almost reach out and grab a fistful of leafy fronds. Shockingly, the forest seemed alive with movement, it being alternately revealed and concealed by flashing illumination overhead interrupted by rapidly contrasting darkness.
He then realized the ethereal glowing was cast by the movement of the sun by day and the moon and stars by night outside this despondent place. The perceived motion of the vegetation he deduced to be the rapid passage of the Earth’s time causing, from his perspective inside the time-bubble, gently swaying leaves to appear to be in high-speed movement, as though their branches were in the clutch of a violent grasp and being shaken like a dog shaking a snake.
Peenemünde told him how the gray men dragged her father through the portal as soon as they arrived and she never saw him again. Many slaves were taken thus, she said, but the gray-backs maintained a population of some two-thousand for their needs in the city for use as interpreters for new captives until they could be instructed in the language of Deneb, for manning the mines and as personal attendants to the gray-backs.
In this colony on Earth these creatures lived like kings, never lifting a finger to perform the slightest chore, with everything being accomplished by natives captured on this planet. Slaves were also kept for various other uses, she informed him, things hinted at in hushed whispers – things the girl seemed reluctant to discuss or reveal.
When Erik asked her about the beasts that chased him through the forests to the steps of the city she told him the Denebians brought the monsters here from their own world, creatures they adapted for life beyond the sphere of influence – the purple loknovarloks. These they released into the valley to not only discourage escape on the part of any slave who managed to slip his restraining ring but also to drive quarry toward the city. The girl informed him the only reason he’d lived to make it to the front gate was due to the fact these beasts were trained to thwart and discourage escape attempts - not to prevent someone from making their way here from the outside.
He’d already suspicioned the clever beasts had herded him in the direction of the city and, their job done, they’d returned to the forest to await the next blundering explorer to scale the great heights of the cliffs surrounding their domain. Peenemünde also told him these creatures must needs have their numbers frequently augmented. Outside the sphere of influence of their home star their lives were greatly shortened and so they perished rapidly from the dissolution of old age, a process even the arcane science of the Denebians might only briefly stem.
He asked the girl if a similar sphere of influence existed on the other side, a condition which should have rendered the passage of the gray inhabitants of Deneb improbable were the Earth’s time pace rendered in a similar fashion there as was Deneb’s here. The girl told him the creatures believed the portal originated on their planet and because of that reason no similar sphere of disrupted time existed on their side. It was a condition Erik lamented, but one he found interesting to know.
The time spent in her quarters while she tutored him in the language of Deneb were the only moments of their gloomy lives they looked forward to with expectation. This particular day had been a demanding one for Erik, with he and Argos having shuttled more than fifty loads of ore to the surface between them. His Denebian escort marched him to the girl’s quarters and there left him alone with her while they sought entertainment elsewhere. Of late they’d been relying on her for a report of his progress. For this he was thankful as he saw a distinct downturn in the number of beatings he must endure.
“What do they want with us, Peenemünde?” Erik was weary – wearier than he could remember feeling in quite a while. And his state of exhaustion made him irritable. “And why do they need so much raw ore? They had us mining a quartz today – not gold, not platinum, not diamond; just worthless rock.”
The fact he was bone weary wasn’t the only thing causing him to feel moody. After that first kiss where they’d been pulled apart by their Denebian guards the girl had become cool and aloof, telling him it mustn’t occur again. Fearful he’d be harmed, she’d kept him strictly at arm’s length ever since – a situation he found maddening.
“They want us for what they can take from us, Erik,” she said. “They already sap our strength and take our lives. If they could strip our humanity I have no doubt they’d take that as well. As to the ore, I have no idea. They’re mostly secretive about what they do – as if they were gods and considered their thoughts so lofty they found it a waste of time to enlighten us about anything.”
“Well, it would certainly be a waste of time as far as I’m concerned because I could care less what they do with it,” he replied sulkily. “I’m just sick of digging it for them.”
“At other times they go on about themselves,” the girl continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “as if to illustrate the delta between their knowledge and our own lack thereof. They do like to preen about their vaunted intelligence.”
The girl’s glance at the man lingered after he turned to peer out a window looking out over a courtyard below, her eyes pausing on his handsome profile far longer than necessary. When he turned his face in her direction she looked away quickly, appearing to be studying a sheaf of papers in which she was wont to notate his progress.
Of late she’d found her eyes drawn to the man to such an extent she found it difficult at times to focus on the work at hand – that of teaching him the language of their captors. That kiss! Try as she might she couldn’t get it out of her mind. The mere memory of it made it difficult to keep up her front of seeming disinterest.
As to the task, her pupil was in actuality picking up the language much more swiftly than anyone she’d ever tutored – absorbing it in almost miraculous fashion. He explained his natural ability to do so being due to the fact he’d learned so many languages in his youth he felt his mind had grown adapted to learning them. And for that he was glad as it gave him additional time he might spend chatting with the beautiful German girl in their native tongue where less astute pupils must needs have spent that same time studying.
Now it was his turn to study her profile. She scribbled furiously in her papers - an attempt, he guessed, to prevent him from taking any more beatings, she keeping diligent notes on his behalf. She seemed so disinterested in him now it caused him to feel slightly awkward and nervous around her, something he’d never experienced in the presence of those of the female persuasion – and he’d been in the company of quite a number of them in various situations, both public and private.
Didn’t the kiss they shared mean anything to her? Obviously not. He would risk any beating the gray-backs cared to dish out to kiss that beautiful mouth once more as long as it did not endanger her. The girl sensed his eyes upon her and began to feel the heat rise up her neck to her cheeks, hoping he didn’t notice.
While she wrote he studied her, watching her lips as she silently read back to herself what she’d written, his eyes dropping involuntarily to her exquisite décolletage. Gods, she was beautiful! Seeing her every day like this was driving him mad. He wished to take her in his arms, press her body against his own and cover that Cupid’s bow mouth with kisses. To take his mind off the trend of his thoughts he looked around her small apartment for the hundredth time while she continued to scribble in Denebian hieroglyphs, realizing an instant later this was a mistake.
The ancients who constructed the city left no writings that he’d seen but their artistry abounded. Whereas his people were prone to paint on fragile canvas that might be burned up and destroyed or stolen or sold off in desperate times, these people instead crafted beautiful murals directly over delicately carved embossments of the image in the stone, yielding a layered, dimensional effect he found striking; as such they were practically permanent fixtures. Indelibly carved and painted, protected from destruction by sun and rain, they were as bright and colorful today as they’d been ten thousand years ago when they were created.
Erik was a man of the world; he’d seen firsthand
works of art fashioned by the skilled hands of those generally accepted as the chiefs of their trade. Seeing these murals, however, he realized that only now did he truly look upon creations painted by master artisans for which no comparison might be drawn for pure dynamism and scope and lifelikeness. They exuded such quality of depth and realism he felt as though he might step into the wall and join the players depicted in the various scenes which took place thousands of years in the past.
As he looked again at the vividly detailed murals, however, he recalled he would have to look elsewhere to cool his ardor than to the walls of the chambers of Peenemünde. Whatever sultress lived here in times gone by had had painted on the walls of this suite what was obviously her favorite activity, and that in life-size depictions. Everywhere he looked he found recreated the arousing, animalistic enactments upon which he specifically sought to prevent his mind from dwelling. To step into any scene of these would be to step into ecstasy.
“A rather stimulating choice of decoration,” he remarked, stressing the verb.
At the sound of his voice the girl swiftly looked in his direction, not needing much of an excuse to once again