The Negator, page 8
The reptilian creatures with their broad feet and clanking plate armor brought me to a great room with a metal table in the middle. There was a beam projector on the ceiling with banks of controls along the sides.
So why did they use gunpowder weapons and swords if they had all this?
The creatures carried me into the chamber and slammed me down against the table, buckling me in. Panic started to build. Were they going to carve me up, disembowel or castrate me?
“Hey, what’s all this?” I shouted, unable to ask calmly as I intended. “I saved their precious butts. They ought to be kissing my feet instead of ordering this.”
The chief priestess appeared, still wearing her golden mask and flowing gown. She gave harsh commands.
The two brutes tore off my clothes and removed my boots, dumping them beside my computer, memory stick and blaster on the floor.
“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Think about this, huh?”
The brutes ignored me as they hoisted the table with me on it upward like the dead Frankenstein monster before he was struck by lightning.
The beam projector on the ceiling began to swivel around, the barrel focusing on my face.
“You don’t have to do this!” I shouted.
The projector started humming as lights appeared in the opening of the barrel.
By craning my head—I was about ten feet above the floor—I could see that the chief priestess was not working the controls, but overseeing several other women who did. They wore flowing garments as well and were intent on what they were doing.
Was this alien surgery? I had completely lost my cool by this point, my normal calm having fled. Being helpless on a metal table—
“Stop it!” I shouted, struggling against the bonds. If I got out of this, I was going to burn this place to the ground and drop asteroids on everything. Why were they doing this? I’d been helping them.
The projector hummed louder and then whined. I stared at it, forcing myself to at least act bravely. I wanted to burn down this temple and—
A narrow beam of blazing light struck. I cried out and tried to shut my eyes, but couldn’t, as my eyelids were frozen and the beam hit them dead center.
They were blinding me. What sick bastards. Was this for drinking in the female beauty earlier? I couldn’t believe—
Streams of images and sounds began to flow into my mind: shapes, tones, gestures, fragments of meaning. I didn’t recognize the words, but my brain seized them anyway, forced them into patterns. Symbols danced before my eyes. Voices rose and fell in strange cadences. Mouths formed sounds I didn’t understand, but somehow couldn’t forget.
It wasn’t pain exactly, but pressure. Like someone was inflating a balloon inside my skull. Every new word, every new concept that forced its way in, made the pressure worse. I could feel my nose starting to bleed, warm trickles running down my face.
The images came faster now. Simple phrases at first: greetings, commands and questions. Then more complex ideas. The structure of their language was nothing like English. Words could mean different things based on tone, on the speaker’s status, on the time of day they were spoken. My brain scrambled to make connections, to build the framework I’d need to understand.
I saw children learning to speak, their mothers correcting their pronunciation. I saw priestesses giving sermons, their formal language full of archaic terms. I saw soldiers cursing, dock workers haggling, lovers whispering. Each scene burned itself into my memory, giving me not just words but context.
The pressure in my skull was becoming unbearable. I wanted to scream but couldn’t move. Blood was definitely running from my nose.
Then came written language. Symbols that looked like abstract art suddenly had meaning. This letter was “ka,” that one was “ren.” Put them together and you get “karen”—stranger. Add a tonal mark and it became “ka’ren”—dangerous stranger. The complexity made my brain feel like it was melting.
Cultural concepts flooded in. Their counting system was base-eight, not base-ten. They had seventeen different words for the sea, each describing a different mood or state. They believed the number three was sacred, and the number seven was profane.
My brain overloaded with all of this. It felt like a gigantic wrecking ball hit my mind, before I mercifully blacked out.
-19-
When I came to, the beam still burned into my eyes, and the torrent had slowed, but not stopped. I lay there, soaked in meaning I couldn’t yet name, my heart pounding, as if I’d been made to drink water from a fire hose, a stream of thought poured straight into my mind.
Finally, thankfully, the hum died down, and the beam ceased. The projector rotated away. As my brain throbbed, the brutes lowered the science table until I was near the floor again.
I wanted to howl with the laughter of relief and hide my face for being such a chickenshit. I’d thought they were burning my eyes out. It had been horrifying. Another part of me was still seething. They showed me up for a frightened, helpless fool. I resented that deeply. I think going from king in a sex-drenched fantasy to lying naked on a science table had been a leap I couldn’t easily handle.
I was going to get even. I was going to let them know they’d been messing with the wrong dude.
Yeah, I was seething all right.
The chief priestess strode up in her imperious but beguiling manner. She peered at me through the eye slits of the gold mask.
“Do you understand me?” she asked in an imperious tone.
I made a croaking sound, spat to the side, and then said, “Yeah, yeah, I understand you. What do you think you’re playing at, huh?”
“He understands,” she told the other women. “It worked. The theories hold.”
“Yes,” said another.
“What?” I said. “You’ve never done this before?”
“How dare you address me in that tone,” she said. “I am the Chief Priestess of the Sea Temple. My word is law here.”
