Dale Mettam

by The Pub at the Center of the Universe (retail) (epub)

  He watched as the strange couple who were scheduled to depart just before him entered the departure chamber. Impatiently, he paced the floor waiting for them to go so that he could make his jump.

  He checked the departure board repeatedly, and almost jumped with joy when the name before his, ‘PILLAH’, disappeared, with his name appearing in its place.

  Hurriedly gathering his bag and coat, he headed for the door only to be surprised by a small, wizened, bald man in orange robes standing in the chamber.

  “Who are you?” Poultice asked indignantly.

  The old man turned and smiled. “One moment please.”

  Poultice let out a disgruntled sigh and stepped back, allowing the door to hush closed again.

  “Just my luck. Maintenance steps in when I’m due to leave.”

  Inside the chamber the old man looked at the console and smiled.

  “Override last location,” he said.

  “Override clearance code requested to perform last request,” said the voice.

  The old man dipped his hand through the console. He didn’t break anything, nor was the console damaged in any way, but the old man’s hand was now wrist deep in the console with no apparent means for him to enter the solid surface.

  “Override clearance accepted. Please state new location.”

  The old man seemed to adjust the position of his hand then a look of concentration flashed across his face.

  “New location locked in.”

  The old man pulled his hand free of the console, revealing nothing of its entry. He smiled to himself, then stepped towards the door as it opened again.

  He looked outside and saw Poultice, angrily pacing, and nodded to him that the chamber was now his to use. He stepped back in and the door slid closed again.

  Poultice approached the door as it closed and immediately hit the override button that made it spring wide again. He was determined to give the old man a piece of his mind for making him wait.

  When he stepped inside the chamber, he was surprised to see he was alone. Still angry, he turned his attention to the console again and slipped his F.R.B. into the top slot.

  “State desired location,” the metallic voice echoed around the room.

  “Sevres Prime,” Poultice said.

  In a blinding burst of light, Poultice Charm appeared in the arrival chamber on Sevres Prime. He gathered himself, picked up his bag and was startled to see that he wasn’t alone in the chamber. Standing by the console was the old man in the orange robes again, smiling benevolently at him.

  “Ah, you again!” Poultice said. “I want your name and badge number. Just one moment while I get something to write with.”

  Poultice bent down to take something out of his bag to record the information required for a formal complaint.

  “I am sorry for your death, my friend,” the old man said.

  “If it is of any consolation, this was when you always die.”

  Poultice snapped upright again. “Threats will do no good, my man...”

  His anger was replaced with confusion as he found he was once more alone.

  Poultice snatched up his bag. “The management will hear about this, I can promise you that,” he said to no one in particular, then stepped forward.

  The door slid open with a hush, and the air was filled with white hot laser fire as Poultice Charm became one with the inside of the Chamber.

  He might have been consoled by the fact that only a few hours later, the customer he had sold his last big order to, canceled, and the commission he had been planning to spend was never going to come his way.

  Then again, it may have been no consolation at all.

  The Arrival Chamber Lu and Kirk blasted into was very much the worse for wear. If Kirk had been surprised to see the peeling paint when they set off, he was horrified at the amount of rust that crumbled from the walls at their journey’s end.

  “I’m guessing you guys don’t make a big deal about general maintenance out here in the civilized parts of the universe,” he observed, flaking off a large chunk of ionized metal.

  Lu looked confused. “Something’s wrong.”

  She stepped towards the door, but instead of the hushed opening, it didn’t budge.

  “Sarge?” Concern was evident in her voice now. “Where are we?”

  “I am re-calibrating our coordinates. When we arrived my readings were scrambled,” the F.R.B. answered.

  “Mine too,” offered Casio. “One thing’s for sure, we aren’t on Sevres Prime.”

  “Both of you run a full Five-Dimensional location sweep,” said Lu.

  “Five dimensions?” asked Kirk.

  Lu stepped over to the door and ran her hand over the pock-marked surface. “Your three spatial coordinates, X, Y and Z, and then there’s Time and Potential.

  “Potential?”

  “Look, I really don’t have time to give you a lecture on spatial navigation. The door isn’t cold.”

  “And that’s good?” Kirk was feeling like a spare part.

  “It means that in all likelihood, there is a relatively friendly atmosphere behind the door,” Lu said.

  “My calibration indicates that we are currently in open space. There are no recorded planetary bodies within at least one light year of our current location,” Casio reported.

  “I am reading the same information, ma’am,” said Sarge.

  “Either of you picking up a homing signal that would identify where we landed?”

  “Negative,” Sarge said.

  “It would seem the Chamber has been powered

  down,” said Casio.

  “Wherever this is, they didn’t envisage any visitors arriving.”

  “I am reading a large structure beyond the chamber, but the shielding of the walls is making it impossible to get any definite information,” Sarge said.

  Lu looked around the chamber, an expression of grim determination set on her face. Slowly she reached inside her jacket and withdrew her P.R.P.

  “I guess there’s only one way we’ll find out then,” she said and fired at the door.

