by Ron Miller
The carbonized terrain was flat and only slightly rolling, though broken by thousands of protruding black and red boulders that had evidently been thrown from the central volcano, or created when the ground she was now walking on had been a river of liquid rock, tortured as it cooled like a fracturing ice floe. The stream splashed and meandered its way over, under, around and through these obstacles, Bronwyn had to abandon its banks often in order to take a more circuitous but passable route. She had quickly grown to resent the sun she had so recently welcomed. There was little shade; only a few twisted boulders were large enough for her to sit beneath and these opportunities she welcomed at every presentation. The air was as dry as a furnace and she could feel her body’s moisture being drawn from her as though she were packed in salt. She was thankful for the presence of the stream, and she sucked up its tepid, sulfurous water greedily. She could feel her skin reddening under the incessant glare and was in a considerable quandary: she needed to locate the professor as quickly as possible (she was convinced for no rational reason that she would find him at the center of the island) yet needed water and shelter from the sun; but every halt delayed her arrival. The thought of waiting and traveling after dark occurred to her, but she was as afraid of trying to navigate the treacherous terrain in the night as a blind person would have feared a room full of scythes.
It was nevertheless growing dark before she reached the center of the island and found what lay there.
She had arrived at the brink of a crater, though one that was not at all like the one whose creation involved the vaporization of Rykkla’s circus. This crater, or caldera rather, was shallow in proportion to its breadth, which must have been at least a mile and a half or more; a relatively flat plain surrounded by a steep cliff, not at all un-like the proportions of a frying pan. Not far beyond the opposite rim was the smoldering cinder cone that had served Bronwyn as a guide, which apparently was not as large as it had first appeared. Its perpetual cloud was illuminated by a dull red glow from the crater.
On the level floor of the caldera were perhaps a dozen buildings, ranging in size and elaborateness from wooden shacks to a single large cubical structure made of black volcanic rock and two or three stories high. She saw only a very few people, perhaps only half a dozen or so after diligently watching for more than two hours, she finally concluded that there were no more than that. In none of them did she recognize either the professor or the doctor. It was also obvious, just from its appearance, that the big stone building was Tudela’s headquarters or main laboratory, a conclusion she felt was justified because of the squat tower of steel latticework that rose behind the building that supported a huge black icosidodecahedron (or so she thought; it was actually a rhombitruncated icosidodecahedron). The remaining structures radiated in more or less regular concentric arcs around the central building.
For the first time in hours she remembered that she was naked, unarmed and unequipped with even so much as a notion of what she was going to do. More consumed by hunger and the growing chill of approaching night than by either curiosity or satisfaction, she found shelter in a cleft that overlooked the caldera.
Dusk swept over the island like a sheet of indigo silk and lights began blinking on in the buildings. The air became cooler, though it was fortunately too muggy to be cold. As the sun set, like an orange Musrum had just lobbed at the horizon, the larger moon simultaneously rose above the opposite horizon. Its light flooded the caldera like a cup being filled with pink lemonade. In an hour or so, Bronwyn realized, there would be sufficient illumination to attempt a surreptitious descent. Meanwhile, she curled into as a tight a ball as she could within her sheltering cleft, hugging her legs and resting her chin on her knees, breasts pressed against thighs, feeling her skin bristling with goosebumps, her scabs and sunburn itching, trying her best to think of almost anything but her empty stomach. She nestled nascently within her dark recess like the reticent and contemplative oyster.
As was so often her wont when tired, or when feeling hopeless or depressed, Bronwyn’s thoughts became introspective and morbid. A few stars appeared but were quickly obliterated by the rising moon. She could feel the woods crouched like a beast behind her back. The darkening sky was laced with meteors.
