The Star Plume (7 page)

As quickly as it had lit up, the tunnel fell
again into darkness. Aglaje could feel her heart pounding against
her thin ribs. She had to make it through this.

The heavy sound blasted through her on all
sides, starting low then rapidly increasing pitch and volume until
it was deafening. Aglaje resisted putting her hands over her ears.
They were watching her from somewhere, as well as taking readings.
She needed to resist showing weakness. It would end soon. She
hoped.

When the sound ended, the voice spoke again,
as if none of this had happened.

“Please state your reason for this
unscheduled visit.”

Aglaje inhaled. Here goes. “My sister has
entered the Nothing through a Night Prism. She is with a Star
Wrangler and I believe they are going to confront the Dark
Spectrum.”

There was a long pause before a reply came
back. When the voice spoke, it sounded neutral but Aglaje felt she
could hear a shift in tone, a strain to hide a level of increased
interest and disbelief. She had expected this.

“That is impossible. There are no Night
Prisms available for usage. They were all collected.”

“One was released not too long ago in the
Liquid Mine and my sister found it.”

Again, a long pause.

“We are unable to help you.” There was
silence for a good minute. Aglaje knew they were reviewing the
readings they had taken from her palm.

“However, you are heavily depleted,” the
voice said. “You would not survive your journey. We will supply you
but then you must leave.”

Aglaje sighed. She did feel tired. “I've been
on the road a long while, “ she said, more to herself than the
voice.

The voice interrupted her thought, as it
continued.

“The rest of your report is being
completed.”

Aglaje furrowed her brow. The rest of her
report? What did that mean? The Readers measured Liquid percentage.
She had light and sound checks before, though none quite so intense
as that. She tried to remember her last one, probably fifteen years
ago, when she started out as a Trader.

“Please step forward.”

A door at the end of the tunnel slid open,
about fifty yards ahead. Aglaje walked toward the light and stepped
into the small room.

The room was square with blue walls with
framed pictures of the Star Plume on the walls. Aglaje saw several
sections she recognized and a few she did not.

The single chair waited in the corner. There
were no windows and recessed lighting provided dim light.

“Someone will be with you in a moment.” With
that, the voice system disconnected. Aglaje heard a short burst of
static and then silence.

She sat down. She considered their refusal.
Given what she’d told them, they would know the risks involved.
After all, they were the experts. Were they bluffing? Were they
frightened by her presence? Would they treat her as they had said
or was she herself in danger? They would, of course, also wonder if
she had been followed or worse yet, if she was merely a diversion
for some larger threat.

Aglaje looked up at the sound of metal
sliding against stone. A door on the far side of the wall opened. A
tall woman stepped in, dressed in a long yellow robe. Her face was
deeply lined and her short white hair was done in sharp spikes atop
her head. She held a silver tray in her right hand. As the door
behind her slid closed, the woman approached toward Aglaje, taking
a roundabout path across the room, as if circling prey.

“I’m Nin. I’ll be treating you. How do you
feel?” Nin asked, watching Aglaje. Aglaje could feel Nin assessing
the color of her skin, the circles under her eyes, her drooping
eyelids.

Aglaje stared back. Nin’s eyes were the color
of spring leaves.

“Tired,” Aglaje replied.

Nin patted her hand. “You’re lucky to have
made it this far. You are nearly out. Dangerous to push so hard.
Now. How many do you have?” Nin asked.

“Three,” Aglaje replied

Nin pursed her lips and shook her head
slightly.

“Regulation is four for Traders,” Nin said,
gingerly lifting a white ampule from the tray.

“I’m smaller than most Traders.” Aglaje
said.

Nin ignored this defensiveness. “And where
are they located?”

“Both feet and my left hand.”

Nin nodded and took hold of Aglaje’s left
hand, turning it over to reveal her palm. She probed the meaty
flesh at the base of Aglage’s thumb, feeling for something. She
pursed her lips to one side in concentration.

“It’s really in there.” Her fingers pushed
hard again below the thumb. A thick rectangular piece of flesh the
size of a stamp popped up below Aglaje’s thumb. It folded over on
itself, revealing an ampule tucked in the flesh, similar to that in
Nin’s hand, only blue.

Nin deftly pulled out the blue ampule and
placed the white ampule in its place. “There we go.” She placed the
skin back in place, pressing lightly.

“That’s one.” She repeated the process with
each of Aglaje’s feet, pushing against the ball of each foot.

Finished, she stood and stared at Aglaje.

“You took quite a risk coming here. You've
been tracked since you landed. There was some disagreement about
what to do with you. Normally intruders are warned. If that doesn’t
discourage them, more severe measures are taken. Permanent
measures.”

Aglaje nodded. She was not surprised. Of
course, they needed to protect themselves. “Why was I allowed to
pass?”

“One of us is a Baser. He sensed something
about you that indicated you should pass through. Our tests
confirmed it. Combined with what you have told us, we thought it
was best to let you in.”

“What did he sense?”

Nin smiled at her, her wrinkles scrunched
about her eyes. “You do not need to pretend with me.”

“I’m sorry?” Aglaje was confused. ”I’m not
pretending.”

