Government Men by Gary J. Davies
CHAPTER 34
THE LAND
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
As the Bus fell rapidly towards the rugged peaks below, Narbando T. Bates, strapped in the engineer's seat behind pilot and copilot, was again facing death as a very near term prospect. The Bus, inherently unstable aerodynamically to begin with, now seemed to be spinning end-over end, though frankly, it was impossible for Bates to tell precisely what exotic kinematics were being executed, or to even care. Not when terrified people were screaming in terror, or attempting to, in the breathless, low air pressure environment, and being spun and yanked about wildly.
People were strapped to their seats, but nothing else was. Papers, pens, Twinkies, dog biscuits, shoes, Pepsi cans, coats, and other loose objects flew about throughout the inside of the Bus. This is what riding the inside of a clothes dryer must be like, Bates thought, or one of those amusement park rides that his stomach hadn't been able to endure for the last 20 years. Something hard smashed into his face and was gone again in an instant, before he could even guess what it was.
This was like being in one of those rock-tumbling stone-polishers that the gemstone fans used, he reflected. He had one once that he used to try to smooth a rough quartz crystal. He accidentally left it turned on for a couple months longer than the recommended period, and ended up with just gritty, mushy paste that was totally unsuitable for jewelry use. He had managed to create sand. He knew that very shortly a similar fate was in store for the B-Team. Something needed to be done, but trapped in his seat by strong centrifugal forces, he was completely helpless. Help would have to come from elsewhere.
With great force of will, he turned his head a little to the right and glanced at Norma in the copilot position. In the dull glow of emergency lighting he could see that she had removed her helmet, and was barfing profusely into one of the bags that she always carried 'just in case'. She finished, but the bag then slipped from her hands and flew off over Bates’ head towards the rear of the Bus. Bates could tell that she wouldn't be much help.
He heard laughter, and saw something out of the corner of his eye even further to the right. Turning his head he found himself face to face with Goyahkla, who was crouched next to him, staring into his eyes, and laughing with glee. This ride apparently seemed like some sort of wonderful joke to him. At least somebody was enjoying this, but it didn't look like help would be forthcoming from the spirit world either, except perhaps to soon welcome new members.
The Team had failed. He had failed. As a result, Earth and billions of people would die in a few days. But by now he was too sick and dizzy to think much about failure and the fate of Earth; fewer and fewer cogent thoughts ran through his aching head, and those few that remained were mostly prayers, and the names and faces of those that he loved.
Then, very faintly, he thought that he heard 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'. Forcing his head back to the left, Bates could see Flood whistling as he went about his piloting work, reading displays and gages, throwing switches with one hand, and struggling with the control yoke with the other! His efforts must have taken super-human strength and will.
The Commander took the yoke controls with both hands and started moving them in a complex pattern that seemed to somehow compliment the rhythm of the Bus spin. The gut wrenching spinning slowed, then gradually stopped completely! ”Landing in ten seconds," Flood announced calmly over the inner-COM. Bates looked out the windshield. The Bus headlights reflected back glare from the swirling snow. Suddenly the flakes thinned out, revealing snow covered trees and cliffs that reached up slowly towards the descending Bus.
The Bus gently settled down on solid ground, and Flood switched all thrusters off. A pathetically weak but highly emotional cheer arose from the Team. The lack of motion was simply wonderful to experience! The somewhat thicker air was awfully nice to breathe too, though at the moment, it stunk to high heaven. Norma's barf bag hadn't gone nearly far enough, wherever it had gone. But they had landed safely, and amazingly enough, they had landed right on target, for in the headlights a dozen meters in front of the Bus rose the trunk of a gigantic tree.
It took a few seconds of further recovery before anyone spoke. "Hey!” exclaimed Kay at last, "that's my unicorn tree!”
Bates got up gingerly and patted Flood on the back admiringly. "That was fantastic Commander" he said. "How did you manage to get us right next to the tree?”
"Damned if I know!” answered Flood, enigmatically. "Just as I regained control of our dissent the snow thinned out in this direction and I had to only make a slight adjustment to end up here!"
Bates was so pleased to have landed safely, and anxious to get out of the Bus, that he immediately threw open the hatch and stepped out in his shirt sleeves, fully expecting to be buffeted and frozen by a gale force blizzard, and to be up to his kneecaps in snow. Astonishingly, he found that the temperature outside was 'room temperature', about 20 degrees Celsius! Instead of standing in snow, the light from his flashlight revealed that he was standing in a field of green grass! ”Hey everyone, come on out, the blizzard is over! It's summer out here!”
"Not so," said Mel, who had followed his friend out. "Look towards the back of the Bus!”
Bates swung his flashlight around to where Mel's was pointed. Perhaps five meters in back of the Bus an impenetrable curtain of swirling white rose as high as they could see with their flashlights. Mel pulled a thermometer from his pocket, and, putting the thermometer in a gloved hand, walked to the white boundary and thrust his arm through it, thermometer included.
