Flower-of-Sands_The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut

by Grahame R. Smith

  Chapter 26

  It was not so much a prison, rather a cage where birds and animals are prepared for some intended celebration. Nonetheless, it was comfortable, warm, with food and drink. They each had a room with a bath and shower, all in translucent, elusive greenness, everywhere rounded, like a bay.

  The garden was extensive, and from time to time bits were added. There were trees, or rather, copies of what some alien being thought trees looked like, and flowers, with shrubbery and paths and small ponds. Insects buzzed busily and small furry animals scurried. There were seats beside the ponds and water fountains.

  The sky was lost in receding white-greenness, and a pervading sweetness added to the feeling of incongruity. None of it added up. They were imprisoned in an unknown environment for an unknown purpose.

  Venetia sat beside the central pond, listening to Jalaal perform. That at least provided a suggestion of normality. Astral-La was working-out in her room. Soon she would appear, plunge into the pond, then sit under the water fountain. They had little to do, except tell each other stories and speculate as to what was happening to them.

  Time passed or stood still. Knowing which was impossible to tell. One thing was clear, there was no way out. Their world ended in the pale-green walls that surrounded them. There was no outside. Astra-La engaged the wall with her implant – nothing worked. Zero.

  ‘It’s like nothing exists outside here – as if this was all there is. But something must exist,’ Venetia said.

  ‘Do you think we are on a planet?’ Jalaal asked.

  ‘We could be, but we could be anywhere,’ Astral-La said. ‘I’ve tried using my abilities to gain some idea of where we are, and failed.’

  ‘There must be a way of finding out more,’ Venetia said.

  ‘If there is, I am open to it.’

  One day, for want of a better description, Keeper appeared high in the green wall accompanied by an entourage of beings difficult to define. Through telepathic contact with Astral-La, it asked Jalaal to perform. That was unusual. Jalaal had been playing his instrument constantly, and it was a source of comfort to the captives. But being ordered to, was new. Jalaal was reluctant.

  Keeper told Astra-La that it would have no choice other than to punish them. There were several ways, beginning with restricting their environment – half the garden disappeared and the light grew dim and cold. They would be confined to four small walls with a close to starvation diet. Lack of oxygen and an energy field that caused excruciating pain would follow. They list went on.

  Jalaal, who feared for the well-being of the women, heroically agreed to perform. He began to play and as he did so the light slowly increased and the garden reverted to its original size.

  The demands on Jalaal were considerable. He was required to play for many hours. Venetia estimated about ten, maybe more – they had no tangible way of knowing, but at the end of it, when Keeper told Jalaal to stop, Jalaal was exhausted, near to collapse, his fingers bleeding, his breathing shallow, and his pulse rapid and irregular.

  Venetia and Astral-La helped him to his room, where he flung himself onto his bed and fell instantly into a troubled sleep. Astral-la washed his face and lips and Venetia massaged his feet. They were anxious. What did these beings want? Both women had an inkling, but did not voice it to one another.

  Gradually Jalaal recovered. To the women, it seemed liked days, but without clocks or observable weather patterns it was not possible to measure time. They nursed him back to health with food, water, and loving kindness. Astral-La appeared to have healing abilities, and laid her hands on his chest for extended periods.

  Eventually, he returned to his usual self, a self that was charming, fun-loving, humorous, but, as with all three of them, a continuous sense of oppression.

  ‘It drained me in a way that I can’t describe,’ Jalaal eventually told them. ‘Normally, I can play for extended periods without getting tired, or, if I do, tired in a natural way that I quickly shake off. This was different. It seemed to demand something from my essence. It seemed to suck the life out of me.’

  ‘Dracula’s castle,’ Venetia whispered.

  ‘What?’ Astral-La responded.

  ‘Nothing … nothing special. I’m just trying to work out what these beings want. Do they want to learn how our minds, our brains work? Are we a part of a study, or worse?’

  ‘Worse is a possibility,’ Astral-La muttered thoughtfully.

  ‘How?’ Jalaal asked, looking from one to the other. ‘With me, was that an endurance test of some sort?’

