Chapter 21.14

Soon two boats were between Britt and the orcas; men warned her to turn around and return to shore, so she dove under the boats and continued swimming to the largest female –

Who remained resolutely still.

Even as one of the policeman chambered a round and took careful aim.

Evan as Britt swam up to the large female and rested there in the water beside her.

The female turned and looked at the man on the boat pointing at her with the oddly formed stick, and centuries of instinct told her to be very careful now.

Britt swam into her pectoral and was wrapped inside a protective embrace, then one by one the orcas slipped under the surface and were gone.

+++++

Firefighters sprayed some kind of foam on the water; others sprayed water on the grass, halting the fire’s spread – for the time being, anyway.

But now Henry noticed that the wind was so hot, and so strong, that the hot rain had simply stopped. Evaporated – before the water made it back to the earth’s fulsome embrace? Was that what the future held? Wasn’t that the route Venus had taken on her way to the runaway greenhouse that defined the planet’s atmosphere now?

But…why here, and why now? Wasn’t something like this supposed to be decades away – if it ever happened at all? What had changed?

With his back to the wind he looked up at the sky.

Yes. Two of them were up there, two wildly spinning orbs so easily mistaken for bright stars.

‘Have you given up on us?’ he asked the sky. ‘Did we disappoint you so deeply?’

Two more orbs joined the first two – but Henry could see no sign of Pinky.

But worse still, they were all simply ignoring him. Or at least they seemed to be…

Another shattering explosion from the port and the sky turned red; roiling black clouds twisted and climbed into the night, their twisting red bellies full of embers just waiting to fall back to earth.

+++++

Eva woke to the sounds of a furious commotion out on the water, so she went to the balcony to see what was happening. Little red boats a few yards off the rocks were turning in frantic circles in the night, while a helicopter fluttered overhead, a white hot spotlight pointing down into the sea, and there were hundreds of people on the rocks lining the shore. These people were pointing and seemed agitated – but what about?

“Britt? Have you seen this? When did it start?”

Then the silence of no reply hit her. Icy fear reached out into the night, grabbed her by the gut.

“Britt?”

A discarded robe in Britt’s bedroom; her running shoes gone. An impossible chain of events unspooled in her mind’s eye.

“Oh, no…”

She closed her eyes and reached out for Henry.

‘What’s happened?’ he said.

‘Britt has returned to the sea, there are police looking for her in boats and helicopters.’

Then…Pinky’s spinning orb was there beside Henry…

‘She is with me,’ she sighed. ‘Do not worry.’

‘Pinky?’ Henry almost screamed. ‘Where have you been?’

‘There are many difficulties I must attend to now, Henry.’

‘And Britt is with you? This is supposed to put me at ease?’

‘They will not hurt me,’ Britt said.

‘And they won’t hurt Pinky – as long as you’re there with her,’ he thought – but as with all such unfiltered thoughts, off it went, reeling away into the infinite.

‘They will not hurt us, Henry.’

His mind filled with images of orcas and babies coming into the world and he tried not to jump to unwarranted conclusions. ‘Pinky, do you know what you’re doing?’

‘Of course. How is the storm?’

‘Bad.’

‘Be careful, Henry. The others know what has happened, so I do not think they will help you again.’

‘I’ve figured that out already. Where’s Eva?’

‘She will be here soon.’

Henry tried to clear his mind. ‘Alright. You be careful too.’ He could just make out the faintest contours of her smile, then she was gone – leaving him to worry about Dinky and the others. Were factions forming? Were The Others split by unseen differences? If so, dare he even consider trying to meddle in their affairs?

“No,” he said aloud.

“What?” Dina asked, still treating the injuries of one of the people pulled from the canal.

“Oh…nothing. I was just thinking…”

“Henry,” Rolf called out from the tow path – now pointing towards Brugge, “look at the fire!”

Henry turned, watched helplessly as another cluster of medieval buildings disappeared behind another gout of towering red flames – even as fire services tried to quench this latest rampage. “Why does if feel like our history is being devoured?” he muttered.

“Maybe because we are tired of this past,” Dina replied wearily, wiping away sweat and soot from her forehead. “Maybe we have grown tired of hauling around all these ancient ideas. Or maybe we simply always lust for the new and are ready to burn away our past when the weight of her burdens become too much.”

Henry shook his head. “Like reinventing the wheel or squirrels in a cage running round and round. We’re going nowhere, fast.”

“I need more gauze pads. Do you know where they are?”

Henry nodded and went below – and he found Dinky waiting for him.

He was a pale blue version of Pinky, only taller, so he found Dinky sprawled out on the sofa in a futile effort to fit into the cramped space.

“Well, long time no see,” Taggart said – a little too sarcastically. “To whom do we owe this pleasure?”

Dinky ignored the jab. “We will be leaving soon…”

“And what? You won’t be coming back?”

“No, we will not.”

“And Pinky? Will she be going, too?”

“No, she will not.”

Henry tried to digest that one, but he found the idea unsettling. “Okay. What else are you not telling me?”

“Eva and Britt. They will be going with us.”

“What?”

“And they will not return to this place.”

“You can’t do that.”

“We must. And you know this must be.”

Henry looked away, but even so he nodded understanding – Pinky was trying to stop this from happening. “Why so fast?”

“We do not understand the process,” Dinky said, and Taggart could feel the creatures apparent confusion.

“When will you leave?”

“Very soon. We will be gone within days. Nothing of our presence will remain.”

“Aside from Pinky, you mean.”

Dinky just looked at Henry, as if his silence alone could explain the lingering ambivalence he felt.

“Will you remain closed off to me?” Henry added.

“No. But there will be little I can do to assist you.”

“So…alone again, naturally.”

Dinky shook his head. “Such a sad song. Why do you still like it so?”

“You never cease to amaze, Dink. Is there anything about me you don’t know?”

“I will miss you, Henry, if that’s what you mean. I will miss our talks on the beach most of all, but perhaps they didn’t mean all that much to you.”

“Perhaps,” Henry sighed, looking at his old friend. “Anyway, I’ll miss you, as well.”

“Britt is with us now. Eva will be soon, but please don’t interfere.”

Henry hadn’t expected this power play, yet he’d never really thought they’d actually try something so overtly disruptive, let alone put such a plan into effect. Still, he shook his head before he spoke: “This is a mistake, and you know it. Why?”

“Perhaps someday you will understand.”

“I’m thinking about Dina and Rolf. They’ll never understand.”

Dinky sighed. “Yes, that is true, yet it must be.”

“Will they be closed to me?”

“For a while. We will allow the boy a certain amount of contact after that.”

“His name is Rolf, and you will be hurting him terribly.”

“It is regrettable.”

“Regrettable?” Henry sighed. “My coming into their lives will be the darkest moment of his life. You’ll undo everything I’ve tried to build.”

“Perhaps.”

“You know, the shittiest thing I ever did was to teach you the fine art of playing poker.”

“That depends on your point of view, Henry Taggart.” Dinky smiled a little, his deep blue eyes twinkling in the cabin-light. “Again, my friend, I will miss you.”

And with that he was gone, leaving Henry dazed and confused. “Gauze pads. I came down for supplies, for Dina. What do I tell her? How do I…?”

He heard another cannon-shot crack as thunder and lightning erupted from the storm in the same instant, then Dina was screaming and running from the boat…

He ran topsides and saw Dina running in circles, screaming, while Mike and Anton appeared to be searching for…

“Rolf,” he whispered. “Where’s Rolf?”

But he already knew the answer to that, didn’t he. Dink had turned out to be a master at the bluff after all. But…who had taken him? He didn’t know, and that bothered him. He walked over to Dina, intent on explaining what he knew – until he saw the anger in her eyes.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Chapter 21.13

For some reason Judy Garland was the first thing he thought of. Dorothy and Toto, running for home as that writhing black twister came for them out of the clouds. And the really scary thing about that moment caught in the flickering light? Dorothy’s celluloid storm wasn’t an abstract weather formation, it was a living beast full of malicious intent – and that too ran through Henry Taggart’s mind as he stared at the writhing black snakes coming up the canal.

“Get below. Now,” he growled as the snakes’ menacing hiss became apparent.

No one argued, and Dina led the way down.

“Where’s Clyde?” he called out.

“He’s not down here!” Rolf answered from the galley, then Henry heard the boy running up the companionway.

Yet Henry was already off the boat and running for Clyde’s tree by the time Rolf was back on deck, and he saw the pup squatting and doing the deed right in the middle of the tow path as he ran up.

“Way to go, butthead!” Henry said, leaning over to rub the pup’s ears. 

