Cursing

by Lynne Murray

  “Here we are.”

  I had been hypnotized by Wade’s story, but he seemed to be done talking about it.

  I got out of the truck and knocked on Feeney’s door. Wade followed to stand just behind me.

  When the tall, thin man with his heron-like crest of white hair answered, I noted that the red letters of the readout on my glasses said:

  Planet Striders. Known on Earth as Phoenix. Rarely seen. Nests in folded space. Trades in safe spaces and safe passage. Neutral but devious. Incinerates in self-defense and regenerates spontaneously. Virtually immortal. Approach with caution.

  I handed Feeney the card. He saw the writing on the back. “I was expecting you. I have information for you, but it comes at a price.”

  “How much?” I had less than fifty dollars in my wallet, and didn’t want to go out to an ATM.

  Wade stepped forward, reaching for his wallet. “Maybe I can help.”

  I was startled into silence for a second, then I held out a hand, “No, this is something I need to do.”

  “Not money,” Feeney waved away the suggestion. “I will trade for information only you would have.”

  “I seem to be the least informed person in the city these days, but I can tell you what I do know.”

  “May I sit in on this information exchange?” Wade asked me.

  “That would make me feel safer, please,” I told Feeney.

  “Let’s go into a private space,” Feeney said. Wade and I followed him through one of the identical doors along the corridor into a completely neutral with pale walls, polished chrome table pushed into a corner of the room. Chairs with blue fabric seats and backrests were arranged in a semicircle with to face a stretch of bamboo floor with a single chair at the center. One chair just opposite the single chair had a console in front of it.

  “The amulet you wear has changed,” Feeney said.

  “It reacted to one I found hidden in my grandfather’s desk, right next to your card.”

  Feeney’s eyes stayed on the Medallion, but he didn’t come closer. He sat on the chair near the console and gestured me to sit in the lone chair opposite. Wade took the chair next to Feeney and leaned over to see what was on the screen.

  “Let’s try an experiment.” Feeney tapped the console screen and said something in an unfamiliar language. It took a few seconds to realize his words made sense. He had said, “Come in here now, please.”

  After a moment the nearest door opened and the Twins came out. They reacted to Wade by stopping and whispering together with a buzzing sound.

  I was still in shock from the day’s changes, but this time I knew clearly what they were saying. “Conditional, not allowed,” I muttered to myself.

  The Twins ignored me and faced Wade. “We could not find the information you wanted. Scanning again will not change that.”

  Wade waved them away. “A Guardian identified my masked DNA as Guardian.”

  The Twins conferred. “A Guardian can say such things. We cannot.”

  “Rar’nal chugak,” I said, without thinking.

  “We couldn’t say more,” the Twins blended their voices. “The Guardian genes in this man were engineered. Not traditional. We could not guarantee a scan.”

  Without thinking, I raised my hands and held them in front of me as if I were holding a tray and said, “Verxit tr’ah tolt.”

  The Twins froze and then swiveled as one to stare at me. They mirrored my gesture back at me and said in their weird echo voices, “Tolt derander.”

  “Do you know what that means?” Feeney asked.

  “Um, it just came to me out of nowhere.” I hesitated, “Could it be ‘you only say you dive deeply’? And the reply, maybe, ‘Pearls go to the skilled.’ If that makes sense.”

  The Twins riveted me with a gaze that suddenly made me miss our first encounter when they had been focused on the wall. They weren’t making eye contact with me this time either, they were looking at my medallion with unmistakable hunger.

  Wade stood and smoothly moved to block them. “No closer, Twins.” He turned to Feeney. “I don’t much like their attitude.”

  “Yes, perhaps we’ve seen enough. You can go now, Twins, thank you.”

  But the Twins didn’t turn away. “Zunyo kark!” They spoke simultaneously.

  The amulet started to heat up against my skin. If it was gearing up for another red hot light show, I had to stop that from happening. Unfamiliar words poured out of my mouth. “Rangat kaluway. kwa’forglat!”

