Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  She reached out her hand towards the dull black wall and spoke clearly and slowly. “Nam burd hoon.”

  Regularly notched surface, Richard translated effortlessly. Of course. The wall seemed to glisten, and when he reached out hesitantly to touch it, he found that, although the surface still looked flat, it felt as if it were shaped like the worn steps of a castle. How appropriate! He started to climb, pausing momentarily a few steps later, as the idea that the wall might revert to its former state occurred to him. Then, having shaken his head slightly as if to clear the disturbing notion away, he continued upwards.

  He followed the curving staircase around the bulge until it leaned inwards. When he neared the parapet at the top, it turned out to be constructed of an ordinary, rather soft stone; now that he was close up he could see how badly the surface was weathered.

  “This must have been here for a long time… oh, at least twenty or thirty years!” Large flakes of the black coating had peeled off over the indefinite number of years, leaving worn patches of sandy-coloured rock exposed. In some places the exposed rock had been worn down by the action of the wind and rain, leaving rounded corners and edges, where once the stone had been precisely shaped.

  Richard stopped momentarily where the cold, glistening surface of Citadel’s main body met the worn vertical surface of the battlements. He moved more slowly as he worked his way higher, slipping his hands and then his feet into small and sometimes crumbling, time-worn notches in the parapet until, by reaching to his fullest extent, he could feel the top surface with his out-stretched hands. One further, fortuitously placed notch enabled him to move another three feet upwards. It almost allowed him to rest his elbows on the edge. Fortunately, this section had not crumbled, but was still fairly pristine. I wonder: what holds this in place? Jumping up, Richard levered himself up and over the edge and sprawled, a little short of breath, onto the thick stone, relieved that his weight had not dislodged the massive slab or broken through the black, paint-like surface to reveal a rotten interior. Got to keep doing my exercises; something like this shouldn’t be so tiring.

  After a moment he stood up on the worn upper surface and looked out to sea over the opposite battlement. The breeze brought the sound of the waves to his ears, and the glittering of the sunshine on the ocean dazzled him. The faint sound of someone scrabbling below on the wall failed to attract his attention for several moments. Blushing suddenly, Richard turned, reached down and grasped an out-stretched hand, helping the much shorter Karen up.

  “Sorry,” he said shortly but expressively, as her remarkably upbeat emotions flooded into his head again, making him feel like he was wrapped in a deliciously warm fur coat.

  She smiled, amused by his reactions in much the same way as she had been when the star field had captured his attention so completely. They stood silently for a while, looking out to sea, sharing the glorious view. A sail-boat with two triangular white sails and tiny blue pennants fluttering madly, leaned hard over in the stiff breeze out to sea; white caps danced along with it, sharing the exhilaration of the sun and spray in the cool salt air. Down in the harbour a fishing boat chugged slowly up to the wharf accompanied by a flock of seagulls, wheeling and soaring overhead.

  Almost as if they were reluctant to do anything that might conceivably disturb the idyllic view, they hesitated a moment longer before stepping slowly down onto the curved surface inside the battlements. Richard crouched down to examine the shape: it looked like an exaggerated version of the cambered effect common to most roads, sloping up towards the centre, then down again to the far side. Karen started to walk towards the end of Citadel nearer to the sea. Richard followed, studying the surface as he moved. If the battlements were removed, it would look like the inside of a railroad tunnel- except for the turrets, of course.

  “What was that?” Karen turned and looked at him, puzzled.

  “I was just thinking that it looks like the inside of a railroad tunnel.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “It doesn’t,” Richard chuckled. “Let’s go and look at the end,” he urged. As they approached the turret, Richard could see that the surface curved upwards slightly to form a dome in the middle. All was black and devoid of features within the weathered walls; there was nothing else to see. They turned around in silent agreement and walked to the other end.

