BOOK THIRTEEN - !AD
VALORUM¡
CHAPTER FORTY TWO -
“DEPARTURE!”
Once
the shurts are gone, Marge helps Turpin up, drags him
into the captain's chair with a frown.
“You
been burned… and bad! Was it on account
of that killer all those quaffs were blathering about?”
“Can't
remember rawth, just about, since we landed… me and,
I dunna faq? Reg’cy confiscated th’Eegelweissh which I was on… that's funny… Cap'n went bool. Demons! Lotsa demons. Remember
this other bird, though, something… we done something, me and s’mother jims…”
Turp shakes his head, slaps
his head, steadies his voice.
“Transporting
frozen shkooks back to Hurt
to die?”
“Nie, something else. Something big, something
against the Regency. I was a snaker, registered in the Guild, so it must’ve been intersteallar. There
was… Yeah… sorry…”
He
picks up a document atop a pile that Crandall or somebody has left for him -
"cargo registry" - runs his finger down it through names… "cryo - mallam,
isfaheel"… taps it, trying to remember, shakes
his head. The scapescreen,
a sparkling new Antaar flashes into life - a Passport
com, some shurt, not Crandall, warns the two of them of
impending departure…
“Thirty
seconds to automated liftoff. Please
secure yourself in your seats.”
Marge
straps herself into the co-pilot's chair beside him…
“Did
you really hire wiseguys to mawt
your husband?” Turp inquires.
Marge smiles. “Did you, Frobisher and Broonzy
really go through nag to bezend?”
As
Turpin frowns… memory flickering just beyond his reach… the Marina shudders on
docking station fifteen, belches methane steam, then slowly lifts off… briefly
creating a fireball visible to all Die, even the Baawl
where, standing by the charred ruins of the Andromeda (which the Regency will
get around to cleaning up, one of these days), Al watches what seems a white
stone, skipping across the crimson sky.
I do not foresee long life for this Regency… far-flung, yet
swollen with self-importance as a wound infected with the gas…spirits apostate,
as a poet wrote more than a thousand years ago, his counsel vain as all the
teachings of the wise jims in their epochs of makhboolery. Shkook name of
Milton, one of the first, so they say, to have given a name to the Milky Way…
"a broad and ample road, whose dust is gold and
pavement stars, as stars to them appear…a circling zone, thou seest, powdered with stars."
Soaring upwards into
space, Marina passes thorugh the procession of
quacking ilaams standing watch over Die including,
under construction, that for Anus-Best-Us… new and improved, with brighter
colors and new, flamboyant gases! Out of
the orbit of Dubankyaia… threading the tripartite
stars, red Dhubaaht, Ankhubaaht
and the dwarf Yamsu of the system 52 Vespertilio, Marina, at first, approaches the white
hole of the snake, but veers away from it… thrusting on, outward into the void
and past a faded poetic ilaam established centuries
ago to herald the white hole portal to all of the galaxy in the days when the
Regency was young, and kind…
Turp
and Marge gaze and frown – the one with only memories of forgetting, the other
never having seen, hence, remembered at all, only mouthing the words set down
in another place, another time…
Witness
this new-made world, another heaven
From
heaven gate not far, founded in view
On
the clear hyaline, the glassy sea;
Of
amplitude almost immense, with stars
Numerous, and every star perhaps a world
Of destined habitation…
THE END
go
BACK