Chapter 30: Maelstrom

Eru and I stood at a small kiosk that itself stood just short of that mysterious highway I had seen and heard being used through the darkness when we'd first found his world. While I had in theory gleaned an understanding of the written language along with the spoken one during my sessions with Construct, in practice I was able to pick out individual words fairly well, but complete sentences and making sense of what I saw written before me was still a struggle for me.

As Eru selected choices on the menu panel, he explained to me that the entire Western hemisphere was a loose federation of city-states that had banded together during the troubled times and were now connected by a network of high speed land and air transit systems. As he pushed a final button, and two small clear plastic octagonal discs spat out of a slot into a little wire basket, he told me that the closest we could get was to a fishing community called Sagriva. I had seen the map displayed as he was selecting the destination, and it appeared to be close to where New Bern was on Earth, about 40 miles or so from Chocowinity. I thought it was possible that that distance would be within my range if the focus here was anything like the one at home.

Within a few minutes of the plastic discs dropping into the basket, a small vehicle with a white, lozenge-shaped cabin that seemed to be almost seamlessly connected to a dark gray, utilitarian lower unit approached with the distinctive high pitched hum I remembered. There were no wheels. These ground units used some form of magnetic levitation.

Gull-wing style door opened with a pneumatic 'pshhh', and we entered a small, comfortably padded cabin with two facing pairs of seats. A polite voice asked us to please be seated, and within seconds of taking our seats, the little craft rose up and it shot off back the way it had come along the smooth, dark road.

"It will probably be five minutes before we get to the transit center. These little craft have little in the way of amenities, but there is music if you'd like."

I nodded my agreement, and soon there was an interesting piece playing that sounded something like a small group of stringed instruments and a grand piano trading off jazz interpretations on each other's melodies. It was actually quite interesting.

The black highway quickly and smoothly took us on a curving track north and then due west into the central valley, probably somewhere between where Stockton and Sacramento would be on Earth. Our little lozenge-shaped craft slid into one of a pair of long buildings arranged parallel to each other. Inside this building were dozens of similar cars, forming two lines along the side walls of the building. Ours moved slowly toward a ramp with blue flashing lights. The lights on both ramps reminded me of those little lights you see outlining the runways at airports.

As we got past the top curve of the ramp I saw that we were going to move under a larger arm of some type. Once under the arm, we heard a low thrum, and our little cabin, now detached from the lower unit was held in place while a new, different type of unit moved into place beneath us. Our cabin connected to this new unit and we were quickly moved by the arm in a short arc away from the smooth surface of the ramp, where we saw our now cabin-less lower unit moving away.

As soon as the arm moved us that short distance it released us, and to my surprise, and with a definite stomach-wrenching dropping feeling, we were falling up at very high speed. Dare let out a little squeal and I grabbed the armrests of my seat. I heard Eru laughing in his seat across from me. I looked over at him and saw him grinning at me.

"I have been waiting to see your reaction to this part Davey. I saw that your world had not yet developed any of the magno-gravitic technology that has made our word's travel so safe and easy."

I smiled back and let Eru cackle and enjoy his evil plan come to fruition. We rose for only seconds, but I could see the curvature of the planet beneath us when we finally 'thrummed' into a locked position, attached to the belly of some larger craft. Seconds later the soft blue lighting accents in the cabin that I hadn't even noticed until now changed to an equally soft red and I felt a momentary tug of inertia as we began moving.

"Twenty minutes to separation point." a new voice announced.

Wow, twenty minutes to cross the continent. That seemed amazing to me.

We sped along, each lost in our own thoughts. I thought about Ginny of course. She had been absolutely adamant as we were getting ready for bed last night that she would once again be by my side during this journey. No amount of arguing, persuasion or reasoning worked, until finally I took her in my arms and kissed her.

"Do you love me?" I asked.

"Of course! With all my heart!!" she replied. I kissed her again, long and slow and with every ounce of love I could muster.

"Then I need you here! I need you to be my anchor, my lifeline!"

"Davey, I..."

"Ginny, you're not understanding what I'm saying. I need you to be here because I know if something happens, I'll be able to find you." Another long kiss.

"I found your love from clear across California before I was even sure I could. Now I know that your love is a beacon." This time she kissed me.

"If I wind up in danger, this time, even across all the facets of existence, this time, I will be able to find my way home, because I will be able to find you."

She sobbed into my chest as I held her. I felt the tears on my skin. Until finally she looked up into my eyes and kissed me again.

"Love me Davey." I heard the need in her voice, and saw it in her eyes. I slid above her, and as she pulled me into her I whispered

"Always and Forever Blossom."

My reverie was broken by the announcement that we had five minutes until we reached the separation point.

"Davey, when we get to Sagriva, if we are still not close enough, we will have to look at hiring either a boat or a wagon to take us closer. Do you have a preference? Eru asked me. I thought about it for a bit.

"It would be a much shorter trip overland than it would be by boat, but if there is no road to the area it could be much easier to go by boat. We'll have to see what the situation looks like when we get there." I answered.

"That was my thought as well. This is supposed to be a fishing community. We should have no problem finding someone who knows the area to take us by sea if we decide that is preferred."

As Eru said this, the announcement was made for us to take our seats and prepare for detachment. Neither of us had gotten up the entire time, but we unconsciously straightened ourselves in our seats.

There was a slight bump, another, louder 'THRUMMM' and we were falling. The falling sensation lasted only a second, and we were back to what seemed normal gravity. I thought it was funny that that pit-of-the-stomach feeling seemed to last longer when we were falling up than when we were falling down.

Our arrival in Sagriva seemed a repeat, in reverse, of our departure. Our ground vehicle however took us only a few hundred yards, from the arrival building to another smaller round building where the gull-wing door opened with the now familiar 'pshhh'. As soon as we were outside Pearl stretched her wings, lifted and did a couple quick circles a dozen feet above us before returning to Eru's shoulder. While Pearl was doing her thing I reached out for the focus and found ... nothing! I sensed no power at all in the area!

As this was happening a middle-aged woman with long hair tied into a ponytail with a series of braided plant fibers that looked like hay or straw approached us.

"Excuse me sir." She interjected. "Are you here to join the tour to the shrine?

"Shrine? Eru asked. She quickly handed him a brochure, completely ignoring me, perhaps due to my age. Eru looked the brochure over, opening it to look at the interior pages. He looked at those for only a few seconds and started laughing. Before I could ask him what was so funny, he handed me the brochure.