An “X” had been scratched into the wall. Dawann felt laughter rising from somewhere deep in her mind. Aha! she thought. X marks the spot! Inadvertently, Eshlish had given their mysterious excursion a distinctively human touch.
They moved forward several paces and reached a bend in the passageway. It was dark ahead. Since there were no blue temp lights from this point onward, Eshlish ordered Dawann, Fey, and Tima to retrieve their chemlights. Gloved hands delved into pockets, then three beacons flicked on. A door stood in the distance. Constructed of metal, it shimmered with all the colors of the spectrum.
“How interesting,” Fey said as she walked toward the door. “It’s made of pemright, is it not, Eshlish?”
“Pemright?” Dawann asked.
“A synth-metal developed by the Keeper’s kind,” Eshlish explained. “It’s highly impervious to the Moozrabian climate. Some of our architects have started building with it now. Have you seen the new poga stadium?”
“I have. From a distance.” Dawann studied the surface of the door. At its center was etched a clawed, three-fingered handprint. From the length of the fingers and the curve of the claws, it clearly represented an extremity of the Keeper’s species.
Eshlish placed her gloved fingers on the handprint. The synth-metal door immediately swung inward.
With Eshlish in the lead, the others filed over the threshold. They stood for a moment, looking out at a huge chamber, as high and wide as one of the caves found beneath the cliffs of the Great Rift Valley. Eshlish swept her chemlight in an arc through the air, the beam diffusing and barely revealing the furthest wall, which was filled with doors.
“The wormhole,” Eshlish said as she motioned for them to follow.
Looking down, Dawann noticed the floor’s amber-colored tiles. They began with a small spiral design that veered off into a long, golden trail, stretching into the distance.
She admired the floor’s beauty before pausing to study the wall of doors. Every twelfth door seemed slightly larger than the preceding eleven.
“There are one hundred forty-four doors in this chamber,” Eshlish said, noting Dawann’s interest. “All were deactivated before we discovered them. Perhaps they were broken, but I think they were deliberately shut down. We were able to activate the first twelve doors after much effort. The first door leads to Xanderoo, to the place where we witnessed the killing of the hunta bird. This morning, we sent more hunta birds through the next eleven doors. All but one has relayed transmissions back to us. Unfortunately, the twelfth door appears to have swallowed our hunta bird, so to speak. As I mentioned yesterday, I believe that door could lead to the past or the future,” Eshlish explained. “It may have been used for travel to other places, distant places.” Her light fell on a row of plastine pressure-cages, each filled with a radio-collared hunta bird being readied for another round of tests. “If the bird sent through the twelfth door survived, it is somewhere beyond the reach of our receiver. It may be in another time period.”
Or in another universe? Dawann wondered.
Tima and Fey walked alongside Eshlish, but Dawann held back, staring at the twelfth door. As she studied its metallic surface, she recalled a human tale about a place called Wonderland.
Now, the notion of traveling through the wormhole appealed to her more than ever. It took every bit of her willpower to keep from pushing on the twelfth door’s shimmering veneer, from stepping, like Alice, through the looking glass.
But I cannot go, she thought. Not yet.
Despite her resolve, Dawann watched the twelfth door with a renewed sense of longing, but then forced her gaze onward. With a start, she realized she had fallen behind her companions. She could barely make out their lights in the gloom of the immense chamber, could barely hear their comments because of the hissing sound in her helmet’s headphones.
Eshlish’s voice cut above the noise. “Come, Your Highness,” she said, turning around. “You must stay with us, or you could get lost.”
Dawann hurried forward as the group moved toward the entrance of a tunnel. She followed the others inside. The tunnel was not long, and, within a few moments, they entered another cavernous chamber, the floor also paved with a trail of golden tiles.
She looked beyond Eshlish’s beckoning form. The paleoarchitect shined her light on something tall and wide, a gleaming, golden-brown curtain. Dawann walked on, studying it. What had Eshlish found? It looked like a wall made of frost-laden panes of topaz glass.
