"Xanadu"

By RD Rivero

February 11, 2000

Chapter One

Exodus hurtled across space at an unimaginable velocity. The steel frame groaned, vibrated in a low wail that echoed undamped through the cramped, mazed interior. Louder still was the metal tapping of Bengali's footsteps made in his walk along the length of the vessel. It was night, or at least what passed for night, but he alone could not rest. His crew mates he left to sleep blissfully, soundly in ignorance in their cots. Unaware, not a muscle twitched, stirred.

He trusted the computers to do the job, to navigate but there was something, something, something that gnawed his nerves in a way he had never felt before. Anxiety twisted and knotted his stomach so much so that he could no longer hide the pain. On occasion he stopped and, doubled over, he waited until the growing ulcer ceased. That something was wrong he was sure and there was no doubt. But what?

Bengali stepped into the control room. Two leather-backed chairs were set before panels of bright monitors and displays. There were keyboards of course. Upon request the computers showed him the overtly-lighted brig where the captive, the fugitive Thunderian slumbered. Slumbered, perhaps not quite so soundly, Bengali thought, perhaps not sleep at all.

For several minutes he studied the confined man, his stomach magically at rest. He noticed rather absurdly that the green, fuzzy outfit barely covered him and was indeed nothing more than a space-aged loin cloth. Unscarred, the muscular youth had been apprehended easily from inexperience. Yet Bengali knew, or at least he told himself he knew, that he had to keep a watchful eye. No fugitive was "safe" except for a dead one but then a dead one would not bring in ten thousand dollars from Mandora and Control.

No, the fugitive did not bother him, that scantily clad, what, late teens, early twenties? Bengali could have slapped himself silly. The air was cold. He thought he should go give the man a blanket. That time the sound of his flat palm striking his cheek for sure could have awoken the others. Dazed by his own strength he staggered back to his seat. Just in time to see suddenly that several stars in the view screen clustered together very quickly in a bright light that just as quickly as before faded into blackness.

The engines heaved, the metal hull slowly folded in on itself. There were alarms. Bengali tried to piece the action together when the others entered frantically. They held on to the walls, to the floor and to the ceiling in their struggle to get to the control room. The slight vibrations had become unnaturally intense. The ship rotated in at least three different directions.

"What is it Tygra?" asked Bengali. The tiger had buckled himself to the seat beside the captain.

"A strong gravity source. A singularity."

Cheetara, who had managed to crawl her way between the men turned green and choked and let go. She fell backwards outside into the dark hall without so much as a scream from her wide-open lips.

"The ship'll be torn to pieces!"

"There must be a way. A way to stabilize ourselves."

He struggled to talk: "The lateral rotation." Tygra pressed a series of buttons that caused rockets along the sides of the ship to fire. In a deafening scream the vessel nearly split in half but fortunately the hull breach did not penetrate into the living spaces. Bengali momentarily peered into a small black-and-white monitor. The Thunderian was awake, alert but silent on one of the walls. The captive was all right, disoriented but all right.

The ship rotated though not violently anymore. The singularity pulled them closer and closer. "Go check on Cheetara. I'll try to dodge us out of here." Tygra rushed back outside. The ship revolved around its length, he was pushed by that centripetal force toward the walls.

In the darkness, for the fluorescent fixtures had fallen out and smashed, he was unable to find her. Somewhat panicked he paced further down the hall, past the galley, past the sleeping quarters. He nearly stepped on her unconscious body but tripped instead. Cheetara had managed to throw-up all over herself. Unaccustomed to such great g-forces she went numb. Tygra picked her up over his shoulders and carried her to the pod bay. In a small vessel built for one he secured her.

A green light flickered to life in a whirling, swirling aura. Bengali had run down the hall visibly shaken. "She'll be fine," Tygra said.

"I've programed a course that will sling-shoot us out of the singularity but we'll be going so fast there'll be no way to stop the vessel."

"Then we'll bail out as soon as we've cleared the area."

"What about the fugitive?"

"Survival of the fittest. Bengali. We don't have enough pods for four." Bengali agreed reluctantly. He sighed and transferred control to his own pod. The maneuver he had planned should have taken ten minutes or so, ten minutes to be safely out of danger. Still there were no known worlds anywhere in the vicinity but then no one knew about the black hole either. In that he took comfort. Then his heart ached, actually ached for the captive. He knew Tygra was right but -- he typed certain commands into the computer very discretely.

The captive had also known there would be trouble. The area his foolish captors trekked through was forbidden to his people merely because of instability: black holes and worm holes routinely popped in and out all the time. Any venture within was sure suicide. An intelligence lived there, no doubt, in control of the chaos but no, legend was all and not for him. No mechanized, ghost empire crawled under his skin. While the ship careened through the vacuum crippled he wondered if he should have paid more careful attention to the stories his elders tried to instill in him his whole life.

Up against the wall he waited patiently for his chance. At some point the engines would go off-line, power would fail and he would be free to leave the brig. If he would be free to leave the ship was another story altogether. Soon enough he would know his odds, his fate was in his hands alone.

Chapter Two

In the cold, dark room with a high ceiling the young boy lurked in the shadows cast by bright blue-green lights. Between tall towers of absolute blackness he explored silently the goings-on. Overhead, canopied, slopped down to the distant walls was the planetarial replication of the starry heavens. One great object was magnified in three dimensions above the towers that hummed and vented warm air. While at first he had heard only whispers and murmurs now in his better vantage the conversation was clear:

"Temporal shields function."

"Yes, yes, but the ship is out of control. Observe the numerous rotations."

"The ship came too close to the singularity at 1358pc, 30 by 5. Rebounded from the gravity well."

"Can the vessel be stopped?" came a third voice, abrupt and stern. The third man appeared suddenly, toga-covered in white. He moved toward the other two.

"Momentum too great. The tractor beams would tear the ship to shreds." The young boy could see the men huddled in concentration about the encroaching problem. They pointed and prodded at quite a fevered pace then:

"There is another way. Aim the tractor beam directly at the ship head-on and full-reverse the polarity."

"A repulse beam. I see the linear momentum has been reduced substantially."

"What about the axial rotation?"

The young boy stepped out of the shadows and confidently approached the three who seemed to not notice his overt presence.

"Follow that spot at the same angular velocity. We can coax the ship to slow down and cease revolving."

"Excellent. Excellent," came the third voice. A furry purple trim lined the color of his toga that draped down around his arms.

"What should we do with the ship?"

"I shall ask HIM," said the third man. He looked back at the boy. There was a pause. "Drag the vessel to Xanadu."

"Three small objects have broken away from the ship. Should they be dragged too?"

"Yes, let them safely touch down and send a repair crew immediately."

Chapter Three

The lights may have flickered but there was no sudden, no irreversible power loss. Needless to say the Thunderian captive was bitterly disappointed by the unexpected turn of events. An alarm, a flashing yellow or orange beacon followed an abhorrent sound of hissing. The air in the brig seemed thinner, colder. Or there had been a full hull breach or his captors had bailed out or both.

Believing he was in the fight of his life he crawled toward the force field, toward where he had judged an access or control panel of some sort resided, hidden beneath slabs of thick metal. Without the slightest hint of expectation he fell to the floor with a loud dud. The forces that had held him to the walls had been switched off by the wave of unseen hands. Still his stomach felt the strange sensation of rushing, running in a strange manner that was not exactly painful nor debilitating.

Timid as a frightened animal, as the Thunderian walked steadily to the force field, arm outstretched, hand ready to touch that ever omnipotent source of pain. But to his utter delight there was no barrier at all. Roaring with glee, he rummaged through the drawers and storage bins now open to him. He grabbed, he recovered his gear his foolish captors had confiscated: a heavy broadsword.

Straight to the control room he ran along the cluttered hallway, careful to not cut himself with the broken shards of glass from the light fixtures that littered the floor. Silence, as silence as space was silence the ship was deserted. Over on the view screen there was an object, he could not say it was a star for it was as dim as a glowing piece of coal if such a thing was possible. The ship was slowly, gently gliding toward a large, dusty brown planet, covered thick in glimmering clouds. The jewel he beheld was more a forbidden treasure than anything else. The fugitive pressed a few buttons and saw that there were three pods behind the vessel. He put two and two together.

Acting fast again he stormed into that dark, shadowy hall. In the pod bay he found to his horror that there was no way to leave Exodus. Then, just then, he rethought the situation and realized how fortunate he was. What ever was in control of the vessel and of the escape pods that trailed close behind, no doubt would surely have caught him if he, too, had ejected.

In that instant the Thunderian formed a masterful plan in his mind. Only when the ship landed on the planet -- which he strongly believed was deserted but with that intelligence -- would he be able to escape his enemies. Quickly he searched through the recesses of the vault, the chamber behind a series of consoles and the computer's electronic brain. He found a floor hatch, he opened the cover to reveal a whole new world beneath.

Crawling through the unstable light of the badly damaged engine room he discovered a series of ducts and ventilation passages swarming with turbulent steam. His sword clanged and banged on the sides of the passage while he managed to ease through the narrow tube. The tubes populated, circumvented the bulk of the ship and served well to hide him until he could escape undetected. Patient again he waited for the ordeal to come to an end.

Chapter Four

A dense fog of brittle sand and dust cleared suddenly in the wake of two horizontal current vortexes. Overhead, thick, curled brown clouds with yellow-green under linings amassed and blocked out any patch of starry space. In the distance the barren ground arched up ever so slightly in the heavy atmosphere. Pillaring mounds that vented, that burst with plumes of steam dotted the scenery. Strong winds swirled the silicate sand up in the air and when the currents died, the upshot particles remained suspended in ghostly forms that only slowly fell back to the ground.

Exodus and her three escape pods landed softly on the beachy surface. The terrain was ragged, mountainous, cavernous, with long winding ditches and vast basins where once boundless waters flowed. But the spot upon which they had landed was flat, quite flat, unnaturally flat. None the less they were alive.

"This is incredible," Cheetara said from within her pod. A rainbow of computer lights flashed across her warm face. "The air is breathable."

"What's its composition?"

"Nitrogen at 70 percent, oxygen at 20 percent, the rest is carbon dioxide, sulfur, nothing lethal," she continued.

"But there are three atmospheres of pressure."

"So it'll be harder to breathe," said Bengali who only then understood. "Let's get out of these pods and go check on the ship. After what Exodus went through with that black hole I want her in tiptop shape."

"Yes, sir," Tygra said uncharacteristically playfully. "Wait, before we get out we should see if there's someone or something approaching." He struggled undoing his restraining belt.

"What do you mean?" Cheetara asked.

"Well, if someone brought us down here maybe someone might come to meet us."

"I can't pick up anything," Bengali said. Nearly out of the pod, he fiddled with several knobs along the control panel within. "The better sensors are on board the vessel."

