Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  Mayford led us past the train platform to the tunnel with the footpath. The darkness was broken by a bright light shining at the far end which made the walls around us seem darker by comparison. The light in the distance was too far away to make out any detail, but the rush of wind, accompanied by a notable mist, led me to guess what we’d find there.

  “Is that a waterfall ahead?” Hathan-Fen asked Mayford.

  “Yes,” Mayford replied. He seemed distracted, running his hand along the tunnel wall as we moved forward into the darkness. “It’s part of a hydroelectric experiment we’ve been working on. It filters particulates from the air, provides a modicum of power, and it’s a favorite place for our young people to spend their time. That’s not…why we’re here…however.” He took a few more pensive steps, muttered something under his breath, and then gave a resounding ‘A-ha!’ that echoed off the damp rock walls.

  Redland grumbled irritably, steadying himself against the tunnel wall as he rubbed his temple.

  “Sorry,” Mayford said again. Looking at each of us, and then taking a quick look toward both ends of the tunnel, he reached out his right hand, placed it flat against the wall, and pushed.

  An audible click emanated from the wall, after which a square portion of rock swung outward. Behind the hidden panel was a glass rectangle that glowed faintly green around the edges. “This is a biometric lock,” Mayford said, placing his right hand flat against the glass. Green lines flowed downward from the top of the glass like another waterfall, only this one fell in unnatural, electric colors. We all watched as vector lines played up and down Mayford’s hand, illuminating his face in a ghostly pallor as it did so. The green lines traced the contours of his hand in perfect detail, from his fingerprints to the crooked angle of his little finger. Lines of text scrolled down one side of the glass, and finally showed a small image of his face in the bottom left corner. A quick bleep of approval sounded from the display, and mechanisms within the wall began operating.

  A massive door, similar to the one we’d encountered at the entrance to the mountain, swung easily on large, recessed hinges. Mayford gestured into the dark hallway beyond. “Enter quickly, please,” he said.

  Inside we found a narrow corridor built entirely from concrete. Light came from square panels in the ceiling, not bulbs like we had seen thus far, but a kind of material that glowed brightly without the use of filaments. Mayford made sure we were all in the corridor and pulled the door shut again. The door’s mechanisms reseated themselves in a series of metallic thuds.

  “We must be in another node,” Major Hathan-Fen commented.

  “We are indeed,” Mayford said. “This one is somewhat larger than the other one, as you will soon see, partly because it is shielded. The concrete is reinforced at the molecular level with a T’Neth bonding agent. It would survive most attempts at penetration short of a nuclear attack. It also extends the nullifying characteristics of the node itself.”

  “A nuclear attack?” Hathan-Fen asked.

  “Ah, an inside joke,” Mayford said. “It was a kind of bomb used on Earth many centuries ago.”

  “He means it’s solid,” Redland growled impatiently.

  Mayford led us down the nondescript corridor, turning left and then right, up a long flight of steps, and a few more turns before finally reaching another door. This one had no lock that I could see, just a handle that Mayford turned.

  The door swung open to reveal a wide antechamber, perhaps fifty meters square and ten meters high, which was divided in two parts by a shallow channel running across the middle. On our side of the channel, the floor was made of the same concrete as the corridor. To our left, a row of benches sat in the open area, looking much like a waiting room. Altogether underwhelming, I thought, but at least the benches had cushions.

  The far side of the cavern was nothing more than bare, excavated rock. A few support structures had been added to buttress the ceiling, and a variety of digging tools lay around an enlarged hole in the rock, but otherwise it looked no different than the mine had in the rest of Dolina.

  It was the centerpiece of the room that drew everybody’s attention, however. It was a wide cylindrical tunnel, five meters I diameter, composed of the blue T’Neth metal that seemed more and more commonplace lately. The tunnel emerged from the rock in the left side of the cavern, opened at the top with beveled edges that curved down in until it merged with the channel running across the floor. The channel, itself made of blue metal, continued to the far end of the cavern where it curled upward. The edges smoothed out and morphed into a circular post, which then widened into a sphere that pointed down the tunnel.

  “Folks, this is where the next leg of your journey begins,” Mayford announced.

  Redland was the first to break the silence. “Fantastic,” he muttered. “Another train ride.”

  “Is it safe?” Hathan-Fen asked Norio.

  “I do not know,” Norio said, his face a mask of bewilderment. “I have never been this far.”

  “Very few people get invited,” Mayford said. “Even the most trusted among us aren’t allowed unless there are extraordinary circumstances. I myself have been there only once, and that was ten years ago.”

  “Will Alex crash the train?” Kate asked.

  “The last tunnel we traveled through was damaged during a magnetic storm,” I hastened to explain to Mayford. “We ran into a few problems.”

  “Not to mention dozens of iron barricades,” Redland mumbled. Apparently, not even a hangover could prevent him from taking a swipe at me.

  I only shrugged. It didn’t matter what I said on the topic. I wasn’t the explaining type, and Redland wasn’t the forgiving type.

  “That won’t be a problem here,” Mayford smiled. “I suspect the T’Neth train will run somewhat better.”