  The air seemed to vibrate as if someone had sounded a giant tuning folk. All three gasped as the ceiling turned into a long funnel, a vortex of shimmering, cascading colours. The ground began to shake and the garden came in and out of focus.

  A rent appeared in the opaque wall that engulfed their habitat. Keeper stepped out of it accompanied by others like itself and beings of an entirely different nature. They seemed to be semi-corporeal and constructed of luminous rings. There were faces and eyes and a feeling of intent. Keeper began to speak in broken English.

  ‘Go to rooms and stay. Do not move until told.’

  ‘Why should we?’ Astral-La cried.

  ‘Go!’

  ‘No!’

  Keeper held up a device and Astral-La screamed in pain, falling to her knees, and retching violently. At the same time, Jalaal rushed towards Keeper intending to attack him, but collapsed in agony on the ground. Venetia stood motionless, as if paralysed. The ground heaved and the air buzzed as the vortex above became more active, creating rushes of stifling air that seared across their bodies.

  ‘Go … rooms … now!’ Keeper roared.

  Venetia helped Astral-la to her feet and then went to Jalaal who was vomiting violently. Slowly they made way to their rooms. Shaking with fear, unable to comprehend what was happening, they lay on their backs waiting for the end.

  Venetia stared at the nebulous greenness of the ceiling as it writhed and curled around her. Blobs of darker green bounced off each other, changed shape, and spun in fantastic dance routines. She could hardly move and yet something was moving inside her head, pressing, searching, exploring. It seemed to seek entry to her higher functions. It wanted her mathematics, her concepts, her understandings, her theories, and discoveries, her most lofty thoughts, her dreams, and aspirations. Then she felt her mind giving way, collapsing like a balloon losing its air. Try as she might, she was losing her mind, her thoughts would not join up, she could hardly remember who she was, who she had been and where she had come from.

  She lay for a long time unable to move. Slowly, a degree of conscious awareness returned to her. It was not much, barely enough to remember that she was a person. Her name? Well, that would have to wait. It was all she could do to move her hands. She tried more, but gave up.

  After a long time, she tried again, moving her feet, feeling her breathing, aware of the beating of her heart. She remembered her eyes, tried opening them; the lids were heavy, as if made if iron. She gave up, then tried again. It was torturous, painful, but she finally succeeded. Green and pale-yellow light shifted around her.

  Venetia. Yes. That was she. Gradually, she raised herself from her bed and looked about her. Something was attached to her, a thin tubing, like a saline drip. Keeper – she remembered Keeper – must have attached it to her. That meant she must have been unconscious a long time, perhaps days.

  She was ravenous and, despite the drip, thirsty. She pulled herself free from the drip and tried standing. Her whole body ached. Tentatively, like someone who had been ill for years and was walking for the first time, she made her way to the common room. Astral-la and Jalaal were crouched over the table, water, and bowls of food in front of them, their expressions blank and weary, and curious in a half-hearted manner, as if struggling to remember who they were.

  Venetia grabbed one of the bowls and stuffed a rice-type substance into her mouth, not bothering to use any sort of utensils of which there were many on the
table, just using her hands like a toddler, gasping and choking.

  Astral-La looked up, her eyes glazed, her face ashen, almost elderly. Jalaal, although dark skinned, looked pale.

  No one spoke, and after feeding and drinking they returned to their bunks and fell into a dead sleep.

  It took them a long time to come out of it. Eventually, they began talking to each other and questioning what had happened. Venetia felt her faculties returning. Her grasp of mathematics and physics, which she had forgotten, returned. She exercised, ate, began work in areas of particle physics, astrophysics, and her various theories around the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Strangely, she even had some innovative ideas, new concepts.

  Jalaal, who for a long time hardly recognized what his instrument was for, began to play, exploring innovative ways of expression, new technical avenues, his notes cascading through the dense foliage of the garden that seemed to have grown during their absence of awareness. Astral-La meditated, danced to Jalaal’s music, and practiced telepathic communication with her companions. Nobody objected. They were happy to live in each other’s thoughts, although Venetia was always a little wary of linking minds. They needed distraction. They needed each other. They lived in a land called Nowhere, for an unknown reason. And they were being abused.

