From the sound of it the term could have originated in any number of Raanvedian languages, only Hulé said the traveler denied ever hearing it before, and when she’d searched SyzNet the last time nothing came up. Manglokel could mean anything in the universe, or nothing. The traveler might have misunderstood what the commander said.
“… … … … … … … … …”
She sighed. “End search—”
“MANGLOKEL,” the Egg flashed. “PHYLOGENETIC SPECIES RECOGNITION AND SPECIES CONCEPTS IN FUNGI. ECTOMYCORRHIZAL FUNGAL COMMUNITIES. SPOROSTATIC PRODUCTS OF MANGLOKELIAN FUNGUS, EFFECTS OF ZYGOMYCETOUS VESICULARARBUSCULAR MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI ON HOSTS, CHANGES THE ENVIRONMENT, ESPECIALLY THE SOIL. ANTAGONISTIC PROPERTIES OF SPECIES, ALGONIZED SYMBIONTS PLACED IN LICHENIZED GENERA WITHOUT CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE…”
Zipporah read on for a few minutes, understanding little other than the apparent fact that “Manglokel” was a type of fungus. The connection could be coincidental, but on the other hand this may lead to the truth about Karrick’s death. Grabbing the synthepage from the printer on her way out, she hopped on her graviboard and surfed up to the Raanvedian Embassy to get her ticket stamped for the next day’s flight.
That night in her cube, she lay on the fan bed, slowly turning, staring up at the intergalactic map on the ceiling. So many Systems, so many worlds, a limitless universe of infinite possibilities… The swirling clusters of stars and planets reminded her of the lights she’d seen in Karrick’s eyes. They seemed to hold the vastness of creation within their delicate lenses when he looked into her own brown eyes. Saio’s too reflected the universe, beaming bright and giddy, twinkling with delight at the wondrous discoveries they made each day. What life her family carried, stored up and burning, shining, blazing, trailing out like comets’ tails wherever their hearts conveyed them. How she missed him, how intensely she wanted him to behold his son, how many times she’d imagined the look on Saio’s face, the curious smile he’d make upon seeing his papa for the first time, on recognizing his own form, his own source and life in another. She closed her eyes and pleaded silently for Karrick’s return with her to Calperon. She didn’t care if he lay dead and buried on Raanved. A kiss from her faithful lips would raise him. Grant this, O Lord. Grant this, O Lord. Grant this, O Lord…
The trip would take five-eighths of a solar, one way, during which time she’d be asleep in her cryopod. The craft prepared for launch as she sealed her helmet to her time suit and locked her ankles, thighs, waste, torso, and head in place. The passengers began the journey conscious, standing up in their pods, then after exceeding the reach of Calperon’s gravitational pull the captain would initiate cryosleep. The engines rumbled below Zipporah’s feet. The helmet clasp rattled in her ears. Any second now they would launch and then it’d be like waking up from a long nap, in another world, where maybe, finally, she’d find the man who vowed to bring her home.
VII.
At first glance the capital of Raanved reminded her of certain places she’d read about in history books, developing nations where new technologies promoted growth, prosperity, and vitality. The same vehicles flew the streets as on Korratrea and Calperon, but these looked newer, more colorful, and the people more alive with anticipation of future happenings. The whole land rang with purpose, which startled Zipporah since she had envisioned the place as a wasteland.
Her first order of business was to find the traveler’s village, Henlopyow, roughly twelve thousand miles away, a distance quickly covered by the Raanved Express, a beam train running the span of the primary continent. She had preordered a ticket at the travel bureau on Calperon, naturally, under the alias of Abimiku Ckezvwa Topepsmaquodrote. Her train left at 10:00 that night, leaving her four hours to explore the city and learn what she could about Manglokel and the Korratrean Military’s involvement there.
Another difference she observed was that all the advertisements in the capital, the holographic billboards, the digital posters, even the Egg commercials between segments of the System News, they all seemed like public service announcements of a self-help, do-it-yourself variety. Instead of typical slogans like, “BroomSled, It Tidees As It Glidees,” she read inspirational mottos like, “Only You Can Achieve Your Purpose,” and, “Attention: You’re Already A Winner!” At first Zipporah figured this for a symptom of cryofatigue, selective vision and hearing, but literally every advertisement she saw conveyed an encouraging message.
