War of the Spheres Page 29

  “Get the other plate,” I ordered Toby.

  He did so sullenly.

  “Now, take me to your new friend.”

  Toby led the way. All the while, he made excuses.

  “I didn’t know he was a fugitive. I didn’t know he was a bad guy. After all, he said he was a slave, a harmless being caught up in this violent misunderstanding.”

  I snorted. “Did he show you his necklace of toes?”

  Toby looked back, eyes wide. “What necklace?”

  “Never mind. Play the role. Keep walking, tell him we’re bringing him food.”

  “How can I do that?”

  Putting down a tray for a moment, I reached out and flipped down his collar. There, exposed on his neck, was an alien communications patch. I still wore mine as well.

  Frowning, I wondered if Big Al could track my location with my patch. On a whim, I took mine off. I stuck it onto some alloy webbing that re-enforced an extra-large plasteen viewport in an exterior bulkhead as we passed it by. If Al was tracking me, it would look like I’d just halted and started loitering there to take in the view.

  Toby led me deep into the ship’s bowels. Under the engineering deck, there was a bilge deck. That was a kind name for it—really, it was a recycling center full of tanks of sludge.

  On a spaceship, you had to conserve your resources. Very little was jettisoned into space as waste. Most of the precious liquids, especially, we’re leached back out of these tanks and distilled into those squeeze bottles of water we drank. After all, a warship’s crew never knew how long they might be on duty. With enough power, water and oxygen recycling, the only other major concern was fresh food.

  When it got down to it, there were ways of taking the contents of these gurgling tanks and converting them back into sustenance for the crewmen—but no one wanted to eat that stuff unless it was absolutely necessary.

  The bilge deck was quiet, steamy, and cramped. It was like being inside an old basement under a vast building. Automated boilers gurgled and hissed. We slid past these with increasing difficulty as we got closer to our goal.

  Finally, Toby stopped and leaned back to whisper in my ear. “Let me go in first,” he said, indicating a drippy, slanted pipe with a dim light shining on the far side. “When he’s eating, you can do your thing.”

  I eyed him in the darkness, uncertain. If Toby was out to screw me, he could do so easily now. Once he was on the far side of that pipe, I would never be able to wriggle through fast enough to catch him.

  Leaning forward, I whispered one word into his ear. “Treason,” I said.

  “I never—!”

  “Good,” I said in a soothing tone. “Now’s your chance to prove that.”

  Glowering and muttering to himself, he took one tray and slid through backwards, on his elbows and knees—holding the food high, so it didn’t touch anything nasty. He did this with a practiced air, and I wondered how many times he’d been down here before.

  He disappeared, and I heard whispered voices. Copying Toby, I tried not to think about it and slid my significantly wider mass down into the pipe feet first. I went for broke and had taken both of the trays with me—stacking one on top of the other.

  I had to lie mostly flat out while I held the trays in my hands. The hardest part was when my shoulders wedged in a narrow spot. I was too broad, and I had to writhe and squeeze myself down the modest incline, wriggling backward.

  For a panicked moment, I got stuck. How the hell was I going to get out of here? My boots were scrambling and trying to find a hold—and they finally did. I got my toes outside the far end of the pipe, and I used the tips of my boots to leverage myself through.

  With a nasty sound, I came free and slid the rest of the way down the pipe. The smell wasn’t terrible, though unidentified fluids dripped and trickled on every side.

  The heap of food in my hands looked like shit by now, but I wasn’t too concerned whether Al would tip me for the tableside service or not.

  There, I looked around a large, gloomy chamber. It was about the size of a living room, but with a very low ceiling. No more than a meter high in places, I was forced to crawl.

  There was Toby, dead ahead. He was near the light source, a wan glow from some bluish bulb that had been left on down here, possibly for years, since the last time a maintenance man had been ordered to deal with an unpleasant repair.

  Toby had done well, I could see. He’d moved so that his back was in a corner, forcing the alien to turn to face him.

