“What was that?” Rex asked, suddenly feeling very dizzy. “Some kind of a dream?”
“I don’t know,” Porter said, glad to see him. “More like a nightmare. Sure felt real.”
“What the hell is going on?” Isellia asked, rubbing her temple.
“Then again,” Porter continued, “I’m not sure I’m convinced this right now isn’t a dream.”
“What do you mean?” Joey asked. Had he really seen his mother? He had hoped so, however impossible it seemed.
“You sure you didn’t see anything strange here?” Porter asked.
Joey looked at the ground. “Um, no.”
Porter shook his head. Stephen shrugged
“All I know is we sent out the robot, then suddenly we all had these weird — experiences — none of which match up with each other’s,” Isellia said. “Then suddenly we’re in our ship, only it has crash-landed on this planet, which looks like the one we found Joey on. Except now its not Joey’s planet, it’s — whatever this is.”
Porter scratched his head. “I mean, why haven’t we entered the server? And where’s Celia?” The slightest of grimaces crossed Rex’s face at the mention of Celia, then it was gone.
Isellia looked up at Porter. “Maybe this is the server.”
Everyone stopped and looked at Isellia, whose face grew red. Very red. “Well, I don’t know! What else could it be? Jeez!”
“No, you might be right,” Porter said. “Maybe this is what happens. The server manifests itself as some kind of physical world. But if that’s the case, what happens now?”
“Find some people who know something,” Rex said. “And try to find Celia.”
Joey felt a tingle on the back of his neck. Would they run into his mom again? Would the rest of the crew see her, too? Was he going crazy?
“Hmmm, that might work. Stephen?”
“Yes sir?” Stephen said. Isellia rolled her eyes at his politeness.
“Think you can get the scanner working again?”
“They’re too damaged to fix without replacing parts!” Isellia yelled. “I already checked.”
“I wasn’t asking you, Isellia. Stephen?”
Isellia shot Porter a look before turning away to pout.
“S-s-she’s right,” Stephen said. “T-t-they can’t be fixed completely. But I think they could be fixed enough to show us an energy source. W-w-we could at least head in that direction.”
“Like what?” Isellia asked, spreading the attitude on thick.
“Like anything,” Porter said. “As opposed to wandering around and finding nothing. We can find a life source or power supply, some signs of civilization. It beats meandering.”
Stephen looked around and noticed everyone looking at him. They would all be counting on him. “I mean, m-m-maybe.”
“Good,” Porter said. “You and Isellia get on it.” He noticed Rex staring out the window. “What is it?”
“Snow,” Rex said, staring out the porthole.
***
The group pressed into the flurries of flakes that swirled around them, covering the heavy spacesuits they adapted into cold weather gear. The wind made the air feel much colder than it already was — and it already was pretty cold. Their boots stamped through nearly a foot of snow, fluffy enough to shuffle through but heavy enough to slow them down considerably.
The suits were silver, the color of wrinkled tin foil. They weren’t air-sealed — the machine that did that was broken and would have taken too long to fix — but the suits kept them relatively warm regardless. Without them, frostbite would have started taking limbs and, eventually, lives.
A gust of wind howled through the valley they traversed, bringing a swift current of air that forced the group to sway to one side. Isellia fell to one knee, and Porter hauled her up by her arm.
“You all right?” he buzzed over her intercom.
“Yeah.” The connection was fuzzy — these were only emergency suits, after all. Porter was surprised they worked since they hadn’t been maintained in far too long. He decided it was best not to think about it.
“We still headed in the right direction?” Isellia asked.
Porter looked at the compass he’d taken from the ship. It was part of the ship’s crash-landing kit — one of those things every ship has. Nothing anyone actually expects to use; or at least nothing anyone hopes they have to use.
They’d figured out the direction of a nearby energy source. Stephen and Isellia managed to get the scanner working just enough to make out its general direction, though they had no idea what lie ahead. Whatever it was, they had to gamble it was better than starving to death inside the ship.
“Just ahead,” Porter nodded, though the snow swirled so thick that no one saw him nod. “Just over that hill.”
“That hill?” Isellia pointed. “You mean planet-sized mountain over there? That hill?”
Porter put the compass away and stepped toward the giant mountain, its peak disappearing into the white cloud the snowflakes appeared to be at a distance. “Yep. That one.”
“That mountain ain’t gonna be our problem,” Rex said.
“Why’s that?” Porter said.
“Look.”
Everyone squinted into the snowstorm, trying to find the mountain. It slowly dawned on each of them that they couldn’t make out the mountain because it no longer was there.
“Robot, where’s the mountain?” Porter asked, feeling disoriented as he looked in every direction. He didn’t think they’d been turned around ...
“What is a mountain upside down?” the robot asked.
“He’s still acting weird,” Joey said.
“A mountain upside down?” Porter said. “You mean a valley—” Porter didn’t have time to finish his thought, as he felt his footing dramatically change. Level ground suddenly became slope, in a most unnatural manner — as if it were being reprogrammed. His feet went out from under him, and he fell on his butt in a downward slide.
Soon, everyone was sliding through an icy haze, with no idea where they were going.
