Carr heads back to his station. When he turns to face the portal, he sees that the explorers have mounted the steps within the rings. The portal resembles a truncated cornucopia: a series of massive contiguous rings, each one smaller than the one before it. The first and biggest ring stands directly on the floor, while the others are supported on graduated cradles. The expeditionary team is standing single-file within the metal harvest-horn.
Removing a key from his pocket, Carr unlocks a cover to reveal a button. His finger hesitates briefly above it, then plunges down, initiating the launch sequence.
Driven now by an elaborate program running on the Cray-2 CPU’S, the whole process is automatic. The whine of the snap generator increases in frequency and strength. It’s almost more than Carr can stand… At last, mercifully, the noise terminates in the eponymous crack—
The annular stage is empty.
Carr looks at his watch.
Two hours till retrieval.
* * * *
The team materializes on a dusty, pebblestrewn, arid patch of desert, standing in a line. The three inner members—Benson, Kent and Blount—immediately drop into crouches. Each has his or her weapon aimed at a different point of the compass, covering a pre-assigned 120 degrees of fire. Meanwhile, Montreaux at the rear and Jones up front whip microalloyed vanadium-steel poles and hammers from their belt-clips and begin to pound them into the ground. Explosive charges prove unnecessary to split the friable earth, and the poles—which contain homing transmitters and radio-activated flares—are securely in position, marking the locus where the crew must await the re-opening of the transplenary portal.
Only when this crucial task is accomplished does the team relax somewhat. Tle crouching guards stand erect. At a hand-signal from Jones, they sling their rifles over their shoulders. Warily, the men and woman attempt to absorb their surroundings, here in a dimension completely removed from the entire universe of their birth.
They appear to be standing atop a large flat mesa. Beyond this tabletop stretches a landscape of canyons and arroyos, wind-carved buttes and pinnacles, titanic blocks and spires, precarious arches and natural ziggurats, red, yellow, sandy beige, brown and gray. The quiet vista is unbroken by tokens of civilization from horizon to horizon. The air is dry, the sun vibrant. Of animal life there is no sign.
“We might have popped out in a more convenient place,” says Jones. “We certainly won’t be able to get down off this mesa and back up in two hours. It seems our exploration will be limited to these few acres.”
“That’s true,” says Montreaux. “Still, we’re protected up here.”
Kent says, “Looks kinda like Arizona.”
“Yeah,” says Blount, “’round Coconino County,”
“Why is that name so familiar?” asks Benson.
Blount laughs. “You’re showing your age, kiddo. That’s where—”
“Look!” shouts Montreaux suddenly.
The others follow his outstretched finger skyward with their eyes.
A daytime moon hangs low. It is shaped like a ball of Gouda cheese with an irregular slice taken out of its dorsal side. It is as yellow as a butternut squash.
Everyone is shocked into silence, until Jones speaks.
“It must be an illusion, a trick of the atmosphere. The refractive index of the air, perhaps. No natural astronomical object could be shaped like that. Remember, Carr warned us to be alert for small differences in the physical makeup of this place.”
“Whatever the explanation is,” says Kent irritably, “I don’t like it. Either we can’t trust our senses, or the natural laws here are screwed up bad. Either way, we could be in for trouble.”
“Just get a grip on yourself, Tom,” admonishes Jones. “We’ll be fine as long as we step carefully and hang together. Okay, let’s check out the periphery of this mesa, and see if there’s not an easy way down.”
Adopting a patrol formation, the five move off, Jones is pointman, Blount and Benson are in second rank, and Kent and Montreaux bring up the rear.
As they move toward the edge, Jones wonders briefly if he should rearrange the pairings. Kent—always a touchy type—has had spats in the past with Montreaux, and his nervousness might trigger more today. Tle team cannot afford any such arguments or dissension now. However, Blount and Benson are an efficient duo. The pudgy Blount seems to have a crush on the aloof but tolerant Benson, which makes him extremely solicitous of her welfare. It would be a shame to split them up. No, to shuffle things around might be worse, cause trepidation and nerves, decides Jones. Best to leave the assignments as they are—for now.
