Origin & Earth (The Orris Project Book 1), page 7
Left, right, left, right. The Envoy spent the next seventeen minutes slowly concluding that although the northern route might be more painful, it was also the route he was more likely to survive. North, then. His gait bent to the left.
When he reached the coast, he again performed his planetary-life-dosing ritual, located his possessions, and walked due-north, letting the encroaching sea push him westward. As he walked north and slid west, always scanning the horizon, he felt a pang of depression, which his subconscious immediately addressed. The correction came in the voice of Dr. Christine Paige, dead for billions of years by that point. There are many things that are more dangerous than my mind, don’t let my mind become more dangerous than those things. It was a chant they rehearsed at the beginning and end of every meeting they had with her. She had intended to brand it into the brains of the envoys.
The sun was approaching the western horizon, and the sky was shifting from its daytime blue to its oranges and reds. He had left the coast entirely, searching for the tidal terminator so he could sleep without fear of being rudely awakened by waves crashing down on him. After a few minutes of walking/climbing up a small hill, he found the high water mark. It was closer than he expected, even at the increased elevation. Although the light was dimming, there was no mistaking it, so he climbed to the top, dropped his gear, and made camp for the night. When he laid down, the cool breezes and the general good health he was in made falling asleep easy. He slept deeply and fast. In what seemed like fifteen minutes after losing consciousness, he was awake, witnessing the sunrise, completely baffled.
The Envoy was on an island. Although he understood what was happening, he still had a hard time believing it. He appeared to be on a tiny island and way out to sea. The coast was visible, but it was far enough that he never even considered trying to swim the distance. It was over a half mile. To the north, he saw multiple more rounded peaks popping out of the ocean surface, making an archipelago. Much further to the north, he saw darkness on the horizon, which he expected was another storm; a storm that he would be more than happy to have miss him entirely. He had been enjoying the rain-free days. The archipelago could reduce the amount of walking he would have to do if he could island-hop during low tide. In that moment, it was an annoyance, but there was nothing he could do until the tide receded. Well, except for this, he thought, and went to his bag for another vial. At least I don’t have to get wet for this one. He snapped the container full of special salt and flicked the whole of it as far as he could in the direction the breeze was traveling.
When the tide pulled back, he gathered his supplies and walked off the western edge of the island, which was just a hill again, onto the wet ground and resumed his northerly trek.
12
After walking for two days, he could see that the storm clouds in the far north were not clouds at all, but exactly the thing he was looking for: mountains. It took him seven more days to reach them. During that time, he used the islands to sleep on four more times. He deposited the salts eight more times, having made two dives on the fifth day, which was abnormally warm.
The beach gave way to a slope on the seventh day. Before starting his climb, he filled his bottles with ocean water. The young ocean was still fresh, which surprised him every time he jumped into it. Only twenty paces up the slope, the terminator line was apparent. The Envoy stopped, knowing he was leaving the ocean but would visit an ancient version of it when he awoke. He did not speak to the ocean as he had the apartment that aided him, but he smiled at it. Before continuing, he took the packet with its two remaining vials out of his bag. He took the entire packet and bent it back and forth, feeling the remaining vials bend and pop in his hands. He worked them repeatedly until he was sure they were both cracked and open. Before he cast the packet into the ocean, he noticed a bit of the salt leaking to the earth below, and he nodded. It was a triple redundancy and unnecessary to do at all; but he wanted to be rid of the packet. One less thing to carry around. With a smooth motion and a sharp flick of the wrist, he threw the packet like a frisbee, and it plunked into the crashing waves ten feet below.
The Envoy began the physically taxing process of climbing. His daily travel distances diminished by much more than half for two reasons. Climbing was exhausting, and the higher elevation reduced the already poor oxygen concentration. He passed out twice, collapsing where he stood. He suffered no injuries from the events but thought better of letting it continue to happen. Another fall could mean a broken arm or a split skull. He took it slow and took frequent breaks. He had experienced a comfort, or a sense of accomplishment, as he ascended, seeing the ocean get further and further away.
Still traveling north, he reached a vertical rock face that he could not navigate. He turned west, as an easterly direction would have eventually deposited him violently back into the ocean. Four times after that, he reached areas of the landscape that were too steep to climb, and he descended, still always moving forward, never backtracking. Twice he had slipped on loose sand or gravel, badly enough that he lost his footing and made an abrupt visit to the earth below. He had sustained no serious abrasions from the falls, but he had badly bruised his right hip on the first occurrence.
He was at the base of his latest diversion and staring up at a long, smooth incline. It was steep, but he believed he could traverse the grade. The most interesting thing was that he could see nothing above the slope but sky. He wanted to know what the view would be like at the top. He had thrown the last of the salts into the ocean eleven days before that. It had rained eight times, which kept his water bottles filled. His food was dwindling, but not yet alarmingly so. He imagined he had a few weeks left, but his ribs were approaching skeletal, and his gut was concave, a condition he had not experienced since his beginnings on Telraed.