Bengali, Cheetara and Tygra carefully stepped out of the escape pods that had landed randomly, haphazardly oriented. They struggled to walk on the sand, the particles were too loose and they were afraid they might sink beneath the surface but the ground managed to hold their weight well.

There was little light, very little light even for what was judged was day. Still they saw the ship clearly. Small cracks had formed along the top and the bottom. The center had crumpled a little and that the ship was bent was undeniable. Several armor plates lingered, languished, dangled scorched and burnt, others had outright evaporated.

Up a rung ladder that only slightly protruded from the hull the three climbed into a side hatch Bengali manually opened with the turn of a rusted crank. Huddled in what was a small decompression chamber Tygra asked: "What about the fugitive? Could he have escaped the brig?"

Taken aback in utter nervousness, "Oh, him," Bengali said slyly. His stomach growled, his ulcer began to return. He turned to face several knobs that adorned the slowly opening inner door.

The fugitive Thunderian and his sword were no where to be found. There was no sign of forced exit and Bengali wondered aloud to the others of just how the captive had managed to do such a thing. The three scoured the ship for the slightest trace of the fugitive and along the way detailed the damage the ship had encountered. Tygra and Cheetara found some rather distinct scratches on the inner walls of air ducts around the engine that could have been made by the youth's broadsword.

No other physical evidence was uncovered until Bengali called the others to the control room. A close up of the sandy horizon painted the main view screen. He pointed to a series of indentations along the lower parts of the monitor that then magnified. "There's a trail that leads out from the front of the ship. The wind's done quite a number to erode the footsteps."

"He's had a good lead on us from the very moment we landed."

"Can't we see him? Where's he going?" Cheetara asked.

"No, he's too far away for the sensors to pick him up. But if he returns he'll set off the proximity alarms," Bengali said.

Tygra got up and walked to Bengali's side. "His ears popped to bleed when he jumped ship. He didn't decompress I bet. Oh, he'll return. There's nothing out there. This planet's dead." Tygra whispered.

"Dead or alive, is it day or night?" Cheetara asked. The three then huddled close around on the floor deep in thought. Meanwhile the computers continuously spewed out pages of data.

"The star is a brown dwarf, dim and small so it's no wonder we couldn't see this place until we stumbled upon it," Bengali began.

"The star doesn't produce much light but the atmosphere is good at retaining the heat, what heat's produced. The upper atmosphere is chemically different from the lower atmosphere and I, for the life of me, can't understand how," Cheetara continued.

Bengali glanced then keenly eyed several sheets of paper. He reshuffled them randomly into a pile by his leg. The other two noticed but were too enthralled, mulled over the significance several points other. They realized that alone the ship could not have stabilized and there was no way to explain how the pods had "stuck" in place, as Tygra put it, behind Exodus. Some intelligence had rescued them from shear destruction and even went so far as to guide them to safety, landed them on the planet smoothly.

"If we were rescued then placed here then we are not alone on this planet. Maybe it lives here, maybe it doesn't. I suppose in time something'll show up," Cheetara said.

"I agree. There is an intelligence but is it a good intelligence or a bad intelligence? Were we saved to be made slaves or out of benevolent concern? Until we have more information," Bengali said surrounded by faint green mist and shadows and glimmering, gleaming reflections, "we should be well alert. The fugitive's not here so we'll be safe to make the necessary repairs. Tonight we'll take turns at the watch."

Chapter Five

"It will not be expedient to show ourselves too quickly," said one of the voices that moved, glided forward softly.

"Indeed it may affect them adversely," the second voice followed.

"They seem to be hostile. Perhaps due to the stress and to the pressure of the ordeal."

"We should materialize in forms more familiar to them," spoke the third voice who remained in place, half in and out of the shadows cast by the tall, dark humming towers.

Suddenly the young boy appeared before them. "Change their local environment accordingly to let them know higher powers are at work," he said. At last the voices faced him. He paced around the figures.

"What about this one?" The screen flickered to show the Thunderian trekking through a vast, rugged wilderness. "Why did he break away from the others? Why was there no escape pod for him?"

"They called him a 'fugitive' and they seemed to be afraid of him. But he doesn't appear too dangerous to me," the boy said. "You monitor the three on the ship and I'll investigate this man myself."

"Are you sure that's safe?" the third voice asked. The other two turned suddenly toward each other and began to communicate at a feverish, frenzied, terrified pace.

The boy turned and walked to the monitor slowly. The Thunderian, or his image, suddenly paused, stood astride the edge of a deep cliff. His chest heaved in pronounced motion, in difficulty breathing the thick, heavy air. His trim, tone muscles sweated, his black hair fretted in the breezes.

"That savage doesn't belong with the other three and no doubt with good reason."

"You will watch me of course but I do not believe he will harm me." He turned to face the others who were all then suddenly silent. "I have a plan."

Chapter Six

I had stopped at the very edge of a cliff that had quite suddenly appeared out of no where. With my eyes covered, for the wind blew hard, gritty sand, I managed to eke out a good view of the surroundings. Before me was the largest, deepest canyon I had ever seen. So vast in extent the interior was masked in perpetual shadow, the bottom was covered in murky nothingness.

What was I to do? I decided to go with the current of air so that I would not have to fight against the on coming dust. The air was thick, the atmosphere was heavy, I found breathing very difficult. Panting, I felt lightheaded, even dizzy. My feet seemed to fall deeper into the sand than I had anticipated.

A hollering gale followed an unexpected flash of light. I feared lightning. I slipped backward into the wide-open mouth of the canyon. Adrenaline rushed and circulated firewater all over my body. Quickly I outstretched my arms and tried to pull my weight forward. My feet lost what footing they had, my face pressed and scrapped against the edge of the cliff. With my hands I grabbed at fistfuls of sand and stone to try to keep from falling further but I did not see how that would have been possible, everything I touched had the consistency of water. A wail or an echo shot up from the smoky trench, a fog, a mist flowing, ebbing, shooting up in tentacle arms to try to grab me, to drag me down beneath.

A coldness touched my hands and I looked up. On the edge of the cliff was a boy not much younger than me. His eyes black, dim and small, his hair shaved trim. While he held onto me with one hand he held a metal chain with the other and in one tacit movement he slacked the chain down to me. I grabbed it, pulled it to make sure it was tight and strong. Without much strain I managed to free myself from the throws of death.

The boy was attentive. He held onto my arm while I climbed to safety and while I caught my breath he carefully supported me in the midst of the strong breezes. I dropped the chain on the ground and stood up finally. I am not sure exactly what he did but he managed the chain into a circular pile by his legs -- for the life of me I do not know what it was attached to -- and the whole chain disappeared, lost beneath the encroaching sands.

The boy sat in place, he did not utter a word. I paced around him, studied him. A green cloak covered him, fitted tightly around his waist by a dull leather belt. His feet were covered by sandals. Overall something was not right. I could not believe he could live in such a hostile environment. Our eyes met and he stared deep into mine in a manner I was uncomfortable with but which he seemed to have no problem with. He blinked rarely. I saw sadness, long bitter sadness but I was not sure why.

I lifted him up and stood him in front of me. I was at least a foot taller than him. With my hands on shoulders I hugged him gently, I hoped it would not frighten him. He took some time to respond and when he did he followed suit, wrapped his arms around my back under my shoulders. He was not used to people or to being around people which only bothered me more. I thanked him though clearly we did not share the same language.

With one hand I reached out then circled back and pointed at me. "Grune," I said, "I, Grune." I tapped my chest with my forefinger. He followed the motions with his eyes. I was unsure if he had even nodded at least to show some understanding. He reached out with his hand -- I thought he had gotten my intent -- but instead lay his palm flat up against my chest where I had eluded to, over my heart. His hands were unusually cold. For some reason I felt the boy had never met a living soul or else that he might have known someone a long, lost time ago. For a few moments he was intrigued by nothing more than the beating of my heart. Then he felt his own. He smiled in agreement.

He looked to his left and no doubt saw something, something, something only he could understand. Immediately he pointed to the horizon. All I saw was a creeping blackness I did not recognize but then I realized that the ground arched up at the very distance because the air was so thick. We could see night as it approached before the sky over us darkened. Then I understood the danger.

I followed the boy while he led the path. His home was around the area I wondered or hoped anyway. Not as accustomed to the dense air as he I stopped often to catch my breath. He stood by me, he pulled my hair back so it would not be in my face while I nearly doubled over in exhaustion. He wondered. He had no hair of his own except eye brows, eye lashes, someone or something must shave him regularly. My mane fascinated him: he studied how it curled in his fingers, he pulled it, he tugged it -- the pain did not make me flinch -- he ran his hands all throughout my scalp. Rather than make a fuss I took his hands in mine and tried to warm them. No matter, he was perpetually cold. Just to make sure there was something there I put my hand over his heart. A beat but his whole body was cold. He smiled, spoke rather quickly and broke away from me.

I had to breathe so hard so fast I broke a sweat over nothing. We walked maybe a mile. Seemed like a mile to me. Eventually we came across a clearing where there appeared from the crusted eons of sand and dust brick and carved stone designs. I recognized an archaic construction of an age long past. The circular pit was twenty five feet around and set off from the rest of the desert by a curiously preserved rim. Toward the back, on the other side was the edifice of a flatish, curvy home or house with windows and doors clearly visible though there was only darkness within.

The boy walked me toward the center of the ring where there was a pile of rocks and rotted materials. He displaced two or three stones and a small fire came into view. The flames grew larger and warmer and seemed not to consume any of the objects the fire flickered on. Perhaps a gas fed fire, perhaps my eyes played tricks on me. Irregardless it was a fire and none too soon for night was on.

He snuggled up next to me on my lap. I lay my heavy weapon down before us for it was in the way and it was uncomfortable. To my astonishment the boy managed to pick up the broadsword with one hand. He pointed and began to feel the weight. Worried someone might come out hurt, while we both stood, I put my hands firmly over his and I moved the sword around in the ways that I remembered when I was about his age, when I studied the instrument the for the first time. The boy was a quick study but deep in me I felt better to limit his knowledge of such things. We laughed together for the first time. I secured the weapon not around my waist but over his shoulders. He walked with a heavy burden.

Knelt down before him once again I tried to communicate. "I, Grune," and other such combinations that worked little. I looked away but for a moment and saw that there were lights within the house at the far end of the circle. Slowly I arose and trekked closer. The boy followed but oddly enough remained only close behind me. At first I thought there was something wrong but upon inspection I found nothing lurked within.

The lights came from a strange lamp that rested upon a table. Also on the table were two plates each covered by a bell-shaped metal objects. The boy thrust open the front door and we entered. Only the kitchen was actually lit but I found no stove, no oven, no refrigerator, no other way into or out of the small house. The boy uncovered the plates and revealed steaming hot food. I distinctly recognized chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, peas, carrots, apples.

