Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld

by James Wittenbach

  “Specialist… you,” Keeler said, pointing his walking stick at Scout. “Take a party around, see if you can find a way to recharge George.”

  Scout gave a quick nod, grabbed a technician. “Lead on, George. You probably remember where those things are kept.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Skinner grabbed Keeler’s arm. “Good Lord, Captain. Your hand.”

  He lifted the hand that had gotten caught under the door. It was burned, and blood was dripping from the base of his fingernails, the skin around each knuckle was necrotic. Even the clothing had been bleached and shredded somehow. Keeler raised one side of his mouth in what might have passed for a cocky half-smile. “All right, maybe that didn’t work perfectly.”

  “There is not much I can do,” Skinner removed an anesthetic healing bandage from his kit and began wrapping the hand. “This is like the arm of a mummy of a burn victim.”

  “Will I ever play the ninety-key-harptilocus again?” Keeler asked. Instead of waiting for the punchline, Alkema shined his lamp on the walls, which were covered with small tiles, about one centimeter high and twice as long. On each one was engraved a small image. “What are those?”

  Keeler studied the figures. “Stylized tactile ideogrammatic calligraphy,” was his assessment.

  “Quite common on monuments built by ancient human civilizations. Let me demonstrate.” He moved away from the medical technician and took Alkema’s hand with his bandaged one, his walking stick, as ever, clutched in his good hand. “I’ll need your hand. Mine’s in no shape for this.”

  Gently, he rubbed Alkema’s fingertips across the tiles. As he did so, images flooded Alkema’s mind with each tile. It was a fragmentary effect, like flashes of memory, like what an insect with a compound eye might see. A woman laughing… or screaming. Great metal spheres falling to earth. Children recoiling from make-believe monsters.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Alkema said.

  Keeler thought it over. “Wait, you’re reading it up and down.” He pulled Alkema’s arm gently sideways across the wall. He saw Alkema’s eyes widen. “What is it?”

  Alkema began walking away from him, his fingertips still drifting across the surface of the wall. “This way to the monsters,” he said.

  Eden – The Farside

  Winter had not oversold the daybreak.

  The night had grown lighter and lighter over several hours, the air warmed. Spring breezes blew across the landscape. Then, the air grew still, saturated with possibilities. The sky remained gray, an expanse of cloud-cover so flat and complete it might have been a sheet of frosted glass. Then, the sun rose above the horizon, invisible at first, but brightening the cloud cover, making to burn through like a flame through paper. Then, a single shaft of sunlight stabbed through the clouds like a spotlight. Then another and another, and the clouds began to boil away explosively. The last clouds burned away from the orb of the sun like the shock-wave of a nuclear blast. The temperature jumped 20 degrees in a matter of moments. The snow and the frost on the rocks melted away like time-lapse photography. Such was daybreak on the Far Side of Eden.

  Ironhorse had watched the event sitting cross-legged atop the canopy of his ship. His crew, who stood watching with the villagers, cheered as though at a music concert. The sunrises, said some of the villagers, were the only thing the Far Side had over the Dayside. That and freedom.

  The Aves Basil came gently through the new day's sky on the Far Side, settling down not far from the first two. Ironhorse had been expecting her. When the hatch opened, he was standing by, ready to receive her. "Captain Jordan."

  She removed her flight helmet, and a thick crop of golden blond hair fell perfectly around her face. "I trust the landing team is well."

  "No injuries among us. Most of them are off exploring."

  "I have put you in for a commendation for the rescue mission." Ironhorse, out of modesty or simple indifference, said nothing.

  "Where is Commander Redfire?"

  There was the briefest of pauses, then Ironhorse answered. “No one has seen him since we returned from the Rescue Mission.”

  “Where was he last seen?”

  Ironhorse paused again before answering. “He was last seen leaving the ship with a woman from the village.”

  Jordan raised a perfect eyebrow. “A woman?”

  “Tactical Commander Redfire was spending a lot of time… with one of the village leaders,”

  Ironhorse explained. Jordan got a harsh expression on her face.

