The Transdyne Awakening (11 page)

Greg led him along a steep walkway and into a large tunnel. Clay started to count off his paces in order to get some idea of how far inside the ground they were going. Before he had reached five hundred they had emerged into bright sunlight. A great chamber surrounded them. The jagged channel went up for a long way above them and he could see the gleaming blue desert sky. Walkways had been engineered out of the rocky sides where they stood. Looking into the chasm below them he could see the sun reflecting in clear water.

“Come on,” Greg beckoned.

He walked to the edge and gripped the bars of a wide ladder which was bolted securely to the cave wall. Clay could see that it went down a long way. He counted a couple of hundred steps as he carefully followed Greg into the underground lair.

On the descent he thought about the cavern raid he had been on with Ahab’s recovery crew. Before that, he had never given any thought to what lay below the ground. His take on life had been somewhat the same. He hadn’t known that so many other things were happening right underneath where he stood.

The sight that greeted him at the bottom of the ladder was magical. The shaft of sunlight made a wide circle in the water and threw dancing patterns of reflections onto the cavern walls.

The walls were further lit by yellow, artificial lights. These too reflected off the water and rocks, bathing the entire place in an iridescent glow. The water was crystal clear and he could see the rock formations stretching away below the surface. He stood enchanted for a moment in the glittering.

Below him, two dark shapes became discernable in the water. They were moving quickly upward towards the surface. They emerged from the depths, closer to where Clay and Greg stood. Both figures broke surface at the same time and stood upright on the rocks in front of him.

They were clad in black skin tight suits which also covered their heads. The water streamed from them in rivulets. Their faces were obscured by masking devices and breathing tubes. Standing in the flickering light, they looked otherworldly. They removed the tubes from their mouths.

The nearest one pushed up the mask and pulled the headpiece away. He immediately recognized Skye. She was smiling and shaking out her hair.

“Hello, Clay. I’m glad you’re coming down. You have to see this,” she laughed. Greg stepped forward until he was shin deep in the water and began helping her off with a harness. It ran around her body and over her shoulders, securing two large cylinders to her back.

“Air supply,” Darren said.

Clay lost all track of time as Darren and Skye initiated him into the mysteries of diving. They helped him put on one of the weird suits and showed him the aqualungs and tubes. They told him to wet the mask because of condensation. They showed him signals that they used to communicate when submerged. Eventually, when he had gained enough confidence, he sat on one of the ledges just beneath the surface, getting used to breathing from his air tanks.

When they felt he was ready, his two guardians flanked him as he took his first tentative strokes under water. It was exhilarating.

He quickly indicated that he was ready and they set off.

Skye led the way and Darren stayed beside him. Aided by the flippers, he rapidly got used to the ease of forward movement.

He could see ahead clearly through his mask as they made their way past the descending, rocky outcrops. These waters went a long way down. Drawn by curiosity he made to go slightly deeper.

Darren touched his wrist and signalled a clear “No!” He realized that his guardian was right. He wasn’t ready for that. He signalled back his compliance. ‘Another time’, he thought. His desire for further exploration would keep.

Beyond the cavern’s immediate circle of light the visibility was still good. Swimming into the blue-green haze, he marvelled at just how clear the water was. He started to take in the sights of this amazing underworld. They hadn’t been in the water for very long before a second, brightly lit space came into view ahead of them. Skye turned in the water surrounded by wreaths of air bubbles. Her graceful movements were like some sort of underwater dance. She pointed upwards and they surfaced in another area, closely resembling the one they had left.

Sitting on a rocky shelf, Darren explained how this waterway stretched on for miles. At certain points, Skye told him, they filtered the water for impurities and then pumped it up for everyone to use.

When they eventually climbed out at the end of the dive he was elated. He wondered how many people had experienced what he had just felt. He tried to picture the first person coming down here to investigate. On his trips out to this community he had thought about the many places he had never seen. Now, he was feeling for himself the wonder that came with exploration.

