The Imprisoned Earth

by Vaughn Heppner

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  We sat at the picnic tables near the food tent, eating rabbit stew, red vints—a kind of vegetable—and quaffing a watery beer. Some oil-stained men reported to her on the steam engine, but otherwise we were left alone but for a small guard detachment that kept their distance from us.

  Schaine glanced at me sidelong. “Theo Ran began the process that the oracle refined. The oracle predicted the location of the ruins of the Ancients, and he helped whisper the news in the right starmenter’s ear. Afterward, the mentalists grew interested—”

  I spewed the beer I was drinking onto the table.

  Schaine eyed me. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Ah…” I coughed, faking it, pointing at my throat.

  “You drank it the wrong way?” she asked.

  I nodded, coughing more, standing up and clearing my throat. “I need more,” I said, holding out my cup.

  A fur-bikini-clad woman poured me more from a stone jug.

  I chugged the beer and held out my cup again, getting an instant refill. “Better,” I said, sitting back down. “The mentalists did what?”

  “They were wild about the ruins,” Schaine said. “They seek ancient treasures, ‘artifacts,’ the oracle says. He also said that the mentalists seek to increase their already legendary knowledge.”

  “That’s mentalists for you.”

  “You know about them?” she asked, seeming overly interested in my answer.

  I made an airy gesture.

  “I knew you would,” Schaine said, almost triumphantly, “you being a spaceman and all. I think…” She lowered her voice as she leaned against one of my arms. “I think the mentalists are cheating us, paying too little for our help. Yet, they are dangerous, possessing hidden powers. Even the starmenters fear them. The oracle is also uncommonly wary concerning the mentalists. He has forbidden me from mentioning him to any outsider lest the mentalists learn about him.”

  Schaine sat up, clutching the arm she’d been leaning against. “Do you think the oracle meant you as well?”

  “Hardly. I’m your champion.”

  “Didn’t I prove to earlier that you indeed are my champion?” she asked coyly.

  “You did,” I said, grinning. I didn’t take her affections to heart, though. If I had to guess, this lady liked something new, and often.

  “But you’re still an outsider,” she said, eying me carefully. “Perhaps the butcher woman should cut out your tongue, making it impossible for you to tell anyone about the oracle.”

  I laughed.

  Her manner became more thoughtful. “You think this is a joking matter. It isn’t. This is the life of the Fighting Hunge. The oracle will lift us to heights of power, but only if we obey his strictures to the letter.”

  “If I’m your champion, aren’t I automatically one of the Fighting Hunge?”

  “I don’t know. I must ask the oracle.” She released my arm as she stood. “Drink more beer. I must go to the—”

  “Hold on,” I said sternly. “You don’t think I’m letting an oracle—Schaine. Don’t you understand the fundamentals of wielding power?”

  “Better than anyone,” she said.

  “The oracle surely resents your authority over the Fighting Hunge. Priests have fought kings—queens—over matters of precedence and political authority for millennia.”

  “The oracle is no priest.”

  “A priestess makes it even worse,” I said.

  “The oracle is not human.”

  “No?”

  Schaine shook her head. “I’ve already said too much. The oracle will be displeased. It’s possible I’m going to lose you before I’ve really gotten to know you.” She frowned. “It’s a pity you slew Esteban. But I couldn’t have taken him back after you manhandled him so thoroughly. I can only love a winner.”

  I set down my beer. “How do I become Fighting Hunge?”

  “You can’t. You’re from space, from another world.”

  “You want me to defeat the mentalists for you, don’t you?”

  “Who said anything about that? I just don’t want them cheating us. The oracle says we can use the mentalists if we’re crafty enough. Why do you think the steam engine generates force night and day?”

  I did wonder about the steam engine, but that wasn’t the priority right now. “I can help you against the mentalists,” I said. “I know them better than the oracle does.”

