Clam (Maura's Gate Book 1) Read online

  “Where is Kenton?” Roland asked after the three of them gathered together.

  “He was around a while ago and then went in that direction.” Mina gazed at a high place on the other side of the ship.

  They hurried over and found Kenton in a shadow. He was kneeling on the ground and drawing a circle on the surface with his right arm. When he lifted up his arm, Devin saw a long blade held in his hand.

  “Found a soft spot,” Kenton said to the others, breathing heavily. “We got to go soon, but we have to take something—”

  “No!” Devin shouted as he ran to Kenton and knocked the blade out of his hand. “Stop it!”

  “Are you nuts?” Kenton said furiously.

  Before Devin had time to reply, a sudden shock came from under their feet and threw them to the air. After they fell back, the ground began rising up as if a volcano was being created underneath. The four of them lay flat on their stomachs and tried to remain on the same spots since the rising was uneven. Soon they found themselves on a steep hillside, and their ship was already sliding downhill. If the gravity weren’t so small, they would’ve fallen too.

  “We should let go,” Devin heard Mina saying through the intercom. “Better do that now than later.”

  With the rising continuing, Devin carefully lifted his head up and browsed the surroundings. They were probably a few hundred feet high relative to the normal ground surface. Mina was right. It didn’t seem the rising would stop soon, and once the friction failed to hold them, they would fall hard. So he reduced his contact with the surface and started gliding downhill, just like what Mina was doing.

  Finally they came to a stop at the foot of the hill and managed to stand up. Luckily nobody was missing, but the ship was no longer in their view. All they could see was an enormous mountain that kept rising in the distance. The peak of the mountain was a pair of pipes that protruded to the sky.

  “What’s that?” Mina asked.

  “Where’s my camera?” Kenton was looking around.

  “Siphons,” Roland said as a matter of fact. “Clams have two siphons, an incurrent and an excurrent one.”

  Chapter 3 The Park

  “Let’s hold our arms together,” Mina said as she spread out her arms.

  The four of them stood in a circle and tightly grabbed one another. Devin was surprised at how quickly the young woman responded to emergent situations. The pair of siphons had bent over with the tip steadily coming down toward the intruders. There was no time to search for their ship, and no point of running away. They would be sucked into the clam, and once inside they may never come out again. But for now, the best they could do was stick together.

  Soon they were enclosed by a pipe that could have swallowed an entire basketball field. It was too dark for them to see anything, but Devin had the impression that the tip of the pipe was shrinking and closing in on their bodies. In the blink of an eye they were lifted up and started bouncing, sliding, falling at a frightening speed. Sometimes Devin felt as if they were doing group-skydiving without parachutes.

  Finally the pipe leveled off and they gradually came to a stop. They turned on the integrated lights on their helmets and looked around. There was nothing they could do but keep walking along the monster pipe, which became slightly narrower as they marched.

  “Are we going to hit an end before we walk ourselves to death?” Mina complained after a while.

  Devin agreed it was a boring trip. Above, below, and ahead of them, all they could see was this uniform brownish yellow. After a while he began walking mechanically—tired, dehydrated, and half sleeping. About two hours later, he sensed a sudden declination of the ground and came to himself as Mina shouted, “Watch out!”

  He stopped short and saw Mina holding Kenton’s arm. There was a dark hole on the ground in front of them, and Kenton’s right leg was halfway inside the hole.

  “Thanks!” Kenton gasped and backed up. “I’m glad you caught it.”

  The hole wasn’t large but enough for a person to drop in. The four gathered their headlights at the opening and studied the inside. They couldn’t tell how deep the hole went since it turned sideways after going down for a few dozen feet.

  Devin straightened up, no longer attending to the others’ discussion. The image of him sliding down a soft pipe kept flashing in his mind.

  “I think we should go down here,” he said in a dreamy voice.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Kenton said. “Do you know where it leads?”

  “I don’t, but now I have the memory of being here before.”

  There must have been no headlights on their helmets seven years ago. He remembered walking behind his colleagues who were holding a tiny flashlight. And he remembered falling into the hole accidentally. He didn’t know what happened to his colleagues afterward, but the fact that he was the only one who had survived indicated they were less lucky than he was.

  “This is our best bet,” said Roland. “Because if we keep going, we’ll soon enter the digestive system.”

  The digestive system … Devin smiled bitterly. He was eating clams in the ship’s kitchen only a few hours before. Was he in reality or a dream?

  “I trust your memory,” he heard Mina saying.

  Kenton was still hesitating while the others jumped into the hole one after another. The tunnel was soft and sort of closed like a deflated pipe. To Devin, it wasn’t a pleasant ride, especially with the notion that he was some kind of waste moving through a colon. But if that meant they would soon exit the body, he wouldn’t care about the route.

  When the tunnel ended, the world suddenly lit up brightly and Devin fell into a room from its ceiling. He should’ve immediately moved aside to make way for his followers, but what he saw was so dumbfounding that he didn’t even feel a thing when the others crashed onto him.

