Summerhill (4 page)

“Mr. Summerhill, that’s the middle of nowhere out there—the
actual
middle of nowhere. How could you possibly have gotten there?”

“I walked.”

The young woman leveled her eyes at the dog. “You what?”

“I walked,” he repeated. “I got to the very edge of the World of the Pale Gray Sky—that’s where I was told by possibly-me I had to find you—and I just kept walking until I, well, until I wasn’t anywhere, I guess.”

Even if Katherine was struggling to believe what Summerhill was saying, she’d forgotten, at least momentarily, about calling Security. “Crossing the boundaries between dimensions takes a phenomenal amount of energy,” she explained. “Something like the reality jump drive of this ship. You can’t just
walk
out of the world, Mr. Summerhill.”

“Look, who’s telling this story, me or you?” Summerhill didn’t quite snap the words, but he nearly did. Questioning his own reality was harrowing enough; having someone else do it was starting to wear him thin. “And yes, I know that I’m a stowaway and I’m crashing a shindig for a bunch of people who are more famous and important than me, but like I said, I’m kind of on the run and I think I need your help and so it would be really great if we could just both be on the same page, here.”

In the wake of that sudden outburst, Katherine was just wide-eyed and silent. “I am sorry, Mr. Summerhill,” she said. “But I’m afraid that I’m going to need more to go on than just ‘I think I sent myself to find you’ and an unbelievable story.” She reached up for her earpiece, but before she touched it, she added, “And after years of working aboard this ship, I never thought I’d run into something I didn’t believe again.”

Summerhill stepped in closer to Katherine. “Please,” he said. “I know how it sounds, I really do, but—”

He had been so fixated on the communication earpiece that he hadn’t noticed Katherine’s other hand move to her hip. She moved in a flash, her hand coming up before Summerhill could react. In her grip was a small device, and while the dog was still trying to figure out what the sleek, elegant piece of electronics was, it fired a pale blue-white beam that struck him square in the chest.

Summerhill braced himself for a searing pain that never came. Instead, he found himself completely immobile, though still fully aware. His eyes were stuck open, and he was treated to the sight of Katherine, flustered and anxious, speaking to Security via her earpiece, her weapon still in hand. A loud, low buzzing in Summerhill’s ears prevented him from hearing exactly what she was saying, but the look on her face was one of apology as she stared back into his face the entire time.

Out of the corner of his eye, Summerhill could see his partially outstretched arm, the shape of it haloed in the same pale blue-white as the energy discharge that Katherine had fired at him. Presumably, this energy was what was rendering him motionless, and also what was causing the annoying buzzing in his ears. Some kind of stun beam or stasis field generator? Fascinating piece of technology, whatever it was. He hadn’t even seen it on the hostess’ hip at all before she’d reached for it. Maybe it
hadn’t
been there before she’d reached for it.

It didn’t take long for Security to show up, which spared Summerhill and Katherine the awkwardness of him being forced to stare at her while she fidgeted and looked guilty. The Security detail consisted of a pair of identical robotic units, half again as tall as Summerhill. They were radially symmetric, each possessing four legs that ended in sharp points, and two arms that held long, metallic pikes with tips that glowed bright white. Their unwelcoming appearance was made further unnerving by the lack of any obvious eyes or face.

One of the robots extended its pike and poked Summerhill in the ribs with the glowing tip. The strange paralysis was lifted, and the dog lashed his tail and staggered as he tried to keep from falling over now that his ability to move had been restored. Once he’d regained his sense of balance, he stretched his limbs and craned his neck from side to side to make sure that everything was working properly.

“The unidentified canine biped will follow us.” The robots also lacked an obvious mouth or even a visible speaker to serve as one. Whoever built these things sure had a knack for ‘unsettling,’ Summerhill thought. To back up its instruction, the robot that had jabbed him now motioned down the hallway, while the other brandished its pike threateningly.

“The name’s Summerhill,” the dog said as he held up his hands in surrender. “Katherine could have at least told you that.”

Katherine was looking away, now. She’d put away her weapon at some point, and Summerhill could see no sign of where it had gone. Giving the two robotic security guards a look, she turned around and began to walk back toward the ballroom.

