The Ways Between Worlds: Peter Cooper

by Larry E. Clarke

  "Pusssh" came the reply.

  I put my shoulder against the slab and shoved. Nothing.

  Despite all the rubble we had removed from around it, the slab was still firmly lodged in the tunnel.

  I found the iron bar I'd used in the battle with the drakor and after a bit was able to work it into position to pry the slab up from where its bottom was seated. I signaled it that I was going to lift the slab and that it should push when I lifted it.

  "PUSH"

  "PUSSH"

  With a crash the slab fell outward into the tunnel. A wave of cool air was sucked forward by the temporary vacuum it created. Before the dust cloud had settled the alien had begun to lumber up the corridor toward the outside.

  I recalled my own relief at finally being out of the dome and could imagine how it would have felt had I been trapped inside over night. Still with some fear for Leeta's safety (and my own) I followed it out. Once outside it immediately set to grazing on some of the low grasses and weeds growing just outside the opening. Leeta had moved a respectful distance away but it was so intent on filling its stomach that it was ignoring her. I saw now that the small "arms" growing from beneath its chin were quite useful as the thing ate. They tossed aside rocks or sticks that were in the way, and pulled edible plants to within reach. Occasionally they took from the mouth some bit of matter which I suppose was inedible or at least not tasty.

  Leeta and I kept our distance and watched for 20 minutes or so as it grazed. The thing’s skin was--for lack of a better description--ugly. It reminded me of a great oversized Chihuahua which had been dipped in hair remover. The blotches were ghastly too. Nonetheless, I remembered that I'd been no prize when I'd come through the transporter.

  My hair (where I had any) was still less than an inch long. It looked as if this alien might have had hair over its entire body.

  By now it was late afternoon. I was finally getting used to the short days here. My original calculation of of 19 hours +/- 3 had been further refined by new observations to a length of day somewhere between 18 and 21 hours.

  Leeta and I indicated that we were going to leave. As we turned away from the dome and began the descent to the stream and back to the tree the alien followed.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Lady Camille” was the name we used for our newfound friend. From the way she had followed us back from the transport chamber it had been obvious both that she was a sentient being and that she lacked any sort of natural fear (More than we could say for our part.)

  Leeta and I had pantomimed our names to her. She understood instantly and replied in a sort of cow's lowing which was difficult for us to imitate. Each time we tried it produced a sort of rapid clucking from deep in her throat which I was sure was laughter.

  In the end we gave up and did what most people do when names are hard for them to pronounce... we gave her a nickname. Her bearing was regal, yet gentle so I proposed "Lady Camille". It stuck.

  It would have been too risky for her to attempt the climb to Leeta's quarters in the upper branches even if the opening to the stairs had been large enough to admit her. The first night we had signaled her to take shelter in the deep recesses of the roots. Leeta and I brought items to add to her comfort and security.

  We offered food items which she generally ate without apparent concern that they could be poisonous to her. We managed to roof over a space between the roots so she would have a bit more shelter she took little heed of it. Once, during an afternoon storm I looked out to see her serenely chewing a cud in the driving rain with the relative shelter beneath the roof only a few meters away.

  She was such a serene, gentle creature that Leeta and I quickly became quite fond of her. Left alone at the base of the great tree we were concerned that she might be attacked by predators. Against this possibility we erected a sturdy barricade across the space where Lady Camille spent time (I hadn't been able to tell if she ever actually slept) each night.

  She seemed puzzled by our concern. She lacked fear in the same way some rare humans lack a sense of pain. In this world fear was crucial if one wanted to stay alive. Camille usually accepted the food we offered her from the stores in the great tree but she clearly preferred finding her own. For an hour or so each morning and afternoon she grazed the nearby hillsides, eating almost anything that would fit in her mouth. Her gait was loose as if each bone were linked to the rest with elastic or rubber rather than tendon and ligament.

  Beneath her chin were those finger-like projections with which she occasionally picked up and examined some bit of material to assess its potential edibility. Items thus examined rarely escaped uneaten. It amazed me that she could so well manipulate things which were outside her field of view, until I noticed that she had a small set of eyes below her chin to guide these "fingers" and allowed a close examination of anything they picked up.

  The large eyes on the sides of her head were well positioned for viewing distant objects The smaller set was ideally positioned for seeing things at close range. . . a sort of natural set of bi-focals.

  We spent all the daylight hours together constantly pursuing informal language lessons. Lady Camille was making especially rapid progress. Her ability to mimic our speech was incredible. Though distractions occurred here and there about noon each day we gathered for a group meal. This time especially we devoted to learning the others' languages.

  Each of us in turn would display, sketch, of pantomime some object, action, or phrase in our own language for the other two to repeat.

  Leeta's Threatan (“Threet’n”) language was the one we concentrated on as it was the only one likely to be of any use on this world. As I mentioned before, she taught us not the language of the tree dwelling Nugas, but the language of her childhood, the "Neslan" trade language of the Threatans which she knew to be in wide use on this world.

