“Cool.”
“I think all of the working parts are stored inside its molecules.”
“Like quantum computers? But wouldn’t we be able to detect that?”
“Scuff has a theory—”
“Fatty? He’s got a brain inside that froggy head of his?”
Zeke hesitated, wondering why Fitch was being spiteful. With a shrug he went on.
“Scuff’s into String Theory, Brane Theory, and so on. They suggest that although we only see three dimensions, there are in fact lots of extra dimensions all around us.”
Fitch rubbed his index finger with his other hand.
“So although we see a stone engraving there’s actually more to it, hidden from the naked eye?”
“You got it.”
“Cool! Right let’s see the magic in operation. Chant away.”
“Okay, but I think you have to chant with me, if you’re to get in. Repeat every syllable after me. They’re not easy. They were said by alien throats, after all.”
Fitch gestured impatiently for Zeke to start.
“Dthoth, thla, ryksi, thnga, bchrfft, xgiishi, Dthoth, thla, gleqxuus, jchzaa.”
With every word Zeke paused and allowed Fitch to copy him. He struggled with the pronunciation, and Zeke had to work hard at not smirking.
Nothing happened. Fitch stomped towards the picture and tapped it irritably.
“Aren’t I good enough for you?” he snapped.
Zeke blinked. The Engraving seemed bigger. Or was it Fitch who was smaller? And flatter!
“Fitch! You’re turning two dimensional.”
The textured surface bubbled and then, without warning, erupted. Rock, solid and fluid at the same time, crashed over them like a wave.
“No!” Zeke cried, frantically trying to breathe. The wave swallowed him into its grainy depths. He kicked wildly but it was useless. The force was overwhelming.
It dragged him deeper into the darkness.
Chapter Ten
Inside
Air pounded against the walls of his chest. I’m going to suffocate, he thought in despair. Then he realised. He no longer needed to breathe. He was a diagram, a drawing of lines and circles in a two-dimensional world. A sense of relief seeped through him.
“Over here!”
Another human-shaped diagram was waving at him. Fitch! As Zeke sprinted across the gritty landscape, his brain grappled with the weird dimensionality. How could he be running towards someone? There was no near or far in a flat universe, only up or down, left or right. Yet somehow it all worked. Scuff was always going on about String Theory and its extra dimensions, all around us but invisible. Maybe it was like that?
“This is great!” Fitch cried, bursting with excitement.
“That’s odd,” Zeke said. He nodded at Fitch’s rectangular left hand with its five lines for fingers. A star radiated from the index finger. What could that be?
“Nothing,” Fitch said quickly. “What now?”
Zeke surveyed their position. Identical triangular mountains ran across the top of the scene. In the middle, polyhedron trees dotted the banks of a perfectly oscillating river.
“Kshnmlnwa!” he bellowed, then added for Fitch’s benefit, “that’s hello.”
Fitch hopped from stick leg to stick leg.
“What do they look like? The Martians?”
“They’re called Hesperians,” Zeke replied a little irritably. “The first time I came here they were hexagon-shaped. On the second time they were more like cells. But I’ve no idea what the real Hesperians looked like.”
“There!” Fitch shrieked, pointing to the peak of a triangle. A tiny humanoid figure waved at them. It called to them with a string of bizarre syllables.
“Sgh-skoo, thlnjii!”
Zeke tensed up.
“What?” Fitch demanded.
“That means ‘go, danger’.”
“We’re not going anywhere till I’ve got what I came for. Ask him about transubstantiation.”
Zeke conjured up the alien words from his subconscious and shouted them out.
After a brief lapse the outline in the distance replied.
“What did it say?” Fitch cried, bouncing up and down.
Zeke scratched his metaphorical head.
“Find Gravity’s Eye.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, maybe—”
“It got stuffed up in translation! Come on, do better.”
Zeke turned to the figure. “Sorry I don’t understand. Could you explain?” he said in Hesperian.
“No time. Depart! We were not prepared for two life forms crossing into our realm. You have triggered a catastrophic breakdown.”
