I swiveled back to stare at Calidore in the giant test tube, writhing in agony as the electrical discharges surged from the metal curved around the cylinder and struck his brain.
Slowly, I looked back at the flickering images on the screen. I saw another screen on a spaceship, showing the stars.
That’s when I noticed the other in the chamber with Calidore and me. It was a creature of sorts, a hideous thing with black rubbery skin, a giant slug perhaps, with a single eyestalk. On the stalk was its only apparent eye, watching the flickering images on the screen.
Was that thing an Avanti? I dearly hoped not. But it must be a creature, an alien, an intelligent entity.
The eye on the stalk whipped around, and it leaned toward me.
I shivered in dread.
Tentacles appeared, oozing upward from the giant slug mass, and they tapped controls.
The electrical discharges from the curved metal ceased. The metal prongs moved away from where they had been around the test tube. I could not see what held them. They sank out of sight.
Inside the cylinder, Calidore slumped in exhaustion. How long had he been inside there? His eyes snapped open, and he glared when he saw me.
“You,” he said, his voice muffled by the glass, or whatever the test tube was composed of. It surprised me I could hear anything through it.
I looked to see what the alien was doing, but it was gone. How had the giant slug-thing managed to disappear so fast?
I was too freaked out to try to figure it out. Instead, I regarded Calidore again.
He concentrated, and his eyes seemed to swirl with power. I felt lethargy overcome my mind, and I frowned.
“Are…are you doing this?” I asked.
He stared more intently, and then he indicated a bank of machines. I felt a strong compulsion to go to the machine and see if I could free the doctor.
Instead of obeying the compulsion, I stubbornly remained rooted where I stood.
“Obey me,” Calidore said in a commanding way.
I wanted to, but something in me resisted. I shook my head.
He scowled, and it looked as if he was gathering power to increase his command. Then his shoulders slumped, and he said, “Please release me. I’ll reward you beyond your wildest dreams if you do.”
I frowned as I considered his offer. Then, I realized how corny it sounded and shook my head again.
“Who are you?” Calidore shouted. “You’re no Terran. Do you control the Arch Ship?”
I opened my mouth to answer. Before I could begin doing so, I witnessed one of the most gruesome sights of my life.
-16-
Calidore must have seen something, for he looked up sharply. The doctor cringed before throwing his hands up above his head and shouting for mercy.
“No, no, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have harmed your structures. It wasn’t my fault. The others made me do it.”
The top of the cylinder was moving away, and a metal cap like a helmet had begun descending from somewhere in the darkness up there. Nothing visible moved the cylinder plug or the helmet, but I assumed I simply didn’t understand the technology that did it.
The helmet halted, and the cylinder plug recapped the test tube opening. The curved metal things reappeared along the glassy sides.
Calidore looked upon them in horror. “Just ask me,” he pleaded. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. There’s no need to force it from me.”
Electrical discharges sizzled from the curved metal plates, the lines of power again striking the doctor’s upper head.
I turned and looked at the screen. I saw the same circle of robed men around the strange spinning globe. They were in a cavern. I looked closer. The men raised their hands as if they worshiped the spinning globe. I had a sense that they were doing something unseen.
“Yes, yes,” Calidore managed to pant. “They’re the culprits. They’re the ones who yearn for knowledge.”
The scene on the screen changed. I looked upon a dais. Three men in robes sat there, scowling down at me—at Calidore, I realized. I was seeing all this through his memories, through his sight.
The center man spoke. I heard nothing, but he seemed angry.
“They cast me out.” Calidore wept inside the test tube. “They said I did not adhere to their philosophies. I had broken my vows, they said, and attempted to corrupt their assembly. They accused me of heresy, said I did not belong in their august company. Can you imagine the shame I felt, the bitterness against them? I decided later that I would show them. I would find the ancient Avantis—you, I suppose—and use your wisdom to return in power. Of course, they look for you, too. They seek the ancient ways—”
Calidore abruptly stopped talking, and he cringed again in the test tube.
