The Narrow Path To War

by D L Frizzell

  "Yes," Norio said. "That is it, exactly."

  "So?"

  "Do you not think that is funny?" Norio turned to look at Alex. He seemed unusually interested in Alex's reaction.

  "I don't know," Alex answered truthfully. "The farmer won't think so when he finds it." After considering the question for another moment, he added, "Cale will think it's hilarious."

  "Yes, he would," Norio agreed, "but you would not." He paused to let Alex think about that. "I never see you smile, Alex.”

  Alex stared at Norio, wondering why that was so important. "My foster parents told me the same thing," he replied. "I do laugh sometimes, though."

  "Do you miss the Biedriks?" Norio asked.

  Alex drew back. It wasn't customary for Norio to pry into his personal matters. "They send me lots of letters," he replied, though it wasn’t an answer to the question. "I'm going back to visit them after I graduate next month."

  "Then perhaps you do miss them."

  "They have some of my father's things," Alex explained. "They promised to hold them until I finished at the university."

  "I see," Norio said. "Is Cale going with you?"

  "He's their son," Alex said. “We’re going together.”

  "I am glad you two get along so well," Norio said. "You have what he lacks. He has what you lack.”

  Alex didn’t like the direction of the conversation. Deciding a change of subject would be best, he said, "You're leaving CC again?”

  "Yes," Norio sighed, "but I do not know if I will return this time." He held up his hand to stop Alex from asking why. "Let us just say my past has caught up with me. Before I leave, I want to share something with you."

  "What?"

  "Something that will hopefully prepare you for the future."

  Alex sensed Norio had a burden. Maybe he would finally provide details about Alex's parents, why his mother left and how his father died, but Norio didn't broach those subjects. "You have more potential than anyone I have ever known, Alex. That is the truth. You have equally great hurdles to overcome, however. You lack rapport with others. You lack warmth and feeling."

  "I've noticed that, too," Alex replied, unoffended by Norio's directness.

  "You get that from your mother," Norio said.

  That went too far. "Don't say that," Alex shot back.

  Norio knew he'd touched a nerve. "You know it is true, though.”

  "I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Alright, we will not,” Norio yielded. “I suppose it is not important right now. I do not have much time, so let me tell you a few other things before I go."

  Ten minutes later, Cale reached the roof to find Norio and Alex staring quietly at the potato field. They didn’t notice Cale’s unusually high spirits or the stain of lip gloss on his cheek. He bounced with an overabundance of energy and saw them watching a farmer chase a drunken bug mule across the farm.

  “Whoa!” Cale cheered at the sight. “I love those bug mules!” When Alex and Norio turned to look at him, they seemed distant and sullen. “How come you guys never smile?” he asked.

  Chapter Seven

  Norio left without another word, disappearing down the stairs into the building below.

  “I must've missed all the fun,” Cale deadpanned. “What were you guys talking about?”

  “Earth,” Alex finally replied.

  “He spends all that time teaching you about science, rock-climbing, and everything else,” Cale cocked his head, “and he wants you to be a gardener like him?”

  “Not the dirt kind,” Alex said, dismissing Cale’s reply. “The planet kind.”

  “Earth, the planet?” Cale asked in confusion.

  “He says we might return there someday,” Alex said, his tone strangely serious, "but not until we overcome this planet."

  Cale didn’t have a smart-aleck rejoinder for that. “Earth, the planet?” he asked again.

  "He said people had to start over when they got to Arion," Alex said, "but that the answers are waiting to be found." Alex looked up at Arion’s moons. “Big Hand and Little Hand aren’t just moons,” Alex continued. “They’re space stations. The Founders put them there because we needed a calendar. Did you know that?”

  “I’m a C student, remember?” Cale pointed out. “That average doesn’t go up if I include the science classes. Or history classes.”

  “The Founders knew they were losing all their technology,” Alex said, still looking at the sky, “but they figured we’d find a way to get it back.”

  “We can barely keep swamp coolers running,” Cale said as he watched the bug mule finally stagger out of the potato field. "How are we supposed to fix a whole planet?"

  “I don’t know,” Alex replied, seeing that Cale wasn’t really interested in talking about it. “I need to clear my head.”

