But the thing that stood out most about him was his personality. I know that sounds weird, especially since I had just met him and all, but right from the start I knew this guy had it all going on. He was concerned enough about Uncle Press that he went looking for him when he saw that his skimmer was anchored in quig waters, then risked himself to save my life. But he shrugged the whole thing off like it was no big deal. That was pretty cool. And the guy always looked like he was having fun. Whether it was flying underwater with his sled, or getting his skimmer ready to run, the little smile on his face made it look as if he always enjoyed whatever he was doing. You gotta like a guy like that. Bottom line, from what I had seen so far, I thought Spader was pretty cool.
“C’mon, Bobby,” said Uncle Press.
I kicked my fins and slid over toward the skimmer. Uncle Press had to pull me out of the water because I had no strength left in my arms. I laid down on the deck of the skimmer, happy to be on something solid again, even if it was just a small high-powered boat.
“You okay, Pendragon?” called Spader from his skimmer.
I struggled to sit up and pretend that I wasn’t totally out of my league here, which I was.
“I’m good,” I shouted, not convincingly. Then added, “Real good!” as if that would make me sound better off than I was. I’m sure I didn’t fool anybody.
Spader let out a big, warm laugh. For a second I thought he was laughing at me, but he wasn’t.
“Don’t you worry, mate, been there myself. Many times,” he said. “We’ll fix you up spiff soon as we get back, don’t you worry.”
“Get back where?” I asked.
Spader now stood at the controls of his skimmer, as did Uncle Press. I saw that they each began flipping toggle switches. As they did, the skimmers came to life. I heard a slight whine of engines, then in turn, each of the outriggers that had been sticking up in the air began their descent into the water.
I also saw that Spader and Uncle Press had both grown tense. They each stood stiffly at their control columns while throwing quick, furtive glances at each other. Something was up. I didn’t like this.
“It’s a wonderful place,” continued Spader. “You’re going to love it.”
“I’ll second that,” added Uncle Press. “Spader lives on the most beautiful habitat on Cloral.”
The two were speaking calmly, but their body language said they were anything but calm. What was going on? Was there another quig zeroing in on us? Each of the four outriggers was now underwater and I could hear the low hum of the skimmer’s engines waiting to be told what to do.
“Nice of you to say, Press,” replied Spader. “Last one to Grallion buys the sniggers?”
“Snickers?” I said. “They have candy bars here?”
“Sniggers, Bobby. It’s a drink,” answered Uncle Press. Then to Spader, “But I don’t know the way.”
“No worries,” laughed Spader. “Follow me!”
With that Spader gunned his skimmer and shot forward.
“Hang on!” shouted Uncle Press and hit the throttle.
Our skimmer took off and I got rocked back on my butt. I wished he had given me a little more warning. Now it all made sense. These guys were playing with each other. They wanted to race. Okay, I could deal with that. I scrambled to my knees and got into the seat behind Uncle Press. Our two air globes were rolling around on the deck so before I could look to see where we were going, I grabbed them to make sure they wouldn’t go flying overboard.
We were moving fast—faster than I’ve ever traveled over the water. I looked down at the pontoons and saw that they weren’t just for balance. They were below the water and I saw a jet of water coming out of each one. They were the skimmer’s engines. The skimmer didn’t have a rudder or anything, so when Uncle Press turned the control bars, it would send more or less power to either pontoon. That’s how the thing was directed. Very cool.
I looked up ahead and saw that Spader had a pretty decent head start. Uncle Press was intense at the controls, but I could tell by the look on his face that he was enjoying this. I didn’t blame him. I was too.
“What is Grallion?” I asked.
Oddly enough, I didn’t have to shout. The engines of the skimmer weren’t loud like a powerboat. Instead they gave off a steady, solid hum. Rather than the loud drone of an engine, most of what I heard was the hull flashing across the water. The water was amazingly smooth too, so we shot across it like ice skates on glass.
“Grallion is the habitat where Spader lives,” said Uncle Press without taking his eyes off our adversary.
“What’s his deal?” I asked.
“He’s what they call an aquaneer. All the habitats have a crew that keeps them moving safely over the water. It’s an important job. Spader’s good at it. He’s a good guy, too.”
“Yeah, but is he the Traveler from Cloral?”
“Look!” he shouted.
He pointed ahead of us and there on the horizon I saw our destination. At first it was just a hazy gray smudge that could have been an island. But the closer we got, the more I saw that the outline was too regular to be an island. No, this thing was man-made. And it was big. This was Grallion.
Uncle Press gunned the throttle and easily caught up to Spader. I then realized what his strategy was. We had to lay back until we saw Grallion. But now that we knew where it was, the race was really on.
“You’ve got too much drag!” taunted Uncle Press at Spader. “We’ll beat you at three-quarters!”
“But you’ve got the extra weight, mate!” Spader shot back. “Even up!”
Both guys gunned the throttle and the skimmers charged forward even faster. We hadn’t been at full speed up till now. Unbelievable.