The smile left Nin’s face and her eyes
darkened. “You do not know?”

Aglaje shrugged. “Know what, exactly?”

Nin leaned in. Her eyes were filled with
compassion. “You are a Hybrid. You are 20% light.”

Chapter 13

Having returned to the now empty Station, Koe
walked to the back and flipped a switch on the far wall. The blank
wall lit up, revealing a 10’ x 10’ digital map of the Nothing,
shades of grey depicting the various densities and layers. The
borders of the Nothing were like Cilia, thick finger-like tendrils
constantly moving and waving, beating away space debris that might
cross the Breach.

Koe’s eyes scanned the screen for
movement.

There in the lower right corner, he saw them.
Two colored waves, the up and down movements showing a circuitous
progress toward the center of the Nothing, the Confine.

He watched the oscillations. The tall wave,
blue on screen, led the way while the flatter yellow wave followed
close behind. Koe saw the blue wave speed up and then slow down
abruptly when the yellow wave fell behind. Occasionally, the front
and backs of the two waves would overlap on the screen, their
convergence green, and then they would separate again.

It made him a little queasy. Still, he had a
job to do.

Koe waited until the blue wave gained a wide
lead on the yellow wave. He quickly pushed three vertical black
buttons on the panel to the right of the large screen. A dim light
flicked on by each one, blinking then holding steady and
bright.

As the attenuator loaded, Koe watched the
wavy lines. When the blue wave pulled ahead again, Koe pushed the
last button in the row, holding it down as he watched the result on
screen, as a pulse of anti-waves projected toward the blue
line.

The anti-sound pulse traveled through the
dense material, honing in on the intruders. Once a wave was
attenuated, there was no way out.

*******

Wrangler felt the pulse hit just behind him.
He stretched himself as high as he could go, increasing his
amplitude.

“Cressida, get higher!” he yelled. She was
behind him or had been only a moment ago. But he could not hear
her. He yelled again.

“Get louder!” No reply.

A second shot of the attenuator pulse hit
Wrangler’s tail end. He felt his wave end diminish, growing
flatter, as the peaks and valleys lost height with each passing
moment. The weakness crawled forward, flattening him slowly but
surely. Wrangler pushed forward but he could feel the weakness
moving along him. It had flattened a third of his wave already.

With every ounce of energy left in his
system, Wrangler turned a sharp left and propelled himself forward
and up as high as he could go. He felt himself pick up speed. He’d
hit a patch of gaseous metal. This was the least dense area of the
Nothing. He needed to stay in this seam to conserve energy. He
picked up speed again and he felt his wave propagate all the way
back to his end.

He hoped Cressida was right behind him. But
he didn’t dare stop.

*******

She hadn’t meant to do it. Well, not really.
She had hardly known what she was doing. Mostly, she just wanted to
escape. To go home once and for all. And going farther forward in
the Nothing wasn’t helping.

When the attenuator hit in front of her, she
didn’t know what was happening. She thought she heard Wrangler for
a moment. She suddenly felt slow and tired. Sluggish.

Slowing down, she thought. What was she doing
alone in this strange place? Her body pixilated across a vast
space, maybe never to be reformed.

In the distance, she could hear Wrangler
calling for her again. Was he in front of her, to the left, or
maybe straight up?

The weird slow feeling hit her again and the
sound of Wrangler’s voice got all warped and warbled, like a record
played too slow on a turntable.

All she wanted was to go home. That’s all she
had wanted from the beginning. That stupid Night Prism had lured
her away from her home.

Now, here she was, nothing more than sound,
as far from home as she could possibly be. She’d done enough. She
was going home. One way or another.

With great concentration, she slowed to a
stop, feeling the silence as a standing wave. Then she pushed away
from her edge, moving backward, tracing over herself. The sound
that came from her was a low eerie moan. It frightened her and she
moved more quickly, to escape herself.

As she pushed back from where she had been,
she could feel the Night Prism at her end getting closer. She did
not know what would happen when she reached it. But she no longer
cared.

She heard another low sound behind her,
louder than her own sound. It was not Wrangler. The sound grew
louder. It sounded familiar but still faint, as if a memory of a
sound and not a sound itself. It was soothing.

She listened as she doubled over herself,
criss-crossing her earlier forward motion. She seemed to pick up
speed moving backward and she no longer felt as tired. She reached
the tail end of her wave, now a wave folded in two.

She recognized the song as her wave began to
pass through the Night Prism, into the density of the Nothing.

The Dark Spectrum was waiting for her
there.

“
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
you make me happy when the skies are gray, you’ll never know dear
how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

Quotation/Song credits in order

Michael Jackson “Human Nature”

Rick Springfield “867-5309”

Nena “99 Red Balloons”

Sun Tzu “The Art of War”

Alfred Hitchcock

Pink Floyd “The Wall”

The Scorpions “Rock You like a Hurricane”

Mildred Jane Hill/Patty Smith Hill “Happy
Birthday”

Grease “Summer Nights”

Yes “Owner of a Lonely Heart”

The Offspring “Come out and Play (Keep ‘Em
Separated)”

Pink Floyd “Dirty Woman”

Willie Nelson “You are My Sunshine”