“Are you sure? How do you know you’re not connecting to something else? Or another one somewhere far away?”
I’d never learned how to differentiate between different caduceus—we were the only ones who had them, so there hadn’t been a need. “I don’t know for sure,” I admitted. “But how many people on Earth right now have a caduceus?”
She frowned at the question, the folded her arms. “I don’t think you should do it.”
“I know you don’t. But why else would I get a receiving tone other than I’ve found a connection with another device? I know the biosim is right here where we are. But look around—the only place it could be is behind that door…in the mountain that we can’t open. I have to try to transport to it. It’s gonna be fine.”
In truth, I was nervous too. My reasoning was sound, but I could still be wrong. “When I disappear, count to twenty and open yours for transfer again,” I said.
I confirmed that the biosim hadn’t moved, and that the connection to the other caduceus was still there, then I started the transfer.
The tingling was less startling this time, but the falling sensation was the same. I was immediately hit with the smell of animal when I materialized, and I hit my head on the low ceiling. I should’ve remembered to duck, I thought. I knew I was transferring into a small space carved in a mountain.
I Electrosensed around myself and confirmed what my nose had already told me. I was standing in a little space about six feet square and there was a large animal just feet away from me. I’d found my biosim.
This close, I could make it out just using Electrosense, but, being human and still wedded to my five natural senses, I turned on my flashlight to see. And the mountain goat who’s space I’d just entered immediately rammed me in the chest and sent me sprawling. I was so amped up that I forgot to slip the neural link into place. I reached for it again but the slipperiness was still there.
The goat was getting ready for another charge. I slid the link into place just as it started forward, but its momentum carried it into me anyway, knocking me down again. The goat looked down and bleated. No wonder it had been so hard to get a fix on it. We were in a hole in a mountain, behind several feet of solid granite.
I looked around the room and there, wedged into a crack in the wall was the caduceus that had let me transport in. A real, working one, I realized. Mine was a replica of this thing that was the real deal. Gently, I removed it from its place in the wall and studied it. It was a burnished bronze color and longer than mine. Worked onto the surface in black enamel were a pair of snakes that wound up the length. I ran my fingers along the snakes, and along the places that would activate mine, but nothing happened. It had been in here for thousands of years—I figured it had to have been on some kind of power conserve setting, but I couldn’t figure anything else about it. I channeled a small trickle of electrons into it. At first nothing seemed to happen, then it suddenly got so hot that I almost dropped it. Exploring the caduceus would have to wait for later.
I called Tati to let her know I was okay and had found the biosim.
“That’s good,” she said. “Can you hurry? I thought I heard something out here.”
“Don’t worry, it’s just the wind,” I told her. “I’ll come out as soon as I find the shims.”
Getting back to the mission at hand, I took my specimen collection equipment from my pocket and pulled out the special syringe I’d gotten from Beldran.
“Alright, my goat friend, this is going to pinch just a bit.”
The goat bleated when I jabbed the needle into its rump, but it didn’t move otherwise. I scanned the syringe with my caduceus as Beldran had shown me and waited. Hopefully this would work and they’d be able to tell me where the shims were hidden.
Almost immediately, I got a response saying that they’d received the transmission and were working on it. A minute or so later, I got another message:
The DNA message is present and consistent.
The shims you’re looking for are in a cavern hidden on a high ledge of the east slope of the highest peak.
The exact language they used is: “in a pocket in the stone above the golden river, between the peaks where Feather Serpent says the Sun God is born and dies.” A little reconstruction and cross-referencing got us the answer. You’re on the right path. We haven’t figured out what the next location is yet, but we’re working on it.
I pondered the newest riddle. An excavated cavern on a high ledge of the east slope of the highest peak. I was in an excavated cavern on the east slope of the highest peak right now. What were the chances there was another? Pretty slim, which meant the shims should have been in there somewhere, but I wasn’t sensing anything.
Not a big deal, I thought. They’re hidden of course. It wasn’t a big chamber, I didn’t think it would be too hard to find them. I felt along the walls for cracks and knocked to find any hollow spaces, but nothing turned up. I was getting frustrated and the smell of goat didn’t help.
Tati called again. “Nate, I really think there’s something out here. I heard some rocks fall.”
“Okay, maybe it’s an animal. Just hunker down and I’ll be out soon. I’m not finding the shims.”
“Okay, but don’t hang up,” she said.
Normally, I would’ve told her that keeping the light on would screw up her night vision, but I didn’t want to scare her more, and I didn’t think there was anything for her to be scared of, so I set my caduceus into the same place in the wall where I’d found the old one and kept talking to her while I poked around. She sounded nervous, and told me a couple of times that she heard more rocks fall.
“Well, you’re on a mountain,” I said, as I ran my hand along a stretch of wall feeling for hidden compartments. “Rocks fall off. That’s what happens.”
“They fall off when something makes them fall,” she said tartly.
I turned away so she wouldn’t see me smile. “It’s probably just the wind or some animal.”
