Aurona, page 32
“Hmm.” Adam deliberated a minute. “I’ve got an idea, Duron. Here’s what I’m gonna do: I’ll park three unmanned SpeedSleds along the perimeter of the rainforest, set their external sensors to scan 360 degrees, then shield and cloak them. If any of them spots one of those bad boys, it’ll send out an alarm in plenty of time.”
“Excellent!” Once more, Duron nodded with his whole body. After a moment, his tone grew more serious. “Adam, ah, I really need to discuss something I have been struggling with all morning.”
“Whazzat?”
“I sensed a great, negative aura among some of your crew.”
Adam grimaced. “You noticed, too? I thought I was feeling some kind of a barrier. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t push through it. I’m just plain stumped, Duron.”
“Stumped? What is…?”
“I’m sorry. What I meant was, I really don’t know who they are.”
“Nor do I.”
Adam scowled. “My gut tells me it’s Dexor. He and his three buddies are quite stand off-ish. Believe it or not, I’ve tried to capture their thought pictures the same way I did with Tola yesterday morning, when we were all up in the tree. Couldn’t do it, though. It was as if there were this-this impenetrable wall. It was totally the opposite with Tola. He practically spoon-fed me his thoughts…”
Duron was visibly stunned. “Adam!” he gasped, his dark eyes round. “You did not tell me you could capture thought pictures from your own people! That is amazing, especially since you have not as yet ingested a full dose of the Rasheen. Your youthful mind is fascinating!”
“Really?” He shrugged. “But I keep blacking out under stress! I really hate that part. Is-is it normal?”
“No, no, Adam, quite to the contrary! A normal first reaction for our youths would be a two-week neural spasm, or as in your grandfather’s case, a month-long coma nearly ending in death.”
“Oh, no! He went into a…. Wow! I guess I got off pretty easy, didn’t I?”
“Yes. To the extreme, Adam. Your case continues to break all known precedents. We do not know what to think anymore. Your mention of a ‘wall’ is bothersome, though. It sounds very much like our defensive mechanism called ‘mind-shields.’ Perhaps your people have a natural affinity for this, especially if they have something to, ah, hide?” His wispy brows knit together in the middle of his forehead. “Unfortunately, you can’t arrest anyone for what you think they are thinking. Perhaps their PIL frequency could…?”
“I’m sorry, Duron,” he interrupted. “If they’re really up to no good, those foxes just stuffed those little suckers into their pockets right after they got ‘em. Even more, I’ve got a gut feeling they might just do something even more deceitful, like parking their PILs out in the rainforest as red herrings so they can go around and snoop!”
The big head was tilting quizzically. “Red … herrings? Please explain. Some of us older Bandors have a rudimentary knowledge of the complexities within your language, but unfortunately, not I. Perhaps I could assign a few scholars to interpret for me? I could also assign some of our police force keep your outlaw group under surveillance.”
Adam stopped short. “Surveillance! That’s it! We have the Spyders!”
Again, Duron squinted at him questioningly. “What do you mean?”
“Our little robotiods aren’t exclusively a video tool, Duron! I tinkered with a broken one a while ago. The eye just sort of unscrewed and the ring of legs….”
“Show me!” The old one pulled out one of his cherished insects from his cloak.
“You don’t mind?”
“Please. I understand you have plenty,” he reassured.
Adam sat down at his desk and bent to work with a pair of tweezers. As the nano-parts fell away like specks, Duron grabbed one of the legs and held it up to the fiberoptic light diffuser over his head. “What are those miniature hooks near the suction tips, Adam? I did not notice them before.” He lowered his gaze to the mound of parts lying on the control panel. “And those three miniature canisters, as well? There is a purple one and two white ones that seem to be joined together at their outlet. Look.”
Adam poked at them gingerly. “Ah, I dunno,” he shrugged. “Maybe two backups for the stink gas? Gotta be careful with those! Ah, maybe the hooks are for climbing? We’ll look at ‘em later. Anyway, wait a sec….” More parts flew, and in moments he was left with a thin, flat recording assembly: a mike, recorder, and power pack, all weighing practically nothing.
