by Gini Koch
Wilbur whined. He didn’t want to be left behind. Not ever, but especially when we were going on what appeared to be a dangerous mission. I didn’t want to leave him anyway, plus we might need his chocho nose again.
“Then I’ll carry him.”
“He’s heavy, Kitty,” Reader reminded me.
Dropped my Glock back into my purse, hefted Wilbur up, and slung him over my shoulders like he was a chocho wrap. “He’s not heavy, he’s my pig-dog brother.”
“Let’s hope not.” Reader flashed me the cover boy grin. “You going to be able to run us all up there?”
“Yep, not even tired. Per the girls this is an oxygen-rich planet. Fancy, you lead, I’ll provide the speed.”
“You’re rhyming a lot, girlfriend. Oxygen-rich or just a poet and you don’t know it?”
“I’ll exchange grade school quips with you later, James. Right now, we’re on a mission and I’m wearing the heaviest fur stole in the universe.”
He laughed as Fancy shifted Ginger to her hip so she had a paw free. Then I grabbed his hand and her paw, and we took off.
CHAPTER 58
THE MOUNTAIN WASN’T all that wide or impressive—but what it lacked in pizazz it made up for in height. The terrain was interesting, in that this was the midpoint for the spiral, so I could see other lands pretty easily.
There was no way the snowy height of Iceland should be snugly up against the rocky yellow terrain. The Yellow Land also had a completely different kind of rocky setup—high peaks and lots of them, not a mesa to be seen. I could see the Purple Land in the not-too-distant distance, and it just started where the Yellow Land stopped, as if a line had been drawn. I was certain by now that a line was exactly what had been drawn for each border.
The Black Land, by contrast, was comfortably against Iceland but at a much lower elevation. However, there were the remains of volcanic eruption in evidence, which stopped dead at the Iceland border with absolutely no overlap of any kind. We were able to verify this close up, because the fastest way up to the top began where this color’s spiral started. This part of the world smelled like licorice tasted, and also like coal looked. There were border guards, so to speak, but they were few, far between, and easily avoided at hyperspeed.
“Can we take a look all the way around the mountain before we go up?” Reader asked. “If it won’t tire you out too much, Kitty.”
My music changed to “Around the World” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Clearly Reader’s plan was one Algar agreed with.
“I should be fine. We can always stop and rest if I have to. Is it safe for us to do that, though, Fancy?”
“I don’t know why not,” she replied. “This area is always kept open for any and all to approach the Mountain.”
“Your king allows this?”
“If he did not, Shealla, then none would follow him. The All Seeing Mountain sits at the heart of our beliefs. No one who lives on our world can be denied access to it. That is our one inviolate law.”
Interesting, but not necessarily surprising. Whoever had put this world in place—and my money was still all on Algar—they clearly wanted their uplifted races to have equal access to whatever was up there.
So we zipped along the road that encircled the mountain. It was nice and wide, and though there weren’t a lot of people out and about, there were enough. I had to run us past a variety of the Lecanora, some of whom were clearly making their Up The Mountain Pilgrimage.
Other than confirming that the Blue Land was indeed all water with buildings of all kinds floating on it and a lot of otters, minks, and beavers representing for the Lecanora, it wasn’t someplace I wanted to stay too long, mostly because I wasn’t up to running fast enough to run us all on top of the water, and the jumping we had to do from floating bridge to floating bridge was disruptive enough that I wasn’t sure we wouldn’t dump some unsuspecting Lecanora into the water or be discovered, or both.
The Blue Waterway—really, once I’d seen it, calling it a Land seemed ridiculous—smelled like air, and sky, and water, but the wrong kind of water. Not that it smelled stagnant or anything like that, but it also didn’t smell like ocean. Frankly, it didn’t smell much at all, though scent was there—but the smell here was almost ethereal.
The next song up was Coldplay’s “Glass of Water.” Seemed like a hint to me. Risked stopping at the border, put Wilbur down for a moment, and put my hand into the water. Licked my fingers. “It’s freshwater. Not salt.”
“Of course it is,” Fancy said, sounding confused. “What would we drink if the water was salty?”
“Rain water? Snow melt?”
She shook her head. “We have none of that.”
“That’s impossible.” In a normal world. In the world of Planet Colorful, though, it probably was possible. The power orbs might be controlling the weather, or lack thereof, too.
“Let’s keep moving,” Reader said. “You can discuss this with Reynolds when we find him and the others.”
He was right, so I just hoisted Wilbur back up and we took off again.
Reaching Greenland was a relief, but only insofar as we could stop jumping and teetering and almost falling into the water. As with the Black Land, there were border guards but they were as easily evaded as the others had been. However, in addition to being the greenest place I’d ever seen, there was something different in the air here.
Like everywhere else, the scent here was green, combined with smelling like a tart apple tastes, while not actually smelling like apples. But that wasn’t what felt wrong. There was a tenseness in the air, a tang, and it was fighting with the green scent.
“There’s something really rotten in this particular Denmark.”
“The king,” Reader said. “But we have a different goal right now.”