I felt it, too—anger, maybe even rage. It was palpable, seething in the air. Perhaps it was a mental projection and I sensed it. Soon, though, the anger ceased, and I sensed curiosity, a need to know…to know… what? I’m not sure.
Calidore must have known. “It’s obvious,” he said. “They look for ancient ruins, Avanti ruins, and for the ones called the Masters.”
For a moment, then, I sensed fear. That stopped, and I had the odd impression of a conversation. It was not with us, but amongst themselves, whoever controlled the alien ship, the “Arch Ship,” as Calidore had called it earlier.
“Do you see now?” Calidore shouted from in the test tube. “I’m not the one to blame. I’m—”
The electrical discharges stopped, and the curved metal plates floated away again, disappearing somewhere in the floor.
Calidore sagged, perhaps in relief.
The top of the cylinder lifted once more, and he flinched.
“No!” he shouted. “Didn’t you hear me? It wasn’t my fault. They threw me out. They did even more than that. They disowned me, removing most of my modifications. I had reached the Eleventh Degree, and controlled eight sensitivities, three energies, two projections, a nullification, two lethal emanations. And I had an anti-fatigue gland, and the ability to survive over an hour in a de-oxygenated atmosphere. They took all that from me, when I had labored endless years to reach so high. By doing that, they as good as forced me to hunt for the ancient treasures so I could redeem myself against them. They’re your hidden enemies, not me. Now that I understand your real greatness, I would never think to do anything again to displease you—”
His desperate pleading cut off as the helmet entered the top of the cylinder.
“No!” Calidore howled. “Please don’t do this to me, please, please, please.”
He tried to throw his arms up. A hidden force kept them from rising higher than his shoulders. He threw his head from side to side until, it seemed, invisible clamps held his head in place. Slowly, the helmet, shaped like an ancient Spartan helmet, although without eye or mouth holes, slipped over Doctor Calidore’s entire head.
I heard humming, a machine noise. It increased in volume. The louder it hummed, the more Calidore’s body shivered and shook.
He howled again from within the helmet, muffled even more, of course. He sounded like a lost soul in Hell. He wept, and then his body went rigid.
I watched in horror as his body began to shrivel in upon itself. It was as if the helmet drew the substance out of his entire body and sucked it up through the thing around his head. Finally, Doctor Calidore was nothing more than a dry husk of his former self.
Abruptly, his regular-sized head plopped out of the helmet. The grotesque paper-thin body and full-sized head collapsed to the bottom of the cylinder. With a whoosh, a hot flame devoured everything, the stench drifting through the room.
I gagged, heaving the contents of my stomach. I never wanted to witness such a thing again. Poor Doctor Calidore, what a miserable end to a—
“Hey!” I shouted. “What’s happening?”
An invisible force grabbed me. I could feel pressure all along my body, including my arms and legs. It lifted me.
Was the ship or, rather
, were its aliens going to put me in that tube? I dreaded the idea and desperately tried to struggle. I was unable, as the invisible force had gripped me too tightly.
I floated toward the tube and moaned in dread. But the force took me past the awful tube and toward a sudden opening in the wall. I left the horror chamber and began to drift elsewhere, carried along by the force.
“What are you doing to me?” I shouted.
There was no answer.
I inhaled deeply, ready to shout and plead just as I’d seen Calidore do. A tiny voice—an inner voice—asked me how that had helped the doctor.
I exhaled without shouting, without pleading. I reaffirmed who I was, Jason Bain, a warrior of the Wolf Clan of Nevada. I had passed the manhood tests, ready to go into the greater world and seek to advance the knowledge of our clan. I had trained in combat arts. I knew how to think. If ever there was a moment made for contemplation, this was it.
I was trapped in a supposedly ancient Arch Ship of the Avantis. I had just witnessed a terrible end to Doctor Calidore. I might die soon in some horrific manner. But that didn’t mean I had to wail like a coward. As a man thinks, so is he. I was a warrior. I would therefore act like one, and even more importantly, I was a man.
