Читать книгу Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 7 – 9: The Darquesse Trilogy - Derek Landy - Страница 31

t night, the orbs that lit the mountain facility grew gradually dimmer, and deep hues of orange and red began to sneak through before being replaced by the silver, grey and blue tones of moonlight.

They spent the evening in the living room. Lenka explained that they had gone through phases of calling it the common room and the social area, before deciding that living room just sounded more comfortable. There were sofas and armchairs and tables and pictures on the walls and a massive screen down one end.

“How do you pass the time here?” Valkyrie asked when Lenka had finished explaining everything.

Vernon Plight laughed. “It can get quite boring at times,” he admitted. “We watch television and we play music, but mostly we’ve found ways to amuse ourselves.”

“Really?” Valkyrie asked. “Like what?”

Plight’s smile faded. “Like human sacrifice.”

He grabbed one arm and Lenka grabbed the other and Valkyrie cried out.

Then they both let go, laughing.

“Naw,” Plight said, “we just play board games.”

Lenka doubled up with laughter. “Your face!” she squealed. “Your face when you thought we were going to kill you!”

Valkyrie glared at them. “That,” she said, “is not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” Lament said, passing the door.

“It’s not funny at all,” Valkyrie insisted. “Skulduggery, tell them.”

“I wish I’d had a camera,” he said, shaking his head.

“I hate all of you. Every single one of you.”

Kalvin Accord came in.

“She fell for it!” gasped Lenka. “She fell for the human sacrifice bit!”

Kalvin chortled, he actually chortled, and turned around and walked out again.

“I hate you all,” Valkyrie said miserably.

It may have been the mountain air, but Valkyrie awoke refreshed the next morning, full of energy, thinking good thoughts and feeling positive. She showered, dressed, and met Lenka for breakfast. They had freshly picked fruit and freshly squeezed orange juice.

“And now,” said Lenka, rubbing her stomach, “we have freshly slaughtered pig.”

Valkyrie made a face. “You kill your own animals?”

“It’s not like we can pop out to the nearest supermarket,” Lenka said, laughing. “Pig. Pork chops. Bacon. Oh my God, bacon...”

She closed her eyes and smiled. Valkyrie frowned.

Then Lenka sighed, and looked up. “We don’t have pig,” she said sadly. “We have the animals and the birds in the Arboretum but we don’t touch them. We can’t. Those monkeys are too cute.”

“So why didn’t you bring some pigs? When you started, I mean.”

“Oh, we did. But they escaped. They’re loose somewhere in this mountain and every year, their numbers grow. Sometimes at night you can hear them, calling to each other. It’s quite spooky, in an oinky sort of way.”

“I… don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

“Probably wise. But then we all decided it would just be easier to become vegetarians, so we did. Do you eat meat?”

“Yes.”

Lenka sat forward, eyes sparkling. “What was the last piece of meat you ate?”

“Uh,” said Valkyrie, “I don’t know, it was... It was before I got on the plane. I brought a sandwich with me. Chicken and stuffing.”

“Chicken!” Lenka exclaimed. “How was it? How did it taste?”

“It was OK. It tasted fine. Like chicken.”

“Wow,” said Lenka. “It tasted like chicken. I envy you so much, being able to eat chicken and being able to do… things. I’d love to spend a day in the world. Just walking around. Going into shops. Going to a concert. Sitting in an office.”

“An office?”

“Oh, yeah. And everyone’s wearing shirts and ties and arguing about annual reports and the photocopier not working... That’d be heaven.”

“Are you sure?”

“The hum that phosphorescent lights make – is it as comforting as I remember?”

“Uh...”

“I miss that sound so much.” She looked away, and after a moment Valkyrie became aware of a very low hum that was coming from Lenka’s direction.

Valkyrie cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something?”

Lenka stopped humming. “Sure.”

“Why did you come here? I mean, I can’t imagine making that decision, to leave everything behind just to watch over one person that you don’t even know.”

Lenka smiled. “Tyren asked. How could I refuse? I’d just started working for the Sanctuary, and I was full of ideals and pure thoughts. Once you start working there, you give yourself over to a higher duty, don’t you? You become a protector. You’re ready to give your life to ensure the safety of others.”

“That’s a very dramatic way of looking at things.”

“I’m a very dramatic person. But I’m sure you’re the same.”

“Dramatic?”

“Willing to give your life for the safety of others.”

“Eh, I don’t think so. Have you met those others? Most of them are idiots.”

“So there is no one you would die for?”

Valkyrie went quiet for a moment. “I’d die for my parents and my sister.”

“See?” Lenka said. “Out there, in the world, there are people I would die for. They are the reason I’m here. They are the reason I’ve sacrificed a normal life. I do this to keep them safe.”

“I hope they appreciate it.”

“Sadly, they will never know. They think I just disappeared one day. I couldn’t even leave them a note.”

