Main Page: The Legend of Aaron LaBarr
Chapter One
Planet Andiron, sometime in the early Twenty-third century
The air was warm, humid, and, at least to Dr. Bryan Gilmore, thoroughly unpleasant. It was not the cool, filtered air that cycled constantly through his office at the university, or one of the many libraries he had appropriated in preparation for this venture. He was not a field worker by nature, that much was sure, and he felt very uncomfortable in this environment. Soon, he told himself, soon it will all be worthwhile. If we can survive the rest of this trip.
His group moved silently, purposely through the alien jungle. Strange insects and plants pestered them as they ducked through the alternating thick and sparse undergrowth, but the area remained pleasant and peaceful. At regular intervals, some of them would glance furtively around, searching for the dangers that never came. Although the terrain had been going steadily uphill for several hours, the shift was so subtle, and the gravity so light, that no one cared. It was, all in all, a paradise. But none of them were there for a vacation. Rather, they had a goal.
There were five in the group. Three, a pair of well-dressed men and the obligatory beautiful blonde woman, were academics from the reputable Sternweld University. There was Bryan, of course, and then his colleagues, Dr. Paul Binyird, and Dr. Mary Delisle. As they trekked, all three of them were overtaken by the same feeling, that of being connected to the ancient past by this jungle. How many primitive tribes, long-extinct species, and other forgotten explorers had trodden this same soil, the surrounding flora looking virtually the same, since the dawn of time? Technology had reached an impressive point throughout the universe, but to look around they might have been the contemporaries of stone chisels and arrowheads.
The remaining two were a pair of armed local mercenaries named Glik and Glak, hired for their protection, and it was they who did most of the furtive glancing. They knew and insisted, in spite of the foreigners’ growing doubts, that the jungle could turn hostile in a moment, and claim its victims just as fast. In fact they had already scared away several potential predators with the protective herbs in their pockets but had felt no need to spread the news. On the other hand, they themselves perhaps posed the greatest danger of all, as they had made it clear that their services were intended for the highest bidder.
At some point in the afternoon on the third day of their expedition, the group arrived at a low rock wall. Like the pyramids along the Nile River of Earth, it had been constructed without advanced tools or knowledge, and yet the stones were perfectly cut into rectangular prisms, and compacted so tightly, without cement, that not the thinnest sheet of paper could be slid between them. In this day and age, however, most of them stood no more than one layer high. They also stood out like a sore thumb out here in the untamed jungle, but no one had ever noticed them. No one had ever had reason to come out this far.
Bryan raised his hand, signaling everyone to halt, but everyone already had. This was clearly their destination.
Eagerly, five packs were unshouldered, five brows were wiped, and five throats were filled with the pure cleansing water of Tranginus V. Only Paul and Mary sat, however. Glik and Glak showed no further signs of exhaustion, and hurried to set up camp. For his part Bryan, finally so near his goal, was emaciated and filled with a surge of energy. It was his moment in the spotlight, and although he would not let on, he was glad to have the undivided attention of his exhausted companions.
Digging into his satchel, he removed a tattered sheet of paper on which he had scribbled his calculations. It was more efficient to do such things on a pocket computer, but he enjoyed the extra connecting factor with the past he had dedicated his life to preserving. Simply walking in a thousand-year old jungle wasn’t enough for him. Besides, as he gazed at the damp and yellowed sheet, it struck him as being quite like an ancient treasure map. When one looked closer, they would see nothing but numerical gobbledygook. In fact, however, it was the precise location of his goal, painstakingly pieced together from countless sources over more than half of his life.
Bryan knew exactly where to go, but for the sake of his audience pretended otherwise. He made a show of checking over his paper and then the wall, back and forth, and finally moving over to a particular stone. Then he repeated the process, audibly “hemming” and “hawing,” and hesitantly moving to a different one.
When his companions began to rise and stretch, he knew it was about time to get moving. They were a restless bunch, to be sure, and they wanted to see results. The mercenaries, for sure, who had been lured by the promise of untold wealth, had to be regarded with caution. Under normal circumstances they might slit his throat for a few salted nuts; now, merely being cheated of their tantalizing riches would be enough to motivate them. When Mary placed her hands on her hips and cocked them to the side in an exasperated manner, he knew it was time.
He pointed to one of the stones he had overlooked entirely. “This is it,” he said.
The four men positioned themselves around the stone and bent their knees, moving their hands around to find a purchase. Mary stood off to the side and watched in amusement, as they had expected. “I just got a manicure,” she had insisted from the expedition’s beginning. But all five, even the mercenaries whom they had never previously met, knew this was baloney. She was not a prissy wuss by any means, and could hold her own in anything they did. But she gained a certain satisfaction from watching elderly scholars indulge in manual labor, and even more from watching men in their place, as if she were their overseer.
“Lift,” she said with a smile, and, with a few disparaging glances in her direction, the four men complied.
The rock did not budge easily from its resting place, and Bryan refused to let them destroy it or its brethren. They were not worth much, but they were artifacts of a forgotten era, and in his eyes all such things were valuable. He did, however, allow Mary to rub its sides with oil as they were gradually exposed, which facilitated their task a little bit. Within a few minutes they had removed it, and were once again catching their breath. It was still incredibly heavy, however, and it took a great deal of endurance to gently set it down beside the wall.
Bryan could only gaze in wonder at what now lay before them: the now-exposed opening which led to a slanted tunnel into the ground. Mary rushed over to look; the others took a while to register its significance as they tried to inhale as deeply as possible.
Finally, Paul managed a weak smile. “You were right,” he admitted.
Bryan shrugged modestly even as a smug grin lit his face.
Paul got to his feet and extended his hand. “Dr. Gilmore, please accept my humble apology,” he said. “I never should have doubted you.”
Bryan shook it vigorously. “No harm done,” he said graciously. Then he pretended to think about it for a minute. “Well, except for me being mocked and shunned from the academic community,” he added.
Paul’s cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze. “Yes... well...”
Bryan ignored him and turned to Mary, hoping for a similar apology. Mary, however, was much slower in swallowing her pride, and moved to avoid the issue. “Come on,” she insisted, “there’s a king’s tomb down there to explore!”
Bryan was disappointed, but not surprised. Still, the point was that he had been right, and all his years of being ostracized meant nothing now. He was about to make one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century.
Still, no one moved. Looking into the darkness beyond, everyone suddenly felt a bit uneasy with the thought of violating it. A king’s tomb, as Mary had said, and furthermore one that had lain in peace for ages. It just didn’t seem right somehow. But they were professionals, after all, and they couldn’t let little things like that bother them.
“Yes, all right then,” he said. “Let’s get to it already.” Turning, he ducked and descended into the tunnel, closely followed by Mary and Paul.
Glik and Glak brought up the rear, each setting down a bundle of firewood before they approached. As they paused to let one another pass, their eyes met, and they might have exchanged a knowing, conspiratorial smile.
***
The tunnel soon leveled out, and loomed straight ahead into darkness. The three academics activated the glowsticks on their belts so they could continue, but once again Bryan raised his hand to signal a halt.
“Careful,” he said. “Watch for booby traps.”
He was met with cruel laughter. “Really, Bryan old pal, you’ve been reading too much children’s fare,” Paul said. “Archaeology is simply a matter of digging things up and taking them to a museum.”
Mary agreed. “Worst-case scenario, this place is a maze and there are false passages,” she added. “That’s why we brought chalk.”
Bryan shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he insisted. “Caldwok isn’t just another Tutankhamen. My research brought me quite close to him. He was a cunning and diabolical man, who loved to manipulate his enemies and make them suffer. Even in death, he would not allow anyone to simply march into his tomb unscathed.”
“Then we should respect his wishes,” Paul said sarcastically, mocking one of Bryan’s scruples and refusing to let on that he had felt the same mere minutes ago.
Bryan recognized the sarcasm but took the bait. “We’ll help him achieve even greater fame throughout the universe, and there’s nothing he would want more than that,” he said. “All I’m saying is that we need to be very careful down here.”
Mary rolled her eyes and was about to say something snotty, when a realization struck her. She rolled her eyes again and kept them in that position.
“Apropos nothing,” she said tentatively, “but wasn’t the ceiling much lower than that when we came in?”
Four pairs of eyes joined hers, and one by one moved to the floor. There they were astonished and more than a little queasy to find that four corresponding pairs of knees, plus hers, were mired in it.
