Colin looked at the smiling face of Saurial.
Then he looked at the equally smiling face of Raptaur.
Then he looked at the visibly smirking face, which was quite different, of Metis.
Finally, and very slowly and reluctantly, he turned to look once more at the… Thing… they'd arrived at the PRT building with.
He shuddered a little.
Dragon, beside him, was examining the… Thing… with her head tipped slightly to the side, not saying a word.
Off to the side, the Director was staring fixedly at the same sight, as were a number of PRT staff, along with Hannah, Ethan, and Missy Biron. The latter was gazing in a somewhat worrying manner at it, causing him to look askance at her, before shaking his head and going back to his own examination.
It wasn't much better on second glance.
Or fifth, or fiftieth, in his opinion…
Finally, the sound of him clearing his throat broke the silence that everyone had fallen into, rather abruptly, when the lizards had unveiled their latest… Thing.
"What..." He swallowed and tried again when his voice broke embarrassingly. "What is it?"
"A gift," Saurial replied immediately and happily. "Lisa told us what you told her about your force field bridge thingy being broken. Some Tinker Tech is really not very robust, in our view. So since we like you guys, and wanted to help out, we thought we'd come up with a good alternative."
Raptaur nodded. "We talked to the Family and got permission to make this for you. It's using some of our private techniques, ones we don't normally let other people have access to, but under the circumstances we thought it was a nice thing to do."
Colin looked at both lizards, then back to… The Thing.
He could swear it was looking back, somehow.
Which was a little bizarre for what on the face of it was only a door.
Admittedly, it was the sort of door that the words 'Dread Portal' didn't really do justice to. The sort of thing that would have made some of the more excessive medieval woodcarvers gape in horror, then switch to making chairs for a living. He'd seen pictures of doors from Gothic cathedrals that didn't radiate quite as much menace...
And the really weird part was that there was no one thing he could put his finger on as to why the… Thing… gave off that impression.
It was about fifteen feet square and by the looks of it, seemed like it probably irised open rather than operated in the more normal manner. It was covered in a spiky writing-equivalent that his suit computer suggested was a very information-dense system, most likely the written version of the Family language. It was oddly difficult to focus on, for reasons he couldn't discern. Around the edges of the frame were symbols that were even harder to look at, although they still drew the eye almost involuntarily, and when you looked straight at them, it was hard to look away again.
The more worrying part was the way that all the other symbols, the entire assembly totally defying any proper description, seemed almost to move at the edges of one's vision… Like as soon as they weren't being fully observed, they changed.
Scanning a few of them at high resolution, he quickly erased the images as his computer began throwing up unusual errors, complaining that the memory was full even though it should have had room for thousands of photos.
The worst part of the entire… Thing… was the face in the middle of it.
Oh, it wasn't a human face, that was definite. Neither was it obvious. The writing, and the symbology, and subtle changes to the texture of the surface, which was mostly in shades of dark blue verging on black, all somehow came together into a collage that at the right distance and right angle… Looked back at you.
And grinned. With teeth.
Then when you moved your head a little, it was just a mirage and vanished into the background.
How it was done, he had no idea, and in some ways the sheer artistry involved was remarkable, but in other ways the end result was the most bowel-clenchingly terrifying sight he'd ever encountered.
Of course, the three lizards were looking at it with a distinctly appreciative air, and more worryingly, so was Vista.
He checked. Yes, she was smiling. Weirdly, true, but smiling nonetheless.
Deciding that he didn't really want to know, he turned back to Saurial and her sister.
"What does this… Thing… actually do?"
"It'll let you get to and from the Rig with much less hassle than that little ferry," Saurial smiled. "And even faster than the bridge. Plus it's got a number of neat security features in it too that should help if anyone ever tries anything."
Metis chuckled in an unnerving manner, but didn't add to the conversation. Ianthe came around from behind their creation and joined her sister, a look of amusement on her scaly visage. He wondered what she'd been doing…
"You mean it's some form of transportation system?" Director Piggot asked, with a slight shake of her head as she seemed to snap out of the near-trance she'd been in for the last five minutes as she'd stared fixedly at the… Thing.
"Yep." Saurial nodded. "Exactly that. You go in this end and come out over there." She pointed at the Rig in the distance. "A bit like the WCC but only between two destinations, and there's no radiation hazard, or power supply needed, or any of that stuff. It just works."
