Lewis & Glark | Time Traders | Book One | Chapter 19
Lewis fought to break the hold, to turn his head, to face the danger which had crept up behind him. The pain and the inability to move — it was unlike anything he had ever met before in his short lifetime. It could only have come from some alien source.
This strange encounter felt like a battle of will against will. The same rebellion against authority which had ruled his boyhood rose up inside him. If it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to turn his head, he was going to see who stood there behind him. Though sheer force of will, Lewis’ head turned. Sweat stung his seared and bitten flesh, and every breath was an effort.
He caught a glimpse of the beach to the right side of him, and the stretch of sand was empty. Overhead, the birds were now gone, as if they had never existed. The lack of their sounds, a present and fundamental part of the shoreline, was unsettling and ominous.
Having successfully turned his head, he used the remainder of his determination to turn his body. His left hand extended, slowly, as if it moved some great weight. His palm gritted painfully on the rock next to him. He savored that pain, as it pierced through the dead blanket of compulsion that was being used against him. Deliberately, he ground his blistered skin against the rock, concentrating on the sharp torment in his hand as the agony shot up his arm. While he focused his attention on the physical pain, he could feel the pressure against him weaken.
Summoning all his strength, Lewis turned himself completely around.
The beach was still empty, except for the pile of driftwood, the rocks rising up beside him, and the other things he had originally found there. Still, he knew that something was waiting to pounce. He resolved that if they took him, it would be after besting him in a fight.
Even as he made this decision, Lewis was conscious of a curious weakening of the force bent upon him. It was as if his opponents had been surprised, either at his simple actions of the past few seconds or at his determination. Lewis decided to take advantage of that surprise.
He leaned forward, still grinding his torn hand against the rock as a steadying influence, took up a length of dried wood and thrust its end into the fire. Having once used fire to save himself, he was ready and willing to do it again.
Holding up his improvised torch, Lewis stared past it, searching the land for the faintest sign of his enemies. In spite of the light from the torch, the dusk prevented him from seeing too far. Behind him the crash of the surf could have covered the noise of a marching army.
“Bring it on!” Lewis yelled, in a tone slightly weaker than he intended.
He waved the torch bringing it to its full life, then hurled it straight into the nearby pile of brush and driftwood he had collected earlier. He was grabbing for a second piece of wood almost before the blazing head of the torch had fallen into the pile. He stood tense, a second torch now coming to life in his hand.
The sharp vise of the alien’s will which had gripped him so tightly moments ago was easing, slowly disappearing. Still, Lewis couldn’t believe that his small acts of defiance had so daunted his unseen opponent as to make them give up the struggle this easily. It was more likely the pause of a boxer reevaluating his opponent in order to formulate a plan for a more deadly strike.
With the torch in one hand, Lewis kept his other hand mercilessly pressed against the rock as a painful spur to keep him alert and his body coursing with adrenaline.
Fire twisted and crackled among the driftwood where the first torch had lodged, providing a flickering light a couple meters from where he stood. He was grateful for it in the gloom of the gathering storm. If they would only confront him head-on before it started to rain.
Lewis sheltered his torch with his body as spray, driven inward by the wind from the ocean, spattered his shoulders and his back. If it rained, he would lose what small advantage the fire gave him. If that happened, he would just have to find some other way to counter them. They would neither break him nor take him — even if he had to wade into the ocean and swim out into the lash of the cold waves until he couldn’t move his tired limbs any longer.
Once again that painful alien will struck at Lewis, assaulting his mind, awakening his stubbornness. He waved the torch, bringing the intense heat of the flame inadvertently near his other hand that was pressed against the rock.
With that action, the pain and pressure in his mind had fallen away instantly, almost as if some current had been snapped off.
Lewis was filled with a sense of surprise and disbelief. In this bizarre duel with the alien will, he was using both the power of his own will, tolerance for pain, and a depth of perception he had never known he possessed. His mental strength and determination had shaken his opponent more than any physical attack could have.
“Bring it on!” Lewis shouted again. “Come and get me, you alien punks!”
This time there was more than simple challenge in Lewis’s demand — there was a note of triumph.
The ocean spray whipped by him, striking the fire from the torch in his hand. The spray also hit the larger fire made by the pile of driftwood, but its flames persisted. Let the sea water put both the fires, Lewis thought. He would find another way of fighting. He was sure of that, and he sensed that those out there knew it too.