"Yikes! Cold!” The snow was falling so thick that the thermometer, his hand, and most of his arm were completely lost from view. A minute later, when he retrieved them, they were encased in a layer of snow and ice, which he shook and batted off as he read the thermometer. "Minus 10 degrees Celsius,” he announced. “Actually darned reasonable for a blizzard in December at over two kilos altitude. Mild, even. What we are currently standing in however, I would have thought impossible."
The others, who had also left the Bus, were similarly amazed at what they found. Milo wasted no time in laying claim to this hospitable territory in doggie fashion; in a few spots the lush green carpet would soon be even greener. Even Flood came out of his beloved Bus to see what all the fuss was about, or perhaps mostly to get some fresh air.
"Is the Bus force field doing this, Flood?" asked Bates.
"No way our force field could do this," responded Flood. "Besides, it’s turned off; we're covert. Everything except battery powered diagnostics and lights are turned off."
"It's the unicorn tree," explained Kay.
The Team soon confirmed this by surveying the strange 'warm zone'. They spread out along the periphery of the zone and confirmed it to be a circle about fifty meters in radius, with the huge, unicorn-blessed aspen at the center. The diameter of its smooth, gray-white trunk was nearly three meters, about the size of the biggest Northwest Douglas Fir or Western Cedar trees, and as big as most Coast Redwoods. This aspen was many hundreds of times as big as a normal aspen.
"Holy smokes!” exclaimed Bates. He had elevated his flashlight's light beam to shine on the tree above the trunk, expecting to find the beginnings of a leafless, fractal network of winter branches. Instead, he illuminated layers of healthy green leaves, of tremendous number and size, that stretched up into the sky far beyond the capabilities of the flashlight. The leaves seemed to twinkle a little, but that could have been a trick of the lighting.
Doubts harbored by most of the Team members about Kay's unicorn story were by now of course totally gone; the tree was obviously magical, whatever that meant. Mel and Norma, curious about this amazing place, were even now dithering about with thermometers, voltage meters, infrared sensors, and other scientific instruments that they had quickly retrieved from the Bus. Everyone else was still simply gaping in wander at the tree, with the exception of Milo, who was joy
ously claiming territory all about the patch of green. The small plump dog seemed to have an endless supply of urine.
"To work everyone!” said Bates at last, after several minutes of gawking had elapsed. "Flood, Carbuncle, you better work on the Bus.”
"Maybe the rest of us should bring the aliens out to the tree," suggested Elizabeth.
They did just that, though moving Krog required quite an effort, mostly contributed by Steve, Don, Kay and Bates. Krog and Wink looked strangely natural, propped up against the base of the tree trunk. Whatever magic was present in the tree did not wake them, however.
Carbuncle came out of the Bus to give the good news and the bad news, accompanied by Flood. "Fortunately, no critical systems were destroyed," she anounced. "The control lines that got hit had redundant backups that finally cut in, which is why Flood was finally able to regain control. We can patch the holes in the hull easily with our spare Starlite tiles. However, that ray, whatever it was, cut clean through the Bus far too easily. Recall that the Hotel, with its own Starlite Plastic, easily stood up to similar weapons. We wandered why. Flood, demonstration time!"
Flood was carrying two Starlite tiles and a hammer. Each small tile was about a hundred square centimeters in size. He placed them both on one of the large boulders that were scattered around the area. "I used plates like these to repair one of the holes," he explained. When I tapped the first one into place, this happened.” He tapped a tile rather lightly with the hammer, and it not only shattered into pieces, it disintegrated into a fine white powder!
"Crime-in-nee!” exclaimed Hank.
"Maybe you hit it too hard!” ventured Don.
"No," said Flood. "Watch. This is what should have happened.” This time he used both hands to deliver a tremendous blow to the second tile. The tile seemed completely unharmed. Flood picked it up and handed it to Bates. There wasn't a scratch on it, Bates noted. "The first tile was part of the original equipment delivery about twelve years ago. The second one was part of the newer equipment taken on in Enterprise City."
"The first tiles were defective?" asked Bates.
"No, not originally," explained Carbuncle. "Twelve years ago we subjected all of them to rigorous testing.”
"The problem seems to be some sort of molecular instability," explained Flood. "Jigs warned me about this, but he said he didn't know exactly when disintegration would begin. Probably even the newer tiles will have exactly the same problems in another ten years or so.”
"But why does the stuff lose its strength?" asked Bates.
"Frankly," confided Carbuncle, "we haven't figured out yet what gave it its strength in the first place.”
"I think Jigs knows more, but won't tell anyone," said Flood.
"That I can believe. The bottom line though, is that we are traveling around in a vehicle that could turn to dust at the slightest provocation," noted Bates.
"Or even spontaneously," clarified Carbuncle.
Flood, ever the practical man, looked pretty grim, but Carbuncle, having thought through and clarified a technical issue, seemed quite pleased with herself.
