disgusting. The idea was to make myself look like a Flighter. I could always make myself dirty; the trick would be to get that rancid Flighter smell going on. I figured a day out on the ocean under the sun would take care of that.
I was about to head out when Loque grabbed my arm and said two simple, sincere words. “Come back.”
“That’s the idea,” I said with more confidence than I actually had.
I started for the door when he asked, “Is everything all right with Telleo?”
How was I going to answer that? The truth was, Telleo was dead. The real Telleo. I didn’t think Nevva would be coming back.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I guess I kind of weaseled out. I left Loque with more questions than answers, but I believed the full answers would have been harder to take than the mystery of not knowing the truth. It made me realize something else I didn’t want to deal with. Genj. What would I tell him about his daughter? His real daughter. He had to know the truth, but I couldn’t think of anything to tell him that he’d understand. What could I say? He wouldn’t believe me, especially since I started acting all crazy the night before. He might even try to come up with his own logical explanation for why his daughter disappeared and prevent me from leaving.
I couldn’t let that happen, so I made a tough decision. I decided to not tell Genj that his daughter was dead. I felt horrible about it. All he’d know was that his daughter had disappeared. He’d have no idea why. My silence would condemn him to the agony of uncertainty and wonder. I promised myself that when I returned I’d tell him everything, even if it meant revealing the existence of the Travelers and Saint Dane. At least I’d be able to give him closure on Remudi, too. Yes, that would be the right thing to do. But not just then. Daybreak was too close.
I gathered a few supplies for the trip. My plan was to make the voyage back on the skimmer that Loque brought from Rubic City. It wasn’t a very big craft, so I couldn’t exactly load up on gear. I took four canteens of fresh water and some dried fruit, along with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. I didn’t know what I’d do with the weapon, but at least it gave me a small feeling of security, as false as it might have been. The final task was to get rid of my lightweight green shorts and shirt and put on Loque’s dirty, torn rags.
After putting the shirt over my head, I realized that I didn’t have to worry about faking the bad smell thing. The clothes were plenty foul enough.
I walked through the quiet, sandy streets of Rayne, headed for the shore. I didn’t hurry. It wasn’t that I was having second thoughts; it was more because I wanted to take a good look at what I helped create. I passed newly built huts and many more that were in various stages of construction. The roads were clear. Water lines were being buried. Some homes already had flowers growing around them. It was a beautiful thing. I was proud of this village and its people. I was one of them. I wanted to do right by them. That last walk to the shore gave me the final gut check I needed. One way or another I had to protect this village from Saint Dane and the Flighters.
The skimmer was still onshore where I had beached it. I loaded up my small provisions under the deck and pulled it out onto the water. I had the brief fear that it wouldn’t have power. That went away as soon as I started toggling switches and the engines hummed. Skimmers ran on water power. There was plenty of that around.
The sky was already turning from black to blue, extinguishing the stars. A thin line of light appeared on the horizon that said the sun wouldn’t be far behind. I needed the sun to get my bearings. Between that and the small compass, they would be my only guides to Rubic City. It was a good thing it wasn’t a cloudy day.
I lowered the pontoons into the water. As soon as they submerged, I could feel the power of the skimmer growing. I hesitated. This was really happening. I was going back to Rubic City. I was going to meet Saint Dane. It was something I thought would never happen again, but there I was, poised to go. I took a look back at Rayne and Tribunal Mountain. It was a tropical paradise. I vowed to keep it that way. I looked ahead and throttled the engine. With a quick lurch I was off.
The warm, tropical waters of Veelox were glassy calm, allowing me to fly over the surface. I had made this trip before on a skimmer, in the opposite direction. I knew I was in for a long day, so I settled in and tried not to get bored. A few times I actually broke out in song. Why not? Nobody could hear me. I sang a little Green Day, and in honor of my dad, some Beatles. I’m not a good singer. It didn’t matter, unless you were a fish.
I can’t tell you how many hours the trip took, because I didn’t have a watch. It was many. It took most of the day. That’s the best I can say. I kept my eye on the compass and on the movement of the sun, to make sure I was headed in the right direction. When I wasn’t rechecking my heading, I stared at the horizon, hoping to see the beginnings of the skyline of Rubic City. It was torture. It didn’t help that I was alone. Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, the razor-sharp edge of ocean slowly grew jagged. I knew what that meant. I was seeing the tops of skyscrapers. My first reaction was relief.
My second reaction was fear. I was really going to do this. Was I ready? The answer was no. I had no idea how to prepare myself. To say I was going to wing it would be an understatement. Ready or not, it would soon be showtime. It took another hour or so before I was close enough to make out details of the decaying city. The sun had already traveled across the sky and was heading down. The late afternoon light warmed the cityscape. Things looked pretty much the same as when I’d been there months before. At one time this had been a busy, thriving city. Now it was a hollow, rotting place of the dead. Beneath the water, I could make out the shadowy hulks of ships that had been sunk and left to rust over many generations. You’ve heard of ghost towns? This was a full-on ghost city. Actually, the only thing I didn’t have to be afraid of was ghosts. At least I didn’t think so.
I saw the pier where we had tied up the pilgrim ship when the Jakills and I first discovered the city. I couldn’t bring myself to put in there. It was a place of death. The hull of the burned ship was still beneath the surface. If there were any ghosts in Rubic City, that’s where they’d be. Instead, I maneuvered the skimmer toward the large pier under which the fleet of skimmers was kept. My thinking was that the perfect place to hide the craft was among others just like it. I didn’t want somebody stumbling on it and raise some kind of alarm to announce an intruder had arrived and was poking around.
I was about a couple hundred yards out from the pier when I heard an odd sound. I had been listening to the steady drone of the skimmer’s engines for the last million hours. This was different. It was steady, but definitely a different frequency. I cut the engines. Water lapped up onto the deck as I came to a stop. Once the sloshing sounds stopped, I listened intently. The sound was faint, but distinct. It wasn’t like anything I remembered hearing in Rubic City. The steady sound grew louder. Was it coming closer? The skimmer bobbed gently on the small swells. I scanned the city. There was nothing in sight that could be making that kind of sound, but it was definitely there and getting louder. It sounded like the buzz of a machine. That was impossible. There was nothing mechanized in Rubic City. At least nothing that had worked for centuries.
I was about to hit the throttle and travel the rest of the way to the pier when my eye caught movement. Dead ahead. It looked like a dark cloud moving along a street, between the rows of tall buildings. I strained to get a better look. The cloud grew bigger. It was definitely moving. Was it a dust storm? A minitornado? Whatever it was, it had cleared the last row of buildings and was headed my way. For a second I thought that maybe there really were ghosts in Rubic City, because a big, black-looking specter was coming toward me.
That’s when I saw the lights. It was almost pretty. Almost. As the cloud grew closer, it seemed decorated with thousands of tiny, twinkling lights. Yellow lights. Like Christmas. The sound grew even louder. The buzzing sound. The lights were the tip-off. It wasn’t a cloud. It wasn’t a tornado. It wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t Christmas.
It was a swarm of bees. Quig-bees. The weird thing was, I wasn’t afraid. Not just then anyway. My first thought wasn’t that I had to do something or I was going to get swarmed and stung by those monsters. No, my first thought was that there were quigs in Rubic City guarding the flume. That meant that this territory was once again hot. Saint Dane had sent his little demons out to welcome me. There was no chance of surprise here. He knew I was coming.
That’s when I got scared.
JOURNAL #34
(CONTINUED)
IBARA
