A Voyage in the Near Distance 1: From Here to Nearly There Read online

  He stood.

  “So, it’s settled. We will talk about compensation later. For now, I can offer you room, board, and travel accommodations.”

  I was confused.

  “Travel accommodations? Where am I going?”

  “You are now my personal liaison with Allison’s organization, which is co-leagued with ours. Surprising as it must be, her people have the same conundrum we do. Thus, we have thrown in together in an effort to uncover the answer to a great mystery.

  “You will report to me, but effectively, you will be reporting to her. I trust that suits your Ladyship?”

  “Only if you stop calling me that,” Allie said.

  I should have been mortified. A sane person would have demanded to be let go that very moment. I had a job already, and a good job. I had my bills and debts, yes, but I managed them. I had, well, not a house per se, but a room with my aunt. And I had friends. Sort of. Well, I had people at the office.

  I didn’t even have a cat.

  Forget what I just said about being mortified. I mean, honestly, once the insanity of the situation was rationalized away (three cheers for growing up in my family), I was unable to think of a single real reason not to take one more step. If there was no step after that, then I would still be a little ahead. If, however, there were many steps beyond, then I would want to take them just to see where they led.

  I stood and shook the Earl’s hand. A wellspring of excitement built up in me. I found myself eager and thrilled.

  In the interest of disclosure, you should know that I might have had another sip or two of the brandy, but my notes are deficient as to that point.

  Sensing my emotion, Allie came over to me. She looked me in the eye and said, “Carver, are you really sure about this?”

  My enthusiasm ebbed slightly as I honestly considered the question.

  “Allie, why not? As crazy as all of this was tonight, it was…” I searched for the right word. “It was eye-opening.” That was not the right word. I should have said ‘illuminating’ or something like that. I went on, “You tell me the truth right now. Am I in danger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pause next time.”

  “Next time ask me something I have to think about.”

  “Will I be safer if I go with you?”

  “No clue.”

  “Then it’s settled. Call it a career change. What’s our destination? New York or Vancouver?”

  “Carver, I don’t think you’ve made one or two important connections yet.”

  I searched my memory but was unable to figure out what she meant.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Burnside. Duchess of Burnside, Carver. Ever heard of it?”

  “No, but I don’t know every dukedom.”

  “Ever heard of a town called Burnside? Or a county? Or anything?”

  “No…”

  An idea came to me. I disregarded immediately. It was too preposterous to seriously consider. Yet, it nagged at the edges of my mind until it was through and foremost in my thinking.

  “Burnside,” I said slowly and intently.

  “Yeah,” Allie said. “Little place, very nice. I grew up there. It’s about an hour outside of Newmarch.”

  “Newmarch?”

  She cocked her head.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah, Carver.”

  My preposterous idea suddenly became inescapable.

  “In a way, I am jealous of you, Mr. Carver,” said the Earl. “I cannot travel very far from England with all that is happening. That means you will be the first of us to accompany Allison on a trip to her home.”

  “Which is?”

  “Rhedel,” she said. “It’s called Rhedel.”

  I mouthed the word but could not say it aloud.

  “Planet,” I uttered.

  She nodded.

  “That’s another planet.”

  She nodded again.

  Now, you must take my word for all of this, and I admit that some of it strains credulity. Nevertheless, believe me when I say that in that moment, as I heard Allie tell me that she was not born on our Earth and that she was, in the strictest sense of the word, an alien, I smiled. I smiled broadly. I grinned like a fool. This was not frightening, nor was it cause for any sort of alarm. It was exhilarating.

  I smiled, and I laughed. I wanted to weep, and I had no clue why. Then I hugged her; squeezing the wind from her lungs. She laughed as well, albeit a bit nervously.

  “Carver,” she eventually croaked, “I can’t breathe.”

  I released her. As I backed away from the hug, I considered her anew. For the first time I looked at her and understood so many things that had been mysterious. This strange woman who did not know what a Twix was had a perfectly acceptable excuse for ignorance.

  As she was, I soon would be. A traveler, a stranger traipsing about on a world untouched by anyone from my own. The possibilities and the consequences rose up all around me and consumed my imagination. Oddly enough, I did not consider the momentous reality that my name would become deserving of a place alongside Neil Armstrong.

  The Earl clapped me on the shoulder.

  “You two have some planning to do. I have to make a call. I need to see how things are going in the village. The creatures should have been scared off, but I sent some men over just in case. I need to check on them. Dana.” With that, the two of them stepped outside.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” Allie replied, “There’s someone you need to meet. But first, close your eyes.”

  I did. Then, like a parent at a birthday party, Allie led me through the other door and into the larger room beyond.

  11

  It is a difficult thing to describe something you love. A person trying to do so will almost certainly fail to convey the deep sense of affection, respect, and, if it is not going too far to say, awe that a truly beloved object invokes and evokes.

