by Ryder Stacy
The process of interconnection, integration, continued. Each of them in turn exchanged something—weakness for insight, compassion, strength. After a time, they were all done. Finally they were ready to aid Rockson.
The Turquoise Spectrum mind-spoke to them all: “EACH OF US HAS LEARNED. NOW WE ARE READY. WE WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS THING. RESOLVE THAT WE WILL GIVE OUR POWER TO ROCKSON, DRAG HIM OUT OF THAT NETHERWORLD OF HALF-DREAM, HALF-AWAKENING . . . RESOLVE IT, AND LET US BEGIN THE STRUGGLE FOR HIS LIFE! LET US DO IT NOW! CONCENTRATE ALL YOUR POWER UPON HIS SHIELD, SO THAT HE MIGHT RECONNECT TO THIS WORLD, SO THAT HE WILL HAVE THE POWER OF LIFE ENERGY ONCE MORE!”
Twenty-Nine
All were now linked in mind and heart. They all looked with even greater sadness at the prone, shallow-breathing form of their friend Rockson. His shield was dark and empty, like his life force. Just the great blank shield covered him. But being united mind and heart meant that they made up the whole. And as they understood, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Blue electricity filled the air like a great dynamo ready to start. Their power was awesome.
The Glowers now began a low hum, a discordant yet somehow beautiful dirge. Flashes of light as bright as the sun shot from everywhere and nowhere, all around the dome. As they all concentrated their mental energies on Rockson’s body and the great blank shield over him, the Glowers’ hum became a beautiful song, grew louder. Snaps and crackles of static electricity filled the air. Even Archer’s beard was standing on end. The flashes of light intensified, ricocheting, pulsing faster and faster, becoming a vibrating kaleidoscope of swirling colors and shapes.
With a terrific thunderous clap, the dynamic energy shot out in the form of lightning flashes from each of the participant’s shields and flowed into Rockson’s shield. Rockson’s blank rawhide shield became full of moving colors and shapes. Beams of light shot out from the shield to Rockson’s body and back—which made the shield grow brighter still, until there was an all-powerful interflow of energy from shield to Rockson to the shield. The shield and Rockson grew in brightness, until they rivaled the sun. Angels sang, demons howled.
Simultaneously, all assembled around the circle started to rise higher, still in a sitting position, hovering in the air. When they had risen approximately a foot off the ground, they started to spin slowly around Rockson. Each mind link to Rockson became clear, represented by a visual light-spoke of the wheel. The wheel began to turn slowly and then faster and faster. It all spun around Rockson. The whole assemblage and Rockson became the spinning medicine wheel! The completion, the beginning.
Suddenly the colors and shapes on Rockson’s shield hardened and solidified into a beautiful mosaic. And then the mosaic resolved into Rockson’s personality. The brilliance faded, and a red wolf formed on the shield; the inward and outward pointing arrows became manifest. The flashing lights went out in one final burst, and all fell over swooning in their places. The wheel had stopped. The energy had been transferred.
Rockson sat up. “God, where? Oh, now I understand! You all helped me,” he croaked out. “Thank you.”
“Here, drink this,” surgeon Escadrille said, handing him a glass of blue liquid.
Rockson drank it and it steadied his tremors. “Thank you.”
“Now rest. Sleep first. We will talk later. We all will rest.”
Archer yawned and stretched and lay back where he was. He was the first awake, but soon all the Techno-survivors arose, too. They had slept the sleep of the exhausted on their beds of straw that the Glowers had piled into one empty geodesic dome. Rockson had snored as loudly as Archer, to the consternation of the little techno-survivors.
The Glowers—God knew how they did it—produced a large breakfast. There was the smell of bacon, and fried eggs, and toast.
They ate heartily. “Perhaps the Glowers can materialize food,” Rockson speculated. The Glowers sat communing with each other, without touching of course, off to the side.
Zydeco, as he sipped his mug of coffee, said, “I never thought about anything except logic and science before. It is a startling revelation to me to experience this . . . other side of life. What would you call it? What happened yesterday?”
“Spiritual?” Rockson said. “Metaphysical? Is that the term? No. I think a better word would be “Warrior power.”
“Yes, that’s it. I thought I knew it all,” Zydeco said. “And I knew nothing. My understanding of life was so shallow—”
Archer put his arm over the little man. “You know now.”
