Spaceling

by Piserchia, Doris

  There was only a moment or two for me to look around before I scampered through the half-open archway. During those few instants, I saw a great deal of expensive, ultra-modem equipment in the form of computers, temperature dials, pressure gauges, energy scales, and the like. There was also a small arsenal on one wall, a collection of guns, knives and bludgeons. Evidently each weapon had a magnetic attractor built into it because a goth wearing a metal harness tapped a button with a claw and a gun flew from the wall and across the compartment to lodge against his shoulder. With a twist of his head he used his tongue to activate the trigger and pellets began ricocheting around me. One singed the fur on my tail as I went beneath the half-closed archway. I galloped down the seemingly endless bore.

  The place was like the inside of a cylindrical mirror, a dull gray, lambent lights reflecting dozens of images of myself, full of booming echoes that threatened to knock me down. Behind me came sloks and farther behind them came goths. The distance between the two groups lengthened so I slowed down long enough to see how a slok reacted when kicked against a metal wall. My specimen ceased troubling me almost at once, bounced off the ceiling like a limp bag and went skidding into the path of his associates.

  It was easy to run in the bore. There wasn’t a flaw anywhere in the shiny surface and my weight was sufficient to create traction. About seven meters in diameter, the cylinder seemed to stretch for miles. I knew I was in no danger as long as the situation remained as it was. I simply had to run faster than my pursuers.

  Straight as an arrow the bore or pipe raced through D-2, vibrating, nearly dancing as the power pods back in the pit fed it with mighty juice. As I ran, I thought about the power of the machine. It wasn’t doing anything but making noise but my imagination conjured up dire visions of what it could do. I saw the bore as a gigantic cannon aimed and ready to fire. At what? I couldn’t think of a single answer. There seemed to be no reason in the world why the engine and its tubes should exist.

  Patterns in my life seldom remained static. My sojourn through the metal hallway was disrupted by an optical illusion appearing ahead of me. By the time I saw it I was convinced I had run eighty or ninety kilometers.

  The change in the landscape caused me to slow down. My enemies gained ground. Unable to make sense out of the intense light, I slowed even more. A slok made a grab for my tail, grabbed again. I wasn’t too busy to give him a kick.

  The light was green, a familiar enough shade and one that I saw every day, but this had a gray center that completely disoriented me. The scene was like a circular buzz saw embracing a center of darkness with everything whirling and swirling as if in a strong wind.

  I hadn’t much time to make up my mind, what with sloks preparing to surround me, but the fact that they didn’t seem disturbed by the strange lights lent me courage. I barged ahead and waited to see what would happen.

  The center of the circle changed to a glittering black. I didn’t realize I was within the perimeter or corona of a large green ring until I fell through one of the openings in the pipe. Actually, I jumped. There was nowhere else to go unless I plunged into the maelstrom of blackness or unless I turned to fight the sloks and goths who seemed to have increased in numbers and ferocity. With the disorienting lights behind me, I faced the enemy, meanwhile looking for a way out.

  On both sides of me, the holes suddenly came into view. At first I didn’t think they were real, but as I began kicking sloks as fast as they attacked, I saw that the shapes in the steel didn’t change position. For some reason, I thought of air vents. The holes were big enough and inviting and at the last minute, when it was obvious that I had to make a choice or go down, I took my option and backed through the nearest one.

  One second I was a big, hairy goth and in the next I vanished. The green light had been the corona of a green ring and the holes in the pipe were entrances into the third dimension or Waterworld. All of a sudden I was a swimmer seven centimeters long. Instinctively I made like a wraith, ducked down along the side of the bore and lay flat against it while adult swimmers floated everywhere, searching.

  Ever so slowly I drifted farther under the bore. Now and then a swimmer passed below me, but they were looking for a human-sized prey and not one who could fit herself around a few barnacles on the metal. I faded into the anonymity of familiar flotsam and while I waited for them to abandon their hunt, I thought about what I’d learned. What kind of people could build a pipe that extended through a green ring? Why had they done it? Also, what kind of people turned into sloks when they traded dimensions?

