Shockball

by S. L. Viehl

  “No, that’s not necessary,” I said, and pulled the power supply board out of the back of the unit. It went completely dead. “Please help me get him on his back,” I continued, for the benefit of the recording drones.

  Reever allowed me to roll him over, and while I blocked the view of the maintenance drone, pulled the unit’s panel and began reprogramming it.

  Everything was looking great, until all the lights went out.

  “Is it the power grid?”

  “We’re not going to wait to find out.” Reever grabbed my hand, pushed the unit out of the way, and hauled me to the door.

  Someone bumped into us. Someone short and wearing strange garments. Too short to be Joseph. Another drone?

  “You the patcher and the code talker?” a high-pitched voice whispered.

  “Who wants to know?” I whispered back.

  “Come to spring you two out of here.” The intruder turned on an optic emitter and swung it toward one of the corridor access panels. “This way.”

  I started out the door panel, but Reever held me back. “Who are you?”

  “Milass.” His voice bordered on shrill. “I hov’ with the alien underground. Caught word of your troubles, craved to help.”

  The alien underground? “I’ve never heard of that,” I said.

  Reever stepped in front of me. “Nor have I.”

  “Not like we advertise, get it?” He spoke an odd variety of inner-city slang, one I hadn’t heard in three years.

  “Can you speak stanTerran?”

  Milass made an impatient sound. “You two crave strolling out of here, or not? The junkers will be on us in a blip.”

  I wasn’t taking another step without my cat or the Lok-Teel. “Reever, get Jenner.”

  While I retrieved the Lok-Teel from my cell, Reever managed to smash open the plas unit Joe had imprisoned Jenner in. He leaped up in my arms and stared at our rescuer. He didn’t hiss, but the fur on the back of his neck stood on end.

  “He’s okay, pal.” I stroked him, not sure if I was comforting the cat or lying to myself.

  A small, square hand gestured for us to follow him. “We got to stroll, now.”

  I looked at my husband, who hesitated another moment, then nodded.

  We followed our diminutive rescuer into one of the corridors and down past a number of equipment storage areas. Emergency lights illuminated everything with a blood-red glow. At the very end of the corridor was a wall panel with a small, square hole.

  Milass pointed to it. “That way.”

  Reever crawled in first. I put Jenner in, then followed. Behind me, Milass got in, then sealed it. That plunged the narrow crawl space into total darkness.

  We crawled forward, but not for long. Reever pulled himself out into a larger area, and turned to grab Jenner and help me. When the smell hit my sensitive nose, I stopped at the very edge.

  “What is that stench?”

  Beyond me appeared to be some kind of tunnel with smooth, perfectly rounded walls. Someone had strung a couple of optic emitters along the very top of the tunnel. A stream of sluggish mud covered the bottom of it.

  “Take my hands, Cherijo.”

  I held on to my husband’s hands and pushed myself out of the crawl space. And stepped into something that was definitely not mud. “Where are we?”

  “Old sewer pipes,” Milass said as he emerged. “We got to hike through it to get to Leyaneyaniteh.”

  That wasn’t anywhere I’d been in New Angeles. “Le-what?”

  “It means, ‘The Place of the Reared Under the Ground,”’ Reever said.

  Our rescuer climbed down and walked toward us. “You got word on my tribe, code talker?”

  I saw his garments had been fashioned from some sort of animal hide, and covered with primitive symmetrical symbols. He looked as though he’d stepped out of a history text.

  “I understand your root language.”

  Code talker. A name for linguists who’d used obscure languages as encryption devices during the old wars. How did I know? Joseph had dragged me over to the Four Mountains reservation to watch him make his annual address as the official shaman for the Native Nations of North America. Sometimes I’d slipped out of the tribal assembly hall and wandered around the adjacent museum building.

  “You’re an Indian,” I said. I concentrated for a moment, rolling the word around in my head. The only Indians for miles around were the ones up in the canyons, beyond the mountain range. “Navajo?”

  “No.”

