Sliding Into Antar

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Onward Into The Unknown

Chapter 26

XXVI

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Liz hugged Alex… then Isabel… one last time, then she bent down and kissed Mali and Gidi.

"I'm going to miss you guys. I'll probably be wishing we were back here before the day is over. It's lonely out there in space when you're missing something… or someone."

Alex smiled but shook his head. "You'll be on your way home. Once you're out there in space, you won't even remember us."

Liz gave Alex a scolding look, and without warning, she and Maria both gave him a playful slap from opposite sides at the same time. Alex smiled, rubbing his cheeks, "See what I mean? Already I'm being abused."

Maria scrunched up her nose playfully. "You deserved it… for saying that we would forget you."

"Well, I know two little people who aren't going to be forgetting someone real soon" Isabel said, motioning with her head toward Mali and Gidi, who where both on the floor hugging Jung-Jo, as he purred and licked them on the cheeks.

Liz laughed and nodded. "Jung-Jo has a way with kids. They all love him. Grown-ups do, too… most of them… once they get to know him. But kids… kids always love him. They just seem to be drawn to each other."

"He knows where all the petting and loving come from," Alex said with a grin, "I understand."

"Somehow, I don't think you're lacking for those things, Alex," Liz said, glancing at Isabel, who stood beside him smiling.

Alex shook his head and put his arm around Isabel. "No… you're right… I admit it."

"We're ready," Max said, sitting down in the pilot's seat. Michael was already seated in the co-pilot's seat.

Alex smiled then hugged Liz and Maria one last time. Liz hugged him back and kissed him on the cheek, then she kissed Isabel on the cheek, too, before turning back toward Max; but she stopped for a moment, as she saw Tess from this dimension standing not far away, behind Isabel. For a few seconds, no one was sure what Liz was going to say. Her face betrayed no emotion. Then… slowly… she smiled…

"Good luck, Tess… Take care of Alex and Isabel for us. I… uh… After Alex told us what happened back on earth between you and him, I was… well… but I understand why he's forgiven you now… and why he says he trusts you. I've always thought Alex was pretty smart, so…" Liz hesitated, trying to think of something else to say but then left it at that. Maria finished it for her…

"What Liz means is, we appreciate what you did bringing Alex here and making him well again and all… and if Alex trusts you, then we guess we do, too… but if anyone were to ever hurt Alex… I mean, again… not that I think anyone would or anything… I'd have to say, you know… we'd, uh… we'll be back."

Tess smiled but managed to maintain a sober look. She realized that Maria was being totally serious and had only said what she had said out of genuine concern and affection for Alex; and she didn't want to seem flippant… but for some reason, Maria's words struck her as funny. She looked at the floor for a moment then back at Maria, and nodded… "I hear you, Ah- …Maria. Don't worry. I've never been as scared in my life as I was after… after… what I did to… you know… before…" She took a deep breath, suddenly becoming unexpectedly flustered as she recalled the past…

"Call it 'scared straight' or whatever you want. I'm not the same person I was when I was younger. I've washed everything Nasedo put into my head out of me… and I don't regret it at all. I like thinking for myself. I like being someone who can be trusted… someone people actually care about. It's like… coming out of a dark sewer and living in the sunlight. I don't want to ever go back."

Maria gave Tess her best "desperado" look then slowly nodded.

"Come on, Maria," Liz said, "It'll be fine. Alex is a big boy. He can take care of himself."

Maria looked at Tess again, then, slowly, she smiled. "I was just being sure."

Tess returned the smile. "I know."

"WELL…" Alex said, smiling sheepishly, "I don't think any king of Antar has ever been better protected."

Max laughed. "You may be right. If Liz and Maria had been around in our last life, Kivar would have been in serious trouble."

Liz and Maria both nodded. Then Alex nodded, too… "Tess took care of Kivar for me."

"NEVER underestimate us," Isabel said.

Alex smiled and then chuckled. "Not me! No way!"

Liz laughed, then everyone began to laugh.

"Beam me down, Scotty," Alex said, turning to Michael, "I know you guys are anxious to get on the road… or whatever lies out there for you."

Michael pressed a button, and Alex, Isabel, Tess, Mali, and Gidi disappeared. A second later, they reappeared safely inside the palace, two hundred feet below. All five rushed to a balcony, only to find Alex's mom and dad already there. The five Antarians… and two new Antarians… looked up in time to see the New Granolith rise through the atmosphere, high in the clear Antarian sky, picking up speed then disappearing, as it headed off, once again, into the unknown.

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It had been two days, as the hours were counted, since Alex and Isabel's Antar had faded to a tiny point of light behind the New Granolith… then had disappeared like so many other stars and planets in the night.

