by F P Adriani
“You wouldn’t be able to understand the controls,” Devin said from the same step Steve was on.
Steve’s head spun toward him as he said in an annoyed tone, “Excuse me?”
We had all kept moving up, and Kostas was at the very top of us, alone on a step. She turned around to face us now. “We don’t have time to explain the controls. The workers are taking care of your suits with their devices.”
“Well, they’re not doing a very good job,” Shirley snapped, pushing her dark hair away from where it was sweat-plastered to one of her cheeks. “I thought we weren’t the first to make this trip—why weren’t you more prepared to make it comfortable for us?”
Kostas’ dark eyes fell on Shirley. “You are the not the first humans to find and use a stone, but you are indeed the first to make this trip, outside of the working members of this planet.”
“O-oh,” Shirley said in a breathless way, her blue eyes widening. “Well, I guess that’s something exciting then—being a first. I’m sorry for complaining—”
“Don’t apologize to them, Shirley,” I said. “I know I’ve been griping a lot, but I don’t care. A new adventure or not, I’d rather we all live through it and come out as healthy as before.”
“You will live,” Kostas said, turning back toward the rise of the stairs. “Another few dozen steps, and we’ll enter the first level.”
I groaned, but my uncomfortable booted feet continued their journey upward. The stairs eventually turned inward more, toward where the “center” of the mountain’s shape seemed to be—at least where it seemed to be at this moment: unless I was going crazy, the mountain’s shape had changed….
There was a stone overhang on the left side of the stairs now; Kostas disappeared into the dark opening beneath the overhang, and Gary and I followed her into a cooler, interior space. It was quite dark inside, but a golden light was coming from somewhere on the right. Kostas’ orange-suited figure moved in that direction, and Gary and I followed her again. I heard the others come up fast behind us, as if they’d fallen very behind and were trying hard to catch up, but my vision was focused forward on the gradually lightening room-like space we were now moving in.
On the left, a massive stone table stretched back into the darkness, and a bunch of devices made of what appeared to be stone and shiny black metal were spread out over the table’s top. Kostas moved to near there, and a person came out of the shadows—a robed person, a Keeper, whose face was almost completely covered. There seemed to be a brief pause among all of the people in the room; then The Keeper’s robed head nodded at Kostas.
“Upal normally resides in the mountain,” Kostas said as she turned to face me and my crew. “He must remove his robe in order to work. Prepare yourselves now.”
“What the hell do you mean?” I asked.
And it wasn’t long before I got a visual answer to my question: Upal’s orange robe slid down his body, which I now saw was indeed humanoid in overall shape, but his individual parts—they chaotically flickered on and off; one instant they were here, the next instant they were gone. And when his parts were on, a circulatory system was visible inside them. In fact, everything was visible, including what looked like five wildly pumping small hearts scattered around his torso and something brown moving through what appeared to be his lower intestines….
He was a horrifying, physically discomfiting sight. I had to look away. So did the rest of my crew. I heard sharp breaths being sucked in behind me.
“What is happening with him—” someone gasped—it sounded like May.
“He is not always here,” Kostas said, which wasn’t a detailed-enough explanation for my tastes. But I was so horrified by Upal’s appearance that I felt unable to speak and ask Kostas for more information. That the dimensional sickness seemed to have come back as soon as Upal had taken off his robe wasn’t helping matters. The dark walls in the big space around me seemed to be constantly changing shape—I struggled to get a bearing somewhere—finally felt Gary grab my left elbow hard.
“You’re falling over—” he said “—are you all right!”
“Not really….” I had closed my eyes, and now I took a few deep breaths. “Don’t you feel the changes here?”
“Yeah,” Gary said, “but I wish I wasn’t feeling them.”
When I opened my eyes and looked up at him now, he was clearly avoiding looking at where Upal was, just like I was avoiding it, and when I turned toward the rest of my crew, their heads were facing down and away….
I heard Kostas’ firm voice. “Upal needs the stone now.”
I groaned, my fingers fumbling with my belt pocket and finally yanking out the stone. “I’m going to need to eat something soon—the walls look like they’re moving. I’m feeling so nauseous….”
“We will give you food, but Upal must place the stone on the scale straight away,” Kostas said, and out of the corner of my right eye, I saw one of her hands jerk toward the big table.
The stone felt cool in my palm, like always, and there was something so comforting about that now. I felt a stab of depression that at some point soon, I wouldn’t be able to feel that comforting sensation ever again.
I shuffled toward the table, carefully avoiding looking at poor Upal, who, for all I knew, was the most beautiful member of his species. But, to us, to the human species, he contained aspects of a humanoid that humans did not want to see while those aspects were in operation.
However, the difficulties I was having with his appearance weren’t only because of his internal organs—his temporaneous nature was just as bad; his appearance and disappearance constantly reminded me of how fragile physical existence could be.
A part of me couldn’t help feeling sorry for Upal, so, as I laid the firestone onto the table, I glanced in his direction but not quite at him, and smiled a little. “Here,” I said, and an instant later I felt something touch my hand—but it was so fast and so light, I thought I had imagined it. Or maybe it was just the wind coming in from outside. It apparently had strengthened, and the air in here had grown dustier. Could there be a storm coming….