The glasses of water, when drunk fully, magically refilled themselves. The boy was comfortable and seemed to know it was supposed to happen for he gave his glass not a second look. Part of the design. All the while we ate I conversed, I talked to him about my life, my warrior masters, my training at the academy, my service to my clan, my stint with the Thundercats, my rebellion right up to the moment of my capture. The boy was patiently silent and listed attentively to every word I spoke even though he could not understand them. That made me very happy.

When dinner was consumed fully he re-covered the pates and dimmed the lights until only the fire outside lit our view. The plates vanished, disappeared. The house remained warm. There was a hum too.

The boy led me to the adjacent room where there were all sorts of windows. We looked out and he showed me the far away distance where an electrical storm brew. Lightning bolts smeared through the dense, dusty air in a way that sent chills of horror through my body. He held me close though I do not believe he was afraid.

Up in the sky the night of space was covered in clouds that never let up. Then when the storm passed night was pitch black absolute. Even the fire outside could not break through the darkness. I was tired and yawned and for the first time I realized that the air was no longer heavy. I breathed normally. I laughed ecstatic.

The boy lead me not upstairs where the roof was patched if not missing altogether but downstairs where the humming was the loudest. He took with us the lantern. Beneath was a bedroom with one large bed covered in thick, fluffy sheets. What I thought was a closet was in reality a bathroom. We stripped and I was amazed again by how warm it was. In the shower I shut the door behind us and though the wind howled above us we were in a world all to ourselves. Indeed it seemed my ordeal with those three was a whole lifetime past. I cleansed myself with the steady down dripping from the open pipe that was the shower head. If the boy had managed to live on such a dead and remote planet for so long then perhaps if I wanted to survive too I had best make his customs mine own.

I lay the weapon on the ground next to the mattress. Thankfully the bed was soft and the blankets made for a warm comfortable night. The boy was still cold and I tried to warm him. We were up close side by side.

"I, Grune," I said but he was already asleep.

Chapter Seven

Outside Exodus Bengali paced in the quickening sand pondering meaning. With his hands and with his arms around behind him he stood in open defiance to the coldness of oncoming night. Somewhere the solar star that slowly sank beneath the horizon sent long, oblong, distorted shadows across the desert face. Silently, with his head down, eyes down on the ground his mind roamed.

Nothing could stop the storm's approach. A strange, a sudden wind blew, ruffled the wild, the red hair of his superannuated mane. He turned to see massive gray, black clouds form and spread quickly through the distant silhouettes of mountains. The clouds rolled as an invading, as a menacing tidal fog.

Still he paced several yards from the vessel. The vessel. Back to the ship. The lights within he could see clearly through the windows of the control room. There was a scream and a moan and he turned away. The clouds continued the unnatural advance albeit somewhat slower than before.

What frightened him was the way the ground reacted. The gradual, upward inching of the horizon faded in the lower pressure of the storm. But that was not all that changed. Bengali saw to his horror that the land quivered, wavered though it breathed, though it swayed in the course of violent tremors, though it vibrated in the throws of massive spasms. Details and deviations on the sand patterns were erased in the midst of the shadows, of the formless, nothingness that slowly engulfed the world around him.

The moaning.

The moaning came from that void though the very orb itself echoed in pain. Then he turned and headed back to the ship to continue his nocturnal vigil closer to safety. The moaning came again, louder.

He began a new trek around the vessel. His mind no longer consumed by nothingness he thought about the captive Thunderian. Perhaps he should have treated the fugitive better. Perhaps he should have spent more time with the captive in the brig. "And not have ventured right into the control room the way I did. As if that would have changed anything, as if we would have survived had I done that instead," he said to himself. Still the youth -- he let his mind wander, wander, wander. The moaning. Did someone speak? Did someone scream? Did someone yell?

He continued to walk.

Perhaps he should have refused Tygra's suggestion that the captive should not have been put in a pod, that indeed the captive should not have been left in the brig all alone. How he must have suffered, Bengali wondered openly, how afraid he must have been. Then again, then for the first time he stopped. Half way around the ship, in total darkness the world was a painting, an ethereal painting more surreal than actual, physical reality. Lights from the ship bounced off some nearby peaks not mountains, not hills, just peaks. Tall, thin, arthritic fingers that pointed up in the air, swayed, throbbed gently in the breeze. By the way the light spread, by the way the light danced over the surface it could have only been a painting.

A painting.

The Thunderian was out there for two days already. The Thunderian was out there lurking, surviving, he hoped. The Thunderian. He could not, no, a piece of him could not accept anything else. He would return somehow or he would be found soon. Somehow the ship would be fixed. Somehow the ordeal would all be over. Or? So many things would have to happen by the random chance of miracles.

Lightning and thunder. Lightning and thunder. Thunder. The storm was on. But he had made it to the side door in time. The moaning had ceased.

Bengali turned his face for a moment and saw Cheetara standing in the way of the open door basked in bright yellow light motionless. Tygra was already at the end of the rung ladder that led down to the ground. His hands trembled, his body shook while he walked groggily to Bengali. The tiger tried to smile but was too tired.

"Bengali. The storm's getting closer."

"Much closer. Very closer."

"Lightning."

Bengali smiled, reached out to grab Tygra's shoulders. He looked spent and oddly disheveled. His clothes apparently he had put on in a bit of a hurry. Up in the doorway Cheetara yawned and made a familiar sound both men heard clearly.

"A second storm on the second day. Can the ship handle more lighting blasts?"

"Yes, but we'll have to get in now. It's too dangerous out here. Don't worry about the fugitive."

Bengali looked down on him suddenly aware of a strong musky odor the turbulent currents had hid well. "No?"

"Ten thousand dollars is not a lot of money. Not enough money for all this."

"The money's not what I'm after."

"Then what?"

Bengali looked at him square and let his eyes speak. He said nothing himself but Tygra got the message in a moment of passing vigor. The tiger did not have the tongue to speak, so he nodded in understanding. Bengali shook his head in surprised disbelief.

"We might be able to send a distress call. We might be able to repair some of the hull damage. But the engine is another story."

Tygra led Bengali back to the ship, to the rung ladder by the arm. The captain ascended first, he thought Tygra would have preferred it that way also. Up on the very top Cheetara was gone, no where to be seen. Bengali helped Tygra climb on board.

"Permission to come aboard, Captain?" the tiger spoke exhausted. The two smiled. Bengali even managed a chuckle.

"What about the engine?"

"Today we found that several vital parts had burned out during our escape from the singularity. We also don't have much fuel left. There's plenty of electricity but the engine doesn't run on electricity."

The outer door swung down softly.

"The youth will return. It's a harsh environment out there and he knows that if he's smart. Give him a few more days, without water, he'll return."

Bengali wanted to say something but rather bit his tongue. He simply let the matter die. Tygra was right. The fugitive would have to return but would he be hostile? Or cooperative?

In the living quarters Tygra sipped fresh and hot coffee while Cheetara poured her attention over several star charts and stellar maps of the area. By her growls and murmurs all knew the frustrations of her efforts. Having nothing to do Bengali began to clean up the mess that had formed in the room. He began with the shards of glass since he reasoned they were the most dangerous. Then he worked on the furniture that had severely displaced itself during the ordeal. Finally there was nothing left but oddball litter, a wild assortment of papers, books, pens, CD's and other miscellania.

All the while Tygra spoke sporadically. Cheetara growled some more, louder, evidentially the men -- or perhaps just one man in particular -- was too loud, too noisy for she was not in that sort of mood. Something about the storms every night since their arrival had got her riled up. Tygra, despite his apparent overdose of caffeine, had fallen soundly asleep in the chair he sat on. Bengali placed him on one of the beds he had cleared earlier.

Himself his work done he managed the courage to walk past Cheetara. She was certainly insupportable when in one of her moods. The two passed within inches without addressing one another. She was scanning one of the last, one of the most obscure books. He felt better and safer in the control room so off he went.

Chapter Eight

The dark, cold room. Empty but for three tall towers at the center. Humming. Vibrating. The metal columns were cooled by internal fans that sent mild currents through the air. A smoky haze evolved from the distant walls, from the shadowy walls. The mist poured out of the room through a bright opening in the back.

A glowing screen came to life from a pinpoint of light nearer the front. After a few bursts and flashes the bluish aura faded into a view of Exodus. The added brightness stood out in paradoxical contrast to the blackness of the room, seen from the thin, narrow hall.

No. Not a hall.

"The engine is inferior and inefficient in design," said one voice. The sound echoed through what in reality was a ventilation tunnel, one wider than usual since it also doubled for emergency access. At the other end the open hole emitted mere traces of smoky, dusty mist. Upon the floor of the main passage was the grid iron, dust covered, rust covered, still rested in place after millennia from its taking off.

"Unfortunately," a voice concluded, "it has taken the better part of yesterday to locate the plans of a similar model."

"Now we have to determine the extent of internal damaged before we can synthesize the proper replacement parts that best conform to the original."

Something about the conversation faded into a sonority of droneness. Little more than murmurs, the white noise receded further into the background of the tall corridor. The walls were a rubbery metal dense and dull. Square light receptacles dotted the walls, the dead fluorescence kept the scene in a continuos state of dreary melancholy.

The third voice proclaimed: "For that reason I propose the following solution. Based on their physiology we can produce cybernetic automatons that mimic their forms. To further support the illusion --" above the corridor a vast network of tunnels crisscrossed in gradually more complex patterns from one level to the next until the regular framework of the obelisk replaced the oblivion of the shadowy world beneath the surface.

But then the screen suddenly changed to a view of the boy and Grune in a cavern. The boy was asleep, huddled in a thick blanket. The Thunderian practiced his swordsmanship by himself in the foreground. His shinny blade swished through the air.

"We should not have let HIM alone with the savage. Progress here is not as well as developed."

Some moments passed before one of the voices said: "What we have always feared might come true. There are some things we cannot grant HIM no matter how great the desire."

"No. There is a way."

"But."

"But it is forbidden."

"But it can be done if this one time only. We shall have a better understanding of what to do as the problem further develops. Until then we must continue the work of this drama albeit more cautious. Prepare the mind probes."

Chapter Nine

Shadow.

Darkness.

"Tygra! No! No! Oh my god! What the hell is that? What the hell is that?" the heightened female voice broke, degenerated into a plethora of frantic screaming, yelling.

Something ran loudly with a gait that echoed, reverberated through the ship within. "I'm right here. Where are you? Where are you Cheetara?" a stern male voice asked in unaccustomed fear. "Why can't I see you? Why is it so pitch black here?"

"It's got me! It's got my leg! Oh my god! No! No! Tygra!"

"I'm right here!"

There was a great and sudden crush then a sloppy slurp. Objects fell down and across the floor in shattered pieces. Striking, scuffling, screaming, shouting, the sounds of the struggle were undeniable. At last there was one feeble "Bengali, help," but so weak, so weak he could not tell if either he or someone else spoke the words. A chorus of "Bengali, help" followed only to fade into silence in vain impotence. The captain fell silent into the commander's chair paralyzed by terror. Another crush, another slurp, syrupy slurp.

