Aurona, page 47
“Ready?”
Elena nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide, her jaw hanging open.
The sleek shape plunged swiftly beneath the waves.
“What is this thing?” she whispered, awestruck.
“You are inside a large SeaSphere freight transporter, child.”
“A what?”
“Just a minute. Please move aside.”
As Movon reached down, he pulled the mysterious black box into his lap and began to tweak a few dials. “In our knowledge, there is nothing faster for traveling through the oceans. Since this vehicle consists of seawater itself, it moves without hindrance through its own medium.”
She was puzzled. “Please explain. I-I don’t understand.”
“Several thousand years ago, we arrived at this ideal, streamlined shape by studying the bodily forms of the fastest sea creatures, but ironically, we took our clues for its unique locomotion by studying the slowest.”
As Movon bent back to his navigational plotting, Duron explained. “I know it sounds like a paradox, Elena, but what Movon is saying is true. We know you are an expert in biology: most sea snails travel by sending a ripple, or pulsed wave, along their muscular stomach-foot, right? We have found a method of amplifying this same ripple along the surface of this liquid-capsule vehicle. The more powerful the pulse, the faster it goes and the more streamlined the shape becomes. Now with the aid of a newly discovered probe accelerator, some of our more advanced models have attained unheard-of speeds!”
For several minutes there was silence and a faint sensation of flying, then all went still. The bubble-within-bubble rose from the sea and settled on the shore, rupturing and trickling down into the dry sand. Once again, the golden shell simply became one with the atmosphere, the glittering droplets blowing away in the wind.
Elena was speechless. Within minutes, the sun was lower in the sky, it was definitely warmer, and they were sitting in a circle at the base of massive, white vertical cliffs. Incredibly, their SeaSphere had just crossed several time zones in its southwestward travel. Her eyes traveled slowly upward, searching for the clifftops lost somewhere in the ever-present atmospheric haze.
Chapter 26: THE ISLAND
Five miles long and a thousand feet high, the crescent-shaped landmass rose straight from the sea like an iceberg, the towering chalk cliffs an impenetrable fortress, a remote, almost dreamlike castle. The fragile exterior was protected from the elements by a glowing force field that extended around the entire perimeter, both above and below sea level. Free from the threat of Razah and Spyrin, the island was secure in its splendid isolation.
The ancient one had lived here for most of her life, a long, eventful span now approaching an incredible ten thousand years. She coveted the unobstructed, windswept view and so manicured the flat-topped grounds every morning, pointedly yanking up every seedling that sprouted in the lush green carpet of grass that made her roof. The soil on top was rich, fertile loam, deposited eons after the limestone seafloor had thrust upward and separated from a larger landmass to the south. Gathering vegetation, it rode its continental plate into warmer climes.
By the time she’d discovered it in the wandering days of her youth, there was a rainforest on top. There was also a large, hollow chamber in the depths of the island. With an army of robodiggers, she’d carefully hollowed it out more and more through the ages, widening and reinforcing it as they descended. When the big atrium was ready, she lowered the jungle inside, piece by piece, into shelter. Eventually, she’d meticulously sculpted many terraced balconies opening into the vast, white-roofed central area. Solar pipes brilliantly lit the lush tropical garden and a young Motherlode now formed the focal point; with fruit in abundance, the perfumed air was now almost too rich to breathe. She was rightly proud.
Elena stared at the cliffs in a trance, then shook her head in confusion. Out of nowhere, a sudden, unbidden string of strange thoughts and scenes had been invading her consciousness. “Who is … she? A rainforest? What?”
Duron broke the spell with a chuckle. By the look on Elena’s face, it was evident she was only partially understanding the telepathic mind-pictures and halting English narrative he was sending her. As he touched her gently on the elbow, she turned to him in shock.
“You? You’re sending me…?”
“Yes, Elena,” he finished in a whisper. “And our speed tubes are not quite operational out here as yet. SeaSpheres and saucers are presently our only access.”
She shook her head in a daze. “Y-you just showed me all that? The history? The feelings? Memories and-and … robodiggers? You beamed all that into my mind?”