“I was telling the truth, you know,” Summerhill called after her, but he didn’t get to see if she turned back around or not, as both of his mechanical escorts herded him into step and marched him down the hallway. Their pointed, clawlike feet made sinister metallic clacking sounds, the rhythm and cadence of eight individual limbs too much for Summerhill to keep track of.

“Find Katherine. Make sure you stick with her and everything will be fine.”
A whole lot of good that had done.

As he was ushered down the corridor, Summerhill tried to engage the robots in conversation, asking them things like where they were taking him and what would be done to him after they got there, but they just marched on without any response. Summerhill almost wished that they hadn’t said anything when they’d come to escort him away, because then he’d just assume they couldn’t speak. Instead, he felt slighted that they were ignoring him, and really, the situation was already unnerving enough without that.

They came to an elevator lobby, its décor almost as grandiose as the ballroom’s. Glittering gold lined the alcoves for each elevator door, the signage above them encrusted with small jewels. Even the panels for the call buttons were adorned with fanciful inlays and had gemstones in all four corners, presumably covering the screws that bolted them to the wall. Between the doors, on either side of the hallway, were small tables topped with vases full of flowers of bright and varied colors.

Summerhill reached out to those flowers with his mind, just to feel their presence and gain whatever reassurance he could from them. They were only plants, of course, and had nothing to say back to him, but his affinity for them at least allowed him to feel that they were there. There was comfort in being able to feel something else that was alive and wasn’t going to judge his grip on reality.

The different sets of elevator doors came in different sizes, the largest of which could accommodate the largest guests Summerhill had seen in the ballroom, as well as smaller elevators where beings his own size wouldn’t be made to feel so small. One of the robots pressed a call button, and without any wait at all, the nearest set of doors slid open. Summerhill stepped inside without being prompted, not wanting to be reprimanded or possibly poked with one of those glowing pikes.

Inside the elevator were a staggering number of buttons, far more than enough to account for the number of decks the ship had, if Summerhill’s estimate from seeing the ship from the outside was anywhere close to accurate. Rather than pressing any of those buttons, however, one of the robots emitted a low whirring sound, and then the elevator was off, shooting upwards at an uncomfortable speed, one probably reserved for security purposes.

Just when Summerhill thought the elevator had come to a stop, he heard a loud ‘clunk,’ and then the car jolted to the left and began to hurtle sideways at the same excessive speed as before. While the dog was still reeling from the sudden change of direction, there was another ‘clunk,’ and then the elevator dropped, stopped, and began to move forward.

Summerhill lost his balance, and no amount of flailing his arms or wagging his tail was going to keep him from toppling over. He reached out to catch himself on one of the walls, but instead, one of the robots reached out and grabbed him, surprisingly gently, and set him back upright. The dog gasped and panted as he stumbled up to one of the walls anyway and braced himself against it, then looked up and muttered a halfhearted “thanks” to the robot.

Once more, the elevator slowed down, and this time, much to Summerhill’s relief, the doors slid open and let him out into another hallway. This one was less lavishly decorated than the ones branching off of the ballroom, but it was still clean and well-kept. The dog got a firm nudge in the back from the blunt end of one of the robot’s pikes, and after a quiet bark of protest, he fell in line and let himself get herded down the corridor.

It was a blissfully short trip from the elevator to the security office. The doors opened as Summerhill stepped up to them, and the two robots flanked him and followed him inside.

The back wall was a massive array of monitors and screens, most of which currently showed different views of the ballroom. Some of the screens were overlaid with data windows that would change as the cameras focused in on different guests, but others were static, showing wide-angle views of not only the party, but other areas of the ship that Summerhill hadn’t been to.

Behind a dark and solid wooden desk sat a dog-like being that looked remarkably like Summerhill. Its coat (Summerhill couldn’t tell, from this distance, if it was male or female) was made of bolder colors—richer browns, starker blacks, paler whites—but its general size and shape suggested the same or at least similar species. It also wore a neatly pressed outfit of solid black with glittering silver trim.

It addressed the pair of robots with a nod, and spoke in a voice as androgynous as its appearance. “Thank you. Please wait outside.” The robots both took a moment to stand at attention, then departed, their sharp legs clacking away until they disappeared between the doors.