Again Lewis leaned against the rock, studying the length of beach. Had he been wrong in thinking that they were in range of his voice? The power they had used might carry over a greater distance.
“Ahhhh — ” Lewis yelled, his previous demand demand now a taunting cry, a scream of defiance.
Some wild madness had been transmitted to him by the winds, the roaring sea, his own pain. Ready to face the worst the aliens could send against him, he tried to hurl that thought back at them as they had struck with their oppressive will at him.
No answer came to his challenge, no rise to counterattack.
For the first time, Lewis moved away from the rock and began to walk forward toward the driftwood fire, his torch ready in hand.
“I am here!” he shouted into the wind. “Come out and face me, if you dare!”
It was then that he saw them. Two tall thin figures, wearing dark clothes, were standing quietly watching him, their eyes dark holes in the white ovals of their faces.
Lewis froze. Though they were separated by meters of sand and the driftwood fire, he could feel the power they wielded. But the nature of that power had changed. Once it had penetrated his mind like a painful spear. Now it formed a mental shield of protection that Lewis couldn’t break through.
A curious stalemate now existed between them in this alien mental battle. Lewis watched those expressionless white faces, trying to imagine some reply to the deadlock.
Another thought came into his mind. Why didn’t the aliens just pull out a laser rifle and shoot him? If they wanted him dead, or only wanted their suit back, they would just shoot him and get it over with. But for some mysterious reason, they not only wanted to keep him alive, they wanted to have him under their control.
Lewis then tried with all his will to drive home a few simple thoughts into their alien minds. He was not going to surrender. He was not going to give them their suit back. He was not going to submit to their alien mind tricks. If they tried anything else, he was going to kill them — or die trying.
“Freeman!” a croaking cry came over the ocean wind to Lewis’ ears.
“Freeman!”
Lewis spun to face the ocean. Visibility had become worse by the lowering clouds and the dashing ocean spray. But he could see a long dark object on the waves. The whale? A raft?
Sensing a movement to the side of him, Lewis spun back as one of the alien figures leaped through the blazing driftwood fire, immune to the flames, and ran stealthily toward him. The alien had in hand a weapon like the one that had felled Foscar. Maybe he had miscalculated — maybe the aliens didn’t need him, and were going to kill him right here on the spot!
Lewis ran toward and threw himself at the alien in a reckless dive, forcing the being to the wet sand with a smashing impact. The alien’s body was fragile, but it moved fluidly as Lewis fought to break it’s grip on the laser rifle and pin it to the sand.
Lewis was too intent on the struggle to fully acknowledge the sound of a gunshot over his head and a wailing cry.
He slammed the alien’s hand against a rock and the rifle dropped to the sand. Centimeters away from his own, the alien’s face looked up at him with a painful, twisted expression.
The alien wasn’t that strong, but strong enough to push Lewis, sending him rolling onto his back. He came down on his left hand with a force which brought tears to his eyes and stopped him just long enough for the alien to regain its feet.
Instead of grabbing the laser rifle in the sand nearby, the alien looked to the side and was visibly spooked. It quickly turned and sprinted back through the driftwood fire to the other alien. And with that, both aliens moved — almost hovered — with more ease than Lewis would have believed possible, away down the beach and into darkness.
Lewis, half crouched on the sand, felt unusually light and empty. The strange pull which had drawn and held him to the aliens was totally gone.
“Freeman!” the voice came again faintly from the ocean, only it was louder this time.
A rubber raft rode in on the waves, two men aboard it.
Lewis stood up and looked out toward the dark ocean, pulling on the metallic fabric of his suit. The two men running toward him toward the light of the driftwood fire were allies, not enemies. The whale appeared as a long dim sliver on the dark horizon.
“Freeman!” the Major yelled.
The Major reached him first, followed by Maarn. Lewis, caught up in this dream, appealed to Maarn for help with getting the metallic suit off him. If the aliens were able to trace his location him by the suit, he wasn’t going to let them follow the whale back to the operation’s temporary outpost.
“Got to get this off,” Lewis said, tugging frantically at the stubborn zipper. “They can trace this and follow us — ”
Ripping the zipper open with his remaining strength, Maarn pulled the clinging fabric from Lewis’ upper body, causing him to yelp with pain as he pulled the left sleeve down over his burned hand. He kicked off the boots and pulled the rest of the garment off on leg at a time. Exhausted, he stood naked in the cold, wet sand.