Bates took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. What else could go wrong, he wondered. "That sounds just great!" he finally remarked, sarcastically.
"Curious beings you are, to travel in a conveyance of which you know so little," said an unfamiliar, strange, clear piping voice. The Team members looked at each other and all about, without discovering the source.
"That sounded like my unicorn friend!” exclaimed Kay.
"Just so, small one. I will speak to you today using sound, which is the way of your kind. Greetings, friends of Kay," said the voice, as sure enough, a large shimmering white shape similar to that of a thoroughbred racing horse materialized next to Kay facing Bates. As it materialized, other non-horse-like features besides sentience became apparent. Most obviously, a meter long, glowing, spiral horn jutted out prominently from the creature’s forehead. A long silver-gold mane flowed down the back of its neck, and similar hair formed prominent eyebrows and tufts about erect, forward facing ears. The tail was also made of the stuff, in the manner of horses. The silver-gold hair also accented the slim ankles above too-small silver hooves that didn't appear to sink into the soft ground at all.
Perhaps the most striking feature was the white coat that covered most of the creature. It was simply whiter than white, and seemed to actually glow, though not as brightly as the horn. Bates reasoned that the coat somehow created its own light, as it was simply too bright to be simply reflecting it.
But what really captured Bates' attention were the unicorn's eyes. They were set forward far enough to support binocular vision, which was evidently directed straight at Bates. The eyes themselves, if that's what they were, consisted of large, round, black pits, like the empty eye sockets of a skeleton. They contrasted incredibly with the white and silver that surrounded them.
The over-all effect of the creature's appearance was disarmingly unearthly, to the degree that even the likes of Wink, Krog, and Goyahkla though somewhat odd seemed as commonplace as the strange set of neighbors that always manage to live next door to anyone. The unicorn seemed utterly flawless and impervious to its surroundings.
Bates had certainly never seen anything like it, and he struggled for long seconds before finding his voice to reply. "We thank you for your greeting. Yes, communicating using sound is definitely preferred, thank you. As to our Bus, in our world, things as complex as this are developed by hundreds of people. None of us that are here now are experts in this particular plastic material.”
The beast produced a strange snorting whinny. "None in this universe are expert in that particular material human," replied the unicorn mysteriously. "But we may perhaps speak of this later. First please introduce yourself and your companions.” Bates introduced each of the Team, except Goyahkla, who was nowhere to be found. The unicorn as yet gave no name for itself, but acknowledged each Team member with a nod of its head and horn. When introductions concluded with the unconscious aliens, the unicorn walked over to them, and rested its horn on the brow of each of them for several seconds.
"They have life, yet they do not live," pronounced the unicorn. "I have not before seen mortals in this state. They dream in deep sleep, the large one quite loudly. I can perhaps waken them, but only safely if I take them into my home realm, where my powers and the powers of my friends are strongest. You must carry them there, if this issue is to even be considered. All that are here must come, or none."
"Why all of us?" asked Barns.
"All of you are jointly dedicated to this quest, are you not? Then to help even some of you, all and the quest they follow must together be considered. But I give dire warning that thus will you each and all risk yourselves also. You risk your very lives.” The unicorn looked at each of them with its cold dark pits-for-eyes.
The Team members looked at each other nervously.
"We come this far," said Hank, with the fatalism of age.
"I say we go for it!” said Don, with the exuberance of youth.
"This may be a good time for everyone to reassess their life insurance needs," said Winnebago.
"We'll all go," stated Bates, flatly.
"But I should stay and stand guard over the Bus," protested Flood.
"There is no need as long as it remains near this great tree," replied the unicorn, with such authority that its word could not possibly be doubted. "It is well hidden here and protected." So Flood joined the rest of the Team as they picked up the aliens.
Meanwhile the unicorn had turned towards the stand of normal-sized aspen that grew beyond the great tree, and walked towards it, beckoning the Team with a gesture of its head and great horn. "Come then mortals, if you dare!” it said. The Team followed, struggling under the great weight of Krog.
They expected to be stepping out of the warm area and into a blizzard, but the bubble of warmth that sheltered the giant Aspen reshaped to accommodate the movement of the party
, even pushing all snow out of their path as they went. They walked behind the prancing unicorn through the stand of Aspen, straight towards a nearby towering granite cliff-face. The party was mystified as to their destination as they approached the mountain-side, which certainly appeared to be an impassable wall of solid rock.
"I recommend that you hold tightly onto each other, mortals," advised the unicorn. "It would not do to become lost where we now go."
As they approached the cliff, a narrow section of the solid rock mountain side seemed to partly fade. Into this new cleft the unicorn strode without hesitation, followed by the Team, many of whom were so busy struggling to dodge the huge form of green scaled Krog through the Aspen maze, that they never even noticed when they began walking through the translucent mountain of granite.
