Spaceling

by Piserchia, Doris

  It didn’t seem too big a misfortune to me that I was finally dumped all by myself onto a piece of terrain somewhere in the Pacific. It was better than getting killed. Erma didn’t say anything as she sat beside me in the expensive little jet that looked like the one I’d seen from Lummox mountain. The two men went into the pilot’s compartment and that was the last I saw of them. A few hours after our takeoff, collapsible blades came out of the plane’s roof; it converted into a copter that landed on a sandy knoll and I was literally tossed through the doorway.

  “Let’s see you hop around now,” said Erma. “You’ll stay here until I’m good and ready for you. Don’t bother looking for rings. If one has set foot in this territory in the last fifty years, it’s invisible.”

  Coconuts, papayas and brackish water from a pond were served up to me daily by the island while the sun tried to boil me alive. My nose peeled ten times before the skin toughened and tanned. Meanwhile I looked for a way out and wondered how long it would take Solvo and Lamana to come and see why I was out here. Unless they already knew. And besides, maybe they wouldn’t anyhow. They might be glad I was stationary for a while.

  I was too angry and disgusted to build a hut, not that I could have anyway since the vines were six inches thick with not a single sharp rock showing up anywhere. Every day at about the same time the rain battered me bruised and soggy and always I scanned the sky for a rescue ship in the form of a ring. All I saw were faint reflections of something far off, not actual circles but little flashes of partial disks that were like the images I created when I rubbed my eyes hard.

  Sun and peeling nose, clothing so abused that I ended up with only the briefest part of my shorts left, I became a castaway in every sense of the word. Every day I trudged to the top of the knoll to see if anything broke the monotonous horizon of water, every afternoon I crawled under a rock and slept away the worst of the heat, in the evening I lay on the quiet shore and brooded over the fact that I was without kin or friend, and each night I dreamed of Kisko lost and mad in D.

  It took me too long to realize how wrong Erma had been and that the partial disks I sometimes saw in the sky were good old-fashioned rings. The reason I couldn’t see them most of the time was that they were the color of clear water, or to use Erma’s own word, practically invisible. That I could see bits of their rims was only due to my special kind of sight and I wasn’t too convinced it was all that much of a blessing right then. Going into weird dimensions was hazardous no matter how desperate the situation.

  Ring detectors couldn’t pick up the clear orbs because they had no color. Somehow knowing Erma and her ilk were less than perfect heartened me so that I summoned enough courage to at least try to examine the things in the sky. I lay on the sand and stared upward. Little faint curved lines showed here and there like ultra-thin sides of the rims of lenses. Similar to fast-spinning coins of water, they were visible for a moment and then gone, there above me and then way off toward the horizon or backward over my head into oblivion. At times they ducked to earth where they became impossible to see against sand and grass.

  As it turned out, they weren’t rings and they didn’t open into dimensions but rather they were all a single corridor that might have been the core of reality from which everything began its journey. They were no different from ordinary rings in that I could call them to me but I couldn’t manipulate their motion and had to sidestep into one as it flipped in my direction.

  It was like stepping into a hallway of glass or into a diamond the facets of which mocked and cast my image everywhere. My physical makeup didn’t change. Haggard, sunburned Daryl walked into a place of silence and glittering walls where motion never ceased and where I seemed to hurtle through infinity. The surface beneath my feet was hot so that I spent the trip gawking and hopping, not that I actually went anywhere but the things I saw were concerned both with time and space and so it appeared as if I were present where it all happened.

  I stood on a platform that sped through the universe and revealed to me a statistic: a vast number multiplied by forever represented more worlds and space than my mind could envision. The millions and billions of rings within my view were but a miniscule sample of the legions I couldn’t see. The slightest difference in the shade of rings meant worlds of a different nature, one single added molecule of pigment meant a doorway into a planet whose only relationship with any other might be its orbital path around the same star. The variations within the color spectrum were significant and I saw them all as I took my strange trip through the hall of glass.

  It was fitting that the way out of such an astonishing place was simply a matter of stepping backward. Like a piece of debris on a spinning coin I flipped out of the dimension and dropped onto the sand of my island prison where I lay staring up at the sky as if it were a painted mural superimposed upon the real one. There were things going on out there in space that we mortals didn’t dream about.

  It didn’t take me much time to discover that no matter which clear ring I skinned through, the view on the other side was exactly the same. A fast trip through outer reality was fine and dandy and I liked looking at all those rings but the repetitive entertainment wasn’t getting me off the island and back into human action.

  Naturally I had already considered tripping out through one of the spheres hurtling past the platform and in fact had tried to call some to me, but they either didn’t hear me or couldn’t respond. Conceivably space was distorted while I stood on the platform or I myself might have been spatially out of position. Maybe millions of light years of distance separated my physical body from the rings, thereby making communication between us impossible.