  Kirk watched as a perfect circle glowed in the door and then, as he had witnessed with Toast, the material contained in the energy field exploded and was contained, shrinking into a small clear sphere which dropped through the hole and landed with a dull thud.

  Lu took a deep breathe. “Well, breathable atmosphere at least. Always a bonus.”

  “What!?” exclaimed Kirk. “You didn’t know if we could survive out there?”

  Lu gave him a pragmatic look. “We couldn’t leap out of this chamber, and there was only so much breathable air in here, so our options were a little thin on the ground anyway. If it makes you feel any better, the F.R.B.’s could filter the atmosphere for a short time, so we still had a chance of finding something out there.”

  She indicated the hole. “Shall we?”

  Kirk glanced through the hole, then back at Lu.

  “Ladies first.”

  “How is this possible, Sarge?” Lu asked.

  They were standing in a room not unlike the departure lounge on Titan, but for the heavy layer of dust that covered everything. Kirk looked at the floor and guessed by the depth of his footprint, there must be at least a half-inch of dust in the room.

  Looking back, Lu noticed that the Chamber door had been welded closed.

  Ahead of them was a large double doorway also welded shut.

  Above the doorway, just readable through the grime was a sign that read, ‘WELCOME TO ENON.’

  “Now that we are clear of the chamber’s shielding, I am reading a large superstructure. I am also detecting many life-forms beyond those doors,” reported Sarge.

  “When you say superstructure, just h
ow big are we talking here?” Kirk asked.

  “I am reading that it is in the range of twenty-six miles long, one mile high, and twelve miles wide,” Casio said.

  “Confirmed,” Sarge said.

  “That’s much bigger than even the largest long-haul String transports,” Lu said.

  “I am not detecting signs of generators capable of a spatial breech,” said Sarge.

  “So where exactly are we?” Asked Lu, more to herself than anyone else.

  Kirk pointed towards the sign above the door. “Enon?”

  Lu shook her head in confusion. “Enon was destroyed at the start of the Prion War.”

  “Might I suggest further investigation, ma’am?” Sarge said.

  “Well, we have to go through those doors to get back on our way to Sevres Prime, so I guess we’ll do some investigating by default.”

  She took out her P.R.P. again and blasted a hole in the double doorway. This time the explosion threw up a large cloud of dust. As it settled, they made their way to the double doors and looked through.

  In a wide arc across the corridor beyond the doors stood ten armor-clad soldiers, all aiming large rifle-like weapons at Lu and Kirk.

  “Y’ know,” said Kirk as they threw their P.R.P.s through the hole and raised their hands. “It was only a matter of time before someone got mad at you for the way you treat their doors.”

  Chapter Eight

  As detention cells went, Kirk was definitely impressed. Not that his frame of reference was that extensive, but he was certain that Plaach and Toast would have approved.

  He lay back on the soft mattress and tried to work out just where he had taken a turn from his normal, yet sadly pathetic life, onto the current path that, while admittedly more exciting, had crossed into the realm of a seriously drug-induced episode.

  Still, he thought as he reached behind his head and plumped up the pillows, at the moment it was a very comfortable strangeness. And on the plus side, for the first time in what he guessed must be at least twenty-four hours, he was free of Lu, who made him feel distinctly uneasy at times. Especially when she was trying to be nice, of comforting, or even worse, reassuring.

  “Kirk? You there?” Lu’s voice sounded in his head.

  Kirk sank into the covers more, snatching the pillow and smothering it down over his head.

  “Kirk, are you there? Are you alright?” The pillow did nothing to reduce the sound.

  “They took us in different directions. How is it I can hear you?” he asked.

  “The nanoprobes,” Lu said.

  “But they took Casio away from me before they put me in here.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The F.R.B. can be up to ten miles away from you and you would still be in contact with it,” Lu explained.

  “I talk and the nanoprobes relay the information to your nanoprobes and you hear me.”

  “That is correct,” chimed in Casio.

  Kirk shook his head, resigned to a fate which suggested sharing his every conscious moment with Casio and Lu. Probably Sarge as well.

  “Have you had a chance to examine your cell?” Lu asked. “Is there any chance you can escape?”

  “Why would I want to escape? This cell is more comfortable than my home was back on Earth. They gave me clothes, which I might add is more than you did, despite what you promised me before we left. Even the food is good! Have you tried the gray stuff?”

  “You like that?” Lu sounded surprised.

  “I asked the guard to bring me more. It’s delicious,” Kirk said.

  “Well, if we escape, I’ll make sure you get all the spleeh phlegm you can eat.”

  Kirk looked suspiciously at the two empty bowls. “Phlegm?”

  “As much as you can eat. But first we need to get out of here, and find the F.R.B.s.”

  “We appear to be stored close to Kirk,” said Casio.

  “And my sensors indicate you are three floors above, ma’am,” said Sarge. “I am also detecting life forms that are approaching both your locations. I would advise silence now, so as not to reveal our communication capabilities.”

  “Agreed,” Lu said.