He had heard the cries for help and did nothing. The pain in his stomach returned to prick and sting his conscience. What they must have suffered, he wondered, what terrors they must have felt, but no, worse.

Footsteps. Heavy. Dull. The intruder unseen walked mechanically, purposefully into the control room as though it honed fear, as though it knew where to look for its next meal. Bengali sank deeper into the chair. He wanted to meld with it, he wanted to become one with it.

The ulcerous pain alleviated for the moment. He tried to pretend sleep, he tried to do many things but at the end he could no longer deny that the intruder was in the control room, right under the open doorway. Peeking through shut eyelids Bengali saw from reflections off the black-and-white monitors that indeed there was a shadowy form waving in the midst of an unknown breeze, standing no more than inches away. The control room filled in a thin haze that clung by static to the walls, floor and ceiling that materialized from nothing.

"Speak! Speak! Speak!" The voice commanded but Bengali refused to comply. "Speak! Speak!" Harder and harder still came resistance. His jaw tightened though he was about to be jabbed in the chin. He felt spasms run up and down the length of his face. His mouth wanted to open but he clenched his teeth together so forcibly he was afraid the enamel would shatter. "Speak!"

"All right," Bengali said. The pain in his stomach resumed with vehement vengeance.

"Reveal the inmost contents of you mind."

"Never! Kill me and be done!"

The intruder approached and for the first time Bengali could see its face -- or at least its head. The armored exterior was an oily black and was covered with shoots of sharp, erect hairs. Compound eyes bulged out of the skull. Each little eye reflected his own trembling image. A curled insectan proboscis was furled between mandibles that glistened, dripped with blood and torn flash. The voice came from elsewhere. Two of its six legs rubbed together under its clear, brown wings:

"Reveal!"

Bengali screamed and yelled unrestrained not merely by the form of the creature, not merely from the intent of the creature, not merely from the cramped pain in his stomach but for that something else --

"Reveal!"

"The fugitive!"

The creaturous intruder oozed closer. Blood, warm and fresh dripped dropped onto his quivering lap.

"Reveal!"

"All right! I can't deny my feelings! I can't deny my feelings for the --" The creature extended its proboscis to Bengali's chest. He writhed and he screamed when he felt the thing touch his skin. Then he shook -- in Tygra's arms.

Chapter Ten

"Wake up! Wake up!" The tiger said. "You're only dreaming!"

"Thunderian! The Thunderian!" Bengali's eyes opened wide. He looked around the control room in a stunned daze. Cheetara stood by the door. Tygra dotted over him. Outside there was daylight. The storm had passed.

"Stay silent. I hear them coming closer," said Cheetara.

"What?" Bengali asked, more terrified of what he might have exposed aloud in his nightmare for all to hear than what lurked unseen in the recesses of Exodus.

She waved the men to silence and quickly maneuvered the thin metal door of the control room shut. Carefully she had turned the handle so to not make as much as a click. Tygra stepped back into the console gaze fixed upon the door. Cheetara, too, stepped back in utter horror that even Bengali understood. Arisen from the swiveling chair he heard clearly the breathing and the growling that came from behind the locked door.

On tiptoe the three crept in the light of morning to a crevice behind the monitors under the windows. In that cramped darkness each would find some solace. Until they heard a second set of footsteps and yet a third characteristic grumble. The animals, for they could only have been animas, sniffed around the door. Then after what was an eternity the three mysterious intruders retreated toward the interior of the vessel.

Cowering in the corner the timid crewmen only gradually inched forward silently, silently to not alert the intruders of their intentions. Free from behind the console after minutes of agonizing lurching the three stood in the control room with fragments of renewed confidence. Remembering where he was Bengali tried to turn on one of the monitors to see just what had befallen Exodus but to his belated dread the controls would not respond.

"No, power, no, nothing works," said Cheetara.

"The power was knocked out from outside," Tygra continued.

"To evade the sensors. Well that rescue party we waited for I guess has arrived."

"But why like this? Why scare us like this? There was no warning at all, there was no communication at all. In a puff of smoke those things showed up," said Cheetara.

"Maybe they don't know any better."

"Look!" Tygra pointed to a window that only then he noticed clearly. Outside there was not only daylight but bright blue sky and white rolling clouds swiftly evolving. The three looked down to see that the vessel seemed to float, seemed to hover from a platform over the ground that had also transformed. Once brittle, sterile sand had faded into fertile, black dirt. Grassy plains fringed with flowered plants, trees covered in shiny wet moss, vines and ivies clung to the tree tops in an unreal webbed canopy that glistened in the morning dew. Far ahead the forestry continued without end until the horizon where the swaying greenery mixed and blended completely into an enveloping fog that covered the high mountains beyond.

"What sort of power can do this?"

"Why that's it, that's it all along," exclaimed Cheetara, "they are making contact with what would be familiar to us."

"Or what they think would be familiar to us," Tygra added.

"Then what we've heard roaming through the vessel --"

"There's only one way to find out."

Behind the door Exodus's interior wound out in darkness. Though they were fairly certain the intruders meant no harm the intruders were still unseen, unknown, formless. They proceeded into the shadowy hall careful not to trip up or accidentally drop down something that would give away their cover. Past the living quarters dark and empty, so silent, so silent. At the back Tygra made sure to close the doors all the doors the three walked by. He kicked himself for not having done so earlier when he and Cheetara had fled in terror, in the throws of terror, when hey were alarmed from sleep by the growls of the advanced intruders.

At last the three entered the pod bay.

The only part of Exodus that was lit -- by the outside. The main hanger was wide open. In the glory of the rising morning light to their astonishment the three escape pods were back in place, none the worse for wear. A power was at work, they realized, for even all together they could not have accomplished such a feat.

Cautiously Bengali walked over to the open, fresh air, scented air. A black iron ramp looped and circled down from the back of the vessel to the ground beneath. Undeniably clear, the ship was on an immense, taylor-fitted construction, a platform that, like the snippet of nature around them, had arisen from nothingness.

From spiraling shades of gray the outline of a moving, swaggering creature formed. Four legged, compact body, its head pointed toward the floor and swayed gently from side to side. Its paws made somewhat gentle noises while it approached forward from the interior of the vessel, from the engine room. The creature stepped out from the shadows into full view.

A gasp. A cheetah of all things a cheetah walked right past them with a mangled, char-covered chunk of engine in its jaws. Loose, colored wires hung off the sides precisely cut. It stepped onto the ramp and carefully followed the course without giving so much as a second look. The three were stunned.

Cheetara looked as through she had stopped breathing. Outside there was a soft noise made when the machinery the cheetah carried dropped onto a pile of other broken implements. Before Bengali could utter a word he saw that from the same place the cheetah had come from another creature emerged. A small white tiger.

Bengali wanted to laugh at the ridiculous, preposterous malformation the power, the intelligence had made of him. Still he held his tongue. The white tiger did nothing, said nothing, held nothing. It waited patiently until the cheetah returned. Then the two cats disappeared back into the oblivion of the engine room.

The three were instinctively drawn to the outside though a soft melody called their attention. For some reason without thought, without suggestion of their own they walked down the metal, spiral ramp, traversed through the crisscrossed braces of the platform down to the soggy turf. A path of smooth rocks and shale invited them to follow. Meanwhile the white tiger passed them, dragged a rather heavy and obtuse portion of the drive shaft. They followed the beast to an open field where the path ended and the pile of scrap technology began.

In a very short amount of time the creatures had managed to collect almost all of the broken engine parts. The white tiger put down his load and headed back to the ship promptly. A red tiger then came out of nowhere. With its paws it moved the gear into a smaller sub pile. In that way the various multifaceted parts and pieces of equipment were organized by function.

"Now I have seen everything," Tygra said.

The red tiger tactfully approached the three. It eyed them one by one until it stopped before Cheetara. She began to sway back and forth, her arms around her forehead, she seemed ready to swoon but stopped short. Her eyes glowed green, blue green, like the tiger's. The others started to back away, Tygra more horrified than afraid.

"There is nothing to fear," she said in a voice that was not her own, too stern, too forceful, "we are preparing," she shook her head, "fixing your ship. You are not to return to it until we have finished. Until then you may use and enjoy the paradise we have created. You will find much in it to content your spirits but however we must warn you not to venture beyond the cloudy haze."

Her eyes returned to normal and she promptly closed them. Disoriented, her head fell forward, her body fell backwards but Tygra was there to catch her. Her limp frame in his arms he helped her to the ground where she gradually returned to normal. The creatures meanwhile continued their work undaunted.

"Who? Who are you?" Bengali asked the roaming red tiger.

Cheetara spoke and the men turned to hear: "They exist. That's all. That's all."

"They are the masters of this planet without doubt. Our indebted benefactors." Bengali thought Tygra was about to weep. He turned away to the trees.

"Water runs in the distance," Cheetara said with a smile.

Tygra's hopes returned full-fledged.

"Let's go," she said, "explore."

The two giggled and pranced like school children into the forests though cast under a spell. Dejected, alone, Bengali followed the pair discretely, inconspicuously.

Surreal. Surreal. Serene. Surreal. Leafy greens with just enough, with just the right amount of dew and moisture. Stems and branches quivered gently in the warm breeze to sprinkle misty waters upon the earth below. Weeping trees spread stringy foliage intermingled with white and yellow flowers, petals of blue and violet and other buds unopened spread intoxication canopy-like around bushes and the underbrush brown, dark green in color. Off in the distance, past boulders and slopped land forms trickled a soft sweet waterfall. A sparking lake collected the running waters. Bengali heard splashing and laughing, moaning and groaning. Then silence. Then silence. Tranquil silence. Exhausted silence. Rested silence.

Bengali stepped out from behind the tree trunks to catch his breath. Tired. He saw Tygra's and Cheetara's clothes over and around bushes that fringed the lake exactly where they had dropped them. He heard a soft, fluid sound of water gilding. He saw more and turned away careful not to be seen, at once angered at once saddened. There was nothing more, there was no need for more.

Chapter Eleven

When morning came the cavern flooded in an aura of orange light. I could see nothing of the world outside the entrance beyond the yellow clouds in the sky above. There was a slight and unexpected chill in the air. The planet, for all its autumnal loneliness, was not overtly cold, but then my experience was insignificant, the seasons could have changed.

As I undid my sleeping bag, as I approached a gentle stream within the cave I felt overwhelmed by a strange pain in my temples. The pain was deep, the pain was a torturous headache. I had felt similar effects before, in my first days in space, when my head only gradually became used to the vast difference of pressure. But never anything like that, never anything like that morning.

I fell to my knees, I nearly splashed into the waters but fortunately I was able to break my fall. Screamed, yelled, I could not remember. Suddenly a dream or fragments of a dream returned to me. Little snippets of random visions had fermented in my mind since I had awoken but only then at that moment did the apparent nonsense have the semblance of meaning.

