by Bob Blink
A few minutes later he started wondering why he was standing in the middle of the room. He’d been planning on doing something earlier when he’d become distracted somehow. He tried to remember what had caught his attention, but he couldn’t bring it back. Maybe it was the headache he felt coming on. Whatever it had been couldn’t have been important, although it was later in the day than he’d thought, and his plan to go out to the campus should probably be put off until tomorrow. Instead he decided to head down to the bookstore and see what had come in, hoping the new book in his favorite series had finally arrived. He really needed to get one of the eBook readers, which would save him the drive. Happily he headed out to the car, everything that had happened earlier totally forgotten.
The memories came back in full four weeks later when the prickly sensation suddenly came again. Randy was sitting in the study reading, and immediately walked into the living room and opened the door to welcome his “guest”. The man walked into sight moments later, wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he left before, and once again carrying three of the glowing crystal bottles. He seemed more relaxed, in better control of English, and had a clear idea of what he wanted to do.
“You want to go to San Francisco?” Randy asked a bit surprised. “Why?”
“It was one of the clear images in your mind, and seems to be a good example of one of your larger cities. Also, the city is on the coast near the ocean. It will be informative.”
It seemed the man had extracted more than just the ability to speak the language, but also bits and pieces of Randy’s memories as well. There were a lot of gaps and incomplete knowledge as the transfer has been severely hampered by the actions Randy’s mind had taken in response to the intrusion. During their discussion Randy had noticed that the man knew many words without really understanding their meaning.
“When do you want to go?” Randy asked. He never considered not doing as the stranger desired. He never considered questioning his own actions in placidly going along with the stranger’s desires either.
“Now would be fine,” the man responded.
“It will take a couple of days if we drive. Would you prefer to fly?”
“Fly?” the man asked. “I don’t think you can fly.”
“In an airplane,” Randy answered patiently, wondering why the man didn’t understand.
Randy could tell the man recognized the word, but obviously he hadn’t made some kind of connection. He decided to take the man for a ride and show him, so they climbed into the SUV and headed off to the airport. A bit later Randy watched as the man took in the large planes on the ground, saw them taxi and launch into the air, and gradually become small dots in the sky.
“So, do we fly, or drive?” he asked again.
“The man took another look at one of the planes passing far overhead, and shuddered. He tapped his hand on the hood of the SUV making it quite clear his desired means of travel.
Since it was late in the day, they returned home after picking up a pizza on the way. After they ate, Randy packed a couple of bags, putting the clothes they had purchased that last time in a separate bag for the stranger. They left early the next morning, heading north to Cheyenne where they picked up Interstate 80, the stranger watching every detail while Randy drove.
They spent the night at the Nevada border, and continued on their journey early the next day. Randy tended to drive fast, and the open desert lulled his caution, which earned him a set of flashing lights and siren halfway across the state.
“What’s wrong?” the man inquired. He’d become bored with the scenery, and had been napping as they drove, but was now fully awake.
“Cops,” Randy answered. “I got careless and was going too fast.” He was pulling over to the side as he explained, and the man looked over his shoulder at the car behind him.
“I’ll remove him,” the man said suddenly, and Randy sensed he planned to take some kind of action that would not be reversible and that Randy wouldn’t like.
“No!” he said sharply, causing the other to look at him.
“It is no problem,” the man said. “He will simply disappear.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Randy said concerned that man might take action before he could stop him. “He has a radio.”
“So do you. You showed it to me the other day. Why should that matter?”
“He has a radio that he can use to talk to other cops. He has certainly already done so. It’s standard procedure. If you do something to this guy, they will know our license, who we are, and they’ll come after us. Let it be, okay? It won’t be a problem.”
They dodged that bullet, Randy thought as they drove away, the cop still sitting in his car after giving him the ticket. Randy realized the man riding with him was more dangerous than he’d realized. He didn’t know how, but he suspected he’d just saved that cop from a very unpleasant fate. For the rest of the trip he’d pay a lot more attention to the speed limits. The man had directed him to stay below the limit, a command that worked better than cruise control.
Chapter 15
“Dragons!” the man exclaimed as they looked out at the ocean from the Golden Gate Bridge scenic overlook. “I’ve never seen the like of this anywhere. The sheer number of people that exist here is beyond imagining. You have buildings of glass and stone that reach to the sky, and now this impossible bridge of metal that spans the very ocean itself.”
“Where are you from then?” Randy asked sensing for the first time the man he’d ridden halfway across the country was about to open up a bit. He’d only recently learned the man’s name.
“Cheurt,” he’d said when Randy raised the question. The name still felt strange on his tongue, even though it seemed to fit the language he couldn’t identify but which he seemed to be fluent in somehow.