The next strange difference she observed had to do with the inhabitants themselves. They were all human. Unlike every other location she had visited in the entire System not one nonhuman being appeared in the streets of the capital, not piloting the vehicles, not working at the stores, not strolling on the sidewalk. Every life form she saw was a human. She scanned the busy crowds for quadrupeds, to no avail. Not so much as a pug walked among them.
Last on her list of bizarre observations pertained to the phenomenon of Raanvedian communication. Far from the language through which Hulé and the traveler had conversed in the hospital on Calperon, the language employed in the capital used no words at all, but merely facial expressions—a series of smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows, scrunched up noses, all manner of facial contortions in precisely ordered combinations functioning as what appeared to be a coherent and articulate vocabulary.
Zipporah proceeded down the street, gripping the train ticket in her pocket, determined to board the Express and finish her journey.
She got on the train early, found her seat, and sat down, the only one in the passenger car. The door at the back slid open with a sharp whoosh as the gray haired attendant entered and sealed the door behind him, a gentle humming as the cabin repressurized. He marched up the aisle to her row, spun right ninety degrees to face her, and planted his feet. “Your baggage, Miss?”
“You can speak,” she said, relieved.
“Indeed. Do you have any bags, Miss?”
“No, no, just myself alone. Tell me something, has this place always been like this? The ad slogans, the humans, the faces and all?”
“I don’t follow,” replied the attendant.
“Has there always been such a low nonhuman population in this city?”
“I’m afraid so. As long as I’ve lived here, at least.”
“What about their faces? It seems like everyone here communicates by making odd faces at each other, everyone but you I mean. Is that how the inhabitants speak, by making faces?”
The attendant stood silently for a moment watching Zipporah’s expression as if to assess the full significance of the question.
“Do you understand what I said?” she asked.
“I believe so. Would you mind joining me in the dining car? I’d like to address your concerns over coffee, if I may.” The attendant smiled and stepped backwards, indicating the aisle with his hand.
“Ohh-kay,” she stood up and shuffled past the empty rows. At the back of the car she turned the handle and the door slid open with a sharp whoosh. They passed through four or five more passenger cars before reaching the dining car, which happened to be filled to capacity by people eating quietly and conversing in the peculiar way she had observed on the street.
“There’s one,” spoke the attendant, pointing to an empty table beside her. “Please,” he pulled out the chair.
Once they’d sat down, she said, “You understand my confusion. People don’t normally interact like this, and I haven’t seen a single nonhuman being since my arrival.”
The clinking of utensils and soft clatter of dishes grew louder in his silence. He only watched her, smiling faintly. “Perhaps you’re dreaming,” he said at last.
The words sounded like she had said them, like it was her own voice speaking from the mouth of the attendant. “Could I be… Am I still in cryosleep?”
“Can you walk, Miss? Hello. Can you walk?” Zipporah felt the edge of a hard object push against her shoulder. “Are you alive, Miss?”
“Uh-huh. Yes,” she responded.
“I’
m going to fetch an airsled. I’ll be back soon, okay? Very soon.”
When she woke again she was being loaded onto the back of an airsled like a pallet of Egg adaptors. “I can walk,” she called to the blurry figure above her. “I’m awake, I can walk.”
She rode shotgun as they flew down the path, back to the city where the craft must have docked. Out beyond the forest to the left of the towers, looming over the trees and over the highway leading to and from the capital, a silver-peaked mountain shone softly in the moonlight.
The man piloting the airsled noticed her looking. “Manglokel,” he said, pointing at the mountain.
“What?”
“Manglokel.”
“Take me there,” she asked, reaching into her time suit for the last of her money.
VIII.
The silver sheen at the peak acquired an aspect of movement the closer they got to the foot of the mountain. The shimmering light flowed in subtly pulsing waves from the icy peak down the pine-blanketed face and sides, making Zipporah doubt the validity of what she saw, and wonder if this weren’t all a dream or hallucination induced by cryosleep.
