Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  She looked at him blankly, and wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Some accident, disaster, or something similar,” he continued. “Like an earthquake, or tornado, another world war, plagues, or... the school burning down, or something. Anything that would keep them busy. That would distract them from you, I think, because they’d not have the time to spend thinking about you.” He smiled. “That’s not much help, I suppose?”

  “You have helped very more,” she smiled slightly in return. “I do not want to injury, but these someones must not find out that I am the only one left to protect…” She stopped in mid-sentence.

  As Richard was trying to figure this out, he noticed the second half of the candy bar still on the bench beside him. He decided not to be too pushy for information. “Ever had one of these?” He held up the foil-wrapped chocolate.

  “I have not one.”

  “Try it; I think you’ll like it,” he predicted.

  Karen took the candy, peeled back the wrapper awkwardly, and bit into it. She smiled that faint smile again.

  “I have never taste like this; I must go to make it when school is ‘gile’ – day, over.”

  The town hall clock sounded in the distance. Richard glanced at his watch. “Speaking of school, we’d better be getting back, or we’ll be late,” he said automatically. He picked up the empty bag and launched it into the garbage can as they stepped around the end of the bench. He wanted to ask more, but somehow the quiet soberness of the slight girl in the oversize clothes and rounded boots, the small, scared stranger with the mind that could tell he had lost his family, and even discern the name of his brother, made him reluctant to disturb her reverie.

  They hurried back to school in silence and walked into the now quite familiar classroom at the same time as the first afternoon teacher. As the routine of the afternoon began, Richard tried to work out how Karen knew so much about him. Much as it alarmed him, he could not escape the conclusion that she must indeed have read his thoughts. For the first few minutes, he almost managed to listen to the instructor. Inevitably, he glanced across at her again, losing track at this point, as he had in the morning. Then, there was the matter of her eyes. Now that she was looking at the teacher, they were grey and cloudy again. In fact, they only appeared blue when she looked at him.

  From what she had said, her parents had died some time ago, probably a matter of years, but people, people that mattered, like school principals, and – he thought – social workers, police, and judges, the kind of government workers that make decisions about living arrangements, custody – things he so recently had learned about from personal experience – the social support staff were only just starting to think about her situation now. Why did she have to keep her parents’ death a secret anyway? Or was it something to do with her tutor? What was she left alone to protect? And now, what had happened to her tutor? Why did the Principal accept a letter from a young girl as sufficient justification to admit her to the school? Did she have any other proof of her existence, a birth certificate, maybe? She certainly looked younger than seventeen; why was she in the same year as him? Surely the Principal could never have mistaken her letter for one from her father.

  Then there were the purely practical, mundane matters. Where did she live? How did she provide for herself? She had never heard of apple juice, or tasted grape juice and chicken salad sandwiches before. She sounded genuinely unfamiliar with the term ‘sandwich’ and the concept, as if she had never even seen layered foods or imagined the protective wrapping which had proved so difficult for her to remove. She had never opened a bottle of juice, or experienced a candy bar either; what kind of food did she eat? Her English was unaccented, if that could be said of anyone – or almost Bostonian – how could that be?! But she seemed to barely understand the rules of grammar, her vocabulary was very limited, and she built sentences like some teenagers kept their school lockers. What kind of tutor would not even teach proper English to their special student?

  Did she have some secret cache of money to buy food and clothes? But then she had seemed puzzled when he had handed over the dollars for the lunch and had received other bills and coins in exchange. Where can you get free food these days? A jumpsuit! Of all the things for a teenage girl to be wearing! And so big she was lost in it. Boots almost like steel toed ones, but obviously very light, as she moved so easily in them. Where did she find such unusual styles? Richard had never seen anything like them, not in any store in Boston, or New York, or even London or Paris, for that matter – having a family-owned travel agency had meant that he had seen a fair portion of the world.

