Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) (11 page)

But the human side of her nature protested. After a long moment of contemplation, she recalled something about her heritage in that other, maddening existence. As an American woman of Russian descent, Dawn Stroganoff had friends and family members who stood with a patriot named
Sakharov
, during the downfall of a nation – whose name Dawann tried to recollect, to no avail. Yet she did remember something else in the muddle of strange memories; Human Dawn valued dignity and freedom above all else. She would never support a tyrant.

And neither shall I
. Through the window of her bed-nest chamber, He Who Watches stood distant, yet imposing. She studied the massive mountain, determined she would go there today, to see what Eshlish had found.

Dawann reached for the button to summon Tima. It was time to leave the red planet, time to escape from the Keeper’s evil grasp, and then strike out on her own. 

At last, she realized, she would fling aside the silken cords binding her to this life, to gather her courage and meet her fate headlong.

She had to be free, to find her own destiny. 

Dawann nodded with deliberation.
Yes, free
.

Chapter 9

“There’s no use trying,” Alice said: “one
can’t
believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast.”

~Lewis Carroll,
Through
the
Looking-Glass

With the Keeper off-world, Dawann prepared to leave the palace. Without an official entourage, and, with only Tima by her side, she would join Eshlish and Fey for a clandestine look at the subterranean reaches of He Who Watches. 

After a round of tedious morning duties, Dawann at last made her excuses and left the royal court. She hastened to her bed-nest chamber and pulled on her pressure suit, which provided a kind of blessed anonymity. No one, not even the guards, gave her a second glance as she walked through the corridors and then slipped out of the palace. 

As planned, Tima had a taxi cruiser waiting by a service entrance. Dawann took a seat in the taxi, quietly listening as Tima gave instructions to the driver.

Dawann gazed from the window. The wind stirred the atmosphere, and rusty dust now obscured the midday Sun. The taxi sped through the streets of Missloo City, then out to the vast plain bordering the outskirts of town. 

As empty land swept past the cruiser, Dawann felt a mingling of feelings; a deep sadness at the path her life had taken, mixed with a renewed sense of hope at the thought of the Lex clone. She kept her eyes focused on a dust devil, pirouetting like a drunken demon on the horizon, and her thoughts teetered between apprehension and expectation.

Soon, from afar, He Who Watches broke through the haze, a giant volcanic summit of burnt-red stone. The taxi sped on as Dawann scanned the clearing sky. High above, wispy trails of blue ice clouds filled the heavens. 

She leaned toward the window. He Who Watches grew larger, coming into sharper focus, the slant of light showing the effects of wind erosion on its ancient surface. 

The whir of the taxi’s engine cut off. They had arrived. While Tima paid the driver, Dawann continued to stare through the window. Two saurians, whom she assumed were Eshlish and Fey, stood in pressure suits at the bustling site, surrounded by several dozen worker drones and
scattered pieces of heavy equipment. 

Dawann stepped out of the cruiser and walked forward. Tima followed on her heels with slow, heavy steps. Fey and Eshlish turned in unison, exchanged greetings with them, and then, in silence, the group watched as the taxi sped away.

Despite her pressure suit, Dawann felt as exposed and vulnerable as if she were standing naked in the deadly Moozrabian atmosphere. What was going to happen now? Through Eshlish’s efforts, would she finally travel to Shurrr? How soon before she found the Lex clone? How soon before she looked him in the eyes, or spoke to him?

“Your Royal Highness, shall we go inside?” Eshlish’s voice burst through the microphone in Dawann’s helmet. 

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Then please follow me.”

Dawann took her place behind Eshlish and Fey, with Tima bringing up the rear. They negotiated around a curtain of scaffolding to reach a door cut into the rock face.

Cautiously, Dawann studied the immediate area. To her relief, only a few worker drones labored nearby.

Eshlish retrieved a chemlight from one of the outer pockets of her pressure suit, then opened the door. Shining the strong, steady, golden beam on the rubble-strewn floor, she told Dawann, “Rest assured, no one will ever learn you’ve been here.”

With Eshlish in the lead, the group inched through a long, dust-filled hallway. For their safety, small, blue-white temp lights had been placed along the sides of the corridor. A
hiss
suddenly filled her headphones, and Dawann asked, “What is that awful sound?”

