All Rocs Wise & Wonderful, page 14
"Well, shit." Christopher's shoulders drooped. He moved to stand next to me, his arm brushing against mine. "So much for that."
Fred noticed our disappointment. He shrugged, another movement he'd picked up. Of the three of us, he seemed the least worried. Of course, he was also the only one who had a good chance of making it back if Mullins sent us to a random destination.
Then he saw a portal marked with a red metal bar on the dirt in front of it and froze.
Mullins followed Fred's gaze and rolled his eyes. "Here we go again. For a race that's holding the keys to instantaneous interstellar travel, the verdirans are superstitious reactionaries." He looked back at me. "That's the other reason for the NDA. We had to swear up and down we wouldn't let anyone go through certain portals or talk about them anywhere that could get back to the other verdirans. Our navigator almost wouldn't set them up, but apparently they're necessary for what we're doing."
Necessary for what Xavier was doing, maybe. I wasn't convinced Xavier's goals lined up with the Chevalier Foundation's, though Mullins might not have realized that. "What's the big mystery?" Danger. Secret. This had to be related.
"If you ask the verdirans, it's because it's the home of the central tree. You've seen those blocks of wood they carry around. If you believe them, the wood has some magic they need to create new portals."
I remembered Fred's reaction when his had been stolen. Whatever its purpose, the need to have it had been real.
Mullins must have seen my doubt. "They can open the portals just fine without it. The problem is finding the right destination. As far as we can tell, the wood just works as a sort of tuning fork, so they have the right starting frequency to navigate." He shrugged. "It's too bad, really. We were hoping we'd be able to cut out the middleman as soon as we engineered our own version of the central wood, but it looks like it's going to take a while longer."
Christopher shifted. "And now that we know about those portals you weren't supposed to let anyone see?"
Mullins waved that away. "Relax. We're not murderers. Once everything is done, you'll be released unharmed. And the verdirans don't kill people either, at least not directly. The worst they would do to another verdiran is shun them. You and I they might just abandon somewhere to keep their precious secret safe. We can't open portals, you know, so they don't consider us even worth punishing."
He pocketed his phone. "Now let's go take the tour."
24
Going through a portal would never not be weird, but at least now I knew what to expect. We lined up in front of a silver plaque on the ground labeled "Gamma 47". A guard went through first, and then we all moved forward. Just before we touched the shimmering air, Christopher and I reached out to each other. His hand was warm and calloused. I focused on that as my skin tingled and everything went dark.
The transition took just a couple of seconds. We emerged in an emerald green field in the mid-day sun.
Mullins gestured broadly with one arm, as if showing off his own creation. "Welcome to Pure Paradise."
Rolling hills surrounded us. When I looked past Christopher, I saw an impossibly blue lake. In front of us, a concrete path curved toward the water and then wound around the shore, with offshoots going to glass and granite houses in the hills. I squinted in the sunlight and counted. Either paradise was only meant for about ten families, or there was a lot we weren't seeing.
Fred looked confused.
Christopher dropped my hand and knelt, running his hand through the blades of grass. "This is Kentucky bluegrass."
"Lovely, isn't it?" Mullins strode toward two golf carts.
We followed. The breeze changed direction, giving us hints of algae and... weed killer? Now I had a pretty good idea of what was on the other side of the hills. "So... You picked a spot, wiped out all the native plants and animals and seeded it with grass? Holy shit, that's..."
"It's a thing of beauty."
Christopher shook his head slightly. I swallowed my words and looked at the still water of the lake. Had they drilled wells as a source of water? Or were they using the lake? If it was the latter, the wrong type of algae bloom could kill them all. Superficially beautiful, "paradise" might be on the edge of collapse.
Christopher had thoughts along the same lines. He whispered, "I saw a lot of things like this in Florida. Throw up a bunch of condos and sell them before the land washes out underneath them."