“Bingo!” He perched it on the tip of his finger, winking. “This little speck is the audio system! Sorry, there’s no remote; we’ll have to retrieve it afterward to listen. It looks like it might have two hundred and fifty layers of rewriteable nano-flash memory! Maybe five terabytes of RAM!”
The old one was left in the dust. “Bingo…?”
“Slang, Duron, slang,” he chuckled. “It means ‘right on the money,’ or, ‘you got it!’ Um, ah….”
The big head tilted further. “You mean the disc unit is very small and light in weight and can easily be hidden inside the suspect’s clothing. Therefore it should serve well in its specialized, abbreviated function as a purely audio recording surveillance tool and then deliver the contents when recoupled to your nano-laser sound reading equipment inside your e-helmets? It’s worth a try, Adam.”
Adam let out a low whistle. “Wow! Couldn’t have said it better myself! C’mon, white boy, let’s catch a ride up to the Observatory. I wanna sneak a peek at the lake! I’m cravin’ the waves!”
The old one trotted closely on his heels, shaking his head in confusion.
Down in Warehouse F, Dexor and his companions were pressing their faces to their pod’s dark glass, their hearts racing. The chronometer inside was blinking unsteadily. The light would came on strongly for a minute, fade, and then repeat the sequence. Suddenly a different display scrolled by. They read it quickly.
“Internal autosequence commencing… bypass mainframe… internal autosequ….”
As the words abruptly cut off, they glanced at each other in confusion.
Trennic raised his voice in exasperation. “See? It’s been tryin’ to say somethin’. It’s been goin’ back and forth like that for the past two hours! On, off, on, off….”
Senn cut in. “Yeah, boss. I saw it first!” His chest puffed out. “There was this little blue light and then a bigger blue light and then an even bigger….”
Dexor sighed. “And then a big, BIG blue light. Right?”
Senn’s eyes popped. “You saw it too?”
The men rolled their eyes at each other.
Dexor tapped on the glass. “Well, something’s finally happening in there, but we still don’t have clue about a timeframe. We gotta stay sharp,” he scowled. “Every day, pinheads. You’ll hafta come down here every day and look. At the first sign of opening, we all gotta be ready or….”
Their eyes met. Expelling a collective breath, they slipped out of the room.
As Adam and Duron entered the Observatory, they spotted a large group clustered in front of the screen, surveying the wide vista. Tola glanced over his shoulder. “Boy, that water sure looks cool, sir,” he breathed wistfully. “Real cool.”
Adam elbowed his way to the front and stared a moment. “I was thinking,” he toyed. “Nah.” He spun around. “You guys wouldn’t go for it. Too radical.”
They took the bait, nudging each other. “What, sir?” someone prompted.
“Maybe, just maybe, a loading dock, say, way up on level R might make a good high diving platform?” As they whooped enthusiastically, he held up a finger. “Whoa, now! There’s just one tiny problem, a small glitch, really.”
They stopped, freeze-frame. A glitch?
“Don’t concern yourselves, but remember what Duron told us. The jungle seems to be chock full of predators, particularly the Razah. Remember that stealthy, demented Sabretooth upwards of fourteen feet long capable of sending out telepathic mind-stuns for half a mile? Small things like that,” he shrugged. “You know. Blips. Tiny ones.”
Someone coughed and then spoke up hesitantly. “G-got anything in mind, sir?”
They formed a huddle, he filled them in with the details and in minutes they were with him all the way. “Remember,” he concluded, “even if all else fails, you’ve got the shields on your SpeedSleds, its blazing acceleration, and your wrist communicators….”
“No, no, Adam!!”
They all turned toward the old one. Totally out of character, Duron had interrupted, breaking his silence. His dark eyes were blazing with excitement.
“No?” Adam questioned. “But I don’t understand! We just….”
“Go ahead and stun the Razahs!” he said firmly.
“What? Stun them? But you….”
“Stun them! Definitely! After our revealing group discussion in the kitchen this morning, I have been thinking and have come to a conclusion. As Supreme Leader, I have decided to repeal our strict policy of noninterference: Both the Razahs and Spyrins are indeed mutant species and should be restored to their original state. You have my full permission to start a program of trapping and relocating. And your amazing Elena is my obvious choice to initiate and lead this new series.”