Greg was eagerly waiting back at the surface to hear his impressions. Skye and Darren left them talking.

“You told me you have everything you need here and you’re right.”

“Jehovah Jireh,” Greg said through a smile.

“What?”

“God is our provider.”

Clay was fired with his explorations, but still full of questions. He wanted to know everything he could about this tremendous place and how these people made it work.

“What about the power for all this?”

“Well, over the years the Lord has sent a number of very bright people to join us. I can help operate some of the gear, but I couldn’t claim an in-depth knowledge of the principles behind it all. You’d better talk to Alistaire here. He can explain all that stuff much better than I can.”

Alistaire was an extremely tall individual with a preoccupied manner. He wore strange looking, circular glasses which were held together in the middle with a swathe of black tape. The right lens was cracked. Questioning Alistaire was like unleashing a hurricane. He spoke rapidly in a clipped English accent.

“Well, of course we have generators which run on various hard fuels. However, there are other means of generating the power we want. People used to call some of the devices that we use
‘perpetual motion’
machines. That’s not actually very helpful. It was said that perpetual motion was an impossibility, but think about those rocks out there for a minute. Those formations contain electrons that have been spinning around steadily ever since they’ve been there. I would say that’s pretty perpetual, wouldn’t you, dear boy?”

“Well, I guess so…” Clay mumbled. ‘Dear boy?’ he puzzled. He’d never heard that one.

Alistaire went on.

“The question that most people don’t ask is ‘why?’ Why don’t those electrons just run down to a standstill? We know that this universe of ours is just absolutely seething with energy. Energy has always been my fascination. My heroes were the unconventional thinkers from oldtime. They went their own way in realizing their ideas; people like Nikolai Tesla. I had to studylearn about people like him secretly of course, but then my parents were always outside the system, so I guess I was privileged. All that work was a preparation for what I do here. You see, men like Tesla asked the big question -’why?’ He understood that there was energy all around us. He knew it could be harnessed and went on to ask himself ‘why not?’ Then, he found ways of doing it. Conventional thinkers all said that he was crazy. When ordinary people saw him demonstrating his inventions, some said he was in league with the devil and practicing black magic. Tesla was just a man whose thinking was way ahead of his time. He wanted people to have power and light in their homes because these were easily harnessed and would make life more comfortable for them. Powerful people stole his ideas and made them available for vast profits. People used electric light for years but they had to pay big credits to the giant power corporations for the privilege!

There was a law of the Conservation of Energy which stated that more energy couldn’t be taken out of a system than was put into it. That might seem fair enough as far as it goes. But, think about it… what about us? It doesn’t mean that
we
can’t take more energy out of a system than
we
put into it! Think about a solar panel up there in the sunlight.
We
don’t have to put sunlight into that panel. Just look up there - the sunlight comes along on its own! In that instance you can see the sunlight arriving and shining its energy on the solar panel. The real point is that there is a lot of energy around us that we don’t see in that same way. That doesn’t mean that it’s not there; it just means that we can’t
see
it in the same way as we
see
the sunlight! I’ve never really paid much attention to the professional naysayers. They’re always telling people that this or that is impossible. I couldn’t really care less what they say or think. What I know is that this stuff works and we use it!”

Clay nodded awkwardly. Alistaire had lost him a few sentences back. Tesla? Laws of Energy Conservation?

Alistaire clearly needed to be somewhere else.

“Not wishing to be rude, old bean, but must dash. Work to do y’know.” With that, he pushed the strange glasses back on his nose and strode away. ‘
Old bean
?’ These English guys had some strange expressions Clay thought to himself. What a place!

The journey back always afforded him time to think. For a boy from the Tenacamps, there was an awful lot to think about.

