Branegate

BRANEGATE

JAMES C. GLASS

FAIRWOOD PRESS

Bonney Lake, WA

CHAPTER 1

T
rae Nowok was four years old when he saw the outside world for the first time, and discovered danger there.

It began as a game of hide and seek. Mother and Father had been working long hours all week, leaving him alone in Petyr’s care. Ordinarily Petyr was fun when he wasn’t tutoring Trae in letters and numbers. When teaching, his face would sometimes get long, scowling and serious, but Trae knew it was an act and he would laugh, and then Petyr would laugh, and so even the lessons could be fun.

Petyr Vlasok was more than a tutor to Trae. He was a constant companion, and took Trae everywhere with him. Trae saw more of him than he did his own parents, who seemed terribly busy all the time. Petyr took him on explorations of all four levels of the city, and sometimes they rode the broad escalators up and down just for the fun of it. On all levels they watched the dome of light above them brighten and dim, colors changing from red to orange to yellow, then back to red again as the day progressed.

Petyr held his hand when they walked in the street, and Trae often thought of him as a brother, a much older brother with chiseled features attracting admiring glances from other people, especially the ladies. He was tall and slender, but Trae had felt the muscles in his arms and they were very hard. Petyr’s eyes were constantly moving when he was with Trae, and the boy learned to imitate him, always aware of his surroundings. Petyr was everything to Trae, and without knowing the meaning of the word, the boy loved him.

“It’s important to be aware of what’s around you,” explained Petyr. “Not so much here in the city, where we share beliefs and simple lives, but in the outside world you’ll live in someday. It’s much more complex than here, and dangerous.”

“I won’t live here when I grow up?” asked Trae.

“No. The world will be much larger for you.” Petyr patted his head. “I’ll go with you when you’re ready, Trae. I’ll never leave you.”

Trae felt good when he heard that, but wondered why Mother and Father hadn’t said anything to him about moving to another place. They didn’t talk to him much, probably because he was too young to understand a lot of things. Petyr tried to explain what they didn’t.

Nobody lived on fourth level. It was a kind of park, with a few marked trails for strolling among the boulders and stones, and a little clearing with some tables for a picnic, a place to breathe strange scents and watch the birds fly. There were many tunnels and fumaroles, but entrance to all of them was forbidden. Iron gates blocked some, and signs warned of their danger, thus making them attractive to a four-year-old boy who had just learned to read.

So it was that on a day when the lessons were over and he and Petyr had played every cyber-game in the family collection, Trae was bored and wanted to do something exciting. “I want to feed the birds,” he said.

“It’s getting late for that. It’ll be dark up there in a couple of hours. There are no lights,” said Petyr.

“Just for an hour. I worked hard today,” pouted Trae. “I want to play.” He put on his best scowl to let Petyr know he meant business. It was a joke they shared.

“Okay, one hour,” said Petyr.

They rode the escalators to third level, an elevator to fourth. When they got off there were patches of deep blue above them. A few people strolled the paths, most of them men dressed in the yellow robes of meditation. A delicious, mint scent was in the air. Petyr followed him around the paths, but it didn’t take much time to walk all of them. They went to a table in the center of the cavern to eat their fruit bars. A few birds were flying, but when Trae tried to entice them down with a few pieces of his fruit bar they ignored him. He was quickly bored again. “Let’s play a game,” he said.

“What kind of game? We have less than an hour left here,” said Petyr.

“I’ll hide, and you have to find me. Close your eyes, and count to a hundred,” Trae grinned excitedly.

Petyr smiled like a patient father. “One game, and then we go.” He closed his eyes. “One—two—”

Trae sprinted away, jumping from one trail to another. He found a flat slab of rock jutting out from behind a bench. The space beneath the rock was large enough to accommodate him if he lay flat. He squeezed himself into it, his cheek on mossy rock, and he waited, breathing slow and shallow.

Time passed. A bug crawled out of the moss and walked across his nose. Trae flicked it off with a finger and sniffed just once.

“Where’s Trae?” said a voice right above him. “Where can he be?”

It was Petyr. Trae held his breath to stifle a giggle, and pressed backwards in his wedge-shaped place. Suddenly a big hand reached in and began tickling his stomach.

“Theeere he is!”

Trae laughed, but was disappointed. “You looked. You found me too fast,” he complained, and slithered sidewise out of his hiding place.

“We have to go,” said Petyr, “and what counts is knowing where to look.”

“I had to hide too fast, Petyr. One more game; we have time, since you found me so fast. One more and we go, and I won’t argue about it. Please?”

Petyr relented again, so he was in a fun mood.

“Count to fifty this time,” said Trae, and Petyr began to count with his eyes closed. Trae didn’t hesitate; he had quickly decided exactly where he could go to win the game.

The iron grate over the tunnel entrance was not fastened to the rock, only leaned against it. A sign warned of falling rock and mud pits beyond the entrance. Trae pulled the grate out just enough to slip himself inside, and crawled a few feet back into darkness. The rock was cool and dry.

He saw Petyr’s boots before the man had a chance to look into the tunnel, and crawled backwards out of sight around a corner. A light suddenly played on rock near his face. Petyr was using his flashlight to look for him.

Trae held his breath. “Trae?” said Petyr softly. “You’d better not be in there. It’s dangerous, and there might be spiders. They’ll bite you.”

