Chapter 2

Oliver sped down the mountain on the four-wheeler at full speed, Conner hanging on for dear life as he careened around corners that threatened to toss them down to their doom. So much for his reasons for not letting Conner drive. They made it down the mountain safe and sound. As they barreled toward town, Conner realized that Oliver had no intention of slowing down. They zoomed into Daylight city, swerving around cars and getting honked at and sworn at left and right. Luckily, they did not run into any police.

The wind had nearly dried out Conner’s clothes by the time they arrived back at Oliver’s lab. Oliver parked the four-wheeler and ran toward his garage. That seemed strange to Conner.

“Hey Oliver,” he said, “why do you park the four-wheeler out here instead of in the garage?”

“Because it’s not a garage,” Oliver said. He pressed a button, and the garage split in half, swinging open on hinges, revealing a large black blunted cone poking out of the ground, which had been completely removed under the garage. “It’s a spaceship hangar.”

“A . . .” Conner could feel his eyes bulging out of his head. “You built a spaceship in your garage?”

“Basement, really,” Oliver said, “but it had to launch from somewhere, so I thought why not repurpose my garage as a launch hatch. Come on.” He climbed down a ladder on the side of the hole.

Conner followed. When he got to the edge of the hole, he looked down to see that the spaceship was of a shuttle design, with wing fins by its rocket boosters. The ship was painted black, with an orange stripe running along the side. Following Oliver down the ladder, he landed on a catwalk that led to a hatch in the side of the shuttle.

“Step into Spaceflyer I,” Oliver said. “It has the latest artificial gravity and hyperdrive technology. For living space, it has a cabin, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a fully stocked pantry.”

“That’s . . . kind of awesome,” Conner said. “But really? Spaceflyer I was the best name you could come up with?” He could have at least named it Spaceflyer One instead. The “I” sounded completely out of place.

“You don’t like it?” Oliver said, disappointment on his face. “It was either that or the Destiny.”

“No no no,” Conner said. “You’re not thinking cool enough, especially for a paint job like that. How about . . . the Black Fire?”

A grin spread over Oliver’s face. “I like it,” he said. “Black Fire it is.”

Conner stepped through the hatch to find an interior that was nice, but sideways. Oliver toed a switch on the wall they stood on, and the direction of “down” started to change. Conner followed Oliver’s movements, stepping from the wall to the floor as sideways became the new up and down. They were now standing in a cockpit with chairs and panels with buttons, and a hallway leading back in the direction their feet had been pointing a moment earlier. Through the windshield, Conner saw the blue of the sky.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“Artificial gravity, like I just said,” Oliver replied, stepping toward the front of the cabin and spreading his arms. “Now, we can really see that we are on the side of the planet instead of on top of it.”

“Well it makes me feel like I might fall off,” Conner said.

“Oh, that won’t happen. The artificial gravity field only exists inside the ship.”

“Good to know.”

“All right!” Oliver said, “I’ve packed enough clothes and food and games for months for both of us, and enough fuel to last a lifetime. What do you say we give her a test flight?”

“Wait,” Conner said, “you haven’t tested it yet?”

“No,” Oliver said, with an expression of indifference, “but I know it will work. I modeled it after the N-12 class do-it-yourself spaceship home assembly instructions, with a few of my own modifications, of course. Do you need to pack or take care of anything before we go?”

Conner’s mind went blank. “Uh . . .”

“Great!” Oliver said, pushing a button. The hatch closed, and before Conner knew what was happening, the ship around them hummed to life. “T minus five and counting!” Oliver cried. “Four! Three! Two! One!”

“Gah!” Conner cried, jumping into the empty chair. A moment later, he was pressed back against it, as the ship blasted into the sky.

“Oops, sorry,” Oliver shouted, reaching forward and flicking a switch. Conner relaxed as the feeling of acceleration stopped. “Inertial dampeners,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “You would think they would have made it a part of the artificial gravity system.”

“Aren’t you the one who built it?” Conner asked.

Oliver grinned sheepishly.

The view out the front turned from blue to black, covered in bright speckles of stars. Conner had never seen this many at once, since the lights of the Arguen Islands’ towns and cities always drowned out much of the view. Conner looked around, taking in the sight of all the different colors of stars, and the milky blur in the direction of the center of the Shaper’s Path. Galactic streams criss-crossed the sky like beads on strings, and Shaper’s Next hung bright in the opposite direction of the galactic center.

“What’s that white ball?” he said. “Is it the moon?”

“Huh? Oh, that’s the sun. It is way too bright to let all the light in, so the viewport filters it out. Also, in case you were wondering, the whole ship is radiation proof. We’re safer in here than on the surface of Moebius.”