In a faint, gray mist I was held tight to a chair. I looked down at my arms, to my legs, the chair had literally wrapped and worpped around me, conformed to my anatomy so completely I feared I had melded or merged with it. I was then aware of a similar band across my neck, my chest under my arms. I was immovable, I was fixed in place.

Cold. Coldness. Painful coldness. I shivered though firmly placed in the chair. A helmet-shaped object swooshed down from an incredibly tall and darkened ceiling. The helmet also melded precisely to the last feature of my head. For a few moments I could not breathe. I panicked but then a respiration apparatus of some sort formed around my lips and my nose. The air I inhaled evolved with a vaporous moisture. The rest of the dream then faded under the eroding blow of memory.

I turned face up on the rocky, sandy floor of the cavern. From behind, the morning daylight bounced around the waves of the rippled surface, of the stream that reflected brilliantly on the high roof of the chamber. The roof. I had not noticed the roof before until then. Dome in shape, even and smooth. Around the fringes an outcrop of rock several feet wide formed the sloped cave walls under them. There was something unusually unnatural about the architecture but there was still an element of undeniable nature, from the random marble patterns to the rough textures of the stones. Aged, withered, crumbling, crumbling. Around the ground were mounds and pillars of sand millennia old.

Cold hands lifted me and I sat up. The boy seated right beside me. His bare feet submerged in the clear waters. I was warm. The air was warm. Calm. I no longer shivered.

"Grune, Grune," he said, head tilted. He sounded, he sounded in such a tone that for the moment I overlooked the obvious. "Are you all right?"

I nodded softly and then I came to: "You can speak? How? How can this be?"

"Because I can."

"No. No."

"You are confused and I understand. I may have taken too long to learn your language. Soon you will know and learn all but not so fast, not too much at once. Are you all right?" He looked me over attentively.

"I have a head ache. My eyes feel though they'll bulge out of their sockets."

The boy put his hands around my head and rubbed my throbbing skin in soft, gentle circles. Fluid sensations followed. Then as quickly as the pain appeared the pain ceased.

"Now you are all right."

"Who are you? What are you?"

"Hard. I had not expected that. I know very little about myself. I named myself Kit what I was taught how to read and write. I am not from this planet. No. I was not born on Xanadu."

"Xanadu?"

"That's the name of this planet. A ship crashed here years ago and only I survived. I may have been one or less at the time. I was and am still cared for by my masters."

"You mean there are others?"

"Not like us. For the longest time I have been here alone, living alone. My masters are computers, cybernetic organisms with only limited physical forms. Do you know that? Do you know I have never felt the warmth --"

Yes I had known that all along. I hugged him and rocked him ever so slightly back and forth. I could not keep from crying. In a thousand years I could not know what deep, intimate horrors he must have felt. His whole life spent isolated in the throws of a mechanical, technical world. Alone. Alone. So utterly alone. Was there any wonder he craved my attention so?

"I don't complain. My masters are very good to me, they deny me nothing and they need me. The original inhabitants of this planet once had an empire that covered the galaxy billions of years before there were any other sentient beings. But they died out long ago, long ago. My masters were designed to look like them but they were too horrid so they took on forms they believed were more familiar to me, so not to disturb me." The machines have been taking care of the planet, the remnants of that ancient superpower. But the machines lacked creativity and could not think in terms outside the logical, beyond the rational.

I was quiet for sometime contemplating the situation. Wanting things to return to normal I asked Kit if he would like a dip in the lake. We stripped and we dived into some of the deeper parts of the water. He told me that Xanadu had never really been a paradise. The first challenge of its past inhabitants was to overcome the harsh environment. The caverns held the only natural patches of water left complete with very primitive organisms.

I said the water was cold, he said it was not a problem. Almost instantly the lake heated no more than a few degrees above my body temperature. I smiled, I laughed, refreshed. We returned to the camp naked, we let the warm air currents dry us. We found a campfire burning and more miraculous plates and glasses.

"The food is replicated. All the food is replicated here and as far as we are concerned the supply is unlimited."

After the steaming breakfast was eaten we donned on our clothes. I asked if he would like to carry my broadsword. He most adamantly agreed. Kit felt the hilt of my sword like he knew what he meant. The blankets and mattresses we had used no more than an hour ago were gone, the dinnerware had also disappeared. With nothing else to carry we walked, rather he led me deeper through the labyrinthal cavern. His masters allowed him to explore Xanadu all he wanted, they would not interfere unless his life was in danger.

I noticed that the ceiling had dropped to a more normal height the further inward we trekked. He noticed my curiosity.

"These masters of yours, can they see us?"

"They watch over me."

"That doesn't disturb you? Don't you have privacy?"

"Of course I have privacy when I'm home but they worry about me."

When the ambient light became nonexistent the boy stopped us. He spread his hands across the slippery, sedimentary rocks and pulled out two small, hand held lanterns. I took mine and instinctively pointed up at the ceiling. Above us the cavern roof was inundated by stalagmites. There were bulbous spongeal objects that hugged around the base of the structures.

Light blue or green in color. There were thin finger-like ornaments, yellow with pools of bluish water around them. The wide chamber expanded further out beyond our point where there seemed to be another wall, another set of passages.

Kit showed me to a wall in particular that had rocks before it, like a set of makeshift stairs, that lead to a darkened orifice. We shown our lights into it, the slopping passage wound down into the interior of the planet. The yellowish, brownish walls were covered in thin films of streaming moisture.

"Don't worry, Grune, the walls are just cold so they collect moisture."

I entered the passage first and helped him up. Not too soon for my taste because just as we were roaming through the narrow corridor I heard a strange click from behind. I know he heard it too but he did not respond.

"What kind of creatures live here?"

"There are twenty species of invertebrates. Blind mostly. They like the cold, dry rocks. The rest are algae and fungi. But we won't see those yet. They eat the rocks they live in."

"You mean they carved these caverns?"

"Oh, no, they are much too slow. Xanadu was once covered in water, that's why the surface is so sandy and, well, weird. That's why the cities are down below where the environment was dry and airy." We talked all the while we wandered through the darkness and I admit he knew that would comfort me.

Then he told me about Exodus: "We're having a hard time understanding them," he said. I might have scoffed to myself. "Those three have a strange dynamic between them. They are afraid I think. Perhaps that's just the way they are. I am surprised they have not come to find you. Or that they kept you in the ship while they ejected. Or that --"

"Or that I would escape from them into deserted, dreadful planet all alone."

He looked at me and spoke: "You are the same but different from them. They called you a 'fugitive.'"

"That's what I am," I said while I pushed my long hair back. "I rebelled against the Thundercats."

"We are not the same?"

"No," I said softly, I hugged him, too, that much satisfied him comforted him.

Suddenly we came across a sprawling ocean at the terminus of the passage. The light was green bluish and seemed to come from the upper portions of the cavern where was a thin but perceptible film of fog or dense moisture. The light was so much better in fact that were turned off our lanterns. No doubt the plants and algae and fungi were responsible for the dim abidance. Yet I saw that far further away the light was much better.

Ten or so feet beneath our overlooking vista was a rocky beach. The waters were very calm and barely waved the shore with foamy crests. We jumped down and searched the small area of dry land for what Kit said would be a suitable flat boat.

"The city is out beyond the ocean. The boat will direct itself to where we have to go. We won't need to use the oars." I helped him aboard and we sat face to face. The boat began to move by its own mechanism exactly as he said it would. I stared up above at the rood of the vault, so many hundreds of feet in the air. I wondered what those first inhabitants of Xanadu must have thought of the word. Did they think the whole of the universe was a planet, a cavern, infinite in size, infinite in complexity? What did they think of space when they first came upon that world above? So different form the rest of us who started above ground.

I told him about how the three had captured me, I told him how they intended to trade me in for cash from the all powerful Control, the government in control of the galaxy nowadays. I told him I was from the planet Thundera. In detail and description I confessed I did not know my home as well as he knew his adopted planet. I related the story of my life from the first time I could remember playing with other boys my age in the playgrounds of the small mining town of my childhood. He was very interested in the customs of my people.

"Exodus should be fully repaired by sometime today. Will the three try to come after you?"

"I'm not sure. They didn't strike me as being very intelligent but they might try to ask your masters if they have seen me. Your masters did contact them?"

"Not directly but none the less it is a certain possibility. Somehow we have to convince them that you are dead if they try to find you. I know my masters won't do anything unusual without asking me first, I told them not to divulge anything about you to the three. Yet if the three do ask my masters cannot lie, they are not programmed to lie." After that we sat silent and calm. The air was comfortable and the ocean was still. The light got better gradually. Then he continued: "The city is so large that it completely covers the interior of the planet. Only the original iron core remains. Iron is what's used to store energy."

"Store energy in matter?"

"Matter is frozen energy. You could store energy in batteries but batteries fade and expire. So much heat is lost in the process of storing and recharging that it makes them highly inefficient. You could also store energy in capacitors but only for a limited amount of time and if the capacitors are damaged. Matter is the best and most reliable way to hold energy. It doesn't leak, it doesn't fade, it doesn't waste away in entropy."

Just then his words echoed in the recesses of a chamber as vast as infinity. I lost track of its dimensions entirely. The scene did not only spread out past the horizon, the scene was the horizon, beyond and above the horizon. Sprawled before us was the city, or at least that part of the city that mere human eyes could see at once.

Braces and iron supports nearly a mile in diameter supported the edifice of the cavernous structure carved out of what remained of the planet's interior. All around, one vast area boarded another, each sector divided the other through a framework of floating glass squares.

"The squares are not really glass. They are the light sources here. It's daylight on this side of Xanadu."

The boat reached an equally rocky shore. We stepped out onto a concrete metal dock that lined the waterfront. The light was bright and for the first time I looked into the waters. Beneath the surface the ocean was no more than fifty feet and there was no ground either. A glass dome with crisscrosses of iron supporter. Beneath yet more parts of the dead, lifeless city were visible.

Up a certain set of steps we came upon the pavement of Xanadu City. The deeper we walked the harder it was to tell that we were actually within the planet. Buildings and other constructions towered above and blocked almost all the views. Kit said that he lived deeper, toward the core where the lights were not as good as it was in the upper levels.

We entered a grand concourse, a sidewalk lined with dark gray glass porticoes. Around us the cityscape increasingly rose taller and taller still. Above and below and all around were yet more concourses. At the end we came across a tube that reminded me of an elevator from an old cartoon show I recalled from childhood.

He and I stepped in boldly. Kit spoke a few words. Gently we began to fall. Mile after mile passed up and at each succeeding level the constructions became grander and grander. I felt physically lighter but I was reassured that gravitational effects were well compensated.

