Screamer shrugged and glanced at Stan.
“I think I would only confuse the issue,” Stan said. “Sometimes too much history and knowledge can hurt more than it can help.”
I knew Stan was right, so Screamer reached over and touched my arm and suddenly he and Patty were both in my mind. We had done this sort of thing so many times over the years, it didn’t even feel strange anymore.
It just felt familiar.
After only a few seconds, Screamer pulled his hand away from my arm and I was back alone in my own head.
Patty gave my hand a squeeze, but didn’t let go, for which I was glad. Her touch kept me calm and thinking clearly, at least most of the time.
“See anything?” I asked Stan, then Patty.
“Something about the exit,” Patty said.
“You were thinking we should find it first, before we go in.”
Suddenly I knew the answer.
“That’s exactly right,” I said. “And I have an idea. I’ll be right back.”
I instantly teleported to the Diner.
Madge was scrubbing a counter far harder than it needed to be scrubbed. Clearly she was upset at herself for not wanting or being able to help.
“I need a thermos of hot chocolate,” I said.
She looked at me and frowned. “Official or otherwise?”
“Official,” I said. “How long?”
“Two minutes,” she said, turning for the kitchen. “I’ll bring it to you.”
“Thanks.” A moment later I was sitting next to Patty in the booth in my office.
And I was smiling. I knew how to find the exit, at least from this side.
“What was that all about?” Stan asked, looking as puzzled as the rest of my team.
“Call Laverne and Benny and I’ll explain,” I said.
“No need,” Laverne said as she appeared again in the chair facing the booth. Benny was standing beside her and she still seemed taller than he was. “You think the exit is controlled by the Silicon Suckers?”
“I do,” I said. “In fact, I’m convinced of it.”
The Silicon Suckers were an ancient race of beings that lived in huge tunnels and caverns under desert regions of the planet. The gods, a long time ago, had negotiated a truce with them to keep humans and Silicon Suckers from fighting.
“How can you be so sure?” Benny asked, his voice deep and low and almost rumbling with power.
“There was a point when I was trying to save a superhero from the Keno side from her time with the Suckers. I had to watch her negotiate with the leader of the Silicon Suckers for an exchange of land for a number of thermoses every month of hot chocolate.”
“Strangest thing I had ever heard about,” Benny said, shaking his head.
“During the negotiation, the leader of the Silicon Suckers floated a map in the air of the land around Las Vegas, showing what humans controlled and what they controlled. There was a giant round area under the city of Las Vegas that had neither human nor Silicon Sucker color on it. At the time, I assumed it was that way because it was under the city and no one cared.”
“The ancient city,” Laverne said, nodding. “From what I understand, the original protective screen over it was a dome, so it would be round.”
“I’m willing to bet,” I said, “that the Silicon Suckers know of the exit and have just kept it locked or blocked.”
“Worth finding out before going in there,” Laverne said, nodding her head. “We’ll be watching if you need help.”
With that she and Benny both vanished again before I had a chance to ask them why they didn’t just go and talk to the Silicon Suckers instead of me. More than likely there was some reason I didn’t know about. Just another question I would have to ask later.
Before anyone could say anything, Madge appeared out of the invisible door carrying the thermos of hot chocolate, the most sacred and valuable of drugs to the Silicon Suckers.
I was going to need to negotiate for Laverne’s daughter’s life with hot chocolate. I just hoped I could offer them enough.
FIVE
Five minutes later, after making sure my plan was solid with Stan and Screamer and Patty, I found myself standing alone on the edge of Highway 95 leading north out of Las Vegas.
The Silicon Suckers’ main entrance was under a billboard, hidden from view for anyone not welcome in their castles, as they called their caverns and tunnels.
The hot wind was whipping my coat around me and I had to hold my hat on my head with one hand to keep from having to chase it up the highway.
I waited until there were no cars coming in either direction, then slipped off my shoes and left them in the sand next to a sagebrush. I stepped into the wide tunnel and took ten steps into the sand tunnel, as showed respect, then stopped.
Silicon Suckers were big into respect. And rules. They had a million rules.
A few seconds later two Silicon Suckers appeared. They were, as normal, completely naked, but I had no idea what sex they were, or if Silicon Suckers even had a sex. Their bodies were very, very skinny and a pasty gray, but their heads were huge, with wide, unblinking eyes.
Over the centuries, humans who had seen them called them aliens and lately they had become known as the Grays. But as far as I knew, they had lived on Earth longer than humans, and that was going some I was starting to discover.
Both of the Silicon Suckers bowed slightly to me and I returned the bow, then followed them down through what seemed like miles of sandstone tunnels, illuminated by something I had never been able to figure out. The light just seemed to come from everywhere in the tunnel.
When we broke out into the open into the huge cavern that was the main area of this city, I was stunned. Never had I seen so many Silicon Suckers in this area, and they all seemed to be moving at a normal pace, clearly all busy.
