Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  Amber jumped to her feet.

  “Relax! Nothing’s going to bite you, unless Smoke is getting hungry,” he joked, as he patted her dog on the head again. “Act like a tourist. That castle-thing has been here for years and nobody even noticed it existed until a couple of days ago. You’ll be fine.”

  “Can… can I touch it?” Amber rubbed Smoke’s ears fondly.

  “Yes, but… be cool?” He tried to sound current.

  She laughed and started to walk off. “Uncle Ed, you’re great! If I do a good job, will I get to work for you all the time?”

  “I’d like that!” Ed laughed.

  As she walked away with Smoke on his leash beside her, trotting happily along, Ed watched silently, his face suddenly grim. I suppose I’m taking a big chance with Amber, but where else would I locate a believable youth with an innocent reason half as good as Amber’s to approach this structure? And no one’s even noticed this Citadel before, and in all the who-knows-how-many-years it’s been here, there’s been no indication of danger up to this point – at least, not to anyone on the ground!

  Amber stopped, bent down and talked to Smoke for a minute. She turned, waved and started on up the road again.

  Ed waved back and waited until she had moved on around the bend and out of sight, then he got the flat screen portable display from its concealed location in the bushes and put it on the bench beside him. Switching it on, he waited impatiently until he was rewarded with a rather jerky view of the road ahead of Amber. If, by any chance, these Aliens are really bad, it’s probably better for her to die quickly now, rather than to suffer, maybe for years, as they conquer our planet. He wondered, silently and grimly, what he would tell his sister in that event, or if things would move so quickly then that he would never get the opportunity to explain, before they were all killed.

  ***

  Richard gradually drifted out of sleep. He found himself staring up at stars blazing far more brightly than the full moon. A slight movement beside him made him glance over. Karen was still asleep, her hair draped over her shoulders like finest unwoven silk. She lay facing him, her face relaxed, just a hint of colour on her nose and cheeks from her exposure to the sun the previous day. Without any conscious effort on his part, Richard found himself leaning closer; as he did so he was startled by a couple of beeps from right behind him. He turned to try to discover what had made the sound, but there was nothing there. Reluctantly, he got up, moving carefully and slowly, so as not to wake Karen.

  After a moment’s thought, he concluded that the beeps were an indication that Tutor was watching him, trying to look after Karen in accordance with her father’s directions. Checking his wristwatch, Richard found that it was already after ten in the morning; he had slept right through the night!

  “Tutor,” he whispered, “I’ve got to show my aunt that I’m OK; she’ll be worried. She might even phone the police. It’s just up the street a little ways. I’ll go and see her, and come back in an hour or two. Tell Karen where I am if she wakes up before I get back.” He walked towards the exit.

  “STOP!” Tutor said loudly.

  “Quiet!” Richard hissed. “She’s had a tough time lately.”

  “The volume is irrelevant; I have isolated Karen from the audio in the room – she will not hear a thing, unless she sits up,” Tutor explained, as Richard gestured in annoyance. “You must not leave. Citadel is being monitored. You would likely be taken captive as soon as you reached the road.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look.” Tutor activated several viewscreens.

  Richard looked carefully, then shrugged, puzzled. “There’s nothing there except an old moving truck and some mail distribution boxes. What’s that supposed to prove?”

  “Citadel was hit by laser light last night; also ultrasonic, infrared and ultraviolet probes were used. The scanning came from that truck and those ‘mail boxes’. Mail boxes that must have arrived when the truck did, for neither were here yesterday. The tests began soon after you both fell asleep.”

  “Hardly standard moving equipment,” Richard muttered. “And that is a heck of a lot of mail boxes for a little street like this.” He did some quick thinking. “How long did you say that stuff has been out there?”

  “It must have arrived sometime during the period when we were reviewing the ship’s log. More precise information is not available; I only detected it when the scanning began, after the two of you fell asleep. There have also been a lot of people walking up and down Daniel Street, much more than usual. None of these people have ever been observed here before.”

  “And you conclude that I would be prevented from returning if I left the safety of Citadel?”

  “The tests they performed would have told them very little about Citadel, except that it could not possibly have been constructed by any civilization on this planet.”

  “Scary.” Richard ran his hand over his head, finding that the hair was sticking up on one side.

  “They could not fail to see you as soon as you exited. Karen needs you. This was the best night’s sleep that she has obtained in years.” Tutor paused for a moment. “Sheldrif programmed me to protect her and teach her. When she used her mind power against Mr. Stranberg and the police officer, you were the one who aided her. It was not much, but it was more than I could achieve.”

  Richard sat down against the wall (the mossy floor came up to meet him), stunned by this revelation. No! It’s impossible! I don’t have the ability! Not like Karen… Or do I?

  “During the play-back last night,” Tutor continued hurriedly, as if trying to tell Richard as much as possible before Karen woke up. “I was unable to help Karen come to terms with the truth about her parents. You comforted her and supported her. You gave her hope for the future. Analysis of the present situation indicates that Citadel’s security will probably be significantly impaired, with all that entails for the future of this planet and its inhabitants. And for Karen. Without you, I can compute no action that can prevent this.”

