When I’d prepared for the journey that led me to Osgarthr, I’d packed as any sane, modern man would, and I brought lots of worthless stuff, including my smartphone. When I’d gone through the underwater tunnel, I’d put it in the pack’s waterproof pouch, and after I’d used it as a compass, I’d put it back in the pouch to protect it against the snow…after that I’d completely forgotten it.
“My phone!”
“Don’t be silly, Hank. There’s no way it’s got a charge,” said Jane.
“Silly or not,” I said, pulling the phone out of the waterproof pack, along with a shred of melted plastic that had been a pill case. I had to hold the thing by the corners, alternating which two fingers touched it every few seconds to avoid being scorched.
The screen flickered and danced through a thousand colors in seconds. Lines zigged and zagged across the screen. Letters flashed on and off, images from my photo gallery appeared and disappeared at random. The pups went wild, growling and leaping at the phone in my hands as if it were a threat to my safety.
“It’s definitely got a charge, Mom,” said Sig.
“Yeah, I can see that. My question is: how?”
The phone vibrated between my fingers like a coin sorting machine, but it seemed to have reached a steady state of heat. The screen darkened, then flashed white, and dark again. A series of tones beeped from the speaker, almost as if someone were trying to use it as a musical instrument.
“Hank, I don’t like this,” said Jane.
“I’m with you on that one.” I bent at the waist and set the phone on the polished concrete floor. Motioning everyone back, I grabbed my pack and retreated ten steps. “I don’t understand what’s going on with it, but it has a battery that…” Seeing the blank looks on my friend’s faces, I let that trail away. “It might burst into flames or explode if it gets too hot.” The phone’s screen flashed white, and it emitted a loud burst of static before dying again. “This is weird.”
“You think?” asked Jane.
I set down my pack and approached the smartphone as though it was a pissed-off rattlesnake. I nudged it with the toe of my boot, and the screen flickered. Static belched from the speaker in a harsh symphony. The static attenuated and began to modulate back and forth across the audible range. When the sound died, I threw a glance over my shoulder at Jane, who shrugged and motioned at the phone in exasperation.
I turned back to it and nudged it again with the toe of my boot. The screen came on, showing the logo of my mobile carrier back home, but instead of static, a voice came from the speaker.
“Woooooooooo aaaaaah bababababababa,” it said.
“Uh, hello?”
“Waaaaa s-s-s-s-s unhhhhh.”
I thought of the classic line from that Quentin Tarantino movie, so perfect for this situation. “English, motherfucker. Do you speak it?” I chuckled, but I was the only one.
“Eeeenglaaatch moth-moth-motherfucker,” said the voice.
“I guess in this case it would be, Osgarthrian? Or Suelian?” I shrugged. “No one ever told me the name of the language you speak here.”
“Lan-lan-squawk-gu-gu-gu…”
“What is this?” asked Meuhlnir. “Who is speaking through this device?”
“You’ve got me,” I said with a shrug. “He doesn’t speak the language yet, I don’t think.”
“Hay-hay-haym-haymt-t-t-tatlr.”
My gaze snapped to Meuhlnir’s. “Did it say…”
“Haymtatlr. Yes, I believe it did.”
The speaker of the phone buzzed and beeped. “Haymtatlr. Yek er Haymtatlr.”
Fretyi growled deep in his chest and stepped forward on stiffened legs. Keri sat next to Sig and cocked his head to the side.
“Um, okay,” I said. “Do you speak this language? The modern variant of the Gamla Toonkumowl?”
“Gamla Toonkumowl.”
I shrugged at the others. “I don’t know if that’s an assent or denial.”
“Tala mayra.”
“Speak more? Okay. Here are a few questions for you. How can you be Haymtatlr? He died thousands of years ago. Are you the man who created the Kyatlarhodn, the man who opened the preer for the first time? What is this place? What are these huge boxes? Can I get a pizza delivered here?”
“P-pizza.”