  Schaine appeared dubious. “The oracle is all-knowing. He has raised us to unbelievable heights through his knowledge and craftiness. We have obeyed his words closely, killing any who defies or disobeys his dictates.”

  “He’s not human, you say?”

  “He was, but now he isn’t.”

  “What?” I asked, before I could stop myself, glad I wasn’t drinking beer or I would have spewed another mouthful onto the picnic table.

  Schaine turned to her guards, readying to call them, I think.

  “I know the oracle personally,” I said quickly.

  Schaine froze, and turned back to me slowly. “You came from space,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “The oracle came from across time. How, then, can you possibly know him?”

  I took a stab in the dark. “Doctor Calidore knows me.”

  Schaine sucked in her breath as the blood drained from her features. She might have swayed, but sat down abruptly instead.

  “How do you know his holy name?” she whispered.

  I gave her a significant glance.

  “Only I know his name,” she whispered. “Do you…? How can you…?”

  “Take me to the oracle,” I said.

  Her features hardened. “Are you seeking to order me?”

  “Not in the slightest. I’m here to help, remember? That I know the oracle should prove that.”

  Schaine looked away, and it seemed her mind whirled at high speed, churning out possibilities. I was beginning to understand that she loved power more than anything else. She turned back to me, standing as she did, and I spied the hardness in her eyes.

  “I would have loved you, Jason Bain.”

  “Oh, Schaine,” I said, standing, putting real desire in my voice. It gave me the time I needed, for I slugged her hard and quick, with a short sharp cross to the chin, knocking her out even as I caught her collapsing body.

  Lifting her in my arms, I cried, “Hurry! Escort me to the oracle. Schaine’s in trouble and only he can save her.”

  The guards swiveled inward, taking in the situation—at Schaine’s orders earlier, they had been careful to only watch outward, giving us privacy. I half turned and saw a beer girl with a jug in her arms looking at me wide-eyed.

  Since I couldn’t do anything else, I winked at the beer girl, making it a leering one full of promise.

  The bikini-clad beer girl blushed, and she turned away without shouting that I’d slugged Red Schaine and knocked her out. That beer girl hissed something to the others, and they all hurried into the food tent.

  “Schaine has to see the oracle at once,” I told the guards. “If you wait too long, the oracle may not be able to help her.”

  “How can the oracle help her?” the chief guard asked. He was heavier than the others, an older man with a gut but with a shrewd way about him. “All Schaine needs is a glass of water poured over her head.”

  I laughed sharply. “Get out of my way if you’re not going to help. I’m the champion, and I’ll do whatever I must to make sure nothing happens to my lovely Schaine.”

  The guards glanced at each other.

  “Let him go,” one of them told the chief, a lean Fighting Hunge with an ugly scar above and below a black eye-patch.

  “Only Schaine enters the cool of the holy cave,” the chief said. “Only she speaks to the oracle.”

  “What about the primary engineer?” the one-eyed guard asked. “He goes in all the time.”

  “The primary engineer is not Fighting Hunge,” the chief said, “
but a spaceman tending to the oracle’s energy needs. The engineer never enters the cave while the oracle is awake.”

  “Shows what you know about the cave,” I said.

  The chief guard scowled at me.

  “Oh, darling,” I told the unconscious Schaine, pressing a cheek against one of hers. “I’ll do anything for you.”

  The one-eyed guard snorted, and shot a meaningful glance at the chief. I suspected, then, that some of Schaine’s champions had come to quick ends, their surprised antics at the sudden turn of fate providing amusement for the Fighting Hunge who had seen it all before. They likely thought my so-called love for Schaine was badly misplaced, and I would have been the first to agree with them.

  “You know the rule,” the chief told the one-eyed guard. “No one can enter the cave without receiving a death sen—” he trailed off and glanced at me. “You want to go with Schaine as she sees the oracle?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” I told him, putting bite into my voice. In case that wasn’t enough, “Are you too stupid to understand me?”