"The whole thing is a scam," I muttered. "You can't just wipe out all the flora, sow one kind of grass, and not expect the native plants to grow back." I looked at the hills and the lake. I didn't see a water treatment facility. "And if they aren't careful about how they handle things, cholera is definitely a possibility."
The two guards drove us toward a cluster of buildings near the lake while Mullins pointed out the amenities — solar panels on every roof, a waterfront restaurant, hiking trails. His voice warmed as he spoke. "Plus, we're building a state-of-the-art hospital. And then there are the extras."
We pulled up in front of a building that could have been a warehouse. Fred stiffened, and I caught him checking his empty pocket. So it wasn't a surprise when we went inside to find a cavernous space with another grid of portals. I counted four military-looking types watching from the periphery with semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Mullins checked a handwritten schedule on a whiteboard mounted on the wall. "Shouldn't be too long."
The guns made me nervous. "What is this place?"
"One of the extras I was talking about." Mullins pointed at the nearest portal. "Want to hunt a sabertooth tiger? Dinosaurs that never went extinct?" His finger moved to the one beyond that. "How about an elephant? Without having to get a permit or deal with protestors." He smiled. "This place really is paradise. We can bag an elk and make it back for dinner without having to drive anywhere. The restaurant here has the freshest meat you'll find anywhere."
Now the guns made sense. There was nothing to stop the animals from coming through the portals in this direction. A sabertooth tiger roaming the hills of paradise might scare off the investors. The walls of the building were cinderblock — would that stop a bullet? Covering my mouth with one hand, I whispered, "This is like the timeshare presentation from hell."
Christopher was more direct. "Why are we here?"
Mullins shrugged. "The two of you?" He indicated Christopher and me. "You have skills we could use, but you're really here to make sure he cooperates. Our navigator has run into some... technical challenges, and he could use a consultant."
Fred took a step forward, facing a portal two thirds of the way down the warehouse. Rubbing his ear as if he heard a discordant frequency, he shook his head. If he hadn't moved, I would never have noticed, but now that he'd brought my attention to it, I saw how the portal rippled more than the others. Ozone burned my nostrils.
An electrical arc crackled from the portal to the exposed ceiling beam. Then another. And a third. The portal disappeared, leaving behind a charred stain on the concrete floor.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. "Hope nobody was off hunting a sabertooth tiger in that one, because they aren't coming back to paradise any time soon."
Mullins shot me a venomous look. "As I said, we've had some technical challenges."
A portal near the back of the room glowed white, and the guards unslung their guns. Then a verdiran — Xavier — appeared, followed by another six men, equally well-armed. The guards on the perimeter relaxed.
Xavier ignored all the humans in a move I was beginning to accept as the verdiran standard. Only Fred was deemed worthy of notice.
And Fred was pissed.
I thought he'd been angry when Xavier had come to my house, but this was a whole new level. When Xavier came within range, Fred lifted one crutch and whacked the other verdiran in the head. Xavier fell to the ground in a crouch, hand to his cheek.
The men following Xavier ran forward to separate the two, guns aimed at Fred.
Mullins's voice cut through the chaos. "Put your guns away! Right now!"
Christopher and I had been forgotten. He edged behind me so he could speak near my ear. "If they harm Fred, none of the verdirans will talk to them again."
I wondered how far that ban would extend. The man who fired the bullet? Everyone in the room? The entire group behind this nightmare of a place? Looking at Mullins's face, I thought he also wasn't sure.
All the guns were lowered, but the men kept a protective ring around Xavier. Mullins strode forward and held up a sheet of paper for Fred to read. Right. Back to paper again, because without cellular coverage, the translation app wouldn't work. Mullins looked over at us. "As long as your friend here cooperates, the two of you will remain unharmed. But if he refuses, things could get a little rough."