Rolf ran up – carrying Clyde’s leash – and he snapped it on. “Sorry. I forgot the poop-bags…”

Henry laughed at that – hard and loud. “Yeah? Me too. Time to beat feet,” he said, scooping up Clyde and dashing back to the boat.

“You were so weak earlier today,” Rolf said. “How are you doing this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with a tornado crawling up our ass…”

“Ah yes, I see.”

Which made Henry laugh again, even as they climbed on board and hopped into the cockpit. “You go first and I’ll hand him down to you.” And after he passed Clyde down through the hatch he went to the helm and looked at the display one more time before he powered everything down; the storm’s eye was visible on the radar now – though still just offshore, but it was headed their way and he wondered what that might lead to…

Then he made his way down the companionway steps and into the galley just as a colossal gust tore through the boats moored in the canal. He heard a few shrieks and screams, then people struggling with boats that had come undone; he heard what sounded like a high-pitched freight train coming close and that reality pushed everything else from his mind. Looking through trees and houses, he saw the twister scything its way through boats moored a few hundred feet aft of Time Bandits, followed by more screams and several small explosions as bottled propane tanks ruptured and ignited. He ran up the steps and into the night, Rolf and Anton right behind him…

Then an overwhelming wall of scalding rain hit, and the pain was shattering…

+++++

She could hardly stand it.

The orcas were still out there, still motionless, still silent in the night – yet – she could sense they were calling out to her. Reaching. Reaching out to her. For her.

Then…puzzlement? Why wasn’t she answering?

Can she not hear us?

Yet no matter what she did, what she tried, she couldn’t make the connection.

She looked at Eva – still sleeping on the sofa, cut-off from her frustration, her fear a dissolute reminder of that other life. That life before all this happened. Life before Henry Taggart came into their  lives. Her life. And now something was growing inside her womb. Something – human? Or…?

She stood and cinched up her bathrobe, then walked out onto the balcony.

And still they looked at her.

She went back inside and put on her clothes then walked down to the water’s edge – oblivious to the world around her. Heedless of the several biologists gathered on the rocks monitoring the orcas, or of the harbor police still in their boats searching for two missing swimmers. Now everyone was gathered, watching this woman swim out to the orcas. 

Curious. Unsure what they were witnessing.

“That’s Dr Bauer,” one of the police officers said over the radio net. “She hasn’t been seen at the clinic for days…!”

“Those are wild orcas,” one of the biologists yelled into her radio. “They’ll kill her!”

Police jumped into their Zodiacs and rushed across the water, men gathered on bow platforms with heavy rifles at the ready. The inherent confusion of adrenaline and testosterone taking on a certain mindless momentum all too familiar to her.

To Pinky.

She was overhead now, looking down at the all the pieces moving on the board, moving to take the White Queen. 

Would they listen to her now?

+++++

Their foul weather coats offered some protection – but not to the people fleeing the carnage as several tornados tore through the boats lining the canal – and the result were predictably catastrophic. Anton collected a pregnant woman and tossed her across his shoulders, then sprinted back to Dina – waiting on Time Bandits to take care of the injured; Mike dove into the canal and plucked two drowning children from the inky water – just before fuel arrived on the flooding tide. He passed them up to Rolf, then he carried more injured back to Dina.

Henry was first to smell the fuel arriving on the tide, and at the same time he saw flames spreading inland from the port area, heading for Brugge, heading for their stretch of the canal. It was, he figured, only a matter of minutes before the fuel ignited, turning the canal into a miles long inferno…like a torch in the night…and he thought of a certain boatman ferrying lost souls across the Styx in another endless night.

Then some sort of environmental protection vessel appeared, stringing booms across the canal, booms meant to arrest the flow of contaminated water into the ancient city, then several brigades of fire services arrived – apparently setting up some kind of fire line here on the western edge of the city. Would it be enough, Henry wondered?

Then Epsilon hit in all her fury.

Scorching winds blasted through the region, winds so hot they literally fried everything they touched. “Get down!” Dina yelled. “Cover your face!”

Trees ignited. An ancient row of medieval townhouses went next, and Henry knew then that his nightmare had been a window to the future – and he wondered what that meant.

The grass along both sides of the canal withered under the onslaught, then sparks began raining down from the sky, and as Henry looked on helplessly the water in the canal turned to fire.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Chapter 21.12

The lightning was close now. Too close to ignore.

He sighed, looked around his little world and tried to imagine what was waiting for them in the next few hours – and he didn’t like what he saw. “Dina, you’d better go below now.” 

By the tone in Henry’s voice she knew this was a command – yet she stood her ground. “No, I will stay with you,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand.

The feel of her skin on his was pure electricity now, her love palpable in the darkness – like something he felt hovering beyond the uncertainty pacing back and forth within the growling wind. She was knowledge, and knowledge is strength. The same old story, he thought. Every storm is a teacher, right?

A stroboscopic series of blue flashes split the night as fire services and EMS went racing by, headed for the port and the leading edge of the storm; Henry flipped on the radar and tried to measure the distance to the leading edge. He used the cursor and mapped out the distance – eight miles – and then knew that was that, the wait was over. The storm was making landfall – right now – and so the fuel storage tanks would soon be feeling the first impacts of 180 knot winds. He looked to the southwest and saw the writhing snakes, so guesstimated a bearing and placed the closest waterspout on the radar display. “Just about there,” he murmured.

“What?” Anton asked as he came into the cockpit.

“The waterspouts are just about on top of the fuel storage yard.”

The aviator nodded and turned to look at the sky.

“How about some juice?” Dina asked, her voice a life preserver. When everyone nodded she ducked below, then started passing up plastic cups full of fresh squeezed OJ, and Taggart watched her little ballet with more than a sense of wonder. Everything she had done since Amsterdam she had done out of strength – and with Love. Was that what had attracted him in the first place? Had he seen this moment coming back in May?

Because right now he was almost sure that he had.

Britt and Rolf – and that fiercely glowing lump in his breast – had taken him from the uncertainty of his voyage to the sheer certainty of her Will – and yet everything since had been leading them all to this moment, to this confrontation.

‘Because every storm is a teacher,’ he repeated. ‘Right, Dad?’

Then – ‘Dina is my storm, my teacher,’ he realized as he watched her come up the companionway steps. Their eyes met. They never wavered, never once looked away, even as the feelings of strength and love returned. Then she nodded – just once – when she saw understanding in his eyes.

Another flash. A few seconds passed – then the deep rumble of thunder still a few miles distant.

He drank his juice, marveled at the simple strength contained in this magic liquid…

Just as more lightning hit. A massive, prolonged volley – the following thunder sounding more like a burst of rifle shots not even a second later – then he saw a billowing mushroom of boiling flame rising over the port area, and the tank farm.

Within seconds the blast wave hit, sending Time Bandits reeling and knocking Mike and Rolf off their feet, and yet this first blast was only a precursor to the second, much larger wave that hit seconds later. Henry instinctively turned away from the searing heat – just as the wave of the storm hit –

A searing pain in his chest announced the arrival of the first hot gusts, and he watched the outside air temperature readout leap from 118 to 135 Fahrenheit, just as scalding rain began slamming into exposed skin. Henry looked at the fabric awning that covered the cockpit and wondered if it would hold up to this assault – while Mike and Rolf leapt to get under its protective embrace.

“Yeow!” Mike yelled, holding up his arm while he inspected the rising welts. “This shit is hot, Henry. I mean, like, really hot.”

Anton held his hand out and quickly pulled it back under cover. “This not right, Genry. Something very wrong here…”

But his words were cut off by another blast from the port – just as a writhing, snakelike tornado came into view – now just a few hundred yards away and heading right for them.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Chapter 21.11

It was a different world. Entropy – no longer gradual, but energetic, almost chaotic.

“Henry…look at this news report,” Rolf exclaimed almost breathlessly as he made his way into the cockpit, pointing at the screen.

Taggart hunched over and looked at the display: two more hot cyclones had formed in just the last six hours – one south of Bangladesh, and another, much larger storm southeast of Japan. Like Epsilon, both of these storms were redefining meteorological theory with their blistering hot temperatures and historic wind velocities, and now climate change scientists were gathering information from every available source, trying to make sense of these startling new developments. Yet as information poured in from satellites and remote sensing buoys the data just didn’t seem to make sense…

Unless…

Some unforeseen tipping point had been breeched.

Henry looked up from the screen and shook his head, then he looked up at the masthead.

But Winky wasn’t there.

He closed his eyes and leaned back, reached out for Winky – only to find a wall of emptiness in the darkness. This hadn’t happened before, and he suddenly felt very unsure of his footing.

So he reached out to Pinky – and once again found only a n engulfing void.

