“She looked fine.”
The stranger’s sadness relaxed into a half smile. He swept off his invisible hat again, and gave another exaggerated, low bow. The squeaky voice returned:
“Simo Belan at your service, honoured crewmen.”
3.
Jenine was naked, drifting in the great void of space with nothing between her and billions of shining stars and galaxies, and yet she felt warm and relaxed, at peace with the splendour of the universe around her. By moving her arms and legs she found that she could reorientate her body, although “up” and “down” had no meaning. But no matter which way she turned, or which way she looked, the eternal glory of the universe lay before her.
“Go where you will. Will where you go,” urged the voice that she had learned to trust.
She singled out a brilliant blue giant from the myriad points of lights - a star that shone out like a beacon.
I have knowledge, Jenine. Come to me and be fulfilled.
Even as she willed herself towards the magical shining diamond, the entire firmament began moving passed her; slowly at first, and then with increasing speed until she was like a baby hypnotised by a dazzling mobile as her awesome speed turned the universe into bewildering blur of light that her brain could not resolve.
She stopped abruptly above the star. There was no sensation of deceleration. One second she was moving, the next second she was stationary. She had stopped because she wanted to stop. The star was no longer a point of light but a blue giant that filled her entire field of vision. From its blinding photosphere mighty solar flares, writhing with terrible energies, arched out to greet her. They brushed harmlessly against her, tongues of brilliant plasma rippled down her spine and snaked deliciously and insistently between her thighs before falling back into the sun, following curiously looped lines of magnetic force. Knowledge was a gleaming sword, a torment of ecstasy sliding insidiously into the liquid warmth centre of her being, an Olympian lover’s tongue probing deep-rooted pleasure buds and infusing her with its power and burning orgasmic fury. She thrust down on the mighty sword, draining its force and craving more. She wanted to see more; she wanted to see into very core of this stupendous powerhouse; she wanted to understand…
And so it was…
Her will took her plunging into the star; through the blinding photosphere and on and on, deep into the mighty nuclear reactor at its very heart where gravitation pressures fused atoms of hydrogen to helium so that the stupendous energies released balanced and counteracted the inward crush of gravity. Thus the blue giant was stable, pouring light and warmth onto the surfaces of its planetary children, and would continue to do so for aeons to come. But not all stars were thus. For many the delicate equilibrium between gravity and their nuclear furnaces had been upset or had never existed. Many blasted forth streams of cosmic particles that destroyed all in their path, turning their planets into ghostly barren spheres where, perhaps, life had flourished and had been snuffed out.
And she understood.
She left the star and fled through the cosmos, pausing to study the strange drumbeat of energy emanating from a pulsar, or a binary system in which a pair of stars pursued each other relentlessly around their common centre of gravity - prisoners of their collective, incomprehensible mass.
But Jenine comprehended them; she understood everything on her great odyssey of learning: from a black hole’s greedy syphoning of matter from a captured, orbiting star; from the supernovae of exploding stars throwing off heavy elements; from the blue-white clusters of hot stars that had come into being shortly after the creation; to the gentle firefly speckling of meteors from spent stars falling to far earths as shooting stars under moonlit, tropical skies.
The voice left nothing unsaid and she understood everything.
Her journey ended where it had started, poised above her home planet. She looked down at the shining blue-green wonder, seemingly as bright as a star against its black velvet background. As it turned on its axis, so the entire surface passed beneath her: mountain ranges, their ice-covered peaks burning white fire as they caught the morning sun; vast plains that seemed to stretch from pole to pole, their rich mosaic patterns due to the huge variety of crops in varying states of growth; broad strips of managed forests that traversed the plains like meridians. And above all, the lakes. There were so many that it was impossible to count them and yet she knew the exact number. The largest was a huge, landlocked sea that straddled the equator. This was the sea that she had looked on in wonder when the outdoors had been first revealed to her. The island that had held her and Ewen prisoners was one of a string, but she knew exactly which one it was. There were cities in the temperate regions, many of them great urban sprawls. She looked closer, wondering at their strange stillness. As her perception sharpened, she realised that many of them were abandoned shells. They were pristine ruins due to the durability of the materials used in their construction. In some cases the straight lines of the forests marched right across them, with gleaming tower blocks thrusting through the dense foliage.