  “That’s it,” he said. The chief turned to the one-eyed guard. “Show the fool—take the champion to the entrance of the oracle. What he does after that is on his own head.”

  “This way,” the one-eyed guard told me, motioning toward a section of cliff.

  I nodded stiffly, and I heard Schaine snort as she began moving the slightest bit in my arms. She was waking up, which meant I had to get this done before she started shrieking orders to kill me.

  -28-

  “Step it up,” I told the one-eyed guard.

  He glanced back at me and must have noticed that I felt the pulse in Schaine’s throat. In reality, I pressed a key spot on her throat. If I did it long enough, it would kill her. I just wanted to render her deeply unconscious.

  The guard hurried, and I strode after him. After we’d crossed most of the plateau, with the rest of the guard detail trailing us, the one-eyed guard pointed at a leather curtain. It hung before an entrance in a vertical cliff wall that went straight up. The cliff looked smooth, machine-made.

  Without preamble, I shouldered aside the cape, entering a gloomy cavern. A faint glow ahead provided me with a modicum of illumination. I headed that way and tripped, almost pitching Schaine onto the stone floor. A glance back showed me a thick power cord that snaked deeper into the gloom. Looking back, I saw that the cord went into a rocky recess just before the hanging cape.

  That was interesting. Why would a digitized Dr. Calidore need a power cord? Maybe just as important, what supplied the power?

  Heading toward the light, I tried to understand how Calidore could have become the all-important oracle in so short a time. I hadn’t been with the Wind Runners and Fighting Hunge for very long, surely not enough time for Calidore to maneuver his way into telling these people what to do or drastically changing their destiny.

  I strode for the light, taking a turn in the cavern and now squinting the nearer I came. It was a bright arc light. Maybe the Fighting Hunge had gotten it from the Wind Runners.

  The cavern narrowed back here. I noticed several banks of machines to either side. There were also a few radar-like dishes slowly moving back and forth. Was that for show? I actually saw two rods sticking up in a V with a purple electrical current working up it like a bad 1950’s science fiction movie. We had found the oddest books in various Nevada ruins, including those written by movie critics.

  “Halt,” I heard in Dr. Calidore’s all too familiar voice. The sound was loud, louder than his computer-slate speaker should be able to produce.

  I glanced around, spying a big speaker unit. I noticed a shelf in the very back and saw the computer slate lying there. Cords snaked to a unit beside the slate. Maybe Calidore had a wireless connection to the bigger unit.

  “Long time, no see,” I said.

  “Jason Bain?” Calidore asked, sounding surprised. “I thought you died years ago.”

  As softly as I could, I set the red-haired lizard queen on the rock floor.

  “What happened to her?” Calidore asked.

  “Better question is what happened to you? How did you manage all this? And how in the world can you say something so ridiculous as that I’ve been dead for years?”

  “It isn’t ridiculous as it’s been over seven years since I saw you last.”

  “What?” I asked, sounding winded and feeling weak. Was he serious?

  “I’ve begun to wonder if we initially landed at a temporal anomaly.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around that. “You mean arrived here at Aiello at a spot that goes in and out of time?”

  “Crudely put and not even that accurate,” Calidore said, “as I do not have any evidence to support the theory. I am more inclined to believe that the Avanti’s transporting ray or travel method had some unusual characteristics and side effects. Did you notice anything unusual upon reaching Aiello?”

  “Sure. There was a dinosaur-era fern forest, a parked spaceship and a weird box city. Oh, I was also on rock then, not on sand as when I woke up later.”

  “Describe the box city.”

  I did so, remembering and describing its chaotic nature.

  “Amazing,” Calidore said, once I’d finished. “Do you realize you’re describing a Gorth outpost?”

  “Who? What?”

  “The Gorths were a servant race of the Masters.”

  “The supposedly galaxy-invading Masters that the Avantis hate?”

  “The same,” Calidore said.

  “Okay…and what does all that mean?”

  “That you spied a box city?”

  “Sure. We can start there.”