Clay had his hands on the steering column but his mind was still in the semidarkness of Adam-son’s chamber or diving in subterranean waterways. In a couple of brief months he had experienced the embrace of a totally new and unfamiliar world. He knew it was not some dream that he might readily dismiss in order to return to the existence he’d known before. He recalled a quote John had used in conversation;

“The world is not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we
can
suppose.”

Clay had never supposed that his universe was odd at all. He had always dealt with what was - or so he had thought. Now he had to deal with a reality that had always been there, but had been hidden from his view.

The lights caught him unaware. Momentarily he was blinded in an unforgiving glare. Unable to see what was ahead of him, he powered the terraglide down. Luminescent spots danced before his eyes.

Two big Polibro terraglides hovered in front of him, blocking the route ahead. As his eyes refocused he became aware of two figures in black uniforms before his grounded vehicle.

“Step out!” a stentorian voice commanded.

He couldn’t believe that he had been dumb enough to steer straight into a Polibro patrol squad.

From where they were positioned, he figured that they could only have a clear view of his head and shoulders. Without moving his upper body, he slowly unfastened his belt, pushing the pulse weapon down into the gap behind the seat.

He emerged, blinking into the searchlights. “Mark!” came the next instruction. Clay hesitated. “Mark! Now!”

A gloved hand reached to grip his wrist and push up the sleeve of his work tunic. “Violation!” he heard. “No visible mark.” He couldn’t see the face of the interrogator behind the visor, but he already knew it was pointless to argue. These were drone class Trans on routine Citizone patrol. A second Tran focused a portable autoscan device on his right hand and then moved it upward to his forehead.

Once again, he heard; “Violation! No I.D. chip!”

No mark, no debate. No chip, no debate. Clay stayed silent.

These synthetic morons would do exactly what they had been designed to do. He would be taken to the Polibro holding tank and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He looked up at the other figures waiting at the ready near the big patrol terraglides. He noted their rather stiff gait and movements. The entire patrol seemed to be made up of standard service Trans. He told himself that there must be a human patrol chief somewhere but he couldn’t make one out. Had the patrol been human, he might have mentioned Ahab or one of his local contacts. He may have arranged some kind of payoff or intimated the possibility of retribution if they didn’t see sense and let him go. It wasn’t worth wasting breath.

One of the patrol crew quickly took up position behind the column of his terraglide. Two others cuffed him and forced him into the rear of their massive transport. Secured to the bench, he stared through the reinforced mesh over the shoulders of the silent Polibro Trans in the cockpit. He cursed quietly under his breath. How stupid could he have been?!

At the holding point, he was practically lifted off his feet between two of the arresting Trans. Down a corridor with lights almost as bright as those on the patrol vehicle, he was forced into a small cubicle with Permasteel bars. The holding cell stank. In the corner lay the only other occupant.

The badly beaten prisoner had not only thrown up but had voided his bladder on the floor. The poor unfortunate was only semiconscious. Clay gagged on the mingled stench of vomit and urine. It was going to be a long night. He set himself on the bench at the side of the cell and tried to stretch out on the hard surface. In the semidarkness he cursed himself again for his stupidity. He was cold now and pulled the small collar of his tunic up as far as he could. He wished he had his pack with its container of Nevermind pills. He would have taken three, or maybe even four, just to numb out for a couple of hours. Without that option now, he turned on to his side and cradled his head on his arm. He knew the drill. In the morning he would have to face the consequences of not having an r.f.i.d. chip - the mark of a citizen. The dark thoughts that began to take hold were heightened in his exhaustion.

Sleep must have overtaken him, for when he started and suddenly sat upright, he could hear his name being called. His mouth was dry and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Through the bars of the holding cell he made out a uniformed figure holding an electronic pad. He studied the officer closely, half expecting to see yet another drone Tran. This was no Tran. It was a clearly harassed human Polibro officer. The sleeves of his uniform were rolled up and he was obviously not in the best of humour. He motioned to the Tran standing beside him and pointed at Clay. The electronic cage doors opened.