“If they want to, they will win. If they can get here at all, they will always win, eventually.”
“What are they trying to tell us? Are the visions some kind of warning?”
“They may be guidance. But we don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand why nothing works.”
“Enjoy the ice cream,” said Margaret, “while we have it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Corn, and More
Although they carried all the supplies they could, this time packed on two rolling luggage carts, they departed with few plans. The next nearest place on the map was at least 100 kilometers away. The forests seemed to be thickening with fewer breaks and clearings.
Then they reached another cornfield.
“I wonder who lives out this far, who runs this farm.”
“It appears to be a very large cornfield.”
“I guess corn grows better here than on the moon. But will the farmer show up again?”
“I vote for a museum in the middle of it myself.”
“Margaret….”
He stopped as fast as he began. A large shadow had crossed their path from behind. It was suddenly quite dark.
When they turned, they saw the thing that made the shadow. It was large, but they could not tell if it was smaller and nearby or huge from far away.
“What is that?” Joseph looked at Margaret, not really expecting an answer.
Margaret had become silent. She stared without expression, as if she was in a hypnotic trance. She asked quietly, “Is this a conduit?”
“A conduit for what? It’s a big, round, dark oval sitting above the corn. What’s holding it up?”
They both started walking toward it. Soon they could only see the top that was not obscured by the tall cornstalks around their heads. As they continued the top of the oval seemed to be growing above the stalks. The object must be huge. When they reached a clearing, they began to realize just how big it was.
The corn was flattened in front of the oval. They still could not estimate just how far away they were. There was no detail, no markings. The oval displayed a featureless surface that might be flat, or it might be convex or even concave.
A head appeared from their left. Or something like a head. It was floating in front of their eyes, and it was shaped like a head and about the right size. But its only features were two large bug eyes staring back at them from an otherwise blank face.
“Is this a drone of some sort? A 3D camera since it has two eyes a nose-space apart? If it had a nose.”
“You’re the expert on artifacts, Margaret.”
“I only know old artifacts. I presume this one has something to do with the big black egg that’s lying on its side in our path.”
“It doesn’t look like an egg. It looks concave to me, like something we could step into if we were high enough.”
Margaret pulled a cornstalk from the ground. “I want to see if I can touch the bottom of that head.”
“How do you know it’s not hostile? It may be showing them exactly what you’re up to.”
“Them?”
“It must belong to somebody.”
Margaret tried to touch the head with the cornstalk. “It just moves out of the way.”
“What did you expect?”
Margaret walked onward toward the oval. Its giant darkness loomed above her, but she tried to touch it with the cornstalk. “I can’t reach. Can you, Joseph?”
Joseph had followed but not without some hesitation. “It may reply with a ray gun or something.” He touched the oval, almost, and the corn stalk was ripped from his hand.
“Where did it go?”
“I don’t know. It looked like the oval sucked it up. But it was so fast I couldn’t really tell. Don’t ask me to try to touch that thing again.”
At this point another head had appeared, but this one had a long slender body with a whip like appendage.
“I think we need to retreat.”
“Aren’t you curious, Joseph?”
“Actually…no….”
“Okay. I wonder if the potato heads will follow us back to the road.”
“I wish they wouldn’t.”
But they did. All the way back to the road. There was no change to the oval.
“I feel like we should be notifying somebody.” Margaret was examining an outdated communicator she had taken from a shop in Elmherst. Joseph was munching on a raw ear of corn while he looked for the bags they had left by the roadside.
“Hey, what happened to our bags? They ought to be here!”
Their bags were gone. The heads continued to stare.
“I think we need to head back to Elmherst now. We’ll never make it to Signatora now that our bags are gone.” Margaret was disappointed. Joseph was disgusted, angry, and a little afraid.
Just then the sky turned dark and stars began to twinkle on the surface of, or maybe inside, the oval.
∆∆∆
Clouds roiled close and obscured the top of the great darkness. Pinpoints of light shimmied in waves from its bottom into the clouds. There was a roar signaling the approach of a great wind. But they never felt it. Neither did they see the presence that now surrounded them. They were inside the oval, and the oval was of them. They were stretched to each star-point and existed, or not, as waves in the thoughts of a monster.
∆∆∆
They were on a foreign landscape. Beneath them was a furry softness, a mottled pink and grey. Was it ground or was it…? The furriness waved and swayed and seemed alive, or maybe it waved like seaweed propelled by invisible currents. Above a short space just tall enough for them to stand was another layer of waviness, pointing downward, this time more blue. The space they occupied seemed to stretch on forever beyond them though narrowly circumscribed by the floor and a ceiling barely above their heads.
“I won’t ask where we are. The question has become absurd.”
“Yeah, if we wondered if Elmherst was real, what about now?”
“This may be more real than Elmherst,” Margaret replied. “In fact, this is where we may have been all along. Are these things alive?” She reached down to touch the waving fuzziness. It recoiled from her touch.