  “Molto,” she yelled to one of her team. “Bring your tracker, we have a man to find.”

  Ironhorse watched as she began striding toward the woods outside the village. To his eyes, her simple, graceful walk was more pleasing than the finest ballet, more sensual than silk sheets and hot spiced oils.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  Eden – Dayside – The Temple of the Z’batsu

  Scout found what she was looking for in a side chamber. A Glowing blue piece of crystal contained within a clear tube held in place by two wedge-shaped pieces of metal. The entire apparatus was no larger than a man’s fist. A row of them was arranged along a wall. She opened the front panel of George’s breastplate. “Ready for this, big guy?”

  “Affirmative, Mistress.”

  She reached in and pulled out a nearly identical device. Almost all its blue radiance was gone, and it was a nearly inert gray. She inserted the new power cell.

  “I bet that feels a lot better.”

  “This unit has no feelings as such. However, my power levels have been restored to optimal levels.”

  “I bet if I put this in the chamber, it’ll get recharged.” She put it in the empty cavity. Its blue glow was restored within a second.

  “Very interesting,” said Scout. She took another one of the cells for later study. “Let’s catch up with the others.”

  Alkema led the party to a chamber, a very large chamber around the periphery of which were arranged very large tables, each looked about the size of a very large bed with rails around the sides. Alkema found a place and began reading the walls again. Lord Paperlung drew a paw across the tiles. “They do not speak to me,” he growled.

  “Neg, only us.” Keeler said.

  “The made avian men here,” Alkema was speaking almost as though he were in a trance.

  “Avian females there. Bull men here, leonine males and females, raptor men, dolphin men, vampires, lycanthropes. I’m seeing more… dragon-men, hermaphrodites with dual sets of sex organs, spider-men with eight legs climbing on the walls, insect-men scampering over the floors, tiger-men, panther-men, tiny people only a decimeter high, moth-men, manta-men, women with eight sets of breasts, men with clear skulls so you could see their minds, lizard-men, snake-men. Men with bowel systems that turned water into beer. Women who could bend metal with the power of their minds. Human trees.”

  He pulled his hand away, as though he could not take another second of the imagery flooding his head. “There were hundreds of variations… captain, hundreds… they could do anything. This is where they did it. They took people here… and they changed them.”

  “How did they do it?” Keeler demanded. Alkema looked at Keeler, as if begging him not to continue. The captain met him with a firm hard gaze. Alkema’s brow furrowed. He shook his head, took a breath and looked around the walls of the chamber. He could not read them visually, but he had developed a sense of their meaning, and of what meant what. He followed the wall to a section of pale blue tiles. He ran his hands across the tiles there. After a few minutes of running his hand over the tiles, he reported. “I’m seeing DNA strands being re-sequenced. This must have been some kind of genetic engineering facility.”

  “Maybe this planet was some kind of research facility for genetic experiments.” Honeywell suggested.

  The news seemed to infuriate Lord Paperlung. “Are you saying that we… the Noblesse, were all created from… slave-humans?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”
Keeler said. “Keep going, Young Alchemist.”

  Alkema walked along the walls, grazing the tiles with his fingertips, his trance returned.

  “They put them on the table, and then… they … they injected them with nano-probes, tiny machines that reconfigured their DNA gene-by-gene. They hooked tubes to their arms and fed them. The transformations took weeks, months sometimes.”

  The same way we used to do it on Sapphire, Keeler reflected to himself. They just took it to an extreme we never dared.

  “The machines … the nano-machines… became a part of the anatomy. They enabled the rapid transformation… in some cases. They could transform from human to monster… grow cowls… fangs, hair… it was…”

  Some of the party were staring at the tables. Skinner reached underneath one of the pads and pulled out a restraint.

  “Were the subjects willing, young Alchemist?” Keeler asked.

