THE FIRST PORTAL
Diana
is the Roman Goddess of the Hunt and Protector of Children, also
known as Artemis
Christopher Kirkham-Sandy
THE FIRST PORTAL
The first adventure
Christopher Kirkham-Sandy
Copyright: Christopher Kirkham-Sandy © 2010
Printed and first published in the United Kingdom in 2010
by
Qwertyword Limited
The Library Danny’s Court Odham’s Wharf Ebford EX3 0PB Devon United Kingdom
Publisher web site: www.qwertywordbooks.co.uk
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
FRONT COVER
Bright knots of glowing gas light up the arms of spiral galaxy M74, indicating a rich environment of star formation. Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is slightly smaller than our Milky Way.
The illustration has been published with kind permission from http://hubbelsite.org
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (University of Toledo) and J. Miller (University of Michigan)
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-906140-03-8
Published in the United Kingdom
Where it all began: the Book
Rain. Everywhere. Rain. Enough rain to wash away the sins of the world.
And on the ether came the wail of tiny voices, crying for help: for release from their purgatory. Ninety-nine little voices: children pleading for help. The Wraiths watched. Out of sight. Out of mind - for most people. Those people who could not tune into their particular wave length.
The brown doe-like eyes looked around: it was a truly bleak day. Through the centre of the old city, the wind howled as it was funnelled down the narrow lanes of Tudor shops and houses near to the Cathedral Close. Hats were hung on to. Umbrellas were blown inside out. The rain raked the pedestrians. The cold chilled the marrow of those outside. Tears welled up in stung eyes. Adults sheltered their children from the biting wind as best as they could.
I have never forgotten that day: not for one moment. Every day the experience haunts me. And it haunts me at the darkest hour- just before dawn.
The wailing stopped. Eventually. One day, it just stopped. And the Wraiths were gone too.
I shuffled sideways, trying to dodge unsteady adults being pushed along by the wind. Ducking and diving as best I could, so as to avoid sharp elbows and stumbling feet, I past the Olde Coffee House, its aroma escaping from vents in the wall and scattered by the winds. Inside, behind fogged windows, were the peering eyes of customers, nursing hot steaming mugs to thaw out chilled fingers. Next door was the antique shop and then, in sight, was my target. The Bookshop!
I was nearly sent flying: pinned between a tall, grim man and the wall, I smacked headlong into the rack of books outside, obstructing part of the pavement. I couldn’t see anything clearly because of the rain. The books were covered by polythene sheets and held down securely to the ground by a line of bricks. And along the top row of books lay a line of heavy dark wooden blocks.
Staggering to regain my balance, I knocked away one of the blocks. When he saw me, I cannot say. But before I could struggle to replace the block, the book shop owner was out of the door and standing there, glaring down at me. I looked up, more than a bit ashamed, holding the block in both hands.
“Sorry!” I muttered, but the sentiment was blown away on the wind. It made no impact upon him. He snatched the block back, grabbed the loose sheet and slammed it down. He turned away on his heels and stormed back into the shop, slamming the door hard. It sprung back open. The impact of the door ensured that the brass bell above clanged loudly making a chaotic noise, evoking a sense of panic rather than its traditional serene sound. A draught of warm air escaped in my direction. “Get in there,” I thought.
I moved tentatively forward towards the door, risking the wrath of the proprietor. He was in there —somewhere - in the gloom.
Never had I seen the shop so busy! It was almost full. No surprise there, given the horrid weather! The door sign said “Open” and so it was: ajar. To left and right, browsers had escaped the cold, horrid reality outside for the warm atmosphere inside - and for the books. Umbrellas overflowed from the bucket by the door. They fell out haphazardly, just as I passed. I cringed. “Please! No! Was I clumsy or what? Or was it bad luck?” I wondered. “Was some invisible gremlin hovering nearby me, knocking over whatever was near to create embarrassment?”
I swung around. “Was it wanting to drive me out?” I stood firm against my imagination. “No!” Trying to move away from the door and take the space of a couple vacating the premises, I edged forward, knight-like on an imaginary chessboard on the shop. Slowly I eased away from the door and the hostile weather outside, well aware that the proprietor had caught sight of me. A huge round convex mirror, attached to the ceiling, was angled away from the top of the rickety old stairs which descended to the basement. “Look at him!” I forced myself. I smiled politely. The mirror made a Billy Bunter of his image. The reflections of his customers were Hogarthian in shape.
My parents wandered off along the ground floor, heading for the History section, no doubt.
The stairs beckoned! “Why?” I shuddered. I took hold of the banister rail and descended slowly. “At an almost regal pace,” I thought. Moving away from the crush of the ground floor, I edged steadily downwards into the gloomy damp of the basement. The recessed lighting strips in the ceiling of the ground floor gave way to the yellow light of shaded bulbs, some still working, others dead since who knew when.
And then I felt that chilling sensation: for the first time. Some cold unseen force was edging me down the stairs. Was it denying me the chance to change direction and return back – to the safety - to the ground floor? Its magnetic force drew me on. I remember a sense, not of fear or even anxiety, but that it was my destiny to carry on downwards. It was if I was meant to be there and that I was now acting out some prescribed role in the greater scheme of things.
“Snap out of it!” The voice inside drew me up short. “Go back! Too late!” I was at the bottom of the stairs, standing on the linoleum floor. I stood stock-still and listened. The ghosts were still present: I could sense echoes of the rasp, of cutting knives and of the squelch of wet glue. From inside my head. The pervading damp unnerved me. I stared back to the flight of stairs: it was my only route back to that other world. I could see the brighter lights, the people edging past one another, some mumbling excuses as they pushed through the crowd and others giving the occasional nod of politeness to recognised faces. Some held books casually in their hands, others reverentially, as they eased their way towards the counter to settle their debt: for treasures chosen and bad weather avoided.
