by Lyndon Hardy
“Yes, I came here through a magic portal.”
Ashley gripped the edge of her desk. “Right, and a magic portal also? No! Too much.” She shook her head almost violently from side to side and then crumpled back into her chair.
“I know it is hard to believe it all,” Maurice said. “But, you, yourself, spoke so fervently about the existence of powerful love potions that take over one’s mind. It took Briana several days to convince Jake and me. Well, because at first she wanted to tell us nothing. But having to take care of resetting the portals arrivals and departures every morning before we even stirred got to be too much for her.”
Ashley continued to shake her head.
“It does not matter if you believe everything or not,” Briana said. “You have told us what we need to know. Hilo, Hawaii. That is where we are going next.”
Ashley stopped the agitation roaring through her head. She felt calmness wash back over her as if she were slipping into a bath at precisely the right temperature. The trio didn’t care what she thought! They weren’t trying to convince her. They didn’t care. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t a swindle, and she was not their pigeon.
She studied Fig’s expression. He was not protesting either. Maybe, just maybe, like love potions, there was truth to the rest of their tales as well.
But to Hawaii? They can’t even afford decent clothes. And to do what? Confront aliens? How? Walk up to them and say ‘Hi’? Suppose they were dangerous?
Good questions. But then, she reminded herself, did they really matter to her? She had been shunning the trio for weeks. Now they had what they wanted and would be out of her hair, out of her life. She could get on with her own. Her thoughts slowed to a halt. Yeah, her life. What life? What was she now going to do with herself after this last hurrah?
“Wait,” she said. Her training as a manager of state-of-the-art projects kicked in. Old habits were hard to let go. “Don’t rush off like that without a plan.”
“Why do you care?” Briana shot back.
“Instinct,” Ashley shrugged. “‘Plan the work. Then work the plan.’ That’s what I do… well, that’s what I did.”
Briana tugged on the stray curl, as if trying to get energy to what she did next. “Perhaps then, you also can help,” the younger woman said.
Brainstorm
ASHLEY SWIVELED her chair and rose. She shook her head as she looked at her whiteboard. It had remained completely erased for a week. No schedules, no To-dos, or any other reminder of her past remained.
She glanced back at the four occupants of the guest chairs. Like eager kindergarteners on the first day of school, they seemed intent on listening to what she was going to say. Good.
“It looks like you could benefit from a little brainstorming,” she told them. A tiny sense of well-being poked through her overriding sense of bitterness about what was happening in her own life. Over the years, she had facilitated many such sessions, and if any group needed one, this was it.
“It seems to me we have not thought through clearly what is to be done.” She picked up a colored marker and wrote ‘Goal’ on the whiteboard. “What is it?”
“To find out if the exiles have used magic and escaped.” Briana rose halfway out of her chair. “To have come out of the forgetting spell of the Faithful — and, as a consequence, are a dire threat to the people of this planet.”
Ashley smiled. Good again. She wrote ‘exiles,’ ‘magic,’ and ‘escape’ on the board. Usually, It took a while for the first person to crack — no longer able to stand the silence. But Briana had broken the ice immediately. Now to add some more impetus for the others to join in.
“Seeing the future, tiny imps, potions of love,” Ashley said. “Don’t we have all the evidence of magic we need? What do others of you think?”
“Those indeed are aspects of the crafts,” Briana answered before anyone else could speak. “I do not need them to convince me the arts of the masters exist. And as far as I can tell, the micromites from CERN have no connection with exiles, nor does what happened to you in the tattoo shop.”
Briana rushed on. “Even Emmertyn’s trances may not be connected. He is a native, not from somewhere else. His customer is my only lead, and perhaps he, too, is native to this planet.”