“Nobody panic,” said Mary. She tugged forcefully at her legs, but they refused to come out. As she watched, in fact, they were visibly sinking deeper. “Okay, now we can panic,” she amended.
“Quickmud,” Bryan seethed. “Remember those patches we passed in the jungle? Those were very obvious, though. This looks just like regular loam.” He turned to Glik and Glak. “Have you ever seen this variety before?”
Both men shook their heads. “It was just as deceptive to us,” Glak admitted sheepishly.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any suggestions for getting us out,” he added.
Glik and Glak thought long and hard for a moment, during which everyone slipped at least an inch deeper.
“Perhaps our guns…” began Glak.
“Yes!” shouted Glik. “They are quite powerful. They will propel us out of the mud.” Before anyone could protest, he shoved the muzzle of his weapon into it.
“Wait!” shouted Bryan, Paul, and Mary all at once. There was clearly no stopping them, and they didn’t have time to think of better options anyway, but Paul had to add, “Create an air pocket at least and slightly decrease the chance of blowing us all to bits!”
Glik quickly swished the gun around, and then pulled the trigger. With a sickening shluck noise, he was propelled out of the mud and through the air, over the heads of everyone else that were now in up to their waists, and landed softly on more mud. He quickly jumped to his feet and began tap-dancing over its surface to avoid sinking again.
“Yes!” shouted Glak, and repeated the maneuver.
They extended their guns first to Mary, and then to Bryan. Paul sulked as he watched them escape, while he continued to sink at an exponential rate.
Bryan shook his head. “That was so incredibly implausible, I suppose it was bound to work.” Then, as he was handing over his gun to Paul, there was a loud foom and a geyser of dirt sprayed from the floor. Paul was suddenly in up to his neck. Void collapse.
Paul screamed. Bryan bit back a string of expletives for Mary’s sake, only to realize she was unloading them all herself, as well as some worse ones he had never heard of. Glik and Glak babbled something in unison that sounded like a cross between a curse and a prayer.
Only Paul’s fingertips were above the surface now and he could not grab the gun. “Raise your arms,” yelled Bryan. “Raise your arms!”
“I can’t!” Paul shrieked.
“Try harder!”
The mud rose past his fingertips and up to his chin.
“You can do it!”
Straining with everything he had, and much that he didn’t have, Paul tried to lift his arms. But it was no use. He continued to sink, and the mud reached his lips.
“Come on!” Everyone stood by him now, desperately egging him to not give up, holding the gun so he could have grabbed it given a mere few inches.
He channeled all of his strength into one arm now, pushing it even further. Excruciating pain ran its length, and he gasped with the effort, letting mud into his mouth. Slowly, painfully, it moved a few inexorable centimeters closer to the surface. But it was not enough.
The mud was nearly to his nose now, and Paul continued to feed off of strength from some unknown source, ignoring the pain, letting it fade into the back of his mind even as his bones threatened to fracture. Sweat poured off of his body and he trembled uncontrollably. His arm moved ever so slightly closer.
But still, it was not enough. And even the most optimistic person in the universe would have to admit that it was hopeless. He wasn’t going to make it.
Paul Binyird closed his eyes and waited for the end.
“Darn it, we’ll have to use our hands!” yelled Bryan.
“So we can get pulled in too?” sputtered Mary.
Bryan shook his head. “If we all do it together, really fast, and keep tap-dancing, we might have a chance!” he insisted.
Suddenly, there was another void collapse, and Paul sank beneath the mud completely.
Clearly it was worth a shot, and it was now or never. The four of them took a deep breath, and lunged for where they estimated his arm to be.
“I’ve got it!” Glik shouted, and the others moved to where his arm disappeared below the surface. All grabbing Paul near his wrist, they pulled.
It was more difficult than Bryan had anticipated. They were forced to call upon the same reserves of strength that Paul had moments earlier. Fortunately, they had the advantage of teamwork, and were more successful. They got his hand above the mud.
Glak quickly shoved the gun into it. Paul, with his last moments of consciousness, ignoring the pain that still coursed through his arm, pulled it under with him.
There was an anxious moment of silence. Four breaths were held as they waited to see if they had been too late. The mud was too thick to let out any telltale bubbles, and no one could hear him. The tension was as thick as a celebrity’s skull.
Then, suddenly, the four of them were violently ripped off their feet in a mind-mangling explosion of light, noise, and mud. The ceiling came quickly down to meet them with a deafening thud and a moment later, the floor obligingly came up and did the same. Mud pressed into their fronts and splattered down on their backs.
Stunned, bruised, and scared to death, but otherwise okay, they quickly got up to avoid being sucked in face-first. Wiping mud from her eyes, Mary was the first to see Paul lying on the ground in their midst.
She rushed over to him and nearly fainted with relief when she saw he was breathing. She jumped for joy when she heard him groan in misery.
She was shocked when he mumbled, “Forgot… the air pocket.”
They hastened to pull him to his feet. Bryan pulled out a spare flask of Tranginus V water and emptied its contents down Paul’s throat. A moment later, his eyes flickered open. “Bloody marvelous stuff,” he rasped.
“Well that was an adventure,” Bryan remarked dryly. He was in fact incredibly relieved that Paul had survived. But they had never been on the best of terms, especially since Paul had laughed him out of the academic community, and he hated emotional moments anyway. So he preferred to gloss over it and move on, gloating a little into the bargain for good measure. “Now do you see what I mean about booby traps?”
“Booby traps, shmooby shmaps,” Mary snarled. “That wasn’t a booby trap. Just Mother Nature on the rag.”
Carposathia certainly would have been cunning enough to engineer even this innocuous pitfall, but it was futile to argue. “Regardless,” Bryan insisted, noticing even now that they had kept tap-dancing without thinking about it, “we’ll have to move fast. Come on.”
“Right.” Mary hurried on ahead.
“Hey wait!” Bryan called after her. “Hold up! Ladies last on this expedition!”
“I’m no one’s mollycoddle!” she called back.
Exasperated, Bryan hurried after her, leaving Glik and Glak to follow, propping Paul up. He knew full well that most women could take care of themselves, and that Mary Delisle was a very capable woman. But she was still skeptical of the booby traps. And Bryan knew too much about who they were dealing with, to suspect that they were over. Besides, the fact that she was a woman would only increase his guilt, and the disapproval of his superiors at the university, if he allowed anything to happen to her.
So he sought to prevent it, but realized within the next moment that he was too late, when her legs suddenly disappeared into the floor once again. This time, however, he could see that it had crumbled beneath her feet, rather than sucking her in.
“Don’t move!” he said.
He moved quickly but cautiously now, trying to find where the fragile part of the floor began. She had wedged in the hole now, and Bryan prayed that she would remain there. But a moment later, the floor crumbled again, and Mary fell in up to her armpits, throwing out her arms just in time for leverage, and grasping for handholds that weren’t there.
“Hang on!” he called. He was impressed with her mettle. The whole thing had happened in a manner of seconds, and she hadn’t so much as screamed.
He suddenly noticed that Paul had left Glik and Glak and caught up with him, and seemed to have suddenly recovered completely. Like Bryan, he was staring at her in wild-eyed panic. “Caution,” Bryan murmured.
Suddenly she cried out, more in surprise than pain, and released her arms. Paul lunged as the rest of her disappeared into the hole, and grabbed her hand right when it was the only thing protruding out.
“For Grabthar’s sake help me!” he screamed. Bryan ran over to support them. He realized that the fragile part began right where Mary was, as he could see the mud from where they were dripping into the hole. But there was no seam, and no visible difference between the two areas. It was truly diabolical.
Paul pulled Mary out, up to her waist, and suddenly gasped with the effort. He had completely blocked out the pain and fatigue from his earlier escapade, and it had no bearing on what he did now. But either Mary was hiding something in an incredibly tight corset, or something was trying to pull her in.
“Something is trying to pull me in!” she shouted. “It’s got me real tight!”
Paul swore. “No! No one hurts my colleague!” He turned to Bryan. “You, put your back into it!” And he turned to the mercenaries. “You worthless dingbats, get over here! What are we paying you for?” He turned back to Mary. “We’ll get you out,” he insisted.
“No, wait! Stop pulling so hard!” she cried. “It’s got me real tight!”
“Well we have to do something!” shouted Paul. “Would you rather we let go and dropped you in?”
“Yes, actually, at least I’d see what the heck is grabbing me!”
