Dutch and Eric stood at
the edge of the swimming pool, and the black and silver cone of the event
horizon continued to stretch itself writhing and turning ever upwards. Righteous
Alchemy and Sweet Mary circled around it in mid-air as if on a macabre
merry-go-round, their bodies hanging motionless as if from some invisible hook.
Dutch could just make out Rags clinging to Sweet Mary’s midriff. But that was
little comfort to Dutch as she looked around desperately for some way to help
them. And then, like some answering call to a prayer, Shim and her two girls came
out of nowhere, scooting across the floor towards them on the Rider’s flying
platform. Dutch waved them on impatiently and Eric stepped back so as not to
get run down as they sailed up and stopped. Dutch, with a peremptory wave of
her wand, swept them from the flying saucer and leapt on board, her crozier
flaming furiously. She was a woman with a mission and she was determined to get
to grips with the Seesh. She was tired of being played for a fool. But first
she had to get Sweet Mary and Righteous to safety.
She urged the flying
platform upwards but instead of its normally swift response the progress was
slow and turgid…like swimming through custard. She also noticed that the higher
she rose, the bigger and higher grew the unicorn’s horn. The closer she got to
Sweet Mary and Righteous, the closer the event horizon seemed to get to the conical
spire at the top of the building. It grew before her eyes until it was massive
– more than a hundred feet in diameter now - and she could quite clearly see
her own reflection in its surface. Not only that, she could see a kaleidoscope
of multiple images tumbling over each other, fractured and juxtaposed one atop
the other like a crazy collage on the move. She saw Sweet Mary and Righteous,
upside down and back to front – Rose too was there, swirling around in her
oversize bedroom - and overshadowing it all, a panoramic view of the valley, with
the Cantave standing in the centre, proud and beautiful, intricate and
delicate, its spire reaching up to heaven…or hell.
Urged on by these
visions Dutch pushed harder and harder to reach Sweet Mary and Righteous, and all
the while the event horizon grew larger and higher. Dutch put every ounce of
her willpower into urging the flying saucer upwards. She was nearly there now,
just a few more yards.
Then her worst fears
came true. Before she’d even reached Sweet Mary or Righteous, the column of the
event horizon quivered as it made contact with the central top spire, and a thumping
sound like the detonation of an explosive bolt rent the air as the Cantave
lurched and lifted off the ground. Desperation struck Dutch like a tidal wave.
She could hardly breathe. They were moving. The whole damn caboodle was lifting
off. She watched it happening quite clearly in the reflected image of the
quicksilver column in front of her. She had an uninterrupted view of the valley
and the red mountains slipping slowly down below the horizon as the Cantave
surged up into the sky. Dutch urged her flying saucer onwards, desperately
trying to reach Sweet Mary now, but for all that she tried she couldn’t get any
closer. All that happened was the Cantave picked up speed and was soon clear of
the bubble of light surrounding the planet and heading out into the blackness
of outer space. Dutch looked downward and could vaguely see Eric and Shim and
the girls looking up at her. All their hopes were on her and she was
failing…again. Tears of frustration began to squeeze out the corners of her
eyes. Why did things always go so wrong with her? Why was everything so difficult?
Just for once, couldn’t something go her way? She was hard pressed at that
moment not to curse her mother again, the sole reason, she thought, for all her troubles.
Sweet Mary and Righteous
continued to rotate quietly round the central core of the event horizon as the
spaceship approached the wormhole. In desperation Dutch began hurling bolts of
energy at the waterspout to try and disrupt it but she couldn’t even disturb
the surface. Then she noticed something strange about their reflections in the event
horizon. They were all old. Righteous’ hair had gone white and his face, old
and toothless. She too had deep lines and folds of skin hanging from her bony
face. Sweet Mary’s skin looked like crinkled parchment, as if all the blood had
leeched out of her.
‘Don’t believe it,’ said
Dutch to herself. ‘This is just another trick’…and then she had no more time to
think because they were engulfed by the wormhole and everything went black.
For a long while there
was nothing. The only things visible were Sweet Mary and Righteous circling
around the waterspout. The surface of the waterspout showed no reflections or
images. Perhaps it would all end here thought Dutch. What if this was all just
a bad dream. This would be a good time to wake up and find themselves back in
their prison cell. She never thought she would long for that. Then they were
through the wormhole and the familiar sight of Earth’s solar system came into
view. This was the moment she had been dreading. Things were completely out of
her control now and her worst horrors were happening. There was G.O.D. 5 ahead
of them, getting closer every second. She held her breath in anticipation as
she saw the orbiting gun-platforms begin to explode as they tried to open fire
on the great white cathedral emerging from the wormhole like a celestial city.
The event horizon was doing its job, blocking anything from getting through to
them.
Next, G.O.D. 5’s on-board
missile launchers detonated and bloomed like deadly eruptions across its
surface as their launch codes were activated and their firing power ricocheted
back on them. What the Seesh had said was coming true. In quick succession,
every one of the Federation’s Star ships, Corsairs and assorted battleships blew
up as they too opened fire on the Cantave. The devastation was complete. G.O.D.