  “I need to eat lunch,” Cale said. “Want to go with me?”

  “I think better when I run,” Alex gestured to the city wall that passed by the science building. “Want to go with me?”

  “Standing on this roof is scary enough,” Cale pointed out, “and you want me to run around the city on a wall that’s only a meter wide? I’d rather work on my science project, thanks.”

  Alex knelt to check the laces on his shoes, then looked up at Cale. “You hate science. C student, you said.”

  “C in my other classes,” Cale reminded him. “If I build an electric motor for the university competition next week, my instructor says I can maybe get a C in Electromagnetics, too.”

  Alex thought about what Norio had told him about Cale. “What if I help you with your project?” he asked.

  “Really?” Cale perked up, then looked at the wall. “Not if I have to run with you. What’s the catch?”

  “Nothing,” Alex said. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” Cale replied slowly, and stared warily at Alex. “Okay,” he answered. “Just don’t tell Keeva you’re helping me, though.”

  “I know she doesn’t like me,” Alex stated the obvious. “I promise not to tell her.”

  “She thinks you have a death-wish,” Cale replied. “I’m trying to convince her you’re just an idiot.” He grinned.

  “Thanks, I think,” Alex said. “Eight o’clock at the science lab tomorrow morning?”

  “But tomorrow’s the weekend,” Cale protested.

  “Your project, your grade,” Alex said.

  “Okay, my project. I’ll be there.”

  “Good. Now watch this,’ Alex said, and bolted for the edge of the roof.

  “Oh, God,” Cale moaned. “Can't you wait until I leave?"

  Alex didn’t answer. He was already sprinting towards the edge of the building, gauging the distance and lengthening his stride. Every distraction pushed from his mind, and ignoring Cale’s plea for sanity, he leapt into the air a mere ten centimeters from the edge.

  Chapter Eight

  Alex would be seriously hurt if he missed the wall, but his conditioning reduced the chance of that to practically zero. The laws of momentum dictated his direction and speed, and he was confident in his reflexes to adapt if necessary. The gap between the roof of the science building and the edge of the city wall was only two meters, though. For Alex, that was an easy jump.

  The city wall was rounded on top. Others might have thought this presented a more difficult landing. As far as Alex was concerned, it gave him angles to work with. He expertly planted one foot against the inner curvature of the wall to stop his forward momentum, then put the other down on the crest to hold his weight. Another perfect landing. He smoothed the wrinkles from his outfit and started jogging along the wall, taking the long way around the city towards his dormitory. With a last glance back, he saw Cale shaking his head.

  Despite being Alex’s favorite place to run, the wall was not designed with runners in mind. On the contrary – it was made with the intent of discouraging easy traversal. There were no guardrails to prevent him from falling off, and frequent obstacles b
locked his path. Buttresses reinforced the wall every fifty meters, but they were low and easy to jump over. Whenever he came to one of the battlements at each bend in the wall, he would either slow down and make his way around the narrow ledge on the inner side of the wall, or run through the guard posts. He patted the envelope in his pocket and looked forward to being stopped by someone who hadn’t received the order to let him pass.

  Unfortunately, no one tried to stop him. As he ran through the battlements, the militiamen simply cleared a path for him without saying a word. That was strangely disappointing, so he made a special stop at Sergeant Dain's post.

  “Alex Vonn reporting,” he announced loudly, shocking Dain as he read a procedures manual. “Sergeant, all is well along the northern wall!” When the sergeant stared at him in disgust, Alex smirked. Without giving the sergeant a chance to reply, he gave a mock salute and exited the other side of the guard post

  Alex had to slow down before getting too much further, as the guster had damaged the wall pretty badly in several areas. He decided that running on the broken surface would be too risky. It would be good enough to simply walk and think at that point. As much as that had been his hope, Alex soon found himself encountering other distractions. Along the residential section of the city, laundry had been strewn across the wall. He kicked the clothing of the wall into the yards below, figuring they would make their way to the right people eventually.