He reached out to Eva and found she was sitting up in Britt’s seaside home just outside of Bergen watching several female orcas, while Britt seemed to be lost inside of some kind of catatonic funk.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked Eva.

‘She’s been like this for hours, Henry. I’ve never seen this before.’

‘Have you tried talking to her?’

‘Yes. It’s like she can’t hear me, or even see me.’

‘What about the whales? What are they doing?’

‘The same. It is like they are rigid and unmoving.’

‘The storm is just about here. I’ll let you know when it’s over.’

‘Be careful, my love.’

He nodded and returned to Time Bandits. Anton was staring at him, almost seething with anger.

“Where you go when you fade out like this?” the aviator asked grumpily.

Henry shrugged and turned to Rolf. “Pull up the weather radar, would you?”

The storm’s main northeast wall was less than a fifty miles away now, so Taggart looked to the southwest. In the inky blackness he saw towering cloud-tops alive with flickering streamers of lightning, so he looked at the radar again and measured distances. “The first wave of wind ought to be here within a half hour,” he said, looking at Mike and Anton. “Make sure you’ve got gloves handy, as well as the big bolt-cutters and that axe. Let’s keep the decks clear, and our lines, too. We may need to reset lines that break loose, and in a hurry, too.”

“Why you ignore me, Genry?”

“Because I don’t have time to explain things in detail right now. When we get past this storm we’ll have a long talk…just you and I.”

That seemed to satisfy Anton, for now anyway, and he turned to help Mike gather supplies from the garage, so Henry turned to Rolf. “Are you ready for this?”

“In truth, no, yet I don’t know what else we could have done to prepare.”

“Every voyage has a storm, Rolf. Some bigger than others. Just like life, I guess you could say, but the important thing to remember is this: storms are teachers. You learn from them, or you perish – but we can talk about all that tomorrow, after the storm.”

“You seem certain we will be here tomorrow.”

“We will be.”

“Thanks. I feel better now.”

“Words matter, Rolf. Especially the right words – at the right time. Every captain learns this, and when this is your ship you’ll need to remember this.”

“I will never be able to think of this as my ship, Henry. Time Bandits will always be yours.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Rolf. A ship can have only one master, just like a life can only have one master. When I’m gone, this ship is either yours – or it isn’t. If you feel like it isn’t, you’ll need to pass it along to someone who can take her over. Is that clear?”

Rolf nodded.

“You’re still young, Rolf, and I realize I’m asking you to grow up in a hurry, but I’m only doing this because I’ve seen something in you. An ability, what I’d call a great inner strength. Maybe you won’t get that yet, maybe you can’t understand that right now, but there it is.”

“Okay, Henry.”

A hot gust hit, and everyone turned to face a deep, rumbling wall of thunder, but even Henry seemed to cower for a moment when he realized what he was looking at…

A huge, anvil-headed cloud full of lightning was almost upon them, but along the horizon a wall of writhing snakes approached. Water-spouts. Dozens and dozens of them, as far as the eye could see.

And they all appeared to be converging on the huge fuel storage tanks in Zeebrugge.

‘What haven’t I thought of?’ Taggart asked as he looked at the coiling storm.

“Fuel. In the water,” he murmured.

“What?” Rolf said.

“What happens if those fuel storage tanks let go? Pull up the local tides, Rolf. Now.”

“Right!”

The graph was clear. It was slack water now, but the flooding tide would return in a few minutes – and if a lock failed the sea would potentially flood into the canals here, and all the way into Brugge. And if the storage tanks failed the canals would fill with inrushing waves of fuel.

One spark and everything would soon be lost to the fire. Including Time Bandits and everyone on her.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Chapter 21.10

Epsilon’s first band washed over the central Belgian coast a little after 2100 hrs, and this first brush with the storm worried Henry Taggart – and absolutely terrified Dina. 

The outside air temperature had been holding steady at 105 degrees Fahrenheit through the early evening when suddenly the barometer dropped and the temperature jumped ten degrees; moments later a 90 knot gust raged over the Brugge region and older trees began snapping and tumbling away in the wind. The sound made by the snapping trees, Anton said, reminded him of distant cannon fire.

Yet Time Bandits hardly budged under the force of this first onslaught. She leaned a bit, perhaps two to three degrees off-plumb, then shrugged-off the impact and stood resolutely upright, and Henry was pleased.

Pinky was secreted below, her massive frame curled up on Henry’s berth in the aft cabin; Dina remained in the galley working on a fresh batch of bread but every now and then she looked in on Pinky to see how she was doing.

After Epsilon’s first band passed a pale blue orb appeared at the top of Time Bandit’s mast; the slowly spinning orb simply fixed itself there, an inert, watchful presence that was simply impossible to ignore. People on nearby boats stared and pointed, yet by now nothing seemed to surprise these people after a day of watching the antics on the American’s boat.

Clyde seemed to be in a little too much pain after the thug’s kick and Henry looked at his urine after each walk to the bushes, but it was still running clear so he resolved to simply keep a watchful eye on the old boy for a few more days – or until they could find an open veterinary clinic.

He looked up at the masthead from time to time, at the baleful eye lingering up there, and at one point he saw stars and moon glow through an opening in the scudding clouds. He could just make out Orion up there, and even the pink glow under the belt was faintly visible – yet the overwhelming mood of the moment was how utterly surreal this bizarre heat made everything feel. It was autumn in northern Europe coming up on 2200 hours and it was now 120 degrees Fahrenheit on deck.

The BBCs 2200 broadcast was rife with vivid images of British seaports along the southern coast all ablaze. Cathedrals from Canterbury to Salisbury had lost their roofs, and there were reports of airports closed after fuel storage facilities ‘cooked off’ as the storm hit. Taggart and Anton looked up at that, if only because the various tank farms in Zeebrugge were less than ten miles away, and Rolf intuitively switched to the weather overlay function when he heard that, and they all gathered around the display to look.

“The next band will hit in less than an hour,” Henry said, “and it won’t let up until the storm moves out of the area. If anyone is still hungry, now’s the time to do something about it…”

He felt Winky probing his mind then and didn’t even try to resist.

‘Is she with you?’

‘Yes. She’s below and quite afraid.’

‘What happened?’

‘When she moved inside me I resisted, but with her strength I was able to strike out at the intruders.’

‘So…you are saying it was not her actions that resulted in those three deaths, and that they were the result of yours?’

‘I am.’

‘I see. I had no idea you’d grown so attached to her.’

‘Nor had I.’

‘I was being sarcastic, Henry.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t.’

‘She must answer for what she has done.’

‘She didn’t do anything.’

‘I am sorry, but she will not be allowed to hide behind your denials.’

And with that, Winky disappeared. Taggart stood and steadied himself as he grew light-headed, a wave of nausea washing over him, then he went below to check-in on Dina, then Pinky.

“You look pale…” Dina said as he came down the companionway. “Sit down. Let me take your blood pressure.”

He sat and she put a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice down on the table in front of him, then she hooked up the cuff and pumped it up.

“100 over 40. Drink your juice, then go lay down for an hour.”

He nodded. “How’s she doing?”

“Sleeping, as far as I can tell.”

“Sleeping?” Henry asked. “Or simply depressed?”

Dina shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never treated an angel before.”

“An angel? Dina, are you serious?”

“What would you call her?”

“I don’t know; a species that evolved on a low gravity planet?”

“Oh, Henry, you are such a romantic.”

“What kind of bread are you baking? It smells outrageous!”

“Walnut and black olive. It will be ready in a half hour or so.”

He tossed down his juice then stood, holding onto the table until the light-headedness passed, then he shook his head and walked back to the ten foot tall winged creature asleep on his bunk…

+++++

She knew the dream was over yet it felt so good to simply sleep…

Eva sat up in the darkness expecting to feel the harsh contours of the tank, but groping around she felt a mattress underneath and then something that seemed to imply she had returned to normal gravity. She swung her legs out of bed and felt carpet underfoot and knew she was back in Britt’s house, so she walked to the kitchen and found the light switch, then she found a clean glass and filled it with water.

And there was Britt on the sofa in the living room, apparently wide awake and staring out the windows that overlooked the bay. She filled a second glass and went to the sofa…

“Here. Drink this.”

But Britt appeared to be in some sort of trance-like state. Britt was rigid, quiet, and unresponsive, so Eva looked out the window too.

The female orcas were out there, not a hundred meters away from what she could tell, and they were perfectly still, too. Shaking her head, her thoughts reached out for Henry – yet she was shocked to find her way blocked. She’d not experienced this before, and she wondered what it meant.

+++++

As he lay down on the bed her eyes opened, then she smiled.