Reader was right again, so we zipped on, going faster through the Bronze and Purple Lands, simply because we’d been there before. I breathed their scents in deeply, though—they helped get the tang from Greenland out of my system.
Back to the Black Lands and the supposedly fastest trail to the top. The trail, if you could call it that, was steep, narrow, and treacherous. This was so par for our course that I didn’t even comment. It was hard to hyperspeed with four others dependent upon my skills and I really missed Christopher.
“Do we need to go at regular speeds?” Reader asked as I ratcheted down to the slow version of hyperspeed.
“Not really. I’m just having issues with control and this is safer. It so figures that the fastest way up is also the most dangerous.”
“It’s the least dangerous,” Fancy countered. “Each path has dangers on it, Shealla. This path is the steepest, so its dangers are less.”
“Fantastic. Why is it a gauntlet in order to get up to look up into the sky?”
“Because every worthwhile goal requires sacrifice, courage, and perseverance to achieve.”
“Cannot argue with that mindset.”
“Good, because it is something you, Shealla, said to our forebears so very long ago.”
“Go me and the pithy sayings, and I really can’t argue with my wisdom. Can argue with the idea of running us what feels like straight up.” Oxygen-rich planet or not, I was getting tired.
“It’s not quite that, but close,” Fancy said as “Eat Me, Drink Me” by Marilyn Manson came on my personal airwaves. I stopped.
“We could have run around the other obstacles,” Reader pointed out. “And an easier path might have meant we got up to the top faster.”
Fancy shook her head. “The obstacles are not avoidable. They are a requirement.”
“Religion, James. That falls under the why ask why column.”
Carefully took Wilbur—who’d been a total champ and not struggled or anything while I was carrying him—off and handed him to Reader. Rummaged around in my purse, found a waterfruit, and ate it
. Selfishly didn’t offer any to Reader or Fancy. Felt guilty. But not guilty enough to give them one. Presumed this meant that Pinky, Saffron, and Turkey were okay and possibly close by, or that the Matriarchs were able to extend their influence. Or that Jeff was wrong and I was actually addicted to these things. Really hoped for the former.
Selfish or not, I felt a ton better once I’d eaten the fruit. “Give me Wilbur back, I’m good now.”
We took off again, and while I felt like I could have raced on, I kept us at the slow version of hyperspeed. It seemed wiser and a way for me to conserve my energy. Luckily, my track coaches in high school and college had all lived for the No Pain, No Gain mindset. I’d done hill charges for eight straight years. Sure, most of them weren’t this bad, and I hadn’t had a big pig-dog on my shoulders and two people and a hefty cat to drag along when running track. On the other hand, I wasn’t running in 115-plus-degree heat, so it evened out.
There were a couple of times I thought we were going to lose our footing and slide down or fall off. But each time Fancy or Reader managed to keep the rest of us steady. So, definitely not looking down, we forged on.
Hyperspeed, even the slow kind, meant that we made it up this hill in minutes versus hours or possibly days. As we crested the top, “I Have Friends in Holy Spaces” by Panic! At the Disco came on.
Couldn’t really see much. There was a gigantic dome of iridescent material of some kind capping the mountain, but other than a railing that appeared to go around the perimeter, there was nothing special here. Though the iridescent cap flickered intermittently, but in a discernible pattern—it resembled the flickering of torches. Meaning this was what I’d managed to spot the night before.
However, looking like nothing much or not, we’d come a damn long way to get here, so I clambered over the metal railing—without issue, other than wearing the heaviest wrap in the universe and a minor tingling sensation—took said wrap, aka Wilbur, off my back, caught my breath, then really looked around. And then I looked up.
Had really only one thing to say. “Oh. My God.”
CHAPTER 59
THE TOP OF THE All Seeing Mountain was obviously manmade, and not by any man native to this planet.
As with the mountains in Iceland, the mountain was a mesa with a completely flat top. There was a layer of what I was willing to bet was concrete—while I hadn’t seen every inch of this world yet, I’d seen enough to be able to feel with some certainty that I hadn’t seen anything like this yet anywhere on this planet. You know, something that looked like it came from Earth.
The metal railings were like those I’d seen at the Grand Canyon and any other tourist spot on Earth where the authorities didn’t want people to fall over, in, or off—four thick metal rungs connecting to posts every few feet or so, with a thicker bar on top. Unlike Earth, though, this railing had no gaps to allow visitors easy access in or out. It was climb over the four-foot-high barrier or go home.
The mountaintop, while flat, was also round, far too round to have formed naturally. And it was the size of not just a football field, but the entire stadium and parking lot, too. One of the big ones, like we had in Pueblo Caliente.
The setup was interesting. The area was obviously made for tourists or pilgrims or whatever. The area on the immediate inside of the railings had benches, water troughs, and other niceties sprinkled throughout. There were trees in all the main land colors, including black, which gave off shade and scent. The trees were near the benches and water troughs, and they created a cacophony of smells up here. Not unpleasant, in no small part because the place was big enough that the different colored trees weren’t that close to each other.
But it was the main area that really stood out, so to speak.
