Chapter 11

He must have passed out, either from fright or from hitting his head, because the next thing he knew, he awoke alone. There was no hole in the ceiling, and the room had only one door, which was closed, and had no handle. Next to the door, a panel was missing from the wall, and a bunch of wires and electrical-looking stuff was poking out. He walked up to the door and pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed harder, with no result. He pushed, and shoved, and threw his body against it, and then did it again, and again. The door would not budge.

Tired, he slumped to the floor, his back against the door. If Oliver were here, he would know what to do. Heck, even Mara might be able to figure it out. But Conner, he was just a dumb guy who was good at tennis. If the door wouldn’t open from force, it wouldn’t open at all. That was all he was good for.

This whole trip, what had he done? Tagged along, while Oliver did all the work. Oliver always knew what to do. Oliver could always figure it out. If Oliver were here, he would probably have gone to that open electrical panel and done something with it to get the door open. But stupid Conner knew nothing about electricity.

Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Heck, if the time fields had gotten him, it might have been days. He wondered if there was any way he would know if he was in a time distortion field. Would it feel like time was passing normally for him, and look like time was going fast for everyone else? If so, how did anyone know if the normal time they experienced on their home planets their whole lives was actually normal? Maybe the rate of time that everyone in the galaxy measured was actually fast or slow, and the true rate of time was something else.

He looked back up at the circuit box. If there was a way out of the room, it was there. Maybe if he waited, Mara and Oliver would come and rescue him. Maybe they wouldn’t. He stood. If he didn’t touch anything and mess it up, there was no harm in looking, right?

The wires and components seemed to be made out of the same material as everything else in the palace, and on the planet, for that matter. It was very complicated. Wires and things went into holes in the back board. There were small blobby things, and larger cylinder things, and rectangular things that looked like they grabbed into the plate with claws. And there were wires. Lots of wires. If Conner had expected to have any hope of figuring out how the circuit worked, that smoldering spark was snuffed.

One of the wires was swinging slightly. When he took a closer look, he saw that the end was hanging loose. Near it, on the back board, there was a hole that looked just about the right size for the wire. Hesitantly, he took the wire and plugged it into the hole. It fit perfectly, and clicked into place.

The sound of something heavy sliding made Conner jump. He looked back to find the door had opened on its own. Then he looked at the circuit box one more time. He still had no idea how it was supposed to work, but he had been able to fix it. He hadn’t been helpless. For the first time in his life he realized that, even if he was not a genius like Oliver, he had the power to figure some things out just by looking at them and thinking about them. It might only be little things, but he felt like the universe had just been opened up to him in a new way that he had never imagined.

He stood up straight as he walked through the door. All alone, in this place of infinite unknowns, where one misstep could be fatal, he found a kind of confidence.

The hallway twisted and turned, and, to his great amazement, took him to another room without turning sideways or opening up a hole underneath his feet. The other side of the room had a doorway that led to a room full of glowing light. He did not know what that meant, but it was the only way to go, so maybe it would help him find his friends.

After taking two steps in, the ground shook. There was a sliding sound behind him, and he looked to find the doorway he had just walked through had closed. He intended to run for the other exit, but when he turned back around, a form was rising up out of the floor, and taking the shape of a yuman. A girl, her skin and form-fitting suit made of liquid brass, her hair slicked back behind her head. Her features, though not the right color, were distinctively Tantalian.

It was an unmistakable replica of Senna.

Conner stood still, looking at the specter, wondering how it was possible for it to exist. Had she been here, and the palace had somehow copied her? He took a step forward. “Senna?”

In response, the form took a readied stance, as if anticipating Conner would attack. He stepped back, but the form did not relax.

“What are you doing here?” Conner asked. When there was no reply, he said, “Can you talk?”

The Senna replica watched him, if it could be called watching, with those inyuman solid color eyes. Conner shook his head. Whatever magic had conjured up this replica, he did not need to use up time figuring it out. He stepped to the side to go around it.

Its head followed his movements, and when he stepped forward, it moved, blocking his path. He put his hand forward, palm up. “Look,” he said, “I need to get past here. Would you let me by?”

The form just stood there, its liquid gaze pointed at him. He stepped to the other side, and it moved again to block him.

“Well,” he said to himself, “it’s not a real person, so I don’t have to worry about hurting it.”

At this, the replica froze. Conner thought maybe it had stopped working, like one of the gravity or time fields turning on and off. But as he cautiously stepped forward, there was an electrical sound, and its eyes suddenly shone red. Almost quicker than he could see, it rushed up to him, grabbed his collar, and lifted him off the floor. Staring with those shining red eyes deep into his soul, it spoke. One word. “Wrong.”

It thrust him, and he tumbled onto his back, sliding toward the back of the room. He lay there for a moment, regaining his wits. The machination from the uncanny palace had talked. What did it mean? It had said, “wrong,” but why? He played the moment over in his head. It had been just after he had said he didn’t have to worry about hurting her because she wasn’t real. So did that mean she was real, somehow?

He stood back up, an ache running down the right side of his back. “What do you want?” he asked.

The form, infuriatingly, said nothing.

