Excerpt from The Unknown Battle of Krndsdell, Chapter 22
It couldn’t go on indefinitely. Taln heard the lock click and the door to his cell opened. He squinted in the sudden flood of light. A figure entered, almost glided in. Taln did not move, did not acknowledge his captor.
The man gestured, pointing a finger at Taln. “You are the first person who ever found us. You must be very clever. The punishment for this, of course, is death. But we have decided to offer you the opportunity to determine your outcome yourself.”
Nothing. There’s nothing I can say to you that would work to my advantage.
“We know who you are. We know all about you.”
How could they know who I am? It’s impossible with the precautions I took. I must not respond to him in any way.
The man smiled, cocked his head to the side a little. “Don’t worry about your wife, she’s doing fine. We can make sure no one does her any harm.”
Give no reaction. He’s bluffing.
“You don’t believe we have found her? Well I have brought you something of hers . . . let’s just say, as evidence of our serious intentions.” He reached his hand out towards Taln, showing him a little bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. He opened up the handkerchief for Taln to see.
Taln had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It can’t be! Marzena’s finger-troxes. Oh, how I miss Marzena! And now they have taken her too! How could they have known where she was? But wait. . . does he have all twelve of the troxes? He tried to count the troxes in the man’s hand without appearing to be too interested. Of course his captors couldn’t know anything about the quarm.
“If you choose to tell us nothing, then we will do nothing to protect Marzena from . . . whatever might happen to her," the man smiled. "If you help us we will help her. If you scorn us we will scorn her. As I promised, here’s your opportunity to determine the outcome. Now, will you cooperate with us?”
He has only ten of the finger-troxes! He must have no idea of what he's got! And those troxes must have been taken from Marzena no more than fourteen days ago--when I was last with her. So I must stall, stall, as much as possible.
The man looked at Tron impatiently. "Well, what is your answer, will you cooperate?"
Taln was hardly paying attention, as he was realizing all of the implications. At some time, the remaining two troxes will slip into Resonance, and if I am vigilant, their momentary unphasing will enable me to access the power of the Third Frelzn before the final dissolution of the remaining troxes drains the energile reservoir. So . . . I must stall him--pretend to cooperate, however much it galls me to submit to him, and watch for the precise moment of the Third Frelzn. It's the only way to save Marzena.
Taln looked up at the man. “Please don’t hurt Marzena,” he pleaded. “What do you want from me?”
The man smiled and clasped his hands together. “Tell me how you found us. You should not have been able to do this. No one has ever found us.”
Taln didn’t want to even hint about the quarm. That was the one thing they must not ever know. “I learned about your whereabouts from my readings in the Library of Gleb,” Taln said.
“Liar!” the man retorted. “There is nothing in any of the books in the Library of Gleb that even remotely speak of time directionality. You can’t have learned anything there. Now, we’ll try this again: How did you find us?”
Time directionality? So this is why they can never be caught! Not in my wildest dreams have I ever thought that they used time directionality. I must get him to reveal more about this.
Taln shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, we have known about time directionality for quite some time. We have just thought it more useful to develop the stronger potential of time dimensionality instead.” Phew! what a mouthful of nonsense. Can he tell I’m making it up as I go along?
The man stood looking at Taln for almost a minute, considering. “Hmm . . .time directionality versus time dimensionality. I think you are bluffing,” he said finally. “You have developed no science of time dimensionality—We would surely have detected it. My people have been trained from birth in the subtleties of time. As children, we play with quantas of time as your children play with crude blocks. When your children are learning to walk, our children are learning to walk backwards, to talk backwards, to do facial expressions and hand gestures in reverse, so we can invade your counter-world, and your people never guess our true nature—that we move in the opposite direction in time as you are. No, you cannot fool me when talking about time.”
Why is he telling me all this, revealing his true nature? He must plan on killing me after I tell him what he wants to know. I must somehow last long enough to access the Third Frelzn.
“No, I am not satisfied with your cooperation,” the man said, shaking his head. “At any rate, I must leave now, as my intersection with your time has reached a maximum. I must head now into your past.” He smiled. “But I can assure you that the next one who comes in my place will bring more news of Marzena--bad news, I'm afraid. . . And, ah yes, news of the quarm.” He smiled, and was suddenly gone.
They know about the quarm! How could they?! But . . . do they? Perhaps that's exactly what they are trying to learn from me. The only hope I have is to hold on until the eruption of the Third Frelzn.
it's well structured. The dialogue is well done (IMO the hardest part, sometimes, in writing fiction!) The fantasy is a little bit mysterious and unintelligible, but I think only because I haven't read the rest of the book. This makes me want to... always a good sign!! I can feel the tension in the scene, and it's got a good flow to it.
ReplyDeleteDid you write this or is this from a book you've read? I like that part where it talks about doing things in reverse- and that there are people in a different dimension just like us. At first I thought the who was guy interogating could read the prisoner's thoughts.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote this I had two independent ideas floating around in my mind:
ReplyDelete1)Write what sounded like a chapter from somewhere deep inside a book.
2)Write a story with the idea of people in one direction surreptitiously invading people in another time direction.
For 1), it had to be a little difficult to tell what was going on for it to seem like a chapter taken out of the flow of the story. (Of course, you had to ultimately be able to make sense of it, too, for the most part for it to really be a short story.) Thus, Nosurfgirl, when you, describe it as "a little bit mysterious and unintelligible, but I think only because I haven't read the rest of the book," and Natalie, when you write, "At first I thought . . ." (I'm glad it was clear enough to figure out that the man couldn't read Taln's thoughts--that's something that would have been more clearly set up at the beginning of the whole book, etc.)-- your responses in this regard were reactions I was hoping for.
The idea about interractions between people from different time directions, 2), is almost completely impossible--how would there be any context for any extended reaction beyond just one moment (whatever that is--how short is a moment?--in this case, perhaps it would really be infinitely small). So my task was to get the reader to accept the idea as possible some way through getting them involved in the story, etc. Also, I wanted to do this in a very short space (a very short story) so I didn't have a lot of time to set it up or explain things, etc.--but the excerpted chapter idea, 1), could perhaps help with that.
Anyway, I started with those ideas. Of course, a story has to have more than ideas like that--it has to actually have a story and characters etc.
Thanks for your nice responses, too: "I haven't read the rest of the book. This makes me want to..." and, "Did you write this or is this from a book you've read?" and your other comments.
I was thinking that it would be fun to write another chapter from somewhere else inside the "book." Who knows, eventually all of them could get written--but I wonder how often people write books with chapters written initially completely out of order?
Wow.
ReplyDeleteThat's some good writing. Honestly, I don't feel like I can develop characters and tension at the level you have until I've really gotten into my story.
You should write your chapters out of order! I bet, in a way, it'd be a good way to write better... meaning there'd be no "in between" sludge jamming up the wheels of plot and story development...
He smiled. “But I can assure you that the next one who comes in my place will bring more news of Marzena--bad news, I'm afraid. . . And, ah yes, news of the quarm.”
ReplyDeleteOh no!!!!! As the end of the story, that's devastating. But I guess if that's the middle of the story, there's still hope for Taln.
That's such a fun idea-- to write a chapter from the middle of a story!
I'm ready for the last chapter. Oh wait, maybe the last chapter is really the first, which is last and therefore first, which is... It's amazing that we are even able to read it as it may have been written out of time directionality or dimentionality as we know it. Maybe we already have read the end (I mean the beginning) ARGH! Anyway. I sure hope Marzena is safe. Will I ever find out?
ReplyDelete