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The first sensation was pressure.
Something was across his chest, making it hard to breathe.
Steve groaned, and the sound shocked him. His eyes blinked open, then closed, then blinked open again, staring at the rough-cut rock. His whole body felt stiff and sore, and his head ached terribly. A wire seemed to be wound around his head, incredibly tight, agonizingly hot. He put a hand to his head and felt only tousled hair.
Steve looked down, and saw immediately that the weight on his chest was Dan's leg. He shoved the leg away and Dan groaned.
"Ohhh....." The groan seemed to release action in both men, and now Dan opened his eyes. "Barry!"
Dan half rose, stared around frantically, but there was nobody there. He then noticed Steve for the first time. The white pilot was looking at him curiously.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Dan answered, "except that the top of my head is missing." He put an unsteady hand to his skull and felt it gingerly. "Man, what did that guy hit us with?"
The memory of what had happened came back to Steve and he sat up.
"Awww...!" he said as the room blurred. "Take it easy getting up," he cautioned Dan. "My brain just turned to mush."
Steve got to his knees and stayed there, his eyes pained and his body sore. He looked around the small room as his companion slowly and painfully got to his feet.
The room was a strange combination of rough-cut rock---hewed somehow out of the foundations of Metropolis---and of gleaming metal and plastic panels. At one end of the room, several steps led up to a raised platform, where a comfortable chair sat, flanked by a little table upon which sat a glass and a decanter. Some books filled a shelf below the tabletop. There was one door, the only door to or from the room, beyond the chair.
On the lower level of the room, where Steve and Dan had been laid, stood a large cabinet of beautiful plastic, decorated with whorls and organic shapes formed when the plastic had been cast.
"Are you going to say it, or am I?" Dan asked.
"Say what?"
"What everybody is supposed to say when they come back to consciousness in a strange room. "Where am I?"
"Okay, I'll play straight man," Steve agreed. "Where am I?"
"Same place I am," Dan muttered.
"Comedy dumbness we don't need."
"There was more dumbness in that remark than comedy," Dan replied.
He helped Steve to his feet and they started exploring the room.
The first thing they investigated was the door. Although there was a set of buttons next to the metal door, these did not---or would not---operate.
Steve picked up several of the books sitting in the rack and read the titles aloud. "Huckleberry Finn, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...."
"Good old American novels," Dan said, testing the plastic and metal panels set into the walls.
"Also something in Italian and something in German. None of these books looks read. I wonder what they're...."
The door abruptly clicked, and both pilots looked alert.
When it opened, in walked the living replica of that last bust back in the narrow passageway. The same smooth marble face, the luminous eyes, the glasslike rigidity. All of it enveloped in brilliant robes, lying like a shroud about the imposing figure. He looked at the two, looked at the books Steve held, and his eyes, which had been the most important part of his physical tools these last terrible hours, were now fully strung to the maximal pitch of their efficiency as he said, "Please put those down. They are quite valuable."
Steve put the books on the table and turned to look at their "host."
"I am Mendez, the voice and will of the Underfolk," he said.
Their eyes swept over Mendez.
"Underfolk?" Steve repeated, his voice tinged with both curiosity and hesitation. "Who exactly are the Underfolk?"
Mendez's eyes were hard and shrewd and took in every detail of the man before he spoke. Steve moved down a few steps toward Dan. The handsomely robed man's voice was awesome, and something of the recitation of a church litany could be heard in his words.
"I tell you, when the great conflagrations ravaged our world centuries ago, we sought sanctuary in the deep earth." Steve's puzzled eyes met Dan's. "Our ancestors were forced to forsake the light, cast down into an eternal darkness, and even now, we have never reascended to reclaim the blessed, green world above." His eyes now melted from a glaring fanaticism to a sadness that touched both Steve and Dan.
"Listen, Mendez," Dan said sharply, shaking his head. "The world above isn't some lush, green paradise—it's a brutal wasteland, dangerous beyond measure. You need to understand that before you preach any more."
"I demand an answer now—what have you done to Barry?!" Steve said, stepping forward.
Mendez's face returned to its former harshness. He raised an arm to halt Dan. "You must understand, Captain—his name is Baruk, not Barry; our ancient scrolls foretold that a child who survived the Great Fires and returned as a youth would lead us to freedom, and we witnessed that miracle when Baruk was brought back to this land." A faint smile crossed his face, then vanished.
"Baruk?" Dan puzzled.
"That chant!" Steve exclaimed.
Mendez strode down the ancient, crumbling steps and approached a weathered cabinet nestled against the rock face. Its surface was scarred by time, and a hidden lock lay camouflaged among faded carvings. With deliberate precision, he opened the lock, revealing an ornate reliquary. Inside rested a small, finely sculpted effigy—an artifact carved from a luminous, iridescent stone—that bore a striking resemblance to Barry. The delicate features of the effigy, its eyes etched with a prophetic clarity, were accompanied by mysterious inscriptions and intricate filigree, pulsing with a faint, otherworldly light as if holding the very essence of the child who was destined to bring salvation.
Steve's breath caught and he stepped closer. He squinted at the barely legible inscription, his voice low as he read aloud, “Baruk—once called Barry, born of the Great Fire—shall be the beacon that guides the lost home to a new dawn.”
He looked at Dan with narrowed eyes. "It's clear, buddy," he said in a low, bitter tone, "this effigy was made by those who lost hope when Barry—Baruk—never returned. They crafted his likeness as a symbol, a desperate memorial to a dream that died too soon, binding our fate to a past we can never escape. We’re trapped, Dan, haunted by what we once were."
