Cradle of Destiny, page 14
“I can steer you close, given the information stored within the diagnostics,” Morganstern replied, speaking up to cool down the raw nerves. “Given that Maccan was dimensionally shunted a year ago, and millions of miles away, the likelihood of you entering the same point of seventh-dimensional space is closing on impossible.”
“But clearly not impossible,” Lakesh said.
“I’ll risk it for Grant. Besides, we’re not going through without the right equipment, correct?” Kane asked.
“That’s if firearms operate in such a dimension,” Bryant said. “We are talking about alternate states of physics, and it’s quite possible that the shadow that Grant’s casting to this era has no physical component…and neither would you in that environment.”
Kane squeezed his eyebrows together, then realized the different bodies he’d been when he was bouncing between parallel universes. Suddenly the concept of being a ball of energy wasn’t so strange.
“If that’s true, then what are we going to do to grab Grant if he’s not grabbable?” Kane asked.
“Presumably, you’d be composed of the same form of energy as his shadow casts. It could be quite possible that all you have to do is return on your tether signal, and he’d piggyback on you,” Morganstern said. “Whether he becomes corporeal or is a voice in your head when you return is academic at this point, but you will have made contact and retrieval.”
“Any option on which would be better, a physical body or Grant bouncing around in my head?” Kane asked.
“Given that Mr. Grant would be entirely composed of ego in this particular shadow, I think we’d prefer him be a disembodied voice,” Morganstern said.
“He’d be only a fragment of the Grant shadow left in ancient Sumeria. You’d probably have a drooling, insensate amputee or a withered skeleton,” Bryant added.
“Right. Annoying voice good. Body bad,” Kane answered. “Then we head to Sumeria and pick up the body?”
Lakesh nodded. “But even with a mental and a physical aspect, they are simply two shadows of the true organism. We need them, though.”
“There’ll be some kind of tether that can lead us to the original, right?” Kane asked.
“In a best-case scenario, yes,” Lakesh replied. “In Egyptian mythology, there is a figurative silver thread linking the ka and ba of a being…the spirit and body of an immortal pharaoh.”
“Spirit and body,” Kane muttered. “Just like we have now.”
“Supposedly, when the ba and ka are reunited, they recombine to live again,” Lakesh said. “Who would have thought that this could be a mythical allusion to what we are experiencing here.”
Lakesh frowned as he realized the irony of his statement. Over the past several years, the Cerberus explorers had encountered an entire litany of supposedly mythological beings and creatures that had been all too real. The concept of a mummy’s body and soul being indicative of Grant’s time-lost status suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched, especially given the addition of tesseracts—shadows of a being or object passed down from a higher dimension. The concept of the afterlife was hardly unique, and the Egyptians had the highest recognition of the nature of such a realm, storing servants, pets, food and riches for their god-kings who had passed on. The actual items themselves were inert, lifeless things without nourishment or actual worth to a dead man, but to a shadow, the shades of those items could be useful in a higher dimension.
It went with Lakesh’s experience of how the Hindu religion understood the cyclical nature of the universe and the multiverse, an ever-renewing state of being drawn together. To the Hindus, the “discovery” of the Big Bang, the primal event where the universe was forged, was nothing new, something that had been told in the stories of Siva in his facet as Kali, dancing the death of an old world and a restart. In Lakesh’s time, there had been a discussion of whether the universe would collapse on itself or continue expanding until entropy snuffed every erg of warmth and energy from the final atoms of reality. The entropic view had been winning, as there was no known means of creating a gravitational force that would draw far-flung galaxies back together into a primordial superatom.
That had been before preliminary evidence had been discovered about dark matter—a substance that possessed sufficient mass and subsequent gravitational pull to cause an aeon’s distant collapse of gravity.
“Forgive me. Apparently my youthful clarity and vigor are failing me worse than I had thought,” Lakesh lamented.
“You’re still sharper than my combat knife, no matter how ancient you are,” Kane replied. “So no excuses of diminished faculties, at least until we get Grant back.”