“I don’t understand that either.”
“We are at the end of our existence. Our power molecules are very weak. Opening the interface for two has caused a cascade failure.”
Zeke steadied his thoughts. Switching between languages was not easy.
“Fitch, we’re in danger. We must leave.”
“Not until I have the answer, how to change atomic structure.”
Zeke wondered why Fitch was so sure there was an answer.
“We will go but please, what did you mean by Gravity’s Eye?” Zeke said to the figure in the mountains.
“The place where your mind expands to the size of the atom.”
“Where? Where is it?”
“We don’t remember. Our molecular chains are greatly corroded. But the Gshnodaa will know.”
Gshnodaa? It was a Martian word Zeke didn’t recognise. The distant creature sensed his confusion.
“Its chemical signature…is on you. You’ve had recent contact. Now go!”
“Please wait! Is it some kind of Hesperian technology?”
“In a way, but you must leave, now!”
Zeke anxiously racked his brains. “The orbs? The Infinity Trap? The dust devil? That boulder thing?”
But with each suggestion the image shook its oval head.
“The Gshnodaa was lost. Trapped in one of your deserted habitations.”
“Oh,” Zeke exclaimed with a flash. “The Beagle Research Station! There?”
“Look, human!”
The creature pointed to the right-hand corner of the sky. It was crumbling! A stream of sand was trickling downwards. It gathered pace, as more and more of the Engraving collapsed into its flow, turning a stream into an avalanche. A great flow of sand eating everything in its path. And in its wake a dark void gaped ever wider.
“Oh-oh!” Fitch had noticed it too.
“We’re leaving, now!” Zeke yelled.
“How?”
“Run!”
Both boys broke into a sprint. They bounded through a forest of symbols, a city of squiggles, and all manner of markings, rectangles, epsilons, ovals. But every time Zeke glanced back the huge torrent was gaining on them.
“We’re…not…going to...make it,” he gasped.
Fitch said nothing, running faster.
Above their heads the flawless circle of the sun disintegrated into powder. Zeke feared for the life forms inside the engraving. They described themselves as the recorded thoughts of the long dead Hesperians, yet they seemed alive and able to interact. They had lived in this miniature universe for nearly two billion years. And now they were dying. There was nothing he could do to save them. There was nothing he could do to save himself.
Thud!
The boys had run smack into an invisible wall. They staggered back, then pressed their palms up against it.
“Why can’t we pass?” Fitch shrieked.
The tsunami loomed nearer.
“It’s the edge. See!” As he spoke the dimly-lit office of Principal Lutz appeared beyond the unseen barrier. Zeke and Fitch’s real bodies stood outside, hypnotised and gigantic. If their minds were trapped inside the engraving, cut off from their physical form, would they ever get back?
“How do we get out?” Fitch cried.
Zeke shrugged his two-dimensional shou
lders. The wave was almost upon them.
Suddenly a creature emerged from the ground, a hexagon shape with wavy-line tentacles.
“Kdggjyi, doo thrmmzskaa!”
“Jump as the wave hits!” Zeke translated into English.
They were going to surf the tidal wave back to reality. A terrible few seconds passed as the great, heaving wall of sand bore down upon them.
“Now!” Zeke screamed.
They leapt. The wave crashed into them with the force of a bullet train. The hexagon wailed one last Hesperian word, ‘traitor’ and was lost. The boys fell, tumbling, carried in a storm of grit. The sand blinded Zeke’s eyes. Then the murkiness started to fade. A shimmering white and blue light lit up the room before them. A discoloured patch stained the wall, where the engraving had hung until a few moments before.
“Lutz is going to do her nut,” Zeke said sadly, observing the heap of dirt on the floor. Two billion years of history gone forever. With a deep splutter Fitch woke from the trance.
“Zeke, where’s that light coming from?”
Zeke shuddered. They slowly twisted around. A huge orange obelisk towered over them, blocking the way out. White seams riddled its surface, pulsating with a fiery light. Once again it started to loose opacity, revealing a core of intense heat.