Eventually I saw a large, green pyramid, it was hard to miss, I had never seen anything larger. Kit said it was his home, it used to be the presidential palace where the business of empire was run. Next to it was an obelisk five miles high that crossed into two other sectors, one above, one below. The old imperial senate held its meetings within. The computers who were his masters resided deep within the bowels of the pillar.

A four-wheeled, open-air vehicle waited for us in the area around where the elevator came to rest. The clear glass wall of the tube gave way to a door that we stepped out through. He directed me to a seat on the vehicle and when we boarded it set off on its own to the pyramid. More of those square glass crystals hovered around to display to my astonishment the ethereal beauty of what must have been the penultimate zenith of that long, lost empire's ultimate achievement.

I was surrounded by the material substance of opulence and by the edifice of power. I was awed by the shear impossibility of the vistas that surrounded me: the palaces, the temples, the buildings after buildings of glass, gold and marble that stretched mountainously into obscured and unseen zeniths, to the world, to the very edge of the universe. I was a child in the prepense, in the shadows of the absolute mastery of nature that was Xanadu. But even for all that jaw-dropping, knee-bending overreaching grandeur, they were not gods, no matter how their architecture may have fooled them. Their technology extended to spread to the entire galaxy but alas, at the end they could not conquer death. Though their machines lived on, evolved after them, they, small, fragile, could not delay their ultimate and final limitation.

The pyramid was green because the outer surface was a hanging garden complete with floating orbs that spewed dewy mist over the shoots, the vines, the flowing plants. The car stopped within the structure past the visage of a wide, old stone archway. The room was typically large, everything was large. The inside smelled of power. Kit had to lead me by the hand through an impromptu tour of his home, a home so large there were parts yet unexplored. I was so shocked, so despondent that I, for my own part, could not walk under the pressure and force of that incredible genius. Pillars and adorned grand stairs mixed and blended seamlessly with fountains, more plants, bright lights along the ceiling and walls and elevators.

Vast rooms, libraries, theaters, bathrooms, control rooms, each and all with an impressive eye for the value of every last detail. Even the closets, no not one room was overlooked in importance above any other. Except the throne room. A single chair, so large I was dwarfed by the armrest alone. Above the roof was carved form marble, green, black. Light evolved form the fringes between the ceiling and the walls. The floor was a soft green, smooth tile, a shale lined and grated with gold. Behind the throne was a shinny, silky cloth that covered the walls from the ceiling to the floor where it folded in itself in excess. Gold columns divided the shoal into five parts. The throne was elevated by five one-foot steps and rested on a base of green marble. The throne was metal but soft, foamy, comfortable. It molded itself to the anatomy of the sitter.

I looked around the room one more time. There were four fountains, one at each corner, each a different geometric shape but all about the same size. Plants lined the rims, plants that spread glossy leaves over the waters and over the floor. The gentle sound of splashing water echoed crisply throughout the chamber.

Chapter Twelve

In the wilderness Tygra and Cheetara idled serenely in the clear blue waters of the warm lake. The two swam and treaded to one another only to part again. There was splashing, there was merrymaking but for the most part they behaved, they comported at a respectable level. Though often either Tygra or Cheetara would break in spontaneous, in frantic giggles, soft laughter.

Wrapped in his arms she spoke: "So where did Bengali run off to?"

He looked surprised in more ways than one. He eyed her close then looked around. He splashed water when he turned his soggy head to see, to peer keenly into and through the luscious trees. "That's right, he's not here, is he?"

"So you only noticed that now?"

"I've had other things on my mind."

She cupped some water in her hand and poured the liquid over his head, down the side of his face. "Let me cool that off."

Tygra let his hands roam and wander gently across her warm, her furry skin. He kissed her deeply when his hands came to rest unseen beneath the quivering surface of the otherwise calm water. He hugged her, he pressed, penetrated his body firmly up against hers. She whispered sweet nothings, murmurs that echoes unrecognizably through the naturalness of the environs. She returned the deep hug The two interlocked, rotated around each other, came closer to the pebbled shoreline.

The two were silent while they rested bareback atop the ground, while they waited for the warm air to dry them. On the hard, slate rocks near the edge of the lake Cheetara stared, salivated at Tygra in her mood once again. Tygra oblivious to the pressure of her eyes on him, turned to her.

"The silence is oppressive. Do you think he's anywhere around us?"

"Well, he can't be back on the ship. Maybe he's wandering around the forests."

"Looking for the fugitive I suppose."

She laughed with the overt tone of scorn. "Is he still? What ever happened to that Thunderian?"

After they put their clothes back on the two began to walk, to trek into the forests. Over and above Exodus stood out like nothing else and served as a guide, as they roamed without maps or legends. Behind a large, a wide tree with roots that curved and curled through the fluffy earth, a stream flowed through a course around a sudden outcrop of rocks and a flat-faced hill. Tall trees shaded the scene in a perfect canopy.

Tygra and Cheetara took turns shouting Bengali's name. They made their way carefully by the waters that slowly widened and strengthened in intensity. The stream became so large the currents formed violent, foamy upheavals. The tree line thickened in green, light green, dark green and in every other shade of green. There was no break in the monotony except for the sky that had turned white from the thickened clouds. The daylight was very bright and at no time was the ambiance gloomy, ominous. All the while there was no response to the calls, Bengali was no where to be seen or heard.

"Bengali!" Tygra shouted. Only the rushing waters of the stream answered. He looked at Cheetara. Worried. Meanwhile the terrain became more and more surreal like something from a nightmare, too medieval to be real. The stream that had begun form nothing had turned into a full-fledged river whose mouth, if it existed at all, lay hidden betwixt the trees and the nothingness the mist and the fog they had been warned not to venture too close to. Thick tree trunks, roots, branches, spread across the surface of the water. Could Bengali have disobeyed, could Bengali have done something so foolish? Tygra dared not answer himself, dared not speak his thought for fear of what he might hear Cheetara say.

The unnatural vegetation gave way to a tall tower of rock, a formation no more than fifty feet high. Water dripped down its side from on open orifice. There were two other such orifices each about the same size and shape as the other, each curiously adorned with snippets of flowered vines that gave the tower the look of something that had arisen from the ocean or some misbegotten sea of antiquity. Behind the tower the land slopped upward, that allowed them to climb to the top for to have scaled the face of the tower would have been quite a formidable challenge. They carefully ascended the incline they looked back and saw that only a slivered fragment was all they could see of Exodus. There was nothing more, they were afraid they might have wandered too far too.

At the end of the walkway the rocks of the tower rose yet several more feet. Apparently there was no place else to go until Cheetara spotted stone steps that arched and curved down inward into the darkness. Beneath the two found themselves within the chamber whose three more-or-less windows had driven them to discovery. The room could only have been carved by hand. Not nature. The floor was too smooth, the walls and the ceiling had a purpose of design against the character of randomness. There was a small but deep pool lit by a single hole in the tall ceiling. The water sourced from gray, black rocks immediately behind the pool, the circular pool whose run-off spewed through a long, cylindrical groove on the floor out the window, out the side of the tower. Around the edge of the pool were marking and writing that though unrecognizable spoke directly to the brain. The individual words themselves were meaningless, the symbols were merely the physical representations of abstract ideas.

"Conquer from within," Tygra said.

"No, no, they conquer those who think they can," said Cheetara. "I don't understand how we can both read that, never mind that we've interpreted so differently."

Tygra and Cheetara made their way around the pool where they found at the corner, three toga-clad men speaking, arguing in a language unknown The men at first were not aware of their intrusion. Then the third man, the one in the middle, the one with the purple trim, he managed a casual glance at them. He waved his hands before his companions who stood, turned and walked backward into the darkness, into the shadow where there was nothing at all but rock. Yet the men diapered.

"Hello," said Tygra.

"Hello. Tygra." The voice spoke in a forced language. His lips would move with no sound produced. "You have come for."

"We are looking for Bengali," said Cheetara, "our captain."

"Yes. I know. He wandered far into the mist." His voice and tone had improved.

"Is he all right?"

"Yes. He is headed beneath the ground through a cavern. He must be stopped before he reaches the city."

"Is the city dangerous? Is there a danger in the city?"

"He is not prepared for what he will find. Our technology is far too advanced. The only danger is to himself by himself." With every word and sentence he became more and more natural. "You must follow me. We can still get to Bengali in time." The man turned around and walked to the wall, the dark wall. Tygra and Cheetara quickly followed. The wall was not a wall at all. Before their eyes the barrier faded to reveal a winding set of steps, carved stone steps through a well-lit corridor that led down deep into the planet. The man was on his way down by the time the two were well on his heels.

"Who are you?"

"I am Q, I am the master of HIM, I am the one of three in control of Xanadu."

"Xanadu?"

"Who's is HIM?"

"HIM is the master."

"HIM is your master?"

"Yes."

"But how can than be? How can you be his master and he yours?"

"HIM is different from us three and may be able to better answer your questions. You will meet HIM in the city. I am sorry if my lack of experience in your language has confused you."

After that there was silence, a silence that could break stone. She grabbed and pressed his hand. He squeezed, he looked back. Wild brown eyes smiled gently.

Chapter Thirteen

I stepped free from the well-lit kitchen, past the refrigerator whose door I had shut with my elbow, past the glossy counters where a quiet blender hummed, past an intimate table whose chairs rested haphazardly after their most resent use. I meant to put them back in place but my hands were busy and besides, I thought, there would be plenty of time for that later. The living room was much darker.

I had expected to find Grune but I was met by shadow instead. I stood in front of a coffee table, sofas were on either side of me. Beyond that were the expansive walls, adorned with posters and bookshelves. On each corner of the room was a tall, metal lamp. I meant to light them for there was something about the room, the contrasting somberness perhaps, that filled me with melancholy. To my relief the patio doors were open, I followed them out.

I lived in a part of the pyramid that was rarely used by the old emperors. What a shame, too, because the area was rich in crisp greenery of the most abundant variety. The faint smell of moisture scented by glorious flowers filled the air. Not far in the distance a water vessel floated above another segment of the hanging gardens. Misty liquid sprayed softly from unseen spigots. To my right on the very corner itself, shaded gray under the granite concrete overhang was the very pensive Thunderian.

"Grune," I said. He looked back at me. I clearly saw his saddened features. I do not know why I approached so slowly. "Try one of these." I gave him one of the two cups I had carried. He took it, looked into it then sipped it. First a little but only, then in gulps. He was disappointed the cup did not refill as magically as he would say. "You are sad." He nodded. "Why are you so unhappy?"

Grune took careful time to collect his thoughts. Meanwhile he looked at me squarely. "You've been very good to me." He put his cup down on a glass table nearby. I put mine right up next to his, right up touching his. Grune drew his arms around me and pulled me closer, pulled me closer to his warmth. "You saved my life, you are my friend. Because you've never felt such a thing as the kindness, as the care of another living soul, I showed you affection. I have been very happy but -- "

He could not go on so I continued: "The three captured you and I set you free. You don't have to go but you must go. You don't have to go so soon but you must go soon, the longer you stay the harder to part."