  6

  I was walking down a hot and dusty street in the town near Mutat when Pat and Mike sprang out from behind a tree to take me prisoner. They tied my hands and stuck tape across my mouth so I couldn’t yell. After thrusting me in the back seat of their old gasoline burner, they rattled out of the territory and rode through the countryside for what seemed like years. It was actually only a few hours but I couldn’t see through the Venetian blinds on the windows and there was nothing for me to do but endure the stifling heat and brood over my past mistakes.

  Grunting and groaning weren’t satisfying pastimes but I had to do something, besides which the noises inspired my kidnapers to make occasional comments such as, “Shut up, brat,” or “You’re neck-deep in friction, kid,” or “Your rotten little remains are going to save our hides, beast.” Conceivably, they might eventually tell me something I could use.

  From their mutterings I gathered they had made a nearly fatal error by selling a certain human property and now they intended to get back into someone’s good graces by locating and snatching the same property. Trouble was, she was immune to truth drugs and was difficult to catch and hold onto.

  Languishing in the hot automobile, I groaned and made garbled threats behind the tape. Who wanted me? Who had ordered them to pick me up? To whom were they delivering me?

  They stopped to eat but didn’t offer me anything. I could have used a cool drink, some fresh air and my freedom.

  When the ground first began to shake, I wasn’t aware of it In a half-swoon from the heat, I gradually realized that Pat and Mike were concerned about something. Hope filtered through my sagging psyche. If they were in trouble, it could only mean the opposite for me.

  It was late afternoon. Pat suddenly jammed on the brakes and she and Mike got out. The ground under me moved almost rhythmically, making me wonder if we were on train tracks. Perhaps they intended to kill me by stalling in front of an old transport. Or maybe we sat on the wobbly edge of a cliff.

  Struggling up, I shoved aside the Venetian blind with my head, peered through the back window and saw, to my surprise, that we were on a superthroughway in green country. Why, then, was the world gyrating? I noticed fresh air coming into my section and knew Pat and Mike had left their doors open while they gawked at the rippling turf beyond the road. Immediately I attacked a back door handle with my teeth. First I pulled up the lock after which I clamped the handle in my jaws and slowly applied pressure in the wrong direction.

  Someone outside was yelling. Tires screeched, alarms sounded as drivers pressed buttons, horns on old models honked. I changed direction with my jaws, moaned in pain, pushed upward, choked and gurgled, all at once fell from the car as the door opened. Instead of falling onto macadam as I anticipated, I dropped into a culvert that had been created when the street split. Now the air was filled with such a thunderous roar I thought the sky was cracking open. It was only the earth breaking up around me in several places, and I landed in one such spot. Panic came when the culvert shuddered and threatened either to close in on me or widen and drop me even deeper. The ground couldn’t make up its mind as it yawned and buckled, and I waited no longer but bounded erect and started climbing. I used my feet and when they weren’t enough, I dug in with my chin.

  Eventually Pat and Mike noticed me going at full speed across an untouched field. They came after me. Once in a while I fell when the ground dipped or heaved. The earthquake continued and s
o did I, through high grass with the twins hot on my trail, until I spied a blue ring in the sky. Any ring would have done. I directed it to swoop toward me in a swooping arc so that as I went through it in a sloppy dive it probably flew skyward where Pat and Mike couldn’t reach it.

  If I had anticipated tranquillity in D-2, disappointment awaited me. The tape over my mouth muted into a snoutful of foul smelling gook while the rope on my hands fell to the ground in little white flakes that disintegrated. Almost eagerly I landed in a pool of hot tar that began heaving in exactly the same manner as the surface of the dimension I had just fled. Not only was Earth having an earthquake, a like disturbance marred the peace of the second world.

