Last of the Treasure Hunters

by Warren Dean

  He risked opening his eyes briefly, and was surprised to see that he had only fallen about halfway to the ground. With his newfound ability, he discovered that it was as easy to ascend as it was to descend. So he began to climb, concentrating ferociously on using the pockets around him to swing himself upwards. As he did so, he began to see that the pockets were constantly moving, shifting both shape and position, and that it was sometimes possible to ride one which happened to be moving in the right direction. Later, he would recognise them as the magnetic currents Xzaroth spoke of, which flowed upwards from within Aquasolis itself, twisting and turning and flitting in and out of mind-sight.

  When he finally stepped back onto the platform, he sagged with relief, thankful for the comforting arm Christina threw around his shoulders. Then he rounded on Xzaroth, forgetting that the flyer couldn't understand his spoken words. "You maniac! What kind of a teacher are you? I could've been killed!"

  Understanding the sentiment, if not the words, the flyer shrugged his shoulders in an almost human fashion. "--Necessity is a powerful instructor, and you were either ready or you were not. And if not, I would probably have caught you before you struck the ground.--"

  "Probably! What do you mean, probably?" Connor spluttered, still speaking aloud, but he was too exhausted to maintain his indignation. And he couldn't deny that the sensation of flying unaided through the air was exhilarating to a degree he hadn't thought possible.

  Xzaroth took his leave then, soaring away on some errand. By then Connor was shaking with shock and fatigue, and Christina led him back into the infusion chamber so that he could rest and recover his strength. She called telepathically to Elexzath, and the flyer arrived a few minutes later with a hamper containing various fruits, slivers of sweet meat, and slim bottles of a clear liquid. Connor couldn't identify anything, but he was so famished by his exertions, he didn't ask any questions. He wolfed the food and washed it down with a bottle of what tasted startlingly like lemonade.

  Re-energised, the trauma of his first flying lesson began to fade. "What's next?" he asked Christina.

  "If you're feeling up to it," she replied, "we should practise levitating. We need to make our way to the Repository in the next day or two."

  They left the chamber and, with Elexzath hovering protectively, dived off the edge of the platform.

  TEN DAYS AGO

  When she stepped through the portal into the reception room on Aquasolis, Azee felt dizzy and disorientated, and had to concentrate hard to stop herself from passing out. She moved aside to get out of the way of the other Nerds coming through, and staggered over to a seat on the periphery of the room. She sat down and took deep breaths, which just made things worse. So she tried breathing as shallowly as possible so as to take in less of the oddly tangy air. That made her feel a bit better.

  The other Nerds were experiencing similar problems as they came through fold-space, some gasping or coughing, and others bending over or sitting down on the floor as they tried to recover their equilibrium.

  After a few minutes, she began to feel less woozy and was able to look around. Other than her fellow Nerds, there didn't seem to be anyone there and she thought it strange that no-one had come to greet them. She saw that she was sitting next to a large stone column, which was covered in some kind of synthetic textile. She stood up to see if there was perhaps someone on the other side of it.

  Some of her dizziness returned and she put a hand onto the column to steady herself. Then she felt the column move, and a voice like a giant thunderclap crashed through her mind, "--Be patient, youngling, your discomfort will soon fade.--"

  She flinched as if stung, and looked around wildly to see who had spoken. She still couldn't see anyone other than her human companions. It was only when she looked up at what she had mistakenly thought to be a stone edifice, that she saw the torso and head of a giant. "Who… who are you?" she asked in a small voice.

  The massive being bent downwards, bringing its head closer to her. It was three or four times the size of hers, with two bright amber eyes set below an elongated bald pate. "You will have to vocalise more strongly," boomed the giant. "I have begun learning the rudiments of your language, but my aural receptors are not accustomed to your speech yet."

  The voice was so loud that she found herself shrinking from it until she was almost crouching on the floor.

  "Er," she said, clearing her throat and raising her voice above the thumping of her heartbeat. "Are you… the Journeyman?"

  "Some call me by that name, yes. And what may I call you?"

  "I'm Azee," she said, growing a little bolder. "I hope I'm not being rude, but could you speak a little less loudly?"

  "A little less loudly?" he boomed, reducing the volume ever so slightly. "Like this?"

  "Er, a lot less loudly; you're hurting my ears." She tapped the side of her head with a finger by way of demonstration.

  He bent a little closer, as if to see her more clearly. "You humans are sensitive little things," he observed. "But that is good, I think. It is that ability to sense rather than to reason that I am counting on." He still spoke loudly but had at least modulated his voice to a bearable level.

  He straightened, his head almost brushing the ceiling of the room, and looked around at the other Nerds before speaking again. "Time grows short, younglings," he said. "The atmosphere on this planet is not compatible with your physiology, and I need to take you to the Repository before your cardio-vascular systems begin to fail."

  Azee took that as a signal to check that everyone had recovered enough to travel, and she moved around the room, encouraging those who were having the most difficulty. Once she was sure they were all okay, she told the Journeyman so, and he led the way out of the portal room. He had to stoop almost double to get through the doorway.