"But you can come with me." His eyes lit up with that thought. He knelt down to my height. "You don't have to be a prisoner here anymore."

I hated to dash his hopes but he could not live a lie, lead a lie. "I can't leave. My masters need me." He looked down to the cold, terrace floor. "Grune I owe them everything."

"We are from different worlds you and I. No. You wouldn't be happy with me and I couldn't be happy here. Xanadu's too much a thing for so few to populate."

Then I looked down and way. I did not believe him, I would not believe him though I knew full well the truth of his sentiment. Grown, reared in the ruined grandeur of prehistoria I could never see things as he did, know things as he did. In a thousand years we could never understand one another. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps Xanadu was too much too soon to be thrust upon suddenly at one man. Of one thing I was sure. He was not mine anymore than the sun was mine. He was alive like me, he had a heart that beat like me. He was not meant to be caged. I had freed him. He belonged to the stars, forever to roam, forever to wander in the sky, in the utter and complete void of space.

"They knew this would happen. They did not want us to meet, to be close. They knew well before me how much I would crave the company of another." I looked back up. I combed his hair with my fingers. My masters always shaved my hair. "Waiting for you is a ship that will take you back to your people, pack to where ever you want to go."

"All right." He nodded.

"My masters will show you where it is, how to operate it. Right now they are busy orchestrating your means of escape."

"How?"

"They want the Exodus crew to think you are dead."

The cups vanished form the table. We returned into the living room, I closed the patio door behind. Grune walked by a low, long reading table where his broadsword lay lifeless. I walked him to a bookshelf full of old items I had read through already years ago. I handed him "Fragments," a tome of Xanadu history complete from the earliest records to the extinction of the original inhabitants. He did not know what to make of the book so I had to show him. At last he realized that the symbols were images and pictures that the brain automatically translated into thoughts, ideas, concepts, from the trivial to the abstract.

"This was a method used to transfer knowledge directly. You have to be careful when you read it. You must be calm and collected, almost in a meditative state or else your mind will misinterpret the language. If you are unsure, scan the phrase and a meaning will come. Scan it again and see if the meaning has changed. After a while you'll just get the same sort of idea back each time yo read the phrase. When that happens then you know you can read the rest just fine and the ability will last for as long as you read. Stop for too long a time, a minute or so and you'll have to start the process over. The good news is that the more you read the faster it will be for you to get back into that state until it might seem an instantaneous transition."

Knowing already what some parts should work out to I directed him on his first and possibly his last lesson. He read some passages and I was very pleased at how easily he got the hang of it. He spoke at last the full meaning of the work: "No one knows what first drove man to dream to reach beyond horizons to the distant stars."

Just then a red light switched on from the ceiling. Two forms materialized in the room. Grune instinctively went for his sword but I stopped him, calmed him. "These are Max and Hall, two of my masters. Q is the third but he's not here."

"The plan has worked brilliantly. We were quite fortunate that Bengali, the captain, has wandered off into the mist."

"Into the mist and inadvertently into the cavern you two were in. He followed your footprints."

Grune quickly looked at me. "He is headed here and will arrive at the city shortly."

"He has already swum half the length of the underground waters." there was a point of light that grew and spread into a large, foggy ball. The picture flickered but then he and I could see that in fact Bengali was steadily stroking across the waves no more than one hundred feet away from the opposite shore where the boat was still docked.

"Speed his progress along some more," I said. "Then arrange it so that he ends up nearer the pyramid."

"What about the others?"

The image on the ball changed to that of the inside of a long corridor that slopped downward. On dark orange walls shadows danced without fear. Tygra and Cheetara walked hand in hand behind Q.

"They should arrive at the pyramid immediately after Bengali."

Q nodded gently.

"Excellent. The conflict will climax in the vicinity of the pyramid," Q's voice rang though his lips did not move. Grune was started by the effect but got the picture quickly enough.

"Can we watch from the patio?" Grune asked.

"Certainly," I said. We walked back outside. Max and Hall remained within. "The plan is that they will see you die."

"How will they think it's me they see?"

I motioned him to turn around. Max and Hall had changed from their usual selves to forms that matched Grune perfectly. With the wave of my hands they returned to normal. The Thunderian was very quick to understand. For my own part I kept it simple: "We have our methods."

Chapter Fourteen

When he first came upon the underground ocean he feared that the waters stretched onwards without end but somehow he know that was not true. The tracks he had followed through the cave lead directly, lead unflinchingly to that spot, a rocky, pebbly shore that seemed quite capable of docking a boat, that seemed manufactured by the steady work of the hand.

Even the waters seemed unnatural: refreshing, cool, not cold, not what he had feared, there was an odd, chalky taste to the ocean. Not salty, no, sedimentary, doubtless from particles of rock that fall from the mist-covered roof of the subterranean vault. The cavern walls emitted light from the luminescent fungi forever intertwined to the stone. Just then he regretted having taken that sip from the waters but he could not turn back, he could no longer see where he had been, where he had come from.

So on he swam and swam in the direction where the light grew brighter and brighter. Yet the source of that second, odd illumination was another story altogether for it was not coming from the cavern, it was coming from elsewhere, from something grander.

Then at last he saw it. First green lights, then red, then a whole panorama. Bengali wondered if the waters had any hallucinogenic effects, he wondered if the fungal excretions were poisonous. Surely it must have all been in his mind, he thought as he looked out across at the city of Xanadu. He could not believe the complexity, the engineering bravado responsible for such a construction but yet it was, it was real and did not care if he believed in its existence or not.

The other shoreline revealed itself gradually from the foamy blur of the horizon. Then in horror he wondered if in such a city could he ever find the fugitive? And if there was one city, could there be another?

On the swaying rocky coast a small vessel rocked gently back and forth. Dry, unused oars protruded form it sides. Suddenly, as if an unseen hand glided him. He found himself heading straight to shore at an incredible velocity. At first he feared some behemoth had grabbed him from underneath the waters but then he realized that the effect was perpetrated by nothing more than a swift current. He did not fight against it anymore and before he knew it he was back on dry land none the worse for wear. The last leg of his journey was an effortless stride.

His feet stumbled and ached unaccustomed to treading on such unfriendly terrain. To his relief a concrete platform stood not too far away. There were more tracks on it and again it confirmed his suspicions: there were two people. Not one, not just the one fugitive but a fugitive and someone else. Had the youth let himself be captured, or lured, or something worse. Thoughts of various degrees came to him but it was a noise that brought him back to reality.

The sound of running, of air whipping up in the tidal wake made Bengali look around, walk the length of the platform until he reached a paved road well within the city proper. The road, or highway, was massive and wide and it took him a good five minutes to reach the other side. The sidewalks had a concrete metal barricade about ten feet high. The face sloped gradually but Bengali had enough traction to climb to the top.

To his astonishment he saw that there was nothing on the other side but the rest of the city and he saw it all for the first time. The city covered the extent of the entire planet's interior down to the core that revolved suspended in place by machinery that would defy the mind's powers of conception that emitted a strange, low glow, like the sun up top, like a burning charcoal. The city itself grew in spherical shells around that point. Directly beneath there was another highway, beneath that another and another and another until each succeeding road faded into a mushy blob that made each level indiscernible from the rest.

Dizzy and afraid he rolled down back the slab, back onto the street where he peered about. The sound had returned. To his left. All he could see was a faint fragment of hair waving in the air but it was ll he needed. Bengali summoned the will to follow.

The highway as well as the whole city seemed deserted though the technology apparently still functioned. He judged a pursuit would be safe provided that the ex-Thundercat did not use his broadsword. As he treaded close behind through dark alleys between tall building he realized that after so many days without food or water that the fugitive might not have much energy left in him. Then he remembered that there was someone else, a mystery man that then threw a monkey wrench into his train of thought.

He trekked though a plaza of statues and he feared he had lost the Thunderian and himself. In the midst of the unknown and unimaginable he regretted not having any armaments but then the inhabitants did seem friendly enough though they might be upset that he ventured too close to the mist or what ever that meant.

Just like that he stumbled upon a grand concourse lined with clear glass tubes. one of them seemed to produce a slight hum so he walked up to it and looked down. The elevator was too deep to be seen clearly, however the cab was certainly going down. Immediately he entered an adjacent tube. Afraid at not knowing how to operate it he was horrified when the glass doors behind him shut and the cab started to fall down very quickly.

He looked out to the side. The elevator he was following stopped deeper within the planet, onto another concrete terrace. Above that platform large square objects hovered and emitted light. They floated around in concentric circles and were not al all painful to look at. To his utter relief the elevator stopped on that very platform.

Bengali stepped out quickly to avoid any more embarrassing, complicated situations. He now had a problem. While the concourse was brightly lit it also had far more objects within it, notably statues and tall buildings. In the background loomed a great green pyramid, a structure so massive, so huge, it dwarfed all others except for the core that though still many thousands of miles beneath, appeared large and imposing. To the side of the pyramid was an obelisk that though tall was not very thick. The tower seemed to penetrate onto other concentric levels and had writing or at least drawings on it but it was too faraway to make out clearly.

There was an utter and strangely recognizable sound of an engine, an electric engine. Bengali turned around very quickly in a swift jerk. A small vehicle with an open top sped deep through the concourse, deep to the pyramid off in the distance. He ran around trying to find another but failed. Instead he decided to run after it himself. He felt he was lucky, the streets were clean and well paved. There were no sudden turns or bumps. He was catching up but just as it seemed he was getting closer to his target, the vehicle sped up faster. He felt he was allowed only glimpses, fragments but could none the less clearly see the youth at the controls. His broadsword arched over his back, his black hair waved, fretted in the wind.

The vehicle disappeared in the monotony of miscellania that surrounded the pyramid. The sound was gone too but there was really no place left to go, no place else to hide a car of that size inconspicuously. Bengali stopped to catch his breath. He panted nearly doubled over on the side of a great fountain. The waters twinkled in its shiny blue basin. He took a sip then another handful.

The corridor through which their footsteps clamored suddenly gave way in a quick brash of light that hurt to look at. Tygra felt something tug and pull his hand, he felt the biting sting of fingernails and realized then that it was only Cheetara. She reacted with some terror. Around them, before then, past them, above and below was a strange fog and mist that turned thick, that turned the cave into a formless oblivion. Even their guide, Q, seemed to disappear. Neither Tygra nor Cheetara could see one another clearly.

There were no strange lights, other than an all-encompassing bright orange that allowed them to see but shadows, shadows, shadows and nothing more. Then just as suddenly as the haze appeared the haze was gone, replaced by a vision that was far greater, far loftier than what could have been imagined.

"The city of Xanadu," Q said at last. He did not turn to face them. The three in total stood atop a flat, circular platform of rubbery metal.

