Agriarctos shrugged. “He doesn’t tell me his plans.”
“Whose neurocache do you think he wants?”
The Ursan seemed annoyed. “I said, he doesn’t tell me his plans.”
I sighed. “You think he’ll really let us go if I do this?”
Another shrug. “But he won’t if you don’t.”
“Thanks,” I said without enthusiasm.
Agriarctos shifted his gun so it was pointing at my chest, and settled into a more comfortable position in his jump seat. He looked out at the stars and avoided my gaze.
“Have you ever been to this RAM?” I asked casually.
“No.” He continued to look out the viewscreen. “It’s not open to the public.”
“I’ll say. The public probably hasn’t ever heard of it.” I admitted, “They never said anything about it at Mingferplatoi.”
“They don’t tell you a lot of things at Mingferplatoi.” Agriarctos was clearly a cynic.
“What I don’t get,” I continued, “is why Benedict just can’t access the neurocache he needs through his Ergal. I mean, when I muted as this guy from Earth Core, or, as you even, my Ergal got me the right DNA and neurocache.”
Agriarctos turned his snout in my direction. “You ask too many questions.” He took out his own Ergal. “Let’s go over what we have to do.”
* * *
Our plan was for Agriarctos to create a distraction that would allow me to find and access the RAM. I’d kind of expected he’d mega and do a King Kong on Zygint Central, but Agriarctos had other ideas. Still keeping his stun gun trained—well-trained—on me, he activated his Ergal. His hulky Ursan torso slowly morphed into the lanky body of a tall lean youth dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. Agriarctos had now Ergaled, or more likely, muted, into Spud!
“Oh, no,” was all I could gasp. “You’re not gonna get away with this.”
Agriarctos/Spud was confident. “You’re much more likely to succeed in your mission with me,” he pointed at his human form, “than with … me. After all, we’re catascope partners. It’s natural for us to be together.”
“The accent’s supposed to be English,” I said, shaking my head. “Oh, sure, this’ll really work.”
“Okay. Pip, pip, jolly good, cheerio!” “Spud” teased. “How’m I doing?”
I buried my head in my hands for the second time today. Doomed again.
* * *
We had an uneventful hour until we approached Andromeda’s border. I finally had to acknowledge that Agriarctos did have a point. “Spud” would have an easier time getting into Central. Easier than we were having getting back into Andromeda past the Gliesers. Despite my advance comm, Gil Pesci was very persistent about grilling us this time, even when I tried to reassure him that we were just fine and simply piloting a relaxed flight back to Zyga.
“You were in the vicinity of HD5924,” he insisted. His holo showed him standing in front of a starmap.
“Just doing a little sightseeing with my partner.” I nodded at “Spud” sitting next to me. Agriarctos waved.
“We’ve had reports of Benedict operating out of that quadrant in M82. Did you see him?”
“No, no,” we both said simultaneously. “We’re fine. Just piloting a relaxed flight back to Zyga,” I repeated.
“So you don’t know what happened to the planet?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as innocently as possible, my heart skipping a beat.
“Our scans of the sector show that HD5924 is no longer there.”
“Spud” piped in with a British burr, “Maybe a black hole …?”
Hmm, the accent was passable after all.
“No,” Gil responded. “No disturbances in the area. We recorded that the planet flew out of its orbit 6.8 hours ago, headed in our direction. Then, 1.7 hours later we received a general distress call from its tracked location. Twenty-seven minutes ago it disappeared completely from our scanners.”
I looked at “Spud” in alarm. Benedict’s planet-ship had disappeared?! How? Where? My friends!
Agriarctos did not seem distressed. He ran his fingers over our scanning display. “Checking.”
I waited anxiously. If the Benedicts “vessel” had vanished, my friends were gone as well. They could even be—
“Bollocks!” cried “Spud,” his fingers still playing over the holo.
Dead … all dead…
“Got ‘em!” “Spud” grew a self-satisfied grin. “They’re in the sixth octet of M81.” He raised a hand, adding, “Don’t ask me how …”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Gil and “Spud” spent the next few minutes talking about cutting-edge propulsion systems and warped space, but finally we got the green light to enter Andromeda and resume our trip. Now it was up to me to keep my friends alive.