"How?" he asked, deliberately turning his back on it. Then wishing he hadn't, as he could feel it looking at him again.
"Family Math, more or less," she replied, waving a hand a little vaguely. "Makes the space here and the space there the same."
Looking over his shoulder he quickly checked that it was still at a safe distance, since his subconscious kept telling him that it was moving closer every time he took his eyes off it. He noticed that Ethan was very, very slowly backing away from it, apparently not even realizing this. Hannah seemed frozen in place, and at least two of the troopers were doing the same thing Ethan was.
"I have to admit there is a somewhat… disconcerting… feeling surrounding it," he said delicately, trying his utmost to avoid offense. And to avoid using words such as 'terrified to the depths of my soul' because it was both unscientific and possibly too close for comfort.
"Oh, you'll get used to that, it's only a minor fringe effect from higher dimensions leaking through into normal four-space," the lizard girl responded with another wave of her hand, like it was irrelevant. Or even reasonable. "Humans sometimes react oddly to that sort of thing. The nightmares usually go away after a couple of weeks at most." She looked at Ianthe and said something in her own language, the Bioshaper responding with a few sentences, then cocked her head inquisitively before nodding. "A month, tops. Worst case."
She studied them all for a second. "None of you are allergic to tachyons, right? I'm pretty sure that's not a human problem."
"As far as I know, tachyon allergy is not an issue," he replied when he'd run the query through his mind a couple of times. "I am not sure that tachyons have even been proven to exist, being a hypothetical superluminal particle..."
"Oh, right, never mind then," Saurial smiled. "Forget I said anything. Anyway, it's easy enough to use. We've configured it already, and preauthorized you and Dragon for it. You can add other people with a simple procedure, just put your hand there where it's marked in orange, see? When it makes a sound, get the new person to put their hand there where it's marked in blue." She raised a warning finger. "Do not let them touch it before you've done so, and whatever you do don't let someone go through it if they're not authorized and the security level is set higher than three. Not if you want them back, at least."
"Security level?" he asked a little helplessly.
"It's got six levels, the indicators there along the top light up to show which it's set to." She pointed at the highest point of the… Thing. Six symbols, none of which he could really decide on a good label for, were in a line across the center. The leftmost one was currently illuminated, glowing a soft blue-green that was easily visible despite the bright day. "Level one is public access, anyone can go through. Level two is public access with authorized guide, so you can take guests, but people can't just wander back and forth if they're not meant to. Level three is authorized personnel only, anyone without authorization is bounced back. Level four is aggressively authorized personnel only."
"Which means..." Hannah asked nervously, speaking without taking her eyes off it.
"Anyone not authorized is… ejected. Quite vigorously." Raptaur answered her with a look of amusement that still seemed to imply a certain amount of danger.
"Level five… Well, let's say the ejection would take place in stages." Saurial shrugged. "At fairly high velocity. And level six… Don't use level six if you want anything to come back. Ever."
"It will also screen for weapons on guests, and remove them at level two," Raptaur interjected. "At level one it only alerts. Plus we added a detection system for..." She looked at her sister and said something, then nodded at the response. "Bad intent, is probably the best description. It'll flag people who intend to cause trouble at the lower levels and take more direct action at the higher ones."
"The security level can be set using that control on the side," Metis put in, indicating another block of symbols on the left edge of the frame. "Only by people with the correct authorization, of course. And it can also auto-select a suitable level if hostile events are detected."
"How?" Directory Piggot asked, sounding worried. "How does it know?"
Saurial smiled secretively. "Ianthe worked something out. It's smart enough to do the job, but we can't talk about it. Don't worry, it won't do anything to anyone who doesn't deserve it." She held up a book from somewhere. "We wrote a manual on all the other things it can do. Make sure you read it."
Colin was now more and more sure this was something that should probably be avoided, but they seemed so sincere in their desire to help he couldn't quite work out what to say to stop them.
"OK, so basically you just activate it by standing in front and wanting to go through," Saurial went on, moving to a position a few feet from the… Thing. There was a short pause, then the most bizarre effect he'd ever seen as the center of it opened up, as he'd suspected via an iris-like mechanism, but somehow managing to do this in at least four orthogonally opposed directions at the same time. Everyone, including him, took a step back, and most people winced.