  “The Gorths built on outpost worlds millennia ago. Thus, if you saw such a city, it would imply that you saw or were in the distant past.”

  “Which might also explain the fern forest,” I said.

  “Ah, there is corroboration for the event,” Calidore said. “Yes. That would also explain rock turning into sand.”

  “Fine. Now, how do you explain the sky-sharks hitting us—me, really? They also took my knife and you.”

  “I can’t explain the process although there must have been some kind of temporal disturbance as I’ve suggested. I would guess it had to do with the Avanti transfer method.”

  “I don’t. I think it has to do with the mentalists poking around this world’s oldest ruins.”

  Calidore did not reply right away, finally saying, “You know about the mentalists?”

  “That I do.”

  “Did Schaine tell you about them?”

  “Did you turn her into the sadist she’s become?”

  “This is no time for recriminations. I did what I had to. Now, we must unite our efforts in order to achieve our separate goals.”

  “Yeah? What’s your goal?”

  “More to the point, what is your goal, Jason?”

  That stopped me. What was my goal?

  “The Avantis have besieged Terra,” Calidore said. “They have infested you with a Lorelai worm—”

  “Whoa. What?”

  “Information,” he said. “You seek information. I seek aid, particularly of a mobile kind. Perhaps if you supply me with arms and legs, I will find it in me to tell you what the Avanti did to you.”

  “Where do you want me to take you?”

  Calidore paused again. “How do I know I can trust you to keep your end of the bargain?”

  “I’ll start the ball rolling,” I said, sure that I was running out of time. “The Avanti, or the shining one in the Arch Ship, told me that if you try to tell mentalists about what happened to you on Terra, or about the Titan ruins or the Arch Ship, that an auto process will erase you from the computer slate.”

  “Devilish bastards,” he said. “That complicates things considerably.”

  “Why, because you were going to have me take you to the mentalists and double-cross me there?”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “You’re overreacting.”

>   I doubted that, but I needed his help to get away from the Fighting Hunge. I would worry about his treacherous nature later. “I just started the trust, Calidore, giving you advanced information. Now, tell me about the whatever-you-call-it worm inside me.”

  “Lorelai worm,” he said. “It’s a control device, a semi-sentient creature living in your body.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Have you noticed any…differences since leaving the Arch Ship?”

  “Like people slowing down during a fight?” I asked.

  “The worm must activate certain bodily functions in you, refining human capabilities. However, if you die, it will die, so it must be careful what it does to you.”

  “And you can see this worm in me?”

  “If you mean detect, yes, of course. These augmenting machines have increased my sensor range and given me x-ray weaponry, among other things.”

  I muttered a swear word.

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Calidore said. “The Avantis are notorious for doing exactly what they did to each of us. Galactic legend and history both corroborate this. Think of them like elves in Terran history. I do not refer to the elves of the many fantasy novels written just before the first nuclear war, but the elves or fairies of historical legends. Those creatures were capricious, often playing sinister pranks on those who met them.”

  “Do you think Terran legends about elves and fairies are really couched truths about the ancient Avantis?”

  “That is an interesting theory. I will have to ponder that at another time. We are about to have visitors, I’m afraid.”

  “Are guards coming?”

  “Not that kind of danger. I finally managed to convince one of the mentalists to visit me. He’s almost here, and he has several neutraloids in attendance.”

  Instead of berating him for treacherous actions, I asked, “What are neutraloids anyway?”

  “Altered humans,” he said, “gelded and inflated with massive strength and a bloodthirsty nature. They’re mentalist shock troops, you could say.”

  As he spoke, I remembered what Schaine had said about Calidore keeping his presence hidden from the mentalists. If the doctor had called one, it sounded as if he’d made a fundamental change in policy. One thing seemed clear. He’d made the call before he knew the Avanti computer would wipe his digital personality for trying to give away the Terran System and Avanti secrets. Had Calidore hoped to make a deal with the mentalist, betraying my planet?