Laughing Wolf (14 page)

The dark retreated as the match burst into life. As he'd expected from his previous visits, they were in a narrow passageway that stretched off to their right. The place was thick with dust and cobwebs, and beetles recoiled at the touch of the light. Shivering and feeling a touch claustrophobic, he moved forward with Carolyn mere inches behind.

“Be careful,” he warned. “There's a hole on our left …”

Carolyn squeaked and almost vanished from sight; she had been leaning to her left and fallen through a gap in the wall. If Felix hadn't grabbed her, she would have tumbled to her death. Unfortunately, he dropped his candle and it fell into the abyss. The dark swooped around them as if devouring them whole.

“Thanks,” Carolyn gasped. “That was close.”

“At least you found the entrance. Let me light another match.…”

“That's not necessary.” Opening her laptop, she powered it up. Its screen cast a ghostly glow and kept the shadows at bay. They peered into the hole beside them: it was about a metre wide and lined with stone and had possibly served as a well in times past. Securing her laptop to her waist with her belt, Carolyn ducked into this “well” and thrust her hands against its sides.

“Come on,” she said. “It's not that bad.”

Felix followed suit. Copying Carolyn's movements, he wormed his way down. At one point he almost lost his grip when a particularly large insect explored his back; but a minute later they had reached the bottom.

“The battery's weakening,” Carolyn said. Sure enough, the laptop's glow was fading.

“That's okay. We're there,” Felix answered, pointing to a slab of wood which he shoved to one side. “This was the temple's main entrance. Beyond it —”

“Just go,” Carolyn said. “While we still have some light.”

Beyond the wood was yet another space, half-filled with dirt and rotting timber. In the thick of this debris he spied the outline of a statue — an arm upraised in a gesture of greeting. He knew this was Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt.

“That's it,” he exclaimed. “If we walk forward one metre, the TPM should kick in.”

“So what are we waiting for?”

“Hand me your laptop. You can't take it across the portal.”

With a growl of impatience, she closed its lid and passed the computer to him. Retreating several steps, feeling his way in the dark, Felix shoved the laptop into a massive hollow that was deep enough to hide it from his father's pick and shovel — two hundred years into the future. With this task accomplished, he rejoined Carolyn and they stumbled to the statue of the goddess. Without warning an orb of blinding light engulfed them.

Having received its first visitors in over two thousand years, the sacred space was empty again.

Chapter Twelve

T
he temporal projection was different this time. Felix's limbs were impossibly stretched and a tunnel of light was glowing around him, but now, instead of one opening before him, there were “holes” all over through which events could be seen, fleetingly, like images in a high speed film. There were riders on horses, farmers seeding fields, a battle scene of epic proportions, and a building easily the size of a city. A cacophony of sound exploded, of laughter, terror, excitement, and rage, as well as the strains of impossibly sweet music.…

“Felix …!”

He flinched. That was Carolyn calling. Spinning in slow motion, he could see that she had slipped into a gap and that her stretched-out features were snapping back to normal. Had she fallen out of the temporal vortex?

With a supreme act of will, he reversed his course midway through the tunnel — his elongated limbs were bending back on themselves, so that now they extended in both directions. He focused on the spot where Carolyn had vanished and.… There!

She was lying in a desolate landscape. It consisted of a grey sky and a lake of mud, with clumps of grass breaking through the ooze. Where was she? Or rather … when was she?

The mud's surface parted and an appendage emerged — it was over two metres long and tipped with a needle. A second one rose up, a third, a dozen, until these objects numbered in the hundreds. They were converging on Carolyn, who was up to her knees in the slop.

Claws broke forth, two to each appendage. They were accompanied by tube-like structures that contained multiple eyes, jet black and unblinking. Felix's blood practically froze. What …?

Scorpions! They were scorpions! But they were fantastically huge! Somehow Carolyn had entered an era when monstrosities like these had walked the earth!

