It had been late afternoon when they landed and Aushthack had wanted to set out immediately, assuring her that they would surely have sufficient light to not only reach the swamp, but also locate the hidden access point inside a camouflage doorway that Aushthack had last seen only on exiting it twenty years ago.
Gel had some doubt. The daily rotation of Stefnal ran just shy of twenty hours, meaning the daylight would fail sooner than her gut wanted to believe. Worse still, it seemed unlikely that the last light of the day would penetrate very far into the swamp itself, and they’d be floundering around, effectively in the dark well before sunset. She patiently explained this to her client, but Aushthack would have none of it.
“The Tosh have excellent night vision,” he said. “You’re worried about nothing.”
“I’m not worried,” said Gel. “I’m just practical. And I’m not a Tosh.”
“Well, by your logic, even during the brightest part of the day, the density of the swamp is going to render its interior dim at best. So it really doesn’t matter what time we go, does it?”
Gel had little choice but to concede the point, and to acknowledge the unspoken but overriding consideration that Aushthack was simply anxious to return to his people.
“Fine. We’ll go. But I’m bringing a handlamp. Call me crazy, but if I have to walk into a swamp on an alien world, I’d like to be able to see where I’m putting my feet.”
The land leading away from the ship ran from hard packed dirt to short grass the farther they went. A light breeze carried away the Tosh’s floral scent, which was just as well as it had gotten heavier, almost as if it were a marker of his stress levels. They made good time to the swamp and crossed into ever deepening gloom and traded the refreshing breeze for the ranker scent of decomposing plant life and sulfurous mud. Gel had never been in a swamp before, but her surroundings matched what she’d read about them. The further they went the wetter it became, and any hope of traveling in a straight line travel vanished almost at once. Small paths and trails of drier land rose barely above the surrounding pools of dark water and sludge.
Aushthack, true to his word, showed no difficulty navigating their way, and actually moved too quickly for Gel’s tastes. The gloom deepened into darkness and what little elevation their path had enjoyed sank away until Gel found herself trudging along, her pretty pink boots becoming submerged with greater frequency.
“How much further by your reckoning?”
She had activated her handlamp at the first squishing sound from her boot, keeping it low and to the side to illuminate her way forward without letting the light blind her.
“Not far.”
“Could you be more precise.”
“You seem on edge. I don’t understand.”
“On edge? Why would I be on edge? I’m wandering blindly through a fucking swamp following an alien whose best intention is to overthrow his homeworld’s social order that’s been running for countless millennia, returning like some prodigal son, if only he can find an exit that’s probably gone unused for decades, in the faint hope he’ll recognize it despite all the intervening years of overgrown vegetation.”
The Tosh paused ahead of her and looked back over his shoulder to catch her gaze, his own face illuminated by the lamp.
“When you put it like that, it’s no wonder you’re feeling pessimistic.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Well, me, for one. Both my ancient ancestors and the original Clarkesons evolved in just this kind of environment.” He gestured toward one of the endless pools nearby. “It was in a spot like that where some dumb animal leaned down to drink, ingested an opportunistic colony of cells, and started that first symbiotic relationship.”
“Your point?”
Aushthack shrugged. “My point is that I’m perfectly at home in this environment. I actually find it calming. If I seem excited to be here, realize that I’m approaching the culmination of all my efforts and hope since I left this world. I feel like I’m about to realize my destiny, the best of all possible outcomes.”
“You seem to have conveniently forgotten your twin problems: how to move your people to their new home, and what to do about the Cliveden portal to that system.”
“Destiny,” repeated Aushthack.
“Well, I’m not a big fan of destiny,” said Gel. “I like to think I choose my own path.”
“He said you would say that.”
“What? Who?”
“Randolv Greyce. I think it was part of why he sent me to you. They actually cautioned me against using the word ‘destiny’ in your presence.”
“Oh, why… why is that?”
Aushthack turned away and resumed walking, but she could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke. “He seemed confident that your involvement would be critical to my success and that indeed, having you at my side in this endeavor was to be my destiny.”
Gel resisted the desire to roll her eyes, but only because no one would see it. She squished her way after the Tosh. The distance between them stretched as she continued to slog and he quickened his pace, seeming to glide through the muck, leaving her well behind.
“Don’t get too far ahead,” she called, and he wildly flapped an arm in acknowledgment even as he darted through ever deeper shadows and was soon lost from view.