Eshlish turned. “My engineers have not found the cause. Perhaps it’s interference from the workings within He Who Watches. We don’t have a definitive answer yet.”

“But, is it possible that eavesdropping devices have been planted here?” Dawann asked in alarm.

“No. My engineers have checked and double-checked. This place is clean. Have no fear.”

Grunting in affirmation, Dawann stumbled slightly and then caught herself. She looked down the corridor and tried to get her bearings. Was it her imagination, or were they gradually moving downhill, deeper and deeper into He Who Watches?

The foursome walked for a time, negotiating around rocks and cracked paving stones. 

Finally, Eshlish halted. “It’s not much farther,” she said, slightly out of breath.

Dawann looked about, not seeing anything unusual. She saw Fey and Tima’s wrinkled brows through their visors. They seemed as puzzled as she.

“Ah, here we are.” Eshlish shone her chemlight at the wall, revealing a telltale mark. 

An “X” had been scratched into the wall. Dawann felt laughter rising from somewhere deep in her mind.
Aha!
she thought.
X marks the spot!
Inadvertently, Eshlish had given their mysterious excursion a distinctively human touch.

They moved forward several paces and reached a bend in the passageway. It was dark ahead. Since there were no blue temp lights from this point onward, Eshlish ordered Dawann, Fey, and Tima to retrieve their chemlights. Gloved hands delved into pockets, then three beacons flicked on. A door stood in the distance. Constructed of metal, it shimmered with all the colors of the spectrum. 

“How interesting,” Fey said as she walked toward the door. “It’s made of pemright, is it not, Eshlish?”

“Pemright?” Dawann asked.

“A synth-metal developed by the Keeper’s kind,” Eshlish explained. “It’s highly impervious to the Moozrabian climate. Some of our architects have started building with it now. Have you seen the new poga stadium?”

“I have. From a distance.” Dawann studied the surface of the door. At its center was etched a clawed, three-fingered handprint. From the length of the fingers and the curve of the claws, it clearly represented an extremity of the Keeper’s species.

Eshlish placed her gloved fingers on the handprint. The synth-metal door immediately swung inward.

With Eshlish in the lead, the others filed over the threshold. They stood for a moment, looking out at a huge chamber, as high and wide as one of the caves found beneath the cliffs of the Great Rift Valley. Eshlish swept her chemlight in an arc through the air, the beam diffusing and barely revealing the furthest wall, which was filled with doors. 

“The wormhole,” Eshlish said as she motioned for them to follow. 

Looking down, Dawann noticed the floor’s amber-colored tiles. They began with a small spiral design that veered off into a long, golden trail, stretching into the distance.

She admired the floor’s beauty before pausing to study the wall of doors. Every twelfth door seemed slightly larger than the preceding eleven.

“There are one hundred forty-four doors in this chamber,” Eshlish said, noting Dawann’s interest. “All were deactivated before we discovered them. Perhaps they were broken, but I think they were deliberately shut down. We were able to activate the first twelve doors after much effort. The first door leads to Xanderoo, to the place where we witnessed the killing of the hunta bird. This morning, we sent more hunta birds through the next eleven doors. All but one has relayed transmissions back to us. Unfortunately, the twelfth door appears to have swallowed our hunta
 bird, so to speak. As I mentioned yesterday, I believe that door could lead to the past or the future,” Eshlish explained. “It may have been used for travel to other places, distant places.” Her light fell on a row of plastine pressure-cages, each filled with a radio-collared hunta bird being readied for another round of tests. “If the bird sent through the twelfth door survived, it is somewhere beyond the reach of our receiver. It may be in another time period.”

Or in another universe?
Dawann wondered.

Tima and Fey walked alongside Eshlish, but Dawann held back, staring at the twelfth door. As she studied its metallic surface, she recalled a human tale about a place called
Wonderland.

Now, the notion of traveling through the wormhole appealed to her more than ever. It took every bit of her willpower to keep from pushing on the twelfth door’s shimmering veneer, from stepping, like Alice, through the looking glass.

But I cannot go
, she thought.
Not yet
. 

