Petrick slumped and nodded his head. He knew it would be this way. Why had he tried to fight it?
“We must depart,” said their host. “We are expected.”
46
“SO, SHE’S AN ALIEN?” Barry whispered as they were led down the halls deep into the Syrruk mountain.
Petrick was sure he meant to be quiet enough not to be heard, but he was also sure, just from the vibrations their footsteps were sending down the echoing hall, that their host could hear him quite well if she wished.
Suzy glared at him. “What?” Barry put his hands up to defend himself.
“Maybe she doesn’t like that word,” Suzy whispered back.
“We don’t know what the Syrruk are,” Balta said from the side of his mouth, “but I doubt they like people talking about them behind their backs.”
That zipped Barry up, and Suzy too.
The hallways were black and shiny, in contrast to the matte finish on everything else they’d seen, and here and there starstuff ore crystals glinted in the light, which seemed to mostly be coming from a doorway at the far end. Their guide was leading them to it as swiftly as she could, pausing now and then to let the smaller legs catch up to the pace.
Petrick looked at the black suit their host wore; it fit tightly in places, and angled into edges and exaggerated points in others, which made it impossible to guess at her shape beyond two legs, two arms, a head—generally like a human. There wasn’t a single spot of bare skin anywhere, so that too was a mystery. Most mysterious of all was the completely opaque helmet, which was matte and light absorbing everywhere except a glistening slit in the front where Petrick assumed her eyes must be. Did she have two, like he did? Did she have a nose? A mouth? How “alien” was she? What was her—?
“My name is Panzer,” she said once they reached the doorway at the end of the long hall. “I am chief centurion of the Seer’s Guard.” She said it with the shiny slit pointed to Petrick, as if she’d heard his question before he could speak it . . . before he even knew he was going to think it, which he realized he’d been about to.
She motioned for the five-some plus Clarke to enter the small room beyond the door. They hesitated. She sighed, audibly, and passed through first, then gestured again for them to follow, as if to say, It’s safe.
In the room, there were several shapes on the floor—diamonds, of course, marked in matte black that stood out from the otherwise shiny blackness. Panzer stood on one of the shapes, and the rest of the group intuited they should do the same.
Panzer kneeled once the group was in place, and the moment her back knee hit the floor, the whole room lit up in bright gold.
Petrick reflexively clutched at Clarke, who was in his arms, and he realized the dog’s fur was standing on end. A high-pitched whine filled the room. Petrick looked at Panzer and saw that she was holding her staff above her, head turned up toward the sky . . . or ceiling, as it was.
The high-pitched whine increased sharply in intensity, which made Petrick wince in pain, and then there was pitch-darkness and silence.
“What in the far-flung galaxy was that?” Balta said into the darkness.
“Is everyone okay?” Haber asked.
A golden light appeared and brightened slowly, and Petrick saw that Panzer was getting back up to her feet. Suzy was standing, as were Haber, Balta, and Barry. They were fine. He was fine. He realized that his skin was tingling all over. Even his insides tingled.
“Praise be to the Timeless,” Panzer said, and she turned to the back of the chamber.
Petrick was about to point out that the door they’d entered through was actually the other direction when the wall she was facing slid open and a new blinding light poured in. Panzer stepped through the doorway, and the group followed her.
“You’re not much for explanations, are you, lady?” Balta called after her. Whatever follow-up admonition she had for her was swallowed by the expanse that opened up before them beyond the door. Balta’s eyes went wide, and her breath caught in her chest. “My stars,” she said.
They were standing on a ledge of some kind that was perched a hundred feet or so above the floor of an enormous cavern. It was a cavern the size of . . . well, the size of a mountain. It stretched out for miles in every direction and funneled up from the sides toward a peak miles above them. It was hard to say exactly how high it reached because an enormous blue-white light floated near the top, its form obscured because it was too bright to look at directly.
“It’s incredible!” Barry whooped. His voice echoed out into the cavern.