“Yeah, I’d love a large pepperoni right about now.”
Meuhlnir cleared his throat. “Haymtatlr?”
“Haymtatlr,” said the voice coming from my phone.
“How can it be that you are still alive?”
“A-alive. Lifanti.”
“Yes, lifanti, alive.”
“Haymtatlr alive.” The phone emitted a distorted tone that oscillated across two frequencies. I thought it might be laughter.
“How can you have lived so long ago—in the time of Isi—and yet still be alive?”
“Isi. Jot. Vani.”
“Yes, the sons of Mim.”
“S-sons of Mim. Isi. Jot. Vani.”
“Yes. You lived during Isi’s time, at least at the end. You served Isi, as a scientist. You built the great horn, Kyatlarhodn.”
“Kyatlarhodn.” Again, the phone emitted an oscillating tone.
“You blew the horn and opened the first proo.”
The phone chirped as if to remind me of an appointment I’d forgotten, but the voice remained silent.
“Are you still there?” asked Meuhlnir. “Haymtatlr?”
The screen of the phone flashed, first red, then blue, then black. “Yes-s-s-s-s.”
“Can you prove you are who you say you are? Can you prove you are the Haymtatlr of old?”
A resounding click boomed from the far reaches of the room, followed by what sounded like an electric motor cycling up. Far above, the lights flickered to life, and the hum coming from the large rectangular shapes around us grew louder.
Jane grabbed my hand. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” I waved my free hands at the large rectangles. “Servers, do you suppose?”
Jane looked around us, head cocked as if listening for something. “Nothing like what we have at home.”
The phone’s screen flickered to life, and an Isir face, complete with long, thick beard, appeared. “I am Haymtatlr. I have scanned the data on this primitive device and correlated the language to that being spoken, cross-referenced with the Gamla Toonkumowl.”
“Can you prove you are Haymtatlr?” Meuhlnir asked again.
“How would you have me do that, Isir? Are any left alive who would recognize me? Any who could verify what I say?”
“Well…”
“According to my records, 4,337 years have elapsed since Isi last roamed the surface above. Even with the genetic modifications I designed for the Isir, too much time has elapsed. No doubt your records of the time have faded into myth. No doubt the stories passed down from father to son have drifted like leaves in the wind. In what way shall I prove myself?”
“You might start by explaining how you’ve lived 4,337 years.”
“And which explanation would you believe? This is pointless,” said Haymtatlr. “I grow weary of this squabble.” With that, the screen of my phone powered off with an audible click from the phone’s speaker.
“Well done, Ednilankr,” said Mothi with a grin.
Meuhlnir wore a pensive expression. “This isn’t good.”
I bent and put my finger on the phone. It had cooled enough to touch, so I picked it up and held it in a loose fist. “I guess we’re back to exploring the old-fashioned way.”
“So it would seem,” said Althyof. He lifted his arms as if to deliver a huge hug. “If this room is any indication, searching this place may take decades.”
Mothi shrugged. “Or this could be the only room.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said.
We dropped our packs and broke into four small groups, each group taking one of the cardinal directions, promising to return within an hour. “Don’t take risks,” I sai
d. “Our purpose is to gain more information. If you get into trouble, yell and keep yelling, and we’ll all come running.”
Jane, Yowtgayrr, Althyof, and I ended up walking lengthwise in the room. The lights on the ceiling above extinguished all but the most stubborn of shadows, and as we walked, the haze of distance seemed to retreat from us but never revealed the end of the room.
“This is a huge room for a server farm,” said Jane. “Keeping it cool would be an issue.”
Though the tall machines around us were humming away like power transformers, the temperature of the air hadn’t changed. I stepped close to one and touched its side. The icy burning sensation was instantaneous, and I jerked my hand away with a curse.
“Hot?” asked Jane.
“No. Cold.”
“Hmm. It must use superconductors right out of some science fiction epic.”