Adam was flabbergasted. “Wow! I don’t know what to say… ah, thanks? I can assure you we’ll use utmost care and the beasts will be well-sedated.” He spun back to the crew. “Well, there you have it. Now vamoose! You should be able to get in a few hours of R&R before lunch. And remember to contact Kron about how to park those three empty SpeedSleds out in the jungle.”
They stared at him blankly. Things were moving way too fast.
“So whaddaya waitin’ for, Christmas? Take a hike!” he shooed them off.
The old one’s head had tilted to an impossible angle. Adam thumped him on his bony shoulders. “You too, water boy! It’s time you learned a few strokes yourself!”
The water was exhilarating as he broke the surface in a clean dive. Adam swam lazily underwater, his eyes wide open in amazement at the crystal clarity and purity of the water and the teeming abundance of freshwater life forms skittering by inches from his face. The bizarre surface dwellers they’d seen so far suddenly seemed ordinary in comparison to these pulsing, glowing, hyperextended expressions of someone’s imagination gone berserk. He floated in place, paddling and turning slowly around.
This was a totally different world: an aquatic planet of lights! The incredible, lit-up creatures amplified the extremes of the spectrum: In shocking, metallic, glowing infrareds and neon yellows they burst from every spangling, gold-festooned grotto; in heavy-lidded blues and glowing ultraviolets they skulked under every shadowed rock; in squid-like schools they swept by in alarmingly long strings of bioluminescence before disappearing in a flash into the unfathomable depths.
Totally unnerved, he popped his head out of the soothing bath to glance around for a reality check. Duron stood awkwardly on the shore, looking painfully thin in a borrowed bathing suit. His bony ribs were clearly outlined and his flat, fluttering abdomen revealed his excited breathing. Adam chuckled. “Yike, a reality check? Hmm … definitely not a pretty sight out here in broad daylight.” He raised his voice. “Hey, c’mon in, man!” he waved gleefully. “Chicken!”
The pale Bandor leader stuck in a long slender toe, then gathering courage, waded quickly toward him. His big, dark eyes darted around fearfully, scanning for danger.
Adam bit his lip, stifling his urge to laugh. “Don’t worry, Iron Man, we’ve got a whole battery of underwater probes hooked up! Nothing bigger’n a tadpole can come within a mile of the ship!”
His thin lips were drawn back, his small, even teeth exposed in a grimace. “T-the water is very c-cold, Adam, b-b-but somehow soothing to the s-skin,” he quavered. “Fortunately, these t-translator buttons have been manufactured as sealed units. We Bandors are extremely s-sensitive to electrical s-shock.” He waded in a step further, then suddenly sunk over his head. He popped up sputtering, his thin, fuzzlike hair plastered against his great domed head. “Watch out, Adam! The shoreline descends rapidly beyond this point!” He squinted into the depths. “But-but your feet … your feet are not touching! How can you hover in the water like that?”
Adam let out a belly laugh. “Its called ‘swimming’! I’m swimming, Duron!”
A shadow crossed the water. They both looked up to see a muscular form leap far out into the air, spin in a showy triple somersault, then knife vertically through the still surface without a ripple. No sooner had Dexor entered the water than Senn, Nastix, and Trennic followed with noisy, spirited cannonballs.
Adam watched quietly, treading water at Duron’s side. “There they go,” he muttered, squinting in the glare. “See what I mean? They stick together like glue. I talked to Elena and she agrees. Do you think she…?”
A runic message interrupted his consciousness. “Yes, Adam. As soon as all of Dexor’s men jumped, I saw movement up there. Elena just removed Senn’s uniform.”
“Hey!” He turned in surprise. Duron was staring innocently the other way. Chagrined, he beamed back a message in silence. “Sorry. I keep forgetting about this telepathy thing…. So it’s Senn, huh?”
“Yes, the heavyset, muscular one.”
“Well, it’s only a matter of time now. I sure wish we could read their minds, though. It would be so much easier.”
Duron shrugged. “That may come eventually. Be patient. Right now Elena should have no trouble hiding the disc. We will just have to wait for another opportunity to recover it. She showed me her abilities as a seamstress, Adam. She is very adept at forming garments. Her closet contained an odd, colorful, robelike uniform.”