  “‘Robert Wallin Preformed Furniture’,” quoted Richard as he – with some difficulty – prised off a large sheet of cardboard that had become moulded to the curved surface of Citadel, presumably by the heavy rains in the last storm, and had since dried and stuck in place, like some vacuum-sealed package of ‘deli’ meat, where Citadel was the meat, preserved, or perhaps more accurately, sealed off, beneath it. He tossed it over the wall and turned to Karen.

  “Just like replacing a light bulb,” he quipped, grinning. “I hope.”

  Karen smiled back a little uncertainly, but with a growing feeling of hope. When she got to the hidden steps, however, she realised that she was stuck.

  Richard solved this by lowering her over the battlements until she could feel the notches they had used on the way up, and slip her feet into them. In the process he picked up on her rapidly flourishing feelings, anticipating the success she craved so much. He waited until he could see she had reached the ground, and then he climbed down after her. They quickly re-entered Citadel behind the bushes. Richard recalled the monitor screen and keyboard and typed ‘status report’ once again. The screen glowed dully, then started to brighten gradually, almost imperceptibly, until it suddenly flared up into a healthy radiance. The display wording indicated that all maintenance functions were restored, and that reserve power was being replenished.

  “I can’t believe that’s all it took.” Richard shook his head incredulously, wondering at their good fortune. There must be a serious problem with this Citadel, if something as insignificant as a sheet of cardboard can cripple it. His conclusion was a worrying one, which he hastily pushed from his mind as he decided he would try to keep it to himself.

  “Citadel kept working, it was just Tutor that shut down,” Karen corrected him, reminding him once again of the uniquely open nature of their relationship. “Tutor, are you there?” she asked nervously.

  “There has been a system failure,” a warm voice responded after a tense moment or two of silence. “System self-test is proceeding.”

  Karen grinned at Richard, her spirits buoyed even further by the return of her mentor and friend.

  Sounds like a radio announcer I used to listen to, back in Boston. Richard watched her reaction with a sense of shared pleasure.

  “System nominal. There is another human here – protocol-”

  “I brought him here, Tutor!” Karen interrupted confidently. “He fixed the ‘system failure’ for me.”

  “My name is Richard Fletcher,” Richard pronounced, with a sense of security because of Karen’s pride in his action, though he thought that really he had not done anything very special at all.

  “He was meant to come!” Karen interjected again. “I know it!”

  There was another tense moment of silence, though this time Richard imagined the great computing power of Tutor analysing the implications of his presence, and he found himself hoping that he would measure up to whatever standard was necessary, somehow.

  “I am unable to determine the length of time that I was shut down.” Tutor changed the subject, and Richard concluded that he was accepted, at least on a provisional basis.

  “Oh, two or three weeks.” Clearly Karen had no doubts about her decision. “That’s not important right now; can you restore Daddy’s Citadel ‘Disinterest Zone’ to Redcliff?”

  “Negative,” Tutor responded almost instantly. “That feature can only be initiated by a fully functional mind of power, like your father’s. You are now developing such abilities, but even if you were fully trained, so many of Citadel’s power storage systems have failed and so much power is required to maintain the Disinterest
Zone that such an attempt would have a very high probability of overloading the entire network again.”

  “Then we must find another way to protect Citadel.” Karen sighed, deeply disappointed by this news.

  Richard glanced idly around the strange but beautiful room, managing to look a little lower, now he was beginning to get accustomed to the spectacular stars overhead. Something quite large, which seemed to reflect the simulated starlight, caught his eye.

  “What’s that?” He walked over and bent down to examine the object. It was a cylinder, which appeared to be made of brass, with notches and ridges inter-spaced across its burnished surface. It was about two feet long and five inches in diameter. He tried to lift it, but it barely moved, even when he leaned back and pulled hard. “Sure is a lot heavier than it looks.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Karen responded as she crouched down beside him. “I hardly even notice it, usually. It just lies there. It always has. I don’t think it does anything; even Tutor doesn’t know what it’s for.”

