The Fellowship for Alien Detection (35 page)

The Alto moved to a frosted glass window and slowly slid it open. He peered outside. Dodger half expected to see him get yanked out of it by mind-controlled hands, but he ducked back in. “Clear.”

They clambered out the window, hopping down to the steep, pine-needle-carpeted hillside.

“The path is that way,” said AJ, pointing toward the end of the museum.

The Alto crouched and led the group, weaving between the thick pine trunks along the slope. Up the hill to their left, Dodger could hear townspeople milling around by the basement door.

They moved farther down the slope and emerged on a wide path.

“Maybe a hundred yards down,” AJ whispered.

They hurried down the hill. Dodger could feel the pull strengthening and sense that, like a whale under the water's surface, there was something giant beneath his feet, its power beckoning him.

I
T IS MORE THAN THAT
, D
ODGER
.

Dodger stumbled. A voice had spoken in his mind. It sounded older and female, and yet also not entirely human.

“Dodger,” said Haley from behind him.

“I'm okay,” said Dodger. He focused on keeping his feet moving—

Y
OU ARE CONNECTED TO THE
P
AHA'
N
E IN A DEEPER WAY THAN YOU KNOW
.

This time he sprawled onto his knees.
Who are you?
he thought back at it.

I
AM THE
D
IRECTOR OF THIS FACILITY
, the voice replied,
AND OUR OPERATION HERE ON
E
ARTH
.

Haley stopped and helped him up. “What happened?”

“Their leader,” said Dodger. “She's in my head.”

There was a thudding sound up ahead. Dodger and Haley ran down to see the Alto standing over two fallen townspeople by a hunched cave entrance. He slipped a headlamp on. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” said Dodger.

The Alto made a sweeping motion. “After you.”

Dodger led the way into the cool dark. It smelled like dust and old leather. He felt the close presence of rock again, and more than ever the proximity of crystal, drawing him forward now, almost like if he stopped moving, it would pull him along anyway.

Y
ES
, said the Director. Y
OU FEEL THE POWER
. P
OWER THAT IS YOURS
. I
CAN SHOW YOU
.

No thanks,
Dodger thought back, except, he wasn't entirely sure that was how he felt.

I
KNOW YOU THINK WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS THE RIGHT THING, BUT YOU DON'T HAVE THE WHOLE CONTEXT
. I
CAN SHOW YOU THE BIGGER PICTURE
.

Dodger could barely speak. He felt like he was floating inside his head, in an energy field without gravity, on the tide of the orange crystal.

I am not listening to you,
he said. He expected to hear more from the Director, but the voice went quiet.

The descent was long, the air growing cooler as the tunnel sloped through the black, and Dodger felt like he wasn't just traveling into the center of the Earth, but into the center of the universe and existence and all things.

For all that had happened along the way, a new certainty had taken over inside Dodger. He realized that it wasn't just that he felt like he was being drawn down into this tunnel, he also felt certain that he
was
supposed to come here. After all, whatever was down here, it really was something he was meant to see, that he
had
to see. Its power was vibrating every atom in his body, like it was connected to the orbit of each electron. He was sweating from the current, and yet sweat and air and even breathing and his racing heartbeat all felt like things that were somewhere distant on the surface of the world, up with the night and the moon and even the aliens and their plot. Dodger was inside now, inside himself, inside the stars, inside
being
.

He was so lost in his head that even with the light of the Alto's headlamp coming over his shoulder, he would have walked right into the door if it hadn't been for Haley grabbing his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Dodger whispered, his throat dry.

It was a door like the ones he'd seen in Lucky Springs: sleek metal with the two black crystal discs at chest height.

“I've seen this before,” said Haley.

“Yeah, me, too.” Dodger put one hand on the door. The crystal ignited. He felt his connection with the energy sharpen. “I can go through this door,” he said. He searched around in the crystal energy, trying to determine how the door operated.

Dodger turned to the group. “Okay, I can bring you guys through. I need you to grab onto each other, like by the shoulders. Don't let go, though, or it'll break the conductivity.”

“What does that mean?” asked AJ.

“I don't totally know,” said Dodger. “Kind of like we're making an electric circuit. So hang on.”

He turned back to the door and felt Haley put her hands on his shoulders.

“Ready,” said the Alto from the back of the line.

Dodger placed his hand on the other black disc. Orange flooded his vision and he felt himself melt into the crystal energy, slipping through space and then popping back into reality on the other side. He stepped ahead as the others came through.

The orange light faded from Dodger's eyes and he saw that they were standing on a small metal platform, surrounded by a railing.

Before them was a cavern beyond measure. It was giant, a vast geodesic structure with hundreds of triangular walls that resulted in a nearly spherical chamber. There were platforms made of iridescent alien metal ringing the sphere at different heights. Dodger counted eight in all. The centers of all the platforms were open, and in the center of the space was a massive glowing sphere of crystal, hundreds of feet across, like a tiny sun, a million-sided polygon of crystal faces.

The rock hovered in space. At its equator, catwalks extended out from what seemed to be the main platform of the cavern. The catwalks each ended right at the surface of the crystal, and there were little workstations with consoles like Dodger had seen in Lucky Springs.

The crystal was blinding, coating the room in a flickering orange light, and yet Dodger also thought he could see darkness inside it, the black void of space dotted by infinite stars.

“Dude,” Haley said quietly.

