into the distance in every direction.
"It is a work of art!" Rafael exclaimed. "A three-dimensional mural!"
For the moment Fidelity could share his notion, as she suppressed the data tags her augmented vision was trying to refine for her. They stood in a tall hallway below a glowing ceiling and on a floor that glowed like the ceiling. A dark red wall lay behind them. The gravity was significantly less than Earth-normal. There was no end in one direction of either the hallway or the mural, and a strange tangle of strips of light blocked sight in the other direction, as though the hallway had been interrupted by a strangely twisted impact. The mural view before them was framed by the floor and ceiling of the hallway and Fidelity noticed how cleverly other such open-sided bright hallways, depicted in the distance of the mural, eventually merged with the hallway in which they stood.
"It is not a mural!" she declared, watching the data tags in her eyes insist that many objects in the view had measurable distances and even small motions. "It is a very large habitat and there is no rotation to provide a feeling of gravity." She noticed Samson, who stared at the scene before them and turned his puzzled face toward her. She switched her language to Twenglish and repeated her explanation to Samson. Then she addressed Daidaunkh.
"Do you speak any Twenglish?" she asked the Rhyan.
"I can understand it," he slowly responded in Standard, distracted by the view, "but I've never spoken it in normal conversation."
"Try to speak it as well as you can, for Samson's benefit," she asked.
"Why does the boy speak Twenglish?" Daidaunkh struggled to say in Twenglish.
"I don't know why," Fidelity replied. "I have asked him but he suffers from amnesia."
"Why do you call it Twenglish?" Samson asked. "It's just English."
"Samson, you speak English that sounds like that of the twentieth or twenty-first century, seven hundred years ago. We call that language Twenglish."
"Milly never told me! I never thought it was such an old language! But you and Rafael can speak it really well."
"Most people have data devices in their bodies that help them understand different languages," she replied. "Also, your version of English remains useful for historical reasons."
"Do you have any idea where we are?" Rafael asked Fidelity.
"No, but as spectacular as it is, it doesn't feel alien."
"Then we must still be near Earth."
"No, I don't think so. Unless this is some secret location unknown to my Navy database, we must now be orbiting another star."
"Then it truly is a gate we have passed through!" Rafael declared. "I wonder if we want to know why!"
"It's sudden!" Samson said.
Daidaunkh uttered a phrase in his native language.
"What did he say?" Samson asked.
"It was not... nice," Fidelity replied, "but funny. Let me explore a little bit." She released her grip on the handlebar of the pedicab and took a few steps forward. "Gravity increased! The view gets bigger. I'm moving!" She glanced down at the bright floor. "The floor doesn't move, but I am moving!" She quickly retreated toward the red wall and walked back to the others. "Look. Under us. This dark disk of material. It is material that came with us from Earth. It's larger than the gate artifact we had in Daidaunkh's apartment. The gate is either adjustable or there is another gate of a larger size."
"The gravity is artificial?" Rafael queried.
"The gate apparently damaged the gravity plates right here," Fidelity said, "although I don't see any individual plates like the ones on starships."
"Artificial gravity is expensive," Daidaunkh said. "How much of it do they have here?"
They stared for a long time at the view before them and discussed what they saw. Samson was eager to point out everything he found new and exciting. He also tried walking onto the part of the floor that caused motion, Fidelity helping him hop on his one leg.
When speech began to lapse into longer moments of silence they began to hear something.
"It sounds familiar," Daidaunkh said. "Music! An Earthian song. Not Standard or English."
"Italian," Rafael said, closing his eyes for a moment to listen carefully. "Opera!"
The sound of music emanated almost unobtrusively from a distant source and Fidelity tried to ignore its familiarity, for even though it had to mean something about this place, she had to record and analyze as much other detail as possible with her in-body data augments. She wondered if her data storage capacity would be sufficient, as her augmented analysis faculties seemed unusually aggressive, forcing her to shunt much of its reports below her awareness, in order to act normally with her companions.
Fidelity helped Samson as he tried to reach the edge of the floor where Rafael was staring down into the gap between the red wall and the illuminated floor.