“Can’t be.” Jake surprisingly came out of his stupor. For the first time since Ashley had met him, the fog in his eyes dissipated. “Connected to a broker who never failed? Why would anyone with even a single brain cell not insist on bigger and bigger trades? Plowing the profit from one deal back into the next? I know my father sure would. My father…”
Jake lapsed back into his inner world, and Briana continued. “So, we have to go to Hawaii and find out what Kahuna Enterprises is all about. I cannot return to my own home with only speculation. I must show I can be relied upon for convincing proof, regardless of what it is.”
The others begin to squirm in their seats like newly hatched tadpoles. It looked like they also had things to say. But to get too far behind with the recording would cause the momentum eventually to die out.
“Hold it a moment.” She held up her hand, turned back to the whiteboard, and rapidly began adding memory joggers for what had been said — ’micromites,’ ‘tattoo,’ ‘trance,’ and ‘profits.’
“Wouldn’t the ones who call themselves the Faithful create a prison that was magical somehow… something that could not be escaped from?” Ashley asked when she was done.
“Evidently the victors did not,” Briana said. “Randor would not have asked for help had they done so.”
Ashley studied Briana. The young woman’s tone hinted at a little hostility. Perhaps she was regretting she had asked for help — that someone else was holding the marker and leading the group.
“But you said whatever the confinement is, it has been successful for a thousand years,” Ashley persisted. “That is a long time. Enough to chip away a path to freedom, no matter how thick were walls of stone and mortar. If that were the case, they would have become free long ago.”
“Perhaps something natural,” Maurice said. “There are active volcanoes on the Hawaiian Islands. Lava tubes. Caves and caverns. The location of the prison could be below ground.”
Good. Finally, more were joining in.
“Hey, below ground!” Fig craned forward. Good. He was feeling the momentum starting to build. “The micromites spoke of rockbubbler imps and a master far away and underground.”
“Too hot,” Jake woke from his private reverie a second time. “It would be too hot. Nobody could survive for centuries in the bowels of a volcano.”
“Nothing negative, Jake,” Ashley said. “We’re brainstorming here. Let the possibilities interact. Don’t shoot them down as soon as they emerge. Instead, build on them. Go with the flow.”
Now a long silence did fall on the group. No one else spoke again. Ashley bit her lip. This always happened when someone had to be reminded of the rules. Jake probably would not contribute again at all. And the others would become more cautious, censuring their thoughts before they became verbal. She wrote ‘below ground’ and ‘volcano’ on the white board to cover the awkwardness starting to fill the room like a creeping miasma of doubt.
How long should she merely stand there before intervening and trying to pump things up again? Ashley smiled encouragement at Fig and then Maurice, but neither responded.
“This is not working!” Briana said suddenly. “We are wasting our time. I do not have a storm in my brain. We should go to Hilo and then decide what to do next.” She frowned at Ashley. “This is my quest, not yours. I only asked for your help, not to take over everything.”
Ashley started to reply but caught the words in her throat. Getting into a pissing contest with Briana would end the chance of anything coming of this. She returned to the whiteboard and wrote ‘too hot.’
“Yes, too hot,” Briana said. “Randor was swathed from head to toe when he appeared before my father. Near the natural heat of
a volcano would make things almost unbearable. They would fry in something like that.”
Another muteness. Both Maurice and Fig looked away when Ashley tried again to encourage them with a smile.
“So, maybe the bundling works like a wetsuit,” Jake said as Ashley was about to try jogging things again. “Not too hot, just warm enough.”
Ashley wrote ‘just warm enough’ on the board.
“Then for them, maybe our air is like the ocean,” Fig said.
“They would not need to wear swathing in the prison,” Maurice said. “They would not look hideous to one another when among themselves. As Buddha says, ‘The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.’“
“Seeing through appearances!” Fig said. “Here’s a wild thought.” He turned to Briana. “How do you know the exiles swath themselves to cover how hideous they look?”
“Why else?” Briana answered.
“Because,” Maurice said slowly. “Because, maybe, just maybe, the swathing serves some other purpose than disguise.”