I decided in that moment to meet my fate stoically and to fight against it if I could manage. What I would not do was die a thousand deaths, which, “they” said a coward did. The same “they” said a brave man only died once.
I hardened my resolve as I was borne deeper into the alien vessel.
-17-
It was one thing to resolve an action. It was another matter to follow through with it. Unfortunately, I did not have long to prepare myself.
I entered a dimly lit chamber with a massive chest in the center. Tubes and lines snaked to it. Perhaps “chest” was the wrong word; maybe “ancient sarcophagus” would be more descriptive. It had that feel.
As I drifted toward it, the ancient sarcophagus opened. I expected it to creak, but it did not. It glowed inside, and I noted a depression where a body would go.
The force shifted me into a horizontal position, maneuvering me so I entered the damned thing. I tried to struggle, but it did not help. The force set me into the depression. That part was warm, and I did not like it. Worse, I noticed spikes in the top part. They were finger-length, and I counted thirty of them before I made myself stop counting.
The top with all of those spikes began closing upon me.
I panted until I regained control of myself. As an act of courage, I forced myself to stare at the spikes descending toward me as the giant lid closed.
That nearly unmanned me. I wanted to howl, to whimper and plead. Instead, I held my breath—
Despite my best resolve, I gasped in pain as the thirty-plus spikes plunged into me; legs, torso and arms. The intensity of the pain—I surged and wriggled as fluids and who knew what other substances were injected through the spikes into my body. I felt hot fire and numbing cold in turns. The agony increased, rising in pitch, and it tore a grunt from me and a moan of agony.
That was the last I remembered. The agony surely drove me unconscious, and for that, I was grateful. There at the end, I’d almost howled.
I never learned what my resolve had gained me, but I do know that I dreamed most strangely. It was surreal at first, and then I felt as if it was reality. Surely, this was not the case, however.
In my dream, I drifted as a spirit through many parts of the Arch Ship. I saw technical marvels and thought to see giant slug monsters with eyestalks and tentacles instead of hands. I knew then, in my dream, that those creatures were not the Avantis. They were servants, biologically created things. I paused in my dream before a giant screen. There I saw Terra, but it wasn’t as I recalled seeing it while walking on the ship’s surface. I saw space creatures, like spiders, that were spinning a substance from their bodies. This substance was crystalline when it hardened. In any case, these tens of thousands of space creatures wove a crystalline web around my homeworld. That would hold the plants, birds, fishes, animals and people in suspended animation, I somehow knew. They would not die, but they would not live, either, until someone broke the crystalline substance in such a way as to regenerate life. This was an ancient process and had happened many times in the distant past when the Masters had invaded our part of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Why had it happened? I did not know. Perhaps the crystalline process was meant to preserve life. Maybe it was a zoological process. Maybe this was a pattern with a sinister purpose; the Avantis cataloged and did something…deeper and viler with their test subjects.
Why would I dream like this? I was beginning to find it confusing. Why had I been put into the technological sarcophagus with the horrible spikes?
With dreamlike clarity, I realized the sarcophagus—the enhancer, my mind suddenly knew—had strengthened me for the coming ordeal.
“I don’t understand,” I said in my dream.
The dream shifted. I stood on the floor in a vast room with many shadows and dark recesses around me. I felt small and insignificant. Then, a shining thing with a humanoid shape approached me. The shining one was beautiful and elegant, and it—no, she—also seemed immaterial. Was she an angel or a—
“You are called Jason Bain,” she said in a musical voice.
Maybe she was an Avanti, or maybe the alien used her machines to find an image in my mind that would awe me. Was I dreaming still, or was this a ghostly reality, manufactured by drugs perhaps or mind machines of inordinate complexity and power? Perhaps the method didn’t matter, only that the alien of the Arch Ship communicated with me.
“You are correct, Jason Bain. I am communicating directly with you.”