Reaching the eastern edge of the mesa, the five halt and peer cautiously down.
The ground is hundreds and hundreds of feet below. A thin thread of blue defines a snaky river. The sides of the formation are absolutely vertical. Here, at least, there are no obvious means of safe descent.
“Okay,” says Jones. “We’ll circle south and inspect the whole perimeter. We might have better luck elsewhere.”
They don’t. A half-hour’s hike around the circumference reveals that they are efficiently bottled up on this desolate mesa, with only a few large cacti for company.
Jones assembles his squad at the original spot of arrival. During the recon, the two pairs of teammates have been conversing quietly between themselves, so that Jones could not overhear. Now everyone falls silent. Overhead, the moon has impossibly crossed a full fifty degrees of the heavens in the short time they have been here.
“Well,” begins Jones, “it seems we’ll have a boring report to make, but sometimes that’s for the best—”
“Fuck you!” shouts Kent.
Jones goggles at Kent until he realizes that Kent’s expletive is directed at his partner, Montreaux, and not at Jones himself.
“Tom, get ahold of yourself. What’s wrong?”
“It’s this bastard Montreaux. He’s been bugging me, saying stupid things, trying to burn my ass.”
“George, is that true?”
“No way. It’s Tom who’s the instigator. He’s been spouting crazy talk about how we’re all gonna die here. I’ve been trying to calm him down.”
Jones tries to ascertain which man is telling the truth, and fails. He looks for help to Doctor Benson, his second-in-command. Jones is grateful when Benson speaks up.
“All right, listen up now. This must be the onset of the psychic abnormalities the test-animals exhibited. Everyone break out their mood-stabilizers.”
Following Benson’s example, the four men soon hold their individually tailored neurotropin pills in one hand, unstoppered canteens in the other. At a nod from Benson, all five swallow the doses down, Kent grudgingly.
“There,” says Jones gratefully, “that should do it. Now, let’s split up in pairs—I’ll remain here by the drop—and take some sensor readings and samples. See if you can find any traces of animal life, however simple.”
His subordinates obey his orders. Jones watches them disperse, then falls to his own sampling of the ground around the poles.
A yell brings Jones out of his concentration.
Montreaux is flat on his back, Kent astride him and choking him. The really odd thing about this scene—the sight that Jones cannot initially accept—is that Montreaux’s tongue extends a full twelve inches out of his mouth and is vibrating like a New Year’s Eve favor, while his eyes have popped out on stalks. In addition, the victim’s face is turning an unnatural royal blue.
Jones rushes toward the pair, sensing Blount and Benson close behind him.
Wrestling Kent off Montreaux, Jones drags the insane assailant to his feet and begins to shake him. When Kent seems a trifle more in possession of himself, Jones releases him.
“What the hell is the explanation for this, Tom? Why would you want to hurt George?”
Kent passes a hand across his brow. “1—I don’t know. It seems I just can’t stand the sight of him.”
Blount and Benson have helped Montreaux up. As inexplica
bly as it altered, his face has returned to normal, and he seems okay. Jones moves over to examine him.
No one notices that Kent has a grenade in his hand until the pin is pulled.
Jones has time only to shout: “Down, down—!” before it lands in their midst and explodes with a roar.
The smoke clears to reveal four standing figures, centered in a carbonized sunburst of cracked ground. Their white Kevlar armor is streaked with long black trailers of soot. Their hair stands up on end. Otherwise, they are unharmed.
“I can’t believe it,” says Jones with utter bewilderment. “We should all be in little piece…” Suddenly, their survival a given, an insupportable rage overtakes him, at the sight of the unrepentant Kent.
Without conscious decision, Jones makes a fist of his right hand. Gripping this fist with his left hand, he begins to screw his arm into a rubbery coil, armor and all, until it’s entirely compressed at shoulder level. He advances on Kent, who quivers but does not flee. Once in proximity, Jones unleashes his fist.