“Look,” Conner said, “if you want something, you have to tell me.”

The form of Senna took one step backward, now fully in the doorway. It took a strong stance and spread its arms. The message was clear: you may not pass.

But she was a conjuration of the palace, wasn’t she? Why block the door instead of just getting rid of it, filling it in with whatever material it was all made of? Was it a challenge? A test? He took another step forward. The Senna replica stared back at him, its eyes no longer red. “Do you want me to fight you?” he said. He took another step.

When he was within an arm’s reach, the replica thrust its hand forward, and jabbed him in the solar plexus. As he doubled over in pain, it grabbed his shoulders, and thrust him stumbling backward. He kept backing up until he bumped into the back wall, struggling for breath.

He looked up to find her standing six feet in front of him. For an instant, he panicked, thinking she was there to go on the aggressive. But from her posture, standing at ease with her hands clasped in front of her, she did not look like she was going to hurt him. Not at the moment.

She smiled gently, and took a slow step toward him, her motions calm and unthreatening. She reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Senna,” Conner said, “is that you? Are you here, somehow, by some kind of magic?”

Her smile broadened, and her eyes turned a light, relieving blue.

Conner stood, looking at her in utter bewilderment. Could she really be here, now, turned into some kind of shapeshifting creature by the palace? How had she found him? Were the other Tarrans running around, looking for the medallion? Might he end up like them?

“All right, Senna,” he said, “let’s get out of here together. I’ll help you get your body back, and then we can help each other search for the medallions. Who knows? If we tell each other our goals, we might be able to work out a way so that we both get what we want.”

She looked directly at him, with those blue eyes, coming closer, only a foot away. He felt he was getting through to her, that maybe, this was the moment that would bring them together.

Then, her eyes turned red.

Conner stared into them for a moment, not registering what had just happened. Then adrenaline and instinct took over, and he threw himself away from where she could easily pin him to the wall. He ran for the exit, but she grabbed his shirt and yanked him backward onto the ground. He rolled to his feet, moving away from her. When he saw her lunging toward him, those red eyes full of malice, he knew there was no common ground, no hope of cooperation. The fantasies that had played in his mind crumbled to the ground. The Tarrans were his enemy. Senna was his enemy.

He dodged to the side, forced away from the doorway by the vector of her motion. Coming up crouching, he stared at her alert, all uncertainty gone. Fire flowed through his veins, heightening all of his senses. Options played through his mind. Possibilities of lunging and dodging, throwing and tripping. He could see it. The set of motions and muscle movements that would carry him past her and through the doorway behind her. He lunged.

She pulled out a gun.

He stopped, frozen by the sight. All of his genius foresight came to nothing at the tip of the barrel. Here he was, trapped by an adversary with an advantage that nullified all of the inner strength he had just found. To win, he had to run and juke and dive and kick. All she had to do was pull the trigger.

His own hand, he noticed, had some weight in it. He was holding something. He chanced a glance, and saw that it was a medallion. Or rather, it was a disk made out of palace stuff that was shaped like a medallion. Through it, he sensed the floor, the walls, the ceiling. In fact, he sensed the entire palace all around him, shifting, moving . . . breathing.

The palace was alive, he knew that for sure now. Somehow, the matter that made up the walls, the floors, and all of the objects found within, worked together to make a living organism. Perhaps it was not just the palace either, but the whole planet. It sensed, it felt, and in its own way, it communicated. And now, Conner knew what it was trying to say.

Holding the palace medallion before him, he sent a bolt of kinetic energy surging through the floor, into Senna, or her replica, or whatever it was. The energy caused the matter that made her up to vibrate. He adjusted the phase distribution so that each particle would be knocking into all of those around it at maximum force. The vision of Senna smiled, and her eyes turned blue once more, before she shattered into a fine dust that rained down and was absorbed by the ground. The medallion that the palace had conjured up melted in his hand and trickled to the floor like a liquid. He let it go, looking into the doorway, which was now unguarded.

He had done it. He had passed the test. And now he knew, he couldn’t afford to hesitate when going up against the Tarrans. If he had to fight Senna again, he would hold no delusions of winning her to his side, and wouldn’t hold back on account of her being a girl. She was his adversary, and he would show her the respect that position demanded, nothing more. Of course that didn’t mean he couldn’t still dream, though he knew now with certainty that the dreams would remain only dreams.

The doorway ahead and the light beyond it called to him. He strode forward, entering into a large, circular room. At the same time, Mara and Oliver entered the room from the two other entrances. Conner was not surprised to see them. It just felt right. And by the calm, knowing looks he received from each of them, he knew that they had just experienced trials of their own.

They approached the light at the center of the room. It was a glowing white ball, perfectly smooth, about the size of a yuman head. As one, they reached toward it and touched it. There was a great, echoing sound as it cracked, and then the pieces fell to the ground, revealing a golden disk with a pattern of dips and bulges carved into both of its faces. How that was supposed to represent time, Conner didn’t know, but there was no question that this was Aepoch, medallion of time.

Conner expected Oliver to take it, but Mara reached for it instead. Oliver looked at her with a smile, as if the two of them shared something Conner didn’t know about. Once she had put it in her pocket, she said the first words any of them had spoken since reuniting. “All right. After all that, we finally got what we came for. Let’s go.”