Judging by the position of the sun, he expected he had another two or three hours before dark, so he started the climb. Slow but persistent, he got two-thirds of the way up before the sun dipped below the horizon. The thought of sleeping on the grade and rolling over in his sleep scared him, so he continued the climb in the fading sunlight. When he reached the top, it was dark. The moon was not visible, so he was traveling by starlight, which amounted to no light. He felt his way up the grade for the last twenty minutes of the climb. When his hand finally escaped the slope and reached a flat spot, he scrambled up onto it and collapsed. Exhausted, sleep was almost immediate.
13
The Envoy woke six hours later, feeling almost as exhausted as he had when he fell asleep. No oxygen up here, he thought. This is terrible. He laid still for another five minutes, breathing deeply, trying to pull as much of the scarce free oxygen into his blood as possible.
He sat up and looked around. To his right, a steep slope that looked as though it might stretch down a mile to the flat plains below. To his left was a flat, dusty beige surface, and nothing higher. He was on a plateau. It measured twenty yards across where he sat but widened considerably further north, and once he stood and regained his complete sense of direction, he saw that it stretched northeast, not due north. There were few features on top of the near-level surface of rock, rubble, dust, and sand, but in a handful of places, there were larger rock outcroppings. He walked and smiled when he saw a round opening in the ground after only ten minutes. Upon closer inspection, he could see that it was a sheer drop into darkness, probably a drainage point, but the good news was that there was a cave system in the mountain. The Envoy needed to find an entrance he could use and then find a relatively safe place to stash himself while he made the long run; the one that would hopefully end with a planet rich in free oxygen and with an established and growing body of not just animal life, but intelligent life. It’s a lot to ask for when you’re throwing a dart in the dark, he thought.
There were dark rain clouds approaching from the southwest, and he thought they would reach him before the day was out. That might not be a terrible thing, he thought. Running water made sleep difficult but offered a lot of valuable information if you were looking for cave entrances beneath your feet. The rain would not come for hours, though, and he had every intention of finding the entrance without its assistance.
He continued to explore the plateau for the next three hours and found two more “vents,” as he thought of them. Circular openings in the ground that offered only a fatal entrance into the cave system below. The vastness of the plateau encouraged him. He still could not make out a defined end point, but it was narrowing after having achieved a maximum width of two hundred yards.
The light had dimmed considerably, and large droplets of rain pelted the back of his head and neck. He drew the blanket from his bag and draped it over himself to at least rid himself of the discomfort of the impact. It rained hard for several minutes and pools formed on the plateau. The water moved in every direction. Relief washed over him, being in a prime place for lightning strikes, when no thunder accompanied the rain. Head down, he walked, watching the water swirl and slide and tumble across the surface. He spotted a small stream of water establishing itself, with hundreds of tiny tributaries running northwest, toward the closest edge of the plateau. He imagined it would get bigger and bigger and gain a bit of speed before launching itself off the cliff. Following it with his eyes, he saw he was right. Moving on, he found three more of the small streams running off the edges, and then he saw one that flowed rapidly toward the interior of the large plateau. It had all the tributaries of the past four streams but was not making a bolt for any of the edges. It ran toward a large outcropping, maybe eleven feet tall and about twice as wide, with sharp, jagged edges and much taller on the right than the left. He was still twenty yards away, but it looked more and more like the stream smacked right into the rock and disappeared. As he approached it, he slowed and watch his footfalls carefully, not wanting to go where the water was going, at least not yet. When he was upon it, he smiled, filled with tentative joy. It was another “vent,” and it was larger than the others, but he had no way of surveying the entrance point as it was then accepting large volumes of water.
The Envoy stood there staring at the crashing end point of the stream and thought about his current situation. There would be an hour before the sun went down. The sky to the far east was bright, but to the west it was a dark, leaden color. No end in sight for the rain. His water bottles were mostly full, but he took out the empties and filled them anyway, for something to do. The one thing he would not do was leave the position. The plateau was not enormous, but it was big enough that he did not want to risk losing his place. With his bottles full, he optimistically began preparing for the long run. He drank three bottles of water in a row; an excellent prescription for an upset stomach. The stretching routine normally took forty minutes, but he took his time and spent an hour working through it. While he did not think there would be much sleep in his immediate future, the outcropping had a flat place about two feet square on the lower edge, only a foot off the ground. The next course rose into the air at a smooth angle. He sat on the small flat platform and leaned back on the roughly forty-five-degree up-slope. He placed his pack on his lap and draped the blanket over his head and down to his toes. Sleep drifted in and out for two hours. When the rain stopped, he pulled the blanket off his face, shifted his position, and slept for the rest of the night.
14
The Envoy awoke as day was breaking, and the still steel-colored clouds in the sky were thinning in places. Standing up and walking around to the foot of the outcropping, he wanted to look down into the chasm, but the light was not strong enough. He could only see darkness and the ghosts of shapes. Another fifteen minutes would pass before the edges of the opening revealed themselves. As they did, he skirted the edge, pressing down with one tentative foot to find any weak spots, but no material broke off. Except for the long flat edge created by the outcropping itself, the hole was an oval about twice as wide as he was tall. The area around the entrance was getting brighter, but the depths remained the color of tar.
