Twelve O'Clock Tales Page 5

  I mentioned the widening of the fissure and he looked at me and said, “They probably leaned on it too hard in their lust to be on television.” I didn’t know how to take that quite unusual criticism, and so I did not respond.

  He was meeting someone for lunch, and the others had already gone out for theirs, so I remained in the lab, lunching on a sandwich and fruit I’d brought. I napped for twenty-seven minutes in the breakfast room.

  They were all back and in their offices when I woke up. I had coffee, suited up, and went back in to room with El Tigre to remove the second piece of material.

  In those two hours, the fissure had widened yet again, its rate of widening seemingly increasing. But of course this could only aid me in locating a more interior area to remove a slice of El Tigre for our electroscopes, just as the professor wished.

  After I had done so, getting a slice of rock from inside the newly opened fissure itself, I looked at the slice under the simple magnification we had in that room. When I glanced back at El Tigre, I could have sworn that I noticed a glimmer of color coming from within that fissure, i.e., from inside the meteorite.

  I changed my position for another look and the color was gone. I tried to locate my original position but could not seem to recover that gleam or glimmer—both words being too strong to describe the very dim, somewhat ultraviolet-like hue that I thought I had seen. I concluded that the effect must be a trick of the glass in the helmet of the Haz-Mat suit I was wearing, along with the fluorescent lightbulbs high up in the room, which I had noticed at odd times flickered. I said nothing of it to Prof Rig when I brought in the second slice, but I did mention the increased widening of the fissure.

  He was pleased by both slices and said he would look them over carefully. He sent me to my office to fill out my daily report. He remains now with the slices under the electron scanning microscope. I guess he’s searching for bacteria fossils.

  Fine with me. I’m about to leave. I’ve got a date in town with a young woman I’ve been interested in since I first saw her.

  July 4th, 2___

  10:45 a.m.

  Surprisingly, I was the only one here in the lab all this morning. Prof Rigoberto sent me an e-mail that I only read once I arrived here today in my old Datsun, reminding me that he would not be in the lab before noon, as he had a doctor’s exam in town. I have no idea where del Cuerco or Ventano are.

  The professor said he had found some “anomalies referring to color and possibly also to composition” in the second slice of El Tigre that I’d taken yesterday and he wanted me to look it over. And, if the fissure had widened, to go back and take another slice of material as deeply located as possible.

  I went into his office and looked at the two slices. As he mentioned, the second one indeed seemed to have a slight tinge of that same ultraviolet glow I thought I had seen inside yesterday. So perhaps it wasn’t a trick of the light as I’d first thought. No hint of any fossilized proto-life, however, in either slice.

  Ten minutes ago, I suited up and went into the room with El Tigre. The fissure had widened to eleven centimeters, i.e., three times what it was on yesterday evening. I could place my entire gloved hand into the fissure from the top surface. The glow I’d seen before was now present, as before, if of even deeper origin and somehow suffusing more what I could see of the interior. Are those even the right words to describe it?

  I did as Prof Rig had requested and carefully made a very deep inroad into El Tigre twenty centimeters in, and using the utmost care, I removed the material in a thin slice. When I held it up in its tiny forceps, it had that same odd glow. I looked at it in various kinds of artificial light and it still had the glow, although it was now not ultraviolet, but also had hues of violet, green, and indigo.

  I brought it into Prof Rig’s office and placed it in a sealed plate. Then I unsuited and returned. Del Cuerco had come into work and asked me what I was doing. I told him, and together we looked at the slice of material under triple magnification. He muttered something unintelligible and would not repeat it when I asked him to. I received a strong impression that he was hungover from a night of drinking; it wouldn’t be the first time.

  Prof Rig has just phoned to say he won’t be in at all today. He reacted badly to an injection of B-12 and something else his doctor gave him—is he one of those Doctor Feelgoods? They do abound in Caracas.

