The Kings of Eternity (39 page)

Langham considered. “He came a long way, Vaughan. I’ve thought about dying, but I’m not ready yet. I have... there’s so much to experience, so much to live for.” He looked up, across at Vaughan. “Are you joining Jasper out there?”

“I’ve had enough of Earth,” Vaughan said, “for the time being. I’ve done so much, experienced pretty much all there is to experience. I need something new. I was hoping to explore the galaxy with Charles and Jasper.” He paused, smiling sadly. “And you? Will you be joining us?”

Langham smiled. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe one day.”

“But not today?”

“I’ve met someone, Edward. She means everything to me.”

“You mean...?” Vaughan stared at him. “The serum?”

Langham nodded. “I’ll ask her, of course, if she wants to become like us. I’ll tell her everything. I think she’ll join me. I know she’s the one, the one with whom I want to share the dubious gift.”

“You have only one choice, Langham,” Vaughan said. “Eternity is a very long time.”

Langham smiled. “We might not be together for ever,” he said. “I know that love can’t last that long. It would be selfish to hope it would. But of all the people I’ve ever known, she’s the one who most deserves the opportunity of experiencing more than what we’re normally allowed.”

“She must be an incredible person,” Vaughan said. “Maybe, one day, we will meet.”

Langham looked across the room, to where the receiver sat upon the floor. “How long before...?” he asked.

Vaughan looked at his watch. “Jasper said he would open the jump gate at three o’clock our time,” he said. “We’re about a minute away.”

They sat in silence for a minute, and then two. Langham was about to comment on Jasper’s characteristic unpunctuality when the air of the room became charged, and a second later a blue glow appeared at head height, a fist-sized ball, which expanded with a breathtaking rush. It hung, an oval six feet high, in the air above the shanath’s base.

Langham stood, and Vaughan with him, and together they approached the pulsing blue interface.

As they stared, the blue light cleared, and both men stood back involuntarily, dazzled for a second.

Langham squinted, and made out a strange garden scene, full of weird blooms and vines, with a house-like construct in the mid-ground, except the building had no walls and the garden extended into it.

Jasper Carnegie stood before the construct, staring through the portal at them - but a Jasper much altered from the man Langham had known all those years ago. The skin of his face and arms was iridescent, his face gaunt and attenuated, and yet something uniquely Jasper remained.

“Gentlemen!” he cried. “You cannot imagine my joy! Welcome to Kerrain, my home. A more beautiful world you will never experience. But quickly, I can maintain the link for minutes only, as the cost is prohibitively colossal. Please, step through.”

Langham said, “I’m remaining on Earth, Jasper. Maybe in time, when I’ve tired of this world...”

“I will attempt to communicate more often,” Jasper said, “now that the war is almost over.”

Vaughan stepped forward. “You mean...?”

Jasper smiled, the iridescent swirls of his face shifting like rainbows in a kaleidoscope. “The Vark are defeated. They hold out on one or two planets, but they are routed. The galaxy is free at last, and peaceable once again. Slave worlds are no longer in thrall, and all across the face of the inhabited galaxy the many peoples of the many worlds can go abroad without fear. Truly, it is a wondrous age in which to experience the teeming universe!”

I thought of Kathan, who the last I heard was a prisoner of the Vark. “And Kathan?” I asked. “What of him?”

“You will be pleased to know that the rescue attempt was a complete success. The insurgency party penetrated the Vark stronghold and extricated the majority of him intact.”

“The majority?” I said.

“He was enmeshed in a particularly bestial Vark implement of torture at the time,” Jasper said.

“But he is fit and whole now?”

“Fit and whole and due to join me here within the week.”

“Jasper,” Vaughan said, “if only the news from this end were as sanguine.”

Jasper Carnegie stepped forward and peered through the portal. “I see no sign of Charles.”

“A Vark assassin found us,” Langham said. “There was a brief fight. Without the weapons you sent us, we would be dead.”