“Far from here. Impossibly far. I don’t think you could understand or would even believe if I told you. It’s a place of magic and power. This place is so restricting in comparison.”
Randy shook his head. It wasn’t an answer that explained anything. Most people thought of their homeland as magical, but the term had little meaning when used so loosely. He still didn’t have a clue about the strange visitor, or for his own actions in humbly aiding the man’s every whim.
“Do you live near the ocean Cheurt?” Randy inquired, hoping he could possibly find a small lever by which he could pry a bit more information from the taciturn man. Whatever compelled him to be as helpful as possible to this man had done nothing to curb his curiosity.
Cheurt shook his head. “I come from the mountains. The oceans of my homeland are very different. Your oceans are far more peaceful than mine, which frequently are angry displaying immense waves. Only the bravest of fools venture onto the seas. But here, your sea is flat and still with only the smallest of waves as far as I can see. Tell me, do you know what’s on the far side?”
“Of course,” Randy answered a bit surprised. “The Pacific Ocean is the largest on the planet, but on the far side is China, Japan, Australia, and all the rest of Asia.”
“You speak as if you’ve been there,” Cheurt said.
“I have,” Randy replied. ‘Several times.”
“It is hard for me to imagine,” Cheurt said. “In my land, no one knows for sure what lies beyond the far horizon.”
“I can show you on a map,” Randy offered.
“A map. Of the whole of your world? I would like that,” Cheurt said.
“There’s probably somewhere here in the city we could go, but I know my way around Berkeley across the bay. We could go across the bay, find a place to stay for the night, then go to the University Library and I could show you.”
They turned to leave when Cheurt spotted a naval aircraft carrier nosing its way under the Golden Gate Bridge. The magnificent ship was all decked out for its return, the deck spotted with a variety of fighter aircraft and hundreds of sailors on deck happy to see the sights of home after an extended deployment. The presence of the crew
made it abundantly clear just how large the carrier was, something not lost on Cheurt.
“That cannot be!” he exclaimed realizing the size of the ship. “It appears to be made of metal. What kind of magic is required to make it float?” he asked seriously.
“Magic?” asked Randy. “All major vessels are made from steel now days. There isn’t anything magical about it.”
“Nonsense,” Cheurt objected. “Metals do not float. A ship must be made of wood if it is to sail the seas.”
Randy decided not to argue the point. Maybe they could stop by the shipyards later and he could show the man the reality. His lack of knowledge of the simple physics behind the construction of ships was yet another mystery of his origins.
“Are those some of your flying machines?” said Cheurt, interrupting Randy’s thoughts.
“Yes. That is an aircraft carrier, one of the largest warships in the world. It carries men, missiles, bombs, and a complement of aircraft capable of delivering the weapons wherever desired.”
“The planes can be used for war?”
As the great ship made its way into the harbor, Randy explained the basic functioning of the ship, and how the planes could be loaded with a variety of weapons to attack different types of targets as well as the logistical advantages of having a mobile launching base. He could sense both the interest and the surprise in the other.
“How powerful can these bombs be?” Cheurt asked, still not entirely convinced he was being told the truth.
“In the extreme, incredibly powerful. For example, that ship carries a special type of bomb. One of them could destroy this entire city.”
“Dragon Piss!” Cheurt objected. “This I do not believe.”
“Come on,” Randy insisted. “Let’s get to the library and I’ll show you.”
“This is a model of your world? Show me where we are, and where you live.”
Randy showed him where they had started, and the path they had taken to reach the city of San Francisco. He pointed out the various major cities of the United States, and then some of the other countries. When he explained the light blue areas on the globe represented the oceans, the man was astonished at the great distance from where they were to the far side of the ocean.
“It must take years to cross and return,” the man observed.
“Weeks by ship, and a day each way by airplane,” Randy corrected him.
Cheurt was becoming numb to the realities of this world, and only nodded.
“Come, let me show you something else.”
“Wait,” Cheurt objected. He looked at the globe carefully, located the spot where Randy had shown him they’d started their journey, and carefully located the spot on the globe on the exact opposite side. He looked closely at the area he’d found, and turning to Randy asked, “Ocean?”
Randy looked over the man’s shoulder. “A few small islands around, but right there its nothing but ocean for a very long way. Why?”
Cheurt didn’t respond, but Randy’s confirmation that the spot was in the middle of the ocean seemed to have some meaning to him.
Randy spent rest of the afternoon showing Cheurt books and pictures, and even one movie of various kinds of weapons systems. The movie showed the power of the atom bomb, and even Cheurt seemed shaken by what he had seen. As the afternoon wore on, Cheurt’s interest seemed directed more towards individual weapons, especially rifles.
Randy wasn’t quiet sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way he realized they had transitioned to using Cheurt’s native language rather than English. It didn’t take much imagination to decide he didn’t want their discussion overheard, and one more odd language on the Berkeley campus was totally unremarkable, causing no particular notice.
