CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Kareem followed at the rear of the party. He worried that the mob of gray demons might come after them. He didn’t really trust that the one calling itself Yotto was really on their side, and wouldn’t lead them into a trap. All of the back-and-forth, in and out of the same square, felt like an attempt to disorient them. In any case, he wanted to keep a rearguard position from which he could monitor all the action and be prepared to strike.
Yotto led them away from the square, around the corner, and through large doors. Gollip waddled along with Yotto, bobbling his head at every word the engineer said. The space they entered echoed with grinding, humming, and wheezing sounds. Light here came from a phosphorescent strip on all the walls, but it needed repainting, and was dim. Light of various colors leaked out from the farther corners, creating a muddle of illumination.
Kareem didn’t need the light, in any case.
To his eyes, the rest of the party was bright red, as always. The gray demons were also red with heat, and he could see a dull orange glow on the floor showing the paths the Grays generally traveled in this industrial room. They were limited, and large sections of the room seemed never to be visited at all, or at least they hadn’t been visited in so long there was no trace on the floor of anyone’s passage.
And there were neglected doors in the back corners.
It was child’s play to slip away from the group, simply waiting behind a tall metal tank until they moved on. Yotto and François took turns droning on, each trying to impress the other with his technical mastery while the others tried not to yawn.
When they had stepped away, Kareem examined one of the doors. It was lever-operated, like the door to Yotto’s laboratory, but the lever wouldn’t come down, so the door wouldn’t open.
Was it locked? But he didn’t see any apparent keyhole or locking mechanism. Kareem peered down inside the slot in which the lever ran and saw something jammed into the groove. Picking with his fingers, he found it to consist of several thick wood splinters. Someone had jammed the door out of operation with bits of wood.
Well, that was easily remedied. He used his ankh to neatly pop away the casing that housed the lever, and then the splinters simply fell out. He brushed away the remaining tiny fragments and then tapped the casing back into place.
He pulled the lever and this time it came down. With a hiss, the door slid open and he let himself inside, waiting until the door shut again before moving on.
He was acting to relieve boredom, and at first the passage failed to oblige. He walked down a long hall to steps that descended, sneezing at the clouds of dust he kicked up. Far away, he heard the gurgle of water. His heat vision allowed him to move without a light source, but not very well, since the gradations in heat between the floor and the walls and ceiling were slight. He had to move slowly to avoid tripping.
He descended stairs and then the detour became interesting. Vision became easier, because he entered a space with metal doors, and the metal was noticeably colder than the stone. Each metal door had a small window set into it, a little lower than would be convenient for a man’s use. Behind the metal doors were prison cells. Kareem had been in jail once or twice, not for anything especially grave, and he knew what cells looked like. These had holes in the floor to let the prisoners relieve themselves, and stone slabs for sleeping. He saw scraps of old blanket and smears of filth.
He found many cells, organized in clusters of twelve around central spaces. The central rooms had water spigots in their center, rising up from the floor and curving like the beaks of flamingoes back toward the ground. Kareem turned the knob on the first spigot he encountered, waited through the coughing and spluttering noises, and then tasted the water that poured from the faucet. It was cold and delicious.
He found four slabs per cell, which meant forty-eight prisoners per cluster, unless you jammed them in more thickly, which you could do. With sufficient cruelty, you could double the number of prisoners. At seven clusters he stopped counting and started looking for something different.
At one point, the gray demons had been prepared to hold many prisoners in this dungeon.
And the slabs were tall enough to sleep adult human beings.
He fingered his sharpened ankh, imagining himself beheading the engineer Yotto.
He followed a hallway that ended suddenly, opening into a larger chamber. The floor dropped away below him, the ceiling rose, and the walls opened left and right. The echo of his footfalls told him that the space before him was vast.
And the floor looked strange. Knobby, irregular, arrayed in heaps.