Before he could answer, Movon interrupted, urging both of them onward toward the cliffs. “Please explain all of this to her later, Duron? There is not a moment to lose!” He trotted a few steps further and called nervously over his shoulder. “She is waiting for us and y-you know how she gets!” His eyes rolled.
Casting knowing looks at each other, the elders tossed their blankets aside and ran after him. In their rippling gold-trimmed robes, they seemed to float over the white dunes like tall, elegant ghosts.
Elena puffed resolutely after the long-legged aliens, shading her eyes and squinting at the surreal scene in front of her. A tiny, greenish, vertical crevice had started to slit the shimmering force field, drawing back to reveal a blinding, sunlit section of wall as they approached.
The twelve arrived at the narrow electronic opening. Moving efficiently, they raised Adam’s stretcher a bit higher to pull it through. She stumbled up after them, totally out of breath and throwing up clouds of powdery chalk with her feet. Her throat had never felt so dry. She raised her voice to speak, but no sound came out.
In a moment they were inside. Pausing to catch her breath, Elena began to grope along the walls, following the faint whisper of Bandorese voices in the distance. It was blissfully cool and some kind of strange, phosphorescent glow seemed to be lighting the tubular passageways. When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness she began to see eerie movements up ahead with distorted, strangely lit shadows dancing over the walls. Spooked, she picked up her pace, winding through a bewildering labyrinth of greenish-white. Every wall looked the same, and passageway upon passageway seemed to stop in dead ends, turn blind corners or tunnel through endless chalk corridors. Her heart in her mouth, she rounded a last turn.
There they were! Green ghosts! Duron’s head was bobbing in front of a long string of mushroom-topped, floating apparitions and they were in a dead run; evidently this section was quite familiar to them. Putting on a burst of speed, she caught up. Sprinting alongside Adam’s bouncing stretcher, she slid the blanket off her shoulders and draped it over her husband’s cold body. Suddenly, everyone bumped to a stop.
“Ah!” Duron’s voice echoed. “The Western Wall!”
He made a smooth motion with something in his hand. An elevator was suddenly there, glowing chalk-white behind the greenish cast! As they bumped and squeezed into it, an insistent beeping sound rose over the rustle of starched robes and panting humanoids. Alarmed, Elena turned her focus to the battery of gauges and readouts monitoring Adam’s vital signs. She let out a deep groan.
“Noo-o-o! He just stopped breathing! Look, his respirator’s giving him plenty of air, but-but he’s not responding! Do something quickly!”
A shaking hand covering his mouth, Duron checked and rechecked the gauges. “S-she is right,” he hissed between his slender fingers, “He is leaving us! We have only moments!” He glanced nervously over his head as the proper floor approached on the control panel. “Let us all hope she is in her right mind tonight,” he sighed, tapping on his chin nervously.
As the elevator stopped, Elena stumbled. “She? Who is this she person?”
The door slid open and they all looked into the room in silence. An enormous window had been carved in the outer wall and beyond the shimmering force field, the magnificent blue-green sea curved toward the darkening Western horizon. With a faint rustle, a lone, hunched figure suddenly appeared in silhouette.
“What kept you?” a raucous voice screeched out. “Couldn’t you move your scrawny legs any faster??”
“It is Roson,” Duron whispered. “Do not be afraid of her.”
As the figure swept toward them into the greenish light of the elevator, Elena drew back, her heart pounding. This was a truly ancient Bandor woman with long, yellowed nails, small broken teeth and … something else. She tried to keep her eyes from traveling downward, but they did, quite by themselves. The crone’s legs were evidently useless; she appeared to be floating in a seated position. Her strangely puffy robe was carefully spread out to conceal a small, round antigrav chair. Yes, her eyes were dim and her hearing was faint, but her voice was loud.
“What am I, a magician?” she screeched. “Am I supposed to raise the dead?” She bumped rudely past them to examine Adam, jabbing his arm with a collection of strange instruments. “Why couldn’t you bring him any sooner? You sent me your message an hour ago!! Tell your workers to hurry up and finish my speed tubes!”