Fred ripped the paper from Mullins's hand and tossed it on the floor. But when he looked at us, I sensed hopelessness. I shrugged. "Do what you need to do." Without the translation app, he wouldn't understand my words, but I suspected he would get my meaning. Fred wouldn't help destabilize our earth, not even to protect us. That much I knew. Lifting my chin, I gave him a thumbs-up.
Mullins spoke to the guards we'd come here with. "Stash these two in the distillery." He looked at me. "You'd better hope your navigator cooperates."
25
The "distillery" turned out to be a portal encased in a metal cage at the back of the room. I'd figured it out before the guard finished unlocking the gate. We'd be stuck on the other side of the portal — anyone coming back would have just enough room to stand on this side to unlock the cage.
They'd already been prepared to keep prisoners.
I pushed back against the hand shoving me forward. "Is there drinking water on the other side?" The hand pushed harder and I threw up my arm to shield my face. My fingers tingled where I touched the shimmering surface. Then everything was dark and still as I fell through space.
I landed knee-deep in snow, a star-filled night sky above me. Green lights swirled on the horizon, reflecting off a cluster of small translucent geodesic domes twenty feet away. Entranced by the northern lights in the sky above me, I forgot to move. Christopher crashed into me as he came out of the portal, and we went down in a tangle of limbs. Snow slid down my back.
I shivered as I climbed to my feet. "I think I should start bringing a parka with me everywhere I go." In jeans and a t-shirt, I wasn't any more prepared to encounter cold weather this time than I had been during our hike.
"At least there aren't any snakes." He brushed snow off my shoulder, then moved ahead to break a trail through the snow toward the nearest dome. Between the dome's dark interior and the lack of footsteps in the pristine snow, the area didn't look inhabited, but at least we'd have shelter.
"No snakes that we know of," I said, and crunched along after him.
The door to the dome was ajar, snow spilling through the gap, and the interior was as frigid as the outdoors. Crushed cigarette butts littered the ground, as if someone had stayed in the protection of the dome and leaned through the gap to smoke. Inside, the lingering odor of ammonia reminded me of every cat spay and neuter clinic I'd ever participated in. Christopher kicked the snow out of the way and pulled the door closed. His nose wrinkled. "Smells like your car."
"It's not the air filter here, either." The translucent glass panes blurred the moving lights in the sky. Using my phone's flashlight, I illuminated the interior. From the rumpled sleeping bag and box of empty MRE pouches, someone had spent a lot of time here, but the air had a stale quality that said the building had been vacant for a while. A tiny space heater lay next to the sleeping bag, plugged into the only visible outlet. Next to that was a hot plate with an empty two-quart pot.
Opposite the door, a tunnel extended toward the neighboring dome, the entrance covered by clear plastic flaps like a supermarket refrigerator. By unspoken agreement, we headed in that direction. I rubbed my arms. "Maybe we'll find the snakes in the next one."
"Very funny." Christopher pushed through the plastic at the end of the short tunnel. The smell was stronger here. We moved into a dome nearly identical to the first, except without the sleeping bag. Open boxes lined the curve of the walls.
In the middle of the floor lay distillation equipment, the glass condenser still positioned over a receiver flask. A half-empty box of tiny vials with screw top lids lay within easy reach. The pot for boiling the original substance had a dusty film of leaves on the bottom and sides, as if someone had just dumped the contents without cleaning it afterward. I started to look more closely, then pulled back as the smell hit me. This was the source of the stench permeating the domes. "Why would anyone want to concentrate that?"
"And why would they need to do it in the middle of nowhere?" Christopher added.
Leaving the distillation setup where it was, I sorted through a few boxes to read the labels. MREs, toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap. They all had manufacturer's addresses in the US. Since I didn't know how many people had stayed here, I couldn't tell how long it had all been in use. If it had just been one person, they had lived here for months.
The final two domes were larger, filled with rows of waist-high shrubs, all dead. Seen in the illumination of the northern lights and the glow from my phone, it gave me the creeps. I edged closer to Christopher. "Of all the places to set up a greenhouse, why here?"
