Hayden thought of his mother and uncle and wondered how many times they’d been to Kuhl-Agev and if he’d see them there? He hoped. He hoped so more than anything. He stopped stepping down the great wooden slabs and stared into the city’s beauty again. It felt like he’d spent his life living under a veil that had suddenly been lifted.
*
The further down they ventured, the higher the great ancient walls rose about them and the city was hidden from view.
At first in the dim light, Hayden saw what looked from his vantage like shallow scratches crisscrossing the curving wooden wall on his left but as he neared and began to round a bend, he observed the marks become clearer and clearer until he saw them to be carvings etched by artists of obvious great skill. In extraordinary detail, scenes of men in odd-looking armour holding javelins, shields, axes and swords hacking into one another was a disturbingly common theme. Other scenes depicted the hunting of large bull-like animals, very large emu-like birds and other equally large but totally unrecognizable beasts. He was mesmerized by the size and content of the works but further down the steps, he saw something that made him stop still.
Looming ominously above him in the half light, the likeness of a creature was etched into the wall. It was a huge lizard that he hoped wasn’t depicted to scale. He was fascinated with the beautiful but unsettling image that was carved more deeply into the wall than the other depictions. Kel, again unmoved, was direct in her mission to get into the city as was the mechan that plodded behind her with all the emotion of a rock. Hayden who was transfixed, realised with a sudden nervous pang in his gut that the creature could be a current inhabitant of Kuhl-Agev and a chill rose up his spine and the hair stood on the back of his neck. He feared that perhaps secrecy was not the only reason for the tall walls surrounding the city.
*
Those same walls that enclosed the stairs had doubled in height by the time they had reached the bottom and had blocked out most of the light to an extent that lit sconces were used to reveal the large courtyard in which they found themselves. At the top of each wall to their left and right, two large flags, hidden from view from the top of the stairs, flew high with colours still quite vibrant despite the waning light from beyond. They were crimson with four thin diagonal gold bands. Kel, unprompted, began to explain.
‘The flag of Tika. The four golden stripes show periods of peace. The red...’ she trailed off, her voice breaking a little, showing some emotion, ‘...red shows the blood spilled in between those times.’
An unexpected wave of reverence swept over Hayden as he watched them flap lightly in a breeze that emanated from somewhere and he held his breath slightly when he noticed with sadness just how much thicker the bands of red were.
They stood quietly, Kel reflected and Hayden imagined.
Another large door stood before them, again with the plant patterns but this time it was highly polished and silvery and the metal contrasted sharply with the dark and equally as polished wood surrounding it. Hayden confidently took steps closer and, as he expected, another orb, this time a glossy vibrant white appeared and again hovered before them, its silver eye waiting to scan them.
Without an utterance of the digital Kuhlian, it hovered before them and scanned them all. When finished, it let out a sound like that of two-way radio static then returned to its nook in the wall which promptly shut after it as the other’s had.
The huge door began to rise slowly and noisily from the floor on two metal tracks embedded either side into the old tree trunk.
Kel took Hayden’s good arm gently, her touch surprising him.
They moved forward through the opening with the mechan trudging behind like clockwork and, as usual, its head turned and was ever scanning. When through, they found themselves atop another platform and beyond it the well-lit streets of Tika.
Hayden looked more closely, the buildings were of varying sizes but none could be described as massive. From his view, he saw only the occasional vehicle moving through the cobble-stoned streets near them and he noted that the craft appeared to be using a similar technology as the slick train that brought them, but without any track he could see. The car sized vehicles floated silently just above the roadways. Perhaps the road’s stones were magnetic and the undercarriages of the vehicles were too? Repelling each other but under some sort of control?
He pondered this as Kel adjusted her clothing and ruffled her hair.
‘We are to get clean and you fixed,’ she stated, obviously in discomfort. Hayden noticed her wincing as her fingers caught knots in her long dirty hair and it brought back memories of when he was little and his mother would comb his after he’d been out on one of his adventures with his uncle. It hurt when she’d snag the comb on a knot, pulling his head back. It was at that moment that he realised that he had never ever been without either his mother or uncle for so long in his whole life. Ever.
Not having washed for a few days since leaving Earth, walking through strange environments, being rough handled by squid-men and shot by same while escaping their grungy pirate ship filled with greasy junk, Hayden felt he would value a shower or bath more than having his shoulder mended if indeed it could be, almost.
Approaching a wooden footbridge that extended across a wide and slow running canal that cut through the cobbled ground, Hayden could see similar patterns as on the doors and buildings in the metal railings and span. He heard slight movement in the water and excitedly looked over the ornate balustrade to see a school of large, brightly coloured fish in the crystal clear water. They didn’t look entirely unlike the Koi carp found in Asian ornamental ponds on Earth. These though were half again as large on the whole with long, attractive luminous multicoloured fins and tails that trailed their path, lending them an ethereal quality as they swam.
Their grace was hypnotizing but this brief respite from his troubles was interrupted by tremors through the handrail as the mechan and its heavy feet passed him by. He saw Kel, arms crossed with a stern look, and reluctantly pulled himself away from the railing and followed. Despite her cold demeanor, Hayden knew, well, he hoped, that it was because she cared.
