by Laura Watson
There were holes of different sizes embedded in the surface of the opposing wall. She reached one of these holes and climbed in. It was very large and she could stand up in it. It was dark in there and as she turned around towards the entrance, where a faint grayish light came in, she could see the row of columns where she had been imprisoned. The Grays were back!
They hovered outside of a container near the top of the column where the thick filmy panel bore the ragged hole of her escape. Sarah heard them scream in rage. The buzzing noises their minds made became deafening. She watched as they started looking for her.
They zipped through the space between the
columns and the wall with amazing speeds. Back and forth, they flew and were quickly working their way down to where she was hiding.
Instinctively, she backed up as far into the hole as she could. She kept backing up until she realized that the hole she had climbed into was actually a tunnel.
Sarah didn’t waste any time when Mikel told her to run! The Grays had smelled her out. She was blind in there and as she ran, she stumbled and fell. Her arms pistioned out in front of her and she felt the coarse grainy surface of the tunnel’s walls. There was scrabble under her feet and she reached down to pick some of the stones up. “I can throw a rock at them,” she thought to herself, not realizing at the time what a ridiculous and futile idea that was. No sooner had she picked the stones up, Mikel shouted “drop those right now Sarah!
Keep running!”
Sarah didn’t understand why he sounded so angry but she listened to him and kept running blindly through the tunnel. Mikel skillfully guided her through the tunnel and she now ran effortlessly by listening to his directions. “Stop”, Mikel said “turn here.” Sarah turned to her right but found nothing there except the rough granite feel of the tunnel’s surface.
“Turn the other way” Mikel said quickly. She turned to her left and discovered another, smaller, tunnel leading off from the one she was in.
Sarah felt safer in this smaller tunnel as she crawled through it. Sharp outcrops of the rugged tunnel surface tore at her knees and hands but she only registered it in the back of her mind. It would only be later that she noticed that her knees were bloody and her hands had cuts and gashes all over them. Her adrenalin blocked the pain and heightened her other senses as she fled, in sheer terror, from the Grays.
The smaller tunnel offered no more resistance against the pursuing Grays than the larger tunnel had.
They seemed to have no trouble at all moving through it even though they were three times Sarah's size.
She could hear them faintly behind her at first, moving along the tunnel's surface but the sounds were getting louder and she knew they weren't very far behind. Mikel directed her into another branching tunnel. There was a vast maze of tunnels in there.
Mikel could block out her thoughts from the Grays but it was her scent that they followed and by then she reeked. She left an easy trail for them to follow and Mikel frantically thought of a way to disguise it.
Mikel led her through the tunnel and out to a smooth surfaced, oval shaped room where small metallic mesh suits hung in a row on the curved wall.
Helmets, that had the appearance of heads, hung above the garments.
He told her to put one of the bio suits on, but first, to go into one of the other tunnels that led from the room a few steps, and then come back out again.
Sarah did what Mikel said to do. She ran into one of the tunnels a few feet and then back out again. She hurriedly put on one of the metallic mesh bio suits.
The suit was larger than it looked and hung over her hands and feet but it instantly shrank down in size to fit her. It wasn’t heavy although it looked it and the helmet closed snugly around her neck.
Mikel had her quickly pull a few more of the garments and helmets down so that it looked like a pile of them on the floor and then told her to crawl under them and stay very still.
Sarah could see out of the dull chrome colored helmet and through the blackened eye holes that were shaped like huge, slanted, almonds. She watched the hole that she had crawled out of to enter this room and it wasn’t long before she saw one, then both, Grays emerging from the tunnel.
They were taller, like pulled taffy, she thought, stretched tall and thin. They had stretched themselves to wriggle through the tunnel and as she watched in horror, their bodies began to shrink back to their usual size.
They weren’t aware that they were being
observed. They gave the room a cursory glance and then went straight to the tunnel that Mikel had told her to walk in and out of.
Sarah noticed that their nose holes had grown in diameter and were flaring in and out as they sought out her scent. She shuddered in revulsion. They quickly scurried into the tunnel where they thought she had gone. They came back out after a few moments and looked around at the other tunnels. Mikel chuckled inside of her mind.
They were confused. The scent had stopped a few feet inside of the tunnel and there were no other tunnels branching off from it in there. They found no smell at any of the other tunnel entrances. The mesh garment and helmet concealed Sarah from their noses, just as Mikel knew it would.
The Grays systematically checked each of the tunnel’s entrances before going back to the one they had picked up her scent at. They disappeared into the tunnel deciding (Mikel told her) to follow it farther out to see if she was, in fact, still in there.
Mikel told her not to move and she didn’t. She lay there, for some time, underneath the pile of garments, before she saw the Grays emerge, once more out of the tunnel’s entrance.
They were disappointed to have let their meal escape. They reluctantly walked back to the first tunnel that they had accessed the room from and squeezed themselves back into it.
Even Sarah's young mind had difficulty accepting what she saw. They stretched themselves tall and thin and wriggled through the tunnel entrance.
The two Grays had been gone for a very long time before Mikel allowed her to move from where she was.
