Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘I’ve never seen a ruby that large,’ hissed Bull. ‘That has to be worth the price of a kingdom.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Amelia. ‘The gem has a whole world inside it. This is what was projecting the vision of Camlantis.’

Bull looked around, only now noticing that everything about them had disappeared. They stood on a flat plateau, looking down on the machine forest below.

Bull reached out to lift the crown off the column, but Amelia slapped his hand back. ‘Traps mean treasure, but the reverse also holds true.’

Amelia inspected the column carefully, looking for weight sensors and other triggers. There was nothing she could see, but then, Camlantean society had progressed to a level of super-science mere Jackelians could only dream of. There could be a thermal trigger, a light-grid — sensors that did not even exist on this plane of reality. And what sort of traps would pacifists build to protect an ancient projector? Was this the secret the ruler of the Daggish had been trying to recover for centuries? If the gem held the memory of Camlantis within its glittering planes, might it also contain the current location of the broken city among the heavens?

‘You take the jewel, then,’ said Bull. ‘The doors here work for you, not for me.’

‘I don’t know. This crown is beyond price, we can’t just pass it over to the Daggish.’

‘Sod them, we’re going to take it for ourselves.’ Bull leered as if he had been handed the keys to the city of Middlesteel. ‘What a bloody great jewel.’

‘It’s not a ruby,’ said Amelia. She knew what it was now, bathing in its light. The jewel was illuminating her, feeding her. ‘It’s been grown from a single seed of data. Can’t you feel the energy flowing from it? It’s raw information, a nugget of absolute knowledge, compressed to a level of detail that has forged it into a universe within itself — this makes the Camlanteans’ crystal-books look like a page of text scalpel-carved onto a wax tablet.’

‘Then Abraham Quest will pay us for it,’ said Bull. ‘Even if it doesn’t provide the location of Camlantis in the heavens, he’ll pay us for it all the same. The Camlanteans are just like every other bugger that followed after them — all ego and self-importance. They couldn’t bear to leave the world without scrawling a little graffiti on the wall, so we’d know that they’d been here and what they’d achieved. You know what this is, don’t you? This is your rich shopkeeper friend’s manual for his perfect, pacifist society, and he’ll bleed money to get his hands on it. He’ll bloody well need to, too.’

Amelia stared at her comrade-in-arms with disgust. The slaver’s avarice was an affront to everything the ancient civilization that had created this miracle once stood for.

He saw her look. ‘Don’t give me that, dimples. Quest will get his jewel and you’ll have the rest of your life to study the information inside it. And all the plaudits from your bookworm friends who didn’t want you walking their college corridors.’

‘I hope they accept Jackelian coin inside the Daggish hive,’ said Amelia, ‘because that’s where we’ll be thrown if we go back to the surface with this. No wonder the hive wants the crown. Whatever blood limiters the Camlanteans placed into their engineering to stop the ancestors of the Daggish breeding feral, the clues to removing the restrictions lie inside this gem. Imagine the Daggish armed with the knowledge of a Cassarabian womb mage — no limit to the hive’s growth, able to project their drone armies hundreds of miles beyond Liongeli’s borders, absorbing Jackals, Quatershift, the Catosian city-states and Kikkosico. Adding our strength to its own, nation by nation — everyone on the continent converted into its slaves.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ said Bull. ‘Leave the crown down here? You’ve seen how patient the Daggish are — like bulldogs with a bone. They’ll keep on trying, keep on developing new u-boats. They’ve already absorbed my crew — they know more about u-boats than they ever did before. Sooner or later they’ll bag some more explorers from the race of man and try their luck with them. Who is to say others won’t just take the jewel and hand it over to Tree-head Joe? The hive knows how our minds work, too. Grab a mother or father with their children, keep the kids as hostages, make the parents come down here to get its precious crown back for it.’

‘You’re just saying that because it suits your greed,’ said Amelia.

‘Maybe, but you know it’s true. All that’s keeping that crown from the Daggish is a crater filled with water. Sooner or later, the hive is getting in here. We have to take the crown and make a run for Jackals. We can take it now, or Tree-head Joe’s boys will take it later.’

‘You said we couldn’t outrun their seed ships in our bathysphere.’

‘I didn’t have the crown then,’ said Bull. ‘We’ll sneak past them. I know a few tricks about silent running those walking trees and their moss-covered slaves have yet to learn.’

Her hand reached out for the jewel, hesitating just above the crown. If they failed in their escape attempt, she was condemning everything and everyone she cared for in Jackals to a living death. But then there were the seed ships, the graveyard of Daggish u-boats lying dead in the currents of the lake. Kammerlan was right. Leaving the gem where it was wouldn’t deny it to the hive, just postpone the inevitable day when the Daggish broke in down here and took the knowledge they needed. The knowledge for infin ite expansion.

‘You think you can do it, Guardian’s daughter?’ said Bull. ‘Then walk away. Let’s go.’ His hand clenched into a fist. ‘Let’s leave a hundred thousand crystal-books crushed into an object no bigger than my hand. Everything your life has been devoted to. Let’s just leave the gem down here, dreaming its dreams of old Camlantis town, and go back to the bathysphere empty handed. We’ll make a run for home all the same. And if we make it back to Jackals, well, you can return to digging out Wheat Tribe pottery from the plains of Concorzia, while old Bully-boy will take a berth on a Spumehead trader working the oceans for your shopkeeper friends: then we’ll both be happy.’

Amelia tried to block out the slaver’s voice. This had to be done for the right reasons; there was too much riding on the outcome for the decision to be made any other way. Jigger it. Her hand flashed out and she removed the crown from the plinth. Action over inaction every time.

‘Let me hold it for a moment,’ said Bull.

‘Don’t push your luck. Or mine. That was-’ she noticed the tide of light rushing up the empty hill.

‘-easy.’

The wave washed over the two of them, and, as it overtook them, their hill above the machine forest was rewritten with the flat, featureless walls of the chamber they had started out in. Only the dried-up pools of water around the bathysphere indicated that any time had passed at all. Amelia checked her hand — still clutching the crown with its near weightless egg-sized jewel of knowledge. Were the Jackelians ready for the wisdom it contained? Did the fact she had been allowed to take it at all mean she had been tested and the Jackelians judged ready to receive the precious knowledge of the Camlantean civilization? That had to be the purpose of the crown, this place, the ancients’ legacy preserved for those who would walk the world after them.

There was no sign of the doorway down to the corridors of else-when. Amelia resisted the urge to walk over to the wall to see if she would be granted admittance a second time. Everything she needed from the wrecked basement world of Camlantis was in this crown.

‘Make the bathysphere ready,’ said Amelia.