CHAPTER TWO
Running on Empty
Veronica Giguere and Mercedes Lackey
So much we didn’t know—including the flip side of the frantic warning from Mercurye, and that last image we had of him, battered and running from the captors that should have been our saviors.
The room resembled the inside of a gallon of milk. White walls, white carpet, white ceiling, even white microfiber furniture that seemed to absorb any spill or stain dropped onto the opulent cushions. The pants they had given him after a few days’ containment were also white, a light silken fabric that made a soothing shushing sound when he walked from one side of the room to the other. Color, he realized, came in the form of food, entertainment, and the occasional visitor. Left alone in this pristine prison, Rick Poitier decided that he would give anything for a fistful of crayons or a few pots of fingerpaint. Anything to make his quarters in Metis less…perfect.
This was his second room in the forbidden city of innovation. When Mercurye had boarded the saucer to accompany the body of Eisenfaust, the ambassadors had mentioned that he would be quarantined for disease following his exposure during the Invasion. They never mentioned what sort of quarantine, and so he had spent a good portion of the trip trying to get details. The only ones who bothered to talk to him without the Stepford glaze in their eyes were the three young women on the bridge of the ship. Wearing identical gold and silver jumpsuits, these gray-eyed and violet-haired Metisians spoke with Rick at length without making him feel like a piece of dumb human ribeye, answering his questions as best as they could. When they couldn’t answer due to some security protocol, they seemed genuinely sorry and apologized that they couldn’t say more.
Once they had dropped him off, Mercurye had gone into a holding room in their medical center, where Metisians in skintight cleansuits swabbed him from ears to toes. The cleansuits covered them, faces and all, with a breathable yet sterile second skin that made them all resemble the creepy horror flick aliens who were rumored to sneak into bedrooms and perform probing experiments in all sorts of uncomfortable places. They scanned him with a host of chirping boxes, and when that was over, had him ingest some pureed concoction that they assured him was full of protein and nutrients to compensate for his journey and any ill effects that the Metisian environment might have on him.
He thought it tasted like cheap elementary school paste. No amount of Tabasco would have made it any better.
The discussions about the Invasion and Eisenfaust took days, it seemed. Not only did the faceless cleansuits record every answer, they seemed interested in the society reactions to the Thulians as well as the technological response. Any questions that Mercurye tried to ask were met with a shake of the head and a reminder to adhere to the standard interrogation protocol. When he would lose his patience, the cleansuits would stand as one and shuffle out of the room as soothing music was piped in through unseen speakers and the faint smell of vanilla and peppermint wafted through the air.
It was maddening. Infuriating. Insulting, considering all that he’d been through with the Invasion and with Echo. They denied his requests to speak with Tesla or to contact anyone, but they did allow him into his current room with a collection of every clichéd science fiction series ever created. And so, Rick spent his days alternating exercise with reruns that had kept him company during his teenage years in New Jersey.
Which meant that he watched the entire series of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Twice.
He had the volume turned up as he exhaled and kicked himself into an armstand against one of the walls. The lack of dirt made footprints impossible. As the precocious teenage heartthrob got in over his head once again, Merc mouthed the lines and began his post-breakfast routine. Fifty press-ups, slowly and deliberately, not even trying to go for speed. This was something he had started long before Echo. Between breakfast and school, he would turn on the television and try in vain to build up his ropey form into something that the cheerleaders would notice. He wanted to be that kid on the screen who stumbled over words with girls but who would inevitably save the day at the end with some key skill or lucky happenstance.
By the end of his second year of high school, Rick Poitier was just as stringy and acne-ridden as any other fifteen-year-old kid. He hadn’t saved the school or become a standout in any of his classes, but he had gotten pretty good with the armstands. He watched the show to obsession and his mother even humored him with his own blue shirt as a birthday gift, but there were still no cheerleaders nor any rise in popularity. Instead, he took the bus home, walked a few blocks, and finished his homework like the good son he was supposed to be.
He passed one hundred, a light sweat on his skin that the Metisian environment tried to correct with a rush of cooler air. If he was lucky, one of the ship navigators would show up after he hit two hundred and hang around for a while to chat. They rarely gave him a lot of information about what was going on back home, but they did try, which was more than he could say about the rest of the population. According to one of the navigators, there were well over ten thousand Metisians, from the very young to the very old, and they all had a say in how the society functioned. It reminded him of a Law and Justice class he’d had to take in high school. Every rule was voted upon, all options explored alongside consequences, and each vote was equal. The teacher’s vote didn’t count more or less than a student’s, and they voted on everything from exam dates to project requirements. The shared responsibility had its perks but the biggest drawback was the time involved. Every decision took minutes, sometimes hours.