With a gulp Zeke overcame the rasping dryness of his throat.
“It’s the Failsafe, and I think it’s going to kill us.”
Chapter Eleven
Between the Rock and a Hard Place
“Down!” Zeke shouted, throwing himself against Fitch. They fell behind Lutz’s sturdy steel desk.
Flash!
The room disappeared in a blinding whiteness. The flare faded, as the Failsafe glided around the melted, smouldering desk. The marble-coloured veins on its surface throbbed. Another heat bolt was building.
“Run, run, run!” Fitch shrieked.
Zeke was in total agreement, but where?
“The window!” Fitch added, reading Zeke’s thoughts.
They scrambled to their feet and Zeke bolted after his friend. The open window waited for them. Surely Fitch wasn’t planning to jump?
“Don’t!” Zeke screamed. In a split second that lasted forever, Fitch twisted, grabbed Zeke around the waist and leapt. They hurtled out into the freezing night, riding the weak Martian gravity. Then they plummeted, as a second blast erupted over their heads.
Solid ground rocketed upwards. Zeke closed his eyes shut. But instead of a neck-breaking impact he felt the embrace of a soft cushion. When he dared to look he found himself hovering a few centimetres above the gravel. Another of Fitch’s tricks, a psychokinetic buffer of air. They landed with a harmless bump.
“That was unexpected,” Fitch said, putting out the sparks in his hair.
Zeke pointed over Fitch’s shoulder.
“So is this.”
The Boulder was materialising out of nowhere, its stone heart burning like a furnace. Fitch took a deep breath and squared up to the enemy.
“Go!” he said in a whisper, and clicked his fingers.
The huge boulder shot into the sky at the speed of a bullet. Zeke’s jaw dropped.
“How did you—”
“Some people lift weights with their muscles. I lift them with my mind. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing! The Failsafe must weigh half a ton.”
“The Failsafe huh? That’s what it calls itself? Well it’s a new moon around Mars tonight.”
Zeke scanned the stars. “It’ll be back.”
Fitch gave a cocky smirk.
“Next time I’ll drill it into itsy bitsy pieces. You go now. I’ve more work to do.”
“Work? What work?”
“Never you mind, Zeke.”
Fitch tapped his nose, turned and merged into the dark.
~~~
Breakfast time and half the morning slipped by without any further sign of Fitch. The first class of the day was Telepathy 101 with Mariner Zoë Kepler, a raven-haired woman with a habit of eavesdropping on her students’ thoughts. For this reason Zeke knew he had to push aside any thoughts of the engraving. That wasn’t easy, he felt sorry for the creatures inside it. Instead, he focussed on the prospect of finding his father, thoughts the mariner would well be used to reading. Thanks to his new best friend this was now a real possibility. The excitement in Zeke’s heart was stronger than any other feeling.
The teacher rapped her knuckles on her table.
“Attention class, spot quiz.”
A disgruntled murmur flowed through the room. Kepler sat bolt upright, her aquiline nose and haughty expression reminding Zeke of a Roman Emperor.
“The human brain generates what form of energy?”
Scuff placed his magnopad on his desk, screen down, to hide the computer game he was secretly playing.
“Electricity, Mariner Kepler.”
“Very good, which is expressed as what?”
“Brain waves,” Juanita piped up.
Kepler walked into the sea of desks.
“That act no differently than radio waves, light waves or any other wave. They are subject to the laws of wavelength as explained by the mathematical theorem of Green’s Function. Therefore brainwaves are not restrained to the tiny dimensions of an apelike skull.”
She tapped hard on Zeke’s head. The other students laughed loudly.
“And which brainwave is the most potent?”
“The Alpha pattern?” Pin-mei ventured uncertainly.
“Be more specific, child.”
With an obnoxiously smug smile Scuff rubbed his fingernails on his chest.
“The Mu rhythm, a particular type of Alpha wave.”
“Excellent Barnum, precognition’s not my field but I predict an A-plus for you.”
She drew herself up to her full height.