To be honest, I was less concerned about our race to decide who was going to buy sniggers than I was about our destination. Mark, remember the time we went to Manhattan on that school trip to visit the aircraft carrier Intrepid? It was pretty impressive, right? Well, imagine approaching the Intrepid on the water in a rowboat. Can you picture that? Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Well, now multiply the size of that aircraft carrier by about four hundred and you’d have Grallion.
I kid you not, this was a floating island. As we sped toward it, I kept thinking that we’d be there any second. But we weren’t. With each passing moment this monster barge kept on getting bigger and bigger. It was about four stories high, but that’s not where the size was. This thing they called a habitat spread out before us for what seemed like a couple of miles. Because we were approaching head-on, I couldn’t tell how far back it went, but if the front end was any indication, this thing was the size of Stony Brook.
“We’ve got him now!” exclaimed Uncle Press with glee.
I looked over to Spader’s skimmer to see we had pulled ahead by a few feet. Apparently the drag from his equipment caboose was a little bit more than the extra weight that I added to our skimmer.
“There’s the marker buoy!” Uncle Press said, pointing ahead.
I looked to see there was a buoy floating about twenty yards off from the habitat. Beyond the buoy I saw that at the water line there was some kind of seagoing entrance to the barge. The opening was large enough to pilot small crafts inside. I could even make out other skimmers in there, along with a few small boats of various shape and design.
“The buoy marks the safety zone,” added Uncle Press. “Once you pass it, you’ve got to slow down. That’s our finish line.”
We were only a few yards away from victory. I didn’t know which excited me more, knowing that we were about to win or looking up at Grallion as it loomed over us. Spader wasn’t giving up though. He coaxed a little more power out of his skimmer and pulled to within a few feet of us. This was going right down to the finish line. And . . .
We won! We passed the marker buoy first. With an exuberant “Yes!” Uncle Press killed the engine.
But Spader didn’t stop. He kept on full throttle, headed toward the water dock. All we could do
was watch him in wonder.
“Maybe he is crazy,” I said.
Uncle Press gunned the engine and followed him in, though at a safer speed. What I saw in the next few seconds was amazing. As I told you before, Spader jammed into Grallion at full throttle and full speed for these skimmers were fast. I saw a handful of dock workers go wide-eyed and scramble out of the way in anticipation of the nasty crash that was sure to follow.
Spader didn’t flinch. He drove his skimmer right toward the dock. In seconds he would be mush. But with only a few yards to spare he hit the water brakes and spun the skimmer—later he called it autorotating—into a complete 360 that killed all his speed. With a rush of water caused by his turn, he slid sideways and barely kissed the dock. Without missing a beat, he jumped out, turned back to us, made a deep bow and said, “You lose, mates.”
We pulled up slowly in our skimmer. All I could do was applaud. Forget anything they’ve ever shown on those network stunt shows, this was hands down the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
“Oh, no,” Uncle Press called out to him. He was trying to sound angry though I know he wasn’t. “We all play by the same rules. We passed the buoy first.”
“But the race was to Grallion!” answered Spader. “That buoy isn’t Grallion. Almost doesn’t count.”
Spader was laughing. So was Uncle Press. Maybe this trip to Cloral was going to be fun after all.
“Spader!” came an annoyed voice from above the dock.
We all looked up to see a woman wearing what looked like some kind of uniform standing on a catwalk above the dock. She looked ticked.
“Wu Yenza,” Uncle Press whispered to me. “Chief aquaneer.”
“Spader’s boss?” I asked.
“Yeah, Spader’s boss.”
“Uh-oh.”
Yenza looked to be in her thirties. She had short black hair and was in pretty good shape. I guess all aquaneers had to be in good shape. She wore a black outfit that was similar to Spader’s, but it had long sleeves with yellow stripes near the cuff that gave it a kind of military feel. I’d go so far as to say she was kind of hot, in an older woman way.
“Now, Spader!” shouted Yenza. She then stormed off.
Spader turned to us and gave a little shrug. He didn’t look all that nervous about the slamming he was sure to get.
“Let’s call it a tie, right, mates?” he said with a smile. “Sniggers on me at Grolo’s, soon as I can make it!”
With that he turned and bounded up the stairs that led off the dock and into the bowels of Grallion—and to deep trouble for him.
“He’s doomed,” I said.
“Nah. He’ll get yelled at and told never to be so reckless again. But they won’t do anything to him. Everyone likes Spader. He’s the best aquaneer they’ve got.”
We maneuvered the skimmer to the dock, tied it up, and stepped onto the floating platform.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“What question was that, Bobby? You’ve got so many.”
“Is Spader the Traveler from Cloral?”
Uncle Press didn’t answer right away. He busied himself getting our air globes and fins out of the skimmer. I knew he wasn’t ignoring me, but the fact that I didn’t get a simple yes or no made me nervous.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “Spader is the Traveler from Cloral.”
“I knew it!” I shouted.
“There’s just one thing. Spader doesn’t know it yet. He has no idea that he’s a Traveler. We’re going to have to tell him.”
Uncle Press grabbed our gear and walked toward the stairs. I stayed there a moment, letting those words sink in. Here I had just met a guy who seemed to love everything there was about life—about his life—and we now had the job of telling him that it was all going to change. In my short time of being a Traveler, that was the hardest thing I had to deal with—finding out that my life wasn’t what I thought it was, and having to leave it behind.
