The Prize: Book One (26 page)

“Okay, smart ass, what do we do without light?”

“As part of your training, did you ever do the blind man bluff walking thing?”

“What?”

“You know.  Go around blind folded for a week.”

“No I can't say I have, just blind man's bluff when I was a kid, is all.  You?”

“Yes.  I had to do it several time.”

“Would you hurry up and get to the point, my legs are getting a little shaky out here.”  Ellis felt her legs beginning to tremble.

“Hold on to me and steady yourself.”  Penn felt her grab his pack.

“So what's your idea?”

“Listen.”  She did, hearing their voices echoed around them.

“So?”  She asked.

“Now listen.”  Adjusting his hearing, he struck two knives together, producing a ringing sound.

“Don't tell me you are going to navigate your way through this maze by echo location.”  She snorted.

“You have a better idea?”  A moment later, the sound of steel on steel rang out again.

Penn turned to his head to the left and struck the knives together.  The sound was different this time, bouncing back quicker.  He turned the other way.  This time the sound didn't come back to them so quickly.   He angled the knives down and struck them again, but couldn't tell from the sound which wall continued on, or which one ended up leading nowhere.

“I think the opposite wall off to our left.  Hold onto me and shuffle forward very carefully.”

They shuffled forward, Ellis holding onto his pack for more reasons than one.  If separated, she knew she'd never be able to carry on.  Even now, the darkness was starting to get to her, disorienting, suffocating, and stirring up dark memories from her childhood.  Inch by slow inch Penn led her forward, feeling ahead with his foot before transferring his weight.  Every few second he struck the knives together, hearing the echo get shorter and shorter the closer the came to the wall.  After what felt like hours, he at last he touched the wall, letting out a soft sigh of relieved.  The disappointment was that it wasn't the far wall, just another obstacle to get by.

“Are we there yet?”  Ellis asked.  Penn burst out laughing; remembering an old joke his father told him.

“What's so funny?”  Ellis asked in a huffy tone.

“You ever hear the joke about the kids in the back seat of the car.  They were constantly asking if they were there yet.”  Now it was Ellis's turn to laugh.

“So I'm the kid in the back seat now?”

“Sort of, and I hate to tell you this, but no we not there yet.”

“Shit!”  Was Ellis's eloquent reply.

The respite wasn't long before Penn had them moving again.  With no wall behind them now, losing their balance in the blackness was a distinct possibility.  Inch by inch he felt their way around the wall, or pillar to the next path.  Twice Penn guessed  wrong,   coming to a dead end, or his searching foot finding nothing ahead of them.  Hugging each other tightly, they did an awkward sort of shuffle dance to turn around.  Penn knew that if either one of them lost their balance for a second, they would both plunge off the ledge to their death.  After what seemed like an eternity, Penn called for a rest after he reached another wall with a wider ledge.  With shaking legs, they slid down into a sitting position.

“Tell me we are getting somewhere.”

“I wish I could,” he replied, sucking a long drink out of his camel pack.

As if on cue, a light gradually pervaded the chamber, at first so low it was almost impossible to call it light.  It grew slowly, from somewhere above, and they both saw the huge domed roof above them.

“Oh shit!”  Ellis sounded as if she was about to scream.

As the light strengthened, the true nature of the space took shape.  She gripped Penn's arm so hard it hurt.  Somehow, Penn had successfully negotiated their way across the quarter mile space of narrow pathways by sound alone.  Ellis preferred not to look to see how deep the drop off was.  A slight grating noise drew their attention to their left, and they saw the opening to another passageway.

“I think that's our invitation to carry on.”

“I wish it was an opening to a nice place to take a proper bath, and sleep.”  Ellis grouched, carefully getting to her feet.

“We live in hope, Princess.”  Penn said over his shoulder as he led off.

They pressed on, stoically, no matter what obstacles they encountered.  Fortunately, both had climbing experience, and they were able to navigate the sheer cliffs, rushing rivers of frigid water, and lakes of sinking acid.  Still, even their incredible endurance was bound to fail at some point.  As if sensing their needs, the passageway led to a secluded rocky grotto on a fern covered hillside, complete with waterfall and a soft carpet of velvety moss-like vegetation.  A thick veil of dangling vines with bright yellow fruit surrounded the place, and without thinking twice, Penn picked one and started munching.

"Not a bad place to spend the night.”

“Penn!  That fruit could be poisonous!”

“It's not.  Here, try one, they're delicious.”  He picked another and handed it to her.  Ellis took a small, cautious bite, finding the fruit tart and sweet at the same time.  Juice trickled down her chin.  Of all the things this place had thrown at them, poison fruit as a way to kill them, seemed tame by comparison.

"Yum!” She said around a mouthful of fruit.  ”I suppose you dreamed all this up.”  Ellis waved hand around as she licked her fingers.  Penn just smiled, and shook his head.

"No, but if I had, this would be about as perfect a place I could think of.”  Ellis laughed.

"I, on the other hand, would have preferred a five star hotel back at the Capital with room service to boot no less.”

"Just what I thought, spoiled rotten," Penn laughed, dumping his pack. 

"Barbarian,” she smiled.

It wasn't long before Penn was checking the place out.  He found enough driftwood at the bottom of the waterfall to light a fire, looking around as he did.  The grotto was definitely a room, be it a large one, as he could see all four walls from where he stood.  What he couldn't see was a roof, or sky, just the ever present, sourceless glow above him.  Before he got a fire going, and helped prepare a meal, he wedged the canteen of wine between the rocks to cool, and between the two of them, it didn't take long to rustle up a hot meal from MRE's, with the sweet fruit as dessert.