“My God. That’s the most... selfless thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Then you should talk to the others,” Lenka said with a little laugh. “They’ve all sacrificed just as much as me, if not more. But we do what we do to make the world a safer place. When it gets cold here, really cold, that thought keeps me warm.”

“I... I want to hug you.”

“Hugging also keeps me warm.”

Valkyrie hugged her and Lenka laughed again.

“When you’re quite finished,” Skulduggery said, walking by.

Valkyrie got up. “See you around?” she said to Lenka.

Lenka held up her hands. “It’s kind of inevitable.”

Valkyrie caught up to Skulduggery. “These people are really nice. I’m not used to nice people. I’m used to you.”

“I’m nice,” he said.

“I can’t believe that you are what I now think of as normal, so that whenever I meet nice people they seem like weirdos.”

“I’m very nice.”

“You insult everyone you meet.”

“Not every single person. I don’t have time to insult every single person. And have I insulted anyone since we got here? No, I have not, because I am, as I said, nice.”

“I don’t think I’d be as nice as these guys if I’d been stuck here for the last thirty years. What kind of person do you think you’d need to be in order to spend thirty years in a mountain?”

“I don’t know,” Skulduggery said. “The kind of person who loves mountains, perhaps?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to handle it.”

“Me neither. I’d say you’d be quite cranky. But Lament picked them for a reason. They each have the right temperament. They each have a little thing called patience.”

Valkyrie snapped her fingers. “See, that’s why I’d be useless in here.”

“It’s definitely one of the reasons.”

She scowled at him.

The corridor split and they veered left until they came to the only room in there that didn’t have natural rock for walls. The laboratory was all stainless steel and polished surfaces, as precise and detailed as anything Valkyrie had ever seen in the Sanctuary. It was sleek and so compact that she almost missed the fact that the room was packed full of machinery and monitors. Lament sat in the corner, drinking tea.

“Hi,” Valkyrie said as they approached.

“He can’t hear you,” Skulduggery told her. “See his eyes? See the way they move? He’s working.”

“He’s drinking tea.”

“His body is drinking tea. His mind is in the circuitry.”

She looked around. “What, in all this?”

“Why bother looking at a computer when you can be the computer?”

“That’s... kind of creepy.”

Lament stood up. “Indeed it is.”

“Oh! Sorry...”

“No need to apologise. When I was your age, my mother did her best to persuade me to study a more conventional discipline of magic, but science was always too dear to my heart. Thanks for waiting. I just had some tests I needed to finish up. Did you sleep well?”

“I did,” said Valkyrie. “Thank you.”

“I have to ask your forgiveness, actually, for last night. You caught me unawares, as you can imagine. You came all the way here to see how we managed to contain Argeddion, and it would be churlish of me to deny you. Please, this way.” He led them through a door, standing to one side and presenting his creation with a flourish.

The room was a mass of alloy and wood, with magical symbols carved on every surface. Four steel arms protruded from the corners, stretched towards the middle where they almost met. Hovering between the tips of these arms was a cage of energy that crackled with power, and within that cage was a man. Dressed in a white bodysuit, Argeddion rotated gently in mid-air, his eyes closed and his expression peaceful. He looked young, maybe around thirty years old. He had black hair, cut short, and a clean-shaven face. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would destroy the world if he woke up.

Directly beneath the cage was a metre-high glass pyramid, in which raged a small storm of energy. The pyramid had wires and cables running from its base to a padded chair set into a metal arch, decorated in sigils and circuitry.

“Six hours every day,” said Lament, “one of us sits here, strapped in and hooked up.”

“What’s the pyramid for?” Valkyrie asked.

Skulduggery answered instead of Lament. “Their magic is drawn out of them and stored in there, am I right? Presumably to power Argeddion’s cage.”

“Very good,” Lament said, clearly impressed. “We call it the Cube, though. A cage is something you keep an animal in. The pyramid is called the Tempest. Our magic is collected inside it, pretty turbulently but not dangerously so, and then siphoned off to maintain the Cube’s integrity.”

Skulduggery nodded. “And is one person a day really all it needs?”

“A lot of power was required when the Cube was first created,” Lament said, “but only a minimal amount is needed to keep it going. That’s the beauty of it.”

“And what if something goes wrong?” Valkyrie asked.

Lament nodded towards a big red button. “This,” he said, “is the Big Red Button. If there’s an emergency, I press this and the Tempest empties itself into the Cube, reinforcing it. It means it wouldn’t have to be recharged for three days. Hopefully, that would give us enough time to fix whatever emergency had occurred and get back to our normal routine. We haven’t had to use it yet. Hopefully, we never will.”

“This is quite a machine,” Skulduggery said, examining the chair. “If all gaols had this level of technology, there’d be no more break-outs.”

“But then we’d have the Nadir problem,” Valkyrie said. “What’s the point of sending criminals to prison if they’re going to sleep their way through their sentence?”

