The small party looked at the shore where all the ‘shims’ now stood in formation. It was obvious that they were not going to move far from shore. Harry motioned for them to follow him as he continued.
“Hell it took me over a decade to learn some of their color talk, and them me stupid hand signals, but I get the gist of what they be sayin’, figure they be getting most of what I sign to them.” Harry looked frustrated “I dunna get a lot of what they be tellin’ me, so they stopped trying if it didn’t concern about the trading, maybe this night I can read what I can, and sign back…and Paul can help me. He’s the Captain of that bathes-thingy they came in and says he can be a reading some color codes…guess that differs from Jan’s world.”
“Yeah we sent messages with heliographs in the old days, even some with various colors, but it’s mostly forgotten now radios and the ilk were invented.” Jack nodded still a bit puzzled what he had to do with all of this.
Paul smiled in the moonlight as he chimed in “Isn’t it amazing that we all came from the same planet, just different realities? I mean look at them…they are stunning.”
Jack looked at the ‘shims’ and then back to Paul and laughed “Let’s not piss off the fishies, ok?”
Paul nodded “Agreed, if they can live in a sea filled with those nasty things…” he pointed to a huge yacht-sized shape with teeth large enough to glint in the moonlight “if they can live with those things all these centuries, I’d just as soon not antagonize them. I know in the past the Mayan’s traded with them, from what they told Harry…he thinks…”
“Aye lads, but there was some kind of war, or something that went on and the shims began to stay away from humans. I dunna know what, but they dunna want to talk about it.” he looked at the shims and then back to his small group.
“But me friends, I be thinkin’ we best not piss them off.”
Jack nodded to the globes and the lance-like poles others held “Perhaps we should let them explain…or Harry talk and we listen as I doubt that all of us could make it back to safety should they turn on us.”
The monstrous dark shape glided close to shore as possible and with it brought three more shims on its back, and with a loud bellowing sound slid back beneath the waves.
Jack muttered “Jesus, do they control that sea creature?” he looked at Paul “Do you think that thing can come up on land if they called it?”
Paul nodded…
“I have no idea my friend, so I have to agree with Harry, pissing them off would be a bad idea.”
Chapter 22.
Harry had them hold back as he walked toward the shim position and made several gestures and the shims replied with colorful light patterns that ran the course of their stripes like a moving, colorful ticker. Needless to say everyone was stunned by the beauty on the dimly lit beach. The shims had formed precise ranks. Harry walked up to the creatures that appeared to be porpoise like beings with leathery skin that glistened in the lighting they held aloft.
He motioned for Paul and after several minutes Paul returned shaking his head in dismay.
“No way, my friends, these beings undulated far too fast for me to grasp without years of study. In the past of my world, we used light colors for code…these creatures talk way too fast for me to even start to grasp what they are saying.” he nodded back to Harry who was still hand signing in his own crude form “hell, he’s the expert of communications with these things he calls shims. Their communication abilities are too advanced for me, and Harry can’t keep up.”
“Aye…” Harry replied over his shoulder as he motioned them forward and formed a small group surrounded by a semicircle of shims “they always seemed like they were trying to talk to me but…”
The semicircle parted and a large well adorned male stepped through “Careful lads this is what I think is some sort of sub-chief or medicine man.”
This shim was darker in complexion and slightly taller than the ones that appeared to be some sort of body guard or perhaps an honor guard. He walked with a steady stride and in the dark could have passed for a human, but for his webbed hands and feet. Once into the light Coi and Jack were stunned at the elegant facial features. Huge black eyes and slightly furrowed brow highlighted a slightly pointed nasal area, and almost human-like lips; but much wider. The teeth however were a combination of tearing shark-like teeth and what appeared to be molars toward the rear as it tried to mimic the human smile.
“Appears to be omnivorous.” Paul commented as it neared slowly.
