The Tower

By J L Blenkinsop

The Sun is dying. Humanity, descending into anarchy and chaos, is desperate to escape. Space elevators and starships are being built, but can save so few.

Into this World comes Yifan Shen, dragging her mother with her. They come from our own Earth, and leave behind their own problems for Yifan's step-father - for Yifan's ability to travel between minds brings danger and death; to save them, he has to go back to his previous employer: British Intelligence.

In this World John and his friend Professor Alan Baer have to discover the secret of Travel between Worlds, find the mysterious Flying Dutchman and fend off the Chinese Secret Service. In the other, Yifan is trapped as the slave of an abusive family; and her mother, Ji Ye, is riding up the Tower into space. The secret of Travelling could save the doomed inhabitants of Earth - but at what cost?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J L Blenkinsop
• Release date: Nov 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370655489

J L Blenkinsop

After many years during which I've written plays, pantomimes and short stories for friends, I am now the proud possessor of a step-daughter, attached to a beautiful and intelligent wife.I've never had a child to look after before, and it's a challenge. She'll be a teenager this month. Watching her trying to work out what life means to her, how to cope with friends and foes, made me write (for the very first time) a novel, just for her.But this novel is not just for her; it's for me, and it's for anyone who is a child or who has a child who is intelligent and enquiring, who is shy, who has dreams.It is enjoyable to write about Yifan, and the fantasy element of the story means that there are many more adventures for her to have as she grows up into the balanced, resourceful adult that I know she will become. And so here I am, hoping to share her life - the real life and the life of dreams - with you.

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THE TOWER

Worlds of Yifan Book 3

by J L Blenkinsop

Copyright 2017 J L Blenkinsop

The Tower

For Veronica

Contents

Prologue

The Tower

The Cliff

The Island

Assassination

The Clown

Journeys

The Dutchman

Angel Hair

Kidnap

The Ruins of Paris

Meetings

Escape

Destination

Prologue

Tomass stood at the edge of the high road that circled the island above its terraces and plantations, staring up at the magnificence of the night sky. There were no man-made lights to fade the wheeling glory of the galaxy, no clouds to obscure his enjoyment and awe. The early-evening rain was long gone; all that remained were some rapidly-shrinking puddles.

A steep slope rose up before him to a plateau, the mountain-top the Chinese had removed to build their tower. Above that the crowded band of the Milky Way strode past, every star but one moving slowly in the same direction.

The one star never moved. It stayed exactly where it had been put.

Tomass shifted his feet, and mud squelched between his toes. He wriggled them, enjoying the squishiness. Feet in the ground, head in the sky, his grandfather always said. Stargazing made him feel tall, though he was short for his twelve years.

A sudden light blossomed above him, beneath the fixed star. It grew, like a chrysanthemum firework, and faded just as quickly. There was no sound; it was many miles above, and when, hours later, the concussion came, it was too faint to notice.

The spectacle wiped out his night vision, and when that had gone, so had his view of the stars. Tomass made his careful way back to the shack he shared with his mother and father and went to bed.

The Tower

A Chinese-flagged C-17 Globemaster flew in from the east. Behind it, the sky was darkening; before it, the bruised sun approached the ocean. Pulau Batu stretched ahead and behind on the plane’s starboard side, but the destination was the far smaller island of Pulau Masin.

When it started its descent, Ji Ye, standing behind the pilots, gripping the backs of their seats, took in the island as it slowly filled the view from the cockpit windows. Up to a point it was standard for the region; a thin coastal rim dotted with small harbours and fishing villages, a steep slope of forests and terraces, and a steeper cliff up to a central peak. But on Pulau Masin the top of the island had been sliced off, like the top of a boiled egg. There was nothing natural there, only a flat grey plain scattered with low square buildings and bounded by six tall pylons topped with red lights to warn away aircraft. The long scratch of a runway started just short of the precipitous cliff-top and stretched almost all the way west to the other side of the plateau. As she watched, the runway lights came on.

The pilot, Temi, talked calmly over the radio to the ground controller. Her co-pilot Bernard pushed buttons on his electronic checklist, then pulled back a set of levers. The undercarriage came down, with bumps and whirrs.

The transparent plastic shell on Ji Ye’s face reflected the colours of the instrument lights. When she turned to look back to the enormous black cargo that filled the load space, her friend Sophie Ailes, the Vietnamese-French nanotechnician, was strapped in in front of it, but Yifan wasn't in her seat. She was probably behind the cargo in the toilet, or in the galley getting more Coke. There was no time to go get her. She’d be all right staying where she was.