  Whatever the reason, it didn’t help my situation which was growing worse as I sickened of my diet. In the end my boredom with the same fare every day of the week served to get me off and away, so in retrospect the food seemed good. Before I escaped, though, it was only bad. I would find myself gagging as I swilled coconut juice or I felt as if one more bite of papaya would rot every tooth in my head. My jaws ached from lack of conflict, my tongue rebelled for want of titillation, the whole world could have ended for all I cared if I soon didn’t get something interesting to eat.

  15

  There was a small cove on the western side of the island where I usually spent my mornings, in a little rock-shaded nook beside a pool surrounded by a miniature beach. The ocean beyond some high boulders was noisy and violent while the pool was quiet, tranquil and clear. One day the water was unusually transparent and I thought I saw what looked like a large clam or oyster in its depths. Immediately I plunged in, swam down about five meters and then retreated to the surface. Sucking air in and out of my lungs for a few moments, I went back in and down approximately eight meters before calling it quits and heading upward.

  The water had been clear during my time of submersion but there was no way for me to estimate how deep the pool was, so I lay on the sand and hyperventilated for several minutes before sliding in and swimming toward the bottom. Approximately twelve meters down, I stopped abruptly for two reasons. My maximum had been reached and there was a startling object below me. What had looked like a clam from the height of the beach was a blue ring. I had no more time to stay there and inspect it, and pulling with my arms and kicking my legs, I flashed up through the pool and emerged just as my lungs expelled the last of their air.

  I had a problem, an enigma, a puzzle, a challenge and a possible way off the island. Lying on the sand and listening to the surf, I tried to draw it on a mental diagram. Twelve meters down and then up to the surface was my limit, I knew, no matter how long I hyperventilated. The ring seemed to hover some five meters farther down and to reach it I would have to swim below the depth where nitrogen automatically started building in my blood which meant that once I passed say, thirteen or fourteen meters, I would be committed and beyond the point of return. No way could I safely surface after that. Pleasant thought, especially when I considered how way off the mark had been my original es
timation of the so-called clam’s depth. What if water distortion made me think the ring was seventeen meters down when it was actually fifty? Or what if I passed sixteen meters and the ring moved?

  Fear was a hitchhiker that didn’t harass me until I was well beyond help, and maybe I subconsciously planned it that way, but it didn’t matter since the idea of living and dying on the island was repugnant enough to make me reckless. The water was cool and clear, I had what felt like a week’s supply of air in my lungs, I had bidden good-bye to the beautiful but sterile rings in the sky but more particularly I’d said farewell to the coconuts and papayas. No tramp steamer or flashy jet was going to come along and pluck me from my station, and the fact was if I stayed there long enough Erma would visit me one day and knock my head off.

  The only thing I left up there on the beach was my life as it had been and now I forged toward China with every ounce of strength I owned. As the meters passed me by with fleet fingers, silence increased, as did the pressure in my ears. Not depth happy, I nevertheless felt like humming because I was on my own again and in charge of what happened to me. Besides, optimism warded off that old hitchhiker who stood in the wings and grinned with wicked good will, waiting for me to start thinking seriously about the madness of what I was doing.

  Never having heard of underwater mirages, I began speculating upon them as I continued downward. Anything to ward off fear, except that this concept wasn’t a wise one since it could be blown out of proportion by imagination. The pain in my chest became so deep it hurt my spine. My feet grew numb, my thighs burned, my nose pained as it strove to perform its natural function. I thought it unfortunate that my brain was clear and aware of everything occurring within and without. My estimation of my depth was twenty-four meters, increasing ever more slowly as my body rebelled against the orders given it.

  The point of no return had me now, and its grip was merciless, cutting off my hope and confidence with impenetrable walls of water that hovered just a breath away. One of my last energetic thoughts was curious: too bad I wasn’t my mother, tall and strong and far more skilled, because then I could have gone on for at least another forty meters; she had lungs like a porpoise.

  I was done and I reached for the ring knowing it was too far away, a tiny brilliance that had looked so large thirty meters or more topside. Reaching couldn’t hurt and moving like a slippery snake couldn’t do any damage and I figured I might as well go out active so I gave one last and final lack before getting ready to let all that water have its way.

  Again I reached out and slithered sideways as though I had already arrived at the shiny little circle. It worked and the ring was really there and I groaned as I transferred from the pool into Gothland. At the last moment I had the impression that a dark piece of friendly fog gave me a needed little shove.

  In retrospect I think I expected to land on my head but I didn’t land at all, merely floated through brimstone and black cloud like an inflated balloon which was as good a description of me as any. Not that I cared since the pressure of anticipating death in deep water was gone but my new physical self still amazed me. I was an oversized goth but there was little weight to my mass. Coming in with a bloodstream full of nitrogen had changed the normal course of things so that the transmutation was accomplished differently. I was a blob of a goth who floated through space and never touched down, a light and lonely entity sailing above lava pits, tar rivers, mountain ridges and scampering drees.

  Red rain sent me earthward, belching gas tossed me toward the sky, even the scant wind coursing along the ground scattered me like dust. I was blown about by every whim of the elements and once I was thrown beneath a waterfall where I bounced up and down for the longest time before being hurled clear. A breeze slammed me flush against an escarpment, sent me scraping all the way to the top where another flurry made me careen into another hard wall.