“Oh, crap.” Gel tried to keep her eyes fixed on a point in space ahead of her where she’d last seen the Tosh, but that meant following in a straight line, and leaving behind even the faint pretense of the raised trail they’d been using. With her lamp in one hand, she raised the other in front of her. Her fingers instantly gripped a battered animal plush toy. It was her oldest possession. She reached out to a quarry in Fenkomor, a city on a Glamorkan world she’d visited a year ago when taking on a job from a master fabricator. He’d hired her to deliver a care package to an unacknowledged daughter apprenticed to a rival on another world. The rival had had no idea that her star pupil was related to her professional nemesis. The fabricator had insisted on a tour of his facilities, perhaps out of pride, but more likely to ensure that they could not be eavesdropped on. Then, as now, Gel’s every step produced an uncommon sound. But instead of the current squish, squish, squish caused by the swamp, it had been the scratchy grind of her boots on gravel, the scattering of pebbles and small rocks with every step, and small clouds of rock dust that rose to mid calf only to settle down once she passed.
“Let’s do this, Barry,” she said. Wiggling her fingers to cause the plushie to nod, with an act of will she scooped up furrows of gravel from that distant quarry and poured them in a straight line path ahead of her to where she’d last seen the Tosh. At first the swamp simply absorbed the gravel, with no sign that anything had been added. That was fine. She simply borrowed more gravel and poured it down the same line, filling in whatever void lay below the surface of the muck and water until she’d created a narrow land bridge and could proceed forward. The sounds from her boots upgraded to a wet scraping sound, nowhere near the dry sound of walking through a gravel field, but infinitely better than the squishy noise of her previous progress through the swamp.
She made good time along the length of her creation, but quickly came to the end of it and the last place where she had seen the Tosh. She stopped, raising the handlamp high above her head and peering into the darkness. Making a slow turn she peered into the darkness, trying to find some sign of her client. Gel had turned almost completely around when she spotted him standing behind her a dozen steps away with a look of astonishment on his painted face.
“What are you doing there?”
“I found the access door,” he said. “It’s back a little ways and off to the side. I came back to find you but you’d left the trail, but I easily found you because of the lamp and I’ve been following you.”
“Why? Why didn’t you just call out to me?”
“I was about to, but then I saw you’d made your own trail. How?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Really?”
“I’m forced to conclude that you’ve created it somehow.”
“Why would you conclude that?”
“That phrase you’ve used, Occam’s razor. I didn’t do it, and you’re the only other sapient being to come this way as far as I’m aware. Therefore, you must be responsible.”
Gel sighed. “I can’t argue with that kind of logic.”
“Thank you. Does that earn me an explanation?”
She shook her head. “The intention of one, sure, but alas, I can’t explain it because, you see—”
Aushthack interrupted. “Another courier trade secret?”
“You got it.”
“I see. Very well. I’ll drop it for now, but only because I have more compelling news.”
“Oh?”
“Well, good news and bad news.”
“I hate that game,” said Gel. “Fine, what’s the bad news.”
“As I said, I found the access door, but it’s locked, and the entry plate does not recognize any of the codes that I possess that should open it.”
“That’s the bad news?”
“It is.”
“Then what’s the good news?”
“There’s been a response from someone on the other side.”
“A response? From whom? And what did it say?”
“The display plate normally only provides visual confirmation of the characters entered when someone is attempting to open the door; so there wasn’t room for a very long message. Only three words.”
“Which were?”
“Wait, we’re coming.”
Reminiscent of a Clown Car
Rather than cut off on a direct line to wherever he’d found the access door, Aushthack did her the courtesy of running back along her gravel path. and only left it when he was at a right angle to his destination. Gel followed and, as required, made a hard left turn, once more stepping deep into the muck that sought to pull the boots from her feet with every struggling step. It was slow going, but not that far, and she never lost sight of Aushthack.
He reached a mossy hillock well ahead of her catching up, using that time to resume the task he must have started before, pulling away piles of overgrowth revealing the access door. It opened while she was still more than a few steps away, and another Tosh tumbled out, causing Aushthack to stumble backwards and catch his kin. No sooner had that one cleared the threshold, then another Tosh emerged, and another and another. All had the same general appearance, clown-white skin with facial coloration around their mouths and eyes, bulbous red noses, and phosphorescent tufts of hair, all of it toned down by nondescript jumpsuits the color of oatmeal. Most smelled of violets, though Gel detected additional odors like freesia and something that was like lavender but not quite.
The mound of the access point barely came to her knee, and Gel supposed there had to be a ladder or some sort of lift beneath it, because the actual area of the thing at this height could only support two or three of the Tosh. And yet they kept coming, one after the other, each of them looking like Clarkesons, their faces marked with what appeared to be painted on smiles and makeup accentuating their eyes over otherwise deathly pale skin, their pates all but bald save for tuffs or fluffy tonsure of riotously fluorescent color. But they weren’t Clarkesons because the Clarkesons of her experience traveled in the solitude of their own consortiums and didn’t clothe themselves in drab utilitarian jumpsuits. Still, something about the spectacle reminded Gel of a scene she’d seen in a documentary vid from Earth. A circus in the 20th century and an impossible number of clowns emerging from a tiny vehicle.