“Do you see that?” she asked the driver, “can you see those light waves?”
“This is the magic of Manglokel,” he smiled. “The Mountain of Silver Dust.”
When the road ended at the base of the foothills and the airsled could fly no farther, the man hoverparked at the gate of a chain link fence, turned and said, “Take care that you do not abide here. The mountain is beautiful, though it is not for us to make our home here. The people of Raanved have always known this.”
“Thank you,” she handed him a stack of thin emerald plates.
The wind blew cold and strong as she bounded up the trail as quickly as her space-weary legs could carry her. The pines whispered the presence of awakening life forms, some predators no doubt, and she without so much as a lightblade to protect herself. No sign of the waves she’d seen from the road, not until she mounted the crest of the highest hill below Manglokel’s wide face. Peering up through a gap in the trees she saw rivers of flowing silver light cascading over the mountain’s surface, ice, stone, and trees, like a projected ocean, billions of tiny particles glimmering and sliding weightlessly in paper thin layers over solid elements and beneath the air. Zipporah’s curiosity about the nature of the dust combined with her need to uncover the mystery of Karrick’s disappearance, an occurrence she knew to be inextricably linked to the power of this mountain. To reach the source of the waves she would have to climb all night and into the morning, uncertain of what effects the dust might have on her mind and body.
Many miles up the mountain, long after abandoning the winding trail for a more direct path, and still no sign of the dust on the ground or in the pines, she unsealed the top half of her time suit to cool off and tied the sleeves around her waist. Glancing down in the dark, suddenly her black shirt and bear arms shone with silver light, the sweat trailing lines of bright moisture on her skin, the fabric of her shirt emitting a silver-blue radiance. She squinted up at the treetops but could see no dust. “It must be invisible from below,” she thought, “or else activated somehow by water.” Zipporah drew a deep breath, exhaled. She felt neither sick nor weak, no more than expected after a climb like that. Judging by her view of the orange dotted towers of the capital she must be at least halfway to the peak.
“I knew I’d return to you,” he said calmly, “as soon as it was safe.”
She ran to meet him, kissed his lips, his hands, his face.
“The mission here, there was too much at stake. They never gave me a choice, Zeeah.”
They spun around and held each other, she kissed his neck, his cheek, jumped up into his arms.
“Every night I dreamed of waking you, every night. I watched you die ten thousand times. No other way he’d leave us alone, no other way.”
He wrapped his arms around her, tucked her head beneath his chin, rocked slowly back and forth, back and forth.
“Civilizations, Zeeah. Not towns, not cities, not even worlds. Whole species will be saved because of this. Life as we know it, life itself.”
“What of my life?” she demanded. “What of Saiojéte? The life of your child for the life of the worlds? You would make that exchange?”
“Why not, our Creator did.”
“God did that so we wouldn’t have to,” she cried.
Karrick lifted his hands and held them up in front of Zipporah’s face. “A soldier of my company, not much older than a boy, received this back because of Manglokel. His arms were severed at the wrist and at the elbow. We flew him here, took this,” he dipped his fingers in a glass cylinder of luminous silver grains, “spread some on his bleeding stumps and in minutes, Zeeah, his hands were restored. Since then we’ve seen cancer, plasma burns, failing organs, shattered bones, wasted nervous systems, all completely, instantly healed.” He drew a dark curl of hair back from her left eye. “I’m sorry I was not there for our son’s birth. I’m sorry I have not been able to share in his life thus far, but Zeeah, you must believe that I have not been able. My allegiance is to God and look, He has cared for you.”
“I met a traveler,” she said, “from the village of Henlopyow. A man named Ccazolan. Your commander and fellow soldiers, your brothers, murdered his family.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I know you were not there! Is innocent blood the price of healing, Karrick? Your men destroy a village and why? To keep the natives from resisting your presence here? To send a message, we will save the world at any cost?”
The Commander entered the laboratory with the Captain and two soldiers.
“Commander Xinn,” Karrick saluted.
