Broken Bow - Diane Carey [59]
The scanner’s information was now heavily distorted. Why would it be?
As he approached the door, it opened for him. That alone confirmed his suspicion that someone was inviting him here.
He cautiously stepped through, expecting for a moment to be assaulted, but that didn’t make sense. He could easily have been a sitting duck in the closed corridor.
Inside was some kind of vestibule—a passage without an exit.
He raised his arm—it stayed up after he put it down. ... Lights distorted his vision ... time began to slow ... to slow ...
Was he underwater? His movements slowed further. Time effect!
This was some kind of temporal alteration chamber. And Archer had walked right into it. His arms and legs blurred as he moved. Gradually, deliberately, he learned to make forward progress, to ignore the echoes he saw, movement echoes that unnerved him and confused his eyes. He moved his arms, and a second set made the same movement seconds later—or seconds before?
He looked down. The sound of his footsteps preceded the actual steps. He stopped walking. Soon he had only two feet again. When he had a little control—although his heartbeat had other ideas—he clapped his hands.
The sound came before his hands met.
Now what?
Definitely time distortion, contained somehow. Could he trust his own thoughts?
Moving with great deliberation, he began to explore the room, the alien architecture, the technology on undecipherable panels. After all, someone wanted him to see all this. He would oblige them.
A podium rose before him. As it did, as he was able to focus on it, the temporal distortions began to fade. Had someone been giving him a taste of what they could do, and now they were finished showing off? Had it been a test? A mistake?
There was the podium, clear now before him, and a large weird-looking archway—metallic, huge, obviously purposeful in design and whatever its function was. Certainly not just interior decor.
He drew his pistol and turned sharply when a reverberation rang through the chamber—the door was opening. Beyond it, the dark vestibule appeared empty. The door closed and sealed again, as if a ghost had entered ... or left.
Archer backed away, silent, listening. His senses chimed with intuition.
“You’re wasting your time. Klaang knows nothing.”
A voice! Real words. What a relief—more or less.
The sound of footsteps in the preecho chamber rumbled with strange sounds and repeats. Archer tried to track the sound with his pistol, ready to shoot. The voice preechoed, too. He heard two, three, four of each word.
“It would be unwise to discharge that weapon in this room,” the voice said.
“What is this room?” Archer asked. “What goes on here?”
“You’re very curious, Jonathan. May I call you Jonathan?”
“Am I supposed to be impressed that you know my name?” he asked reasonably.
“I’ve learned a great deal about you. Even more than you know.”
“Well, I guess you have me at a disadvantage,” Archer said, leading this person on. He knew by now that whoever was talking desperately wanted to tell him many things, or he/it wouldn’t be talking at all. “So why don’t you drop the invisible man routine and let me see who I’m talking to?”
Because you know you’re going to show me eventually.
“You wouldn’t have come looking for Klaang,” the voice said, “if Sarin had told you what she knew. That means you’re no threat to me, Jonathan. But I do need you to leave this room.”
The time-door hissed again, and opened invitingly.
“Now, please.”
The footsteps echoed again, but this time Archer saw something, a slight distortion against the far wall.
Instead of leaving, he fired his phase pistol. A blurred preshot flowed in before the blast itself, and the sound had no attachment to what he saw. The beam struck the far wall. A jagged wave of energy blew from the point of impact and swept the room. Archer was blown back, slamming his head against a wall. Pain drummed in his skull—he held his head and waited for the wave to pass. It passed four times.
“I warned you not to fire the weapon,” the voice said.
Again the