The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Read online

  Nadira sat back up and squinted at him. “So what’s on your mind?”

  Madowé scratched his chin. “I was just thinking about how glad I am that we have someone with your experience on this job. You’ve spent decades working your way up the imperial food chain, and now they seem to trust you implicitly. None of our other operatives have gotten even half as far with them as you have.”

  “The imperials have always had a knack for turning people, Madowé. They do a lot of research on their personnel, so they know what buttons to press if they suspect that they have a mole.”

  Madowé’s brows furrowed at this. “Yes, loyalty is sometimes a problem within our ranks as well as theirs. The empire just has so much more time and money than we do. Tell me, what keeps you so motivated?”

  Nadira placed her hands on the table carefully and looked down at them. “While insight into that particular aspect of my background could help you cultivate operatives and develop candidates, it can also expose me to leverage.”

  “True.”

  She looked up at him. “Suffice to say, I have reason to make it my life’s mission to help bring down the empire, and nothing they can say or do will change that. If they could have turned me, they would have by now.”

  Madowé nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked around the kitchen like a craftsman evaluating his handiwork. “Well, I guess that’s everything.” He raised his right hand, gave Nadira a steely gaze, and made a fist. “Freedom and solidarity, sister.”

  Nadira raised her right hand and made a fist. “For the Federation.”

  Madowé shut down the pod, and Nadira’s consciousness returned to the van. As it rumbled down the road under the dark of night, she gazed through the windows and regarded the scene. There was a ragged mass of blackness along the horizon, underneath a sky dusted with stars.

  The jungle was getting very close now.

  ✽✽✽

  The brothers began to stir shortly after dawn. After examining the map, they concluded that it would be best to pull off the road where they would be closest to the Bángama River.

  “Why’s that?” asked Nadira.

  “We can’t go in a straight line from here to the ruins,” said Darius. “According to the map, the forest is just too dense, and there are some deep ravines that can be treacherous to cross. Traveling by water is the best way.”

  “But we don’t have a boat,” said Nadira.

  Darius waved his hand. “Not a problem. We can carve those. It will take a few hours, but it’s still faster and less dangerous than trying to punch right through.”

  By sunrise, they had reached their drop-off point. The van slowed down and steered gradually onto the shoulder before coming to a stop.

  They clambered out and surveyed the tree line.

  The greenery along the side of the road was only about the height of the average adult, but it quickly rose to ten meters or more. But to call it “greenery” would be a misnomer. This section of the jungle was dominated by stand of bluish tree-sized mushrooms topped with thick purple caps from which hung moving tendrils. One could not tell if they moved from the breeze, or on their own.

  “Try to avoid those,” Darius said to Nadira.

  There was also a small field of ankle-high fungi to their right, reaching almost to the road. They were dark purple, and a faint haze of reddish spores hovered over them. “Those are scavengers,” he said to her. “They seem to specialize in consuming dead animals. New Cal leaves the stuff alone because it cleans up all the roadkill.”

  Nadira coughed. “I can smell it from here.”

  Beyond this stand of growth rose mushrooms as high and thick as the redwood trees of Old Earth. Their trunks were mostly white but became coated in a green dust towards the top; they were strewn with vines, and many leafy green plants bunched atop their wide, flat caps.

  “Looks like this cluster thins out a bit to the north,” said Darius. “We should be able to get in from there.

  Nadira began programming the van to make its return trip.

  “I suggest,” said Rali, “that we send it to Ribera village down the road.”

  “I suggest,” said Rali, “that we send the van to Ribera village down the road.”

  “What’s your thinking?” asked Nadira.

  “Well, someone is gonna track this van down soon, and we can’t be telegraphing our movement.”

  “Rali,” said Darius, “you need to stop reminding me how good of a criminal you would be if you did it full-time.”

  “Yeah, if only I had the drive. Anyways, after we send it to Ribera, we should probably have it circle back and head to the highway that loops around the city. Maybe throw in a few pauses like we’ve got right now. Just keep repeating this pattern until the rental timer expires.”

  To Darius, analytical thinking wasn’t usually Rali’s strong suit, but maybe getting him off the mindspike juice was allowing him to think more clearly. Darius seen that happen with addicts before. Maybe Rali wasn’t quite the screwup that he seemed to be.

  Nadira waved a hand. “Fine, whatever. Right now, I’m more concerned about being swallowed up by one of these...purple things.”

  Rali sent the van on its way.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Darius. “They don’t go for live prey. Some of them might explode if you get too close, though. Not good for your lungs.”

  “I suspect not,” she replied. She added, “What do I do if that happens?”

  Darius grinned. “Try to hold your breath.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “In all seriousness,” said Rali, “let us know right away, and point out the fungus so that we can identify it. There are often medicines available from the jungle itself that can help.” He gestured to the treeline. “In a way, the jungle is kind of a war zone. Adaptations to different threats are necessary to survival, and so battle lines emerge through the process of evolution. Sometimes we can wield their weapons to protect our own bodies. And minds.”

  Darius pulled a sizable machete from his pack, to hack their way forward. “Even knowing what can be slashed with this thing and what must be bent out of the way can be a challenge.”