  To my disappointment I'd pieced together that Lady Camille had arrived here as I had, quite by accident. Unlike me, she knew a great deal about the device that deposited her on this world. She and other scientists from her world had discovered an abandoned but more or less intact transport site on their home world. They studied it for years before they were finally ready to test the system. The test was to have been between two stations on their world. Lady Camille, as a highly placed scientist in the project, had apparently volunteered to take the first ride. Instead of arriving as planned on the other side of her own world she woke up on the same slab I had occupied beneath the broken dome.

  Leeta and I knew that we couldn't remain at the tree indefinitely. Sooner or later her tribe would return and from what she had told me it would be dangerous for us to be found here. We looked at the Ursoid's map together after lunch one day and agreed that the symbols did seem to show the transporter site on the hilltop nearby. Further, we agreed that a similar site was represented near the far western margin of the map.

  In the language of Leeta's people we explained the situation to Camille as best we could.

  "We must go again to the place where first I came here" she replied...in a manner which still reminded me of old black and white 2D films of Francis the Talking Mule.

  "I know of these things" she continued. From the deliberate pace of her speech we could see that she was choosing words carefully, using the limited vocabulary at her disposal to best advantage.

  "Sure, Camile, you must want to see the equipment here before we go a long way to the other place."

  An hour later the three of us stood outside the entrance to the dome. Leeta and I were each well armed while Camille continued to behave as if on a Sunday stroll through a park. From all I had gathered her race had never had predators of any sort on their home planet and violence among themselves was unheard of.

  She literally had no concept that anything other than an accident could possibly harm her. It made me nervous to think about the risk looking after her posed for us. Still, what could we do except try and explain that here there were things on this world which would harm us given the chan
ce. On of my first efforts had been to warn her away from the porcupine plants. Although she indicated understanding continued to have my doubts she wouldn’t try to eat them!

  "I'll go in first. Leeta, you follow in the rear. With Camille in the middle we can keep an eye on her."

  Leeta nodded her agreement and we started down the ramp. Since Camille carried no weapons, I had her carry the light spheres for all of us. We got inside without incident.

  "Peter we must find the power for these units." Camile said in a perfect imitation of my own voice.”

  The cables from row upon row of couches disappeared into the floor. The source of power had to be somewhere beneath our feet. The upper chamber held enough ghosts and shadows in recent days. I didn't relish the thoughts of descending into the near total darkness below.

  Near the wall of the dome we knew there were at least two places where ramps led down to a lower level. Until now we had avoided them. Neither Leeta nor I would have had the slightest idea how any of the mechanisms were supposed to work. Now I led the way down while the others followed. The circles of pale green light from the spheres held the darkness scarcely more than an arm's length away.

  There remained plenty of inky dark for our imaginations to populate with lurking, crouching, stalking, monsters. Here and there we heard scurrying sounds as some small creature fled the oncoming light. The only other sound was the regular klop, klop, klop, klop of the Lady's feet striking the hard floor like so many bean bags.

  As our eyes became more adapted the dim glow from the spheres revealed row upon row of dust covered machines. A pair of cables ascended to each from the floor below.

  "Here" was all the Lady said as she moved off to the left down a row of musty equipment. At each bank of machinery there was an oddly contoured seat and a triple row of controls, the operating position for the couches above perhaps. Each looked to be exactly like the rest but Camille seemed to have some goal in mind.

  Three aisles over and two units up we stopped in front of a station identical to all the others except...that on its control board a tiny purple light glowed. "This is the thing which brought Peter and me to this world" Camille murmured using Leeta's voice and language this time.

  "More light."

  Leeta edged closer with the globes Lady Camille had just handed her. Camille produced from somewhere an oddly shaped piece of scrap metal with several hand worked edges.

  We had seen her working on this tool earlier but had not guessed its purpose. Now she began using it to remove several inspection plates from the equipment. One hatch was large enough to allow a light sphere to be placed inside the opening for better visibility. For the most part she worked in silence.

  Those things she did say were in her own language so that Leeta and I were able to catch only bits and pieces of it. What we did understand was not encouraging. Words like "hopeless", "bad", "never", etc were mixed in with what I would have bet were some alien cuss words.

  "No more to do here." the Lady said as she replaced the last access plate.

  We followed her once more down row on musty row until we descended a ramp to a still lower level. If the level above us had been the control level this was clearly the source from which power for the installation was disseminated. We crossed a dusty but still sturdy cat-walk to what must have once been a secondary control room. Below us the darkness stretched far beyond our light. It might have extended down one meter or a hundred. From the way our voices echoed I knew we were in a sizeable chamber

  "What is this place Lady Camille?"

  "From here Peter came the ...stuff, the force to make the machines above, and those in the dome go. ”

  “Wait. . . I will be but a short time here” she said as she moved to the side of a large component just a couple meters to our right. As Camille worked we had nothing to mark the passing time. Leeta and I might have waited there in the darkness for just a few minutes or for over an hour. As each access plate had been removed I looked on alien technology no human ever seen. Once again Lady C. murmured some discouraging comments in her own language and then, like any good technician she replaced just enough of the fasteners to hold the access plates back in position.