  “It doesn’t say, but… “ He cocked his head. “There’s a sub-text, almost a refrain in the background of information. It’s like…” he squinted and concentrated hard. Skinner saw an opportunity. “Lift the wounded onto these beds,” he instructed the technicians. “These beds have been de-activated for centuries, but they’ll make serviceable healing beds,” he rubbed the shimmering silver fabric of the mattress pads. “Tacky… but very very comfortable.”

  “Try to leave them with the original number of heads,” Keeler advised.

  “I’ve got it,” Alkema called. “… all monsters must… all monsters must… treat… all visitors… with respect. All monsters… must … must comply… must comply with the …” He shook his head. “I can’t make out the next part. All monsters must comply with the…

  something… code of conduct. All monsters must ensure the … must insure the maximum entertainment experience of the visitors.”

  “So, it wasn’t a preserve,” said Honeywell. “It was more like… a zoo.”

  “Closer… closer,” Keeler muttered, almost to himself. Scout and George Borrows Things rejoined the party. "We’re close, but we haven’t gone all the way. We know how they made monsters. No surprise. Big deal. Genetic engineering, just a stupid trick, we could do it, but we don't want to. I want to know why they wanted to. You don’t just make zoo animals."

  “There has to be some kind of command center in this complex,” Keeler went on, his hand beginning to sting and itch beneath the bandage. “That’s what we have to find.”

  “The walls don’t give any indication,” his young protégé responded. “We could try tracking the power systems within the complex.”

  “It won’t work,” said a technician, holding up a tracker. “I’ve been scanning the walls and floors. Either there’s no energy flow anywhere in this structure, or there is one constant energy flow all around us.”

  “I’ll bet a pair of Ex. Cmdr. Lear’s knickers that the second answer is right.” Keeler thought for a minute. “If I were the ancients, and this was my design aesthetic, the command center would be just there, in the center of the structure.

  Leaving Skinner behind to care for Bihari, Dallas, and the other wounded, Keeler led the rest of his party toward the center of the structure. Alkema, Buttercup, and Honeywell were with him, of course, Blade Toto, Flt. Lt. Southernbell (another pilot), Lord Paperlung, and Scout went with him.

  The open appearance of the chambers was deceptive. The interior was constructed of an arrangement of large interconnected cells. They were turned around more than once before reaching, what the trackers said, was the middle part of the structure. It was surrounded by a kind of spiral labyrinth. Its walls pulsed with blue, purple, and black light.

  “It looks… forbidding,” said Lord Paperlung.

  “You killed a Ghoulfiend Dervish back at the castle,” Alkema reminded him, “But you’re afraid of the dark.”

  “I know how to kill a Ghoulfiend,” Paperlung growled back at him. This was something else entirely, he did not have to add.

  “In,” Keeler ordered. Honeywell walked first, Keeler behind him, then Alkema, Toto, Paperlung, Scout, Southernbell, and Buttercup bringing up the rear. They walked down a little way following the wall. It curved away on either side of them, and was split with openings here and there. “Which one to take,” Keeler mused. “I bet they all end up in the same place.” He led the party into one. As they went through, all light disappeared, as though they had entered the deepest cave in the world. Alkema rubbed the wall. “No tiles here,” he said.

  “Of course not,” Keeler answered him.

  “Are you sure this is the way to the command center?”

  “Would you have put a maze like this around a public restroom?”

  “Not on our world, but I thought we were on their logic.”

  Honeywell activated an illuminator built-into his uniform. It shined for a second or two, then faded, as though giving up against the darkness.

  But another light appeared, a tiny twinkling fairy light appeared on Honeywell’s shoulder. He brushed at it and it wafted away through the air. Others began to appear, one at a time, dancing and swirling in the air, like a snowstorm of tiny lights. Lord Paperlung grabbed at one, tried to sniff it. “They have no substance,” he declared.

  “No heat, no spark. Nothing at all.”

  “And yet, they are making me nauseated,” Keeler observed. Indeed, the spinning lights were getting to all of them. They spun around the party like a blizzard without wind.

