What Price the Stars? Part 9

“Lose my soul? What does that even mean?” Professor Rosencrantz demanded angrily. He tried to twist away from Jørgen, but his struggles did nothing but rumple his expensive jacket and cravat.

Jørgen’s reply was patient, but firm. “It means exactly that. In defiance of my commands and simple common sense you were reaching for the primary pneuma bus. The quintessential pneuma it carries is almost identical to the mundane pneuma that comprises your soul. Had you made contact, you would have been drained like a battery.”

“I suppose I’d have become a soulless husk, like a zombie out of some old twodee?” Rosencrantz mocked.

“I am not joking. Pneuma is your volitional essence. Without it, your body can do nothing. It will live on for a while, until dehydration and malnutrition take it, or something else finds a use for it.”

“There is no such thing as souls, or pneuma, or quintessence, or any of this foolishness!” scoffed the professor. “It’s bad enough that you coddle the church. Must you believe their nonsense as well?”

“I believe what is true. But my knowledge did not come from the church.”

“I don’t care where you absorbed your mumbo-jumbo. Let me go!”

“Will you obey, mind your hands, and touch nothing?”

Rosencrantz deflated like a burst balloon. “Yes.”

Jørgen released the professor. He darted to stand behind Li, where he sulked, rubbing his bruised arms and muttering under his breath about assaults, wrongful arrests, and lawyers.

Alexi tugged Michael’s sleeve. He bent to hear her whisper. “Mishka, when you’re right, you’re right.”

“I wish I wasn’t,” he whispered back. “We should never have come this far. I’ve got no idea how to escape.”

“I don’t want to escape,” she sniffed. “But my up-front costs just went through the roof. I can’t let government inspectors near this place. I’ll have to build a dummy plant topside. But I’m not too worried. I’m sure it will pay for itself overnight.”

Michael nodded agreeably, but his heart sank. What would it take to bring Alexi back to her senses?

The trackway came to an end, and the party was deposited gently onto terra firma. The pyramid of the rostrum beetled above them, an Everest of the same smooth matrix that comprised the floor. The pneuma bus dove into the floor at the toe of its foundation plinth. This was surmounted by a blind niche that ran about the entire perimeter of the base. The niche was capped by a heavy lintel. Michael was not surprised when it writhed, and a constellation of jet-black, inhuman eyes came to the surface to watch their approach.

Jørgen studiously ignored the inquisitive lintel. He called a halt a few tens of meters in front of the pyramid. “We have arrived,” he said. “This is the sanctum. Inside, the engine vessels are filled and sealed.”

“Excellent. Let us go and see,” said Li. He took a step toward the pyramid, but Jørgen stopped him with a firm hand.

“We shall not. None leave the sanctum unscathed.” He said gravely.

Li regarded him with unkind eyes. “Just as I expected. We cannot enter. Here is another thing in which we must trust you completely, despite every evidence that you are withholding information. Mister Pangloss, you are very predictable.”

Jørgen smirked. “I have been called many things, Mister Li, but never has anyone accused me of that. Rest assured, when we cast aside our masks you will find me anything but predictable. But I do not lie. Only one has entered the sanctum and lived to tell the tale.”

“You?”

“Aye. I once was an ignorant wanderer, a seeker without goal. But for those with second sight, the foundry is a beacon. I saw it from afar, and was drawn in, a moth to a flame. When I recognized it for what it is, I chose to make it my own. Too late, I became aware of the Watchman. He is the last holy Aeon remaining in the second heaven, and his seat of power is here, in the sanctum. He challenged me, and we contended for mastery. But there was a stalemate. The Watchman had not the power to drive me out, and I could not slay him the without destroying the foundry. In the end, we reached a compromise.”

Behind Jørgen, the eyes of the pyramid blinked solemnly, as if in agreement.

“What was this compromise?” asked Li.

“In exchange for a continuous source of pneuma, the Watchman agreed to provide engines for my use. This has been done. The Inscrutable is proof.”

Michael hazarded a question. “Where does the pneuma come from?”

“You recall the entombed Grig in the hall above?”

Michael nodded.

“There are billions of them in this place. After their fall from grace, this was their final redoubt, their last fortress. At the end of the War of Wrath, the warlords of the Pleroma arrived to mete out punishment. Here, locked in their time-prisons, the Grig are tormented for all eternity.”

“That creature we saw...it’s not dead!?” Alexi gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

“As we count death, it is. The body you saw will never breathe again. But a Grig soul is trapped inside, the better to suffer. This moon is a little antechamber of hell. But with the aid of the church, those souls can be freed, and put to good use.”

Michael gulped. “I knew it. The wrights are exorcists, aren’t they?”

“Many are, yes.”

“And the Grig souls become the pneuma,” Alexi declared, wide-eyed.

“An excellent deduction," Jørgen replied. "The Grig are fallen beyond redemption, so no one contends with us for their black souls. The wrights handle capture, homogenization, and transport. The Watchman consumes the pneuma. Once digested, it is excreted in the form of sanctified aeonic ghosts. These are sealed inside the engines, empowering them. It’s a most beneficial arrangement for all involved. The Dweller is propitiated, the Grig are released from torment, the church gets to replenish her treasury of merit, and we get Spooky engines.”

The blood drained out of Michaels face. “Spooky engines, ghostrides--those terms aren’t just ironic?”

“Not at all. Every engine contains at least one incorporeal aeonic emanation, to use the technical term. That is why only priests may handle them. They are haunted.”

“That’s...horrifying,” Michael stammered.

“It’s a fairy tale!” Rosencrantz shouted. “Ghosts, angels, and demons! How gullible you captains of industry are! You may choose to take this madman at his word, but I will not. Supposedly we make the rules of this game. It’s my turn, and I say that it ends now!”

He lunged at Alexi. Before she could react, he wrapped an arm around her neck and jammed the business end of a very familiar black cylinder against the side of her head: Mother Dumiel’s neuron flail. The mysterious black monster must have been his doing, and in the confusion following the attack, he’d pocketed her weapon.

“Gopnik!” Alexi snarled.

“Be quiet.” Rosencrantz growled, pulling her toward the sanctum. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this scam, and see how the engines are really made. You will be my witness, and my insurance policy.”

“Alexi!” Michael yelled. Jørgen clamped his arm in a viselike grip. The look on his face said be quiet.

Rosencrantz climbed over the plinth, dragging Alexi behind him. Once atop it, he shouted to the congeries of baleful mollusk-eyes on the lintel, all of which were focused on him. “I know you’re watching me! Open up! I’m not afraid to use this!” he shouted, waving the neuron flail to punctuate his threat.

A section of the back wall of the niche disengaged from the lintel and receded slowly into the plinth, revealing a dark entrance. Rosencrantz shoved Alexi in first. When nothing happened to her, he followed. They were immediately lost in the thick shadows.

Michael glared at Jørgen. “Are you just going to stand there and do nothing?” he demanded.

“Have patience, Michael Borisovich. The worm turns even as we speak,” replied the old devil, a vicious grin on his thin lips.

A piercing shriek tore out of the sanctum.

It took every ounce of strength in Michael’s body to break Jørgen’s grasp, but break it he did. He rushed for the doorway, but stumbled to a halt when Alexi came forth, dragging Rosencrantz behind her like a battered doll. Her fingernails were extended into shocking talons, now dripping with blood. She withdrew them into her fingertips with a meaty slurp.

“I hope there is a surgery nearby. I was angry, and got a little carried away,” she said ruefully.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9