They walked straight toward her. ‘Mo frod Hay-den han scapu srend,’ Kel unhesitatingly informed the woman in Kuhlian and Hayden couldn’t understand a word of what she said except his name but just at that moment had the feeling of déjà vu again.
‘Ye frod?’ The graceful receptionist asked Kel as she carefully tipped a pen in Hayden’s direction.
‘Mo frod,’ Kel answered as she too glanced at him.
‘Ye frod?’ The receptionist asked again looking distracted and Kel was quickly getting annoyed.
‘Ye frod. Srend es scapu,’ the receptionist repeated still looking at Hayden.
‘Mo frod Hay-den han scapu srend. Scapu srend es cauterium,’ Kel enunciated and the receptionist looked almost jealously at her.
Hayden tried to understand or at least look like he understood as they talked. It was no use. He just sort of stared through the woman as she spoke but strangely it did all sound familiar to him and he didn’t even notice that she was looking at him strangely.
When she’d finished Kel told him that the receptionist had called for an escort and that they were to wait at the far end of the foyer. They followed her direction and sat on a long wooden bench covered in gold and brown cushions beneath the largest of the cloud paintings and waited. Kel looked back at her and saw that she was still looking at Hayden. ‘What did you tell her?’ He asked, not able to shake his déjà vu.
‘I said you were my friend with burned shoulder.’
‘Scapu,’ Hayden remembered one of the words she’d used. ‘Does it mean shoulder on this world?’ And he rubbed his.
‘Yes,’ Kel smiled. ‘You do understand Kuhlian.’
‘No. I understand Latin.’
‘Lat-en?’
‘Lat-in,’ Hayden corrected. ‘Scapula is the scientific name for the shoulder blade, derived from an ancient language on Earth - well ancient for us.’
Twisting as best he could, he moved his right hand over his bad shoulder and pointed down to his back. ‘Scapu, scapula. Scapula, scapu. Get it?’ Kel nodded as she thought she might know what he was on about.
Hayden had a thought. ‘Kel?’ it was the first time he’d addressed her by name and by the look on her face, she was surprisingly delighted to hear it from him. ‘How many days in a Kuhlian year? How long does it take Kuhl-Agev to orbit its sun?’
‘Five hundred and forty four.’
‘Five hundred and forty four!’ he marveled. ‘Wow, we are a long way from the Kuhlian sun?’
‘Kuhl-Agev has three suns. Rol is biggest then smaller is Mem then smallest Tagra. We are not too far from them.’
Rol, Mem and Tagra. The names seemed a mysterious memory. ‘A year here is calculated by how long it takes to orbit those suns, right?’
‘Yes,’ Kel answered, again a little struck by how this Earthling was so interested in everything about everything yet seemed to know nothing of anything.
Hayden worked the figures. ‘So here we have long orbits and therefore one year takes one hundred and seventy nine days longer than when my Earth orbits my sun.’
‘Only one?’ Kel asked.
‘Yeah, but it’s a really big one and it’s pretty far from us.’ He got back to his calculation. ‘So we are talking of a Kuhl-Agev year being equal to almost one point five Earth years. That adds quite significantly to the time line and means for every one thousand years here, it’d almost be one thousand five hundred on Earth!’
He pondered the prospect that Kuhlians had potentially been speaking a language with words similar to Latin or a Latin based language for a thousand or so years longer than on Earth. ‘Is a Kuhlian day divided into twenty four hours?’ Hayden asked then pointed his hand upward then made an arc as if following the suns orbit around Kuhl-Agev.
Kel shook her head. ‘Thirty marks to full rotation.’
‘Wow. That’s long.’
‘Wow?’ Kel asked and Hayden again explained that it was an expression that meant very interesting in an abnormal way.
He would listen even more carefully to the language.
As soon as he’d thought that, two sturdy male Kuhlians came out from a lift and summoned Hayden with overt arm gestures.
He was quite glad as he was hoping that there’d be no more stairs for a while. Standing up, he walked to them while Kel stayed behind.
‘You’re not coming?’