My eyes dropped back to my level: to left and to right and from floor to ceiling, ran lane after parallel lane of gunmetal grey shelving, vertical pillars holding them in place, and their nuts and bolts still glinting a little brighter in contrast to the dull uniformity of the mat paint. I could not see any gaps in the seemingly endless rows of book spines. Section after section stretched away into the gloom in both directions.
Drawn onwards, I edged along the first lane, moving steadily away from the foot of the stairs. “Why that way?” I know not why, even now as I look back after so many years have passed, to that particular moment. “Was I being melodramatic?” If I didn’t choose to go back up the stairs, then I had to move away in some direction. I had to explore. I just knew it. My choice seemed to be as good as any at the time: left instead of right? A fifty-fifty choice.
The conflict raged on inside me. “Was I in control or was I not?” I wondered. Somehow, I really wasn’t in control. My very best efforts to assert my sense of independence and self-control were nothing as to the power of that feeling: my direction, my pace and my purpose were now under the control of some external force. The lines of books, row upon row, to left as well as to right and from floor to ceiling, seemed to run out of sight ahead of me, to converge in the gloomy distance. An optical illusion, I knew. “How far to the end?” I wondered.
At the end of the lane, where the illusion joined the shelves together, I guessed that there would have to be a wall. There was also something else there which I sensed inside me. Whatever it was, there was an aching feeling in my spine and which imbued the deepest sense of trepidation within my soul. The dampness of the atmosphere in the basement compounded my fear. And the rows of shelves were as poorly lit as at the bottom of the stairs. It was truly eerie. Even today I shudder at the memory. As I edged cautiously further along the lane between the books, the atmosphere grew clammier by the minute. The dampness compounded my anxiety but it never became strong enough to drive me into total panic and beat a retreat. “No! Don’t be silly!” I told myself. “You are only the shortest of distances from those stairs. They will take you back up to your normal world: rain and wind, jostling and bustling crowds, too many people in too little a space.” I felt reassured, momentarily.
“Press on!” The racking really did close in on me. I realised that the shelving had been erected so as to make the gangway progressively narrower, if only gradually. By every yard or so, the width reduced by maybe an inch, or so I guessed.
Now, so near the end, I did not dare look back to see how far I had come. “It was only a few yards? Surely? Or was it?” I did not know. More importantly, I lacked the courage to turn around and look.
I had become too busy watching my feet as I walked along the old linoleum. And then the linoleum stopped. “The end!” I looked up and gasped. The shelving stopped on both sides all of a sudden: my eyes rose up from the dirt on the old linoleum floor. There was the wall.
And a little below my waistline was a finely hewn oak table. Was it not scarred and stained from use over the generations of its life? Was it not dusty and covered in cobwebs? “No!” It was spotless! Polished! Shiny! Immaculate! It was a tiny island of precision and cleanliness in a dark dank world. It stood out, boldly contrasted before my eyes.
I scanned the end wall: perfectly formed. Clean, dark, ruby-red bricks, in perfect horizontal rows, were separated by cement of the purest white which I had ever seen. The horizontal rows of perfection in the bricks and the cement were matched by the exact right angles of the vertical cement joins. Embedded in the surface of the bricks were the tiniest slivers of what? Glass? Diamonds? Each sliver caught and reflected particles of the weak light.
On the table, two pure and perfect cream-coloured candles were mounted on finely wrought silver stands, unblemished by use or age. Their wicks pointed proudly to the heavens. In front of them were a small pewter jug and some lighter-flints from a bygone era.
Gradually my eyes absorbed the detail and the context. On the table and laid longitudinally was a book. Its deep red leather hue was like blood in contrast to the pure whiteness of the silken cloth on which it rested.
It had the appearance of a fine reference book. A Dictionary! A Bible maybe? Deep down, I suspected that this was not the case. The book emanated something. I could sense it. I scanned around warily me. “What was this place? A chapel? No! A sacristy? No! And what was it about this book?” My hands were drawn towards it. To grasp it? To seize it? No, my desire was to feel its outline as it lay there. To sense its tactile gifts! I hesitated and observed it cautiously from various angles. In size, it was about ten inches from top to bottom, maybe a little over six inches wide and about four inches thick. It rested on the white cloth, its spine facing me and its gilt pages adjacent to the wall. The leather cover bore gilt lettering, which made no sense at all to me. The spine was annotated by two separate lines of letters, one was larger and longer: the title, I guessed. Then another line below, which I surmised could be the name of the author. A small lock secured its contents. “How odd!”
The gilt brightness of the pages was reflected in the array of tiny slivers in the wall. I leant forward to see more of the book, and for some reason I felt myself taking the greatest of care not to lean too closely over the book, not to put it in my shade, not to impinge on its right to space. I need not have worried: I could see now the fine gilt paint on the edge of the pages. I had always marvelled at how this had been done.
The book beckoned! To touch it? To take it? I knew it! I could sense it! But somehow, I couldn’t acknowledge it! No way could I admit it! But it was true and I knew it to be so. My hands trembled just a little, as they edged physically towards it.
“Stop!” my conscience countermanded. “Don’t touch it! You’re not supposed to be here!”