* * *
Zyga—present day
The other checkpoints were easier to go through. Our catascope creds were good enough to get us through routine planet screens, and we had a relatively pleasant entry into Zyga’s atmosphere. We landed at the largest spaceport in Mikkin, and micro’ed the Nautilus into Spud’s pocket.
We Ergaled to Zygint Central and entered the building with a desperate air of confidence. Fortunately, as mutes, the WHO scans easily cleared us, and we were admitted to the lobby of the spire structure.
“Now what?” I whispered to Agriarctos, who was busy studying his Spud-style cell phone Ergal.
“It’s this way,” he said quietly and motioned for me to follow him to a bank of lifts.
Along with others in the lobby, we entered the lift and levved up almost to the top of the spire. The trip took several minutes—we had to stop and let out passengers on so many floors—but by the time we reached the top, the two of us were alone in the car.
The doors opened on a barren lobby, but Agriarctos held me back. “Not here. Wait.”
Curious, I waited for the doors to close again. Agriarctos had his Ergal out again and was activating it in some way I couldn’t interpret. As soon as the doors clicked together, we shot down as rapidly as the descent I so hated into Terra Core.
I grabbed the railings of the lift to keep from falling, and from floating up due to the loss of gravity from the sharp drop. We kept going down for a distressingly long time. “We should be arriving at Earth by now,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Spud” didn’t laugh or comment. He kept monitoring his Ergal intently until we started to slow down. The car finally came to a surprisingly smooth stop, and its doors opened again to reveal, astonishingly, a lush garden reminiscent of the meadows around Benedict’s disappearing cottage. We stepped out onto a wide path among the multi-colored flowers and shrubs. I felt that I’d walked into a greenhouse designed by a graphics editor with an infinite number of tints.
I had an irresistible urge to sneeze. And then I realized that the flowers had no fragrance. I reached out and touched one. It felt real. Breaking off a stem, I noted that liquid oozed out from the broken ends. I put the flower to my nose. Nope, no smell. Weird.
Agriarctos was already some distance down the pathway and waving for me to catch up. I set off at a jogger’s pace, amazed and troubled by my surroundings. Was this a holo? Were we in an Enclave missing from my Zygography upload? Were we even still on Zyga?
“Stay with me,” “Spud” barked. “We are not on holiday.”
I snorted. “I would sure like to know where we are.”
Agriarctos led us at a good clip before answering. “If you must know, Nejinsen Medical Center.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Nejinsen?! Nejinsen’s in Aheya!” A city hundreds of miles from Mikkin!
“Tell me something I don’t know,” “Spud” responded, before softening his tone and adding. “We came in through the back door.”
“You have been here before…,” I guessed as we started forward again.
Agriarctos nodded. “With Benedict.” His voice was a whisper. “I hope we’ll succeed this time.”
<
br /> * * *
I soon noticed that we had started to climb, and that the terrain and vegetation were changing. Before long, we had left the garden and entered sparse woods, and eventually, a denser forest of equally odorless pines. The path on which we were hiking was now blanketed with scattered twigs that crunched under our feet as we trudged onward. Having slept little in the past few days, I was starting to feel the fatigue, and hoping we would either arrive at our destination soon or stop to rest.
Finally, I told Agriarctos I had to take a break. There was a slight clearing in front of us surrounded by the pine trees, and I insisted we pause for a few minutes. I found a patch of cool moss and plunked down to relax. “Spud” sat next to me on a sturdy log, leaning against a thick tree trunk and closing his eyes.
I yawned and laid down, relishing the refreshing wetness of the dew against my neck. As I looked up, I saw streams of light breaking through the tall pines above me, forming a vault, a cathedral of luminosity, which looked very beautiful and familiar. And I remembered. This was the forest I had awakened to in my vision in my—Benedict’s—cell.
I sat up quickly. If this was the same forest, was there a chance I would I stumble upon Benedict—and my brother—up ahead?
Chapter 23
Apocalypsi
I jumped to my feet, pulling “Spud” off the log on which he was sitting. “I know this place. I’ve been here before—I think. We have to go see! We have to find him!”