  “No argument here,” said Kirk settling back into his bunk.

  Moments later the door to his cell opened and in walked a guard dressed similar to those that had detained them earlier.

  “I bring you apologies for the manner of your welcome to the Citadel, and offer you an invitation to a meeting with the Council of Enon,” the guard said.

  Unless Kirk missed his guess, the guard was not used to being polite to his prisoners.

  Kirk slumped. Just when he had found a nice place to hide out for a while, something comes along and spoils it. He stood and headed towards the door.

  As he passed the guard he saw another heading towards him, carrying a large bowl on a tray.

  “Is that for me?” he asked the guard who had released him.

  “The Council informed us we should offer you all the courtesies we would bestow upon them, and since you seemed to like the Spleeh, we ordered more for you.”

  Kirk felt a little queasy again. For some reason, knowing what he’d been eating seemed to affect the taste.

  “I’m all full up at the moment.” Kirk waved off the advancing guard. “Maybe later?”

  Kirk looked up. Now that he was free of his cell, he took the chance to examine the large hall he had been whisked through earlier.

  The hall was a wide ellipse, laid out with cells at regular intervals. Kirk assumed crime wasn’t that great here, since all the doors were open.

  The whine of an elevator stopping caught his attention and he turned as the doors slid open to reveal Lu and another guard emerging. As Lu approached she leaned in to Kirk.

  “You have any idea what’s going on here?” she whispered.

  Kirk shrugged his shoulders.

  The guard, who had been previously about to deliver Kirk another helping of the spleeh was now walking towards the exit carrying their F.R.B.s. At the door he turned. “If you would be kind enough to follow me, the Council awaits,” the guard said.

  Lu and Kirk exchanged glances then headed off to meet the Council.

  The three members of the Council of Enon sat behind a table raised on a slight dais. They all wore robes of office, but otherwise seemed to lack any real signs of rank or social standing.

  All the Enonians he had seen so far looked very similar. They were tall and lean with long pale yellow faces that made Kirk wonder if jaundice was a common complaint amongst the species. The general form appeared to be very humanlike which immediately made him suspicious. All had large almond-shaped eyes with very little white, and deep brown irises that made it almost impossible to see the pupils. Hair color seemed to be the only consistent difference, with the colors ranging through every hue Kirk knew and many more he had never before seen. Though in each case, the style was the same. Swept back from the face and cropped at the shoulders.

  As Kirk and Lu sat at a smaller table before the Council, Kirk had the uneasy feeling that there were many more than the two eyes of each of the Council members looking at him. While they had passed relatively few of the residents of Enon as they traveled through the myriad of organic looking tunnels, almost as if they had been grown rather than built, Kirk couldn’t shake the idea that these corridors ran endlessly around the superstructure, more like a hive than a the way he would have imagined a spaceship. And everywhere down each corridor, Kirk had felt the same sensation whenever they encountered what he learned were the Enonians.

  He had noticed that some species were very obviously of one gender or the other. Others, the Enonians being a prime example, had an asexual appearance, making it difficult, if not impossible, to tell if he was looking at the male or female of the species. In the flow
ing robes the Council wore, it was impossible, and he was hoping that voice pitch would be an indication when they spoke.

  The guard who had escorted them placed the F.R.B.s in front of the Council, bowed low, and departed.

  There was a moment’s silence before anyone spoke.

  The council member in the center leaned forward. “Please accept our apologies for the manner in which you were greeted upon your arrival here on Enon.”

  Female, thought Kirk.

  “And in return, please accept our apologies for the manner in which we arrived. It was not our intention to cause damage or alarm.” Lu was at her most formal.

  “You will of course now be our most honored guests,” continued the Council Leader. “Allow me to introduce myself and my colleagues. I am Shé’vah. This is Shé’poh,” She indicated the Enonian on her left. “And this is Shé’lae.” Indicating the other

  Council member.

  Lu bowed her head slightly. “I am Specia...”

  Shé’vah held up a hand, stopping Lu.

  “We are aware of who you are Agent Pillah. What we wish to know now is who is your companion, and what species is he?”

  All the attention focused on Kirk and he felt again the burning sensation of many more eyes than

  he could see in the room, studying him. Lu nudged him.

  “Sorry,” he blurted. “My name is Kirk Deighton, I’m a human. From Earth.” He noticed that Lu was glaring at him. “Oh, er... Pangaea. A human from Pangaea.”

  The Council nodded sagely, as if they had known this, and the question had been some kind of

  test he had passed.

  “Why did you come here?” asked Shé’lae.

  “It was an accident,” said Lu. “We had intended to make a Hyper Luminal Jump to Sevres Prime, but there must have been some glitch in the navigation program, because it jumped us here instead.”

  “Where is here, by the way?” asked Kirk.

  Lu kicked him under the table, and he looked at her, an angry question evident on his face.

  “It is a reasonable question,” said Shé’poh.

  “You arrived on Enon. We have striven for many years to remain as insular as we could. That is the reason we sealed off access to our jump capabilities.”