by H C Turk
Kathlynn took one step inside only to scowl. To either side, at the chamber’s ends, shadows extended forever.
“Let’s leave,” she said weakly, looking to her left, right.
Parno stepped ahead, passing the supervisor.
“You return to the loo. When I start dying, come and get me.”
“In the loo, I won’t know of your situation,” Kathlynn said to Parno’s back.
“Then you think of something,” Parno concluded. “You’re the supervisor.
Kathlynn looked to either side, to the panel behind, then followed.
She remembered stepping across the island’s pink sand, traveling a greater distance than this with no fear, only enthused expectation. Now she looked to either side, then behind, her expectation ugly.
Parno walked the twenty yards to that vast central shape all of perpendicular planes. He almost touched the nearest surface with his face while peering within.
“The boat’s matter hold could fit inside this lower box,” he described as Kathlynn joined him. “All these big boxes contain sizable equipment elements. I think most are filled with fluid.”
“A goldfish bowl?”
“The boat’s drive bay,” he guessed. “I think I see an alien paramass canister inside, on the perimeter of an Actal Manifestic ether exchange.”
He stepped away, pointing toward his new goal.
“Over there, on the outer wall, that big panel is an airlock for planetary gear, perhaps vehicles. Let’s go and see if we can find a big door knob.”
Following, Kathlynn looked to either side, then behind, before speaking again.
“Parno, your voice echoed. The surfaces here lack the sophistication of modern construction materials.”
He shrugged.
“You should see the drive bay of our space boat. It’s like a tool shed full of nucleonics.”
“Parno, I’m rather proud of that sentence I just gave you. I spoke decisively, without a single knee shaking because any moment some black horror will drop from the ceiling on our heads.”
They looked up simultaneously. No horror fell. They would have to walk to it.
The starry panel, as high and wide as numerous Earth-norm indigenes, suggested the parlor’s smaller door, but a different galaxy. Parno extended his arms in opposite directions.
“You take one side and I’ll take the other,” he suggested. “We’ll meet in the middle.”
“Yes, we’ll meet when the vacuum outside pulls us to our doom in deepest space.”
“Kathlynn, if this is an airlock, it has inner and outer doors.”
“What if this is the outer door?” Kathlynn wondered, and furiously pressed against the panel.
Without result. The panel showed gaseous nebulas in subtle colors, an infinity of stars. If applied individually, these stars had been set in the black door by an art god.
“Open up, please!” Parno shouted, pressing against the panel, smacking his palms against the wall beside the supposed door.
“I want to leave this place so much,” Kathlynn called out, her sound a loud whimper, emotional, honest, ineffective.
They formed a cacophonous song-and-dance, walking sideways while wailing their desires, slapping the static panel as though in punishment.
They met in the middle, stopping to pant, to regroup their dance troupe.
“If the other side has zero pressure,” Parno said, breathing deeply between phrases, “the door would not reasonably open.”
After regaining her breath, Kathlynn added:
“Parno, we are not in outer space. Remember that although the greenhouse door accurately depicted that chamber’s contents, the loo was merely a pattern. Can we expect the kanji door to lead to a room full of signifiers?”
“It’s not kanji,” Parno sighed, “it’s—”
“Don’t make me call you a bastard,” she snarled.
After shaking his head, Parno returned to the vast central structure, stepping along the wall, arriving at a lower segment, the external surface here opaque.
“Let’s try this place,” Parno suggested. “It differs from the greater gel box. Aux alien control, perhaps.”
He leaned against the wall with both hands—and stumbled into a brighter chamber. His sight—and Kathlynn’s—went immediately to the floor, where the bodies lay.
“Parno! Get out, don’t touch them!”
Staring at the floor, Parno stood on his toes, trying not to enter farther into the chamber, thereby stepping on the human form at his feet. Not a body, but an opaque alien suit, the same as the flame container in the greenhouse. Unlike that solitary figure, this suit was accompanied by several peers.
