Chapter 20

Interlude: Another place not far away, in the dead of night.

The roar of the big cat shook Sandra from her sleep. “Not close,” she thought as she slowly awakened. “No danger. Who’s on guard duty now? Oh yeah, Derrick.” She took a moment to reflect on the previous day. “My God, what a meeting. He was one step away from challenging my authority. What a mess that would have been.”

Sandra stretched and sighed, looking at her watch and seeing that she would be relieving Derrick in ten minutes. It was not enough time to try to get back to sleep, and her active mind soon returned to its favorite pastime, reviewing their experiences since coming to Castle Commonwealth and trying to find a clue that would lead them out of this nightmare.

Fifteen other women and one man had pledged to follow her leadership, though after so many days of zero progress, the group’s unity was beginning to unravel. But what else could she do? Sandra stretched in the warm darkness, listening to the sounds of the jungle outside their shelter. Just one colossal mistake, she thought, on their second day here. That’s all it took. It really wasn’t anybody’s fault.

“How strange,” she thought. “Less than three weeks? Is that all? Is that possible?” She sighed and let the memories run in her mind.

She wouldn’t have even come to this party, except for the fact her parents called from Boston on the 20’th and said something came up. They asked if they could they pick her up on Saturday rather than Friday. Sure, she replied, what’s one extra day? No problem.

Sandra remembered the cold and gray December sky and how Amy had shouted when she saw the dirt road. Sandra remembered the incredibly whacky treasure-hunt path down to the elevator at the end of the tunnel. What a scene! Those fraternity boys were acting so sure of themselves. It really was rather pathetic to watch them argue with the nurses ahead of them in line. What a relief when they finally left through the elevator.

By the time Sandra’s group took the ride, they were all in good spirits. Several of the girls were already flirting with the two boys with them, and Sandra could remember how they sang their Party theme as they rode on the elevator. “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain. Too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will, oh what a thrill.” At this point Amy and Patrick were bumping the sides of their hips together, nothing lewd, just being playful. “Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!”

Another roar of the big cats brought Sandra out of her memories. She grimaced at the thought of their deadly power. They had killed Patrick the day before Christmas, or more precisely, Patrick had sacrificed himself so that Sandra and the others would have a chance to escape. Such nobility, Sandra thought, and from someone who was almost a stranger. Sandra still felt unworthy of the gift. Shrugging off the lingering feelings of guilt, she got up and stretched and then went to relieve Derrick a few minutes early.

Time: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 10:05 AM

Mark and Jada quietly walked the dark cobblestone path south. They were at the home hexagon complex of Green Mall at it was still twenty minutes before dawn. The air was quite chilly, cold enough for snow, and the southern sky had a faint pink glow to it but was without warmth. Winter was fast approaching.

It had proven surprisingly difficult to coax the interface to change the time of his training program, but Mark finally got it to agree to a 8 AM to 10 AM, 2 PM to 4 PM, and 5 PM to 7 PM schedule. The change would allow him to still participate in the short excursions around noontime and free him from being in classes late in the evening.

The couple met Aggie and Emily at the southern vertex. There were brief hugs all around. “How was your class?” asked Aggie.

Mark stretched. “The interface was putting me through my paces on Hertzprung-Russell diagrams, or at least that’s what I used to call them.”

“What’s that?” asked Emily.

“Plots of solar luminosity versus temperature. We’ve got a good example right here coming out of the southern sky. Radiant output is down a factor of four compared to our old sun, which means the color temperature of the light is down about a thousand degrees Kelvin. We’re still on the main sequence for solar evolution though.”

Emily nodded. “Just lower down on the totem pole?”

“Exactly.” In the dim predawn twilight, the group started making their way south.

Two hours later...

Mark looked at the sun and cracked his first smile in over an hour. He was about to call it high noon, but the sun was only three or four degrees above the southern horizon. He decided the correct term would be low noon.

Taking the bikes had been a mini-disaster. The surface features south of Green Mall’s home complex were very different than Red Mall’s. Fewer straight corridors, many more mandatory stairwells where they were forced to change levels, and somewhat interesting, large areas where the topology was reversed. They had entered an area with soft sand paths between large hexagonal buildings.

“What do you think is inside?” Jada asked gesturing to the buildings. They had just turned sixty degrees to walk due south.