In space, there was no real difference between night and day… Counting the hours was the only way to measure time. The crew of the New Granolith adhered to a schedule just as though they were back on Antar. During the hours that coincided with nighttime on Antar, they slept. During the "daylight" hours on Antar, they worked, ate… and sometimes played.

At the moment, Liz was watching Varec carefully scrawl cryptic scientific notations on his huge map of the interdimensional cosmos… and she looked up to find that Michael was standing beside her with Max. Both of them looked at the map, and Max seemed to study it for a moment… "So… do you think we'll find our own Antar this time, Varec?"

Varec sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "There is no way to know, Zan. I can find Antar… but I can never be certain that it will be ours… not until I have the precise interdimensional coordinates to compare to the coordinates of the other Antars we have been to."

"Is that what all these notations are," Max asked, pointing at the map.

Varec nodded. "This one here…" He indicated a small sun-spiked orb in the lower left corner of the map and hurriedly wrote in some names for Max and Michael's sake… "This orb is the earth that your younger doubles lived on… the earth where Liz was paralyzed… And this is their Antar…" He pointed at another tiny orb about three inches to the right."

"They look really close when you see them this way," Max said, "…considering that they're seven galaxies apart, I mean."

Varec nodded. "That's because the cosmos is so big by comparison… and we have to take dimensions into consideration, too."

"What is this," Max asked, pointing at another tiny orb on the map.

"That is the Antar where the children were trying to chase us away with fire in the sky… where the parents were asleep in the black bog."

"Dead," Liz corrected… "Or something that was about the same thing."

Varec nodded. "And this Antar over here is the one we just left… where Alex is the king."

"How do you know which one is which," Michael asked.

Varec smiled… "The notations tell me everything I need to know."

"Explain this one," Michael said.

Varec nodded. "Well… D2 El'r means 'Dimension 2 Eluymer… or Earth… because it is the second one we went to. Here is the longitudinal position for that planet, based on the positions of the stars in their dimension. Then this is their latitudinal position, based on the same reckoning. And this is the dimensional plane, based on a theoretical cosmic core being right out… here. It's a reference point… whether or not it turns out to be the actual center of the universe is irrelevant. I could put those equations into the ship's computers and the ship would find its way back to that planet with no problem."

Max nodded… "How do you figure out where we are interdimensionally? I understand the star positions, but how do you determine a particular dimension's position or plane or whatever?"

"Triangulation. If you look at the figures, you will see that the positions of the stars and planets follow a formula. They're triangulating as we proceed through the various dimensions. It would seem, at first glance, that they are coming closer together… or getting further apart, depending on the direction one is going… but that is only an illusion. They are not. It is similar to the effect that you get when looking at something that is far away. It looks smaller, and everything between you and the distant object is proportionally smaller in turn, so that if you were to hold both arms out and draw a line from the tip of each hand to the distant object, the lines would appear to converge at some distant point… but every object in between would be on a level with the line… if it is on the same interdimensional intersecting plane. The lines are not really coming together, though. It is a matter of perception. The same formula that will calculate that perceptual effect will also effectively calculate the positions of the different Antars. On the map, they triangulate… That allows us to locate them. But then by applying the correction formula, we can expand the universe… in a manner of speaking… so that its true dimensions are represented… and plot an accurate course directly to the next Antar, in the next dimension. We just follow the line. Does that make sense?"

Liz nodded. "Yes! It does!"

"It does?" Max and Michael both asked at the same time. "Oh, yeah… yeah, it does," Max agreed, sounding less than convincing.

"Well, it works," Michael added, "I never argue with what works."

Max nodded.

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It was the morning of the third day when the crew spotted Antar ahead, and everyone gathered on the bridge to watch, as they drew nearer. Oddly, as they approached, they noticed that there was no radio chatter on the airwaves. Usually, one could hear numerous conversations going on between pilots and the Antar Control Center and between pilots and each other… but there was nothing…

"Do you think we should go into stealth mode this time… just to be safe," Max asked, though it was more of a suggestion than a question. Michael nodded and engaged the ship's invisibility shield then activated the other stealth systems.

"It looks like our Antar," Maria said hopefully.

"So did the others," Tess reminded her, "…Well, except for the one where we were getting peppered with fire balls and meteors… but those were illusions that the kids were creating."

"Jiba," Maria said, nodding, "Your daughter's double."

Tess shrugged and smiled. It had been a harrowing experience for the crew of the New Granolith, but Tess had to admit that she was proud, in a vicarious way, of her double's daughter's amazing abilities… and of the way the children had stuck together, pooling their talents to chase away Kivar's shadow shifter assassins… and even Kivar himself.