‘You alone,’ she answered softly.
Hayden nodded and reluctantly followed the orderlies into the elevator but as the doors closed he saw Kel go outside, he assumed, to wait for the mechan and he sighed.
He was in a small elevator with two Kuhlians, members of another race on another planet and he couldn’t even make real conversation. ‘Mater,’ he said softly. The Latin word for mother but it elicited no response. ‘Pater,’ he added a little more audibly the word for father. He wasn’t sure if the glances he received from both were because he was calling them mother and father and they wouldn’t let on that they understood or they thought he was weird for thinking that they were his parents or even because they found it odd that this alien was blurting incoherent sounds to them.
He was quite sure that it was more likely the latter, not that he could tell from the stone-faced pair.
Soon enough the lift doors opened. They’d reached the tenth floor. Hayden had counted the lit symbols as they rose on the display above the door. His escorts motioned for him to step from the lift.
The view again was fantastic. Large oblong windows with rounded edges ran from floor to ceiling at the end of the spacious room making the city almost look as if it was inside with them or they were outside with it. The orderlies directed him to sit on another very large and comfortable sofa. As Hayden turned to thank them, they’d quickly and quietly returned to the elevator and he just caught a glimpse of them as the doors closed. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he called out to no response.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d waited. He was near to nodding off to sleep when another Kuhlian appeared from a narrow door. He wasn’t as tall as the other two but he was much thinner.
Thick mousy brown, straight, shiny shoulder length hair rested atop a type of jacket-cape that was pristine white with thin golden piping down the inside of the lapel and to the base of the garment making him look very distinguished.
A doctor?
This new Kuhlian helped Hayden up by his good shoulder, led him down a small corridor without a word in any language and into a small dimly lit room. The room was filled with what looked, as far as he could tell, like scuba equipment.
A mask and a regulator type device sat on a small bench and the Kuhlian silently directed Hayden to put them on which he did only after the Kuhlian ‘doctor’ had disappeared behind a thin green curtain. Hayden put the regulator device on first, which seemed a little big for his face and draped the long breathing tubes one over his good shoulder and the other carefully under the bad. The mask fit perfectly and he was reminded of the snorkeling holidays he’d taken with his family when they travelled to the coast near to Armadale. He remembered once that Monty had speared his first fish, a small leatherjacket, and had excitedly stood up onto a barely submerged reef and to Hayden and his mother and uncle being at water level and a hundred metres away, it looked as if he were walking on water. He smiled at the memory.
He disrobed to his underwear, called out a muffled, ‘ready,’ then waited nervously.
After a few moments the Kuhlian appeared and opened a transparent trap door in the wall then placed Hayden’s clothes within it. A whooshing sound ensued and his garments disappeared. The tall man then directed him into another room but as Hayden started to move the man grabbed his own wrist in reference to Hayden’s and shook his head. Very reluctantly, Hayden removed his watch and handed it over. As his arm was outstretched to pass it, he noticed that his wrist, exactly where the watch had been, was a bit itchy so he retracted it and rubbed it eagerly. The Kuhlian led Hayden into the other room that was completely dark and quiet and he began to fee
l uneasy. He heard a click then from the middle of the room came a luminous green glow and he was surprised as it grew brighter and brighter until he could plainly see what caused it. A large transparent cylindrical tank, three metres high and a little bit wider he reckoned.
So this is the medi-bath, he thought.
It was filled with what looked like green gel Hayden judged by its behaviour. Small bubbles moved slowly around inside like a whirlpool in slow motion. He looked across at the Kuhlian who like the rest of the room was bathed in the same green. He pushed his chin out to let Hayden know to climb the ladder attached to the tank.
‘What about this?’ The earthling questioned in a muffled voice, pointing to his shoulder and referring to the dirty bandage. The man just stood there and jutted his chin forward again.
Hayden disconcertedly walked toward the large green bath.
Two short pipes on a brassy ball lowering from the darkened ceiling above the tank as he climbed the rungs of the wooden ladder that was curved over the tank. As he did so, he was trying in vain to work out just what the liquid could contain as whatever it was, he knew he would be in it soon.