The floor of the city-sized cavern was covered in rolling green fields, dotted with modest houses and larger clusters of buildings here and there. It looked . . . like a city. A city inside a mountain. But something was off.
“Where is everyone?” Balta asked. “There’s nobody here.”
Petrick realized she was right; as vast and overwhelming as the chamber was, there was not a single person to be seen other than themselves, and it was eerily quiet.
“By directive from the Seer, we have sent our mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers away from here,” Panzer answered in a clipped tone. Before anyone could ask a follow-up to such a statement, Panzer tapped a small button on the wrist of her suit.
Without any other warning, five, six—no, seven figures appeared seemingly out of thin air on the ledge and formed a half circle around the group. They were all wearing the same impressive black suits as Panzer, sans staff; they were all as big as she was; and they were all crouched threateningly.
“Hey!” Balta barked, reaching for her holstered guns.
“Do not fear, Star Farer,” Panzer said with the same clipped tone, and Balta paused her motion. “They are not here for you.”
She gestured to her fellow suited Syrruk and pointed them to various positions around the ledge and doorway.
“Who are they here for?” Balta half-mumbled, watching the seven warily, hand ready to whip her gold guns out upon them.
Not a word was spoken by the new figures, at least not that Petrick could hear. They just moved silently where Panzer wanted them. He wondered if their wordless communication, like how Panzer seemed to speak directly into his brain, was a function of their suits, or if the Syrruk had special abilities of some kind.
Is that a thing?
Balta then realized what their enigmatic host had just said and turned to her, head cocked to the side. “Wait,” she said, “what did you call me?”
“Star Farer.” Panzer’s body language changed for a moment, and she shifted with hesitation. “Is that not the correct term?”
“It is. How’d you know that?”
Panzer looked up toward the ‘sky.’ “We have not the time. Please allow me to join hands with you, and you all do the same.”
She stepped to the group, tucked her staff under her arm, and held out her giant gloved hands.
“Is this another weird ritual thing, like in that blinding business in the noise chamber?” Balta asked, not having it.
The group looked at her skeptically. Her seven guards—Petrick was guessing they were guards—stood several paces away off to the sides.
Panzer again thrust her hands out to the group. “Please,” she said. “I will take you to see the Seer.”
Petrick was again the first to step forward. He mimicked Panzer with her staff, nestling Clarke into his armpit between his arm and his torso, and grabbed her hand. She grabbed back. Her grip was firm but not too tight. He reached to grab Suzy’s hand. Suzy linked up with Barry, and so on until everyone was holding hands. It occurred to Petrick that the last time they’d been connected this way, they were floating in the vacuum of space.
“And where is the Seer?” Balta asked. She looked as foolish holding hands as she probably felt.
“Up there.” Panzer looked up again, and this time, the rest of the group looked up with her.
Petrick couldn’t believe he had missed it before, but far up toward the bright light sou
rce was a chunk of rock that was impossibly floating in midair out toward the center of the constricting cone. A single, thin strip of rock extended from the inside wall of the mountain out toward the floating platform like a precarious bridge. It was far, far too small to have been holding up the entire platform.
The Seer?
No sooner had they all looked up and seen the floating rock platform than their stomachs bottomed out, and it was rushing down toward them . . .
. . . no, they were hurtling up toward it. At incredible speed.
The rock wall behind them was a blur of black, gray, and brown. The wind roared in their ears.
“Crunch,” Barry moaned, his face drained of color. “I’m going to be sick.”
But Petrick couldn’t be bothered with a sour stomach. “You can fly?” he shouted at Panzer.
She looked down at him with a tight little nod, and Petrick swore he could feel a smile grow behind her inscrutable black helmet. “Do not let go of my hand,” she said.
The rushing feeling was incredible, greater than anything he could have imagined or dreamed. The ground below them shrank the higher they climbed.
“Watch out, lady!” Balta yelled over the sound of the rushing air.
