by Peter David
With an impatient sigh, but feeling that it wasn’t worth arguing over, Selar drew the child against herself. To her surprise, he promptly snuggled against her, and his fussiness ebbed. She found the sensation oddly comforting.
“Very good,” said Burgoyne.
Selar had almost forgotten s/he was there. For some reason, she suddenly felt extremely vulnerable. It was not a sensation she welcomed. “Perhaps . . . it would be best if you left now,” she said.
“As you wish. And, Selar—if you change your mind . . .”
“I am afraid that I am rather resolute in this matter.”
“Very well. Then . . . I shall see you.” With that, Burgoyne turned on hir heel and walked out.
Selar found herself staring at the door long after it had closed. Then Xyon made a burbling noise that seemed to demand her attention, and she looked back down at him. Feeling him against her had quickly become so natural, she had almost forgotten that she was holding him.
He was looking up into her face with what seemed a boundless capacity for love. It seemed such a curious expression to see in a face that had a Vulcan cast to it.
Then she realized that he did indeed seem to be watching her without distraction. She shifted him slightly in her arms so that her left hand was free. She then raised her index finger and held it in front of Xyon’s eyes. She waggled it slightly, and the finger promptly caught his attention. She moved it, first to the left and then to the right. His head didn’t move, but his eyes tracked it with no problem whatsoever.
“Fascinating,” she murmured.
ROBIN
IT WAS A CRISP MORNING, and Robin watched as her breath floated away from her mouth. She peered out of the tent, looking like an oversized snail as she did so. There was a scent of dew in the air, which she found extremely refreshing. She had forgotten what it was like to experience sharp changes in atmosphere, what with living in the isolated, recirculated environments of starships for so long.
She was also enjoying “roughing it,” as it were. Naturally, she could have camped out with a far more elegant portable environmental stasis field. At full charge it would have lasted for two days, and kept the area around her in climate-controlled perfection. But on the occasions when she had gone camping with her father while growing up, he had expressed disdain for such modern trappings, and had insisted on such low-tech items as a collapsible tent. He claimed that was the only way to rough it, as his father had taught him and his father before him in turn, and so on through the years. When she had related this discussion to her mother, Morgan had simply shaken her head and muttered, “Ten generations of masochists.” Robin, ignoring the dismissal by her mother, had packed the tent all the same. Now she was extremely glad that she had done so.
She crawled out of the tent, stretching and working the kinks out of her body. The air was sharp in her lungs, but for a stinging sensation, it was nevertheless a pleasant one. She used a portable generator to cook herself a quick breakfast. The generator was her one concession to modern convenience; she simply didn’t have the wherewithal or the confidence to build a fire from scratch. Maybe next time.
She bathed quickly in a nearby river, then got the campsite cleaned up and her equipment packed up and stashed away. Then she pulled out her tricorder and consulted the map of the dig sites she had downloaded from the hotel’s mainframe. One of them looked particularly interesting, and that was where she headed. As she walked, she whistled an aimless tune while her arms swung freely back and forth. She looked not at the ground but at the sky, the way that all truly freethinking people should. It was indeed a beautiful day—the sky was the purest blue, the clouds thick and white. Maybe this entire vacation thing wasn’t going to be so wretched after all.
And she kept on thinking that, right up until the ground gave way beneath her feet.
Robin let out a yelp of fear and clawed at the air, but there was nothing for her to grab onto. Instead she fell, her fingers grabbing at dirt as she plummeted past, and then she was in darkness, with absolutely no idea of how far there was to fall or how many pieces she would be in when she hit. She screamed at the top of her lungs, which was both embarrassing (since one would have expected better of a Starfleet officer) and futile (since there was no one else to hear . . . although at least that did diminish the embarrassment aspect somewhat).
It seemed to her as if she were falling for hours, but, in fact, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Robin hit the ground hard, landing on her back. Ordinarily, such a circumstance would have been disastrous, but she was still wearing her backpack; as a result, the blow was somewhat cushioned. It did serve to knock all the air out of her, but at least she was still conscious. She lay there for a few moments, gasping, still trying to sort out what in the world had just happened. High above her she could see the hole through which she had fallen, fresh morning light seeping through it.
“Ow,” she finally managed to say. It was more to hear her own voice, and make certain that she was still capable of producing a noise other than a moan of pain. She sat up very carefully, concerned that she might have broken something and alert for the slightest hint of a fractured bone or some other catastrophic injury. First she rolled to one side, balancing on her elbow, and then she hauled herself to her feet. She was relieved that everything seemed to be functioning as it was supposed to.
She tilted her head back and called, “Hellooooo!” No response. Then again, that shouldn’t have been surprising, since there wasn’t a soul around.
After a moment to consider her predicament, Robin pulled out a palm beacon from her pack. There was a small clip on the shoulder of her jacket, and she placed the light in it and switched it on. That way the light was automatically pointing in whatever direction she was facing. She also took out her tricorder, trying to determine just exactly which way she should be heading.
