Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker

Author:Clive Barker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2012-02-08T04:40:03+00:00

Chapter 37

Love and War

MATER MOTLEY WASN’T THE only one who had a comprehensive view of the sacbrood’s advance over the Abarat. At the heart of the Commexo Company’s headquarters, in the Circular Room, reports came in from the innumerable mechanical spies, perfect copies of species from the tiny tiger tic to the enormous Rashamass (which resembled a cross between a whale and a millipede). They weren’t programmed to seek out events of any great moment. But there were so many of Pixler’s spies out in the world that at any given Hour one of them would be certain to catch witness of a scene of tragedy or celebration, were it to occur.

But in all the years the cyclopic Dr. Voorzangler, whose genius with Abaratian technologies was responsible for making Rojo Pixler’s visionary dreams into practical realities, had traveled the immense circle on one of the gravity-negating discs that carried him wherever he willed them to take him, he had never witnessed anything as momentous as the events unfolding on the screens now. He had watched as the pyramids at Xuxux had been unsealed, silently awed—though he would never have admitted it—by the sheer power of the hidden engines that had opened the pyramids up. But their opening had only been the first part of the spectacle. What followed had been more incredible still: the outpouring of a life-form Voorzangler was not familiar with, that had been hidden away in the tombs, and now rose like six black rivers flowing heavenward, where they converged to become a sea of darkness that spread over the sky and above the pyramids, blotting out the constellations above Xuxux then moved outwards: east toward Babilonium, south toward Gnomon, west toward Jibarish, and north toward the island of Pyon, at which Hour, of course, Commexo City stood.

Voorzangler surveyed the sight for a few minutes, trying to get a grasp on what he was seeing, then he summoned his assistant, Kattaz to his side.

“What’s Mr. Pixler’s status?” he wanted to know.

“I was just with him,” Kattaz replied. “He says he feels fine after ‘the problem.’ That’s what he calls it, sir. The little problem with the bathyscaphe.”

Voorzangler shook his head. “Really, the man is fearless. We nearly lost him . . .” He stared at the spreading darkness again. “I’m going to start making a report on this . . . this phenomenon. I’d like Mr. Pixler to see it for himself when he’s feeling well enough. Would you inform him that we have a very immediate problem? This . . . darkness is going to cover the city within the next ten minutes.”

“What is it?” Kattaz asked him.

“According to my records this is a species, I believe they are sacbrood. They predate Time, and therefore these islands. But what we know of them from fossil records suggest that they were significantly smaller than these creatures we see now.”

“Genetically altered then?”

“That’s my assumption.”

“By science? Magic?”

“Possibly both. Look at them!”

He directed Kattaz’s attention to the screen behind her.

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