The Trilisk Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  Chapter 12

  Magnus and Telisa sat down against the rock wall of the large chamber while the alien worked with the cube devices piled in the center of the cave. The creature worked rapidly, its limbs moving almost faster than Telisa could follow. She saw that each of its legs ended in three stiff, pointy toes that were equidistant from each other around the perimeter. Each foot reminded her of a three-way crab pincher.

  “Do you think he’s trapped here just like us?” Telisa pondered aloud.

  Magnus grunted. “Maybe. Probably.”

  “He must have brought a lot of equipment with him.”

  “Or he collected it. We should probably start doing that ourselves. If everything shifts all the time, we should search every room for food and supplies to take with us.”

  “So maybe this is his hoard of stuff that he’s collected,” Telisa thought out loud. “But how does he keep it from going away when he’s gone?”

  Magnus blinked. “I never thought of that. That’s a great question. Maybe the corridors change but the caves don’t… or maybe he is a Trilisk after all.”

  “Or he may have learned how to tell what’s going to change when.”

  Shiny abruptly stopped and waved the head-like bulb on the front of his body.

  “He seems to be acting differently,” Telisa said.

  “I wish I knew if that was its head,” Magnus said. “I mean, I wonder if its brain is in there.”

  Suddenly Telisa caught a glimpse of movement at the nearest adjoining tunnel mouth. She gasped as she realized a person stood at the entrance looking at them.

  The person stepped closer, coming into a patch of reddish light so that Telisa could see a man dressed in a UNSF officer’s uniform.

  “Purple paste,” Telisa whispered.

  She realized that the newcomer held a deadly-looking pistol in his hand, pointing it right at them. She glanced at Magnus and saw that he was covering the man in turn with his own weapon, his finger resting on the trigger.

  The UNSF man spoke.

  “No one move. Tell me what’s going on here. What is that thing?”

  “We don’t really know what it is,” Magnus said. “It’s intelligent, though.”

  “We call it Shiny,” Telisa added. “There’s no need for the weapon.” Telisa’s heart thumped against her ribcage. She feared that a gunfight would break out and more people would end up dead.

  “Put the weapon down,” the man commanded.

  “No,” Magnus said.

  “There’s no point in us shooting each other,” Telisa said.

  The officer stared back at Telisa and Magnus. Then he took a long look at the alien. Shiny seemed content to stand idle while the Terrans talked.

  “I’ll make you a deal. Tell me how to get out of this place, and I’ll forget that you were ever here,” he said.

  “We don’t have any idea,” Telisa said. “Everything shifts around in this place.”

  “What about him? Shiny?”

  “We’re just trying to communicate with him… or it, I mean,” Telisa said. “Look, let’s cooperate. I don’t know who you are, or how you got here, but I bet we all have the same problem.”

  “Eminently reasonable,” the officer said. “But I don’t trust you. How did you get here?”

  Magnus exchanged a brief look with Telisa.

  “Does it matter?” Magnus asked. “I’m Mark, this is Tam, and we’re stuck here… the same as you.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Joe Hartlet, UNSF,” he announced. “As you’ve probably guessed, my job is to arrest you. But I meant what I said before. If you know how to get me out, I’m willing to forget about you. I need to tell the UNSF that this complex and this alien are here. It’s possibly one of the greatest discoveries we’ve ever made. That’s all I care about now.”

  “The alien may not be real,” Telisa said. “None of it may be real. Hell, you may not be real.”

  Joe nodded. “This place may be virtual. I don’t know how, but it might be possible. But it’s a weird kind of virtual. Different things bring their environment with them and interact here.”

  “What do you mean?” Magnus asked.

  “Well, this place doesn’t just happen to look like a human-built complex. It looks that way because we’re here. I accidentally brought in an orange crab-thing from the surface, and when I encountered it again later, it was surrounded by a little sphere of dirt and native plants, just as if it were up above. Then there’s these caves. I figure that they must be this guy’s usual habitat.”