“Upal says to not worry about him and to step back from the table,” Kostas said.
I did as she said. “How—how did he know what I was feeling?”
“He touched your hand,” Kostas said.
I wasn’t sure what to think about touchy-feely behavior from The Keepers, but, as far as I could tell, their touching me hadn’t done anything negative to my body. I did, however, feel bad for my thoughts about Upal’s appearance. I hoped I hadn’t hurt his feelings….
“The Keepers don’t feel things the way humans do,” Kostas said.
My head shot toward her. “Are you reading my mind now too?”
“Upal has set up a neural link with you.”
“But I didn’t give you permission to do that!” I said, my head spinning toward Upal, then regretting that spinning, once I caught sight of him. I whipped my eyes away.
And Kostas said, “The link is temporary and necessary to scan for any residue from your interaction with the stone. You have formed an attachment to it.”
My face was flaming: what else had they sensed from inside my mind or my body? I was also embarrassed at my emotional response to a stone—embarrassed in front of my crew, in other words. Now I said to Kostas, “You can read my thoughts, so why can’t I read yours?”
Kostas turned toward me more. “We cannot allow that. You are only here temporarily.” Her head swiveled back toward Upal, and I marveled at how she appeared to have no problem looking right at him for long periods of time. Going on the motions of both of their heads and their bodies, they seemed to be having a conversation now without actually having one.
Kostas’ dark-haired head came my way again. “Upal thinks that if he sends something to you over the link, it might help with the dimensional sickness. We are a little perplexed that you’re all having so much difficulty. Shirley is on the verge of vomiting.”
I spu
n around and saw Shirley hunching over against one of the dark walls. Steve was standing beside her, and one of his big palms was pressed to her upper back—she jerked forward even more and threw up—repeatedly, as if everything she had in her stomach decided to make an appearance now.
I jerked a hard hand at her, then at Kostas. “Help her, for chrissake!”
An instant after I said that, I felt something happening in the center of my brain—I felt a tingling there, as if a feather were tickling my gray matter.
The tickling sensation expanded downward, toward my stomach. It seemed to be stroking me inside there, soothing it, and going on the looks on my crew’s faces, including Shirley’s, they were all experiencing the same soothing feeling.
“That’s better!” I practically cried in joy now, because, suddenly, this place didn’t seem so discomfiting, and neither did Upal. I realized then that there was beauty in his anatomy, almost as if I were completely and truly looking at an Earth ocean for the very first time, because I could now see the physical motion of the tides via the lines of force connected to the Moon. To see the beauty beneath a body, you just need to put on the right kind of glasses….
I remembered that I was still wearing the actual glasses the workers had given me. I took them off now. “What’s happening? I feel different. It’s gotten dustier in here, but it’s not hampering my vision.”
Kostas moved closer to the big stone table, but not quite up to it. “Upal is coordinating your normal dimension better with the various dimensions of the surroundings here, but this will not last once we leave this level and go outside. If we keep the neural link with you up the mountain, it might interfere with the decommissioning.”
“Too bad,” Chen said in a deflated voice from nearby. “I think I could get used to this.”
I nodded rapidly at him.
“Can I have something to eat, please?” Shirley asked in a small voice. “Unfortunately, the taste in my mouth is still terrible.” Her back was pressed against the wall now; her face was flushed and tilted away from Steve, as if she were embarrassed that he was seeing her so sick.
I turned back to the table, where a metallic-looking object was suddenly sparkling into life in front of Upal. Several workers suddenly rushed past him, toward the darkness in the back of the room—yet with my new “eyesight,” I could see more shapes in the dark, could see what seemed to be huge cabinets, which the workers now opened. The cabinets apparently contained supplies, maybe for Upal to live here….
The workers soon returned and held out irregularly shaped black boxes toward my crew. Devin finally handed me one, and when I opened it, I found a container of that bluish fluid and a clear bag of fluorescently-bright red crackers. “Um, these look beautiful, but are they safe to eat?”
“I eat them all the time,” Kostas said.
I shrugged, then bit into one of the crackers. It wasn’t bad; at least it was sweet.
I laid my box on the floor, and when I straightened up again, what was happening on the table caught my eye: Upal’s fingers had pinned the firestone onto an elevated, bronze-looking plate; his fingers were flickering-moving in and out of this dimension, but they didn’t seem to be flickering as much they had been before my neural linking.
Something different also happened to the stone now: a sharp, airy hiss came off of it, as if a door inside that hadn’t been opened in eons had finally been opened.
“Upal has permanently initiated the stone’s decommissioning,” Kostas said in a firm voice. “We must get back to walking upward.”
I felt a little disappointed. “What about the mind-link—once it goes, will we get it back again later?” I had felt mad that Upal had done the link with me, but now that I’d had it, I didn’t want to lose the damn thing.
