Chapter 30. TidBit
Nar’Allia again lost count of how many stairs they had come up, lifting first one foot then the other had become a mechanical repetition, with downcast faces, each of them remained within their own thoughts.
Thus quite suddenly and without warning they found themselves on a landing at the very top of the stairway they had been climbing for what seemed like many hours. Now as they stood panting on the landing, a single closed metallic door prevented their view beyond into the unknown. Nar’Allia on first alighting upon the landing couldn’t help but notice that the thick layer of dust and debris that lay on the floor of this landing had already been disturbed and recently to, for an arc shape had been made in the dust as if the door was regularly opened. Even more surprisingly perhaps the door had a mechanical handle on the inside.
Jonas looked questioningly to both Nar’Allia and Amndo while he placed his hand upon the handle and pushed it down. It moved easily, as if it was in constant use and well maintained, the door swung open inwards and they stared at the view beyond.
For a moment they thought they had actually exited back into the desert, for the red sand was set in piles around the area beyond the door. They walked through.
Jonas idly kicked at a pile of sand and said, “youch, that’s not sand, it’s solid rock!”
Nar’Allia bent down and touched the sand expecting her hand to sink into the fine grains, but her fingertips met with a solid mass. “It is rock. Rock made from the sands perhaps, but never the less quite solid.”
Looking further out they could see that they stood within a large open area, roughly square in shape. It looked like a town square. Many buildings stood around the edge of this square, but all looked very badly damaged or in an advanced state of disrepair. Nar’Allia’s eyes followed one of the buildings upwards, it was obviously very tall, but its upper stories could not be seen for the building seemed to disappear into a vast roof of the same rock that they could see lying in great mounds around where they stood. It was like they stood inside a vast bubble in the rock. Nar’Allia would have said they were in a cavern, but it was quite obvious that the buildings that surrounded them where here before the cavern was constructed, for the rock seemed to flow around the buildings as if it was poured there and left to harden, but somehow this bubble had kept the rock from flowing down to the level of this square.
The square itself was illuminated by many globes that were mounted upon tall metal posts placed regularly about the place. They proceeded forward looking around them as they went.
They walked over to the nearest building. Amndo tried the double doors that opened out onto the street where they stood, but the doors would not move. Not because they were locked but because the bottom of the door was sealed into a pile of the solid red rock. Nar’Allia looked through a set of glazed windows, she had to rub layers of dust from the glass and then she peered in. She saw a large room. Empty shelving surrounded the outside on every wall. Tables and chairs were scattered all over the floor in a haphazard way. They walked along the street and tried the next building, a similar situation existed here.
Off to their left they heard a clatter. Nar’Allia instinctively had her bow in her hand and Jonas had already unsheathed his broadsword. They peered in the direction that the sound had come from, but nothing could be seen, but what they did notice was a tunnel in the rock leading away from the square.
“Well that looks like our way out from here,” said Jonas nodding in the direction of the tunnel.
The tunnel was quite large, nowhere near as large as the tunnels that led to and from the Leviathan chamber however, but then these tunnels didn’t need to allow for the passage of something so big. This one appeared to be only as wide as one of the streets, an avenue perhaps that had once led between the buildings on either side. But a short way in it was blocked off by a large metal door, obviously designed to be impregnable when closed. Close inspection proved their fears, there appeared no way to open the door from this side, no handle or switch and no little receptacle for the Dolan. Jonas ran his hands over the smooth surface; Amndo spoke, “another tightly sealed door, no doubt designed to block ingress by the smallest thing. So tight the smallest grain of sand would not find its way through.
Quite suddenly they heard a whirring noise and a tick-tick-tick sound behind them. They all turned around. There in the entrance to the tunnel outlined in the light from beyond, some kind of machine stood. It was stationary. It stood upon eight articulated legs. As it stood there, it swayed back and forth rhythmically; it almost looked like it was swaying to and fro in time to some unheard musical score. Nar’Allia was reminded of the many spiders that inhabited the woodlands around her home, they spent hours just sitting in the centre of their webs waiting for a hapless insect to fly into their trap. Some of them, as they hung there in their webs, vibrated at different speeds, for what reason Nar’Allia could not think. The machine seemed to be considering something, for it appeared to look at them with many glowing eyes set into its head. At least that is what Nar’Allia supposed the oval mass extended forward from the dull silver body was. The head swayed to and fro like the body but in the opposite manner. Now Nar’Allia was reminded of some snakes in the wood lands that eyed their prey and their enemies in such a way as they gauged the distance that they had to strike. But this machine did not seem to have any obvious weaponry about it, in fact the obvious utensils it did have were a shovel-like device protruding from the side of its body and a very heavy duty looking brush like device closer to the ground, this looked remarkably like a large brush or broom.