The mechan walked past while again it pivoted its head from left to right then back again with intermittent three hundred and sixty degree scans, their surrounds reflected in its grimy metal head.
Kel pointed to a spire that rose above all else in the distance.
‘That is where I take you,’ she said tiredly.
‘For my shoulder?’
Kel looked at him quizzically, cocking her head ever so slightly to the right. ‘In the entire galaxy, Kuhl-Agev is the only place for a medi-bath.’
Hayden slowly nodded as if he knew what she was talking about but raised an eyebrow because despite everything that had happened to him in the last few days, he didn’t know if he believed that whatever it was Kel intended to have done to him would work.
Standing on the pavement beside the road, he looked at the needle-like spire perched atop the building. He had never been to Kuhl-Agev but found it somehow familiar in a very distant kind of a way. It wasn’t the feeling he’d felt when he realised he’d dreamt of the planet but a distinct feeling of déjà vu as when on Salar-One he’d had an underlying familiarity haunt him like a murky memory not quite able to be retrieved but wanting to be.
Kel stepped further out onto the road but the mechan stopped like it was listening for something. It swiveled its head twice around once slowly and once quickly, stood still as it collated the scene. It then continued to follow Kel who was half way across the wide street and standing on a small dividing path in a median strip covered with odd lichens and filled with knee-height red and green bracken. Hayden ran across the empty road to her then they both rushed to and reached the opposite curb just as a small vehicle slid past narrowly missing the mechan behind them.
Hayden watched it as it sped off round a corner.
It was yellow with a silver roof and looked like every taxi he’d ever seen. He asked Kel if that’s what i
t was as she lowered her fist after shaking it after it.
She didn’t look at Hayden. ‘Not sure what you’d call it where you are from.’ She said irritably and angrily as it disappeared. She wanted it to come back and give the driver a piece of her mind or her fist. ‘Here they are called ‘jeti.’ Transport you pay for.’
‘Like I said - a taxi,’ Hayden assured, looking up and down the street hoping another would pass. ‘We have those on Earth and – well - apart from the floating thing, they kinda look the same.’
‘We will take a taxi’ Kel humored him as she watched the excitement in her new friend from planet Earth. It amused and annoyed her how he was intrigued with so many of the little things she thought everyone except a baby would know.
Hayden suddenly felt an almost unbearable pain in his shoulder and hoped what Kel had been saying was true. ‘Let’s get to this bath thing sooner rather than later,’ he insisted, nursing his tightly bandaged shoulder.
Kel looked around studiously. ‘There is jeti point near to us.’
‘What about the mechan? I mean, it’s too big to fit into one of those.’
Kel moved behind the vigilant robot and as it was standing still, placed one foot onto its left knee joint and her hand onto its elbow, pulling herself up so that she was able to mutter something into its receiver at close range.
‘What did you tell it? ’ Hayden asked.
‘I told him we will meet him there.’
‘It knows the way? ’
‘He can calculate finding the biggest building in Tika.’
The ADS-4 stayed where it was and obediently waited for Kel and Hayden to round the corner before it started on its own path.
*
Like a small town square, the jeti point was large enough to accommodate around thirty gleaming yellow vehicles parked floating in rows. Some of the drivers remained in their vehicles while others were empty, their occupants elsewhere. Hayden tried not to stare as he looked for any sort of strange creature piloting one but was mildly disappointed to discover they were just run-of-the-mill Kuhlians. Kel grabbed his wrist tightly and led him toward the jeti closest to them. The operator was slumped back in his seat asleep as they approached the opened front right hand driver’s side window and just short of putting her head inside the cabin asked him, ‘Tika merd bil fay?’
The paunchy Kuhlian sat bolt upright in fright but Kel calmly asked him again. ‘Tika merd bil fay?’
The driver bobbed his head in agreement to presumably what Hayden surmised was a question of fare.
The jeti driver pressed a button on the black swooping dashboard and the passenger door behind him slid aside. Kel pushed Hayden in then followed. After a few moments of maneuvering around the other vehicles the jeti eased onto the road they were to take for the majority of the ride. Hayden noticed the driver looked at him suspiciously from the rear-view mirror so he covered his left shoulder that bulged considerably from the bandage with his right hand. It seemed the closer he got to the medi-building the more painful it became and again, he looked around to distract himself from it. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him we would pay fare to the med-building.’
‘Simple enough. Tika merd bil fay.’
Kel looked at her new friend, impressed. ‘You speak Kuhlian?’
‘Well, I speak a bit now,’ he said with a laugh.
The ride was very smooth as Hayden had expected so he sat back and took in the sights. Strangely there were no pedestrians on the street they were on so he paid attention to the buildings that shot up on either side of the road and noticed two things in particular about them. It wasn’t that they all shared the same general rounded design at the base and tapering to their domed tops. It was that all were of a different colour or shade and that each had its own pattern etched organically across it. ‘What’s with the designs on the houses?’
‘They represent the family who lives there.’
‘They’re all quite similar.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but different. Grown that way.’
