Legends of Lemuria

Chapter 1: Casper-2

And waited.

The last stop arrived. His signal beeped, and Casper climbed off the tram, the extensible motors whining. He made his way deeper into the raw tunnel.

“Our relief at last!” Canpor said, his extensible hand slapping Casper's mechanical shoulder. “Watch that rock face there to the right. Sensor says it's stable, but you know the drill. Otherwise looks to be a decent seam. C'mon, Ramtas,” he said to his drill-mate.

“No secondary?” Ramtas said, her face lit up from below like a ghost.

“Tunsel doesn't like me much,” Casper said, shrugging.

The two of them went the way he'd come, leaving him alone, without a secondary. This deep in, with the nearest fellow miner at least a thousand feet away, oxygen scarce, and the mineface new, Casper felt a shiver course down his back.

It felt like a setup.

Focus, he told himself, turning toward the raw rock.

Nearby, an autoloader blinked placidly at him, awaiting his signal. It would wait until he'd dislodged enough raw ore before loading it up for processing.

Casper looked at the rockface. To the right it did look unsteady, but not for the reasons Canpor had cited. To Casper, a soft ethereal glow seeped from between the cracks, as though a bright light sought to explode from behind a curtain of solid rock. He blinked in disbelief.

Then it was gone.

“You must believe,” Seamus said, as though he stood right there.

The glow returned and Casper got to work.

He drilled until the drill bits glowed red, hammered with the two-ton hammer until the right armature failed, and then set the charges.

The blast brought down the ceiling and buried the extensible. Casper worked his left armature free, but the rest was hopelessly buried under tons of rock.

He had just enough time before they rescued him, the ceiling collapse triggering alarms. He uncovered the escape hatch, felt the chill to his bones as the frigid air rushed into the capsule, and wiggled from the extensible.

Bare feet and hands on rock sent spikes of cold toward his heart. He had perhaps thirty seconds before hypothermia set in. The glow was all around, and he saw it there, embedded in the newly-exposed rock:

A crystal!

A blue-white varietal, as big as a cherry, so bright he almost couldn't look at it.

He scrambled across the new-fall, the surface treacherous and unstable, and put his hands on the crystal.

The universe spread before him like a sandbox, galaxies like grains of sand. Time swirled around him in the spiral that it was, the inner coccyx looping out to spiral again toward the inner end, engines of creation giving birth to galaxy after galaxy, black holes gorging themselves upon them until they burst from being so turgid.

Casper pulled the crystal from the rock and scrambled back to the extensible, no longer feeling the cold, the blue glow outlining the bones of his hand through his palm.

He climbed back into the extensible, its com squawking at him. Pulling the hatch closed, he worked himself back into position, then pulled the helmet back down over his head. What do I do with it? he wondered, They'll take it if they know I have it, he knew. His clothing offered no concealment, barely adequate to cover his nudity.

There was only one place. The size of a cherry, the crystal wasn't uncomfortable, but the cold felt as if he had an icicle in his buckhole, and he'd have to become accustomed to having the urge to evacuate. He hoped he didn't really have to evacuate between now and the time he returned to the cell block. He didn't know what he'd do then. He couldn't think about that right now.

“Casper, what the buck's going on, do you read?” Tunsel, the warden's buck-lick.

Casper realized he was shivering, and his teeth chattered as he tried to answer. “C … c … ceiling collapse,” he managed to say.

“Are you all right?”

Not that you'd care, oaf! Casper thought. “Shook up, but intact. Extensible's a wreck.”

“Extraction crew is on its way.”

There would be questions, but he wasn't concerned. Tunsel would be asked why Casper was alone. But Casper didn't care. Not anymore.

What about Kathag? he asked himself.

What about her? he answered, and dismissed her from his mind.

Extensibles ran up through the dusty tunnel and swarmed around him, carefully excavating just enough rock to extract his extensible from the rubble. Only the left armature worked, the legs crushed beyond recognition.

“I'll take him back,” Seamus said, his face just visible through his capsule shield. Seamus's extensible grasped Casper's extensible around its middle with a pair of alternate armatures and lifted.

The track was ruined, and the tram was out, its track twisted like shoestrings. Seamus would have to carry him with his extensible.

The com traffic monitored by the warden, Seamus said nothing untoward as he hauled Casper back along the mineshaft. “Thought we lost you, boy,” he grumbled.

The swaying motion was oddly comforting.

Seamus set him on the tram. “Eh? What do you mean? Of course, I'm going with him. The boy's just been in a mine collapse!”

Casper only heard one side of the conversation, and that through the capsule glasma, the sound muted.

“Buck you for putting him out there by himself in the first place, Tunsel. I'm goin'. Got it?” Seamus grinned through the glassplate, setting his extensible down across from Casper.

The tram picked up speed, the other cars full of ore.

Casper saw Seamus's lips move. No sound. Of course.

“Did you find it?” the lips asked.

Casper grinned and nodded.

“Where is it?” the lips asked.

“My buckhole,” he replied with his lips, making no sound.

Seamus chortled, nodding, and slapped his extensible with the hand of an armature. “How big?” the lips asked.

Casper held up a thumb and a forefinger to indicate its size.

“What color?”

“Blue.”

“That'll be a hexagonal.” Seamus nodded. “Timefold properties. Speed-of-light limitation overcome. Intergalactic travel, if that's what you want. You'll get off this rock at last.”