A disarming thought came to Dawann then, rushing to mind: was she finally going to solve the mystery of her past life? The image of an ancient, dust-filled room flooded her senses, a place somewhere nearby, perhaps just beyond the glass partition. Did it hold some kind of mind-reading equipment? Had she been there before as Dawn Stroganoff? Was that where the Keeper had downloaded her thoughts and stolen her soul?
Dawann moved toward the sparkling curtain, while Eshlish opened the door to an airlock. Through an open doorway, Dawann saw the room beyond, and a crypt made of red stone. She recalled something from history. This must be the spot where the first saurian astronauts had found the Keeper!
But the Keeper’s stasis-vault did not hold her attention for long; instead, her gaze was captured by something on the opposite wall, a fantastic black void shaped like a half-moon. She remembered an old saurian myth. The void resembled the legendary Ish-pacal Gateway, the portal to She-Goddess Heaven.
By now, Tima and Fey also gaped at the dark passageway.
“I know,” Eshlish said, studying their awestruck expressions. “But it is not the Ish-pacal. It simply opens to a slick-shaft. I accidentally activated it when we were restoring the Keeper’s stasis-vault. The shaft ends in a room located far below this chamber. The other day I sent a drone down there with a recorder. The transmission was exciting. There is a monolith in the hidden room. I have not yet ascertained its exact function.”
“It is the thing that reads minds and captures souls,” Dawann interjected. “I have been there. I once traveled down that very slick-shaft to the hidden room.”
Tima looked unconvinced. “Are you certain, my dear? I know I told you about the soul-catching machine beneath the Keeper’s palace, but––”
“There is one here, also, and, as I just said, I have used that one.”
“As Human Dawn?” Fey asked.
“Yes,” Dawann said. The void suddenly started to hum and quiver. “I want to go down there, to see it.”
“Please, Your Highness, no,” Eshlish protested. “The passageway is too unstable. Sometimes it disappears for a moment or two. The other day, it was gone for the entire morning. I’ve ordered my engineers to stabilize it, if they can.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions.” Dawann heard a chorus of dissent as she hurried toward the gateway, but she ignored her companions. The uncertainty she’d known for the past few weeks had disappeared. In its place, feelings of hope and expectation rose, and she felt a surge of power.
“I cannot delay,” Dawann went on, “not while the Keeper is off-world. I must know what happened to Human Dawn. The soul-catcher will give me the answers.”
She thrust her chemlight into the pocket of her pressure suit and took a running leap into the void. Immediately, she felt the nano-surface of the slick-shaft grab hold of her body. In a heartbeat, her friends’ protests faded away, and she found herself sliding down, down, down into the darkness.
Soon, Dawann felt the nano-surface lessen its grip, felt her momentum slow, then stop. She retrieved her chemlight, flicked it on, and stared. She was curled up at the end of the slick-shaft, a darkened room before her. She scooted forward, directing the beam of light into the room, sweeping it back and forth until it hit a monolith and nano-chair.
Dawann held the beam on the monolith as she swung her legs around and jumped to the floor. “I do remember this place,” she said to herself.
A harsh, white light instantly flooded the room.
In response, the nictating membranes rolled over Daw
ann’s eyeballs. She stood motionless until she adjusted to the glare. Blinking hard, she forced her membranes up, turned off her chemlight, and then recalled something about the air in here. Hadn’t Human Dawn been able to breathe without a pressure suit?
Slowly, cautiously, Dawann broke the seals of her helmet and waited. A faint hiss sounded and she took a breath. Yes. The chamber had a breathable atmosphere.
Removing her helmet and pressure suit, she ran her hand through her head feathers and then crossed the floor in four steps. She stopped for a moment and stared at the monolith, studying its smooth surface, then continued her exploration, walking around it until she found an indentation on the back side. Within the notch rested a headpiece attachment. She took hold of it and placed it over her earholes. Work, she thought, a little desperately.
She closed her eyes. Nothing happened, but then she remembered the lights had been voice-activated. Was the monolith, too?
“I am here,” she said in a loud voice. “Speak to me. Tell me about Dawn Stroganoff. I wish to know about her life.”