She sighed and tried to think of other things but, to her suprise, the only alternative she could conjure was the realization that she should be missing Gyven very much, but wasn’t. She sighed again and hugged her knees more closely. Overhead, a meteor’s pink trail sizzled. It reminded her of a rocket and that in turn inspired a Thought. She had learned from Professor Wittenoom of the many practical uses that Londeacan engineers and inventors had devised for the newly-developed machine. One of these that fascinated her was the life-saving rocket. A ship in distress, grounded on the rocks off some hazardous coast during a storm, would in the past have been lost because of the impossibility of reaching her. With a life-saving rocket, however, a very light cord could be sent to the shipwrecked crew by tying one end to a large rocket. This light cord would in turn have attached to its nether end another, heavier rope and to the end of this would be attached a substantial cable. Securing this to the ship’s superstructure, a firm link with the shore would be accomplished by means of which the foundering vessel could be evacuated. The ship’s crew would have to restrain their panic when the rocket arrived, however, and resist the temptation to pull the cord on board too quickly. If it snapped, the whole process would have to begin anew, perhaps too late.
Bronwyn felt as though she had spent years as a foundering ship, wrecked upon some black and forgotten reef. Then Gyven had offered her a tenuous escape, a fragile line that, like a spider’s web, attached her sinking life to his soaring one.
Now she wondered: Did I panic? Did I so desperately want to be rescued that I broke that fragile link? Did I pull him toward me so hard that I lost him?
She blinked and realised that pink moonlight was washing over her skin, making it seem to fluoresce like margarine under an ultraviolet ray. She looked down into the caldera; the buildings were still lit, but there were no figures moving anywhere. She stood carefully, cold, kinks, abused muscles and pinched nerves making the progress unsteady and painful. She stretched and bent, working out the worst of the knots, warming congealed muscles, and began to search for a path that was both direct and sheltered from view. She wanted to remain out of line of sight from the caldera floor because she felt that she was indeed as luminous as a bar of white-hot iron, and, in truth, her milky figure against the black lava was like a shimmering aurora, noctilucent cloud or meteor trail. The same moonlight, she discovered, illuminated the rocks almost as brightly as day, but the shadows between them were a deep, violet-tinted black that hid who knew what pitfalls and princess-devouring crevices. Her progess was steady but painfully slow and the moon had passed the zenith before she finally reached the corrugated floor of the crater. The nearest of the buildings was a rough-looking shed not more than a hundred yards distant. There was, she was pleased to see, no sign of light in its single window. Feeling as obvious as a will-o’-the-wisp, and looking very much like one, she made a dash for the shack, her panic at the possibility of discovery anesthetizing the pain in the soles of her feet as they pounded over the sharp volcanic ash.
She arrived at the rear wall of the shed breathless and dizzy, her heart beating like a trip hammer. She pressed her hand against her breast and tried to regain a little composure, or as much as one could naked in the middle of a volcano. Peering around the nearest corner she saw no one, though there were moving shadows in nearby windows. Slinking around to the front, she was pleased and relieved to find that the door was unlocked, in fact, unequipped with lock or latch of any kind, no doubt a measure of Tudela’s self-assurance. Enough light drifted through the single window to show Bronwyn that the shed was only used for storage. A moment’s rummaging found a pair of overalls that did not fit her badly, giving her yet one more reason to be grateful for her height, though the garment was intended for so
meone of at least twice her girth. She winced, and almost cried out, at the touch of the rough fabric against her sunburned skin. There was, unfortunately, nothing at all with which she could cover her feet. She did find a number of tools, all which could be pressed into service as weapons, though none were as obviously suitable as a knife would have been. The overalls’ pockets were capacious and she took a heavy mallet, a chisel and an awl.