***
No one occupied the torch-lit stony chamber, but if anyone had, they wouldn’t have heard Rex’s silent landing. His feet touched first, and he adjusted the tension in his ankles by the microsecond to minimize the impact. He distributed his body weight, springing forward to continue the momentum of the fall (the slope of the hill sent the group down at an angle) and redirect it into a forward roll. He tumbled several times, reducing his speed until he was able to spring up to a standing position facing the spot where he’d first touched down.
The others were hardly so light on their feet. Porter fell hard, nearly square on his bottom. Isellia hit him square in the back, toppling over him to land in Porter’s lap, and the rest of the human members of the party piled on top of them as they reached the bottom.
“Are we all here?” Joey asked, looking around after each crew member had finished slamming into the ground.
“Well, let’s see. Mr. Springy foot over there, old man underneath me, scaredy-cat — on my leg!” — Stephen quickly backed up — “Pip-squeak, on the floor, and—”
“Where’s robot?” Joey asked.
They all stopped, as their attention swung to the sound of a growing rumble. It sounded like the noise of their slide, except louder, deeper.
Isellia looked up as a small snowball bounced off her forehead, trickled down to her suit and onto the stone floor. She wasn’t about to wait around to let what was hurtling down toward them take the same path as the snowball.
“Run!” she said, pushing Joey forward as she moved. Stephen quickly rolled and rolled until he was several yards away. Porter found his feet despite his pain and hobbled away.
He stumbled off just in time to miss the robot’s feet land. The robot’s feet struck the ground with a metallic thud, cracking the stone floor. It made no attempt to compensate for the fall — it simply landed standing up straight, with all its force directed into the stone, crumbl
ing it beneath its feet.
Rex watched with his arms folded, grinning. “Gotta teach me that sometime.”
“What, how to almost kill us?!” Isellia yelled.
“Almost doesn’t count,” the robot said.
“My stonework!” a deep, earthy voice lamented from behind them. It was a voice that sounded like it came from the very stone itself.
“What was that?” Stephen asked.
“Over there!” Joey pointed.
A short, stout figure emerged from the shadow. The creature looked like a human, but had a long, shaggy beard, bushy eyebrows and a hat like two cones stacked onto one another. Its hat and cape were a deep, rich purple covering bright yellow slacks and shirt, but its hands and face were filthy dirty. It was short — the little creature might have reached Stephen’s chest, barely.
The creature stared straight at the robot, shaking the large, heavy-looking hammer it held in its hand. “I’ll teach you to mess with my stonework!”
Chapter 14
The robot stared down at the small, dwarf-like figure shaking a hammer at him. The robot’s sensors read no real threat, despite the fact that the hammer might have been able to put a dent in its chassis. The dwarf, though small, with a face filled with a fuzzy beard that gave it comical appearance, was no weakling; its stout arms were muscled and it appeared as solid as stone.
“What is it?” Joey whispered to Porter, eyeing it sideways as he spoke.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Porter said.
“Excuse me!” the little man said, changing the direction of his hammer. “I’ll have you know, I am not an ‘It.’ I am a dwove.”
“Oh, sorry,” Joey said. He looked at Porter and shrugged.
“Well, all right then,” the dwove said, seeming satisfied with the response. “As I was saying, this is my stonework, which I have spent years on, I’ll have you know. Now then, you seem to have wrecked it. You with your giant metal thing here.”
“You mean the robot?” Joey asked.
“If that is what you call this monstrosity,” he gestured with the hammer, using it like a teacher would a pointer at a chalkboard. “Yes, robot. Anyway, I’ve got quite a mind to put the lights out of all of you.”
The dwove shook his hammer as menacingly as he could, but they all tried to hide their amusement. All but Porter, who seemed to be getting an idea.
“We would certainly deserve it, ruining such masterful work,” Porter said, stepping out a little and running his fingers over the stonework.
The floor was fairly unremarkable; it was smooth and even, but there were no carvings or anything that would make it stand out in anyway. But clearly, the small creature was proud of the work he’d done, and Porter thought to play to that angle.
“Well, that’s ... you think so?” the dwove unconsciously lowered his hammer and cocked his head to one side. His nose twitched slightly.
“I’m a little embarrassed for our clumsiness,” Porter went on, speaking in a grandiose fashion that earned an eyebrow raise from Isellia. “You’ll have to forgive us, but we were helpless to avoid hitting your stone.”
“Well, I suppose that’s all right,” the dwove said, scratching his beard. “If you really admire my work ...”
“It’s just that I haven’t seen artwork — may I call it artwork? — well, ever, I have to think!” Porter’s voice trailed off as he said this, pretending to notice something he hadn’t seen before.
“Oh, well — yes, you may call it that. I do consider myself something of an artist, you see. It took a number of years just to get the formal designed finished. I spent a whole week just figuring out the cornering on this hall. And then the wrap-arounds on the columns, well, I ...”
The dwove went on and on, so wrapped up in what it was saying that it didn’t notice the others were no longer listening. Instead, they gathered near him and began discussing.
“We don’t have time for this,” Rex said, arms folded over his chest. He looked cross, though that was hardly out of the ordinary.