“What are you?” I asked.
“I am old as you conceive such things. I have slept for many millenniums, for many turnings of the galaxy. How I fell into this suspended animation, I have yet to discover. I wonder if I am alone now. I wonder if the Great War…”
“What’s wrong?”
“None of these things matter to you, Terran. I must study. I must think. That will take time, much time.”
“What did you do to my planet?”
“Reserved it as I contemplate,” she said. “I will run tests later as you perceived. Until then, your star system is off-limits to everyone. That should not prove difficult to enforce. Few of your stellar neighbors even know about humanity. There must be a reason for that. I must learn that reason.”
“Does the reason include the Masters, do you think?”
“Worm of a man, do not pepper me with questions about matters you cannot possibly understand. Know that I have found you to be valiant and stubborn. You could not have passed the outer defenses otherwise. The one you call Calidore represents a potential threat to my peace. His kind goes rooting through ancient ruins, seeking relics of power. They are eager for mastery and realize the one true way to obtain it is to expand their minds. I refer, of course, to the ones Calidore calls mentalists.”
“He asked me if I knew who they were.”
“Calidore must have recognized, however dimly, your potential. I have strengthened your mind and body. You are not like before. You are to hunt down the mentalists and slay them, Jason Bain.”
“Why must I?”
“You will do as I have programmed you to do. Through Calidore, they have already committed horrendous damage to one of my few working stations.”
“You mean the one on Titan?”
“Did I not say you shall not question me on matters that do not concern you? Or is it that you seek to learn the lessons that Calidore learned in the end?”
“No.”
“Then cease your prattle and listen. The mentalists offend me. I am sending you to cause them grief as I contemplate my next action. This will take time, time for me to fully awaken. Perhaps the rise of the mentalists heralds something new and sinister in the galaxy, and I have awakened to forestall such a thing. Perhaps Terra shall be my new experiment. I have fo
rgotten why I parked in your star system so long ago. There was damage—it doesn’t matter to you. That I ramble in your presence tells me that all is not right with the Arch Ship and even possibly with me. That will change. Oh, by the Great War, that will change indeed.”
“It sounds as if you’re going to send me…into the Orion Arm, I suppose.”
“You have a small purpose, Jason Bain. But it shall begin in an Ahn of Time. Never fear, I am arming you with a suitable weapon—knowledge. I have decided on an ironic manifestation of this. I have lost so much. I no longer know everything. Yet, even now, these upstart mentalists are violating a ‘ruin.’ There you will start, and possibly, there you will end. Are you ready, Jason Bain?”
“How can I be ready? Little of what you’re saying makes sense to me. I have a counterproposal for you. Free Terra and I’ll gladly be your agent in this.”
“You already are my agent.”
“I will willingly do your bidding.”
“You already are going to obey the parameters of the mission that I have set you.”
“May I ask a question?”
“What does it concern?”
“This knowledge you spoke about.”
“There is no need to ask. Here is the tool.”
In that strange moment, a giant slug slithered forward with its single eyestalk bowed in a reverent manner. Two tentacles were forward as it carried a small box with a strap. The metal box was the size of an ancient VCR cassette I’d once found in the ruins of Old Barstow.
“This is a sentient computer,” the shining one told me. “It can also act as a scanner. Primarily, however, the tool will give you knowledge.”
“May I ask how it is sentient?”
“You should have already deduced that. In a chamber, you witnessed Calidore’s interrogation. At the end of the proceedings, a digitizer recorded Calidore’s mentality, his predilections, his understandings and memories. In a word, his soul transferred to the sentient computer slate in your hands. The ship installed several slave programs so he cannot inform a mentalist, or an agent of a mentalist, about anything that he has discovered here. If such an event occurs, a failsafe will delete Calidore’s digital soul. Since Calidore was and is a crafty and essentially dishonest personality, the ship also installed a pain button on the slate. It is the small red button in back.”
The Imprisoned Earth Page 7
