Enslavement

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  The narrow passage soon opened up into a long spacious corridor, with doors at intervals along its length. Opening one of the doors, they were both taken aback by what they saw.

  “Good God,” exclaimed Brodrick, “it's a bloody library! We've got to take a look at this, it may give us a clue as to what was going on here.”

  Books of all sorts and sizes filled the shelves which lined the walls, with a few chairs placed at two long tables. A reasonable amount of light filtered in through a dusty window above them, but they would have to use their torches to see any fine detail.

  Brodrick had picked up a large volume, and was busy pouring through its pages.

  “Hey, there are some pictures here,” he called out excitedly. “Looks like they are humanoid, well sort of. Ugly looking bunch - bald heads, flat faces with stubby little noses; can't see the rest of their bodies as they are covered in long robes.”

  Ted leaned over Brodrick's shoulder, and gave a shudder.

  “They don't look too different to us, I expected something quite different.”

  “I've got a theory on that,” said Brodrick. “I think all intelligent life in the universe will be of this form, after all, it is the most efficient form for getting around, and doing things - if you think about it.”

  “Hmmmm.” Was all he got from Ted.

  Most of the books contained only script, none of which they were able to understand, but a few were illustrated. One depicted various body parts in dissection, and what Brodrick thought was an attempt to add ‘human’ parts to an animal of some sort - but without being able to read the script, it was only conjecture.

  The next door revealed an eating hall, or so they thought, as it contained long tables with benches, and nothing else - except for a few grubby platters.

  Two other rooms contained machinery of some sort, with gears and levers in abundance, but they were unable to fathom out what they were for, and didn't dare fiddle with them as they didn't know what they were supposed to do.

  A room at the end of the corridor proved more illuminating, as it contained a large and a small loom, very similar to those they had seen back on Earth.

  “Wonder where they get the thread from,” mused Ted. “We didn't see any form of plant or animal life out there - it's just barren rock, and far too hot for plant growth.”

  “I've found some,” Brodrick called out. “There's a little heap of it in this corner. Looks like animal hair of some sort - a bit course, and stiff. Wouldn't like to wear anything made from this stuff.”

  They left the weaver's room to enter the door opposite; a short passage led to a flight of stone steps, spiralling upwards into the gloom.

  A faint but deep, resonating ‘boooong’ echoed down the stair well, making them both jump.

  “What the hell was that?” Ted said in hushed tones. “I thought you said this place was uninhabited - that sounded like a bell, and bells need someone to ring them.”

  They both stayed where they were for some minutes, while Brodrick made up his mind as to what to do next.

  “Might as well carry on,” he said, “maybe a bird or something banged into it.”

  “I've not seen any birds,” Ted replied, “or any other life.” Brodrick just grunted.

  The stone steps eventually gave way to wooden ones, and the walls were now timber framed, with a discoloured course plaster filling in the gaps between the massive timbers.

  “Must be getting near the top now,” Brodrick uttered, sounding somewhat out of breath. “Hope the bell ringer's still there.” He added jokingly. Ted wasn't amused.

  A thump announced that Brodrick's head had reached the top of bell tower; causing him to utter an expletive which Ted hadn't heard before.

  With the torch, he managed to find the catch which allowed them to open the trap door, and climb up into the actual bell chamber.

  “See, I told you there's no one here,” he said, “otherwise that catch wouldn't have been in place.”

  Before them, a circle of bells of different sizes lay in their cradles, with a giant one in the middle.

  “Look,” said Ted, quietly, “there's a wooden frame just the other side of that big bell, with leather straps on it - looks as if some poor sod was tied up there, must have blasted his eardrums in.”

  “Yes,” Brodrick replied, “and there's a stained patch on the floor just below it - I think I'd have done more than just wet myself. Wonder what made that bell ring though?”

  “As far as I remember, bells are rung by pulling ropes,” Ted offered, “and I don't see any, so how do they work them?”

  “That's another mystery,” Brodrick replied, scrutinising one of the bell cradles. “There's no sign of a rope, or any other means of moving the cradle - we must have missed something, or they did it by willpower.”

  They searched for some means of ringing the bells, but could find nothing, so Brodrick suggested they return to the corridor below, to see what other mysteries the building held.

  Replacing the catch on the trapdoor as they left the bell chamber, he was a tidy man by nature, they began the long journey down to ground level. Ted was just about to pull the door shut behind him, when the bell sounded again - faint, but definite.

  They looked at each other, Brodrick shrugged his shoulders and said, “Must be another bird.”

  He suggested they go on a bit further, but after a few metres they were stopped.

  The corridor just ended in a blank wall with a hideous gargoyle set in its middle. Even Brodrick stepped back a pace from the ugly protuberance.

  “Looks like this was meant to scare any inquisitive person off,” he said. “So what's behind it?”

  Brodrick pushed and pulled the head, but nothing happened - until he found the small hole in the back of its mouth. Inserting a finger produced a sharp click, and the wall moved very slightly.

  “Reckon we're in,” he said, giving the door a push; whereupon it swung open, hinged about its middle. They were just about able to squeeze past, and into a chamber carved out of the solid rock. In the middle of the space was the now familiar metal box which denoted a teleport.

