The Lonely Whelk (14 page)

“
You’re not supposed to do
that until I take the diodes off,” John was saying. “You’re going
to burn them out.”

“
No thanks, as usual,” Quin
muttered. He stripped off the bright green Door-Hazard suit,
dropped it on the floor, and stalked off. The crowd separated as he
walked through. He was drenched with sweat, but a small grin
fluttered around his lips.

Boris stared after him. “If he hadn’t been
here, who would’ve had to go through?” he asked.

“
You,” John replied. “Now
help me get this mess cleaned up.”

The room around them began to get busy
again. People still stayed clear of the Door, but they returned to
their obligations, albeit a bit slower and less confident. The
alarm turned off, and the blinking red lights quit blinking and
stayed a solid red.

“
What just happened?” Kaia
asked. “That was insane.”

A cloud crossed over John’s face. “Somebody
in this group took an awful risk,” he said as crossed his arms and
stared at the group angrily, “and somebody is going to have to take
account for their error.” He looked at the mess on the floor: a
generator with wires splayed out in all directions; a microwave
emitter carefully placed in its holder which sat awkwardly on the
floor; two broken diodes and two working diodes strewn amid the
mess; and a very bright green Door-Hazard suit. “Clean this up, and
then meet me in that room.” He gestured to a regular door on the
far end of the Door Room, and turned his back on the group.

“
What happened?” Kaia
asked.

He took a deep breath, and then asked, “Can
they see my face?”

“
No,” she replied. “They’re
working. And your back is to them.”

His face burst into a brilliant smile. He
wiggled a little. “That was amazingly fun!” he whispered excitedly.
“I love it when stuff like that happens.”

Kaia’s mouth opened. “But... but… we almost
died!”

“
Nah.” John took her elbow
and guided her away from the graduate students and up a short
flight of stairs. “Look at all this.” He gestured towards the room
filled with talking, laughing, and working people. They mingled and
chatted, and occasionally appeared or disappeared through a Door.
“I wouldn’t risk them like that. Now, granted, that Door could have
been quite a problem, but we had about an hour to fix it. Quin and
I just like to get things done quickly, and it’s always good to
scare people a little bit so they don’t do stupid things, like
Boris did. He used the microwave emitter to inject the Door with
massive amounts of microwaves, basically causing the thing to start
overheating.”

“
But you stuck the
microwave emitter in the Door, too.”

“
Yes, but I reset it first
so that it would neutralize the extraneous microwaves and make them
disappear.”

“
Is that where the white
light came from?”

John chuckled. “No, that came from the
battery-operated strobe light Quin handed me before he jumped
through the Door. The jump was all for show too, by the way. We
have a whole system for times like these.”

Kaia shook her head and grinned. “Well, what
did the diode things do, then? Were they for show? Or actually
useful?”

“
The diodes were useful –
part of Door emergency protocol actually. They basically contained
the Door, so that if it decided to explode, it would just explode
within the confines of the doorframe. However, in order for the
diodes to really work, they have to be on both sides of the Door –
which is why Quin went through.” He paused for a moment. “Imagine
you have a door that is on fire. You can put out the fire on one
side of the door all you want, but if you let it burn on the other
side… well, the other side will burn.”

“
So if Quin hadn’t gone
through, and the Door had blown up, whatever is on the other side
would have also blown up?”

“
Basically.” John nodded.
“But only within a certain radius – which is actually pretty large.
And Quin didn’t really have to go through, he just wanted to. I
could have just as easily stuck my arm though.” He
grinned.

“
What about Doors without
frames?”

“
Do you see any of those in
this room?”

Kaia looked around. “No.”

“
Then they don’t
exist.”

Frowning, Kaia put her hands on her hips.
“Don’t be silly. The frame is just for show, and so people don’t
accidentally walk through them. It doesn’t actually do any
good.”