And as soon he looked into her eyes he smiled too – because he’d never felt anything quite like what he was feeling inside that moment. It was reminiscent of the first time he’d looked at a girl back in grade school and felt a funny stirring in the pit of his belly – a funny, timeless stirring both within and beyond the moment. Yet different.

Her eyes were larger than his, but otherwise her face was in proportion almost human. Still, her eyes were silver-gray and flecked with specks of pinkish amber; the skin on her face was silver-gray  too, and almost pinkishly iridescent. Yet almost everything else he saw was covered in whitish feathers; white with amber roots and faintly pink ends.

Then she folded one of her wings over the bed, covering his entire body – and affording an unusual layer of privacy. Then she pulled him closer, her eyes taking on an almost laser-like intensity, and whatever else it might have been all he could feel was an overwhelming wave of love washing over him.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“My feelings for you, Henry Taggart. This is what it feels like when you reach for me, and it is now for you as it has been for me – from the beginning.” Her hand came up and caressed the side of his face, and when her skin touched his another overwhelming wave of love crashed over him. “Do you feel how it is for me now?”

She was, he decided then and there, something like love-heroin. Her feelings, her touch, the look in her eyes. Could he live without these feelings?

He instantly doubted he could.

“What would be the point?” he said to the universe.

“What do you mean?”

“What would be the point of life without you?”

The smile in her eyes left him breathless and he felt himself drifting away into timelessness.

Then Rolf was reaching into his mind –

‘Henry? We need you up here. Can you come now?’

Then Eva was there –

‘I couldn’t reach you. What happened?’

She cupped his face in her hands and strength poured into his parched body, then she nodded. “Go to them. There will be time for us.”

“I’m not sure I can now…”

“Yet you must, for you are their strength now, and this is your time.”

She then placed a hand on his chest and warmth poured into him, and with the warmth a kind of strength. He inhaled deeply and seemed to grow into the moment…

When he stood this time there was no light-headedness, only resolve to get through the growing storm, but when he turned to thank her she was gone.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Music Matters: I mention Steven Wilson here from time to time as I’ve found his work to be, well, somewhat meaningful (to me). Anyway, new works these days are few and far between but Wilson released a new album last Friday (29 Jan ’21) and there are a few tracks worth a listen to. The album is called The Future Bites, and the title was born of what I can only call a deep existential despair; apparently sometime in 2017 (ahem, cough-cough) Wilson kind of came to the conclusion that the future doesn’t necessarily have to be all bright and shiny and full of warm fuzzies. The future can be full of dark nasty things that go bump in the night (think: “Iceberg, dead ahead…!”), and The Future Bites is full of all kinds of twisted irony. My choice to share with you this week is Man Of The People, and ode to orange haired tyrants everywhere. Enjoy.

Chapter 21.9

“Where have you been?” Dina asked Rolf as they helped Anton out of the water once again – and back up on the swim platform.

“I do not know, Grandma-ma, but I believe we were far from here…”

“We? What do you mean – we?”

“Mother and Eva were with me,” he added.

“How you disappear like that?” Anton asked, taking the fresh towel Rolf offered.

But Rolf only shook his head as he continued talking to Dina: “I almost think we were up there,” Rolf said, pointing skyward. “It felt like we were inside some kind of ship.”

“How is your mother?” Dina asked.

“She has changed, Grandma-ma. It is almost like she has grown more calm, or maybe less afraid – but I think many things have changed since you last saw her.”

“Things are changing here too. I am now very concerned about Henry.”

“How long was I gone?”

Dina shook her head. “Not long…just a few hours, maybe, but something terrible has happened. That…thing…went inside him again and he is more ill than the first time.” Dina seemed more than angry now – outwardly, anyway, but even so Rolf thought she was reacting jealously as he listened to her. “You’d better start tracking that storm again, and I’ll see if Henry will be strong enough to help you tonight.”

Dina returned to the cockpit as another gust of hot, dry air whipped along the grassy banks of the canal, rocking Time Bandits and sending the hull to the limits of her dock lines. Rolf grabbed onto a handrail in time – but Anton was knocked off his feet and back into the canal.

“Maybe I just stay down here, no?” he sputtered.

+++++

‘Winky’ had called this meeting, and he had seemed more agitated than usual when he did.

Dozens of the ship’s crew had already gathered in something like a conference room when he entered and called the meeting to order, and he quickly detailed what he had seen on the planet below. ‘Pinky’ had intervened in Terran affairs and in the process killed three humans; the gathered scientists and academicians seemed shocked and a few wondered if Winky had evidence to support such startling accusations. He reached into their minds and presented what he had – which was, apparently, enough to quiet the naysayers. Pinky was then quietly summoned, though no one looked forward to what surely had to happen next.

+++++

“The water is shallower here, and so much warmer,” Mike said, pointing at the weather overlay on the plotter. “If the storm comes ashore at Calais the dangerous quadrant will hit us, and hit us hard, but the winds will come from the east, or maybe the east-southeast…”

“Those temperatures can not be correct…” Anton whispered, his eyes wide as he tried to visualize what calamities awaited in the night.

Rolf picked up the latest news feed from Radio France and pulled up images from LeHavre; the port area was ablaze and every tall structure had been flattened; trees and farmland had been similarly scorched. The last available reports from the harbor area recounted 190 knot winds and 130F degree temperatures before the reporting stations went off the air, and even Paris had reported similarly hideous extremes before Epsilon’s influence passed.

Mike looked at Henry, still asleep but apparently out of immediate danger, then he looked at the outside air temp display; it was already almost a hundred degrees Fahrenheit out here in the cockpit and the sun was only just setting now. “If the winds will be coming from the east, these lines aren’t going to do much,” he said, pointing at the spaghetti bowl of lines warped around the boat. “We’ll need a bunch run across to the far side of the canal, and we’ll need to be prepared to reset any that come undone, too.”

“See all fire in video?” Anton began. “If tree catch fire,” he said, pointing at the Linden a few yards aft of them, “could fall on boat. What we do if this happen?”

Mike’s face scrunched up as he thought about that. “If the wind is from the east it ought to blow away from us…”

“If not, there’s an axe in the garage,” Henry said, his eyes open a little now.

“Henry!” Rolf cried as Dina bent over to look in his eyes. 

“Hey, Bud. Glad to see you made it back in time for the festivities.”

“How are you feeling?” Dina said, whispering in his ear as she kissed his cheek.

“Not bad, considering. Somewhere between roadkill and well-done prime rib.”

She shook her head. “I’d say you’re feeling fine, no thanks to that pink thing.”

“She saved your lives, Dina. Mine too, come to think of it.”

“You almost died this time, Henry.”

“She asked this time, Dina. I agreed.”

“You did what?”

“They were armed, were they not?”

“Yes, but she killed at least two of them. Doesn’t that strike you as odd…?”

“It’s complicated, Dina.”

“No it isn’t, Henry, and any fool can see that.”

He looked her in the eye, didn’t break contact but neither did he say a word.

“I see,” she said. “Well, at least you understand my anger.”

“I do.”

“You can be such a paternalistic prick.”

Henry nodded and smiled. “And I can’t tell you how many years I’ve spent perfecting my craft.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded admirably.”

He grinned but turned to Rolf. “Let’s get a few more lines across the canal – to those two trees,” he said, pointing at an oak and a linden on the far side of the waterway. “You grab some line and we’ll get the Zodiac ready to go,” he said, turning to Anton and Mike. “You two feel up to some work?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mike said. “I know the drill; why don’t you just lay low for now.”

“Yeah, right…” Taggart said, rolling his eyes.

“Would someone tell me where boy went, please?” Anton asked – again.

+++++

When the added lines had been set, Henry went back to the plotter and checked on Epsilon’s progress; there was no doubt about it now…the storm was going to come ashore just north of Calais, so they were going to be caught in the dangerous quadrant. Anton came and sat beside him just then and Henry sighed inwardly, not really wanting to fill in all the blanks right now – yet if anything, Anton was deeply perceptive and already Taggart was warming to the aviator’s wry sense of irony.

“So, storm comes to Calais?”

“Looks that way. I’d say eight hours to landfall; maybe nine.”

“So, after midnight. But we will feel effects before that, no?”

Henry nodded. “See that band?” Henry asked, pointing at the weather overlay on the plotter. “We’ll feel that one in about three hours, give or take. You better grab some chow and a nap; it could be a long night.”

Anton nodded. “Must say something first, Genry.”

“Okay.”

“Because I your enemy you should have let me drown, yet instead you take me here, you give respect to me, and a place to stay. I want thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You are not well?”

“No, I am not.”

“I very sorry.”

Taggart nodded.

“One question more. Is okay I stay here?”

“Sure, stay as long as you want.”