When he’d reached the top, the Kuhlian was there too, having accessed the opposite end of the ladder and was standing next to the now descended device. He pointed at Hayden’s regulator tubes then at the pipes and smiled a quite pleasant smile when he realised the Earthling understood. Across the top, the ladder structure spanned the diameter of the tank so it formed a bridge with the rungs in the centre spaced in such a way that it was clear to Hayden that he would have to lower himself down through them and into the green goo. He moved out cautiously onto the structure and after the Kuhlian attached the hoses to the breathing device he saw him point downward. Hayden looked unsurely into the heaving greenness below and knowing he had to, began to lower himself, positioning his legs as carefully as possible under his body. It felt as if he were back at some weird school during recess and about to play on the monkey-bars. When almost in a seated position, he tried to complete the difficult process of bringing his other leg around and keep the two long tubes out of the way without the proper use of half his upper body strength, but he slipped, falling ungracefully into the cool jelly below.
Breathing rapidly for the first few seconds he calmed into an almost dazed wonderment when several images of himself appeared before his eyes. Shiny, green tinted reflections in large bubbles that spiraled lazily upward. Like he was inside a giant lava lamp. His unease dissipated and his breathing relaxed.
His shoulder felt strange so he glanced at it and the glance became a stare, for he was shocked to see that the bandage had almost fully dissolved and the deep burn inflicted by the Sepian blaster had, he was quite sure, begun to fade.
Weightless as if floating in one of his dreams, he thought that perhaps the images he’d had of the green light emanating from the ocean signified this tank perhaps. Remembering his dreams, he found his train of thought heading in the direction of his mother and his uncle again then to his supposed royal bloodline and to Maddy and Monty and Kel and that goliath of steel that accompanied them. He then thought of Captain Baden and his Copernicus and what he’d said about wormholes and his conversation about alternate universes. Hayden pondered further as he approached the twilight of reverie. Perhaps when you dream, he thought -you slip into the life of one of your almost perfect other-selves? You leak into your alternate existence. What if all was just a dream and each world was the dreams of another? Does Earth still exist or is it yet to exist as I know it? How far, how many billions of light years am I from home and can I ever get back?
Hayden had fallen into a meditative state for a time period indefinable and felt in complete neutrality of anything. He knew he was there but he wasn’t and he drifted off or remained in a very deep sleep.
*
Hayden’s eyelids opened slowly in the bright greenness as a T-shaped handlebar in front of his face jigged like a lure trying to catch a fish. He grabbed it tightly as a strap automatically clamped from it around his wrists and he began to slowly ascend. Another amazing property of the semi-liquid he discovered, was that when he was extracted, he was completely dry. He watched the green stuff beneath him as he was swung away and then down alongside of the tank. The thick substance didn’t even ripple. It was if it had served its purpose then entered into stasis. The Kuhlian dashed around and immediately inspected his patient’s shoulder. There was not a single trace of damage and Hayden was almost speechless.
‘What is that stuff? ’ He asked nasally through the still attached mask. The Kuhlian nodded then bowed in a not so overtly but similar way the others had done in Jagged Peak and on The Copernicus. When satisfied with Hayden’s healing the Kuhlian slowly removed the mask then the regulator and placed them on another small table. He then disappeared for a moment and on his return, held Hayden’s neatly folded and vibrantly cleaned clothes.
The alien placed them in the first room then led his patient toward them and bowing again as he retreated, waited outside.
Dressing quickly, Hayden savored the feel of the soft and slightly warm ever-so-clean fabric and when done, marched confidently and amazingly painlessly out into the foyer.
The Kuhlian was talking to the two others who had brought him up from the entrance foyer and when he approached them they all went silent, almost as if they were scared of him. The taller of the two smiled at Hayden nervously and ushered him to follow.
They took the same elevator back down to the ground floor all the while in as uncomfortable a silence as on the way up though this time, other than feeling more comfortable, Hayden sensed there was something more.