She felt that she could stay here forever. It would be heaven floating like this - to spend the rest of her life high above this fascinating but ancient world, absorbing every detail, learning of its many civilizations that had risen and crumbled to dust during its long history.
Her attention was drawn to the sun, pouring out friendly energies. But there was something wrong - a mysterious gap in the stream of knowledge flooding into her subconsciousness that no amount of concentration could bridge. The planet was beckoning, drawing her down. The sun could wait…
She dropped through the upper reaches of the atmosphere and saw deep into the crust of the world, and even into the caverns of Arama itself - tiny bubbles of blind, mole-like humanity in the dense strata. And she remembered Ewen’s words:
“…Four million people going around in aimless circles, going nowhere, getting nowhere. And they’re all doing their jobs. And when they’re not doing their jobs, all they’re thinking of is gratifying their petty little needs; dressing up in weird clothes; going to weird parties; muddling their way through their weird little lives… Wake up, Jenine.”
The last sentence didn’t belong.
“Jenine!”
It was Ewen’s voice. She resented the intrusion. He wanted to drag her into wakefulness; he wanted to deprive her of the delicious sensation of floating above this beautiful world. She fought him but could not prevent herself from falling. Down… Down… She cried out and spread her hands in the futile hope that it would somehow arrest her body as it arrowed through the atmosphere towards the group of building on the edge of the great inland sea.
“Jenine!”
She was now being shaken from side to side. Her fall was slowing. She passed through the roof of a building and drifted down onto a soft bed. She opened her eyes and stared up at Ewen.
“Good morning,” he said cheerily. “Welcome back to earth. Don’t make my mistake by jumping straight out of bed. You’ll need a few minutes to recover.”
She was unable to speak for some moments. With each second, the sensations of the dream were fading rapidly, but the knowledge and memories she had acquired on the strange voyage remained intact.
“What happened?”
Ewen chuckled. “According to one of the stewardesses, it’s called a crammer. A mindwarp educational process. One that really works too. Clever, wasn’t it? What poor old Blader Zallen would have given to have gone on such a trip and seen that his theories about the universe were correct.” He frowned. “Mind you, I’m having a struggle trying to come to terms with what a light-year really is.”
“The distance light travels in a year,” Jenine replied, and reeled off a figure that she was able to pluck straight out of her mind. The ability unsettled her although she realised that there was nothing to be scared of. She swung her legs out of bed and felt faint, but Ewen moved to her side and supported her. “Just rest,” he said gently. “There’s no rush.”
&
nbsp; “I wanted to stay looking down at earth.”
Ewen chucked her on the chin. “Yes - I know. I was with you.”
“With me? How?”
“Trying to keep up with you. But you seemed intent on staying above earth, and I was getting hungry. So I left you to it. Those two little stewardesses have bought us a fantastic breakfast. And there’s a message from Simo saying that he’ll be picking us up in an hour.”
Jenine realised that Ewen was wearing was wearing the same crimson suit that Simo Belan had worn the previous day.
“They’ve left one for you too,” said Ewen, holding up a smaller garment of the same design.
“Why?”
“Because we’re now crewmen, I suppose.”
“Crewmen of what?”
“That is what I hope Simo will be explaining to us.”
4.
The bubble-top ground car with its three passengers, and crimson pennants flattened in the slipstream, skimmed along the coast road on auto.
“Hail stones,” said Simo sadly. “Drops of rain freeze to ice at high altitude. Not common, but it does happen at this time of year. How sad that your balloon was spread out.”