Anton nodded – yet he looked a little relieved. “Thank you, Genry. You rest now too?”

“Maybe.” He looked at the Russian and smiled. “I actually feel rested right now, but we’ll need you rested tonight.”

Anton stood and extended his right hand, and Henry took it – looking into the aviator’s eyes as he did – and when he felt the man’s openness and respect he nodded again. “I’m glad you’re here, Anton.”

“War is a stupid thing, Genry.”

“I think so too.”

“Yet without war I would not be here.”

Henry nodded. “Be careful, Anton. Keep thinking along those lines and you’ll be thinking about God before too long.”

The aviator nodded before he turned and walked below.

Henry turned his attention back to the plotter but almost immediately felt Pinky reaching out to him – and for the first time in his life he experienced someone else’s fear.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I am hiding.’

‘From?’

She filled his mind with images of events earlier in the day, and then of a hastily called meeting where her actions were being roundly criticized.

‘What do you need?’ he asked.

‘A place to think.’

‘And a place to hide, I take it?’

‘That too.’

‘So? What are you waiting for?’

‘I will no longer be able to hide my physical form from you, Henry.’

‘Okay.’

‘I may frighten you.’

‘Let me deal with that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

He heard Anton coming up the companionway steps and he turned in time to see the aviator coming out into the cockpit carry bowls of salads and some fresh bread. He placed these on the cockpit table about the same time Pinky appeared on the aft deck…

“Holy Mother of God…” Anton muttered as he stumbled backwards towards the lifelines; Taggart shook his head – if only because he knew what had to come next – but he turned to the aft deck and he too seemed more than a little in awe with what he found there.

She was easily three meters tall, and her body was covered with white – feathers? Yet…she had very human hands and feet, and what he thought on first glance was a most angelic face. Then she spread her wings, revealing a span of almost six meters…and only then was the visage complete.

“Don’t tell me,” Taggart quipped. “Your real name is Gabriel…”

“Fuck me in the a…” Anton cried as he catapulted over the rail – again – causing a stampede of voices and footsteps coming from below as everyone made their way up the companionway steps.

Dina was the next to see Pinky; her screams were worthy of a B-grade slasher film.

When Rolf saw her he dropped to his knees and started giggling uncontrollably.

While Mike took one look at Pinky and crossed himself before he dove into the canal; he and Anton swam for the far side.

“Maybe we’d better get you below?” he said to Pinky.

“Ya think?” Dina sighed, her eyes wide open…

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Chapter 21.8

She saw him falling, but he was still too far away – she was concentrating on his head and the way it bounced off an exposed tree root – and she winced as she watched his head bounce.

She was by his side within moments, feeling for a carotid pulse. Checking his neck, then pupil responsiveness. Getting him onto his left side, putting her jacket under his head while she watched his breathing

Then Anton was there by her side, though clearly now more confused than ever. “Where is boy?” he asked in his heavily accented English.

But she was looking past the burly Russian, looking for Mike – and she spotted him running off the boat with her ‘go-bag’ – which contained everything she might need to treat Henry in a crisis just like this – and he was by her side in seconds. She opened the bag and handed Mike a pack of alcohol swabs while she asked him to clean up the skin around his port. She took out an IV bag and handed this to Anton, and she told him to, above all else, hold it above Henry’s head. She hooked the line to the port and then set the flow-rate, checking his heart rate from time to time while the fluid stabilized his electrolytes.

“Okay, let’s get him to the boat,” she said after a few minutes, and both Anton and Mike helped lift and start to carry Henry back to Time Bandits.

Only now there was a small band of thugs on deck, and it appeared that several had already been below – ransacking the interior by the looks of things scattered around the deck.

“We need to get this man below,” she said to one of the man-boys standing by the gate in the lifelines.

“Mange moi, beetch!” he replied as two other hoods came over to join their leader. “Dees ees my boat now, so fuck off!”

Taggart’s eyes flickered a little, but they did not open…

+++++

He was sprawled out on the white road, staring up at the ringed blue planet as his fingers clawed into the fine sandy soil…

“Why…why am I here again – now?”

He pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked around, fighting off nausea and disorientation as he looked around these now almost familiar surroundings. 

‘Yes, there they are. The shadows. The shadows and that brilliant white place in the forest…’

He heard cries in the air now, almost like birds but more like feral cats…weird, screeching calls – that seemed to be reacting to his return to this place.

Then one of the shadows was over him, holding him fast to the sandy dirt, yet as he looked through the spectral form he saw that this shadow had substance. 

Almost humanoid, yet the skin was an iridescent matrix of textures that might have been scales, possibly even feathers, and while the creature within at first seemed more or less androgynous he began to make out a startling pinkness to the iridescent shimmer along the edges of the creatures’ scales/feathers.

“Pinky?” he asked as he looked the creature in the eyes.

The creature reached inside his mind: “Yes.”

“Is this you? What you really look like?”

“There is trouble. I feel I must intervene, but to do so I must use your form once again.”

“Okay – what’s the problem?”

“There is great danger to you if I do. You may not survive, Henry.”

“I understand,” he said as she sent images spiraling into his mind, images of thugs and of a terrified Dina. “We must do what we can do.”

“I will do what I can for you after, but it may not be enough. I wanted you to be prepared for what may happen.”

He reached up and put his hand on the side of her face – but then she seemed to physically swoon from his touch, rocking from side to side and the iridescent edges of her scales/feathers began pulsing brightly in concert with the movements of his fingers. Her androgyny melted into pure femininity and what he felt was unmistakable; he took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “I understand, my friend. Let’s go…”

+++++

Dina was by his side again. He was resting on the bench, his breathing ragged, his flesh a waxy-sallowed sheen when the change began.

Muscles redefined before her eyes, the pinkish aura began pouring from his skin again.

Anton shook his head: “This too fucking weird,” he muttered as Mike stepped back and Dina placed her fingertips on Henry’s carotids. Moments later Henry was sitting up and looking at the rag-tag assortment of trash on his boat.

“Take this thing out of my chest,” he said to Dina, his voice now an odd, almost synthetic version of the original. She struggled to remove the line even as Henry stood and began walking towards Time Bandits…

One of the thugs pointed at Henry as he approached and the leader returned to the gate in the lifelines, this time pulling a small pistol from his coat pocket, letting it dangle by his side as Henry came close.

“Leave now,” Henry said, “and I will allow you to live. Remain here and you will cease to exist.”

The leader was staring at the vibrant pink aura radiating from the few visible patches of Henry’s flesh, almost mesmerized by the sight – until Henry’s words registered – then the pistol began swinging up until the barrel was leveled at Henry’s face…

Dina saw the boy’s finger contracting on the trigger in slow motion, then primer detonation followed by a bright flash of light, then the pistol simply disappeared – and with it half of the boy’s right hand.

Henry raised his right hand and made as if to squeeze the air in front of his face – and in a mirror reaction the boy’s body began to implode in agonizing horror, his shattered body falling to the deck in sundered stillness. One of the other thugs took out a killing knife and dashed for Henry, raising the blade as he came: Henry raised a finger and lifted this assailant a hundred meters into the air, then slamming this body down onto the ancient stone tow-path – with gruesome results.

“Leave – now, and you will live,” this Henry said quietly to the remaining boarders, and no one doubted the wisdom of fleeing when they heard this last warning. “Leave everything,” he added, but one of the thugs kicked Clyde as he started to leave and Henry responded by sending this boy into the upper reaches of earth’s atmosphere, leaving the remains to burn-up on re-entry. He walked over to Clyde and placed his hand on the pup’s ribs, sending radiative warmth into the bruising bones, then Henry collapsed onto the deck beside Clyde…his eyes wide and his body now very still. Vast pink tendrils wrapped him inside a cocoon of swimming light as Dina rushed to his side…

+++++

He opened his eyes, looked up into Pinky’s.

“You know, for a benign alien you sure have a helluva a mean-streak.”

“I could not bear to watch them hurt you and your friends.”

“Oh?”

“I am no longer an impartial observer, Henry Taggart. I have feelings for you I can no longer deny.”

“Feelings? What do you mean – like love?”

“I have known of this word, but the meaning was never clear to me until you reached out to me.”

“And now you understand?”

“I think so.”

“I see.”

“Does this trouble you?”

“No, not at all.”

“I know you can not love me,” she said quietly. “You do not know me. But perhaps one day this will change.”

“That is the nature of love.”

She felt urgent cries reach her and looked at Henry once again: “You must return now. Be strong, and know that I will be there with you.”

He nodded as pain washed through his body, then overwhelming weakness came for him…

+++++

Dina was kneeling over his inert body, hooking up the IV to the port once again then injecting adrenaline; she took her light and checked his pupils and shook his head.

