“You told Blanca and Lannie that you’d be gone for hours,” she said. “How far down this rabbit hole are you taking me?”
“The entire planetoid is a gigantic machine,” said Philip. “I mentioned that earlier, or at least I believe I did. Old age curses the mind as well as the body.”
“Right,” said Amy. “The island is some kind of mouthpiece for a gigantic instrument. So we’re walking down to level twenty? That’s not too bad.”
Philip shook his head. “Much, much further. Level eighty-eight.”
The light from the wide hole in the sky dimmed as they walked lower. At the tenth floor, Philip took a metal rod from his belt and twisted the end. The entire cylinder glowed bright blue and illuminated the stained concrete floor.
“Please take this. I need my hands free.’”
Amy took the rod from Philip. The light glowed red through her fingers.
“Wow,” she said. “Tell me you made this from coconuts and I’ll lose my freaking mind.”
“Great Scott, why would you think it’s made from a coconut? This is one of the last remaining fragments of technology from the cats that built this planet. Almost all of it has crumbled to dust.”
“You mean the ancient space cats that are actually from the future but went to the past?”
“I sense a joking tone in your question, but yes––that is correct. Please walk faster. We have many levels below us.”
Amy held up the glowing rod and followed Philip around the circular level and down the next set of steps. The trickle of water she’d seen on the top level had spread into a mist as it fell. The tiny droplets whirled over the balcony and created tiny droplets on her green coveralls. Amy glanced down into the endless hole and wished she had a penny.
“If these cats were so smart, how come they didn’t invent elevators?”
“That’s a good question,” said Philip. “According to the old Keepers, the empty shaft was used for transport or something like a lift, but after the collapse of the cat civilization most of the machinery stopped working. We’re walking through the dried bones of what was a thousand years ago a vibrant transportation terminal packed with cats traveling throughout the galaxy. This is a pale relic of a heavily-traveled hub of cat civilization; an abandoned, empty meeting place for beings that are long dead.”
Amy flicked a cobweb from her fingers.
“So where’d all these cats go? Florida?”
“Much like other complex societies, the cats became so focused on their own pleasures that none became engineers, mechanics, or doctors, and instead yearned to be actors, musicians, and talk-show hosts. The creation of SpaceBook turned celebrity worship into a fever. When a deadly virus emerged, the cats were unable to stop the spread of the disease, having few scientists. The cats who could leave rushed to the past, unwittingly spreading the virus further. The cats who stayed eventually died, some from the disease, and others from the violence and starvation that follows a breakdown of society.”
“Wow,” said Amy. “You know a lot about it.”
“The credit belongs to the old Keepers. They passed down the stories.”
“Blum lum,” said Baby Three.
“How’s the child?” asked Philip softly. “Will she remain quiet for the rest of the journey?”
“I can’t guarantee anything when it comes to babies,” said Amy. “Anyway, I bet her screams will chase away the ugly, hairy things hiding in the dark.”
“I wouldn’t be so confident about that.”
Amy followed him down another flight of damp concrete steps.
“Here’s a question: if you’ve got this SpaceBook teleporter that can go anywhere in time or space, why don’t you pop out to a supermarket and bring back a load of groceries instead of eating coconuts and fish?”
Philip sighed. “A trip to the green grocer’s using a thousand-year-old machine designed by long-dead cats is not worth my life. The island and surrounding ocean provides everything that I and my companions need.”
A dozen floors below, the glowing stick in Amy’s hand was the only source of light, and the scrape of their footsteps the only sound. Shadows moved along the water-stained concrete walls; shadows from a darker pool of blackness than Amy had ever experienced. She smelled a faint odor of ammonia and shifted Baby Three to her other arm.
Philip led the way across the long half-circle of balcony and down another set of steps. At the bottom he stopped and held up a hand.
“What’s wrong?” asked Amy.
“Hush.”
A scrape came from the direction of a dark and empty doorway. Philip slowly raised his right hand to his shoulder and pulled the sword out of its scabbard. The polished steel gleamed blue in the light from Amy’s stick-lantern.
A loud hiss came from the doorway and Philip lunged inside, his sword flashing overhead. Amy heard a wet smack and several thumps, and ran to the doorway. A large, coffee-colored lizard the size of an alligator lay on the floor of the room, headless and thrashing in a pool of blood. Philip kept the sword pointed at the lizard, and a hand raised to block Amy from walking inside. The scaly head of the lizard lay at his feet, its jaws open and loose, and full of sharp, triangular teeth. Although completely separated at the neck, the huge black eyes on each side of the head still blinked and twitched.
“Watch out,” said Philip, breathing faster than normal. “The body keeps moving even after death.”
“Good gravy!”
Amy and baby Three waited outside the room. After the scraping sounds faded, Philip joined them. He wiped the blood from his sword with a rag, and slid the sharp weapon back into the scabbard over his shoulder.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “There was only one. The others would have attacked by now.”
“I see why Blanca and Lannie don’t come down here,” said Amy. “That thing could have eaten us both!”
Philip rubbed his gray beard. “Not quite. At worst it might have taken a hand or a foot.”
