Twistor (26 page)

Carefully, Jeff planted the stick in the freshly turned soil of the planet. 'I, Jeffrey Ernst, claim this u-ni-verse . . . ' he paused to think,
'
. . . this ter-ri-to-ry in the name of the Uni-ted States of Ame-ri-ca,' he recited the words they had composed together. David and Melissa laughed delightedly at the performance. David stopped the camera, and they clapped. Then he took a shot of the computer-paper flag, its crudely formed stars and stripes fluttering and crinkling in the late-afternoon breeze.

He
glanced upward. The treebird was regarding them quizzically from its elevated perch.

They were out of the tree, the flag duly planted. Now David was feeling a growing fatigue. They needed a fireplace and workplace, a center for their activities. That was the first order of business. He pried up another large flat stone. Underneath, white grublike creatures with large brown pincers squirmed and scurried for the cover of leaves. Pink worms, their heads iridescent with bright and changing interference colors, sank into the bare earth. It was a different world, he mused.

As David carried the stone toward the site of what would soon be their new fireplace, he crossed the multicolored line he had spotted from the tree. He stopped and looked down at it. It was an intricate linear pattern made of linked splatters of color, white, red, green, blue, and violet splotches that repeated after a few meters. Now he noticed that the other trees were ringed with similar trains of color, but the patterns were not the same. Curious . . .

He continued to the pile of stones, dropping the one he was carrying beside the others. Sinking down on a mound of orange leaves, he inhaled the rich, mysterious smell of the forest. He must pace himself to avoid complete exhaustion. The light was going fast, and they would need to eat soon. Leaning back, he looked upward, following the soaring column of their tree. It had the familiar tree shape, but that familiarity was an illusion. It was not even close to any tree he'd seen before.

A flying insectlike creature landed on the flat stone and crawled across it. It had the usual six legs and double wings, with a triple-segmented, slightly iridescent blue body. A dangerous-looking triple-pronged trident projected from the rear of its fat, elongated abdomen. The basic insect design was there, yet it did not resemble any Earth insect David could recall. He tentatively extended his hand in its direction, but it flew off.

His
gaze moved downward. The dried leaves on the ground, he now noticed, also had an unusual form. Groups of feathery, orange-brown leaflets organized themselves into a shape that was like the club suit of a playing card. The leaf was a fractal, David realized. He could resolve tiny club shapes that formed larger club shapes, and those formed still larger club shapes, and so on. Nature was using some genetic subroutine to repeat the same pattern over and over at increasing scale. He smiled, imagining the tiny club shape repeating itself infinitesimally inward, down to minuscule club-shaped molecules. He rubbed one of the leaves between his fingers until it powdered to an orange dust; then he smelled his fingers. The characteristic smell of the forest was there, now greatly magnified. It was a green, resinous, spicy smell. Might taste good in spaghetti sauce, he mused . . .

Again he surveyed his surroundings. If he squinted his eyes, this might almost have been a California forest of giant sequoias. But on closer examination almost every detail was unfamiliar, alien. This is not Earth, he thought, it's a whole new world in another universe. He inhaled deeply, allowing the chill of alienness to penetrate successive layers of his consciousness. He felt so isolated, so alone . . .

Above the dark hole of their 'apartment' he could see through the dense upper branches a few wisps of clouds interspersed with blue sky. The great rising trunk gave the illusion of continuing upward to infinity. Yet it was clear that this tree, as enormous as it was, was no larger than most of the others nearby. He stood back and sighted with the CCD camera. He zoomed the lens to maximum focal length, panned up the tree, and then did a slow sweep of the other trees, concluding with a dezoom back to maximum wide angle.

He recalled a family vacation many years ago. His father had taken the family to Redwood National Park
in
California, and then they'd driven to the giant sequoia groves of Yosemite. Both parks had enormous trees, some that were thousands of years old. One had been so large that an automobile could drive through it. But the trees in this forest were certainly bigger. Wait 'til Weyerhauser finds out about this place, he thought grimly, recalling hikes in the Cascades on forest trails that wound past the slash-and-burn devastation left in the path of logging operations.