The next thing she needed to find was Professor Wittenoom. Out of a dozen buildings, eleven, since she could eliminate the one she had just looted, he could be in any one. She took a moment to think about this. Wittenoom had told her that Tudela had given him the freedom of the island, such as that was. That would seem to mean that the professor was probably not confined to any specially secure quarters. On the other hand, Tudela would hardly expect the professor to bunk with the laborers and assistants. Since Wittenoom was apparently the only other scientist on the island, and as such the only one with whom the doctor could intelligently communicate his ideas, gloat, that is, amended Bronwyn, it did not strain belief that Tudela might expect Wittenoom to be his personal guest. If she assumed that, then it became a matter of trying to decide which of the buildings might most likely be the doctor’s own. She eliminated the stone blockhouse. It was lightless and looked far too functional. Of the other larger structures, one had rows of identical windows, all brightly lit, which, added to the sounds coming from it, convinced her that it was a common dormitory. Another was virtually windowless and was most likely a storeroom or warehouse. The third large building was very house-like and, even more to the point, was surrounded by a low fence. Two front ground floor windows were lit as was one upstairs window. This house, however, was on the far side of the camp, almost opposite from where she was now hidden. To get to it she would have to either cut a chord directly across the arcing line of buildings, or follow the outside of the curve. She was incredibly tired and hungry and footsore, so she chose the former course as being at the same time the boldest and the quickest. Walking as steadily and assuredly as she could manage, she set out across the compound, keeping her pace determined and her eyes fixed on the house.
She was two thirds of the way to her goal when she was challenged.
“Hey! Hey, you!” cried a slurred voice. She did not slacken her pace. “Hey you! Wait up!” came the same voice and this time she heard the crunch of unsteady footsteps behind her. Still she neither slowed nor looked back. Nevertheless, her heart was racing like an ungoverned motor and perspiration began to pour down the length of her body. She thought she might faint when the footsteps came to within inches of her back and a hand fell onto her shoulder. “Whassa matta wit’ ya? Coon’t ya hear me?”
She took a deep breath that failed to steady her nerves, and turned around. She found herself looking into a face that the nascent moonlight only managed to make even more corpse-like than it must have looked when fully lit.
“C’m on an’ havva beer . . . who th’ hell are you?” the face asked in an exhalation of overripe alcohol and the answer it received, as inadequate as it must have seemed, was a mallet in the middle of the forehead.
Mollified and somewhat heartened by the satisfactorily resonant bonk the blow made, Bronwyn turned and continued on her way, completing the remaining third of the distance to the house without further interruption.
The house was incongruously homely, with a picket fence, neat clapboarding, stone chimney, tiled roof and shuttered windows equipped with window boxes in which a few cacti struggled. There was a single lit window on the ground floor front and one on the second floor. Bronwyn reasoned that if Tudela and Wittenoom were sharing the house, then it would be most likely that it were the former who had remained awake, perhaps working, and the latter, as the guest, who had retired to his room. If so, all she needed to do was find a way of contacting the professor and letting him know of her presence. But how? There was no fire escape, no tree conveniently growing near the window, no downspout (scarcely necessary in a place where if it rained at all it rained volcanic ash): only overlapping clapboards that would give no purchase to fingers and toes. Do I dare, she wondered, try to enter the place surreptitiously? The thought alone made her feel ill, but she could see no other way. Half in the hope that she would find no rear entrance, she cautiously circled the house and found that there was, indeed, a small porch and door, no doubt the entrance to the kitchen. Neither the screened door nor the door beyond were locked, which did not surprise Bronwyn at all. The door, to her great relief, swung silently on well-oiled hinges, revealing a darkened room beyond that proved to be, as she had suspected, a kitchen. Her nose reared like a starved horse catching the scent of a bag of oats, she almost expected it to whinny. She had not eaten for, so far as she knew, at least eighteen hours and even then it was only the handful of mussels she had devoured at the beach. She reasoned that it would make no sense to try to continue any further without sustenance, especially when food was so close at hand, an argument made even more pertinent when she reminded herself that she had no idea whatsoever what the future, immediate or otherwise, held. By the time all of this rationalization had been accomplished, her eyes, already accustomed to the semidarkness outside, had adjusted themselves and the kitchen’s furnishings materialized out of the gloom like ghosts. Padding silently on bare feet, Bronwyn gingerly explored cabinets, cupboards and, she was delighted to discover, a mechanical icebox. From the latter she removed a jug of milk (which proved to have been reconstituted from powder), half a roast chicken, some soft cheese and a covered bowl of stewed prunes. She wondered if Doctor Tudela might be constipated. In a tin box atop the refrigerator was a quarter loaf of bread. She ate as quietly as her ravenous appetite allowed her. There was still no sound from the rest of the house except for, as she now noticed, a faint, regular squeaking from overhead, as if from someone slowly pacing a room. This convinced her that her original deduction had been correct: Tudela was the least nervous person she had ever met and she could not imagine him pacing for any reason. The upstairs occupant must in fact be Wittenoom.