“So extraterrestrials look like…carpet?”
“Like shag carpet. It was a late 20th century phenomenon. When I learned of it, I thought of fabric grass.”
“That’s what this is, I guess. Fabric, grass. It does seem to be alive. At least it reacts to being touched. But it doesn’t seem to mind us walking on it.”
“Maybe it doesn’t react the same way to shoes. These athletic shoes from the camping store: they’re all synthetic. Polymers. Maybe these are living polymers.”
“So where do we go? It looks the same in all directions. There aren’t any features. We could walk forever, till we starve.”
Margaret sat down. The waviness did not seem to mind as long as she didn’t prop herself on her hands. When she did, she felt the fabric pushing back, against her hands, against her seat. She had to fold her hands in her lap to keep from disturbing the…grass.
Joseph lay down. He folded his arms over his chest. The grass did not seem to mind his head as long as he did not rest his head on his hands.
“What’s their issue with hands? My head and neck are touching the stuff. But if I put my hands under my head, it tries to lift all of me off it.”
Margaret lay down too. She experimented and discovered the same thing.
“Maybe we can communicate. By touching it with our hands. Like Morse code.”
“What code?”
“Dot, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash. Dot, dot, dot. It’s Morse code. I spelled out the code for ‘help’.”
“How?”
“Three short touches, followed by three long ones, and three short ones again.”
“And that means ‘help’? I don’t think it’s helping.”
The ground opened beneath them, and they were in another place entirely.
A Voyage?
Joseph and Margaret found themselves in something that looked like a small movie theater but with a hatch at the front. They were strapped into two of twelve seats. They were wearing some very old-fashioned space suits with thick material to contain pressurization. They were also wearing gloves and old-fashioned space helmets with their visors shut and locked. They could hear each other by radio transmission.
“You don’t have to ask. This is the Pickering ship, again, except this time we’re in the crew compartment, the sector that was missing when we found the ship in the lunar crater.”
“And how do you know this? Oh yes, from the damn book.” Joseph was disgusted. “How do I unlock this visor?”
“I don’t know. Don Henson had trouble with that too.” She released her restraints and floated to Joseph’s seat, carefully, noting that she was very unaccustomed to microgravity. She caught an armrest with her legs to steady herself so that she could examine Joseph’s helmet. “Oh, I see, like this.” She pressed and held two obscure tabs. The visor unlocked and was easy to lift. “It’s not bad if you can see it on someone else.”
Margaret was able to unlock her own now that she had practiced on Joseph’s. Joseph was working on the gloves that had a similar hidden locking mechanism.
“Okay, that’s better. Now the helmet.”
Margaret had to find the locking tabs for him. They were both relieved to be free of helmet and gloves.
Joseph drifted to the hatch. There was a pump and a latch. It opened inward and was made not to open if there was a pressure differential.
“And there we have it. What’s up front looks plenty familiar. What the…there’s somebody in the observation bubble!”
They both floated into the control compartment. But now no one could be seen through the open hatch into the bubble. There was also nothing to be seen outside. It was completely dark.
“I can’t tell if there’s nothing outside or if the glass is completely opaque.”
“You cannot see if there is nothing to be seen.”
The voice from behind startled them both.
“Good afternoon. My name is Jim.”
“Jim who, what, where did you come from?” Joseph asked.
“I’ve been here all along. So have you.”
“Where? The quantum gate?” Joseph was sarcastic.
“If that’s what you want to call it. It’s more complicated than that. But we had to explain it to Mr. Henson in a way he could understand.”
“We would appreciate a comprehensible explanation ourselves.” Margaret was polite but insistent.
“If you must. Dr. Yeardsley, you may think of me as Jim Drake. You know me from Mr. Henson’s book.”
“God, I should have read that damn book!” Joseph said through a clenched jaw.
“I am not God, but for all practical purposes, to you I am. I am who I am. Is that godlike enough for you?”
“And I’m not Moses. So give me a break.”
“Mr. Henson is here also. You can’t see him…oh, you did see him in the bubble. But you won’t see him now.”
“Where is Mr. Henson, and why can’t we see him? Have we traveled into the past?” Margaret asked.
“You may think of it that way. Henson is in a different phase. It’s all the same time because all time is the same. He thinks he’s been to the Quantum Gate, and in many ways he has, though he was there all along. He’s shaken from the sights he’s seen there, through entanglement and superposition, etc. It’s the way you understand it. Again, it’s more complicated.”
“I’d love to meet Mr. Henson if that is possible. I’ve been keenly interested in his book.” Margaret was eager.
“If you read his book, then you have met him. And you have your own purposes here.”
“So we have no choice,” said Joseph, with more disgust.
“You have many choices. Of course, you have guided choices, so they have to be somewhat limited, out of so many.”
“And who is doing the guiding?”
“Why, the angels of the quantum gate, of course. You’ve known this all along.”
“Are you an angel?”
