Fantastic Children 2 Ch.24

24: Coalescence

Agi had no idea what to do about Hasmodai.  He had heard bits of his ranting and paranoia, had been told the entire story by Soreto, and knew that Hasmodai had been healed now, at least physically.

But he kept himself apart from the group, refused to answer any questions, and kept staring into the ocean with haunted eyes, like some ancient sailor who has heard the Sirens calling. Agi hoped Hasmodai wasn't thinking of throwing himself overboard. The water was cold here, Agi knew from experience.

"Agi, I think you need to come look at this." Soreto was at the scanner, and something was flashing on the display. The rest of the team looked at him expectantly, but Agi didn't feel any pressure.  He knew they could take care of themselves if they had to. He was barely up and dressed, and was planning to take things easy for a while.

"What is it?"

"The scanners are showing some sort of energy surge from the island."

"Oh, no!  He's activated it!" said Palza.

Castor's machine.  Agi frowned at the display. "What exactly does this machine do?"

"All I'm sure of is that it's something destructive," Palza said. "Catastrophically destructive."

"Hasmodai was under the impression it was a generator meant to channel energy from the Zone," said Soreto quietly.  "But he wasn't rational at the time."

Agi frowned.  A source of power had been just what Titas had originally hoped for from their scientific efforts. If anyone could have developed that concept into something practical, it was Hesma.

Agi turned to call Hasmodai, hoping that the problem would snap him out of his woolgathering for a while, but Hasmodai was already backing away from the railing, a look of horror on his face.

"We have to move the ship!" Hasmodai shouted. When nobody moved, he continued, "We have to move! The Atalanta is rising!  The cells have been charged by the Orsel coming off the station!"

Agi exchanged a quick glance with Soreto, Mel and Tarlant, saw the same pain and sorrow in their eyes as he felt.  Palza had warned them that Hasmodai might never fully recover. His injuries had been left too long untreated.

"I thought you fixed his head," Seth said to Palza.

"So did I."

"We have to go NOW!" Hasmodai was looking positively frantic.  Agi nodded to Seth.  It would do no harm to move the ship, and it might calm Hasmodai while they worked on the Sei Station problem.

"All right, all right." Seth started the engine.

"Hurry!"

Agi turned back to the scanner.  "It looks like the island is being evacuated.  You said there's a sonic cannon aboard?  Could we take the generator out with that?"

"We could try," Soreto said.  "But destroying the generator while the Zone is open might cause an even more serious—"

The ship lurched upward, as if being nudged by a whale. Agi could feel the vessel turning, out of control.

"Everyone, strap yourselves in!" Agi ordered. He buckled his own harness as the others scrambled for safety. The hovercraft began to tilt, and the robots, unbidden, locked themselves to the deck, securely holding Tarlant and Tina, who had not yet managed to attach their restraints.

The ship fell, plunging into the sea before emerging in a maelstrom of swirling waves.  Agi thought for a moment that they had been driven into the shadow of an iceberg, but then saw that the enormous, blue-white object over them was a ship, an ancient spaceship from Greecia. He stared at the scanner to confirm the vision in his eyes, but the scanner showed nothing.  

The ship rose completely from the sea, moving away to pass over Sei Station, and as it did, the island broke apart and rolled over, and a beam of pure blue energy cut into the ancient starship.

Agi suddenly found himself on the silent, dark shore again. But there was something wrong: there were two shores here, like a double image he could not focus, moving together, then apart, each with its own pattern of waves running up and down the beach.  He struggled to bring his eyes into cooperation, to join the two views into a single image.

A new vision appeared in his mind, the image of two soap bubbles.  They drifted together, touched, melded…and then the wall that separated them broke, leaving one single, shining bubble.

Agi was torn away from that image, caught up in a shrieking hurricane.  The wind whipped him, carrying him as swiftly and as helplessly as if he had been made of paper. He struggled in a panic for something to hold onto, but there was nothing, nothing but the wind and the emptiness and occasionally, the face of some other soul caught in the whirlwind and as helpless as he.

There was no direction and no sense as the tempest swirled in a wild dance of complete chaos.

Agi struggled to clear and calm his own mind as he was torn through the violent confusion. The storm was like the silent shore, he told himself.  It was only a metaphor. It was something in his own mind.

And his mind was his to control.

Agi concentrated, made a circle of quiet around himself, created in his mind a small patch of the silent beach to stand upon. Around him the storm still screamed and howled, but it did not touch him in his circle of calm.  