I looked around, jerking my head impulsively. I was sure I was being observed. “Relax!” There was no one in the walkway and no sound of any movement either. Somehow, I still wanted hold the book, to possess it. I had to! My eyes locked to it again and my body leant forward to pay it the attention, which it seemed to expect of me. “Give it respect! Pay homage?” I knew not.
Even though there was no one to be seen, I sensed observing eyes. It was as if they were watching from inside the fabric of the wall: dark lifeless eyes. I sensed the shadows and the gloom of enveloping hoods shading — shading what? A head of some sort? I blinked and squinted. There was nothing to see: but they were there. I could feel them. They were buried in the wall. I shuddered. I was chilled to the bone.
Clashing thoughts raced around in my head. Confusion reigned in my feelings. I felt giddy and swayed. And then in my eyes a door appeared, in the wall before me. I blinked. It was there! Slowly and silently, it swung open and I was in deep space: globes of yellow and orange drifted across the penumbra of my vision. Comets flashed across the middle. And then an eye appeared and then another: black and unblinking, but friendly and thoughtful; knowledgeable and all seeing. And the image of a face drifted into focus: old and wise, a tidy grey full beard, fine red lips, pure white teeth and flowing hair. I blinked hard. The image was still there. And then slowly the vision faded as the door swung shut. “How long did it take?” I challenged. “Moments or minutes?” I knew not. But I knew what I had seen. It was benign and comforting. The image of that face stayed on: that spirit never left me from that moment.
I looked back down at the book. It glowed softly. I looked at the wall: impervious and impassive, perfect in the symmetry of its construction. It stood like an ultimate barrier to my progress.
“The Book!” I thought. “The Book!” I gulped. “This is the Book!” My body shook involuntarily.
And then my heart began to beat more calmly again. I was alone. “Yes! Even in this gloom!” I was so close to civilisation upstairs and to safety that I could shout and the call would bring help. Yet I was alone! “Or was I?” Somehow, the Book seemed like a companion to me. Had it sought to secure my attention? I sensed it wanted me to take it into my arms, to cradle safely. But it was only a book for goodness sake! “Only a book! Get real!”
I look back to the stairs. “Wake up! Get real! Take it! Buy it and go home! Or just leave it?” The conflict inside my head raged on. I could have walked back to reality there and then - without the Book. My mind was the true battleground for these conflicting thoughts: to flee or to fight! “Wait a minute! Hang on! To fight, well, what for, I wondered for goodness sake?” I shook my head to clear my thoughts and my ears tuned back into the faint hum of life, emanating from past the end of the corridor, from up the stairs, from humanity on the ground floor above.
The Book lay there. Inert. And — I was now sure — of the eyes which watched from the wall. Ever cold and unblinking: impassive, unreal, truly not human, but they were watching all the same. They were watching and waiting. “But for what?” I knew not. Let me never ever again experience the shudder, which racked my little frame. After all, I was only ten years old at the time. And I was alone. “But not too much alone,” I had tried to reassure myself. My dad and mum must still be somewhere on the ground floor.
And, as those eyes bore into me even more intensely, my ears began to scream with the pain and the noises inside my head reverberated. Cries! Wails! Howls! Children in danger? In peril? The Book beckoned all the more urgently. I grasped it. Why had I held back so far? Deferential respect? Surely not! And the pain left my head the instant I touched the Book. And the screams echoed away into the distance. Silence! I panted with relief.
Had I expected the Book to react to my touch? It didn’t! Did it? Of course it didn’t! How could it? “That was just a silly idea.” The Book did feel good to the touch: warm and welcoming. “Anxious to share its secrets?” To reveal the mystery of the content laid out across its pages. I was drawn to it. Why? I knew not! Not at that time.
I now treasured the Book gently in my hands, holding it carefully for its texture and personality: it was truly in my possession. The lock clicked. The Book fell open in my hands. I gulped. “What had I done?” I looked down at its detail. There were no well-worn pages, no thumb marks on the corners, no evidence even that the Book had ever been opened. The gilt edging was still perfect and unblemished. I sensed its purity: it was as if I was the first ever visitor to its pages. “Yet surely, it must have been read before by someone?” Well, someone had written it. Someone had printed it.
“And had no one ever read it?” I asked myself.
This was the purest of books: unsullied.
Suddenly I realised: the eyes, the dark sallow pairs, were no longer watching me from the fabric of the wall.
The Book nestled itself firmly in my hands. My legs gave way slowly underneath me. Involuntarily I sagged until I settled on the floor and sensed the cold and the damp of the linoleum. I took no notice. I tucked my knees in and my feet slipped neatly underneath my bottom.
Now I could examine the spine of the Book from a new angle. With the light from above, I could discern the title was in what was clearly English gilt lettering. But it still meant nothing to me.
I looked at the Book: I was sure it was drawing me to the frontispiece.
My senses stopped. My whole body shuddered at the words before me. “Oh my God! How could this be?”
My tiny fingers shook. “This is the Book!”
The Book hummed softly and we bonded.
Something flashed in my peripheral vision. I looked up to my left from the grey uneven flagstones, still partly covered by perished linoleum: now only a dank dark wall bore oppressively down upon me. Mildew on the bricks, flaking cement in between, peeling paint of an unknown provenance and colour, and water stains from where the ceiling met the wall. All the signs of aging over – how many decades? I knew not. And scattered cracking in the old wall evidenced the stresses of generations of movement in the ground, plus the bombs, had bent and buckled it.
No table and no candles! No ruby bricks! Or pure perfect lines of cement! “It has all gone,” I mouthed.
A dungeon! And now I understood: that this had once been a dungeon of death. The vestiges of the souls lost in its confines fostered the fetid and wretched atmosphere: I sensed the past. I froze.
