Authors: Wade Andrew Butcher
Chapter 41
When the rising sun got high enough in the sky to warm the air a little, Eva walked up to the shoreline rock edge and looked out over the water. She could not believe Quasar was gone. She felt truly alone for the first time.
The sunlight warmed her back as she looked over the glistening expanse of ice stretching nearly to the horizon in the south and west. The waterfall in the distant west raged while the streams to the south trickled water into the surrounding woodlands. It should have been paradise, but it was not.
Eva sat down and dangled her feet over the small cliff edge. She found herself praying to a deity she did not know.
Please, please let Quasar show up. Where could she be? Please be real, I know you’re real.
She remembered the strange creatures in the woods, which she had not disclosed to anyone. There had not been time. Maybe they could be a food source? It didn’t matter anymore. Despite their survival through the night, she could not combat the sadness of the void felt by losing her sister. She might be able to survive, she thought, but the sentiment of hope felt hollow.
Something wrapped itself around her waist from below. She was tossed into the air before she realized what was happening. Another arm cushioned her fall at the edge of the water. Eva could see it was a Dawdler. She was thrown in the air again in the direction of the lake and again was caught by an arm before she hit the surface. She was pulled through a newly formed hole in the ice. She could not combat the force tugging her under. There was no time to think or to scream. One moment she was overlooking the lake, and the next moment she was under the ice in the frigid water.
The cold was paralyzing. Eva held her breath and tried to swim upward, but she was being held. Before the possibility of imminent death could enter her mind, she was surrounded by some kind of pod, a container enclosing her tightly into a space to tight to move. The water was quickly sucked out, and she regained her breath. Eva could not extend her arms all the way. When she tried, they met the interior wall of the pod, and her hands flattened out onto its smooth, hard surface. It was oddly warm to the touch, shielding her palms from the frigid water on the other side revealed by the transparency of the wall. She hit it again and again. She stretched her legs against it. She tried to twist and turn, but there was not even enough room for that. But she could breathe.
Eva stilled herself. While motionless, she took in shallow breaths of air while her heart raced. She could see through into the dark water, but the visibility was low. The only thing she noticed at first was the arm of a Dawdler pressed against her container pushing her deeper into the lake.
The light from the surface diminished. Before Eva had time to let the fear for her life sink in, she entered some kind of lock, where a door was closed behind her and water was slowly expelled through the floor. Walls came into view. The features on the walls looked much like what she would have seen on Gambler or Taurus, and there were controls of some kind. She didn’t know their function but they certainly looked man made.
She looked through her transparent prison at a Dawdler. It was sitting motionless, just like they had seen them on the sand when the three came out of the water the first time. It did not delay long before it reached in her direction. It did something to an apparatus on the pod. There was a knock as the pod folded open to spit Eva out into the drained room. She was on her hands and knees on the wet grated floor. Breathing heavily, she looked straight down. The perch by the lake where she had been a few short minutes before had been forgotten, eclipsed by the horror she had just experienced.
She sprang to her feet and yelled, “Why?” She rushed toward the creature with her arm raised and brought it down in an attempt to deliver a blow. Her efforts were futile and silly. The creature wrapped up her arm with its massive limb, and it suppressed her other arm with another of its twelve. She kicked but could not reach it.
A door opened into a larger room. She was shoved in its direction. She tried to protest, but there was nowhere else to go and nowhere to retreat. As she was pushed across the threshold, Eva was astonished to discover she was not alone.
“Webster!” she cried.
“Eva,” he said as he stood to hug her.
The Dawdler was still nearby. She turned to see, and upon looking, she saw the nearly featureless room. Under some kind of lighting, the floor was a metallic grate like there had been in the previous room, the water lock. She looked for exits but couldn’t identify any right away. There were some pipes that opened into the room, but they were much too small to crawl through.
“How long have you been here? How did you get here? I didn’t even know you were gone?” Eva cried with questions flowing from her mouth. She was confused and in disbelief at what was happening, whatever it was.