The tricorder revealed a byzantine and confusing pattern of tunnels all around. This, she thought, was certainly not what she had been looking for when she had decided to visit assorted archaeological digs. She had already been to three of them, all very orderly and meticulous explorations involving searches for artifacts from Risa’s prehistory. It was generally believed that there had been an ancient race of Risans eons ago, but their eventual fate had been obscured by the curtain of time that had been drawn across the world’s past. Some even believed that there had been some sort of war; that before it had occurred, Risa had been a far more stable world, and the final battles of the now-departed race had caused the instability that had reigned until Risa had been made over once more.
She wondered now whether they had, in fact, lived in these underground caverns. Or was it possible that what she had discovered was some sort of getaway route? She had read of such things on other worlds. Means of escape crafted by monarchs who lived in uncertain times, enabling them to make a swift getaway if circumstances compelled them to do so.
Her eyes having had time to adjust to the darkness, aided by the flash mounted on her shoulder, Robin considered her options. She could simply sit there, waiting for someone to wander past and perhaps help her out. Or she could walk a bit, explore the caves she had literally stumbled upon. Perhaps they might even lead to another existing dig, enabling her simply to come out somewhere else. As long as she had her tricorder, she could not really lose her way. She marked it so that it would track where she was, and where she was going. That way, at the very least, she could retrace her steps with facility.
She started walking. The ground felt a bit spongy, but there was nothing to concern herself over yet. She continued to walk, taking readings off her tricorder as she went. Robin couldn’t help but feel a measure of growing excitement. She was doing what she had wanted to do the entire time: have an adventure. Explore. Her only regret was that her mother wasn’t with her.
She started to become a bit more concerned, though, as the ground grew more and more moist. She wondered if perhaps there wasn’t some sort of steady water leak somewher
e that might be turning the dirt into mud, making it tougher to slog through. Robin looked at her tricorder, ran a few more readings. Then she noticed an indicator flashing and punched up a closer scan on it.
Her eyes went wide. She was detecting something biological. There was some sort of life-form, and it wasn’t simply nearby; it was practically on top of her. . . .
“Or I’m . . . on top of it,” she suddenly whispered. And for the first time, she leaned forward and angled the light straight down.
An eye looked up at her, blinking against the light. Then more eyes, hundreds of them, shimmering and shivering beneath some sort of nauseating, gelatinous mass . . . which she was standing on.
She let out a shriek, yanked the flash off her shoulder and played it all around her. It was directly ahead of her, taking up the entire floor, and behind her as well. It was as if she were standing atop a huge jellyfish. It was watching her, and it did not appear to be happy to see her. Or perhaps it was, for reasons that were quickly making themselves apparent as it started to pull at her boots.
She couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go backward, and sure as hell couldn’t stay where she was. With the path ahead uncertain, she decided the only thing to do was try and get back to where she had come from. Not that even that was necessarily going to be safe; it just seemed the best option of the three lousy ones handed her.
She pivoted and almost fell on the slick muck beneath her feet. She hadn’t been imagining it; the thing really was pulling at her boots. It was trying to keep her in place, and it was all that she could do to yank her feet free. She started to run, and the area around her appeared to become more agitated. Whatever this monstrosity beneath her was, it didn’t want to let her go.
Robin continued to run. Her one hope was that, if she kept moving, the thing might have a tougher time of slowing her down. That she would be able to skip across the surface of . . . of whatever this was, like a stone hopping across a lake surface.
It pulled at her, tried to slow her, and she kept moving. At one point she stumbled, skidded, and her hand went down into it, just missing one of the eyes that gleamed up at her. The moist, gelatinous mass immediately surged around her hand and started to work its way up her arm. With an abortive scream, she yanked free of it, her hand making a sickening popping sound, like a finger popped out of a mouth. She held up her hand and, in the brief illumination, saw foam between the fingers, as if the thing had been salivating over her . . . or even trying to digest her.
There was a low rumble around her, as if the creature was moving, shifting position. It threw her off balance and she toppled backward, landing with a loud sploosh. If the sensation of her hand going into it was appalling, that was nothing compared to lying flat on her back in it. And this time it was moving quicker. When her hand had gone in, the movements had been slow, almost thoughtful, as if trying to comprehend this new creature introduced into its environment. This time, it moved with more certainty. She had barely fallen into it when it was already seeping over the top of her body, moving up and over her face. Her instinct was to scream once more, but then she realized what a fatal mistake that would be: the thing would come pouring into her mouth, and that would surely be the end of her.
She set her teeth fiercely shut, pushing everywhere she could at the thing, even though her hand kept passing through it. She finally managed to struggle to her feet, and this time, when she was in motion, she was determined not to let herself be slowed again. She felt as if she had no choice; if she let herself get caught once more, she was sure that the thing wasn’t going to lose her again.
She ran as fast as she could, driving forward, determined not to slow down for anything. It was only at that moment that she realized she was no longer holding her tricorder. It had fallen from her grasp and was back there, somewhere, in the roiling muck. She had no choice; she didn’t dare go back. It would be suicide.