In all the, flood of Tosh numbered thirty-seven arrivals before it ebbed. They surrounded Aushthack and all spoke at once, using a language Gel had never heard before. She edged closer. It was only when she heard Aushthack’s familiar voice speaking over all the others that they turned to look at her. Whatever he’d said had gotten their attention and after an initial wave of gasps, they fell silent, allowing Aushthack to continue at a quieter volume and in Traveler.
“Angela Colson. It is my pleasure to relay to you greetings from the most senior members of the Research Council. It exists, unknown within the demesne of Tesmel Corwick, here on the island of Meb. They bid you welcome, and ask that you step within and join our community for a feast that even now is being prepared in our honor.”
Gel waved her handlamp at the opening of the access point.
“So, what, there’s a ladder there? How far down do I have to climb?”
“No ladder. No climbing. Something much simpler and more appropriate.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“A portal,” said Aushthack. “An early prototype developed for humanoid-sized transit.” He extended an arm in a wave, gesturing to the open door. “Shall we?”
Down the Rabbit Hole
Gel stared at Aushthack, gobsmacked. “That’s a portal? Impossible. You can’t build a portal that small.”
Aushthack shrugged. “I think the existence of one right here proves otherwise.”
The other Tosh had resumed chattering among themselves, eyes bright, the smiles on their faces more than just clownish smears of color. One by one they reentered the access door, practically jumping in, and vanished. The last one paused, and just before stepping through, glanced back and waved encouragingly at them. And then she too vanished.
“What are we waiting for?” said Aushthack, but Gel shook her head and stood her ground, thoughts roiling. She wasn’t an engineer or a physicist, but she was Plenum, and knew more about teleportation than most. For that matter, she was a mutant Plenum, and had made a point to study and learn all she could on the subject, more than her Plenum siblings routinely did. That had in part influenced her decision to become a courier, to make use of the portals other races had scattered throughout the galaxy. Everything she’d studied, everything she’d learned, everything she knew, assured her that person-sized portals were impossible. And yet… as Aushthack had pointed out, the proof was in front of her. And yet… as she’d come to discover, the Clarkesons had developed portals for their own need which were only large enough to allow small ships to pass through. That hadn’t bothered her or led her to question her understanding. How was this any different? Just another matter of scale. Except it was. The inevitable circle that promised to transport her across some unknown distance, to emerge out another circle, felt too much like the openings two or more Plenum could make to create a conduit across the galaxy.
“Angela Colson? Can you hear me?”
Gel blinked, snapping out of her reverie. “What? Yes, sure. Let’s go.”
Wrapping herself in her misgivings, she stepped forward through the door of the access point and felt a tingle as a step later she crossed through the unseen portal.
Her hand came up, shielding her eyes as she blinked and emerged into a narrow room lit by glowing beige walls. Welcoming hands shyly urged her forward, away from a loop that looked to be built into the wall behind, and she moved just in time to allow space for Aushthack to arrive. When he did, the room full of Tosh all spoke at once, voices raised in delight though Gel couldn’t understand their words. The prodigal son had indeed come home.
“Isn’t it incredible?” said Aushthack. “Welcome to Reshmor.”
“Reshmor?”
“It’s the closest accommodation I can make of the name of this complex in the phonemes of Traveler. I’ve never had cause to say it to anyone before.”
Gel shook her head. “Yeah, about that. You do realize, I can’t speak your language.” She gestured to the excited Tosh surrounding them.
Aushthack grinned. “
None of them are going to know Traveler. None of them have ever left Stefnal, or imagined another race let alone met one. They’re very excited to get to know you and to learn what’s out there beyond our own skies.”
“But they’re happy to see you?”
Aushthack had clearly caught the infectious glee of the other Tosh.
“Much more than happy. They’ve been waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“For proof, that there was something else beyond our world. I told you we have records dating back to when the beings you call Clarkesons left. We know that they did not come back, but there have been different schools of thought as to what happened to them. Did they continue ever outward to explore the glories of a larger galaxy? Or were they consumed by horrors beyond our imagination?
Gel smirked. “A bit of both, I suspect. One person’s glory is another one’s horror.”
Aushthack grinned back at her, pausing a moment to converse with some of the other Tosh. The words of the language had a chittering quality, like squirrels or chipmunks might use if they had language. And then there was laughter and soulful nods all around her.
“What did I miss?” she said.
“I translated your comment, and they’ve agreed. You’ve impressed them with your alien wisdom.” He winked at her, like they’d shared some private joke.
A girl appeared at her side offering a large wooden mug.
“It’s just water,” said Aushthack.
The Tosh holding the mug cocked her head to one side, licked her lips, and repeated ‘water.’ Gel accepted the mug, took a cautious sip, and then drink more deeply.
Ace of Thralls (Freelance Courier Book 3) Page 9