“And Charles?” Jasper said, resignation in his tone.

“I’m sorry,” Vaughan said. “Charles did not survive.”

Jasper nodded his attenuated head. “Another brave casualty in the war against oppression,” he murmured. “You killed the Vark?”

Langham nodded.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for breaking it to me. I am cheered that you survived so that we might meet again and renew our friendship.” He looked at Langham. “Are you sure I cannot tempt you with the wonders of this world?”

Langham smiled. “Not this time, Jasper. But I hope to join you, one day.”

Vaughan turned to Langham. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, first shaking Langham by the hand, and then taking him in an embrace like the hug of a bear.

“Take care out there, Vaughan. My thoughts will be with you.”

Vaughan stepped towards the jump gate, then turned. “Take the receiver with you, and the blue egg.” He indicated the egg upon the sideboard. He smiled. “And the launch is yours, a parting gift.”

“Farewell,” Langham said.

“Oh, those days at Cranley Grange seem like an eternity away already!” Vaughan said, then stepped through the interface, passed from one world to another, with one short stride, and became a part of the strange alien garden.

Vaughan approached Jasper Carnegie and embraced his friend, and then both men faced the portal and lifted their hands.

“To the Kings of Eternity!” Langham said.

“To the Kings of Eternity!” Vaughan and Jasper replied from across the light years.

Langham waved, and seconds later the alien garden, and the two men with it, vanished as if they had never been.

Chapter Seventeen

Kallithéa, July, 1999

He stepped from the taxi and walked up the track towards his villa. It was almost six, and the sun was falling through the pine trees to his left. He would keep his promise to Caroline and be back by sunset.

He passed her villa, and paused beside the place where, mere weeks ago, they had first met. He wept, then, whether at the good fortune that had brought her into his life, or at the thought that soon he would save her, or at Charles’ death, he was unable to say. He felt possessed by a sensation at once joyous and sad, and quite inexplicable.

He continued up the track and came to his villa. He paused to stare at the whitewashed walls, its peaked terracotta tiled roof. Within was the woman he loved, with no knowledge at all of the surprise he had in store for her.

He stepped onto the patio and deposited the shanath, the blue egg, the kree gun and his mereth on the table. He looked around, and his heart almost missed a beat. Caroline was not seated upon the sofa. He entered the villa and called her name, then stepped back onto the patio and rushed to the railings. He peered over, irrationally, fearing what he might find. The cliff-face fell, sheer, to the sea far below.

“Daniel?”

He turned. She stood, framed in the doorway, wearing a baggy white t-shirt and faded jeans.

He hurried over to her and took her in his arms.

“Daniel! Where’ve you been? My God, your face is burned! What on earth have you been doing?”

He laughed. “It’s a long story, Caroline. And you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“After dinner, okay? When we’re watching the sun set and the stars come out. How are you feeling?”

“So-so. I’m hungry, which I suppose is a good sign.” She stopped, staring over his shoulder at the table. “What are those?”

He assisted her over to the table. “That’s... well, we call it a blue egg; this a kree gun, this a mereth, and this a shanath. They’re all part of the story.”

She picked up the egg. “But it’s beautiful, Daniel. Tell me what it is!”

“I can’t. It has its place in the story I want to tell you. I can’t tell you about it out of context.”

She stared at him, head cocked, and then smiled. “I don’t know what’s going on, Daniel.”

“I’m having a shower. Then I’ll cook something. What would you like?”

“I don’t know. Surprise me.”

He showered, and then stood and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His forehead, where the Vark’s light-beam had missed him by inches, was red raw.

He moved to the kitchen, poured himself a wine and Caroline an orange juice, and quickly prepared a salad with cold ham - he was impatient to tell Caroline the story.

They ate on the sofa and watched the sun go down, and Langham considered the miracle of all the sunsets on all the many planets of the galaxy. He drained his wine and poured another.