“I was waiting to meet Relay and was abducted before I knew it. I’m guessing the same way they got you here.”
“How do we get back? Do you think they took Quasar here? Maybe she’s okay! What are they going to do with us?” Her questions continued rolling from her tongue faster than she could think.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He just finished his answer, or lack of an answer, when they heard another voice.
“I explain,” said a familiar voice.
They turned in the direction of the noise and saw the Dawdler lying placidly on the floor with one arm in the air. Affixed to its arm was the little black box, the translator. The Dawdler was Relay, their kidnapper.
“Please do!” Webster implored him angrily, enunciating the two syllables slowly for the translator to decode.
Eva sat down on the cold hard floor. Her chest hurt from an overactive and nervous heart.
“This is spaceship home, like Taurus,” Relay said. The realization that Dawdlers were visitors on that world had not occurred to them. It did not really matter where they were from.
Webster asked the next question, “You brought us here to see your home?”
Relay answered, “Yes.”
“Then you will take us back?”
Relay gave another one word answer, “No.”
“What do you mean
no
. Why? What could you possible want with us?” Webster asked, still not understanding Relay’s intention.
“You will see,” Relay said. His ability to communicate was bizarre and intriguing to Eva, even if it was in short choppy sentences constructed by the translator.
Eva asked, “Is Quasar here too?”
“Who Quasar?” Relay asked.
“Another woman. Did you bring other people?” Webster clarified.
“Oh, yes. Others. Others here,” Relay answered.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Webster yelled.
It did not answer. The creature removed the translator from its arm and placed it on floor in front of Webster. An inconspicuous sliding door revealed itself. Relay swiftly raised his body up on his legs and was quickly through. They tried to follow, but the door shut, and they were left alone again.
In all the years on Gambler, Eva had been in confined spaces many times, but she had never felt detained against her will. The mental agony of knowing the Dawdlers could do whatever they wanted swirled in her mind. Reduced to tears, she imagined Webster had the same thoughts and emotions as he paced back and forth ignoring her.
Some of the group had killed Dawdlers. Would they seek revenge? They were clearly intelligent beings, maybe more intelligent than people. And they seemed to have an agenda. One thing was clear. Eva and Webster were not in control. They were at the mercy of the Dawdlers’ will.
Chapter 42
An hour passed, maybe two. Webster was removed and taken somewhere. His protests induced no reaction from the deaf creatures. He grabbed the translator on the way out hoping to have some method of communication, but he seemed to be the only one interested.
Eva stood alone for a minute and cried thinking she had seen her final day when she was lured down a narrow corridor. Then, strangely, she was released to wander on her own, but there was only one direction to go, one path to take. When she reached a dead end, she climbed down a ladder in a narrow tube into another corridor where there was an open door. The sound of a water fountain was inside. Two others were inside the room watching as if her entrance was anticipated.
“Quasar!” Eva shouted as she ran to embrace her. For a moment, she was so glad to see her that she didn’t even think about what would happen to them.
Quasar was wearing only a white silk gown, and an unfamiliar but pleasant aroma permeated Eva’s senses as they embraced. The closest scent she could remember by comparison was that of the orange blossoms in the greenhouse on Gambler. She could never forget those. They seldom bloomed, only a handful of times in her life that she could remember, but it was a smell that was etched in her memory.
The other person, who Eva did not immediately recognize, approached and put her hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Hello, Eva,” she said. Like Quasar, she was beautiful. And clean. She wore a similar dress that clung to her slender figure. The spotless white color of her garment was flawless. Eva had never seen clothes that looked like that.
“Elisa?” Eva embraced her as well, something she had never done when they were together before. Seeing Elisa gave Eva hope. If Elisa had been alive all that time, maybe there was hope for Eva too.
“What do we do now? What did they do to you?” Eva desperately wanted to understand. She moved closer to Quasar.