Trae had seen pictures of spiders, and he wasn’t afraid of them. After a minute or two Petyr went away, and was calling his name as he searched elsewhere. His voice got louder and louder. Petyr couldn’t find him, so it seemed Trae had won the game with his cleverness in hiding.

He started to turn around for his return to the grate, but saw a red light blinking in the darkness. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and the light faintly illuminated the tunnel when it was on. He crawled up to the light, found it was coming from a small metal box mounted on the rock. Beyond it was another blinking light. He crawled to it, found a sharp turn in the tunnel and another light blinking beyond it.

There was a shout from behind him. “Trae, you get out here right now! We have to go.”

Petyr couldn’t come after him, now. The tunnel was too small for him. Trae thought about answering, but didn’t want to give up the secret of his hiding place. He might use it again someday.

From where he was he could be out of the tunnel in a minute, and he could see well with the red, blinking lights. Trae crawled on, around another curve. Another light blinked ahead of him, and a bright yellow glow showed a gradual curve in the tunnel beyond it. There was a sound like wind, and he felt a faint vibration in the rock. A two minute crawl back to the grate, now. He was having an adventure.
I’ll see what the yellow light is, and then go back before Petyr gets too angry with me,
he thought, and curiosity overcame his fear of risking the man’s disappointment in him.

The yellow light was steadily brighter as he advanced along the tunnel, and warm air with a sour scent suddenly caressed his face. He squinted at a blaze of yellow from a wall ahead, the tunnel curving past it. Up close he saw there was a break in the wall, and he was looking at a blazing orb of light. There was a rush of wind in his face. A wire mesh covered the opening in the rock, but when he touched it the thing fell aside. An opening to the outside world, and he couldn’t resist it. His shoulders were narrow enough for him to squeeze through, and—

His heart hammered hard as he looked down at foam-crested waves of water hundreds of feet below him. The roar of surf breaking filled his head. For one instant he was dizzy, and felt like he was falling. He jerked back inside and scraped the back of his head on rough rock.

Far out on the shining surface of the sea something black floated, an oblong box. A thing left it like an insect flying, with wings and drooping legs. The thing grew larger, and there was a humming sound. At the same time Trae heard shouting from behind him in the tunnel, and his name was called. Now he was in big trouble. He pressed his back against the rock, eyes misting.

“Hey! Whoever you are, get out of there right now. The gate’s open this end. Get away from the port and come out this way. It’s only a few yards. Hurry up!”

The voice came from ahead of him, a man’s voice, and the insect-thing outside was coming closer and closer, straight at him. Trae twisted left, got his feet pushing hard so that he fairly squirted out of the tunnel after a distance of only four body lengths. Rough hands caught him.

“Stars, it’s Nowak’s ward. Where the hell is Petyr? Rudi, get in there and close up the port. Should’ve been done long ago. Control, where’s that Scorpion now?”

The man gripped Trae’s arm tightly. Black uniform, headset mounted on a gray helmet, the grip of his sidearm was at the boy’s eye-level. Trae had never seen a weapon so close up.

“Okay. Rudi’s in there now, and should have the port blocked up before the thing swings back this way. Keep watching it. We don’t know if it picked up an infra-red flash from the kid or not.”

A small, wiry man in brown coveralls had scrambled into the tunnel, dragging a string of many-colored polymer blocks behind him. In seconds, the yellow glow from the tunnel disappeared.

The big man let go of Trae’s arm and knelt down, face close to his. His swarthy face was stubbled with black hair, and his friendly smile didn’t make Trae fear him any less. “Exploring, huh? Well that’s okay, but not on this level. Too close to the outside. Petyr will have to explain some things to you.”

Trae’s heart was still hammering hard, and a single tear ran down one cheek. “I almost fell,” he said solemnly. “I saw water way below me, and I almost fell.”

The man brushed Trae’s tear away with a thick finger. “Can’t let that happen, boy. You’re too important to be lost in such a—”

“Trae! I knew it. You
were
in there.”

It was Petyr, looking afraid, then stern, and Trae burst into tears.

“Easy, lad,” said the policeman. “Everything is fine now.”

Petyr knelt down on one knee and put an arm around him. “Don’t be afraid. You’re safe, and no damage was done, but you shouldn’t run away from me like that.”

“I
didn’t
,” sobbed Trae. “We were playing a game, and you couldn’t find me.”

“You hid very well,” said Petyr, and smoothed Trae’s hair.

“Clever boy,” said the policeman. He looked at Petyr and put a hand to the headset on his helmet. “Coincidence, it seems. The Scorpion was probably coming out for its usual surveillance; it’s miles down the coast now. We were lucky.”

“I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” said Trae.

“Nothing you could know,” said Petyr, then took Trae’s hand gently in his. “Come on. We’ll eat some sweetbread and talk about it. You just got a glimpse of the big world outside these caverns, and you’re old enough to hear why we don’t live out there.”

They went down the escalator to second level, hand in hand, and straight to a brightly lit bakery filled with wonderful odors of yeasty dough. Petyr bought pastries for them, and they ate at a table in the corner of the shop. Petyr talked softly, as if everything he was saying was a secret. The fact it seemed a secret held Trae’s attention raptly.