The engineer looked back out over the pilots’ shoulders. A grey fuzzy mass piled up around the south-east corner of the terminal buildings. Much too close to the runway, she thought.

Sit down, Temi commanded, and Ji Ye obediently took the few steps back to her seat beside Sophie, who took her hand after she’d belted in.

Sitting down, she realised later, saved her life.

Temi brought the huge aircraft in to land. The descent appeared slow at first, but when the ground came up it seemed too fast. Ji Ye, who had flown all around China in some very dubious planes, felt apprehensive.

The nose-wheels cleared the lip of the cliff by a few metres when disaster struck. Above the pilots’ heads the top of the cockpit peeled away. The aircraft opened like a tin can, fast air tumbling around them, roaring, the airframe shuddering wildly. Temi fought the controls and managed to keep level until the rip reached the cargo, when a high-pitched squeal deafened them and the plane suddenly tipped nose-up.

From above it would have looked as if the aircraft was being sliced with an invisible knife. It tipped back for an instant then lurched forward, its nose ploughing into the runway, slewing it around. As it span and slid, first one wing then the other was sliced off, the pieces cartwheeling over the flat ground; and then the tail section fell away, cut through, and tumbled down the cliff.

*

We can’t go down there in the dark, said Temi. Ji Ye hung her head, her mouth full of ashes. Sophie stroked her neck with a black-gloved hand. They had all changed into their carbon armour: flexible outfits the same light-sucking black as the cargo. Heat pumps ticked at the edge of hearing, shifting body heat to the exhausts in the equipment hump on their backs, and when Ji Ye hugged Sophie the frequency and volume increased as the suits sucked warmth in.

They’d stood at the exposed back of the aircraft, shouting into the dark, listening for Ji Ye’s daughter, hoping she had the sense to lie still, hoping she would reply, that she was alive. No response had come back. They went out with torches and walked carefully back over the skid-track of the plane. It was a long way to the cliff edge, and there were too many opportunities for a child to become lost, to blunder over the drop or to encounter more of the Angel Hair that had cut their transport to pieces.

We have to check the vehicle, Sophie advised gently when they were back in the aircraft. Ji Ye nodded mutely. Do you need cream? Ji Ye refused. Her eyes strayed to a suit still in its plastic package, the last one in the crate.

Ji Ye kept herself busy, ran through her checklist three times, powering up the huge cargo, flicking through the status screens on a holopad. Everything checked out. She shut her mind to the possibility of her daughter’s death, and started the checklist again from the top. The cargo twitched its legs, buzzed, lifted, settled. Its reactor was nominal, its sensors one hundred percent. Perfect.

She started the checklist again.

Bernard brought out self-heating ration packs around ten and they ate. Ji Ye could taste nothing except aviation fuel; its stink was everywhere. Behind her the cargo’s heat exchangers fizzed loudly in the tropic night. Outside, cicadas echoed back. Temi returned from the cockpit. Give me a can. She took a ration pack from Bernard and pulled the tab. Her dark face shone from the surrounding blackness of her hood, long-lashed dark eyes and a mouth used to smiling. She pulled off the top of the ration and peeled the spoon from the side. Eugh. This tastes like kerosene.

There’s fuel all around us, Bernard sighed. And I’m dying for a cigarette. He looked up into the open sky where the top of the aircraft had been.

Temi tossed her empty can into a corner and stood up. What are we using as a toilet? she demanded. Bernard gestured to the sheared-off rear of the plane. She made her way aft, stooping beneath a bracing strut, and disappeared behind the huge machine.

The armour was in six pieces – skin-tight leggings that sealed with boots, a sleeved tabard that came with a deep tight-fitting hood, and thin gloves. The bottom of the tabard reached almost to the knee, allowing the leggings to have a sealable split that let the wearer go to the toilet without compromising safety. Temi stared out of the back of the plane where the tail had been, looking toward the cliff edge a couple of miles away. In the dim light from the faraway stars she strained her eyes, hoping to see Ji Ye’s daughter. There was no movement out there. She wiped herself with some blue utility tissue Bernard had left for the purpose, stood, sealed up the leggings and rolled down the hem of the tabard. In the darkness she became almost invisible. She turned to face the cargo, sighed, and made her way back to the others.