Paul had a number of things to say to that. But he bit them all back and tried to clear them from his mind as well, so he could rededicate his mental faculties to the more important task of pulling her out.
There had to be something…
“If you’d worn that dreadful perfume you so adore,” he said, tongue-in-cheek but not entirely joking, “perhaps it would have spit you out by now.”
He would not have thought it possible for her rage to intensify, but intensify it did. “That’s expensive stuff!” she sputtered. “It’s the latest thing straight from Voltran!”
“‘Eau de Ew’, that’s what I call it,” Paul confided to Bryan. “Can’t even pronounce the real name with human vocal chords.”
“Listen, le jerque, just because you grew up in a dumpster –”
Bryan blocked them out. It blew his mind how people could argue about perfume while they were in life-threatening peril. Then again, they probably preferred not to think about life-threatening peril, and the human mind had an incredible propensity for ignoring things it preferred not to think about. Just as he was ignoring their argument right now.
He turned to Glik and Glak, whom he had realized were still not helping them. “Come on, what’s the holdup?” he snapped.
They exchanged a glance, and Glak spoke up. “We are thinking,” he explained.
“Well then think a little harder,” Bryan snapped. “I know we didn’t hire you for your brains, but I’ll – I’ll throw in a hefty bonus for this.”
Glik held up his weapon. “We already thought of using the guns again,” he said, “but –”
“But the floor might completely disintegrate and doom our chances of reaching the tomb,” Bryan finished. He sighed and turned back to Paul and Mary.
And then something wonderful happened. He looked at Mary, snapping irritably at Paul, being a burden and a nuisance and an all-around royal pain just like she had been since she came on the trip. And he thought of the untold wealth and fame that lay just beyond, nearly within his grasp, after spending nearly his whole life tracking it down, nearly his whole life being laughed at, mocked, scorned, and shunned from every respectable university from Earth to the edge of the universe.
And he realized that all he cared about was saving Mary Delisle. The thought came to him with no small bit of surprise, and he was confused. But there was no mistaking it. Confound it, he thought, in this business you can’t afford to have a conscience. He decided he would keep it to himself, disturbingly pleasant though it was. But he also decided it was time to act.
He returned his gaze to Glik and Glak. “Go for it,” he said.
As they walked past, moving slowly and cautiously to avoid Mary’s predicament, and positioned themselves on the other side of her, Bryan realized something else. “If the floor disintegrates, you two will go with it,” he said, trembling. This whole situation sucked.
Both mercenaries shrugged it off. “We do not fear the unknown,” Glak said. “There is a risk in everything, and a potential gain from every mistake.” Bryan mentally revised his evaluation of them. They were more than just your average hired goons, he realized. They were wise, and they cared about more than their own skins, at least a little.
Glak raised his gun and aimed it at the floor, trying to estimate the position of Mary’s unseen attacker. Carefully, he raised it a few notches, then lowered it a few more, and then switched the firepower to its weakest setting and slowly began to squeeze the trigger.
“Wait!” yelled Bryan, Paul and Mary in unison.
Glak stared at them impatiently.
Paul was furious. “That’s too high! You’re going to hit her!”
Mary agreed. “I don’t want to be hit!” she screamed.
Glak looked very annoyed, but Glik spoke for him. “You doubt my partner?” he asked. “Glak is the champion sharpshooter of Andiron. He can hit a fly off the tail of a horse running through a dust cloud several meters away in the jungle at night, without sobering up first. You listen to him. He must be sure and hit the predator, which is of unknown size.”
Glak nodded in confirmation.
“We have to trust them,” relented Bryan. “It’s all we can do.”
“Or perhaps Mary can just quit worrying about her precious pants,” Paul snapped.
“Don’t get me started,” Mary began. “I’ll have you know –”
“For the love of Grabthar, I have no time for this,” Glak said, and fired.
The good news was that it only left a small hole in the floor, and did not spread. The other good news was that Mary did not cry out in sudden pain. What she said was, “Come on, what are you waiting for, you worthless wretches? It’s not pulling anymore! Get me out!”
Annoyed and relieved, Paul and Bryan quickly pulled her out. Although it was much easier, Mary still seemed to have bricks in her pockets. “If you’ll pardon the cliché,” Paul grunted, “you could stand to take off a few pounds.”
“I’ll start exercising as soon as I get out, by beating you to a pulp,” she replied curtly.
They were shocked to find when they had pulled her a bit farther that everything, from her waist down, was engulfed in the maw of a huge phosphorescent carnivorous plant. And they could see, just below her feet, where the stem began; and ended, as it had been cleanly shot off its stalk by Glak’s expert marksmanship.
The four men quickly pried it off of her, tossed it back down, and looked as one into the hole Mary had created. There was a collective gasp at the sight.
About forty feet down began an entire forest of humongous phosphorescent plants. Many of them were carnivorous, and they would snap at the small phosphorescent rodents and lizards that scurried through their leaves, chasing small phosphorescent insects that fluttered through the air. This forest went on as far as the eye could see in either direction, although it was somewhat interrupted in one by what appeared to be a dried-up riverbed. Bryan wondered if it had emptied naturally, or been dammed up for some purpose that had been lost to time.
“Incredible…” someone said.
Mary could not help but think about how lucky she was. Between the fall and the plants, there was no way she could have survived. She realized with some embarrassment that her own recklessness had nearly killed her. She should have let Bryan go first, like he wanted, and have him fall through instead.
“Do you recognize any of these species?” he was asking the mercenaries.
They both shook their heads. “None of them live on the surface, to our knowledge,” Glik said. “Or even in any of the caves we have explored.”
Mary realized it was their idea that had saved her life and her pants, and she felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude. “Thank you,” she gushed. “Thank you so much.” And as Paul and Bryan watched in astonishment, she passionately kissed them both full on the lips.
As Glik and Glak looked at each other in disbelief, then slowly smiled from ear to ear and gave each other thumbs up, she turned to Bryan and apologized for possibly the first time in her life. “I’m sorry I was so stupid,” she said, staring at the ground. She forced a weak smile. “I guess this is a shameful moment for feminists everywhere,” she added sadly.
Bryan lifted her chin and gazed into her eyes. His smile was genuine. “Don’t feel so bad,” he said. “It would have happened to any of us.” He gestured at the floor. “It looks exactly like the quickmud we went through. There was no way for you to have known.”
He turned to the rest of the group. “Now we know, don’t we,” he continued, raising his voice, “that this is a very dangerous place, and we cannot be too careful.” He pointed off into the distance. “That stuff down there is fascinating, but we’re not biologists. Let’s keep going and find that tomb.”
As the group set off again, Bryan turned to Glik and Glak. “That’s two we owe you now,” he said proudly. “I’ll be sure to include a very fine bonus for both.”
Glik and Glak looked at each other and grinned again. “That will be unnecessary. We have already received a finer bonus than you could offer,” Glak said, pointing to his lips, than at Mary with a smile.
They continued with caution, now more anxious than they had ever been, moving as slowly as they could manage across the perilous floor, glancing furtively ahead and back, expecting something else to befall them at any moment.
Suddenly, Bryan threw back his head and laughed. The others nearly jumped out of their skins, but managed to catch themselves before they did.
He shook his head, still chuckling. “I remember now!” he said, shaking his head and still chuckling. “There was a cryptic clue in one of the old parchments I studied, about fifteen years ago. It said, ‘Press forward with readily changing footsteps, or the earth itself shall be thine fiercest enemy.’” He chuckled again. “I couldn’t make heads or tails of it at the time. I guess this is what it was talking about.”
Mary glared at him as the others simply gaped. “Guess what, Dr. Jones,” she snapped furiously, “you’re supposed to give us the cryptic clues before we go into the scary secret passageway.”
Bryan’s smile grew wider. It was good to see that she had already regained her old sassy spunk. “I’ll try,” he said, and he did. There was something else coming back to him now, something they might need… what?
They continued on in silence, still worried, but the floor did not crumble, and it did not change its consistency again. Instead, they came to a dead end.
Of course, anyone who knew their Saturday matinee serials could tell it was not a true dead end. It was a sculpture of one of the many gods that the Shindoor had worshipped in the distant past. Some of them were still revered by the natives of Andiron today, most notably the chief deity Grabthar. But one of those this was not.
