WHEELS

by Lorijo Metz

  Curiosities he would willingly share.

  Wells took each item and placed it on his bed…all except one. Broshbonits, prized for their spikes by both the Tsendi and Circanthian cultures, were deceivingly cute but deadly. The spike he now held was about eight inches long, sharp as a needle and ten times as strong. He’d pulled it from the head of a Tsendi child who’d foolishly gotten too friendly with one of the horrible little creatures. Now he took the spike and wedged it into the bottom of the box. A firm shove revealed a secret compartment containing a package. Like a child opening a much anticipated gift, Wells sat on the edge of his bed cradling the package with one hand, while running his finger around the edges savoring the moment before slowly peeling back its wrapping of sobolis skin.

  Shortly after his arrival on Circanthos, Wells had begun encouraging the Tsendi to raise soboli. Though no larger than a small dog, a sobolis hide was as close to cow leather as anything on the planet. As opposed to their customary nakedness, Wells preferred the Tsendi wear clothes. Sobolis skin provided the perfect material.

  “Bloody savages,” he muttered, folding back the final flap of skin to reveal a small, triangular object.

  It had taken him years to discover how to make the object come to life again. Now he covered the triangle with his left hand placing his thumb, middle finger and pinky on each corner. Immediately, as if it were trying to communicate, a sharp pain pierced him between the eyebrows. Wells winced—he was used to this. It would pass.

  Seconds later, the triangle began to glow; at once gold, crystal, silver and all the colors of the rainbow, pulsing but not moving at all. Light leapt from all three of its rounded corners, bouncing from wall to wall, sconce to sconce, off every available surface in a kaleidoscope of color. It was the most amazing, most dazzling sight H.G. Wells had ever seen, and the first alien object he’d ever encountered.

  The object, the prism as he referred to it, had sat before him on a pale-blue pedestal infusing the cave with light exactly as it filled his private chamber now. Stunned from the unexpected journey and mesmerized by the spectacular light show, Wells’ first thought had been that such a device could only have been produced by a highly advanced civilization. His second thought: I must own it.

  The prism had been surprisingly cool, almost cold to the touch, but upon lifting it from the pedestal, its light had dimmed and then gone out. Disappointed, Wells gazed upon it a few moments longer, then placed it inside the pocket of his laboratory coat. He was about to leave the cave in search of civilization, when he thought twice and decided to take along his machine. A decision he would never regret, for shortly after his departure the entrance to the cave disappeared. The only way in now was by water.

  Wells had wandered through the strange, pale-blue forest for hours until two creatures spotted him. Dropping from the treetops, the albino, ape-like creatures with bulging eyes and protruding dimpled chins, began chattering in a language he could, oddly enough, almost understand. The sentient, but clearly inferior creatures, were surely not the creators of the object in his pocket; thus, he decided not to share it with them.

  Before the day was out (which he soon realized with two suns, never entirely was) the rest of the Tsendi civilization, recognizing his superior intellect, had declared H.G. Wells their Advitor. They’d been waiting for someone to guide them. Wells decided to stay. A lucky choice, as his machine, which he came to refer to as the Gate for it provided not only a gateway through time, but across space as well, no longer functioned.

  Loonocks later, when Wells met his first Circanthian, Soliis, one of the illustrious Circa Septim, he chose to keep the existence of his prism a secret. Circanthians, after all, were the enemy.

  Carefully now, he rewrapped the prism and returned it, as well as the other objects, to the chest. More humans had arrived, using the design for his machine, no less. H.G. Wells felt a strange combination of fear and pride. With firm resolve, he strode over, unbolted and threw open the shutters. Yes, he thought, it is a good day to be alive. I am the Advitor, the chosen one, and I will not let anyone, human or otherwise, take that away from me.

  Wells gazed out over his domain. Abacis had the prisoners at work clearing the forest’s edge. Good work my boy; you still serve me well.

  Turning from the window, his gaze fell on the image reflected back by a fragment of glass hanging on the wall, a piece of mirror taken long ago from his Gate. Indeed, it was a good day to be close to two-hundred-years-old, and yet look and feel no older than fifty. A very good day to be King!