  The Twins rocked backward on their heels in unison. Turned around and glided out of the room without another peep.

  “My translation units didn’t register that, it must have been a Doliani dialect.” Feeney’s tone was one of total amazement.

  “They wanted the Medallion,” I said, a rasp of anger in my voice. “They tried to call to it directly. I told them to swim off and stick to in their own fish patch. Why do I get the feeling you expected that to happen?”

  “I did wonder how they might react to your medallion.” Feeney seemed unfazed by the Twins’ aggression.

  “Well, no thanks to you for setting that up,” I told him. Irritation seething beneath my skin. “What if something had gone wrong?”

  “It did, and you handled it just fine,” Wade said with an odd gleam in his eye. Amusement? Could it be admiration?

  “Your group trusts the Twins too much,” Feeney said.

  “They certainly withheld information from me,” Wade said. “I wasn’t sure until that Guardian told me what kind of alien genes I have. My mother always told me I have Guardian DNA, but that didn’t mean anything to me until I encountered ETPA and my mother had trouble separating reality from fantasy.”

  “I’m not surprised the Twins didn’t scan deeply enough to find your Guardian DNA. It’s rare. That would set off a Guardian-led investigation. They seldom reproduce outside of their own species and the Twins would be obligated to report a possible misuse of Guardian genetic material. No one wants that kind of extra attention. I will say that this is the first time I’ve seen them so agitated. Your Medallion stirred them up, Angie.”

  “So did you get enough information to pay for you to talk to me about this?” I held up the card.

  “Just one more question for you, Angie. The Ekrot sought you out. Was that before or after you merged with the Medallion?”

  “Before.”

  “How did the Ekrot speak to you?”

  “It sent images into my mind. It showed me Wade and Dennis getting hauled into the lizard ship. There were two simple, spoken words in my head like thunder in my mind: ‘Wrong’ and ‘Fix’.”

  Feeney stood for a long minute as if calculating something. Then he seemed to wake up. “Thank you,” he said. “Now what did you want to know?”

  “Was my grandfather a Seeker?”

  “Of course.” Feeney nodded. I wondered if he charged by the word.

  “Tell me about Seekers.”

  Feeney started to speak slowly, his bushy white eyebrows furrowed. “Seekers are seldom seen on this planet. They live to look for new knowledge and Earth hasn’t had much to offer. I don’t know why your grandfather came here, but he might have been hiding. Until recently Earth has been a sparsely populated scenic area.”

  “Do you know anything about this medallion, it sought me out.” I wanted to say just how weird that was, but the past week had gone so far past weird that I didn’t know how to rate it.

  “Seekers store insights in their own realm and access it through medallions,” Feeney said. “The amulets the ETPA use are a limited version of the same tech.” He hesitated and then tilted his head to one side as if listening to an inner voice. He pulled a larger medallion out from under his heavy sweater. It was but made of a similar pearl-like substance as one around my neck, but twice as long and feather-shaped. “My own medallion is similar but keyed to my species.” He tapped the surface lightly a few times. A hologram appeared in the air in front of me. “Here is a message for you.
No further charge.”

  An almost transparent image three-dimensional image formed in front of me. Life-sized. “Aunt Bess!” A wave of longing to hug her went through me.

  “Angie, if you are hearing this, you found your grandfather’s medallion. I’m proud of you.”

  Tears overflowed my eyes. I had missed her voice so much. I knew this was just a hologram but I stood out of the chair and stepped closer and reached out a hand as if I could make her image real by touching it.

  “I’ve taken you as far as I can and if you’re talking to Feeney, you must have found friends to will help you grow into your power.” Aunt Bess’s image continued. “I’m sorry I had to leave without a word. But the child I needed to rescue has very dangerous enemies. I couldn’t say anything to you. It could be tracked and could get all three of us killed. I love you. I don’t know when, but someday we will find a safe place to meet and talk again. Be strong, be well.”