“So the test. After years of practice I can shape my thoughts as pure Mu waves. I’ll now think of a number between zero and infinity. Write it on your magnopads.”
The colour drained from the mariner’s face. She stared blankly ahead. Zeke glanced around helplessly. His classmates were frantically keying data into their pads, some with their eyes radiant. He was getting zilch.
“Thought is the most powerful force in the universe,” he muttered under his breath.
He cleared his mind and attempted to tune into the brainwaves invisibly beeping from the teacher’s cortex. Nothing! Instead, an image of Fitch in a space-suit popped into Zeke’s imagination. Fitch, all alone in the darkness of the lunar night. His sharp intelligence beneath the stars. A galaxy alive with random signals, radiation, light rays, radio waves. And there was Mars, low on the horizon, sending out signals of its own…
“Time’s up! No copying. Display your magnopads now.”
Zeke hastily punched in a number and lifted up his pad. Then he turned around.
Everyone else in the class had written the number ‘3426.5.’
“Well done class, that’s the correct answer.”
Kepler glared at Zeke.
“Hailey, why did you pick the number one?”
Zeke blushed and mumbled into his chest. “Dunno, Mariner Kepler.”
The teacher clicked her tongue.
“Sometimes boy, I wonder if you’ve been sent to the wrong school.”
After the lesson Zeke followed Scuff and Pin-mei to South Cloister, a small cactus garden popular at break time. A vendomac trundled around the edge dispensing soft drinks. The boys picked Craterades while Pin-mei chose her favourite, chrysanthemum milk. They sat on a stone bench facing the genetically modified cacti, adapted for the dry, cool environment of Mars.
“Are you over your mega-sulk, bro?” Scuff asked, guzzling noisily from the can.
Zeke said nothing.
“Come on Zeke, tell us,” Pin-mei pleaded.
“Tell you what?”
Pin-mei gave him her doleful puppy look.
“We know something’s happening. I can sense it. My brain’s tingling the
way it did when Professor Magma was here.”
Zeke shivered at the mention of a name he wanted to forget. But it did the trick. He told them everything, from Fitch turning up at his door to their parting at the foot of Lutz’s minaret. He waited for his friends to explode with outrage at the risks he was taking. They were strangely subdued.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I’m playing with fire and should report Fitch to the authorities?”
Scuff watched him through half-closed eyes.
“Would it make a difference?”
“Nope.”
“There you go, why bother?”
All three lapsed into a brooding silence. Eventually Scuff stirred.
“Zeke, I wanna apologise for finding out diddly squat about your missing father. If Fitch can help, hey, I’m cool with it.”
Pin-mei threw her drink carton at a passing trashomac. Its lid sprung up and a segmented aluminium tongue snatched the carton from mid-air.
“Saving mankind from an energy crisis is a very praiseworthy ambition. If I can help my honorary brother-on-Mars, then I will.”
Zeke couldn’t think of a reply in English, but a Hesperian phrase popped into his head.
“Thrshkuu gng ngaa, bchxn araruui jf.”
Both gave him a bewildered expression. He laughed.
“The orbit of friends has more pull than the sweep of stars.”
“So they had friends then, these Martians?” Scuff remarked.
“Hesperians—what’s wrong?”
Scuff’s face had suddenly reddened.
“Can’t you hear that?” he snapped.
Zeke shook his head. Scuff sighed.
“Wonder Boy is sending you a telepathic message. He’s arrived at Chinook’s class early and is waiting for you.”
Since arriving at the Chasm Scuff’s psychic power had gone from strength to strength. It was becoming commonplace for him to pick up stray thoughts.
“Th-thanks!” Zeke gasped and dashed away.
~~~
Chinook’s classroom was on the second floor, above the main courtyard. Fitch sat in a window bay, nursing his left hand and gazing at the bustling students below.
“Might as well be ants for all I care,” he said as Zeke breezed into the room.
“Who?”
“Everyone. Anyway, you got my message then, wasn’t sure how sharp your telepathy is.”
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