  Chapter 15

  FBI TRANSCRIPT 21204

  Agent Wink Krumm and H.G. Wells

  Thursday, April 30th

  KRUMM: …against your will?

  WELLS: Yes. Kidnapped! I had a perfectly lovely existence; my sobolis skin industry thriving, the Circanthians almost extinct—

  KRUMM: Extinct?

  WELLS: Survival of the fittest, Krumm. The Tsendi were trapped in the most uncivilized of conditions. They sensed from the start, my arrival was no accident. They entreated me to take command, to guide them—to save them!

  KRUMM: From what?

  WELLS: Think of it this way, had you been alive during the Jurassic period, you would have hedged your bet on the dinosaurs. Ah, but then you wouldn’t have known that something was going to come along which would cause those seemingly indestructible giants to become extinct. My presence was a bit like that. The Circanthians appeared destined to rule Circanthos, until I came along. I was their ice age—cold, jarring and sweeping across Circanthos.

  KRUMM: Intimidating.

  WELLS: It all comes down to territory. Look at Earth, three, possibly four times the size of Circanthos, yet only one sentient species. Circanthos has two.

  KRUMM: So…the Tsendi and Circanthians were at war and the Tsendi were winning.

  WELLS: Strategically speaking, by the time I’d finished with them—we’d won.

  KRUMM: You’d won?

  WELLS: The Tsendi, dear man—my Tsendi!

  ***

  SUNLIGHT & REVELATIONS

  Monday, March 16th

  Circanthos – Vibrona coast by the Lapis Sea

  McKenzie’s wheelchair lurched out of the portal, thrust into overdrive as Hayes, who’d somewhere along the way ended up behind her, slammed into the back of it. Something blue and undulating loomed in front of them. Hayes’ flailing arm reached out, connected with the back of McKenzie’s chair, and stopped them both in their tracks. Bound together by a common dependence on her wheelchair, McKenzie and Hayes remained motionless, save for the blinking of their eyes.

  Slowly, warmth eased in through McKenzie’s fingers and elbows, and the top of her head, warming her body and lightening her soul, while her eyes began to adjust. The large blue mass was an ocean. The Lapis Sea, Pietas had called it. Ripples of light danced across the water and over the shore reflecting off pink, quartz-like pebbles and granules of sand. The effect was dazzling. Locent sun—or san—filled the sky appearing two, maybe three times the size of Earth’s sun. Fortunately, not as hot.

  “Eyes” screamed McKenzie. “Big, bloodshot eyes like, like—like pealed plums!

  “Where?” said Pietas. “In the portal?”

  “Yes! I mean, no. Right before we left I looked back because it—OH!”

  “Something’s wrong,” said Hayes. “Look at her face!”

  “Because it what dear?”

  “It smelled like garbage.”

  “Tsendi!” Pietas wrinkled her nose. “I knew they were following us.”

  “Tsendi,” whispered McKenzie, taking a breath. “I’m sorry Hayes.”

  “No, no. I shouldn’t have left your side.”

  “It’s not that…” McKenzie tried to recall the moment she’d looked into those eyes. Could she have stopped it? “The ah…Tsendi took your backpack.”

  “Backpack?”

  “You hung it on my chair. Remember? For the race.”

  “Cripes!” Hayes slapped his forehead.
“You let it take my backpack!” He reached up and began grabbing and crunching clumps of his hair as if needing to remind himself it was still there.

  “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

  “That rotten Tsendi thief stole my journal,” he muttered. “Ah nuts! And my brand new colored pencils.”

  “I’ll buy you new ones. Promise.” McKenzie felt horrible. Hayes seemed more upset about losing his backpack than about being stuck on another planet.

  “Yeah. Whatever…” he said, sounding dejected and looking a bit crazy now that his thick, wavy black hair was sticking up in all directions. It’s only a backpack. Only brand new colored pencils and…” Hayes sighed. “My life!”

  McKenzie resisted the urge to laugh. And then immediately felt guilty. Hayes kept a journal. Nothing wrong with that. She smiled. “Nope. Nothing wrong at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Hayes.

