Heartlight (19 page)

“The Darkness!” she screamed in panic. “It’s The Darkness!”

Just then she felt the terrible coldness reaching into her. An evil energy, even more powerful than before, began squeezing her tightly.

“H-help!” she gasped, reaching frantically for Grandfather’s outstretched arm. “I’m being str-strangled!”

“Away with you,” thundered the Voice. “Leave her alone!”

The music grew dimmer as did the circle of light below them, until finally both were extinguished. Heavy clouds surrounded the great globe, and the sky darkened ominously. The serpentine form of The Darkness encircled them, drawing its vengeful noose of anti-light tighter and tighter.

“Save us, Trethoniel!” pleaded Grandfather. “Get us out of here!”

But the great globe did not move. Only the muffled groans of the Voice came struggling back from beyond the clouds.

Fear flooded Kate as she fought to breathe—desperately forcing herself to inhale. “I want to live,” she sputtered with all her remaining strength.

The cold pressure inside her chest only increased. It was closing in on her, suffocating her, squeezing the life out of her heartlight.

Now The Darkness was circling so close that Grandfather could see the electric red eye, sizzling with currents of negative energy.

“Leave her alone!” he cried.

Kate coughed uncontrollably. Her hands grabbed her own throat, and she fell to her side, wrestling with an unseen force. She couldn’t breathe at all.

Then, suddenly, she went completely limp.

“Stop!” screamed Grandfather as he scooped her into his arms. “Leave her alone, whatever you are!”

The entire sky flamed brightly, then went totally dark. At the same instant, Grandfather felt Kate’s unconscious form disintegrate into nothingness. His arms were empty.

“Kate!” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “Where are you?” He groped madly in the blackness to find her.

In time, a dim light returned to the starscape. The Darkness had vanished, and so had Grandfather’s last shred of hope. He collapsed in a heap in the center of the great globe, weeping bitterly.

Kate was gone.

XIV: The Promise

Kaitlyn, dear Kaitlyn,” the old man sobbed. “Why did you have to follow me? Why did I ever make two rings? Oh, my dear, dear child . . . I am sorry.”

With utter finality, three weighty words thundered across the clouds. “
She . . . is . . . lost.
”

Grandfather slowly sat upright. He wiped his tear-washed face with his sleeve, struggling to regain a measure of composure. “What? What did you say?”

“She is lost,” rumbled the reply. “Her heartlight has been extinguished.”

“Extinguished!” cried Grandfather. “No! God, no!”

He placed his face in his two weathered hands. “It should have been me. Not her. Not my little Kaitlyn.”

“Doctor Miles Prancer,” spoke the Voice. “Do not despair.”

He raised his sorrowful head. “Do not despair? But I’ve lost her. The person I most loved! Nothing else in the universe matters to me now.”

“Something else matters. You also love the star Trethoniel.”

A white eyebrow lifted. It struck Grandfather that the Voice sounded different than it had before. It was smaller, thinner, as if it had just survived a brutal battle.

“You love Trethoniel very much. And Trethoniel can still be saved.”

“I can’t think about anything but Kate,” said Grandfather, shaking his head sadly. “Why didn’t you save her? Why didn’t you save her before she was lost?”

“I tried to save her. But I could not.” The sky darkened slightly. “The Enemy wanted her badly. And the Enemy is very, very powerful. Never have I fought so hard, Doctor Miles Prancer. But I failed to save her.”

“Who took her away? Who is the Enemy?”

“The agents of the Enemy are all around us. They come in many forms, sometimes frightening, sometimes pleasing. Deception is their weapon and destruction is their goal.”

“Why?” cried Grandfather desperately.

“Because the Enemy is bent on destroying every star, every source of light in the universe.”

“Including the Sun?”

“Including the Sun.”

“But why did they want Kate?”

“She wanted the stars to survive! She wanted your Sun to live, and she wanted Trethoniel to live. Despite her vast ignorance, she was on the side of life, not death. She wanted my music to live, and to live forever.”

“They can’t have her!” protested Grandfather, tears again brimming in his eyes.

“They already have her,” answered the Voice, some of its former strength returning. “They already have your Sun. But they do not yet have Trethoniel.”