  “Thought we might find one of these,” Brodrick said triumphantly. “But I wonder why there are two - remember, we came in via one.” Ted said nothing.

  Brodrick found the slight depression which activated the door, and went in, Ted staying in the doorway to prevent it closing, just in case it sent them off to where they didn't want to go.

  “There's no symbol on this one,” Brodrick called out, “so perhaps it's a local one - feel like giving it a go?”

  Ted knew that his friend would anyway, so he agreed, stepping fully into the chamber. There was the usual mistiness when Brodrick pressed the knob, and then it cleared. When the door opened, they both held back, just in case it was too hostile.

  As they edged towards the doorway, they were greeted with what passed for grass on this world. True it looked like grass, but there the resemblance ended.

  Brodrick, after poking his head out to make sure nothing was moving and equipped with teeth, bent down to retrieve a few blades of the grass to get a closer look. The blades rose up straight, and then curled round to form a small tangled ball. When he gripped one, the ball unravelled to several centimetres, and then seemed to come alive, and slipped through his fingers to resume its previous shape.

  “God, the damned stuff seems alive,” he cried in astonishment. “I'm sure I felt it wriggle - or maybe it's just a built in spring to stop it from being cropped.”

  They both stepped out of the teleport into a world of green. In the far distance, well beyond a line of thickly forested hills, rose the top of a smoking volcano.

  “Well, I reckon we're still on the same world, but some distance from that awful monastery thing. This is really beautiful.”

  Below them a large river gently twisted and turned between rises in the land, until it disappeared into the distant forest. Dotted about were bushes and small trees, adorned with bright green l
eaves and clusters of flowers and fruit.

  As they stood there, transfixed, a small furry animal with large brown eyes and long ears, walked out from under a bush. It looked straight at them, raised its head, sniffed, and then walked on to go under the next bush.

  “I thought it was a rabbit.” Ted said.

  “Of course it's not a rabbit,” Brodrick rejoined, leaving out the expletive the occasion would normally have called for. “We're on another planet, not Earth - you can't expect to see rabbits here, anyway, rabbits hop, they don't walk.”

  They both walked down the slope towards the slow flowing river, Brodrick picking a hanging fruit from a tree they passed.

  “It's not an apple, but it surely looks like one - I'll just check it out to see if we can eat it.”

  He cut out a small piece and touched it to his lips, smiled, and put it under his tongue for a few seconds.

  “Seems OK, I'll chew a bit, swallow it, and see what happens - it's certainly sweet.”

  “God, you take some chances,” said Ted, disapprovingly. “You're going to make a mistake one of these days - just hope I don't see it.”

  Brodrick seemed none the worse after some minutes, so they both tucked into fresh succulent fruit, the first they had enjoyed since their adventure began.

  “I wonder what it was that they were after here,” Brodrick mused. “I bet it wasn't just a bit of rest and relaxation, it must be something of value, but not necessarily to our way of thinking.”

  They walked on beside the river for a while until they came to a more hilly section of the terrain.

  “Wonder what that is?” asked Ted, pointing up a shallow valley. “Surely that's not natural.”

  Several long symmetrical lines of mounds stretched up the valley, each being about two metres long. The pair went closer to inspect them, when Brodrick said, “That reminds me of a military cemetery I once saw - the regular neatness of it. There must be hundreds of 'em - if not thousands.”

  “But there are no grave stones or crosses.” Ted said.

  “I think you'll find that's a human trend, we put a great deal of significance on the dead - doesn't mean to say all races do.”

  They left the valley, and rounding a bend found what they had been looking for.

  Several massive heaps of broken rock lay along the edge of the river. A series of small stone built constructions clustered around a large triangular tower, below which a dark hole yawned.

  “Looks like a mining operation,” said Brodrick, confidently, “and by the amount of spoil on those tips, a big one. Let's see what they've been digging up.”

  They skirted around the huge tower and headed for the nearest spoil tip. Brodrick picked up a piece of the discarded rock, and studied it closely, turning it in his hands.

  “I think I know what this is,” he said, “seen it before a long time ago, it's a uranium ore called autunite - see those yellowish crystals, it's a mixture of uranium and calcium. There must be something else they're after, as these are the waste dumps.”

  They returned to the small stone buildings, and they tried to enter one, but there was no visible sign of a catch or lock - and the door stayed firmly shut, despite their efforts.

  “As it's only wood, if we both put our shoulders to it we should get in.” Ted said.

  They both hurled themselves at the stubborn door, and after the third attempt something gave way, and they both tumbled into the dim interior.

  A table, chair, and several wooden boxes comprised the contents of the room. Brodrick went over to the table and picked up a dusty ledger; leafing through the pages of alien script he concluded it was a tally of something which had been extracted from the mine, and the boxes probably contained whatever it was. All but one box was firmly sealed with metal straps; the temptation for Brodrick was too much, and he carefully and slowly lifted the lid.

  “Hey, come and look at this,” he called out, excitedly. “I've never seen anything like these.”