Once inside the mountain, all was pitch black except for the unicorn, and a dully-glowing tube as thick as a person's body that seemed to be below their feet. The tube stretched in back of them towards the tree and ahead past the unicorn as far as they could see. Bates tried his flashlight, but it didn't appear to function. Sound was also totally impossible, as he discovered when he tried to talk with the others. However, the whole Team was still joined together by holding onto Krog, Wink, and each other; so at least touch between them seemed possible, despite all the other contradictory violations of basic science and logic that were happening.
Bates had first thought that they had merely entered a tunnel of some sort, and that their entrance into the rock cliff had been some sort of optical illusion. He now strongly suspected that they weren't in a tunnel at all; they were actually passing through the rock of the mountain itself. How could this be possible? How could rock feel like cold, damp air? How could they breathe? And if they could breathe, why couldn’t they speak? Bates had no idea. In any case, whatever was happening was fantastically strange and frightening, and Bates was very grateful that the Team was at least able to somehow hold on to each other.
Bates pulled and pushed to keep everyone close behind the unicorn, as it wouldn't do to lose their guide while they were somehow inside of a mountain. While positioned so closely behind the gracefully prancing creature, Bates confirmed Key’s notion that it was female, though with so unfamiliar a species he couldn't be totally sure.
His proximity to the rear quarters of the creature also led to a concern that the creature shared the equestrian habit of liberal defecation. Would unicorn poop glow in the dark, he wondered? Would they just pass through it anyway, as they were doing with the solid rock? He didn't really want to find out, but at least thinking about such things kept his mind busy and away from more frightening thoughts about how strange and dangerous this entire experience was.
Then Bates noticed something really weird. He stopped walking for a just moment and found that it didn't make any difference at all! He still moved along with everyone else, or at least they all seemed to be moving; he wasn't totally sure anymore, as the only evidence of progress was the motion of the unicorn's legs and apparent motion relative to the glowing tube that stretched below them. He concluded that the unicorn was magically moving all of them. Bates and the others had been moving their own legs for nothing!
After traveling through the darkness for several long minutes, the Team suddenly burst out onto the open, onto a field of knee-high grass. Looking around, Bates found that the whole Team was still together. They laid Krog and Wing down in the soft grass, so that they could more easily openly gawk at their surroundings and rejoice their release from the strange silent depths of the mountain.
The whole area was dimly lit, to about the level that would be provided by a full moon, although no glowing lunar orb was visible. Rather, a dim glow seemed to emanate from the entire sky, or roof, or whatever was overhead. Stands of trees loomed everywhere in the faint light, with many of the individual trunks every bit as large and vigorous looking as the one near the Bus. Other trees, bushes and great boulders also loomed about the Team, but it was impossible to identify most objects very well in the near-darkness. The air was comfortably warm with a slight breeze, and it smelled wonderfully of life, as if it were late Spring rather than early Winter.
"Where are we?" asked Kay of the mystical creature that they had been following, who had paused for a time to let the Team acquaint themselves with their new surroundings.
"This is our realm, Kay, a land of the Fairy, I have heard it called by our human friends; one of only a few such places that remain. We simply call it The Land.”
"Were you driven out of our world by human-kind?" asked Sandra.
The unicorn did its odd snorting whinny again, which Bates by now was sure was laughter. "No child, your fables over-estimate the role of humans in this matter. Our primary difficulty, and yours to a degree that you are as yet unaware, is The Sleeping Great One."
"That must be who we are looking for!” exclaimed Bates. "We are supposed to waken a Great One that dreams, and somehow save the Earth!”
The strange legendary beast turned to stare at Bates. "Then you are on a most dangerous quest, human. Impossible and deadly, under most imaginable circumstances. Your knowledge of the dreaming Great One both fascinates and disturbs me, as does the strange material that makes up your vehicle. Also, it is odd that one of your human dead awaits you outside the boundaries of this realm. But I will discuss these things no further on this night. I would instead call a full High Council meeting of The People in the morning, that you may explain it to all of us."
"After that, will you waken my sleeping friends Wink and Krog?" asked the General.
"Perhaps," replied the unicorn. "I am pledged to help them, but the form of that help is yet to be determined. First the circumstances of your quest must be discovered, so we of the Council may decide your fate. Follow me now to a place where you may rest.”
Once again, the Team picked up the unconscious aliens and followed the unicorn. On the way, Bates sketched out the entire Ra and Dannos situation to the unicorn, who gave no response, other than an occasional snort or a nod of her horn. Bates had no idea if he was even understood by the strange creature, who seemed to know English perfectly well, but certainly came from a vastly different environment then did the Team. Hidden away in this strange place, could creatures of mythology possibly conceive of space ships and asteroids? But it was important that she and this Council of hers understand the situation. What had she just said about deciding the Team's fate?
"I don't understand," ventured Bates, "exactly what is it that your Council must decide?"