  “Caves? I’m not sure,” Telisa said, looking at the alien. “I think it’s an advanced creature, capable of using technology and communicating. Wouldn’t it live in a constructed environment like we do?”

  Joe shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “The cubes aren’t natural though,” Magnus pointed out. “It uses them to create devices of some kind. So maybe this is the kind of surroundings it’s used to.”

  “So what you’re saying is that this isn’t a UNSF installation?” Telisa asked.

  “If it’s UNSF, then it’s a secret I wasn’t let in on,” Joe said. “It probably isn’t UNSF since the technology required is beyond our current capability, unless it is virtual and we’re being used as guinea pigs…”

  Joe stopped for a moment, as if considering the possibility.

  “My theory is it’s Trilisk, and as I said, any creature that enters this area is surrounded by an environment that it’s used to. Like a holding pen for aliens, or for all I know, some kind of Trilisk hotel for varied life forms.”

  “We aren’t used to this,” Telisa said, indicating the surrounding cave. “Shouldn’t it be turning into a Terran environment?”

  “I was wondering about that too,” Joe said. “Sometimes you get something like your own environment. In our case corridors and rooms of all sorts. Sometimes you don’t. The crab I saw was in its own habitat when I spotted it, but then it crawled out onto the tile floor as I watched. The area didn’t follow it when I was there.”

  Magnus had been listening, but now he spoke up. “So it makes sense to suppose that the caves, with these red cubes, are what Shiny is used to. I’d like to find some corridors and try and lure Shiny into them, just to prove that he can end up out of his environment. We went looking earlier for the Terran part of the area but couldn’t find it.”

  “I came from an area that looked like a Terran university or something, straight back about forty meters,” Joe said.

  “Well, we couldn’t find it. It’s probably gone by now,” Magnus said.

  “I think I figured this out,” Telisa said. “This place is like first come, first served.”

  “How’s that?” asked Joe.

  “If we’re someplace, it becomes like a Terran complex, like when we entered. But if we come across an area Shiny is in, then it stays like he likes it. That’s why one human corridor seemed to join the caves so abruptly. But once the area moves out of sensory range again, it can be anything.”

  “And the crab was surrounded by its own environment until I came along and trapped it in a human area?” Joe asked.

  “Yes,” Telisa said. “Your senses can go farther than the crab’s. You surrounded it with your own type of environment.”

  Magnus shrugged. “It’s the best theory we have so far.”

  Telisa wasn’t done. She continued excitedly.

  “It gets better. This theory explains why we can’t find any corridors now. Shiny is the problem. He’s trapped us. Joe, Shiny can see through walls.”

  Joe blinked. “He can?”

  “Yes. We proved it to ourselves earlier. Somehow he can sense through dense matter or around it. So he forms caves as we move around, beyond our range of sight and sound. He traps us in the caves just like you walked up and trapped the crab in a human corridor.”

  Magnus nodded. “That does sound like it all fits.”

  Joe scratched his head, allowing himself to lower his pistol.

  “Very
well. I like that theory too. It should be simple to test. You two stay here with Shiny, and I’ll walk away through the caves. If it works, I’ll eventually move beyond his range and run into some human rooms or corridors.”

  Telisa shrugged. “Sounds okay to me. I hope his ‘range’ isn’t too far.”

  “It’s worth a try, but that doesn’t explain what you mentioned earlier about how Shiny keeps his hoard here from disappearing whenever he goes for a walk,” Magnus said.

  Telisa nodded. “Let’s try this experiment first, then we’ll try and tackle that mystery.”

  Joe looked at the other two Terrans for a second. “Well, since I’m already used to making my way around on my own, I guess I’ll go look for the corridors. I realize that you two may run away while I’m gone, but I really do just need to escape, so I give you my word you’re in no danger from me. We’ll have a better chance of escaping if we keep sharing information and work together.”