Its seven leering reptilian eyes bulged from their sockets, scattered haphazardly above a proboscis-like nose with nostrils a grown man could sleep inside of. On either side the statue was flanked by a large fleshy ear, the lobe of which was pierced with all kinds of animal tusks and draped nearly to the floor. These, too, could fit a grown man, though just a bit more snugly. After all this, the monstrosity’s smiling mouth was refreshingly normal, framed by thin lips and filled with very human-looking teeth.
That wasn’t what intrigued Bryan about the teeth, though. He pulled out his scrap of paper again, and reviewed a different section of calculations which seemed, to an outsider, a disorganized extension of the first.
“What is that thing?” Paul gasped.
“Dragator,” Bryan answered without looking back. “He was Carposathia’s personal god. Anyone else caught praying to him would be punished in the most hideous ways imaginable. So hideous, that even today historians hesitate before discussing him. Finding this, though, is a sure sign that we’re on the right track.”
“You mean you weren’t sure before!?”
“Of course I was. But you know science. The more evidence, the better. Ah.” He had found what he was looking for. Finally he faced the rest of the group. “I think I know how to get through here,” he said. “I calculated a sort of code, if you will, from a bunch of scattered cryptic clues. I think this is what it’s for.”
“And if it’s not?” Mary wanted to know. She was doing the hip thing again.
Bryan sighed and raised his hands sheepishly. Hopefully she would believe the truth, now, after what she had been through. “If it’s not,” he admitted, “then it will probably activate a booby trap and kill us all. You guys might want to stand back.” He was happy to see that they all willingly obliged, Mary included.
He returned his attention to the statue, or more specifically to its teeth. He had noticed that there was a small amount of space between each of them, and that they appeared to be set into sockets, rather than being a solid part of the hideous creature. And so it should be possible to…
Bryan looked back at his notes, just to be sure. Then he looked back at the teeth, moving to a specific one just as he had done at the entrance to the passage. This time, however, he did not care about putting on a show for his captive audience. He was closer than he had ever been, so close he could feel the thrill of ancient treasure coursing through his veins. And with the immediate concern for Mary’s life and pants out of the way, he rather cared about it quite a bit.
So he grabbed the tooth and gave it a solid counterclockwise twist.
There was a low rumbling sound, and then he could hear rusty gears grinding. He braced himself for falling rocks, spears, a trapdoor, anything that might happen to whoever screwed around with the king’s favorite god. But moments passed and he remained alive, so he reached for the next tooth and gave it a twist as well.
The noise started again, but Bryan paid it no heed and moved on to the next tooth, and the next. Excitement thrilled through his whole body and he began to bounce and laugh like a giddy schoolboy. “I didn’t go through Archaeology 101 to become a dentist,” he called over his shoulder. Still, it was nice to have such an obliging patient. And a god besides!
Then he slowed down, and, trembling, overcome with reverence and awe at what he was doing, he reached for the last tooth. A molar, as it happened. Slowly, he twisted, and shouted in surprise as it clicked into place and the statue’s mouth opened.
The mechanism behind it could clearly be heard, but it did not move in pieces. It opened in one slow yet fluid, realistic motion, as if it were flesh and not stone, moving from a clown-like smile to a gape of surprise. Within its dark recess, just beyond the tongue and decorated with a uvula and tonsils, was a stone door.
Bryan, Paul, Mary, Glik and Glak were all awestruck. But their lust for what lay beyond the door made them recover quickly. With Bryan in the lead, they moved into the statue’s mouth.
Which promptly closed behind them.
Someone cried out in the pitch blackness. Only then did they realize that their eyes had adjusted to the dimness outside, after their glowsticks had been solidly coated with mud. Now they quickly attempted to brush it off.
As the first few patches of light came flaking through, Bryan surveyed the door.
Mary came up beside him. Noticing the uvula and tonsils, she asked, “Why would gods need to eat?”
“What?” Bryan was distracted. He was trying to find the way out, and he really could not care less about Dragator’s dietary needs. “Why not?” he responded.
Mary thought about it for a while, and shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “I guess just the concept of a supreme being with a digestive system strikes me as a little kinky, that’s all.”
“She’s right,” Paul chipped in. “The whole point of eating is to fuel the body so one does not die. If he’s immortal, that should not be a concern.”
Bryan could not believe his ears. Why were they trying to drag him into one of their ridiculous discussions? Perhaps because they both agreed this time, and needed an opposing viewpoint. In fact he agreed with them as well, but in any case, at this moment he only cared about finding the way out.
Eating – digestion – the way out…
Putting yourself into the mind of a long-dead man was no easy task, especially one as cunning as the king they were after. A few random facts he had come across in his studies now seemed to take on a certain relevance, and he fought to figure out what they were, drowning out the conversation around him. They had to do with it, though, he knew, and less coincidentally the predicament he was in. And when put in the proper context, everything would make sense. With any luck.
Suddenly it hit him. He thought to himself as he began to pace around the tongue. An account of two Shindoor miners from about 3240 B.C. details the discovery of a strange liquid which ‘burned terribly at the touch and removed the skin of our forearms.’ No follow up was ever found, but the record also indicates that Caldwok took an interest in the two miners, and invited them into his palace for a symposium. Perhaps there is a lake of the stuff down there, which will quite literally eat us alive! And the accounts of Dragator, rare as they are, always mention one of Caldwok’s famous sayings, “The mind of a god is a gateway to glory.” And the mind is in that direction, he thought, looking up. Aloud he yelled, “Follow that uvula and tonsils!”
The others thought he was hopelessly insane. But he had been right so far, and the treasure wasn’t going to find itself, so they joined him in pushing on the door, and the others, after a moment’s pause, followed.
It budged a bit, then a bit more, and then it nearly knocked them all over as it swiveled into a horizontal position. Above and below it, they could see vertical passages extending into the darkness.
They couldn’t see the acid lake that Bryan imagined was at the bottom. But they did notice the stone spinal chord that had been attached into the far wall extending up to the top. Every other vertebra was made of
“Solid gold,” Paul mumbled.
Greed lined the eyes of all four men, and a certain cunning woman. They had come this far, and finally saw a hint at the rewards they hoped to reap.
It was clear, of course, that they couldn’t simply take them out. But just looking at them was refreshing and joyful. A touch would have sent shivers of ecstasy down their own spines. But Bryan had something to say about that.
“Don’t touch the gold ones,” he said. “It would be like disturbing a sacred offering to Dragator. Climb up it only using the stones.”
Even blinded by greed as they were, everyone knew better than to protest. They had been through enough, and had seen Bryan’s expertise firsthand, and knew he was not kidding around. Climbing onto the door which now served as a platform, they began the long, arduous climb. First Bryan, then Paul, then Mary, followed of course by Glik and Glak.
“This whole thing seems like a rather random bit to throw in,” Paul observed. “Especially after all the dirt-themed stuff.”
“Well of course,” said Bryan. “That’s what makes it harder to outwit. I myself would be stupefied without the proper clues.”
“And of all the Shindoor scrolls ever created, what percentage has most likely survived?” Paul went on. “What are the odds of the right ones, with the relevant clues, all being preserved, and discovered?”
“I don’t know,” said Bryan. “It depends on whether Caldwok really wants to keep us out.”
Just then, as Mary clambered up, one of her feet accidentally brushed against a gold vertebra. “Oh no!” she gasped.
“What?” Bryan snapped in annoyance. He had had it about as far as he could take with disasters, especially now that the tomb of Carposathia was within reach.
“I touched a gold one!” she wailed.
Bryan laughed. “It’s okay to brush against one,” he said. “I may have exaggerated a little. Just don’t put any pressure on one, or else most likely this entire structure will come down.” What a group he had been stuck with. They could be annoying at times, even more often than not, but the thrill of ancient treasure still coursed through his veins, and he was so close – so close – that it was easy to find such trivialities amusing.
About an hour later, Bryan Gilmore hauled himself over the edge at the top of the spine. His muscles were aching, but the thrill of ancient treasure soothed them like no serum could. He looked ahead, saw another door, and nearly screamed. When would this nightmare be over? Was he doomed to an eternity chasing his elusive goal.
But this was different, he realized, as the others pulled themselves up and came to join him. It was small, and plain, and it had a simple ring to pull it open. It was as if the designers of the passage were saying, “Fine. You know what? Forget it. Go ahead and plunder the stupid tomb already. Who cares?”
Too tired and excited to speak, Bryan motioned everyone else to stay back as he moved towards the door. No booby traps flattened him or turned him into a pincushion. No undead warriors jumped out, swinging their swords and shrieking battle cries to the heavens. Well. He hadn’t exactly expected that to happen. But when he reached the door, he began to sweat. What now? Were there more calculations, more cryptic clues, anything at all about this door that he needed to know? What now?