“
Hush!” John exclaimed,
putting a finger on his lips. “That counts as extreme math. We like
to keep it a secret, because we don’t want people wandering off and
making them wherever they feel like.”

“
How does putting a
doorframe around it stop that?” Kaia asked. “It’s not like there
aren’t doorframes in other places. Like… houses, for example. Or in
buildings in general. Or in the home construction
store.”

“
Don’t get mouthy with me!”
John was grinning and his grin was so wide at this point it didn’t
quite seem to fit on his face. “We put a core of titaniron
through.”

“
I don’t believe that for a
second! Where’d you get it, an asteroid?”

“
As a matter of fact, yes!”
John said stubbornly. Then he gave in a little. “But it’s not
around any of these ones... we shouldn’t be talking about this
here. Let’s go wait for my little graduate students who are about
to get fired.”

“
Fired! Why?” Kaia asked,
shocked.

“
They broke the rules.”
John’s face turned serious. “Now, mind you, I’m all about breaking
rules, but not when there are thousands, and possibly millions, of
lives at stake.”

“
Oh.” Kaia’s eyes widened.
That thought hadn’t occurred to her.

“
I do like Naytiri,
though,” he muttered. “Maybe I’ll offer her a research position
somewhere else. Hm.” He shrugged. “Oh well. Come along, my lovely
intern.”

Hazel was nervous. Pilgrim, Holland’s friend
who had just woken up, was trying to sit up and having trouble
doing so. In addition, there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of other
bodies lying in these coffins. Bodies... coffins... spaceship...
this day was not turning into a very good bedtime story.

“
Wait, wait,” Hazel said,
holding out her hands towards Pilgrim. “Don’t you need help?” The
monkey was curled around her neck, repeating her words in a robotic
tone.

“
No, no,” Pilgrim replied
cheerfully. “It just feels good to be awake! I mean, you have no
idea. I have been asleep for a long, long time and I am just... I
can’t even explain how much I want to be awake right now. You
should focus on waking up the others and I’ll help as soon as I
can.”

Walking to the next coffin, Hazel tried to
read the plaque, but the jewels in her ears apparently couldn’t
read. A brief thought crossed her mind – hadn’t she been able to
read the sign outside her shop for a minute? She brushed the
thought away.

“
Who is this?”

“
That’s MacDougal. Don’t
start there, start with Sammy. She’s our nurse, and she’ll be able
to help us walk faster.”

Hazel walked over to the coffin Pilgrim had
pointed out and began to turn the wheel. She followed the steps
Holland had shown her, and a moment later, the woman in the coffin
was blinking drowsily and murmuring, “Who are you?”

“
Sammy!” Pilgrim greeted
her happily.

Sammy blinked a few more times and looked
around. A slow smile spread across her face, starting with her lips
and working up her cheeks and into her eyes. It was like a sunrise.
“It is amazing to be awake,” she said, clearing her throat a few
times.

Pilgrim explained who Hazel was, and then
the two of them began to discuss things completely unrelated to
Hazel. It was all techno-gibberish – light years and rotary motors
and some kind of beam. Then Sammy the Nurse began to show Pilgrim a
few stretches, designed to help his disused muscles strengthen
after their long sleep.

Meanwhile, Hazel opened coffin after coffin.
Every person was different. Some immediately sat up straight –
those were the scariest. They claimed to have been awake for a
while. Others were like cranky teenagers, still in the throes of
sleep and rather unwilling to be woken up. Others were drooling,
and still others talked in their sleep or whispered nonsensical
words as Hazel moved by. But soon the room was abuzz with chatter,
and most of the crew knew as much about her as they needed to –
Holland had assigned her to help, and she was doing as she was
told.

After a while, Sammy got out of her coffin
and began to assist the others. She showed them stretches, and
encouraged them to drink water. Soon after her, Pilgrim followed,
although he was still a bit wobbly on his feet. Hazel watched as
person after person woke up and stretched; it was like a roomful of
zombies, although they didn’t seem particularly interested in her
brains.