Dan’s eyebrows shot upward as he studied the inscription, his voice trembling with realization. “Baruk— that’s from the old tongue,” he whispered, eyes wide. “It means ‘blessed one.’ They didn’t just give him a name; they made him a symbol of hope and destiny.”
The black pilot turned to Steve with sudden excitement. "We must talk to him!"
He turned toward the door, and at once a humming proceeded from the direction of Mendez's eyes.
Steve jumped as two pencil-thin beams of light flashed by him, landing explosively on the floor in front of Dan. Dan halted his sudden lunge for the door, startled. Both astronauts looked at Mendez, not knowing what to expect.
The robed and hooded Underfolker smiled---a thin, haughty smile that told the pilots from Earth's past that he, Mendez, would determine what would be and what would not.
"Of course you shall speak with Baruk," he told them smoothly.
Then he picked up an inconspicuous block of black plastic from the table---an object that Steve and Dan had supposed was a sample of art---and pressed one blank side of it. The door whisked open, and Barry stood just beyond.
"Barry!" Dan said, stepping forward.
Steve tossed at glance at Mendez and then, reassured, joined Dan in taking Barry's arm and bringing him into the room. "Barry? Barry, are you all right?"
The two pilots exchanged puzzled and frustrated looks when their former passenger didn't respond to their pleas. Dan stepped in front of him, taking his upper arms tightly in his hands, squeezing hard, hoping that a little mild pain might cut through whatever it was that was blanking him out.
"Barry...It's me---Dan! Don't you remember?"
Dan carefully pulled out a worn, heavy dog tag from his pocket. The tag was embossed with a single word: "Chipper." Its letters were slightly raised and faded, yet they shone with a quiet, enduring significance. Dan held it out, hoping against hope that Barry would recognize it. He then knelt beside Barry and gently pressed it into the boy’s trembling hand. He squeezed it firmly, as if trying to transfer a silent promise of hope and remembrance.
"Barry? Barry?" Steve was saying.
He was jostled aside by Dan who half-turned Barry away from Mendez, letting her hood hide any expression he might've had. But there was nothing, and the black man dropped his hands from her shoulders wearily.
"Whatever it is that's wrong with him," he said morosely, "it doesn't look as if either of us possesses the magic bullet." He looked at Mendez, whose face was impassive, and grimaced.
"Kaham! Vislek!" Mendez called out in a sharp voice.
Two men, dressed in orange-and-white cloaks appeared, burly specimens with grim faces who had been standing just outside the door.
Mendez indicated Steve and Dan with a wave of his hand. "Take them to Cell Four."
Neither of the pilots resisted. Seeing Barry in his near catatonic state had made them sad, though a mood of anger and resentment was contained under their sadness. They followed the guards through a maze of paved and brightly lighted tunnels. Some of them seemed natural cave passages, for there were grotesque stalactites overhead. Others had been cut smoothly out of the rock. Regularly spaced overhead there were rings of glowing bare metal, emitting a coldish orange illumination similar to sodium light.
The cell was carved out of solid rock, at the end of a short passage, but it didn't look like a cell. It had no bars, no windows; it was, in fact, nothing but a bare rock cube with two spartan bunks and a bucket for waste.
Mendez had followed them silently, but now he spoke. Standing outside the open doorway he said, "You will remain in this cell until you have proven your loyalty."
"How're we supposed to do that?" Steve asked, some of his anger surfacing.
But the Underfolk leader had turned his back and was disappearing down the corridor.
"Hey!" yelled Dan, but Mendez was gone.
The two guards gave them a disinterested look and then they, too, walked away.
Steve looked aro und at Dan. "What is this, the honor system? No bars, no nothing! C'mon, let's get out of here!"
He had started forward when Dan stopped him.
"No, wait!" The black looked around, found a small stone that had crumbled away from the rough rock walls. Picking it up, he tossed it toward the center of the doorway.
The stone arced through the air until it came between the sides of the doorway. Then there was the sudden flash, and both Steve and Dan were stung by flying bits of the exploded rock. Wiping their faces, they gaped at the door.
"A force field!" Dan exclaimed.
"We'll never get through that!" Steve said.
The two friends looked at each other hopelessly.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFCIf72g0jK
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWCJyFwLqr3
Mendez stepped back into the chamber with slow, deliberate strides, his robes whispering against the stone floor. The electric lights cast long shadows across his gaunt features as he approached the open cabinet, where the effigy of Barry loomed in silent reverence. Upon the raised platform beside it, the original model—Baruk himself—stood motionless, his youthful face blank, eyes distant, as if caught in a trance. The eerie stillness of the room seemed to deepen, the weight of prophecy and expectation pressing down like an unseen force.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKv16iUipin
The Underfolk leader stepped past him and closed the doors of the cabinet. Then he turned back toward him and studied his face for a few minutes before speaking.
"It was bad enough when those who kept company with you sought to keep you from us. But now, their friends—these ‘pilots’ the one called Valerie Scott spoke of—would steal you away. That cannot be allowed, Baruk."
Barry stood unmoving, staring through empty eyes. He barely breathed and only the gentle rise and fall of his chest and an occasional eye-blink indicated he was alive.
Mendez walked up onto the platform next to him. "They do not understand the importance of the fulfilled prophecy." He paced around him, his hands behind his back, and spoke as if thinking out loud. "Your arrival gives us hope, Baruk, and we were woefully short of that." All at once, he stopped in front of him. "Someday you, Baruk, will help us return to the green world above!"
Barry's lips moved, but no sound came for several seconds. Then his voice sounded, wooden and dead. "Your thought is true, O Mendez."
"And on that day," he said, his voice rising, "we shall recover our world from the apes."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhqsUW2BMy1