Fighting an urge to scream, Elena scanned the room. Cluttered. Very cluttered. Definitely a bad sign. She clenched her fists uncertainly. There was a forked object on a nearby tray, just like the one Adam was being poked with. Quaking but curious, she picked it up. By its familiar deeply embossed logo, it was plainly of Bitron origin.
“Put that down!!” Roson roughly slapped the instrument of torture out of her hand and it fell to the floor with a clatter. “I’m the doctor in this house and don’t you forget it!” As the ancient one waved a skinny arm in fury, a strange, shiny object suddenly protruded from the edge of her robe. Once more, Elena tried her best not to look. The crone jerked her head up suspiciously, her better eye traveling up and down her body, scrutinizing her in the minutest detail. Elena shrank back, trying to hide behind one of the elders.
“Aliens!” The A-word was spit out of the hag’s mouth, like so much rubbish. “They’re all the same!” She wheeled back to work, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder and muttering curses in Bandorese. Her gnarled hands flew, tweaking cryptically marked dials, poking long needles and prodding stiffened limbs. Finally, the prep finished, she wiped her hands.
“That’s it! Now get him over there!” she shouted, pointing to the far wall.
The elders hesitated for a confused, split instant, trying to decide politely amongst themselves just who she meant.
“N-n-now-w-w!!” The instruments rattled in their trays.
They flew into action like cowed interns, all elbows and knees. Lifting Adam awkwardly, they shuffled in a tight, knotted group, strapped him to a table, and then leaped out of the way, falling over each other in haste.
A pair of arthritic-looking hands rested on a set of bony hips. “Could be better,” the crone chided, shaking her head. “Amateurs! The lot of you!” She jabbed a button impatiently with her elbow. With a rumble, Adam’s table slid down a pair of rails into what looked like a thick-walled decompression chamber. As the heavy door slammed shut with a loud bang, she floated to an oval window on the side to peer in. “I’ve given him a dose of my own medicine,” she rasped, scowling darkly. The greenish glow from within lit up her face grotesquely. “A concentrated dose, mind you! If you fools hadn’t respirated him, who knows how far the damage would have spread! Why, it’s already paralyzed his motor neurons and speech center!” She seemed to be making herself angrier as she ranted. “Look,” she screeched. “Just look at him! He can’t move or talk! How’s he going to rescue his crew now?”
Without warning, a strange look came over her face. “Oh, blast it! Another one!” As Duron and the elders exchanged knowing looks, she began to choke pitifully and fell backward, screaming maniacally and foaming at the mouth. Elena grimaced in recognition. She’d seen it many times before: with the disturbed electrical rhythms and convulsions, the grand-mal seizure had all the earmarks of advanced epilepsy. She took a step forward to help.
Just as suddenly, the convulsing stopped. Roson raised her head, muttering and smoothing out her robes. “You! All of you just stand there, looking at me! You’re all in cahoots!” She spun around on her seat to point at Adam through the oval window. “It was his grandfather! That old man started it all! He sweet-talked his way into my life and then left! Poof!! Gone! Just like that! I never wanted to see another one of you aliens again as long as I live!” Suddenly, her eyes riveted on something. She scrambled off her barge and scrambled on her hands and knees to pick it up from the floor. Pulling up the hem of her robe, she determinedly repinned yet another piece of what looked like….
Elena discreetly leaned closer. Yes, it was: a piece of thin metallic gold foil, wrapped around scraps of a cardboardlike material. There was a sudden, sharp nudge to her ribs. Duron had caught her inquisitive gaze and was shaking his head in emphatic alarm. She pulled back.
The crone floated over to the windowsill, guzzled something from a decanter, coughed a moment and then raged on, sarcasm in her tone. “Take your medicine, take your medicine, they say! I still don’t feel any different! I’m hurt, I tell you, I’m hurt. We were friends, or so … I thought.” She was calming down. “The Rasheen will fix it. You won’t die.” She suddenly slumped, exhausted, and rolled off her small barge onto a sculpted contour chair. Sensing her weight it hummed to life, lowering her into a more horizontal plane.
Elena’s knees had turned to jelly. She looked forlornly at Duron.
“She will be out for a while,” he whispered, shrugging apologetically.
