Chapter 497

The Prison Planet

The meeting in the cave continues.

Whitworth looked over at the young anthropologist and grinned. “That might go well in your dissertation, hmmm? You know the committee will try to punch holes in such a controversial subject, though. I suggest you take your time, complete your research and, as they say, do it right. You’re under no deadline from me.”

That got him an energetic hug, astonishing not only him, but Jasmine as well, not to say anything about causing the General to almost spill his coffee.

“Oh, my goodness, Sir. I didn’t mean...” she stammered when she realized what she had done.

Laughing, he quickly put his cup down and hugged her back. “Hush. I can always use a hug from a pretty, young woman. Now, I know there must be something else the two of you wanted to tell me?”

“Well,” she said, blushing as she returned to her seat, “it should have been Morales to tell you about the communication between him and the wolves, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut while he tells of his other discovery.”

If there ever was a deer in the headlights look, Morales had it. “Jas, you’re the one who checked out everything with your equipment. All I did was...”

“ ... discover the place and explore it,” she finished, putting words into his mouth.

“So, what have you discovered, Mr. Morales?” the General prompted.

“I just found the place. It was Jasmine who...”

“Will the two of you just stop and tell me what’s happened?” Whitworth said, knowing full well what they were going to say since he had much of the information from the near-microscopic cameras.

Morales looked at his lover. “Jas?”

“Unh uh. It’s yours to tell.”

With a sigh, Morales took another sip of his coffee before turning to the General. “Uh, Sir. Well, as we’ve mentioned, I noticed some cooler air coming from further down a side passageway. Once I had the battery powered lanterns from the resupply case, I finally worked up enough courage to check out that part of the cave. To make a long story a little shorter, I eventually came to an area that must be an underground glacier or whatever. Anyway, the passageway continues on, but not long after the ice starts, the tunnel begins to slope more steeply downward. A little farther along, the incline really steepens, and remember, everything is frozen hard as steel. Without a pick with me to make steps and maybe ropes in case I slipped, I was afraid to go any farther. I brought some poles in, made some holes in the walls for anchor points for the poles, slung other poles between boulders, and I was in business for a place to hang my meat. Now, I didn’t have to jerky everything to keep the meat from spoiling. I could have steaks and roasts anytime I wanted. Sooner or later, I’m going to take a pick to dig out steps and explore farther, but that’s beside the point for now.

“Well,” he went on, “each time I went into the area, I kept seeing things – movement – out of the corner of my eye. When I looked, there was nothing there, but it really spooked me. I knew it had to be reflections, but knowing that, and convincing the hair that was standing up on the back of my neck, was a different thing entirely.”

The General, having had the feeling a few times in his career, grinned, but motioned for Morales to continue. “Anyway, while I was trying to find what seemed like movement, I discovered a crack in the wall of the ice cave. It was jagged and ran at an angle down the wall, but I managed to force my way through. Inside – well – there isn’t any good way for me to describe it with my limited vocabulary. There’s this big ... room with hundreds – maybe thousands – of almost crystal clear ... uh, columns scattered everywhere. Sometimes, there is the hint of something moving – flowing – inside them. Some of the columns are no thicker than your wrist, but others are six feet or so in diameter. There doesn’t seem to be any logical ordering about them. Some are close together while others are several yards apart. It’s as if everything has been placed randomly in there.”

“I assume you’re saying that the ... column things aren’t natural. What do they appear to be made of?”

“Well, we, Jasmine and I, at first, thought they might be made of ice. But ... they’re obviously artificial, whatever they’re made of. We aren’t even sure the floor is ice, although it seems to be almost clear and very cold, of course. But ... it isn’t quite slick enough, if that makes sense to you. Oh, it’s slick, but not like an almost perfectly smooth ice floor should be. It’s certainly not as slick as an icy sidewalk or an ice rink, but it looks like ice.”

“And what did you find?” the General asked Conners.