  Richard, sprawled on the recliner that had risen to support him, leaned a hand against the mossy wall, his mind racing, while he pondered this latest bit of information. He glanced over at Karen, to find that she was still asleep.

  “You skipped some of the sequences from the play-back last night, didn’t you?” Richard guessed wildly.

  “I tried to let her know what happened without causing her unnecessary pain,” admitted Tutor. “You will not tell her?”

  “Of course not!” Richard was indignant at the idea. “I think I – but you probably already figured that out,” he finished lamely, deciding not to reveal, or more precisely, give voice to, his feelings any further, as he was not sure whether Tutor would understand or approve of them.

  There was silence for several minutes. Richard tried to figure out some solution to their problem. He was about to suggest that he could phone his aunt, when Karen’s mentor broke the silence once more.

  “There is a dog approaching Citadel,” Tutor announced, adjusting one of the viewscreens to give a clearer view of the grassy slope down to the fence at the edge of the road.

  Richard jumped back up and looked at the scene outside. “What? Looks like a stray… no, it’s a runaway! It’s dragging its leash behind it. Yes… there’s a girl coming up the street, trying to catch up! Tutor, could the dog activate the entrance?” The dog trotted past the garage and started towards the bushes.

  “Proximity is the only requirement. The disinterest effect worked on animals, too.”

  “Can you find some way to switch off the door?”

  “Affirmative,” he admitted after a momentary delay. “That function was released to my control when you inadvertently accessed the ‘Category Five’ command override last night.”

  “Then do it,” Richard urged, as the large, black and white dog started sniffing around the bushes behind Citadel.

  “Entrance deactivated,” Tutor announced.

  “Whew! Now, if we could
figure out how to fly Citadel, we could probably disappear straight up into space before they could do anything to stop us. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the people out there or anything.”

  Karen sighed, sat up, and stretched. She yawned as she reached for the silver ring at the nape of her neck. It shimmered for an instant and came away in her hand, releasing her hair. She shook her head slowly, and long platinum waves cascaded about like Niagara Falls. Looking over at Richard, she smiled dreamily at him.

  “People… did someone say something about people outside?”

  “The ones that sent that dog to find the entrance,” Richard replied, watching for her reaction.

  Karen opened her mouth to speak, then shut it quickly. Finally she said:

  “You figured out how to seal the door.”

  “It seemed the appropriate thing to do.” Richard laughed.

  “Just like staying here all night?” she looked up at him intently, absentmindedly balancing the hair restraint, which had mysteriously reformed into a silvery rod about ten centimetres long, across one outstretched finger. “Isn’t that considered inappropriate?”

  “That was Tutor’s idea,” he protested. “And anyway, this isn’t Victorian England, nobody minds nowadays.”

  “But you don’t think like them,” she continued to look at him, obviously connected, mind-to-mind with him, though they were not physically in contact, then she blushed. “You don’t want to just…”

  “You’re more to me than that.” He crouched down beside her, his face red, too, and returned her gaze on the same level. “We have gotten to know each other very well, thanks to your mind-sharing abilities, very much faster than most people do, but in some ways we are still strangers. I don’t want to take advantage of you; I would lose your respect, and my own.”

  We were never strangers, we two, Karen disagreed silently. Even when we had not yet met.

  “So you stayed because of Tutor?”

  “And because you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’ve been alone for most of my life.” The rod fell off her outstretched finger and disappeared silently into the floor.

  “That’s even more reason for it never to happen again,” he whispered.

  “So you stayed for Tutor and for me. What about you? You didn’t seem to have any objections to staying,” Karen recalled as she raised herself up on her knees and touched his hands briefly before running her fingers up his arms and resting them lightly on his shoulders, her face glowing with happiness.

  “No more than you did, really,” was his reply. He slipped his arms around her waist.

  “I had the most wonderful dream…” Karen sighed, tilting her head back slightly.

  Richard pulled her closer and…

  “Excuse me,” Tutor interrupted, “but aren’t you two forgetting the people outside?”

  Richard and Karen laughed, and then just hugged each other.

  “I guess we did forget,” Karen admitted.

  Richard helped her to her feet and then stepped back a little; he looked down at her innocent face, holding her by her shoulder with one hand, the other stroking her cheek, and concentrating hard.

  “There’s no fear in your thoughts today,” he murmured. He did not voice what had replaced it, but it seemed to cause his heart to beat faster, somehow.

  “Thanks to you. …and Tutor,” she added hastily.

  “That girl is coming up to Citadel, now,” Tutor announced.

  Looking at the viewscreens, Richard and Karen saw a teenage girl in jeans and a ski-jacket climb over the gate and run up the grassy slope towards Citadel.

  “Audio, please,” Karen requested.

  “Here, Blackie. Here boy.” The girl walked around Citadel after the dog, which never quite seemed to let her get close enough to catch it.

  They watched in silence for a while, and then Richard remarked: “That’s a very well-trained dog. I bet his name is not Blackie.”