She didn't scream — her ERR prevented that — but the look on her face was one of desperation. With no weapon in hand, she'd bunched her fists together and was girding herself for a pointless show of combat.

Concentrating hard, Felix extended an arm. Although the sensation was excruciating — it felt as if he were sticking his hand in boiling tar — he saw his arm materialize in that prehistoric world. Stretching farther, he managed to tap Carolyn's shoulder. She flinched, thinking she was under attack, then grabbed his hand and jumped in his direction, even as he hauled at her with all his strength. She felt a stinger brush her hair, missing her by inches.…

And then she was in the vortex and her proportions were distorted. A shower of light beams was propelling them forward, toward a space of dust and shadow. An eternity later (although it was only an instant) they were thrown into this unknown setting, even as their limbs assumed their normal shape.

“Are you okay?” Felix asked, climbing to his feet.

“Thanks to you,” she panted. “But … where are we?”

Reassured that she was safe, he examined their setting. Light was entering through a far-off window and revealed that they were surrounded by … books. The room's entire width, which measured fifty metres, was full of cases that stood a metre from each other, allowing enough space for someone to pass. Each case rose from the floor to the ceiling and continued for the length of the room — far into the shadows away from the windows. The shelves themselves were packed with books of every shape, size, and colour. The air was thick with disintegrating paper, a rich smell that made Felix think of … his father.

He knew exactly where he was.

“We're back,” he informed Carolyn. “We're in the Book Repository. The statue from the temple attracted us here.”

He pointed to a statue of Diana in an alcove. The goddess's arm was raised in greeting — a sight he had seen on countless occasions.

“Thank goodness,” Carolyn sighed. “We actually made it.” She stopped a moment and considered Felix. He had approached his father's old-fashioned desk and was running his finger along its green-baize surface.

“We should tell my father we've arrived,” she said gently.

He nodded and motioned to a black cube on the desk. She looked at it and almost managed a smile.

“I thought Speakboxes vanished decades ago.”

“My father's old-fashioned. That Speakbox is the only piece of technology in here.”

“It's more than adequate. General Manes,” she spoke, addressing the cube.

“Processing,” the cube replied. A moment later it was playing a message.

“This is General Isaiah Manes. Please leave me a voiceprint.”

“That's odd,” Carolyn mused. “He never fails to answer when I call. Is there a Holo-port nearby?”

“There's one across the street, in the Nano-Center. It's over this way.”

Leading Carolyn through a warren of shelves, he hurried to the exit in the building's northeast corner. There were window wells along the wall, although most had been filled in over the past few decades. And the ceiling, although worn, was highly ornate, an indication that the space had been a place of elegance.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“This building was something called a department store. It was called Hudson's Bay and was at one time very popular. It should have been razed, but the Federation preserved it for historical reasons. It seemed the perfect choice for a book repository.”

By now they'd left the building through a pair of glass doors and were crossing Road 11 (formerly Yonge Street), a four-tiered thoroughfare that was the city's central artery. Felix looked around. The area was the same: its totalium towers dwarfed his father's building; the streets and sidewalks were immaculately swept; every pane of glass had been brought to a shine; and there was an ion crackle splitting the air, a sign the Weather Template was planning rain for that evening. On the other hand, there wasn't a soul in the streets, no shoppers, no businessmen, no tourists, no one. The lack of any human presence made the district feel … unsettling.

“There's the Nano-Center,” Felix cried, suppressing a shiver.

They hastened into a nearby tower that, with its exceptional height and swivelling dome, was the city's crowning landmark. It too betrayed no signs of life except for a screen by the entrance to a Vacu-lift. Ignoring it, they approached a Holo-port at the far end of the lobby. Reciting her log-in code and her dad's contact number, she waited for the link to engage. Sure enough, an image of her father took shape.

“This is General Isaiah Manes,” the hologram spoke. “Please leave me a voiceprint.” The image popped, like a bubble bursting.