Kostas’ dark eyes glanced at me. “When we reach some of the other levels, if you’re all still feeling unwell, we will initiate the linking again. But we lose time then, so just try not to feel so stressed by the journey. That isn’t helping your physical states.”
“It works both ways,” I said. “Our bodies aren’t used to what’s going on, and that’s affecting our heads.”
Kostas nodded at me a little, and Upal left the table and came closer to me. He stopped less than a foot in front of me; this close, I realized that his head and face weren’t as transparent as the rest of him, but his circulatory system was still visible everywhere, and his body shimmered as if streams of liquefied opals were running through his veins.
I felt tears fill my eyes now; then I felt Upal raise one of his strange hands and gently touch the inside corner of my right eye.
“What is he doing?” I asked softly.
“He has never seen a human cry,” Kostas replied.
Upal’s hand was still shimmering against my face, and his strange, colorless eyes were flashing into nonexistence then back into existence quite rapidly. “Does the crying look interesting to you?” I asked.
And Kostas said, “He’s not sure he understands it. The Keepers have existed with a very purpose-filled existence for so long. They are required to do their work at various bases around the universes. They usually live alone, because their appearance is so difficult for others to handle, even for each other when they’re very young. It took me years to be able to watch them work for several minutes at a time without looking away.”
Upal’s hand had left my face, but where he’d touched me felt warm now. And his chaotically changing head still seemed fixed in my direction.
“How many of you are there?” I asked. “Do you have children?”
“Though The Keepers sometimes have sexes, they are predominantly asexual. They bud,” Kostas said. “There are an unknown, possibly uncountable number of Keepers because the different sects work in different universes. They do not often get into contact with each other.”
“You seem to lead lonely lives,” I said in a quiet voice. “You remind me of bees a little, including you human workers. You’re part of this ‘hive’ here, but do you really interact that much with each other personally?”
Behind Upal, Kostas’ hands were dangling at her sides, and she seemed to be blinking kind of fast now. When she spoke again, her voice was slower. “We do have the mind-link with each other. But some jobs are so important that they are their own reward. The individual doesn’t need anything else.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve felt that way about my shipping business at times; still, at other times, it’s not nearly enough.”
I felt a motion from Upal—as if he’d exhaled at me—a light, crisp little wind. I liked to think that it was a sigh of agreement, but then if it had been, that might mean Upal was sad inside. And I didn’t like to think of his being sad. “Will we see you again?” I asked him now.
He seemed to flicker faster than normal.
“He will try,” Kostas said.
And then Upal moved away from me and to the table again, where he gestured toward the stone, then toward me.
I moved closer, but I stopped abruptly before I reached the stone. “Whatever you did to it, could it hurt me? Kostas, you mentioned the layers of an onion—and I guess you’ve peeled one off now. And, well, onions often make you cry.” I glanced at Upal, then at Kostas.
“Other than being coded to you for your use, the stone is still inert to you,” she said. “The creators of the stone did have the foresight to see that other organic lifeforms besides the creators could get hold of the stones. They aren’t able to do anything directly to any substances but ships. The stone pulled you inside your ship into its well, but you and your crew were still kept away from the energy inside the well.” Kostas quickly adjusted the long sleeves on her orange suit. “It is time to keep moving. Please pick up the stone, Captain Zarro.”
“Call me Lydia,” I said, without intending to say that. “Can I call you Ilona?”
Kostas shook her head “no.” “I’ve never really gone by that name as an adult, so I’d prefer that you didn’t use it.”
I shrugged; then my fingers gingerly touched the stone—it didn’t dangerously zap me or anything, but it did feel much warmer than it had—maybe the neural link was responsible somehow. I sighed a little as I took the stone in my palm. “I wish I had the kind of mind that could understand a lot more of this.”
“You’ve been given the mind you’ve been given, and it’s a good one,” Kostas said, making me blush and wonder if that compliment was meant from her or from Upal, or maybe from both.
“Captain Zarro,” Shirley said from on my right, looking at both Upal and Kostas, “I’m a mess, including the front of my worksuit. Please tell me I can clean up somewhere before we go….”
“And I have to piss,” Gary said bluntly.
“Come to think of it, me too,” I said. “We all need a bathroom break.”
Kostas called to Devin, and he motioned for me and my friends to come with him.
We followed him into the dark back area where the cabinets were; he turned on an overhead light, revealing a wide space with a long, waist-high sluice area filled with what looked like normal water. A large round drain covered in a metal grid was fixed into the room’s gray stone floor.
Devin opened one of the wall-cabinets and pulled out an orange worksuit, presumably for Shirley.
“Um,” I said, “we don’t want to go to the bathroom in front of each other.”
Devin motioned to the right, where there was a large doorway in the dark wall. “Three private toilet compartments and shower stalls are in there, or you can wash using the waterfall and sprayer here.”
I was standing near the moving trough of water now; I put my hand inside the slightly cool fluid, and it felt nice and fresh on my skin.
“All right—this is good,” I said, splashing a little of the water onto my face.
*
When we were all done using the somewhat crude bathing and bathroom facilities and Shirley had changed into a clean worksuit, my crew and I went back out into the big room.