Summerhill stood in the center of the room, trying not to stare but not doing a very good job of it. He’d never seen one of his own kind before, and to coincidentally run into one here, aboard the
Nusquam
, so far from home, made an almost alarming amount of sense under the circumstances. Maybe that’s why his other self had urged him to seek out Katherine, knowing that he’d be sent along to Security and have this encounter.

“Please, sit,” the other dog-creature said, motioning with a familiar hand-like paw at an appropriately sized chair on the other side of the desk. “So, you’re this so-called Summerhill, then?”

“That’s right.” It was too much to hope that his fellow canine would know who he was. Still, it probably at least knew something helpful. Summerhill took his offered seat, then asked, “So, um, what should I call you?”

“Just ‘Chief’ will do for now,” the other dog replied. Not the most helpful response for disambiguating gender. “I’m happy to see that we’ve been able to avoid an incident so far.”

Summerhill folded his hands in his lap and felt his ears tilt back. “I’m not here to cause trouble, honestly. I tried explaining that to Katherine, but I guess my story’s kind of a farfetched one.”

The Chief smiled. “Ah, yes, Katherine,” it said. “She says you’re a stowaway who didn’t actually stow away anywhere. Says you claim to have sneaked on board while we were already underway.”

“That’s exactly right. But Katherine seemed to think that was impossible.”

“‘Impossible’ isn’t a word we’re big on here aboard the
Nusquam
. I’ll admit that it sounds highly unlikely that you’d just be out there, but we’ve certainly had guests here before who didn’t require things like air or sustenance to survive.”

Summerhill looked back at the other dog and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. “Um,
do
we require air and sustenance to survive? Folks like you and me, I mean.”

“Like you and me?” A look of confusion crossed the Chief’s face, and then it let out a hearty chuckle. “Oh, no, no, you don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?”

“I’m not actually a... well, whatever you are,” the Chief said. “This is just how I’m choosing to appear right now, in the hopes of making this easier for the both of us.”

Summerhill felt his heart sink. “Oh. I see.” He looked down into his lap and withheld a sigh of disappointment. “Well, I guess that makes my next question kind of moot, then.”

“What were you going to ask?”

“I was hoping you’d know what we are and where we come from,” Summerhill said. “But I guess that since we’re not really a ‘we,’ you probably wouldn’t know.”

The Chief shook its head. “I’m afraid not. Whatever you are, you aren’t in our databases, which means we’ve never had a member of your species as a registered guest before.” It then tilted its head in a curious manner, very much in the same way Summerhill himself would have. “Why don’t
you
know what you are?”

Summerhill sighed. “It’s a long story.” That was starting to become a too-familiar refrain. “I come from a place called the World of the Pale Gray Sky, except I don’t think that’s actually where I come from.”

“How do you mean?” the Chief asked.

Summerhill told the story of how he’d escaped his private world that made no sense. He recounted how he’d simply kept going until he’d wound up in the middle of the nowhere, found the
Nusquam
, and then crept aboard through a maintenance hatch when the ship hadn’t responded to his attempts to wave it down.

The Chief folded its hands together atop the desk and smiled. “Well, we’ll put you someplace safe until we reach our next port of call,” it said. “Once we get there, we can figure out what to do with you.”

“I see.” Summerhill swallowed dryly, and just nodded. At least they’d be keeping him in a cell instead of just throwing him overboard. “I guess I’ll go along quietly, then.”

Pressing a button on the desk, the Chief summoned the two robot guards from before back into the room. “You’re a curious one, Summerhill,” the other dog said. “If you remember anything else useful during your stay, just give the sentries a holler and they’ll be sure to pass it along.”

Once again, Summerhill turned himself over to the pike-wielding robots, already hoping that whatever cell he got thrown in wasn’t too far away. “Um, are you going to feed me?” he asked the Chief as he was led toward the door. “Because I’m pretty sure I
do
need sustenance, actually.”

“You’ll be made quite comfortable, I assure you,” the Chief replied. “If there’s one thing the
Nusquam
prides itself on, it’s unparalleled comfort.”