“My dear, I’m an Air Force Colonel. And I can assure you that that means I’m no angel. But I must go for now. You’ll find plenty of food and other supplies in the crew compartment.”
Jim Drake floated into the bubble and disappeared into its blackness.
∆∆∆
“Well, we do seem to be well-equipped for a significant journey, but we don’t know where we’re going or how long it will take to get there. At least we don’t have to walk for a change.”
“No, just float. But that’s not going to be good for us after a while, and I don’t see any exercise equipment. But I want out of this old space-suit.” Joseph started pushing and tugging.
“I may have to help you. At least to find the catches and latches.”
“Anything to be out of this bulky get-up. And it’s hot. I need to find the environmental controls.”
“Stop flailing about. I won’t be able to find anything. There, that detaches the top from the bottom. What are you wearing underneath there anyway?”
“Heck if I know. It looks like some kind of fabric with tubes running through it. And now it seems to be leaking. Say, where’s the bathroom in this bucket?”
“Maybe it’s in the corner there.”
“Well, I hope it’s vacuum operated. I don’t want to have to wear diapers while we’re here.”
“You wear them in your PSV suit, don’t you? And your moon suit?”
“They’re a much more modern design. But I suppose these things are artifacts to you.”
“Well, yes, most anything is an artifact to me.” Margaret laughed. Joseph was both disgusted and awkward.
Margaret was already down to her spacesuit skivvies while Joseph was still flailing about trying to get the suit top over his head. “And I thought you were the spaceman!” She was laughing while Joseph was twisting and turning.
“I’m not accustomed to zero gee. And I don’t like it.”
“That much is obvious. Here, let me help you.”
It was a kind gesture, but all the twisting around had them both in a yaw, pitch, roll type of spin.
“Okay, I’ve got to let go or I’ll never get myself straightened out. We’re going to have to anchor you to a seat to finish this.”
“First of all, I need the vacuum in that bathroom. My stomach….”
He headed off to the corner and behind a partition. A whirring motor mercifully disguised all sounds.
When he returned, still in his pressure-suit top, Margaret had changed into some blue coveralls. They fit tightly enough that Joseph would have noticed if he had not become sweaty and pale.
“Okay, now wrap this restraint around a leg. I’ll hold on here.”
It was a team effort, but the top of the suit was finally floating independent of its former occupant. Joseph found some blue coveralls for himself and headed back to the corner with the vacuum to change.
∆∆∆
The voyage dragged on, if it was indeed a voyage. There was no indication of movement, and no indication of the passage of time.
“So much for space-time. I think we’re stuck in one point. I’m almost ready for one of those apparitions to liven things up. This is like solitary confinement.”
“You aren’t entirely solitary, Joseph. And there are things to do here. Once I found some paper and a pen, I started cataloging every detail I can find. I wish I had a camera though.” Margaret had been staying busy while Joseph was extremely bored.
“I’m thinking of putting that spacesuit back on and going outside. That airlock we crawled through must still be working. I want to see just where we are.”
“Why would you see more from outside than through the observatory?” Margaret asked.
“The observatory may be blacked out in some way.”
“What if t
here are forces that won’t let you be outside?”
“Like what? You mean if I go out the veil will be lifted, and I’ll see where we really are?”
“It’s just that it could be a very dangerous thing to do. And I don’t want to enter an airlock again.”
“You wouldn’t have to come with me.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I? There would be some reason. I don’t know what, but you’d need me for something.”
Joseph sighed. He was making no progress with this idea. He’d need help just to put the suit back on. Margaret would have to be suited too, in case he did need help, in the airlock, or maybe outside.
“Okay, I’ll wait a little longer. But a time will come….”
“A time will come when things will change. In the meantime….”
Margaret floated over to Joseph. They were touching slightly, then more so. And then much more.
∆∆∆
Margaret and Joseph had become quiet. They had broken through a professional bond into something that was more, and also less. It was eloquently human, and primitively animal. There had become fewer needs for words after that.
Margaret continued cataloging. Joseph was drawing. His artwork was strikingly detailed and provided the documentation that Margaret wanted for her accounts and descriptions. His drawings of Margaret at work had become the most striking of all.
The ship was warm, which was surprising to Joseph. In the dark coldness that was space, their standard uniform had become nothing but loose shorts. There had become no need for decorum or priggishness.
Dials that they could not interpret continued to turn. Digits without meaning continued to change. Joseph and Margaret continued to enjoy each other’s company from time to time, but with decreasing frequency.
“I’ve decided. Don’t try to talk me out of it. I need the suit. I’m going to crack open the outer airlock hatch. Just a little. I need to know if there is something outside or not.”
“All right, Joseph. I will help you. Where are the spacesuit skivvies? First of all we have to fill the tubing with water.”
And so, after what seemed like many hours, Joseph was ready. Margaret was also fully suited. Joseph was in the airlock, and the inner hatch was closed.
Personal Space- Return to the Garden Page 6