“I’ll never give up looking for our friend,” Lakesh promised. “And if I personally have to walk through Maccan to do it, then I’ll bring all I’ve got.”
Kane nodded, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “I’m not interested in fighting him, either, so don’t feel bad. You’re smart not to want to throw down with that freak. It’s all right to be scared. Scared sometimes makes you fight smarter.”
“And here I thought your courage was blind stupidity and your success came from dumb luck,” Brigid noted.
Kane locked her with a glare.
“If you’re done flirting in here, Mr. Kane,” Morganstern squeaked. He cleared his throat, surprised at his challenge to the hero of Cerberus. Kane could tell that there was more than a little bit of jealousy in his interruption.
“I’ll go. I know you’ll point me in the right direction to find Grant,” Kane said. He smiled as he did so, trying to allay the mathematician’s nerves about his status with the tall, beautiful archivist.
The four scientists continued to examine diagnostic code, line by line, searching for the formula that would be able to launch a rescue party for Grant.
All the while, they wondered how long their friend had been trapped at the beginning of history, and how much he had suffered.
Chapter 11
Enkidu wondered how long he had been unconscious as his eyes fluttered open. Tentatively, he moved the arm that he remembered had been gashed open in his conflict with the minotaur that had been dispatched as his shadow. It moved smoothly, without a hint of pain. He brought the fingers of his other hand to touch it, and realized that his hand, once broken, had its limberness and dexterity back. His fingertips met smooth, unscarred flesh, his bicep as firm and strong as it had been before the fight.
He reached for where his side had been rent, and that wound had been healed, as well. Flexing his wrist and making his fingers dance, he realized that if broken bones had been stitched and torn flesh had grown back together, he must have been out for months.
“You have been asleep for two weeks,” a husky feminine voice said from the doorway of the cave he was in. “Without access to a cask, I was not able to mend your injuries swiftly, so I had to do it the slow way.”
Enkidu sat up, looking to see the magnificent figure of Malesh, seven feet tall and carved of golden, nearly feline beauty. She was unmistakably human in her form, except that her apparent slimness was in proportion to a body that was stretched tall. Her limbs would have been willowy twigs on a woman of five-and-a-half feet, but at seven feet in height, the truth was that she was a powerful example of superhuman perfection. Dark hair with golden streaks poured down over her shoulders.
Though Humbaba had said she was his sister, the resemblance was merely in the eyes. She could have passed for a normal woman, if humans naturally grew to seven feet or more in height. The only signs that she had alien blood were her cold, yellow cat eyes and a slight flatness to her nose, which could have simply made her African in origin.
“You understand me, or I understand you,” Enkidu said numbly. “That means…”
“I knew your meaning when you challenged my brother’s beast pawn,” Malesh said slowly. She milked each word of the sentence, every one a measured intonation that held both seduction and threat toward the man. “Of course, the very fact that you traveled from Eridu to my forest was an indication of your hostile intent.”
“So what kept you from eliminating me?” Enkidu asked, pushing himself to his feet. He had been lying on a mat that bore the contour of his body. He must have lain there, immobile, for the entire two weeks to have created such a perfect impression. Either that or the mat had been molded especially for him, a perfect cradle for an injured, unconscious human.
He had no symptoms of stiffness, no bed sores from lying stationary for two weeks, so it was likely built to his specifications. This was not the technology of a woman who had been exiled to the primitive backwoods of a preindustrial planet. He winced as such an assumption hurt his brain due to its familiarity. Someone he had known in another lifetime had said such things, almost on a regular basis. Thus, he knew what he was talking about, but the lack of identities, either of himself or the cherished friend who had spoken those words, reminded him of the gaping wounds in his memory.
“Concentrate on something else, Enkidu,” Malesh whispered softly. “Pay no mind to matters which no longer have concern to you.”
Enkidu looked at the goddess at the cavern entrance. She was sufficient distraction from his psychic scars, though her presence raised a whole new set of questions.
“Like I said, why am I still alive?” Enkidu/Grant asked.