In Metis, these same sorts of decisions took days, weeks, even months. The sheer fact that he remained in this room, upside down against the wall as he pressed into his two hundredth push-up, was the result of some grand vote among the populus. On days like today, Merc wished there was some Metisian equivalent of a starship captain who could overrule and make things just so with a wave of his hand.
The door chimed, beeped, then opened to reveal the three ship navigators. They grinned at Mercurye as he lowered himself to the floor and gave them an easygoing smile. “Good morning, ladies,” he offered with a goofy yet practiced bow, same as he did every time they came to visit. “Are you the crew that’s here to take me back home? There’s just not enough dirt here.”
Their smiles faded a bit. “We can’t do that, Mr. Mercurye,” one of them answered with a faint shake of her head. “The consensus remains that you should stay here until the Thulians progress to a later stage in their attacks on Earth and Echo.”
He clenched his jaw, forgetting for the moment that these young ladies had no personal control over whether he could stay or go. As with many things in Metis, they were only messengers. “A later stage? So I get to stay here until it’s a burning wasteland? That’s really mature and hospitable. Will I get to go home with a party favor? Maybe a balloon or a picture of my jail cell?”
The first one winced as his voice rose. “It isn’t like that, Mr. Mercurye. We voted for you to go home. We want you to go back and have you pursue your friendships and continue to assist the people of Echo. Unfortunately,” she said, twisting her fingers nervously, “we were overruled.”
“Overruled?” He snorted and padded across the white carpet to one of the chairs and flung himself onto the cushions. “By how many? All of them?”
“Fifty-two point three percent.” The second spoke more softly, her expression sad. “We were so close this time, too.”
He stared at them. “Fifty-two point three? But that means that—”
“That forty-seven point seven percent agree that you should return to Echo to assist in the fight against the Thulians,” the third finished in a tone that was closer to Mercurye’s than her co-navigators. “If you ask me, the simple majority is faulty. Two-thirds should be the prerequisite to hold someone against their will. It goes against the very model we attempt to emulate.”
“Simple majority is sufficient for our purposes, especially in our fully democratic model, Trini,” the first murmured. “Even if we do not agree with the majority.”
“Simple majority is not sufficient in the case of personal liberties, especially in this instance where the subject has committed no crimes and is not considered a threat!” She jabbed a finger in Mercurye’s direction. “He should not be detained! Even Mr. Tesla and Mr. Marconi argued as much!”
“Tesla?” He sat on the edge of the couch. “Alex Tesla is here? Can I speak with him? I thought—”
The one they called Trini threw her hands up in the air in a gesture that reminded Mercurye of Detective Ferrari. “No, not Alex Tesla. Nikola Tesla. The real Mr. Tesla, as far as anyone should be concerned. None of them will listen to either him or Mr. Marconi, in spite of their perfectly logical reasoning.…” She began pacing around the room as the other two offered him apologetic smiles.
“She is rather emotional.” The first of the navigators slid onto the couch next to him and took his hand in hers. “We all feel the same way, Mr. Mercurye. While it would be untrue to claim that you are not welcome here in Metis, you should not be held against your will and we should be providing you substantial aid against the Thulians during the first part of the conflict.”
His stomach bottomed out at her words. “First part? You mean, there’s more?” Mercurye pushed his other hand through his hair in disbelief. “You know that there’s going to be more?”
She patted his hand as she spoke. “Well, of course. These things come in stages, as we have seen many times. We cannot intervene when doing so would keep humanity from learning in its progression, however painful that learning might be.”
“Wait, wait.” Mercurye stood and clasped his hands behind his head as he began to pace a slow circle around the room. It forced him to focus on his thoughts and organize the jumbled mess of emotion that the navigators’ news had brought. “There are ways to stop this, there are ways for you—Metis, I mean—to help us so that we don’t wind up a smear of humanity on what’ll be left of the planet after the Nazis—”
“Thulians.” The one called Trini spat the word with obvious distaste.