  Some objects are of nearly universal love, so the author needs only to reference them in order to convey this quality. The Lincoln Memorial is beloved to the people of America, as is Christ the Redeemer to the people of Brazil, and the Eiffel Tower to the people of Paris. The examples are legion, and a list is unnecessary. Other objects are of a category that many humans can relate to in a more general way. The first pair of shoes worn by a beloved child. A wedding ring. Some memento of a beloved person no longer alive.

  Then there are the great machines humans create for the seemingly mundane purpose of transportation. I say mundane because there really can be nothing more ordinary to the modern person than going from one place to another by means of artificial locomotion. Within this category, however, there are automobiles, ships, aircraft, and others that have done so much more than simply engage in the business of conveyance. They have transcended into objects of love and admiration.

  When a person entrusts his life or the lives of beloved others into the care of, say, an aircraft, that person silently and unwittingly asks the aircraft to do something far more important than ferry passengers. He asks the aircraft to keep people alive. When we travel, we say silent whispers to the engineers and designers; begging them in retrospect to do everything in their power to assemble a moving machine that will face the furies of nature and the uncaring whims of physics with grace and aplomb. We ask them to keep us alive.

  Along these lines, it is quite common for people who develop associations with flying machines to attach profound emotion to the relationships. All the more so for people who have witnessed an aircraft perform magnificently in the face of disaster in order to bring them home. Some aircraft keep you alive because it is part of their design. These do so mechanically and coldly. Other aircraft fight to keep you safe, and you love them for it.

  You, reader, at this point in our association have no idea why I should feel so powerfully about any moving machine. You shall do so if you continue to read this story. Of this, I have no doubt because I will tell you of the many ways that a
machine built by the hands of man not only ferried me across vast distances and saved my life, but did all of this with such qualities as one would expect from the most valiant hero.

  I tell you that I love the ship I am about to describe. Yes, she is luxurious and opulent, but that is wholly irrelevant to my affection. Far more important than the artfulness of her shape and the care of her design is the sheer awesomeness of her engineering. She is and shall ever be as much beloved by me as any person I have ever met.

  This is how I met her. As it happens, it is how you too shall meet her.

  The room sounded large. I had caught a glimpse of it when Allie opened and shut the door, and that had given me the impression of a vast interior. I began to conclude that the whole of the newly-built dike was carved-out and hollow. This conclusion was consistent with the echoing sounds of the door shutting behind us as we entered.

  My feet strode on a solid foundation. It seemed like rock or concrete. Once, I put out a hand to steady myself and felt the cold of steel or some other metal. What was this place?

  “Careful,” Allie said as we proceeded. Her hands were on my shoulders, and she guided me. I am oddly proud to say that I did not peek and, not wanting the surprise to be spoiled, kept my eyes shut tight. The giddying prospects I had only recently become aware of filled me with a sense of dramatic curiosity. But Allie had a reveal in mind, and I was not going to ruin it for her.

  She repeated her admonition to be careful as we began to climb steps. These were definitely metal and resounded with each step. We ascended several feet into the air until we made it to a platform. Allie led me onto it.

  “If this gets to be too much for you, let me know,” she said in my ear. “Ready?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  She whacked the back of my head. I opened my eyes with a start.

  I will not say that I was shocked. I doubt I had very much of that left in me. What I will say is that the image before me took a while to solidify in my mind.

  At first, I thought I was looking at a building. Like a medium-sized office block that some modern architect had adorned with glass and metal. Gradually, it became clear to me that I was looking at a ship.

  And how am I to describe her? How am I to convey the design of a vessel unlike anything you have ever seen? I fear this may be a task beyond my ability, but I must endeavor to try. Forgive me if I rely too much on analogy.

  No observer could have mistaken this spaceship for an ocean-going vessel. Yet her design was vaguely nautical. She bore the symmetry and curvature of a fine sailing ship. Indeed, if you wish to conjure a mental image of the ship (though one seen through cheesecloth and giving only the bare outline of how she appeared), you should start by envisioning a nuclear submarine in dry dock.

  That is precisely the impression the vessel gave me as I first considered her. She differed from a submarine, of course, and she was far more lovely to behold. Still though, the mental image I suggest will help you to begin to see the ship as I did.

  From where I stood, it was obvious that I was looking at the bow. Here was a marked difference between the spaceship and a submarine. Instead of the rounded dome that typically caps-off the latter, sleek metal of a dark color swept up toward an apex. This was met suddenly by lighter-colored metal that curved down to form her prow. She looked as though she had been made to glide atop water, although I knew this could not be so.

  The top half of the ship was colored in a light shade of grey. Below the imaginary waterline, she was black. Red stripes ran along her keel, and white piping decorated the entire hull. There were windows everywhere.

  I gazed at her in admiration, for she was an object of unmistakable beauty. No words came to me. I just took her in. I walked a few steps to the left, toward her starboard side. She was long; easily more than two hundred feet from prow to stern. She was also stout, with a wide beam that threatened to take away from her beauty without actually doing so.

  Along the starboard side, near the front and just beneath a row of floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw her name. It was the first time I ever read those words; the name of the ship that would become my home and, if I may dip deeper into hyperbole, my companion. They were written in gold upon the black of her hull.