***
Dawann may have lost awareness for a few moments – she couldn’t really tell – but something made her close her eyes, made her sink into a semi-conscious state. There was no voice at the controls of the soul-catcher, no real message or explanation. Only murky images came to her; of winding streets with rectangular buildings; of a surrounding forest with tall trees, and of distant, snow-topped peaks.
And then, quite suddenly, she knew. Complete images seized her mind, filling it with a sparkling clarity. Flagstaff, dazzling in the sunshine, the brisk mountain air softly scented with pine. Flagstaff, Arizona.
Home. Dawann-dracon roused and then shifted in the nano-chair. Now she was fully awake. Human Dawn had lived on Earth in a place called America. And Flagstaff – no make that Flag, as the locals called it – was her hometown. She sighed with happiness at all she saw, at all she was starting to remember.
She leaned forward, hands pressing against the headset, hoping she would retain everything, wishing she could comprehend it all. Images of the city and its surrounding environment came faster and then she saw human beings. A tall, dark-haired man – was that the one called Dad? – then a small, blonde woman with big blue eyes. Mom. She saw her brother next, a brown-haired boy. Matt. He stood in the yard, eyeing a mixed-breed terrier named Buster. Matt and the dog began to play together, frolicking in the snow. It was cold, so very cold, but Dawn joined in. She, Matt, and Buster ran around, getting icy-wet, throwing snowballs and laughing when one hit Matt in the center of his chest.
Then another set of memories rushed in, supplanting her previous thoughts. Human Dawn was older now, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, and it was the season called autumn. Blue skies overhead. Distant mountain peaks covered with patches of gold from changing aspen leaves. In brilliant sunshine, Dawn hiked in a dry streambed, away from the pressures of modern life, away from the pervasive computer culture of the early twenty-first century. The “ditch” – as kids nicknamed the streambed – was now her favorite haunt. She would roam there for hours, hiking with Buster, eyes glued to the ground, searching, always searching.
Once she found an obsidian arrowhead, so delicately flaked it was nearly translucent, shiny black and sharp-edged, standing out against the pea gravel and gray river rocks. Coincidentally, she was reading her first big novel, her grandmother’s favorite book, The Source by James Michener.
Sitting in her bedroom, dog by her side, Dawn held the beautiful arrowhead in her palm. As she read of Michener’s Tell Makor, dreaming of excavating the ruins of an ancient city, she realized she’d found the key to her future. She opened her palm, her fingers trembling, her gaze held by the arrowhead. An archeologist. Yes, she was going to be an archeologist.
She sighed happily, determined she would dig in dusty pits and uncover the mysteries of the ages...
Dawann-dracon removed the headset, leaned back, and took a breath. The images of Human Dawn’s life had been startling. How odd it all seemed! She could scarcely imagine a world where sentient beings lived with their families as a matter of course. Where they willingly let their skin touch cold snow. Where they shared their affections with small, carnivorous beasts, with hairy, smelly, little dogs.
And where they controlled their own fates so completely.
Dawann shook herself to action. You must see the rest, she thought.
Replacing the headset, she watched Human Dawn in school, saw her move toward adulthood. There were things she understood fully, such as Dawn’s first sexual experiences, the sweet, sharp yearnings associated with mating, but there were also things she could not comprehend, like the human female’s love of chocolate – to Dawann, the impression of its taste was revolting.
Visions sharp and clear continued to pass by her inner eye. Human Dawn’s college years in Arizona. The hard work and sacrifice the young woman experienced in order to complete graduate school. A trip to a beautiful place called France, the taste of champagne – something Dawann decided she could love – and then back home, spending hours and hours uncovering the past in digs located in Northern Arizona.
Then Dawann learned that two startling things occurred in the summer of 2022: a space probe found alien artifacts on the Martian moon, Phobos; and a laser beacon had sent messages to Earth, from the vicinity of the great Martian volcano, Olympus Mons, which the saurians called the volcano Karesh, or He Who Watches.
A few weeks later, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a photomosaic of Phobos. There, beneath the mysterious dark-red and deep blue, organically rich soil, hidden within the ancient dust-draped rills and in the endless, winding caverns, proof of extensive alien mining activity had been uncovered.