Ewen and Jenine smiled at their host’s lugubrious expression. They had spent the hour-long drive giving him a full account of their escape. In return he had answered most of their questions as best he could. At times it seemed that he was shouldering responsibility for all their misfortunes.
“We’re here,” said Simo taking over manual control.
The ground car left the road, rode smoothly over some low dunes, and slid down the beach towards the water’s edge where a group of men were wearing breathing sets. The divers had beached their inflatable work boat and were unloading their finds onto a truck. They looked expectantly at the ground car that stopped near them, its crimson pennants drooping in the heat.
Simo Belan regarded his two guests with great sadness. “I expect you recognise this spot? It’s where you came ashore yesterday.”
“I didn’t get a good look at it,” said Ewen. “I had other things on my mind.”
“Of course.” Simo looked utterly woebegone and gave himself a slap on the wrist. “I simply never think.”
Jenine knew it was an act but the gesture made her smile.
The canopy swung open. It was mid-morning and already the heat was becoming uncomfortable. The trio walked across the soft sand to the men. Ewen and Jenine looked fresh and alert, fully recovered from their ordeal of the previous day. In addition to their crisp new uniforms, they were wearing broad-brimmed sun hats that Simo insisted they keep on.
The divers came to attention and saluted the new arrivals.
“We think we’ve recovered everything, crewmen,” said the leader respectfully.
“These will be the ones to answer that,” said Simo, inviting Ewen and Jenine to examine the wreckage piled on the back of the truck.
They looked at the shredded remnants of the two passenger baskets and the blackened, now bottomless shell of the fire basket, and odd lengths of the unpicked rope that they taken from the restaurant.
“Everything except the envelope,” Jenine commented.
“That was recovered yesterday,” said Simo. “Most of it was washed ashore.
“Why bother?” Ewen asked.
“It’s for the museum, of course.”
“What museum?”
Simo’s broad, loose shoulders sagged with his expression. “Now you’re pumping me for information again. Well, I’m allowed to answer questions on everything you see, so I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you. We save everything to do with the escape of all crewmen. We’ve learned to respect history even when we’re living in it. This is the first escape ever from the islands by hot air balloon.”
Ewen looked sharply at him. “So how did you escape?”
Simo’s mobile face adopted an expression of embarrassment. “I got out of the cave by climbing up the cliff - I’m a bit of an acrobat. Not being clever like you, I got away from the island by the same method that all escapers from the islands have used. I built a boat.”
“But all the wood we found was waterlogged,” Ewen protested. “Did you have a saw to cut down trees?”
“The reeds,” said Simo apologetically. “They grow on all the islands. They can be cut easily with a piece of flint or just uprooted. They’re very buoyant once they’ve been dried, and they can be lashed together with vines, and a sail can be made from-”
“Reeds?” Jenine interrupted.
“The tall, slender plants that grow around fresh water pools-”
Simo broke off as Jenine suddenly burst out laughing. The divers gave her puzzled looks as they went about their work.
“The reeds!” Ewen muttered, thunderstruck. “We used them for the launch scaffold and sunshades. I never thought… I just didn’t think…”
“His lateral thinking!” Jenine gasped, wiping her eyes. “Reeds! Well here’s some more lateral thinking: he may have been the first to think of using a hot air balloon, but looked at another way, he was also the first not to think of the obvious!”
“Why should we have to think of escaping? Why all the charade, not to mention the danger to us?” Ewen demanded indignantly. “Why don’t you rescue people?”
“More questions that I’m not allowed to answer,” Simo replied sadly. “But they will be answered soon.”
They returned to the ground-car and drove along the coast road. They passed lines of parked cars. On the beach the hard, black shadows of the beach shades obscured the people lying under them. Children played and splashed in the surf. All wore broad sun hats and kept their bodies covered with thin bodysuits.