  Big Al was bent over the tray of food, grabbing it with both hands and eating with gusto.

  Putting down the trays I’d brought with me, I crept forward. Toby saw me, of course, but for once his naturally sneaky nature was helpful. He gave no hint of my approach. He never even looked up.

  All charges of treachery were dropped at that moment, I decided—not that I’d been serious about them in the first place.

  Al’s hood was back so he could get at the grub. As he busied himself in the pile of food, I snaked a long arm forward and grabbed him by the scruff.

  I gave one big yank and spun Al around—tearing off his garment in a smooth two part movement. The tray of food went flying, and, the alien whirled with a shocked expression.

  From my first experience with these miserable freaks, I’d watched them mess with a light harness they all wore beneath the robe before disappearing into thin air.

  Before he could think, I reached to him again and grabbed the one he was wearing—pulling it off him over his head. It did my heart good to see I’d managed to surprise him.

  “You won’t be needing this, Asshole,” I said remembering his proper name.

  But then I realized he couldn’t understand me. I’d left the translation patch glued to a steel strut in the passage on the upper decks. Reaching out, I snatched the patch off Toby’s neck.

  “Ow!” he called out, and I saw a trickle of blood run. Several hair-like filaments writhed from the back of the patch.

  That made my lips curl. Could these patches have snaked tendrils down into our bodies? I hadn’t seen that before with my own patch, but maybe it took more time to fully adhere to a man’s flesh…

  With disgust, I slapped the patch on my forehead. I needed to talk, but I made a mental note not to wear this patch for too long.

  “Big Al,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Regret... Discord…Garment… Cold.”

  The room seemed steamy-hot to me, and I figured he was just trying to weasel his transportation back, so I shook my head.

  “I’m feeling a little chilly myself,” I said. “Go ahead and eat. I’ll bring you more food if you behave yourself.”

  “Food…?”

  The alien now wore nothing and seemed quite comfortable in spite of his complaint—even his trophy necklace was nowhere to be seen. His eyes slid to the tray I’d left behind. I could hardly see it in the dim light, but he seemed to have no such problems. Maybe these guys could see in the dark like cats.

  He crawled quickly toward it, having finished the first tray. I let him go.

  “Food… Unsatisfying… Dung… Failure…”

  While he muttered these admonishments, he began eating anyway. I wondered if he binged on food to regrow his damaged body. Already, the leaking holes in his abdomen had transformed into small weeping punctures.

  Was this due to some kind of organic technology beyond our comprehension? Or was it a natural recuperative power shared by all his race? I didn’t know, but I planned to find out in time.

  “That’s quite an appetite you have there Al,” I observed.

  He stopped eating and stared at me with that deadpan poker-face again.

  “Al,” he croaked. “Al… Hunger— Vehk… Hunger.”

  “Vehk, huh? What’s that?” I asked him.

  He tapped his grey skin with his claws. “Al… Vehk—Vehk… Hunger.”

  “Oh, I get it. Vehk is what your people are called, and all of you eat like ravenous swine a
t chow time.

  After a long, silent stare, Big Al went back to the pile of food.

  He was my captive now, and I planned to learn a lot from him.

  Before I could congratulate myself further, Toby interrupted my thoughts.

  “I led you right to him. We’re square, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “All crimes forgiven.”

  “All of them?”

  I looked at him. He seemed very excited, as if I’d offered him ten times the asking price.

  “Everything I know about—up to this point, that is.”

  Crestfallen, he shrugged. “I’ll take it.”

  In the meantime, Big Al had finished another tray of food. He’d eaten everything, even the husks of the water pods.

  His belly seemed distended, and I was repulsed at his ravenous hunger. It seemed more likely now the necklace he’d worn earlier was a snack and not a trophy.

  He crawled toward me, and I let him. Wary, I watched as a single crooked finger reached toward the robe that I’d thrown over my shoulder.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said and brushed him away. Unwadding the harness from my fist, I put it on over my clothes. “I think I’ll try on this rig.”