  “Don’t let them disorient you,” Keeler ordered. “Keep feeling along the inner wall until you come to another opening.”

  “Got it,” Honeywell called out. Why he was shouting, he didn’t know. The lights weren’t making any noise. He pulled himself through the opening.

  One by one they emerged on the other side, onto a beach were the goldenrod sun of Eden was setting over the sea. The sky was glowing like embers in a fire. There were some people further down the beach, dancing and playing wally-ball around a bonfire. The sound of their laughter carried on the warm breezes.

  “Captain?” Honeywell asked.

  “Let’s check this out. Southernbell, Buttercup. Stay here so we can find the aperture again.” Either this is some kind of illusion, or we’ve been teleported. Teleportation, that would be an interesting technology. We never figured out teleportation.

  As they crossed the sand toward the revelers, the voices and laughter became clearer, and more familiar.

  “That’s Lt. Engineer Braveheart,” Alkema said. “And Flight Specialist Alliant… and Jarrod Churchgoer… Hey, guys!” He called out to them. “Guys!”

  He kept running, although his crew-mates seemed indifferent to his presence. He finally ran up to a woman from Climatology that he knew, and ran right through her. “What the …

  holo-projections?”

  “Looks like it,” Keeler said. He looked around at his crew, enjoying themselves beneath the setting sun, enjoying the warm evening air. “They seem to be having a good time, though. Let’s get back.”

  There were, so it seemed, nearly a hundred meters of sand and palm trees between the beach party and the portal. Keeler wondered how far one could walk in any direction within the holo-projection.

  When they got closer, they saw only Flight Lieutenant Southernbell standing at the portal.

  “Where is Buttercup?” Honeywell barked angrily. “I told both of you to wait here.”

  BellSouth answered. “I just turned away for a nano-second and he wasn’t there any more.”

  Honeywell called out. “Buttercup!”

  Blade Toto asked, pilot-to-pilot. “You didn’t see him run off? He might have run off to join the party?”

  “He wouldn’t have done that,” Honeywell growled.

  “I turned around and he was gone.”

  Keeler digested this for a moment, than made his call. “Back in the portal.”

  “Captain,” Honeywell asked. “Shouldn’t we look for him?”

  “He couldn’t have left the temple. That’s wher
e we go. Back in,” Keeler ordered. The opening was marched by some leafy branches, which he pulled aside and exited the beach to find himself on the streets of a seaside town, where night had all but fallen. Fires burned on torches set into buildings and on poles that lined the streets.

  “Where are we now?” Scout asked.

  “According to my gear’s geo-locator, we have not left the Temple,” said Honeywell. Paperlung sniffed the air. “This has all the trappings of a North Coast maritime citadel. Tashawa, maybe. I have heard of such places.”

  “Where’s Scout?” Alkema asked.

  They looked aroound. Their party had diminished again. “I know she came through the portal with us,” Alkema said.

  “We’re being picked off one by one,” Honeywell walked back toward the point where they had emerged. “We’ve got to …”

  “We’ve got to keep going,” Keeler told him. “We can’t go back, We don’t even know how. We tried that and we ended up here. We have to find the next portal.”

  One of the doorways to one of the taverns lining the street stood out more brightly than the rest. “There,” Keeler pointed. “Stick close. I don’t want to make you hold hands but I am also to that point.”

  Beyond the doorway, they could see nothing. They emerged on the other side to cold, and wind, and jagged peaks stretching as far as the eye could see. They were on the edge of a precipice, looking down below into an expanse of, to Keeler’s experienced eye, very good ski slopes. He could picture a village set among them, lights glowing warmly in the windows.

  “How do we get out of this one? I don’t see any taverns or anything.” Honeywell shouted above the wind.

  Keeler looked up and down the ledge, nothing but bare rock stretching down the mountainside. “Look for a cave, or a big rock or…” He looked down at the rocks at his feet. He picked one up and threw it over the side. It fell a few meters than vanished in mid-air. Alkema and Southernbell fixed Keeler with identical looks of disbelief. “You can’t …”