Jasmine shrugged. “My instruments weren’t designed to measure anything in that environment, but we tried, anyway. There are no obvious radio waves of any frequency I was able to check for. I have density readings, but they change from one instant to the next. Sometimes, the instrument even claimed the density of a column was infinite. They are totally non-conductive, the resistance off the scale, at least with the equipment I used for the tests. Reflective characteristics of visible light waves also vary over time, and I mean at the same exact spot. I have everything recorded if you should want to have your physicists review my notes. But, I fully expect that they will say that I am incompetent to take any of the measurements, because everything seems to change from one time to another, but I did, carefully, record the time each time I took a reading. My watch no longer corresponds to Earth time, but the time I listed does, at least, show the duration of the intervals between readings. There just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the place, and there is something else.”

Nervously, she took a sip of her now cold coffee. “Sir, there is, indeed, something else, something really... weird.” She locked eyes with Morales who nodded and smiled encouragement. “Sir, we were suddenly back at the crack where we started. I freely admit, that I could have been going in a circle should I have been left to my own devices, but Mr. Morales, who was guiding me, has an excellent sense of direction, evidenced by how he has checked out the area around this cave for miles without ever becoming lost or losing his bearings even for a moment. And he, Sir, was paying attention while I hurried from one column to the next, probably muttering to myself, which I tend to do when faced with a new and unknown artifact of which this is, indeed, a giant example,” she quietly said.

“Anyway, Sir, even though he was consciously keeping us in a straight line so we could measure the distance across the place, we wound up at our starting point. Like I said, I wouldn’t have thought much about it, since I wasn’t paying close attention to where we were, but he was, and it upset him immensely. We went back a second time, and this time we both took pains to walk in a straight line while again pulling a long line behind us to keep from getting lost.

“We wound up at the crack again, and when we investigated, the line was stretched out, parallel, but only a dozen feet from where we were still pulling the same line. At some point, somehow, we were turned around and we must have walked back, all the while trying to maintain our straight course away from the entrance point. We pulled the cord while watching the parallel cord, and sure enough, it began to move. We wound the whole thing up and got the heck out of there,” she finished, chill bumps on her neck and arms.

Jasmine continued. “Although I tried to maintain professional standards throughout our ... research effort, the room actually frightens me – badly. We did not become disoriented or turned around. We took precautions to proceed in as nearly a straight course as we could manage by first looking back at the line lying on the floor, then turning to project our path toward a distant column. When we got to the column, we looked back down the line as best we could to see if we had veered off course. We had not. But, no matter how careful we were, we were suddenly back at the crack, and there was the beginning of the line tied to the base of a column only a few feet away.

“There was no way we could visibly determine exactly where we reversed our course, because the columns quickly mask the line as viewed from the side. Upon reflection, there are other ways to guarantee that a straight path is maintained, but both of us were unsure of exactly what happened. By then, I just wanted to be out of there. Oh, we know how much line we used, but were we turned around at the halfway point of the paracord or at some other, maybe random distance? Neither of us has the slightest idea.

“With the profusion of columns and the reflections, it’s impossible to see the opposite wall of the room. Both of us have the feeling that the room is immense, but that is only a feeling without any hard evidence to support it. As I said, after the phenomenon I have just described, we were ready to get out of there. We haven’t made another research effort since, due to the frustration of what happened to us. In addition, that feeling of being watched had increased in intensity the farther we went into the room – at least for me. Mr. Morales was more aware of the feeling in the beginning, but I felt the effect more toward the end of our visit. As far as our suddenly finding ourselves back where we started, logically, we must have, somehow, become disoriented and reversed our direction. But, Sir, both of us were highly alert that second trip. We did not walk in a circle. We did not reverse our direction. We did walk in a straight line, yet we wound up where we started from. It is eerie, to put it mildly.” she finished with a sigh.