  They grew close, often sleeping together, in bed or on the simulation of grass by the simulated pond in the imaginary garden, seeking the warmth and comfort of each other’s presence.

  The next time, it happened only to Astral-La. Keeper appeared in what looked like a tear in the green fabric of the elusive wall around them. It ordered them to their beds. Afraid of the pain it could inflict, they obeyed. Quickly they lost consciousness, then seemed to wake immediately, but days must have passed.

  Venetia and Jalaal made it to the kitchen at the same time. Apart from being hungry and thirsty, they had not undergone the reduction in intellectual and emotional functions that they had previously experienced. They felt normal, which was a relief, as they were deeply afraid of the after-effects of these artificially induced sleeps.

  After eating, they investigated Astral-La and found her unconscious. At first, they thought she was dead or dying, but gradually she began to recover, her pulse faint and slow and her breathing laboured and erratic.

  They thought it best to let her come out of it by herself, and it took a long time. They were worried, sharing looks of concern, fear, and hopelessness. Venetia and Jalaal held hands most of the time, desperate for closeness, afraid of the future, afraid for their very souls.

  They slept together, not for sex – that was out of the equation by now – but for solace and protection, although they knew it was false as nothing could help them.

  After what felt like weeks, Astral-La returned to something resembling her usual self. But she was moody, depressed, and uninterested in playing telepathic games or any other of her mind games that had previously entertained them and kept madness at bay.

  ‘We are food,’ she said one day, suddenly, during breakfast.

  Jalaal and Venetia looked at her, questioning.

  ‘We are food,’ she said again. ‘They eat our thoughts. That’s why we are here. We are a harvest.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Jalaal said.

  ‘Last time, when I was under, I was able to read their minds, at least a little and only for a while before oblivion overcame me, but I learned a lot. Its only just coming back to me. I felt their thoughts and their motives.’

  ‘Who or what are they?’ Venetia cut in.

  ‘I’m not sure. Certainly, not Keeper, or its kind. Not the Pulse. As we agreed, they are just hired. It’s the Unseen. It’s all a bit vague. But, we are a big “food” project – probably the equivalent of a speciality, a delicacy, a rare cuisine for beings of great wealth or power. Of course, I’m putting this in our terminology. It’s their equivalent of these things, and vastly alien.’

  ‘How do they do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. A technology outside any point of reference I am aware of.’

  ‘But why us?’ Venetia butted in.

  ‘Because we are exceptional – prodigies, rare breeds, our minds must be delicious, or something horribly weird like that.’

  ‘Just our luck,’ Venetia whispered. Her face lit up. ‘Yes, we are like a special mushroom, a rare food product, like oyster mushrooms, chanterelles, or some Japanese seafood.’

  ‘Like a pearl in an oyster, metaphorically speaking,’ Jalaal said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Astral-La looked quizzing at the two Earthlings, a hint of humour in her voice, a sign that her old self was returning.

  Jalaal looked beseechingly at Venetia. ‘I’ll explain,’ Venetia said.

  For a while, they forgot their troubles, enjoying each other’s company, occasionally laughing as Venetia explained pearls and oysters to Astral-La.

  ‘I have an idea,’ Jalaal said suddenly.

  ‘Must we?’ Astral-La seemed uncharacteristically reluctant. ‘Can’t we relax and enjoy what little normal time we may have left.’

  ‘That’s it, you see. We believe we are helpless, even you Astral. But between us we have great resources. We think we are doomed, but we are not.’

  Venetia looked interested, but Astral-La rolled her eyes, looking away as if somewhere in the misty trees and opaque gardens lay the genuine answer to their plight.

  ‘Don’t you see, with Venetia’s knowledge of physics, Astral’s telepathic abilities, and my ability to reach out and extend, we could find a way of fighting back.’

  Astral-La started to look interested. ‘Perhaps we could build a cerebral wall, or a psychic wall to at least give Keeper a contest. Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘But the pain?’ Venetia said.