Dawann ripped the headset from her earholes. Was that why Human Dawn went to Mars? In Dawn’s universe, the Keeper’s kind had also lived on the red planet. When humanity found traces of that ancient, alien civilization, when they investigated He Who Watches, they needed an archeologist-astronaut to help them explore.
Holy Mother She-Goddess, it makes sense now. I finally understand.
With trembling fingers, Dawann readjusted her headset and let the images come into her mind. Human Dawn worked at NASA now, training for the flight to Mars. Meeting the male astronaut named Gus and then traveling in a nuclear-electric propulsion spacecraft. Looking out the window and seeing a ruddy orb against the blackness of space.
Moozrab? Dawann asked herself, gazing at the lifeless planet, suddenly filled with unutterable sorrow. But this was not her Moozrab, not her world. In this universe, the saurians did not exist, had never existed. Moozrab was not colonized, not a world filled with thousands of saurians and their teeming minions. Instead, it was Mars, dead, dry, uninhabited, freeze-dried Mars.
Dawann rubbed her eyes, wishing she could cry. Forgotten images sprang to life, passion and knowledge crumbled to dust, then seemed to exist once more. Remembrances of both universes had come full-bloom to her senses.
Dawann-dracon tried to push her emotions aside. She knew she couldn’t give up. She had to go on, to learn more about Human Dawn.
She sat for a moment, without moving, lost in her thoughts. How much time had passed since she entered the chamber? She turned and stared, relieved the slick-shaft stood empty. Fey, Tima, and Eshlish remained above. Now, more than anything, she wanted privacy, felt the need to learn everything about Dawn, from all points of view.
She nodded, human-style. “Hear me now,” she said aloud, speaking to the soul-catcher, hoping it would signal back in understanding. “If you have recollections of the other humans in Dawn’s life – like Gus, Lex, and Tasha – reveal their stories to me. I want to learn what happened to Dawn, to hear what happened to them all.”
But mostly, she thought, I want to learn the truth.
Of how I came to be.
PART TWO
Chapter 10
Today’s today. Tomorrow, we may be
Ourselves gone down the drain of Eterni
ty.
~Euripides, Alcestis
July, 2029, aboard the first manned spacecraft to Mars, called Destiny.
Eyes searching the infinite darkness of space, Dawn Stroganoff gazed from one of Destiny’s viewing windows. Sighing to herself, she watched the gleaming stars, which washed her in a faint, silvery light. During the previous half year, she’d shared close quarters with six other crewmen, and it was good to have a moment alone for some quiet reflection.
She held her Google glasses in her hand, then decided to put them away in a pocket. It was nice to detach from the ever-present Web, to look out at the universe with what was now called “naked vision,” minus the lens which gave her constant contact to the plethora of connections via recorded Internet and social media messages, the distance between Mars and Earth delaying instant access.
She became aware, quite suddenly, of the faint rumbling caused by the ship’s rotating, spokelike hub, which created an artificial gravity. It was an all-pervasive sound, yet she rarely noticed it; much like the ticking of a clock, her brain blotted it out.
Dawn breathed deeply, listening. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself standing in the viewing tunnel, one of the four portals connecting the spacecraft’s habitat sections to the slowly moving hub. The image in her thoughts changed, drawing back to hover, godlike, above the ship, and she saw everything as if from afar: her pale face at the window, a fragile human being going ‘round and ‘round, like someone stuck on a giant Ferris wheel.
Or like a caged rat racing in place on its wheel.
“There’s a solar storm comin’. You’ve got about fifteen minutes to get into the safe room before you’re fried.”
The easy Texas drawl jarred Dawn’s thoughts. She faced Commander Gus Granberg.
“Should be one helluva storm,” he added. He removed his Google glasses, rubbed his eyes, and then glanced through the window, gaze sure as he watched the stars.
“I was just standing here, thinking.” Dawn’s voice faded as she caught the hint of his smile. She could almost hear him saying, You know, don’t you, that daydreaming’s a waste of time.
Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) Page 9