What the devil, he figured, and pulled it open.
Next: Chapter Two
His group moved silently, purposely through the alien jungle. Strange insects and plants pestered them as they ducked through the alternating thick and sparse undergrowth, but the area remained pleasant and peaceful. At regular intervals, some of them would glance furtively around, searching for the dangers that never came. Although the terrain had been going steadily uphill for several hours, the shift was so subtle, and the gravity so light, that no one cared. It was, all in all, a paradise. But none of them were there for a vacation. Rather, they had a goal.
There were five in the group. Three, a pair of well-dressed men and the obligatory beautiful blonde woman, were academics from the reputable Sternweld University. There was Bryan, of course, and then his colleagues, Dr. Paul Binyird, and Dr. Mary Delisle. As they trekked, all three of them were overtaken by the same feeling, that of being connected to the ancient past by this jungle. How many primitive tribes, long-extinct species, and other forgotten explorers had trodden this same soil, the surrounding flora looking virtually the same, since the dawn of time? Technology had reached an impressive point throughout the universe, but to look around they might have been the contemporaries of stone chisels and arrowheads.
The remaining two were a pair of armed local mercenaries named Glik and Glak, hired for their protection, and it was they who did most of the furtive glancing. They knew and insisted, in spite of the foreigners’ growing doubts, that the jungle could turn hostile in a moment, and claim its victims just as fast. In fact they had already scared away several potential predators with the protective herbs in their pockets but had felt no need to spread the news. On the other hand, they themselves perhaps posed the greatest danger of all, as they had made it clear that their services were intended for the highest bidder.
At some point in the afternoon on the third day of their expedition, the group arrived at a low rock wall. Like the pyramids along the Nile River of Earth, it had been constructed without advanced tools or knowledge, and yet the stones were perfectly cut into rectangular prisms, and compacted so tightly, without cement, that not the thinnest sheet of paper could be slid between them. In this day and age, however, most of them stood no more than one layer high. They also stood out like a sore thumb out here in the untamed jungle, but no one had ever noticed them. No one had ever had reason to come out this far.
Bryan raised his hand, signaling everyone to halt, but everyone already had. This was clearly their destination.
Eagerly, five packs were unshouldered, five brows were wiped, and five throats were filled with the pure cleansing water of Tranginus V. Only Paul and Mary sat, however. Glik and Glak showed no further signs of exhaustion, and hurried to set up camp. For his part Bryan, finally so near his goal, was emaciated and filled with a surge of energy. It was his moment in the spotlight, and although he would not let on, he was glad to have the undivided attention of his exhausted companions.
Digging into his satchel, he removed a tattered sheet of paper on which he had scribbled his calculations. It was more efficient to do such things on a pocket computer, but he enjoyed the extra connecting factor with the past he had dedicated his life to preserving. Simply walking in a thousand-year old jungle wasn’t enough for him. Besides, as he gazed at the damp and yellowed sheet, it struck him as being quite like an ancient treasure map. When one looked closer, they would see nothing but numerical gobbledygook. In fact, however, it was the precise location of his goal, painstakingly pieced together from countless sources over more than half of his life.
Bryan knew exactly where to go, but for the sake of his audience pretended otherwise. He made a show of checking over his paper and then the wall, back and forth, and finally moving over to a particular stone. Then he repeated the process, audibly “hemming” and “hawing,” and hesitantly moving to a different one.
When his companions began to rise and stretch, he knew it was about time to get moving. They were a restless bunch, to be sure, and they wanted to see results. The mercenaries, for sure, who had been lured by the promise of untold wealth, had to be regarded with caution. Under normal circumstances they might slit his throat for a few salted nuts; now, merely being cheated of their tantalizing riches would be enough to motivate them. When Mary placed her hands on her hips and cocked them to the side in an exasperated manner, he knew it was time.
He pointed to one of the stones he had overlooked entirely. “This is it,” he said.
The four men positioned themselves around the stone and bent their knees, moving their hands around to find a purchase. Mary stood off to the side and watched in amusement, as they had expected. “I just got a manicure,” she had insisted from the expedition’s beginning. But all five, even the mercenaries whom they had never previously met, knew this was baloney. She was not a prissy wuss by any means, and could hold her own in anything they did. But she gained a certain satisfaction from watching elderly scholars indulge in manual labor, and even more from watching men in their place, as if she were their overseer.
“Lift,” she said with a smile, and, with a few disparaging glances in her direction, the four men complied.
The rock did not budge easily from its resting place, and Bryan refused to let them destroy it or its brethren. They were not worth much, but they were artifacts of a forgotten era, and in his eyes all such things were valuable. He did, however, allow Mary to rub its sides with oil as they were gradually exposed, which facilitated their task a little bit. Within a few minutes they had removed it, and were once again catching their breath. It was still incredibly heavy, however, and it took a great deal of endurance to gently set it down beside the wall.
Bryan could only gaze in wonder at what now lay before them: the now-exposed opening which led to a slanted tunnel into the ground. Mary rushed over to look; the others took a while to register its significance as they tried to inhale as deeply as possible.
Finally, Paul managed a weak smile. “You were right,” he admitted.
Bryan shrugged modestly even as a smug grin lit his face.
Paul got to his feet and extended his hand. “Dr. Gilmore, please accept my humble apology,” he said. “I never should have doubted you.”
Bryan shook it vigorously. “No harm done,” he said graciously. Then he pretended to think about it for a minute. “Well, except for me being mocked and shunned from the academic community,” he added.
Paul’s cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze. “Yes... well...”
Bryan ignored him and turned to Mary, hoping for a similar apology. Mary, however, was much slower in swallowing her pride, and moved to avoid the issue. “Come on,” she insisted, “there’s a king’s tomb down there to explore!”
Bryan was disappointed, but not surprised. Still, the point was that he had been right, and all his years of being ostracized meant nothing now. He was about to make one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century.
Still, no one moved. Looking into the darkness beyond, everyone suddenly felt a bit uneasy with the thought of violating it. A king’s tomb, as Mary had said, and furthermore one that had lain in peace for ages. It just didn’t seem right somehow. But they were professionals, after all, and they couldn’t let little things like that bother them.
“Yes, all right then,” he said. “Let’s get to it already.” Turning, he ducked and descended into the tunnel, closely followed by Mary and Paul.
Glik and Glak brought up the rear, each setting down a bundle of firewood before they approached. As they paused to let one another pass, their eyes met, and they might have exchanged a knowing, conspiratorial smile.
***
The tunnel soon leveled out, and loomed straight ahead into darkness. The three academics activated the glowsticks on their belts so they could continue, but once again Bryan raised his hand to signal a halt.
“Careful,” he said. “Watch for booby traps.”
He was met with cruel laughter. “Really, Bryan old pal, you’ve been reading too much children’s fare,” Paul said. “Archaeology is simply a matter of digging things up and taking them to a museum.”
Mary agreed. “Worst-case scenario, this place is a maze and there are false passages,” she added. “That’s why we brought chalk.”
Bryan shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he insisted. “Caldwok isn’t just another Tutankhamen. My research brought me quite close to him. He was a cunning and diabolical man, who loved to manipulate his enemies and make them suffer. Even in death, he would not allow anyone to simply march into his tomb unscathed.”
“Then we should respect his wishes,” Paul said sarcastically, mocking one of Bryan’s scruples and refusing to let on that he had felt the same mere minutes ago.
Bryan recognized the sarcasm but took the bait. “We’ll help him achieve even greater fame throughout the universe, and there’s nothing he would want more than that,” he said. “All I’m saying is that we need to be very careful down here.”
Mary rolled her eyes and was about to say something snotty, when a realization struck her. She rolled her eyes again and kept them in that position.
“Apropos nothing,” she said tentatively, “but wasn’t the ceiling much lower than that when we came in?”
Four pairs of eyes joined hers, and one by one moved to the floor. There they were astonished and more than a little queasy to find that four corresponding pairs of knees, plus hers, were mired in it.
“Nobody panic,” said Mary. She tugged forcefully at her legs, but they refused to come out. As she watched, in fact, they were visibly sinking deeper. “Okay, now we can panic,” she amended.