Another ledge, similar, it seemed—at least from the underside—to the ledge they’d first stepped out onto, was mere feet away from them. Panzer didn’t flinch. Instead, they went right toward it, through it with a loud whoosh, and continued on their way steadily upward.
Petrick looked down at the platform and had just enough time as it receded to spot a smallish diamond-shaped hole right through which they’d flown. Like . . . it had been designed that way. Petrick realized they needn’t have doubted their host’s flying abilities; she was used to it.
“Will you slow down?” The complaint was from Barry.
Petrick didn’t want her to slow down.
Moments later, they did, but not because of any request from Balta. A final ledge in the rock wall was above them, lipping out from the mountain. It was from this last ledge that the stone bridge reached out to the Seer’s floating platform.
They passed through one more diamond-shaped hole that was just large enough to fit their group and hovered over the shiny floor on the top side, and Panzer gently set each of them down. Barry immediately crashed to the ground, his legs mush.
“Can we . . . not . . . ,” he said between ragged breaths, “do that . . . again?”
Petrick might have laughed, but he was feeling a bit woozy himself, and he put his hands on his knees and bent over to catch his breath.
“It is natural for us,” Panzer said. She was looking at the children with what Petrick imagined was a mixture of confusion and amusement.
“Well, it’s not natural for us,” Suzy confirmed.
“You guys know when . . . it’s too much . . . too fast . . . ,” Barry wheezed. “Yeah . . . well, this . . . is one of those times. Just . . . gimme a minute.”
“I will notify you next time,” Panzer said with a slight incline of her head. “But we must continue. This way.” And then she turned her back to them once more and walked off toward the stone bridge and the floating platform.
From this height, so close to the light source for the cavern, everything was bathed in brightness and almost impossible to see. Petrick had to shield his eyes to make out some vague peaked shapes. The platform of floating rock was flat like the ledge, with what appeared to be a small set of buildings or tents on it. It was hard to make out.
Haber reached for Barry, who grumbled, but he was back up on his feet in short order, and they set off to follow after their host.
The thin stone bridge was wider than it had looked from so far down below on the cavern floor, but still . . . it had no railings. That struck Petrick first as extremely unwise given how far down the bottom of the cavern was, and struck him second as making complete sense for a race of beings like the Syrruk.
Why have railings if you can fly?
“Don’t look down,” Suzy hissed to Petrick. He saw her eyes were wide and she shook her head. She’d apparently made the mistake of looking down and intended to spare Petrick the same.
Curiosity got the better of Petrick, and he peered over the rail-less edge anyway. The round cavern floor was so far below them it was hazy, and he immediately regretted not listening to Suzy. She yanked him back from the edge, even though he was a good three feet from it, and shook her head. Her disdain was as much for herself as it was for Petrick; she should have known better than to even mention it to him.
A few more feet and Petrick saw that Panzer had stopped at the door of a tentlike structure that sat at the very front of the platform. It was quite unlike the buildings they’d seen down below. It peaked at the top like a mountain, and the entrance was more of a fabric flap than a door.
Panzer held up her hand. “The Seer has asked to speak with the boy from Indacar,” she said, pointing at Petrick. “The rest of you will wait here.”
“Wait a minute,” said Barry, puffing out his chest. “I’m a boy from Indacar. How do you know he doesn’t mean me?”
“Yeah,” said Suzy, “and I’m a girl from Indacar. Why can’t a girl talk to the Seer, huh?”
“Guys,” said Petrick. He put his hands up in exasperation, but Suzy and Barry ignored him.
Panzer looked back and forth between them, appearing even through her helmet as if she was trying to figure out what to say to the little upstarts. Balta stepped in to save her the trouble.
“Best just let them through, lady,” she said to her. “Take it from me. More trouble than they’re worth.”
Suzy nodded her head in agreement. “And Haber too,” she said.
