Story #240 - Port

Port

He couldn’t help but rub at the chains around his wrist – the dull grey metal was of a composition he’d never seen, and it set his skin to itching if left sitting in one place for too long. Jonah Marsden wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve capture, but then he really had no idea how he’d ended up here, let alone in the clutches of what appeared to a be primitive alien race.

Jonah was going to have to revise that last thought. Though the blue-skinned inhabitants of the planet seemed less technically advanced on the surface, their small metal chains were something he could not defeat, even with all of his tools still intact. Any attempt to remove his blaster or tech-drill from his belt resulted in burning agony, and he hadn’t been able to get more than three feet outside the door of his hut before he was on his knees, gasping for breath.

The quiet beings had fed and watered him each day, but not one would speak to or so much as look at him before disappearing back into the village. Over the course of the last week, he had pieced together parts of what had happened, but still had no clues about how he’d managed to port-in to the surface of the world. This wasn’t where he’d been aiming.

He decided it must have been the Lens Coupler that had failed again – the part had been on back order for the bulk of the last two months, and he’d been recycling parts of broken ones to make usable wholes for three weeks. Each time he went through the portal, he knew his was taking his life in his own hands, but the Chapter’s funding was on the verge of running out, and unless he could demonstrate a use for his breakthrough, they wouldn’t renew his grant.

It was stunning how little progress mattered – he could now transport people to other worlds, but the Chapter cared only for what material gain could come as a result of his invention. One person every twelve hours with a return time of twenty-four wasn’t good enough, they said, if that person couldn’t bring back anything valuable. He’d never subscribed to an economic simplification of science, but it appeared now that he’d been naïve.

Shifting position to relieve the itching on his wrist, he smacked his head hard into the thatch wall behind him. He should have known better after his second test to Beta 3, when the Porter had begun to rattle during his return. Even his assistants had been concerned, but he had shrugged them off – the machine had always been rickety at best, and his first ten trips had been done with no supervision.

Initially, this trip had seemed like any other. The port had spun up, dials locking into place and the coruscating silver waves of the diphosphoral matrix warming up, bringing the temperature of the device up from near-absolute zero to something a human body could withstand. It was the cold, he had learned, that shortened the distance between worlds, and so long as he could raise and lower the temperature fast enough, he could access them before their conduits closed.

Stepping through the portal had brought the same feeling as always – the feeling that his skin was going to crawl off his body and slip into the darkness. He’d been heading for Beta 2, the first planet he’d found that had been able to support human life without a suit. When his head cleared after the port, he’d found himself on what he had learned was Beta 5, strapped to a wooden platform and carried by six silent, burly blue men. Screaming had done no good, and when they became annoyed with him, one had balled a massive fist and flexed his considerable muscle. Jonah had quickly gone silent.

The door to the hut banged open, and he squinted against the bright light of the lower sun. The higher sun in the sky was hotter, despite being much smaller, but the lower one never seemed to leave the horizon, and he found the entire planet far too bright for his liking.

“Marsden,” a voice said from the light, “you look good down there, flinching in the dirt.”

The voice was familiar, but his brain couldn’t process the information. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be real.

“This must be confusing for you,” the voice went on, “to see your old friend Paul somewhere he shouldn’t be – somewhere he couldn’t possibly be.”

Moving out of the light, the figure moved to crouch beside him, and Jonah felt himself go cold. It was Paul.

“It’s simple, Jonah,” Paul continued, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. “I’ve been watching you very carefully, all this time. Your machine is clever, but not impossible to replicate. For months, I’ve been just a step behind you, travelling everywhere you have, but making useful contacts instead of just sightseeing.”

“You…what?” Jonah struggled to get the words out. Paul had been his lab assistant for the better part of four years, and they had parted amiably after the other man had received a better job offer.

“It’s simple,” Paul said, lightly touching the chains around Jonah’s wrist, “do you really think these simpletons could have fashioned something like these themselves? They’re a project I’ve been working on for a client, along with re-deploying your invention into something useful. It was easy to convince these blue-skinned freaks you’d be back, and that it was in their best interests to capture you. I made it very clear it was the will of their god.”

“Their god?”

Paul smiled brightly, and Jonah felt the bottom fall out of his already-unstable world.

“Let’s be clear, Jonah – it’s not that I don’t like you – it’s that the world needs your invention to do more than sit there and explore sad little planets on the edge of the galaxy.” Paul spread his arms wide. “We need to exploit them, use what they have to our best advantage. Technology rules, after all.”

Jonah felt himself go limp, and the dirt floor came up to meet him.


- D