The Eye of Zoltar

He was right, and I swore softly to myself. The trail, sadly, had long ago turned cold. If this all happened six years ago, the Eye could be anywhere on the planet. I searched Sky Pirate Wolff’s room, then the main hall, but could find nothing that might have told us who took the Eye, let alone where it was now. Kevin Zipp had been right about the Eye’s whereabouts – it was just his timescale that had been at fault.

We walked back the way we had come.

‘Do you know who took it?’ I asked.

‘Sadly, I do not,’ said Gabby, ‘but it would have to be a sorcerer of some sort.’

‘The Mighty Shandar is skilled enough to tap the Eye’s power,’ I murmured, ‘but sending me to find something he already has doesn’t make much sense.’

‘And there’s a good reason why Shandar wouldn’t want you poking around out here,’ said Gabby, ‘and it has nothing to do with the Eye of Zoltar.’

I frowned and thought for a moment.

‘The Skybus facility below?’ I suggested.

Gabby nodded.

‘What are they making?’ I asked. ‘And why do the empty lorries coming in weigh more than the ones coming out?’

‘Because … they’d have to be.’

I stared at Gabby for a moment, trying to figure it out. We had by now arrived at the top of the bone spiral staircase. A few steps down and we’d be in the all-obscuring cloud again. I reached out to one of the Leviathan bones and scratched off a small amount, which, once released, drifted upwards.

‘Shandar’s harvesting Cloud Leviathans?’ I said, and Gabby smiled.

‘Ever wondered how those huge jetliners seem to hang in the air on those tiny wings?’ he asked. ‘How Skybus lead the world in efficient aircraft that can fly twice as far on half the fuel? Ever wondered why Shandar has made so much money through Skybus, and how Tharv can afford for all his citizens to have free universal healthcare?’

‘Tharv and Shandar are partners?’

‘Very much so. The whole jeopardy tourism thing might sound like a long and very complex joke, but without it, Tharv and Shandar would not be as stupendously rich as they are. All those tourists in the Cambrian Empire snatched from the jaws of certain death, hundreds of times a day, month in, month out.’

And that was when it hit me. The answer had been staring me in the face the whole time. The Cloud Leviathans’ lighter-than-air capability was not due to magic, nor some natural process. Prince Nasil had even mentioned it before he left: the same thing that keeps a flying carpet in the air also keeps up a Leviathan.

‘Angel’s feathers,’ I said in a soft whisper. ‘We were nearly hoovered up by the Leviathan the night before last. They do that feeding run every morning, sucking up not just the birds and bugs, but also many of the Variant-G angels who are constantly employed in the Cambrian Empire. They are then digested to make the Leviathan lighter than air. jeopardy tourism is there for a purpose. High risk of death, high concentration of guardian angels.’

I paused, and looked at Gabby, who nodded.

‘But,’ I added, ‘that’s not the end of it, is it?’

‘No indeed,’ said Gabby. ‘The higher-than-normal concentration of ingested angel’s feathers leads to an excess, which is then expelled as all animal waste is expelled. The drones working in the facility below gather up the Leviathans’ droppings with nothing more complicated than shovels, then extract the angel’s feathers using Shandar-supplied magic. They then ship it out in the Skybus lorries. The refined material is known in the aeronautical industry as Guanolite, and is stuffed inside aircraft wings to assist with lift. That’s what’s going out in the Skybus trucks.’

‘Which must explain,’ I said slowly, ‘why the trucks are lighter on the way out.’

‘Of course. Fill a two-ton truck with concentrated Guanolite and the upward force will ensure it weighs effectively no more than a golf buggy.’

Gabby beckoned me to follow him as I fell silent for a moment, digesting this new information as we began the climb down the staircase. As I entered the cloud I felt the damp and clamminess touch my face and hands, and pretty soon we were standing on the Leviathan skull, the spot where I had first entered this strange place.

‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘You know about this place, but you’re not dead – you come and go as you choose.’

‘You might say I have a version of “access all areas”,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘As I think I explained, I collect information on death likelihood for a major player in the risk management industry.’

‘I remember,’ I said, ‘and by identifying the potential risk factor of everything anyone does, you decide where best to deploy your assets to avert those risks.’

‘That’s pretty much it,’ said Gabby. ‘We save lives … when lives need to be saved.’

‘It’s not an insurance company, is it?’

‘Not really, no. It’s sort of … fate management. It’s of vital importance that you – or anyone, in fact – do not die until you have fulfilled your function in the G-SOT.’

‘G-SOT?’