Ashley wrote quickly, trying to keep up with the sudden outburst of ideas… ‘hideous’ and ‘disguise.’
Now, she thought. Now was the time to provide a boost. “Hmm, some other purpose,” she said. “Like what?”
“Well, like… like something else swathing is used for,” Fig said.
The hush returned for a few moments and then, “Like protection from the elements!” Maurice exclaimed. “Yes, that’s it! Gotta be! The heat of a volcano is not oppressive. To the exiles, it is normal. And if that is so, then the temperature of the air on the surface is freezing to them. The swathing is protection like that worn by an Antarctic explorer — protection from the cold.”
“That explains the prison!” Fig agreed. “There was no need for rock and iron. Nothing to check on and repair. The exiles could venture above ground, but only wrapped so they could barely move. Only briefly could brave explorers manage to survive. The exterior of our planet is a hostile environment for them.”
“That does make sense,” Briana said slowly, then shook her head. “But it is not a complete answer. There still is the matter of the crafts. With them, who knows what they could accomplish.”
“I agree,” Fig said. “But it does explain a lot — how they were able to communicate. Visits to the surface for short times by explorers. Limited contact with a few humans, and the internet for all the rest.”
“I still need to verify this with my own eyes,” Briana said. She shot a steely glance of what had to be defiance in Ashley’s direction. Then she smiled at Fig. “Speculation, even by what you call a physicist, is not enough.” For a moment, she played with a stray curl. “But you guys are usually good at math, right? I do need someone to figure out the destination coordinates of Hilo for the portal.”
“Sure, I probably can do that,” Fig said. “But, Briana, don’t you see? If what we have come up with is correct, there is no way the Heretics could escape from where the Faithful had put them.”
To Hilo
DINTON WAS always cautious, Angus reasoned. But this time, he could not be sure. Jormind surely would have told him Oscar’s hut was near the opening to the crop garden. It probably was only a short matter of time before a troop would brave the cold and come looking for him. To be prudent, he must get far enough away so that his elder brother will have no thoughts of pursuit. The base of operations would have to shift to Hilo, as daunting as that was.
Angus turned his attention to the clothing he had laid out on the floor. He removed his swathing as rapidly as he could and huddled in the blast of air coming from the open oven. The fabric he had added was fragile, and if he moved too quickly, it would rip and become useless. He kicked aside the packing boxes that had arrived in only two days, exactly as the seller said they would. One arm skittered into an outstretched sleeve, and immediately he heard a crunching noise as if one were wadding up a large sheet of coarse paper.
He inhaled deeply, and then immediately regretted it. The air was cold, frosty cold. His lungs stung from the contact. “Control yourself,” he muttered. “As the saying goes, ‘Speed makes garbage.’ Fix the sleeve first and then proceed.”
He knelt down and carefully inverted the loose shirtsleeve, exposing the inside where he had stitched on the delicate strips of cloth. Yes, there was damage. He would have to rip out what was there and replace it with a fresh insulation.
“Aerogel,” Angus said aloud, practicing the native language in order to force himself to move slowly as he resewed. Studying Oscar’s notes on using the computer and doing searches had opened doors he did not even know existed.
He stopped and shook his head. No, not enough time for more surfing the net, he thought. Must stay focused. Most of the technology would die with the natives anyway. He shrugged. It would not be a great loss.
Carefully, he donned one of Oscar’s shirts, the one on which he had sewn on the panels of aerogel fabric in front and back. The short sleeves from several other shirts he had stitched together into longer tubes and secured the insulation around them as well. He worked his arms through their interiors like a land eel hunting rat eggs in a tunnel.
The britches Angus had augmented in the same way, and once he had them on after two aborted attempts that also damaged what he had added and then repaired, he stepped out of the kitchen into the other room of the hut for a first test. Instantly, his head, his face, his hands, and his feet began to grow numb, but his arms, legs, and torso felt no discomfort.