The wind and spray were ice on his body as they dragged him down to the raft, bundling him in a thick blanket as they pulled him aboard.
Lewis didn’t remember their arrival on the whale. He was lying on the vibrating surface of the covert ship when he opened his eyes to see the Major looking at him intently. He looked to the side to see Glark — a coat of mesh bandage about his shoulder and chest — laying next to him.
Maarn stood over Glark, with some other supplies in his hand.
“Glad you’re alive, Lewis,” Maarn said with a smile. “He needs this,” he said to the Major, handing him a full syringe.
“You left the suit back there?” Lewis demanded.
“We did,” the Major replied, taking the syringe and injecting the contents into Lewis’ arm. “What’s this about them tracing you? Who was tracing you?”
“The aliens from the ship,” Lewis replied. “That’s the only way they could have trailed me down the river.”
The quick-acting pain medication made it difficult to talk. But somehow, in bursts of half-finished sentences, Lewis got out his story. He told of his capture and Foscar’s death. His dramatic escape from the chief’s funeral pyre. And the bizarre duel of wills with the aliens back on the beach.
As he rambled on, Lewis considered how unlikely most of his story must sound. Yet the Major appeared to accept every word, and there was no expression of disbelief on Glark’s face.
“So that’s how you got those burns,” said the Major slowly when Lewis had finished his story. “Deliberately searing your hands in the fire to burn off the ropes. Very brave.”
“Those meds are going to knock you out,” said Maarn. “Have a good rest. You deserve it.”
“He’s brought us more info about the One and the distant past than we had hoped for ,” Glark said.
As Lewis was drifting off to sleep, he thought of the laser gun that he had knocked out of the alien’s hands on the beach. If only he had thought in the commotion to take that, they would have had a tangible piece of alien technology to bring back and study.
And then Lewis fell into the longest, deepest sleep he had ever experienced.
Even when he was carried ashore at the outpost, and later when he was transported back into his own time, he didn’t awaken. He only approached a conscious, dreamy state in which he ate, drank and drowsed — not caring for the world beyond his own bunk inside the arctic base.
But there came a day when he did care, sitting up to demand his favorite foods with a great deal of his old self-assertion. Doctor Feralon checked in on him twice a day, finally permitting him to get out of bed and try out his legs. They were uncooperative at first, and Lewis was glad he had tried to move only from his bunk to his desk chair.
“Visitors welcome?” a voice came one day from the doorway to his room.
Lewis looked up eagerly and then smiled at Glark. The Bulkon wore his arm in a sling but otherwise seemed healthy and in good shape.
“Glark, tell me what happened,” Lewis said. “I know we’re back at the base. But what about the Ones? We weren’t followed back here by the aliens, were we?”
Glark laughed and took a seat in the chair.
“Yes, Lewis, we’re back at the base in our own time,” Glark replied. “As for the rest — well, it is a long story, and we are still picking up pieces of it here and there.”
“Tell me what you know,” asked Lewis.
In the past, he wouldn’t have been presumptuous enough to demand that Glark tell him anything. In the past, his request would have been met with either a side look and harsh reprimand, or dismissive silence. But they had been through a lot together. Lewis had risked his life, and come out the other side alive and full of valuable information. So, Lewis was glad that Glark’s reaction to his request was one befitting a peer and not a subordinate.
“You’ve been a brave and resilient agent, Freeman,” Glark replied. His observation had some of the ring of the old Glark, but there was a new respect behind the words. “Rather a busy young man, after you were bumped off the raft into that river.”
“I guess so,” Lewis replied. “But what happened to you and Maarn? And what’s the status of the operation?”
“One thing at a time,” Glark replied, surveying him with an odd intentness which Lewis couldn’t understand. “We made it down the river, don’t ask me how. The raft came apart piece by piece, and we walked and waded most of the last kilometer. Maarn can fill you in on the rest of the details. We built a signal fire and sat by it for a few days, until the whale arrived — ”
“And you took off,” Lewis added, recalling that hollow feeling he had known on the shore when the still-warm coals of the signal fire had told him the story of his too-late arrival.
“And we took off,” Glark confirmed. “But the Major agreed to extend our departure from the area for another twenty-four hours, in case you did manage to survive that toss you took into the river. Then we sighted your spectacular display of fires on the beach from the whale, and we knew there was a good chance it was you.”
“The aliens didn’t trace us back to the outpost?” Lewis asked.
