Button in the Fabric of Time
Page 11
Again the silent voice spoke: “We could transport the machines, but would it not be better to take you to planet Ergo, so you could help the Ergons build purifying chambers there?”
“That would be better,” Roc-2 agreed. “We could train the Ergons to build and operate the machines, and they could do the purification. Is planet Ergo still contaminated by atomic radiation?”
“Yes.”
“It will do no good to purify your bodies if you don’t get rid of the radiation.”
“We know that,” Ulto said with a touch of annoyance. “With your help, we could get rid of the radiation the same way you did. Some of the Ergons still have functioning minds. Their minds are no longer creative, but they are capable of learning and, with your help, they could get rid of the radiation on planet Ergo, the same way you did on planet Earth. If you trained them to build the machines, we could purify our bodies and, with your DNA, mend our deformities.”
“That will work,” Roc-2 said, “but it took Earth people seven hundred years to cleanse the earth of radiation.”
“We don’t want to wait that long!” the voice said.
A way to solve the problem occurred to me, but I hesitated to voice my thoughts because I was in the presence of people with far more knowledge than I. But Ulto read my thoughts and said:
“Gus, that idea will work!”
“What idea?” Jan-3 and Roc-2 asked me at the same time.
Ulto explained: “We will build the purification station on planet Ergo, go back to a time when we had bodies, take them to planet Ergo, and then purify them there. After we purify them on Ergo, we will take them to planet Duos. Thank you, Gus. We didn’t realize that people in your stage of development had that much reasoning power.”
I was a little insulted by Ulto’s words and said to myself, “Yeah, I can even tie my own shoes.” I had again forgotten that Ulto could read my thoughts until the voice said:
“Sorry, Gus, I meant no offense.”
Oops! He read my thoughts again. I didn’t even dare to think. Then I heard a chuckle in my head. And Ulto’s voice, in a conciliatory tone, asked: “Gus, will you come with us to planet Ergo, and help us build the purification chambers?”
Roc-2 and Jan-3 heard the same silent voice, and Roc-2 said, “Gus, our engineers will go with you and help train the Ergons. We have suits to shield you from the radiation.”
Jan-3 said, “Gus, if you’re going, I’m going, too.”
“I’d like to have you with me, Jan-3, but living conditions on planet Ergo will be unpleasant, and it might be dangerous.” Then I said to Ulto, “We can’t eat, sleep, or take a bath in radiation suits. How will we live?”
Ulto answered: “While we Antons were living on planet Ergo, we built radiation-free structures, but you will need to bring your own food and water.”
“You and everyone else from planet Earth who goes with you will have to go through the purification chamber again before you can re-enter Earth’s environment,” Roc-2 said. “Gus, you need to go through the chamber again anyway. I’ll ask some of the engineers to volunteer to go with you.”
When I was in the Army, I learned to never volunteer, but it looked like I had been suckered into this assignment. I was both concerned and pleased that Jan-3 wanted to come along. “How long do you estimate that it will take to complete the job?”
Roc-2 replied, “It depends upon the availability of building material.”
“Planet Ergo has an abundance of wood, metal, and masonry. But if you must use glass, we will have to build smelters to melt and mold the silica,” Ulto added.
“I know how to build with wood, metal, and masonry,” I said. “Those materials are sufficient to make temporary structures. Perhaps I can be useful in working with your engineering staff. If the Ergons provide the labor, we should be able to build the chambers in a few weeks. Can we take enough supplies to last that long?”
“We can move an unlimited amount of material,” Ulto answered.
The engineering staff had arrived, and Domer, the head engineer, overheard the exchange. He said, “Let’s take everything with us, and then all we’ll have to do is assemble it. We can do that in a matter of days.”
* * * * *
Chapter 19
Ulto spoke: “Days on planet Ergo are longer than the days on Earth. Ergo is ten per cent larger than Earth, and it orbits a red-dwarf sun once every six hundred Ergo days. An Ergo day is thirty of your hours long.”
“Because of the difference in the size of the planets, the gravity will be different,” Domer commented. “We’ll have to take that into consideration when we build the purification chambers.”
“We have robots trained to monitor the purifications,” Jan-3 noted. “We can take them with us.”
“Then we can have the chambers ready in a matter of days,” Roc-2 said. “We can depart for planet Ergo as soon as we can assemble the supplies.”
My question was for Ulto, but I spoke in a voice that everyone could hear, “May I take my button with me?”
“I’m sorry, Gus,” Roc-2 said, “but your button hasn’t been reassembled yet.”
“Ulto,” I asked, “can you give me another button?”
“Of course. We will provide the transporters that you call buttons for each of you.”
Knowing that Ulto would read my true reason, I said aloud, “Jan-3 and I have been traveling for a couple of days, and we need rest. We’ll be ready to start our project on Ergo tomorrow morning.”
A voice that I thought was for me only said: “Oh, how I envy you. I look forward to resting in that same manner. Your request is granted. We will wait.”
Roc-2 smiled but offered no comment except, “I’ll assemble the robots and supplies while you rest. Everything will be ready when you and Jan-3 get here tomorrow morning.”
