I wanted to call him out on that, but if he needed a private audience with us, it was likely for a good reason.
“You have something to report about the ice world?” he asked, leaning forward, showing his interest level was high.
“Yes,” Mary started, “we found a symbol among the ice.” I passed him a datastick, one he’d provided me for bringing him planet details for his portal world project.
He plugged it in, and images reflected on the side wall of the room, an art piece disappearing from the screen to be replaced by shots from our aerial drones. We’d left out Slate’s and mine, which showed nothing but ice, snow, and wind.
We’d edited Mary’s to skip forward, and when he saw the foreign metal stuck in the ground, he leaned toward the screen. We had a shot of the drone flying over it, getting the symbol in full view.
“Amazing,” his quick tweet translated. “I do not recognize this one. Is it from…” He left the question unanswered. He knew I had access to the hidden side of the portal guide, the one Kareem and others had worked hard to cover forever. Sarlun had never asked me for the details, and I knew it was eating him up inside.
I shook my head. “Never seen it before.”
“I think it’s their world. It has to be,” Mary said.
“The Theos, you mean? Not necessarily, but perhaps,” was all Sarlun said.
The screen began to show the images Slate had taken up close of the black metallic symbol. All along it, every few feet, were the curves and slashes identifying five other portal worlds. I recognized three from the Gatekeeper portals but hadn’t been given a chance to check the ones the Theos Collective had blocked. If they’d worked so hard to close a section of planets off, they must have done so for a reason. Not being able to access the Bhlat homeworld would have been a good thing, under normal circumstances.
Sarlun’s nose lifted up and down in excitement, and he started to swipe through a tablet. “The icon on the left” – he paused the screen, pointing to the four rectangles sitting in front of a small circle – “is none other than Atrron. I’ve been there before…once. I remember how impressive a place it was. Of course, it would be linked to the Theos.” His language fluttered out in a series of tweets, the translator doing its job well.
We discussed the other two worlds Sarlun knew of. Having never visited them himself, he couldn’t say more than was on file from the other Gatekeepers.
We got to the footage from the rover, and Sarlun stood up as the hole we’d dug caved in on itself. “What did you find down there?” he asked.
“What makes you think we found anything?” Mary asked, a twinkle in her eye.
“Because the only reason for them to have the symbol get swallowed up by the ice would be if someone had passed their first test.” Sarlun started to sit back down but moved to the screen, staring at the paused image.
“Why have a test in the first place? What do they want?” I asked.
“The Theos were the most intelligent race ever to exist, but they also had an insatiable appetite for puzzles and challenges.”
“Centuries after anyone’s seen them, and now we find a clue to follow. To what end?” Mary fidgeted with her hands. Her wedding ring spun around her finger as she contemplated the problem.
“If I were to speculate, I’d say they want to be found,” Sarlun said.
“Why?”
“That, I can’t tell you.”
I dug into my bag and wrapped my hand around the cube. “Maybe this will teach us something.”
His black eyes widened. His narrow mouth opened and closed a few times before he said anything. “That’s the missing piece.”
“I’m not sure, but it seems likely,” I said.
“Come with me. I don’t want prying eyes.” Sarlun opened his door, and we followed him out of his white pristine office into a similarly-designed hallway. Every so often, we walked past a Shimmalian, and we smiled and made pleasantries with a couple. They seemed to have a hard shell, but once they got to know us, they softened and treated us like equals.
“Where are you taking us?” Mary asked as the lights became dimmer, and the walls seemed to lose their sheen.
Sarlun didn’t reply. He just motioned for us to keep following, and soon we were at a gray steel door. There was a keypad with strange cyphers on it, and he quickly tapped a pattern, the door sliding open.
“What you’re about to see doesn’t leave this room. Agreed?” His choice of words caught me off-guard, but I played along. The translator still impressed the hell out of me.
“Agreed.” I said it first, followed by Mary. She waggled her eyebrows up and down at me when Sarlun wasn’t looking.
Sarlun shut the entrance as we passed through, and a bright white light came on in the center of the ceiling. “Welcome to my collection.”
It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I saw rows upon rows of shelving, each filled with strange-looking items. I whistled a long note, unsure of just what it was we were seeing, but impressed nonetheless.
Mary stepped forward, but Sarlun stayed put, watching us as we investigated the room. It was a large space, probably close to two thousand square feet, with fifteen-foot ceilings. There were at least three yards between each shelf, which were each around twelve feet long and eight high. I followed Mary to the first row and spotted dozens of stone objects. Some looked like crude tools, bowls, hammers, cups; much like a section you’d see at a museum of natural history.
“Where are these from?” I asked, reaching for a long spoon-like tool. A blue force shield activated, stopping my fingers from going forward. It left a slight tingle in my hand.
“Those were from my very first world. I was a young Shimmali man of thirty cycles,” Sarlun said. I had no idea what age that put him at, compared to an Earth year. “Tranlok Four. The planet had gone through an extinction event. We weren’t sure what happened to them, but the most advanced creatures were using these tools when I arrived. They were in that stage for what we think were centuries, never adapting or evolving. Quite the unique story.” Sarlun gazed at the shelves wistfully for a moment.