Then there was a flash, and an entire spacecraft, an oval model much larger than the drone they'd flown in, appeared as if out of the crystal itself and glided slowly toward the far side of the cavern, where it landed on the main platform. There were other spacecraft parked there, too. Many were of this larger size, and a few were even more massive, with complicated curving shapes.

“Whoa . . .” AJ breathed. Dodger turned to see him glancing back and forth from the door behind them to the central crystal. “They use the rock to transport themselves through space,” he said. “Like you did with that door. Is it like tuning the electromagnetic properties of the rock to certain frequencies? In that case, they could be transmitting almost like wireless data.” He looked to Dodger for confirmation.

Dodger just shrugged. “When I do it, it's just by feel.”

“How does it feel?” asked AJ.

“Fuzzy,” said Dodger. “Like stretching. I don't know—it just kinda happens.”

“That's very zen,” said the Alto.

Dodger considered that he had maybe never felt zen about anything before, other than studying maps. It was a good description. He pointed toward the catwalks that led out to the crystal. “Anyway, we have to get to one of those consoles. Then I can access the main interface.”

“Down here,” said the Alto. He was starting down a staircase from their little landing. It dropped down through the platforms below. They moved quietly down the sets of stairs until they reached the main platform.

They started across it, weaving between other parked spacecraft. Dodger kept an eye out for townspeople or agents, but this part of the platform seemed to be empty. In the distance, he could see figures moving back and forth from the ship that had just landed.

“All those UFO buffs have been looking up,” said AJ, “when they should have been looking underground.”

An electronic voice suddenly broadcast throughout the cavern: “P
ARAMETERS FOR
T
EMPORAL
L
OOP REPETITION
9,867
ARE SET
. A
LL STUDY VARIATIONS ARE DUE IMMEDIATELY
.”

“We were right,” said Haley. “About the testing. Changing the variables each day.”

Dodger stopped beside the final craft. There was a catwalk just ahead, but there were three figures standing there, small people in the orange jumpsuits and yellow hard hats and black goggles.

“I hate those guys,” said Suza.

Dodger felt weirdly defensive at hearing that, almost like someone he knew was being insulted. He almost said something but stopped himself. What was that about? Was it like because he was connected to the crystal, he was also connected to these aliens? That felt complicated.

“Now what?” Haley asked.

But just then the little group moved on, walking toward the far side of the platform, almost like they'd been called away.

“Okay.” Dodger led the way onto the catwalk. It was made of grated metal. Dodger looked down and saw a long drop to the distant cavern floor. Suddenly the waist-high railings of the catwalk didn't seem high enough.

As they neared the crystal, Dodger could feel the hair on his arms starting to stand on end, felt his teeth almost vibrating in their sockets, his eyes watering. So much power. And at this point, he wasn't sure he could have turned around even if he'd wanted to.

They reached the catwalk's end. The light was overwhelming. Dodger moved to the console with the hand spots, like he'd seen in Lucky Springs.

Haley, Suza, AJ, and the Alto clustered around him, all tiny and drenched in neon light beside the enormous crystal. Dodger saw it gleaming in Haley's eyes as she looked at him.

“You can do it,” she said to him.

It surprised Dodger. Did he look nervous? He didn't feel it, did he? Or maybe he was terrified. He couldn't tell. Too much humming energy.

“Okay,” said Dodger, “let's see what's what.”

He was about to put his hands on the pads when an urge struck him. He looked at his fingers, flexed them, then reached out, leaning over the railing and placing his hands directly on the Paha'Ne.

Light and energy consumed him. No more skin. Just warm current.

It was so vast, he felt like he could travel the universe in this crystal, and maybe he really could. Dodger the explorer. He felt the idea beckoning him.
Let's go
, he thought to himself. It would be so easy to slip out into the cosmos from here.

Hello
, said the interface.

Dodger had to take a second to remember what he was looking for. He accessed the main menu.
Connectivity, Time Parameter Management, Transit
.

Time Parameter Management
, he said.

Please enter password
, said the interface.

A sort of menu appeared in front of him, lines of symbols. There seemed to be about fifty. And he sensed that he had to choose five of them. Maybe this was the code that Suza had mentioned.

Dodger pushed himself back toward the surface and, with great effort, slid into his body and pulled one hand away from the crystal. Like in the spaceship, he found himself in a kind of double reality, the interface still present but the real world around him again. Only this time, the power of the crystal was so strong that his view of the world was like through a curtain of orange light.

“You said you had a code?” He spoke aloud, but the words seemed distant to his own ears.

Suza held up a small rectangle of metal. “Here.”

Dodger looked at the symbols carefully. When he felt like he had the series memorized, he returned both hands to the crystal. He referenced the menu of symbols and pointed his mind at each. When he'd suggested all five, there was a whir of motion in the interface.

T
EMPORAL
L
OOP
D
ISENGAGED
.

Distantly, Dodger felt the floor, the entire cave complex, shudder, as once again Juliette reappeared in the present day. Dodger returned to the next item on the menu.

P
ROJECT
B
LISS
C
ONTROL
I
NTERFACE
S
TATUS
: E
NGAGED
.

E
NTER CODE TO
D
ISENGAGE
.

Dodger sensed now that a single symbol was needed. The same bank of many symbols was available to him. Which one? He surfaced again, pulling a hand away.

“I need the sixth symbol,” he said.

“That's the problem,” said Suza. “We only have the five! We were just going to try each one until we found the right one.”