I didn’t look forward to being the one who had to bring someone else’s world crashing down around them.
JOURNAL #5
(CONTINUED)
CLORAL
From the moment I first left my home in Stony Brook, I’d been jumping from one disaster to the next. It seemed like I was always scared, or confused, or scared and confused. There were a few times when things didn’t totally suck, but for the most part I was getting slammed every time I turned around.
But after spending some time on Cloral, I am very happy to write that the next few weeks were actually pretty great, for a change. From the second we stepped onto the habitat of Grallion, I felt safe. But it was more than that. As I learned about Grallion and how the floating habitats worked on Cloral, I felt as if I had found a place that had gotten it right. The Clorans had a society and a way of life that was like a perfect machine, where every piece and every person played an important part. Everyone relied on everyone else, and they respected each other for the roles they played.
That’s not to say there weren’t problems. The Clorans weren’t mindless Disney animatrons who lived only to serve or anything like that. Far from it. They had their own opinions, and they didn’t always agree with one another. It was the big picture that they kept in perspective. There were no wars and no tension between people of different races. There didn’t seem to be any class distinction either. Meaning, though some people had more responsibility than others and got paid more salary, no one treated anyone like a second-class citizen. It was amazing.
I tried to figure out how such an ideal society could exist, when supposedly evolved societies like ours on Second Earth always seemed to be at one another’s throats. The best theory I could come up with is that it was because each and every person on Cloral faced the same big challenge—they had to deal with living on the water. Yes, they had created these amazing boat cities that made you feel as if you were on dry land, but you weren’t. You were floating. That meant anything could happen. A rogue storm could wipe out an entire city. Growing enough food to feed the entire world was an ever present worry. A simple virus could endanger an entire habitat. This was not an easy life. These people were united by a common cause—survival. Any other disputes were trivial compared to the larger challenges facing them every day.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself. Let me tell you what happened right after Uncle Press and I arrived on Grallion.
Since Uncle Press had been there before, he gave me a tour. As we climbed up from the depths of the docks, I noticed two things. One was that the inside of this barge was a labyrinth of machinery, pipes, engines, and pumps. I looked down long catwalks where workers busied themselves keeping the giant floating habitat running.
The second thing I noticed was that nothing seemed to be made out of metal. I’m not sure what the material was, I guess you would call it plastic or fiberglass or something. But all the walkways, pipes, supports, girders, and even the machines looked to be made out of the same kind of lightweight material. When we walked on the stairs, rather than the sharp clanging sound of metal, our footfalls were almost silent, as if we were walking on carpet. I guess it made sense. You have to use lightweight stuff when everything has to float. And here’s a weird thing: Even though the underbelly of Grallion looked like a vast factory, it wasn’t all that loud. You could tell the place was alive, but it wasn’t much noisier than Stony Brook Library on a busy Saturday. Pretty cool.
“What do they do here?” I asked Uncle Press as we climbed the stairs. “Do they just float around fishing and racing skimmers?”
“Every habitat has a specific purpose,” was his answer. “Some manufacture materials, others process food, some are financial centers, others mine raw materials.”
“And what about Grallion?” I asked.
“See for yourself.”
We had reached the top of the stairs, where a door opened onto the main surface. We quickly stepped out into the sun and I got my first look at Grallion. Mark, Courtney, I’m not sure I ca
n find the right words to describe it, that’s how awesome a sight it was.
First, did I say Grallion was big? Well, big doesn’t cover it. It was enormous. I felt as if I had reached dry land. But after having been below, I knew this wasn’t dry land at all. This was a vehicle, but unlike any vehicle I had ever seen. Now, are you ready for this? Stretching out in front of me for as far as I could see . . . was farmland. I swear. I saw acre upon acre of flowering plants, fruit trees, and vines heavy with colorful vegetables.
Yes, Grallion was a giant, floating farm!
“This way,” said Uncle Press, and walked off.
I didn’t move at first. I couldn’t. I wanted to get my mind around what I was seeing.
“You’ll get a better view over here,” called Uncle Press, laughing.
He knew I was blown away and he was enjoying it. I ran after him. I wanted to see more. He led me up the stairs of a tower, and from this higher vantage point I got a great view of the farms of Grallion. I saw that there were very distinct sections, broken up by walkways where farm workers could travel. There were even small electric vehicles that moved quickly and silently along roads that criss-crossed each other. To our far left I saw row after row of fruit trees. Many of them bore fruit that looked like apples and oranges, but there were trees with clusters of unfamiliar fruit as well. Some were bright green tubes that looked like balloons hanging from the branches. Other trees had great purple orbs the size of grapefruits. Others were covered with pure white fat berries. They all looked ripe and ready for picking.
Directly in front of us were rows of thousands of individual plants that grew out of the dirt. Yes, dirt. At least I think it was dirt. It was brown and looked soft, so if it wasn’t dirt, it was a good imitation. Some plants bore small fruits and vegetables, others looked as if the whole thing would be picked like lettuce, or pulled out of the ground like a carrot or a potato.