Retaining his breath and his balance, Parno retreated, only inhaling when standing beside Kathlynn.
Aware of her negligence, Kathlynn jerked her head to either side, seeking the arrival of the smoke ghost from the chamber’s void ends. No, the hideous figure did not approach, and the entry panel showed no intrusion.
Stepping carefully inside the smaller room, Parno nodded for Kathlynn to look.
“On the wall here,” he said quietly.
Kathlynn looked, seeing similar suits. These were open and upright. Their interiors had no features. Seeing nothing deadly, Kathlynn called out loudly:
“Why in the world are you whispering? If they’re going to leap up and kill us, let’s get it over and done with!”
Parno looked down to the suits, not to the demon fem behind. None of the prostrate aliens stirred. Then he turned to Kathlynn, speaking with a humorless half-smile.
“You have the balls of a tiger and the brains of a piss ant,” he whispered, then turned away.
Cautiously stepping among the human forms on the floor, Parno moved to the perpendicular wall. Several identical suits, their feet at floor level, were attached to the wall as though glued. Split at the limbs and torso and head, the neat gear awaited aliens.
“All you have to do is turn around, back against one, and the suit will wrap around you,” Parno surmised.
“And never get out,” Kathlynn predicted.
“Perhaps, if we were both wearing functional ground suits,” Parno said, “the airlock door would open for us.”
“Parno, what if wearing an alien ground suit is like drinking alien beer?” Kathlynn demanded.
“What would you rather do, enter this suit, or enter the death void at the chamber’s ends?”
“That’s a fallacious choice,” Kathlynn snarled, “as though I were compelled to do either. I would rather step through that big airlock and walk across the sand of Kapnos 3.”
“So would I, and here’s how we do it. I enter the suit, verify that it’s hunky-dory, then you hop in another, and we go for a stroll outside.”
Parno stepped to the nearest vertical suit, and Kathlynn gasped, reaching out to stop him. She had not, however, entered the compartment.
“I’m sorry, Parno, I’m so selfish, and I can’t help it,” she moaned, nearly weeping.
“Kathlynn, what are you talking about?” Parno asked, confused.
“Parno, if something goes wrong, I don’t think that I could get you out. I would rather be inside the suit than outside. You would be able to free me.”
“These suits are made to protect people, not injure them.”
Kathlynn stared for a breathless, alien-norm moment.
“Then why are these people lying dead at your feet?”
“The suits may be empty, Kathlynn.”
“You may be a maniac, Parno.”
“No, if I were a maniac, I’d pop open a headpiece just to prove you wrong. I remember the last time.”
“Parno, we don’t know what’s inside them, and we don’t want to know. We do know, however, that the previous suit contained a blow torch. There may have never been a body in it. And think of this: the alien food room. Do you think that the inhabitants are supposed to be sickened by their own food?”
“We were probably eating rat and cat mush,” he
mumbled.
Parno looked at the nearest suit, looked at the supporting wall, searching.
“I don’t see any sort of controls.”
“Parno, our own suits have no blatant controls. You have to know where to look.”
“Well, I don’t know where to look,” he grumbled, “so let’s prove we’re both not maniacs by finding something that we can figure.”
Parno stalked past her, looking for better answers, acceptable solutions, or more trouble. The latter arrived at his back, delivered by the superfem, followed by remnant fire.
As Parno stepped past, Kathlynn discreetly entered the compartment. Stepping carefully between two prostrate suits, she looked to the upright versions as though meeting royalty, ready to demand an autograph. Not hesitating, she stared with wide eyes, bashful, frightened, foolish. Kathlynn would not demand a gesture from this aristocrat, but knowledge. She was convinced that with this technol gear, she would learn how to leave. Exiting this cemetery was her greatest desire.
“I’m no lemming pussy,” she moaned, turned, and stepped backward against the suit.