  I told him about the fissure and the multicolored glow. He requested that I look back at El Tigre at 3 p.m. and if the fissure has widened further that I take a another interior slice, going as deeply in as I can.

  I’m not sure why I’m making this entry, probably because I’m nervous. Prof Rig is not here. Del Cuerco is, but he’s hungover, and Ventano called to say he’d be in later.

  10:22 p.m. Yes, p.m.

  Prof Ventano is sitting here with me in his office as I am still somewhat shaken by the events of this afternoon. I’ve had a half glass of brandy and am calmer. Possibly the most astounding aspect of it all is that it is 10.22 p.m., since what happened seemed to me to take place over perhaps ten minutes, at most.

  Whereas, according to Prof Ventano and Dr. del Cuerco, I was gone over seven hours!

  Ventano had just arrived at the lab. I met him in the corridor all suited up at 3:05 p.m. and I went back into the room with El Tigre. He was standing in the corridor looking in at me when he got a call from his mistress, which he admits absorbed most of his attention as they were arguing over some private events of the most recent weekend. Yet he said he was also, if not with his fullest attention, watching me.

  I will first relate what happened in the room. Then Prof Ventano will add what he witnessed.

  I entered with my usual tools for taking interior slices and I was extremely startled to see the prismatic glow I’d noticed before was suffusing the entire top surface of El Tigre. As I neared it, I immediately noticed that the fissure had considerably widened.

  When I looked into the interior I immediately saw that the light and colors were coming from an object embedded in the interior, some fifteen centimeters from the top.

  If I was astonished then, you may imagine my further astonishment as the object began slowly rising, with no apparent noise or strain. As it did, I could make out its shape, a torus or solid ring, its color, prismatic as I said, albeit at first in the green-blue-violet range, and its size was no bigger than my gloved hand. I couldn’t even speculate on its composition.

  It rose so slowly yet so continuously that I turned to the glass separating me from Ventano and gestured to him. He was arguing and looking away, so I tapped on the glass.

  When he looked at me, I gestured at El Tigre and shouted and then mouthed the words, “There’s something inside. It’s coming up.” I gestured to indicate something rising slowly. Ventano did not understand and so I located a piece of paper and wrote down what I meant and held it up to the glass.

  He read it and glanced at the meteorite and yelled, “I’ll suit up and come in.”

  He hung up the phone and ran to the storeroom.

  I turned back to El Tigre. I could now see the object’s top edge over the top of the meteorite. It was continuing to rise. I turned to see where Ventano was, then back to El Tigre. He wasn’t coming. Had he taken another phone call?

  I could not stop looking at the meteorite. The object now had risen halfway up.

  I rapped on the glass, hoping to urge him to hurry up. No luck.

  I looked back at the thing, and now the object was up almost its entire length.

  I went closer, and sure enough, although I couldn’t say why or how, it was still moving. It had managed to rise so that all but a very tiny portion of it was still touching the interior.

  I turned back to the glass and corridor and pounded on the glass. Where was Ventano?

  I looked back and the object looked as though it was clearing the surface. I swore I could see its bottom edge clear the rock interior.

  Thinking it was clearly a manufactured and not a natural
object, given its perfection of shape and its utter amazement of color, my fear was that if it fell onto the floor, it would crash and break into a million pieces. It did look that fragile. And I would be responsible for destroying something of unknowable significance. That must not happen!

  I looked back once more for Ventano. But he was not coming. Then I turned and grabbed at the torus to keep it from falling.

  Professor Ventano’s statement was found in an e-mail he sent to Professor Rigoberto y Alain on July 4th at 3:45 p.m.

  Something has happened to Jorge! He was inside with El Tigre, working, when a sudden glow illuminated the interior of the thing. He got my attention and I went to suit up. When I returned, I saw him reaching for some non-natural object at the very top surface. As he did, an enormous silent explosion of light and color occurred, stunning me and blinding me for at least three minutes with its strength and luminosity.