“You protected me when you could have allowed the beast to slay me,” Malesh said. “You protected me at what could have been the cost of your life. When I laid you there, you were moments from your last breath.”
“Still doesn’t change my mission,” Enkidu replied. He realized that he was completely naked, though the clothes he had worn, or suitable replacements, were folded on a table in the corner. Strangely, he didn’t feel any shame, as if concern over his own nudity was dispelled.
The hole in his memory yawned in his consciousness once again, this time exacerbated by the temporal shadow of Malesh, who had recognized him. What Enkidu could not know was that Grant initially had shown reluctance to bathe naked with the samurai leader Shizuka during their first few days together. The boldness of the beautiful Japanese warrior had shocked him, and Grant was uncomfortable with such brazenness.
Reluctantly, he stayed, perhaps strengthened because he had already been attracted to Shizuka. She also seemed to pay no mind to what Grant had considered a flabby mess of middle-aged nudity. It had taken months, but Grant had grown to be completely comfortable with himself in her presence. He was still critical of his own appearance, but Shizuka had purged him of his shame of being exposed. What Enkidu also couldn’t know was that the ghostly tendril, the tesseract that had reached out to him, was Shizuka.
Still, there was an instinctual recognition. Malesh and Shizuka were physical opposites, his samurai lover being petite yet hard muscled, while the goddess was huge, her musculature subtle beneath olive skin. But beneath the skin, from a perspective that only a displaced being could have, the two women were identical twins—warrior souls unafraid of a world bent on their destruction.
Enkidu took a couple of deep breaths, trying to control the flutter of Grant’s heart.
“I tried to peer into your mind, but it is unattainable. All that I can do is comprehend your words, as if your vocabulary were the only piece of your intellect here, everything else hidden behind an impenetrable veil,” Malesh explained. “It’s interesting that your identity is hidden behind that veil, as if parts of your mind are not here, not formed.”
“I appeared in Urudug, Humbaba’s home, and was captured,” Enkidu admitted. “He sent me after you, after he learned what leash to pull to control me.”
Malesh narrowed her eyes. “What hold does he have over you?”
“My fellow humans,” Enkidu said. “If I fail, dozens will be tortured and killed because of me.”
“They would die anyway,” Malesh said. “My brother sees humans as playthings, nearly inconsequential.”
Enkidu’s frown followed his drooping gunslinger’s mustache. “Things aren’t as clear-cut as I thought. I’ve been gone for weeks?”
Malesh nodded, her black-and-gold locks brushing over her smooth, muscular shoulders. “It is likely that you failed to protect those people.”
Enkidu closed Grant’s fists, tendons popping as anger bubbled from the core of his being. “You saved my life, but it really doesn’t matter. I’ve failed.”
Malesh tilted her head quizzically. “Who were these people?”
“Slaves. Innocent people toiling in the court of Urudug at Humbaba’s pleasure,” Enkidu said. “Women, children, old men, the kind of people I’m supposed to protect.”
“Supposed to?” Malesh asked. “How well did you know them?”
“Not at all. I couldn’t even speak their language, but I have my duty,” Enkidu returned. Grant’s upper lip curled up in a sneer. “Humbaba took my compassion and used it as a knife in my gut.”
As if on cue, Enkidu felt a tremor of the muscles in his abdomen rippling up through his chest and down his densely muscled arms.
“What will you do?” Malesh asked.
“Go back,” he told her, turning to gather his clothing. It took a few moments to strap into his sandal-bottomed boots, thick leather strips protecting his feet while metal braces ran from just above the ankle to just below his knee. With a flourish, he wound his kilt around his waist over the undergarment that protected his groin and thighs from the chafing thick lengths of studded leather.
Malesh rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a suicide mission.”
He turned, a cold, dark rage smoldering in Grant’s eyes. “Let me go. This isn’t your fight.”
Malesh started to squeeze, but the Doppler effect of Enkidu’s time-lost senses warned him of the firming of her grip and he wrenched himself free, feeling the sharpness of her nails leave shallow scratches on his skin. “Enkidu, you…I demand you stay here.”