It held out his hand so the humans could observe it, touch it, but it was Jack that gently clasped its webbed hand and turned it to shake it slowly as not to alarm it…and a wide grin appeared as the shim gripped his hand and returned the shake.
Slowly it gently touched Jack’s arm, and then reached out a webbed finger and touched his face. The sides of the shim began to flash in multicolored bursts of light as others behind it returned the signals. Slowly it touched Coi and Paul as Harry quickly related that they had done the same to him decades before and occasionally since, as if they had hoped for something different. Every time it came back to Jack and repeated.
Nearly ten minutes passed and finally it stopped whatever it was trying to do and turned. There was a strange rumbling sound that they felt more than heard. The shims parted and another, equally tall, creature walked slowly through. Although the same in appearance, it differed by a large bulbous mass of smooth skin over the eyes, a strange dome-like structure similar to the beluga whale back on Jack’s earth.
It stopped before Jack and looked at who the group had assumed was their medicine man. There were a series of flashes and the newcomer looked at Harry and flashed.
“Aye lad, the bonnie beastie wants to do something to ya.” Harry looked concerned but not alarmed “They flashed the sign of pain, and the light pattern they use for talk…” he shrugged “Laddie, I believe the beasties want to try to try to talk to you…in some way they never tried with me.” his face changed “Ahhhhh… Lad, I think they be wantin’ to use the wind on ya. They tried decades ago on me, but it made me faint… I dunna think they be wantin’ ta hurt ya lad, but be warned.”
Jack slowly pulled his hand from Coi’s concerned grip and smiled.
“It’ll be ok baby. If it means that somehow I can get everyone back home, pain or not…” he glanced over to the awaiting creature and back to his friends.
“I must try if it will give us answers.”
Jack stepped forward and nodded; the creature acted as if understood. It slowly reached both hands out and grasped Jack’s head and slowly moved its head so it was tightly was pressed to Jack’s forehead.
Before it did another thing, it backed its head away and looked closely into Jack’s eyes. Seeing no fear it pressed its head against Jack’s.
There was a deep rumbling sound and everyone could see that Jack was beginning to feel pain, yet he waved them off.
“No! Let it go on…head ache…feel my teeth rattling.” he chuckled “Not too bad and…” There was a moderately high blast of sound followed by something that literally cause them all to feel something…and the creature backed off and motioned to the water.
“I think this thing is trying to communicate to me by telepathy…but it…” he rubbed his head vigorously “…don’t think it works in open air.” He followed the creature into the nearly wave less freshwater sea and followed it as it stood in chest high water.
Slightly taller than Jack’s six foot plus frame, it bent to touch foreheads once again. Jack took a deep breath and they vanished beneath the surface as several others gathered around to form a ring of light. There was a burst of water as the shim surfaced holding Jack’s limp body in its arms as the others rushed forward. The warriors formed a wall between the humans and Jack and the communicator lowered Jack to the cool sandy beach and put his head a foot from Jack’s. There was lower rumblings that seemed almost soothing and slowly Jack began to move. As the beautiful Coi slid to her knees in the lapp
ing waters to cradle Jack on her lap, the communicator stood, nodded, and turned to slip beneath the dark waters. All but three followed suit and as the one that appeared to be the leader flashed colors at Harry, the final three slowly slid into the waters and the humans were alone.
Harry stooped and smiled “The boss beastie said something about rest and I think he’d be a telling us that Jack will know…uh, see maybe…but he must sleep.” Harry grinned at the stunned and groggy Jack “I think we best be helpin’ the poor lad up and get him off ta bed.”
As it turned out Jack felt like he had been not only drugged, but drunk as well as his feet fumbled to find the ground as they lifted him to his feet and when they did, he only accomplished to drag one foot at a time.
Harry threw one of Jack’s arms around his neck and Paul did the same on the other side as Coi looked for anything in their path that might trip them. Jack could barely speak…
“Jesus…it…he…she…awww…I don’t know…fuck me…my head…someone…what hit…me?”