  “Sorry I…” McKenzie burst out laughing; therefore, it was a moment before she realized it wasn’t only laughter shaking her chair. It was something else. Her wheelchair tilted backwards, then forwards, and it would have tipped right over if Hayes hadn’t grabbed on to it.

  “TREMOS!” cried Pietas.

  “Dig in!” said Hayes.

  “Quickly,” called Pietas, “weave a wall!”

  Despite Hayes holding on, McKenzie’s wheelchair inched closer to the sea. Suddenly, the sand in front of her began to shift, rearrange itself, and form into a wall just tall enough to prevent her chair from rolling further.

  “Good job,” yelled Hayes.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Then, as sudden as it began, the shaking stopped, and the wall rearranged itself back into piles of sand and pebbles.

  McKenzie reached back, knocked Hayes’ hand off her chair and whirled around. “What was that?” she demanded, ignoring the sight of Hayes hopping around on one foot and muttering something about his toes. Pietas’ eyes were closed. You could barely tell she was breathing. She was the complete opposite of what they’d just experienced; her face, her entire body calm. “It’s not right, not the time.” McKenzie heard her whisper.

  “Not what time?” asked Hayes.

  “For the tremos,” murmured Pietas. “They come right before or after the loon. Not now.”

  McKenzie’s hands were still gripping her rims, her knuckles white. “You mean an earthquake.”

  “Quake—yes, an apt description.” Pietas leaned over and placed her hand upon the ground. “Concentric help us, there is only so much one old cirv can do. Circanthos is not happy.” She sat back and looked at McKenzie. “I have heard H.G. Wells use the term quake. How does your planet manage? You must have many particle-weavers.”

  McKenzie relaxed her grip. Apparently, they were safe for the moment. “I don’t know. I mean, our scientists try to predict when and where they’re going to happen, but usually they just happen. Buildings fall, sometimes people die. We don’t have—”

  “Look at the water,” said Hayes. “It’s sooooo blue!”

  They’d just survived an earthquake and Hayes was admiring the color of the water. “Are you nuts?” But in that instant, it struck McKenzie; the water was blue. Really blue. Not the translucent, watered down, foamy blue of Earth’s oceans speckled by glimpses of seaweed, sand and dead fish—but deep blue. Lapis blue. “Pietas, you said this is called the Lapis Sea. Is it called that in your language too?”

  “In Circanthian it’s called the Lapis Aecor.”

  “But still lapis,” said McKenzie. “Freaky.”

  “Freaky?” Pietas had moved alongside her.

  “That two planets, in two different solar systems have a similar language. My grandmother has a necklace made from lapis stone passed down to her from her mother and probably her mother’s mother before that. It’s very old…” McKenzie’s hand drifted up to her neck as if she could touch the necklace that lay tucked away in her grandmother’s bureau. “And beautiful. The exact color of your Lapis Sea.”

  “Maybe it’s not the same language,” said Hayes, walking up behind her. “Maybe we’re just able to understand them like they do in sci-fi movies.”

  “What is this sci-fi,” asked Pietas?

  McKenzie shook her head. “Ignore him.”

  Pietas smiled. “I believe that might be difficult. However, in answer to your question, I too noticed the similarities while first learning the Earth language.”

  A loud “thup, thup, thup” interrupted their conversation. McKenzie turned around in time to see Hayes toss a pebble into, or rather, onto the sea where it bounced a few times before sinking slowly under the water. “That’s what I call thick,” he said.

  “You are a curious one.” Pietas’ tone made McKenzie smile. “However,” she continued, “now is not the time. There is much I need to tell you before we reach the Gathering.”

  Hayes put the rest of the pebbles in his pocket and plopped down beside McKenzie.

  “There is so much you don’t know,” Pietas murmured, becoming so still, so silent, it was clear she was thinking of something.

  McKenzie glanced down at Hayes, only to find him staring back at her. Her heart burst into double time and she looked away, hoping he hadn’t noticed her blush.

  “H.G. Wells arrived sometime around the disappearance of Petré Revolvos.” Pietas shook her head and sighed. “Dear me, of course that’s not where to begin.” Then she proceeded to tell them about the discovery of the Circolar; the book she’d shown them in the cave. “I was a child at the time, a mere hundred or so loonocks old.”