The mighty blow catches Kent on the jaw. Little multicolored five-pointed stars spray out from the site of impact. Kent’s head rockets back, stretching his elastic neck a full four feet. There is a BOI-OI-OI-NG noise. Kent’s body finally catches up with his head. His feet leave the ground and he arrows twenty yards through the air. He lands in the arms of a large cactus. The arms close on him, spikes piercing through his armor. Kent screams: “Yeeee-oooow!” He shoots straight up into the air, reverses at the zenith, so that his head is pointing down, then plummets. When he hits, he piledrives into the mesa up to his waist.
Jones turns in astonishment to the other three. He barely notices that all effects of the blast have disappeared from their persons, as from his own. “I didn’t mean to— I didn’t know I could—”
No one pays any attention to their leader. Blount is solicitously inquiring after Benson’s postgrenade condition. Montreaux, meanwhile, is laughing at Kent’s fate, doubled up in hysterics, slapping his knees. He falls to the ground, kicking his legs in the air. He rolls onto his belly, pounding the dust, wetting it with his tears, until there is a large puddle around him. He does not notice Kent’s return.
Kent is dirty and full of cactus spikes, but otherwise unhurt. He unshoulders his rifle. Montreaux seems to sense his presence. He ceases laughing, looks up, makes an instant transition to his feet and starts running. Kent lets him go, flicking his rifle to single-shot action. He draws a careful bead on Montreaux’s fleeing ass and squeezes off a round. The bullet hits with a noise like a bell being rung in a sideshow shooting gallery. Montreaux jumps straight up—“Yikes!”—then resumes running. Kent begins to chase him around the mesa, stopping now and then take another potshot at his tail.
Jones does not attempt to stop them. He’s scared of what he might do to them. Instead, he turns to Benson and Blount. At least they’ve stayed sane…
Blount is holding Benson’s hand. He has somehow progressed from inquiries about the effect of the grenade on her health to fervent protestations of love, made in an atrocious Maurice Chevalier accent.
“Mah leetle pee-geon, you feel mah heart wiz love. Mwa-mwa-mwa-mwa-mwa.”
T’nis last noise accompanies Blount’s kisses, which he is planting hotly up and down Benson’s arm.
“Stop that! Stop that, you—you skunk! Quit it!”
Blount does not heed Benson’s wishes. He grabs her waist, tips her backwards so that she is balanced on one foot, the other leg extending out in the air, and begins kissing her neck.
Benson oozes out of Blount’s grip as if oiled.
His arms remain in a circle, and he continues to kiss the air for several seconds after she is gone. When he notices her absence, he straightens up.
Benson has her rifle aimed at Blount’s midsection. Jones notes with despair that it’s on automatic.
“Don’t take one step closer—” warns Benson.
“Surely you do not mean zat, ma cherie,” says Blount, and takes the fatal step.
Benson lets loose with about two hundred rounds of large-caliber ammo. Jones closes his eyes.
He opens them to see Blount pierced with holes. He is solid through and through, like a potato.
“You have caused a thirst een mah stomach, mah leetle lovebug,” says Blount. He drinks from his canteen. Water spouts from all his bullet-holes like a fountain. “Now zat I am refreshed, let us resume our battle of love.”
Benson tosses her rifle into the air in fright and runs off. Blount drops his knuckles to the ground and pogoes unconcernedly off on all fours after her, bouncing impossibly high into the air with each “step,” stopping once to sniff a cactusflower in mid-pursuit.
Jones is left standing alone. From across the mesa drift sounds of gunfire and explosions, shrieks and shouts of triumph, interspersed with weird sound-effects: slidewhistles, crashes, echoes, reverb, racheting…
Dazed and broken-spirited, Jones trudges off.
He finds himself at the mesa’s edge. He sits despondently down, legs dangling over the abyss. Reflexively, he checks his chronometer. Less than an hour until pickup. He supposes he should be returning to the rendezvous-point, but hasn’t the heart. The mission is a complete failure, a total bust. How can he face Carr and the others and report what he has allowed to occur? Jones grips his head dejectedly and shakes it. There is a rattle as of marbles in a can from inside his cranium.