In his heart, he knew what was down there, but he had to confirm it for himself. The wall below his feet was irregular, and easy to find footholds and handholds in. He lowered himself carefully until he was close enough to let go of the wall and drop.
When he landed, he sank to his knees in a heap of bones. Close up, what he saw was unmistakable: human ribs, human pelvises, human skulls. How big was the room, how many bones were there? He couldn’t see the opposite wall clearly in the darkness. Hundreds of skeletons?
Thousands?
Kareem was no stranger to death or to violence. But what he saw, looking at the massive heap of bones, broke his heart.
He searched meticulously, found exactly the bone he wanted to show François and the others, and tucked it into the large pocket of his tunic.
Then he turned and began the climb out.
“We need air, of course,” Yotto said. He stood pointing out a massive glass cylinder with an accordionlike bellows flexing up and down within it. “Oxygen, the same as you. But also, as you point out, we have a metabolic challenge binding the oxygen into our blood with your atmospheric mix. Unfortunately, the engineer who was master of this device underwent some kind of metabolic shock and ceased to function. All we know is that this mechanism could render the interior of our home amenable to breathing without these devices.” He tapped his nose ring.
Gollip bobbled his head and swayed back and forth with excitement.
“I’m guessing there’s no instruction manuals or anything of the sort?” François asked.
“That would be correct. As the ship melted through the ice and settled onto the Earth’s surface, we lost all contact with the outside, including anyone who could have helped us. Such documentation was digitally stored in remote nonvolatile storage up with the mothership, which at the time was in orbit.”
François nodded. “In the time that we come from, we would call that storing data in the cloud. But some of you lived in Atlantis for a time, no?”
“Atlantis?” Yotto blinked.
“The City of the Gods on Earth?” Marty prompted the engineer.
“Ah yes. That city did indeed have functioning machinery, but those of us who came here were expected to rely on the devices in the downed ship.”
François tapped at the controls on the device’s console and said, “It looks like you have controls for input gasses here, and gauges for measuring the output.” He tried twisting the dials and they didn’t move.
“Yes,” Yotto agreed. “I think there are sockets for inputs on the other side here as well, if you want to come look.”
François circled the machine and looked at the indicated sockets. They reminded him of old-style RS-232 cable sockets from years ago. “So, do you have any cables that plug in here?”
“If I have them,” Yotto said, “I don’t know that I have them. They might be in storage. Or they might have been destroyed.”
“Who would have destroyed them?” Marty’s voice was puzzled. “And besides, with those nose rings on, you’re able to breathe fine, right? What’s keeping you here and preventing you from going elsewhere?”
“As to who would have destroyed them . . .” Yotto hesitated. “I suppose I’m not sure, but I’ve grown cynical over the years. I trust the motivation of very few creatures nowadays. It’s safer that way. And the nose rings . . . some of the nose rings are starting to fail, as well.”
Gollip shivered visibly.
François’s brows furrowed as he took in what the alien had said. These guys were hosed. “It seems odd to me that anyone of your kind would purposefully sabotage you and themselves as well . . . I guess I’ll need some time to study this and compare notes with you and whoever else has looked into this device. Maybe we can both examine your storage space for hoses or anything that might be related to what I’m seeing here before we assume the needed equipment is destroyed. Do you have any other machines with mysterious purposes?”
Yotto led François to a panel. “I am not entirely certain what this does.”
“Those are just controls. Where is the machine?” Surjan looked around.
François looked, too, but then realized that the party was missing a member. Where was Kareem? He worried the young man might get up to no good, but he said nothing. Being a good mentor to the lad might from time to time mean coming down hard on him, but generally it must entail extending trust and space in which to operate. Besides, maybe Kareem was simply standing quietly, and had therefore disappeared into the shadows.
“I don’t know,” Yotto admitted. “I think in the walls. Based on work-log entries written by a predecessor, I believe this might be the control panel for a device to shield us from sunlight and radiation.”