  “Yes, her thoughts give that away! It is a bit of a surprise, having someone snooping around here,” Karen admitted. “What’s that funny thing hidden at the top of her coat, just under her chin?”

  “Video viewer/transmitter,” Tutor pronounced decisively and succinctly, after a few moments’ analysis.

  “Tutor, what can they determine from the pictures the girl is getting?” As Richard spoke, the dog barked and ran up to the girl, knocking her sideways so that she fell against Citadel’s wall.

  “Now she knows it feels hard and cold,” Karen commented.

  “The school principal found that out when he came to see your Dad.” Richard reminded her.

  “I conclude that no significant additional information will be added to the facts they discovered by their surveillance last night,” Tutor stated finally.

  “Then I’m going to have a bath,” Karen announced apologetically, stretching. “I can’t think like this,” she indicated her crumpled clothes with distaste and walked off towards the seaward end of the room.

  Richard chuckled to himself.

  “Is there somewhere I can freshen up?” he called out, realising suddenly how much he needed to relieve himself.

  “Try the other end.”

  Oh, yes! Richard realized that Karen had given him that information during the mind transfer, but he had not thought to access it, so it had sat in the back of his mind like a favourite forgotten dairy dessert hidden behind the more mundane milk cartons in the family refrigerator.

  Karen waved back at him, and then shimmered through the end wall, out of sight.

  “Ah, Tutor. Let me know if anything urgent happens while I’m washing, okay?” Richard walked to the opposite end of the Moss Room, past the mysterious brass-like cylinder, and fizzled through. He found himself in a smaller room equipped with a pool about twelve feet across, mounted flush with the floor. Steam floated up from the water and the air smelled like a sauna. Looking around he could see no other facilities, but then he recalled the ‘Karen memory’ that indicated nothing else was needed. This was baffling, but, with no other option, Richard took off his clothes and, after testing the water cautiously with his toe, jumped in. The water felt deliciously warm, and he swam around, enjoying the sensation of heat.

  He gasped as the water suddenly went very cold; he scrambled out, shivering, and looked around for a towel. Annoyance built as he could not find one, but dissipated as he realized that he was no longer cold or wet, and that he was now dressed in a blue-grey jump suit, complete with boots and belt. His old clothes were no longer on the floor where he had left them, but his wallet was in his back pocket, where he usually kept it. He ran his fingers through his hair to find that it was dry, too. He felt totally refreshed and clean; his stubble was no more, and even his desire to relieve himself was gone. So, shrugging to himself, he stepped back into the Moss Room.

  I guess I should have remembered the default settings and changed them to suit my own tastes. Or, maybe I could get to like it like that... He grinned wryly to himself, recalling the invigorating temperature change. He fingered the belt, pulling it away from his waist easily, and found that it was not exactly elasticized, as he had thought the first day at school, when he had seen Karen wearing one, but it did seem to adjust somehow as he breathed in and out, exaggeratedly.

  “Not bad,” Karen remarked from a couch-like protrusion on the wall by Tutor’s console. She was dressed in an outfit similar to the ones she had worn previously, but this one was better fitting than any he had seen her in, and entirely black.

  To show respect for her parents, Richard deduced with a flash of inspiration as he sat beside her. “Any change outside?”

  “No, not really.” Tutor responded. “The girl caught the dog after a while and walked off down the hill.”

  “Anything interesting on the audio?” Richard hazarded a guess.

  “As she climbed over the gate, she whispered quite loudly: ‘Come on, Smoke! Jump!’” Karen said, with amusement evident in her voice. “And he did!”
<
br />   Richard chuckled.

  “Well, let’s leave here before they try something else,” Karen suggested, leaning a little towards Richard and taking his hand.

  “Good idea! Tutor, how do we get into the room where the Commander had that argument with Karen’s parents? What was it called again?”

  “It is called the Control Centre. The Commander programmed it so that only he could access it.”

  “But the ‘Total Emergency Category Five’ thing overrides that, right?” Richard asked, after the merest hint of hesitation.

  “No.”

  “That’s awkward,” Richard muttered finally.

  “I had no record that the room even existed until we reviewed the ship’s log. Access is still restricted. The only things I can now do that were not possible before are: display those records we saw last night, and; access the security controls for the exit.”

  Richard and Karen were both stunned. Finally, after a long silence, Karen stood up and started to pace around, speaking slowly, as if each word were part of a tapestry she had to join together with stitches before she could continue:

  “How... did... the... Commander... access... the... ‘Control Centre’?”

  “He vocalized his request,” Tutor answered quickly.

  “Tutor, search through the records and find the following words, spoken by the Commander, and string them together.” Karen recited a series of words.

  “Ready.”

  “Run the entire string,” she urged. The Commander’s voice filled the room, sounding strangely oriental, as the words had been selected from many different log entries, and the tone did not flow in the manner of normal conversational speech:

  “Admit - all - personnel - to - the - Control - Centre - immediately.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When one slave confides in another, the dominated become conspirators – Shoonan saying