“Who knows what we don’t have time for,” Porter said. “We have no idea where we are. This whole thing could be his creation, for all we know.”
“God help us,” Isellia said, rolling her eyes.
“I don’t think so,” Rex said.
“All right, so he didn’t make this place — this server. Maybe he’s some kind of test. Or maybe he knows where we need to go. Anyway, we have a grand total of zero clues what to do next, and he might. Play along.”
Joey had not joined the discussion; he continued to watch and listen to the dwove speak. It fascinated him, the way he talked — the dwove made sweeping gestures with its hammer and its coal black eyes beamed expressively to emphasize certain words. The dwove appeared to be a natural storyteller.
Finally, Joey decided to act, poking the dwove, who stopped in mid-sentence.
“Um, yes, what is it?” the dwove said.
“Mr. Dwove?”
“Oh, call me Doc.”
“OK, Doc ... do you know the way out of here?”
Doc looked at him for a moment. “Hmm, no, not particularly. I’m not sure I understand your question. You want to leave?”
“Um, yeah,” Joey said. The others had stopped to listen to the conversation.
“Well, why would you want to do a thing like that?”
Joey thought for a moment. “Because.”
Doc mulled Joey’s answer over for a moment. Eventually, he seemed to decide it was a satisfactory reason to want to leave.
“Well, all right. You probably want the Riddel house. I can show you.”
“Great, let’s go!” Porter said.
“Oh, yes, we’ll leave right away. Right after tea. Come along, now.”
Doc trotted along, careful to hold his hammer just out of reach of the floor so as not to scratch his “artwork.”
“Tea?” Isellia said to Porter. “The little guy drinks tea?”
***
Doc handed each of them an earthenware cup, steam billowing out the top; save for the robot, of course. The crew and their host all each looked at each other, not sure what to say. Porter looked around at the various decorations that lined the wall — stone sculptures rose out of the floor, shapes of animals and monsters the like of which he hadn’t seen stared at him, growling from beneath the stone’s surface. The work was intricate and detailed, and the crew had a hard time taking their eyes off the creations.
“Did you make those?” Joey asked, pointing to a sculpture of a pair of serpent-like figures with wings bursting out of the ground.
The dwove looked up from his own cup of tea, which he’d just finished filling. His eyes lit up a moment, then dimmed when he saw Joey pointing to a mere statue.
“Oh no, not that stuff,” the dwove said, waving his hand dismissively. “My cousins do that stuff.”
He took a sip before continuing. “But the stonework on the floor is all mine. What do you think of that?” He looked at Joey intensely.
Joey looked at Porter. It didn’t look like anything more than a floor to him. Solid, yes. But still, just a floor.
“It’s wonderful,” Porter said. “Very finely done.” He winked at Joey a little.
“Yes, I thought so, too!” Doc seemed pleased with himself. “I think it’s better work than the hall. I did that too, have I mentioned that? I really went for a different motif here ...”
“We don’t have time for this,” Rex whispered to Porter, gulping down his tea.
“I beg your pardon?” the dwove said somewhat peevishly. “Who doesn’t have time for tea?”
Rex set his cup down and walked out of the room.
“Well, what’s his problem?” Doc seemed offended, and sipped his tea with his brow furrowed.
“We should go, Porter,” Isellia said.
“Go? What’s the hurry?” Doc asked.
“Can you show us the way to Riddel house? Do you have a map, or something?” Porter asked.
“Map? I don’t need a map.”
“Then what are we doing sitting around drinking some hot cup of awful for?” Isellia said, looking ruefully into her still-full cup of tea.
“I beg your pardon?” Doc asked, eyes raised in alarm.
Porter sighed — he had to cover her lack of diplomacy skills again. “She means, we need a map or something else to show us the way. Can you help us?”
“Of course I can help you,” he said. “What do you think we’re drinking tea for?”
“Well, I wondered ...”
“Every adventure must start with tea. I’m going with you.”
Everyone in the room exchanged a glance of surprise.
“Would you like another cup?” Doc asked.
***
Everyone followed Doc through the dark, stone-walled caverns, and aside from the dwove stopping at several places to explain perfectly mundane things, such as the spot where he once found a perfectly round stone, the trip had been relatively uneventful. The pace of the short figure somewhat irritated the crew — Isellia in particular seemed annoyed at his insistence to stop and look at every piece of cave art. Doc seemed to have a story about each one. Porter might have found some of them interesting — indeed, the tales of dwoves are renowned in many parts of the galaxy — had time not been a factor.
Doc led them through a narrow passage to a cavern larger than the rest. Porter ducked his head through the opening and looked up to see a wall filled with highly detailed artwork. The brighter light in this particular cavern revealed a picturesque verdant scene embossed on one wall, with oddly shaped deer-like creatures with six legs bounding through fields of tall grass.
Porter and the rest of the crew stopped to admire the artwork, which Doc took as the invitation to launch into another tale.
“This is a particularly interesting piece. The artist was a friend of my great uncle’s. When he started this, before the great war with the gomres—”
Robot Awareness: Special Edition Page 19