“Will you need this if the glacier above covers you?” François asked.
“We will not,” Yotto admitted. “In fact, the glacier might inhibit the operation of this device. The ambient temperature in the ship is lower than it’s supposed to be, and some parts of the ship may actually be frozen over. Our climate control has not operated as I’d hoped since our heavy landing on the planet. However, power, water, ventilation, and sewer are all functions that work.”
Gollip nodded vigorously.
François caught sight of his comrades’ faces and saw looks of utter boredom. “Isn’t your basic issue one of food?” he asked. “Dietary supplements with the metabolic iron you need? Radiation shielding doesn’t feel like a critical need at the moment.”
“Over here.” Yotto beckoned with a long finger and headed toward an adjoining chamber. “We’re trying to work on various solutions to enhance the absorbable iron within our foods.”
François followed into a long rectangular room split into two sections. Being somewhat familiar with how basic human metabolism works, he figured that maybe the aliens had similar issues with extracting necessary nutrients from some foods. People couldn’t exactly eat iron pellets or even grind up iron and gain any benefit from it, since in those forms it would simply pass through any human digestion system.
Aliens likely had the same kind of problem—the trick was how to gain iron supplementation in a form that could be metabolized.
In the nearer and smaller section, many tables stood in rows with terraria squatting on them. Lights of various colors shone down in the lids, but some of the lights didn’t work and others sputtered on and off. In the bottoms of the terraria, white, chalky bricks rested in trays of a milky liquid. Some of the bricks looked sunken and waxy and others had an unhealthy greenish cast. One was speckled black and deeply pitted.
“Looks like tofu,” Lowanna said. “This sight here is exactly why I could never be a vegetarian.”
“Smells like foot,” Surjan said. “What on Earth are you putting into that?”
“Iron,” Yotto said. “Those are iron-infused vegetable proteins. Other important vitamins and micronutrients are also added. When it works, the result is an emulsified food substance that can be molded into any shape and easily flavored. Really, it shouldn’t be nurtured in these glass cages. That slot in the wall should simply be extruding bricks, one every few seconds. But the machinery is slowly breaking down. Within months, at this rate, none of it will work.”
François turned to the engineer with a look of surprise. “Are you saying that you’re months away from starvation?”
Yotto shook his head. “No, not really that bad, but remember we’re trying to find a solution that makes us less dependent on these devices we’re wearing, and with the newly failing equipment, that solution is getting farther and farther away.”
“Got it.” François nodded. “So your ability to make this tofu that smells of feet is starting to falter.”
“It does not smell like feet,” Gollip objected.
“What’s in the other half of the room?” Lowanna looked at the far end with little enthusiasm.
Yotto showed them the rest: rows of vines climbing up wire trellises out of planting troughs, heavy with bean pods. At the near end, the vines were neat and trimmed. At the far end, they exploded in a wild vegetable profusion, leaping off the trellises and climbing the walls.
“So the plants grow, at least,” François said. “That’s one problem we don’t have.”
“These are some experiments we’re running. It’s a bit frustrating, to tell you the truth. The plants either refuse to metabolize the iron infused into the soil,” Yotto told him, “or they do absorb the iron and it causes the produce to become extremely woody and inedible. I have some infusions that seem to have promise, but as of right now, they’re not very efficient and certainly not ready to scale for wider use.”
François nodded. “I see there’s much work to do here.”
“And not much time,” Yotto said. “Our side has been keeping the Herders at bay with the idea that we’ll have a breakthrough in this issue, but if we don’t make some progress, the patience of our opponents will vanish. And at that point, there may be a point of criticality where someone attempts to seize power. That may be the beginning of the end.”
“You’re really worried,” Marty said.
“I worry,” Yotto confirmed.
François frowned. To him this rivalry between the Farmers and Herders was nowhere near its beginning, it looked more like it was about to come to what might be a bloody conclusion. He needed to talk with Marty about this . . . their team didn’t want to be anywhere around here when the proverbial excrement hit the rotating blades.