After some minutes the machine suddenly moved a leg forward and started to walk towards them. It moved one leg in turn and as the pointed tip of the leg touched the rock floor a loud audible click could be heard. Jonas raised his broadsword to a defensive position. Nar’Allia raised the black bow and pulled on the arrow that she had strung, but no pressure was exerted by the black bow, it was as if it did not class this new discovery as a threat of any kind, so Nar’Allia released the tension on the string and let the black bow fall to her side. On seeing her act in this way Jonas also lowered his sword.
Suddenly there was a whooshing, a sound that was obviously emanating from back in the town somewhere behind the machine. The machine stopped dead where it was, it seemed to tilt its head to one side as if listening intently, then coming to some conclusion, it moved its legs in such a way that it rotated around its axis, thus turning to face the way it had come. It began moving once more and went back into the square room at a greater pace, in fact it looked to be running. Curious, the three companions followed the machine back into the square. The whooshing sound was quite loud now and the three of them turned to look in the direction from which the sound was emanating. High in the ceiling some kind of fissure had appeared and red sand was pouring through the crack, presumably from the desert above their heads. Nar’Allia remembered the description that Minervar gave of the desert sands and how the grains were so fine they seemed to flow like water. In deed the sand running through the fissure above was falling, cascading down into the cavern like water would do. It even pooled upon the floor and flowed across the space in an ever widening puddle.
The spider-like machine rushed over to the floor of the cavern below where the sands had gained entry, it stood up on its forelegs and lowered its rear end so that it could look up at the source of the sound. It raised one leg. A hatch or cover flipped open on the topside of the leg and a metal tube device flicked out, almost at the same time a blinding beam of light blue light shot out from the tube and hit the sand where it poured through the fissure in the ceiling of the cavern. The creature carried on shining the beam of light onto the patch, the patch itself seemed to glow red, then and even brighter red, the whooshing sound was replaced by a loud hissing noise. The creature then began to move the beam of light slowly down the cascade of sand. To Nar’Allia surprise the sand seemed to stop flowing and the remnants of the flow fell to the fl
oor, but no more sand seemed to be pouring through the fissure, indeed it seemed that the fissure was now closed. The beam of light from the machine stopped, the machine moved forward slightly and regained a level posture, it then aimed its device at the pool of sand upon the floor and the beam started up again, the same hissing noise followed. The sand pool stopped spreading and after a minute or two, the machine switched off the beam of light. The light emitting device retracted back into the limb and the little hatch closed. The machine walked over to the pool of sand and stood there inspecting it. It ran round the pile of sand that now looked to be fused rock, occasionally it even took the brush appendage it had and started to stroke the pile of sand. Some loose sand it swept up into the shovel like appendage and carefully poured this small amount of sand into a hopper mounted upon its back obviously designed for the purpose.
Nar’Allia smiled, then she laughed out loud. “It’s cleaning up, the machine is a caretaker, it looks after this place.” She walked across to the pile of sand that the machine was inspecting.
“Careful milady.”
“It’s fine Jonas, look.” She touched the pile of sand; it was solid and still quite warm to the touch. “This solves the mystery of the piles of sand at least eh?”
The machine seemed not to notice her at all; it did not make any acknowledgment of her presence close by its side. It moved back towards the tunnel where they had first encountered it. It strode straight past them. They followed it, the machine came to a stop at the great metal door that they had been inspecting a moment before. Nar’Allia looked at the machine through different eyes. It stood still swaying as it had done before, its head and eyes facing the door. Along its flanks through the covering of red dust and the dirt of millennia she could see letters recognisable as those in the same ancient human alphabet she had seen in the book of devices in Vaughnal’s tent. Some of the letters she noticed had been partially or completely rubbed away, there were many dents and abrasions in the machines body, but she could read what was left.