  She was called the Near Distance.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. I repeated that phrase a few times. She truly was a thing to behold. Sleek as an arrow, but obviously built to convey a sense of stately strength.

  Her hull bulged out slightly about a tenth of the way aft. This was blended into the rest of her by smooth lines that swept down from the topmost deck until amidships. Think of the sculpted intakes of a stealth aircraft’s jet engines, and you will get a sense of this feature.

  Each deck was clearly distinguishable. Atop was a crown of glass. I took this to be an observation deck or navigation station. For a moment, I was distracted by thoughts of the views one might enjoy from such a vantage point.

  As my eye scanned down along the hull, each succeeding deck emerged from the one above by way of curved windows. The view from every room must be amazing, I thought. Through the windows immediately in front of me, which accounted for three decks, I saw a single lamp glowing. It struck me as oddly domestic and not the sort of thing one would expect to see on an alien spaceship.

  “Want to go aboard?”

  “Dear God, yes.”

  She actually giggled, such was her vicarious joy. She was a seasoned traveler witnessing Disneyland through the eyes of a child. We raced down the steps. I felt like a child.

  Once on the ground, I walked briskly down her hull. The dark underside was pierced in several places by round portholes. I crept up close and ran a hand on the vessel. I did so tentatively at first, looking at Allie as though to ask permission. She smiled and nodded, and I felt the cold, metallic surface beneath. It was clearly not built like an ocean-going ship. This metal felt thin and smooth. Not a hunk of iron, this girl.

  We continued on. Along her underside, the ship had three more well sculpted bulges. The first was all the way forward, and from this a pair of struts extended to the earth. Beyond these were golden panels.

  “Solar?” I asked as I looked at them closely.

  “Yes. They swing out in flight. Like golden wings.”

  “Marvelous.” It truly was.

  Roughly amidships was another swelling. This was larger and had a number of discreet yellow triangles on them. They were warning signs of some sort, adorned with symbols that must have made sense to the sort of people who worked around spaceships.

  The ship flared out for about her last tenth. It did so in three directions and made the aft portion of the ship slightly wider and slightly deeper than the rest. Stout, but graceful.

  “Come on, let’s go aboard.” Allie tugged my shoulder, and I turned to run after her.

  I expected to see a staircase or gangway of some type, much like one would expect to see on a sailing vessel. Failing this, I thought access must be gained by way of a mobile stairway like those used to access parked aircraft. Indeed, I thought I saw such a contraption on the opposite side of the ship. Allie, however, did not go in that direction.

  Instead, she walked under the ship, which cleared the ground by about fifteen feet. We were aft of her middle in between two of the humps that curved down from her hull.

  “Is it like a frigate?” I asked. “A destroyer? Where are the weapons?”

  She laughed but did not answer.

  Instead, she walked to where a single beam of light was shining down from the hull. Allie stood in this and it grew in intensity and began to cast a large ring of light on the ground. Allie looked up at the ship and made a gesture. It looked a bit prayer-like. She clapped her hands together and held them in the familiar pose for a second before extending both forward, palms-up.

  Three loud ‘beeps’ emitted from the ship followed by three short bell peels. I heard a faint click and the sound of servos working. To my amazement, a square
about five feet on a side separated from the hull and began to lower itself out of the ship. This square grew into a rectangular box that craned down, suspended by a single strut attached to its side. There was very little sound as it descended.

  It slowed when it was about six inches from the ground. For the rest of the distance, it moved very gently and soon touched the earth. Allie approached it and pressed several times on a panel. Each press was accompanied by a soft tone. A security code, I deduced.

  Finally, she pressed a green button that had illuminated upon the panel. With this, the rectangular box opened, and I understood what I was looking at.

  “It’s an elevator,” she said.

  “A lift.”

  “Whatever. Come on.”

  It was surprisingly capacious. Honestly, I have been to hotels in London with smaller lifts than the one we now rode. And it was far from austere, as I had expected it to be. There was no exposed piping or worn surfaces; nothing that made it feel like the type of spaceship I had seen in movies or on television. This was positively luxurious.

  “You asked if it was a warship,” Allie said as the doors closed.

  “I did.”

  By the sensations I felt, I knew that we had started to rise.

  “Well, she isn’t.”

  “Then what is she?”

  Allie paused before answering. Always the dramatist, Allie. It was not a long pause, for our trip soon ended, and the doors again slid open.

  Instead of seeing the grey paint of a warship or the dystopian clutter of a science fiction spacecraft, what lay behind that door was a foyer that could have been stolen directly from the Savoy or the Metropolitan Hotel in London.

  “She’s a yacht.”

  Now, as modest a life as I have led, you may be surprised to know that I once sailed on a yacht. When I was much younger, my mother was invited to sail upon a thirty-foot pleasure craft with a revolutionary trimaran hull. She had been employed as a journalist back then, and the trip had been arranged as part of a campaign by local business leaders in Sunderland to demonstrate a revitalization of British ship building that would never actually occur. That ship, she had been called the Doubloon, was meant to exemplify this phantom resurgence.