“Good to know. Hey, by the way, where are we going?”

“A cold little planet called Proserpine,” Oliver replied. “That’s where Irial, the ice medallion is. After that, we’re going to Meysenia, which has Loriah, the medallion of air. Those are the only medallions I know about, but if anyone knows where the rest are, it’s the Great Dooku Flower of Meysenia.”

“Great . . . Dooku Flower?”

“Yeah. Do you know of anyone else?”

“Uh, can’t say that I do,” Conner said, shaking his head.

They coasted for a little bit, and Conner began to wonder if they were even moving. Then, Oliver pulled the joystick on the console to the side, and the ship spun around, revealing the round blue face of their home planet, with its cloudy bangs and white arctic tuft on top. Their islands were invisible from this distance, as they were on most maps, and for a moment Conner imagined himself looking down at the planet through a magnifying glass to find them.

“Thought we’d want to take a look at where we came from before we head out into the cosmic sea,” Oliver said, his hands behind his head. “Looks like it was a good choice.”

They gazed at the shrinking planet for a while, thinking about all of the history, the wars, and the pop culture memes that had come from that planet. It was truly amazing to think about. And probably would have been infinitely more amazing if it had been the only planet they had known of, but there were a lot of other planets, so it really wasn’t that amazing.

“Aaand I think that’s good enough,” Oliver said, turning the ship back around. “Onward, through the uncanny mysterious regions of hyperspace, to the wandering planet Proserpine!”

“What’s so uncanny and mysterious about hyperspace?” Conner asked.

“I’ve never been there before,” Oliver replied, throwing a switch. The sky in front of them split open, as if the stars were dots on a curtain instead of points in space, and it closed behind them, leaving them floating in an infinitely long green tunnel, which flashed by them in jagged lines.

“Why is it green?” Conner asked.

“I don’t know,” Oliver replied. “That’s something I should look up on the galactic science wiki. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough money to install a hyperspace modem, so we won’t have internet again until we get back to normal space. But yeah, I would think it would be blue, because we are going so fast that all of the light should be blue-shifted.” He shrugged.

After watching the greenness zip by for awhile, Conner asked, “How long will this journey take?”

“A couple of hours,” Oliver replied. “Hyperspace is a hyperbolic dimension.”

“Which means?”

“It means it is shorter to take a detour through hyperspace than it is to travel in a straight line.”

“Oh, uh, I knew that.”

While he waited, Conner took his backpack to the bunkroom and changed into a new set of clothes. Then he took a box of crackers from the pantry and sat back down in the cabin and started munching. But although the scene outside was comfortable enough, the knowledge of being in the void outside the void began to gnaw away at his soul. So he went back into the bunkroom and put some music on.

Some time later, Oliver poked his head in. Conner muted the music. “What’s up?”

“We’re here,” Oliver said.

“Oh, okay.” Conner followed Oliver back to the cabin, where the windshield showed the normal old void filled with stars again. “Where is the planet?”

Oliver pointed. “It’s over there. If you look hard enough, you can see the crescent.”

Conner stared, and sure enough, there it was, growing larger. He smiled. Then he looked around. “Where is the sun?”

“Ah, the sun,” Oliver said, looking like he was caught off guard. “How shall I put it?” He thought for a moment, before pointing. “It’s over there. It’s far enough away that it looks like any star.”

Conner looked in the direction Oliver pointed, and sure enough, there was one star that was brighter than the rest.

“And over there,” Oliver said, pointing to the other side of the windshield, “is the second sun.”

“Two suns?” Conner asked.

“Not exactly,” Oliver said. “The third sun is behind us. But the fact that it’s a trinary star system is only half of the story. You see, the planet Proserpine does not orbit just one of the stars. The three stars orbit each other in a circular orbit, and the planet loops around them in turn, criss-crossing through the middle. Moebius has one winter and one summer per year, because of its axial tilt. Proserpine has three of each season, the summers when it is near the stars, and the winters when it is between them. Right now, they’re just about to start their next forty-year winter.”

“Well it’s good that we’re not any later,” Conner said.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed, “and you know what’s weirder? That it even exists at all! Gravitational systems with more than two major bodies tend to fling themselves apart. So either this was a one-in-a-trillion chance occurrence, or,” he leaned in conspiratorially, “it was built that way by some long-forgotten super-advanced civilization.”

“Cool.”

The planet filled up a good chunk of their field of view now, its glaciers extending a lot farther away from its arctic regions than Conner was used to seeing. Oliver returned to the console to make sure everything was in order. After some buttons were pushed, some lights blinked, and some booping noises were made, he said, “Huh.”