“It is unfortunate that this place is so far from your home,” Cheurt observed. “I would like to spend much time here.”
“This is just the university library. Libraries are everywhere. The Boulder University campus has an excellent library where you can find all the same information. Even better, most of this is available on the Internet.”
“Internet?”
“I’ll show you once we get home. Where are you from? You are clearly unaware of things that are universally known.”
Cheurt hesitated and shrugged. “You won’t believe me, but I am from a different world, a very different place.”
“Right,” Randy drawled. “You came here in your spaceship and want to take our primitive technology back home with you.”
“I came via a pathway known as the Nexus. Few know of its existence anymore, and even fewer have the ability to make the passage.”
“And you are seeking something to take back with you, weapons it seems.”
“There is conflict on Gaea, just like here. There is much I would very much like to take back with me, but it cannot be. The Nexus has degraded in the centuries of neglect, and I can carry only a small weight with me when I cross. With my clothes, and the power bottles, I could barely manage another ten of your pounds when I make the transition.”
“That seems very restricting.”
“It is so. Even worse, transitions are limited. I cannot cross and return more than once every few weeks. I am hoping to obtain knowledge that I can take with me. Something that could then be used to change the direction of my world.”
Randy sensed that Cheurt wasn’t one of the “good” guys, but that didn’t make any difference. He was compelled to help the man, whoever he really was.
“Come. If we can find all of this near your home then it is time to return.”
A couple of days later the two were back in Randy’s living room as Cheurt prepared to leave.
“We will have much to do when I return,” the man said. “I will want to learn how to use all of the tools you discussed on our return. You will know when I am back.”
“In a month or so?” Randy asked thinking back to the spacing of previous visits.
“Close enough. It will depend on what is happening there.”
Cheurt considered the man beside him for a minute then shrugged. What he’d allowed Randy to learn this time had been unwise of him. No matter, it was simple to fix. Unless of course the fixing killed Randy, but then these things always had some risk. He was willing to take the chance.
Randy had been trying to decide if someone had stolen his identity and had been using his credit card numbers to pay for hotels in San Francisco and places in between. He certainly hadn’t been there in a couple of years, but he couldn’t see how anyone could have gotten the numbers to his cards. He was very careful how he used them, and most often used cash for purchases these days. His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sparkling behind his eyes, followed by the usual returning memory that alerted him the intruder was back. Something told him the man would be at the door in a minute and would be expecting his help again. He also now remembered making the trip to San Francisco a few weeks back, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall any of the details of the trip or anything they had said or done during that time. Those memories appeared to have been erased somehow. Maybe that explained the migraines he’d been having a couple of weeks back.
Randy opened the door and was surprised to see the now familiar face calmly standing waiting on the doorstep despite the zero-degree weather and the brisk wind blowing outside. The winter had been fierce off and on, and the past couple of days had brought several inches of new snow and extremely low temperatures. Yet here the stranger stood in his usual attire, without a jacket, showing no particular stress or concern after several minutes direct exposure to the storm and having walked through a couple feet of snow from the back yard to the door.
“Is it like this often?” the man asked as he stepped uninvited inside.
Randy shut the door quickly, already feeling the cold soaking into his core and shivering, happy to be able to step back into the warmth of the house. The intruder walked into the living room and sat down, curiously without tracking any snow into the house.
Seemingly, he was untouched by the weather outside.
“It’s winter,” he replied simply. “We’ve been having storms off and on all month. “This time of year Boulder can get pretty nasty. Don’t you get much snow where you come from?”
The man ignored the question and examined Randy carefully for several seconds. Randy didn’t know what he was looking for, but apparently satisfied, he said, “It appears you will continue to be useful. That is most fortunate.”
Then he started out explaining his immediate agenda. The man had changed significantly since the last time Randy could remember dealing with him. He was still showing the superior outward attitude, and seemed to expect instant adherence to his wishes, but in addition he seemed more confident of himself. He appeared to have learned a great deal about the way things worked. Randy couldn’t help wonder if much of that change might be explained if he could only recall what had happened during the time the two of them had spent in San Francisco, but those memories stubbornly refused to surface.
“We have much to do,” the man explained. “There are places I want to see, and several preparations that must be made to support my plans. From what you told me before, you are fortunate to have access to reasonable wealth?”
Randy couldn’t remember the subject having come up, but obviously the man had somehow become familiar with Randy’s financial situation. In the past the man had had Randy acquire whatever he wanted, but the subject of whether it he had the means of paying hadn’t been important to the man.
“I’m well enough well off,” Randy replied, despite the fact the man seemed to know this. “I’m not rich by any means, but I have some savings in addition to owning this house with my sister.”