“Hush laddie ye not be tryin’ to talk until ye get some rest.” he chuckled in his deep Scottish voice “But I be thinkin’ that ye had a dose of something stronger than our homemade rum.”
They piled into the basket and were hoisted to the top of the mesa where Jack was hustled off to a rather nice stone building that was reserved for royalty when they visited. As it turned out Coi and her dad had a temple-home, on all eleven mesas of their civilization just to have a place to stay. They weren’t large, but comfortable and overly adorned in bright colors, and by Jack’s reactions, lamps were removed until the room was mostly dark.
For nearly three days Jack drifted in and out of consciousness, muttering sometimes incoherently, other times he was quite lucid for the short time he was awake. But on day three, he bounded out of bed and quickly plopped back down as Coi rushed to his side.
His head still spun, but slowly he, with Coi’s steady arms holding him, got to his feet and was ushered into a comfortable sitting area. A splendid breakfast was served and he thought that he would never stop eating. All the time he stuffed his face, Harry, Paul, and now Doc and Ed had come to hear what Jack had pushed into his head.
Jack washed down the last of some rather tasty and lightly fermented berry juice as everyone was seated and the beverages were poured for them.
Jack rubbed his face, sighed, and stared at his friends. He put his arm around Coi and smiled thoughtfully…
“Boy oh boy…guys…you have no idea.”
Of course the anthropologist of the group had to be the first to start questioning, but Ed barely got a half sentence out when Jack waved for him to stop.
“Please guys, let me toss this shit out as it comes out of my head. It’s like their…ummm communicator? Yeah, communicator is the best description I can give for that shim…SHIT!” he rubbed his furrowed brow.
“Let me start where I can, and let’s see what rumbles out. You see he sped fed me…” he looked at Paul, who’s time line fit as closely to Jack’s people than anyone of the other races.
“Burst information…Jesus, guys, I can barely decompress this crap any faster than when I was sleeping; it’s what I can remember, so bear with me and…” he grinned “I’ll probably leave a bunch of info out that I’ll get to later…but here goes.”
Everyone braced for an outburst of massive amounts of information, but Jack slowly took another swallow of the tasty breakfast wine-juice, smiled and slowly began...
“I’m sure we all had some ideas about these creatures when we saw them, Harry here probably knew them best, but all those decades…”
Harry grunted “Hell lad, all those years and they never tried to talk to me the way they did to you.”
“They couldn’t Harry, you weren’t of their time…reality.”
“Whoa!” Doc sputtered “That would mean that those things are from our reality?”
Jack slowly nodded “Sit back and listen gentlemen…and my lovely princess. I shall tell you a tale that I barely believe myself.
These shims…and that’ll have to do as I cannot pronounce the name they call themselves and lacking many words in our language, I’ll have to come up with descriptions of names of my own choosing to fill in the blanks.”
“Gotcha laddie” Harry grinned and leaned back on the plush cushions, in his meaty hand was a cup of a much stronger wine, than Jack’s..
“Our scientists were so wrong about evolution.” he grinned at Ed and Doc “No offence guys. You see we always figured the dinosaurs crawled out of the primordial ooze, evolved, and so forth. What no one ever figured that just perhaps some life stayed on the oceans and evolved, paralleling life on the ground.
The communicators’ and there are more than one of them, their job is to store all of the shim history…sort of like a living memory bank. Of course no living thing can store everything so it is more of a history book synopsis.
The shims had a rather advanced civilization and found that not only could they live at the different pressures, but on land for up to a week at a time. Of course it was far too dangerous for them to do anything other than a quick look around with the dinosaurs and all.
There are different castes, the ones with the bulging foreheads can send extremely deadly sonar-like blasts of directional sound to stun or kill, but not in open air as you all saw the other night.”
“Dinna do ya too well last night laddie.” Harry grinned.