She took her best guess, knowing that she might be losing herself even more as she kept running, right, left, left again, another right. All guesswork, and she had the hideous feeling that she wasn’t going to see her mother again. She thought of all the things she wished she’d said to her, wished she hadn’t been so damned stubborn. Why the hell hadn’t she just stayed in the blasted resort to begin with? But no, no. She had to go off on her own, prove something. Well, she had proven something all right. She had proven that she could be a complete and total idiot.
She was positive her imagination was running wild with her. She was convinced that she was hearing the creature roar, moaning in fury, redoubling its efforts to try to drag her down. She knew that she was giving it too much credit. This creature, whatever it was, was undoubtedly a very simple-minded entity, incapable of doing anything except satisfying its immediate need. Unfortunately, right now its immediate need seemed to be centered on dragging her down, smothering her, and . . .
She didn’t even want to think about that part.
She skidded slightly, but righted herself and kept going. She rounded another corner, was convinced that she had managed to double back on herself and lose herself even more, and then suddenly she saw a shaft of sunlight from just around a bend. She covered the distance in no time and, yes, there it was: the hole that she, like Alice in Wonderland, had fallen through.
The problem was that the creature had apparently located it as well. The space between where she was at that moment and the hole up ahead—or at least where the sun was coming in through the hole—was completely enveloped by the creature. The one place it wasn’t occupying was the spot right where the sunlight was beaming down onto the floor. Instead, the creature had carefully circumvented it, leaving an isolated path of safety.
Obviously it could not tolerate the sunlight. Fine. If that was to be her one shred of advantage, then so be it. She had never stopped moving up to this point, because she didn’t like her odds if she did. Now she almost skied across the remaining distance, sections of the creature rolling apart in waves on either side of her. She stepped into the “zone of safety,” her feet on firm ground once more. Without this creature lining it, the floor was normal, craggy and rocky. She never thought she would be quite so happy to see sunlight as she was at that moment. Of course, she had no idea how long she was going to be able to stand there, but at least it was something. She could remain on that spot and shout for help until her throat went raw. At least it would beat being consumed by this . . . this whatever-it-was.
The moment she was absolutely stable, perfectly still . . . the creature went for her.
It was at that instant that she realized the thing was, indeed, intelligent. That it had, in fact, laid a trap for her, and she had walked right into it. Before she even had time to think about it, it was around her feet, moving up her legs, making a loud, slurping noise, like a child in the midst of eagerly devouring and savoring, all at the same time, an ice cream bar.
There had been any number of times in the past when Robin felt as if her mother was going to have her climbing the walls. Never, though, had it become literal.
In a heartbeat, Robin was climbing the walls.
When she had first fallen through the hole, the prospect of trying to climb back to the top never occurred to her. It was far too high, and there was no way she was going to be able to find enough foot- or handholds. Now, however, she had no choice. She grabbed hold of the wall and started to climb, as fast and hard as she could. Her fingers dug, almost on instinct, into nooks and crannies that she never would have seen before. She didn’t look down, but she could sense the thing bubbling around down there. It was not, thank God, climbing the walls. But it was waiting for her to lose her grip, to plunge back down into it. And she had the nauseating feeling that if she fell into it again, she was not going to be getting out anytime soon—if ever.
Her right hand gripped a bit of outcropping, which then broke off. For one moment she was dangling there by one hand, her feet desperately seeking purchase. Then she found it, and flattened herself against the wal
l, gasping, steadying herself. Once she was certain that she had a firm handhold again, she continued to pull herself up. She was truly caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, she wanted to rush, to get up there and out of danger as quickly as possible. Also, she wasn’t sure that her endurance, given the circumstances, was going to be up for a sustained climb. On the other hand, she knew that the more she rushed, the more likely she was to make a mistake. And this was one circumstance in which a mistake would prove costly, and even fatal.
Through gritted teeth, she muttered, “Let’s have adventures. Let’s go climbing. Won’t that be fun? My God, what was I thinking?” Her fingers were being rubbed raw, and she was terrified that, if her fingers became blood-slicked, she would be unable to hold on.
Another foot up, and then another, and she was drawing closer and closer to her erstwhile entrance—which would, ideally, prove to be her exit. She wasn’t bothering to call for help anymore; all of her focus was on keeping herself from falling. She could feel the sunlight on her face, the gentle breeze wafting down. Far below her, she could sense the thing still moving around, waiting for her to return.
Now, however, she was coming to the most dangerous aspect of her attempt to survive. The hole was above her and a little to the right. She was going to have to twist, turn fast, kick off from the wall, and lunge for the hole in desperate hope of grabbing the edges. She was not going to have the opportunity to make a second attempt.
She steadied herself, took several deep breaths . . . and then made the leap. One hand missed completely, but she snagged the edge of the hole with the other. Her sense of relief lasted for exactly two seconds, and then the uncertain ground she was gripping crumbled in her grasp, and she fell, straight toward the bottom.
