“So the tech is dodgy, but why is this the tricky bit?” King asked, understanding the issue with avoiding Alexander’s younger self. The two had discussed such things for years, debating issues of paradox and destiny.
“Powering the machine,” Alexander replied. “I never used it to return home, because I couldn’t power it. Not until the twentieth century — but by then, I had come up with this plan to save her. The hard part is we have to power the device with this…” Alexander held up a small brown rock the size of a golf ball, which hung around his neck on a thick chain he had worn since they arrived in the past. He let it fall gently to his chest, then awkwardly tucked it back into his robe with the one hand, while his other arm cradled Acca.
“What…exactly…is that thing?” It looked familiar, but King couldn’t place it.
“Paris,” Alexander said.
The single word triggered King’s memory. He’d never forget Paris and that he’d nearly been sucked inside out by a sentient…
“Wait. We closed that portal. Completely. That can’t be what I think it is.”
“If what you think is a dwarf black hole, hidden inside the flimsiest of rock coverings? Then yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
FIFTY-THREE
“You’ve been wearing a black fucking hole around your neck for twenty years, and you didn’t think to tell me?”
Acca stirred in Alexander’s arms, so he shifted her to both arms. She laid her head against his chest and went back to sleep.
“Quiet, Jack. Let’s not wake her.” They continued walking across a pasture. “I’ve told you before how much I’ve been playing this whole thing by ear. I wasn’t sure any of this would work. But there’s simply no power source in this time that is strong enough. I took this thing in Paris for this very purpose. It’s an immense source of power. If anything can power up the portal I have here, this will be it.” Alexander moved over to a soft rise of grass and gently set Acca down on it. She stirred briefly, opened her eyes and looked around, then blinked and went back to sleep on the grass.
King plopped down on the ground himself, ready for sleep. Alexander sat cross-legged. “I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep, Jack. You’re going to need it.”
King yawned. “Why? What’s waiting for us in Antium?”
“Man eating birds with sharp bronze beaks and projectile metallic feathers,” Alexander said.
King sat up. “Seriously?”
“No. Just joking.”
“Dick,” King laid back down.
Alexander laughed. “Go to sleep.”
Hours later they began walking south again. King walked ahead, allowing Alexander and Acca time to discuss the extremely complicated story their lives had become. When they stopped in a small village for a lunch of bread, cheese and wine, Acca seemed convinced. She no longer questioned the impossibility of their having travelled back in time. Her only questions were geared toward what they needed to do next.
“Jack,” she said, “Alexander tells me that you have a woman for whom, you too, would cross the oceans of time. You must miss her very much. I am so grateful you were willing to come assist him.”
King just nodded. He didn’t think it would be right to tell her how he didn’t have much choice in coming. It was also water under the bridge for him. But the mention of Sara, made him yearn to be done with this mission — especially since they were so close to the end now.
Alexander had left them after lunch to obtain some horses. King was left to chat with Acca over wine.
“He’s missed you terribly. Everything he’s done over the years was to keep his identity a secret and to make this all possible.”
“Tell me about your time,” she said, sitting back in her chair.
He laughed. “It’s so different in many ways, but still the same in others. We’ve made many advances. Men have travelled to the moon in a flying cart, I guess you would call it. Most of the carts on the ground are propelled by what would seem like magic, but is more of a complicated series of metal parts that make the wheels move, fueled by a liquid we pump from the ground and refine. People live indoors, and we have boxes to keep our food cold in the kitchen, and other boxes to cook with. We have rooms in our homes where you can defecate and urinate, and water will flush those things away from your house to a place where the waste is treated and broken down into mostly harmless parts. We can hold a small device in our hands and speak to people on the other side of the world with it. But we’ve also made so many terrible things. Weapons that can kill a man in a blink. Weapons that can destroy entire cities just a fast. There are wars in the future that will claim millions of lives, and there are men, who would, if given the chance, destroy all of humanity.”
Acca sat up in her chair. “It sounds terrible. How did so many things come to be made? Were they gifts from the gods?”
King smiled. “No. Most of these things were simply developed over time by man, to fulfill one purpose or another. It’s our nature to turn just about everything into weapons.”
Acca seemed to digest this information, while sipping more of her wine.
“And what do you do to make this strange world of yours a better place?”
King thought about the question for a while. He thought about his life — first in the military and later with Chess Team. He decided to break it down into the simplest terms possible. “The people who kill innocents, who seek out power at the expense of others, or who, in their madness, want to destroy the world…” He looked up at her eyes, saw his mother for a moment, and said, “I find them. And I stop them.”
“And if they can’t be stopped?”
“Then I kill them.”
Acca nodded in understanding. She was no stranger to violence. “Why do you do it?”
King had often thought about the bizarre nature of what he did, but he rarely gave thought to why. It was like breathing. He just did it.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
Acca smiled. “I can see why she likes you.”
FIFTY-FOUR
Richard Ridley was sweating. It took concentration to use the mother tongue to animate inanimate things, like mud and stone. The larger the golem, the harder it was to not just grant the thing life, but also give it direction. Purpose. A mission it would follow until its undoing. And as far as golems went, it didn’t get bigger than the Colossus.
The statue was made of iron, bronze, brass and stone, but unlike other such statues built many centuries later, this one was not hollow. It had been filled with crushed stone and rock of varying sizes. Over the centuries, coral and sediment had cemented the interior spaces between the brass plates forming the skin, so that even though much of the iron tie bars inside had rusted away, the statue held its integrity. Making the thing stand and walk, as if it were alive, meant forcing breaks along joints that did not exist, and grinding the stone and metal past each other, then re-bonding the molecules, so the limbs did not simply fall off.
He had used the tongue to animate things before, but the Colossus was huge, and it was taxing his abilities. Sweat poured down his face, and his arms felt weak. He mumbled the guttural language, repeatedly, like a mantra, to keep the statue alive.
Once the shooting had started, he had a hard time seeing where to direct the statue. He was startled initially at the automatic weapons fire, and he had simply stopped the thing from walking. He should have known some of the Chess Team would make it out of Omega and past his men. Their skills, while a constant annoyance, were impressive. He had ducked behind the ruins with Seth and sent the Colossus toward the sound of gunfire, stomping on anything that moved, while Trigger and Carpenter returned fire. Without time to imbue the statue with intelligence enough to control its own actions, Ridley really needed a higher perch from which to control the statue. If he could see where he was sending the ancient statue, he’d be able to steer it better. He considered the minaret on the nearby mosque, but then realized he’d only need to keep the Chess Team busy for a few minutes longer.