“I’m very attached to both of those, thank you very much. What does a huge thing like that even eat down here? Don’t tell me hands and feet or I’ll smack you.”
“Their diet consists mainly of spiders.”
“Spiders? A lizard that size would have to eat thousands.”
Philip grimaced. “Very, very large spiders. Imagine a cat with eight legs and sixteen eyes.”
Amy stared at Philip for a second with her mouth open, and then walked briskly with Baby Three toward the next set of stairs.
“Nope. Nope. Nope. Move faster and bring that sword!”
They descended the next sixty levels without meeting hungry reptiles or spiders, although Baby Three began to whine and sudden noises in the dark caused Philip to stop and draw his sword a dozen times.
Amy’s back and legs ached from the long climb down the eighty-plus flights of steps, and she felt the pain of blisters forming on her feet.
“Good gravy, little baby,” she said. “Lose some weight already. I wish I had one of those baby-carrier things, because my arms feel like someone beat them with a rubber hose.”
Below floor eighty-seven, the steps continued fifty meters through empty, pitch-black air without a railing and ended in a dusty floor with no walls in sight. The light in Amy’s hand shone on nothing, as if she stood at the bottom of a cavern or a dry well. Her boots scraped away a layer of dust on the floor and revealed a mosaic of tiny white and black bricks in a curving pattern.
Philip waved her forward. “This way, please.”
Amy pointed at her feet. “Nice floor. Hey! There’s a fish.”
“Those are directions, not decorations.”
After a short walk, a tall, half-circular opening of a tunnel glowed ahead. Philip led Amy and Baby Three a few hundred meters through the tunnel to another large space, too wide for the blue light to reach the walls. A new pattern of black and white bricks covered the floor, whirling around a red oval in the center like the curved arms of a hurricane around an empty
eye.
“You may take off the extra clothing and boots now,” said Philip.
Amy stared at him for a second. “Oh, right! I guess you’ll need them for the next Amy Armstrong.”
She slipped her feet out of the boots and unzipped the jumpsuit.
Philip walked a few paces and placed his feet over a rectangular pattern of white bricks that contained a deep impression of two cat’s paws. The air crackled, and a five-meter green hologram of a cat on its hind legs flashed into existence in front of Philip. The transparent cat bowed, and a diamond-shaped pendant dangled from its neck.
“Bon apremidi,” said the hologram in a calm female voice. “Mete tike ou nan plas la, tanpri.”
Philip took a polished metal square from his toolbelt and placed it on the cylinder.
“Mwen gen yon paspo diplomatik yo,” he said. “Tout vol yo gratis.”
The hologram bowed. “Mesi.”
“That sounds familiar,” said Amy. “Is it Cat French? Where did you learn how to speak it?”
Philip shrugged. “I’ve picked up a few phrases here and there. The machinery has always communicated in English, but we had an electrical storm last year and it began speaking this way. I’m not certain how to change it back.”
“Kisaki destinasyon ou?” asked the hologram.
Philip pointed at the red oval in the center of the floor––the focus of the gigantic pattern of black and white bricks.
“Place the infant on the platform,” he said. “I’ll send her to Zeta Five.”
Amy stepped away from him. “What? No! She’s coming with me.”
Philip frowned. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. This node is designed for single-person transport. Don’t worry––she’ll be absolutely fine on Zeta Five. I’ve sent many young women through who will be overjoyed to take care of her.”
“No! Send me first, and Baby Three to the same place, back to where Philip and my friends are.”
“I’m afraid it’s too dangerous. The precision of this transport node is not high enough to guarantee her arrival immediately after you. She may arrive moments later, or years, and suffer in the landing.” He paused. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of Blanca and Lannie, but any transport, even to Zeta Five, is perilous for the infant. This machinery is a thousand years old and designed for cats, after all.”
“How do you know it even works? You think you’ve been helping these copies of me, but maybe you’ve been killing them!”
Philip held up a hand as if he were swearing on the Bible. “I promise you that is not the case, and I’ve tested the system myself.” He rummaged through the large leather pouches on his belt, at last pulling out a gold bracelet covered in ridges. “This bracelet is a temporary pass. The old Keepers said that it was used by the maintenance workers in the old days to test the node.”
“Test the node?”
Philip shrugged. “The universe is a complex system, with supernovas and shifts of dark matter. The bracelet automatically brings the traveler back to this node after sixty seconds.”
“That seems awfully short.”
“Not without oxygen, it isn’t,” said Philip. “One minute is the average time a cat can hold his breath or survive exposure to a vacuum. Let your mind be at ease––wear the bracelet and travel with the infant to Zeta Five. I assure you, sixty seconds is enough time to realize what a paradise it is.”
Amy looked down at Baby Three and touched the soft blonde hair on top of her head. The baby giggled, and grabbed at the heart pendant dangling from Amy’s neck. Amy gently pulled it away from the baby’s pink fist.
“No,” she said. “Not Zeta Five. I know a place where she’ll have friends, a family who will love her, and where she’ll have a chance to grow up happy.”
“And where might that be?” asked Philip.
Amy looked up. “Earth. Pacific Grove, California. February 1, 1981.”