A sound came from the direction Mara was looking, and Conner turned to find a hallway had opened up in the wall. It was perfectly straight for quite a long way. Mara took the lead, and Conner fell into step next to Oliver as they made the long walk back toward the palace entrance.

He considered asking them about their experiences, but decided not to. After all, he was going to take his encounter with the Senna replica to his grave, and the others might want to do the same with theirs. So they walked in silence.

The end of the tunnel turned a corner. For a moment, Conner worried that the gravity would shift and send them tumbling into it. But something told him that would not happen. He noticed that Oliver was not holding the grav map. When he asked Oliver about it, the reply he got was, “I don’t need it,” which added confidence to the feeling.

Around the corner was a familiar room, the one at the beginning of the palace, with a mirror in the middle. Once again, their reflections acted differently from them, looking around like they had no idea what the palace had in store for them.

All of a sudden, Oliver burst out laughing. “It’s us!” he exclaimed. “It’s been us the whole time!”

“You mean . . .” Mara said.

The pieces came together in Conner’s mind, and he gasped, feeling like he could laugh himself.

“We’ve gone in a time loop,” Oliver said. “Remember when we first entered the palace? That’s us, on the other side, back then, right now. And we’re the other us we saw as we walked in. Come on, stand close to the glass.”

The three of them walked up to the mirror, and it spun around, putting them on the other side of it. They laughed, and waved to their past selves. “Take care,” Mara said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

Their past selves stared bewildered at them as they left the room. Their joyous spirit stayed with them as they walked the remaining steps to the entrance of the palace, back out into a sunlit landscape of yellow bronze.

After being enclosed by the tan-brown of the palace interior for so long, the sky was a bright, crystal blue. Conner felt like a newly-born life form, stretching its legs and getting its first view of the wondrous universe that gave it birth. As they walked over the parking plateau and down the path to Research Station Gannow, Conner felt a clearness of mind that he had never experienced before. The whole universe was out there, and somehow, in his daily life of school and tennis and hanging out with friends, he had completely missed it.

When they arrived at Gannow station, Joe looked up with surprise. Then he relaxed. “Time stuff?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Oliver said, “time stuff. We ended up leaving at the same time we arrived.”

“That happens sometimes,” Joe said. “So how did it go? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“We sure did,” Oliver said. Mara pulled out the medallion of time to show him.

“Another mystery of the Time Palace,” Joe said, his eyes widening with an almost greedy look. “Once you are done with it, do you think you could bring it back for us to study?”

“Sure,” Conner said sarcastically. “Study.”

“Of course,” Joe said, looking at him in puzzlement. “What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know,” Conner said, smirking. “Maybe you want it for the ability to stop time with your mind?”

Joe sputtered. “How could you possibly put such a trivial thing next to the amazing insight into the workings of the universe that comes from scientific study?”

“Yeah, Conner,” Oliver said, in a low, admonishing tone. “That’s kind of the way scientists think.”

“Sure, sure,” Conner said, keeping the smugness on his face.

“Anyway,” Oliver said. He handed the grav map back to Joe. “Thanks for this, and for your advice. We surely wouldn’t have been able to get through without either.”

“Don’t mention it,” Joe said. “It was nice meeting you, and I hope you succeed in your mission.”

They said their goodbyes, and returned to their ship. As they soared up out of the atmosphere and beyond, Conner thought about what a strange world Chronesia was. It was so alien that it baffled scientists. It was sentient, or at least some parts of it were, and could read people, or study them, or something, in ways no yuman yet understood. Truly, the universe was full of wonders.

“Next stop,” Oliver said, “and our final destination, Tantalus.”

“And hopefully our Tarran enemies will be there for us to take back the medallions they stole from us,” Conner said.

“Enemies?” Mara said. “Not rivals?”

“No,” Conner said. “If they’re willing to kill us, they are our enemies.”

He was relieved when they did not ask why he had changed his mind so suddenly. Perhaps they guessed it had something to do with what had happened in the palace. None of them had brought up the time when they had been separated, and he was perfectly content with that. They had all come out of it changed in a very personal way. He knew that about himself, and he could see glimpses of it in his friends. They were tougher. More resilient. Able to see things and act without hesitation in ways that would get the job done.

Oliver put the Black Fire’s engines on full blast, and the planet and the star began to recede behind them. A thought occurred to Conner. “Hey Oliver,” he said, “why do we need to spend all this time speeding up and slowing down, when we have hyperspace, which takes us places faster than light?”

“Hyperspace isn’t actually faster than light,” Oliver said. “It makes distances shorter. When we travel through hyperspace, we’re actually coasting at about a thousandth of light speed, and that velocity is conserved when we emerge. It’s like---”

“No, I get it,” Conner said, “It makes sense.”

“You sure?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah. We come out of hyperspace going the same speed we went in with.”

“Wow,” Mara said, “you’re sharp today.”

Conner smiled a half-smile.

They slowed down for the same amount of time that they had spent speeding up when they had come in toward Chronesia. After that, they leaped into hyperspace.