“Lieutenant. Do you mind telling me what your wife is doing here?”
“I’ve come to—”
“I was just trying to ascertain that information myself,” he answered. “It sounds as if a survivor from Henlopyow informed her of my location. I apologize for the inconvenience, Commander. I will make haste to tie up any loose ends.”
“Like you’re so—”
“And I will prepare a full report for you by quarter moon, Sir.”
“By tomorrow, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He eyed Zipporah calmly. “Can I trust her to keep her mouth shut about our operation?”
“She won’t be a problem, Commander.”
“Escort her home please, Lieutenant Dallens. Report back on the first of Thorgh, next solar.” He eyed Zipporah once more. “If I see her again she dies.”
As the Commander marched toward the laboratory exit, Zipporah called out, “His wife was Duijairo. She helped him at his store, firing the kiln and repairing broken vessels. His son, Ccazi, was a musician, and brilliant, deaf since birth.”
Commander Xinn paused for a second, and kept walking.
IX.
Zipporah, Karrick, Hulé, and Saio sat at a table on the patio of the market bar and restaurant in Calperon T34. Karrick was attempting to persuade Saio to eat his cacti pasta, while Zeeah and Hulé speculated about the fate of the injured traveler who’d journeyed into the outlands once his health had been restored.
“Perhaps he went seeking a village where he could open a new store?” said Zipporah.
“I don’t think so, he didn’t have the look of a man in search of a home,” said Hulé.
“What did he say before he left? Did he mention anything about his plans, or a destination?”
“It has vitamins,” said Karrick. “Yummy vitamins.”
“Not to me. All he said was goodbye and thank you for the Egg, last I heard from him.”
“He took the Egg? I never said he could keep it.”
“How about you, Lieutenant,” Hulé asked, “what happens after the first of Thorgh?”
“Report for duty back on Raanved. The KWPAF arranged a sky home in the capital for these two théquos,” he nodded at Zeeah and the child. “I guess I’ll be working in the lab on Manglokel. Th
ere is more to that mountain than any mortal can know.”
Zipporah thought for a moment watching Saio poke a slice of cactus with his index finger. “Why do you think Ccazolan claimed he’d never heard the word, Manglokel, before? Every native of Raanved knows that name.”
“I wondered that myself,” said Hulé.
“He probably lied,” said Karrick, “to protect the secret of its magic.”
“I doubt that very much,” said Zipporah.
“Is it possible he failed to recognize the word, not because he’d never heard it, but because of the context in which the Commander spoke the name? If the mountain is as sacred as you say, perhaps the name is only true for those who honor it.”
THE END.
MORPHIA by Vincent Sakowski
Morphia sat under water on her high-backed, wicker chair. Her long, ravensesque tresses floated above her. Palms on her lap, she held down her black satin skirt.
Bubbles rose.
She couldn’t breathe.
No more than anyone else underwater… well, perhaps a little more.
But that was not where her power resided.
Her power was in her visions.
They only came to her when she was drowning, on the verge of death. Morphia discovered this once by accident, long ago, when she tried to drown herself on purpose in her bedroom. She’d taken out all her furniture and sealed off all the holes. Then she locked the door, broke the key in the lock, and filled her room with water from a hose attached outside her house-- which she’d ran under the door before sealing it off, and attached it to the ceiling. After paddling on the rising surface, Morphia shut off the water once the room was filled.
She’d left the light on, which cast a strange, soft glow in the room, reflecting off of the deep blue walls.
Calmly, she sank down to the hardwood floor and waited. As Morphia took her last breaths, her lungs filling with water, she had her first vision. In those moments as the vision unfolded, Morphia realized that she had to share it-- that she shouldn’t die-- that it would be wrong for her to do so. Now, she had a purpose, a reason to live. But she was also ten feet underwater on the floor of her room. Panicking, Morphia kicked at the floor, and flapped her arms, trying to swim to the ceiling, where there was a hatch that led to the attic. There had been no way for her to lock it, nor had she planned to escape to begin with, so she hadn’t thought of it much before. Now, Morphia was glad she had a chance to survive.
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