  “Confirmed.”

  Richard stroked the slippery surface, deep in thought. He got up with a sigh and went back to the padded recliner in which he had been sitting.

  Gloom seemed to settle over the Moss Room. Outside, another continuous beam of microwave energy began flowing blindly from Citadel, up into the sky, unnoticed by the world, undetected even by Tutor.

  “Karen?” Finally Richard broke the silence. “We’ve got to figure out some things – if we can: Why is Citadel here? Who built it, or brought it here, and how?” He asked, semi-rhetorically. He continued his ruminations with a question he thought Karen might be able to answer: “Can you tell me more about your parents – or your Dad, I guess? What was he doing in Redcliff?”

  “Doing? I don’t remember him doing anything, other than being with me. In fact, I don’t remember very much about Daddy at all, just a few nice things, like the hugs he used to give me, and the presents… little flowers when he came back into Citadel sometimes after being out all day. I remember one day we drove somewhere in our car.”

  “You have a car? I wondered if there was anything in that garage out there!”

  “I haven’t ever opened the padlock – don’t even know where the key is…” She smiled at the memory and her lack of knowledge, or even interest, in the contents of her garage, then she continued with the reminiscence:

  “We walked along the coast and saw birds, rock pools and sea creatures. He put a tiny crab on my hand and it crawled around in circles. I was scared at first, but then it tickled. That’s my favourite memory…” She sounded far away, dreamy.

  Richard realised she was referring to the trip to the seaside, not just the crab, though her recollection made him smile because of her phrasing.

  “Tutor said my parents collected – or, I guess, just borrowed - local artwork: paintings, sculptures, as well as newspapers, magazines, things like that. Even encyclopaedias from the town library would ‘visit’ Citadel briefly. But I don’t understand why.”

  “Ah… Tutor,” Richard began hesitantly, wondering if this fantastic intelligence, this oh-so-personal computer, would deign to answer him. “Why were Karen’s parents here?”

  There was an unbroken silence following this question, until finally Tutor responded.

  “Inconclusive, due to lack of data.”

  “How about a guess?”

  “A guess?” Tutor sounded unsure of Richard’s meaning.

  “Yes, an estimate… extrapolation from known facts, probability… you know what I mean… don’t you?”

  There was another pause, then:

  “The only conclusion that I can provide is from a lack of information. Karen’s father never informed me of the purpose of their mission here… There is no data in the integrated memory system which comprises my reference bank, relating to this subject.” Tutor sounded apologetic.

  “Mission? Sounds like you think they were here for something important.” Richard pounced on the innocent-sounding word, recognising its implications intuitively.

  “They were not the kind of people who would waste their lives on trivia.”

  Richard thought for a moment, realising, with increased confidence in Tutor, that the strange computer foster-parent had greater abilities than he had recognised thus far, or Tutor had admitted to.

  “What about Citadel? What’s it for?” This, to Richard, was the most pressing question, and the answer would, he felt, change his life forever. Does Tutor know? Can he figure it out?

  “The functions of Citadel are compatible with those required for a dwelling unit designed to be self-maintaining and personnel-sustaining for an extended period of time. There is no data available prior to the start-up of my monitoring system.”

  “Daddy made Tutor to look after me, when he found out he was going to die,” Karen whispered, still far away.

  Richard reached for and squeezed Karen’s hand sympathetically; her emotions flooded into his mind and heart, threatening to overwhelm him again. He took a deep breath and attempted to calm down. Breathing slowly out, he finally felt more or less in control once more. “So we don’t have any idea why Citadel is here, how it got here, or when it was delivered – if it wasn’t built here… or if, perhaps, something went wrong,” he mused, trying to think, over and above the sadness ebbing into his mind from Karen’s.

  Once again, silence descended like a thick fog, isolating the inhabitants of the old refuge as if it were a prehistoric ruin on a cloud-capped mountain.