“What do you need?” Mike asked.

“Bring a mattress up here, would you? I’m afraid to move him now.”

“Right.”

“Where is boy?” Anton asked – again, and Dina simply shook her head.

“I have no idea, but I suspect Henry knows…”

“What is going on here?” Anton sighed.

“You need to talk to Henry…”

Mike asked Anton for help getting a mattress set up on one of the cockpit seats, then they moved Henry, hanging the IV bag from the cockpit enclosure in the process…and a moment later Rolf reappeared in a blinding flash – sending Anton into another stumbling back-flip over the rail and into the canal…

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop soon.

Recommended side trip: Foo Fighters 2008

(update: I won’t go into details (boring, to say the least), but the last week or so has not been fun. Worse, my left eye is once again totally out of commission so typing has slowed to a crawl. I seem to be, as well, crawling from one physician’s appointment to the next, but at least one of them is offering me a C19 vaccine next week – so hallelujah! Come Alive has dominated recent output, but as soon as Chapter 21 concludes my next efforts will swing back to the Eighty-eighth Key, because Harry’s story is far from over. Two chapters should close out 88, so CA ought to wrap up in short order after that. Still, I’m assuming progress is going to be slow. After CA wraps, I feel it’s time to return to my “cop” novel – which at 1500 pages already written ought to be considered finished. Yet…I’m going back to page one, aiming for a total rewrite and an attempt at publication – so I may post a chapter here and there but not the entire work. Other short stories will be posted, including revisions to existing works, while work on the novel rolls along. Anyway, fingers crossed here…that is the plan…)

Food for thought: The Raven That Refused to Sing

Chapter 21.7

Rolf was aft now, down on the swim platform helping a thoroughly flummoxed Anton back onboard, while both Mike and Dina stood, transfixed, after ‘Pinky’ merged with Henry. Moments later Anton and Rolf were back in the cockpit, Rolf’s face an open book full of questions, Anton’s a vivid mix of confusion and paranoid fury.

“What the fuck is this shit?” the Russian aviator bellowed, pointing at the shimmering amber-pink aura pouring out of Taggart’s every pore – and by this point even a few passersby on the canal tow-path were stopping – and gaping – at the spectacle.

“Be quiet!” Dina snarled. “Don’t interfere – don’t say another word!”

Anton took the towel Rolf handed him and shook some stray water from his ears, all the while never taking his eyes off Henry Taggart – until, a few minutes later the swirling sphere emerged from Henry’s face and simply winked out of existence…

…and as suddenly Henry seemed to phase back into the present…

He saw Dina and reached out for her – and she intuited that Henry was now suddenly very unstable and about to pass out. “Mike! Help me!”

Yet it was Anton who reached out for Henry, Anton who caught him as he started to fall, and Anton who helped Henry onto the helmsman’s seat and held him there while Henry caught his breath and regained his bearings.

But even so, everyone could see the change that had come over Henry.

He seemed physically diminished, palpably weaker now, and Dina rushed to his side and began a quick assay of his vitals even as Henry seemed to wilt into her gathering strength. “Rolf, some water, please,” she said to her grandson.

“This is some seriously weird shit,” Anton muttered.

“You got that right,” Henry sighed.

“Henry,” Dina said, sudden concern clear in her voice now, “this must not happen again. Your pulse is now very low and you are as white as a sheet…”

“I didn’t exactly ask her to do this,” he sighed.

“What happened?” Mike asked. “Did she tell you why?”

“I’m not sure. She had a bunch of questions and she’s looking for answers…”

“Did she know how this would effect you?” Dina asked.

“I don’t know. Next time you see her why don’t you ask…?”

“What is this?” Anton asked. “You speak of woman, yet I saw no woman…?”

“Well, she’s a woman alright,” Henry smiled. “And she has an attitude, too.”

“But,” Anton barked, “what is she?”

Mike chimed in now: “She’s not from around here, Anton.”

“No shit she’s not from around here. The question is, does anyone know where this thing is from?”

Mike pointed at the sky, which caused an audible gasp from the startled crowd of onlookers still gathering on the tow-path…

…yet as if on cue a gust of hot wind blew threw the crowd, reminding everyone of the approaching danger, and even Henry sat up and took note of the change in the air.

“Rolf, let’s get the latest weather updates pulled, okay?” Henry said, ignoring the questions written all over Anton’s ruddy face and as he took the bottle of water from Rolf. Henry looked at the compass and then tried to visualize their physical orientation to the English Channel – and he figured they were almost bow-to the north, so tied-off to the west bank of this canal. So, they would be beam-to any gusts that came up the Channel and hit the Belgian coastline.

Not good.

And then fragments of the dream returned. The red skies, the coiling clouds and the rows of medieval buildings burning to ash and cinders…

‘Yes, just like those right over there,’ he said to himself as Rolf bent over the plotter and got to work.

He looked at the lines Rolf had set, and while most were well-placed he could see a few weak zones that would need reinforcing if the winds were truly apocalyptic. Then again, if the storm was packing both extreme heat and wind speeds probably nothing would save them – aside from fleeing to the south.

Pages started appearing on the plotter and he leaned forward, fought through the light-headedness and the pulsing light that rattled his vision; Epsilon’s eye was now in mid-channel, about halfway between Brighton and LeHavre and headed directly for Calais – and just beyond, Bruges. 

And he wondered then… ‘Should I send them away? Get them to the train station and send them to Geneva?’

“What are you thinking, Henry?” Anton asked. 

“It might not be safe here.”

“Da, no kidding. Maybe best we go south?”

“Maybe.”

“And what about you, Henry?” Dina asked. “You won’t leave, will you?”

Henry shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. There’s something I’ve got to see here.”

“Well,” Anton said quietly, “that is that. We stay, then.”

Henry looked at Rolf, then Dina…

“Don’t you dare say it, Henry Taggart!” Dina hissed before she turned and went below.

Taggart nodded and looked at Rolf: “Get some line, son. We’ve got some work to do…”

+++++

The large female was with Eva when she felt the disturbance growing along the shore across the bay. Men were gathering in the water and in the air and in an instant she knew who the men were looking for. She reached out to Eva and passed along images of her concerns…

As Eva processed these warnings she reached out to Henry, but she felt danger gathering all around him and pulled back. Not knowing what else to do, she wondered what would happen if she reached out to one of Them.

And a moment later a pinkish orb appeared in front of her, a fiercely glowing shimmer perhaps a foot beneath the water’s surface. She ducked under the water and almost instinctively placed her hands on the sides of the sphere, and in the next instant she felt Pinky probing the deepest reaches of her mind.

And when she felt traces of Henry in this new place she closed her eyes as his warmth enveloped her.

She turned and looked around, saw that both she and Britt were no longer in the sea. Then she realized she had been holding her breath, so she inhaled – slowly – until she relaxed as fresh air washed through her lungs. 

And then she turned to Britt…

…who was clearly not amused…

“What happened?” Britt cried as she struggled with the idea his new place, then she was screaming: “Where are we?” over and over

Eva went to her, reached into her mind, let her feel Henry all around this place until she too relaxed.

“Do you know where we are?” Britt finally whispered.

“No, but I think Henry does.”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Eva,” Britt said to Eva while clutching frantically at her belly. “I don’t understand what’s happening to us…”

Eva grabbed Britt, pulled her close and told her everything would be fine, but she could feel Britt’s trembling uncertainty. “You have to trust Henry. You know he won’t let anything bad happen to us. Trust him, trust him…”

She felt Henry just then, felt his probing thoughts, then he felt her moving-on to Britt, then Britt growing warm and soft again as his thoughts caressed her…

…and only then did Eva pull back and look at her surroundings…

They were in a tank of some sort; huge, smooth and cylindrical, made of some kind of black resinous material, but one area was full of viewing ports. She focused there, tried to move but found she couldn’t, then realized they were weightless and had nothing to push against.

Then the cylinder began spinning, very slowly at first, until gravity began to assert itself and they both began drifting to what must have been purposed as a floor. Once she felt something solid underfoot, Eva walked over to the viewing ports…

…in the space beyond the ports she saw dozens of glowing orbs moving about some sort of control room, all heedless of her presence – aside from one pinkish orb spinning there just on the other side of the port.

Then she felt Britt standing by her side.

“I’m okay now,” she said.

“I know. How is Henry?”

“Worried. That storm, Epsilon. It’s coming right at them…”

+++++

Henry and Rolf stood on the tow-path looking over the web of lines they had wrapped around Time Bandits, hoping they would be enough to secure her to the canal. Both banks were lined with small craft now, and crews were frantically running lines to every available tree or bollard in sight. Henry looked at the mess and shook his head, knowing that if even one or two boats broke loose the end results would be ugly.