  Rali began walking towards the thinner area of this roadside spectacle. “Let’s get going already!” he called after them.

  “I’ll take point,” Darius continued, “since Rali is a bit rusty. He’ll be right behind you. Stay within a few meters of him as best you can.”

  “Wait,” Nadira said. “Before we get going, there was something I wanted to discuss.”

  “Ral, hold up!” said Darius. He turned to Nadira and titled his head.

  “Gods, what is it now?” his brother crowed.

  “Ral is a bit irritable right now,” said Darius. “You’ll have to forgive him.”

  “Right,” said Rali as he came back. “Sorry. I’ve been on edge all morning.”

  “That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Nadira. “I can’t help but notice, Rali, that you’ve been going through what appears to be withdrawal.” She held up her hand as Rali began to speak. “I’m not judging, and there’s no use denying it anyway. I’ve been in your shoes, and I know what you’re dealing with.”

  Rali’s expression darkened, but he held his tongue.

  “It’s mindspike withdrawal, isn’t it? Unfortunately, I don’t have any cures for that with me, but...I actually know of one that may grow here in the jungle. Your brother was talking to me a minute ago about a forest’s natural defenses, and I was reminded of an experience I had the last time I was on Telamat, about a decade ago. It actually involved your father.”

  Rali began to speak again, but this time Darius raised his hand.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “You see,” Nadira continued, “your father also had a little problem with mindspike, and it was interfering with his work. I was in town on business, and he asked me if I could take a day trip with him to the Ardesh Valley to the south to forage for a fungus that he belie
ved could help him get off the drug. I accepted. We found a cluster of them by a stream. We brewed a concoction based on an old recipe. He drank it, and it worked...mostly.”

  “Mostly?” asked Darius.

  “He was cured of the withdrawal, but his behavior became...erratic. I did more research on this fungus, and I discovered that he was experiencing a common side effect caused by harvesting too late in the season. By then, it was too late. If there was an antidote, I never found it. I went through every archive I had access to. So did he. Then he went digging for records that he said might be found back in the jungle.”

  She gazed down the road, but her eyes were far away. “The improperly harvested mushrooms weren’t poisonous, but I fear that the tea became a part of his disappearance. So for any involvement that I may have had in what happened to him...” She looked at Rali. “I’m sorry. I thought you should know before we went any further.”

  The breeze picked up now, carrying with it a medley of scents—flower blossoms, rain-dampened soil, and musty fungi. The sun shone down in its full glory for the first time in days, bathing the cloud-scattered sky in a faint crimson.

  “For whatever it’s worth,” she added. “Saeed loved you both very much. I think things just became...difficult for him. After he took that drink.”

  Rali looked down at the scrub grass at the edge of the asphalt. “I see. So what you’re saying is, you think that this stuff will help me, if the fungus is in season. Well, is it? What is it called?”

  “According to my research, yes. Its Latin name translates to ‘time walker.’ And according to what I know about mindspike withdrawal, we need to do this soon. In another day or so, and you won’t be able to walk around, and then you’ll start suffering nerve damage.”

  “Time walker,” said Darius. “I’ve heard of it. Not too familiar with it.”

  “Me neither,” said Rali.

  “According to Saeed,” said Nadira, “time walkers grow sparingly even in this jungle. Not much is known about them outside of the mushroom cultivation community. But I know that it’s a cure. And I know how to do it properly.”

  “Then how about we all take it,” said Darius. “If it’s like you say.” He wasn’t exactly eager to chug something foreign while she watched over them.

  Nadira studied him for a moment. “All right. It’s in and out in less than an hour anyway. Though I’ve read that it can feel, well, a bit longer than that sometimes.”

  “Is it a psychedelic?” asked Darius.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Sounds about right. Ral?”

  Rali looked up from the road for the first time. His face and neck were sheened with perspiration. He looked Nadira dead in the eye. “If this shit doesn’t work, we are gonna have words, Nadira. We might anyway.”

  “Sounds like a yes,” said Darius. “All right, unless there’s anything else on the docket, I’ll be taking point now. Nadira, please fall in behind me, and Ral will bring up the rear.” He was more glad than ever that someone was keeping watch on this increasingly interesting woman.

  ✽✽✽

  All around them was the hum of the jungle—hooting primates, tweeting and whistling avians, chittering insects, croaking critters, and the occasional snarl of a large brute. Tree leaves fluttered in great breezes, sounding almost like a tide going in and out. The smells were of damp soil, tree fruit, and algae along the bank of the Bángama River. And the humidity was extraordinary.

  Whether it was a coral reef or a jungle, there was no other habitat as rich with sound, color, and deadly beauty as the tropics. The creatures here survived because they were fast, observant, stealthy, and strong. If there was an evolutionary pressure that added self-awareness and language, the tropics became the crucible for a species that could dominate a planet. This galaxy’s historians had seen the pattern play itself out repeatedly over the eons.

  The river was wide, dark, and slow here. Halfway across, one could see the backs of slithery creatures breaking the surface. Darius spotted a clutch of cane-like tree branches growing straight up out of the water’s edge, and he harvested several with his machete.