  Richard was still trying to puzzle it out when school ended for the day. The other students left rapidly, and he was left alone in the classroom with Karen once again. He had intended to ask her a lot more questions, but she got up and walked out just as he was about to start. He followed her outside, hoping to be able to ask them as he walked her home.

  “I live on the other side of town; is that your direction?”

  “‘Troh’?” Karen turned her dreamy blue eyes towards him, deep in thought. “Yes,” she responded uncertainly, as if she were thinking of a hundred other things. “Thank you much for your someones… suggestions. I must there now. Please come at me tomorrow morning on your travel at this school.” And without any further communication, she ran off, almost at a sprint.

  But I don’t know where you live! Richard wondered if her obscure words meant that she would not be at school the next day. I guess I’d better not chase her; she might get scared!

  “Where are you going?” He managed to call out to the rapidly shrinking figure.

  He wondered if she was going to ignore him, but she slowed a little about fifty yards down the road, stopped and turned around.

  “I going at my home,” she called back, starting to run again as soon as the words were out.

  “Where’s that?”

  “I live in Citadel,” she shouted over her shoulder as she stopped on the crest of the slope of the small bridge. Then she ran down the other side, and was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Learn the significant, plan to live on, leave when ready and able – Idahnian

  Terry Stadt opened his eyes and looked up at a featureless grey expanse above him. For a moment his mind felt similarly blank, then he tensed up, remembering: The boat... ‘Zac... Ruth... YES! There had been a huge black shape, falling down towards the boat, like a gigantic foot about to snuff them out of existence. He had rushed to the radio, intending to transmit an S.O.S. signal, but when he had turned it on... He raised his right arm in front of his face and looked at his hand for confirmation, flexing the taut skin of the reddened fingers. Still burnt. He felt strangely relieved that his recollection of events was confirmed by the state of his hand.

  He had sent Ruth down to the lower cabin, ostensibly to get something from the first aid kit for his hand, but mostly in the hope that she would be safer there, then Isaac had opened the door, and… He could remember nothing from that point onwards. How long? He raised his left arm and discovered a paler strip of skin on his wrist where his watch had once been. Now, as he looked up, he saw a grey, steely dome hundreds of feet above his head. Cautiously he sat up. The dome seemed to shake and his eyes went out of focus, so he moved his head gently from side to side. Even that motion felt strange, like the feeling he had experienced as he was wheeled into surgery for a ruptured appendix when he was sixteen.

  Looking around, Terry saw a pyramid-shaped construction, glowing in the distance, next to a huge, giant-size door of slightly darker grey. Then, for the first time, he looked down at the place where he lay. A raised rectangular surface the same colour as the door, seemingly the top of a box-shaped object about eight feet long, supported his body about a foot off the floor. The top surface of this box was somehow softer, allowing his body to sink into it a little, and adjusting slowly back to a flat surface when he took his weight off a part of it. His light brown shorts were gone, as was
his colourful shirt. The Florida air was warm, and those clothes suited it, but now both items were replaced with something darker and thicker, and he shivered as the palms of his hands contacted the platform he was laid out on, as it seemed cool, almost chilled. He fingered the strangely formed black cloth that he was wearing. It was like a bathrobe except it had legs, but instead of the velvet-soft material he preferred, this was very harsh, more like canvas sacking. His feet were clad in bright green boots with a smooth, seamless finish. They were so close-fitting they looked like they had been vacuum-formed in-situ. He wiggled his toes and saw them move through the rubbery material.

  He swung his legs gingerly off the platform he was laid out on and stood up slowly.

  A surprised gasp burst from his lips and he staggered, feeling light-headed. The dome was only a few feet above his head! The room shifted into a new perspective; now it was only a few yards across, and the pyramid-shaped object was some kind of lamp, standing next to a low, regular-sized door. Terry turned again, wondering if he was drugged, as every movement seemed effortless. Opposite the door, beyond the thing that he had been laid out on, a short, silvery cylinder sat next to a box of similar material. The box, though slightly taller and wider, seemed almost like a piece of bedroom furniture, although it did not appear to have any doors or drawers. He walked slowly over to the wall, reached out and touched it.