"It goes on forever!" Rafael declared. "There are more of these shining walkways down there! And also above us! And more of everything else!"
"It's a big floating building!" Samson declared, touching the red wall.
The red wall did seem to belong to a building. Rectangular features in the red wall above and below the walkway could be windows. It was too close to see its true extent but the red building seemed to end not too far below and above them. Fidelity could not determine if the building stood on another surface but it was attached to this walkway by several thick extensions, the nearest of which was probably an entrance. A distant platform connected the building to the surface of the walkway, but none of these connecting pieces seemed sufficient to hold such a large structure against gravity; therefore, there could be no gravity - the red building was weightless, just as was every other object they saw. The open-sided walkway corridors appeared to be connected to each other and might ultimately be anchored to a surrounding structure that was too distant to be seen.
Fidelity, Samson, and Rafael started to move away from the pedicab toward the glowing tangle that appeared to erupt from the powered walkway upon whose static edge the gate had deposited them. "Take me with you!" Daidaunkh called, and added: "Please?"
As they pulled the pedicab to the end of the red structure they saw more clearly how the floor of the powered walkway split itself into individual lanes which curled and curved, each going its own way. The ceiling was apparently another powered walkway, perhaps headed in the opposite direction, and it also divided itself in the same manner. The edge-lane of the walkway brought them to a round platform that extended to the outside of the end of the corridor and to just beyond the red building. From there, they could see much more, and finally comprehend that this was an intersection of three pairs of walkways, each pair perpendicular to the other two. Once they traced the paths of the loops and swerves of the tangle of luminous strips that filled the 3-dimensional space, they understood its almost carnival-like purpose as a traffic intersection. The separated lanes provided every choice of route through the intersection.
Looking out along the static edge lanes of the other open-sided corridors they discovered other intersections, none of them like this. The corridors and intersections existed as far as they could see in six directions: upward, downward, left, right, forward, and behind. Nor were all of the glowing walkways white, nor were they all straight; some spiraled or bowed or weaved.
"If only Denna could have seen this," Fidelity heard Daidaunkh quietly say.
Then she heard: "Stay here."
Fidelity turned to see what stranger stood next to her and saw no one. Samson was close enough that he should also have heard the voice but apparently did not. It was the same voice she had heard in arctic Asia. She still assumed it was the voice of Milly. It still made her nerves react despite the supervision of her military augments.
"Where next?" Rafael inquired, sounding enthusiastic, despite the probable exhaustion of his aged body.
"Perhaps we should stay here," she replied.
"It is intimidating," he commented with a questioning look at Fidelity.
"Why stay here?" Daidaunkh asked.
"I heard the voice again," Fidelity answered. "It said to wait here."
No one objected to obeying the voice. They waited and stared at the scenery, fantastic in its spatial arrangement yet understandable in its functions as they gained knowledge of its details.
Fidelity first spotted the lone figure moving through the maze and pointed him out to the others. The person stood still as the pathway carried him through a loop, right-side-up then upside-down as he neared them. He walked laterally across the ceiling above them to the static lane at the edge, directly above them. He bent his knees and jumped downward, executing a flip to land on his feet a few meters away from them.
The young man stared at them in almost alarmed curiosity but seemed to gather his courage to speak. "Hello there," he greeted them in Twenglish. "I am Percival. I think I've been summoned to your aid."
"Hello, Percival," Fidelity replied. "My name is Fidelity." She stepped forward to him and offered her hand. It was not an admiral-like thing to do but she could detect signs of stress and wanted to calm him. He hesitated to take her hand. She held his hand longer than he wanted, until he seemed resigned to whatever fate he imagined and he perked up.
"Pleased to meet you, Fidelity!" Percival greeted too brightly, putting on an act, turning to Rafael and offering his hand.
"I am Rafael," the artist said, joining the act, smiling at Percival, gripping his hand. "This is Samson."
Percival took Samson's hand, his smile
Keshona Far Freedom Part 1 Page 49