  “I sure hope so,” I replied.

  “Well,” Mayford said, clapping his hands together, “make yourselves comfortable. We may be here for a short while.”

  We all spread out. Norio and Kate stayed together, where she helped him with the laces on his gloves, her thought expressing worry that he might be concealing a deep-seated pain. Hathan-Fen paired up with Mayford, probably because she preferred him and his intellectual jargon to either me or Redland. I sat on a bench by myself. Redland moved as far away from the rest of us and laid down on a bench with his hat covering his eyes.

  Sometime later, I glanced around at the others. Redland still lay on his bench, face covered, making the occasional snore. Kate was thinking about bug mules as she absentmindedly wrapped a finger around one of her long curls. Norio sat cross-legged on a bench, eyes closed. Hathan-Fen paced back and forth, her usual dour expression firmly in place. Mayford started to look a little worried, checking his pocket watch frequently.

  “Train running late?” I asked.

  “The T’Neth are usually quite punctual,” Mayford said. “This will be the first time a new T’Neth has visited, so perhaps they are still making preparations.”

  “No doubt they’re puttin’ up all kinds of streamers and fancy decor,” Redland grumbled through his hat. “Keep it down.”

  Mayford shrugged. “I don’t think T’Neth are the decorating type,” he whispered to me.

  It was at that moment that I noticed something in my peripheral vision. A little blue speck of light floated in the air near the tunnel opening. I thought it was a mote of dust, but it traveled back and forth in what looked like a very straight, calculated manner. Another mote suddenly appeared next to it, behaving the same way.

  I looked around the cavern. Other blue specks materialized, one after another in rapid succession. Some moved down from the ceiling while others moved up from the floor. A few of them changed direction, not randomly but at ninety-degree angles. Whenever two specks intersected, a line stretched out along their continuing paths and produced additional wisps of light. When two lines touched one another, a third split off, perpendicular to both. Three-dimensional shapes were the next to appear �
� cubes, spheres, and so on - with some kind of symbols attached to them. We had been surrounded by mathematical apparitions, and some even passed through us. I watched them curiously for a minute, almost saying something until I realized that I was the only one who saw them. Everybody seemed oblivious to the light show, even Kate, who currently had several objects orbiting her head. In her mind, she was currently preoccupied with a painting she saw in Dolina, an abstract representation of something called a tangerine that was unfamiliar to her.

  Should I say something? I asked myself. No. That would renew suspicions that I’d fallen under T’Neth influence. I definitely didn’t want to have that conversation again. I did think I should alert the group, though. It was just a question of how to do it.

  "Anybody else still recovering from that vodka?” I asked.

  Redland grumbled, “Shut up.”

  Mayford showed immediate concern. “Marshal Vonn, you should have said something earlier. I have medicine that will help with that. Did you at least drink water before we left?” He put a thumb on my cheek and pulled my lower eyelid down. “Are you feeling dizzy?”

  “What?” I said, brushing off his concern as I swatted his arm away. “No. I was just making conversation. I feel fine. Forget I said anything.”

  Hathan-Fen perked up. “You’re notorious for many things, marshal, but making conversation isn’t one of them,” she said, oblivious to an expanding green hypercube in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

  Everybody was suddenly interested in me, which is exactly what I’d hoped to avoid.

  “Nothing,” I insisted.

  Kate raised her hand. “I vomited onions before we left. I can still taste them.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Kate,” Hathan-Fen said.

  “Everybody shut up or so help me…I’ll kick your asses,” Redland growled.

  “Spill it, Vonn,” Hathan-Fen demanded. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing,” I insisted. “I just wanted to…get a rise out of Redland.”

  She looked at Redland, who had started rubbing his temples again. “Seriously? Marshal, could you try to act like a grown-up for once?”

  I shrugged.

  Norio joined us. He gave me a concerned look but said nothing.

  Shimmering geometries now filled the room. Vectors darted around. Glowing walls shifted back and forth along the entire length of the cavern, passing through everything in their way. Objects with three, four, or five dimensions – though I had no idea how I could perceive such things. Patterns emerged that I shouldn’t have been able to identify but did. Okay, that’s it, I thought. As little as I wanted anybody to know what was going on inside my head, I was ready to say something.

  “A T’Neth is coming,” Kate said before I had a chance to open my mouth.

  A rush of air whooshed out of the tunnel, forcing everybody against the wall nearest to the door. I moved back as well, not being completely impervious to caution, even with the bizarre phenomena parading around me. Tendrils of light extended from the tunnel entrance and condensed into a form that, thankfully, everybody else saw. A blue cylinder of energy took shape over the channel, terminating in a shimmering bubble over the sphere at the end of the track.

  Hathan-Fen Spoke up first. “That’s the same type of energy that brought us out of the tunnel near Sunlo.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Mayford beamed, “You’re about to get a full demonstration of T’Neth advancements in physics.”

  I was pretty sure I’d gotten a sneak peek already.

  A massive object shot from the tunnel like a bullet. At first, I thought it would hit the other end of the cavern, but it stopped within an arm’s length of the sphere. I mean it stopped instantly, with no deceleration that I could detect. First it was a blur, and then it just sat there. Everybody startled, even Mayford.