I was hungry and wanted another steak dinner, so Jan-3 and I went to the restaurant that had served specialty food. When we were alone, I asked, “Why does Domer not have a number following his name?”
“Domer, by your way of judging, is very old. He’s an original, so he could rightfully be called Domer-1, but he prefers to be referred to in the usual manner.”
“Have others copied him?” I asked.
“Domer is highly admired, and many have copied him.”
Jan-3 was quieter than normal and I found myself wishing I had Ulto’s ability to read thoughts. “Why are you so pensive?” I asked.
“I don’t know why,” Jan-3 replied. “Call it feminine intuition if you will, but I feel an impending danger. . . . Do you trust Ulto?” she asked.
“I have no reason not to trust him, and I think he stated his reason for wanting our help honestly. But when we get to planet Ergo, we’ll be at his mercy. I don’t like that. You’re important to me, and I can’t help being concerned for your welfare—perhaps you should stay here.”
“I feel the same about you, so if you go, I go.” Jan-3 stated with determination.
“If we have a button,” I reassured her, “we can zap ourselves back here if things go wrong.”
Jan-3 reached across the table, placed her hand on mine and said, “We’ve committed ourselves, so let’s enjoy our night together.”
We each knew it would be our last time completely alone, so we spent the time in sensual embrace. The night was wonderful. My only disappointment was that it passed too quickly. At dawn, we were at the pre-arranged meeting place. Roc-2 was waiting and, true to his promise, he had everything ready.
* * *
Domer had chosen four of his most talented engineers to accompany him to planet Ergo. When he saw me, he smiled a knowing smile, and said, “Well, Gus, are you ready? You’ve traveled like this before, so you know what to expect, but for us, it’s all new—and a bit unnerving.”
“There’s nothing to the traveling, but the arriving in a new and unknown place can be a shock,” I explained, “and I share your feeling about that being a bit unnerving.” For the first time, I saw an expre
ssion of uncertainty on Jan-3’s face. Her eyes were slightly squinted, and she had small lines of worry on her brow. Not being completely honest about my own concern, I squeezed her hand to reassure her.
Roc-2, who was to remain behind, smiled a dour smile and nodded.
A voice spoke in our heads: “Those of you, who are going with us to Ergo, gather in a group where the supplies are located, and if you are ready, let’s go!”
Ulto’s voice had a commanding tone. I checked both mine and Jan-3’s survival gear, and we all put on our radiation protection suits and walked to the place where the supplies were gathered. The robots needed no protection.
* * *
Without further warning, and in less than the blink of an eye, we were in another world. . . .The temperature was pleasant; the oxygen level was more than adequate. Light from the red-dwarf sun lit the surface of Ergo and radiated in the dense atmosphere, casting a red hue on everything. It was beautiful, in a strange way. Life forms on Ergo were carbon-based, the same as on Earth. The chlorophyll in the plant leaves looked oddly brown. The sky was not blue as it is on Earth; it was violet. My radiation-detecting device indicated levels that could be safely tolerated for a short period of time. The light from the blue presence looked gray.
Jan-3’s blond hair was orange, and her pink complexion was ruddy. Her blue eyes, like the sky, were violet. She was astonishingly attractive.
Ulto’s voice was clear and commanding. He was referring to the Ergons when he said: “Your labor force is arriving!”
We looked to our right and saw, marching in unison, a multitude of beings. The creatures stopped only a few paces away. Grotesque would be an inadequate word to describe them. They appeared humanoid, but unlike any humans I had ever imagined. They had three legs attached to a hairless body. Their bodies were shaped like ants standing upright. They didn’t need to turn to go in another direction. They could move forward, backwards, and sideways with equal agility. They moved crab-like on feet with long grasping toes making their feet more like monkeys than humans. It appeared that they could grasp branches and swing from tree to tree. They had two long muscular arms with rotating sockets at the shoulder and elbows. It gave them extraordinary manual agility. Their hands had only three fingers, but each finger was capable of moving like opposing thumbs. It seemed that only the ones who had mutated had survived. The mutations had carried through to each new generation until they appeared to be another species altogether. I was unable to identify the species because there was nothing like it on Earth.
The heads of the creatures were centered on top of the rounded section of their upper bodies and rotated like the head of a praying mantis. Their eyes sat above their ears on each side of their heads, and their extended eyeballs moved like chameleon’s eyes, giving them three-hundred-sixty degrees of vision. The pupils of their eyes were elongated, like the eyes of a cat. Their ears extended out from their heads and rotated, like the ears of a grazing animal, such as sheep, cow, or goat. Their mouths were just slits across their faces; there was no protruding upper lip, and their lower lip rolled out and had muscles that enabled them to grasp food. Other than two canine-like teeth, their teeth were broad and flat. I guessed that they were herbivores, but like humans they could and, at times, did eat meat. Their noses were just two holes in a flat face. The openings were large, and could open and close, like a camel’s nose.
Sounds coming from their mouths were unlike anything I had ever heard from either humans or animals. It was a low growl-like grunting. I didn’t know why, or how, but I was able to understand what they were saying.
