Europa by Joseph Robert Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

seat to create an uncomfortable-looking recliner to sleep in. “And there is plenty of wind out there right now.”
    The howling gusts outside shook the cabin, and there was a continuous tinkling sound of icy granules peppering the windows from all sides.
    “So, is there nothing alive out there?” Omar squinted into the dark window, but could only see his own reflection in the glass. A sharp gurgle in his belly made him wince.
    “No, nothing alive here,” Kosoko said. “Plenty of dead folk, though. If the wind lets up enough for the aether to settle, we should see the southern migration tonight.”
    Omar jerked away from the glass. “Migration? Of the dead?”
    “It’s not a migration,” Garai snapped. “Animals migrate to find better seasonal habitats. The dead have no habitat. And you call yourself a scientist!”
    “Then what would you call it?” the cartographer asked. “Hundreds of souls all moving south together. Just like birds or fish.”
    The naturalist rolled his eyes, pressed his hand to his belly, and burped. “Don’t be stupid, Kosoko. It’s probably some sort of pilgrimage. These barbarian souls must be looking for their afterlife or their gods or something.”
    “So you don’t know?” Omar asked. “You’ve never investigated this migration?”
    Garai slipped his hand inside his belt to pull his pants away from his stomach as he shifted in his seat. “Of course not. I am a scientist, sir, not a priest. Natural philosophy has been the bedrock of Songhai scholarship even longer than in Marrakesh. I don’t concern myself with matters of religion. So until it becomes possible to study aether and ghosts in a controlled manner, there is no place for it in the natural sciences.”
    Omar smiled and turned back to the window. “Interesting.”
    Within the hour, the small light bulb overhead flickered dimmer and dimmer, and then faded completely to leave the cabin in utter darkness. But a pale glow fell on the ice outside and Omar peered out across a vast plain of wintry desolation marked here and there by the light of the stars and he perceived the shapes of the clouds overhead by the dark shadows they cast on the glacier. The Finch itself sat flat and still on the ground, and only a few thin streams of icy dust tumbled across the ground outside.
    The men were snoring in the back of the cabin, and the women looked to be similarly asleep in the cockpit, so Omar pulled on his gloves and hat, wrapped his coat tightly around himself, and slipped out the hatch as quickly and quietly as he could. There was a sharp stitch in his side and he hoped a long walk would ease his digestion before he tried to sleep sitting up for the third night in a row.
    Stepping away from the warmth of the cabin and away from the shadow of the airship, he discovered a world of quiet oblivion. There were no leafy branches or tall waving grasses to shush and whisper in the breeze. There were no owls or nightingales to call, and no crickets to chirp. No wolves howled and no lions roared.
    There was nothing between heaven and earth but the ice and the clouds wrapped in perfect silence.
    He walked carefully across the frozen ground, placing his boots gently on the icy dust and making only the softest crunching noises. When the Frost Finch was merely a dark shape in the distance behind him, Omar stopped. The clouds were breaking up, revealing more stars and spilling more moonlight on the face of glacier. A pale mist hovered above the ice so thick that it obscured the ground completely, and Omar saw the aether moving slowly toward the south, sliding down the skin of the world toward the jagged peaks of the Pyrenees. He turned to look north, and froze.
    My God. Look at them all!
    The ghosts marched toward him in a line that stretched from the east to the west as far as he could see. Their fragile forms rippled and fluttered as the last weak breaths of wind danced through the aether mist, gently tugging at the outlines of the dead men