  Finally I learned how to use my slight weight as ballast and sail and pretty soon I was dodging obstacles with no trouble, utilizing windflaws to my benefit, avoiding mountain ridges and hard rain areas.

  I sported for a while, manipulated my peculiar self and even enjoyed the sensations but eventually I recalled my plans for the future, searched out an appropriate ring in the area, invited it to visit me and vacated the premises.

  The first thing I did was rent another homestead in Jersey. I intended to stay away from my farm until something could be done about Erma. My new house was old, decrepit and crowded after Lamana moved in. For the first few days she camped in the back field, refusing to answer any questions and cooking over an open fire until I gave her permission to eat in the kitchen and sleep on the couch.

  “We’re busy sometimes, you know, which is why we didn’t come and look for you,” she said, which obviously was an untruth since she had scarcely let me out of her sight during the past weeks.

  “The fact was you knew exactly where I was, out of everybody’s hair and you decided you liked it that way.”

  With a shrug, she said, “The fact was I accidentally dropped the receiver and broke it into fifty pieces. My father wanted to do the same to me. It’s a highly specialized instrument and it took our experts all this time to repair it. Where were you?”

  “No place. Incidentally, what do you think you’re doing in that getup?”

  She adjusted her headband, ran two fingers along the feather attached to it. “Did I ever tell you I was a good scout and tracker?”

  “And the suede shorts, top and leggings ward off marauding white eyes?”

  “I smoke a pipe and bum goat ears to do that.”

  “You’re more educated than I am. Why do you do this stuff?”

  “Because my mother loves being an Indian. Because all my uncles carry their little sacks of com and their stinking pipes. And they’re educated, too. It’s my business, you know. Mind yours.”

  “Okay.”

  “What would one of your enemies think if they saw me coming at them with a tomahawk?”

  “It would scare them worse than a goth.”

  “I agree. Incidentally, my father conferred with an expert regarding the electronic object in your body. It isn’t in your head.”

  “Who says?”

  “X-rays would clearly define it. The thing in your head belongs there.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It isn’t a machine and a blood clot would change over a period of time.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “The expert is willing to take a picture,” she said.

  “My brain will fry if I get anymore pictures taken. In the meantime, where’s the radio and who put it there?”

  “It’s probably in a place you can’t easily reach. Shoulder blade, most likely.”

  My back began to itch. “How do you know so much?” I said. I was angry at the thought of someone having made a walking footprint out of me. What did it matter whether it was a bloodhound or a person with a machine following me? The whole idea scuttled my attempt at independence and privacy. “That can’t be right,” I said suddenly. “I have amnesia. I can’t remember anything.”

  “You don’t read enough. Amnesia doesn’t hang around as long as you’ve had it. Somebody put the whammy on you. They looked deep into your eyes, squeezed your tiny intellect until it was no bigger than a pea and then they plucked out your memory. It’ll come back when it’s supposed to.”

  “You mean I was hypnotized?”

  “By someone who really knew the business.”

  That afternoon we went to Pittsburgh to see the big earthquake which turned out to be a deep valley of smoke and fire. It would be quite a while before it was known whether anything still lived in that vast crater.

  The quake outside Topeka was similar except it had taken place in open farmland and not a life was lost. The awesome hole reminded me of the brown dimension where everything was in the process of collapsing and dropping inward.

  “What if this is happening all over the universe?” I said to Lamana as
we stood with a crowd near the lip of the great depression and looked at the broken earth. Overhead a pair of police planes cruised and waited. Were they interested in me in particular? I didn’t wait to find out but encouraged Lamana to walk with me back toward the highway where a variety of rings were ready to be used.

  “Is Solvo going to do anything about anything?” I said. “If those rings aren’t freed from those pipes…”

  “Progress is slow, especially when you don’t know who your enemies are. Be patient.”

  “At least I agree with part of that. I can’t understand how I was so lucky to pick a police station at random and find your gang.”

  “We aren’t a gang and maybe your choice wasn’t so random. Someone cleaned out your past memories. Possibly they also left some suggestions, such as New Mexico if things got rough.”

  “More manipulation! I don’t know if that makes sense or not. If you aren’t part of a gang, what are you?”

  “A member of a family that’s been in the law enforcement business for a long time. We were already investigating the source of the earthquakes and when you came in with your story about oil we knew it was the right lead.”

  A little while later we sat in Gothland beside a bubbling tar pit with Lamana gawking at me as if I were more of a freak than I actually was. She didn’t need to talk for me to know what she was thinking. It was the first time she had ever really seen me in D. Grinning in grisly fashion, I led her a merry chase through labyrinths and amphitheaters until we reached a wide-open parklike area where Kisko sometimes came. The place was dotted with rectangular stones that looked like picnic tables while in the ground around each were four shallow holes. Resting in one of the furrows, I showed Lamana how comfortable it was and how easy it was to rise up slightly and rest my front paws on the table.

  It was a disturbing experience as I imagined a time in the past when the park was full of goths lounging around the tables while they had their feasts and celebrations.