At the mineshaft entrance, Seamus carried him to the extensible bay. They both climbed out of their machines, the basecrew cheering when Casper emerged unscathed.

“You must have had a mineshaft canary watching over you,” Tunsel said.

Casper looked at him. No one knew what a canary was, just that it was purported to save miners. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Back to work, you buckholes. You, too, Seamus. I'll deal with you later.” Tunsel scowled at the old man. “Come with me, Casper.”

Casper and Seamus exchanged a look, and Casper followed Tunsel to the medical office.

“Fit as a fibble,” Dr. Dersop said, he too a prisoner. No one asked why a doctor would be in a place like this. No one asked about another's offense, and rarely was it volunteered. Sometimes before someone's arrival, the newcruit's crime might be spectacular enough to set tongues wagging, but it was rare to know.

“What's a fibble?” Casper asked.

Doctor Dersop shrugged. “No one knows anymore. Just an expression that means you're okay. Slight hypothermia that'll go away with a little rest.” Dr. Dersop turned to Tunsel. “He'll go back to work tomorrow morning, Tunsel. Not a moment before.”

Tunsel puffed up, as if about to object. “All right, Doctor.” He turned to Casper. “Transport won't be here for another four hours. Find a place to park your buckhole and stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, Sir,” Casper said.

Tunsel stomped out of the doctor's office.

In here, the noise was muted. Out there, a cacophony of machinery wouldn't allow him a moment of rest. “Ever hear of Lemuria?” Casper asked.

Dr. Dersop snorted. “Just a pile of buckshit,” he said. “Some enterprising scientist of Old Earth made it up to explain the similarity of species on Madagascar and Sri Lanka, said the only explanation for the similarity was a continent in the Indian Ocean that had once linked the two islands, a continent that sank. The legend persists to this day. Don't listen to old man Seamus, boy. He'll just get you in trouble.”

“Can I use the toilet?”

It actually had a door. Surprised at that, Casper carefully extracted the crystal, then rinsed it off. It glowed, but now with a muted light. Washing his hands, he discovered he did have to go. How am I going to keep this secret up on the unit? he wondered. The singles' bathrooms consisted of a slot in the wall. At least the conjugal cubes had a half-screen. Now, he didn't even have that. His flicker of sadness at Kathag's loss was quickly extinguished, his relationship with her at best a silent begrudging tolerance, at worst a mutual buckfest.

Gazing at the crystal, wondering how to keep it a secret, Casper asked it, “What can you tell me?”

The crystal brightened and then dimmed.

As if it's responding to me, he thought. Pulling his pants back up, he washed and picked up the crystal.

The universe leaped into focus.

Overwhelmed, he thought about the Milky Way galaxy. The view shifted, one point expanding, the familiar barred spiral a much easier object to grasp.

Crab Nebula, he thought, and the view shifted yet further, the oval nebula along the Perseus Arm filling his sight.

Puram constellation, he thought, and the view arrowed toward one of the “Crab” legs. Karata, he thought, which was both the name of the primary and the single inhabitable planet in orbit around the fiery yellow sun. Four other planets also orbited the same sun, Karata a baked stone just ten million miles from the primary, and three gas giants farther out than the occupied planet.

The hot band of desert around his world's middle was dark, just a few glints to indicate it was occupied. Toward the poles the infrastructure increased, as evidenced by swatches of glitter. Casper reveled in seeing the night side of his birth planet from space.

What about other planets? he wondered. Jaffna, for instance, he wondered.

The view lurched precipitously beyond the Crab Nebula to a tenuous string of stars, where a young blue star rushed at him, orbited by a tan planet swathed in green. Groundward, he thought, and the forest canopy rushed at him, a river coursing beside a mountain. Staying focused on it, Casper gasped as it moved closer. Beside the swift-moving river, a hamlet stood beside the road, as though to guard the bridge that spanned the rushing waters.

Closer, he thought, and the bridge rushed at him, at one end a woman who turned to look right at him. He swore he heard her gasp.

Pounding on the door startled him. “You all right?”

Casper dropped his pants and sat on the toilet. “Just a little constipation. Be out in a moment.” He grunted gratuitously.

“Just checkin',” the doctor said through the door. Then his footsteps faded.

Casper sighed and attempted to relax, not wanting to hurt himself when he put it back in.

It did not go in lightly.

He secured his pants around his waist, washed again, and left the toilet.

“Exam table's available if you want to nap,” Doctor Dersop said from the other room.

Casper found the exam table. In moments he was asleep.

* * *

The door crashed open and Casper was off the table and on his feet before Tunsel reached him.

“This way.” Tunsel grabbed his collar and threw him through the waiting area and out the door.

Casper stumbled and fell down the ramp, puckering to keep from excreting the crystal.

They were already lined up. All his fellow prisoners, except one.

Seamus, on his knees, near the smelter loading chute, Gorcos standing over his shoulder.

Tunsel clopped Casper before he could regain his feet, then dragged him bodily toward the spot where Seamus knelt.

“Your attention, everybody,” Tunsel said, his voice echoing across the yard. As though three hundred miners hadn't already given him their undivided attention. “You're here today to see what happens to fools who spout foolery and fools who drink it up. Seamus, you stand convicted of spouting foolery and your sentence is death.”