“I wonder how my mother is doing?” Rolf asked.

“She’s fine.”

“How do you know that, Henry?”

“Good question.”

“So?”

Taggart looked around, saw a bench in the shade of an old Linden so he walked over and sat there; not knowing what else to do, Rolf followed and sat beside him.

“Do you think we’ve done all that we can do to secure the boat to the tow-path?” Henry asked.

“I think so…yes.”

“So, your mind can be at ease about that. Is that right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Fair enough. With your mind at ease, can you imagine going to a place where you think of nothing at all?”

“Nothing? No, not really.”

“Close your eyes, Rolf.”

“Okay.”

“Concentrate on the blackness you see now, and only on that.”

“Okay.”

“Just listen now. Don’t think, don’t even try to answer me. If you feel something strange, just concentrate on the blackness and ignore everything else.”

And just as Winky had shown him once, he reached inside Rolf’s mind until he could feel the uncertainty gathering all around him…

“Listen to the wind in the trees. To the sound of my breathing, to the earth, breathing.”

He could feel Rolf relaxing, letting go.

“Your mother is here, Rolf, in this place, in this darkness. Imagine reaching out for someone in the dark, someone you know is there, only use your mind to reach out, not your hands.”

He felt an image of Britt forming in Rolf’s mind, watched the image resolve and grow.

“There she is. Keep reaching, reaching until she is close enough to hear you…”

He could feel Eva with him now, and then Britt and Pinky were there too – all of them watching Rolf, willing him on.

“Mother?”

“I’m here. Come to me, my boy.”

Dozens of wildly spinning orbs were gathered at the viewing ports now, watching this next most important phase of the experiment as it unfolded.

“Where are you?”

“I’m with you, my son. You’ve made it to me and we are together now!”

“How is this so?”

“Take my hand. See? I’m here with you…”

He watched as Rolf reached out for his mother’s hand, then he opened his eyes.

Even before he heard Dina’s screams he knew Rolf was gone, then he took a few deep breaths before he tried to stand. He pushed himself up from the bench, then the earth started spinning wildly and he fell to the ground, grabbing at the earth with his fingers to slow the nauseous gyrations.

He heard them running for him even as the darkness came for him again, then he was under the cool blue light of the vast ringed planet, but this time everything felt different…and very dangerous.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next chapter will drop as and when circumstances allow.

Chapter 21.6

Henry Taggart had been the first human to reach out so far.

And ‘Pinky’ had been the first to feel Henry’s tentative probes. The first to feel a human’s thoughts, the first to – in a very real sense – make contact.

His thoughts were anything but focused, but they were sentient so she took note and followed protocol. Within hours her team was preparing to respond and evaluate this new contact.

Pinky’s people were children of the mind and as such they relied less on physical instrumentalities than their most distant ancestors ever had, and while not strictly speaking immortal their lifespans were by human standards ridiculously long. There had been no discussions of this between humans and Andromedans because there had been no common frame of reference, and for a time Pinky had simply felt the matter irrelevant.

Until now.

Now – after her fusion with Henry Taggart – death was everywhere: an omnipresent awareness locked-up in a tight, hot place somewhere between cold dread and pounding fear. When she felt Taggart’s compounding diseases the first thing she wanted to to do was run – anywhere – to get away from this hostile, unfamiliar feeling.

But as suddenly she had wanted to know how he coexisted with such an intimate cascade of negative emotions, and, because she had been studying humans for several years now, she wanted to reconcile her understanding of human support systems – like religion and medicine – with what she was now experiencing for herself – through Henry.

‘This is terrifying,’ she said to Henry as she settled in next to him.

‘You’re telling me. Now I know what schizophrenia feels like.’

‘Death is everywhere. How do you not think about it all the time?’

‘Oh, I think we do, especially as we get older. Probably ninety percent of the time, anyway. But whenever we’re not thinking about death we’re thinking about getting laid.’

‘So…you think of death – or procreation?’

‘Yup, pretty much. So, how long do y’all live?’

‘That is a question, Henry Taggart, for which I have no easy answers.’

‘Okay, but I’m curious. Why now?’

‘Do you mean why have I come to you now – in this way?’

‘Yeah, I think that about sums it up.’

‘Your systems are failing rapidly. We need to know more about this process.’

‘You asking about me, or about civilization in general?”

‘You.’

‘So, you’re asking me about death and dying? Why?’

‘Because we do not understand how this process affects you.’

‘Most directly, I think I can safely say.’

‘But…where do you go?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Where do your thoughts go – after?’

‘I don’t understand. Our thoughts don’t go anywhere, because when we die we stop thinking.’

He could feel her puzzlement, an almost paralyzed sense of incomprehension as she stumbled in the dark for the truth of the matter: ‘What do you mean…you stop?’

‘I mean when our bodies stop functioning everything ceases. Including thoughts and feelings.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, of course not. As far as I know, no one really understands what happens after we die – beyond the very certain biological processes of decay which begin at that time.’

‘So much uncertainty. It is no wonder your kind is consumed with matters concerning spirituality and an afterlife.’

‘Your kind is not, I take it?’

‘No, we are focused on other things.’

‘What about getting…uh, procreation?’

‘The process is known to us.’

‘You are evasive, I’ll give you that much. But why? Why conceal so much from us?’

‘I think it is simply a question of frames of reference.’

‘So, you think I can’t understand. Is that your frame of reference?’

‘In a way, yes. What is that noise you have been making today?’

‘Noise?’

‘Yes, almost melodic, but it almost seems to come from deep inside your body.’

‘Ah. Humming. As in humming a musical tune.’

‘How does this differ from singing?’

‘Humming is more of an approximation of the original…’

‘Is this approximation subliminal?’

‘I suppose it could be. What are you getting at?’

‘Is it possible the source could be external?’

‘External? You mean like sent from someone else?’

‘Yes. Is that possible?’

‘I don’t think so. At least, not in any way I know of.’

‘This is strange. When humans gather and listen to music many tend to become one with the structures within the music, and it is here that we have experienced many encounters recently.’

‘Encounters? You mean, as in reaching out?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, you think it is people changing, or something within the structure of the music?’

‘We are uncertain.”

“I see,’ Taggart said knowingly. ‘And so you think you have discovered something…’

‘Yes, Henry. Something new, but also something quite unexpected.’

+++++

He saw the women one morning while out walking his two pups; he watched them walk to the water’s edge and disrobe, then most surprisingly, the two women stepped into the icy water and disappeared. Not at all sure what to do, he grew concerned when they did not reappear after several minutes, so he pulled out his phone and called the rescue services.

Within minutes divers and helicopters were scouring the waters north of Bergen.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next chapter will drop as and when circumstances allow.

Chapter 21.5

The sky was red – blood red – everywhere he looked.

Red satanic mills lighting the way ahead, roiling black spires of writhing cloud overhead, and trees on both sides of a blood-soaked canal reduced to glowing embers as, not so far away now, walls of orange flame moved through a row of medieval buildings – those ancient timbers adding their cry to the night.

And then there was the music. 

A dark lament, yet he heard sublime chords weaving new tapestries into and out of the licking flames. Timbers consumed by the roving fires split and burst howling into the night, coming together in the music before lifting away into the night – embers to stars – pitiless onlookers all as they rose from the earth.

First there was the fire and the music – coming together as yellow lightning moved across the charred prairie beyond the canal – then the smoke. Suffocating smoke and gritty remains started falling from the clouds, the soot smothering flames as the tarry remnants of human agony covered the earth and finally lay still…

He was coughing now, coughing and hardly able to breathe, Clyde’s eyes were full of panic as he too coughed and gasped. Then a voice, faraway and cool:

“Take a deep breath…

“That’s it, take another…”

He felt cool plastic around his mouth and nose, could just hear the hiss of oxygen beneath her voice as he opened his eyes…

Two IV bags were hanging from one of the hand-holds on the ceiling and he knew they were connected to the port in his chest. Some sort of glucose solution in one; the other a vampire’s brew of platelets and plasma, and he reached out – feeling his body in this world once again, wondering how much more he could take.

A pulse oximeter on his index finger, a BP cuff on his right arm, and there was Rolf pumping up the cuff as Dina passed along another of the dark arts; she was even now teaching him, training him, and he could see budding interest everywhere the boy’s eyes scanned.

He took a deep breath and the cool oxygen felt good inside his nose – but – ‘What is that I smell? Honeysuckle?’

He looked up through the overhead hatch and could see a Linden tree wrapped in autumnal reds and golds, a coppery-blue sky beyond, and there was a gentle weight on his chest: Clyde – his muzzle resting lightly in the last fading shade of the dream.