  “I expected that, and it still surprised me,” Mayford laughed nervously.

  “It ain’t natural,” Redland said. He was so shocked that he didn’t sound one bit angry.

  “Indeed,” Norio added, staring at the train as the surrounding blue energy cylinder faded and disappeared.

  What sat there looked like no train I’d ever seen before. Predictably built from blue T’Neth metal, it had alternating grooves and curves that began near the nose cone and overlapped like braids of hair to the rear of the train, which extended just beyond the tunnel opening. There were no windows or doors on the train; it was one solid metal mass suspended above the cavern floor, presumably by magnetism. What was even more amazing is that it made no sound. I expected something, even a jet of steam from the undercarriage – if the train had one. Even the rushing air had subsided in a strange hurry.

  “It’s still moving,” Hathan-Fen said.

  She was right, sort of. The train itself had stopped, but its braid-like contours flowed like intermingling ripples on a lake.

  “It does that,” Mayford said with an uncustomary lack of explanation.

  I stared at the train, perhaps with greater appreciation than the others because I realized that the light show I’d seen was created by the train in advance of its arrival. Now that the train had stopped, the glowing lights dissipated. I let out a silent breath of relief.

  Near the train’s nose cone, a tall rectangular section shimmered and liquefied. I’m not saying it melted; I’m saying it changed its physical state into something that resembled wet paint. It poured into an unseen mold, guided by a handful of ethereal blue wisps, and took on the form of stairs. Then it became solid again.

  “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who saw that,” I said.

  “I am sure we all did,” Norio said, gawking at the stairs with wide eyes.

  A feminine figure stood in the doorway, her features hidden behind a plain, hooded gown made of silver fabric. She was the same slender build as Kate, but taller. Her face covered in shadow and hands cupped together in her sleeves, she turned her head to examine us without leaving the train.

  “I present to you the T’Neth engineer,” Mayford said, holding both hands out palm upward. “Se’ku Drin Gra’h Larin.” Though his pronunciation was eloquent, he looked confused.

  The engineer glided down the steps with an economy of motion that made it look as if she were floating toward us. “Seku,” she said. As with Kate, I heard her both in my mind and my ears at the same time. She returned the palms-up gesture to Mayford, a greeting I’d seen Kate make many times in the past.

  “Engineer Seku,” Mayford said, “I understood that the Ambassador was to greet us today.”

  Seku did not answer. I thought she might be assessing whether or not we were a threat. I listened for her thoughts but heard nothing.

  Seku began circling Kate slowly, examining her.

  Kate reached out to Seku with her mind. Engineer Seku, are you one of the exiles that Doctor Mayford spoke of?

  Seku looked back at Kate. Interval expected. Ambassador reciprocation post-transit, she replied in her thoughts. Apparently the older T’Neth are just as uncommunicative with their own kind as they are with humans.

  I still didn’t want anybody knowing I could hear T’Neth thoughts again, so I tried to watch inconspicuously as Kate asked Seku other questions. The engineer’s response was always the same: Interval expected. Ambassador reciprocation post-transit. I smiled to myself. Seku was telling Kate to wait for the ambassador, but Kate didn’t understand the phraseology.

  Seku’s mental pronunciation was labored at best, as if she was unaccustomed to thinking in the same manner Kate did. Then I wondered, is it possible that the T’Neth have more than one language? I’d never thought that the T’Neth could have any barriers to their telepathy, but it seemed that’s exactly what I was witnessing.

  As Seku circled Kate, I noticed blue wisps of energy appear wherever the engineer’s gaze went, almost like the beam of a spotlight when it illuminates objects in the dark. Was she making those lines, I wondered, or just revealing them? Luminous blue lines soli
dified next to Kate, each of them marked by symbols.

  All at once, the blue wisps around Kate disappeared and Seku moved to the next person in our party to do the same thing.

  “I’ve put on a few kilos since I last went to the Sanctum,” Mayford said to Seku apologetically. She didn’t seem to notice that he said anything, but merely observed the blue wraiths dancing around him.

  Next was Hathan-Fen, and then Redland. Both of them stood rigidly as ones who might be surrounded by a swarm of bees and didn’t want to get stung. I don’t think they realized how true that looked from my perspective.

  When the others were finished, Seku paused in front of me. I took off my hat and waited for her to do whatever she was doing. She looked in my eyes and reached around to feel the back of my neck. I didn’t move, even though she treated me differently than the others. Apparently satisfied, she began her slow circle around me and summoned the wisps to encircle me.

  I began to understand what was going on. The blue wisps were a manifestation of Seku’s abilities as an engineer. Her thought patterns weren’t manifested telepathically like Kate’s but were done telekinetically.

  When Seku finished, the blue wisps faded away and she addressed Mayford directly. “Ride,” she said simply, and walked back onto the train.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Mayford said. To the rest of us, he said, “A bit of a change of plans, it seems. Don’t worry, it happens sometimes.”

  “When?” Redland asked.

  “Oh,” Mayford said. “What?”

  “When do they change their plans?” Redland asked.