They all were rather quiet for the rest of their meal.
The morning light shone through the cracks in the tentlike top of the lodge-dome. It was a morning of beauty; the blue sky peeking in was shot with icy sky crystals, and a red sun glowed magnificently.
The Glower leader opened the door, letting in cold air just as they finished breakfast. “WE MUST BEGIN THE JOURNEY BACK TO CENTURY CITY. THIS LOCATION IS DANGEROUS FOR HUMANS AFTER A SHORT TIME.”
When they came outside, Rockson gasped. It had snowed several feet during the night. It was beautiful. The strange trees that surrounded the circular settlement had coatings of ice. “Like a fairy forest,” Zydeco said. “Beautiful.”
And the geodesic domes too were ice coated, glowing blue from inside. Turquoise spoke in their minds:
“WE CAN’T SAIL THE SANDSHIPS OVER SNOW, BUT THERE IS YET ANOTHER SHIP. IT HAD BEEN COMPLETED JUST BEFORE WE FELT THE DANGER YOU WERE IN, ROCKSON. COME, WE WILL SHOW YOU OUR GREATEST PHYSICAL ACHIEVEMENT—OUR SNOWSHIP.”
Rockson had the brief flicker of a thought about the other-dimensional worm creatures they must pass by to get the hell out of this part of the world. “Will the gunships be able to accompany us?” he asked.
“THERE WILL BE NO NEED FOR GUNSHIPS,” said the Turquoise Spectrum. “THE INTERWORLD WORMS WILL NOT ATTACK US. THE BEAUTY OF SNOW TRAVEL IS THAT WITH THE SNOW THERE ARE NO BEINGS SUCH AS THAT. SNOW, GENTLE SOFT SNOW-WATER IN SOLID CRYSTAL FORM—SERVES AS A NATURAL BARRIER TO THE NETHERWORLDS. ALL WE NEED IS JUST ONE CRAFT—BUT COME AND SEE.”
Rockson, Archer, and Zydeco and the other Techno-survivors all followed Turquoise Spectrum, eagerly trudging down the path that Glower vaporized in the snow before them with a strange bubble-ray wand.
They came eventually to a great geodesic-shaped hangar, situated between two huge natural monuments of stone. The hangar was oval, elongated and large, perhaps a hundred and fifty meters long by a hundred meters wide. It was several stories high and glowed blue from the inside, like some huge cocoon. Shadows moved inside, cast against the eerie interior light. And as the travelers gaped in awe, the unseen hinges moved and doors slid open, revealing the looming shape inside. It was the great snowship, supported on large timbers. The twelve-foot-diameter stabilizer ball was spinning slightly under the center of the craft.
A dozen Glowers were prying the poles out from under the great craft. The roller ball spun faster and faster. Rockson had learned that it was a sort of gyroscope that spun so fast that it reduced the craft’s weight in the gravitational field of the planet. The ship above it stabilized and actually hovered above the concrete flooring of the hangar dome. The great prow of the ship, a ship that seemed to made of crystal ice, started to float slowly out the immense doors.
It was like a Spanish galleon, but twice the size, and immensely more beautiful than the sandships.
“BEHOLD THE SNOWSHIP,” Turquoise said proudly in their minds. “IT RIDES HIGH AND FAST. ZYDECO TELLS ME THAT HIS LITTLE PEOPLE WISH TO ACCOMPANY ROCKSON AND ARCHER TO THEIR HOME. THIS ICE-CARVED VESSEL WILL TAKE YOU ALL BACK TO CENTURY CITY WITH ALL GREAT SPEED.”
The magnificent, impossible snowship slid its full hundred-meter length out of the hangar. The back of it was shaped to hold rooms, with lights coming out of portholes. “THOSE ARE YOUR COMFORTABLE QUARTERS. THE JOURNEY WILL PERHAPS BE TOO INTERESTING FOR MANY OF YOU TO WISH TO RETIRE, BUT THERE ARE WARM PLACES AND BEDS.”
As Rockson watched, the sh
ip seemed to lower itself a bit, scattering up a spray of snow. The twelve-foot roller ball spun slightly slower under the center of the craft.
Once the craft had totally emerged from its hiding place, the crew on deck dropped the strange, pink, warm nets for them all to scramble up. It would be quite a climb. This baby was high.