“They haven’t hurt us,” Elisa said. “When they took me, they put me in an underwater container, just like they did with Quasar, and just like I think they probably did with you. I couldn’t see where we were going. The water was dark, but I could feel myself accelerating. I didn’t go over the waterfall. At least I don’t think so. It was some kind of underwater cave that brought me back down to the lake. They brought me here, and since then I have had water and food. And books.”
Eva stopped to look around.
Books
? The room was big and furnished with many soft chairs with accompanying tables. The ceiling must have been more than thirty feet overhead. And dark. It was transparent, revealing the opaque water on the other side. The floor was soft, covered with light brown carpeting. Eva removed her shoes and gripped the soft surface with her toes. She had never seen a place like it on Gambler or Taurus.
There was a fountain. She walked over to it in disbelief. It fed a small pool with warm water. Steam floated above its surface as the fountain water fell gently over it making small splashes. The steady noise of the miniature waterfall filled the room.
“Go ahead and have a bath,” Quasar suggested with a nod.
A bath was something she had only read about in stories. Eva removed her clothes and stepped up the stone and into the small pool. The warmth radiated through her naked body. The sensation made her forget where she was, and she stopped caring just for a moment that she was some kind of prisoner, a pawn in a game run by creatures with an untold agenda. Eva closed her eyes and was overcome with relaxation.
“Use this now while you can,” Elisa said as she offered Eva some kind of container. Eva reached out her hand, and she poured the viscous liquid into her palm. Its scent was of the same flowers she smelled on the other two. She rubbed it all over her body and hair. She dipped all the way into the bath and scrubbed until she was cleaner than she could ever remember.
She finally stepped out after about an hour. Her skin was wrinkled and she was dizzy from the warmth of the water. There was a white gown waiting for her just like the ones on Quasar and Elisa. It was her size, draped over a chair. Quasar brought it to her with a towel. What luxuries were these? What was this place?
Eva scanned the room. The giant window spanned across the ceiling and down nearly to the floor about seventy feet away. She approached one of the tables and tried to push it. It was affixed to the floor. Along the wall that stretched to the outer edge of the room, there were bookcases filled with books.
There
were the books. The place was furnished like no place she had ever seen, not even the Ward back on Gambler. The two women followed Eva around as she explored.
Eva began to realize as she approached the books the room was built for humans. What use did a Dawdler have for a chair or a book? How could that be? Did they construct this place for them?
She pulled one of the books from a shelf. There were hundreds, maybe thousands. She opened it to see words she did not understand, written in a language that was not her own. Elisa gently took hold of her wrist and led her over a few steps.
“Try some of these,” Elisa said.
Eva opened one. It was written in her language or some version of it that had existed in the past. She could understand the writing but did not know where to start. There were books for teaching and some that just told stories. She gravitated to one and pulled it out. She impatiently flipped to the end, figuring if she read all of the endings, she might be able to finish quicker. The words resonated with her:
…There was a new planet and a new sky, and the city came down out of the air…
She looked up from the page and saw spherical models lining the wall. They represented planets. Each was decorated with a different map. Eva looked with fascination down the line of planets. They were labeled, and like a magnet seeking another magnet, her eyes were pulled to the word
Beta
among the two-dozen globes.
Beta
? How would they know? How would they call it by the same name, and in our language, spelled with letters from our alphabet? It did not make sense, but it was unmistakable when she saw a tiny water mass among the many labeled in red:
Tar Lake
!
Eva approached the globe at the end of the row. It was mysteriously tagged with a name she was intuitively expecting.
Earth
.
She looked at Quasar first, and then to Elisa, who had been there longer, in captivity. Eva did not have to ask. Elisa spoke the question in the form of a definitive statement.
“They know about Earth,” Elisa confirmed.
“How?” Eva asked.
“They came from there,” Quasar quickly answered.
“HOW?” Eva cried. The foreign beings were nothing like any familiar form of life they knew.
“We are standing in their spaceship,” Elisa said.