  Plowing through the tar pool to the lower rocks of an escarpment, I attempted to climb to a solid looking ledge. If the mountain fell on me, I might never get out from under the debris.

  A tremor dropped me back into the pool which abruptly plunged into a chasm as its bottom fell out. I hurtled and continued to hurtle within the mass of spewing liquid until finally I was washed into a labyrinth and carried through it at breakneck speed. Everything, including me, rushed down a hot falls and was temporarily submerged in a pool within the confines of an amphitheater. I hung around no longer than was necessary. Beaching and finding my way to the surface through various labyrinths, I started hunting for a green ring. I had to know if anything was happening in D-3.

  Waterworld was having one of its common maelstroms, only now I knew they weren’t so common and never had been, and I also knew the experts were wrong in their cautious explanations that the rumblings and movement in the wet dimension were mere settlings. This was an earthquake, or a waterquake, and it was the same one that disrupted Gothland and Earth.

  “The trouble with you,” Kisko said to me later, “is that you drop bombshells as if they’re handkerchiefs. Pardon me while I react.”

  “Squirm,” said Wheaty. “You’ve pulled an indescribable from your magic hat.”

  “Could it be mining?” said Deron.

  Kisko shrugged. “Sounds like it, though I don’t know how.”

  “Not gold or diamonds!” I said, prepared to be disappointed. When the three urged me to tell them again, I did. The bore began in D-3, went straight through a ring into the pit in D-2 and continued elsewhere. No, I had never seen or heard of anything or anyone holding a ring stationary.

  I went riding into the hills. It was hot and Googs limped along behind. The earth was good but I felt depressed. There didn’t seem to be anything going for me. I knew, even then, that the most important thing in my life was and would be the human relationships I established.

  “You and I, Bandit, we’re two of a kind,” I said aloud. “We come on too strong and people think we’re smart alecks.” Intent and act. No matter my intentions, I would probably never be the belle of the ball.

  It suddenly started to pour and we sought shelter under a big tree. Bandit liked cool water dripping on him so I sat on the ground between his legs with Googs hunched against my side. My one regret at the moment was that I couldn’t take them into D with me and get lost. I didn’t dare. Who knew what they would be like on the other side or if they would even survive the transition?

  Pondering the question gave me an idea so, after the rain stopped, I exercised Bandit and then went back to the house. Deron wanted to talk about the metal bore but I walked away from him and headed for the barn. When a suitable blue ring happened by, I went into D-2 and hunted for a live dree. One popped from a tiny hole in the ground, saw me and started to pop back in. Too quick for it, I snagged it with a claw and, with it dangling from my teeth, jumped through a yellow ring and promptly had a fat white rat trying to eat my head off. I lay on my back and watched it race across a narrow meadow toward a cluster of old barns. So much for that.

  The next dree I caught turned into a small bobcat that took one look at me after we entered D-i, screeched and took off at flank speed toward a convenient patch of woods. So much for that.

  Back in Gothland I examined several drees. There seemed to be six or seven varieties, all similar as far as size and body fur were concerned but with definite differences in shapes of eyes, ears and tails. They all seemed to be natives of Earth and they had either accidentally gone through blue rings or someone had deliberately forced them through.

  Returning to the ranch, I discovered that my three caretakers were having another quarrel about me. Wheaty wanted the others to stop sending me into D—as if their orders really motivated me—Kisko wanted me to take it easy for a while and lay low in case the sloks were mustering a defense against intruders, and Deron wanted to know why I hadn’t been captured or killed. He was all for locking me in the cage again until I came up with some satisfactory answers. How had I managed to get farther into the enemy complex than any other muter who had ever worked for them? Why didn’t I use ring channels like everybody else? Why wasn’t I dead?

  “Sometimes I think that’s how you want her!” said Wheaty. “If you ever had any ethics you’ve lost them.” To Kisko, he said, “You’re no better. I didn’t sign up to tag along while a kid constituted the first assault wave. What kind of human being are you?”