Her first alien sight was of stars.
The broad expanse of floor seemed so empty to Parno. He wondered if some objects normally rested here. He saw neither footprints, wheel car tracks, nor blood. But he knew that vast composite structure behind could have included garage space for alien trains and buses. Looking beyond, Parno saw nothing new, only an old horror.
One black end of the chamber showed only a frightening, seductive depth. Come and fall forever…. The opposite void, however, showed movement. His teeth clenching hard enough to hurt his jaws, Parno stared as vapid ash limbs formed in the shadow, flailing toward Parno’s heart.
He turned, not seeing Kathlynn. Immediately he ran into the compartment, finding her standing upright, looking nowhere, staring peacefully. But he only saw her face. Kathlynn now wore an alien suit whose headpiece had turned transparent, nearly invisible. Since the remainder of the suit was opaque, she seemed decapitated, her head resting on alien equipment.
“Kathlynn, you have to get out!” Parno shouted, pulling and pressing on every section of the suit: neck, torso, clear headpiece, wrist, ankle, back.
He did not peer outside the compartment. They had time to flee, he knew, if only he could get her out.
“Suit, you have to open, please! Kathlynn, Kathlynn, you have to leave, you have to get out!’
With all of Parno’s prodding, the suit had not responded, not moved, its material displaying no suppleness. Parno then bent to wrap both arms around the suit at hip level. He would simply lift her and run away; Kathlynn was not a massive fem. But the suit possessed infinite mass, it seemed, for Parno could not budge it.
Without looking outside, he sensed the shadow of his death approaching.
A new idea then came to Parno. This solution struck him as a horror. He could leave her. Kathlynn would be safe in the super-technol alien suit. Parno could run, then return when the death ghost had passed, passed through Kathlynn, leaving ashes.
For a moment, Parno could not think, could not see. In the following moment, he turned and pressed his back against the nearest upright suit, only thinking and feeling that he had to get her out.
The suit closed around him. Parno saw everything and nothing instantaneously. No time passed and the suit split open, folding away from his body. Kathlynn’s suit now lay against the wall, neat and vertical.
Kathlynn remained vertical for only a moment before staring nowhere or everywhere, and screaming.
“Parno, I forgot!” she hollered, and bent double, weeping as though having found her parents dead on the floor.
He had to hold Kathlynn upright to prevent her from collapsing onto those dead suits at her feet. Never, never had he sensed such utter misery in her. She wept absolutely, all of her energy devoted not to fear, but to failure.
In the next moment, she spoke again, her words distorted by pitiful sobs.
“Parno, I knew,” she wept, looking up with utter failure in her eyes. “I knew everything. In the suit, I learned, I learned what to do. But I…Parno—I forgot.”
As Parno lifted her, Kathlynn wrapped her arms around his neck, still weeping, but not so deeply, still abjectly depressed.
He had been right: Kathlynn weighed nothing. Only her value was unlimited.
Moving swiftly across the floor, Parno pressed Kathlynn’s face against his shoulder so she would not see those flailing limbs of death. He heard a moan, but it came from himself, because he saw that terrible form, understanding it to consist of mankind’s worst emotions: despair, failure, fear. Yes, he had time to reach the ribbon panel and move through, for the ignorant smoke ghost had entered from the wrong end. Had the ghost arrived from the nearer chamber void, Parno would be struggling with pure death while holding Kathlynn in his arms.
So immersed in emotion that he sensed nothing bodily, not his own strained knees, Kathlynn’s breathing, or the distance to that safe panel, Parno walked lifelessly. In those last few steps, Parno pressed his face against Kathlynn’s hair, if not from affection, than from a need to hide. Beside him, the black death of nothingness clawed near.
They entered before the ghost arrived, and the ashes could not follow. Once through the panel, Parno sank to his knees, and Kathlynn sat beside him. They remained despite feeling an urge to leap up and run along the ribbon, not only to escape the ghost, but desperate to be on with their dying, having learned movement from the living dead.