Christopher sounded equally uncertain. "Isolation, maybe?" He leaned over to look more closely at the brown leaves. "Do you know what kind of plant this is?"
"No." Though that didn't mean anything. "Antonia's the gardener." I could identify a handful of poisonous plants that would kill livestock, and Mark had taught me the names of the more common flora along the trails where we hiked, but I was no expert.
Christopher knocked away some brittle leaves to get a closer look at the stem. "It looks like something's been cut from the top here. I think this was what they were cooking out there."
This didn't look anything like the marijuana plants Antonia grew in the raised bed nearest her cottage, and I was pretty sure poppies flowered lower to the ground. "It's not any contraband I'm familiar with. My guess would be it's some sort of xenoplant they didn't want to risk growing elsewhere, but..."
"Yeah." Christopher stood up. "I guess we can add that to the bottom of the list of questions. We have more important things to worry about."
We headed back to the first dome, where the air was the freshest. The space heater moaned a little when I turned it on, then went silent.
"The solar panels might be covered by snow." Christopher didn't move. "I'll check when it's light outside."
"Assuming it gets light outside." The eerie green swirl was visible through the panes of the dome. "If that's the aurora borealis, and we're far enough north to see it..." Then I realized I might be making false assumptions. Did they even have the same phenomena on other planets? "What causes northern lights?"
"Something to do with magnetic poles and sunspots? I don't know." Christopher moved a stack of boxes into the center of the dome. "Have a seat. The cardboard will insulate us from the ground."
I sat gingerly, but the nested boxes were solid. Christopher perched on the stack next to me and pulled the sleeping bag around us. His shoulder warmed mine. It made me realize how long it had been since I'd just sat with another person like this.
The dome became oppressively silent.
"I almost called," I blurted. "The week after the hike."
He slowly turned his head to look at me. "But you decided not to."
"No. I kept putting it off because it just felt..." I trailed off.
"Because of Mark."
Somehow, I hadn't expected him to remember my husband's name. "I know he's not coming back. Not after all this time. But I still kind of panicked."
He bumped against me companionably. "It's okay. I get it."
"And then Antonia told me I was being an idiot."
Christopher dropped his chin to his chest and laughed softly. "Your mother-in-law is an interesting person." He raised his head and watched the lights playing over the dome. "Is that why you stopped wearing the necklace with your rings on it?"
It was automatic to touch my sternum, where my wedding and engagement rings had been for so many years. Now it felt unexpectedly smooth. "You noticed." I let my hand drop. "It seemed like it was time."
"Ah."
Only I would be stupid enough to start a conversation like this when literally trapped in a small space with no escape. I cleared my throat. "Anyhow, I just... When we get back..." If we got back. "I'll call. If I haven't left it too late." My cheeks burned, and I wondered if it would be any more awkward if I pulled the sleeping bag over my head and pretended to be dead for the next hour or two.
Christopher leaned against my shoulder a bit harder. "That would be good."
We watched the lights some more.
I gazed absently through the panes toward the ground. "That portal is probably our only way out of here. Unless we're actually somewhere in northern Canada."
Christopher shook his head. "Not with those constellations. Though I guess we could be somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. I don't think I'd recognize the stars there."
"I'm pretty sure we're not in Antarctica."
He nodded. "Yeah, the portal's probably our only way out. I don't suppose you know how to pick a lock?"
"Sorry. My life of crime began and ended with ditching school once in the eighth grade."
Christopher laughed and turned to look at me. "I wouldn't have pegged you for the truant type, Dr. Cunningham. Were you avoiding class, or was there something better to do?"
"It was a stupid dare. I went home and read a book." The school had called my father, and he'd come home from work early to find me sitting on the couch with a plate of brownies. He'd tried to give me a stern lecture, but his heart wasn't in it. I suspect he was just relieved that was the extent of my rebellion.