“What’s up?” Conner asked.

“There’s a ship nearby, but the computer doesn’t recognize its design.”

“Is that bad?”

“Naw, it’s just weird. The program I bought was advertised to have all of the current and past spaceship models in its registry. It would even be able to detect custom builds like ours. But there is no way that it could know every possible craft, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“You know,” Conner said as the planet drew ever closer, “I just realized something. I didn’t think of it before, because I guess other planets just seemed like far-away dots to me, but how are we supposed to find something the size of our hands if all we know about where it is is what planet it’s on?”

“Oh that,” Oliver said. “Yeah, I actually know where it is within about a fifty mile radius.” He pointed toward a spot at the edge of the frost region, and then frowned. “Although, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly what part of the continent is under that ice.”

They strapped in as the Black Fire approached the planet’s atmosphere. As entry began, the ship started shaking, bright orange lines of flame flickering up across the windshield. Then, things smoothed out, and they were flying above a snowy landscape. Conner leaned forward, taking in the view. He had never flown before, and it was something to behold.

Oliver banked the ship around, and came in for a landing on a stretch of snow-covered ground in the midst of a sparse scattering of leafless trees. “Don’t forget to put on a coat,” he said.

After a flawless touchdown, the two of them stepped out of the ship, bundled up in winter gear, the hatch doubling as a staircase. Conner looked around. He was slightly surprised at how bright it was, considering how far away the suns were. “All right,” he said, “where do we go from here? It looks like you’ve put us in the middle of nowhere.”

“That way,” Oliver said, pointing in a direction that looked no different from the rest.

“Uh, if you say so.”

They started walking, the powdery snow resisting their movement, making them have to lift their feet and push through. As they passed by tree after tree, Conner said, “Are you sure this is the right direction?”

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, “though I’m not quite sure how far we have to go.”

“Not sure as in?”

“Anywhere between here and a hundred miles from here.”

Conner stopped. “A hundred miles? You’re kidding me!”

“No, but it’s not what you think,” Oliver said, waving his arms. “There’s---”

“Hello!” a voice called.

Conner jumped, and Oliver waved. Conner turned in the direction Oliver was looking, and saw a yumanoid figure bundled in snow gear, complete with goggles and a face mask.

“A bit underdressed, aren’t you?” the stranger said in a strange accent.

“Good to see you,” Oliver said. He introduced himself and Conner.

“And you too. I am Michael Kraine. I saw your ship, and wondered if you might need a guide.”

“Indeed,” Oliver said. “We’re looking for the Cistern of Calvaja.”

“Tourists, then,” Michael said. “Well you’ve come to the right place. I live in Oridion, not far from the Cistern. In fact, we use the cistern’s water in our town’s water system. It’s perfect for the winter. Come.”

They followed him back along the trail of his footprints. As they walked, he said, “I’m out hunting right now, but times have gotten dangerous, with everything going crazy and angry. Even we yumans are getting restless.”

The trail led to an elevator, which was luckily a lot nearer than a hundred miles. “We’ve all moved underground for the winter,” Michael said as he pushed the button to make them descend. The elevator accelerated quickly, the walls speeding by. However, it was not long before they started slowing again, and came to a stop.

“Are you sure this is deep enough for the winter?” Conner said. “I heard it’s forty years long.”

“Oh yes, plenty deep,” Michael said. “The planet’s crust holds heat very well. We would have built our town at half this depth if the seed cavern and its tunnels had been there.”

They left the elevator and entered a tunnel, which was a bright sandstone color. “How is it lit up?” Oliver asked. “I don’t see any light sources.”

“This stone has a bacteria in it which gives it a natural orange luminescence,” Michael explained. “They feed off of the temperature gradient that occurs during the transition between summer and winter. Their luminescence is just enough that it doesn’t look like it is glowing, but if you put your hand near it you will see there is no shadow.”

“Oh, that is so interesting!” Oliver said. “What does the temperature gradient do that gives the bacteria a food source? Does it rearrange the polarity of the sedimentary mineral content?”

Conner tuned out as his friend and their guide talked about science. He didn’t understand half the words they said, so he contented himself with admiring the natural look of the tunnel, and the carvings and paintings along the sides. One showed two people making spears. The next showed them running after a six-footed animal with antlers. The next showed them going into tunnels as snow covered the land. The next showed them sitting happily in a cave with meat on their plates. And finally, the last one showed them raising their hands in the air as a rocket ship rose to the sky.

