by Tim Dennis
Traveler
Escape from Legong
Tim Dennis
Copyright 2016 Tim Dennis
Traveler MT/TD01 T103016 First e-Edition
Published by Tim Dennis at Smashwords
cover art by Malcolm McClinton
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Table of Contents
Losing Legong
About the Author
Connect
Other books by Tim Dennis
Acknowledgements
1
Myles paused in the shade of the Jacarandas, midway between beach and barnyard and again tried his implant.
Hello?
Nothing.
He laid his guitar on the grassy verge and stood in the middle of the gravel path, bending and arching his back to ward off an incipient cramp. He tried one more time.
Hello? He thought to himself with force and purpose.
Take a breath, relax. He answered himself. It never works when you're stressed like this.
How can I NOT be stressed?
Myles looked up through the purple canopy, searching for the orbiting torus of Central Command. The sky remained blue and mostly empty. The run so far had taken him between two vacant and silent fields, through which the still air brought no perfumes, not of leaf, grass, or livestock; only a faint salty, ozone-y quality, and even that may have been imagined. He took a deep breath.
Is that what a tsunami smells like?
It was a rhetorical question asked silently to himself, but Myles paused, just in case his implant responded. It didn't. Myles drew his attention back to the impending flood and his aching sides only to be distracted yet again - this time by the plaintive sounds of panicked sheep erupting over a hillock. A flock of timid beasts came into view, pounding along hoof-over-knuckle, chased across the uneven ground by tripping and tumbling Inflatable Seekers.
Stupid beasts. They don't know they're running from their saviors.
You're not going to make the beach in time, just go grab a Seeker.
Myles considered his own suggestion for a moment, calculating the remaining distance to the beach while watching each sheep be overrun, woolly backs mounted by leaping six-legged Seekers. Several dropped to the ground, rolling, trying to knock the flotation gear off. Others twisted and bit. Not able to reach the Seekers on their backs they snapped instead at their nearest neighbor.
Stupid sheep.
A flash in the sky claimed his attention. Myles stepped out from beneath the trees for a better look.
Meteor? He asked himself.
Be more specific. The implant responded.
Never mind, I was just thinking. Wait! Hello? Reconnect.
The implant remained silent.
Hello? Hello?
The over-sized dome of blue peaking out from the edges of the fireball identified the streak as a Shuttle in re-entry. He turned and on the opposite horizon Central Command's gray torus could just be seen, the tangle of launch rails reaching out from its center suggestive of a mutant octopus. Myles took another look at the sheep and chose the run to the beach.
Bento said she'd wait.
You asked her to wait. Not the same thing.
This was true, and nervous now for the first time, Myles took a few steps further down the path, stopped, turned back and retrieved his guitar. He resumed his run, more of a jog really, looking this way and that as he scanned the sky for Drop Capsules.
Most of the sheep had forgotten their burdens and returned to shortening the grass, leaving only the swish-scratch-crunch of his own feet on gravel as the soundtrack of Myles's flight from the coming wave. He joked to himself about the irony of berating sheep for running from the Inflatable Seekers when he himself was running from the security of his parents' farmstead directly towards the water.
I'm not running to the water, I'm running to Bento's Skimmer.
Myles's competing thoughts coalesced into their normal patterns, producing enough self-doubt that he actually stumbled slightly, briefly considering a return to the farmstead. But now well past the Jacarandas, he was committed, and accelerated towards the beach. The bump-k'thump of his pounding heart joined the crickle-crickle-crickle of feet on gravel.
You mean swish-scratch-crunch.
The swish-scratch-crunch remained, overlaid by a crickle-crickle-crickle. Myles stared down at his feet, trying to match sound to motion. As if shot from a cannon, thirty five kilos of pig rocketed past, down the gravel path, disappearing into the barrier of mangrove trees that separated the inner fields of the Key from its exposed beach.
"Picked a fine day to go walk-about!" Myles shouted, himself bursting through the trees moments later. He stood in the sand, watching the pig snort across the mudflat sloping away towards the next low, green isle.
Mudflats? There's no mudflats.
But there were. In fact, laid out between his key and the next was at least a kilometer of gently sloping mudflat split by a narrow strip of quiet water. Myles stood, astonished. Preceded by a trough, the wave had drawn much of the lagoon out into the open sea, silently shrinking it into a three-kilometer pond. The beach, now half sand and half mud and rock, stretched to more than twenty times its usual depth. None of it contained Bento's Skimmer. Myles scanned the beach in suppressed terror.
He tossed the guitar to the ground and ran to the end of the narrow pier reaching out across the mud. Dropping to his knees, Myles fought with a knotted rope from which dangled a small recreational sailboat. The knot only grew tighter. Prying apart two loops a fingernail folded back. He leapt.
"Shit! Shit shit shit!"
The pig joined in with one long screech as it raced the wave now forcing itself back into the lagoon. Myles looked skyward. To the north and south he saw the ordinary streaks of meteors, but no Drop Capsules. A new trickling, dripping sound filtered through the mangroves, complimenting the gentle swirling gurgle of the filling lagoon. The pig stopped a few meters from Myles and set about spinning rabidly.
