Cycles, Chapter Two

Harbin’s contrivance towered above the tribal trappings from whose midst it had been raised, turning Dylan’s vehicles to tiny toys as they slewed to a stop at its foot. It was not a dome, though it was easy to see how it might have been mistaken for one.

It was made from hollow circumferences of granite and iron. The largest among these, if laid flat on the ground, might have encircled a town centre or a good-sized park. Harbin however had set these giant ambits upright and thrown them into ongoing overlapping motion, such that the vertical and horizontal were mere fleeting phases in their relentless revolutions through every possible plane and degree. It was like some unearthly centrifuge, or rather, as the massy arcs rolled without rest in a vast smooth bowl sunk in the planetoid’s mantle, the overall effect was that of a cyclopean naval compass. When one of the greater rounds lunged to its zenith it all but touched Titus’s reddish-tinged black, and throughout the ruins reverberated a booming buffeting din of unnatural hugeness mangling and mauling the surrounding serene. For there was no glass cover, as a naval compass might have boasted, and these gyroscopic violations stood open to the elements. Swelling in the globe-shaped space thereby circumscribed were billows and roils of luminous green vapour, which had given the impression of interior lighting. Dylan at once noted the tell-tale shade of this glowing gas.

“Temporal disruption,” he reported to his fellows.

Flashlight was gawping up at the parabolic monstrosity whose agitations even now maliciously swished his skirt. “But what kind of place is this?” he breathed.

“One way to find out,” observed Mini-Flash Bloomer.

Together the command struck off down rough bedrock steps which led to the swooping plunging periphery. Close inspection revealed the inward-facing rim of each ring was staggered likewise to resemble stairs, though it seemed to most of the spectators it would be another matter to stay on these for long, seeing as their continuous movement would flip you upside-down or sideways seconds after you embarked. Dylan however, applying his especial aptitude for machinery of even the most outlandish stripe, confidently assured his friends this would not be so, for the contraption through its very action was generating gravity specific to itself. Then without a moment’s pause he walked straight at the next curving arm that passed by, and sure enough, instead of plummeting to his doom on the rocky concavity far below Dylan remained static and calm inside the gradated loop even as it whirled and inverted on its crazy course. One by one his companions followed his lead and crossed over to the interior, though probably none but Phoenix managed it without taking a deep breath beforehand or discreetly resettling their underwear.

Once inside, wherever you placed your foot was as unto solid ground. The stairway running the whole of your chosen span was visible, including that stretch of it which hung apparently unreachable overhead, but this could be ascended to without difficulty and once there, it was as if your starting-point was now above. Likewise the many smaller circuits that intersected the boundary could be alighted upon when their paths coincided, swinging your prior foothold to right-angles without any fluctuation in your own personal take on what was up and what was down. Blinking through the eerie green smoke 4-H-N saw Dylan and Phoenix sideways-on to her inside an adjoining cog, glimpsed the pink tip of Mini-Flash Bloomer’s beehive hairdo as she wheeled by on the ceiling, then had to cast about for Flashlight before spotting him fathoms below at what from 4-H-N’s subjective standpoint was magnetic south of this madcap sphere.

Under different circumstances it might have been an interesting place to explore, even a fun one. However, the flights of stairs in this Escherlike dreamscape were like escalators stuck in reverse, ever compelling travellers to walk. There was to a certain extent some choice as to where you went, but no opportunity whatsoever for rest. All that was afforded was an endless uphill march. Each of the command soon saw that only this factor prevented them from toppling out of the orrery to be crushed, as they had feared at first might happen to Dylan. At length Phoenix pointed, and caught everyone’s attention with a cry of: “Alors.”

It was the farn Albazorascabaranthi. Feeble, stooped and white-bearded, he was toiling slowly along the steep track which now began to scale into view. About him in the greenish fog, indistinct spectral pictures took on form and faded in turn. Having sighted Albazorascabaranthi the command presently glimpsed martial arts master Manual, labouring over an adjacent treadmill, a similar aura of images crowding his airspace. Doubtless the other two sages Benmor and Prune were suffering likewise elsewhere within the workings of this merciless mechanism.

“He’s his mother’s son,” declared 4-H-N, choked with pity and disgust.

Dylan meanwhile had already mustered his Four Heroes abilities to get to the bottom of this. It was true, in all fairness to Joe, that their enemy had inherited his contempt for the limitations of living beings from the parent 4-H-N indicated, but Harbin as far as Dylan knew him was all about purpose. A cursory technological assessment supported the hypothesis.