5 itself was nearly torn in half from exploding its entire on-board ordinance,
spilling its guts and many millions of its people into outer space. Dutch’s white
face stood out aghast against the stars. Her brain had frozen. This was too
vast for anyone to comprehend. The Federation fleet was in ruins. Shattered
hulks of ships crippled and torn apart, bodies twirling as they went by,
defence satellites blasted and drifting helplessly, fires blazing out briefly
in the blackness of space…and then they were past it, and the thread of the event
horizon now pointed like the feeling finger of fate towards the Earth.
Righteous and Sweet Mary
still hung helplessly in front of Dutch - limp and unreachable. Planets whizzed
by as the Cantave increased speed even more. More gun emplacements stationed on
armoured asteroids along the way lit up the darkness as they tried to stop the
juggernaut in its headlong rush towards the Earth. In mere moments they came
into view of the Earth, the moon off to their left where she could see fireworks
going off on the surface as the defence systems swung into action. Wherever
there was a gun or a missile fired…there people died. None of the missiles even
had time to launch. They merely blew up on their pads. Then the pretty blue and
white planet of Earth filled the screen in front of her. She hardly had time to
take it in when a rash of multi-coloured mushrooms began erupting across its
surface as hundreds of thousands of nuclear silos and mobile sea-and-land
launch-vehicles exploded, releasing a storm of devastation across the face of the
Earth. Dutch couldn’t even look anymore.
Nuclear-alert sirens
screamed and Dutch found herself thrust this way and that amidst a crush of
panic-stricken people fighting their way onto the platform of an underground
station, trying to escape the holocaust above. The vain hope was to catch a
train out of the city. But there were too many people; thousands of them shoving
forward and trying to be the first one there. Dutch had to use her brute
strength and size to keep from being pushed off the platform and onto the rail
where many had already fallen and died. The single silver rail of the
electra-glide frictionless railway track stretched from one end of the platform
to the other. The people who touched it were instantly fried. She could hear
the train coming down the tunnel and people beginning to scream, those in the
pit trying to climb out and those on the platform pushing them back in. A
frantic voice on the station speaker kept repeating……
“PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM
THE EVENT HORIZON! PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE EVENT HORIZON!”
A little worm of light began
niggling in Dutch’s dim brain and the words ‘event horizon’ tried to hammer
their way in through to her attention. She had a vague suspicion that this was somehow
a personal message as the train swooped into the station.
“PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM
THE EVENT HORIZON!”
Where had she heard that
term before? Then the train was in front of her and she could see Sweet Mary’s
face in the window amidst the crush of people trying to get on. Her instinct
was to go to her…force her way onto the train and take Sweet Mary in her arms;
but this nagging voice in her brain kept saying “PLEASE STEP AWAY…” and finally
her own personal alarm-bell started going off in her head. Something was wrong.
Something was terribly wrong with this picture. It wasn’t right. What was Sweet
Mary doing on a tube train anyway? Where was she actually? This wasn’t where
she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be…she tried to grab at the thought
but it drifted away. It was important though. She could feel that. She tried
again.
“PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM
THE EVENT HORIZON!”
That’s it. She knew
there was something funny with the scene. The voice. It was Sweet Mary’s voice.
She was talking to her.
“Dutch. Please. Don’t
come any closer. Step back. Step away from the event horizon,” her voice said
calmly in contradiction to her frantic face in the window of the tube train,
screaming silently for Dutch to rescue her. Which to believe? Her eyes or her
ears? All was madness in her brain. She could trust none of her senses. But she
had to make a choice.
“Move away from the event
horizon,” said Sweet Mary again, “The closer you are, the more it propels you
forward into the future.” It made sense to her, and in the end it was her eyes
she decided not to trust. With heavy heart she lifted her hand and waved goodbye
to the Sweet Mary on the train and her heart broke as the girl clawed at the
window shouting a silent ‘No, no, no…’
Dutch stepped away from
the edge of the platform and the scene before her stopped. Everything froze.
She took another step back and things began to move again…..but this time they
were moving backwards. Another step and the train began reversing out of the
station, the crowds surging backwards. The further she stepped away, the faster
the action rewound. Suddenly she was in outer space looking down upon the earth
again, at the mushrooming atomic clouds that were now folding back in on
themselves and disappearing. The scene was rewinding like a movie, going backwards
in time. And still she retreated, stepping further and further away from the
twirling waterspout of the event horizon. Backwards they all flew, for there
was Righteous and Sweet Mary again, dangling in front of her. Back they flew, back
in time. Close to the wormhole now she watched the federation ships reforming,
the people flying back into their safe environments; and as they flew past GOD
5 she glimpsed it returning to its original state, its blasted bits coming
together in little clouds being sucked inwards. And then it all disappeared.