‘Grown?’
‘Homes grow from floor.’
Hayden pondered what she’d just told him. That was incredible. ‘They grow their own homes? That’s fascinating and truly - home grown.’
Kel didn’t get the bad joke but liked his interest.
They sat silent for the rest of the journey as Hayden drank in his surroundings and Kel lost herself in her own thoughts.
Within a few minutes they had arrived in front of a sky blue-coloured building. It looked to Hayden like they were in the central business district and there were more Kuhlians here.
The driver turned and held out his palm to receive payment. Kel looked at the meter on the dashboard, furrowed her brow again, then fiddled inside her pocket and after a faint ripping sound, produced a small silver coloured card with a transparent half that Hayden realised she must have had hidden in the lining of her clothing. The driver duly took the card and passed it over a meter machine which clicked and beeped once. A credit card.
The driver smiled as he passed Kel her card back but only nodded his head in Hayden’s direction, looking at his shoulder as if to see if he could work out why it bulged so. They stepped out onto the pavement again and the jeti sped away in search of another fare.
‘Well, he seemed quite rude,’ Hayden remarked. ‘Didn’t say two words to us.’
‘Which two did you expect?’ Kel asked.
‘Which two what?’
‘Which two words did he not say to us?’
‘Sorry,’ Hayden remembered who he was with and where he was. ‘Just a saying where I’m from.’
Looking skyward Hayden could clearly see that the Medi-building was considerably larger than all the other buildings in the city. An impressively immense renovated tree trunk. Forty storeys high Hayden counted before it was topped with a glass dome formed like a single insect’s eye with hundreds of small panes. A large fluttering pennant, as was on the entry gates, hung from a tall mast atop it. Kel looked up the short rise of steps in front of the building and looked around to see if the mechan was near.
‘We need fresh garments,’ she stated, dismayed at the small rips and tears in her dirty clothes and Hayden agreed.
‘How long have you had that card?’
‘Hid it in lining before I was taken.’
‘You’re lucky to still have it.’
There were two multicoloured mosaic tiled ponds, each surrounded by four large fern type plants with bulbous smooth green trunks in tall red glazed pots on each corner situated at the top of the steps on either side of the entrance. A fountain in each sprayed enticingly fresh clear water upward that fell down to bubble on the ponds surface. The two teenagers looked longingly at it.
‘You take the left,’ Hayden pointed, suggesting exactly what she was already thinking. They leapt up the steps two at a time then ran to a pool each and before anyone could see, took great pleasure in washing their grimy hands and faces then dunking their heads to soak at least some the filth from their hair. Hayden watched similar though smaller fish to those he’d seen in the channel swim just as gracefully by. He watched the dirt from his hands cloud the clear liquid and was still when he saw the reflection of his face.
He somehow looked older. He felt older.
Water dripped from his hair and rippled the pond, skewing his features. The symbolism not lost on him as he felt that his life, his personal pond, had been disturbed.
Another flash of pain shot across his shoulder.
When satisfied they were at least reasonably clean, both met each other before the tall main entry door as they shook and ruffled to try and dry themselves. Kel rung out her long hair as best she could, watching as the water dripped onto the huge stone slab on which they stood. Hayden could really see now what his new found friend looked like and it wasn’t lost on him that despite her still messy appearance, she was a very pretty girl.
‘Time to go,’ she announced.
‘I said already. Medi-bath.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that but what is it?’
Kel looked at Hayden’s bandage. He was standing lopsided, his bad shoulder forcing him to droop. Thankfully the cauterized wound beneath had protected him from the risk of excessive blood loss and to an extent, infection. He was still a mess. She looked Hayden in the eyes sternly but gently.
‘You will not have to spend too long.’
‘How long is not too long? ’ He asked with some nervousness.
‘Long as it takes,’ Kel stated matter-of-factly.
‘Well,’ Hayden said as he looked away from Kel, distracted slightly, thinking he saw some small commotion inside. ‘I’m just not getting very straight answersfrom anyone.’
Kel looked surprised as she thought she had given him straight answers. He was nervous but it wasn’t just Kel’s adamancy that it was the right thing to do that made him have to deal with it. It was the pain in his shoulder that forced him to.
‘Everything will be good, friend.’ Kel soothed and Hayden smiled a bit. It was nice to know Kel thought of him as a friend.
At least he had one with him
They stepped up and made their way inside through the tall glass doors that slid aside for them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The entrance foyer wasn’t like an average medical building.
It was warm and inviting décor greeted them inside.
In the centre of the room was a large polished wooden reception desk carved out of the floor and surrounded by metre tall cycad-like plants arranged evenly around its sides. The polished wooden stump floor was covered in several large colourful floor rugs and on the walls hung bright oversized artworks mainly of clouds and some of trees and other natural things but mostly of clouds. Behind the desk sat a very neat, attractive Kuhlian woman wearing clothes similar to Kel’s but of course much cleaner and with a deep V neck that accentuated her lithe neck. With her pale complexion, she seemed to almost glow against the dark wooden wall behind.
The Blake Equation- Discovery Page 16