“It works,” he continued verbalizing to no one as he reentered the kitchen and placed his hands inside the oven to rewarm the stiffening fingers. A silica gel, he mused, almost weightless because of being crammed so full of microscopic pockets of air. Insulation so a human could withstand the frigid air of the south pole, protect liquid hydrogen in a rocket’s fuel tank — or provide the means by which a Heretic Who Has Found the Truth could brave downtown Hilo without a single wrap of swathing.
When his hands were again warm enough to function, Angus put on his boots, strapped the lithium polymer battery to his back and hooked the output to the wires leading to his feet. For his face, he slid on an insulated Halloween mask, covered on the backside, one for a ‘bigfoot,’ whatever that was. He smiled. If by chance it were ripped away, the startled native would see a face not so very different. Next came gloves also electrically warmed. Finally, he slipped on a hoodie, aerogel padded on the inside, and pulled tight the drawstring. When he was done, Angus looked in a mirror.
More humanlike in shape, better than swathing, he supposed, but he could not hold in the laughter. He was warm, comfortably warm, but looked like a slightly overstuffed and insane native. Pass unnoticed on a street in Hilo? Probably not.
So, he should not try to, he decided at last. Rather than attempting to conform as best he could, he should stand out in the crowd instead. Have a reason why he was clothed so oddly. Perhaps a final adornment would do the trick.
THE SUMMONED cab honked outside of Oscar’s front door. Angus draped the sign he had drawn in bright red letters around his neck and stuffed the recluse’s credit cards and cell phone into his tummy pouch. He took one last look around the interior of Oscar’s shack. The shipping boxes, packing slips, and remaining scraps of aerogel fabric all destroyed. If Dinton’s minions came to check, they would get no clue to what he had achieved. Pursuit would not be possible.
He stepped outside and approached the passenger seat in the taxi. “Lost an election bet.” The cabbie read from the sign tied around his neck. “Wow, mister, what kind of wager was that?”
The Weight of Leadership
BRIANA SENT the portal away and turned her attention to the shabby little hut. It was not as she had imagined — peeling paint, bare wood, and windows completely draped behind taped together pieces of pane. If this was the foothold of the exiles on the surface world, it did not speak of any magic.
Google Earth had given them the coordinates they needed, and, with the he
lp of the portal’s user manual, Fig had figured out how to translate them to the ones the device would understand. He had also calculated the settings to take them to the back yard of Ashley’s house when they were ready to return.
At first, Briana had wanted to come alone. “It is, after all, my quest,” she had said. But everyone else thought very little of the idea. To stop the protests, she had agreed, but only on one condition — there was to be only a single other traveler. She had not felt this excited in some while, and the tedium of waiting until it was daylight in Hawaii and then the ferrying passengers one by one would have been too much to bear.
Jake had been out of the question. The deep depression he had fallen into could not be broken. He would be useless if an emergency arose. The decision not to choose Maurice was difficult. But Fig was so… Well, he was like a newborn puppy, so eager to please his master. And, after all, he did deserve some reward for getting the meeting with Ashley arranged.
Briana watched as her ‘scout’ approached the door of the hut cautiously. He put his ear to it and then jerked back.
“It is warm to the touch,” Fig said. “Surprisingly so.” He frowned for a moment. “Then again, maybe not.”
Fig began stepping over the weeds clustered to the very edge of the hut and pacing off around its perimeter. After a few moments, he returned.
“All of the windows are covered,” he said. “No sounds coming from inside. I think the place is unoccupied.” He put his hand on the door latch and pushed it open.
“Fig, be careful!” Briana called out. “We don’t want to leave any sign we have been here. If there is something that has to be done about the exiles, it will be a matter for my father to decide once I return home.”
“All clear,” Fig said after he scanned the interior from side to side. Without another word, he entered. Briana scrambled to follow and shut her eyes to the blast of hot air pushing to freedom through the open door. Instinctively, she dropped her backpack to the floor and began to fan her face.