Jaunt (44 page)

Gilmour turned to his partner. “I think it’s another hatch, Neil.”

The pair continued forward, now buoyed by the renewal of the hunt. Closing the gaping distance, the twin helmet lampbeams encircled the glass sphere and the hatch in which it was imbedded, as well as the surrounding metallic bulkhead. Now at a meter’s length, the agents held out their arms, allowing their gauntlets to break their velocity and catch them against the metal hatch. The two haz suits clanged violently, snapping the agents back, but both were safely stopped.

Twisting his body around, Gilmour managed to place his boots on the bulkhead and magnetically attach them to the hull around the hatch, giving him leverage once they attempted to open it up. Next to him, McKean had already sealed his boots to the bulkhead, and was now standing upright again, peering into the darkness from whence they had came. Gilmour rose to his height and rotated his head around, glancing at the extent his helmet lamp would allow him to see. Both now stood in the opposite direction they had entered, a thought sure to boggle their minds if they chose to dwell longer then they should.

“Look at that,” McKean said, pointing his finger past his partner, to the shadow Gilmour cast on the surface from McKean’s helmet lamp.

Gilmour turned to see the sharp outline of illumination on darkness. “What?”

McKean gestured again. “Your shadow is curved.”

Gilmour swiveled again and glanced at McKean, who was now bathed in Gilmour’s helmet illumination. “So is yours.” Gilmour crouched down and ran his gauntlet over the surface of the bulkhead, now under the close scrutiny of his helmet lamp. He then tilted his head up, shining the light, and more importantly, the lidar instrument, outward. On his HUD, a refraction curve was painted yellow, but surrounded by nothingness. He swept the lidar cannon in a complete circle, then came back to where he had started, in front of McKean. “I think we’re on a big sphere. I don’t pick up anything else around here.”

“You mean we’re on a floating sphere not attached to anything else?”

“Umm, yeah. I’m not kidding.”

“Holy...what the hell can be inside of it? I mean, what could fit inside?”

Gilmour double-checked his HUD, just to rule out hallucination brought about by prolonged superreality. “If the lidar is right, it’s calculating a diameter of about one hundred meters, plus or minus.”

McKean’s mind raced at the thought. He spared himself the impossibility of running through a list, though, and knelt down on his haunches, joining Gilmour next to the hatch and the gleaming glass sphere.

Gilmour’s gauntlets brushed the edge of the hatch and found the glass sphere, which, like its twin, bore an exaggerated reflection of his form. “You wanted to know? Then let’s find out.” Firming his hands, Gilmour applied both to the spectral sphere and pushed with all his mass and magnetically sealed boots behind him.

The glass sphere sank into its mooring with laxness, despite Gilmour’s immense exertion and the reinforced strength of his gauntlets. At once, the glass sphere descended into the hatch without warning, viciously slamming Gilmour’s gauntlets against the surrounding metal. He cried out as the reverberations rocked his body.

McKean reached out to his partner. “Are you all right?!”

“I—I think I am.” Gilmour retrieved his gauntlets and folded them close against his chest, then looked down to the circular hatch again. “Why...why isn’t it opening?”

McKean blinked several times, staring at the now sphere-less hatch. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” He put his own hands on the hull. “Open, dammit....”

As McKean alternately yelled at the hatch and tried to pry it open, Gilmour unfolded his arms and placed them down on the hull structure, running his fingers against the sheer metal. Immediately, his eyes widened. “Neil...it’s shaking....”

McKean tipped his head forward over the hatch. “What?!”

Instinctively, Gilmour threw up his right arm and pushed McKean’s helmet, forcing his partner’s body back from the hatch’s breech. Like a rising crescendo, the bulkhead beneath the two agents rumbled and roared before a wave of pure white energy bellowed out of the structure, blowing the circular hatch off and flinging it into the darkness. A secondary wave washed a concussive blast over the two agents, launching them away from the open hatch and depositing them oppositely ten meters back. Both Gilmour and McKean then skidded on the cradles of their engine sleds before lurching to a halt, their inertia ceasing unmercifully.