  When he stepped into the circle of light, I saw he wasn’t a young boy, but a very short, thin man. Milass had the typical bowed calves and dark coloring of the Navajo, so I didn’t think he was telling the truth. He wore his long brown hair loose, with some white feathers hanging from a single thin braid by his right temple. The feathers contrasted sharply with the livid burn scars marring his face and neck. He might be child-size, but he looked like a guy nobody messed with.

  “You’re tasty looking,” he said, giving me a leer.

  “You’re not,” I said.

  “We’ll spout later.” He started down through the conduit. “Move your gear.”

  I looked at Reever, saw how my cat was struggling to get out of his arms. “Give me him, he’s scared.”

  Reever handed me Jenner, and I propped my frightened cat against my shoulder. He sank his claws into me, and shivered.

  “It’s okay, pal.”

  I continued to murmur wordless sounds of comfort as we worked our way farther into the archaic sewer system. When I saw the rats lining either side of the conduit, I realized Jenner wasn’t frightened as much as he was hungry.

  “You can’t eat those things,” I told him. “Look where they live.”

  Reever put his arm around me when we turned into a cross section and had to climb up into another, smaller pipe. This one had several inches of waste at the bottom, and I made a face.

  “That has to be at least two hundred years old. So why is it still wet?”

  My husband took my arm. “It’s below the water table.”

  I cringed as my footgear became saturated. “Lovely.”

  We slogged through a series of waste-lined conduits for some time, until we reached a man-made breach in the pipes. Milass led us through that into a much larger tunnel, filled with what appeared to be an ancient transport system.

  I studied the alloy rails, huge, decaying transport vehicles that resembled glidebuses, and heard the faint hum of electricity. The little Indian went up to the first of them and wrenched open a door. A shower of rust flakes rained down around him. Hinges squealed and groaned.

  “I never saw anything like this when I lived on Terra,” Reever said in a low voice.

  Me neither. “Have any idea what it could be? Besides junk, I mean?”

  “Apparently some type of primitive electrical conveyance system. It might be what was once called a ‘subway,’ a system of underground transport.”

  I could think of half a dozen archaeologists who would have fainted at the sight of an intact subway system. “Can’t be. Subways haven’t been used in about five hundred years.”

  Milass came over to us, clearly impatient to go. “It’s solid. Let’s jam.”

  We entered the long, box-shaped transport and sat down on two of the cracked, stained seats. Reever was utterly fascinated and started touching everything.

  “This pole is aluminum,” he said, then felt the seat. “And this feels a little like unrefined plas.”

  “Plastic,” I said as I watched our rescuer. He’d gone to the front compartment and was sitting at some kind of console.

  “If this is a subway transport, it is too old to be functional.”

  “I wouldn’t put credits on that.” I watched as Milass activated the power system, and the entire car shook. “Grab something, Reever.”

  Metal whined, electricity crackled, and the transport shuddered and groaned as it began to slowly move on the rails.

  Reever got that r
apt look on his face, the one he had whenever he was updating a linguistic database or crossbreeding some kind of rare flower. “Incredible.”

  “Uh-huh.” It might be incredible, but it was also five hundred years old, or worse. I held on and prayed the thing wouldn’t collapse on us.

  It didn’t. It gathered velocity until we were doing about half the normal speed of a glidecar, and rattled along the tunnel railway. Someone must have spent considerable time and effort maintaining this ancient system. Still, every couple of seconds there was a new whine, hiss, or bump. I started to sweat when I saw the rivets in one of the old aluminum panels beginning to give way.

  After an hour of this joyride, I called to Milass, “How much farther?”

  “Almost there,” he yelled back.

  I closed my eyes as we finally decelerated. “There is a God and He listens to me.”

  When the transport came to a full stop, I got to the door and out of there. In the pitch-black tunnel outside, I opened my mouth to give the little man a piece of my mind, when he took out a small black device and pointed it at the wall.