Panzer straightened. “Fine,” she said. “But to enter, you each must perform another cleansing.” She raised her staff, which Petrick guessed could do the trick.
“Cleansing?” Balta asked. “Is that what that damn room was down there that nearly busted my tender ears?”
Panzer stood steadfastly and began to say, “It is our custom—”
“PANZER.” A voice boomed from inside the tent, cutting her off.
Everyone fell silent. They could see nothing inside the darkness of the tent . . . quite the contrast to the light-soaked bridge.
Was it the Seer? It must have been the Seer.
“LET THEM IN.”
47
“YOUR CHOICES HAVE LEFT us short on time,” said the man sitting cross-legged at the center of the tent. “Come closer. Quickly.”
It was dark inside except for the man—the Seer, Petrick guessed. He was gold. His skin was so golden, it seemed to glow, and as Petrick ambled toward him, he realized it wasn’t just a trick of the eye; his skin actually glowed same glittering yellow color, and it lit up the ground around him and the tent’s poles.
He was old, older than any man Petrick had ever seen, and he was small. No larger than Petrick himself. His skin was cracked like sun-baked mud on a floodplain. He sat directly on the floor, his legs hugged up tight against his chest.
As Petrick reached the Seer, the old man bent down and reached into a small bowl at his feet. He brought up between his fingers a pinch of glowing gold dust. He lifted it on a fingertip to his nose, and he snorted loudly. The Seer convulsed with the whole of his body after the gold dust disappeared inside him, and Petrick swore the old man glowed brighter. His eyes glazed over, and he slumped forward.
Was that starstuff he just inhaled?
“Please, son of the Seeker,” said the Seer after he regathered himself and reopened his shining eyes to gaze at Petrick. “We have enough time for you to sit.”
Petrick sat in front of the glowing man. He heard the rest of the group shuffle into place behind him, quiet, finally.
“Uh, thank you,” Petrick said.
With surprising quickness, the Seer thrust an arm out towards him and was pressing something cold and hard against his forehead. An electric shock ran through Petrick, starting from whatever the Seer wa
s pressing to his skin, rippling towards the back of his head, down his spine, and from there out his extremities. Petrick gasped, and he was vaguely aware of cries of alarm, but his mind was transported elsewhere in an instant. Vague images ripped through his mind so quickly they were little more than blurs of motion; an explosion, his father’s face, Suzy’s, an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loneliness, the color red, red everywhere.
And then the object to his forehead was gone, and the Seer was holding it in his hands. Before the Seer’s fingers closed over it, Petrick saw a jewel-like, polished rock, golden in color and glowing just like the Seer.
“What do you think you’re doing, mister?!” Suzy said from behind Petrick. He could hear her struggling against Panzer.
“I’m okay,” Petrick wheezed, transfixed by the object in the Seer’s hands. Its glowing light showed between the old man’s cracked fingers. “What…was that?”
The Seer found Petrick’s eyes, and locked with them. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I do not have time to explain, son of the Seeker.”
“You’re calling him ‘son of the Seeker,’” Haber said, speaking up. “Do you mean Fenton, the scientist? We were told he came here, years ago, to track down the Source.”
“He did come here,” the Seer said, not taking his eyes off Petrick.
“What did you tell him?”
“That it is known to us the Source is protected by the Hornet’s Nest . . . ”
The words “Hornet’s Nest” hit Petrick like another shock to his forehead, and he bent over in pain. Haber put a worried hand out to catch him, should he slump to the floor. A vision of the swirling mass of gas and protoplanet from the new dream swam in his mind, overlaid with the nightly hornets that he’d seen so many times before they swarmed over his father’s face.
“. . . but that is not why we are here,” the Seer continued, “is it, son of the Seeker?”
Petrick’s heart began to pound. The Seer had never taken his gaze off of him.
“Can you explain what the ‘Hornet’s Nest’—” Haber was cut off midsentence by a gesture from the Seer.
Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1) Page 31