As she was taking the mesh garment and helmet off, two small beings entered the oval room. They jumped backwards in surprise, startled at first and they then demanded sternly, speaking in her mind, to know what she was doing in there.
These beings were lovely in comparison to the Grays. Their eyes were like a cat's eyes. One of them had green eyes, the other blue. Their eyes glittered with iridescent light that made their colors very striking and very clear.
Sarah was mesmerized, and they had to ask her again what she was doing in there. Their tones had changed from the surprised harsh tone, to one of a firm inquiry. They sensed no real threat from her. Before Sarah could give them an answer, Mikel stepped into the room.
Mikel! Her heart leapt! She had missed Mikel!
Sarah had not seen Mikel for three years, not since her long walk into the desert to help him. Mikel had blue eyes. Cerulean blue, she later came to realize, would be the closest blue she could compare the color to. The color was much clearer, however, and so much more blue, if it were possible.
For Sarah, looking into Mikel's eyes calmed and soothed and comforted her. No drug store or pharmacy carried a balm or medicine or a potion that could equal the healing power that lived behind those cerulean blue eyes.
Mikel stood at least a foot taller than Sarah's three feet. He was also a foot taller than the other two beings there but carried the same features and skin tone. Mikel was cream colored with graceful, fine features.
His frame was small like Sarah's with long, somehow elegant looking hands and slightly smaller feet. His feet weren't like the Grays', bird like with claws. They weren't like Sarah's either. The digits on his feet were all the same length and had no nails on the ends.
Mikel's head was oval and perfectly proportioned to his body size. His eyes were large and almond shaped and slanted. He had two holes where his nose should have been, small delicate openings unlike the large nostrils of the Grays. His mouth was thin
but wider than the Grays' mouths.
Mikel was a natural mimic. He could mimic any sound he heard, and project any image he wished to be seen as. Mikel was a genial, gentle being. He was a very old one. He was full of knowledge and wisdom that he shared generously. He loved to joke around, and to impersonate some of the strange beings that he met.
When Sarah had her hands on her hips, as she was prone to do, being the bossy type, he would put his hands where his hips should be. He always sent Sarah into giggles when he did that.
Mikel was normally light-hearted and comical, but there was nothing light-hearted in his manner now.
He spoke in an authoritative, formal, voice that Sarah was not accustomed to hearing him use.
"Don't be cross" he warned the two smaller beings, "I told it to come in here. It only did as I bade it to do.” Sarah didn't think it was strange that Mikel referred to her as “it”, that didn't register as being strange at all at the time.
“It has to go see Serel. He will want to see it,”
one of the smaller beings, ( Samel, Mikel whispered in her mind), piped up.
“I have already arranged that,” Mikel replied, briskly walking over to where Sarah stood frozen in place, the helmet she had removed from her head held in mid air.
“Go,” Mikel told Samel and Pate.“We'll be there to see Serel shortly.” They hung the garments and helmets neatly back on their hooks and then left through one of the tunnels leading out of the room.
Sarah's first impulse was to hug Mikel. She always wanted to hug Mikel but she couldn't. Mikel didn't like that. He didn't understand what a hug was.
He embraced with his eyes and with his mind and that was a concept that Sarah couldn't grasp.
Mikel wasn't made from the same flesh that she was. Mikel didn't eat or drink the way she did and didn't ever have to go to the bathroom. He couldn't go to the bathroom, not in the conventional sense. He processed waste through his skin, though it really wasn't skin, he told her once.
Mikel stared into her eyes and she felt the gladness in him. She knew he was happy to see her and that he had missed her. All of that came rushing into her mind. He turned and told her to follow him. They stepped into one of the tunnels that led out of the oval room to go see Serel.
They walked through a series of smooth sided tunnels, Mikel deftly maneuvering through the murky gray light. He explained to Sarah how he had distracted the Grays' attention so she would have a chance to escape.
“I tripped the alarms on the machines in their space.” he said, pleased that his plan had worked. The Grays were in charge of machinery in the area where the containers were. It was their space and their responsibility to keep the machinery working properly.
“On board this patrol ship,” Mikel informed her, as they walked, “are many of my race, along with various other races, including the Grays. These Grays are scavengers.
“The color of their nails is the only distinguishing characteristic between the races of Grays,” he continued. The color changes from red and purple to yellow and green in accordance with their dietary habits. Only scavengers have yellow and green banded nails. Their hunter kin have red and purple nails, and the docile Grays of their race have solid blue nails.”
“The sole purpose of the Grays on board this ship is to care for the machinery. Without this task they would never be allowed to remain on board.”
“They are tolerated for their skill at maintaining the machines.” “The machines”, Mikel added, “are vital to the ship's functions. They maintain the internal atmosphere, gravity and propulsion.”
The job of maintaining the machines is a dirty and laborious one. No other being on board will dirty themselves in that space.
Mikel and the other beings there were
meticulously clean, immaculate. They abhorred the thought of going around those machines. The Grays, however, loved working on them.
“They are the masters of machines.” Mikel stated.