  The wall slid to one side, revealing yet another tunnel—this one much smaller and hacked out of solid stone. Tiny optic emitters sparkled, casting a faint glow.

  Milass glanced back at us, then waved his arm and stepped down into the tunnel.

  Things weren’t adding up. Indians involved with an alien underground. Transport systems that shouldn’t exist but still worked. Stone walls moving like door panels by remote control.

  “Reever, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “We have no choice but to go on. Unless you prefer to return to the estate and try to find an alternative escape route.”

  “So what’s a bad feeling or two?” I stepped down into the tunnel. The air at once became cleaner and cooler, and I took a deep breath. Jenner perked up and struggled to get down again. “Not yet, pal. Pardon me, but how much farther is it?”

  “We’re near getting. Wait.” He held up a hand as he pointed his device at a red optic light set in one side of the tunnel. Something beeped, and the fight turned from red to green.

  “What’s that?” I asked, looking back as we passed it.

  “Watch.” He used his remote again, switching the light back to red, then picked up a pebble and tossed it. A bioelectrical field snapped and crackled, bouncing the pebble back at us. At the same time, half a dozen thin, sharp-tipped silver rods shot out of the top of the tunnel and buried themselves in the floor.

  “A containment field. And … spears. Very nice.”

  “The buzz keeps meddlers out. The chuks clinch they don’t get another go.” He was already walking away. “Grip your animal and stay near.”

  “Absolutely.” Seeing as I didn’t have a handy-dandy remote device myself.

  We passed at least a dozen more traps that Milass had to disarm, emphasizing that wherever we were going needed lots of security. From the slope of the tunnel and the temperature drop I judged we were descending even farther beneath the ground. The deeper we went, the more optic emitters I saw. Then other tunnel openings began to appear.

  “This place reminds me of Catopsa,” I said to Reever. “All it needs is some hostile lizards and killer tul crystals.”

  Strange pictographs also started appearing on the walls of the tunnels. They ranged from abstract circular designs to more elaborate primitive symbols. Some strongly resembled the patterns in the Navajo wool rugs my creator collected. We also heard sounds of other footsteps, faint, clanging noises, and from one tunnel opening, drumming and low-pitched chanting.

  The little man took a final turn and lead us out into a huge, natural cavern. It was so enormous and unexpected that I yelped. Dozens of dark eyes turned to look at us for a moment, then paid no more attention.

  It was exactly as if a small Indian village had been dropped into the center of the earth. There was a big fire burning in the center of the cave. Men crouched near it in small groups, talking and drinking from small pottery servers. Women sat near them, some of them weaving on huge looms. Children ran around, some of them naked, and played games with sticks and balls. Some thirty small, rounded huts built of mud and wood lined the walls of the cavern.

  I’d been to reservations and museums. I’d seen the way even the most conservative Native Americans lived. None of them had ever tried recreating a historic habitat like this. “This is impossible.”

  “No.” Milass’s scarred face lit up with a satisfied smile. “This is Leyaneyaniteh.”

  While I stood there gaping along with Reever, our rescuer strode away and walked around the cavern. He didn’t do anything for about ten minutes.

  “I don’t care what he says. They’re Navajo,” I said to Reever.

  “How do you know?”

  “The Navajo consider it rude to barge in and say hi the minute they arrive somewhere. They like to wait and give people time to finish whatever it is they’re doing before they interrupt them.”

  Once Milass judged the time to be right, he strode casually to the center of the cavern and climbed up on a big, flat boulder there. By then everyone had finished or set aside whatever they were working on and gave him their full attention.

  “Got in, got out, got ‘em here.” The Indian pointed to us, then smacked his little hand against his chest and made a pushing-away gesture. “Junkers never stuck a sensor on me.”

  Everyone in the cavern made a high, trilling sound, something like a cross between laughter and cheering.

  He strutted around the top of the rock, detailing our escape. Then he said, “The chief gifts you two more to connect—she’s a patcher, and he’s a code talker.”