“Quickmud,” Bryan seethed. “Remember those patches we passed in the jungle? Those were very obvious, though. This looks just like regular loam.” He turned to Glik and Glak. “Have you ever seen this variety before?”
Both men shook their heads. “It was just as deceptive to us,” Glak admitted sheepishly.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any suggestions for getting us out,” he added.
Glik and Glak thought long and hard for a moment, during which everyone slipped at least an inch deeper.
“Perhaps our guns…” began Glak.
“Yes!” shouted Glik. “They are quite powerful. They will propel us out of the mud.” Before anyone could protest, he shoved the muzzle of his weapon into it.
“Wait!” shouted Bryan, Paul, and Mary all at once. There was clearly no stopping them, and they didn’t have time to think of better options anyway, but Paul had to add, “Create an air pocket at least and slightly decrease the chance of blowing us all to bits!”
Glik quickly swished the gun around, and then pulled the trigger. With a sickening shluck noise, he was propelled out of the mud and through the air, over the heads of everyone else that were now in up to their waists, and landed softly on more mud. He quickly jumped to his feet and began tap-dancing over its surface to avoid sinking again.
“Yes!” shouted Glak, and repeated the maneuver.
They extended their guns first to Mary, and then to Bryan. Paul sulked as he watched them escape, while he continued to sink at an exponential rate.
Bryan shook his head. “That was so incredibly implausible, I suppose it was bound to work.” Then, as he was handing over his gun to Paul, there was a loud foom and a geyser of dirt sprayed from the floor. Paul was suddenly in up to his neck. Void collapse.
Paul screamed. Bryan bit back a string of expletives for Mary’s sake, only to realize she was unloading them all herself, as well as some worse ones he had never heard of. Glik and Glak babbled something in unison that sounded like a cross between a curse and a prayer.
Only Paul’s fingertips were above the surface now and he could not grab the gun. “Raise your arms,” yelled Bryan. “Raise your arms!”
“I can’t!” Paul shrieked.
“Try harder!”
The mud rose past his fingertips and up to his chin.
“You can do it!”
Straining with everything he had, and much that he didn’t have, Paul tried to lift his arms. But it was no use. He continued to sink, and the mud reached his lips.
“Come on!” Everyone stood by him now, desperately egging him to not give up, holding the gun so he could have grabbed it given a mere few inches.
He channeled all of his strength into one arm now, pushing it even further. Excruciating pain ran its length, and he gasped with the effort, letting mud into his mouth. Slowly, painfully, it moved a few inexorable centimeters closer to the surface. But it was not enough.
The mud was nearly to his nose now, and Paul continued to feed off of strength from some unknown source, ignoring the pain, letting it fade into the back of his mind even as his bones threatened to fracture. Sweat poured off of his body and he trembled uncontrollably. His arm moved ever so slightly closer.
But still, it was not enough. And even the most optimistic person in the universe would have to admit that it was hopeless. He wasn’t going to make it.
Paul Binyird closed his eyes and waited for the end.
“Darn it, we’ll have to use our hands!” yelled Bryan.
“So we can get pulled in too?” sputtered Mary.
Bryan shook his head. “If we all do it together, really fast, and keep tap-dancing, we might have a chance!” he insisted.
Suddenly, there was another void collapse, and Paul sank beneath the mud completely.
Clearly it was worth a shot, and it was now or never. The four of them took a deep breath, and lunged for where they estimated his arm to be.
“I’ve got it!” Glik shouted, and the others moved to where his arm disappeared below the surface. All grabbing Paul near his wrist, they pulled.
It was more difficult than Bryan had anticipated. They were forced to call upon the same reserves of strength that Paul had moments earlier. Fortunately, they had the advantage of teamwork, and were more successful. They got his hand above the mud.
Glak quickly shoved the gun into it. Paul, with his last moments of consciousness, ignoring the pain that still coursed through his arm, pulled it under with him.
There was an anxious moment of silence. Four breaths were held as they waited to see if they had been too late. The mud was too thick to let out any telltale bubbles, and no one could hear him. The tension was as thick as a celebrity’s skull.
Then, suddenly, the four of them were violently ripped off their feet in a mind-mangling explosion of light, noise, and mud. The ceiling came quickly down to meet them with a deafening thud and a moment later, the floor obligingly came up and did the same. Mud pressed into their fronts and splattered down on their backs.
Stunned, bruised, and scared to death, but otherwise okay, they quickly got up to avoid being sucked in face-first. Wiping mud from her eyes, Mary was the first to see Paul lying on the ground in their midst.
She rushed over to him and nearly fainted with relief when she saw he was breathing. She jumped for joy when she heard him groan in misery.
She was shocked when he mumbled, “Forgot… the air pocket.”
They hastened to pull him to his feet. Bryan pulled out a spare flask of Tranginus V water and emptied its contents down Paul’s throat. A moment later, his eyes flickered open. “Bloody marvelous stuff,” he rasped.
“Well that was an adventure,” Bryan remarked dryly. He was in fact incredibly relieved that Paul had survived. But they had never been on the best of terms, especially since Paul had laughed him out of the academic community, and he hated emotional moments anyway. So he preferred to gloss over it and move on, gloating a little into the bargain for good measure. “Now do you see what I mean about booby traps?”
“Booby traps, shmooby shmaps,” Mary snarled. “That wasn’t a booby trap. Just Mother Nature on the rag.”
Carposathia certainly would have been cunning enough to engineer even this innocuous pitfall, but it was futile to argue. “Regardless,” Bryan insisted, noticing even now that they had kept tap-dancing without thinking about it, “we’ll have to move fast. Come on.”
“Right.” Mary hurried on ahead.
“Hey wait!” Bryan called after her. “Hold up! Ladies last on this expedition!”
“I’m no one’s mollycoddle!” she called back.
Exasperated, Bryan hurried after her, leaving Glik and Glak to follow, propping Paul up. He knew full well that most women could take care of themselves, and that Mary Delisle was a very capable woman. But she was still skeptical of the booby traps. And Bryan knew too much about who they were dealing with, to suspect that they were over. Besides, the fact that she was a woman would only increase his guilt, and the disapproval of his superiors at the university, if he allowed anything to happen to her.
So he sought to prevent it, but realized within the next moment that he was too late, when her legs suddenly disappeared into the floor once again. This time, however, he could see that it had crumbled beneath her feet, rather than sucking her in.
“Don’t move!” he said.
He moved quickly but cautiously now, trying to find where the fragile part of the floor began. She had wedged in the hole now, and Bryan prayed that she would remain there. But a moment later, the floor crumbled again, and Mary fell in up to her armpits, throwing out her arms just in time for leverage, and grasping for handholds that weren’t there.
“Hang on!” he called. He was impressed with her mettle. The whole thing had happened in a manner of seconds, and she hadn’t so much as screamed.
He suddenly noticed that Paul had left Glik and Glak and caught up with him, and seemed to have suddenly recovered completely. Like Bryan, he was staring at her in wild-eyed panic. “Caution,” Bryan murmured.
Suddenly she cried out, more in surprise than pain, and released her arms. Paul lunged as the rest of her disappeared into the hole, and grabbed her hand right when it was the only thing protruding out.
“For Grabthar’s sake help me!” he screamed. Bryan ran over to support them. He realized that the fragile part began right where Mary was, as he could see the mud from where they were dripping into the hole. But there was no seam, and no visible difference between the two areas. It was truly diabolical.
Paul pulled Mary out, up to her waist, and suddenly gasped with the effort. He had completely blocked out the pain and fatigue from his earlier escapade, and it had no bearing on what he did now. But either Mary was hiding something in an incredibly tight corset, or something was trying to pull her in.
“Something is trying to pull me in!” she shouted. “It’s got me real tight!”
Paul swore. “No! No one hurts my colleague!” He turned to Bryan. “You, put your back into it!” And he turned to the mercenaries. “You worthless dingbats, get over here! What are we paying you for?” He turned back to Mary. “We’ll get you out,” he insisted.
“No, wait! Stop pulling so hard!” she cried. “It’s got me real tight!”
“Well we have to do something!” shouted Paul. “Would you rather we let go and dropped you in?”
“Yes, actually, at least I’d see what the heck is grabbing me!”
Paul had a number of things to say to that. But he bit them all back and tried to clear them from his mind as well, so he could rededicate his mental faculties to the more important task of pulling her out.
There had to be something…
“If you’d worn that dreadful perfume you so adore,” he said, tongue-in-cheek but not entirely joking, “perhaps it would have spit you out by now.”