  “What are those for?” Nadira asked him.

  “Makeshift fishing poles. Dad also trained us to braid a fishing line and craft a gorge hook, but that’s only for emergencies. He wanted us to be able to survive out here even if we lost all of our gear.”

  Nadira looked around the river. “You can make a fishing line and a hook from the plants around here?”

  He nodded. “It takes a while, but it can be done. You get the fishing line from large, fibrous leaves like the ones that grow on those ornara plants over there. Beat the leaves against a flat rock until the fibers start separating, then weave the fibers together and tie them to the end of your stick. It’s a pain in the ass, but it beats trying to catch things in the river with your bare hands. Especially in the jungle, where some creatures try to catch you back.”

  Nadira swallowed. “And the gorge hook?” she asked.

  “You have to get the right kind of thorn, or find a plant whose leaves end in a long, sharp point. Then you shape it by scraping it against a rock. Again, very time consuming, and gorge hooks aren’t that great anyway. So Ral and I always make sure to pack actual fishing wire and fish hooks. They take less time to set up, and they’re stronger. And they glint underwater, making them more enticing to take a bite of.”

  “Then I suppose you can also start a cooking fire from scratch?”

  Darius strapped most of the canes to his backpack and kept the last one to use as a decent walking and poking stick. “Yeah, we can start fires in all kinds of ways. Sometimes all you need are two sticks, a knife, and some friction.” He smiled for the first time since they’d gotten out of the van. “But I still prefer a lighter.”

  “What if you don’t have a knife?”

  “Then you make one, usually from a rock chip. Humanity’s prehistoric ancestors did that for thousands of years. You really are a city girl, aren’t you?”

  “I have my own set of skills, young man,” said Nadira. “I once subdued two muggers with a single scarf.” She looked down at the sack of timewalkers in her hands. “I’ll be honest, though, I’m not looking forward to doing this. But I get where your brother is coming from. If he’s going to go through it, we should all go through it, for support. And, I suppose, it proves to you that I’m not trying to poison you or...whatever. Though I don’t know why I’d want to come all the way out here to do that.”

  “Well if you find a reason, do let us know. In the meantime, I’ll get a campfire going. Are the timewalkers the last of the ingredients?”

  “Yep, everything else is checked off.”

  At this point, Rali couldn’t do much more than crouch in front of the campfire while Darius prepared the tea. His brother’s eyes were getting glassy now, and he shivered despite being wrapped in a sheet from one of their rucksacks. He shivered despite being covered in feverish sweat.

  Nadira looked around their campsite as Darius made a pile of firewood. “I noticed that you didn’t bother with the sleeping bags I supplied,” she said. “Are the hammocks really that much better?”

  He nodded. “You definitely don’t want to sleep on the ground in a place like this. Things crawl on you. I mean, they still do when you’re elevated, just less so. And when you wake up in the morning, shake your boots out before putting them on. Critters love to hide in them, and many won’t take kindly to the appearance of a foot.”

  Darius had a crackling fire pretty soon, and Nadira handed him a teapot full of purified water from the river. “Let’s get that to a rolling boil,” she said, “then we add the ingredients.” Other than the timewalkers, there was another type of mushroom called dangoshan, and a citric fruit called arfalo that tasted like a mix between a lime and an onion. The additions were designed to make the brew more palatable—and easier to keep down.

  About ten minutes later, the brew was finished and cool enough to drink. Nadira hand
ed out collapsible cups. “Okay,” she said. “A few things you should know before we get started. Number one, try not to think too much about how this brew makes you feel. Don’t analyze it. Just sit back and try to open yourself to pure experience. Two, you may feel a rush of fear or anxiety. This will pass. It’s just your ego realizing that it’s losing its grip. It will naturally fight the separation, just like your body will naturally resist drowning. Remind yourself that what you’re experiencing is temporary.

  “Lastly, timewalkers open you up to memory recall. Sometimes these memories are painful. It’s important to not resist that experience. If you let it flow through you, the pain will recede.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Darius muttered. He poured the elixir into Nadira’s cup. Rali’s hands shook too much, so Darius had to pour directly into his brother’s mouth. “Bottom’s up.”

  Darius drank his own portion in a few gulps.

  Nadira went to her hammock and laid herself down. Darius watched over Rali, who now looked back at him but seemed to be gazing far away.

  The sun was falling into the treeline on the opposite side of the river now. The sky was painted with vermillion and orange clouds. Soon, nocturnal predators would be emerging from their tunnels and roosts. Nature’s shift change.

  A wave of something flowed through Darius. A stirring of energy. It was beginning already.

  -5-

  Nadira hadn’t been lying about the memories.

  Darius found himself looking seven or eight years into the past. He stood in a hallway of his parents’ house. He peeked into the kitchen, where his father sat at their dining table. His mother paced around the room with her arms crossed.

  “I am beyond tired of this,” she was saying. “I haven't seen you in over a week, and when you finally come back, your clothes look like you've been wandering in the forest for two weeks.”

  His father did not answer. Saeed kept gazing down at the table with a melancholic calm. It was the kind of look you might give a familiar tombstone.