“Spud” raised a “Spud-ian” eyebrow—gosh, Agriarctos was a good actor—and, groaning, got himself up as I took off down the forest path. The road wound through the trees just as I had seen it in my vision. At this pace, we would soon reach the clearing where I’d had the last glimpses of my brother. Agriarctos lumbered along behind me, his expression now filled with concern.
Finally, the grove of trees broke open to reveal the field of my dreams. “There it is!” I shouted as we drew closer, pointing at the tall grass.
Agriarctos looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Well, yes, but—how did you know?”
“Because I saw Benedict send … a traveler to another brane through a portal here.” I motioned for “Spud” to pull out his Ergal. “Scan. There has to be one.”
Agriarctos reluctantly complied, scanning the surroundings with his Ergal. I could barely contain my excitement. My brother had been wearing a Somalderis, a Fleece. Might he have launched to another dimension from this very spot—and survived the trip? If so, would we—would I—ever be able to see him again?
“No.” Agriarctos shook his head. “No portal here. I think you must be mistaken.”
I crash landed—hard. Standing frozen, barely able to breathe, I couldn’t speak for several minutes. I had so desperately hoped that in this field of my dreams I could find a path that would lead me to John. Or at least to the truth about him and his fate.
Patience is the champion’s best tool. His voice once again echoed in my ears. It took all my strength but I finally responded with a simple “Yeah …”
“But,” the Ursan added, “we are only a few yards away from RAM entry. Through that back door I was talking about.” He pulled out my Ergal from his back pocket and handed it to me with a forced smile. “You’ll need this.”
I took the Ergal without a word and, avoiding his eyes, slipped it into my jeans. Fighting back tears, I followed Agriarctos numbly to the opposite edge of the empty field and, when he reached out his hand for mine, I took it and waited for him to Ergal us into the RAM.
* * *
We M-fanned in a distinguished lobby under a grand cupola. The marble floor felt hard under our feet after our recent walk through the soft grass. The stun guns against our ribs felt pretty hard, too.
We were surrounded by at least ten Zygfed guards, with orange Zygfed Sentinel Corps insignia on their red uniforms. Members of the elite unit were selected from the best of the Zygint pool. It was a goal I myself had once hoped I’d achieve. But, you had to prove yourself in the field for several years before you would even be considered. It’s funny. Benedict would’ve been a shoo-in for Sentinel Corps if he hadn’t gone against the Omega Archon. Now he was their sworn enemy.
I kept my tone light. “We’re Zygint. Go ahead and scan us.” I suggested in Zygan.
The team leader, a massive Chidurian, looked directly into my eyes. “Catascopes are not authorized in this area. What is your business here”—he scanned me quickly with his Ergal—“Rush?”
Agriarctos jumped in. “Benedict,” he started, to my alarm. Fortunately, after all eyes had turned to him, he continued, “has infiltrated Zygint, and we think he’s gotten into the RAM.”
A murmur of distress spread among the Sentinels. Their Chidurian leader, however, didn’t seem entirely convinced. “I will, of course, comm to check.”
“Of course.” “Spud” nodded genially. “It is expected.”
The Chidurian gestured, and the remaining Sentinels stepped back a foot or so, still pointing their stun guns at us. I took a deep breath, my eyes glued to Agriarctos for my cue. It was nice to have those guns out of our ribs.
As the Chidurian M-fanned a comm holo, “Spud” took a deep breath as well. Exactly three seconds after exhaling, “Spud” exploded! Bits of flesh and blood spattered over me. I grabbed my Ergal and X-fanned as the Sentinels stood momentarily frozen in shock. Agriarctos—or what was left of him—was now on his own.
* * *
I M-fanned into a massive arched chamber that stretched endlessly before me. The walls on each side were white, and seemed to radiate a soft glow that lit the infinite tunnel ahead. The light was soothing, and I basked in its comfort for a few moments, then, aware of my mission, I activated my Ergal and let it do its thing.