A loud beeping noise silenced the people in
the room. Then Holland’s voice came out of nowhere.

“
Good morning, everyone. I
hope you are feeling well and invigorated after your endless
sleep.”

A chuckle rumbled through the room.

“
If you are feeling
unexpected side effects of the sleep, or you are feeling nausea,
please see Sammy and she will help sort you out. Over the next few
hours I will be dealing out assignments, although these may change
based on necessity or health of individual team members. Right now
we will need to respond to an electrical spike in Corridor 11, do
maintenance on the engines and life support systems, and wake the
others on the ships and sub-vessels. Medical staff, then crew, then
parents and single adults, and then children.

“
In the meantime, follow
Sammy’s orders so that you come to full health as quickly as
possible. Oh, and Pilgrim, can you please run to the arboretum and
see why the cameras aren’t working down there? Take Hazel with you
– she will be your shadow from now on. Then head back to the bridge
to talk to me.

“
That will be
all.”

The beeping noise came again, and to Hazel’s
astonishment, every able person in the room turned toward the door,
saluted, and then went back to whatever they had been doing before
the announcement.

“
I’m so glad Holland is our
Admiral – she’s so competent,” Pilgrim said, stretching his arms
and doing a couple of squats. He seemed like he was strong enough
to walk around, at least. “Can you imagine what would have happened
if they had picked that Perkins guy instead?” Several of the crew
members laughed. Then Pilgrim turned back to Hazel. “Well, Hazel,
let’s get going! Hopefully we can figure out what’s up with the
camera and then get back to the bridge before these loonies even
get their limbs working.”

He elbowed one of his comrades, who chuckled
in reply and then punched Pilgrim in the arm.

Hazel followed the rather stiff Pilgrim at
his heels as they headed towards the arboretum.

“
So, Miss Stowaway,”
Pilgrim said as they traversed the long, bare halls. “Where are you
from?”

“
Earth,” Hazel replied.
“And I’m not really a stowaway since I didn’t come here on
purpose.”

“
Earth!?” Pilgrim asked. “I
didn’t know people from Earth had space travel!”

“
You’ve heard of us?” Hazel
asked. “And we went to the moon and sent out some probes, but
that’s about it.”

“
Probes,” Pilgrim chuckled.
“They won’t get you too far. And of course I’ve heard of Earth. I
did my graduate thesis on Earth! Even got to visit. Briefly, of
course. It was a two-hour visa.”

“
Why would you do a thesis
on Earth?” Hazel asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the last part.
She didn’t want to think about aliens showing up for two hours and
then leaving again. That was a strange feeling.

“
My thesis was actually
more about the importance of space travel for my own civilization,”
Pilgrim continued, “but I used Earth as an example. I mean, look at
you – you humans only live for one hundred years! Or less, usually,
I guess.

“
So here’s what happened.
Project Earth (as they called it in the old days) was developed as
an experiment to watch the untouched development of civilization
over a period of time. They put it in an area of space where there
wouldn’t be too much risk of alien intervention, and they made sure
that the number of Doors… do you know what Doors are?”

Hazel’s eyes were wide.

“
Wait, wait, wait,” she
said, reaching up to scratch her head. “What do you mean Earth is
an experiment?”

Pilgrim tilted his head. “They haven’t told
you yet? Oh. Well, my civilization built your planet.”

The air in the tunnel seemed thin. Hazel’s
head was spinning. All of the conspiracy theories on the entire
planet couldn’t even come close to this. But maybe he was making it
up... although, why would he?

Pilgrim continued, oblivious to her sudden
and quite painful enlightenment. “So anyway, a Door is a form of
transportation which allows you to travel across great distances of
space in an instant. They made sure that there weren’t very many
Doors on Earth, and they put them far apart. And then they put some
people in a few places on the planet and stepped back to watch.