Penult (The Liminality, Part Four)

Chapter 68: Above

While dragonflies have powerful flight muscles, evolution had supercharged the wings of wasps. It was the difference between a World War II fighter and an F-14. Sophia accelerated upward, generating G forces on our bodies worthy of a rocket launch. I felt myself slipping in the saddle. I clung so desperately to the saddle's loops that my fingers ached.

The air was frigid on my naked skin. Ice crystals stung as we hurtled through the frozen mists. Frost collected in my stubble.

Tigger gamely came alongside and tried to keep up, but he was a low altitude cruiser and Sophia kept soaring to heights no dragonfly could tolerate. Tigger fell back, dropping down to just below the few puffs of cloud that graced the sky.

The extreme altitude gave me a new appreciation for symmetry and beauty of the road systems and urban networks of Penult. Nestled in a broad valley among the hills was a sprawling metropolis worthy of Paris, Rome or Tokyo. Loomis was a mere hamlet by comparison. The larger city seemed relatively unscathed by our root quake.

Ubaldo had Sophia level off at an altitude that seemed to me like overkill. We must have been far above the height of the glaciers over Frelsi. My breathing quickened as each breath seemed barely adequate to oxygenate my body.

The blackness seeping through my limbs had not spread much since we left the beach. I took some solace in knowing that my death was not all that imminent. We had time. But that time was also a problem.

Sophia could only generate so much heat from her flight muscles. She would only hold out so long in these freezing temperatures before her cold-blooded organs began to fail. And even warm-blooded creatures like Ubaldo and I were at risk of hypothermia if we stayed up here too long, especially since neither of us had much left of our clothing by this point.

None of this seemed to bother Ubaldo.

"This is good," he said, smiling smugly. "I am certain the core does not reach us here."

"Baldo, it's freezing!"

"No worries. I can handle it."

"Listen. It ain't happening. Not any time soon, anyhow. Maybe we should go back down."

He wrinkled his brow. "But ... you have the black."

"I know, but ricin kills slowly, they tell me. Let's go down. A little bit, at least. For a little while? Warm up a bit?"

He shrugged. "I don't mind to wait. But ... okay."

He scraped his heels against Sophia's side and she dropped like a meteor, catching me off-guard and nearly leaving me behind as I had loosened my grip on the saddle loops.

We plunged to a level to just below the lowest layer of clouds where the temperature was much more moderate. My skittish dragonfly gladly joined us, tailing Sophia the way he had often done with Lalibela. If only Tigger could speak. He could tell us what had happened to Urszula and Lalibela.

There was a lot of activity in the sky now over what remained of Loomis. A large number of bulky and slow flying contraptions were landing and taking off from every flat and rubble-free space in the ruins. I couldn't tell if they bringing relief supplies or evacuating souls. Maybe both?

"How are you feeling now?" Ubaldo said, glancing over his shoulder. "You should check yourself again."

I held up my hand and it was the weirdest mosaic. I was a calico cat. Patches of normal skin were now interspersed with black blotches and transparencies. I was not only dying. I was dying and fading.

"Holy shit!"

"What's wrong? Is it happening? Should we go back up?"

Before I could answer him, I was whisked right out of his world.