  McKenzie and Hayes exchanged looks.

  “I remember it well. How excited the explorers were on their return. Seeing the Circolar for the first time. It was as if the san’s light was magnified a thousand times over—swallowed up then spit out in a glorious burst of color. We covered our eyes for fear of going blind.”

  McKenzie nodded her head, recalling how even in the cave it had been almost too bright.

  Pietas picked up the poonchi and began scratching behind his ears. “But the explorers were also afraid. When they removed the Circolar, the pyramid it had balanced on disappeared in a display of light and sound making enough ruckus to send all the explorers fleeing from the cave.”

  McKenzie sat up straighter. “There was a pyramid in the box in Principal Provost’s office.”

  Charlie the poonchi jumped off Pietas’ lap. He flipped over, squirmed in the sand itching his back, and then righted himself and wandered over by Hayes.

  “Hey little roller dude!”

  “Shhh!” said McKenzie. Apparently, Hayes’ charm worked on dogs as well as women. “What happened next?”

  Pietas peered out over the sea. “No one was brave enough to return to Iciis. So, nothing happened. Not for almost a hundred loonocks. Not until my good friend, Petré Revolvos, decided to lead another expedition. Petré had spent loonocks trying to translate the Circolar, unsuccessfully.”

  “And that’s when he disappeared!” Like someone suddenly possessed, Hayes jumped up, knocking Charlie off his lap, and tossed all his pebbles into the sea. A dozen “thup, thup, thups” were joined by Charlie’s yipping and running madly back and forth along the shore.

  “What is your problem?” said McKenzie.

  Pietas stared at Hayes as if she’d never seen such behavior.

  “I was just…” Hayes looked from one disapproving face to the other. “Awww, never mind,” he said, and plopped down again.

  Charlie stopped barking but continued to pace back and forth beside the water as if waiting for more “thup, thup, thups” to erupt.

  “Revolvos did not disappear. Not then,” said Pietas, looking slightly perturbed. “He returned from the expedition with the key for translating the Circolar.”

  “But you said he disappeared,” said Hayes.

  Pietas spread her arms wide as if entreating the Lapis Sea for help. “Concentric help me!”

  McKenzie had never shared a class wit
h Hayes, but it was clear why he spent so much time in Principal Provost’s office.

  “Is anyone else thirsty?” he asked, oblivious to any and all frustration directed his way.

  Pietas looked confused.

  “I think Hayes wants to know if we can drink the water in the Lapis Sea.”

  “Dear me! You DO NOT drink the Creator’s home.”

  “Creator?” McKenzie looked at Hayes. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Yes. Yes, Concentric!” Once again, Pietas seemed to have forgotten that McKenzie and Hayes had just arrived on her planet. “The Creator.”

  Hayes wandered down to the water and leaned over as if to get a better look. “How do you know?”

  “The Lapis Sea belongs to Concentric and the rest is ours,” said Pietas, as if this were self-evident.

  “Then why do you need a savior?” said McKenzie. “If your Creator lives right there, why not ask him, or her, for help?”

  “I did!” Pietas smiled. “I asked Concentric to assist Bewfordios in his search for you. And it worked.”

  Hayes tossed another pebble. “Does this mean I just skipped a bunch of rocks into God’s house?”

  Pietas sighed loudly. “Enough.” Her sphere inflated and she turned. “I find myself suddenly hungry and not at all in the mood to answer any more questions. We’ll continue our discussion on our way to the Gathering. There’s an inlet not far from here where you may, indeed, drink the water.”

  “Come on Mac, you don’t wanna get left behind.”

  “Coming.” McKenzie glanced at the Lapis Sea. It looked perfectly calm. Then, as if aware of her scrutiny, it rose up and washed the gentlest of waves onto the beach and under her chair. She turned to see if Hayes had noticed, but he was reaching down to pick up Charlie. Pietas was almost out of sight. McKenzie put hands to rims and, with surprising ease, took off across the glistening, pebbled beach.

  Chapter 16

  FBI TRANSCRIPT 21201

  Agent Wink Krumm and McKenzie Wu

  Monday, May 4th