Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

Mardon eyed the plant from top to bottom. The face on the pod turned the edges of its thin lips upward. “I think so. The two lower stalks are thick and sturdy, the torso stalk supports the pod quite well, and the new hybridization seems to have made it more alert than the others.”

“Good!” Mara rubbed her hands on her smock and scooted closer.

Mardon turned the pot over and let the ball of dirt slide out into his hand. Then, carefully extracting each root from the dirt, he painstakingly cleaned them with a cotton cloth. The pod’s eyelets widened with each soft rub, and its lips spread wider.

Grasping the stalk again in one hand and supporting the roots with the other, Mardon suspended the plant in the middle of the alcove. “Turn on the magnets.”

Mara jumped up and slid the lever at the base, reawakening the humming choir. The colored lights began flashing on again one by one, first violet, then indigo, then blue. Within seconds, all seven magnets had lit up, each one radiating a color of the rainbow and sending a wide beam at the new spawn.

Mardon slowly released the plant. Mara barely held back a giggle when her new baby stayed suspended in midair. She clapped her hands. It worked! Her growth chamber really worked! And she had built this one without any help!

Mardon looked back at her and nodded. “Well done, Mara. Maybe this spawn won’t have to go to the control room.”

Mara flinched at the sound of the words. The control room except for Morgan’s quarters, it was the most forbidden zone in all of the lower reaches, the place where the weaker spawns were taken, and they never returned.

Mardon folded his cloth and tucked it into his pocket. “If I’m reading your expression correctly, you really want to know how everything works, don’t you?” As he rubbed the scroll against his palm, his gaze wandered around the cavern. “Most of the laborers haven’t even bothered to learn the language. A grunt is the best I can get out of some of them.”

“They can talk a little bit, but Morgan punishes us if we talk too much. The smarter ones always seem to get thrown into the chasm, so why try to learn?”

He pointed the scroll at her. “You’re the smartest girl here, and the oldest surviving female, yet you’ve avoided the chasm. She must fancy you.”

Mara rubbed her shoulder and smirked. “Could’ve fooled me!”

Mardon stroked his chin, speaking so softly Mara could barely hear him. “You may be exactly what I need.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

Mardon tapped her on the head with the scroll. “I think it’s time you learned the process. I could use a personal assistant.”

Mara sat down on the floor cross-legged and spread her tattered outer tunic over her knees. “I’m ready to learn!” She folded her hands in her lap and gazed up at him.

“No, not here. It would be better if no one else knew.” He extended his hand toward her. “I’ll show you the control room. That will make everything clear.”

Mara allowed him to pull her to her feet. He picked up a lantern on the worktable, and as he marched into a passage tunnel on the other side of the chamber, she trailed close behind, drinking in his every word as his voice bounced gently off the walls.

“You’ve probably read stories about the world above, haven’t you?”

“Yessir.” She tried to keep pace, but with her shorter legs, she had to step quickly. “But I don’t see how they can be true. How can a light hang in the middle of an endless sky? And is there really such a thing as a dragon? I heard Morgan talking about them. They sound awful.”

“They are quite terrible.” Mardon stopped at a wooden door embedded in a stone wall, but there was no latch handle, just a large wheel protruding from the center. “The stories in my scrolls are true, but not everything Morgan says is true.” He grasped the rim of the wheel and turned it. “Count the clicks.”

The turning wheel clicked, and Mara extended one finger for each sound.

When he stopped the wheel, he swiveled his head toward her. “How many?”

“Six,” she replied.

“Good. Now count again.” He turned the wheel in the opposite direction, and she counted another series of clicks.

When he stopped, she spoke up without being asked. “Nine.”

“You’ll need to use your toes for the last turn.”

Again the clicks sounded. When they stopped, Mara sang out, “Thirteen!”

Mardon pushed the door open, releasing the familiar hum of magneto bricks from inside. “Remember that combination of numbers and tell no one.” He entered and directed Mara to follow. As they walked across a smooth, stone floor, she could barely take in all the sights. At least a dozen growth alcoves, smaller than hers, had been excavated in the wall on one side. A spawn hovered in each chamber, fragile and sickly looking plants, but alive and wiggling in their suspended states. On the other wall, stacks of scrolls lay haphazardly on row after row of shelves, not as many as in the library, but they still seemed to call for her to roll them out and absorb their knowledge.

“Back to the stories,” Mardon said, as he approached a large worktable at the far end of the room. “There is a sun that shines brighter than the most brilliant lantern, and it is suspended in an endless blue sky” he nodded toward one of the spawns, who seemed to be sleeping amidst a spectral bath “much like he hangs in his growth chamber. And thousands of people work together in peace, advancing technology at a remarkable pace.”

“You mean like using a sharpened chisel instead of a hammer to dig an alcove? And carrying lanterns in the tunnels instead of glow worms?”

Mardon pointed at her. “Exactly.”

“Yessir. A lot has changed just since I’ve been here.”

Mardon laughed. “As if you’ve ever been anywhere else.” He sighed and gazed at her, his eyes seeming to blur. “Do you know how long you’ve been here, Mara? Do you know how old you are?”

Mara shrugged her shoulders. “Naamah says I look about fourteen years old, but I never could figure out what the stories meant when they talked about years.”

“Naamah is right, and it’s no wonder you don’t understand time. A hundred years ago, Morgan planted you in an older-style growth chamber, much like I just did to your spawn, and I uprooted you in your current form almost twenty years ago. But since time passage is skewed here, and you don’t age as the overworlders do, it’s useless to teach you about time, that is, until you visit the land above.”

Mara shivered. Her throat squeezed so tight, she could barely speak. “May. . may I?”

“If your training goes well, I should be able to arrange it.”

Mara straightened her shoulders. “I’ll train well. Don’t worry about that.”

Mardon stared at her again, this time with narrowed eyes, as if trying to penetrate her mind. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

Mara clutched the edge of her smock. Why was he looking at her with that strange expression? But she had enough to think about just concentrating on what she needed to learn. This was her one chance to see the upper world.

Mardon waved his arm over the worktable. “Here is where it all begins.”

A collection of small glass jars covered the wooden surface, each one filled with clear liquid. She leaned over and peered into one of the jars. Suspended in the midst of the liquid, an eyeball-sized egg stared back at her. The eggshell’s outer membrane was semitransparent, and a tiny creature floated at the center, acting like it was trying to swim. It looked sort of like her spawn, except much smaller and without eyelets or lips.

“This is where we plant the garden, Mara. I experiment with different combinations of eggs and seeds to find which ones make the strongest embryos. I sometimes even combine two seeds into one to make them stronger.”