“Don’t push your luck,” the human growled. “Or I’ll forget that you kept me here for noble reasons, not to allow your brother to murder more innocents.”
“They were slaves. It was their lot to die. You…are different,” Malesh said. Despite the reserve she held in her voice, he could sense an underlying current of frustration at his defiance. “You are a warrior…”
“And a warrior is fucking worthless if he can’t protect the helpless,” Enkidu grumbled. “Humbaba’s slaves are the most helpless of all, and because I threw down with a goddamn hunk of livestock, two dozen women and children are dead, or tortured damn close to it. Get the hell out of my way before I knock you out of it!”
Malesh surged forward, hand winding back for a slap across the face. Enkidu saw the windup even before it began, and he plunged his foot between her feet, ensnarling her legs. He caught her by the wrist and pivoted, hurling her to the floor, using her strength and momentum against her. It was a maneuver that Grant been on the wrong end of in sparring with Domi and Shizuka, but Enkidu didn’t know that. All he knew was that he’d derailed Malesh’s assault, and in three swift strides, he was at the cave entrance.
With a suddenness that even his time-warped reflexes couldn’t compensate for, Malesh snaked a strong arm around Enkidu’s throat. Forearm muscles as hard as cedar beneath velvet-soft skin squeezed over his windpipe, pulling his head back. Enkidu had no time or leverage to slip out of the grasp before it had closed, but he was able to bring up his own forearm to block the fist that was going to press against the arteries in his neck to finish the sleeper hold.
The swiftness of his reaction startled and distracted Malesh long enough for Enkidu to take advantage of her momentary slack to bring his elbow back into her ribs. The blow knocked the breath from her lungs, further loosening her hold. With a swift pivot and a firm grasp on the goddess’s forearm, he spun behind her, pulling her hand up between her shoulder blades. He threw all of his weight into slamming her against the cave entrance, but Malesh was not without her own considerable reflexes. She put her knee against the wall, giving her the leverage necessary to keep her from banging her head against unyielding stone. Enkidu grimaced and compensated for her maneuver. He drew up both knees into the small of the seven-foot goddess’s back and yanked on her trapped arm, twisting it.
His weight unbalanced Malesh, and she stumbled backward, her resistance to his hard shove now working against her. Enkidu tucked his legs up higher, his naked back striking the stone floor as the two combatants toppled. On his back, he kicked out with all the power in Grant’s mighty legs, releasing the warrior woman’s arm as he did so. If he’d held on, he knew that the leverage would have been sufficient to snap even her arm bones. As it was, Enkidu wasn’t interested in crippling Malesh, simply tossing her aside, and she launched hard, her face slamming into the ceiling of the cave before she bounced to the ground, stunned.
Enkidu rolled to his hands and knees, looking at Malesh as she lay on her back, face out of sight so he couldn’t tell how out of it she was. He rose to his feet, his head leaning closer to look over Malesh. “I’m not interested in breaking you apart. And I am grateful for your—”
Enkidu felt but didn’t see the goddess’s leg sweep across his ankles, so he didn’t have the same reaction time his Doppler-effect senses could have given him otherwise. By the time he was reacting to her touch, he was cartwheeling in a spin caused by the force of her kick. Enkidu managed to catch himself on his hands, lowering himself to the ground to keep him from breaking his head on the cavern floor, but Malesh whirled fluidly to her own feet just as his touched the ground.
This time, Enkidu saw her coming, and in doing so, launched himself from all fours, his shoulder catching her in her smooth, tight stomach. Her abdominal muscles flexed under the impact, and she released a grunt of surprise as she was lifted from the ground. Malesh, once more on Enkidu’s blind side, connected her elbow with his right shoulder blade, a powerful impact that jolted the strength from his legs. It didn’t matter to the goddess, as the two people had combined to create enough momentum to jar her senses when they hit the wall. Those bamboo-strong abdominal muscles provided a safety cushion so that Enkidu didn’t snap Grant’s clavicle, but he still crashed to his knees, stunned by the double impact of Malesh’s elbow and the wall.
