things that exist on the various territories. I’ve seen the Hindenburg from First Earth, along with Jinx Olsen’s flying seaplane. I’ve seen the white-skinned Novans of Denduron marching in line, and underwater speeders from Cloral being chased by bloated spinney fish. Batu warriors from Zadaa have floated alongside zenzen horses from Eelong. I’ve seen immense Lifelight pyramids from Veelox and even small animals that look like cats from Second Earth. Many things I don’t recognize. I’ve seen swarms of people holding spears in the air, cheering for something or other. I’ve seen stiff-looking muscular men, running quickly, with stern faces and sharp jaws. I wouldn’t want to get in their way. I’ve even seen some clown faces, laughing maniacally. I hate clowns. Have I mentioned that?
There are thousands upon thousands more images that I won’t bother to describe, because I think you get the idea. Many I recognize, but just as many I don’t. They are ghosts from all the territories, floating together in the sea of space. That’s why it makes me uneasy. We all know that elements from the territories are not supposed to be mixed. We’ve learned that the hard way over and over. Yet here in space, or wherever it is, the images of all the territories are jumbled together. It’s not like they are interacting or anything. It’s more like I’m watching movies projected all over the place.
But seeing these images right next to one another makes me realize just how different each of the territories is. They all have their own histories and their own destinies. That can’t change. Mixing them would be like throwing random numbers into a perfect equation. The result won’t be the same. I think that’s what would happen to the territories if the cultures were mingled. None of the territories would be the same and that could be disastrous.
Which is exactly what Saint Dane wants. He’s played fast and loose with the rules about mixing elements between territories, and I’m beginning to realize why. The more he can throw a territory off balance, the easier it will be for him to send it all crashing into chaos. I believe he’s not only working to push the turning point of each territory toward disaster, but he’s helping his cause by mixing them together as well. What does that all mean to me besides making my stomach twist? Nothing, except that it’s all the more reason he must be stopped. As I was speeding through the flume toward Quillan, I couldn’t help but wonder if those images floating in space were there as a warning, or evidence that the worst had already begun and the walls between the territories were beginning to crumble.
It was the first flume trip that I didn’t enjoy.
I didn’t have time to sweat about it for long, though. I heard the jumble of sweet musical notes that always accompany me on a flume ride begin to grow louder and more complex. This familiar song signaled that I was nearing the end of my trip. I took my focus away from the images in space and looked ahead. A bright light shone at the end of the tunnel. I was about to arrive on Quillan. The time for theorizing was over. The show was about to begin.
As the cushion of light gently deposited me on my feet, every sense to get my bearings. It was dark, but that could have been because I had just been sailing along in a shower of light. I needed a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. I waited with my knees bent, ready to jump at the first sign of trouble. After only a few seconds I heard an odd noise. It sounded like chattering. I’m not sure how else to describe it. There was a series of high-pitched clicking noises coming from somewhere off to my right. They didn’t sound dangerous or aggressive. Just… odd. I strained to hear, but it stopped. Silence. All I heard was the faint echoing of the musical notes as they receded into the depths of the flume. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to step into something stupid. I waited a solid minute, but the noise didn’t come back. Whatever it was, it was gone.
Looking around, I saw nothing but black. Swell. I would have given anything for a flashlight… assuming they had flashlights on Quillan. Another minute passed, and I figured I wasn’t doing any good standing in the dark, so I took a tentative step forward and… smack! I walked right into a wall. Head first. Ouch. I took a quick step back, feeling more stupid than hurt. I reached out, more carefully this time, and eased forward until my hand touched the wall. At least I thought it was a wall. It sure felt like one. It was hard. It was flat. It stretched out to either side of me. You know… wall. The space between the opening to the flume and this wall seemed to be only a couple of feet. It was the smallest gate area yet. Of course, I knew there had to be a way out, the trick was finding it. I took a few steps back into the flume to get some perspective. I stood there for a few seconds until, slowly, I began to make out cracks in the wall. Actually, they looked more like seams. The lines were straight, crossing one another, forming a grid pattern with two-foot squares. I didn’t see this at first because I was so close to the wall and my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark. The light coming through was very faint. But it was there. I knew there had to be a way out, so I slowly scanned the wall, looking for anything that might be a doorway, or a window, or a hole. I didn’t care. I was starting to get claustrophobic.