“This isn’t torture, guys,” Dylan announced. “It’s the Foretold One equivalent of chaining his workers to their oars. While the farns are inside this device they’re forced to dance in a ring, which is how they summon their powers of prophecy. You see the manifestations of future events, appearing there in the time-distortions around them? Neetra said he’d make the farns show him what’s in store. Not that it would have occurred to anyone but Harbin to do it this way.”

Phoenix stared despairingly out on the intricate interlocking realms. “To think of all zat ’e might achieve, were ’e only to turn his talents to good!” she exclaimed. “Zis travesty of science…it is unconscionable, and yet ze design a work of genius, ’owevair twisted. Its operation, almost like ze clockwork…!”

“Yep, makes you wish Harbin had been a watchmaker alright,” agreed Dylan, delving deeper with his powers. “It’s winding down, like it’s coming to the end of a cycle. That’s why the projections from the farns are so faint. There’s some kind of lunatic logic to this. I’m reading that the whole thing runs on Harbin’s bio-energy, which explains what he’s doing at the black hole, bringing back the batteries to get his funhouse ready for another go-round. That must be what he does every time it runs out of juice. After all, these poor old guys could never have lasted so long if he’d kept them slogging away nonstop.”

“Tea-breaks notwithstanding, Monsieur’s liberalism as an employer is self-evident,” commented Phoenix. “Get zem out of zere, cheri.”

“One good old-fashioned Four Heroes hijack coming up,” Dylan affirmed, and so saying heaved the horologe’s great gears through their few remaining minutes to settle them at rest. Green time-flux dispersed and drifted away into wafts of nothing, leaving the four farns lined up on the downsweep of the one circle which had ended in perpendicular position. Our heroes found they too had been led to that same safe quarter, so like the erstwhile prisoners were unharmed as the planetoid’s ordinary gravity resumed its pull. There may have been no shred of human compassion about Harbin but he knew better than to damage valuable merchandise.

Dylan and friends hastened to help the elders down to where the now-stationary stairway let onto the stone steps out of their cage. The farn Benmor, whose perceptible presence took the form of a gentle blue ghost, communicated not verbally but through short psychic phrases that were felt by the listener rather than heard. Guiding this intangible one to solid ground along with his three more material brothers, Dylan became telepathically privy to one such clairaudient pronouncement.

Don’t intervene, were the words. Don’t intervene…

“They must all be delirious,” muttered Dylan. “It’s OK, Benmor, not far to go now!”

Don’t intervene, resounded again.

“Hey, if I don’t intervene, pal, we’re all going to be in for it when The Foretold One…” Dylan began, and then within the same breath his easy laughter died.

Neetra. Lost in the throes of this death-defying rescue Dylan had all but forgotten the other mystery as to where she was. Now he knew, though he had wasted precious seconds getting there, even in his full awareness that Neetra and the farns shared some history and a unique spiritual bond.

Benmor’s warning had registered on Dylan’s Four Heroes senses, but he was not the member of The Four Heroes for whom it was meant.

Don’t intervene…

“Something’s wrong,” whispered Dylan. “Gang, we’ve got to move!”

It was not possible to hurry such ancient exhausted men, but our heroes with all the expedition that might be dared ushered them from Harbin’s confines and onto the barren plain beyond. Spurred on by the urgency in Dylan’s tone the painstaking procession made its way, each farn stumbling over this last stony stretch to where the command’s vehicles were parked.

They were nearing when all felt the change as one. Even Dylan, who among the company was most experienced in the awe-inspiring atmospherics their foe’s mere proximity was wont to produce, could scarcely credit the coruscating radiance which without precursor began raining down as if from some cosmic cloudburst. The Arch of Titus, dark already by law of the universe, suddenly seemed itself darkened by some localized event preternatural in origin. This aberration was descending like a nightmare thunderbolt, scraping and grinding its dissonant trail through every barrier that should rightfully be, leaving behind it a butchered wake still howling out its resistance. The visible nucleus from which unclean waves relentlessly pulsed and pounded was swathed in a ragged grey cloak, and two red eyes fumed from a mask of twilight.

It was Harbin The Foretold One, brimming with all the black hole potency his mighty body could contain, and he did not look best pleased.

END OF CHAPTER TWO