Lament shook his head. “They wouldn’t have to be asleep,” he said. “Roughly a third of the power we collect is dedicated to making sure Argeddion stays in a coma-state, but he could just as easily be conscious. Naturally, with Argeddion, that would be a bad thing, as the Cube itself wouldn’t be enough to contain him. But for anyone else it would be more than sufficient.”

Skulduggery approached the Cube. “Has there been any ageing?” he asked. “That long without magic should have had some effect by now, no matter how slight.”

“He doesn’t appear to have aged,” said Lament. “We didn’t expect that, to be honest. Maybe it’s because of his evolved state of being or maybe it’s a side effect of keeping him in a coma, but according to our tests he hasn’t aged even one day.”

“So what’s your plan? You’re going to keep him contained until you all die of old age? Then what?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out.”

“You’ve obviously considered killing him.”

“That is not an option.”

“Destroy the brain, Tyren. Destroy it before his survival instincts kick in.”

“We didn’t go to all this trouble just to end the life of the man in our care.”

“It may be mean-spirited but it’s a practical solution to a problem that has precious few.”

Lament shook his head. “There is always another way.”

“But there’s not always a better way.”

“Skulduggery, even if we wanted to end his life, I’m not even sure that we could. His mind is asleep but his body could still heal itself. And someone of Argeddion’s power... I’m not sure there’s any wound we could inflict that would be enough to kill him instantly.”

“Then how do we stop him from spreading the infection? We had a werewolf in Ireland, Tyren. It has to stop.”

“We’re not even agreed that Argeddion is responsible. The man is comatose.”

“The subconscious is more powerful than you know, Tyren. I’ve seen it myself, firsthand. It’s possible that Argeddion’s subconscious is infecting the minds of those susceptible and actually transferring magic to them remotely. And if this did all start a few weeks ago, then it leads me to only one possible conclusion.”

Lament frowned. “Argeddion is waking up.”

“His mind is becoming active.”

“Impossible. No, I’m sorry, Skulduggery, but there has been no change in our readings. No unusual brain activity, nothing like that. Lenka is in here every day, scanning his mind. If anything was going on, surely a Sensitive would pick it up?”

“Not necessarily. It’s possible to throw up a false reading. It’s been done before.”

“But only by the most powerful of psychics.”

“And is Argeddion not the most powerful of everything right now?”

Lament hesitated.

“You’re right,” Skulduggery said. “There has not been one single Sensitive around the world who has even heard of Argeddion. But we visited a prison where the more unstable inmates, those more susceptible to this kind of thing, were scrawling his name on the walls. He visits people in their dreams, Tyren. He’s doing something to the mortals, something to do with a Summer of Light. We have less than four days to figure out what that is. He has to be stopped.”

“And I told you, I don’t know how to do that.”

“What about telling the Elders?” Valkyrie asked. “I know it wasn’t safe in the past, but now Ghastly Bespoke and Erskine Ravel are in charge, and you can trust them.”

“And can we trust Madame Mist, a Child of the Spider?”

“Well,” said Valkyrie, “no, but she can be kept at a distance. You can get back-up there. The Sanctuary can support you. It’d mean you wouldn’t have to live here any more, you could go back to your lives. We could all share the responsibility and, I don’t know, maybe make the Cube stronger.”

“That’s an idea,” Skulduggery said slowly. “If we do make the Cube stronger, it would block Argeddion’s subconscious from wandering off and infecting anyone else. I’ve seen the blueprints, and it seems to me that there’s absolutely no reason why the Cube couldn’t be reinforced two, three times over.”

“Now, just wait a second,” Lament said. “You’re both speeding on ahead.”

“It’s possible, though, isn’t it?” Skulduggery asked.

Lament hesitated. “Yes.”

“And a reinforced Cube would mean Argeddion does not wake up.”

“But the risk involved with acknowledging his existence...”

“Would immediately be overshadowed by the risk of Argeddion opening his eyes.”

“I don’t know. You’re asking us to abandon our plan.”

“The moment you realised he wasn’t ageing, that plan became null and void. The Cube can be reinforced, right?”

“Yes, of course it can, but the power needed to maintain a reinforced Cube would kill anyone who charged it. The Tempest would drain them in an instant of both their magic and their lives, and then you’d need another mage to charge it. No, sorry. It’s impossible.”

“I don’t see how the process would be any different to the way it is now. The Tempest is just a storage chamber, after all.”

Lament shook his head. “Not when you’re dealing with this level of power. There’d be no more storage – everything would be instant. The magic would be donated, sucked through the Tempest, and within nanoseconds it would be crackling around the Cube. In order for your plan to succeed, the Cube would have to be hooked up to a constant source of massive, massive power. And I’m sorry, but that cannot...”

He faltered.

“What?” Valkyrie asked.

“Nothing,” Lament said. “It can’t be done.”

“You were going to say something. What was it?”

Lament looked away. “I need to talk to my colleagues.” Without waiting for an answer, he walked out.

Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery, and shrugged. “That’s promising.”