  It was a furnished room with red carpets, long couches, delicate glass tables and tall vases holding exotic flowers. Other than the furniture, the room was enclosed by the same clam-tissue material they had seen before. On one of the walls hung a picture of a valley crowded with unfamiliar plants—apparently it wasn’t a place on the Earth. He then looked up and saw several glowing balls embedded in the ceiling. So he switched off his headlight to save energy in case he’d need it later.

  The three of them got up and wandered around. The room had no doors but an exit leading to a long corridor. They were unable to make out the other end of the corridor since the ceiling lights went off halfway down there.

  “I think we are in a waiting room,” said Roland.

  Opposite the painting was a rectangular area in the wall that seemed separable from the rest of the wall. Devin reached out a hand, tapped on the area, and was taken aback when the “door” slid open, revealing a small cell inside.

  “Looks like an elevator,” Mina said.

  Devin agreed. The cell was made of the same clam tissue except that a few metal bars had been mounted on the walls—for passengers to regain balance, maybe?

  “We’ll find out.” Roland shrugged and walked in.

  Now Kenton had also dropped out of the tunnel and was surveying the room with perplexity. Devin was glad that his supervisor had made the right choice.

  “Are you sure you want to go inside?” Kenton asked Roland at the door, seemingly attempted.

  “Aren’t we already inside?” Mina said with amusement. She then walked in with Devin before the door slid shut automatically.

  * * *

  The elevator went downward first, but soon the motion became horizontal. Despite the fast speed, the ride was quite smooth.

  “I wonder what powers the transportation,” Mina said. “I was convinced we’re inside a live creature a moment ago, but now everything seems artificial.”

  “I don’t think life and technology are necessarily exclusive,” Roland said, his hand tapping on the wall gently. “When technology is in its primary stage, it bears little resemblance to living creatures, but they essentially obey the same rul
es, and the difference is only a matter of sophistication. For example, cells grow themselves, make copies, do computations, correct errors. Didn’t somebody recently claim they are getting close to making a biological computer? The development of our knowledge and techniques will eventually smear the boundary between artificial and natural creations.”

  A few minutes later the elevator slowed down and stopped. Devin had been expecting to see another waiting-room kind of place outside the elevator, but instead he found himself in an enormous indoor amusement park. Close to the entrance was a carousel with its seats carved into outlandish animals. As it rotated, the fake animals varied their colors and emitted pleasant lights. Farther ahead was a Ferris wheel about five-stories high. Roller coasters and train tracks were winding through the park. There were also jelly-fish like vessels drifting and bobbing in the air. Everything was running with no passengers on board.

  “Hmm, my gauge detected a bit of pressure here,” Roland said, studying the cuff of his spacesuit.

  Devin looked down and read his meter. There was a certain amount of nitrogen and oxygen around, but too thin for them to breathe naturally.

  “It makes sense,” he heard Mina saying. “Who wants to play in a park wearing a chunky spacesuit?”

  Devin remembered the pipe they had gone through. Maybe there used to be sufficient air in this place. Then the pipe could have served as a safety valve to release excessive pressures.

  He stopped in front of a Teacup type of spinning vehicle, which was standing still at the moment. Although generally in good shape, the vehicle showed notable wear on the cushioned seats. Where were the passengers? Would they come back tomorrow, or never? Devin had this ominous feeling that he was visiting a ghost town.

  “Come here,” he heard Roland calling through the intercom. He walked over to the carousel and joined Roland and Mina.

  “Have you seen any of these animals on the Earth?” Roland asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Devin’s skin crawled as he examined the fake animals in detail. A lot of them had tiny holes along their bodies, and Devin believed he was suffering from trypophobia, although his doctor never acknowledged that such thing existed.

  “Now here is the question: why does Clam look so similar to our clams?”

  Devin and Mina exchanged looks with each other. There could only be one answer, but neither of them was willing to admit it.

  * * *

  After Kenton had caught up with them, they walked through the park and found an entrance to an underwater glass tunnel. The water trembled with moving images, casting shimmering lights to the tunnel’s floor.

  “An aquarium?” Mina said as she entered. “You’d think clams live inside water, not the other way around.”

  “Now I do wish Kenton had his camera!” Roland sounded excited.

  Devin followed the others into the tunnel and looked around. There were about several dozen sea creatures in five or six species, generally small with the exception of a few monsters. Lobsters, sea bass, crabs—nothing but ordinary Earth creatures.

  “This isn’t an aquarium,” Kenton said in disappointment, tapping on the glass in front of a crab the size of a pool table. “It’s part of a restaurant’s kitchen.”

  “A seafood restaurant,” Devin murmured as they walked along the tunnel. He was a seafood lover, and couldn’t have been more familiar with those of his favorites, yet he recognized nothing unusual with them. When he arrived at the end of the tunnel, he turned back and saw Roland being left behind.

  “You’re not coming with us, Professor McGuinn?” Kenton inquired.

  Roland stood facing the water. His stiff posture conveyed a trace of solemnity that was usually seen on people attending funerals. “I am. Give me a minute.”