Adam let out a loud guffaw, breaking their silent conversation. “A dress! It’s called a dress, Duron! I-I haven’t seen her in one yet,” he sighed, “or out of one, for that matter.” He heard a faint chuckle over his shoulder. The old one was sharp; he’d caught the implied meaning loud and clear. He reddened. “Um, by the way, I’ve asked her to marry me, Duron. Tonight.”
A lone brow raised in profile. “So soon? You have just arrived!”
“I can’t wait another minute! Oh, yeah. Um, there is one small detail. My crew doesn’t know about it yet.”
“Another, ah, blip, Adam?”
“Yeah, we thought we’d make our announcement before lunch and then have the afternoon to prepare for a ceremony this evening. You’re invited, of course. Bring as many of your friends as you want.”
The pale mushroom-shaped head protruded a bit further from the water as the old one stepped up onto a rock. He turned toward him. “You move fast, Adam,” he slit-smiled. “You make decisions, good ones, then act on them immediately. I admire you and agree wholeheartedly with your choice of a mate. Congratulations!”
There was a humming noise behind them. They turned to see a bargelike utility sled skimming over the surface, picking up a load of divers. Duron watched, fascinated. Packed to the limit, their bare legs were dangling over the edge, their toes skimming the surface. It rose quickly through the air to one of the many loading docks now jutting out over the water to empty its excited throng. In varying degrees of expertise, they flung themselves into the air with complete abandon, yelling raucously at the top of their lungs.
The old one spun toward Adam fiercely, his eyes flashing. “What fools! Fools!”
“Huh? It’s okay! They’re safe!”
“No! It’s us Bandors! We are the fools! For centuries we have been wasting our lives living in caves!” he sputtered. “There is absolutely nothing like this in our boring underground cities, Adam! Nothing! Up here on the surface there is a joy, a freedom that few have seen save for the bravest of our youths! As chosen leaders, we elders have been foolish and prideful, thinking we could handle all the answers. In truth, we have been driven purely by a misplaced, ungrounded fear of the unknown!”
“So, why don’t you just compromise, Duron?” he offered quietly. “Keep your cities! Live in them, but turn the outdoors into a huge park! Have your people work and sleep underground and then come out to explore! Even … play! We’ll protect you!”
His skinny body bobbed up and down in the water. “Excellent idea! The best of both worlds!” Suddenly he stopped short, looking at the noisy scene. “This,” he gestured, “is what you just called … play?”
“Yes.”
“We will do it!” The bulbous head nodded emphatically. “My people need this! Oh, um, there is one small blip. They do not know they need it yet!”
Adam let out a hearty laugh. “Whoa, whoa! There’s an even smaller blip. First we gotta rid your planet of mutants,” he reminded. “We’ll set up Elena’s capture station about half a mile down the shore,” he pointed. “We’ve got plenty of huge cages in the quarantine rooms and all the equipment we’d ever need for collecting specimens.”
Duron suddenly brightened. “I just thought of something! My people can make living enclosures for you,” he interjected. “Plenty of them!”
“Huh? You mean you can build buildings?”
“Absolutely. Your grandfather left elaborate plans for surface dwellings. He called it his AnchorPlank System, covered in something called FlexFoam. He wanted to put his dwellings out in the rainforest, to be as close as he could to his beloved nature.” The old one shuddered, gingerly rubbing his thin arms.
Adam smiled wanly. “Okay, it’s time to get you back to shore,” he sighed. “You’re beginning to show a little color around your shoulders … blue!”
Duron slit-smiled, his small teeth chattering.
“Hey! C’mon! You’ll catch a cold just standing there! Move it, buddy! Lemme show you how to, ah, hover in the water! Just cup your hands like this and paddle! That’s it! You’ve got the hang of it!”
The Auronian sun climbed higher in the sky. Everyone had switched gears and was now beachcombing along the scintillating, nugget-strewn shore of the lake, their blankets sagging with fabulous specimens of gold. Everywhere they looked, something either glittered or was alive. The air hummed with odd-looking insects, clouds of Aeronautas gathered near the top of the Motherlode Tree, and herds of spotted, hopping creatures fed in the distant grassy plain.