  Cold. Almost unbearably cold. The memory of the huge black bulk descending closer to his boat, creating an unnatural darkness as it blotted out the bright Florida sunlight, returned to his mind. He could see it clearly, could see the section opening above his head, and less clearly, something moving inside.

  Silence, there was absolutely no noise! He remembered. And it was much bigger than my boat, longer than a huge zeppelin... much, much longer. Suddenly he came to a terrifying conclusion; the domed room felt like a gigantic microscope slide, pinning him down. He ran to the door in a frantic attempt to escape. As he braced himself for the collision, the door slid silently up out of sight, and he tripped and fell heavily up the steep slope that had been revealed, and rolled up it until he collided… with a pair of green boots. He looked up, ready to run again, only to see:

  “Zac?”

  “Terrance Stadt!” Professor Hardy smiled down at him, his brown eyes reassuringly familiar. “If I’d have known you would start practicing for the one hundred metres when you regained consciousness, I would have come in to warn you about the gravity slope.”

  “Huh?” Terry gasped from his position sprawled on the floor at his friend’s feet. He started to feel slightly ridiculous, so he got up quickly. He noticed that he no longer felt light-headed. “Where are we?” he asked as he looked around. The room he was now in was also domed, but covered a much larger area. Here, too, the walls were grey, like mild steel, and appeared at first glance to be seamless. Scattered about the room, apparently at random, were several low tables equipped with glowing pyramid-shaped objects at each end. Several of the tables were littered with intricate pieces of machinery and what looked suspiciously like computers, making it seem like a distorted copy of one of the many R & D labs that his companies operated.

  “We are on another planet,” Isaac reached out and grasped his arm reassuringly. “One with a lesser gravitational field than Earth,” he explained quietly. “You fell because this room is equipped with a kind of artificially generated gravity designed to supplement the planetary field; your sleep room isn’t.”

  “How did you figure this all out?”

  “When I stepped, or should I say, staggered, out onto Getaway’s deck, everything was in deep shadow – no Florida sunshine, no blue sky, darkness all around, with a rim of brilliant light in the distance – and the ocean looked black, like oil. Of course I looked up – I couldn’t help but do so – and saw a huge mass, like a supertanker suspended above me, hanging over your cruiser. It seemed to be only a few feet above my head, so I couldn’t really gauge its true size, but there were curves, and a cavernous opening within that bulk and it seemed like Getaway was rising up, into it. I froze – no, not really froze, as I seemed to still have difficulty keeping upright, and then, within seconds, I passed out.”

  Terry felt relieved and tense at the same time, as he heard Isaac corroborate his story.

  “When I woke up, I found myself in a small dome-shaped room, as you did. I felt much lighter than usual. I got up, noticing that the room seemed to shift slightly as I did so. I checked out the room inch by inch, feeling the ultra-cold walls, noting further slight shifting sensations as if the floor or even the room itself were on shaky foundations. I got to a silvery cylinder. On closer examination I found that the top swung sideways, revealing a pool of green-tinted liquid. Next to it was a considerably taller cube-shaped thing. The top on this also slid sideways, revealing a tank of water, about the size of a washbasin.

  “I decided to try the toilet out. It’s a bit small and although the top surface is soft, like the bed, it was rather cold to sit on! The liquid rises as you finish, somehow cleaning you up – it isn’t water, as you don’t feel wet afterwards, which is a good thing, as there are no towels – or at least, none that I could locate. I put my hands in the other water container afterwards, and it must have some of the other chemical in it, too, as it seems to clean, and my hands dried off within a few seconds after I pulled them out again. I realised that someone had gone to great effort to keep me alive, and this cheered me up a lot. I finally progressed to the glowing pyramid by the door. It lit the chamber, and I could feel it also gave off a fair bit of heat. Then I tentatively moved towards the door. I put my hand out hesitantly, to touch the surface of the door, but it slipped upwards quite rapidly. When it was fully open, I looked through at this room for some time. Nothing moved or looked remotely dangerous, so I decided to go through,” Isaac grinned at Terry, and pulled him over to a low bench, indicating that he should sit down on it. “I stepped out through the doorway. I stumbled a little, as my foot struck the surface, and then I felt strangely heavy. I sat down here and thought.”