  The new arrivals followed the giant into a brightly lit corridor. Through windows set high up along its walls she could see a curiously coloured sky; pink with blue whorls coruscating through constantly shifting patterns. In the light of the corridor she was able to see the Constructor properly for the first time. He was humanoid in form, but huge; at least four times the size of an average man. His arms, legs, and shoulders were thick-set and powerful, although he carried himself with surprising grace.

  The features of his face, which she glimpsed once or twice when he turned to look behind, were distinctly inhuman. The amber eyes were set wide apart, their pupils multifaceted, and where a human would have a nose was a system of flat nostrils splayed downwards in a fan-like pattern. The nostrils interconnected with a craggy, lipless mouth, the whole ensemble covered by a transparent membrane. When he spoke, it was not through his mouth; the sounds emanated from a series of openings below his jaw.

  The textile she had noticed earlier turned out to be a dark cloak, flowing from his shoulders to the floor. Somehow, the garment accentuated rather than hid his formidable frame. His movements radiated strength and confidence and, although she was acutely aware of the fact that she and her companions were now on an alien world millions of light years from Earth, she felt strangely safe in his presence.

  It wasn't long before he ducked through a doorway into another dimly lit portal room. It was bigger than the one they had come from, but otherwise similar. Their host stopped in front of the portal which dominated the room, and waited while the Nerds trooped in, fanning out into a semi-circle. The walk had been a relatively short one, but many of them were out of breath.

  Other than to promise that they would be able to breathe properly on the other side, the Journeyman said nothing before stepping through the portal. After a brief hesitation, some of the bolder Nerds followed. Azee held back, shepherding the rest of them through. Ant Jennings hung back too, and when they were the last two left, he gave her shoulder a squeeze. "You okay, headmistress?" he asked. "You don't have to mother hen everyone, you know."

  His tone was not unkind and she gave him a wan smile. "Don't worry about me, I'm just nervous."

  "So
, when you're nervous you boss people around?"

  "I guess so," she shrugged. "Go on, then, after you."

  "Uh, uh, ladies first."

  "Good manners… from you? Since when?"

  "Don't get excited, princess; you know I always go last."

  She shook her head in mock exasperation and stepped through. Ant followed a moment later.

  After a few seconds of disorientation, the first thing she noticed was the sweetness of the air. She gulped in a couple of deep breaths and felt much better. The others were obviously feeling better too, judging by the energetic babble all around her. Then she took stock of her surroundings, and realised that the excitement was being generated by more than an improvement in atmospheric conditions.

  The portal she had just come through was situated on top of a massive outdoor platform. Behind her, the platform stretched away into the distance. Looking up, she could see a clear silvery sky overhead, cloudless and empty. The day was bright, but she couldn't see a sun anywhere. The light seemed to emanate from the sky itself. A little in front of her, the platform ended at a metal railing, where the other Nerds had gathered alongside the Journeyman. She joined them, and looked out over the edge.

  A warm breeze from below engulfed her, but that was not what took her breath away. Stretching away into the distance was a city of shapes: prisms, pyramids, rhomboids, and domes, made of some transparent substance which glinted in the light. The shapes were arranged in clusters along the bed of a long, wide valley, which was itself flanked by ranges of low, dusty hills, almost orange in colour. Rising above the glittering shapes at intervals were tall windmills, whirling energetically in the strong breeze.

  The vista was somehow vibrant and desolate at once, like a gigantic river of diamonds tumbling through a long-dead desert.

  The other Nerds had fallen silent, awestruck for once in their lives, and she took advantage of the lull. "Is that the Repository?" she asked.

  The Constructor answered in his booming voice. "All that you see is the Repository," he said, raising an arm and gesturing grandly over the scene below.

  "The whole city?" asked one of the other Nerds.

  "More than that," replied the Journeyman. "The shapes below, the structure beneath our feet, the hills, the planet… even the sky above us."

  "The whole planet…?

  "What's he talking about…?"

  "How can the sky…?"

  "Where is the sun…?"

  "What time is lunch…?

  The Nerds began bombarding the Journeyman with questions and he let out what sounded like a roar of fury, but was actually a shout of laughter. "You younglings have a form of mindmeld going already," he said jovially. He stepped away from the railing, his cloak billowing in the wind, and turned back towards the portal. "Follow me, and all shall be revealed. Or at least," he said as an afterthought, "all that your minds are capable of comprehending."

  He made some intricate hand gestures towards one side of the portal, and stepped through. Azee and the others followed, and this time the disorientation was momentary. The Journeyman waited until all of them had come through before speaking again. "The best way to learn about the Repository is to experience it for yourselves," he said.

  They found themselves in a cavernous oval space, a domed roof curving distantly overhead. Looking down, Azee could see the bottom dropping away beneath the disconcertingly transparent platform she was standing on. Connected to the inside surface of the oval were hundreds of eight-sided cellular structures, packed about eight deep, all perfectly interconnected in a honeycomb pattern.