“Come,” Turquoise said proudly, “let us get aboard.”
Thirty
Despite the concern voiced by surgeon Escadrille regarding his recent illness, Rock was the first to try the net. He pushed off Archer’s attempt to steady him. “I’m all right.” It was a long climb, over sixty feet up to the deck. Rockson made it a race to the great forward jutting bow. He won—although he suspected Archer could have beaten him. Perhaps the gentle mass of mountain man had held back just a little bit. Rockson felt very strong, but he was not foolish enough to think that he had yet full recovered.
Rock watched the others climb aboard, and while the last of the nets were drawn up, heard an electronic hissing sound like a thousand stereo sets getting ready to blast. The whine was loud enough to make them all hold their ears. Rock knew that the “ball of power” that was embedded in the ship’s hull made that noise. The gyro-ball beneath the ship raised it still higher over the snow. Then Rockson felt the ship start to turn in the air—to face toward Century City.
Breathing hard in the icy air, with the wind whipping his long black locks streaked with the one band of ultrawhite, Rock watched along with the others in his party as the great sails were slowly raised into place. First rose the canvaslike wind sail, then the other iridescent, strange, thin fabrics made, not for the wind, but for more subtle energies. The star-energy sail was raised second, black and flickering with strange electrical flows. Finally the powerful, yet most ethereal of all the sails—the one that would catch the power of the earth’s magnetic field— The auroral-sail!
Once the three sails were up and roped into place, the Glower crew-master went to the great wheel, which was like the wheel on an old sailing ship, and untied it. And then the ship, which seemed to be vibrating like an eager racehorse, began to slide forward out of the rocky area and out above the snow-swept terrain.
They quickly gathered speed, to about thirty knots, and in five minutes were sliding past the Glower village, where the two dozen Glowers that remained behind lined up and silently waved good-bye. But though there was no sound, there was such a mental interchange of emotions and farewell cheers that Rock and his friends held their heads in dismay. They were getting migraines by the time the ship sailed by.
Once the ice-crystal snowship had left the Glowers’ geodesic domes behind, a snowstorm began in earnest and a leaden sky seemed to lower on them. But the snow swirled by even faster—the wind picking up added to the power of the other sails. They were whipping along like a jet.
Rockson stayed in the bow section as the others wandered about the ship, studying its mechanism with enraptured attention. The technically minded little men were especially interested in how the Glowers steered the thing. Rock stayed at the prow, and so did Archer, but as the ship rocked like a cradle, Archer soon bunked out on a blanket right next to Rockson. The Doomsday Warrior was alone in his thoughts, standing in the very foremost part of the great craft, watching the terrain slide by, a winter wonderland.
Further back on the craft, Rock knew, the swirling snow thrown up by the great ship’s passing would cloud the view. But up here it was breathtaking, and more. Up here there was a solitude that let him dream a bit of the alternate-reality Kim that he had left behind on the nonexistent asteroid named Esmerelda. And Kimetta’s face seemed to float in front of the ship sometimes, smiling, encouraging, throwing kisses of icy gusts of snow from the other reality, saying, “I am here, I am well, and I will come to you again.”
He was both drawn to the vision and wary of it, wondering if it was dangerous to engage such thoughts. Would he slip into the other reality again? No, he knew he wouldn’t. He felt solid, substantial, real; and tied to this time-space plane of existence. She would always be in his dreams, but Kimetta didn’t belong here. Or Rockson there. He found himself supplanting her vision with the thought of her lovely counterpart in this reality—Kim Langford, the president’s daughter. Her face formed in the snow clouds.
“Yes, my love, I am waiting for you,” Kim seemed to say. And then she too was just a swirling mass of snow dust. Rock smiled and watched the rolling snow dunes, and the ship silently glided along, leaning slightly this way and that as the great sails caught the various ethereal currents of energy it used to move.
The snow dunes were really piling up. The clearance of the craft from the real ground below stayed the same; that meant that occasionally the prow would hit the dunes and Rock would feel a lurch. But the craft easily cleared all but the highest snow dunes to be glided over. The gentle tug of the crest of one large dune or another bumping the prow created no danger, just a sensation of slowing for a few seconds. The ship, Rockson had been told, could make more than one hundred and thirty knots per hour, but would be run slower until the snow was less deep. It was utterly safe, and pleasant, he was assured. And that was surely true. The journey seemed to Rockson like a pleasant dream that would last for two days.