He seems to understand the impending doom.
Pigs are smarter than sheep, you know.
And apparently smarter than some people, for after a feint back towards the gravel path it tore along the mangroves to the base of an orange trellis upon which rested a four-meter wide bright orange onion dome.
Myles ran after the pig and each threw themselves at the structure, leaping, scrambling for a foothold on its smooth sides. A meter to their right hung the short boarding ladder. Myles ran back for his guitar. The little boat was floating.
Oooo!
Rushing back to the buoy, Myles climbed the ladder one-handed, popped open the hatch and lowered in the guitar. Dropping in safely beside it, he turned to close the hatch, catching a glimpse of the sandy pig below. The animal looked back with inquisitively tilted head. The two of them listened to the rushing waters.
Close the hatch!
Myles scolded himself, drew in his head and grasped the hatch-handle. The squeal started up again, accompanied by an aerial display of flailing hooves and stretched neck followed by a short huffing noise, knocked out of the pig in a thud of ham-on-sand. Myles watched the show as the squeals grew weaker and the thuds heavier. Soon there was only panting a
nd the pick-pick-pick of sandy pacing.
He did find the Emergency Buoy...
Without conscious decision, Myles climbed out the hatch, falling on the pig like a sack of dirt, wrestling bacon and hocks while avoiding the panicky sharp bits at the ends. Pig subdued, Myles felt the dampness. The broad stretches of rock and mud were gone and as the lagoon crept up the beach the main swell took a short cut across the sheep pasture and down through the mangroves. Beast tight against chest, Myles struggled to his knees, pulling from under him one foot before the rising waters lifted the buoy off its mount. With a mighty heave he slid the pig up the sloped side and through the hatch, landing it safely with a crunching, splintery noise and an a-tonal twang.
In the moment between releasing the pig and climbing up himself, Myles noticed the ladder was attached not to the buoy, but to the mounting trellis, which remained firmly planted in the ground as the buoy floated away. He flung himself at the buoy's rail, pulling his face up to the hatch as his legs dragged in the water. The roiling currents of rising lagoon and cresting wave carried buoy, pig, and man along the mangroves, knocking and then bouncing away, floating free for a moment before spinning and slipping back, this time with Myles positioned such that his own fleshy mass would protect the orange dome from dents and scratches.
Shit.
Myles's first thought was of what his parents would think, having expended thirty years of love and care bringing a child to adulthood only to have him drown on a beach because he'd gone soft over swine, not to mention his previous pause contemplating trees and thinking ill of sheep.
Actually, my first and only thought was 'shit.'
With a life-affirming burst of energy Myles pulled his face even with the open hatch. The pig looked up in empathy, or perhaps complete disinterest, tilting head and stretching neck as Myles's arms fatigued and his head dropped from view. Two or three more pulls provided for the pig two or three more images of increasingly panicked primate until finally the interfering currents produced a swell that floated Myles's legs that, combined with one final almighty heave, propelled his body through the hatch. The pig let out a gleeful squeal as Myles plopped onto the floor beside it. Or perhaps it was a squeal of fear, for a half meter to the left and Myles would have landed on it, instead of the remains of his guitar.
Relaxing with a sense of accomplishment, Myles closed the hatch and strapped himself in one of the seats ringing the interior. As the buoy dipped and swayed the little pink sailor waddled over to Myles, shoved its head between his knees and snorted. Myles squeezed. The pig retreated.
"It'll be over soon fella. Gal. What are you?"
The buoy rattled along the mangroves, sending the animal sliding back and forth until the waters calmed. Just as the pig gained its footing the buoy dropped, launching the screeching porkynaut across the interior as it painted the walls with its bowels.
Miraculously avoiding the beastly effluvium, Myles turned inward and tried again his implant.
Hello. This is Advocate Tugot, in a buoy around Tugot key. Just checking in to say I made it. I'm OK.
A solid clunk sounded from the top of the buoy.
The top of the buoy?
Yes, the top.
Oh. That's odd. What could be on top?
The gentle rocking of waves changed to a dizzying sway, stopped with a thud from below. The hatch opened and Bento's Deck-Mate, Clark, stared, pop-eyed and exasperated.
"There's no room on deck for the buoy." He said. "We need to jettison it before the next crest. You need to get out. NOW!"
Myles quickly freed himself and climbed out of the hatch, joining two dozen other damp refugees on the broad, open deck of the Skimmer. Clark lifted the buoy, still attached to the crane, and dropped it over the side into the momentarily calm waters.
"Pig!" Myles shouted, pointing at the open hatch of the rolling and dipping buoy. The next wave trough was already dragging the lagoon out of the atoll, and although Bento's Skimmer held a steady position a meter above the waves, the buoy, hatch open, tipped and tossed in the turbulence. Myles's vision tunneled, his eyes fluttered, and all sounds faded as he focused his mind on the hatch.
Clark steadied him. "It's only a buoy, we can make more." he said.
Myles opened his eyes. The buoy grew steadily more distant, rolling onto one side then the other. But the hatch was closed, pig safely inside.