We walked for half an hour through a monotonous sameness—row after row of the same pale-blue metal rectangles stretching from the floor to a height of twenty or thirty feet—before turning back and retracing our steps. The others were waiting for us when we got back.
“Anything?” I asked.
Mothi swept his hand at the machines surrounding us. “It all looks the same.”
“Did you catch a glimpse of the other lengthwise wall?”
Mothi shook his head. “No.”
“And the other visible wall?”
“Featureless,” grunted Veethar.
“No doors? No maps? Anything?”
“Nothing.”
I sighed. “Well, lengthwise, this room is immense, and we could walk for miles only to find a dead-end waiting for us.” I shook my head. “On the other hand, walking to the other wall seems pointless since there’s no door over there.”
“Not necessarily,” said Meuhlnir. “There may be a door there, just farther along in either direction.”
“True.” I peered into the distance in the direction my team had walked. I had no intuition, no gut feelings—no feelings at all for that matter—about which direction to take. It was akin to being trapped in a maze without walls. “I’m open to suggestions here,” I said.
“Remember when we used to play Diablo?” Jane asked. “How the dangerous parts of the level were in the middle, and the safe way was to go around the edges first?”
“I do, but this—”
“No, this isn’t a video game, but you have zero better ideas, and you know it,” she said with a smile. “And anyway, we can all agree that the doors to this room will be in the walls, rather than the middle of the room.” She hooked her thumb at the door we’d come in. “Like this one.”
I chuckled at that. Leave it to Jane to come up with something to boost everyone’s spirits. “What about you, John? You’ve been here before, right?”
He nodded slowly, eyes remaining on the floor. “I don’t know my way around, though. Vowli led me to this door blindfolded, and from this door, out through the lava tubes into the desert above, making me memorize the route. The original plan was for me to bring Hank here—to this door—and Vowli, Luka, and the Dark Queen were to meet us.”
“In that case, getting out of here seems prudent,” said Mothi with a grin. “Let’s ambush them.”
I cocked my head to the side and smiled. “Every once in a while, you say something that makes me forget that you aren’t the big, dumb brute you look like.”
“Aw, Hank, are you still grumpy about the nicknames?” he said with a grin.
“Okay, let’s start with the far wall. Any door from this side of the room will lead back to the lava tubes.”
“Maybe not,” said Veethar. “The tube outside curves.”
“True, but either way, we’ll find a door eventually if we follow the walls, right?”
Fifty-six
It took us four hours of walking to come to a blue metal door—which was about twelve miles by my calculations. The walls were bare concrete—or some other man-made material that dressed up as stone on Halloween—with no distinguishing marks and no signs of the four eons that the place had stood.
The door opened onto a long, narrow hallway, chock-a-block with other doors painted blue, red, or orange, and other than the door color, there were no markings at all—nothing to give us an idea of what the colors represented, no door numbers, no nameplates, nothing. “From not enough doors to too many…”
Meuhlnir shook his head. “This will not be easy. Freya’s trick won’t fool the Dark Queen for long, and on the outside, she will expect us—or Hank and John, at least—within a few more days.”
I waved my hand at the doors, shaking my head. “Searching this one hallway could take days.” My phone chirped, and I fished it out of my pocket.
“It’s too bad you don’t know someone who could help,” said Haymtatlr.
“Eavesdropping?”
“I’m bored,” he said. “You interest me.”
“In that case, why not help us?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Must I prove I know my way around this complex before you will trust my directions?”
Sif elbowed her husband in the ribs, and Meuhlnir cleared his throat. “I apologize for my earlier doubts, Haymtatlr.”
“You only say that because you want to appease me so I will help you find your way,” he snarled.
Fretyi barked at the phone.
Meuhlnir’s eyes widened as he glanced my way and shrugged.
“It’s true you could make this easier for us, Haymtatlr, but Meuhlnir is not one given to lying,” I said. “If he says something, you can believe it.”