“Not that we know of,” Glark replied. “We’ve closed down the outpost on that time window. Also, you might be interested in an event our modern agents have picked up in this time. A blast went off in One-adjacent region of the continent in this time, wiping some installation clean off the map. The Ones have kept quiet as to the nature of the explosion and the exact place where it occurred.”
“The aliens followed them all the way up to this time?” Lewis asked, sitting up in his bed. “But why? And why were they trailing me?”
“That we can only guess,” Glark replied. “But we don’t believe that they were motivated by any vengeance for the One’s looting of their ship. There is some more profound and important reason. Something specific that they don’t want us to find or use from one of their ship’s cargo bays.”
“But they were in power and existed thousands of years ago,” Lewis pondered. “They and their worlds and people are gone now. Why should anything we do today matter to them?”
“I don’t know,” Glark replied bleakly. “But it does matter, and in some very important way. And we have to learn that reason.”
“How?” Lewis asked, looking down at his left hand, encased in a mitten of bandage under which he very gently tried to stretch a finger.
“By doing some looting of our own,” Glark answered. “Those drives we brought back are going to be a big help. The data indicates that there is more than one ship on Telaan Six in that time period. We were right in our assumption that the Ones first discovered the remains of one, but it was in no condition to be explored. The Ones already had the means to time travel, so they applied it to the hunting down of other ships, with several outposts at various times to throw us off the scent. So they found an intact ship, and then several others. At least two are in territories unsympathetic to them, where they can’t easily access them. But we can.”
“But won’t the aliens be waiting for us to try that?” Lewis suggested.
“As far as we know, they don’t know where any of these other ships crashed,” Glark answered. “Either they disappeared from their tracking radar as they came into orbit. Or there were no survivors to report the crash location. Or passengers and crew escaped in lifeboats while they were still in space. It could be any number of reasons. But there’s one thing for sure. They might never have known of the One’s activities, and the location of that one ship, if you hadn’t activated that ship’s communicator.”
Lewis was reduced to a small boy who badly needed an alibi for some piece of juvenile mischief. It was his bother Levar who had always taken care of the alibis, or taken responsibility himself, to keep Lewis out of trouble. But it had been a long time since Levar had been around to provide that service.
“I didn’t mean to,” Lewis offered. That excuse sounded so feeble and childish that he laughed immediately after he said it, only to see Glark grinning back at him.
“Seeing as how your action also greatly hindered the One’s own operation, you are forgiven,” Glark replied. “You have also provided us with a pretty good idea of what we may be up against with the aliens. And we will be prepared for them next time.”
“Then there will be a next time?” Lewis asked.
“We are calling in all time agents, concentrating our forces in the right time period,” Glark confirmed. “Yes, there will be a next time. We have to learn just what the aliens are trying so hard to protect.”
“What do you think it is?” Lewis asked.
“The operation doesn’t have an official opinion yet,” Glark replied. “But between you and me — I think all signs point to light travel.”
“Light travel?” Lewis asked, unfamiliar with the term.
“We have all seen fictional streams where people travel through space faster than is normal,” Glark suggested. “They call it light speed, or warp speed. But given our laws of physics, that kind of rapid acceleration and propulsion and structural integrity isn’t possible. But what if the aliens figured it out and possessed that technology, and came from planets and galaxies hundreds or thousands of light years away? Inside their lost ships lies the secret which will free us from our local galaxies. Free us to travel to and explore places we can only imagine. If that technology exists — we must claim it.”
“Can we — ?” Lewis started.
“We?” Glark interrupted, laughing at Lewis again with his eyes, though his face remained sober. “So, after all you’ve been through, you still want to be part of the operation?”
Lewis looked down again at his bandaged hand and remembered swiftly so many things — his journey from the courtroom to the arctic base, parachuting through the dark and rainy night, becoming an actual Boreal trader, the excitement of prowling the alien ship, the fight with Annar and his dramatic escape from the tribesmen, the long journey down the river, and lastly, the exultation he had experienced when he had faced the alien and had locked wills — only to hold them off and bring back useful information that could change the course of history.
He knew that he could not, would not, give up what he had found here in the service of the operation — the sense of belonging, usefulness, and dare he say it, family — as long as it was in his power to cling to it.
“Yes,” Lewis replied with a smile.
It was a very simple answer. But when his eyes met Glark’s, Lewis knew that it would serve better than any solemn oath.
© 2024 Zen Brazen — All rights reserved
Based on Andre Norton’s Time Traders (public domain)