“Aye Harry, that creature could have killed me from a hundred yards out if it had wanted to. Eventually even the prehistoric sea creatures learned to stay away and taught their offspring to fear, so the shims lived in harmony, and evolved into a wise and peaceful race. Their technology was far beyond what ours is today.”
“And they kept their secret very well.” Doc added.
“No they didn’t Doc, guys it didn’t end happily for the shims. As they tell it, they had no knowledge of the stars and one day communications could be heard as they were relayed around the globe. Screams of boiling seas, of pressure waves tearing, rending, and destroying. Only the cities that were deep and cold were spared and far away from the originating calls for help. The waters near the surface became hot and unlivable.”
“My God! The meteorite that killed the dinosaurs!” Ed muttered loudly.
“Actually guys, there was some mention that there were calls to look to the heavens the nights before the apocalypse. Some said the skies were full of large falling lights…ummm, stars? I think there was a giant meteor shower and Earth was in its path. We didn’t get hit by one or two large meteors, but hundreds of them…and probably one big one…or two. I got images of a large one at first, and think as it got closer to the planet, it broke apart and pretty much killed off everything up top that couldn’t shelter in caves or whatever to protect themselves.”
“And the shims were cushioned and safe below in the cold waters of the trenches.” Paul stated as almost a question.
“Only momentarily Paul. The waters became silt filled as debris rained down to stain the world’s oceans. The shims had advanced technology as I said. They had a transporter of some sort that they were working on to teleport each other and things to the other side of the planet…” Jack grinned “They didn’t have planes, and swimming takes a lot of effort…especially when moving tons around, you can only imagine how slow it would be.
One of their scientists, decided that perhaps he could change the frequencies of this experimental portal and create a warp to an alternate reality where they could live in peace at the bottom of another world’s oceans.” Jack took another slug of wine and sighed “But I’m guessing that their device wasn’t perfected and probably hasty decisions were made, but the portal was fired up anyhow...guess they had little choice with their water becoming polluted with silt. There was mention of a second device that not only came through the portal, but found dry land, the waterfall, and this lovely sea beyond…I think it came back through the portal.”
“WHAT?” s
everal sputtered loudly. Paul finished everyone’s thoughts “If it came back, then…”
“It gets better gang. They found several things; and the first being that water does not come through the portal, just as air does not.”
“Probably has something to do with being base elements.” Doc added.
“That’s what they seem to think Doc. Second thing they found was those that came through could not go back, they changed somehow, why this device did not, they have no clue. The scientists wanted to send through all their equipment, and this device they had created relayed that request from those that were the first to pass through, but the seas were becoming poisoned and they poured though by the thousands…the rest died and all their technology was left behind. Many died here as they fled to the sea beyond the waterfall, snapped up by the beasts that roamed this world.” Jack sighed sadly “Imagine a civilization far beyond our expectations, wiped out in a matter of months…doomed to this existence, pretty much de-evolving to some extent. Trapped here without their technology.”
Paul nodded “Like ourselves.”
Coi nodded “and it is why my people did so well, so quickly. We had no technology like your peoples did. We created with our hands, so it was easier for us to start anew.”
“Not so with the shims.” Jack sadly added “They managed to survive, but up to this point there had been no need for the communicators to store their civilization’s knowledge, it was all recorded somehow. So shims started relating things as they knew them and the guys with the big heads started being the history keepers. I think they were here ages before Coi’s people came.”
Coi sat there looking so sad Jack had to ask, and Coi sadly blurted out what she knew.
“Centuries ago my people attacked them from the small settlements they had built on the seashores. They feared them, hunted them…ate them…”
Ed nodded sadly “And the war began.”
Coi nodded sadly “It’s a dark secret…I never put the old one’s stories together until now. By the gods…we ate them,” she looked at her love through tear stained eyes “and yet they traded with my people…and Harry’s.”
Jurassic Portal Page 15