  Out of the tunnel the three found more elevators to their right and another corridor ahead with no doors. There! A voice echoed in Devin’s head as his breathing picked up. He knew where he should go. He entered the corridor and hurried ahead.

  “Devin!” he heard Mina calling through the intercom.

  He made no reply but kept walking. He followed the corridor, made a right turn, and passed by a few rooms which he knew right away were not his destiny. The room at the end was where he should get in.

  The door opened even before he touched it, revealing a modern living room with signs of human residence. A pair of winter slippers lay on the thick brown carpet in front of a couch. Adjacent to the couch was a dining table set made of wood, a few empty cups spreading on the table. A large flat screen was embedded in the clam-tissue wall opposite the table. The rest of the room was occupied by tall wooden shelves packed with books. Devin didn’t need to open those books to know that they were written in an unknown language.

  Nothing had changed since the last time he came here. He went across the living room and arrived at two doors. The left one, he said to himself and entered a conference room. A rectangular table was placed at the center surrounded by a few chairs. Along the walls stood various machines with metal or synthetic front panels. The bodies of the machines were either imbedded in the clam tissue, or, according to Roland’s theory, were parts of Clam herself.

  Devin moved over to a machine that bore a resemblance to an ATM. He pulled over a chair and sat down. On the front panel there were a few metal buttons alongside a screen. He pushed one of the buttons and the screen flashed on. Then he unzipped his upper pocket and took out the pen case. There were roughly a dozen cassette-like items inside. Without hesitation he dumped all of them into a drop box located below the screen …

  “What are you doing, Devin?” he heard Kenton asking in a severe tone.

  What am I doing? Devin pushed a different button and the machine started humming. Kenton’s question made no sense to him. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, he thought. Then his body froze, and after a while his hands began shaking. He dropped the pen case to the ground and lay back in the chair.

  What have I been doing?

  * * *

  “Shortly after you came back from your last mission,” said Kenton, sitting in a chair next to Devin, “you started gathering information about our world. Our society. About almost everything.”

  Devin buried his face in his hands. Yes, he did this whenever he had a free minute, constantly searching and copying on the Internet, connecting to virtual libraries, updating the “table of contents”. The topics included history, politics, arts, science … Just like what Kenton had said, almost everything! What he had accomplished so far was incredible. To him, the task was as natural as breathing and sleeping. There had never been a single moment in which he questioned on his motivation. He had even spent fifteen hundred bucks on a device that converted digital information into Fannofilms. Now in retrospect, he guessed he did it because Clam may not be able to decode digital information stored on a regular disc. But even with images, everything was written in English …

  “Have you ever wondered,” Kenton continued, “why we waited seven years before sending another ship here?”

  This question Devin had asked himself many times. His final conclusion was that the loss of the other three astronauts had taught NASA to be cautious.

  “In the past five years we’ve sent over two more ships. Only a few people knew about the missions. The first ship never came back. The second was a collaboration with the military involving three astronauts and five soldiers. The ship came back with the two soldiers who had been instructed not to leave the ship, devoid of memories.”

  The digestive system, Devin thought.

  “To be honest, we’ve spent too much on this project.” Kenton heaved a long sigh. “If this time we don’t bring anything back, NASA’s not going to consider it again. Not for the next two decades, at least. So far you’re the only one who’s survived the mission, Devin. I know they’ve been closely monitoring your actions over the years. I think they had a rough idea of what you’ve been doing on your personal computers …”

  Devin felt as if he had b
een stripped naked. Whoever had been doing this to him, he wanted to punch them in the face.

  “The only unusual activity they’ve found was your collection of the information. They didn’t stop you because none of the information was classified or sensitive. And they knew you did it subconsciously …”

  Right! Devin remembered being asked to go through lie-detector tests several times. “What is your goal?” he asked. “Why do we have to come back?” He knew the answer was not as simple as the search for extraterrestrial lives.

  “How do I put this?” Kenton’s tone dragged. “Although a non-invasive technique that can instantly erase a human’s recent memory is still beyond our reach, they are more interested in whatever power that was able to control your mind.”

  “Why are they interested in that?” said Roland, standing at the entrance. Devin could detect a trace of indignation in his voice. “So that they can control others’ minds?”

  Kenton shrugged and said nothing. Then he left his chair for the humming machine and pushed on the buttons randomly. Nothing changed. He stuck his fingers in the drop box and fumbled inside. “There got to be a way to take it back. We can’t leave this to whoever is behind her.”

  “Nobody’s behind her,” Roland said as he walked in. “And I think it’s better to leave it to Clam. Remember, we are still inside her.”

  Kenton sneered. “It sounds like she’s human.”

  An image lit up on the wall opposite the machine as if being cast by an invisible projector. It was a photo of a small coffee shop with people coming in and out. Before Devin had a chance to study its details, the image was replaced by another one, and another one again. The switching rate quickly picked up, and soon individual images were no longer distinguishable.

  Kenton finally gave up with the machine. “Okay, she’s human. And she’s studying us.”