  “Finished” she signaled, motioning upward toward the exit. We were now like horses headed for the barn, kids ready to get out of the spook house. I noticed our pace steadily quickening as we followed our own dusty footsteps back toward the exit.

  "Pet-ar, look!" Leeta said excitedly.

  She had stopped suddenly and was pointing to the floor ahead of her.

  There in the dust ahead was the clear trail the three of us left on the way in. My footprints, Leeta's smaller ones, and the pad prints from the Lady that sometimes covered mine. It was all very much what I expected to see...except that crossing our trail at right angles was another set prints. Whatever had made them was sizeable and walked on two legs. The steps were 1 meter or more apart. They were large, roughly triangular in shape. Both my feet could have fit easily inside each of the three toed prints. Between the steps was a track as wide as a truck tire where the creature had pushed or dragged something.

  Most relevant was the fact that where the paths crossed our trail was the one that had been obliterated. Something had passed this way more recently than we had. Without a word Leeta and I each drew our weapons and made for the ramp with renewed speed. Carrying the lights we were sitting ducks, without them we were blind. We both wanted out. Five minutes later we were back in the sunlight a hundred yards or so from the Dome. We paused in the shelter of a broken wall.

  "What did you find?" I asked Camille.

  "It was as I thought it would be. This place is very like the one my people found many...a great time ago. Much force is needed to send something to another world, while--for safety--to receive a thing takes only a little power or even none at all. The place we found had ways to produce and store great. . ." she searched for the word.

  "Power?"

  "Yes, great power. If this power were lost at the wrong time those being transported would be lost forever. To stop this they made great holding places for the power. If the holding places here had been full we might make the machines send us home."

  But. . . here she breathed a big sigh. . . The holding places were empty of this power and it is not we who can fill them again."

  I don't know how this news affected Leeta and the Lady but I was more than a little depressed as we walked "home".

  I encouraged myself by thinking of that other symbol on the map. Perhaps we'd waltz in there and find an alien version of O'hare or DFW. Lady Camille and I would whip out our Visa cards and faster than the ruby slippers I'd be back in Kansas and she’d go back to Neverland, or wherever it was she had come from.

  “Think like a scientist Coop” I told myself. There was the real probability that we'd never even find the place. We had only a crude map, a map whose accuracy was unproven. There was no certainty the other site still existed, or ever had. We could just as easily be wandering off in search of the proverbial "wild anatidae". I could see us wondering for years like the lost tribe of Israel . . . or simply dying 3000 kilometers from here. . . or, in the worst scenario of all, going through hell only to find the place a worse ruin than this one. It was with those cheery thoughts goose stepping through my head that I retired that night.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Gaeta beast dropped, as it often does, from the cover of an overhanging branch on unsuspecting prey beneath. Engrossed in our conversation neither Lady nor I had spotted it before being caught up in a whirlwind of claws and fangs.

  Raked front and back and from head to knees by the snarling beast we were pronounced "dead" in seconds!

  From the day we'd left the transporter site Leeta had seen to it that we were not on a pleasure hike but more of a mobile boot camp, a constant skirmish in which she would disappear up the trail to reappear minutes or hours later imitating the stalking and killing behavior of one of the local predators.

  Lacki
ng claws or formidable teeth Leeta added realism to the simulations by arming herself with a stout piece of the local "bamboo". The ends of this she split while green into flails--a sort of vegetable cat-O-nine-tails--which raised enormous red and angry looking whelps. At times the girl laid it on with such relish I wondered if she didn't have more than a touch of the sadist. This time she'd caught us napping and we both have the whelps to show for it. Inarguably, the lessons were needed and they were working. Before this most recent fiasco we'd been a little puffed up at the idea we'd gone three whole days without being taken off guard. Not really a bad record--unless one had in mind to live longer than three days!

  No, we still needed the lessons. Although she lacked any natural or instinctive sense of fear Lady C had developed real proficiency not only at spotting Leeta poised for mock attacks but real predators on the prowl as well. She might not have an innate sense of fear but she was learning on an intellectual level the need for consistent caution.

  Meanwhile, I--whose previous survival training had consisted of re-reading Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky-- had also acquired some modest survival skills. This world also had its share of "stobor" to be wary of. We had been on the trail for six weeks as we pushed west and south edging along the foothills of the mountain range. Using a bit of trig and some remembered remnants of the one surveying course I’d had at the university I estimated the tallest peaks at close to 10,000 meters. I’d shown Lady as close as I could what a “meter” was. She did her own calculations and concluded that the highest was no more than 9,000. More than five hundred kilometers of blistered feet, scrapes, sprains, and insect bites lay behind us. Each of us by now had toughened. We had fallen into our own routine. Leeta, somehow was always the first one awake. Perhaps her years with the Nuga had accustomed her to getting up with the "chickens". This morning, like every morning, she had a small fire going. She was warming the remains of the skirk we'd eaten for supper last night. Lady Camille would soon be foraging for her breakfast, I'd once again make pale efforts at washing in water warmed on Leeta's fire. Before the sun had been up an hour we'd push on to the west-southwest.