“Tell me,” she muttered. “What in the world did this witch just do to Adam?”
“Oh, the, ah, device she put him into?”
“Yes. Everything. The iron lung, the needles, her decanter, the….”
“It is a Neuron Resuscitation Chamber. I believe it is one of her best efforts. She is an odd one, yes, but a genius. She knows that although your husband has suffered a severe neural shock, he is a mere infant by our Bandor standards and therefore his mind has extraordinary regenerative powers.”
Elena narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, but all this just doesn’t wash,” she stated, flatly. “While we’re just standing around, my husband is dying in that-that thing over there!” Her finger waved in the air. “And tell me!” She spun around to confront the group. “Speaking about things, what were all those things I saw pinned under the witch’s robes, hmm?”
With a deep sigh, the tall Bandor crept up quietly to the old crone and unpinned one of her handmade contraptions. As he lifted it up to the fading light in the great Western window, the crinkled foil sent tiny, mirrored spots dancing around the room. “Shields? Reflectors? Maybe they ward off alien death rays or evil spirits? Who knows? We do not mention them around her anymore; she is definitely losing control. Her powers of reasoning have been damaged.” He turned to Elena. “Please forgive her?”
She looked down, chagrined. “I-I’m sorry, Duron, I had no idea.” A thought crossed her mind and she looked up brightly. “Her medicine seemed to work quickly! What was in it?”
“The concentrated Rasheen mixture is quick,” he affirmed.
There was a loud sneeze behind them. As they turned, Roson stirred and lifted her head. “Ahhh, there you are!” she rasped, groggily. “Elena, you’re finally here! They’ve kept me alive all these years to prophesy about you! You’re the one who’ll be taking my place!”
Elena’s eyes grew round with shock. The ancient one’s few words had hit powerfully. “W-what?” She stumbled. “P-prophesy about me? Are you….”
“Yes.” The contour chair rose with a quiet hum. “I’m the prophetess who had the visions concerning you. I’ve waited for hundreds of years for you to arrive!”
“Hundreds? But, but….”
“Hush, child.” The woman turn to glare at Duron and the elders, motioning impatiently with her head toward the exit. They nodded politely, backed up awkwardly as a unit into the elevator, and departed.
She leaned toward Elena. “I had my mind-shields up,” she confided. “Now, I must explain something to you in a way you might understand. Listen closely.” Her voice became barely audible. “I’ve found a way to conquer the relative concepts of time and distance. Understand? I’ve been able to watch both of you young people since childhood!” She leaned back, a pleased look on her face.
Elena’s eyes widened. “Huh?” She glanced in the direction of the Neuron Resuscitator. “Both of us? You mean Adam and me? But, h-how?”
“You still haven’t put it together, have you? You must know by now that your long sleep, a mere seven years to your suspended, frozen body, was in reality seven hundred actual years. As you hurtled through space toward us, you simply slept.”
“Yes, but … we slept? Now really.”
“Oh well, hibernated. We extracted blood serum from a small mammal called the Orcan in the Forti Nebula. Orcans exist on an icy planet that travels in an extremely elliptical orbit around its sun, so they have evolved a spectacularly long period of hibernation. The Bitrons found a way to synthesize the serum in large volumes for their sleep pods. In truth, your long voyage was not what one would call ‘time travel.’ It actually took every one of those seven hundred years to get here!” She looked up. “Have you figured it out yet? Seven hundred years? Now think of what that means and all its implications!”
Elena gulped. “I know. I’m really seven hundred and twenty years old and all the people I knew back on Earth aren’t even memories anymore. Right?”
The cloudy, ringed eyes closed to a slit. “Correct,” she breathed. “Specifically relating to your case, memories just as soon forgotten. I’ve seen similar unfortunate memories and unnecessary melodramas being replayed every day, all over the universe. In countless other inhabited worlds out there, there are many variations on the theme of your life.” As Elena stared at her open-mouthed, Roson locked level gazes with her. “This is woman to woman now. Straight talk. Don’t be afraid, I’m in my right mind … for now.” Smoothing out a crease in her robe, she began.