Had Ulto given me that ability?
Jan-3 grasped my hand and stood close. Her eyes were wide; her eyebrows raised, her lower jaw slack, and her mouth slightly open, betraying her feelings of fear and revulsion.
Domer, uninhibited by the knowledge that Ulto would read his thoughts, said, “I think we should have brought our robots to do the labor.”
While shaking my head I said, “It would have been more efficient than training these Ergons, but if we had brought robots to build the purification chambers, someone would have had to stay here until all of them had been purified, and I don’t think I’d want to do that.”
The voice said: “It’s not a pretty thing to look at, is it? Now you can see why we abandoned our bodies, and how badly we need new ones.”
The Ergons were giving off what we in the twenty-first century called, bad vibes.
“Why are they so angry?” I asked.
“They are not angry—they are repulsed. To them, you are ugly. I have talked to them and, if you are kind, in time they will realize that you are here to help them. I warn you, though, they can be dangerous.”
“Then we should have brought weapons to protect ourselves and to keep them under control! One of us will use our travel buttons to go back to planet Earth to get our weapons,” Domer said.
“We didn’t bring you here to use weapons on them—we brought you here to help them. We can’t allow you to bring weapons to planet Ergo,” Ulto’s voice boomed in our heads.
“We must have a place where we can be safe,” Domer said. “Will you allow us to build a shield that we can stand behind?”
“What kind of shield?”
“Made of plasma,” Domer answered.
“Will it take long?”
“We will do it today, and have it completed before we sleep.”
“Then it is allowed.”
Our thoughts were being monitored, and we couldn’t even exchange ideas by writing messages because we had to think in order to write. I shielded my thoughts by thinking of something else until I could find a way to understand what Domer had in mind.
Jan-3 and I worked with two of the engineers building the purification chambers while Domer and the two other engineers were in our radiation-free living quarters, building the protection shield Ulto had authorized. Since I had received hand-to-hand combat training in the armed services, I kept order among the argumentative Ergons and protected the engineers and Jan-3, while the engineers and some of the less quarrelsome Ergons built the purification chambers. The Ergons had no ability to initiate creative thought, but they learned quickly and reluctantly obeyed me. They didn’t like taking orders from an earthling, and they were larger than I but, because of my training, I was able to overcome their physical aggressiveness so long as I had to deal with them one at a time.
They were attracted to Jan-3, but she found their grotesqueness repugnant. They frightened her, and I was concerned. It was only a matter of time until they would confront us in a group, and I would be unable to protect either Jan-3 or the engineers. Something had to be done, and quickly. We couldn’t call on Roc-2 for help; he had no time travel device and no other way to travel such a great distance. Even a message would take years to reach Earth. I had made a mistake by recommending this method. I had to find a solution.
I was able to prevent Ulto from reading my thoughts by keeping my mind on my work. That’s what he wanted, anyway, so he was pleased.
After completing the day’s work, we went to our quarters. Domer and the two other engineers weren’t there. Jan-3 was smiling, so I knew something was happening that I was unaware of. Suddenly, Domer’s hand reached through an invisible curtain and pulled me inside. Jan-3 and the engineers, who had been working with us, followed. They realized right away what Domer and his assistants had been doing. I was shocked when Domer spoke unguardedly.
“We’ve made an area where we can talk without the Antons hearing our thoughts,” Domer said. “The reason you can’t see these curtains is because they are plasmatic and they absorb light. They also absorb sounds and thoughts. We can speak freely here.”
“Won’t Ulto be suspicious when he is no longer receiving our thoughts?” I asked.
“Of course he will,” Domer said, “but we can use our travel buttons and go back to Earth to get stun guns to protect ourselves.”
“Where are our buttons?” Jan-3 asked.
When he didn’t return, I stuck my head through the invisible curtain and saw him being restrained by four Ergons. I pulled my head back inside the plasma curtain and said to the group inside, “Stay here! The Ergons are holding our companion. I’m going to try to negotiate with Ulto.” Jan-3 tried to stop me, but I extended my hand, palm out, and disappeared from her view.
Once through the plasma curtain, I mentally called out: “Ulto, we’ve got to work this out. We can’t achieve our purpose unless we work together.”
Then I looked behind me and saw Jan-3 coming through the curtain.
The engineer who had tried to get the travel buttons called out, “They’ve taken the buttons!”
The Ergons moved in a threatening manner; it was clear that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
This time I called out in a loud voice, “Ulto! If you want my help, then get these Ergons under control!”
“What do you suggest?”
“You have methods to restrain these unpleasant beings! If you can’t contain them, then allow me to use stun guns to bring them under control. I need my button so I can return to Earth to get the stun devices.”
“You and your people deceived me. How can I trust you?”
“Perhaps if I could talk to the Ergons, we could learn to work together.”
“I have given you the ability to speak and understand their language.”
“I want that ability also,” Jan-3 said in a voice that both Ulto and I could understand.
“I’ll transfer that ability to you as well, but you are going to have to work out your own problems.”