“Fine, Thulians. Whatever.” He drew in a deep breath and exhaled, counting to ten as he did. “Point is, there are ways to stop this, but the majority of people here don’t want to help. It’d be like…cheating, right?”
“Coddling is perhaps the closer approximation.” The young woman on the couch tried to smile at him sympathetically, but it appeared to Rick as a weakly apologetic gesture and irritated him.
“It’s not coddling. This isn’t like some whiny little kid who can’t stand up to a bully. This is the kid who’s getting the snot pounded out of him every time he steps out of the classroom, and you’re acting like you’re committing a crime by not helping him! If you can help, why don’t you?” His voice grew louder and more frustrated as his pacing increased. “Are you in some kind of competition with the rest of us? Are we just some sort of neat toy for—”
“In case you forgot, we voted to help.” The soft-spoken one interrupted him, her tone full of patience. “We came here because we wanted to help, but we wanted to ensure that you were committed to your cause. The comforts of Metis can be tempting.”
Her words took most of the anger from him. Rick turned to face the three of them, his wry smile showing signs of fatigue. “To be honest, I can’t stand it. Your media collection’s about the best thing going.”
“Then we can help you, but we must move quickly.” She pulled a slender bottle from her hip and unscrewed the lid, then gestured to Mercurye. “You’ll need to remove your clothing in order to use the secondary skin coating. It provides a completely protective and flexible shell, much like the Echo uniform you wear. In order to be most effective, however…”
The other two women had already begun to shed their clothing without any regard for modesty, and Rick confirmed with a very red face that Metisian women were pretty much identical to lingerie models. He turned to face the wall and stripped off his own clothing, careful to not look too much to either side. Rick prepared himself to ask “what next?” when an icy tingle hit him between the shoulder blades and traveled down his back and down each of his legs. He let out a yelp in surprise, hands quickly moving down for modesty’s sake before turning around. “That’s cold, you know? Give a guy a warning!”
“You were without a shirt during your entry into Metis. I did not think that the cold bothered you.”
“I’m a registered speedster, not a heating pad.” The tingle across his skin wrapped around his body. Rick looked down as the white cleansuit layer quickly enveloped his skin. As if she knew what would happen, the one who had sprayed him grabbed both of his wrists. She was a lot stronger than he would have guessed as she held his hands away from his face. The sensation crawled up his neck and across his face, a film temporarily covering his eyes. He blinked, the film clearing without effort. There was a soft whistling sound as he breathed through his nose, the layer finally settling softly over his mouth. Rick parted his lips a few centimeters, relieved to feel the second skin move with him and allow air to filter through. Suffocation would not have been the way to go in Metis.
Two of the navigators wore the same off-white cleansuit layer. The third grinned at them, collecting the clothing and vials and depositing them on the couch. “Now, the three of you can leave. We’ve arranged a meeting for you, but you’ll have to hurry.”
“A meeting?” They pulled him to the door, not answering his question. He began to repeat the question, but one put a finger to his lips and shook her head. For now, the priority was to escape.
***
Hallways twisted and turned, white and gray marble in blinding labyrinth. The two young ladies pulled him around corners and through doorways until Mercurye couldn’t tell how far he had run or if he was even on the same level of the building. Was it even a building?
They pushed him ahead into what he assumed to be a wall as footsteps clattered somewhere behind them. He braced for the impact, drawing his hands up to provide some cushion. Rather than hitting the wall, Mercurye tumbled through something not unlike cotton and hit the floor with a grunt, skidding a few feet. The fibers of the cleansuit layer shredded over his face and arms with the impact, the threads hanging off of him in thin white strands. Neither of the women followed him; Rick flipped onto his back and held his breath in the pitch-black room, waiting to see if they might reappear.
Nothing.
In the vast darkness, a soft hum grew to just over a whisper and echoed, indicating the room was an immense size. Rick squinted as a faint blue glow pulsed above him. A second pinprick of blue light appeared, followed by two more to the left. Three appeared on the right, then a field of blue came into view such that it arched far beyond where a normal ceiling might have been. The humming grew in harmony, additional tones adding depth and richness as the blue glowing dots began to form a network in the darkness.