  When I was able to see again, El Tigre was there, but not Jorge. I was suited up and I went into the room carefully, and there was a large fissure opening up inside El Tigre to maybe an arm’s length in depth. But Jorge and whatever he had been reaching for were gone.

  I searched the room, then left and unsuited and searched the lab’s rooms and offices and closets and the lab’s exterior too. No Jorge. Del Cuerco had been sleeping, but with my shouting he came running in. He joined me in the search. Please phone and/or advise!

  I turned and grabbed at the torus to keep it from falling and I managed to get my gloved hand around it to hold it still. Just then there was a sudden burst of light so great I was forced to shut my eyes despite the Haz-Mat suit’s colored and tempered helmet glass, and to keep them closed at least thirty seconds.

  When I opened my eyes the torus was still in my hand. But—and here I can do nothing but write the truth—but I was no longer inside the Puruana Laboratory. Instead I was on what seemed to be a small, concrete or rocklike ledge, about a meter and a half from a vast wall of the same material.

  I looked forward to the wall. I looked up and the wall extended almost as high as I could see. I turned slowly to the right and the wall extended almost to the end of my vision; I turned left and the wall extended very far, maybe a half a kilometer, and then met another similar wall at more or less a right angle. I looked down and the wall extended as far down as I dared lean over to see.

  The term “fly on the wall” suddenly had meaning to me. Except that the wall was not exactly vertical but the top of it leaned over a few degrees, and of course, as I looked down, it sloped inward from my perch. Also, I slowly made out other little balconies like the one I stood on, extending maybe two meters wide and another two deep. Perches, rather, as they had no railing or support at the open end.

  I was, of course, astonished. But also I suspected it might be merely a hallucination caused by touching the torus. So I moved forward and touched the wall with my other gloved hand. It was roughly surfaced and clearly not natural but instead constructed. As I came near I could see extremely straight, albeit oddly angled, shallow fissures and concluded that the wall was indeed constructed, not natural, and it was composed of irregularly triangular bricks.

  I tried turning my back to the wall and managed to get a shoulder of the Haz-Mat suit against it. It was definitely hard—real. From here I could make out a large open space of a distance difficult to ascertain but perhaps a kilometer exactly opposite this wall and perch, where there was another, similar, wall with perches, equally high, wide, and angled in from the top. So if it was a hallucination, it was an extremely detailed and consistent one. Also, there was sky and atmosphere, but it was oddly colored; pale chartreuse is the closest I can come to its color.

  When I turned again, to look in the other direction, the still iridescent torus I held flat out brushed the wall. As it did so, a large space opened up in the wall, not at all jagged and so, I assumed, purposefully made. I supposed this to be an entry or ingress.

  I peered into what seemed to be a chamber, long and narrow and high. The coloring within was an even denser and perhaps even smoky or misty version of the outside air.

  I am not particularly afraid of heights, but this was such an odd place to be, a tiny fly on a Herculean wall, that I admit I was uneasy. I stepped cautiously into the chamber, still holding the torus in front of me.

  Immediately apparent was that the walls also were constructed and, how do I say it, somehow textured in many layers, one over the other, what artists call pentimento, I believe. The interior wall and ceiling coloring was all shades of tan and brown, and the ceiling appeared rounded where the vertical met the horizontal. Like the outer wall, these were at slightly askew, not at right angles to the floor nor to each other, and the chamber was a bit like funhouse walls at a carnival. Also textured out of the sides of some of the walls were seats or ledges or benches, at irregular heights, but all of them large enough to hold a man sitting or perched.

  Smaller and more roundly textured protrusions seemed placed upon the chamber walls, some with odd sticks or other rope like excrescences.

  When I got too close while trying to inspect one of them just above my head, the torus I was holding brushed the wall and it opened up again as the chamber had from the outside, this time into a window to another space.