Melissa appeared around the curve of the tree, her arms loaded with dead branches. 'There's lots of wood on the ground around here, David,' she said. 'And I saw some mushrooms, too.'

Jeff was just behind her, panting and dragging a huge branch that should have been too big for him to handle. He pulled it up near the pile that Melissa had started. Then he ran over to David. 'David!' he breathed. 'There was a squirrel on that tree over there! It was a funny greenish color at first, but it sort of flicked its fur and turned brown when it saw me. It ran around the tree, and I couldn't find it any more. David, it had six legs!'

David followed Jeff to the spot, but there was no sign of any squirrel-like animal, only a few treebirds climbing on trunks of the big trees and some smaller birds flying in the high branches of the forest canopy. He squinted upward at the flying birds. There was something odd about the way they flew, but they were too far away to pinpoint the source of the strangeness. Well, forests should have birds and squirrels, he thought, even if they're strange and green and change colors and have too many legs.

17

Wednesday Evening, October 13

The fading light through the door-hole was almost gone. David looked at his watch, noting that it was just after 7:40. Sunset came at the same time in this universe, he thought. He peered into the darkness. He thought he could make out vague shapes flitting among the trees. Bats? Or something else? He shrugged and pulled up the ladder, rolling it into a rough cylinder and placing it on the floor near the opening. He covered the door-hole for the night with a large circle of aluminum-covered Fiberglas insulation, secured in place by several horizontal wooden branches tied to the nails driven into the wall.

David felt a sense of satisfaction. The children had been adequately fed, and he'd had enough also. He'd built a cook fire on the forest floor. At first he'd been very careful with the fire, concerned that a larger oxygen fraction in the air or combustibles in the wood might make a fire in this world more dangerous and harder to control. He remembered that some archaeologists had found air bubbles in eighty-million-year-old amber that had a very high oxygen content. But the fire was very Earth-normal, so David had proceeded with dinner. They had dined on their small supply of instant soup, Vickie's peanut butter, and selections from David's sack lunch. He'd set the CCD camera to make stills of them all sitting together at their first dinner.

David had also sampled some 'experimental' items: nuts, berries, several mushrooms, and some tuberous
roots
they'd found growing in the forest near the tree-house. He had made careful notes on where the various items had been found, their appearances, and their flavors. Several items he had rejected after a tiny taste. His small taste samples indicated that one of the nut varieties was quite delicious. A variety of pink berry was very sweet and tasty. One of the mushroom types looked exactly like the morels that grew in the Cascade forests near Seattle. Fried with a dab of peanut butter, it tasted truly wonderful. Nevertheless, he limited his intake to small amounts consumed at fifteen-minute intervals, and he'd refused the children's requests to share in these 'snacks.' He explained that explorers had to be extremely careful about poisonous plants.

Now they were all in their beds. David had decreed that they must be in bed by sundown. The children had not been happy with the early bedtime. Melissa suggested that they sit down below around the cook fire and sing songs, as her family often did on camping trips. David had rejected this suggestion because of the possibility of dangerous animals. She was unhappy and suggested that a high priority should be given to the making of lamps and candles so they could work in the treehouse in the evenings. He complemented her for having a good idea. Some of Sam's tools did have rechargeable batteries, and there was a small solar recharger in the toolbox, but candles seemed a better solution to the problem of illumination. If there was any way to make the twistor apparatus work, the small power tools were going to be needed for that purpose.

'David, what's today?' Melissa asked from the cot.

He paused. It took a few seconds to realize that it was still the same day that had begun so uneventfully only twelve hours ago. Today is Wednesday, October thirteenth,' he said. David remembered that by now he should have picked up Vickie and taken her to the Ernsts' for dinner.

Then
it's time for our story!' said Melissa triumphantly. 'You always tell us a story after dinner on Wednesdays.'

'Yeah, David,' said Jeff. 'You were going to tell us what happened to Ton.'