“BEEP-BEEP!”
Jones is hanging in midair, having made an instantaneous transition from being seated on the cliff-edge to hovering above the abyss. He has just enough time to see an impossible creature standing on the mesa behind him, fluttering its impudent tongue at him, before he realizes that there is nothing below him. He pokes the air tentatively. Yup, that’s plain old air, all right… He tries to run in the air, his legs windmilling, his arms outstretched, but gets nowhere. Then he plummets.
The fall is long.
Jones has plenty of time to anticipate the impact.
When it happens, it knocks him senseless for a while. When he comes to, he realizes he’s still alive, lying at the bottom of a Jones-shaped hole. So, there is no escape from humiliation and failure here, even in death…
Jones climbs wearily out. The inviting river lies a few feet away. He walks to it for a drink. Bending down, he cups his hand and scoops up some water.
A grinning shark zips out and swallows Jones’ head and neck. Jones stands up, bearing the shark aloft like a hat, its tail flapping. He gropes around until his hand lands on a petrified stick. With the stick, he begins belaboring the shark with meaty thumps, until it finally releases him and flops back indignantly into the river.
“Yipe-yipe-yipe-yipe!”
This incident has convinced Jones that he must get back to his own universe. His despair has been replaced by renewed ambition. But the portal-locus is far above. He cranes his neck backwards, examining the vertiginous wall. There is nothing for it but to climb.
Jones, utilizing cracks and crevices, begins the ascent.
Such a climb should be impossible. But it is not. It takes nearly half an hour, though.
As he lays his first hand over the rim, he hears a cracking and crumbling. He realizes with a sinking feeling that this portion of the rim is giving way. A mass of rock detaches, carrying Jones back down with it.
Jones lands first. This time he unexplainably does not make a hole. A shadow grows around him. Jones removes his Emergency Umbrella from his belt and opens it over his head. The giant boulder lands on him.
He emerges from beneath it, flat as a pancake, hairy on top, with feet protruding on the bottom. With a SPROING he accordions out, resuming his normal shape.
Wearily, he makes the climb again.
This time he gains the surface of the mesa successfully.
It is almost pickup time.
Jones rushes back to the markers.
He has only one minute to spare. He wishes he could somehow recover the others, but there is no sign of
their whereabouts, and no time to search. A better-equipped force can return for them later. Jones stands hopefully between the poles.
Idly, impulsively, using the tip of his boot, Jones draws two parallel lines in the thin dirt, then connects them with crossbars.
The sketch immediately becomes twin gleaming iron rails lying on tarry sleepers. An enormous express train materializes a few yards away, travelling one hundred miles an hour straight for Jones. The impossible creature is driving it. Before Jones can move, he finds himself riding the cowcatcher across the mesa. When the train reaches the edge it continues onward across a heretofore-nonexistent bridge.
Jones’ wails doppler off into the distance.
* * * *
Back at Mission Control, nerves are tightened to the breaking point. A large clock sweeps out the seconds till retrieval with a thin red hand. Carr wishes there were some switch, however symbolic, which he could throw, so he’d feel as if he were instrumental in bringing the team home. But the whole return process, like the dispatch, is under the control of the machines.
Carr checks his watch, then the clock, then his watch again. The other members of the Mission Control stand at their stations, watching their readouts, alert for any significant fluctuations in the fabric of the dimensions. The assembled members of the intelligence community exchange glances only they can interpret.
The whine of the generator is rising, rising—
Zero hour arrives.
No one is breathing.
The generators unleash their snap, like the cracking of some hunter-god’s whip.
No explorers reappear. The stage is empty.
Initially, everyone is stunned by the failure of the explorers to return. There is absolute silence for a time. Then, two things happen simultaneously.
Carr notes that although the generator has been automatically shut down, the connection between the dimensions remains open. At the far end of the cornucopia is a tiny circle, bright with sun and sand and a small crazy Herriman moon.
At the same time, the technicians begin nervously calling out their reports.
The Paul Di Filippo Megapack Page 34