The dream?

‘Not Rotterdam. Not even earth – I feel sure of that. But…where were we this time…?”

“Ah, Henry! You are awake!” 

“I’ll have to take your word for it, Dina. And is that a tree I see up there?” Taggart asked, pointing at the Linden. “Because, and this is important, I don’t remember trees growing in the ocean.”

“We are moored outside of Bruges, warped off to several stout trees.”

“The storm. Epsilon, right? Rolf, where is it now?”

“The eye is between Brest and Exeter, almost exactly in the middle of the Channel, but Henry, the surrounding weather is beginning to behave in a most peculiar manner.” 

“Define peculiar?”

“Water temps now over a hundred, winds in the outer bands now in excess of 250 knots…”

Taggart sat up, rubbed his eyes while he tried to get those numbers to make some sort of sense. “Did you say 250 – as in knots?”

“Yes, and the northeast quadrant of the eye wall is over 320 knots.”

“That’s not possible.”

“That’s exactly what Anton said,” Dina added, scowling.

“Anton? Who the hell is Anton?”

“The Russian pilot. Do you not remember all that?”

“Vaguely. Something to do with World War Three, right?”

Dina shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“How are our supplies holding out?” Taggart asked.

“Fine now. We went into town and bought enough to stock a small hospital…”

“And I have more rope, too,” Rolf added. “Right now the storm is tracking a little to the north…”

“What? You mean north, as in towards London?”

“Maybe, yes.”

“So, assuming it…”

“Precisely,” Rolf added. “If it tracks just a little south landfall could occur somewhere along this coast tomorrow morning.”

“Dina, you were saying? What about supplies for Mike’s burns?”

She nodded, smiling a little once again, if only because even after fifty years she still had to hold her tongue when men, and even boys, talked over her. “We are good now, and we were lucky with food supplies here. Apparently many stores in Brussels are quite bare.”

“Salmon for Clyde?”

“Yes, and very fresh, too.”

“So, how bad is it out there?”

She nodded. “Better that expected. People still using cash and electronic money equally well. ATMs seemed to have enough cash on hand, too.”

“How’s our fuel, Rolf?”

“We beat the rush into Zeebrugge last night and we have full tanks now, plus the four five-gallon jugs still in the garage.”

“What do you need help with?”

“Nothing, really. Like I said, I have extra rope ready to deploy if needed.”

Henry smiled and nodded, then Clyde looked at him and sighed. “And what do you need, Amigo? Besides some fresh salmon?”

“Woof-woof!”

“Any good bushes around here?” he asked, looking to Dina.

“He just went, Henry,” Dina sighed.

“And how are you doing?” he asked – finally engaging her eyes.

“I’m scared – and a little lonely.”

“Understandable. Not many people had a ringside seat at armageddon and managed to survive the night to talk about it.”

She slipped onto the berth and under his arm, pushing Clyde out of the way as she rested the side of her face on Henry’s chest, listening to his breathing and his beating heart in a decidedly non-clinical way, and feeling now more than anything just happy that he was still here. And Rolf had the good sense to get up and leave them alone, too.

“I have never been so frightened in my life,” she sighed, suddenly trembling as memories of their night came back to her. “The wind has been out of the west ever since, so fallout is spreading inland; there are reports it is very bad near Hamburg and Berlin, Copenhagen also.”

“What about us?”

“I suspect low level radiation exposure for all of us, but I have no idea how much that Russian was exposed to.”

He heard the venom in her voice and tried to ignore it – for now. “You think there are food shortages?”

“Yes, but this is to be expected. Aid convoys from the United States are being loaded now and should be here early next week, and the Chinese have been flying in field hospitals and medical supplies.”

“How did the boy take it?”

“Better than I expected, Henry. In fact, he seemed most concerned that he get things done in a way that you would approve. Dedicated, I think, is the word that comes to mind…”

“For a teenager that’s kind of a miracle, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps, but he has seen what the Time Bandits are capable of, and I think he appreciates what they mean to our future.”

“I wonder how much damage radiation did to her hull?”

“The stern took the worst of it, but the mast, too…”

“Yup, probably a new mast and, well, a couple of new sails are a given, but stripping off the gelcoat to see how deep the damage goes inside the hull…you’ll need to do that next spring, by the way…so that will be your number one priority. I’m in the process of writing it all out, by the way.”

“Good. Have you been getting hungry at all?”

“No, not really.”

“How about some soup?”

“Maybe.”

“I have bread in the oven now, too.”

“I know – I think that’s what woke me up. Best smell in the world, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “That…and a strong brew of coffee. Together those create a magic all their own.”

“Yeah. We have our flaws, but we manage to pull a few rabbits out of our hats every now and then, too.”

“Are you worried about…them?”

“Them? No, not really. What’s done is done, at least as far as they are concerned.”

“And what about Eva, and Britt? What is happening to them?”

“You probably shouldn’t worry too much about them, Dina…”

She seemed taken aback by that, and sat up – her eyes flaring in anger; “That is the most terrifying thing you have ever said to me, Henry. Just what am I supposed to make of a statement like that.”

“I understand.”

“Indeed? Do you really?”

“Of course, but the truth of the matter is I trust – them – a lot more than you do.”

“They could be…”

“Not harmed. Not ever. In fact, they are safer now than they’ve ever been.”

“I see. Will I see my daughter again?”

He nodded. “As soon as we get to Paris you will go pick her up.”

“What?! You mean, I will be leaving you again?”

“Just for a few hours – and because you are the only one here who knows where to look.”

“Look? Look…where?”

He sat up, coughing now as fluids pushed against his lungs – then an arrhythmia shook his heart and he closed his eyes until it too passed – then he took a couple of deep breaths and tried to concentrate.

“I must find an aircraft, one that the Russian knows how to fly, and you must go to Bergen. I will write down what you need to do, who you need to see once you get there…”

“The Russian? You trust this man?”

Henry shrugged: “Everything seems to be happening for a reason right now, Dina. Please try to remember that every time you find yourself confronting the new and the unknown.”

Yet even as he spoke those words he could feel Eva probing his thoughts, then Britt was there too. He closed his eyes and felt them coiling around his thoughts, smiling as he basked in their warmth. Reaching out now, he could feel the warm water, almost feel the rough skin as orcas slid alongside the girls…

Then a gust of hot wind slammed into Time Bandits, knocking her into the muddy banks of the canal. He heard Rolf running up the companionway, then he was talking to Mike, deciding what needed to be done as Epsilon’s steamy tendrils started to reach out for them.

‘Was that a dream?’ he wondered. Or would this storm bring red skies and burning timbers to the coming night?

He tried to sit up – but couldn’t – and the feeling of helplessness that came next only made him angrier.

He took several deep breaths and willed himself to stand – and Dina was right there with him, removing the IVs from the port and swabbing his chest with alcohol.

“Do you want to go topsides?” she asked.

He nodded and held onto her as she led him up the companionway steps into the cockpit – and the change was so startling it left him feeling even more breathless.

Time Bandits was no longer a creature of the open sea; here she was, now – bound to the earth in places, to trees in others, and in a canal perhaps 20 meters wide – surrounded by trees and medieval buildings…in short, all the ingredients to make his last dream come true.

He turned and looked up at the sky and the old Russian was by his side in an instant.

“Sky not look right,” the old bear grumbled. “Too hot. No clouds.”

Taggart nodded. “Do you know how to fly any business jets?”

“737 smallest thing I fly long time.”

“I need you to go up to Bergen, get some people and bring them to France.”

“Okay, can do.”

“Rolf? Pull up the Metars page, would you?”

The weather page filled the plotter’s display and Henry bent over and scanned the isobars over the Channel. “Okay, hit the 24 hour forecast.”

The page froze and an error message popped up.

“Try backing out to the main page again…”

Dina saw it first, and she gasped before she jumped back and away.

A swirling pink sphere not a half-meter in diameter was up by the masthead, and when Henry stopped talking and looked up Pinky fell quickly and stopped right in front of his face. This was of course Anton’s first meeting and he back-peddled with flailing arms until he launched into a sputtering back-flip, landing in the canal like a small whale…

But then Pinky did something she had never done before.

She slipped inside Henry Taggart – until her soul rested beside his.

+++++

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next chapter will drop as and when circumstances allow.

[a wee update: words like pulmonary thrombosis and pericardial effusion entered my lexicon this past week, two liters of fluid around the left lung that had to be drained (very un-fun) in the process with more coming up next week; I am ‘out of the woods’ once again and sitting at the iMac, catching up with emails as best I can. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all the love and support.]