  Several minutes passed, then Tutor’s friendly voice broke the spell.

  “There is a man outside, trying to get in.”

  There was a moment of panicky scrambling, then Karen called out:

  “Visual, please.”

  A large section of mossy wall glowed into life as if a whole chunk of Citadel had been removed. In the centre of the field of view stood a short man wearing a light brown suit. As he looked uncertainly around he ran one hand nervously over his sparse grey hair. He glanced from one turret to the other, and then tapped on the curved wall immediately in front of him. He looked left and right again, and then over at the rickety old garage. His lips moved as he seemed to mutter to himself. Richard felt sure that the words that followed were something to the effect of ‘what kind of stupid trick is this’, although no sound could be heard.

  “Audio please?” Richard suggested questioningly, and was relieved to discover this question at least could be answered. Now they could hear the rustle of leaves and the sound made by the papers in the man’s hands as the documents flapped intermittently in the autumn breeze.

  “That’s Mr. Stranberg, the school Principal,” Karen announced. “I think I’d better go and try to disinterest him.” She got up and moved towards the wall.

  “Wait!” Richard motioned at the screen; Mr. Stranberg had turned around and was calling to someone off the edge of the picture.

  “Officer Wayne, how can this possibly be her home, I can’t find a door, or even a window! This has to be some kind of monument, a solid block of stone, not a dwelling place.”

  “Can you handle two?” Richard groaned.

  “I can try. Tutor, could we have another visual… at the road below Citadel, please,” Karen called from her position near the exit. A second section of wall seemed to dissolve, revealing a view of a police car near the gate at the end of the driveway, with an officer sitting at the wheel. Another policeman was walking up the slope towards the Principal.

  “There’s no other building on this street that even remotely fits the description,” began the perambulatory police officer. “‘Citadel, 29 Daniel Street’, that’s what you said she submitted for the school record, isn’t it? It’s right here on the letter she gave you.” He waved some photocopied documents in front of the Principal’s face. “Town planning records show this has always been an open space, but…” he shrugged.

  “Three would be–,” Richard began doubtfully.

  “I’ll just
try to handle the two, and hope that the other one stays in the car. It will be much more difficult now they are suspicious.” She took a deep breath and disappeared through the wall. Richard turned back to watch as Karen walked around the seaward turret and into the field of view of the first screen.

  “Hello!” she called cheerily to the two men.

  “Hello, Karen,” began Mr. Stranberg, as soon as he recovered from the shock of her sudden appearance from nowhere. “Er, how are you today?”

  “Just fine, thank you,” she replied cheerily.

  “Karen, I have to get your father’s signature on these forms. Regulations, you know.” He glanced uneasily at Citadel. “Is he, er, home today?”

  “He isn’t, I’m afraid.” Karen replied truthfully. “I’m not sure when you could see him.”

  Richard grinned from his secret hideout inside her home, impressed with her honesty and the way her words failed so perfectly to communicate such a terrible truth.

  “You’re on your own then, miss?” Officer Wayne interjected, a note of concern in his voice.

  “Oh no,” Karen replied quickly, “Tutor is with me.”

  “I thought you said he died?” Mr. Stranberg said.

  “No, actually he was just very ill. But he’s fine now,” she added hastily, staring at the Principal with her most reassuring expression. “I might start taking lessons at home again.”

  “The law requires a written request from your parents or guardian to allow that,” the officer explained. “Mr. Stranberg tells me that the civic records didn’t even show that such a request was made to have you excused from the school system; in fact, the records seem to have been mislaid, or some such thing. We don’t even have a copy of your birth certificate, for example.”

  “Would it be from a different State, Karen? Or perhaps abroad?” The Principal gently probed for something solid about this mysterious teenager.

  She grinned. “Oh no, it would have to be from Maine – I was born right here, in our humble little home, actually.” She waved at Citadel with a casualness that would have been ludicrous without her judicious mental tinting of the colour of reality.