The unicorn stopped walking and turned to face Bates again, fixing him with twin bottomless black pit eyes set in glowing white. "I gave fair warning human, as is our custom. In addition to considering the merits of your quest, it must be determined if any of you will ever be permitted to leave this realm alive."
****
THE LAND
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
As the Bus fell rapidly towards the rugged peaks below, Narbando T. Bates, strapped in the engineer's seat behind pilot and copilot, was again facing death as a very near term prospect. The Bus, inherently unstable aerodynamically to begin with, now seemed to be spinning end-over end, though frankly, it was impossible for Bates to tell precisely what exotic kinematics were being executed, or to even care. Not when terrified people were screaming in terror, or attempting to, in the breathless, low air pressure environment, and being spun and yanked about wildly.
People were strapped to their seats, but nothing else was. Papers, pens, Twinkies, dog biscuits, shoes, Pepsi cans, coats, and other loose objects flew about throughout the inside of the Bus. This is what riding the inside of a clothes dryer must be like, Bates thought, or one of those amusement park rides that his stomach hadn't been able to endure for the last 20 years. Something hard smashed into his face and was gone again in an instant, before he could even guess what it was.
This was like being in one of those rock-tumbling stone-polishers that the gemstone fans used, he reflected. He had one once that he used to try to smooth a rough quartz crystal. He accidentally left it turned on for a couple months longer than the recommended period, and ended up with just gritty, mushy paste that was totally unsuitable for jewelry use. He had managed to create sand. He knew that very shortly a similar fate was in store for the B-Team. Something needed to be done, but trapped in his seat by strong centrifugal forces, he was completely helpless. Help would have to come from elsewhere.
With great force of will, he turned his head a little to the right and glanced at Norma in the copilot position. In the dull glow of emergency lighting he could see that she had removed her helmet, and was barfing profusely into one of the bags that she always carried 'just in case'. She finished, but the bag then slipped from her hands and flew off over Bates’ head towards the rear of the Bus. Bates could tell that she wouldn't be much help.
He heard laughter, and saw something out of the corner of his eye even further to the right. Turning his head he found himself face to face with Goyahkla, who was crouched next to him, staring into his eyes, and laughing with glee. This ride apparently seemed like some sort of wonderful joke to him. At least somebody was enjoying this, but it didn't look like help would be forthcoming from the spirit world either, except perhaps to soon welcome new members.
The Team had failed. He had failed. As a result, Earth and billions of people would die in a few days. But by now he was too sick and dizzy to think much about failure and the fate of Earth; fewer and fewer cogent thoughts ran through his aching head, and those few that remained were mostly prayers, and the names and faces of those that he loved.
Then, very faintly, he thought that he heard 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'. Forcing his head back to the left, Bates could see Flood whistling as he went about his piloting work, reading displays and gages, throwing switches with one hand, and struggling with the control yoke with the other! His efforts must have taken super-human strength and will.
The Commander took the yoke controls with both hands and started moving them in a complex pattern that seemed to somehow compliment the rhythm of the Bus spin. The gut wrenching spinning slowed, then gradually stopped completely! ”Landing in ten seconds," Flood announced calmly over the inner-COM. Bates looked out the windshield. The Bus headlights reflected back glare from the swirling snow. Suddenly the flakes thinned out, revealing snow covered trees and cliffs that reached up slowly towards the descending Bus.
The Bus gently settled down on solid ground, and Flood switched all thrusters off. A pathetically weak but highly emotional cheer arose from the Team. The lack of motion was simply wonderful to experience! The somewhat thicker air was awfully nice to breathe too, though at the moment, it stunk to high heaven. Norma's barf bag hadn't gone nearly far enough, wherever it had gone. But they had landed safely, and amazingly enough, they had landed right on target, for in the headlights a dozen meters in front of the Bus rose the trunk of a gigantic tree.
It took a few seconds of further recovery before anyone spoke. "Hey!” exclaimed Kay at last, "that's my unicorn tree!”
Bates got up gingerly and patted Flood on the back admiringly. "That was fantastic Commander" he said. "How did you manage to get us right next to the tree?”
"Damned if I know!” answered Flood, enigmatically. "Just as I regained control of our dissent the snow thinned out in this direction and I had to only make a slight adjustment to end up here!"
Bates was so pleased to have landed safely, and anxious to get out of the Bus, that he immediately threw open the hatch and stepped out in his shirt sleeves, fully expecting to be buffeted and frozen by a gale force blizzard, and to be up to his kneecaps in snow. Astonishingly, he found that the temperature outside was 'room temperature', about 20 degrees Celsius! Instead of standing in snow, the light from his flashlight revealed that he was standing in a field of green grass! ”Hey everyone, come on out, the blizzard is over! It's summer out here!”
"Not so," said Mel, who had followed his friend out. "Look towards the back of the Bus!”