  Telisa nodded, trying to encourage Joe. Magnus gave no reaction.

  “Okay, be back in a while,” Joe said and walked back out the way he came.

  “Well, what do you think? Is he our friend or our enemy?” Telisa asked.

  “I think it’s more complicated than that. Should we trust him? Almost certainly no. But still, we may have to work with him to get out of here. I think we should just stay calm and cooperate with him, but if we get out of here, the situation may degenerate into a firefight.”

  “The most important thing is communicating with Shiny, I think. We can still try and learn more about the complex, of course, but it seems that Shiny understands it better than we do.”

  “I agree. But I’m also tired. I don’t know how long we slept before, but I feel like I’ve been up forever.”

  Telisa realized that fatigue gripped her as well.

  “I guess it’s just hard to think about sleep with so much going on. I do feel tired.”

  “Sleep may be a problem with Joe around. Should we rotate our sleep so one of us is always awake?”

  “No. I’ll hide my stunner somewhere he can’t snatch it while I’m asleep. If he takes your weapon, then I’ll get him later. Besides, you have a lot more weapons than that thing on you.”

  Magnus smiled. “So true. And this strap will make the rifle hard to snatch quickly. I can also disable it with my link.”

  “Oh yeah. My stunner won’t shoot for anyone but us. I forgot about it.”

  Joe returned from the same entrance as before, walking slowly.

  “I found Terran-style rooms about fifty meters in that direction,” Joe said, indicating his exit point. “Of course, they looked different than anything I’ve seen so far. Things are still changing around behind our backs, I suspect.”

  “So it probably was Shiny, since he was walking with us,” Telisa said.

  “Have you talked with it?” Joe asked.

  “The only thing we’ve really managed is wave your arm for ‘follow me,’” Telisa said, demonstrating with her arm.

  “Look. We have to sleep. We’ve been up for a long time now,” Magnus said.

  “Go ahead. I slept just a few hours ago. I’ll stay up and watch him.”

  “Don’t come over near us. I’m sleeping with my weapon, and I intend to keep it,” Magnus said. “I don’t harbor any ill will toward you. I just want to escape.”

  Joe nodded. “I expect the same from you when I need to sleep,” Joe said. “I give you my word I won’t disturb you.”

  Telisa and Magnus curled up against a wall and prepared to sleep. Joe walked over closer to Shiny and watched the alien attentively. Shiny had quit watching the humans and was working with the cubes again. Telisa wondered what he was doing with the complex items and thought that she should examine them, since they must be artifacts like she had come to find. That was her last thought before sleep claimed her.

  Magnus awakened hours later, uncertainly rising and checking his equipment. It didn’t seem that anyone had interfered with his things. He checked his clip just to be sure. Everything seemed to be in order.

  “Time to get up?” Telisa asked sleepily.

  Magnus’s fiddling had brought her to consciousness.

  Joe saw that the two were starting to rise and walked over a little closer to their sleeping area.

  “Anything happen while we were asleep?” Telisa asked.

  “Not much. I’ve been trying to communicate,” Joe replied. “I’ve figured out that he says ‘yes’ by lifting his first right arm and ‘no’ by lifting his front left arm. Past that part, it starts to bog down.”

  “Progress is progress,” she said. “But we don’t have many days of food left.”

  “Food is no problem,” Joe said. “I’ve found food and water here. There was a vending kiosk with phony product names, but I broke into it and the food was real enough. Also, there were water spigots in a chemistry lab I went through.”

  “That might do if we have no other choice,” Magnus said. “But if the food is as phony as the reports in the office, we’re in deep trouble.”

  Joe grunted. “I didn’t get that far. The reports are phony how?”

  “They’re full of gibberish. Well, each sentence has good syntax, but there’s no real meaning to any of it,” Telisa said.

  “Well, let’s hope it’s hard to screw up water,” Joe said.