“Families from Challenger City,” Simo explained. “Engineers, designers. This is a popular vacation spot. People only come out in the morning and evening, of course.”
“Too hot?” Jenine suggested.
“Dangerously so.”
The turned inland and drove along a broad avenue. A few couples were drifting aimlessly from shop to shop. Some sat at bars under sunshades. There was an air of desolation and decay about the place. The sidewalks were pot-holed and uneven. The state of the road was not much better. Such neglect would never be tolerated in Arama.
“Where are we going?” Ewen asked. They had driven through the township and joined a hot, dusty highway. Simo flipped over to auto and took his hands off the controls.
“Challenger City. The project director wants to meet you.”
“What’s he like?”
“The greatest man that ever lived.”
Ewen looked sideways at their host, but Simo was serious. As though heading off further questions, he fished Ewen’s radio capsule from a pocket and returned it. “They wanted this for the museum but I saved it for you. A souvenir. It saved your life. I was asleep when the details of your landing were holo-faxed to HQ. That you had used a hot air balloon was enough for an assistant to do nothing. You were Armageddonists and the police would take care of you. But when she happened to glance at the holos of your belongings and saw the capsule, she hit the panic button.”
“What’s so special about it?” Jenine asked.
The sun beat down on the ground car’s clear bubble canopy. Simo adjusted the air-conditioning. “They’re smuggled in to Arma to only about one in a hundred would-be escapers.”
“You mean escapes from Arama can be measured in hundreds?”
“Sorry, Ewen. I can’t answer that.”
“We saw what happens to Armageddonists,” said Jenine quietly, grimacing at the memory of the execution in the walled yard.
“The police are tough,” Simo agreed. “They have to be.”
“Why?” Ewen asked.
“Not only is the security of the project vital, but also the lives of the people of Arama. The Armageddonists are a group of religious fanatics who don’t like what is going on here-”
“And what is going on here?” Jenine interrupted.
Simo’s expression became that of a hunted man. She was learning that his hangdog act was a technique he used to avoid difficult questions. “All in good time, Jenine.” Simo waved his hand at the passing barren scrub land. “This entire area, including the coast and the islands, is restricted. No one who is not working on the project is allowed access.”
“Listen!” said Ewen.
They all heard the strange, ethereal singing note that seemed to rise and fall. It reminded Jenine of the curious vent on the island’s hilltop but this note was much higher and had a strange melodic quality.
“What is it?” Ewen asked, turning to Simo. He was watching his passengers carefully, as though keen to see their reaction to something extraordinary.
“You’ll find out… Now,” Simo replied.
The ground car breasted a rise. Jenine and Ewen uttered exclamations of astonishment at the spectacle that greeted them. Standing on the plain were the giant cylindrical sections that they had first seen from the island hilltop. There were four of them, facing in different directions. One looked as it could roll down the slight incline and crush them. The largest ring seemed to have a chunk missing from its upper section until Ewen realised that it was obscured by low cloud. It was not possible to tell which of the rings the eerie singing note was emanating from. It could be all of them. They were made of steel for they were crumbling and flaking with rust.
Simo reduced speed and glanced at his awestruck travelling companions. “I remember the first time I first saw them. They still get me every time I come this way. Like to take a closer look?”
“Please,” said Ewen, not taking his eyes off the gargantuan rings.
Simo nodded and took over manual control. “Okay. But they’re further away than they look.”
The ground car swung off the road and raised a cloud of dust as it rode over the desert. A thousand questions crowded into Ewen’s mind but as each one gained priority, another astonishing feature of the mighty structure seized on his disbelief and paralysed his tongue. Close to, the rings showed their great age. Centuries of wind and dust had eroded their surfaces. Their edges were eaten into, crumbling to flakes of rust that discoloured the ground beneath them with a reddish hue. The area all around was disfigured by piles of spoil and hundreds of neat, rectangular excavations. They stretched into the distance, but it was the colossal rings that commanded the attention.
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