Bates swung his flashlight around to where Mel's was pointed. Perhaps five meters in back of the Bus an impenetrable curtain of swirling white rose as high as they could see with their flashlights. Mel pulled a thermometer from his pocket, and, putting the thermometer in a gloved hand, walked to the white boundary and thrust his arm through it, thermometer included.
"Yikes! Cold!” The snow was falling so thick that the thermometer, his hand, and most of his arm were completely lost from view. A minute later, when he retrieved them, they were encased in a layer of snow and ice, which he shook and batted off as he read the thermometer. "Minus 10 degrees Celsius,” he announced. “Actually darned reasonable for a blizzard in December at over two kilos altitude. Mild, even. What we are currently standing in however, I would have thought impossible."
The others, who had also left the Bus, were similarly amazed at what they found. Milo wasted no time in laying claim to this hospitable territory in doggie fashion; in a few spots the lush green carpet would soon be even greener. Even Flood came out of his beloved Bus to see what all the fuss was about, or perhaps mostly to get some fresh air.
"Is the Bus force field doing this, Flood?" asked Bates.
"No way our force field could do this," responded Flood. "Besides, it’s turned off; we're covert. Everything except battery powered diagnostics and lights are turned off."
"It's the unicorn tree," explained Kay.
The Team soon confirmed this by surveying the strange 'warm zone'. They spread out along the periphery of the zone and confirmed it to be a circle about fifty meters in radius, with the huge, unicorn-blessed aspen at the center. The diameter of its smooth, gray-white trunk was nearly three meters, about the size of the biggest Northwest Douglas Fir or Western Cedar trees, and as big as most Coast Redwoods. This aspen was many hundreds of times as big as a normal aspen.
"Holy smokes!” exclaimed Bates. He had elevated his flashlight's light beam to shine on the tree above the trunk, expecting to find the beginnings of a leafless, fractal network of winter branches. Instead, he illuminated layers of healthy green leaves, of tremendous number and size, that stretched up into the sky far beyond the capabilities of the flashlight. The leaves seemed to twinkle a little, but that could have been a trick of the lighting.
Doubts harbored by most of the Team members about Kay's unicorn story were by now of course totally gone; the tree was obviously magical, whatever that meant. Mel and Norma, curious about this amazing place, were even now dithering about with thermometers, voltage meters, infrared sensors, and other scientific instruments that they had quickly retrieved from the Bus. Everyone else was still simply gaping in wander at the tree, with the exception of Milo, who was joy
"To work everyone!” said Bates at last, after several minutes of gawking had elapsed. "Flood, Carbuncle, you better work on the Bus.”
"Maybe the rest of us should bring the aliens out to the tree," suggested Elizabeth.
They did just that, though moving Krog required quite an effort, mostly contributed by Steve, Don, Kay and Bates. Krog and Wink looked strangely natural, propped up against the base of the tree trunk. Whatever magic was present in the tree did not wake them, however.
Carbuncle came out of the Bus to give the good news and the bad news, accompanied by Flood. "Fortunately, no critical systems were destroyed," she anounced. "The control lines that got hit had redundant backups that finally cut in, which is why Flood was finally able to regain control. We can patch the holes in the hull easily with our spare Starlite tiles. However, that ray, whatever it was, cut clean through the Bus far too easily. Recall that the Hotel, with its own Starlite Plastic, easily stood up to similar weapons. We wandered why. Flood, demonstration time!"
Flood was carrying two Starlite tiles and a hammer. Each small tile was about a hundred square centimeters in size. He placed them both on one of the large boulders that were scattered around the area. "I used plates like these to repair one of the holes," he explained. When I tapped the first one into place, this happened.” He tapped a tile rather lightly with the hammer, and it not only shattered into pieces, it disintegrated into a fine white powder!
"Crime-in-nee!” exclaimed Hank.
"Maybe you hit it too hard!” ventured Don.
"No," said Flood. "Watch. This is what should have happened.” This time he used both hands to deliver a tremendous blow to the second tile. The tile seemed completely unharmed. Flood picked it up and handed it to Bates. There wasn't a scratch on it, Bates noted. "The first tile was part of the original equipment delivery about twelve years ago. The second one was part of the newer equipment taken on in Enterprise City."
"The first tiles were defective?" asked Bates.
"No, not originally," explained Carbuncle. "Twelve years ago we subjected all of them to rigorous testing.”
"The problem seems to be some sort of molecular instability," explained Flood. "Jigs warned me about this, but he said he didn't know exactly when disintegration would begin. Probably even the newer tiles will have exactly the same problems in another ten years or so.”
"But why does the stuff lose its strength?" asked Bates.
"Frankly," confided Carbuncle, "we haven't figured out yet what gave it its strength in the first place.”
"I think Jigs knows more, but won't tell anyone," said Flood.
"That I can believe. The bottom line though, is that we are traveling around in a vehicle that could turn to dust at the slightest provocation," noted Bates.
"Or even spontaneously," clarified Carbuncle.