The New Granolith glided into the atmosphere, descending over the Golden Sea and then turning inland over CoruzAntar, the capitol, as everyone watched expectantly through the huge bridge window. The palace was there. And there seemed to be traffic on the roads… though it was lighter than usual. Max and Michael brought the ship around and set it down in a field on the outskirts of the city.

In reality, "set the ship down" was a bit misleading, though not exactly inaccurate. The New Granolith never actually sat on the ground; it didn't even have landing gear. Rather, it nestled into an anti-gravity field generated beneath the ship, as though sitting on a huge invisible pillow. This field could be increased or decreased to make the ship "sit" at various altitudes, anywhere from less than an inch off the ground… theoretically… though they had never tried it… to the equivalent of about 300 feet off the ground. It could "hover," of course, at any altitude, but the anti-gravity field, which provided a positive placement lock, only worked to about 300 feet. Usually, they set the ship down somewhere between 20-40 feet off the ground. This time, Michael had set it at 40 feet.

"I'll go check the place out," Max said, "Jim and Kyle can come with me."

"Better you should stay in the ship," Michael objected, "I'll go. Jim and Kyle can come with me. If something goes wrong, you need to be on the ship where you can do something about it."

"You mean where I won't get hurt," Max retorted unhappily, knowing that he wouldn't win an argument with Michael on this. When it came to doing his job, "General Michael," as most of the troops called him, could be unmovable… totally.

Max fell back into the pilot's seat with a dejected look on his face. "Just once! Just once I'd like to over-rule him!"

Liz smiled. "Why didn't you?"

Max sighed. "Because he's right… But I don't have to like it!"

"Michael will be better protected if you're safe here where you can help him if he gets into trouble out there," Maria said.

Max looked at Maria for a moment… "Is everybody the voice of reason here but me?"

Maria grinned. "I've always been the voice of reason… You guys just have to listen more often."

Max smiled slightly and nodded. "Alright! Alright! I give up! I know when I'm fighting the wind. And you're right… I can do more from in here… But I still feel like I should be out there."

Liz smiled, understanding.

Michael took Jim and Kyle with him and transported down to the surface, then the three of them walked off toward the palace. They didn't have to walk far. As they reached the road, a hover car… a sea-blue Fan-Ji IV… approached, and the driver slowed to a stop.

"Do you guys need a ride somewhere?"

"Yeah, that'd be cool," Kyle replied in Antarian, which he, like the others, was fluent in after living on Antar for so long.

"Where 're you going," the driver of the blue Fan-Ji IV asked.

"Uh… we thought we'd go into the capitol… over near the royal palace… do some shopping or just catch the sights," Michael said.

The man nodded. "You're not from around here, are you? Where you from? You're not from the Chanesio region… are you?"

Michael shook his head. "I wouldn't know how to raise shebbles."

"I didn't think so. You don't look like shebble herders… more like the old royal class."

"Old royal class?" Kyle and Michael both asked at the same time.

"Yeah, well, you know… before 'HE' came."

"Oh… yeah… HIM," Michael said, looking at Kyle. Kyle shrugged.

"He's a strange sort, isn't he," Michael said, pretending to know who the driver meant, and at the same time fishing for any information that could be useful to them.

"I guess so," the driver replied. "I haven't met many Eluymerians. Actually, I never saw one at all… before HE came."

"Eluymerian… He's from Earth," Kyle said in a whisper. "Do you think he means Max?"

Michael shrugged. It seemed odd that the driver would refer to their king so cryptically… as HE or HIM. Antarians called Max, Zan… or the king… or his majesty… many things, but "HE" was not one of them. It set Michael's defensive alarms off. "You don't think Alex is the king here, too, do you?" he whispered.

Kyle shrugged. "Could be… I guess. But I didn't hear anyone refer to Alex as HE or HIM. They called him by name."

Michael nodded. "That's true… but we weren't there very long and didn't meet many people… outside of the palace, I mean."

"That's true," Kyle admitted.

"What are you guys talking about," the driver asked.

"Oh… just, you know… HIM," Kyle said.

"Oh." The driver nodded. "He's a bit of a mystery, isn't he?"

"How do you mean," Michael asked.

"Well, you know… I mean, he shows up here out of the blue, makes friends with Kivar… then Kivar mysteriously disappears and HE takes over as the leader. But nobody ever sees him. He never gives any speeches or holds any government meetings…"

"Maybe he doesn't speak Antarian," Kyle said… "He's from Eluymer, right?"

The driver nodded. "Yeah… that's probably it. But it's still strange. What do you think happened to Kivar… I mean, not that I miss him, you understand!"