David sighed. It had been a long day, and his mind was numb. But the weekly story was a link with their normal existence. It should help them to make the difficult adjustment to life in this new world.

'OK,' he said, gathering his thoughts, 'I'm sure you recall what happened last time. Ton had been kidnapped by corsair pirates and sold as a slave to Zorax, the evil magician. Zorax had sent Ton into some dangerous underground ruins to fetch some things he'd called "mementoes." But when Ton had done it and had wanted to be pulled out along with the objects he'd fetched, Zorax became angry and made an explosion that closed the opening. Ton was trapped underground.'

'Yeah!' said Jeff, 'What happened after the 'sploshun?'

'After the explosion,' said David, 'there was much crashing and banging and sounds of cave-in along the passages, and Ton was left in utter darkness. There must have been much dust in the air, because his eyes stung and he coughed a lot. He pressed his face low near one corner of the passage where the air was better, and he waited. It became so quiet that he could hear only his own heartbeat. After a while it became easier to breathe. But there was no light at all. Ton was lost in total darkness. And he was scared, very scared.

'But he remembered that his father had once told him that when you are in a difficult situation, the first thing to do is to take inventory.'

'What's enden-tory?' asked Jeff.

Melissa grunted in annoyance.

'Taking inventory,' said David, 'means making a list of everything you have that you might be able to use. Like we did today when we took everything out of Sam's toolbox and the supply cabinet.'

'
Oh,' said Jeff. Melissa snorted.

'Feeling around in the dark,' David continued, Ton tried to find the things he had brought from the passage. His hand bumped against something smooth. It was the leather bag. He sat in the darkness and undid the thong that held it closed, then opened the top. A faint glow was coming from the bag. He reached inside, and his hand encountered something hard and cool and smooth. As his fingers touched the object, the light from the bag became much brighter. He lifted the object out. It was a crystal sphere, and it glowed brightly with its own internal light. Lifting it to eye level, Ton could see fuzzy blobs of white and blue and green, but his eyes couldn't quite focus on what was there. As long as the sphere was in contact with his hand, it gave a bright light, but if he put it on the floor and moved his hand away, the light dimmed. Taking the sphere and holding it higher, he looked around. He was still in the passage, which now was littered with rocks and large dressed stones that had fallen from the ceiling. On the floor were the other "mementoes" for Zorax, the roll of carpet and the corroded old weapon. And there was also the small leather-bound book that he had taken from the skeleton. The basket, with the rope still attached and leading upward, was resting on the floor. Ton pulled on the rope and it came free, its upper end frayed and burnt.

'He rolled up the rope, perhaps five meters of it, and placed it and the rest of the "mementoes" in the basket. He retraced his steps backward down the passage. It soon became clear what had made the cave-in sounds after the explosion. There were many places where the roof had fallen in, partially blocking the passage. As for the side passages, all of the heavy stone doors had fallen during the cave-ins, completely sealing them. Ton continued down the central corridor, and just beyond the second passage on the right he found that the main passage was completely blocked. The tomb that he had entered was sealed, perhaps forever.

Ton
searched the passage desperately. It was now clear that he was trapped deep underground with no food or water and no way out. He was going to die, soon and unpleasantly. Years from now someone would perhaps find his bones in the tunnel and wonder who he had been and how he had come to be trapped here.

'
He lay down on the littered floor and cried in the darkness. It wasn't fair. He had been kidnapped and beaten and enslaved and stripped naked and sold and badly treated and now left to die, and none of it was his fault. He wept bitterly for a long time and at last fell asleep.

Ton came awake suddenly. Groggy, he reached for the dim sphere, and when the light came to full brightness he could see that nothing had changed. He decided that he felt better, and sitting on the floor of the tunnel, he began to examine his few possessions. The thin corroded weapon had an inscription written along the shaft, but in an unfamiliar script and language. The hilt was functional and unadorned, but showed signs of having once been gilded. Ton, the armorer's apprentice, selected a piece of sandstone from the floor and polished the weapon. The corrosion, probably the remains of a decayed scabbard, came away easily, leaving the rounded shaft bright and shining.