Flood, ever the practical man, looked pretty grim, but Carbuncle, having thought through and clarified a technical issue, seemed quite pleased with herself.
Bates took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. What else could go wrong, he wondered. "That sounds just great!" he finally remarked, sarcastically.
"Curious beings you are, to travel in a conveyance of which you know so little," said an unfamiliar, strange, clear piping voice. The Team members looked at each other and all about, without discovering the source.
"That sounded like my unicorn friend!” exclaimed Kay.
"Just so, small one. I will speak to you today using sound, which is the way of your kind. Greetings, friends of Kay," said the voice, as sure enough, a large shimmering white shape similar to that of a thoroughbred racing horse materialized next to Kay facing Bates. As it materialized, other non-horse-like features besides sentience became apparent. Most obviously, a meter long, glowing, spiral horn jutted out prominently from the creature’s forehead. A long silver-gold mane flowed down the back of its neck, and similar hair formed prominent eyebrows and tufts about erect, forward facing ears. The tail was also made of the stuff, in the manner of horses. The silver-gold hair also accented the slim ankles above too-small silver hooves that didn't appear to sink into the soft ground at all.
Perhaps the most striking feature was the white coat that covered most of the creature. It was simply whiter than white, and seemed to actually glow, though not as brightly as the horn. Bates reasoned that the coat somehow created its own light, as it was simply too bright to be simply reflecting it.
But what really captured Bates' attention were the unicorn's eyes. They were set forward far enough to support binocular vision, which was evidently directed straight at Bates. The eyes themselves, if that's what they were, consisted of large, round, black pits, like the empty eye sockets of a skeleton. They contrasted incredibly with the white and silver that surrounded them.
The over-all effect of the creature's appearance was disarmingly unearthly, to the degree that even the likes of Wink, Krog, and Goyahkla though somewhat odd seemed as commonplace as the strange set of neighbors that always manage to live next door to anyone. The unicorn seemed utterly flawless and impervious to its surroundings.
Bates had certainly never seen anything like it, and he struggled for long seconds before finding his voice to reply. "We thank you for your greeting. Yes, communicating using sound is definitely preferred, thank you. As to our Bus, in our world, things as complex as this are developed by hundreds of people. None of us that are here now are experts in this particular plastic material.”
The beast produced a strange snorting whinny. "None in this universe are expert in that particular material human," replied the unicorn mysteriously. "But we may perhaps speak of this later. First please introduce yourself and your companions.” Bates introduced each of the Team, except Goyahkla, who was nowhere to be found. The unicorn as yet gave no name for itself, but acknowledged each Team member with a nod of its head and horn. When introductions concluded with the unconscious aliens, the unicorn walked over to them, and rested its horn on the brow of each of them for several seconds.
"They have life, yet they do not live," pronounced the unicorn. "I have not before seen mortals in this state. They dream in deep sleep, the large one quite loudly. I can perhaps waken them, but only safely if I take them into my home realm, where my powers and the powers of my friends are strongest. You must carry them there, if this issue is to even be considered. All that are here must come, or none."
"Why all of us?" asked Barns.
"All of you are jointly dedicated to this quest, are you not? Then to help even some of you, all and the quest they follow must together be considered. But I give dire warning that thus will you each and all risk yourselves also. You risk your very lives.” The unicorn looked at each of them with its cold dark pits-for-eyes.
The Team members looked at each other nervously.
"We come this far," said Hank, with the fatalism of age.
"I say we go for it!” said Don, with the exuberance of youth.
"This may be a good time for everyone to reassess their life insurance needs," said Winnebago.
"We'll all go," stated Bates, flatly.
"But I should stay and stand guard over the Bus," protested Flood.
"There is no need as long as it remains near this great tree," replied the unicorn, with such authority that its word could not possibly be doubted. "It is well hidden here and protected." So Flood joined the rest of the Team as they picked up the aliens.
Meanwhile the unicorn had turned towards the stand of normal-sized aspen that grew beyond the great tree, and walked towards it, beckoning the Team with a gesture of its head and great horn. "Come then mortals, if you dare!” it said. The Team followed, struggling under the great weight of Krog.
They expected to be stepping out of the warm area and into a blizzard, but the bubble of warmth that sheltered the giant Aspen reshaped to accommodate the movement of the party
"I recommend that you hold tightly onto each other, mortals," advised the unicorn. "It would not do to become lost where we now go."
As they approached the cliff, a narrow section of the solid rock mountain side seemed to partly fade. Into this new cleft the unicorn strode without hesitation, followed by the Team, many of whom were so busy struggling to dodge the huge form of green scaled Krog through the Aspen maze, that they never even noticed when they began walking through the translucent mountain of granite.