Three doors exited the kitchen: one was that by which she had entered. Another, she discovered by gingerly opening it half an inch, revealed only a pantry. The third door, which was hung on swinging hinges, opened onto a hallway. The far end was illuminated by light spilling from an open doorway, while a flight of stairs ascended halfway between. Bronwyn swallowed, though quietly. In order to reach the stairs she would have to approach within a few feet of the room in which she was certain Tudela was sitting and, for all she knew, as alert as a cat.
Slipping through the narrow opening, afraid to swing the door any further for fear of a suddenly squeaky hinge, she pressed her hands against the door and took several long seconds to allow it to soundlessly swing closed. She paused, as alert as the tremulous gazelle, but there was not a sound from the front room. Her heart was racing, adrenalin acted upon her metabolism like resin in a steam-boiler’s firebox and her oxygen-starved body was making her breath come in short, sharp gasps that she tried desperately to suppress, replacing her fear of discovery with an even worse fear of passing out. She took only one short step at a time, listening carefully between each movement, placing her foot onto the uncarpeted floor as gently as a stalking kitten. As yet unnoticed, after a subjective hour or so, she placed her first step on the bottom riser of the stairs. She took a moment, now that she was out of direct sight of anyone standing in the doorway of the front room, to wipe away the flood of perspiration that was sheeting her face, stinging her eyes. Now came the second stage: stairs, which she knew were traditionally and notoriously noisy. Keeping as close to the wall as she could, so that she would be placing her weight on the most secure part of each step, she ascended with nerve-wracking deliberation.
She reached the upper landing with a sense of physical exhaustion that left her feeling drained and almost swooning. There, however, not ten feet from where she stood, was a closed door with yellow light fanning from a gap at its base. Caution
ing herself not to abandon her guard, she approached the silent room as though it contained her mortal enemy, rather than a friend. Standing before the unpainted panel, she was not certain what to do next. Knock? Rather than think overmuch about it, she grasped the brass knob, turned it and entered the room.
It was sparsely, but not by any means shabbily, furnished. The walls were papered, if plainly, relieved by a few framed prints; a circular rug covered the floor almost wall to wall; there was a large bed with carved head- and footboards; an amply upholstered easy chair; an overbrimming bookcase; a secretary and a plain wooden chair and in the chair leaning over a sheaf of papers on the desk of the secretary was a tall, black-clad man who turned and regarded her unexpected appearance with no surprise whatsoever.
“Good evening, Princess,” he greeted.
“Good evening, Doctor Tudela,” was all that she could think to say.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CATMEN & CONTINENTS
If Tudela had been surprised at the sudden appearance of Princess Bronwyn Tedeschiiy out of an uninhabited and virtually uninhabitable wilderness, after she had been missing for weeks, he failed to show it. He only asked where she had been and her answer, “Lost”, seemed to satisfy him. Perhaps under ordinary circumstances, in fact, almost certainly, he would have questioned both the un-likeliness of the event as well as the uninformativeness of her reply. As it was, even the vast mind of Dr. Tudela had found itself over-preoccupied by the almost infinitely recomplicated details of his Great Project. He accepted Bronwyn’s presence as though she had always been there. He directed that a room be prepared for her in his own house, a room adjoining the professor’s she was glad to see, as well as clean clothing (including, she was also glad to see, socks and shoes), and then proceeded to ignore her.