“Nothing else matters, now that Kate is gone.”

“All life matters,” the Voice replied. “And no life matters so much as the great star Trethoniel.”

“Yes, of course, all life matters,” said the old man halfheartedly. “But now that Kate is gone—”

“There is still time,” roared the Voice. “There is still time to save the star you most love. But we must act together. And we must act swiftly.”

Grandfather bowed his head in despair. “Nothing has any meaning for me anymore. Not even helping Trethoniel.”

“Then do it for her. Do it for the young one. She wanted the music of Trethoniel to survive, to ring forever throughout the heavens. Helping me is helping her.”

Slowly, the white head lifted. Clumsily, Grandfather regained his feet. His eyes were filled with sadness, but that sadness now mixed with his rising rage.

“Can we still stop the Enemy from destroying Trethoniel?”

“Perhaps,” came the thunderous reply. “If we act now.”

Grandfather’s anger distilled into determination. “What can I do? How can I help you?”

For a long moment, the winds were utterly silent.

“You can lend me something,” boomed the Voice.

“What can I lend you?”

“You can lend me your heartlight.”

Grandfather winced, as if he had been struck by some object. “My—my heartlight? Great Star, you of all beings know that heartlight cannot be loaned! It can only be given, as an act of free choice. But once given it can never be returned. My heartlight would belong to you forever.”

The winds whistled ominously.

“You are correct.”

“But you’re asking me—”

“—to make the greatest sacrifice any mortal being can make. Yes! To give up your individual heartlight forever. There is only one purpose that can justify such a request: the purpose of saving Trethoniel.”

“So the precious substance you need is heartlight!” exclaimed Grandfather.

“Yes,” answered the Voice. “A small dose of heartlight is the one thing I need, the one thing I lack. And I must have it soon, or the Enemy will destroy me.”

“But I don’t understand, Great Star! How can my heartlight be so important to you? Why is a little heartlight so much more necessary to your survival than all the PCL you are manufacturing?”

“Because,” rumbled the Voice, “pure condensed light only prolongs life, while heartlight—heartlight is life itself. Pure condensed light has strengthened my body, but the darkest danger I face is to my soul. And the danger is upon me. Only heartlight can save me now.”

“But why?” pressed Grandfather. “I still don’t understand.”

“You need only understand one thing.” The Voice sounded closer, almost on top of Grandfather. “Trethoniel is now balanced on the thinnest edge of extinction. There is very little time left. All my beauties and marvels, all my music and light, will be destroyed forever—just like the young one—unless you help me. Even now, the Enemy is gathering for a final attack. You can make the crucial difference, Doctor Miles Prancer.”

“Tell me more.”

“I will tell you only what you need to know,” replied the Voice. “The only fact you need to comprehend, which you have already guessed, is that I have labored for eons with all my energies to postpone the ultimate tragedy: that thing called death.”

A swell of sympathy began to rise in Grandfather. “I know, Great Star. For so many years I have believed you were on the verge of collapse! How you have avoided it for so long is a miracle.” He shook his head dismally. “I can understand your desire to live, to complete your work. You simply want to grow older and wiser, to avoid becoming—”

“—
a black hole
,” roared the Voice, and with those words a new layer of darkness descended. “The Infinite Nothing! For eons I have lived in fear of this fate. The more beautiful I grew, the more inescapable it became. I have struggled in vain to avoid it, to find the solution to the terrible flaw that afflicts all living things. But I will struggle no longer. For I have finally discovered the answer to the greatest of all riddles. And I need only one more modicum of heartlight to complete my plan.”

“So my heartlight will enable you to continue postponing your death?”

“No!” bellowed the Voice. “Postponement alone would be no success! No success at all! In the end, death would still triumph. No, Doctor Miles Prancer, I do not seek merely to postpone death, like every other living thing in the universe. I seek something far more precious. I seek to avoid death completely.”

“Avoid death completely!” Grandfather’s eyes opened wide. “That’s—that’s incredible! That would revolutionize astrophysics . . . as well as philosophy and religion! It would change everything!”

“Yes! I have labored for eight billion years to arrive at this moment.”

