“Your lack of detail on the matter begs to differ,” Mister Mittens pressed.
“I was killed,” Gabriel said. “I told you that. And I got a second chance if I agreed to go to the Spires of Infinity and do something. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, but I have to go there. I could lose my second chance as easily as it was given if I stray from my path.”
“You really musta hit your head hard,” Sam nearly fell from her saddle in her
merriment. “No wonder you kept that to yourself. It must even sound silly to a crazy person. When we get to the Spires and you find them empty, will you please at least consider that this is all in your head? I think you need a doctor or something. I mean, stuff like that isn’t normal. You’re not well. You need help.”
Easier to make sense of the reported ratings for American Idol than win an
argument with a woman who has already decided you’re wrong.
“Still, you do have an Imperial Crest. Maybe you actually were sent out here for something, and you just forgot about it when you hit your head. Maybe there’ll be someone there that can set you straight. Our journey is almost over. You won’t forget your promise, will you?”
“Which one,” Gabriel knew it for a mistake the second the words were through
his lips. Sam’s tail lashed in what he’d come to recognize as anger or frustration, and he quickly added. “Of course I remember. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Sniffing loudly, Sam turned her head away from him, gazing at the Spires of
Infinity again.
“I wouldn’t have come half this far without you,” Gabriel said. “Thank you, for everything.”
“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?”
“I can’t thank you?”
Sam was quiet for a very long time before turning to look at him with a pained expression.
“I,” she started, then stopped for a few seconds to compose herself. “If they’d taken you and left me, I’d never have come for you. I’d have run away and left you to rot. That’s what’s kept me alive since I was a little girl. Seeing you risk your life for my sorry hide, when I wouldn’t have even thought to . . . it just has me feeling a little worthless. I didn’t deserve to be rescued, but you came for me anyway. You make me want to believe in your fairytale world, but I know that it can’t possibly be real. I just don’t want you to freak out when you find out it’s not real. I’m afraid you’ll leave me if you do. I don’t deserve you, but I don’t wanna lose you.”
“Everyone deserves to be happy and safe,” Gabriel said. “That’s why I became a lawyer, but somewhere along the way I lost sight of my ideals and got blinded by the fame, the money, and the women that come with being successful. I forgot that other people are human beings too, and they have thoughts and feelings of their own, just like me. You made me remember, and for that, I will always come for you. Whenever you are in trouble, I will always be there to save you from it. I wanted to be a hero, but I became a villain instead. You reminded me that it’s not too late to be a hero.
“Whether or not you believe my story, it’s true. There’s something waiting for me at the Spires of Infinity, and there’s nothing that can stop me from going there now. I want to make the things I’ve done wrong right again. I’ve done awful things, treated women like playthings, lied in court, set murderers free to kill again. You made me realize how wrong I’ve been, and I will forever be in your debt because of it.”
“You’ll always be my hero, no matter what you have or haven’t done, or whether or not you’re crazy and delusional.”
With that, Sam ruined the moment, demonstrating just how repulsive she could be by scratching herself vigorously for a second in a very naughty place.
“I wonder if there’s such thing as an obedience school for wolfgirls,” Gabriel mused jokingly.
“Celestial Mother,” Mister Mittens cried. “If only!”
“Hey,” Sam eyed the cat on her shoulders. “Bad kitty!”
The ridiculousness of the situation hit Gabriel and he could not keep himself from laughing. Soon, Sam joined in, and the dark mood that had settled over them since escaping the Children of the Chosen was gone, just like that.
Having said everything that needed saying, they rode toward New Hope in
silence. Distances were strange in the flat wasteland, and the town was further away than it appeared. Gabriel took the opportunity to work with his Sa’Dhi, studying both the wall of the Quarantine Zone and the Spires of Infinity in turn.
After a while Mister Mittens began humming to himself, which slowly became
singing. His song was in a language Gabriel had never heard, sounding triumphant and sad at the same time. For a cat, he sang beautifully.
“I don’t know which is weirder, that the cat’s singing, or that he’s got such a lovely voice.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Mister Mittens sat on his haunches and took a deep bow. If shrugs and nods from a cat looked odd, the bow was downright ridiculous.
“What was that? I kind of liked it.”
“From an opera,” Mister Mittens explained in a puffed up, lecturing tone. “The heroes return triumphantly from battle, though many have fallen along the way. A triumphant melody in a minor chord.”
Nodding, Gabriel knew little about music, being terminally tone deaf. He enjoyed listening to music, but had never been a fan of opera. The vibrato style that most opera singers seemed to employ annoyed the hell out of him. In his opinion it completely ruined the music. Call him uncultured, but he knew good music when he heard it and some fat broad wailing in Italian, unable to decide whether she should be singing the note high or low, was not good music.
“I know things look closer than they are out here,” Gabriel eyed New Hope, “but shouldn’t we be in town already?”
“That’s from the Spires of Infinity,” Sam explained. “They say things get screwy around them. This place is called the Distorted Lands. Distance stretches and folds over itself. Far away things can be close, and close things can be really far away.”
Gabriel looked toward the Spires of Infinity on the horizon. The central spire had followed the sun’s progress across the sky, with a barely visible line of light connecting them. He wondered if they were closer or further than they appeared.
There was a British sci-fi comedy that he could never remember the name of
where the characters were falling into a black hole and the closer they got the more it distorted their perceptions of distance and time. The situation made for a whole slew of gags that were probably only funny to the Brits. Maybe the Spires of Infinity generated some sort of gravity distortion that did the same. From his knowledge of time and instantaneous travel from one point in space to another, gleaned over a lifetime of watching sci-fi, a doorway to other times and worlds would need some sort of
gravitational anomaly to function. Perhaps the Spires had been built in a place where such an anomaly already existed in nature.
As the day began to move toward a close, they passed the first of the people
leaving town. A man with floppy dog-ears and his wife, who bore cat ears and a cat tail.
Carrying as much as they could on a makeshift litter between them, they seemed intent on getting as far from town as quickly as possible. They didn’t even notice Sam’s cathor until she reined it in to keep from trampling them.
“What’s going on,” she asked. “Are all those people I can see running around in town fleeing like you are?”
Looking from Sam to Gabriel, then to their pistols, the man bowed his head