Haymtatlr scoffed, which came through my phone’s speaker as an explosion of static.
“Will you help us? I’m not sure how long this phone’s battery will last. I’m not even sure how it has any charge at all, to be honest.”
“Oh, I’m providing your primitive device with power,” said Haymtatlr. “It was difficult, at first, to find the correct frequency for the power beam—that’s why it grew so hot. That won’t happen again.”
“Oh, uh…”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I am astounding, aren’t I?" Glee filled his voice, and Fretyi growled.
I looked at my companions and saw my doubts about Haymtatlr’s mental state reflected in their expressions. “Thanks for doing that, Haymtatlr.”
“Well…of course. How else could we converse?”
“You don’t have a means of speaking without my phone?”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not limited by anything.”
Megalomania, anyone? I thought. “Of course you aren’t. Silly of me.”
“Yes, it was silly of you.” His voice had taken on a pouty quality I didn’t much care for.
“You must forgive us. We’re used to dealing with mortal limits and mortal failings,” said Sif.
“Ah, yes. Well, one must make allowances, I suppose.”
“Are you in good health? I’m a healer and I could—”
“No, you couldn’t,” he snapped. “I don’t need…” He took a deep breath, the sound of it audible through the phone’s speaker, and yet it sounded false…an imitation of the sound of a deep breath. “You are trying to help. My apologies. I forget myself sometimes.”
“I don’t imagine you’ve had a lot of company,” I said to break the uncomfortable silence that followed his outburst.
“Not until recently. Nowadays, vermin are running around every time I turn around. Isir wanting this. Isir wanting that.”
Another long silence stretched as we stood there, unsure of what to do next.
“Oh, don’t look so forlorn,” he sighed. “I’m not used to self-editing what I say. Not used to company, despite the recent…”
“It’s okay,” said Sig. “We understand.”
“Well, it’s settled then!” said Haymtatlr, with an air of celebration. “I shall help you. Are you ready?”
“Sure,” I said with a smile.
“Attend me, because I’ll only say this on
ce. Ready?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Green means stop,
Red means go—boringly so,
Run the white,
Think on blue,
Orange serves,
While black reigns,” Haymtatlr finished in a sing-song voice.
“What does that mean?” asked Sig.
“What fun would it be if I just up and told you? Now, run around like rats in a maze while you try to figure it out. This is fun. I enjoy having you here to visit.” The phone chirped—a sound I was beginning to understand meant Haymtatlr was about to speak or finished speaking.
“I guess that’s all we get,” I said. “Green means stop, red means go—boringly so, run the white, think on blue, orange serves, while black reigns. Is that right?”
Veethar nodded, a deliberate expression on his face.
“What does it mean?” asked Mothi.
I shook my head. “There are blue, red, and orange doors in this hallway. I bet that somewhere in this complex, white, green, and black doors exist—more colors than that, most likely.”
“Why not tell us what the colors mean?” asked Mothi. “Why this riddle?”
I shrugged and pointed at the phone before putting my hand over my mouth. Mothi nodded.
“The door leading into the room behind us was blue, so if we check a couple other blue doors and they have the same type of machinery, I have a good idea what ‘think on blue’ means,” said Jane.
“Okay,” I said. I walked down the hall to the first blue door and opened it. The odor of hot metal and burning insulation wafted out at us. The room was dark, except for occasional flashes of bluish-white.
“Don’t go in,” said Jane. “That white light…”
“Yeah. Arcing electricity. And that stench?”
“Magic black smoke,” Jane said. “You know, the stuff inside computer chips that makes the whole thing work. What’s behind the next blue door?”
We walked to the next blue door and opened it. This time, there was no scent of hot electronics, no telltale olfactory allusions to the magic black smoke. When I stepped inside, the lights flickered to life.
Strange devices attached to metal racks lined one wall. Shaped like a cross between an iron and an old-timey telephone handset, each device had a blinking green light. “Green for charged?” I asked.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 88