Where once there was darkness as infinite as the depths of the universe, now erupted a fountain of white energy into a river pouring forth past the mousehole’s hatch. Shining with an intensity rivaling a supernova, the fountain transformed the KurilKamchatka Trench into an undersea paradise, light spilling, gushing forth, flowing through the seawater with energies unknown save to the power of the largest suns. The massive scar that was the trench now flowed with light, an orgy of swirling and roiling turquoise waves stretching the entire length of the kilometers-wide subduction zone. Life that once inhabited the darkest and deepest edges of the world now were revealed to it for the first time, many blinded, many reveling.

And five kilometers up from this reunion of water and light, many took notice, and many set long-held plans into action.

“McKean! McKean, can you hear me?! Neil!”

Inside his cumbersome haz suit, Gilmour grunted while trying to regain his balance, trapped on his back like a tortoise. Tilting his body to the right, he rolled off the supercavitating sled and back onto his feet, careful not to launch himself into the microgravity. Throwing his mass forward, he was now able to look at the awe-inducing fountain of white light for the first time, witnessing for himself the tremendous power that had blown him away.

“Neil, are you all right?! Neil!”

Static crackled over Gilmour’s voxlink before he heard McKean’s voice. “Yeah, I’m all right. Just about flew off the surface...had to light my hydrazine to keep me from floating away.”

“Good to hear,” Gilmour answered, blocking out the intense rays of the fountain with his gauntlet so they wouldn’t sear his eyes. He followed the fountain upwards, craning his neck to see how far the light river flowed. “Can you believe this? Look at that...it goes all the way out.”

McKean took a few steps closer to the former hatchway, now the fountain. “The power and energy in this sphere...what could it be?”

Gilmour shook his head. “A power source? Some kind of reactor?”

On McKean’s holographic interface, he accessed his array of instruments with a touch of a button, then scanned the pillar of energy for a few moments. “The sheer scale of the energy is immense, at least several teVs, but the radiation readings are about nonexistent, no more than conventional energy sources...actually less. I’d say it’s nearly as safe to live in there as anywhere else.”

Gilmour put a reticent foot forward, then another; working up the confidence to close the gap, he walked to the edge of the hatchway. At arm’s length, the fountain of light did not seem to be repulsive; in fact, he felt no energy beam or wave to ward him off. It was white light...pure photons, glistening against the slate grey of his haz suit. Gilmour’s instincts urged him to cover his eyes, but the orbs did not burn with the pain of staring at the sun. Every facet of this fountain flowed with peacefulness, tranquility, with life. It was intoxicating. Kneeling down, he neared the fountain, his faceplate now encompassed with its image.

“Gilmour,” McKean spoke, no longer seeing his partner. “Gilmour, what are you doing?”

Extending his right gauntlet, Gilmour pierced the fountain’s boundary and plunged the extremity inside. The agent’s once-shadowed hand soon burned with brightness; eddies of light licked up his arm and swirled over his haz suit, coating Gilmour with the fountain’s purity. Never once did he retreat from the fountain’s fantastical beauty...the raw power the fountain displayed was enveloping, heartening, loving. Fear did not have a haven here.

“Gilmour!” McKean implored. “Talk to me!”

Without trepidation, Gilmour rose, and not responding to McKean, extended a boot, then leapt inside the fountain of light, descending into the hatchway, leaving only a crackle of white flame behind.

“Gilmour!!!” McKean reached out, but his partner had already gone. He shook his head at the impulsive stunt, an act quite unbecoming of the James Gilmour McKean had known throughout his career. For a moment McKean wavered, and realizing that Gilmour most likely wasn’t just going to reappear, decided to follow him inside, god help him. Inhaling deeply, McKean’s palms perspired while he counted to three, then closed his eyes and leapt as well, hearing his haz suit crackle along the way....

Spacetime peeled away in layers of flame, the universe a vast cycle of fire, ever fueled, ever dying, ever born....

They burned in an invisible fire, a river of flame swirling, rolling, a surf burning through their cores, purified, consecrated by time....