  “One,” he counted off on his fingers. “I am in a craft which was accelerating upwards at a rate equivalent to about point five of Earth’s gravity; I stepped from one area to another and the craft simultaneously increased its acceleration to, maybe, one point five of Earth’s gravity… Two: I am in a craft where differing gravity fields are being generated by artificial means… Three: I am subject to some kind of mind control or hallucinations”… Hardy paused, aware that he had started to lecture. He smiled to himself, shook his head and continued. “I could have come up with further possibilities for some time, but I was interrupted by someone.” He raised his eyebrows and held his hands up.

  Terry waited for his friend to continue, accepting the dramatic pause without comment.

  “Another man entered the room,” Isaac explained. “He was dressed like we are, but his clothes were worn and wrinkled, not stiff like these.” He fingered the harsh black cloth with distaste. “He was of average build, his complexion a little grey, perhaps, and his disposition rather gloomy and cold, but he was definitely human. He walked up to me and stared at me as if I were some kind of experiment gone wrong. He spoke to me in broken but understandable English. He said his name was ‘Latt Something-or-other’. He told me that I was brought here to do some kind of scientific research for ‘The Controllers’, whoever they might be. He made it quite clear that none of us would be released until I completed the research successfully.” Isaac looked at his friend and smiled wryly. “It seems that this time I am providing the ultimate vacation ‘away from it all’, not you.”

  “And what are you supposed to be able to research that they don’t already have?”

  “Bombs. Anti-personnel bombs. They need something which produces huge quantities of neutrons, and they want it to be simple to mass-produce.”

  Terry looked at him in horror. “And where do they intend to use this weapon?”

  “Latt wouldn’t tell me.”
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  “I keep hoping that I’ll wake up; this must be a dream,” Terry muttered as he looked around, noticing for the first time that the door he had exited was now closed again, and that there were some other doors around the perimeter of the dome. This will take a while to digest. Finally he turned hesitantly to Isaac.

  “Is, is Ruth okay?”

  “Yes, I should have mentioned, she’s still in deep sleep behind that door over there; I had just finished checking that she was all right when you popped out before I could check on you.”

  Terry got up and started across the room.

  “Which door did this grey guy come through?”

  “The one to your left, but don’t bother, it won’t–”

  Terry had stopped and turned for directions, now he turned back to find himself face to face with the humanoid, for it was abundantly clear that the pale creature in front of him was not from any nationality or tribe on Earth. The figure was slightly shorter than Terry, gaunt beyond anything except an anorexic woman he had once seen in his local shopping mall, and the awful images of the Belsen survivors that were eternally embedded in his mind some years before when he had toured the death-camp and watched a documentary on the Holocaust, during one of his visits to Europe. The alien had short grey hair – hair that seemed patchy, as if he might be going bald or have some skin disease, but the most compelling feature was his eyes. They seemed to blaze out of the dull, greenish face with a vitality that suggested a much lower age than he had first supposed. Terry stared, then cleared his voice hesitantly, as the coldness of the alien’s regard made a shiver run up his spine.

  “Terrriii,” the alien said with somewhat of a burr, before Stadt could decide what to say. “Latt Jusstinalss.” He thumped his own chest, then pointed at Professor Hardy. “I-saaack work… Terrriii breathe. You get I-saack work.” Leaving Stadt to decipher this cryptic message, Latt walked past him to Hardy and spread his hands wide. “Rrruth no breathe.” He shook his head. “Now you Rrrruth garbage.” He pointed to the door through which he had come.