The clouds broke slightly at sundown, and at twilight Rockson faced a bloodshot sky. Archer stirred and turned to the side, bumping against Rockson’s feet. God, it is so beautiful, should I waken him? No, let the gentle giant sleep. He deserved some shut-eye. Archer was more than a friend, he was like a brother. If your brother could be a hairy bear, that is!
Soon the sun display turned to vermilion, and then to black. Night descended, the broken clouds shot with starlight. The sails rippled and caught their gentle light and amplified it, used it. Rockson knew that was happening when the second sail began to hiss. They picked up speed, the bow grabbing at the highest dunes, rocking more earnestly. Rock figured they were going about seventy knots, and the wind was so fierce and cold that he shook Archer awake, and they retired to the cabin that had been provided them. The Techno-survivors had their own warmer cabin, but the two humans had an unused cargo space, twenty steps down inside the hull, for their rest. Twin bunks, one larger than the other, made of—Rock touched it and smiled—yes, it smelled like pine and it was pine. All the comforts of a bunkhouse out west, on a strange alien vessel.
For a terrifying instant just before he went to sleep, Rockson thought that he heard one of the other-dimensional invader-worms roaring far out in the wilderness. But then he decided it was just his imagination, and the ship rocked him to sleep . . .
The next day, he was groggy, even though he woke up long after dawn. After making a pit stop at a simple hole-in-the-flooring bathroom, he splashed some water from a basin on his face. Then went up on deck, which was bathed in sunlight. Squinting in the too-bright winter sun, he was then handed some strange wraparound glasses by Archer, who was already sitting on a long plastic bench, eating breakfast with the little people. The Glowers were up on the rigging, or down in the depths of the ship, or at the great steering wheel, tending to their tasks. They didn’t eat breakfast. Not this kind of breakfast. Rock sat down and gaped at the repast. “God, where’d they get this pile of scrambled eggs and toast and bacon and—?”
“Don’t ask,” Zydeco said, spooning a piece of bacon carefully into his mouth, “I asked, and it sorta spoiled my appetite.”
Rockson nodded, and ate heartily. And then, as he and a burping, farting Archer made their way up to the prow of the craft, stretching and yawning, he had to ask.
“Okay Arch, where do the Glowers get this food?”
“Reprocessed shit,” Archer said, smiling. “Good!”
Rockson squelched down his gagging feeling and nodded. “OK, thanks for the info.” He felt as green as Zydeco had looked for a while. But what the hell, he tried to tell himself, all nature is a series of reprocessing steps—fertilizer raises grass, the hay eaten by cattle making their meat, which we turn into food . . . He
thought like that until his stomach stopped quaking.
They continued their smooth, uneventful, beautiful journey toward Century City.
“Boy,” he said to Archer, “see those cliffs over there? That’s the Outer Buttes—three hundred snowy miles to go! Man, I’ve never seen snow of this depth in Colorado. Hey Archer, wait till the guys back home see this thing coming. The portal guards, especially old Gabby, will shit in their pants.”
“WILL SHOOT AT US?” Archer asked with some concern.
Rockson laughed. “No, we thought of that! They won’t shoot. I will inform Jarrety and the other receiver mutants in C.C. by telepathy that we’re coming, once we get within ten miles.”
Archer smiled, “Like Glowers?”
“You got it Arch!” He was, of course, referring to telepathic messages that Rockson—a star-mutant—would send to the three other trained star-mutants in the city, messages that would gently tip the city masters off to expect Rockson to arrive soon—in a strange conveyance! Of course, the Glowers could reach the three telepaths in Century City right from here—but Rock had advised them that their loud and strange mind-links would upset the star-paths of C.C. That’s what Jarrety and the others were called. No, that wouldn’t do. Instead, once the ship was closing on the city’s secret location, Rockson would speak softly into their minds, while they slept perhaps. And all would be well. Not that C.C.’s weapons could do much damage to this baby!
As the sun rose higher and higher and rivulets of melting snow began to form in the dunes below them, threatening early floods, they glided over the torn landscape at a speed that was now truly breathtaking.