Extreme Difference Read online

  EXTREME

  DIFFERENCE

  D. B. REYNOLDS-MORETON

  Extreme Difference

  This edition Copyright © 2011 by sci-fi-cafe.com.

  www.sci-fi-cafe.com

  Story Copyright © 2000 by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  ISBN 978-1-908387-46-2 (ePUB)

  ISBN 978-1-908387-47-9 (MOBI)

  eBook production by Oxford eBooks

  www.oxford-ebooks.com

  Of Myth and Legend

  At first there was a nothingness. He was aware of being aware, but that was all. Then came the blackness. It was so deep and intense that it seemed to suck the very life out of him, and a surge of panic ensued. He felt he was fading away, tenuously expanding outwards to fill the entire universe until he would be scattered out so thinly that there would be nothing left of him.

  The sensation stopped. Was he now nothing? There was still a deep blackness, but the awful pull had gone.

  One by one, tiny pinpoints of light appeared, scattered about in the blackness like star dust.

  Stars. That was it! Stars! But where was he? They seemed to be all around him, so he must be suspended in something.

  But there was nothing attached to him and he felt nothing beneath, in fact he had no sensation at all, he just was. He tried to turn, but nothing happened, there were just the stars and him, a something suspended in space, and for all he knew, suspended in time as well.

  Desperately he tried to remember what he was before this strange state he now found himself in, but there was no recall, no memory seemed to exist before the blackness. There was just an emptiness, a non-existence, a nothingness.

  A sudden wrench of his very being took him by surprise, it seemed as if space itself had been twisted and then turned inside out, and him along with it. He would have been sick if he had had anything to be sick with.

  The feeling slowly faded, and he became aware of his body. He could feel his fingers, and wriggled them to make sure they were real. He pinched his arm, he could feel that, so he must have a body. Turning his head to see what lay beneath him, he was in for another shock.

  The blackness beneath had no stars, although they were all around him like a huge dome of tiny lights, but there was nothing below. Was he suspended over a hole in the heavens? What would happen if he fell? And then he did.

  The black hole hungrily rushed up to meet him, and he hit the ground with a sickening thud which drove the breath out of his already aching body in a whistling gasp.

  For a moment he lay there, stunned, and then spat out the mouthful of ice cold metallic tasting sand he had inadvertently acquired upon hitting the hard cold ground.

  Whatever he was lying on was sucking the heat out of his body at a terrifying rate, so he tried to push himself up using his arms. He flopped down again, the pain in his fingers intensifying to an excruciating level as his hands sank into the freezing sand with the effort.

  The crunch crunch of approaching footsteps caused him to look up. A tall figure stood before him, only discernible because it blocked out the light from the glittering star field.

  ‘Let me help you up.’ The dark shape bent down and a grip of steel encircled his arm, yanking him to his feet in one easy motion, steadying his weak and swaying body.

  ‘Quick, we must be away from here, the sand life will be active soon, and that would spell the end of us both.’

  The dark shadowy shape took a firm grip on his elbow, and urgently propelled him forward at an ever increasing pace until they were almost running, only slowing down when the stars were blanked out by the towering black mass of something ahead of them.

  ‘We should be all right now. What’s your name?’ the dark shape asked, between panting breaths.

  ‘I don’t know.’ he finally gasped out, the words punctured by throaty whistles as his heaving lungs worked overtime.

  ‘I don’t know anything. I can’t remember who I am supposed to be, where I’ve been, or how I got here. I just remember hitting that bloody sand at a high rate of knots, and getting a mouthful of the foul tasting stuff for my trouble.’

  ‘Ah, good. You speak our tongue. That'll save much time getting you oriented into our system. Not many speak like us these days, and that makes things very difficult sometimes. I had hoped you would be a female, but a male is just as welcome, really.’

  They had reached the dark opening in the ominous rock wall which seemed to reach up to impossible heights until it merged with the midnight black of the heavens, its extremities delineated by the bright sprinkle of dust like stars.

  ‘My name is Nan. We’ll soon have a name for you, and then you’ll feel better. A sense of identity always does that for a person.’ the dark shape said clearly, having got its breath back.

  ‘But Nan is a girl’s name. You don’t sound like a girl to me,’ he said, ‘unless you’ve had a very strange operation.’

  ‘Nan is my given name, given to me by the group when I arrived. I find it quite acceptable, and I can assure you I am a man, in every sense of the word.’ His voice had hardened, with a sharp edge to it, a warning that this was not someone to upset unnecessarily, if at all.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean any offence.’ he replied, realizing he was on dangerous ground in a strange land, and would need all the help he could get. ‘It’s just that I am so confused, I don’t know what’s happened to me, or why.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the voice softened a little, ‘we’ll soon get you settled down and explain a few things, and then you’ll feel better. It’s always a shock for new arrivals, but as they say, time and knowledge is a great healer.’

  The steel grip on his arm lessened, and although he could feel himself swaying a little, he remained ambulant as the steadying hand of Nan was slowly withdrawn.