“They craft, on their home planet, Kryox, machines of every kind, from massive, towering, production machines to microscopic building machines.” Mikel turned right and entered another tunnel, never hesitating or erring in his sense of direction, as he talked. “There are none in the thousands of known Universes that can create or maintain a machine with their proficiency or knowledge. They thrive on the creation and maintenance of their machines.”
The Grays were physically and mentally different from any other being that Sarah saw there and she saw many different races of beings. Tall, delicately thin, beings with large heads and black almond shaped eyes, small stocky beings, dark gray in color, some with large owlish eyes and some with small deeply set eyes.
Some were her size and some were over seven feet tall.
It was a whole world on that ship! Each being was in their respective echelons. Each had their place and their role within that world sized ship.
Mikel explained that discipline was strict on board and their Commanders' rules were swiftly enforced. There were very few instances of disobedience there.
It suddenly occurred to Sarah why Mikel
wouldn't let her throw any rocks at the Grays. If she had done that she would not have had a chance with these gentle beings. Sarah would have been instantly handed back over to the Grays, and that meant death. The Grays would have justified her death by an act of violence towards them.
“Now you're getting it kid,” Mikel said, using his best Humphrey Bogart impression. Sarah giggled, not because she knew exactly who it was he was trying to imitate, but because of the gravelly voice that Mikel used.
Mikel often imitated people from the Earth's television or movies. He loved to mimic anyone who sounded the least bit different in their speech patterns.
Humphrey Bogart was his favorite Earth character to imitate, although he did many different ones, because of his unique voice. Mikel called it “strangely wonderful,”
and used it the most when he was trying to get a point across.
Michael did imitations from every world he visited, not just Earth. Some of the impressions, Sarah recognized, like some of her favorite cartoon characters, but most of them, she didn't. She just liked the way Mikel changed his voice to sound gruff, or sweet, or silly. He could make his voice sound any number of ways according to the character he was imitating.
“The Grays never interact with the other beings on board unless they absolutely have to,” Mikel continued, reverting back to his own soft, melodic voice. It was the one Sarah loved the most.“They stay in their space and they despise the other beings. They also fear them though, and obey them when instructions are passed down to them to carry out.” It was all very complex for Sarah to absorb but Mikel continued his explanation of the Grays' roles and positions on board.
Although they ranked below even the lowliest of beings there, the Grays had rights and their place in the Great Order of Beings. They possessed more rights than Sarah. She had no rights of any kind on board. She had only the protection of Mikel, her friend.
They were going to see Serel, who was third in command of the massive patrol craft. Mikel, himself, was fifteenth in command and wouldn't dare assume that his position would ever be any higher.
Mikel warned Sarah about assuming, especially with Serel. These beings learned very early on in their existence about their positions and the upper echelons of their race. Most of the lessons were not pleasant ones either, Mikel confided. But life was more pleasant and life was fair to those who obeyed their upper echelons.
If you were liked, you were liked by all. If you were disliked, there was always a valid reason. These terms, these dispositions, were not randomly distributed, but earned by actions and behaviors and obedience. Serel liked Mikel. That was both fortunate and unfortunate for Sarah.
They walked for miles, it seemed like to Sarah, through that ship. Up in one tunnel and down in another, through rooms and passageways. They walked past startled looking beings who not only stared at Sarah but at Mikel as w
ell.
It was not often that they saw some one like Mikel in these parts of the ship. Mikel stayed with the Elect in the Command section of the ship. The two made an unlikely pair as they walked briskly through the spaces.
Mikel maneuvered deftly through the massive ship, happily talking to his old friend Sarah, as they made their way to see Serel. After Mikel had made an end to the discussion of the Grays, he could now talk about more pleasant things, and he couldn't wait to tell Sarah about his latest trip to Liftun!
“You should have seen it Sarah!, Mikel said excitedly, “It was the most fantastic site!” Mikel loved the word fantastic and he used it whenever he could. He was describing a beautiful triple sun rise over an ancient red sea on the translucent Planet of Liftun. He had just returned from visiting there before boarding the ship they were now on.
“I would love to stay on that fantastic spot of ground” he said wistfully,“and draw my last breath there.” “I could stay there forever”, he added with a chuckle, “if not for the Herries... They would love to make a fantastic snack out of me, I'm sure.”
Herries weren't good. Sarah had seen them
before, with Mikel. They had long hairy appendages that reminded Sarah of huge spider legs. They were great bloated black and green beings with ravenous appetites. They had rows of strange glittering green eyes on the front of them that drew their prey in.
They had almost made a meal of Mikel the first time he saw them. Mikel was on the planet of Liftun's surface, collecting specimens of the bright orange fauna, along with Samel.
The Herries sat along a ridge overlooking the red sea, on their way back to their foraging ground of the sea shore from their large nest near an outcropping of rocks further up the ridge. Mikel caught sight of them approaching in a single file line along the narrow ridge in the distance and glanced at the Herrie in the lead. A glance was all it took.
Michael was mesmerized by the Herrie's
glittering, hypnotic eyes, and was walking dreamily towards the walking appetite when his friend Samel saw him.