"Of course," Kyle replied.

"That is a mystery," Michael added.

"Yes, it is," the driver said. "There's a lot of us that think HE knocked Kivar off… secretly."

"Not that that would be a bad thing, I guess," Michael said.

The driver smiled. "True! But we know so little about HIM. We don't even know his name. He could be as bad as Kivar. Nobody knows."

Michael looked at Kyle, and Kyle nodded, "That explains the 'HE' and 'HIM.' They don't know his name."

"Don't you ever call him the king… or your majesty," Michael asked, venturing out on a limb.

"Well, we don't really know if he is the king or not," the driver replied, "HE doesn't ever come out or mix with the people or communicate with them. He just stays locked up in the palace… except when the palace guards take someone to see him."

"He sends guards for people?" Michael asked, showing sudden interest. "What for?"

The driver shrugged. "Nobody knows."

"Don't the people he sends the guards for ever talk… after they've been to see HIM?" Kyle asked.

"I don't know," the driver said honestly, "I've never heard."

"Do they… come back?" Michael asked cautiously.

The driver was silent for several moments then shrugged. "I don't know. The truth is, I've never heard that they did or they didn't. It's a mystery."

"It sure is," Kyle agreed.

"Well, there's the palace right up there," the driver said, "Where do you want out?"

"Anywhere will be fine," Michael replied, "Right here's okay."

The driver stopped, and Michael and Kyle got out.

"Thanks for the ride," Michael said, "You saved us a lot of walking!"

The man smiled. "It was my pleasure. I enjoyed talking with you. I hope you find out more about HIM. But I've got to tell you, he gives me the willies. I don't know why… but he just does… and I've never even seen him."

Michael nodded and turned to Kyle, motioning with his head in the direction of the palace. Kyle understood and started to walk that way.

"Bye," Michael said, waving at their benefactor, "I've got to catch up with my friend."

"So long," the driver replied with a quick wave and a smile, as he drove off.

Michael hurried to catch up to Kyle. The palace was still a quarter of a mile away… approximately. Because of the extensive grounds that surrounded it, it was effectively isolated from the main roads, shops, and thoroughfares, even though it sat in the center of the capitol city.

Six minutes later, Michael and Kyle stood next to the palace's outer wall…

"What now, Michael?"

"One of us climbs up to that third floor balcony up there and takes a look around inside," Michael said… "I guess that'll be me."

Kyle smiled… "Yeah, that's right, you have some experience at that sort of thing, don't you? Dad told me after you 'fessed up."

Michael looked back at Kyle and cringed. "Geez, it wasn't supposed to be a public service announcement."

Kyle grinned and shook his head. "He just told me."

Michael nodded then started to scale the wall… "Well, that was the Roswell Sheriff's Office. This might be a little harder."

Kyle looked up at the third floor balcony then back at Michael. Michael was half way up the wall already. "You'll make it," he whispered confidently.

Seconds later, Michael stepped onto the small ledge that protruded beyond the balcony railing. He stayed outside the railing to avoid being seen by anyone who might be inside.

"What do you see," Kyle called up in a quiet voice. Michael shook his head… "Nothing yet." But at that moment, a light came on inside the room, and Michael ducked down again behind the outside of the railing. It was a man… about average build. It wasn't Max, though… nor was it Alex. Michael was sure of that. Whoever it was, it wasn't anyone that Michael recognized. Michael pressed closer to the railing, peering between the bars, as the man walked back and forth a couple of times across the room, seeming oblivious to anything around him, lost in thought. Then, suddenly, the man unexpectedly looked straight in Michael's direction, almost as though some alarm had gone off in his head. Michael went white, as he recognized the face looking at him; and in shock, he instinctively took a step back. He immediately knew that he had made a mistake, but it was too late.

Kyle watched in horror as Michael plunged three stories to the ground, landing hard on his back. Rushing to Michael's side, Kyle did what he could for him… which wasn't much at the moment. Blood was coming from the corner of Michael's mouth, and he appeared to be fading quickly.

"I'll get Max," Kyle said hoarsely, starting to jump up; but Michael's hand grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip and pulled him back down… "No time… Kyle… Tell Max… get everyone out of here. Don't bring Max back here. GO! LEAVE!"

"But… but…" Kyle objected, "I'll take you with me then." He started to pick Michael up.

"No time…" Michael gasped with a raspy cough, pushing Kyle away. "Get Max out of here… NOW! Leave this Antar… Don't… ever come back…" Michael's eyes closed, and Kyle looked up at the balcony… and into the face that was staring down at him… Then he ran.

End of Chapter 26

tbc…