He would not have thought it possible for her rage to intensify, but intensify it did. “That’s expensive stuff!” she sputtered. “It’s the latest thing straight from Voltran!”
“‘Eau de Ew’, that’s what I call it,” Paul confided to Bryan. “Can’t even pronounce the real name with human vocal chords.”
“Listen, le jerque, just because you grew up in a dumpster –”
Bryan blocked them out. It blew his mind how people could argue about perfume while they were in life-threatening peril. Then again, they probably preferred not to think about life-threatening peril, and the human mind had an incredible propensity for ignoring things it preferred not to think about. Just as he was ignoring their argument right now.
He turned to Glik and Glak, whom he had realized were still not helping them. “Come on, what’s the holdup?” he snapped.
They exchanged a glance, and Glak spoke up. “We are thinking,” he explained.
“Well then think a little harder,” Bryan snapped. “I know we didn’t hire you for your brains, but I’ll – I’ll throw in a hefty bonus for this.”
Glik held up his weapon. “We already thought of using the guns again,” he said, “but –”
“But the floor might completely disintegrate and doom our chances of reaching the tomb,” Bryan finished. He sighed and turned back to Paul and Mary.
And then something wonderful happened. He looked at Mary, snapping irritably at Paul, being a burden and a nuisance and an all-around royal pain just like she had been since she came on the trip. And he thought of the untold wealth and fame that lay just beyond, nearly within his grasp, after spending nearly his whole life tracking it down, nearly his whole life being laughed at, mocked, scorned, and shunned from every respectable university from Earth to the edge of the universe.
And he realized that all he cared about was saving Mary Delisle. The thought came to him with no small bit of surprise, and he was confused. But there was no mistaking it. Confound it, he thought, in this business you can’t afford to have a conscience. He decided he would keep it to himself, disturbingly pleasant though it was. But he also decided it was time to act.
He returned his gaze to Glik and Glak. “Go for it,” he said.
As they walked past, moving slowly and cautiously to avoid Mary’s predicament, and positioned themselves on the other side of her, Bryan realized something else. “If the floor disintegrates, you two will go with it,” he said, trembling. This whole situation sucked.
Both mercenaries shrugged it off. “We do not fear the unknown,” Glak said. “There is a risk in everything, and a potential gain from every mistake.” Bryan mentally revised his evaluation of them. They were more than just your average hired goons, he realized. They were wise, and they cared about more than their own skins, at least a little.
Glak raised his gun and aimed it at the floor, trying to estimate the position of Mary’s unseen attacker. Carefully, he raised it a few notches, then lowered it a few more, and then switched the firepower to its weakest setting and slowly began to squeeze the trigger.
“Wait!” yelled Bryan, Paul and Mary in unison.
Glak stared at them impatiently.
Paul was furious. “That’s too high! You’re going to hit her!”
Mary agreed. “I don’t want to be hit!” she screamed.
Glak looked very annoyed, but Glik spoke for him. “You doubt my partner?” he asked. “Glak is the champion sharpshooter of Andiron. He can hit a fly off the tail of a horse running through a dust cloud several meters away in the jungle at night, without sobering up first. You listen to him. He must be sure and hit the predator, which is of unknown size.”
Glak nodded in confirmation.
“We have to trust them,” relented Bryan. “It’s all we can do.”
“Or perhaps Mary can just quit worrying about her precious pants,” Paul snapped.
“Don’t get me started,” Mary began. “I’ll have you know –”
“For the love of Grabthar, I have no time for this,” Glak said, and fired.
The good news was that it only left a small hole in the floor, and did not spread. The other good news was that Mary did not cry out in sudden pain. What she said was, “Come on, what are you waiting for, you worthless wretches? It’s not pulling anymore! Get me out!”
Annoyed and relieved, Paul and Bryan quickly pulled her out. Although it was much easier, Mary still seemed to have bricks in her pockets. “If you’ll pardon the cliché,” Paul grunted, “you could stand to take off a few pounds.”
“I’ll start exercising as soon as I get out, by beating you to a pulp,” she replied curtly.
They were shocked to find when they had pulled her a bit farther that everything, from her waist down, was engulfed in the maw of a huge phosphorescent carnivorous plant. And they could see, just below her feet, where the stem began; and ended, as it had been cleanly shot off its stalk by Glak’s expert marksmanship.
The four men quickly pried it off of her, tossed it back down, and looked as one into the hole Mary had created. There was a collective gasp at the sight.
About forty feet down began an entire forest of humongous phosphorescent plants. Many of them were carnivorous, and they would snap at the small phosphorescent rodents and lizards that scurried through their leaves, chasing small phosphorescent insects that fluttered through the air. This forest went on as far as the eye could see in either direction, although it was somewhat interrupted in one by what appeared to be a dried-up riverbed. Bryan wondered if it had emptied naturally, or been dammed up for some purpose that had been lost to time.
“Incredible…” someone said.
Mary could not help but think about how lucky she was. Between the fall and the plants, there was no way she could have survived. She realized with some embarrassment that her own recklessness had nearly killed her. She should have let Bryan go first, like he wanted, and have him fall through instead.
“Do you recognize any of these species?” he was asking the mercenaries.
They both shook their heads. “None of them live on the surface, to our knowledge,” Glik said. “Or even in any of the caves we have explored.”
Mary realized it was their idea that had saved her life and her pants, and she felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude. “Thank you,” she gushed. “Thank you so much.” And as Paul and Bryan watched in astonishment, she passionately kissed them both full on the lips.
As Glik and Glak looked at each other in disbelief, then slowly smiled from ear to ear and gave each other thumbs up, she turned to Bryan and apologized for possibly the first time in her life. “I’m sorry I was so stupid,” she said, staring at the ground. She forced a weak smile. “I guess this is a shameful moment for feminists everywhere,” she added sadly.
Bryan lifted her chin and gazed into her eyes. His smile was genuine. “Don’t feel so bad,” he said. “It would have happened to any of us.” He gestured at the floor. “It looks exactly like the quickmud we went through. There was no way for you to have known.”
He turned to the rest of the group. “Now we know, don’t we,” he continued, raising his voice, “that this is a very dangerous place, and we cannot be too careful.” He pointed off into the distance. “That stuff down there is fascinating, but we’re not biologists. Let’s keep going and find that tomb.”
As the group set off again, Bryan turned to Glik and Glak. “That’s two we owe you now,” he said proudly. “I’ll be sure to include a very fine bonus for both.”
Glik and Glak looked at each other and grinned again. “That will be unnecessary. We have already received a finer bonus than you could offer,” Glak said, pointing to his lips, than at Mary with a smile.
They continued with caution, now more anxious than they had ever been, moving as slowly as they could manage across the perilous floor, glancing furtively ahead and back, expecting something else to befall them at any moment.
Suddenly, Bryan threw back his head and laughed. The others nearly jumped out of their skins, but managed to catch themselves before they did.
He shook his head, still chuckling. “I remember now!” he said, shaking his head and still chuckling. “There was a cryptic clue in one of the old parchments I studied, about fifteen years ago. It said, ‘Press forward with readily changing footsteps, or the earth itself shall be thine fiercest enemy.’” He chuckled again. “I couldn’t make heads or tails of it at the time. I guess this is what it was talking about.”
Mary glared at him as the others simply gaped. “Guess what, Dr. Jones,” she snapped furiously, “you’re supposed to give us the cryptic clues before we go into the scary secret passageway.”
Bryan’s smile grew wider. It was good to see that she had already regained her old sassy spunk. “I’ll try,” he said, and he did. There was something else coming back to him now, something they might need… what?
They continued on in silence, still worried, but the floor did not crumble, and it did not change its consistency again. Instead, they came to a dead end.
Of course, anyone who knew their Saturday matinee serials could tell it was not a true dead end. It was a sculpture of one of the many gods that the Shindoor had worshipped in the distant past. Some of them were still revered by the natives of Andiron today, most notably the chief deity Grabthar. But one of those this was not.
Its seven leering reptilian eyes bulged from their sockets, scattered haphazardly above a proboscis-like nose with nostrils a grown man could sleep inside of. On either side the statue was flanked by a large fleshy ear, the lobe of which was pierced with all kinds of animal tusks and draped nearly to the floor. These, too, could fit a grown man, though just a bit more snugly. After all this, the monstrosity’s smiling mouth was refreshingly normal, framed by thin lips and filled with very human-looking teeth.