Agi looked into the chaos and called his people to him. With every force of command he could muster, he sent his summons into the raging turmoil around him.

Soreto came to him at once, and Belle, emerging from the mayhem to enter his circle.  It grew around them, three now, touching, in a small and fragile patch of safety.  

Agi sent out his summons again.  Tina entered the circle, walking calmly, Seth behind her.  Mel and Palza came, already together, already holding each other.

With each new arrival, the circle grew and the calm spread.

Agi called again, and Tarlant appeared, flanked by strangers, a man and woman of Greecia.  Agi stared at them for a while, wondering, and suddenly realized they were the souls currently animating the robots.

Hesma and Dumas appeared, and joined the circle.  Cooks entered, his face bewildered.  Agi had nearly forgotten the wounded detective was on the ship.  

Agi sent out his summons again. Nobody else approached.  Hasmodai had still not come to them.  He had always been the weakest of the group, Agi knew, unable to stand against the Enma, slow to react, nearly useless in a fight. And now even his mind was damaged. Did he not have the strength to come to them?

Agi firmly planted his feet in the circle of calm and sent his mind out searching in the storm.  Maintaining the peace around him was a struggle as he pushed against the chaos, wild gusts trying to snatch him up and tear him away.

He saw faces flying past him, souls out of control, tumbling through the void. Most were unfamiliar.  Some he knew—friends and family, from this lifetime and others, from Earth and from Greecia. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters.  He saw faces he thought he knew, souls that felt familiar, but who he could not remember.

At last he found Hasmodai, and he shouted his name into the wind, preparing to go after his lost and struggling comrade.

Then he realized, Hasmodai was not being helplessly torn by the chaos.  He stood alone, in his own circle of quiet, not even looking Agi's way, and was reaching out a hand in another direction. Someone took that hand.  A stranger, a woman Agi had never seen. And the two of them stood there together.

"HASMODAI!" Agi shouted again into the storm.  Hasmodai turned. Agi held a hand out to him.

Hasmodai looked at it, and hesitated.

In that hesitation, Agi realized that Hasmodai was no longer his to command.  Agi had lost him, failed him somehow unknowing, the way he had lost Palza.

But he kept holding his hand out.

And, after a little while, Hasmodai took it, and he and the stranger were drawn into the circle.

And the circle was complete.

The calm spread slowly from the place where Agi stood with his team, extending over the dark, silent beach. Others joined them as the chaos withdrew and stilled: Agi saw his mother, several of his mothers and fathers around him. Each member of his team was surrounded by a web of connections to other souls. Flo's father was there, Thoma's parents and Cooks's grandfather. Hesma's families from Greecia, Wattford, and many other places. Agi saw Soran, Goto, Reda, Titas, even Georca standing by Tina, Seth and Dumas. Everyone he had ever known from every one of his lives, and millions of strangers besides, all touching, all joined, all spreading the circle.

And he felt a connection, a love for each and every one of them, and he felt it returned. Even the most distant of strangers, Ian realized, is eventually attached to us somehow.

And when the last of the storm had faded away in the distance, Agi found himself standing on a silent, dark beach once more. Not alone this time, his friends were with him now.  Soreto.  Hasmodai. Tarlant. Mel. Palza. Hesma. Dumas. Tina. Seth.

They stood in the stillness, still holding hands in a circle.

Soreto gasped as tall, dark shapes rose from the mists around them, towering figures.  The Enma.

It was time, Ian knew.  Time to do what the Enma had demanded of him.  It was time to lead his people into the land of death.

No.

To lead them out of it.

Agi turned away from the silent shore and walked.  And they all came with him, because it was what they always did.  He was their leader.

---

Dumas blinked, struggling to clear his mind of the strange illusion that had just left him. Had he fallen asleep?  He remembered a dream, a good dream, something about a storm, and shelter from it.

Hesma was shaking his head blurrily too, rubbing his eyes--

The pod struck an iceberg while he was still fuddled, and they went down.  Water started seeping in through the cracked hull. Hesma tried to restart the engine, but it wouldn't respond.

Dumas reached behind the seat and pulled out the white bodysuit he had stored there. "Here," he said. "It's going to be a little big, but I think you might need this."  He held the suit out to Hesma.

Hesma looked at him strangely.

"I owe you a life," Dumas said.

Hesma took the bodysuit and started to get into it. Doesn't it just figure, thought Dumas.  Just when living was starting to look like a good thing.

He looked down at the rising water and laughed.

"What?" Hesma asked.

"If I could feel my feet, I bet this water would be really cold."