Eventually, the tunnel gave way to a cavern so massive that Conner could not see the top or the back. Apparently the bactermina didn’t live here as much. On the ground, houses were carved into the stone, with streets running between them, the lamps placed periodically along them giving the place a shadowy, yet homey look. Wires strung through the houses in a web, and the foot of each house’s walls had pipes running along it. No one was about, perhaps because of whatever immaterial thing was causing people to be angry. In front of the buildings was a sign that read, “Welcome to Oridion!”

Michael led them to his house, the lights shining yellow through the windows. “My family is going to have lunch in a few hours,” he said. “Won’t you join us?”

“Sure,” Oliver said.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Conner said.

“No problem,” Michael said. He opened the door. “Honey, Mara, I’m home,” he called. “I’ve brought guests.” He took off his coat, and they saw his face for the first time, a slender head with a pointy nose, and dark red hair.

Two girls poked their heads in from opposite doorways. They looked almost the same as each other, with different styles of hair the same deep red as Michael’s. The one with short hair smiled and stepped into the room. “Welcome,” she said, “I’m Denise, Michael’s girlmate. And this is our daughter Mara.”

The girl with longer hair, Mara, smiled shyly and waved.

“Mara,” Denise said, “why don’t you show the boys around while your dad and I get lunch ready?”

“Mm-okay,” Mara said.

She backed into the door she had come from, quite obviously feeling awkward. Conner and Oliver placed their coats on a nearby rack, and stepped through the doorway after her.

“I’m Oliver,” Oliver said.

“And I’m Conner,” Conner said.

“Uh,” Mara said, “and I’m Mara.”

“Yeah, we know,” Conner said.

They stood there, awkwardly staring at each other, and not saying anything.

“So, um,” Oliver said, “do you know about the Cistern of Calvaja?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

“We came to see it,” Oliver said.

“Wait, I thought we came to find the ice medallion,” Conner said.

Oliver looked him, “Well yes, and it’s in the Cistern of Calvaja.”

“Oh,” Conner said, feeling like he should have put the two and two together.

“What’s this about a medallion?” Mara asked.

“She speaks!” Oliver said. Mara blushed, and Oliver grinned at her. “We’re searching for the seven elemental medallions, to put a stop to the . . .” He paused, and turned to Conner. “What’s it called?”

Conner shrugged. “It’s the thing that’s making all of the animals weird.”

“Yeah,” Oliver said. “It’s making stuff angry. People, animals, everything.”

“You mean the Disease?” Mara asked.

“Oh good, at least someone has a name for it,” Oliver said. “Yeah, it’s kind of like a disease.”

“Not kind of like,” Mara said. “It’s exactly like a disease. Er, well, I’ll show you.”

She turned and went into another room, and Conner and Oliver followed. It was obviously her bedroom, with a single person bed, its sheets and blankets in a clump, a dresser, a closet, and a computer desk covered in books, papers, and knick-knacks. It was cozy, and Mara was blushing furiously, probably at the knowledge that there were two boys with her in her room.

She walked over to her desk and opened a notebook, and Conner and Oliver stepped next to her to take a look. Conner found his breath came a little more difficult as his body started to tingle with being-close-to-a-girl-ness.

“The Disease spreads like any bacterial or viral epidemic,” Mara said, pointing to a picture with a bunch of lines connecting a bunch of circles, “with two major differences. First, it appeared at the same time on all planets, and in many places on each planet at once. There doesn’t seem to have been a ground zero. And second, no pathogen has been linked to it.”

“Whoa,” Oliver said. “That’s so cool, Mara!”

Mara blushed some more and smiled, boring holes into her notebook with her eyes.

“What’s so cool?” Conner asked.

“The Disease is a sickness without germs,” Oliver said.

“No,” Mara said, “just because no one has figured out exactly what microbial strain causes the Disease doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I mean, that wouldn’t even make sense.”

“True,” Oliver said, “but a disease which modern science cannot detect might be defeatable with something else that modern science doesn’t understand.” He dramatically drew Migrandir from his shirt pocket.

“This is one of the seven elemental medallions,” Oliver explained. “Each one has the power to control its characteristic element. Well, not like chemistry elements, but you get the picture. This one is Migrandir, the medallion of water.”

Mara’s eyes rolled to the side, her mouth becoming a line and moving in the same direction, as if her features were connected by a string that someone was pulling on. It came across as a very skeptical expression.

“Oh come on Mara, don’t be like that. It totally works. Here, I’ll show you. Where’s the bathroom?”

“Around the corner,” Mara said.

“All right,” Oliver said, scampering out of the room. Then he poked his head back in. “Are you coming?”

“What?” Mara said.

“To see the demonstration,” Oliver said, waving the medallion. “I can’t show you what the water medallion does without water.”