Kel was waiting for him by the large reception desk and Hayden was surprised to see that it was completely dark outside. She ran up to him and hugged him then pulled away quickly with embarrassment ‘It’s dark outside?’ Hayden queried.
‘Your shoulder?’
Hayden shrugged then rotated his left arm. ‘Seems perfectly fine - how is that even possible? I feel better than before and my right hand doesn’t hurt either.’
‘What happened to your hand?’ Kel asked concernedly.
‘An Earth injury,’ was all Hayden revealed not wanting to think of Scott Worcester and his goons let alone try to explain them - if he even could. He wondered at the dark outside.
‘How long was I in that thing?’
‘About seven marks.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
Kel met him with a vacant stare.
‘Another expression from my home,’ he quipped.
‘For the total repair of your shoulder, that is a short time for such healing.’
Hayden thought about that for a moment then prodded his shoulder hard through his newly cleaned top as if to solicit some pain but there was none. It was truly healed. No bandage, and most importantly, no pain with full movement. He hadn’t realised just how much it had hurt until that very moment. ‘What was in that tank?’
‘Proteins and nutrients.’ Kel answered in her usual seemingly uninterested way. Hayden’s curiosity was piqued again.
‘What sorts of proteins and nutrients could heal a burn like that - and heal them so fast? ’
Kel, watching the mechan standing sentry outside in the courtyard shook her head and told Hayden that she didn’t know exactly what the makeup of the tank mixture was but knew that it was more powerful than just being able to heal a wound such as the one Hayden had had. Kel even said she’d heard of it remaking entire limbs.
‘Growing limbs back! That’s impossible, isn’t it?’
Kel tapped his perfectly healed shoulder playfully and Hayden believed her. It was true. He had, unsurprisingly, never experienced anything like what had happened to him in the last few days. He would just have to accept that he would see things that up until very recently he would have thought to be impossible. ‘Then it’s a miracle of balneology.’ Kel again offered the blank stare that Hayden was fast getting used to. ‘It means to cure someth
ing with a bath.’
Kel didn’t respond but her bright eyes twinkled with fascination at his odd sayings and doings. ‘Hungry?’ she asked.
Hayden responded by making a face as though he would disappear into nothing if food was not fed to him immediately.
Arching her thin eyebrows, Kel smiled at his expression as she too was very hungry. She’d grabbed something to eat while he was in the medi-bath but needed more. ‘There are food places near here,’ she said happily. ‘Good foods. They should still be in trade.’
Hayden was eager for her to lead the way but after the bath didn’t feel quite as hungry as he was when they’d first landed. Probably all the proteins.
Outside the med-building the mechan, facing the road, rotated its huge head around to watch the two as they approached.
‘He’s been very vigilant then.’ Hayden observed.
Kel smiled. ‘Yes. I think he has missed you.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’ Kel responded in as deadpan a tone as he’d yet heard from her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rounding a bend Hayden saw a small square filled with quaint kiosks and neatly divided eating areas. He stopped, as did Kel, as did the mechan behind them. ‘What is this place?’
‘It is Wadum square.’
‘Wadum.’ Hayden repeated stepping forward, letting the welcome but strange smells of the alien food permeate his nostrils sending him into a pseudo trance like state. He felt hungrier than he’d ever been - ever.
The food places as Kel called them consisted of a series of small open kitchens with large canvas awnings annexed over several long bench seats bordered by thick vine like ropes threaded through decoratively carved wooden bollards. All were filled with Kuhlians and from what Hayden could tell, some other humanoid types happily eating and drinking and talking.
Hayden and their mechanical friend followed Kel to one of the establishments that was situated in the middle of the left hand side of the square. He watched her closely as she ordered food and drink. He listened to her fluent Kuhlian as the owner of the place nodded and waved his hands about as he seemed to be describing that the food he served was better than all the others combined. After he had finished his spiel, they went to sit at one of the only empty tables. Suddenly the owner started to flick his hand back as if he were shooing something away. Hayden realised he was gesturing toward the mechan.
The Blake Equation- Discovery Page 17