They finished the meal, and Caroline turned to him and said, “Okay, now out with it. The whole story, from beginning to end. No prevarication.”

“One minute,” he said. “The props.”

He cleared away the dishes while she watched, amused. He moved into the villa and from the desk in his study took the serum pistol and the yellowing manuscript. He collected the blue egg, the kree gun, the mereth and the shanath from the table on the patio and carried everything over to the sofa.

He placed the shanath at one end of the coffee table, the blue egg next to it, followed by the kree gun, the mereth and the serum pistol, and last of all the manuscript.

“My God,” Caroline said, “even more. What are they?”

“The Styrian serum pistol,” he said, “and the manuscript.”

She was shaking her head in bafflement, staring at the ranked objects. “They all sound like something from a science-fiction novel!”

He smiled. “I suppose they could be,” he said, “but this novel actually happened.”

He looked into the night sky, and he felt tears prickling his eyes. “Oh, my God,” he said, pointing. “Look!”

She followed the direction of his forefinger. “Orion?” she said.

He stared at the central star of the hunter’s belt, Alnilam, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Daniel?” she said, concerned.

He would tell her that he could save her, that he could bestow upon her the dubious gift of eternal life. It was a miracle, and conferred upon the subject wonderful experiences, but it was a gift not without terrible consequences. He would tell her that he would make her, like him, immortal, but that while she would be spared the depredations of time, others around her, friends and loved ones, would not. She would see her sons age and eventually die, and everyone she knew would grow decrepit and defunct likewise; she would watch societies rise and fall, whole epochs of history come and go; she would watch humankind destroy portions of itself in senseless wars, witness the ravages of plagues and famines... Unless, of course, they decided to flee this planet and journey among the stars and behold who knew what joys and tragedies out there also.

But he would tell her that he loved her, and that although their love might not last the test of eternity, their friendship would. He would ask her to trust him, and that whatever befell them over the millennia ahead, he would be there for her; she could rely on him now, and forever.

She leaned against him, hugging his arm like a frightened child. “The darkness,” she said in a small voice, “the stars... I’m frightened, Daniel.”

He placed an arm around her. “You have no reason to be,” he murmured.

“I think I have.”

He stroked her hair. “No reason at all, Caroline. You see, I can save you.”

She looked at him, her eyes widening when she saw the tears coursing down his cheeks. “Daniel, how can you be so cruel?”

“Because it’s true,” he said. He pointed to Orion. “You are my Queen of Eternity, and the stars are my witness.”

He passed her the manuscript. “This will explain the details,” he went on, “but first I want to tell you the simple truth.”

The middle star of Orion’s belt twinkled, and Langham thought of Vaughan and Jasper beneath the light of the distant sun.

“Caroline,” he said, “I am immortal. I will be one hundred years old next week.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide, and opened her mouth to speak - but no words came.

He put his arm around her, and told her the story of his life, and above the glittering sea, all across the heavens, the massed and hopeful stars were beckoning.

About The Author

Eric Brown’s first short story was published in
Interzone
in 1987, and he sold his first novel,
Meridian Days
, in 1992. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published forty books: SF novels, collections, books for teenagers and younger children, and he writes a monthly SF review column for the
Guardian
. His latest books include the novels
Guardians of the Phoenix
and
Engineman
, for Solaris Books.

He is married to the writer and mediaevalist Finn Sinclair and they have a daughter, Freya.

His website can be found at: www.ericbrown.co.uk

Also by Eric Brown

Novels

Xenopath

Necropath

Cosmopath

Kéthani

Helix

New York Dreams

New York Blues

New York Nights

Penumbra

Engineman

Meridian Days

Guardians of the Phoenix

Novellas

Starship Fall

Starship Summer

Revenge

The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne

Approaching Omega

A Writer’s Life

Collections

Threshold Shift

The Fall of Tartarus

Deep Future

Parallax View (with Keith Brooke)