Despite her resolve, Dawann watched the twelfth door with a renewed sense of longing, but then forced her gaze onward. With a start, she realized she had fallen behind her companions. She could barely make out their lights in the gloom of the immense chamber, could barely hear their comments because of the hissing sound in her helmet’s headphones.

Eshlish’s voice cut above the noise. “Come, Your Highness,” she said, turning around. “You must stay with us, or you could get lost.”

Dawann hurried forward as the group moved toward the entrance of a tunnel. She followed the others inside. The tunnel was not long, and, within a few moments, they entered another cavernous chamber, the floor also paved with a trail of golden tiles.

She looked beyond Eshlish’s beckoning form. The paleoarchitect shined her light on something tall and wide, a gleaming, golden-brown curtain. Dawann walked on, studying it. What had Eshlish found? It looked like a wall made of frost-laden panes of topaz glass.

A disarming thought came to Dawann then, rushing to mind: was she finally going to solve the mystery of her past life? The image of an ancient, dust-filled room flooded her senses, a place somewhere nearby, perhaps just beyond the glass partition. Did it hold some kind of mind-reading equipment? Had she been there before as Dawn Stroganoff? Was that where the Keeper had downloaded her thoughts and stolen her soul?

Dawann moved toward the sparkling curtain, while Eshlish opened the door to an airlock. Through an open doorway, Dawann saw the room beyond, and a crypt made of red stone. She recalled something from history. This must be the spot where the first saurian astronauts had found the Keeper! 

But the Keeper’s stasis-vault did not hold her attention for long; instead, her gaze was captured by something on the opposite wall, a fantastic black void shaped like a half-moon. She remembered an old saurian myth. The void resembled the legendary Ish-pacal Gateway, the portal to She-Goddess Heaven.

By now, Tima and Fey also gaped at the dark passageway.

“I know,” Eshlish said, studying their awestruck expressions. “But it is not the Ish-pacal. It simply opens to a slick-shaft. I accidentally activated it when we were restoring the Keeper’s stasis-vault. The shaft ends in a room located far below this chamber. The other day I sent a drone down there with a recorder. The transmission was exciting. There is a monolith in the hidden room. I have not yet ascertained its exact function.”

“It is the thing that reads minds and captures souls,” Dawann interjected. “I have been there. I once traveled down that very slick-shaft to the hidden room.”

Tima looked unconvinced. “Are you certain, my dear? I know I told you about the soul-catching machine beneath the Keeper’s palace, but––”

“There is one here, also, and, as I just said, I have used that one.”

“As Human Dawn?” Fey asked.

“Yes,” Dawann said. The void suddenly started to hum and quiver. “I want to go down there, to see it.”

“Please, Your Highness, no,” Eshlish protested. “The passageway is too unstable. Sometimes it disappears for a moment or two. The other day, it was gone for the entire morning. I’ve ordered my engineers to stabilize it, if they can.”

“I take full responsibility for my actions.” Dawann heard a chorus of dissent as she hurried toward the gateway, but she ignored her companions. The uncertainty she’d known for the past few weeks had disappeared. In its place, feelings of hope and expectation rose, and she felt a surge of power. 

“I cannot delay,” Dawann went on, “not while the Keeper is off-world. I must know what happened to Human Dawn. The soul-catcher will give me the answers.”

She thrust her chemlight into the pocket of her pressure suit and took a running leap into the void. Immediately, she felt the nano-surface of the slick-shaft grab hold of her body. In a heartbeat, her friends’ protests faded away, and she found herself sliding down, down, down into the darkness.

Soon, Dawann felt the nano-surface lessen its grip, felt her momentum slow, then stop. She retrieved her chemlight, flicked it on, and stared. She was curled up at the end of the slick-shaft, a darkened room before her. She scooted forward, directing the beam of light into the room, sweeping it back and forth until it hit a monolith and nano-chair. 

Dawann held the beam on the monolith as she swung her legs around and jumped to the floor. “I do remember this place,” she said to herself.

A harsh, white light instantly flooded the room.

In response, the nictating membranes rolled over Dawann’s eyeballs. She stood motionless until she adjusted to the glare. Blinking hard, she forced her membranes up, turned off her chemlight, and then recalled something about the air in here. Hadn’t Human Dawn been able to breathe without a pressure suit?