  "This is a bio-technological hive," continued the Journeyman. "It is designed to give users immersive access to the Repository. Observe." He strode across the floor to the nearest cell, which was about twice his size. He pushed his body gently up against its outer membrane, which opened to admit him and then sealed itself behind him. Without further ado, the cell filled up with a clear yellowish liquid. A gaseous bubble formed around his head, enabling him to breathe. Within seconds, he was reclining in a relaxed position, suspended within the liquid.

  "--In here,--" his voice boomed in Azee's head, "--it is possible for your mind to interact directly with the Repository.--"

  Some of the other Nerds flinched at hearing the Journeyman's voice in their heads for the first time.

  "Who said that…?"

  "Ow, my head…!"

  "Telepathy, cool…"

  "That's how he speaks normally …"

  "Does it have to be so loud…?"

  "It's not telepathy, it's more ESP…"

  "Will someone please ask him if there's a cafeteria…?

  "Same thing…"

  "Quiet, guys, he's trying to show us what to do…"

  "They only eat once a month here…"

  "Hey, that's not funny…!"

  "--Are you younglings going to stand there or join me and learn? --" interjected the Journeyman.

  Azee crossed the floor to a nearby cell and pressed herself against it, as she had seen the Constructor do. The membrane was slick and malleable, and it gave way before the pressure. She kept pushing until she was completely inside, and then felt a pang of anxiety as the cell closed itself back up and began filling with a warm, clear liquid. She closed her eyes and held her breath as it rose above her head. She had no idea what to do and was thankful when the Journeyman spoke again.

  "--When you feel the gas bubble form around your head, you will be able to breathe.--"

  A moment later, she felt the liquid drain away from her face, and found that she could breathe. She opened an eye experimentally. Through a light yellow haze she saw that she was now floating within the liquid of the cell. Through its membranous walls, she could see her fellows, who had climbed into other cells and were going through the same process.

  "--Now,--" said the Journeyman, "--you should begin to feel a light electrical sensation being transmitted through the fluid.--"

  For a moment, she felt nothing, until the skin of her forearms began to tingle with what felt like electrical static. The sensation spread quickly and, when it reached her head, a universe opened within her mind. At least, that was how she described it afterwards. At the time, the experience was beyond words. She lay still, transfixed, as galaxies of cosmic light swept through her mental vision.

  For what seemed like hours, the galactic crazy-show played on, threatening to overwhelm her at times, until she noticed two things. First, the content she was watching seemed to respond to her thoughts. If she concentrated on something in the distance, it came closer. As an experiment, she focussed on a tiny object at the very edge of her awareness. The size of a pea when she first noticed it, the thing soared towards her, growing rapidly in size and displacing other matter as it came. It expanded into what looked like a star-filled nebula, swirling through different formations much faster than in reality.

  So, she slowed it down, simply by imagining it doing so, and made her second observation. The nebula was made of information. So was everything else she could see. When slowed down enough, the various phenomena resolved themselves into massive conglomerations of data. Mesmerised, she sampled more and more of them, gradually beginning to understand how the system worked. The fluid in her cell connected the Repository to her mind. And her mind was free to choose what information to interact with.

  Azee was in her element.

  Famous amongst the denizens of NASA's Research Centre in Langley, Virginia, for her prodigious ability to memorise dictionaries, technical manuals, data banks, and the like, she had been fascinated by information since she was little. Growing up in her parents' modest house on the outskirts of Seoul, she collected it like other people collected their favourite music. She began with the stories in her children's books, memorising them whole so that she could correct a sleepy parent who read the wrong word at bedtime or who committed the heinous crime of skipping a passage. Then she moved on to what was written on the packaging of everything from food to domestic prod
ucts, and drove everyone in the household mad with a constant stream of instructions on how to set up, use, apply, or cook things.

  Later on she found her father's computer and the volume of what she was absorbing mushroomed to such an extent that her parents had to introduce limits on the time she was spending online, not to mention the content she was viewing.

  When she went out, she amused herself by memorising street signs, billboards, and advertisements in shop windows. She could memorise the music and lyrics of an entire song on hearing it for the first time. If she listened to the song a second time, cementing her recollection, she could sing it, word for word, years later, even if she had not heard it again in the interim.

  Naturally introverted, she was considered a freak by other children, and by some adults too, and as she grew older she became shy to the point of being reclusive. Her reserve was tempered somewhat by the fact that she was the eldest of five children. None of her siblings, a sister and three brothers, exhibited abilities remotely like hers, and she became extremely protective of what she thought of as her 'normal' siblings. Anyone who made the mistake of messing with them would be driven away by the stream of imaginatively dire threats she was able to glean from the ocean of knowledge stored in her young mind.

  When her parents or teachers asked her to explain how she was able to do what she did, she didn't understand why they were so interested at first. It all came naturally to her and she didn't see it as something special. When she realised that no-one else she knew was able to process and retain even a fraction of what she could, she tried to work out how she was able to do it.

  After doing a great deal of research into the workings of the human mind, she eventually came to the conclusion that she didn't really know. The closest she felt that she could come to an explanation was to trot out the old theory about ordinary people not using more than a fraction of their brains. Through some genetic accident, she speculated, she was able to use more of her brain than anyone else, which gave her extra space for data storage and retrieval.