“Is that why you all ran screaming from the sea beasts?”
“You understand nothing.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I know exactly what you’re saying.”
“You did us a terrible disservice on the beach.”
“Disservice?” I said. “Saving your lives was a disservice?”
“We were sacrificing ourselves to the Sea Peoples, and you interrupted. I was sure that they would give us great wisdom for the sacrifice.”
I stared at her, wondering if she was crazy. That made absolutely no sense. Had the projector scrambled my brain? Had I heard her correctly?
“You’re trying to tell me you were going to sacrifice yourselves to the fish aliens?”
“The Sea Peoples,” she said. “They have great knowledge, and we desperately need it.”
I blinked several times, trying to see if she was serious or not. Maybe this was a ploy to unhinge me. Maybe that was it. I was playing this far too straight instead of looking at clues and thinking things through.
“I am amazed you are here,” she said.
I looked at her again. She’d changed her tune and now appeared contrite.
“Our prayers were answered with your coming, as finally, a votary from the heavens has come down.”
I think I understood. It was as if two minds lived in her, or she had multiple personalities. A switch had taken place just like that. Instead of the knowledge comforting me, my nutsack shriveled. She could be insane, and I was strapped down on this table, helpless.
She was staring weirdly at me.
“I came down all right,” I said, my mouth far too dry.
She tilted her head. “And yet, you did not know the language or our customs. You are ignorant. I wonder… Did the others cast you from the heavens as an interloper, as a devil? Perhaps a demon lord in disguise?”
“No, that would be Axion.”
“Axion,” she said. “What are you trying to palm off on us?”
“Me? Look, I saved you, saved all the women. And don’t try to tell me you were trying to sacrifice yourselves to the fish aliens. Why did the soldiers fight the sea beasts then? Why did you flee? Because you all wanted to live. That means you’re seriously ungrateful that I saved your lives.”
She stepped closer, peering down at me with intense eyes.
That made me far too conscious about being strapped to this table and the two nine-foot creatures waiting nearby. It was time to use some tact or at least play along.
“Uh,” I said. “Why did you pray for someone to come down from the heavens?”
“For knowledge,” she said.
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“What is Axion?” she said.
Play along, just play along, I told myself.
“He’s an interloper from space. He took… a heavenly treasure, and I’ve come as an avenger of the gods to get it back.”
Behind the mask, her eyes narrowed. “You expect me to believe such foolishness?”
“Sure. Remember what I did with the blaster, killing the sea monsters and the fish aliens. They were forced to flee. That shows I have heavenly power.”
She blinked several times.
“How about releasing me?” I said.
“If you have heavenly powers, release yourself,” she said.
Maybe she wasn’t as crazy as I believed. I found that calming.
“Do you really give people to the fish aliens?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We gain technology and information in return,” she said. “We seek to break free from the ancient siege of the heavens. We aspire to gain what has been lost. If you are truly from the heavens, you would know all that.”
“You’re right, I do,” I said. “I was just testing you. This sounds like what the Athenians had to deal with when they sent their human sacrifices to Minos and his Minotaur. I wonder if that makes me Theseus.”
“You’re speaking gibberish,” she said.
I nodded. I needed to play along, use what she believed. “I’m here to change your ways and show you a better system.”
She stared at me, and stared more. “You must enter the circle so the priestesses can determine if you speak the truth or not.”
“What circle?”
“It will be in the Forest Chamber as we practice the mysteries and seek the source of your power. First I will give you time to rest and reflect.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’d like—”
She whirled around and marched off, giving orders to the women, who followed her out, and to the nine-foot creatures.
Once the women left, the brutes approached, unbuckled and picked me up between them.
After a quick march through the corridors, they thrust me into a cell, closing the bars with a clang. I couldn’t believe it. After everything that had happened, I was in an alien jail waiting for what I thought would be a gruesome mystery rite.
-20-
I sat in a cell like the one in Dusty Wells, Nevada just before I found the Theron. It was quiet and still, the bars were in a spotless chamber that looked like no one had ever used it. The nine-foot creatures had left, and I was alone. There wasn’t any food, water, or clothes. The creatures had torn off my clothes and taken my boots and belongings.
When I sat down, the steel was cold on my bare ass.
The silence stretched on, broken occasionally by distant chanting or singing from somewhere deeper in the temple. I couldn’t make out the words, but the rhythm had an ominous quality. This setup reminded me too much of a bad horror movie—the kind where the guy gets grabbed by cultists and ends up as the main course at some twisted ceremony.
I wondered if they were going to first send somebody else to try to soften me up. My gut curled at the thought. I waited for it to happen, but it didn’t.
The hours dragged by, at least I thought they were hours. It was hard to tell stuck in a windowless stone cell with no clothes and no idea what the priestesses had planned for me.
I’d saved the ladies, but the chief priestess claimed they’d wanted to give themselves as a sacrifice. Then why had the soldiers shot at the sea creatures? If they wanted to be sacrificed, why fight back? Why run screaming when the monsters charged?