That wasn’t what intrigued Bryan about the teeth, though. He pulled out his scrap of paper again, and reviewed a different section of calculations which seemed, to an outsider, a disorganized extension of the first.
“What is that thing?” Paul gasped.
“Dragator,” Bryan answered without looking back. “He was Carposathia’s personal god. Anyone else caught praying to him would be punished in the most hideous ways imaginable. So hideous, that even today historians hesitate before discussing him. Finding this, though, is a sure sign that we’re on the right track.”
“You mean you weren’t sure before!?”
“Of course I was. But you know science. The more evidence, the better. Ah.” He had found what he was looking for. Finally he faced the rest of the group. “I think I know how to get through here,” he said. “I calculated a sort of code, if you will, from a bunch of scattered cryptic clues. I think this is what it’s for.”
“And if it’s not?” Mary wanted to know. She was doing the hip thing again.
Bryan sighed and raised his hands sheepishly. Hopefully she would believe the truth, now, after what she had been through. “If it’s not,” he admitted, “then it will probably activate a booby trap and kill us all. You guys might want to stand back.” He was happy to see that they all willingly obliged, Mary included.
He returned his attention to the statue, or more specifically to its teeth. He had noticed that there was a small amount of space between each of them, and that they appeared to be set into sockets, rather than being a solid part of the hideous creature. And so it should be possible to…
Bryan looked back at his notes, just to be sure. Then he looked back at the teeth, moving to a specific one just as he had done at the entrance to the passage. This time, however, he did not care about putting on a show for his captive audience. He was closer than he had ever been, so close he could feel the thrill of ancient treasure coursing through his veins. And with the immediate concern for Mary’s life and pants out of the way, he rather cared about it quite a bit.
So he grabbed the tooth and gave it a solid counterclockwise twist.
There was a low rumbling sound, and then he could hear rusty gears grinding. He braced himself for falling rocks, spears, a trapdoor, anything that might happen to whoever screwed around with the king’s favorite god. But moments passed and he remained alive, so he reached for the next tooth and gave it a twist as well.
The noise started again, but Bryan paid it no heed and moved on to the next tooth, and the next. Excitement thrilled through his whole body and he began to bounce and laugh like a giddy schoolboy. “I didn’t go through Archaeology 101 to become a dentist,” he called over his shoulder. Still, it was nice to have such an obliging patient. And a god besides!
Then he slowed down, and, trembling, overcome with reverence and awe at what he was doing, he reached for the last tooth. A molar, as it happened. Slowly, he twisted, and shouted in surprise as it clicked into place and the statue’s mouth opened.
The mechanism behind it could clearly be heard, but it did not move in pieces. It opened in one slow yet fluid, realistic motion, as if it were flesh and not stone, moving from a clown-like smile to a gape of surprise. Within its dark recess, just beyond the tongue and decorated with a uvula and tonsils, was a stone door.
Bryan, Paul, Mary, Glik and Glak were all awestruck. But their lust for what lay beyond the door made them recover quickly. With Bryan in the lead, they moved into the statue’s mouth.
Which promptly closed behind them.
Someone cried out in the pitch blackness. Only then did they realize that their eyes had adjusted to the dimness outside, after their glowsticks had been solidly coated with mud. Now they quickly attempted to brush it off.
As the first few patches of light came flaking through, Bryan surveyed the door.
Mary came up beside him. Noticing the uvula and tonsils, she asked, “Why would gods need to eat?”
“What?” Bryan was distracted. He was trying to find the way out, and he really could not care less about Dragator’s dietary needs. “Why not?” he responded.
Mary thought about it for a while, and shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “I guess just the concept of a supreme being with a digestive system strikes me as a little kinky, that’s all.”
“She’s right,” Paul chipped in. “The whole point of eating is to fuel the body so one does not die. If he’s immortal, that should not be a concern.”
Bryan could not believe his ears. Why were they trying to drag him into one of their ridiculous discussions? Perhaps because they both agreed this time, and needed an opposing viewpoint. In fact he agreed with them as well, but in any case, at this moment he only cared about finding the way out.
Eating – digestion – the way out…
Putting yourself into the mind of a long-dead man was no easy task, especially one as cunning as the king they were after. A few random facts he had come across in his studies now seemed to take on a certain relevance, and he fought to figure out what they were, drowning out the conversation around him. They had to do with it, though, he knew, and less coincidentally the predicament he was in. And when put in the proper context, everything would make sense. With any luck.
Suddenly it hit him. He thought to himself as he began to pace around the tongue. An account of two Shindoor miners from about 3240 B.C. details the discovery of a strange liquid which ‘burned terribly at the touch and removed the skin of our forearms.’ No follow up was ever found, but the record also indicates that Caldwok took an interest in the two miners, and invited them into his palace for a symposium. Perhaps there is a lake of the stuff down there, which will quite literally eat us alive! And the accounts of Dragator, rare as they are, always mention one of Caldwok’s famous sayings, “The mind of a god is a gateway to glory.” And the mind is in that direction, he thought, looking up. Aloud he yelled, “Follow that uvula and tonsils!”
The others thought he was hopelessly insane. But he had been right so far, and the treasure wasn’t going to find itself, so they joined him in pushing on the door, and the others, after a moment’s pause, followed.
It budged a bit, then a bit more, and then it nearly knocked them all over as it swiveled into a horizontal position. Above and below it, they could see vertical passages extending into the darkness.
They couldn’t see the acid lake that Bryan imagined was at the bottom. But they did notice the stone spinal chord that had been attached into the far wall extending up to the top. Every other vertebra was made of
“Solid gold,” Paul mumbled.
Greed lined the eyes of all four men, and a certain cunning woman. They had come this far, and finally saw a hint at the rewards they hoped to reap.
It was clear, of course, that they couldn’t simply take them out. But just looking at them was refreshing and joyful. A touch would have sent shivers of ecstasy down their own spines. But Bryan had something to say about that.
“Don’t touch the gold ones,” he said. “It would be like disturbing a sacred offering to Dragator. Climb up it only using the stones.”
Even blinded by greed as they were, everyone knew better than to protest. They had been through enough, and had seen Bryan’s expertise firsthand, and knew he was not kidding around. Climbing onto the door which now served as a platform, they began the long, arduous climb. First Bryan, then Paul, then Mary, followed of course by Glik and Glak.
“This whole thing seems like a rather random bit to throw in,” Paul observed. “Especially after all the dirt-themed stuff.”
“Well of course,” said Bryan. “That’s what makes it harder to outwit. I myself would be stupefied without the proper clues.”
“And of all the Shindoor scrolls ever created, what percentage has most likely survived?” Paul went on. “What are the odds of the right ones, with the relevant clues, all being preserved, and discovered?”
“I don’t know,” said Bryan. “It depends on whether Caldwok really wants to keep us out.”
Just then, as Mary clambered up, one of her feet accidentally brushed against a gold vertebra. “Oh no!” she gasped.
“What?” Bryan snapped in annoyance. He had had it about as far as he could take with disasters, especially now that the tomb of Carposathia was within reach.
“I touched a gold one!” she wailed.
Bryan laughed. “It’s okay to brush against one,” he said. “I may have exaggerated a little. Just don’t put any pressure on one, or else most likely this entire structure will come down.” What a group he had been stuck with. They could be annoying at times, even more often than not, but the thrill of ancient treasure still coursed through his veins, and he was so close – so close – that it was easy to find such trivialities amusing.
About an hour later, Bryan Gilmore hauled himself over the edge at the top of the spine. His muscles were aching, but the thrill of ancient treasure soothed them like no serum could. He looked ahead, saw another door, and nearly screamed. When would this nightmare be over? Was he doomed to an eternity chasing his elusive goal.
But this was different, he realized, as the others pulled themselves up and came to join him. It was small, and plain, and it had a simple ring to pull it open. It was as if the designers of the passage were saying, “Fine. You know what? Forget it. Go ahead and plunder the stupid tomb already. Who cares?”
Too tired and excited to speak, Bryan motioned everyone else to stay back as he moved towards the door. No booby traps flattened him or turned him into a pincushion. No undead warriors jumped out, swinging their swords and shrieking battle cries to the heavens. Well. He hadn’t exactly expected that to happen. But when he reached the door, he began to sweat. What now? Were there more calculations, more cryptic clues, anything at all about this door that he needed to know? What now?
What the devil, he figured, and pulled it open.
Next: Chapter Two