_ _ T_ ID_ _ _BI_ _ T.
But then her attention was drawn to a loud series of clanking noises coming from the direction of the metal door. She noticed a gap had appeared horizontally across the centre of the door. The top half of the circular door was moving up into the ceiling of the tunnel, the bottom half moving down into the floor. After a couple of minutes the doors were fully open, but all that could be seen of the opening within was a few metres of roadway which soon disappeared into the gloom of a dark tunnel. Tidbit, for this is what Nar’Allia had decided to call the caretaker machine moved forward through the door and into the tunnel beyond.
“Well,” said Amndo, “it seems that our friend here has the necessary credentials to open doors at least.”
“Perhaps he has the freedom of the city?” Joked Jonas who sheathed his great sword back into the scabbard hung across his back.
The three companions moved forward and entered the tunnel behind Tidbit who had stopped again once inside. Nar’Allia was somewhat dismayed to again hear the clanking of the doors that where now obviously closing again. She felt slight panic at the thought of being plunged into complete darkness, but then remembered that at least Amndo had the staff to give them light. The inside of the tunnel was dark anyway, but as the gap in the doors diminished closing out the meagre light from beyond her fears were realised as they were in deed plunged into the complete black that remains once all light is removed. Amndo dutifully illuminated the staff and they looked around them. The tunnel was featureless except for several thin metal pipes that lined the ceiling, these began to shudder in their mountings as if some pressure had been applied to them from within. The shuddering vibrations continued for some minutes, curious Nar’Allia walked over to stand beneath one. There was a sort of nozzle pointing downwards from which a single tiny drop of liquid was dripping onto the floor. All the other nozzles did nothing. She bent to inspect the liquid and was about to touch it when Amndo shouted for her to stop. “No My lady, do not touch that.”
Nar’Allia turned and looked at him questioningly.
“It is best not to risk touching it. I suspect that this chamber is for the purposes of decontamination. I have been wondering about the tight seals on all the doors, it suddenly occurred to me that these seals being so fine must also stop any biological microbes from passing. The inhabitants of this place may have lived here for so long that they would not encounter any chemical or biological agents and their immunity to such things may have degraded over time. That liquid could be some sort of biological cleanser, the system has either run dry or the nozzles have become blocked, that may well be a blessing and may have saved our lives!”
But they did not have time to worry further for all of a sudden brilliant light flooded the tunnel around them and shone powerfully for a great distance down the tunnel ahead. This illumination was a bright light coming from Tidbit’s many eyes.
They looked down the tunnel, it seemed to disappear into the far distance, at least for a good way until the light that was emanating from the many eyes of Tidbit could reach no further. Tidbit started to click-click down the tunnel so the three of them followed behind. The pace wasn’t slow, but neither was it fast. Nar’Allia could afford to look around her as they walked. Suddenly Amndo stopped and Nar’Allia offered an apology as she bumped into the back of him. But she looked toward where he was staring and her eyes met the slit features of a Startmektoken within its alcove, typical of the ones they had seen before. But this one seemed dead somehow, it was covered in a film of dust and nothing suggested that there was the merest spark of life present. Amndo shrugged and moved to catch up with Tidbit and Jonas who were by now several metres ahead down the tunnel. Nar’Allia followed the light of the staff, she looked nervously over her shoulder but nothing could be seen following them but she couldn’t see anything because of the deepening gloom that closed in behind them.