I shook my head. The chief priestess had likely given me a load of crap, and I had no idea as to why.
I got up and gripped the bars, telling myself it was still too soon to panic, or not to panic for a second time. If nothing else, Axion needed me to use the High Circle, Polarion ring. He wouldn’t have shown it on the mountaintop otherwise. Sure, I didn’t want to be under his control again… but maybe that would be better than this.
Then it occurred to me that the bars…
My life had changed the day I’d stopped to take a leak along the Extraterrestrial Highway. The sheriff had shown up after I’d dealt with the bikers and arrested me.
I thought back to the jail cell in Dusty Wells. I’d phased through the bars and made a break. Could I do that here?
Were the chanting ones the priestesses? I was supposed to appear before their circle. What I heard out there sounded more like a witches’ coven, and I wanted nothing to do with that.
I thought back to what I’d read in the juvie library about the female mystery rites in ancient Greece. The women got high on something. Right, they’d been the Maenads, followers of Dionysus the god of wine. They had worked themselves into a drunken frenzy and ripped apart a man they’d brought into the forest for that purpose.
I couldn’t let these priestesses do that to me.
I knew I’d been wrong about the beam into my eyes. But that they had treated me shabbily after I’d saved them showed me they had bad intentions toward me.
I now realized they must have purposely waltzed around on the beach to entice me into their trap. Either they had been fiendishly clever, or I’d been too easily tricked.
I had to get out of here. To do that, though, to even try, I needed to calm myself. I had to reach a Zen state as I had in Dusty Wells.
I peered at a spot on the wall that was beyond the bars. Then I used a breathing technique. In through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth. I let my thoughts drift away as I repeated this over and over.
There were a few false starts, but I finally entered that partially zoned-out state. It was like dreaming with your eyes open. I shuffled forward, feeling slight resistance, trying not to dwell on it…
I bumped up against something soft and warm—
A wooden tray clattered to the stone floor, scattering bread, fruit, and a clay cup that shattered on impact. Water or wine spread across the stones in a puddle.
I looked up astonished to see a woman in flowing robes stumbling backward, her eyes wide with shock and something that might have been terror. She was beautiful—not like the imperious chief priestess, but with softer features and dark hair that spilled over her shoulders. Her robes were simpler than what I’d seen the others wearing, made of fine cloth but without the elaborate decorations.
She stared at me, her mouth opening and closing like she was trying to speak but couldn’t find the words. Her gaze flicked from my face to the cell bars behind me, then back again to me.
“So you are a god come from the skies,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I got it. She’d seen me phase shifting through the bars.
Now, it might help if she thought I was a god, but my mom had hauled me to a Bible-believing church a few times. There, I’d heard it was bad to claim divinity, godhood. A character in one of the sermons had burst with worms and died because he’d accepted the crowd’s acclaim of godhood.
I wanted nothing to do with that.
“Hey, I’m not a god. I’m just a man,” I said.
“But you walked through the bars,” she said, gesturing with a trembling hand toward the cell. “No one but a god could do that.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of special powers?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment, studying my face. “I have heard tales,” she said. “Ancient stories of those who could bend reality to their will.”
She was gorgeous. Even in my current predicament—naked, trapped in an alien temple, probably scheduled for some kind of ritual sacrifice—I couldn’t help but notice the way her robes clung to her curves, the graceful way she moved, even in shock.
What could I say? I’ve always been a sucker for beauty.
“You saved all of us on the beach with your weapon that blazed fire,” she said, “and now you’ve walked through bars. If you are not a god, you are a special man.”
I couldn’t fault her for thinking that. Between the blaster and the phasing trick, I probably did look pretty supernatural.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Nira,” she said, and the name rolled off her tongue like music. It suited her—exotic and beautiful, like something from a fantasy novel.
“I’m Kane,” I said. “And right now, I need to get out of here before your priestesses add me to their evening ritual.”
Nira glanced nervously down the corridor. “Yes, you must flee,” she said. “You cannot go into the circle. They will surely kill you as they follow the rites—to consume your knowledge and power, gaining it for our temple, so that we will be the ones who will free the planet from its enslavement.”
“Eat my knowledge?” That sounded even worse than I’d imagined. “What does that mean?”
“The ritual,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “By consuming the flesh of a being, they can absorb his abilities. It is an ancient practice from the dark times.”
I felt more exposed than ever, and vindicated in my thoughts that I’d been right about the chief priestess.
“You must flee,” she said. “You must go before they discover you’ve escaped.”
“I need my belongings,” I said. “I won’t be any good out in the jungle without my gear.”
Nira thought for a moment, biting her lower lip. Then she reached into her robes and pulled out a piece of parchment and a stylus.
“Here,” she said, sketching a rough map. “You must meet me here tonight when the two moons shine at their brightest. I will bring your equipment to you.”