I spent another ten or fifteen minutes searching and couldn’t find anything. What if the shims weren’t there? They should be, but what if they weren’t?
Tati’s scream drew me out of my contemplation. I looked at the picture and saw her running around outside.
“What is it?” I asked. In between wild swings of the camera, I could see something big and hairy, but couldn’t make out much else. I tried Electrosensing, but the rock blocked those efforts. “Tati, talk to me!”
She screamed again and I could tell she’d dropped the caduceus. She hit the ground right next to it and was struggling to hold the thing off of her. I tried to teleport to her, but she had to open the channel.
It was another mountain goat. I wasn’t sure if this one was real or another biosim, but it was a big-horned male, and it was intent on getting her off its turf.
She rolled out of the way just as the goat’s hooves stamped down where her head had just been. Her caduceus was still on the ground and all I could see was the dirt right in front of it.
I was screaming, “open the channel!” but she couldn’t reach her caduceus to open it. I could hear her off-camera struggling with the goat.
Tati’s feet and legs came back into view and the goat charged her again, but she sidestepped it like a matador and it barreled past.
The goat turned quickly and moved closer to the wall—closer to the caduceus. It had pushed Tati towards the edge and she now stood facing it with her back to the cliff, dancing around like a boxer.
“The edge!” I called to her.
“I know!” she screamed back.
The goat pawed the ground. One hoof come down dangerously close to the caduceus and I could hear it snorting. I had no idea how strong a caduceus was, but if the goat stomped on it and destroyed it, I’d be stuck in this cavern.
“The caduceus, Tati!” I hollered to her. “You gotta get it! Open the channel!”
“I know!” she said. “Shut up!”
The goat was smart enough
not to charge at her and possibly go over the edge, but it pinned her where she stood and kept stomping and pawing around. I tried again to zap it, but nothing was going through this rock.
Suddenly, Tati charged at the goat and it immediately reared up to ram her. Mountain goats head-butted each other all the time, but they had thickened skulls and horns. It would kill her. What was she doing?
“No!” I yelled.
The goat plunged towards her, and then I saw Tati dive into the dirt, sliding headfirst like she was stealing second base. The goat tried to correct its path but Tati slid under it and grabbed the caduceus. She opened the transfer channel and I braced for the falling sensation, ready to blast the goat, but nothing happened. And then suddenly Tati slid into my knees, taking me out like a shortstop covering the bag. She was safe in the cave with me and the raging goat was outside.
We’d connected and both tried to transfer at the same time. She won for some reason.
“Are you okay?” I asked, getting up to lift her to her feet. She nodded, but her cheeks were wet.
“I told you there was something out there!” she said. “I could’ve gotten killed.”
I was still in too much shock from the whole thing to do anything other than nod dumbly.
She punched me in the chest. It didn’t hurt and I laughed, which made her even angrier and she punched me again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing her and pulling her to me. “You were right. But you were amazing. You kicked its ass.”
I could feel the anger start to dissipate from her body.
“No help from you,” she finally said. I held her away from me and looked at her. “And I didn’t kick its ass. It took everything I had to keep from getting mauled. It’s still out there.”
“I was trying to transport to you to help, but you couldn’t reach your caduceus,” I said. “I couldn’t zap it through the rock. But you did good. You’re safe—that’s what matters.”
She smiled grimly. “How’re we gonna get out now?”
She had a point. I was avoiding thinking about that until I was sure she was safe. But since she’d come in to the chamber, rather than transporting me out, we were stuck. Three caduceus in the chamber, none out.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
“MacGyver would get out of here with a paper clip and a ballpoint pen,” I eventually said.
“Who?”
I always forgot that her cultural references were entirely different than mine.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re getting out. Let’s find the shims, then we can go. Is there any Neuroconceal at work in here?”
She looked around the chamber and shook her head.
Beldran called again. He’d found more to the message. There was a second note, encoded differently, explaining that the Talaris had placed the biosim in the same place where he’d stashed the shims. He’d hidden the shims first, then come back later and put the biosim in there because he thought he’d been tracked. So we were in the right place. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any more info or any tips on how to find them or get out.
I picked up the caduceus I’d found again and looked it over. Channeling electricity into the end of it again got me the same result as before. Something told me to try channeling into the other end. It worked without heating up.
“The ancients had the technology to travel to this universe, but didn’t make this caduceus non-polarized,” I announced.
“So is that gonna get us out?”
“Maybe.” I held the two caduceus end-to-end and channeled into mine, sending the flow through to the ancient one. Nothing happened. But when I did it the other way around—sending energy into mine—a beam of crackling blue energy arced out from the end of the ancient caduceus and into the wall. It must have caught on to some kind of metallic ore, because it crackled along the wall face, then went straight up to a spot near the ceiling.
“Do you think that meant something?” Tati asked. “Why would it go along the wall then shoot up like that if there wasn’t something there?”
I channeled again into the paired caduceus, this time aiming at the spot on the wall where the energy had gone. A blue arc went straight to the spot and a rectangular section about six inches wide immediately started to glow.