  ‘Do you think you can walk unaided now?’ asked the dark shape, ‘the dawn is coming up, and there’s a lot to do.’

  A faint glowing light on the high horizon now clearly differentiated the sky from the blackness of the surrounding land, giving the impression of being at the bottom of a giant bowl, its dark jagged edges ripping into the soft glow of the approaching day.

  ‘Please follow me, you’ll need food and drink after what you’ve been through, and then we’ll try to explain what has happened.’ The dark shape strode into the even darker opening in the rock face and disappeared. Before he could move to follow, a pale yellowish splash of light lit up the opening, the tall figure of Nan silhouetted in its gentle glow.

  ‘Come on, we can’t waste time, the dawn is nearly here.’ and with that the tall dark figure marched off into the tunnel, darkly muttering something under his breath.

  As he followed Nan into the narrow passageway, he drew level with the light source on the wall. A thin pipe with a control knob near its base had a small flickering flame dancing on its upturned end, and as he passed it by, he hugged the opposite wall in case the draft from his body should extinguish its feeble life.

  The tunnel took a sudden turn to the left, and he found himself in a large cave with several guttering flame lights dotted around the walls. These cast lurid shadows from a bedraggled group of stern and haggard looking people, who seemed none too pleased at his arrival.

  Nan stepped forward, and taking him by the arm, pulled him firmly into the middle of the group.

  ‘This is
our new arrival,’ he began authoritatively, turning and smiling at the wretched figure who had followed him into the cave complex, ‘so let’s give him a nice welcome.’

  A feeble chorus of ‘hello’s’ expressing little enthusiasm from the ragged group of hermits left him wondering just what he had got himself into, not that there had been a great deal of choice in the matter on his part.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered back, trying to inject some zeal into his reply, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember my name, or anything very much, but I am grateful to be here.’ He later wondered why he had added that last bit to his response, and put it down to inborn politeness.

  ‘Before we give you a name, I’ll introduce you to our merry little band, we are glad to have you into our midst.’

  Nan stepped forward and raised his arm towards a cloak clad figures who looked the most likely to be female.

  ‘This is Bell, she looks after our growing bins and is generally in charge of all food production and collection.’

  Bell did her best to smile, but two missing front teeth added little to her effort. Realizing this, she gave up, and let her mouth take up its normal droopy look.

  Nan turned to one side and pointed to the next apparition in grey brown sackcloth, almost a twin of the first.

  ‘Here we have Mop, she does all the cooking, helps to gather food, and generally keeps the place tidy.’

  Mop had a full set of teeth, albeit a little stained, and a pleasant smile. Long black matted hair framed a pale pock marked face. Any other semblance to the female of the species was hard to find, as a solid thickset jaw jutted out in an almost threatening manner, and the eyes were cold and hard. She did at least make the effort, and extended a stained and grubby hand for him to touch in greeting.

  In the dim light their hands touched briefly, leaving behind a sour and rancid smell which lingered in his nostrils for some time to come. He felt his stomach turn over, and was glad it was empty.

  ‘Karry is so called because of her immense strength, for a female that is.’ He thought Nan withdrew a little from the amazon like figure, her eyes glaring hard and cold.

  ‘If we get into a scrape, she is the one to have by your side.’ Nan offered in a placatory tone, and the eyes softened a little.

  ‘Ben here, is our weapons man. He maintains the gas guns, and just about everything else you will see in our little haven. All bits of metal and other material you might come across should be passed to him, and he will make something useful from it.’ The short stubby man took a step forward and grabbed his hand in a vice-like grip. He could feel the bones grinding together as the grip increased, the pain shooting up his arm. He tried not to wince, but his eyes watered a little.

  The weapons man, having made his point, whatever it was, relaxed his grip and stepped back, an ill concealed grin on his dark and greasy face.

  Nan, sensing that their new acquisition was feeling increasingly ill at ease, hurried the rest of the introductions through with indecent haste, briefly mentioning the name of each individual and the functions assigned to them, but it remained a hazy blur to him, as had everything since his awakening on the cold dark sands a few nightmarish moments ago.

  ‘We must get the growing bins out,’ Nan said in the same breath as the last introduction ended, ‘the sun will be up any minute now.’

  Everyone was galvanized into action, as if their very lives depended upon some indefinable and immediate response.

  With Nan leading the way, the sombre little group of troglodytes hurried out of the cave-like room and along the tunnel, turning off into another cavern, where a row of trough-like boxes sprouted an assortment of plants. Some had bright red berries dangling from thin spindly branches, while others bore larger plump rounded yellow fruits, the like of which he could not recall having seen before.

  One by one, the troughs were carefully lifted and carried out of the cavern, one person at each end, taking great pains not to jostle the contents of the boxes and even more careful not to bump into those preceding and following. The sombre little procession trundled along the main tunnel until it opened out into the vast expanse of sand which formed the centre of their world.

  The troughs were laid out in rows on stone ledges, close up to the towering rock walls of the extinct volcano, and away from the sparkling lake of sand which seemed to stretch out almost to the horizon.