The Book was in my hands. Yet how it had come to be on the table was a mystery. Now there was truly no way for it to go back.
I looked back down: the pages commanded my attention. They began to turn of their own accord, sensing each time as my line of sight came to the final words on the final line of the open page.
This was the stuff of legend. “The Legend!”
Of course! I had heard the legend: it was an amalgam, based on many varying versions of verbal hand-me-downs from parent to child: from one generation to the next. And that magazine cartoon of new invented adventures? Even a movie? But what was the origin? The provenance? Was this it? Was this truly where it all began?
The Title. My grandmother had been the first to tell me the story. Did she really know where the story had originated? She had learned it, so she had always said to me, on the knee of her mother and so the story, the fable, had rolled across the generations but only along the female line. Fathers and boys were excluded from its secrets. It had its origins, it seemed, in the late Middle Ages: Wiesia had said so with a smile. And then Geoffrey’s beaming countenance, thrilled at her intellect, drifted across her mind. She sighed. “Such a kind and gentle man. Such a brain.” The recognition was well deserved. “Oh that I could think at his level! Some chance!” And I delved back into the Book. Time and space drifted.
The damp was working its way through my clothing, pulled me back to reality. Cramp in my legs, I rose unsteadily. “Get back upstairs,” I thought. And the stairway seemed so much easier to climb back up than it had been to descend earlier. “Was some force, some magnet trying to drag me back?” I got to the top and struggled through the crowd to the till.
“I’ll buy this please?” I looked up at the cashier. The old grey head looked quizzically down at me and thumbed carelessly through the book. I winced. “My Book! Please be careful.” I screamed silently. My scream reached her senses.
The old lady looked back. “There’s no price tag. Did you remove it?” She glared down. I rose to my full height. Indignant. “Certainly not!”
“Humph!” She scowled at me.
I glared back.
“Have you got the money?” She demanded brusquely.
“Depends on how much it is!” Cheeky response I thought! I refused to be intimidated — to be…what? Treated like a child? I am a customer, after all. Like every other!
“Oh! Two pounds. Right?” Her gnarled hand stretched out towards me. A talon!
I fumbled in my money belt. The two-pound coin glistened.
“Here.” I handed it over.
She pushed the sale forward on the counter towards me.
“And a bag please?”
“Huh! Here!” She shoved a paper bag forward. “Not much protection in this weather,” I thought. I said nothing. I grabbed the Book. My Book, now! And I popped it carefully into the bag.
“Receipt?” She called at my retreating back.
I took no notice. I was heading for the door. I wanted to get out before the owner intervened, or that elderly cashier changed her mind. No receipt? “Pah! It was my money.”
My parents were standing nearby: looking for me? They sighed as they spotted me. They too were ready to leave. I smiled sweetly, I thought, and nodded towards the door. They hastened to catch up.
And then I was outside: in the howling wind. I turned my back to the driving rain, shoving the bag inside my waterproof. “Time for home.” And to explore my find. My step quickened. They followed, mystified.
And as I bowed my head to the wind, the howling in my ears changed. The rain seemed to become less evident. The tenor in my ears changed—to the wail: to the wailing of voices. Again. Dozens of helpless little voices! The sound migrated from my eardrums to the inside of my head. The vision in front of me was still of the same traffic-free street, of people bustling their way between each other, avoiding the umbrella spikes and ducking the sheeting rain.
Then the voices were howling through my head. Cries of fear and desperation: little voices, it seemed. Young voices alone and seeking the solace of…whom? I looked around: I could see nothing to justify the trauma. And then the vision blurred and I saw shadows and the image of little bodies in a large grim room, lying on the floor. Grey light shafted down from small apertures set close to a sky-high ceiling: in my imagination, it smelt dank and musky. Just writhing sad little bodies, hungry mouths open, eyes wide in fear, hair dishevelled, arms flailing in the air and little hands, fingers apart, reaching upwards for liberation.
I scanned the vision from inside my mind. Lined against the wall, backs to it and immobile, I could see tall thin hooded figures: in black cloaks, rope belts around the waist with little leather pouches hanging thigh-high. Bare feet protruded from under the hems stood in thonged leather sandals. I cannot describe the shock I felt when I realised that these adult figures were doing nothing for the little forms on the floor. It was in the vision: it was a nightmare in daytime.
Then the jagged flash: a bolt of lightning shafted jaggedly from the heavens, lighting the shadows, highlighting the misery in the faces of others around me in the street. It hammered into the earth.
The vision was obliterated, the howling was gone.
I returned to the real world. But the images were not obliterated: they were locked away in the darkest depths of my subconscious. “Did I truly see that? Was that an out-of-body experience?” I did not know. Now I know more: I know better.
“I had the Book!”
Chapter 1: The blackness of the void
“Today we will have the typical sort of weather for a Californian day at this time of year,” said the smiling man on the television with the weather map behind him. The annotated temperature balloons and scarcity of dainty clouds told it all. “Just like yesterday and similar to tomorrow,” he added for effect. “Where you stand is where you are. From where you are, is all that you can see: the weather where you are.” He chortled, adding, “above it is blue: the sky is always blue, everywhere blue. It is so today. It was blue yesterday. It will be blue tomorrow.” His favourite phrase repeated at the end of every slot.
Of course, when you look up, it is not universally blue from ground level. Clouds cover some parts in the day. Ominous dark clouds drift across in the winter. Light white clouds scud across in the summer. Beyond the blue there is the purest black imaginable.