Once inside the mountain, all was pitch black except for the unicorn, and a dully-glowing tube as thick as a person's body that seemed to be below their feet. The tube stretched in back of them towards the tree and ahead past the unicorn as far as they could see. Bates tried his flashlight, but it didn't appear to function. Sound was also totally impossible, as he discovered when he tried to talk with the others. However, the whole Team was still joined together by holding onto Krog, Wink, and each other; so at least touch between them seemed possible, despite all the other contradictory violations of basic science and logic that were happening.
Bates had first thought that they had merely entered a tunnel of some sort, and that their entrance into the rock cliff had been some sort of optical illusion. He now strongly suspected that they weren't in a tunnel at all; they were actually passing through the rock of the mountain itself. How could this be possible? How could rock feel like cold, damp air? How could they breathe? And if they could breathe, why couldn’t they speak? Bates had no idea. In any case, whatever was happening was fantastically strange and frightening, and Bates was very grateful that the Team was at least able to somehow hold on to each other.
Bates pulled and pushed to keep everyone close behind the unicorn, as it wouldn't do to lose their guide while they were somehow inside of a mountain. While positioned so closely behind the gracefully prancing creature, Bates confirmed Key’s notion that it was female, though with so unfamiliar a species he couldn't be totally sure.
His proximity to the rear quarters of the creature also led to a concern that the creature shared the equestrian habit of liberal defecation. Would unicorn poop glow in the dark, he wondered? Would they just pass through it anyway, as they were doing with the solid rock? He didn't really want to find out, but at least thinking about such things kept his mind busy and away from more frightening thoughts about how strange and dangerous this entire experience was.
Then Bates noticed something really weird. He stopped walking for a just moment and found that it didn't make any difference at all! He still moved along with everyone else, or at least they all seemed to be moving; he wasn't totally sure anymore, as the only evidence of progress was the motion of the unicorn's legs and apparent motion relative to the glowing tube that stretched below them. He concluded that the unicorn was magically moving all of them. Bates and the others had been moving their own legs for nothing!
After traveling through the darkness for several long minutes, the Team suddenly burst out onto the open, onto a field of knee-high grass. Looking around, Bates found that the whole Team was still together. They laid Krog and Wing down in the soft grass, so that they could more easily openly gawk at their surroundings and rejoice their release from the strange silent depths of the mountain.
The whole area was dimly lit, to about the level that would be provided by a full moon, although no glowing lunar orb was visible. Rather, a dim glow seemed to emanate from the entire sky, or roof, or whatever was overhead. Stands of trees loomed everywhere in the faint light, with many of the individual trunks every bit as large and vigorous looking as the one near the Bus. Other trees, bushes and great boulders also loomed about the Team, but it was impossible to identify most objects very well in the near-darkness. The air was comfortably warm with a slight breeze, and it smelled wonderfully of life, as if it were late Spring rather than early Winter.
"Where are we?" asked Kay of the mystical creature that they had been following, who had paused for a time to let the Team acquaint themselves with their new surroundings.
"This is our realm, Kay, a land of the Fairy, I have heard it called by our human friends; one of only a few such places that remain. We simply call it The Land.”
"Were you driven out of our world by human-kind?" asked Sandra.
The unicorn did its odd snorting whinny again, which Bates by now was sure was laughter. "No child, your fables over-estimate the role of humans in this matter. Our primary difficulty, and yours to a degree that you are as yet unaware, is The Sleeping Great One."
"That must be who we are looking for!” exclaimed Bates. "We are supposed to waken a Great One that dreams, and somehow save the Earth!”
The strange legendary beast turned to stare at Bates. "Then you are on a most dangerous quest, human. Impossible and deadly, under most imaginable circumstances. Your knowledge of the dreaming Great One both fascinates and disturbs me, as does the strange material that makes up your vehicle. Also, it is odd that one of your human dead awaits you outside the boundaries of this realm. But I will discuss these things no further on this night. I would instead call a full High Council meeting of The People in the morning, that you may explain it to all of us."
"After that, will you waken my sleeping friends Wink and Krog?" asked the General.
"Perhaps," replied the unicorn. "I am pledged to help them, but the form of that help is yet to be determined. First the circumstances of your quest must be discovered, so we of the Council may decide your fate. Follow me now to a place where you may rest.”
Once again, the Team picked up the unconscious aliens and followed the unicorn. On the way, Bates sketched out the entire Ra and Dannos situation to the unicorn, who gave no response, other than an occasional snort or a nod of her horn. Bates had no idea if he was even understood by the strange creature, who seemed to know English perfectly well, but certainly came from a vastly different environment then did the Team. Hidden away in this strange place, could creatures of mythology possibly conceive of space ships and asteroids? But it was important that she and this Council of hers understand the situation. What had she just said about deciding the Team's fate?
"I don't understand," ventured Bates, "exactly what is it that your Council must decide?"
The unicorn stopped walking and turned to face Bates again, fixing him with twin bottomless black pit eyes set in glowing white. "I gave fair warning human, as is our custom. In addition to considering the merits of your quest, it must be determined if any of you will ever be permitted to leave this realm alive."
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