  Those who had placed their troughs in their appointed positions, then hurried back to bring out the rest of the plant containers, until the ledges around the tunnel opening looked like a neatly laid out small market garden.

  Nan stood back, running his critical eye over the neat rows of troughs, indicating with a casual wave of his hand a slight adjustment here, an extra tilt there, until all were positioned exactly as he wanted them, according to some unspoken ritual which he alone seemed to understand.

  There was little doubt that Nan was in overall control. Whether by election, skill, or age, he could not tell, but he was surprised, as Nan seemed to be a quiet gentle man, not the sort of person one would expect to hold a position of authority, especially in the prevailing circumstances.

  The rising sun poured forth its hard brazen light, glistening off the high peaks on the massive volcano’s rim and turning the ice cold stone into flaming fingers of red and yellow.

  Already the air had a slight touch of warmth about it as the reflected light from the shiny rocks above danced about on the barren sands, giving the momentary illusion of a large lake of shimmering water.

  ‘We’d best get back inside.’ said Nan softly, as though if he spoke any louder he would break the spell of the warmth to come, or awaken some unimaginable monster from its slumbers. ‘Kel, I think it’s your turn to guard, please be extra vigilant today.’

  With that he turned, and herding his newly found recruit before him, went back into the tunnel followed unenthusiastically by the others, except for two who lingered outside for a few precious moments to savour the ever brightening and warming light.

  ‘We must give you a name.’ Nan began when the rest of the group had joined him. ‘Do you have a preference? Or would you like us to suggest a suitable name which you would like to be known as?’

  ‘I don’t know if I even had a name. I can’t remember anything much, except the biting cold of that bloody sand. I’m still spitting out bits of it now.’

  Even thought his mouth was dry, he managed to eject a small globule of spittle to emphasize his point. It glistened and sparkled as it spun downwards in the flickering light of the gas lamps, to be quickly absorbed by the bone dry floor of the cave, leaving no trace of it ever having been there.

  The utter silence which followed his little display made him wonder if he had inadvertently broken some important taboo, or even insulted the motley gathering.

  The stillness was broken by Nan, insisting that a name be given to their visitor, explaining that without it he would not feel a real person, and would be of little use to the group.

  ‘Do we have any suggestions?’ Nan asked again, looking from one to another of the sullen assembly, but all just glared back at him, except Ben, who grinned.

  ‘I get the feeling that no one wants me here, so why don’t you just let me go. I’ll manage somehow. Perhaps there are others I can join.’

  ‘No!’ Nan was adamant. ‘We found you, and with us you will stay. The other groups are mostly a barbaric lot, and if they don’t like you, you could well finish up being eaten, or something worse. Come on, someone must have an idea.’

  The silence dragged on painfully, with a few muttered comments and grunts from the ragged gathering, but nothing constructive or helpful was offered.

  ‘Alright. How about Sandy? That seems fitting, I landed in the bloody stuff, it went up my nose, in my mouth, and given enough time it probably would have found its way up the other end. I’ll settle for that.’

  Nan looked around to see if there was any reaction to the suggestion, but apart from a few half hearted nods, the sile
nce ensued as before.

  ‘That’s settled then. You will hence forth be known as Sandy. Now we can welcome you into our midst properly.’

  Nan waved the others into some semblance of a line, and standing at its head alongside Sandy, beckoned the others forward one by one.

  ‘I’m Mop, welcome to our family, Sandy.’ She clutched his proffered hand in the customary manner, the now familiar rancid smell lingering on long after the others had done likewise, reluctantly going through their ritualised greeting.

  When the official inauguration into the ‘family’ reached its somewhat pathetic conclusion, Sandy asked Nan to explain what the place was all about, and why he was here.

  The others filed out of the cavern, no doubt going about their allotted business, or just getting out of the way of any other rituals Nan might suddenly feel inclined to implement.

  Several crude benches were scattered about the cavern, mostly up against the walls, but apart from two, which were obviously made from some kind of metal, the material used for the others remained unidentifiable.

  ‘Please sit down Sandy, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have, although you may be disappointed in my lack of knowledge of this place.’ Nan had now assumed a much more relaxed attitude towards him, and almost seemed like any other normal human being, except he had difficulty in trying to recall anyone in particular.

  ‘What the hell is this place?’ asked Sandy, the words stumbling over themselves in his eagerness to get them out.

  ‘It is where we live, and have done so for a very long time, long before I came here. Stories are handed down from the elders to those who take their place upon the elder’s death. I am an elder, and I try to keep the stories as true as possible when retelling them, but it is thought that some have embellished the history of this place to suit their own ends.’

  ‘That doesn't surprise me one bit, but what is this place?’ Sandy asked impatiently. ‘Where is it, and what does it consist of?’

  ‘It was created for us by some higher power, and we are created to populate it. Some people claim to be able to recall things from a past existence, but I think that’s heresy, and there’s no proof that we have existed before the creation. I think it’s just imagination on their part, and not healthy.’