Planet Earth moves silently within this small part of the greater cosmos: within its own little grouping of planets, and held in place by the power of this Sun, it is a speck somewhere in the total infinity of what is known as “The Universe.”
And within that blackness there are the twinkles of reflected light and a lot more besides: planets, stars, comets, rubbish and nothings. There are many things are out there: some are on the move, some are stationary. Some are ordinary and some are strange. Some are as silent as the eternal night in which they reside. Others chatter away without respite, but up there you wouldn’t be able to hear them. There are round ones; oblong ones; pretty ones; and ugly ones. No two are the same. There are satellites with dishes; satellites with aerials; satellites with huge fans and satellites with screens. There are space stations and there are spiders with long spindly arms. The shuttle pops in occasionally, for a few days, delivering the groceries and collecting the samples, before returning to Planet Earth.
Up there in the black, it is the Universe of Silence where all is deathly quiet and cold, not golden and warm as it is on the land below. Even the Sun seems cold: bright but cold. Drifting freely in space, tethered only by a snaking lifeline, you can look down beyond your feet as you drift. Below resides Planet Earth, turning slowly and gracefully on her axis: real, multi-coloured and captivating, presenting an ever-rotating face, each aspect in the sun for half the day and shaded for the other half.
Around Planet Earth are orbiting dishes, which scan their individual horizons endlessly, designed only to track the sounds and locations of other satellites and to report knowledge back to their masters on Earth?
The spider-like space station has its own human cargo aboard and they watch and wait; they experiment and they test; they use and fix the equipment. And tomorrow, like today, they will watch and listen, report home and then they wait.
Underneath all of this, the brown, the green, the blue and the white parts of patchwork of Planet Earth moves in an endless and graceful carousel.
From above, the observer of Planet Earth would have no knowledge of the turmoil and the troubles occurring by day and by night, or by country. He would have no understanding of the huge gradations from great happiness and prosperity through to abject misery and poverty, of the pleasures and the pains experienced by its various peoples whose individual destinies are determined mainly by where in that world their parents were when they were born.
The balance of forces acting on Planet Earth was changing; neither conventional wisdom nor scientific knowledge could fathom the causes of these changes nor project the consequences. But the climate was changing. Crops were failing, known diseases were mutating into more dangerous forms, mortality rates were rising, and the birth rate fell. Discord was on the ascendancy.
The communicants on the ground work with their computers and they function in an eternal technical embrace with their satellites and stations. The phones deliver and receive voice messages. The television channels transmit sound and visual signals, linking people in real and recorded time, sharing views and knowledge in work and in leisure. In large technology centres, located underground and out of sight, reside row after row of computers, each reporting on and communicating with the gooseberries, the spiders, the shuttles and the rest of the space population and technology circulating Planet Earth.
As the orbiters above communicate with the legions of computers in the control centres below ground, so they ask, test, collect, analyse, respond, ask again, test again and, in an iterative process which crosses the decades, they are learning the ultimate truth: that the more they know, the less they know of the totality of knowledge and then that the more they know that they don’t know, the more they want to know. The iterative becomes the exponential.
The main language of all of this space technology is English, except of course in France. The centre for all of this space technology and its operators on Planet Earth is on the south east coast of America in and around Cape Canaveral.
The centre for space imagination is on the west coast of America: in and around Los Angeles. And in Los Angeles, they dream dreams and the sky holds no limit as their imaginations transcend all physical constraints.
Chapter 2: Landing in Lalaland
Back up there in the void, in the black back yard, a different looking object slipped quietly into an orbit around the Earth. Its arrival was un-noticed by observers, their radar or their telescopes. The “It” was silent and it was harmless. Or so it seemed to be at the time: it had threatened no one. Somehow, it had got there and, although it couldn’t think for itself, it knew it was on target. As did Chond. The Creator. After all, the “It” was His creation.
And “It” when identified would become known as “The Canister”.
It would be best described as a drum, not too much bigger than the average beer barrel. Certainly, it was not as big as an oil drum. It was about thirty-two inches long and twenty inches in diameter. It was an extra-terrestrial illustration of the rule of Pacioli.
And soon the waiting, after the longest of journeys through time and space, would be over. Then the only exceptional noise in space, lasting for the briefest of moments, and created either by the satellites, the space stations or by inbound static from deep space, would come from the Canister itself.
Even after an un-known number of times going around the Earth, it was still neatly tracking an orbit on latitude just a little to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn, selected because that is where there is more water and less land to pass over; hence the low likelihood of being spotted. And then, the Canister took its initiative. A small quiet “puff” of gas emanated from the end of the Canister, lasting just a few seconds. It was the flap of a butterfly’s wings, changing its balance and upsetting its harmony.
Why did it happen when it did? Why did it happen where it did? Who knows? Certainly, no one on Earth knew. Only Chond knew. The Canister knew of its assignment: it had been given a destination and it had a duty to deliver. That duty had been defined clearly before the inception of its voyage. And at that precise moment in time, everything changed: changes, which could not be reversed. The Canister, with its grey sheen reflecting the rays of the sun was jolted by the gas emission; it tilted by a fraction of a degree and began to roll. And it tumbled laconically towards Earth. The Canister rolled, surrendering itself to the pull of gravity. The grey exterior turned to silver, the silver turned to yellow, the yellow turned to red and the red to white heat as it streaked in through the outer atmosphere.
Accelerating violently, the Canister was soon the fastest moving object in any Earth orbit. And as it fell, it acquired a clear trajectory, swinging north across the Equator and heading at speed inbound along the Tropic of Cancer. And, as the Canister accelerated, it created a vapour trail behind it, as it streaked inbound.