  “The land who finds it difficult to work without a second in command. Are you sure you’re not part of the resistance? Because you’re better at resisting than anything else.”

  Wheaty looked sullen. “When a full grown guy doesn’t come back from one of our assignments, I feel bad. I tell myself it’s a lousy world. I haven’t been able to create a bromide for her. What’ll I say when she doesn’t come back?”

  “When do we eat?” I said.

  Wheaty came in to talk to me after the others had gone to bed. “I know the only reason you work for us is the animals,” he said. “I got a good place picked out for them. It’s a nice farm in Ohio, little, but you’ll think it’s great, and it’s all paid for with your name on the title. What do you think of that?”

  “I wish you hadn’t done it.”

  His sagging chin drooped even more. “What does that mean? Do you want to get Bandit away from Deron or not?”

  “I’d rather buy him with my wages.”

  “Then do it. Who do you think owns the papers on him and everything else around here? That’s part of my job, buying hunks of territory so we can work out of them.”

  “How much does he cost?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Bandit”

  “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “Don’t you understand what I’m talking about? This is your life. You don’t have to buy the horse. He’s already yours.”

  Getting out of bed, I crossed to my bureau and took out my money envelope. Coming back with a stack of bills, I said, “Is a thousand dollars enough?”

  His pale blue eyes looked defeated. He appeared to be exhausted. “I don’t understand you. You aren’t like any kid I ever met in my life. You want to give me all the money you risked your neck for to buy something I’m trying to hand over to you for nothing.”

  “You have your methods of operation, I have mine. Where’s the paper?”

  He went away to the money box hidden behind some wallpaper in the living room and came back with the registration. “Here’s the thing, all signed. The horse is yours.”

  “And this money is yours.”

  He felt his forehead with trembling fingers. “Maybe Fm too old.” He glanced at the slok I had painted on the wall. “I should have been bom a hundred years ago. I can’t tolerate the bad weather we get these days.”

  “How much did you pay for the farm?”

  “You can earn that much by putting your life on the line a few more times, is that it? Didn’t you ever hear of charity?”

  “As long as I can work—”

  “Shut up,” he said. “Don’t talk. You’re the kind of person who has to be looked after. For some reason you have no normal human caution. Do you want to spend the rest of your short life running from monsters? What is it, a thrill or something
? Isn’t ordinary living exciting enough for you?”

  “It’s just that everybody lies to me and that includes you. If people told me a few truths, I’d probably be satisfied to retire.”

  “People don’t tell you truths because there aren’t any. Don’t you know this is a lousy world?”

  He gave me plenty of time to move the animals before he betrayed us, for which fact I was grateful since I wouldn’t have wanted to leave them there where no one would be around to care for them. Maybe he thought that since I was usually away I wouldn’t be caught along with Kisko and Deron. Or maybe he believed it would be better if I died of a quick bullet or a bludgeoning than in the jaws of a slok. It was a long time before I had the chance to ask him which it was.

  I had no intention of using his farm in Ohio. Hiring my own driver, I left Wheaty’s man somewhere in Pennsylvania while I and the new employee drove to Jersey.

  A woman named Olger lived on the farm I leased. She had walked away from an old folks’ home and simply moved in. My coming was no surprise to her since it was a good piece of property and she probably knew that sooner or later someone would come along and claim it. Anxious to stay on, she agreed to take care of the horse, the dog and all the cats. I gave her money and permission to find good homes for the kittens. When I was fully satisfied that everything was in order, I left and went to work.

  There would be no more blunderings or reckless boltings into danger. Such was my decision, so I floated cautiously into Greenworld somewhere near enemy territory, more particularly in the vicinity of the vents where the metal pipe rammed through a ring. If I hadn’t decided to be careful for a change, I probably wouldn’t have entered D-3 practically in the middle of a drifting clump of seaweed and then I wouldn’t have found Mike.