  Her image froze, then flickered out. I didn’t realize how shaky I was until Wade took my elbow and helped me back into a chair and crouched beside me, keeping a hand on my arm.

  I wiped my eyes. I looked up to find Feeney quietly observing me. “What did she mean about rescuing a child?”

  “Your aunt is a Seeker,” Feeney said gently. “She also belongs to a special order of Protectors. They step in to shield and foster alien-human hybrids who would otherwise be abused or even destroyed, often by their off-world relatives. It’s a position of honor among Seekers because she is interrupting her own quest for knowledge to nurture the most damaged and gifted of hybrid children.”

  “So my aunt is like Mary Poppins to monster children?” My stomach dropped when I felt Wade flinch and drop his hand from my arm. I had just insulted him as well as myself.

  Way to go, Angie, good to know my skills for scaring off men were still working.

  “I am sadly puzzled by the lack respect given to those who care for young humans.” Feeney pointedly ignored my “monsters” remark. “Such work is not valued or well-paid on Earth. Ironically that makes it easier for hybrid-human-alien children to fit in on Earth. No one is paying attention to them, so they can hide in plain sight here. My own kind seldom needs care for the newly fledged, but people like your aunt make sure your existence is secret and your survival is possible.”

  “Why do you say you don’t need to take care of the newly fledged?” I asked. “Don’t your species nurture your own young?”

  Feeney gave an odd shuddering movement like a bird shaking water off his wings. “Hatchlings are rare in my kind. Fully fledged adults, whom you call Phoenix, renew our bodies through fire and emerge full grown and aware, with all the knowledge and experience of the past body and mind. No instruction needed.”

  “So you’re reborn as adults every time?” I asked.

  “With very few exceptions, yes. Population control is never an issue.” Feeney sniffed. “The ways that sentient beings reproduce interest me. Species like the Arachne, who routinely consume their own offspring, say that they are sustaining the surviving offspring, keeping the population at manageable levels and weeding out the weakest.”

  The image of Grandmother sucking the marrow out of a spare rib leaped into my mind. “Not such a convincing argument if you happen to be one of the weaklings being weeded out.”

  “You are not, and yet it bothers you?”

  “It does. I can’t help but identify with the Arachne being weeded out. Last time we had dinner together Grandmother started to talk about it when Sophie took me out of the room.”

  “Arachne make no secret of eating their young when food is scarce. It is not taboo in their culture, simply a practical strategy. Those who survive to adulthood are celebrated as the hardiest specimens.”

  It was probably unwise to say the old joke that popped into my mind, but I needed to find refuge in humor. “I guess if the adults didn’t eat their young, we’d be up to our asses in Arachne.”

  Feeney nodded sagely, “They do reproduce in large numbers.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Indeed,” Feeney rose and beckoned us toward the door. “If you have no other questions, you’ve reached the limit of the information you traded for.”

  Wade stood and I reluctantly followed.

  I didn’t want to go without finding more about the amulet on my chest. “Two men broke into my apartment and ripped open the desk where I found your card and this amulet. Am I in danger?”

  Feeney shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Many prize Seeker Medallions, but they are designed to be passed on to direct relatives. Now that have you merged with your grandfather’s medallion, you have access to Seeker research from throughout several world systems, and I understand the ETPA has a fairly up-to-date copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica.”

  “Before I found the Medallion, a Death Dealer named Vole tried to kidnap me.”

  Feeney made an oddly inhuman clicking sound. “They must have uses for someone with your genetic background, Seeker genes and Death Dealer genes. It’s rare for someone to advance very high in the Death Dealer hierarchy with that genetic mix. The only one other I know with that combination General Eel. He may want you for his own purposes.”

  “General Eel?” I blinked at the term.

  Words and pictures from the Medallion rose up in my brain:

  General Eel is a major Death Dealing officer, ruler of several worlds and effective leader of the Red Horde.