The eternal vigilance of the observing men and women could no longer miss this sight: urgent voices scrambled their colleagues as the radar shields swung to track this newly identified inbound object.
Deep underground in military America, urgent voices corresponded.
“A rogue meteor?”
“No!”
“An old Soviet model maybe?”
“Not on that trajectory!”
“It’s tiny: there can’t be much left. It’ll just break up and burn out in a few miles.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah”
“Stand by and observe: note it for the record as not military and not a threat.”
The Russians were watching too: they knew it wasn’t one of their own and they were sure, by the same reasoning as the Americans, that it wouldn’t be one of their old enemy’s either.
And the Chinese watched likewise, not knowing if it was either American or Russian; they surmised that it really did not matter too much to them, as the thing, whatever it might be, was now clearly on an east-bound trajectory too far north to cause concern and very clearly, it was not heading for an impact within their sovereign territory.
They don’t like surprises: these people. The Americans. The Russians. The Chinese. Nor do the others who watch each other, from space in space, and from land into space and vice versa, on this “day-in-and-day-out” round the clock basis. Every time anything moves on one missile base, the event is logged and recorded somewhere in the data banks of the American Crays, the Russian Strelnikov IVs-or the Chinese equivalent-the Mandarins.
The screens’ attendants and their team leaders exhaled in relief. The tension eased. They took sips of coffee and settled back in their chairs.
But the Canister did not burn out: it kept on coming, streaking its way now tracking above the Russian Steppes. It raced ever onwards as it left Vladivostok behind and crossed the Pacific, tumbling over and over.
“Scramble”: the red buttons start the process for handling a US Federal civil emergency.
The huge processing power underground in Utah had been running overtime for some minutes. The trajectory had been mapped automatically since the Canister was first spotted and that trajectory was now being continuously extrapolated. The impact area had been broadly identified.
The inbound object was too small to be a missile, and it could not be part of a multiple re-entry vehicle as it was a lone object.
“It’s not getting smaller. It’s not burning up!” Someone shouted.
The trajectory, projected forwards and superimposed against the map of the Earth, was up there on the huge wall screen for all in the US Command Centre to see.
The impact location was now expected to be Southern California, probably somewhere to the south of the Los Angeles conurbation.
“Oh hell! Too late to stop it! Fifteen minutes to impact! Scramble the choppers,” the Emergency Situations Leader screamed.
“Warn John Wayne Airport to prepare for an emergency. Inbound planes are to stack in three peripherals alternating at levels five, ten and fifteen some thirty miles to the south-west of the field and stay well offshore. Repeat …. offshore. No take-offs at all. All taxiing aircraft are to stay out in the open and as far apart as is possible from each other. Get full emergency cover in place …. now …. Expect a possible Cat. 1 event. It’ll be a major impact: collateral damage and loss of life. Warn all related hospitals on the emergency lines. Local Fire Departments to be on full alert: guesstimate need is a hundred appliances.”
“Ten minutes to impact: no change in expectations.”
“Disney?”
“Yeah!”
“Well call them…now… standard code. Be ready! No panic! No announcement! Get their emergency services on standby. It’s all we can do now.”
“This is big trouble!”
“Someone’s going to swing for missing this one.”
“Notified the Commander-in Chief?”
“No…We haven’t.”
“Do it … now … on the Scrambler.”
A trembling hand reached for the red phone.
Eight minutes to impact.
“Hang on, it’s getting larger!”
“A ’chute?”
“Yeah!”
“OK. Then keep Wayne on hold and we’ll get back to them in ten minutes…if they’re still there.”
“The thing is breaking up.”
“Disney?”
“Ditto, advise them likewise. Yeah.”
“POTUS? Hold the line open and say we might have a ‘situation’, so keep someone smart on the other end of the line.”
“Advise the National Guard!”
A nervous laugh rippled around the tight-knit group.
“It’s a ’chute. Confirmed! We have it on camera. A coastal rescue chopper is in the area. We just got lucky! The big bits are going to hit the sea, ’chute and all.”
“It’s falling short of land.”
The airborne camera was trying to track the rogue object manually: with no onboard transmitter embedded in the target to guide the camera and keep the lens focussed, it was patchy, erratic viewing.
And as bad luck for the observers would have it, at the moment when the target had broken up, the event went unseen by their straining eyes. The lead camera momentarily lost vision: wisps of cloud intervened from nowhere.
The Canister fractured into a multitude of shards. From inside the falling debris, emerged a much smaller object now on a trajectory of its own. The observers saw the debris but not the smaller missile. This object was not hot and it was inert. It dropped rapidly out of sight as it fell beneath the radar’s horizon.
“Confirm the missile has split into two, no …. into lots of pieces! Its’chute has been shredded.”
“Confirmed!”
The remnants scattered in tiny pieces. They fell into the deep blue of the Pacific just offshore and into enough swell to ensure that no traces would ever be found.
“Hold…. Pass on. We have a ‘hold’ on the emergency.”
“It’s gone: broke up. No explosion. Nothing.”
“Tell Wayne and Disney to step back down to a ‘watch’. Keep the planes stacked for another fifteen minutes at their various levels and they are now to move and stay south, repeat SOUTH of the Tower.”
“South. Confirm. Wilco!”
“Warn them of the inbound shards, the trajectory is to the south-west and give them the time scale. If any of the aircrew can get a fix on the impact points that would be good. But I doubt if they will. We’ll revert.”
“POTUS?”
“Report the facts…. Advise events to date today, type up the summary and send it over. I think…we’re over the worst. Even if we don’t yet understand exactly what happened.”