Kareem had rejoined the group at some point. He stood at the back of the party, fidgeting and frowning. He looked at François as if he were trying to catch his eye.
François walked over to the teen and Kareem surreptitiously handed him something and whispered, “Look at it.”
François glanced at what looked like the end of a broken femur and felt a chill race up and down his spine. There were jagged teeth marks on the end of the ancient bone. The marks were narrow, finely spaced grooves—the same tooth spacing he’d noticed the Grays possessed.
He pocketed the bone, patted Kareem on the shoulder, and walked back over to the engineer. “Yotto, I know we walked into this structure off the maze of corridors, but if my bearings are correct, aren’t we basically under your vessel right now?” François asked.
Yotto nodded. “It’s above us.” He pointed. “Slightly that direction.”
“The ship, it’s number seven, isn’t it?” François asked.
Yotto clasped his hands together and cleared his throat. “Seven? Seven what?”
François took a deep breath. “Look, if we’re going to work together, we’re going to have to be a little more candid. You know there’s a portal here. My guess is it’s inside your space vessel. All the daughter cities have one, plus, presumably, the City of the Gods on Earth, and the portals are numbered one through ten.”
Yotto said nothing.
“Where is this coming from?” Marty asked.
“I’ve seen the map.” François shrugged. “You’ve seen it, too, Marty, but the image of the map is burned into my mind’s eye, especially with the hidden markings from the water—that’s what gives it all away. I spoke with Kareem on the journey here and he didn’t tell us at the time, but from what I can tell, he’d spotted what might have been the remnants of a portal on the island, just like that marking told us. I think the craft above us crash-landed, but it was supposed to set down somewhere around here, with a city built around it like spokes around the hub of a wheel.”
“Just like the tunnels and portal in Egypt,” Marty murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
“This ship is the seventh portal, isn’t it?” François asked with a serious tone. “Yotto, you’re the only living engineer left, you have to know the answer. And the place we came from, the one essentially due north of here, it’s number five. It’s all on the map.”
“You have not been forthcoming,” Yotto said slowly.
“What are you talking about? This is our first conversation about this topic, and I’m sharing with you everything I know. You, on the other hand, are still dancing around the fact that a faction of your fellow citizens wants to kill and probably eat us, rather than messing around eating tofu bricks that smell like feet.”
Yotto’s eyes widened.
“Oh, you didn’t think we’d know?” François growled. Then he pushed his voice to take on a melodic, almost hypnotic tone. This was the tone that persuaded people, the tone that he’d only learned to use on these time travel journeys. “My friends and I have been through much getting here. You are not the first of your kind we have met. We have also encountered your type, but in a different form, in other parts of the world. We know about those nose rings you wear. We know about what you—or at least, what the Herders—did with humans. We’re no fools.”
Yotto opened his mouth as if to reply, and then made a blurp-blurp sound as he closed it.
“I appreciate that you want us to help you somehow persuade the rest of the Edu to not do whatever it is they have planned. We know you’re ultimately on our side, but let’s not fool each other.” François nodded. “You also don’t want your people to fall into a civil war. You’re a visible leader of your faction—these so-called Farmers. You and yours are probably in physical danger if something doesn’t change.”
“I have not hidden that,” Yotto said.
“But you haven’t exactly been forthcoming, either,” François said. “Which is fine. We haven’t exactly been forthcoming on our end. But I want to be very open now. We’re looking for a portal. I’m pretty sure you know of one, and it’s inside that vessel of yours. I’ll help you with the machinery—as best as I can. But in return, you have to show us to the portal and explain how it works.”
“I don’t know how it works,” Yotto said.
It took all of François’s control to not smile at the tacit admission that this Gray knew of the portal and where it was. “So we’ll have to figure that out, too,” François said. “Lead on.”