Rick stared, his jaw slack while something connected the ever-emerging dots to one another to craft an enormous wire-frame bust of a severe young man with perfectly coiffed hair and a necktie. He scrambled back as the “head” turned and seemed to focus on him. The face seemed to study him before nodding in approval and allowing the rest of the wire frame to continue. “Mr. Poitier,” it thundered in a precise Eastern European accent that Mercurye felt should have been accompanied by a three-piece suit and a cup of strong tea. “A pleasure to see you away from your quarters. I have heard much of you from my nephew.”
How did someone run from a glowing blue head of electrons that knew names and business associates? Mercurye tried to get the words out, but his mouth continued to open and close in shock.
He did not remain in shock for long, however. Maybe it was because this was too much like the apparition of the Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz (“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”) or maybe it was because somewhere out there, his friends were still facing the Nazis—Thulians, whatevers—and not doing well at it.
“What the hell is going on around here?” he demanded. “Scratch that, what the hell is going on out there and why aren’t you doing something about it?”
The Giant Head regarded him thoughtfully. A pipe would not have been out of place. “Permit me to answer your middle question first,” said the Head. Rick was not going to call it “Nikola Tesla” until he had better verification than the word of three pilot/models in lavender wigs. “Your enemy is a group who refer to themselves as Thulians. They have a base of operations that corresponds to Metis. We have been aware of their presence for some time—and have been careful to conceal ourselves from them. This is not a royal ‘we,’ you understand; I refer to the Metisians as a group. Since you joined us, there have been two more small attacks in the Atlanta area, both thwarted by Echo or its allies. Neither I, nor I and Marconi, nor the strategists of Metis as a whole, have been able to deduce a pattern in their behavior. Other groups are acting opportunistically, some with attacks on citizens, some filling the void left by the decimation of Echo.”
Rick felt his heart sinking again. Damn it all, he was needed back there, and here he was—
“To answer your first question, my colleague and I founded Metis shortly after my breakthroughs in broadcast power and electronic storage. We collected some of the finest minds of every country and continue to recruit, generation after generation. They are all democratic citizens of Metis, and together we have made incredible breakthroughs in every line of scientific investigation.” There was no mistaking the pride in the Head’s voice. “When my nephew founded Echo, we arranged to filter these discoveries into the world through him in a controlled manner. Controlled, because we were aware of Ultima Thule’s existence after the end of the Second World War, and did not want to reveal our own existence, which would likely occur if these were released in too precipitous a manner.”
Rick was beginning to get a very creepy feeling that he had seen or heard of something like this before. Then it came to him. The “Super-Science City” in the movie The Shape of Things to Come. These people—well, except for the Triplets—even had that same haughty, “you are not advanced enough for this, monkey-boy” attitude that the Wings Over the World people had.…
“So—” he began belligerently, but the Head cut him off.
“Unfortunately…our safety here, and our intellectual powers, have induced both an arrogant sense of spiritual and mental superiority, and a state of moral cowardice.” The expression on the Head’s face didn’t change, but the tone sounded deflated. “I blame myself for not offering enough guidance—or not insisting on more contact with the outside world. Some of those who have voted against you do so out of that misplaced superiority, and some out of fear that aiding you will reveal our whereabouts to the Thulians. Marconi and I will continue to attempt persuasion, but we need you to warn my nephew that for now he must soldier on alone.”
Rick blinked. “What, me? Why me? And how?”
“Because at the moment, Marconi and I do not have any direct access to a communication device that will speak to Alex,” the Head explained. “We can establish that contact, but it will take time. Meanwhile, Alex should not live in hope that—in the American idiom—the cavalry will come riding over the hill to rescue him. You can get to that device and warn him. You can also give us the—back door, I think it is called—so that if Alex attempts to contact us, we should be able to answer him, if only for brief moments.”
Slowly Rick let out the breath he had not been aware he was holding. “All right. Say that I do that. Then what?”
“Then we commence the business of convincing five percent of the populace that it is better to die like a lion than live like a dog,” the Head said grimly. “Have I your cooperation in this effort?”
Rick didn’t even have to think about his answer. After all, this was something right out of one of his beloved Next Gen episodes. “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam,” he said.
The wire-frame lips of the Head lifted in something like a smile. “I had the feeling you would say that,” replied Nikola Tesla. “Now, this is what you must do…”
***
But fifteen minutes later, having delivered his warning to Alex Tesla, nursing the bruises and aching bones his Metisian guards had given him as he resisted them…he wondered if he had, or would, ever be able to accomplish anything more than handing Alex an express ticket straight to despair.