Mark stared at the frosted windows. “Can’t see much from here. More warehouses I guess. Want to go inside?”

Jada thought for a moment. “Not this trip. We haven’t got the time.”

Mark grunted his agreement. He was carrying two bicycles while Emily charted their course. The surface underfoot was too soft to bike, and even when they could ride, Emily still needed time to draw the maps she was making. She did that easily on foot the previous day as they walked, but she certainly couldn’t do it while biking. Mark silently decided he would abandon the idea of using bikes for surface exploration.

The topology switched again and they found corridors they could bike for a while by ascending to the second floor. But it didn’t last. Soon they took another stairwell down to ground level and exited to a hexagonal zigzag of sandy roads heading in all directions. Mark sighed and carried two bicycles again as they trekked south. Ten minutes later they came to a major wall running east-west. It was a uniform six meters in height and had the look and texture of a blue translucent glass. A hundred meters to the west there appeared to be an archway through the wall, and the group hiked to it.

Emily and Aggie both frowned when they saw a pictogram by the archway. Mark thought it looked like a broken Y lying on its side.

“It’s a warning,” said Aggie. “The most severe there is. That’s the code for mortal danger.” She suddenly felt a bit like sneezing and wondered if she were smelling something irritating.

The four of them walked to the threshold of the archway and looked inside. Before them was a vast open courtyard perhaps a hundred meters in width and running east and west as far as the eye could see. Beyond the archway was about twelve meters of sand followed by an equally wide cobblestone walkway (four meters each of yellow, then red, then black cobblestones). After the walkway was about seventy-five meters of vegetation.

Mark stared at the foliage with a puzzled frown. It looked like a single species of plant, a dense ground cover with extremely thick, dark green leaves. There was another blue glass wall beyond the vegetation, and this time the wall was truly immense, a full twelve meters in height.

“I don’t like the setup,” Aggie said quietly. “We shouldn’t be here.” She gave another small sneeze.

“Come on,” said Mark. “The cobblestones might be a good bike path.” But they most certainly were not. The yellow cobblestones seemed intentionally laid to make walking on them very difficult, the red stones were even worse, and the black stones had many razor sharp edges. Mark wondered if the stones were some kind of cleaved flint. The jagged surface was so bad it would ruin a bicycle tire instantly if someone were idiotic enough to try to ride here. Standing a meter from the vegetation, Mark squatted on the black cobblestones and examined the plants without touching them. After a moment Aggie joined him. She stared intently into the foliage.

The leaves looked vaguely like holly but were attached to long thin vines. Mark thought it was unusual to see broad leaves looking so healthy in such coldness. He guessed the temperature was about -2C. Meanwhile Aggie was squatting very quietly by his side and gave another small sneeze. She then gave a soft gasp and backed off the cobblestones. She called out in a tense, flat and very quiet voice, “Mark, keep silent. Stand up slowly and back away, no sudden motions. Come all the way back to the sand, as quietly as you can.”

“Hmmm?”

“No words, just do it. These plants are dangerous. Get off the cobblestones. Get off now, as quietly as you can.”

Mark turned slowly and walked across the stones, walking carefully over the bumpy surfaces. As he got back to the sand, he asked in a quiet voice, “Aggie, what’s up?”

“Wicked curved thorns along the vines, Mark, like needles.”

“Yeah, I saw them. I have good boots on.”

“I saw the vines twitch.”

“What? You mean from the wind?”

“No. It looked much more organized than that. Several vines twitched, just when I sneezed. It was exactly as if they heard me, moving slightly towards my sound. Then other vines in contact with the first ones reacted to the motion, jerking and wiggling from the disturbance.”

Mark turned and stared at the greenery. “You think the ivy can hear us? This is a plant, right?”

Aggie whispered, “Maybe not just a plant. I’m telling you, I saw the vines move and wiggle. My impression was that of lots of green garden snakes with thorns, or cats with retractable claws. They wiggled! The motions had purpose! It was ... scary.”

Jada stared at the lush foliage. “I could throw my water bottle in, see what happens.”

Emily frowned. “I’m strongly inclined not to do anything.”

“Me too,” added Aggie. She shivered, and it was not from the cold. “Seriously. We do not want to cause a disturbance here.”