  I figured the harness helped focus a projected personal field for their version of PDM travel.

  Dejected, Al drew himself up into a sitting position. We were all sitting down, the ceiling was too low to allow anyone to stand up straight.

  “Choice…” he said. “Your path…”

  “Hmm…” I said, thinking that over. “I always take my own path. I never let anyone else choose for me.”

  “Choice…” he said again, and he reached down toward the device at his belt.

  I looked at that in alarm. I’d taken his harness, but not the device he’d snagged off his dead friend. I hadn’t seen the device work in tandem with the harness, but it made sense…

  In a near panic, I launched myself at him. We struggled on the floor.

  “Don’t kill him, Gray!” Toby shouted. “We could learn so much!”

  He was right, but I wasn’t planning to kill anyone. I wanted that device.

  Finally, I overpowered Big Al, who was stronger than he looked, injured or not.

  Rising victorious with the device in my hands, I got my first good look at the thing. It was egg-shaped and plastic looking with various nubs and tips that protruded from it. I wouldn’t call them buttons, not exactly. They might take only a caress to activate, or maybe a lot more pressure to depress, as they seemed firm to the touch. I didn’t want to mess with any of them.

  Very slowly, Big Al reached out his hand again. I slapped it away.

  “Demonstrate…” he said. “Gift…”

  Frowning, I shook my head. “We don’t need your help, Al. We’ll figure it out on our own. Thanks. I was not feeling any love or trust yet for this slippery little dirt bag.”

  With no more gear to escape with, I headed toward the pipe. “Don’t let him run off or kill you, Toby. Jillian will feel bad if she finds your corpse down here in the morning.”

  “But you wouldn’t care?” Toby asked. “You’re just worried that you’d be blamed for my corpse? You know Chief Gray, you might want to work on your social skills. I’ll bet you’re on the spectrum yourself—it’s even apparent to me.”

  I was already on the way out, and I didn’t answer. Toby was half-right, and I wasn’t going to lie about it.

  When I got to the pipe again, I got stuck at the same point. That’s when I felt fidgeting at my waist.

  My hand went down to stop it—but I couldn’t reach. I was struggling, wriggling and grunting. Soon, I was howling in frustration to escape that damned pipe.

  Sure enough, my efforts began to get me some headway. I was almost out in the open again, my hands were coming free. First the left, then the right.

  Suddenly, the fidgeting at my waist intensified. I kicked downward, grunting.

  I connected, but something clung to me. I could hear Toby shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Then, suddenly, the world shifted.

  I’d experienced this odd sensation before. Every time the field generator had jumped us… I was jumping through space, moving laterally to somewhere else…

  But where?

  Chapter 35

  To my horror, I found I wasn’t instantly transported to another spot aboard Viper. For a grim second, I thought perhaps I was in open space—but it wasn’t that simple.

  There was no asphyxiation, not exactly. Instead, I felt as if I wasn’t breathing at all. I was in some kind of transitional state of being.

  It was nothing metaphysical—at least I hoped I wasn’t. The idea I was dead and gone did cross my mind, of course, how could it not? But I rejected the thought out of hand. Like a ghost that’s haunting his family, I refused to accept my possible demise.

  I did my best to perceive my surroundings. There wasn’t much to go on. Shadows. Gray edges, fuzzy horizons. It was like being in a dreamland filled with fog and yet I floated, as if in thick fluid.

  The fluid wasn’t water, either. It was like thick, condensed air. That’s the best way I could describe it.

  Naturally, I reacted by holding my breath and attempting to swim. My eyes peered and squinted, but my senses were failing me. There was nothing familiar…

  Fighting a rising sense of panic, I tried to make sense of things. I wasn’t breathing, but I didn’t seem to be dying, despite this. How could that be? Some form of stasis? Some kind of alternate state of being?

  Or could the answer be more radical? Was I in-between realities, drifting and helpless in an ocean of nothing?