Did I do it? I did it! It worked. I closed the hatch.
Ooo. Good for you.
Bento stepped out of the pilothouse long enough to chastise Myles. "You're lucky your mother called. I was heading for deep water, thought you'd stayed on the farm."
"I was fine. You didn't need to-" Myles said, but she was already back in the pilothouse. He moved to follow her but she ignored him, maneuvering the Skimmer away from the islands and shoals to hover a meter or two above the deep center of the lagoon. There they sat for over an hour as the wave came and went, first scouring the surrounding lush green Keys then inundating them, sparing only the barren, dusty mount of the Main Isle, its City Center building, a gleaming steel and glass egg, looking down on the deluge with reserved calm. Myles again looked skyward. Another Shuttle was in re-entry, its over-sized blue dome shielding it from the vaporizing heat as it slowed for landing.
"Still no Drop-Capsules." Myles said. "What the hell is Central Command doing?"
"Leave it alone, Myles." She said.
"It's my job. I'm an Advocate. There should be Drop-Capsules by now."
"Check your implant Myles, Broad Plain is assisting. As soon as this calms I'm heading over for supplies."
"But you said you were going to the Main Island. I would have stayed on the farm-"
"I'll drop you on the beach-"
"No! I'll catch a shuttle up from Broad Plain."
Another wave crest came and went, lower and slower than the last. Bento re-positioned the Skimmer and watched the turbulent waters between the Keys. "Leave it alone, Myles," she almost mumbled the words, she'd little hope they'd be heeded.
2
Krykowfert stared down the long oblong conference table at nine robed figures. Eight hid in their hoods, attempting to project an image of the authority they failed to embody. Only Councilor Five, seated at the far end, left her face visible.
If the Councilors failed to intimidate, the dimly lit room did its best with shadowy niches separated by grand arches curving up into the inverted oblong dome protruding from the ceiling. In the darkness, behind the trio of Krykowfert, Nia Feric and the Honored Guest hovered images of planets, star fields and mathematics. Krykowfert nodded. Feric let her eyes flutter as she mentally manipulated the display. Councilor Five spoke.
"The Council has great interest in what our Honored Guest has to say, but the atoll of Caldera is under flood, and it is this which must now concern the Elders."
Ironic... Krykowfert thought, since most of the women of the Council were younger than he. "Broad Plain is capable of assisting Caldera. I urge the Council to consider the facts I've presented."
"The Guest has waited two weeks," Councilor Six interrupted. "Another hour will not change his opinions."
Five glanced at Krykowfert, silencing what would have been a inappropriate comment. Instead Krykowfert let his shoulders drop and looked back at the floating fields of numbers and images. With a huff or a sigh he tossed a resigned nod to Feric. She spoke softly to the Honored Guest then led him out of the Council Chamber. As the door closed Krykowfert dropped into a vacant seat, slouching and stretching his legs, letting the chair spin slowly around. "If you're going to stonewall like this I won't be held responsible."
Six made her away around the table towards him. "You pay more attention to that- that Earthman than to your own Council. We need to drop Relief Capsules, you should be deploying Shield Guard troops. The surface settlements look to Central Command in times like this."
"Not anymore!" Krykowfert snapped.
"It's not just material assistance," Six barked. "They look to us for
a sense of permanence and security."
Krykowfert infuriated Six by ignoring her, turning instead to speak to Five. The lights were up now, and threadbare robes had been whisked away by nameless clerks. In full light the majestic columns revealed themselves as ill-fitting appliques, the domed ceiling, a dingy, claustrophobic appurtenance.
"The Earthman came in peace with warnings and data to support them," Krykowfert said, "these were not threats, he's not armed."
Six also appealed directly to Five. "He's trying to manipulate us, limit our technological growth, hamstring us, it's the diasporas all over again."
"You must admit," Five addressed Krykowfert, "four hundred years without any contact, and now this?"
Krykowfert turned to his hovering images, "our own people have gone over his-"
"You had no authority to bring that person and his propaganda into this chamber." Six used her implant to dismiss the images of planets, stars and numbers.
"I've been promised an audience since the Earthman arrived. Two weeks-"
"And for that we apologize," said Councilor Five. "But Caldera IS under threat."
Six now manipulated her own images, allowing the planet below to fill the room before shrinking it to a more manageable size. She panned and zoomed across an arid and mountainous landscape towards an sparkling sea, settling finally on the atoll of Caldera; one large, rocky island dying away into a circle of low green keys. The other Councilors retook their seats bringing their focus back from whatever implant consultations they'd been hiding in.
"They're fine." Krykowfert said.
"No one here is doubting that you've accomplished great things with the surface settlements. But can you be sure?" Five asked.
Krykowfert looked back at nine questioning pairs of eyes. "I'm sure."
Five nodded and took her seat. Clerks reappeared and Councilors murmured quietly amongst themselves. Krykowfert took the hint and slipped out into the hallway, marching straight for the nearest elevator. As his two personal guards fell in step he blinked imperceptibly, connecting his implant with Feric's.