“If ever: there’ll be one hell of a stink. You wait. How do we establish why we missed it?”
“True: but there’ll be more dollars for the space and defence budgets.”
“You’re a real cynic!”
“Hey! There’s something else there! Look! It’s moving! At speed! Holy Mother!”
They had spotted the smaller projectile.
The little can was travelling more slowly: it swung over land now, passed Disneyland and hurtled on some two miles and was predestined to hit surface water in the swimming pool of the Radisson Hotel on South Harbor Boulevard in Central Anaheim.
The impact with the water was expected to be dramatic: a small can, it was not so heavy. It hit the pool just before breakfast ended.
Around the edges of the pool, the manicured grass was nurtured by several low-level sprinklers; the loungers were out as were the tables, with shades set up overhead for the hotel’s vacationing guests.
There was only one person to be seen near to the pool: the ten-year old Diana. Known to her friends and family as ‘’.
The impact of the baby can emptied the pool of almost all of its water: it generated a mini tsunami, which lasted a mere ten seconds as it hit the far wall of the pool, rose and ploughed up the grass, tossing the loungers, tables and shades aside in its wake.
Diana was standing by the towel stack at the deep end of the pool when the can hit the water and she caught the spray as the tsunami raced away from her, down towards the shallow end of the pool.
She was drenched.
In the remaining foot of water in the pool, floated the little can.
Wiping the spray off her glasses, she shook the water out of her long hair and dusted her head briefly with the pool towel. She staggered back at the shock of what had just happened…and an involuntary scream escaped. Diana stood frozen to the spot. Her heart raced and was short of breath. She bent over and touched her toes: yes, she was all in one piece. Upright again, she edged gingerly forward, moving a few steps out from the shade of the area’s wall, towards the pool’s edge.
The bobbing can caught her eye. She looked around. “No one!”
Gingerly she descended the steps into the deep end of the pool. She dipped her toe into the remaining water. It was as warm as she would have expected. She turned and squinted as she examined the little can from a safe distance, bobbing in the ripples of the remaining pool water. Should she step into the water and get a closer look?
Diana hesitated. Dad wasn’t within sight or calling distance. She stepped into the water and edged closer to the can. Should she touch it? “No! Yes! No! Yes! Yes!”
She touched up the can, somehow expecting something to happen. It didn’t. It looked to be just a can like any other.
Except that it wasn’t! It felt odd, somehow different. It had no label. That seemed to Diana to be very odd. She looked around her at the water in the pool. No paper and no scraps of paper floating in the water either. She picked it up. Carefully.
And the can….she examined it again, turning it over in her hands. It had no markings, no ridges, no real edging and no ink printed on it. Somehow, it was not quite like any other can that Diana had ever seen! Its texture was quite beyond her sensory experience. She could feel the can and yet it had no real feel to it.
Then something else struck her: the silence around her. The silence was absolute. The pool water made no sound. No one came. No Dad, running in a panic, worrying for Diana’s safety. Nothing. No birds singing. No cars on the move. Just total silence. Absolute and total silence.
And then in the distance she heard the faintest of voices, little voices, young voices, wailing in despair, and the sound grew louder, nearing her, she felt sure. Suddenly it was all around her. She dropped the can and clapped her hands to her ears, screwed up her eyes and grimaced at the pain. Just as the crescendo became almost unbearable, it stopped. Faint echoes were left and they faded too. Diana opened her eyes and the scene before her was as before. She released her grip on her ears. Silence again!
She was deaf: Diana was stone deaf.
She sneezed. She felt that: more importantly, she heard the sound and relief swept over her.
Instinctively she grabbed the can and waded back to the steps up the side at the deep end of the pool. One handed, she scrambled clumsily up the ladder and collapsed onto her bottom, short of breath, on the ribbed paving slabs at the top. Her pool towel was to hand, lying in a crumpled pile where she had dropped it. She pushed the can into its folds.
The world around her suddenly re-started. Houseguests and staff were rushing in all directions, car alarms created a background cacophony. Adults milled around creating chaos, shrieking and towering over her tiny frame.
“What happened?” the discordant chorus demanded.
“Are you OK?”
Diana nodded.
“Where’s the water gone?” asked one man.
“It’s everywhere but in the pool!” replied another.
A grey haired buxom lady of indeterminate age was a key if un-noticed part of the drama. “Lord be praised!” she cried, looking skywards into exactly what had been the recent in-bound trajectory of the can. The angle of her vision fixed her observation on the exact spot where began the first orbit of the larger Canister. And its Progenitor, its Maker, Chond the King, was to be found many light years directly behind, much further away, deep in the outer distances of space. She saw a residual image of the Canister and of the Can in her retinas and of what had happened at Anaheim and...she reported back. Chond acknowledged silently. She sensed the reply. Her task was done. She slipped away from the hotel and, once sure that she could not be observed, popped into a wisp of smoke, which dissipated on the wind. Her essence followed the light path and she was soon sitting at the right hand of Chond.
Chapter 3: Diana escapes
The hubbub and chaos of the crowd was now being augmented by the arrival of the local police and the Fire Department, who added to a noisy melee in the pool area. Diana crawled between the legs of the milling adults to make an escape.
The crumpled towel hiding the can, she made her way on all fours, heading for the clean towels locker: she knew that to be also the way out from the pool area.
The further she got from the pool and the nearer to the hotel itself, the less she could become the object of anyone’s attention.
“Outta the way, littl’un,” humphed a local traffic cop. He had been the first from outside the hotel complex to arrive on the scene. “No place for kids!” he added, unhelpfully. Diana was close to making a very tart response: she bid her tongue stay still.