I smiled at how similar the rudimentary utensils were to those of our own Neanderthals.
“What about these?” Mary asked from a row over. I crossed over to see what she was looking at. She pointed to an intricate helmet, asymmetrical but beautiful.
“That is from the Loorg world. They rule over all the creatures there, taking pity on none. Their leader Lord Plo’s troops fought battle after battle with each region, and with every defeat, he took a portion of the defending general’s bones. This helmet is made from pieces of all forty-seven of them.” Sarlun seemed pleased with himself.
“How did you get it?” I asked.
“One of us witnessed the revolt against Plo. He was beheaded on the battlefield, and amidst the chaos, we took it.” The Shimmalians were proving more interesting to me by the minute.
“When will we be ready to visit an occupied planet?” Mary asked Sarlun. So far, he’d only sent us to worlds with no intelligent life.
“When the rest of the Keepers say you’re ready,” he said, and Mary shot me a glance, rolling her eyes.
“And you? Do you think we are?” I asked.
He appraised me for a while. No part of him moved. “I do.”
Relief flooded me, with a side of anxiety. Until we went to alien worlds teeming with life, cultures, and politics, we were essentially just going for hikes on distant planets. I didn’t mind that. We could go home afterward and feel good about what we’d done, without wondering if we’d negatively affected or altered another race.
I’d already been to at least a dozen planets, each a far cry from the last. What would the next one bring?
Sarlun walked past me, moving with purpose to the far end of the room. Here the shelving full of ancient artifacts ended. He tapped a control panel on the last shelf row, and a blue light flickered, then shut off. He touched his fingertip to a black box a
nd it separated in half, exposing an object the same color as the one in my pack. I’d only seen images of it, but now I could tell it belonged with the cube.
It was slightly wider than the one I had and looked like a platform for it. Four teeth erupted from its edges, making a smooth table for the cube to sit on. I smacked my lips, everything suddenly turning dry. I looked around for water but didn’t see any.
Mary was beside me now, both of us staring closely at the artifact exposed to us. Sarlun smiled his thin-lipped grin, reaching his hand out to me. With only the smallest hesitation, I grabbed the cube from my pack, setting it in his thick palm.
As he touched both pieces, the gemstones began to illuminate with green light. I felt the stone against my chest start to heat up, like it had on the night of the Event. I pulled it out and let it sit against my shirt, the green stone burning brightly.
Mary looked around, like we were about to be lifted into the sky. Some fears never dissipated. I saw her check to see if she had Bob’s ring on the chain she kept around her neck. She hadn’t worn it in a few years now.
“We’re fine,” I assured her.
“Interesting,” Sarlun squawked.
“You’re telling me. The same stones used in the Kraskis’ elaborate plan were one and the same as these you seem to think are from clues left by the Theos. What if all of this was a backup plan by our old friends? Maybe the Kraski aren’t actually gone. Has anyone checked their homeworld?” Sweat beaded on my forehead as I wondered just what the real story was.
Sarlun didn’t answer, and I took his silence as confirmation. He appeared to be puzzling it out for himself. “We haven’t. I didn’t see the need. Especially with your world now gone.”
“Earth’s gone, but New Spero is thriving.” I closed my eyes, imagining angry black vessels lowering onto our new world. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“Regardless, the Bhlat took their world. That’s why they were running away,” Mary said.
“Do we really know that? Or were we trusting the words of a traitorous hybrid?” I spoke the words more venomously than I intended.
“We’ll look into it. For now, let’s see what we have here.” Sarlun turned and set the original artifact down on a table. They were still glowing, though the moment he let go of one, they dimmed. He glanced at me, then placed the newly acquired cube on the stand.
Four
Nothing happened.
“Not quite what I had in mind.” The expression on Mary’s face said she was clearly disappointed.
“A cube has six sides,” I said, lifting it up. I moved it so the largest symbol faced upwards, toward the heavens, and put it back down.
The room illuminated with green light, so much that I feared we’d blown ourselves up. We were now in another place, where we could only see green for all eternity.
“Dean!” Sarlun screeched, his translator saying my name. I let go, and the light level lowered; once again, I could see the shapes of Sarlun and Mary in front of me.
The brightness continued to decrease, and the two artifacts rattled on the tabletop. No one spoke for a minute, all of our attention fully focused on the table.
A shadow in the shape of the symbol emerged from the top of the cube. It matched the one from the ice world and the top of the cube. It hovered there, four feet across, and we moved away from it, unsure what it was made of.
“Sarlun, have you ever seen anything like it?” Mary asked the Shimmali Gatekeeper.
He tweeted an airy noise, but the translator didn’t pick up what he’d said. It was either too quiet or not an actual word.
When he was about to reply, the shadow began to move again, this time growing into the shape of a man. It floated there, its feet linked to the cube by wispy blackness. The shadow didn’t solidify; it stretched out even further until we saw thin legs, a long torso, and arms that went well below the knees. A head turned back and forth, as if assessing us.
Goosebumps rose on my arms. It was like something out of a horror movie, and it had poured out of a cube I’d been carrying around for two days. It had been in my house.