From what I understood, hot chocolate not only was a wonderful drug to the Silicon Suckers, but it was a critical element in their health and ability to reproduce. And clearly they had been doing a great deal of reproducing in the year we had been giving them a number of thermoses of hot chocolate every month in payment.
After almost thirty minutes of walking behind my guides, I was shown into a large room I knew to be the Great One’s throne room. Only it was as empty as every other room and tunnel I had seen in this place.
I was told to wait and my guides left me standing alone.
Then from one side of the room, a tall and clearly elderly Silicon Sucker appeared and walked slowly toward me. I knew, without a doubt, even though most of the Silicon Suckers looked identical to me, that I was facing their great leader.
I bowed very deeply.
“It is a great honor that you have blessed us once again with your presence, my friend,” the Great One said.
“The honor is mine,” I said, carefully respecting their tradition. “May I offer the people of this fantastic castle a gift?”
The Great One nodded slightly and I pulled the thermos of hot chocolate from my coat and sat it on the ground in front of me.
Two others came from a side tunnel and carefully picked up the thermos and carried it away.
After they had left, the great one indicated that I should sit and he did the same, facing me.
Then he nodded, a sign I had permission to speak.
“Great One,” I said, bowing slightly as was the custom when someone spoke in front of the Great One, “I am honored by your gracious gift of time to listen to me. I have a very serious problem that only you and your wisdom can help me solve.”
The Great One just nodded, signaling I could continue.
“Helen, the daughter of Laverne and Benny, two of our greatest leaders, has vanished.”
The Great One leaned forward, clearly reacting in some way to my news.
“Helen is such a wonderful child,” the Great One said. “Full of spirit, yet very respectful, as are her parents.”
I actually was so stunned he knew Helen, I got off my plan
ned script and for a moment sat there not moving.
“Has she gone into the ancient city?” the Great One asked.
“We think she has, oh Great One,” I said, bowing again. “And I am afraid we do not know where the exit is.”
The Great One said nothing, so I continued on.
“We would be willing to offer four more containers of the sacred liquid per moon cycle for ten sun cycles if you knew where the exit is from the ancient city and would allow my team to enter the city from our entrance, find her, and bring her back to her parents.”
“As I would expect of you, your willingness to risk yourself is admirable.”
I bowed slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment. However, a sentence like that usually was followed by the word, “But…”
“We will create a special and separate tunnel from the exit of the ancient city to the surface and allow you to use it for ten sun cycles. But for such work and use, we will require six containers per moon cycle.”
I sat dead still for a few seconds. I was expected to negotiate. It was a custom.
“Great One,” I finally said, “your kind offer is very generous. If I am allowed to make a counter proposal?”
He nodded, so I went on.
“We can only bring five more than we are doing now per moon cycle for the first year. But then, after that, we can add one more per sun cycle for the ten years of the use of the tunnel you are so graciously willing to build.”
I was making sure that he understood that we valued our thermoses of hot chocolate as much as he did, even though we did not. And yet I was giving him a chance to continue to let his people grow and multiply.
He nodded slightly. “Your proposal is very fair. We have an agreement. You can enter the ancient city from above at any time. It will take us only a very short amount of time to open the new tunnel from the ancient city exit to the surface.”
“The first payment will be at your entrance tomorrow at sunrise and then with the other regular payment every moon cycle.”
“It is always an honor,” the Great One said to me, bowing slightly.
“The honor is always mine,” I said, bowing as deeply as I could while sitting down.
He stood and without another word left the room.
I waited until he was gone before standing. My legs screamed at me for sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, but I had had no option.
Two guides appeared a moment later and after thirty minutes of sweating in my black leather coat, we had climbed back to the surface.
I grabbed my shoes and an instant later was in the cool air of my new office floating over Las Vegas.
“Well done,” Laverne said, looking like she wanted to hug me.
Benny just smiled and nodded.
“We’re not done yet,” I said as Patty handed me a large glass of water and I took off my black coat. “We still have to find Helen and get her out of that city.”
“At least there’s a way out now,” Laverne said. “Thanks to you and your fantastic thinking. Not sure why someone hadn’t thought of that before now.”
With that she and Benny vanished and I slumped into the booth to tell the rest of my team what had just happened.
After I was done, Patty gave me a little kiss on the cheek and then squeezed my hand.
“So we’re going in,” Screamer said, nodding.
I nodded and turned to Stan. “Is there a map of the ancient city?”
“I’ll find out,” he said, and vanished.
“I thought you had the exit cleared with the Silicon Suckers,” Screamer said.
“I do,” I said, “But that ancient city is as large as the entire city of Las Vegas. We first have to find Helen. After that, I honestly have no idea where exactly that one door out is.”
“Oh,” Screamer said, looking shocked again.
I felt the same way.
SIX
Laverne found a very old map of a city that seemed to be not only the size of Las Vegas, but a hundred times larger. In fact, from what I could tell from the old map, at one time the ancient city filled the entire valley.