“We have looked through the crack twice since then, but we have already done everything we know to do in our investigation. We need someone, or a team, to investigate the room and those columns. We have neither the equipment nor the expertise to do more, but, Sir, we think the column area does, indeed, do something.”

“The feeling,” Morales insisted. “Tell the General about that.”

“Oh, yes; I suppose I should. Sir, each time we entered the place, we experienced that feeling I spoke of ... It seemed to be a feeling of...”

“Dread,” Morales said.

“Yes. Dread seems to fit, but it seems to somehow morph into a feeling of not being welcome – of something ... vicious and unseen staring at us from behind, of something bad going to happen soon. Sometimes, the feeling lessened after we had been inside the room for a while – sometimes it became more intense, and it varied over time and between the two of us. Sometimes, I might not feel it at all, but at the same time, Morales might feel it intensely. Other times, I might feel it strongly while it wasn’t bothering him to any great degree.”

Jasmine sucked in a breath and a look of determination appeared on her face. Locking eyes with Morales for a second, he nodded to her. Turning back to the General, “Sir, I, uh, we also think there’s an excellent possibility that the columns have something to do with Mr. Morales and the wolves’ communication abilities, and ... maybe an increase of intelligence, particularly in the animals. I feel – we feel – that it somehow influences the animals, and maybe us, all the way out here.”

The General looked down at his empty cup, then back to stare eye-to-eye at the young anthropologist. “And you want me to send in an investigative team to verify that, and to determine just what this ... column place is?” he asked.

Jasmine and Morales glanced at each other before she let out a sigh and answered. “Yes, Sir... but we’re concerned with, uh, our animals. Respectfully, the wolves are probably just this world’s version of wolves to you. But, General, they are so much more. Sir, even the chickens have personalities and show evidence of love toward us. Junior there,” she said pointing, “seems to have imprinted on Morales to the extent the chick wants to sleep in his bed. But before you start to think that is gross, remember, they use the bathroom in one place, then cover their leavings with the loose dirt we provide. They’re clean and have no odor that one might sometimes associate with fowl. Gertrude there,” she said pointing out the larger hen, “is their ... boss, I suppose you could say. Morales has likened her to a drill Sergeant in the army.”

“If the other hens get out of line, she kicks their ass,” Morales inserted.

When everyone chuckled, Jasmine went on, “Sir, the social anthropologist in me couldn’t help noticing the structure of their little society, to put it into human terms. Somehow, they are not just the dumb chickens we normally associate with Earth fowl.”

After hesitating, she smiled and told the General. “I have never done this, but I want to prove something, and I think this will work. Watch.” Then still using a conversational tone and volume, she said, “Junior, please come sit on my shoulder.” While she was saying that, she tried to project a mental picture of the half-grown chicken flying over and alighting on her shoulder.

One of the chicks suddenly stood up straight to stare at her. A second later, he was airborne. After making a half circle around the General, he alighted on Jasmine’s shoulder to nudge his bill against her cheek while she stroked his head and told him, “Good boy.”

Not giving himself time to think it through, Whitworth said, “Impressive, Ms. Conners. How long did it take you to teach him that?”

Jeff cleared his throat as the General’s thoughts caught up with his mouth. Shit, the Sergeant would surely have sent me the video of her teaching the chicken to do that. Before he could voice his thoughts, Jasmine responded.

Since she dared not mention her recent mental activity, she said, instead, “I promise you that was the first time I have asked Junior to do that, and I really didn’t know whether it would work or not,” she said as she absently continued petting the chick. “My point being that I’m almost certain the chickens are not only naturally smart, but they, as well as the wolves, have been influenced by the columns. My hypothesis might well be in error, but I strongly feel that it isn’t.”

The General and the Colonel passed a glance. Whitworth sat for a couple of seconds before admitting, “You present a very compelling case, Young Lady. When you addressed me on the vid, you mentioned a ‘field of influence’. Assuming that this place does influence Mr. Morales, the animals, and maybe even you, what are your thoughts on how far this ‘influence’ extends?”