“Oh,” Mara said, her face turning red again. Conner almost started to wonder if that was her normal shade. It matched her hair, after all.

Two rooms later, Oliver turned the faucet on, and water rushed into the sink. But instead of splatting and sliding straight down the drain, the stream bent, striking the sink at an angle. Then it spiraled and bounced. “See?” Oliver said. “It’s not bogus. Here.” He handed the medallion to Mara.

“Uh, what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Just make the water move with your mind,” Oliver said.

Mara held the medallion with both hands clamped over it, her thumbs white with the pressure. Conner thought she should relax a little, but didn’t know if he should say so. The stream from the faucet bent, and Mara jumped and let out an “eep!” She recovered her wits, and looked commandingly at the water. It splashed up, getting all over Oliver.

“Hey!” Oliver yelped, jumping out of the way.

Mara giggled. “I just had to make sure it wasn’t a trick you had somehow set up behind the scenes.” She pointed at the water dripping off Oliver’s glasses. “That pretty much proves it.”

Oliver grinned. “So you believe us now?”

“I guess so,” Mara said.

Back in the living room, Conner and Oliver told Mara what they knew about the medallions, and of their adventure so far. Now that Mara had come out of her shell, she was more forthcoming as well. They talked and laughed and had a good time until Michael poked his head in the room and said lunch was ready. They all sat around the dining room table, said a traditional regional Proserpinene blessing, and started eating. The food was good; strips of seasoned meat and boiled vegetables, both of a kind which Conner had never seen before. The conversation was good too. They talked about the food, about the village, and about what they were doing, although they left out the parts about the medallions, because that probably would have been awkward.

When they were done eating, the family began cleaning up. Conner and Oliver tried to help, but were shooed away to the living room. Eventually, the clanking of dishes and running water stopped, and the three family members came into the living room.

“So you’re going to visit the Cistern?” Michael said. “You should probably get going pretty soon, so that you can get back before night time.”

“It’s neat that you still count daytime and nighttime down in this cavern that doesn’t get any light,” Oliver said.

“Of course,” Denise said. “We are yumans, after all. We need to keep organized. However, only some of us keep to the traditional day-night timescale. There are always plenty of people up and about in Oridion.”

“Can I guide them to the Cistern?” Mara said, looking at her parents.

“I suppose so,” Denise said. “Just be careful. People are pretty angsty these days.”

“Yeah, but I’ll have strong boys to keep me safe.”

Her parents looked at Oliver with worried expressions.

“I’ll keep both of them safe,” Conner said.

After a little more random conversation, Conner, Oliver, and Mara left the house. Mara led the way down the streets in the opposite direction they had come from. There were few people out and about, probably because of the Disease. When they got to the part of town where the houses connected to the back wall, Mara led them to a tunnel, which, like the one they had first come through, glowed sandstone orange. Mara explained that it was given off by bacteria, which fed off the changing polarity of the sedimentary mineral content which happened whenever there was a changing temperature gradient. The polarity shift was at a slow enough rate, she said, that the tunnels could probably continue to glow for another million years or so.

After the tunnel branched a few times, Conner mused, “It’s like a maze down here.”

“Really?” Mara said. “Everyone in Oridion knows these tunnels inside and out.”

“That makes sense,” Oliver said, “since you grew up here. We’ll just have to make sure we stay close to you.”

“But not too close, Oliver,” Conner said, raising his eyebrows. “Remember, I said I would protect her from dangerous people.”

“Hey!”

After a while, Conner noticed a soft rumbling white noise. “Do you hear that?” he said.

“Oh, that’s just the lake below the Cistern,” Mara said. “There are thermal vents at the bottom of it, so it’s constantly boiling.”

“Speaking of which,” Conner said, “I still have no idea what this place we’re going to looks like. Do you think you could describe it to me?”

“Better yet,” Mara said, stepping up to a door at the end of the tunnel, “I can show you.”

The door opened, revealing a vast cavern that extended high above and below them, the floor continuing straight toward a giant flat-topped rock about fifty feet across and fifty feet high, suspended by stone beams from the walls. Above it, the ceiling was covered in enormous stalactites, which trickled water onto the great boulder. Condensed water dripped down the sides, to more stalactites on its bottom. By the fact that there was no spillover from the top, and the variety of sizes of pipes leading out of it, Conner guessed that it was hollowed out like a cauldron. The path they were standing on led right up to a rope ladder hanging down its side. Shoulder-high railings ensured that they would not fall down to the depths below. Conner looked, and gulped, as he saw that “below” was a churning lake of boiling water. The boiling lake also had pipes running into it, and the air was thick with water vapor.

“Here we are,” Mara said, “the Cistern of Calvaja.”