"What do you think this place is?”  Ellis asked, sipping from the canteen and savoring the wine.

"You mean the pyramid?”  He glanced upward at the unseen ceiling and shrugged.  ”I don't agree with those dickheads in the Capital.”  He murmured between bites of food.

"You think the prize is a myth?"

"I just have a feeling it's not what they think it is.”  Ellis didn't say anything, just sat there considering Penn's words.

After they finished the meal, both lay back on the velvet turf and fell silent, contented, enjoying the moment, and the sound of falling water.  After a while, Penn reached over and grabbed his pack, rummaging about inside until he came up with a towel, and a bar of soap.

"I don't know about you, lady, but I stink, so I'm off to take a bath.”  He walked off, whistling to himself as he headed toward the waterfall.  Ellis watched him go with mixed feelings.

“Damn you, Penn,” she sighed.  ”You are about to complicate my life all to hell and gone.”  Her thoughts drifted to how they'd come to met.  Suddenly, she grew angry.  This had to be a setup!

General Tandy, and probably the damn Director, had his hand in their connection, betting they'd done a genetic match to pair them together.  If so, they'd made a terrible mistake.  This was no longer about getting this Prize for the Empire.  They could rot in hell before she'd turn it over to them.  She wondered when she'd decided, but was unable to pinpoint the moment.  Penn was a big part of it, but she she'd had doubts about her choice to join the Empire military, even before this mission.  However this turned out, it was the here and now, she was more concerned with, staying alive, and what to do about Penn.

Penn, meanwhile stripped, and moved under the waterfall, gasping for a moment as the icy water sluiced over him.  It felt good just to stand there, skin tingling with life as the water washed away the dirt and worry, and worried he was.  Even though he'd never admit it to Ellis, this place was beyond anything he’d experienced before.  From the moment, the innocent looking mud hole sucked squad leader Sartac down, and eat him, he began to suspect what this place was all about.  At least eight people had walked through the mud puddle before him, and should have trigger a reaction from whatever lurked down there, long before Sartac stepped into it.  The nightmare monster that couldn't possibly exist in real life killing the second man confirmed it.  Everything after that just reinforced his conclusion.

From the Silurian's with the roadbed trap, to the one Ellis had almost walked into.  The trooper that drowned in an empty fountain that somehow wasn't, to the roads that led nowhere, then did.  The last straw was the way the female trooper died, raped to death by a damn plant in a sadomasochistic orgy of self destruction.  All their deaths would have been impossible on a real world.  Only once had he dared test the theory when he'd though about the fruit.  The moment he bit into the soft interior he knew it was the same as pear he’d tasted on Earth, a thousand light years from here.

The possibilities of that exact fruit existing here were astronomical.  And yet, how had the building known how it tasted unless it pulled in from his mind.  The trick here was not letting your desires, and especially your fears take form in your mind.  That was the killer, literally.  Even now, his fear could kill her, or him.  Could he keep his mind clear, and not bring about their death?  All his senses told him to run, to get as far away from this place as possible, but, for the first time in his life he really didn’t have any choice in the matter.  Even with a death sentence for millions of human beings on Earth hanging in the balance of his complying with Director Markoff’s will, he still had a choice.  Refuse, and let them die, or comply.  Here he had one choice, and that was to go forward toward whatever was at the end of this road.  He tensed for a moment as something moved into the falling water with him, and he turned to find Ellis standing there, naked.  Their lips met, and their bodied entwined as they should, and they lost themselves in each other.  At last, they parted.

"I need to get clean.  Go wait for me.”  She whispered in his ear over the sound of falling water.  He nodded and left the pool, only to stand on the bank for a moment, watching as her body peeked in and out through the falling water as she bathed.  Pure poetry in motion.

He'd had one wish, remembering how he'd wondered what Sub-Major Ellis looked like out of uniform.  Now he knew, and this one had nothing to do with the pyramid.  Well, not directly.  Using his pack as a pillow, Penn placed their sleeping mats side-by-side on a large patch of velvety moss, and lay down to wait, in modesty placed a towel across his midsection.  He didn't have to wait long before he saw her walk up from the waterfall, a towel wrapped around her waist in a short sarong.  He drank in her beauty as she walked toward him, hips swinging from side to side in a very non-military walk.  She stood for a moment looking down at him while his eyes traveled over her body.

He looked into her eyes, then down at the towel and Ellis knew what he wanted.  The towel fell away, and she stood proudly before him, wanting him to see all of her body.  Penn let out a sound, half way between a sigh and a moan, his eyes alive with desire.  Ellis stepped across him and slowly sank to her knees, straddling his mid section.  She jerked his towel away, and threw it aside, lowering herself slowly onto to his waiting manhood, feeling his strong hands taking hold of her hips.  Without them noticing it, the light dimmed, the warm night air filled with the scent of blooming flowers, with just the sound that of rustling water, and Ellis's sharp cries of pleasure as they made love.  They reveled in the touch, taste, and feel of each other's bodies, souls entwining to become one, as time, space, and the mission forgotten for a few brief, glorious moments.  Neither saw the hot lustful eyes watching them from behind the screen of hanging vines some distance away.  Hate filled eyes, with a heart and soul to match.