  Fighting to keep my cool and my sanity, I experimented methodically. I extended a limb—or I thought I did.

  A ghostly sensation was transferred to my mind from my right arm. There was an inkling of tactile contact. Had I touched… something? If so, what was it?

  Using both arms now, I reached for the same place, and I touched something again. Attempting to grasp it and to pull myself forward—

  I failed. My hands lost their grip. It was as if they were rubbery, asleep, numb. I tried again, more gently this time. I focused, concentrated on making my body—or whatever it was I was manipulating—obey my impulses.

  I failed again and again. It was like being an infant, unable to force my wobbling appendages to function smoothly.

  More experiments followed the first. Perhaps, reaching out and grasping was too much. I didn’t have that kind of control, not yet.

  Time passed. I had no idea how much time. That, in and of itself, caused a fresh wave of bubbly panic to grip my mind.

  Perhaps that slimy bastard, Big Al, hadn’t been such a joke. Maybe he’d never been fully in my control, my prisoner. Maybe he’d been playing us all along.

  Injured, yes. A victim? I strongly doubted it. He’d come to our ship, and he’d woven a web of lies and sabotage.

  It was he who’d sent me here to this purgatory. Could it truly last forever? Was this what hell felt like?

  If so, the Vikings had been right, I mused, not the others. Only they had envisioned a cold Hell, one that left one yearning for warmth, blood and freedom of action.

  Giving myself a mental shake, I realized I’d stopped my experimenting. I’d done nothing for a time, lost in thought and nearly losing my mind.

  Focus. Again, I moved all four limbs, as I understood them to be in this place, and I touched barriers of some kind in every direction.

  Applying them all at once, I felt something give…

  What had moved? What had changed about my shadowy prison?

  After a moment, I thought I had it. The barriers surrounding me, they’d all shifted, slightly. They’d all moved away from me.

  That gave me a new idea… Perhaps, I could shove them all away.

  But would that be a fatal mistake? Would it leave me nothing to touch? Those walls, unhelpful though they’d been, were my only solace. They were substantive, in a
universe where nothingness prevailed. Perhaps, if I pushed them away from my being, I’d be left with nothing at all to touch. Not even ghostly prison walls.

  The fact that I wasn’t getting anywhere fast, however, soon impinged. So… I did it. I shoved and kicked, in all directions, all at once.

  The prison didn’t burst, but it did retreat. Forced back, it no longer enclosed me.

  A new element to my limited reality then presented itself. Ahead, down, and slightly to the left, if such directional concepts meant anything in this place, was a source of… light? Heat? Released energy?

  I was immediately drawn toward it. To my surprise, now that my enclosing walls were no longer tightly binding my being, I could move, after a fashion.

  It wasn’t walking, mind you. It wasn’t even crawling. It was more like swimming, or worse, like wriggling. The process reminded me of that which I’d so recently endured in the slimy waste pipe back on the bilge deck of Viper.

  Inching forward, I moved closer and closer to my goal, and the sense of warmth increased. It was light in a universe of shadow, and I was drawn to it like every moth is drawn to dancing flames.

  But some part of my mind sounded an alarm. I had a memory, a clear thought.

  I didn’t want to think, I wanted to keep wriggling toward my goal, I wanted to find a way out, an escape hatch from this mad form of Hell…

  But my mind isn’t like that of most men. It isn’t driven entirely by emotion, not even when faced with nonexistence.

  So, I listened to the nagging thoughts that insisted on being heard. They told me the direction I was headed was… wrong.

  Direction? I scoffed. How could such three-dimensional thinking apply here?

  But still my mind insisted, and eventually I listened.

  From where I’d been stuck in that infernal pipe back on Viper, a turn to the left and down—that could only lead to the deck below. And the deck under the bilge held only one thing—Viper’s engine.

  The most significant component of that engine was a fusion reactor. Could that be the source of heat and light toward which I was inexorably inching my way closer?