Stan held that map and the rest of us carried supplies. In packs we had enough food and water to last us a month if we rationed.
We were standing on a side street off of Freemont looking like we were heading into the wilderness for two weeks instead of through a simple door I had never noticed before.
We waited until there was no one on the sidewalk around us, then Stan pulled the door open and held it for us to step through.
I glanced around once more at the city I loved, hoping I would see it again, then holding Patty’s hand, I stepped through and into what looked like a long, simple hallway.
Screamer followed, then Stan who pulled the door closed, plunging us into complete blackness.
Patty was the only one who was thinking and had a flashlight in her hand. She snapped it on and pointed it ahead down the hallway that now looked a great deal like a tunnel.
Now I knew where the ancient city got its nickname of “tunnels.”
My stomach was in a tight knot and I could barely breathe the stale, dust-smelling air. Only Patty’s superpower ability to keep me calm allowed me to move forward. Otherwise I was sure I would have turned and fled for the door and the street beyond.
“Feel that?” Screamer asked.
“Sense of dread spell,” Stan said, nodding.
A moment later it was gone as was my need to panic and run. Now all I felt was just plain old fear.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Yes,” Patty said. “I was barely holding on against it.”
“You were doing fine,” I said, squeezing her hand as I led us down the hallway and around a corner.
There the beam of her flashlight found another door made of old wood. It had a metal pull handle with strange inscriptions on the metal and the plate under the handle.
“Here we go,” Stan said.
I nodded and pulled the door open, sending waves of dust swirling around us in the hallway.
It was now or never.
I stepped through the doorway and into the ancient city.
And stopped cold at what I saw spread out in front of me.
“How can that be?” Patty asked breathlessly beside me.
“Oh, oh,” Stan said.
“You have got to be kidding?” Screamer said.
And then, behind us, I heard the door close with a loud thump that sent a chill down my spine.
We were standing on a high balcony with an iron railing protecting us from a very, very long fall. From the looks of it more than thirty or forty stories.
The ancient city was spread out below us. But it wasn’t ancient and it certainly wasn’t underground and it certainly wasn’t empty.
In fact, snow was falling gently on the massive city and I could feel the faint wind and the not-so-faint sounds of a busy city very much alive below us.
We were no longer under Las Vegas.
Or if we were, this was the strangest illusion I had ever seen or felt.
Because we had stepped from a warm afternoon in Las Vegas to a cold, snowy night in a very strange city.
SEVEN
As I stared out over the fantastic city, suddenly I wished I had listened a little more carefully when Stan explained to me how my new office was out of time and space a half turn. Because I had a hunch this city was the same.
And if we went down into those streets, I was pretty certain we would meet some real Titans. Or at least the descendants of the real Titans from legend.
I really wished I had studied history and legends more back when I was in school. I just never expected to need it like this.
The city stretching into the light snow looked like a fantastic alien science fiction city you might see in the movies with towering beautiful buildings and walkways crisscrossing from building to building mixed up with an ancient Eastern city with arches and columns and narrow, stone roads.
A huge b
oulevard wider than The Strip in Vegas wound its way through the city and as far as I could see, lined by sleek glowing buildings that seemed to vanish up into the snow. Futuristic cars that looked like they were polished metal without windows seamlessly flowed up and down the boulevard only on the wrong side of the road as far as I was concerned, like they did in England.
There were a few pedestrians out along the roads, but we were so high in the air I couldn’t get any idea of what they looked like.
The snow was thin and the lights from the bustling city made it all seem sort of like I was staring over a fairy tale city inside a snow globe.
For all I knew, I was. I was starting to learn that anything was possible when it came to my world. So maybe we were in a huge snow globe that was the prison to the Titans.
I tried to clear that thought out of my head without much success.
I turned and looked at the door we had come in.
It had vanished. Just a blank, gray cement wall filled the area behind us. No going back that way.
I knew that would be the case, but now being faced with it scared me more than I wanted to admit.
And I had a hunch that finding the exit from this huge city wasn’t going to be easy.
We had all stood there on that high balcony in silence for a good minute before I squeezed Patty’s hand and turned to Stan. “Got any idea how we might find Helen in this place?”
“I know exactly where she’s at,” he said, shaking his head and coming back to our situation.
“That’s good,” Screamer said. “But anyone besides Poker Boy here think to bring a coat?”
For the first time I noticed just how cold it was. Even my black leather coat didn’t cut the chill.
An instant later all of us were wearing heavy parkas of varying colors. Patty’s was a stylish pink, mine was plain and black like my leather jacket under it, so it matched my fedora-like black hat. Screamer’s coat was green with deep pockets that he instantly stuck his hands into. Stan had put himself in a blue parka with a hood and gloves.
I was glad he hadn’t given me and Patty gloves. I got a lot of strength from her touch.
Smith's Monthly #18 Page 3