“Hello,” I said to it, unable to hide the tremor in my voice. Its head, a smoky black visage, rotated and paused. I wished it had eyes, so I could tell if it was looking at me.
Sarlun hit a button on his translator and said a string of words in his language. He must have turned it off, because no words came out in English. “What are you doing?” I asked, wondering just how much we knew about Sarlun and the Shimmali people.
Sarlun didn’t reply but went to one knee before the shadow. He kept repeating a phrase that sounded like a beautiful bird’s song.
The shadow had been still but responded after Sarlun stopped tweeting his song.
Sarlun turned his translator back on just in time for the shadow to speak. It did so in pure Shimmal, and the device turned it into English for us. “Who goes there?”
“It can speak?” Mary whispered the question. The shadow was still moving slightly, its head turning a little.
The movements were familiar. I noticed a pattern repeating. “It’s on a loop,” I said. “It’s not really here, is it?”
Sarlun shook his head. “No. It is ancient.”
“Who goes there?” the voice asked again.
Sarlun stood up straight, back proud and voice strong. “Sarlun Shim, Head Gatekeeper of the Theos Portals.”
He motioned for us to speak. Mary nodded to me to go first, and I cleared my throat. “Dean Parker, CPA and Gatekeeper, hailing originally from Earth and most recently New Spero.” I hoped my accounting title impressed the long-dead shadow creature.
“Mary Lafon – Mary Parker,” Mary corrected herself. I’d told her there was no pressure to change her name, but she’d admitted she wanted to. “Captain in the US Air Force and Gatekeeper, from Earth and now New Spero as well.”
I winked at her, glad she’d used her old title too.
We didn’t have to wait long for it to speak. “Which of you summoned me here?”
“Technically, we all did. Sarlun had one piece and we brought the cube.” Mary’s words translated through into Shimmal chirps and tweets.
“Which of you summoned me here?” it asked again.
“Dean Parker did,” Sarlun said, and the hair on the back of my neck rose.
“Very well,” it said, and we stood motionless, waiting for more.
“That was anticlimactic,” I said, turning to Mary. Then the shadow moved quickly, rushing toward me. Before I had a chance to duck or run, it entered my soul.
____________
I stood on a cliff, thousands of feet above a deep blue ocean. Even from this height, I could hear massive waves roar and crash against the rocky outcropping below. A yellow star hung in the sky, too close to be our old sun, too pale to be in Proxima.
I tried to recall how I’d arrived but couldn’t. Was I alone? I turned slowly, seeing no one else. The water surrounded me. The chunk of land I stood on was hardly a hundred feet long, and I crossed it, seeing an extremely high cliff face once again. Shouldn’t I be afraid?
Under normal circumstances, I’d be terrified at being at this altitude with nothing but an angry body of water threatening to crush me at all fronts, but that was the rational part of my brain. It was now telling me that I didn’t need to fear anything. Was I dead, then?
I pinched my forearm and felt a sharp pain. I looked down and saw I was wearing a white Gatekeeper outfit, tailored to my human body. When had I changed into this?
“Dean Parker,” a voice said from behind me. When I spun around, no one was there.
“Dean Parker. You’ve earned the right to search.” The English was solid, but spoken the way a computer program might inflect words.
This time, I turned and saw the shadowed figure. It was walking of its own volition, not linked to the cube. It all flooded back to me: the ice world; placing the artifacts together to have a strange mist emerge from them.
“I don’t understan
d. Search for whom?” I asked, certain I knew the answer but wanting to hear it from the creature.
“The Theos.”
“Why did you disappear?”
It took a second, and I thought its head was facing away from me, staring into the endless moving sea. It was a very human-like image. “This is for you to find out.”
“And at the end of the clues, will I find you?”
Another pause. I was still under the impression that this was an intelligent recording I was conversing with. “Yes.”
“Why the games? Why not just tell me where you are?” I asked.
“Only the worthy may seek us. Only the True may find us.”
I cleared my throat, watching the misty man wisp in front of me. “How many True have found you before?”
“Through the ages, few have sought us. Never have we met the True.”
His phrasing set alarms off in my mind. I thought back to Kareem’s words about me being different. Change the universe. His dying words stuck to me like glue now.
I waited for it to speak again, but it was obviously programmed to wait for a verbal prompt before it responded.
“How do I find you?” I asked.
“You must follow the path.”
“What path?”
“You have the tools now. Use the map.”
“The map?” I wondered what that meant. Maybe it was referring to the symbols on the artifact. “What order do we follow?”
“The order is set. All pieces will fit.”
The answers were obscure, yet clear. I understood and pressed my luck. “Is there a wise place to begin?”
“You would benefit from beginning at the bottom.”
“What’s there?” I asked, guessing I’d get some obscure doublespeak back.
“The Forest of Knowledge.”
“What can you tell me about it?” I replied.
“The Forest of Knowledge.”
I probed it a few more times, hoping to get a different answer, but it kept saying the same response. It felt like my spell with it was coming to an end. “Am I the True?” I asked, nervous sweat beading down my back even in this weird world.
The Survivors Box Set Page 67