harness, was trying and failing to come anywhere near her.

Johnny ran toward his sister, only to find himself back at
the entrance to the elevator shaft. Clara cackled. He tried again—he advanced twenty meters only to find himself where he had started. She was folding him away from her.

“Clara!” he shouted. “Come down—you have to stop it.” This time he tried walking toward her. The blackness had engulfed his sister. Lightning bolts shot from her, striking him in the chest. “Clara … please,” he said, forcing himself onward, through the pain. He wasn't about to let her go.

“I can't stop it, Johnny,” she said, sounding normal for a moment. “I can't ever stop it.” She looked down at him and for a second her eyes cleared. “Help me, Johnny,” she pleaded. Then her whole body shrank into a black dot and vanished.

Despite wearing the antigravity harness, Alf dropped like a stone. Bentley howled a little longer, then was silent. Johnny screamed his sister's name, running toward the point where she had vanished. “Sol, where's Clara?” he shouted.

“Clara is no longer aboard,” the ship replied.

He didn't want to hear it. Johnny fell to his knees and then face forward into the grass. His whole body was shaking. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and looked up. It was Alf. Johnny had never realized the android could cry. “What happened?” he asked. “Where did she go?”

For once the android was lost for words, but Johnny didn't need an answer to know what had become of his sister. He remembered the time on Titan when they'd peered together into the thought chamber and seen her falling forever within the nothingness of hyperspace. He recalled her terror, even then, and the fact that the Owlessan Monks had tried to stop her leaving—perhaps they, too, had felt the premonition. Her final words—“Help me, Johnny”—were still ringing in his ears.

“Miss Clara … gone,” sobbed Alf. “I cannot believe it.”

Johnny sat up beside the android. Bentley made his way over, lay on the grass and whimpered.

“We'll get her back,” said Johnny. “It'll be all right.” He hoped that by speaking the words out loud, they might be more likely to come true.

Alf's teary eyes met his. “It is not possible to escape a Klein fold,” said the android. “It is a piece of hyperspace totally enclosing itself, detached from the cosmos. Only another being who is Owlein could reach inside and bring her out.”

“Owlein” was the word describing any creature, like a Plican, capable of folding space. Among the other inhabitants of the galaxy it was an exceedingly rare gift—the Monks were the only even vaguely humanoids Johnny knew of who had the ability.

“I promised the Emperor … I promised I would look after you both,” wailed Alf, “and now Miss Clara is gone forever.”

“She can't be,” said Johnny. “I won't let her be.”

“Master Johnny,” said the android, “I wish with every positronic circuit I have that there was a way, but there is none.”

“Yes, there is,” Johnny replied. “I'm Owlein too. I folded once before and I nearly did it again tonight. I'll learn.”

For the first time the television news had been full of the disappearances. The missing persons' list was the longest since records began and growing alarmingly. Johnny suspected that this told only a fraction of the real story. He was worried that Sol couldn't trace Louise, but had to hope she was lying low somewhere. He'd get there as soon as he could, but for now Santorini would have to wait.

Seeing the TV reports, Alf was keen to return to Mars and have the
Spirit of London
inflict as much damage as she could on the pyramid base. They might not survive, but cutting the Krun supply lines to stop more of the aliens being hatched could give Earth a fighting chance. It was the logical step. Johnny, though, could think only of Clara. Nothing else mattered and he knew he was the one person in the galaxy who might be able to save her. They were already flying toward Titan. He would gaze into the thought chamber. He would
seek out the Owlessan Monks and learn from them if he could. Yes, it meant leaving Earth. It meant allowing the Krun free rein to kidnap more people for the terrible fate that awaited them on Mars, but right now, if there was any possibility at all, he had to try to save his sister.

Resigned to the new course of action, Alf began researching the problem. The android pointed out that Sol's databanks held three very sketchy accounts of the only times in recorded galactic history when anything like this had been attempted, just one of which had been even partially successful. The other two were on the same occasion when the fourth Emperor, Dionyster, had been tricked into creating a Klein fold by “A powerful being who came through the gate,” whatever that meant. His two most trusted advisers attempted to bring him back and both also ended up trapped. The time it might have worked, the rescued being had apparently soon returned to the Klein fold, having been unable to stop itself folding again, regardless of the consequences. If Johnny was to have any hope of success at all, he needed a crash course in manipulating space. Leaving Alf on board to keep the peace between Kovac and Sol, he descended alone to the surface of Saturn's largest moon.

For once, Johnny's first instinct was to gaze into the thought chamber—he had to see Clara. As the scarlet-clad Monks swooped all around, he stared into the transparent dome on its crystal plinth. It was like peering through thick fog, as strange shadows shifted without ever coming into focus. He'd never known how to control the chamber, but tried now to empty his mind of all thoughts but his sister. He leaned right across with his nose almost touching the top of the dome and slowly the swirling clouds parted, revealing a scene in sharp focus.

Bram was standing alone on the bridge of the
Calida Lucia
, staring into the abyss with no stars in the heavens to guide him. Everything began to blur.

Quickly the view shifted and there was Princess Zeta aboard her solar-sailing ship, the
Falling Star,
her long purple hair streaming behind in an impossible breeze. It was as if she sensed Johnny was there—she smiled at him, but her cat-like eyes were full of sadness.

Johnny liked Zeta, but he hadn't come here to see the princess. He thought harder about Clara, focusing on her and her alone, recalling again the last words she had spoken to him. As he did so, he waved his arms randomly over the crystal plinth.

A group of people stood huddled together, their clothes sodden, colorless rags, their eyes wide with fear, too terrified to move. Meekly they allowed themselves to be plucked, one by one, from the ground by clear corrugated living tubes that swung them upside down across a great hall filled with birthing eggs. Then they were dropped and cocooned, battered for the feast to come. Rigid, they were slowly disappearing through the jaws of the Krun Queen.

“
At last, Johnny … live ones. They taste so good. I will come to the humans' planet and devour all.
”

The Queen's voice was drowned out by the screams as, one by one, the poor people were eaten. He couldn't watch anymore and again waved his arms over the plinth.

Here was Louise, in the sun and the wind, climbing down a steep cliff face. Gulls swooped and cawed around her. One slip and she would fall into the rough sea below. She dropped onto a ledge and sidled carefully along till she reached the mouth of a cave, carved into the rock. Inside the cavern Peter rose out of the still, turquoise water to meet her.

Johnny hoped his friend from Yarnton Hill was safe. He was pleased to have seen her, but focused his thoughts on Clara and
then there she was … falling within the Klein fold. One of the Owlessan Monks placed a long skeletal hand onto Johnny's shoulder to pull him away, but he shrugged the creature off. His sister was screaming, her eyes black and face stretched wide in utter despair. Time had no meaning within her bubble of hyperspace. She would never go hungry; she couldn't even grow old. She was there for an eternity longer than the lifetime of the universe. Johnny called her name. He shouted through the top of the dome. He banged his fists on it, as if to break through and pluck Clara from the prison that held her so very securely.

The view changed again. The broken body of Ophia—the Emissary installed by Bram—lay in pieces before a vast angry crowd. Her head, with huge anime eyes still open, was attached only to her spinal column, clearly artificial and beautifully constructed of elegant silver vertebrae, reflecting the glow of a red giant star. Something was standing beside the butchered body, a being whose long legs ended in a pair of diamond-encrusted slippers. A spindly arm reached down from under azure robes and plucked Ophia's head off the stone steps. The creature held it aloft by her short black hair, thrusting it forward in triumph toward a vast crowd of baying, cheering aliens of all kinds, many wearing the blue armor of the dead Regent's army.