  ‘We could link up in such a way as to break down the energy that Keeper uses,’ Jalaal said. ‘And there is something else, you may not have noticed, but I believe I have.’

  ‘We have become more intelligent,’ Venetia said quickly.

  ‘What?’ Astral-La exclaimed.

  ‘You must have noticed,’ Venetia said. ‘We have been too scared, depressed and passive to bring it to the fore, but an effect of whatever the beings are doing to us is to make us even more intelligent and gifted than we already are.’

  They were silent for a long time, as the significance of what they were saying sank in.

  ‘Put it like this,’ Astral-La said. ‘We are food to them. But not ordinary food, we are exotic food. Rare food, a food for connoisseurs, within a seriously alien context. We are delicious – ha-ha, think of that. So, what do they do? They eat us and wait for us to regain our strength and potency, and eat us again. Our intelligence, our extraordinary gifts, is what gives us flavour; we are an active ingredient that brings them back for more.’

  ‘Like caffeine in coffee, or alcohol in a cocktail, or cannabinoid in hashish,’ Venetia said.

  ‘Precisely. But there is more. They don’t just wait for us to recover they …’

  ‘Feed us!’ Jalaal burst in. ‘They are cultivating us, giving us fertilizer – maybe in the food, or water, or the very air.’

  ‘They are putting something in our environment that increases the very thing they want, our intelligence, and our gifts. We could be like nectar to them.’

  ‘We could be the alien version of a party drug,’ Venetia said dryly. ‘We might even be illegal in their ultra, extreme other-dimensional universe. I always knew my intelligence would get me into trouble.’

  ‘I sensed the illegal thing, or something like it, when they ate me last,’ Astral-La said.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes, seriously.’

  ‘So, we fight back,’ Jalaal said.

  ‘Yes,’ Astra-La said. ‘But there is one more thing. These creatures are so different from us that they probably do not equate the food that we are for them with sentience, any more than we equate caffeine in the famous Earth coffee with intelligence.’

  ‘So, they do not reali
ze that we are self-aware, and could fight back.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Which gives us an advantage,’ Venetia said.

  ‘Provided we can find a way of exploiting it.’

  ‘So where do we begin?’ Jalaal asked.

  ‘We link minds,’ Venetia said. ‘We link through Astral-La and we each apply our special abilities. And we start now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Astral-La said. ‘We must begin immediately. We never know how much time we have.’

  They sat in a circle, closed their eyes, and linked hands.

  A thousand miles away, Keeper sat with its family group enjoying a day off and a long feed, when it felt a vague, almost imperceptible feeling of unease wash over its metallic frame. It cast its out-see eyes across the expanse of friendly ice towards the land of frozen water, and rattled a long sigh; the families were spread out in a happy feasting throng. But it was worried about the Guests. Perhaps it had overfed them, or perhaps underfed them, it didn’t know. But something had changed. It rattled a long sigh again. It often felt the captives, caught their impulses. They were harmless, of course, and it had no cause for concern, and it was looking after them with considerable expertise. Its clients could not complain. It was difficult to get it right, of course. Beings from other systems, let alone other galaxies, were difficult to manage.

  How strange were these food beings? It was a complex situation, in its opinion, and disturbing, as the captured ones were obviously sentient, which made the whole thing illegal and criminal. Then, who was to know? The Lawmakers, the so-called Inquisition, were distant and concerned with other matters. Still, it was wrong, but the pay was good, enough for all its families for epoch upon epoch. And there were dangers, terrible dangers, if it did not cooperate.

  The clients, the Outwells, or as they called themselves, the Pulse, did not care that the food-beings were sentient; they were lucrative cargo; nothing else mattered. They paid Keeper and associates handsomely, and those that protested or questioned, they destroyed. They corrupted or blackmailed the occasional official from the Lawmakers. They were an experienced intergalactic, criminal cartel, with an extensive reach. They were ruthless and violent. Keeper knew that were it to rebel and assist the food-beings, not only its families, but the families of all from its birthing hive would be wiped out. It must comply, difficult though that was.