Chapter 11
Colors In His Fingertips
“Find your own bathtub, pervert,” Kathlynn said, and shoved Parno away.
Standing in the alien loo, Kathlynn found the nearest cleansing chamber. She had pushed Parno away not with effort, but with a girlish touch. Now she entered the spherical chamber with spritely steps. She entered smiling.
Parno would not accept confusion, ignorance, or Kathlynn’s apparent madness. But he could not avoid a sense of inferiority. Entering a different bathing chamber, allowing the alien technols to remove his clothing, Parno understood that he was no better than an animal. Though providing only a cleansing massage, the chamber would improve his condition, the condition of his life. How could his sophisticated emotions and acute intellect be revived merely by taking a bath?
Since these thoughts delivered weary confusion, Parno considered nothing, accepting another stint of insipid recuperation.
When Parno next stood beside Kathlynn, the superfem was not smiling. Fully clothed, showing no injury, she confronted her partner.
“Time to leave.”
“Kathlynn, please take me with you.”
That brought a smile.
“All we have to do is go to the process margin in the translation arena. I’ll wrap on a function retainer, relearn the workings of the vessel, and we’ll exit.”
Looking toward Parno, Kathlynn smiled only with the corners of her mouth. Parno much preferred this expression to her snobby disregard.
“Kathlynn, your terminology is alien,” Parno told her. “‘Process margin’? ‘Translation arena’? ‘Wrap on a function retainer’? The ‘vessel’? Ma’am, I’m afraid I’ll have to check inside your coveralls to see if you’re full of ashes.”
He reached out, not meaning to touch her, and Kathlynn grasped his hand. After squeezing his fingers a moment while smiling, she released him, and explained.
Some alien responses he could learn to love.
“Those are verbal translations that just came to me, Parno. ‘Translation’ in ‘translation arena’ refers to changing one position for another: transportation. While wrapped with the function retainer—a type of work suit—I learned so much. It’s difficult to explain. I seemed a part of the alien culture. I was connected to their history, in a type of receptive communication. The only discrete data I remember, though, is stars. I believe I saw the airlock door, which is covered with stars.”
“What is their appearance?”
“Whose appear
ance?”
“As an anthropologist, I want to know more of the aliens’ culture. As an Earther, I want to know how they look.”
“Parno, since I was one of them,” Kathlynn explained, “they looked like me.”
“The aliens are short and sexy?”
She gave him a quizzical look.
“I’m not short.”
“Oh. So, if you learned so much, why couldn’t you get out of the suit on your own?”
“I didn’t want to, Parno. I didn’t know that the ghost was approaching.”
“Is ‘ghost’ an accurate verbal translation from the alien language?”
“No, it’s my term. I didn’t learn about the ghost, Parno, I learned about the alien technols. How long was I in there?”
“A few alien-norm minutes. In this vessel, you and I are the aliens.”
“Oh, Parno, it felt like…hours, longer. It felt…timeless.”
“Kathlynn, assuming the ghost is looking for us now, we can’t stay one step ahead if we linger in the translation arena all wrapped up in function retainers.”
Kathlynn laughed lightly, shaking her head. Parno did love that sound.
“So, here’s what we’ll do,” he suggested. “You don a suit, figure out what to do, and I’ll protect you from the ghost.”
“I don’t think you’re capable of protecting me from the ghost,” she stated with no inflection.
“I think it’s time to confront it, Kathlynn. I don’t think the ghost can harm us. The thing is intangible.”
“Haven’t we discussed this before?” Kathlynn asked, her voice firm but not demanding. “Don’t you terribly fear this horrid…thing?”
“Yes, even seeing it is debilitating,” he admitted. “I become weak and terrified and just want to run and run. But I hope to convince my physicality that the ghost has none, and thus can be confronted objectively. I hope to overcome my fear.”