“Perhaps,” mused the astronomer, “my own life’s work, brief though it’s been, has also been just a preparation for this moment.”

“And perhaps the young one’s sacrifice was a necessary part of your preparation,” added the Voice.

Grandfather jolted. “No! There was no purpose to that—no purpose at all! I would rather have her back than all the stars in the universe. She was lost out of stupidity—my stupidity—and nothing could ever justify it.”

“I understand your grief,” the Voice replied. “But our time is slipping away! Surely you are wise enough to understand what is at stake here. It is nothing less than the ultimate battle of the universe: the battle between life and death. Even the young one understood that much! Now, we have dallied long enough. Will you give me your heartlight?”

“If you first tell me how it will enable you to avoid death completely.”

“Time is wasting! I could not possibly explain it to you in the time we have left. Nor could you understand the answer!”

“But I must understand at least a little more before I can give up my heartlight forever. It’s such a final thing you are asking.”

“Far less final than death! If you will not listen to me, then perhaps you will listen to someone else. Someone whose voice you will recognize.”

“Who is that?”

All went silent, even the incessant howling of the winds.

“Who?” demanded Grandfather.

“It is I,” declared a thin, raspy voice from behind the curtain of clouds.

Grandfather shook his head in disbelief. “No—it can’t be!”

“But it is.”

“Ratchet!”

A hoarse laughter echoed among the mists. “You look much worse for wear, Prancer. Yet still you made it here. Only fifty years late, but at least you made it. I confess I thought you never would.”

Grandfather stood awestruck. “How did you do it?”

“How?” rasped the voice of Ratchet. “You are asking me how? The same way you did it, of course! Through a catalyst of PCL. Does it gall you to know that you were not the first to do it? That you were merely a follower, not a discoverer?”

“Yes,” replied Grandfather. “Yes, it does.”

“I see you haven’t learned much, Prancer. You are as honest as ever.”

“And you are as spiteful as ever.”

“That is the prerogative of the greatest scientist who ever lived.”

“So the whole fire in the laboratory was just a ruse?”

“To disguise my exit,” agreed Ratchet, cackling proudly. “I am sure there was ceaseless debate over its true cause.”

“Yes. But none of us ever guessed that you had found a way to free your heartlight and travel to Trethoniel.”

“Or, even better, that I had discovered the path to immortality!”

Grandfather’s eyebrows lifted to their maximum height. “You mean that you have merged your heartlight with Trethoniel’s?”

“Yes!” Ratchet’s voice was triumphant. “At last, to leave my wretched and decaying body behind. To be free, finally and forever! That is my reward for those many years of torture.”

“So you have ceased to exist as an individual being?”

“What value is individuality when it is, by its very nature, limited and temporary? Now I am part of something much bigger and far better: the infinite life of a glorious star. And my great intelligence has enabled this star to flourish when it otherwise would have died.”

“Fool!” bellowed the Voice, ending its silence. “You are only a tool to Trethoniel! I am growing tired of your endless arrogance. You forget that I have preserved a portion of your ego solely so that you can be more useful to me. But you have served your purpose! However important you might have been once, now much more important is your student. He alone holds the power to save Trethoniel from annihilation.”

“Only because he learned a few things from me,” snarled Ratchet. “And you have certainly changed your tune, O Voice of Trethoniel! You sent me all the way back to Earth just to prevent him from coming here! Now you are begging him for help.”

“Prevent me!” exclaimed Grandfather. “Ratchet! Was that you who ruined my laboratory?”

“You’ve only now deduced that? You haven’t gotten any smarter since I saw you last.” Ratchet’s hoarse laughter rose above the winds. “I actually quite enjoyed being a ghost.”

“You might have killed my dog, you assassin.”

“I wish I had. If there hadn’t been more important matters to tend to—”

“Important!” Grandfather retorted angrily. “Like stealing an empty, worthless box! I do say, Ratchet, you are easily fooled. You haven’t gotten any smarter since I saw you last.”

“Silence!” commanded the Voice. “While you two are bickering, my very life is slipping away. And your life as well, Doctor Willard Ratchet.”

“Why did you want to prevent me from coming here?” demanded Grandfather. “Answer my question, or I will never help you.”