  Feeney gestured out the open door and followed close behind us through the burned-out bar. We stepped out onto the sidewalk and closed the door firmly behind us.

  Wade and I walked back to his truck in silence. “We should go to Angel Island now.”

  We didn’t say much during the drive. I looked out the window but didn’t really focus as Wade drove through Haight Ashbury, past the Panhandle and Victorians lining Fell Street. We crossed Market Street and finally pulled up to the red brick building on Brannan that contained the portal.

  Chapter 24

  By the time we got to the Angel Island Station, Kirby had gone home to his family. Wade seemed relieved to drop me off in the visitor’s quarters. I guessed that would be as safe as anywhere to sit and think about how my world had suddenly changed. If a crowd of Mindworms showed up, I’d have a lot of help tagging them.

  All the doors were identical but as I walked down the corridor, my name appeared on the display outside what must be my assigned room.

  I pressed my palm into the spot next to the door, went inside and threw my bag on the bed and sat down next to it. The emotions that swirled around inside of me when I tried to think about my aunt's message were too close to anger for me to want to explore them right now. I suddenly knew what it was. I was jealous of the new kid she was protecting. Why did she just abandon me without a word? She said all of us I would be in more danger if she said anything. But how did ignorance keep me safe? I didn't have the luxury of getting angry and maybe hurting someone again.

  The medallion on my chest heated up a little. Was it responding to my angry thought? I touched it half expecting a burn mark to be sore but it wasn't.

  I sat in the imitation hotel room and looked for the screen that displayed a view or data. Unlike the room I’d stayed in here before, this one had curtains closed over the simulated window. My mistrust of everything was so strong that I wondered if the curtains hid a two-way mirror and someone was observing me from behind it. That made no sense. I carefully pulled the curtains open and found the same view of San Francisco Bay that the canteen offered, the video display of the Bay looking toward Tiburon. With a half a second lead time lag time. I could have tapped the button on the side and searched for more information on...well, anything. But, no. I was pretty close to info overload. I pulled the curtain closed and sat back down on the bed.

  I was so tired that if I didn't take a shower immediately I would fall asleep. I went to the small bathroom and practiced twisting the chain that held the Medallion up into my hair so that I cou
ld take a shower without taking it off. Then I pulled it to one side so I could wash my hair. The Medallion still got wet. But I dried in the towel and it seemed as good as new.

  Wade. The man I had called a monster yesterday.

  I didn't want to think about that.

  I turned the Medallion over to see how it was fused with the ETPA amulet. I stared at the markings on it. I lay down and slipped into a deep sleep without another thought.

  The next thing I knew I was waking up in the strange room trying to remember how I got here. I realized I was hungry so I got up and went in search of breakfast.

  I'd forgotten which way to turn to get to the canteen. The sleeping quarters seemed to be on the north side of the Station. But I still hadn't wrapped my mind around how north, south, east and west translated into another dimension, let alone folded space.

  "What does folded space look like anyway?" I muttered.

  An image flashed in my mind and hung there like several sheets of origami paper that at first looked crumpled. Then the picture clarified into creases and intersections that melded into unrecognizable shapes. Some random parts of the structure glowed and some did not. Then the planes that looked like flat sheets disappeared and only the glowing areas remained. It appeared to be a vast diagram or a kind of infinitely complex maps.

  "Okay, that's more than I can handle," I said. The image disappeared. “Can you show me where the canteen is?” A glowing line appeared in front of me, blinking and diverging once I reached the end of the corridor.

  When I reached the end of yet another corridor, the smell of coffee let me know I was near the canteen. The glowing line that emerged into what seemed to be kind of waiting room. There were benches and chairs along the wall. The transparent doors of the canteen ran along the wall opposite the seating area. Most of the light came from the huge window that wrapped around the canteen, 180-degree view of the Bay from Angel Island.

  To add to my disorientation the view from the canteen window just seemed to be an extension of the north-facing view from the window behind the curtains in the room I've been sleeping in.