“I think we found it,” I said.
The glowing rectangle was about eight feet from the floor, too high for either of us to reach, so I boosted Tati up. After prodding and pushing the panel to no effect, she hammered it open. Inside was a little wooden box.
There was nothing special about the appearance on the outside, but I probed it gently with Electrosense before opening it. There didn’t seem to be any traps. Whoever had hidden all of this had done so knowing that only another Talaris would be able to find it.
I opened the box, and there, nestled inside, were six, semi-translucent, purple mushrooms—the shims hidden by the Talaris who’d encoded the goat, and the ones from the Talaris who’d encoded the terror bird. I stared at them for a moment before I stuffed them in my pocket.
I paired the two caduceus again and blasted the “door” that stood in our way. Nothing happened. I tried a second time and again, nothing happened. Then I tried something different. I took the ancient bronze caduceus and tried to use it to open a transmitting channel. It took me a while to figure out how to do it with that caduceus, but eventually I thought I had it.
“Tati, open a transfer channel. I know I can teleport to this caduceus—I wanna see if I can use it to start the transfer.”
“It’s not gonna matter though. We need someone outside of here.”
“I know, just humor me.” I deactivated my own caduceus to prevent interference and Tati opened a channel on hers. I wasn’t entirely sure I was doing it right with the ancient caduceus, but I activated it hoping to get the bell tone. Instead, I got the buzzing harmonics. Was there another caduceus nearby? If there was, who had it? I didn’t care, I was taking the chance. If they’d accept the transfer, I was going.
“I think I can make it out,” I said. “Deactivate your caduceus now, then turn it back on in twenty seconds. If I’m ok, I’ll bring you out then.”
I readied myself to fight whoever might be on the other side, then opened the transfer. It connected immediately and the familiar falling sensation began. When I emerged on the other side, I was on the very edge of the ledge. The goat charged. I tried to link it, but I was too slow and it sent me tumbling down. I bounced off the rock face and smashed my shoulder then landed on the hard slope with a crunch and rolled down a good ways. My face and hands were bloody and I’d probably dislocated my shoulder, but nothing was broken. My chumahai would have to work overtime on patching that up.
More importantly—there was not another caduceus out here. I’d confirmed something new—the ancient caduceus let you jump short distances without needing another caduceus to connect with. I was still processing this revelation and the pain in my body when I heard scraping sounds behind me. I turned just in time to see the goat come bumping along. I opened up and reached out—luckily for me, it was a biosim. I slipped the link into place and the goat stopped and just looked at me.
I connected to Tati and told her to wait for a few minutes until I could get to more level ground, then I pulled her and the other goat out. I had no idea how long it had been trapped alone in the dark, but leaving it seemed cruel—even if biosims were more machine than animal.
We made our way down the mountain without any real difficulty, and got into our tent just about the time everyone else was starting to awaken. We were tired, but couldn’t sleep once the sun started to rise, so we packed up and headed back to Barcelona.
Tashmit called before we’d made it back. “Good news,” she beamed. “We’ve determined the final location. It’s in the Bolivian highlands, in the vicinity of one of our oldest cities on Earth. We knew it as Ponkar En. The people now call it Puma Punku.”
“I’ve heard of Puma Punku,” I said. “Doesn’t it h
ave some amazing set of ruins and no one has ever figured out who built it, or when, or why?”
“Sounds like everywhere else we’ve been,” Tati muttered.
“Yeah,” I said, “but this one is supposed to be really special. The ruins are very well preserved.”
“As I said…” Tati said.
Tashmit continued. “Ponkar En was one of our first cities. We were more involved in its construction than in most of the cities that still exist on Earth. It had Electrogen capacity embedded from the beginning.”
“What happened to it?”
“The same thing that happened everywhere,” Tashmit sighed. “War. It was abandoned in advance of its destruction. Our ancestors were able to deconstruct much of the city and remove the technology, but the stone remains. I’ll tell you more once you’re settled.”
15
We got back to Barcelona too late to fly home, so we stayed the night and planned to head home in the morning. We walked Las Ramblas that evening. We ate grilled Galician octopus and drank cañas in a crowded bar with a bunch of British expats before we went back to our room. After her third beer, Tati was in my ear telling me all the things she was going to do to me when we were alone. It sounded like fun, so we excused ourselves from our new friends, who raucously cheered our departure, and went back to the hotel.
I went to the bathroom to pee and when I came back, Tati was out like a light. She looked so cute and tired I just let her sleep. Not long after, I was asleep too.
I awoke to a rustling sound and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was just past 3 a.m. Tati wasn’t in bed. I lay there momentarily, trying to identify the sound I thought I’d heard and going through possible explanations. Suddenly, I felt a sensation as if I was rushing through the air. There was no wind on my face, and the room wasn’t actually moving, but I had the sense of accelerating very rapidly and I could almost hear a whirring, marching sound. I’d never experienced it before, but I recognized it as a time disturbance.
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