He sat on the edge, with his legs dangling in the opening, and thought to look at the Sterilex placard while he had the light to do so. Although it was still not bright, he could read the metal card, and he did not bother looking through the numbers. The last prescription, the longest stint read:
3B: R2-G10
The problem with the formula was that he had used it on Telraed in a similar situation and had undershot by over three hundred million years. The short stints to make up for that were torture, and he had no intention of going through that again. Knowing that each grade on the larger rod worked out to about three hundred million years, he had every intention of making his own “G11” prescription. He vaguely remembered Arthur Sterritt telling them that the Sterilex would “not” or would “never” be the problem regarding their survival, and there was never a warning about taking too much.
He replaced the placard back in the satchel and stared down into the hole. It appeared the outcropping continued down into the depths, and he could see many other features. It was not smooth rock but appeared to be a mostly vertical shaft that dropped straight through to the center of the landmass. As the sun trekked through the sky and the hole got brighter and brighter, it became clear that climbing down would not be easy, but it would be possible. There were hundreds of hand and footholds. He elected to put the satchel in his bag, hoping the bag would do a better job protecting it, cinched the throat tightly, and knotted it for good measure. With his bag on his back, he stepped down into the hole.
15
After descending thirty feet, the Envoy found a solid ledge to stand on with both feet. He stood there, leaning against his bag and pinching it between him and the rock face. Pointed toward what he expected was the cavern or whatever the cavity in the plateau was, he shut his eyes tightly and covered them with his hands for good measure. In his mind, he counted to one hundred to establish the best low light vision he could. When he opened his eyes, he saw the wall of rock four feet in front of him much more clearly. Down further still, he thought, and continued climbing down. After fifty more feet, he reached the floor. Brief glances upward blinded him again in the low light environment, but he could go no further down. He repeated his light sensitivity ritual and was heartbroken to find he was staring at the same rock wall. It had chased him all the way to the bottom. Although it was not perfectly circular, the vent amounted to a tall, straight shaft down, with no apparent destination. He searched the uneven floor, thinking there must be some outlet, otherwise the space would be full of water. He was right. The shaft totaled four feet wide by seven feet long, and in the bottom corner to his left was an opening close to the floor. He laid down and pushed his head through the passage, which he was unsure would be big enough for his ribcage.
He was looking not into a huge cavern but a trough that got wider as it got higher. It had been much narrower in its infancy, but running water had carved it out over the ages. It extended further back than he could see and was over a hundred feet tall where he could make out the ceiling. There were four shafts of light, the vents delivering a weak glow to the interior. The sloped walls were far from smooth, covered in irregularities and pockets, ledges, and small outcroppings.
He backed up, took off his bag, and pushed it through the opening. After spending a minute to work up the courage, he laid down on his back, reached both hands through the hole, and grabbed the inside wall of the trough. He rocked his head to the side, but his skull, ear and face still scraped the topside of the opening as he pushed with his dug-in heels. The whole of the opening hugged his chest and armpits, and he breathed slowly and deeply while he could. No matter what happens, don’t panic. He let the majority of the air escape his lungs and pushed with his feet and pulled his arms. The pressure on his ribcage increased after sliding only a few inches, and the pain started. He kicked and pulled harder, and a pang of panic flashed through his mind when he attempted to inhale and the pain doubled. Relax, exhale, and push. Exhale all the way this time. The calmer, reasoned voice in his head prevailed over the impending panic and he pushed more of the air from his lungs, pushed with his feet and pulled with his arms. He felt the opening slide to the base of his ribcage and stop. The Earth was crushing him. He could not inhale, for fear of cracking a rib, and he was stuck. The Envoy closed his eyes hard and clenched his teeth. Dig deep, there has to be air left in your lungs, push it out! The pain was agonizing but he forced the last bit of breath he could muster out of himself, kicked, pulled, and writhed back and forth until finally, the ribs on his right side freed themselves from the grip of the opening, followed immediately be the left. He laid half in and half out of the trough for ten minutes, enjoying each breath. His concern for his hips making it through proved fruitless; he had lost so much weight that they slid through easily when he was moving again.
The first conclusion he came to upon taking his first few steps in the trough was that it had to go deeper, or there had to be an outlet to the outside. He was once again walking on damp, uneven rock. The water had not pooled here at all. The second conclusion was that the roof had an expiration date and would collapse long before he woke up. It was a fact that brought a great deal of disappointment to the Envoy, and he began thinking the exploration had been all for nothing. He would have to climb back out, descend the northern edge of the plateau, and continue north. If I can climb out, he thought, if I want to torture myself again. There were ledges and shelves cut throughout the walls to his left and right, and he explored while the light was available and planned to sleep down there for the night.