  Inside the box was a wooden tray, with a series of cup shaped depressions, each holding a gleaming water clear crystal, with a very slight blue tinge. Hexagonal in shape, and with pointed ends, they were indeed a thing of beauty.

  Brodrick carefully lifted one of the crystals out of its depression, and holding it up to the faint light from the grimy window, gasped, as it scintillated in the poor light.

  After admiring it for some moments, he dropped it back into the box, but it bounced out and rolled across to the next crystal. As they touched, a brilliant flash of light nearly blinded the pair, and the light continued to stream forth as they tried to shield their eyes from the glare.

  With one hand over his eyes, Brodrick groped about for the box, and having found it with his foot, gave it a kick. It was sufficient to dislodge the wandering crystal away from the one it had touched, and the light faded.

  “The uranium in the spoil tips was just the matrix these crystals were imbedded in, I reckon,” Brodrick announced. “I've never seen or heard of anything like them. Maybe they are just a product of this planet's geology, and occur nowhere else.”

  They were both having trouble seeing clearly after the tremendous burst of light from the crystals, bumping into things and each other, as they tried to orientate them selves in the little room.

  “Well, we now know what the God thing was after, but why leave all this stock behind?” Ted asked, assuming Brodrick would know.

  “I doubt the native people of this planet wanted the crystals; they seem a fairly primitive lot from what we've seen, although the monastery place needed a fair amount of skill to build. Maybe they ran out of miners, by the amount of graves up in that valley that wouldn't surprise me. But what happened to those who survived? And the monks, if that's what they were?”

  Ted just shrugged his shoulders, as was usual when he had no answer. Although he did suggest that they take a few sample crystals with them, but Brodrick thought they may be radioactive, and as he had no way of testing them, decided not to.

  As they couldn't get into any of the other buildings, the spoil tip was just that, and there was no way they would try to go down the mine shaft, there was little else to do, and so it was decided to move on and take a look around the next bend, and then return to the monastery.

  The further they went from the mining site, the poorer the terrain became, until they were soon walking on gravel, with more of the same for as far as they could see.

  “I don't think there's anything else for us around here,” said Brodrick, surveying the landscape. “There maybe other little oases on the planet, but I doubt they'll tell us any more than we now know.” And with that, they turned and retraced their tracks towards the teleport.

  “I wonder how our alien friend got those boxes from the mine site to this transporter, it's quite a way - and he would have to use the one below the monastery where we came in, to send the stuff out to his home world.”

  “More to the point, just where did he send it,” Ted said. “And what do they do with it?”

  'That's something I'd like to find out.' Brodrick replied. Ted looked very worried.

  As they passed the trees with the apple like fruit, they gathered as much as the space in their backpacks would allow, and then carried on up the slope.

  Just before they reached the transporter, something large was moving about in a clump of bushes to their left. As they only had a few metres to go, they both broke into a frantic run and hurled themselves into the doorway. The door closed, Brodrick hit the knob, a little harder that was strictly necessary, the mist came and went, and they were back in the monastery.

  “There must be lots more to explore here,” Brodrick said, as they left the transporter chamber and entered the long corridor with all the doors. “How about we try up these steps?”

  The steps spiralled upwards to open out onto another long corridor, off which many more passages led. They entered one at random, and soon came to a door with a plate on it with an inscription. Brodrick soon had the door
open to reveal a typical monk's cell - a crude bed, a chair next to a table, and a shelf full of books. After they had entered several other cells, all of which were basically the same, except for the name plates which were different, they concluded this was the dormitory for the establishment.

  “There must have been one hell of a lot of people here, if all these rooms were taken up,” Ted said. “So what's happened to them?”

  “Maybe they were all rounded up and sent down to the mine,” Brodrick offered. “It does seem strange that they have left no trace of their comings and goings - they have removed anything to do with normal life, just leaving the main building.”

  They returned to the main hall, when Brodrick noticed some steps in front of the main windows they had missed earlier, and headed off in that direction.

  At the bottom of the steps they were confronted by two heavy wooden doors, which refused to open. Out came the wires, a couple of clicks, and one door swung ajar.

  Brodrick shone his torch into the blackness, swinging it around to make sure there were no nasty surprises in store, and then they entered the cellars beneath the main hall. Along one wall were a series of cell like structures, with a metal grill door on the front. They peered into several, until Ted let out a gasp. Chained to the wall, in spread eagle fashion and a metre off the ground, was a skeleton, with a mouldering pile of rags at it's feet.

  “God, what a way to go,” he exclaimed. “That's just plain brutal.”

  The pair continued to the end of the cellar, and turned to go back when they came upon their next unpleasantness.

  “Barbaric comes to mind,” Brodrick said, as they surveyed a long sturdy table, with a pair of chains on one end, and a windlass with two dark stained ropes on the other.

  “Perhaps someone forgot to say their prayers.” Ted offered, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  They left the cellar, pulling the door to behind them to shut out the horror. Suddenly something flew past them, circled around and swooped down, just missing Brodricks head, and then swept up again to disappear into the darkness above.

  “Looked like a bat,” said Ted. “Well almost, it was a bit bigger and had a long neck.”