“I don't understand …” Carolyn started to say.

“Contact Doctor Lee,” Felix said. “He'll tell us where your father is.”

Again she recited her login code and the doctor's information. It took ten seconds for the link to register, and when the doctor's face came into focus, Carolyn and Felix felt their spines turn to water.

The hologram showed Doctor Lee slumped over in the cubicle where he'd discussed their mission with them. His hair was dishevelled, his chin unshaven, and his suit wrinkled and unfastened at its top. His black-ringed eyes met the Holo-port's lens and he projected an air of abject surrender.

“It is over,” he murmured. “We have utterly failed. I offer my apologies to General Manes, to my colleagues, and every citizen at large. Although the gesture is a futile one, I feel I must do something to restore my honour. Please forgive me.”

He brought a vial to his lips and swallowed deeply. There was a skull and crossbones on the vial's label and, an instant later, the doctor was dead. The Holo-port went blank and a calm voice offered to replay the message.

Felix was sweating. Despite her ERR, Carolyn looked nervous.

“I don't understand …” she said.

“I think I do,” Felix replied, pointing to the Holo-port's console. “Look at today's date. It's October 15, 2214. For some strange reason, we've been gone a year.”

“So …?”

“So we didn't find the
lupus ridens
. And scientists found no cure for the plague. That means the planet has been emptied of all human life.”

Without awaiting her reaction, he strolled over to the lobby's Teledata screen. It featured World President Sajit Gupta. The speech was a recording — its upload date was March 11 and that meant it had been playing for months on end. Felix stared at the broadcast. Whereas the president was normally self-possessed, he had lost his confidence and seemed badly rattled.

And his face was covered with scarlet spots.

“Dear citizens,” he spoke, in a wavering voice. “Please grant me your attention for a final broadcast from your leader. It is with profound regret that I announce we have been defeated by this plague. Despite our best efforts, the virus has struck every human on the planet, even those who strictly abided by the curfew. Half our brothers and sisters have perished, and the remainder are in orbit, waiting for the inevitable to happen.”

He paused, to regain his composure. To Felix's amazement, he brushed a renegade tear from his eye.

“For millennia,” he resumed, “we humans defeated every threat to our survival, from predators and famine, to political strife and global warming. At times we created terrible havoc, delighting in war, savagery, and ignorance. But as often as we proved destructive, we manifested virtues that more than made up for our violence: inventiveness, generosity, compassion, and open-mindedness. Surely other intelligent beings, if they exist and one day visit our planet, will have ample reason to condemn us for our faults; but at the same time, studying our record as a whole, they will gasp at our achievements and mourn the extinction of our grandeur.”

He coughed and passed a hand across his brow: his strength was ebbing fast.

“Finally, you have noticed that I am speaking with emotion. This is because I have had my ERR reversed and am subject to a diversity of feelings. I have acted thus because I am convinced it is incumbent on me, as the last elected spokesman for our planet, to address you and my future non-human audience as a true and proud product of my species, with all my mental proclivities on display. We have come so far,” he lamented, raising his eyes, “and with our demise, something rare and precious disappears — as light inevitably must dissolve into shadow.” He lowered his eyes and faced the camera.

“God bless us all,” he whispered. Then the screen went blank.

The recording ended, only to start again. His speech was too tragic to hear a second time, and Felix and Carolyn retreated from the screen. Standing by the building's exit, they were struggling to digest the unbearable truth: they were the only humans alive on the planet.

“Our plan is obvious,” she finally spoke. “We'll grab a shuttle, board the space station, return to the past, and find the
lupus ridens
.”

“We'd better get started,” Felix agreed. “Before we're infected with the plague.”

They passed outside and approached a Dispersion Portal: it would take them to the Shuttle Depot where they would pilot a craft and ride it to the TPM. They hadn't taken a dozen steps, however, when three Enforcement Drones swooped in. Blocking their path, the drones ordered them to stop.