“We need to get away from here,” said a small voice from inside her head. “Inside? No! Outside! Outside her head!”
And the stunning thought hit her: the can had been communicating with her…..or had it?
“No! That just wasn’t real,” she figured.
Her first thought, when she saw the can hit the pool surface, had been one of annoyance at being soaked, not fear of injury. Her next thoughts had all been questions.
“Who are you to empty the pool?” she’d thought. “I’m just going for a swim.”
The can had certainly done that: it had emptied the pool.
“No: cans don’t talk and cans don’t understand,” reasoned Diana. “Not even ones which can empty whole swimming pools.”
Slipping into the hotel hallway from the pool exit, past the laundry rooms and into the corridor leading to the hotel reception, Diana moved crab-like, sideways as she pressed herself against the wall, to avoid being swept back to the pool area as the swelling crowd of adults rushed past her, attracted by the growing commotion.
She felt the can through the rough fabric of the pool towel. It was still there. Somehow it felt reassuring. “But a bit unnerving?” It wasn’t just its method of arrival. That could have unnerved the bravest of hearts. It was the can itself. Diana was desperate to investigate further. “Why?” She sensed not. On balance the can didn’t feel threatening to her.
Clear of the crowd, Diana dashed across the courtyard to the hotel extension where she was staying. She slammed the lift button for the third floor, hopping up and down excitedly from one foot to the other, as if this would make the lift come any faster. It came after what seemed to be an age. And it ascended so slowly.
Racing out of the lift, even as the doors slid slowly ajar, she all but collided with the luggage of an elderly couple newly arrived from Florida. They were tired and very ready for a lie-down. But at least, as they admitted to themselves, they had left the airport before the crisis that had disrupted later flights. Little did they realise that the cause of the chaos was wrapped in the pool towel of the little girl panting in front of them. But then Diana did not know then what chaos the recently disintegrated Canister and its sibling survivor, the can, had caused.
She gasped an inadequate apology and raced on. She fingered the plastic door card in her pocket as she struggled to retain control of the can in the towel. Somehow, Diana felt sure; gravity should have released the can from her grasp to hit the corridor carpet. But it did not. She entered the card into the door slot and it pulled out. No green blinking light. She tried a second time, fumbling with shaking fingers and then, on the third go, she went a little slower and the light went green. She stumbled through the void, as the bed room door swung open. The can slipped from her fingers, as she crossed the door threshold, and rolled further into the bedroom. It was as if it was putting as much distance as it could from the hotel corridor. And deftly it rolled, as if of its own accord, under the bed.
“It’s playing hide and seek,” thought Diana. “No way.” She countered that thought immediately!
Dropping onto her knees, she could now see the can under the second double bed. It had rolled some distance, past Grandma’s bags, then some dirty washing awaiting her attention and finally her favourite cardigan, which Diana had hidden under her bed, as a joke. She looked back at the room door. “Odd! How could the can have rolled so far and in such a wavy path to circumvent all those objects on the carpet?” she puzzled.
This was no ordinary can! Diana was now becoming deeply suspicious of it. On her knees by the edge of the bed, she lifted the bed covering as she looked at it with more care. “What was it?” She reached out and tried to touch it. The can moved away. “No it didn’t!” She stretched a bit further under the bed. The can didn’t move again. It appeared to be watching her. It emitted a faint glow. “Or was that from the lights outside? Had someone turned on the yellow fluorescent lights illuminating the hotel? No.”
The bedroom door closed with a soft clunk. Diana jumped and bumped her head on the under frame of the bed. “Ouch!” She backed out and rubbed the crown of her head. The can stared at her knees. She looked around at floor level to find something to hook around the can. “A coat hanger maybe? Where was one?” She looked round. She looked back at the can. It had moved closer. She was sure of it. “No? Yes!” She reached out. The can was warmer than it had been: she could sense it.
It was now…or never! She had to get hold of the can. If she didn’t, then either her parents would spot it or, more likely, her ever vigilant Grandma would. Or, with really bad luck, would the hotel’s room cleaner? She lay down on her front again and her fingers stretched so far under the bed that her shoulder ached. She could feel the can’s proximity but she could not get a grip on it. She looked around again for a coat hanger. There was one: on the chair by the desk. She looked back somewhat reproachfully at the can. “Don’t you dare move,” she thought. Ducking out from under the bed, she grasped the hanger and she returned with it to hook around the can and haul it out.
She eased herself under the bed with the hanger in her hand. She was shocked. The can was now only just under the edge of the bed: resting in the penumbra between the darkness provided by the bed frame and the daylight pouring through the window. Diana startled. “The can has moved of its own accord?”
“Time for action,” she thought.
She grabbed the can with both hands, stood up and dropped it, a bit harshly she thought, on the quilt.
“Ouch.”
Was that me? She looked around. She was alone. She blinked and did a double take. The can stared back.
“OK,” thought Diana “OK.” She looked at the television: her puzzled reflection stared back at her from the blank grey screen.
The bedside radio’s luminescent clock clicked on one further minute and the double red light flashed synchronously. The radio was quite clearly not switched on.
Diana’s eyes flashed around the room: there was nothing and no one there to say “Ouch!” but “Ouch” she had heard and “Ouch” she did not say. Or did she?
This was no ordinary can: this was the Can!
Chapter 4: Examining the can
The can clearly merited its own name and to be acknowledged with a capital “C,” Diana decided. It seemed to have some sense of being in its own right and it could communicate with her.