  From my rusty grasp of the man’s patois, and my even scantier knowledge of Indian customs, I thought he was saying we were going to join the tribe. “Reever, did you get that?”

  “Yes. He thinks we’re going to join them.”

  “I didn’t say anything about joining them.” I scanned the faces around us. Most of them weren’t completely human. “Did you?”

  “No.”

  I started edging back toward the tunnel we had come from. “I mentioned my bad feeling, too, right?”

  “Yes.” Reever stopped me. “Wait, we should hear what he has to say.”

  I waited. That was my first mistake.

  Milass climbed down from the rock, and headed straight toward us, flanked by two bigger men.

  “Nice cave.” I looked around again for the exit. “So, can you take us up to the surface now?”

  “Spill and spout on that later.”

  Later. In Indian terms, that could mean anytime, from this evening to next year. “May we speak with your chief?”

  Milass tapped his chest. “I’m the chiefs secondario.” He gestured toward the biggest man. “Kegide, the chief’s other arm.”

  More like his other army. Trytinorn females would have fallen in love with Kegide, who stood nearly seven feet tall and had to weigh close to four hundred pounds. Lighter skin and short-cropped black hair should have made him seem less menacing than Milass, but it didn’t. His expression seemed a little vacant, and his mild brown eyes wandered. He didn’t say anything at all.

  “Hok, the chief’s shoulder-talker.”

  Hok’s title must have meant advisor, but he really did only reach Reever’s shoulder. Not because he was short, but due to the contorted condition of his body. The hump on Hok’s back must have been due to a severe spinal injury, or an untreated case of scoliosis. To add to his problems, he also had scars all over the lower half of his face. It looked like he’d been born with a cleft palate, and someone had done a terrible job on the oral reconstruction.

  Hok wore his dark hair in a long braid that hung over one hunched shoulder, and he had shrewd, black eyes. Not that it was easy to catch his gaze. He seemed mesmerized by the ground.

  “Cherijo Torin,” I said. “My husband, Duncan Reever. May we speak with your chief now?”

  “Come.” Milass pointed
to the fire burning in the center of the cave. “The chief craves you break and chew with us. Spout our tales together.”

  Considering how much he’d helped us, I couldn’t see refusing his hospitality. “All right.”

  That was my second, and worst mistake.

  When we were seated on woven mats near the fire, Milass directed some of the women tending it to bring us food and drink. Reever and I were handed servers of strong, dark tea and handmade bread stuffed with some kind of cheese.

  I cautiously tasted the tea and bread, and smiled. “This is delicious, thank you,” I said to the woman who’d given it to me. She merely gave me a strange look and wandered away.

  The little Indian man sat down beside me and nudged me with his arm. The contact made me jump. “You’re a body patcher, like the Shaman, solid?”

  “I’m a thoracic surgeon.” I nibbled on the bread, trying to figure out how these people had established an underground village. “Why are you people living like this?”

  Milass explained a little about it. From what I grasped of his speech patterns, the Night Horse Clan was formed from Navajo refugees and half-Navajo, half-alien fugitives, some ten years ago. They’d bought land here after leaving the reservation, and had discovered the tunnels by accident. The hybrid fugitives decided to move underground to prevent being deported. Their human family members divided their time, living above ground part of the year, and moving into the cavern in the winter months.

  “We got back the Diné ways,” the little man said. “Here we do like the old ones.”

  Diné was what the Navajo called themselves. “I thought you said you aren’t Navajo.”

  “We are not. We are Night Horse.”

  Jenner, whom I’d been holding with one arm, sniffed at the bread in my other hand. Absently I broke off a piece for him and put him down between me and Reever.

  “What made you decide to leave the Navajo reservation and form your own tribe?” Reever asked.

  Milass scowled. “Whiteskin laws. The people hang on them now. Whiteskin law say all brids taboo, have to go from Dinéteh, go from Terra. Rico fetched the brids and their kin away, fetched them here.”

  “The way you ‘fetched’ us here?” I asked.

  The little man shrugged. “Some. They crave it now.”