Poured from the depths of the cosmos they sprang, renewed, invigorated, recast, rebound to the fabric, the cloth, of the universe....

“Where am I?”

Infinite whiteness.

No snow had ever fallen so pure...no virgin had ever been so innocent...no sky had ever been so clear...no water had ever been so sleek....

“My god, look at us....”

Gilmour held his gauntlet to his eyes and peered through them to find McKean standing on the other side. Blinking, he turned his gauntlet over to the backside. He saw the machine glove through to his hand, then his veins, ligaments, bones, lipids and McKean staring at him in peaceful disbelief at his own body. Nothing could be so clear to them now, nowhere had ever been so quiet, nothing had ever been so much of everything but yet with no pretense at all. Nothing. And yet, they were everything. This was everything. At once. No past, present, future, yesterday, now, tomorrow. Matter, energy, space, time, was all here, all now.

Gilmour tightened his fist...a stiff wind blew through this nothingness...a crack of lightning overhead rendered his fist opaque. Looking out and up, the purity washed away, the whiteness transformed into a chamber...at arm’s length, Gilmour became as Gilmour knew himself, no longer able to discern McKean, he moved his gauntlet and saw the other man in rapt attention to the colors flooding back...taking over their senses, the way matter and energy had always lorded over the finite....

“Your journey has been most treacherous. Please, relax.”

Gilmour and McKean were startled by the man approaching behind them. He crossed slowly over the smooth metal flooring, his footfalls echoing lightly in the spherical walls of this chamber they mysteriously could not recall entering. Gilmour flashed a glimpse to McKean, who returned his puzzlement with a furrowed brow. The two agents glided carefully over the floor, exploring the sterile chamber from within their helmets. Looking over once more to the man who had greeted him, they were astonished to see him dressed in traditional Sherpa clothing, completely incongruous with the immaculate chamber where they now stood, as if he were an ancestor of Shajda, their guide in Nepal.

The strange Sherpa gestured to them with his dark, reddish hands, flashing them a brief, cordial smile. “Please, come forward,” he intoned, without a hint of accent. “I can sense your exhaustion. You have done and seen much.”

The two agents nodded and walked over to a set of furniture. The Sherpa proffered a seat to the weary men, who accepted and sat down, although awkwardly in their haz suits. Both agents raised their faceplates and inhaled the sterile atmosphere.

“I am sure you have questions for me. You are very inquisitive. That is how you have survived so long, when others failed. They could not see the possibilities just lying beyond their view.”

Gilmour and McKean nodded matter-of-factly. Gilmour asked, “Why us?”

“You?”

“Why us?” Gilmour reiterated. “Why did you come here? Why, when this world has seen so much strife, war, terror, longing...why did you choose us?”

The Sherpa smiled. “They were right to say you were curious. So many questions you have. Your first question is not one any can answer. The universe just does what it does. Your second question is the same as the first. You do have a fondness for repeating yourselves.”

“Then allow me to ask this,” Gilmour said. “What is this craft? Where are we?”

The Sherpa raised a finger. “A craft, same as any other. I have not seen any more than either of you.”

McKean leaned forward. “You mean, you’re not...one of them?”

“Ho...no,” the Sherpa paused to laugh, “I am not. I am flesh and blood, as human as you two men are. I just watch for them, until they can come back.” The Sherpa sighed, then started, “I was there the day this...craft came down to the ground. I led a group of men, of Westerners, ancestors of yours, to a small crash. The Westerners did not react well to seeing the remains of this craft’s pilots. Still primitive, even by your standards. As a young man, I was curious, as curious as you two are. I went back to the site, and discovered mysteries beyond that which the human mind had never anticipated, and would never until your time. Here I am.”

Gilmour and McKean gulped, both attempting to digest what should have been called an outlandish story, except for the fact they knew it had happened.

“And here you two are,” the Sherpa continued. “You have utilized their gifts well, as well as can be expected, knowing our species. The jewels you hold inside of your garments are dangerous, but essential. Lessons learned throughout the ages by others you shall learn as well.”