I was levved quickly forward for five long minutes, accelerating faster and faster, the air whipping my face as my speed rapidly topped one hundred miles per hour. I flashed back to the afternoon John had taken me out on his motorcycle a few months before he’d left. Sans our helmets, we’d done the usual back roads in the rolling Appalachian hills until we hit a distant valley with a straight stretch of highway and John had floored it. I’d held onto him for dear life, and whooped with joy as we practically flew over the asphalt. I remember watching the speedometer going eighty, ninety, one hundred, and feeling the rush of wind across my body. I knew then that when I got older I was going to learn to fly. I just never imagined I would be doing it by myself.
My Ergal finally stopped me—a little too fast for my stomach—next to the white wall on my left. I looked at the wall more closely. Its surface seemed slightly rough, like the popcorn ceiling in George’s ancient dorm room. Strangely, the roughness seemed to be growing, the wall turning into a sea of white bubbles. I realized I was being micro’ed at a rapid clip.
As I became smaller and smaller, I was able to see more and more detail in the wall. To my relief, the process finally stopped when I got to the level of several microns, the resolution of an electron microscope. And that’s when I saw them. Lining each wall, to my shock, were thousands and thousands of brightly glowing spheres.
The spheres looked to me like basketball-sized versions of the spheres I had viewed in the giant chamber the first time I had been dragged to Benedict’s planet-ship. Could those spheres have been stolen neurocaches? If so, where had they gone when I had returned to the chamber with Matshi and Spud? To another brane, perhaps?
I was still clutching my Ergal in my hands, and I abruptly felt it start to vibrate. The vibrations caused my hands to tremble violently. At the same time, one of the balls directly opposite me started to vibrate and glow with a greater intensity. It soon resonated in rhythm with my Ergal, and, finally, visibly startling me, it flew off of the wall and attached itself to my Ergal.
“O-kay,” I said to myself, trying to stay calm. This is creepy. The ball felt soft, warm, and soothing against my arms and chest. I felt its vibrations slowly become synchronized with my pounding heartbeat. Bum-pum, bum-p
um, bum-pum. Really creepy.
My mission accomplished, I expected my Ergal would swing me around, mega me, and shoot me back to the entrance. However, as soon as my Ergal stopped vibrating, I—and my new friend, the sphere—started moving forward again. After another few minutes of swift travel, we were stopped near another wall of spheres, this time on my right. The Ergal once again started to vibrate, and I waited, expecting another chosen sphere to respond and join our party.
Instead, all the spheres seemed to be growing larger—or was I getting smaller again? The sphere I had cradled in my arms became much larger than me. Fortunately, it was feather-light, and it floated next to me, hovering and shadowing me as I moved. The spheres in front of me had also grown, and I felt myself being towed towards one in particular. That sphere was now positioned directly in front of me and continued to grow until it was almost four times my size,xxx and micrometers from my face.
As I’d been able to do on Benedict’s planet, I soon found my body diffusing through this new sphere’s membrane. As I passed through, I developed an inexplicable feeling of dread. Once inside, my feathery sensation of flying quickly disappeared. I started to feel very heavy and clumsy, as if I was bound and imprisoned once again. My breathing became more labored, hampered by thick secretions in my nose and throat. My eyes now had difficulty focusing, my vision was blurry and double. I felt hunger, thirst, and a pressing urge to empty my bladder, yet, when I tried to move, my limbs jerked wildly, seemingly completely out of my control. Worst of all, I could no longer hear John’s voice, or remember his comforting words.
An auburn-haired woman, middle-aged, I’d guess, leaned into my line of sight, her expression filled with concern. She seemed, somehow, to be talking directly to me. “What’s wrong, Stacy?” the woman said tenderly. “Honey, are you okay?”
Stacy? Who is Stacy? The woman reached over and adjusted my pillow, re-positioned my arms, and then patted me on my bottom to see if my diaper was wet. Diaper?! What the hell? Where am I? What’s going on? I tried to cry for help, but I was unable to form any intelligible sounds and my voice only came out in grunts and groans. I was terrified, and, once again, tried desperately to escape this nightmare into which I had stumbled—or been led to—to no avail. I was trapped, incapacitated. A prisoner in a strange and disabled body, unable to flee. Panicked, I heard myself scream.