“You’re a very determined young woman,” said Philip. “That’s a very specific request, but I’m certain you have your reasons. In any case, the decision is yours.”
He repeated the destination and date to the holographic cat, and it bowed again.
“The departure information has been accepted,” said Philip. “I simply need a small sample of blood to focus on the proper dimension. Don’t worry, it’s less than a drop.”
Amy held out a finger. “Use mine. It’s my dimension.”
“As you wish.”
Philip guided Amy’s hand to a flat green triangle on the patterned floor. The triangle flashed white and she felt a sharp pain on her middle finger.
“Ow! That hurt.”
Philip smiled. “My apologies. I should have warned you.”
He slid the golden bracelet onto Amy’s wrist and waved her toward the center of the mosaic.
“Place your feet on the red oval and don’t move, whatever happens.”
Amy walked to the center and stood quietly, jiggling Baby Three a little to keep her from crying.
Philip murmured a series of phrases to the hologram. A blue light began to glow from beneath the floor, and burst through the cracks between the tiny bricks. A buzz like Mothra fighting a gigantic bumblebee grew from a whisper to a roar, so loud that Amy’s teeth hurt. Baby Three’s hair puffed out like a tiny Afro, and the hairs on Amy’s arms stood out straight. A dizzying smell of lavender filled the air.
“I’ll see you in sixty seconds!” shouted Philip. “Good luck!”
The bumblebee hum grew even louder, and a hurricane of blue lightning whipped around Amy, blowing up the hem of her cotton nightgown. The black and white bricks crumbled away, leaving the pair standing on a column topped by the red oval, in the center of a sphere of roaring blue energy.
With the snap-crack sound of a whip, the sound and fury disappeared. Amy stood under a star-filled sky, on the patched gray asphalt of a street lined with Victorian houses. Huge, gas-guzzling cars from Oldsmobile, Ford, and Buick were parked along both sides of the narrow lane. The oak trees beside the houses waved in a gentle breeze, their green leaves passing along the sound of waves crashing on the beach at the end of the street.
“Mum mum,” said Baby Three.
“Holy crap!” Amy held the baby tight and sprinted up the street. “I’m nowhere near the police station!”
She raced as fast as she could through the sleeping city, her bare legs flashing and the rough asphalt burning the bottom of her feet. A line of bright blue lights around the edge of the bracelet had lit up when she arrived, and for each second that passed, a light turned dark.
Amy huffed up the sloping street to the back door of the Pacific Grove police station. The door was painted blue and made of reinforced steel, but from past experience Amy knew it was the door closest to the parking lot and would have more foot traffic as the officers came to work or changed shifts. At this time of night, someone would pass by here more often than the front door.
“They should … make this … an Olympic event,” she gasped. “Basket … need … basket.”
A dumpster stood nearby. Amy grabbed a cardboard box and gently laid Baby Three inside, sliding the box next to the door. She unfastened the heart pendant from around her neck and placed it down at the baby’s feet, out of her reach.
“We don’t want our little munchkin to choke to death, now do we?”
“Mum mum!” said Baby Three, and frantically waved her chubby arms.
Amy kissed the infant on the forehead.
“I love you, too,” she said. “Be a good girl and don’t get into trouble. Well, not too much trouble. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
She glanced at the blue lights on the bracelet.
“Ten seconds,” she said. “Enough time for a little trouble.”
Amy leaned into the dumpster and rummaged around, at last pulling something from the trash.
“Got it!”
The golden bracelet ticked from one to zero, and the gale of lavender whirled through the air. The back
of the police station and the parking lot began to shiver and glow blue.
She waved at Baby Three. “Happy––”
With a loud crack, the building and the starry skies were replaced by the cavern and the dusty black and white mosaic.
“––Birthday!” shouted Amy.
The old version of Philip rubbed his fingers through his beard and stared at her.
“Are you quite all right? You seem pale.”
Amy crossed her arms. “Oh, I’m fine. Do you think every woman has to faint at the drop of a hat? That’s some old-timey Victorian values, mister. I’m a freethinking American girl who just realized that she’s her own mom. Wait––that’s not right. I’m not my own mother, I’m a trans-dimensional copy of myself who was shrunk down to a baby by another trans-dimensional copy of myself and left at the back of the police station by … myself. Whoa, dizzy …”
Philip ran up and caught her before she hit the floor. He rubbed her arms briskly for a few seconds, and Amy opened her eyes.
“Tattoos,” she whispered. “Do I have any tattoos?”
Philip pushed up the sleeves of Amy’s nightgown.
“None on your arms,” he said. “I have to admit, this has been the strangest conversation I’ve had in years.”
He helped Amy to stand and guided her back to the red oval in the center of the floor.
“Could I have my bracelet back, please?”
“Sure.”
Amy handed him a circular piece of metal and Philip slid it into a pouch without looking. He stepped over to the “cat’s paw” indentations in the floor and activated the giant hologram of a cat.
“Now, Miss Armstrong,” he said. “Where would you like to go? I can send you anywhere in the universe. Remember, Zeta Five is quite literally a paradise. Two words: Chocolate river.”
SpaceBook Awakens (Amy Armstrong 3) Page 24