As they progressed down the tunnel they noticed that Startmektoken figures stood in their alcoves at regular intervals along the tunnel walls, Nar’Allia thought they looked like sentinels standing under cover, keeping guard at regular places along the tunnel in which they travelled. Even though they appeared to be inactive, the way that they stood completely expressionless with their cold stare made the skin on the back of Nar’Allia’s neck crawl. All of the monstrosities were covered in the dirt and grime of long ages. They had obviously not moved in an eternity of time. Every time they past one of the Startmektoken Nar’Allia stared uncomfortably at it. She was beginning to think that all the figures were in fact just rock statues. She continued to look at them, but her anxiety diminished and her confidence grew somewhat. They passed yet another of the figures, Nar’Allia looked at the slit eyes and mouth, this time, primed by her growing confidence, a bit of boredom and the playful traits of her T’Iea character, she stopped and stuck her tongue out at the tall figure standing upright within its alcove. She turned to walk on and giggled to herself, but suddenly stopped dead when she heard close behind her the sound of scraping, like the metallic screech as a fingernail was run down something hard. She slowly turned to look behind her, the Startmektoken that she had gestured so rudely to was leaning forward out of its alcove slightly, it started to twist its arms about as if trying to shake off some form of binding that kept it prisoner within the small space. But then it reached up and removed a weapon from a holster at its chest.
Nar’Allia screamed and stepped back in alarm; she looked around trying to find something to hide behind, to take cover. Suddenly the soldier seemed to break free and toppled forward falling out of the alcove and onto its knees upon the floor of the tunnel. Nar’Allia gave another shout of alarm and turned to walk swiftly back to the others. The look in their eyes confirmed to Nar’Allia that they had seen the Startmektoken. She turned to look back at it. It was now getting up off its knees, dust and debris was falling from its shoulders and other places and landing upon the tunnel floor. It now stood a full metre above Nar’Allia wh
o was backing away from the monstrosity that now stood before her. To her horror it turned its head and looked straight at her, it turned its body to face her and took a step towards where she stood. Something stopped it, held it stationary even though it was doing its best to follow after her. There was a thick tube like device pulled taught and still attaching it to the wall within its alcove. It seemed to try to move forward, jerking on the tube, but each time was stopped. The thing finally gave one great pull with its legs whilst it leant forward and there was a snapping noise. The tube parted from the Startmektoken and sprung back into the alcove, some foul looking dark red liquid poured forth from the open end of the split tube as it swung back, leaving a trail of the stuff across the floor of the tunnel. With the tube gone, the Startmektoken seemed to over balance and it fell forward, it pushed out with both hands to stop itself from falling face first onto the floor. Nar’Allia could clearly see the same red fluid running from the creatures back and down the back of its legs. This looked for all the world like a gaping sword wound and Nar’Allia gasped at the sight; she felt a kind of sadness, felt almost sorry for the creature. The Startmektoken lay there face down quivering, it lifted its head slowly and seemed to stare straight into Nar’Allia eyes, then slowly the eyes dimmed and the head fell back to the floor with a resounding clang. The creature moved no more.
Nar’Allia was aware of a movement behind her, in fear she turned her head slightly, but not daring to look in case behind her stood another Startmektoken. But out of the corner of her eyes she saw Tidbit click-click his way into her field of vision, then passing her, he headed directly towards the prostrate Startmektoken, she gasped, thinking of calling out a warning, but Tidbit walked around the still form of the Startmektoken to where it had moments before stood up from its prone position upon the floor. The floor here was slick with the red fluid mixed with dust and what looked like rusting debris. Tidbit went right up to this mess and several appendages shot out from a number of places on his underside. Nar’Allia could see what looked like several pairs of pincer-like devices, brushes, a smaller shovel-like device. It soon became clear that Tidbit was clearing the mess up that the Startmektoken had made. Nar’Allia opened her mouth; even in this situation she found Tidbit’s antics somewhat amusing. He continued to clear up the mess, oblivious to whatever else was going on around him. He even produced the light beam device again and neatly sliced up the Startmektoken into smaller pieces which he again secreted away in the hopper that seemed to take up most of his abdomen. Then something strange happened. Only the Startmektoken’s head remained lying there upon the floor, the head with a long flexible appendage trailing from where its neck would have been. Tidbit put all of his tools away accept for one pincer device, he moved over to the head and gently picked it up, obviously taking great care. As he did so a door slid open in his side, not the same one that the rest of the unfortunate soldier’s parts had been placed into. This door revealed a compartment in which were already stored several of the heads of the metal soldiers. This latest one was added to the others, placed within with great care and the door closed once more. Once the floor seemed clear and Tidbit after a final inspection was obviously satisfied with his work, he started off down the tunnel once more.
They resumed their travel down the tunnel, following close behind Tidbit as he swung his lights from one side to the other in a slow gentle rhythm.