There were circles within circles—blue, then green, black, white, yellow, bronze, and purple—each one inside of and smaller than the ones before, leading in to the smallest circle in the exact middle. Well, small in a relative sense. The midpoint circle was easily twenty yards in diameter. It was also a shimmery, almost opalescent silver.
What had shocked me, though, other than circles instead of spirals up here, was what was hanging above the midpoint—couldn’t swear to it, but it sure looked like a giant telescope. As we got closer, it was pretty easy to confirm that it was, indeed, a giant telescope. A very complex and advanced giant telescope. Which no Bronze Age culture could have invented.
A telescope that was just hanging there. Not sitting on anything, or being held up by anything. Just hanging there, hovering over the middle of this mountain. A telescope that resembled the spyglasses of olden days, only about a thousand times bigger. It hung at least ten feet above the concrete—meaning that it would be difficult to touch unless you could fly. Didn’t exclude a good portion of the planet, but did indicate that No Touching was probably a given.
It was gigantic and there was no way anyone looking at this mountain could miss seeing it. And yet, Christopher and Chuckie, and Christopher and I, hadn’t seen this when we were looking right at the top. And there was no way that anyone on the other Alpha Centauri planets had seen it, either, because this telescope didn’t say “Bronze Age”—it said “Looking At The Heavens With Scientific Interest Age.”
Felt certain there was another power orb somewhere close by keeping this thing running and, more importantly, floating. And, even more importantly, cloaked. Potentially several of them. But without the girls or Chuckie around to ask, just had to take that one on faith.
Realized that the railing wasn’t here to keep people in or out or even make it hard to get into this area, though I was sure that the natives felt it was the Last Obstacle—it was what was powering or controlling or whatever the cloaking shield that hid the real top of the All Seeing Mountain and, more importantly, what people were all seeing through. Because that was clearly what the iridescent, shimmering thing we’d gone through was. Having this in place made sense—because there was no way that this planet would have been left alone if anyone else had noted that they were clearly spying on the neighbors.
Also had the strongest feeling of déjà vu that I’d possibly ever had in my life. I’d been here before, somehow.
“Do you feel like you’ve been here before?” Reader asked me quietly.
“Yeah, you too?”
He nodded. “It’s incredibly strong.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Is that what everyone looks through?” I asked Fancy in a normal tone, pointing to the telescope.
“Yes, Shealla.”
“One at a time, right?”
“It depends. If you have young ones, you go as a family. But never more than one family at a time. We go to look at the heavens, to see if we can see the Gods.”
“And all of King Benny’s people, they saw something other than stars and planets and such?”
“Yes. Just as I and all my people did.”
“And, when you get to the railings, what do you see?” Maybe they saw things we didn’t.
“We see everything that is here, Shealla.” She sounded politely confused.
“You mean that when you’re outside of the railing, you can see that?” Reader pointed to the telescope.
“Yes, Leader of the Nihalani. We can see it before we are on the top as well,” she added politely, but in such a way I knew she was fearing for the Sanity of the Gods.
“Okey dokey, just checking. Hang tight, we’ll be right back.” Fancy nodded and remained outside the center circle, on the purple pavement. Wilbur and Ginger stayed with her. Took Reader’s arm and headed us to the center. “That’s why the cloak or whatever it is looks different from the ones we’re used to. It’s calibrated so that the natives on this planet can see it but no one else can.”
“You, Reynolds, and Christopher all ate waterfruit. Why didn’t any of you see it?”
“No idea, but my guess would be that we haven’t been on the planet
long enough, or it’s set to show for natives only. Which may mean that the king has never seen it.”
“Possible,” he said slowly. “Meaning that maybe LaRue hasn’t seen it, either. But why ostracize all those Lecanora if they didn’t know about it?”
“We’ll find out, I’m sure.”
We reached the center. “I wish Reynolds was here,” Reader said quietly. “I’m pretty sure this is something from Earth. A few years ago a giant telescope disappeared. We kept it quiet, because the disappearance was inexplicable and we couldn’t find the telescope or anyone who knew anything about its disappearance.”
“I think we may now be able to explain it. Sort of. Was there anything special about that telescope?”
“Yeah, actually. It was designed for major amplification—the most powerful amplification we’d had to date. We’ve never matched it. Once you found ACE, I kind of figured he’d removed it so no one on Earth could see him, or see the Alpha Centauri system or something. This one looks like at least part of what disappeared.”
Was positive ACE wasn’t the Telescope Thief, but couldn’t say that to Reader. “For all we know, the other part is ‘buried’ in the mountain right under us. But, why haven’t we on Earth created another one of these?”
“Too expensive. And with the first one being stolen and remaining unrecovered, the consensus was that we’d already spent too much money on nothing so the plan to try again was squashed.”
Tidy. Take the thing and thereby ensure no other thing like it will be created. And so like Algar. After all, the people who’d chosen not to make another telescope had the free will to choose otherwise.
There was one problem with this theory—the Planet Colorful natives had been looking through this telescope for thousands of years, not just a few.
Neither one of us had looked into the scope yet. “Ready to see whatever it is we’re going to see?”
Reader took my hand in his. “Yeah.”