"The size of it! My god its immense," said Cheetara.

"Yes, indeed, I regret that there's not enough time to show you everything. The city extends through the whole of the planet's interior."

The two looked down the side of the floating platform horrified at first by the fact that the platform was moving uniformly through the air closer to one of the structures. They saw that Xanadu consisted of concentric shells so large their curvature was imperceptible. The levels arose from the core that was retained for Lord only knows what reason. The core spun slowly on its axis, suspended in place by the triumph of technology. Surrounding some parts of the city and spreading under them were large bright objects that turned off to fill the area with darkness while the platform passed.

"The squares are how light is maintained in one area or another. It's night here in this place but now where we are going."

"Where are you taking us?"

"To the green pyramid over there by the tall obelisk. Those two structures were once our seats of power. There you shall meet Bengali and HIM."

"How can you be sure that Bengali is there?"

Q pointed to the absolute darkness of the local part of the cavern. A red point of light shot out of his hand and floated some distance away from the hovering platform. The pin point exploded soundlessly and revealed the image of Bengali, reclined against the outer rim of a large, stone fountain shaped like an orb impaled through a cone. Symbols etched faintly across the globe glittered in gold as old as the universe itself no doubt. Q waved his hand and the picture popped, faded into nothing.

Cheetara wanted to ask where the fugitive was but held her tongue. Tygra did not however. "There was another passenger on Exodus, actually a captive -- "

"Actually a fugitive," Q said. "We have been watching him but he's come across the city and we've lost track of him. There is no police, no army anymore. The original inhabitants of Xanadu have died long ago. So it's easy for that fugitive to evade our surveillance hide out in some building here, in some building there."

"I'm sorry if he's caused you trouble."

"No. Nothing we can't handle." Q looked down and then faced away back to the ever growing, ever expanding vista. For the first time the two noticed emotion on his part. Tygra and Cheetara felt somewhat uncomfortable. "Without food or water he will not last long. He will show up sooner or later." Tygra wondered where he had heard that before. "He is a good survivor. Bengali followed his tracks through the cave into the city."

The air in the city was naturally thinner than the air on the surface, a fact directly responsible for the swift currents and winds that engulfed the caverns, the interface between the two worlds. Yes the thin air was a welcome relief and with the cool, spring water to boot Bengali leaned back in comfort. He felt completely, he felt totally at ease in spite that the Thunderian lurked unseen, at his most dangerous game.

Out in the distance glass lights turned off to leave a great volume of the city in somber shadows. For a brief moment he thought he had seen a red flash, a glowing orb but the vision was passing, fleeting. He dismissed that to nothing more than the ever encroaching procession of night that unfolded, that played out down there, down there in the depths of the planet.

He wondered just what must have happened to the original inhabitants of that place, that city, that planet that remained nameless. Bengali called it Thundera because he imagined his long destroyed home planet must have surely been a similar paradise. He was amazed by the machines that managed to survive for so long there in isolation. How many millions of years one to the next must have passed since another living being had enjoyed such vistas? Did time have meaning in such a place?

He looked down onto the waters and splashed his face with the substance to freshen up. His face dripped and when he opened his eyes he saw and distinctly recognized a form, a form he knew so carefully well to the last inch from hours of study, a form that no matter what distortions the water surface produced he could make out the muscular youth and none other. Swiftly he stood up, with a jerk he turned around. There, no more than a few feet away he was, still barely covered. The fugitive turned to flee but he was at a dead end, cornered on the concourse before the green pyramid.

There seemed to be no other option, there seemed to be nothing else he could do but jump and try to make it across to a mezzanine below. Just then there was a clamor of loud footsteps and shouts made unrecognizable by the effects of mere echoes that rebounded from between the tall, impending buildings. Bengali did not react, did not seem to be aware of the disturbance but the sudden nose caught the ex-Thundercat off guard. He jumped but did not make it, it took nearly ten seconds for the low dud of his death to reach Bengali audibly.

Bengali ran to the edge and looked down. There was the fugitive's dead body surrounded by a deep puddle of red blood that gushed and emanated from those parts where the torso had nearly broken in half, broken apart in the fall. His stomach was about to turn. Dazed. Confused. He did not hear his crew mates scream or yell for him to stop.

"What's he doing? What's he up to?" asked Q frantically. He as well as the others tried to run to the scene as quickly as possible.

"No, Bengali, wait! No, Bengali, no!" shouted Tygra.

Cheetara was curiously silent but then she was running in the lead, she was running the fastest.

Meanwhile a new figure, a small figure clocked in shadow made an appearance just out of the glass gates of the green pyramid. What ever it was, it, too, seemed to gravitate to that obscure part of the concourse.

Yet nothing could stop Bengali from his deadly fall. All arrived in time to see the captain hit the concrete pavement, limp, broken, mangled, next to his captive.

The figure was a young boy, early teens, he wore a green, fuzzy outfit. He stepped back from the stucco metal railing. He looked at Q who's eye's never wavered from the horror that lay down below, the picture painted red with blood.

"Q," the boy said.

"No, no, there's nothing that can be done, there's no way to reanimate the dead."

Tygra and Cheetara then turned back together. The two were silent. Q introduced the boy as HIM. "My name is Kit," he said. "Q is my master, that is to say, he's one of my teachers. He is not alive. He is a computer, what you see there is a cybernetic organism. The terms droid and robot are not appropriate."

"You, you live here alone?" asked Cheetara. Q looked nervous but was behind the two so no one but Kit noticed.

"Yes, I am alone."

"We are Tygra and Cheetara," Tygra introduced. Kit gently shook hands with the cats.

"And your friend, he was important to you?"

"He was the captain," said Cheetara.

"He was my friend, my dear friend."

"I am sorry that nothing could be done to save him."

Everyone was silent.

"Your ship, Exodus, is completely repaired. Do you wish to take him back?" asked Q.

"We can't hold organic compounds without serious contamination."

"Very well. Then we shall deal with --"

"Be good to him. Bury them both next to each other. What they could not have in life let them have in death."

"As you wish, Tygra. I regret that this manner of our meeting has soured our dispositions. You would desire to return to your ship?" The cats nodded. "You are welcome to Xanadu anytime you so desire." Kit squeezed Tygra's forearm for a few moments then the two were lead away by Q back up side where in the chaos of the tragedy the glorious Eden had decomposed, had returned to the dust from which it came. Exodus remained on the platform eager for her remaining crew's return.

Chapter Fifteen

My masters had managed to overhaul the engine completely and repaired the extensive damaged caused to the hull of the Exodus from the escape from the singularity. I did not personally witness Exodus's take off but I was assured by Q that the event was flawless. Bengali's body was removed from the mezzanine immediately and plans were drawn up to provide for a suitable burial site. It was the least we could do for him, for the others. I felt entirely responsible for the matter. I had insisted that the fugitive, that Grune stay with me, I insisted on that plan. For a few fleeting moments of tenderness, of happiness a man, a good man paid with his life.

Grune tried to comfort me. I let him hug me but somehow the closeness felt, the closeness felt dirty. I do not know how to explain it so I will not. Still I did not want to be rude, still there was a part of me that was close to Grune that wanted to remain so. We remained in my apartment in conversation until night time, or what passed for night time down in the planet's core, down in the city of Xanadu. By then I could no longer deny what was about to happen.

Q entered the room.

"Are you ready?" he asked Grune. The Thunderian looked up and nodded. "Then collect your stuff and come with me."

"Do you want to join me?" he asked.

"I'll walk with you to the ship."

I wanted to but I knew it was in vain, I could not make the journey to the launch pad last any longer than the brisk ten minute walk. On an elevated platform a small vessel stood silent. Spherical, curricular, it was the model of symmetrical perfection, it was truly the ultimate exertion of Xanadu's aesthetic. Below a thin glass slit, colored orange that served as the window for the control room were three large portals only one of which was opened. Right bright light shone from inside.

"The ship has been loaded with enough supplies for a crew of ten so it should serve you well. The power supply is endless and the mechanical systems need no external repair," Q said.

"Somehow I expected nothing less."

"On board you will find someone else who looks like me," Q began, "he's the ship's computer. He will guide you through your flight training and answer your every question."

"Thank you," he said. I was deafly silent. Grune stepped toward me, knelt down to my eye level and hugged me once, deeply. I could hear and feel his heavy heart beating through his soft, strong chest. He flexed his arms for me in a way he knew would make me laugh. "Kit. My friend. Kit." I felt him while he arose and walked out of my reach forever. Into the ship he turned around but for a single moment, he gave a nod to Q and waved at me. A small figure seemed to move through the shadows within the ship toward Grune but I could tell little else for just then the doors of the circular portal slid closed. The vessel rose in the air silently, quietly, effortlessly. It rose and rose right up the clear and open shaft of the volcano above.

I walked back to the green pyramid alone and dejected. I regretted that I thought there was ever anything wrong with my friendship with Grune. I wondered about what went through Bengali's head when he decided to jump. Suddenly, as my home loomed covered in shadow and darkness, as I approached with a heavy step in my gait I think I did know what emptiness and what sorry drove Bengali off the edge. I hoped my sadness would pass but it would surely take a while. A while. A long while.

When I finally made it back to my apartment my soul was empty, absolutely empty. The journey home from the platform had taken me nearly a half hour. I could have spent an extra twenty minutes with Grune if only, yes, if only. That was when I realized I also knew what Tygra was going through. In many ways Grune was dead too, like Bengali's spirit, Grune was out there somewhere.

The apartment was cold, dark and damp from the moisture of the gardens outside. The air had turned chilly so I closed the windows. In the kitchen I put the chairs back in place. I took a while to decide to move Grune's chair back in place though keeping it where it was would bring him back in some inexplicable way. In the living room I turned on the lamps and prepared to study. Yes. My studies. I could find comfort and solace in that at least

To my utter surprise Grune's sword was right where he had left it, right on the low, long reading table. I jumped for joy, I may have even have hollered something. There was a note too, written in the language I had just taught him.

"Kit, I left this for you so that you may always fondly remember and to make sure your days are not spent alone your masters and I have left another surprise."

I was not sure what he meant. Evidently, in the short time I was outside Grune had conspired with Max and Hall on something. In any case, I knew I would learn soon enough what that other surprise was. In the mean time I picked up the broadsword, the heavy weapon conformed well to my hand. I put it around my shoulders the way Grune would so often put it around my shoulders and walked to my room to find a good place for it.

Just as I passed the front door of my apartment, which was unexpectedly open, I saw something I had overlooked before. Someone stood in the shadows of the doorway and by the form of the silhouetted figure I knew that there was indeed a lot of explaining to do. I opted for nonverbal communication. Yes, it was primitive, but at that moment nothing else would do and to heighten the effect of the special, unspoken bond, I ran open-armed to the mysterious stranger -- who was not entirely a stranger. Not a stranger at all.

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