The center of the opening was entirely blank. Not black, or any other color. Just… blank. It was like looking at the blind spot in your vision using the right trick, but across the entire damn thing. "And now you just walk through. Or drive through." Saurial stepped into it and vanished. Moments later she came back, still smiling.
"Just like that. One step and you're on the Rig, one step and you're here. Neat, isn't it?"
She moved to the side, and pointed at Ethan. "Go on, Assault, give it a try."
The man looked at her with a mix of bemusement, worry, and a slight sense of someone who didn't want to be there, but as she beckoned, finally moved forward.
He looked at the iris, which had silently closed as Saurial moved away.
It looked back.
"Just think that you want to go to the Rig," she urged.
He glanced at her, over his shoulder at Colin, who was watching with interest and confusion, then back at the… Thing.
It opened for him, causing him to take a step back, then swallow.
"Now, there may be a slight sensation of falling, and a smell of greenish purple yellow, but that's harmless," she added, causing him to look at her again. Then, with a stiffening of his shoulders, he walked forward.
Colin wasn't sure he'd have done the same, despite his liking and trust of the lizards. The… Thing… was that disconcerting.
Ethan vanished.
The iris closed.
Ten seconds later it opened again, and he came back. "There's another one on the ferry platform," he said in a slow, puzzled, and disturbed voice, looking over his shoulder. "Where did that come from? It was watching me..."
"There's only one," Raptaur assured him. "This one."
"But..." He turned to look at the distant repurposed oil rig. "I saw it. I walked through it."
"Still this one. Just over there."
Saurial grinned. "It's a little positionally uncertain, if you want to think of it like that."
"I'm not sure I want to think of it at all," one of the troopers near Colin muttered. His colleague nudged him, making him shut up.
"See?" she went on, turning to the rest of them. "Much more convenient than a boring regular force field bridge that could disappear if it broke down. And quicker too." She came over to Colin and handed him the manual, which he took somewhat absent-mindlessly while still gaping a little.
After a moment, he went and walked around it, examining it once more, then rejoined his colleagues. He had no idea how it was standing upright, since it was only about an inch thick at most and clearly top-heavy, and for that matter not actually quite touching the ground at all, but he wasn't going to say anything. If he did, he had a horrible feeling that they'd tell him how it was done and he didn't think he could handle that right now.
"Ah… Thank you, Saurial," he finally said. "It is a thoughtful gift."
She beamed at him. "We thought you'd like it. The manual tells you how to move it safely. Make sure you read pages nine hundred through one thousand and twelve, it's important. Don't let anyone insult it, it doesn't like that. Oh, yeah, set it to level six once a month and toss a few steaks in, it does like that quite a lot. And a lemon. A big one."
"A lemon?" he echoed, trying to work out what the hell she was talking about.
"A lemon," she confirmed. "Grapefruit will do at a pinch, but lemons are better. If you stroke it occasionally that would be nice, it likes that too."
As he stared at her, she turned to her relatives. "Come on, guys, let's leave them to it. We've got some other things to do, and I need to go talk to Breksta as well."
"Enjoy it," Raptaur called over her shoulder as all four lizards walked off, looking satisfied. Metis and Ianthe were talking in low voices, with an occasional glance back and a couple of smiles.
Everyone watched until they were out of sight.
Then, as one, they turned to stare at the...Thing.
He was certain it was looking at them.
Eventually he glanced at the manual he was still holding, before turning to Dragon, who hadn't said a word the entire time. "Lemons?" he said plaintively.
She shrugged.
Vista finally moved, slowly walking over to the Family created nightmare and caressing it tenderly. "You're beautiful," she whispered, just loud enough for them to hear.
The… Thing… purred quietly under her hand.
Colin tried very hard indeed not to notice. Unsuccessfully.
In the end, of course, they used it since it was far too efficient not to, but very few people ever really got used to it. Except Vista.
It did work remarkably well as a security system. When a small number of the group once known as the Teeth attempted to invade the Rig some years later, no one ever determined with any great degree of accuracy what actually happened to them. But no one ever tried again.
And they never forgot to give it some steaks and a lemon every now and then.
Just in case.