When she emerged into the weak light she looked at them. Bernard Coxhead was a military pilot and computer systems expert from England. Sophie, originally from Paris, had spent the last four years in Nanjing devising the tiny atomic assemblies that made up the cargo’s payload. Ji Ye, an engineer and computer scientist from what remained of Changchun in north-east China, was responsible for the cargo’s articulation software. If anything went wrong on the long journey up the Tower, she was the only one capable of fixing it.

And Yifan Shen, Ji Ye’s daughter, ten years old, who had no relevant expertise. She had been allowed to come with them only because there was nowhere else for her to be. A sweet child. Their first casualty.

*

The Sun rose. The iron spot was close to the middle of its disk, the pupil of a huge eye glaring at them over the eastern horizon. Dawn light flowed like syrup across the plateau and glinted off the crippled aircraft.

A huge black shape rose from the ruin. An enormous spider, unfolding its eight limbs, flexing its joints. After a pause, two of the long legs arched over the fuselage and touched the fuel-sodden ground. Two more did the same on the other side and then the body of the cargo rose up. It high-stepped out of the smashed plane, walking on knee-joints to keep its delicate feet from damage, and came clear.

In the cabin, cramped from squeezing four into a space meant for two, Ji Ye fired up the sensors and begin a sweep for her missing child. She followed the trail of wreckage to the edge of the plateau and nodded the front of the spider over the edge, but saw no-one; debris scattered down the steep slope but there was no movement, she saw no crumpled body. The salt from her tears made her face itch, but she was not able to soothe it.

She turned the spider and made for the complex of buildings at the centre of the plateau. From time to time, and more frequently the closer they got, the same shrieking noise that had sounded during the crash clamoured from the spider, like fingernails down a blackboard. There was no obvious reason, but inside the vehicle the team winced each time they heard it.

The Cliff

John, normally a brave, sane and well-balanced individual, was nevertheless very, very frightened of heights. On this bright warm morning he felt panicky and sick as he watched his precious daughter Yifan Shen flirt with death by walking along the edge of a cliff.

Please keep back, Yifan, he pleaded, but she took no notice.

Ji Ye, strolling between her husband and her daughter, didn’t mind heights, and thought that John’s nervousness might make Yifan take more risks. But she was concerned about something else. What if you go off somewhere? she pointed out. You’ll fall off the cliff and die, then you’d have to stay there. Yifan shrugged, and John shuddered.

The family was on a break. John had taken Friday and Monday off to accompany the girls down to the coast. It was a crisp and sunny February day, and the English Channel sparkled. Yifan’s school was out for half-term, and Bart the cat had expressed an interest in being looked after by their friend Rachel. This morning, against his better judgement, John had been persuaded to go with the girls for a walk on top of the White Cliffs of Dover. Although he was more than five metres away from the edge, he was still scared of falling off. He was even more scared that Yifan might.

Yifan and her family had a secret. She was able to ‘go off somewhere’ – to move between the multitude of Universes, so long as there was a version of herself to move into. It wasn’t something she could control. At the age of eleven she’d shared the mind of an older self called Vicky in a very similar Universe, and from that meeting discovered and later proved that she and her mother were Princess and Queen of China, descended from the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

After that adventure she swapped minds with Shen Teal, a male version of herself in an Eighteenth-Century parallel World. She had to learn to behave like a swashbuckling Korean Prince, while poor Teal had been coerced into skirts and an all-girls school, which Ji Ye hoped had given him a new and welcome perspective.

The problem was that Yifan didn’t know when she might suddenly ‘go off’. John was working with a Professor of Physics, Alan Baer, from Imperial College in London, to try to find a solution and keep her from wandering, but so far they’d had no success.

It wasn’t any wonder, then, that Yifan cavorting on the edge of a lethal drop should make John nervous.

Please come away from the edge, he called again. Yifan stuck her tongue out at him, turned to look out over the sea, and slipped.

Rachel, cat-sitter of choice to those in the know, put down a bowl of food for Bart. He looked at the food, then up at her.

It’s to eat, she urged, and sighed. His eyes just became more round. She bent down again and rattled the bowl. Bart immediately started to eat.

Rachel shook her head and searched for tea-bags. She selected a mug and switched on the kettle. Behind her the regular crunching stopped suddenly. She turned and saw Bart standing by his bowl, quivering, eyes wide with terror. He let out a plaintive cry and fell into a stiff-legged faint, spilling the dry food on the way down.

Ji Ye lurched toward Yifan as she teetered on the edge of the cliff, stretching out her hand to catch her daughter’s wrist, but Yifan’s falling weight and her own momentum pulled her off balance. John ran