I heard the clicking sounds again. This time to my left. I shot a look that way to see… nothing. But there was no mistake. Something was there. I had no way of knowing how far off in each direction this wall stretched. The seams disappeared off to either side. It’s not like they ended abruptly, they just kind of faded out into the dark. This wall could have gone on for miles for all I knew.
The chattering stopped. Whatever it was, was creeping me out. I wanted out of there. Out of desperation I walked up to the wall, put my hand on it, and started pushing. I reached up over my head and pushed on one of the squares that was marked off by the seam of light. It didn’t budge. I moved my hand down, pushing on the square below it. Nothing happened. My thinking was that maybe one of these squares was also a doorway of some kind and…
It didn’t take me long to find it. The fifth square pushed out. One side was on a hinge. Instantly light flooded in. I glanced back to the flume to see the big, round mouth of the rocky tunnel. I looked off to the sides to see if I could catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was doing all the clicking, but my pupils had already contracted because of the light. All I saw was pitch black. The mystery would have to wait. The door was about at my waist and just large enough for me to enter. I put one leg through, then ducked down and put my head through, and finally I dragged my other leg behind.
I was out! Great. But where was I? I turned around to see that the wall I had come through was made of cement, or stucco. Whatever it was, it was definitely man-made. That answered one of my questions. Wherever the flume was, it wasn’t in some natural cave or tunnel. It was in a building. I suppose the hinge on the door should have been a tip-off too. Duh. The face of the wall was covered with what looked like a grid of metal. That accounted for the pattern of squares I’d seen inside. It looked to me like some kind of support to keep the wall secure. It was one of the sections of this grid that was actually the gate to the flume. I was about to close the hatch behind me, when I realized I needed a way to figure out which of these squares was the gate once it was closed. They all looked the same. Of course, I needn’t have worried. They didn’t all look the same. I saw a small star burned into the upper right corner of the open panel. It was no bigger than a quarter, but it was there. It was the mark that showed this was a gate to the flume. I knew how to get back. I closed the two-foot square secret door, then quickly opened it again, just to make sure I wasn’t locking myself out. If I had to get to the flume fast, I didn’t want to have to monkey with a temperamental door. After closing it again, I put my back to the wall to get my first look at Quillan.
I found myself in a huge room that looked to be a storage facility. Wooden crates of all sizes were stacked everywhere. The ceiling was about forty feet high. The walls to either side were so far off I couldn’t tell how big the room really was. The words “airplane hangar” came to mind. I could now see that the grid on the wall behind me must have had a couple of thousand squares in it… with exactly one that led to the flume. It was a brilliant place for it, like hiding a needle in a haystack… made of needles. I just hoped I could find my way back to the haystack and find that particular needle. Light came from glowing strips in the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if they were electric lights or openings to the outside. The light they gave off wasn’t bright. The whole place was kind of gloomy. But there was enough light for me to get the overall feeling of the place. There looked to be thousands upon thousands of containers of all sizes. Some were as small as a shoe box, others were big enough to hold a car. There was no way to tell what any of them contained, other than the black series of numbers that was painted on each. From looking around I came to my first conclusion about Quillan. It wasn’t a primitive society. They had manufacturing and construction and enough advanced technology to create a huge indoor space.
There looked to be a thick coating of dust on all the crates, which told me this was a place for deep, long- term storage. Who knew how long these crates and boxes of whatever had been there? Good thing, too. Having a flume in a heavy-traffic area wasn’t a good idea. This place was ancient, and probably forgotten. The word “tomb” came to mind, which conjured a whole nother image of what might be in those containers. I had to shake that idea, quick.
The containers were arranged in such a way that there were twisting alleyways between them that led