  I was not prepared for the enormous size of this new space, an interior courtyard of the same oddly angled walls but now in some sort of ziggurat fashion with ramps going up and down. Nor was I ready for the sudden noise, nor the unceasing motion of what seemed to be dozens of dark, unclearly seen, shapes, all clearly animated, and all shrieking or screeching.

  There is no other way for me to explain this.

  I withdrew just as one or two of the figures suddenly noticed me through the opening and rapidly approached in what might have been a curious or a threatening manner. I didn’t stick around to see which it was.

  I quickly strode to the other opening of the chamber leading to the outside perch, and as I rushed toward it I somehow struck the torus against a side of the opening, and again a great light swamped me and I fell to my knees.

  When I opened my eyes I was back in the laboratory and the torus was at the top surface of El Tigre where I first had grasped it. I was maybe a meter away from the meteorite, on my hands and knees, upon the room’s tiled floor.

  I heard loud knocking against the glass, and when I opened my eyes and looked, I saw Ventano out there in Haz-Mat gear but without the helmet, his hands thrown up, and he was screaming something.

  Just then del Cuerco came running into the corridor. Ventano pulled on the helmet and rushed into the lab room. He came over to where I was trying to stand up, and grabbed me by both arms, shouting, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” and after I’d nodded and yelled back that I was okay, he pulled me out of the room.

  Del Cuerco had his office set up so that no sooner was I unsuited than he led me in, sat me down on his sofa, and began giving me a physical exam: eyes, ears, nose, throat, lungs, heart. Everything but a electrocardiogram, and he would have done that if he had the nodes and machinery there. The upshot, clear from his relieved reactions, was that I was fine.

  Ventano was there too, and they both pulled up chairs and peered at me closely.

  “Where were you?” Ventano asked.

  “The strangest place imaginable,” I told them. That’s what the tape recorder they had turned on confirms that I said.

  “Where?” del Cuerco asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  I described what I have just spoken into this tape recorder. After I was done, I drank some bottled water, and Ventano said, “That only sounds like the activity of a few minutes. What about the rest of the time you were gone?”

  When I looked puzzled he showed me their watches and then opened the curtains. It was a clear starry night outside. That’s when he told me how long I was gone—and most crucially that I had been gone.

  “The torus,” I said. “It began when I took
hold of it to keep it from falling.”

  “It didn’t fall. It’s just sitting there,” del Cuerco said. “Come see.”

  We went into the corridor leading to the windows leading to the room I’d been in with El Tigre, and there the torus sat or hovered not quite atop El Tigre’s surface.

  Professor Rigoberto arrived just then and I repeated it all for him.

  By then it was midnight and Prof Rig said he was feeling better after napping most of the day and so he would stay up and keep watch over El Tigre. We should all go home.

  July 5th, 2___

  11:15 a.m.

  The only indication I had that the others at the laboratory were concerned or at all unsure of me last night was that del Cuerco followed me in his Mercedes coupe all the way home, and waited while I parked and went into my apartment building. Only then did I hear him roar off into the night.

  I was exhausted but starved and made toast and covered it with peanut butter and marmalade, eating maybe five sandwiches of that and drinking almost a liter of milk. I slept dreamlessly.

  When I arrived at the lab this morning, Professor Rigoberto y Alain was on the phone, and he remained on the phone much of the morning. He called me in and had me read over a transcription someone had done from the tape of what I told Ventano and del Cuerco late last night. He’d made red pencil question marks that he wanted me to confirm. I did so.

  After he hung up the phone he asked me to once again describe the “animated shapes” that I’d seen in the interior of the structure. Were they man-sized? More or less. Could I describe them better? Did they have arms, legs, a distinct head, a neck? I thought so, but told him my vision had been very fuzzy because of the dense atmosphere and the interference of the Haz-Mat helmet glass.

  He then asked why I’d withdrawn. How threatened did I truly feel? I had to admit not that much. The animated shapes might have just been curious.