  Further down the wall, he came across a variety of other objects; streamers from a birthday party, an open packet of sandwich meat being pecked at by some grey scavenger birds, and a long carpet runner draped over the wall behind Norio’s home. That one seemed odd, as it was bulkier than the other rubbish he’d found. It was long enough to reach the ground on both sides, made of a coarse fabric that blended closely with the color of the wall. It didn’t look like the kind of rug someone would have in their home, as it had a rough texture and stank badly besides. When he noticed aluminum barbs digging into the wall from the seams, he concluded it must be something used by the militia. This was the kind of thing Colonel Seneca might want to retrieve, so Alex would make it part of his report later.

  It took nearly an hour to make it back to the dorm. After stopping to get a book from the library, Alex went to his room. It was just as hot as he expected it would be. CC was built on the edge of a desert, after all. He opened his window to let the breeze in, and heard a mechanic swearing loudly on the roof as he fought to repair all the swamp coolers.

  Alex opened the book he’d checked out of the library and lay down on his bed to read. Titled ‘The History of Arion’, it spoke of the Founders’ journey to Arion five hundred years earlier, celebrated the bravery of those who colonized Arion, and described how they adapted to the unchanging daylight in the northern hemisphere.

  Alex wondered about Earth. He’d never really thought about a world where the sun crossed from one horizon to another on a daily timetable, supposing it must have been disorienting for those who lived there.

  As he read, the book merely glossed over the scientific feats that made the trip possible. It told how the six vessels of the founding fleet crossed an entire arm of the galaxy in only a decade, and how their plan was to set up a beachhead in a star cluster where hundreds of near-earthlike planets existed. It didn’t say why they picked a planet that had been turned sideways by an asteroid collision. It didn't tell where all the ships landed, either. He knew about the Celeste and the Nakajima, but the other ships were conspicuously omitted from the text.

  Frustrated by the lack of information in the book, Alex snapped it shut. Why had so little information survived from the Founding? It didn’t make sense that there weren’t museums full of gadgets and relics saved from those times if people truly thought they could return to Earth at some point. None of the exhibits would work, of course. All micro-electronics died centuries ago. The printed books were just as useless. Everything in them gave only the vaguest generalities about the fleet, saying one could walk non-stop around a ship for months without visiting the same area twice, or that many of the passengers never saw more than a third of a ship during their entire journey from Earth. He thought briefly about the one ship that supposedly remained intact on the surface of Arion, the Nakajima, and wished he could go see it. That was impossible, of course. It was halfway around the planet in the Jovian Nation. Traveling there would probably trigger a war with the Jovians if he were caught, not to mention resulting in his own execution.

  Alex put the book down, closing his eyes to picture what space might look like but not being able to. His imagination failed him, he knew, because he’d never seen a true nighttime sky.

  Eventually, he dozed off and dreamt of bug mules.

  Chapter Nine

  It was eight thirty the next morning when Alex gave up on Cale. Judging by the condition of the lab table in the science department, Cale had been there already, leaving his signature trail of dirt and tools behind. Professor Rogers would get riled up as he always did when one of his students didn’t respect the sanctity of his classroom. Alex was not going to become Cale’s personal janitor, though. He left everything as he found it, thinking the Professor would deal with Cale when he discovered the mess.

  Finding himself with nothing to do, Alex decided to head to Norio’s house. He usually tended Norio’s plants while he was away on his trips, so he figured he would continue to do so as long as he was in the city. With no other instructions from Norio, there wasn’t much else he could do.

  Alex always enjoyed visiting Norio’s house. There were few dwellings in the city that stood out from the rest, and this was one of them. The house itself was made of the same sun-bleached adobe as all the other homes, except that it had the benefit of an avid gardener as its occupant. Leafy vines spilled over from a rooftop garden to blanket the walls on every side. Pastel-colored flowers grew from planters surrounding the front porch. Songbirds made their homes in numerous birdhouses around the house, always chirping their distinctive tunes. Camolizards scurried among the vines to feed on insects. All around the house, water trickled down from the roof into a system of gutters and basins that plants and animals used for nourishment. The water made soothing bubbling noises as it splashed from one tier to the next, prompting Alex to pause at the front door and draw a calming breath.

  The bouquet of flowers was not the only smell here today, however. It seemed like a dead animal, definitely something rotten, was spoiling the garden’s natural aroma. After a careful sniff around, Alex realized the smell was actually seeping through the house’s front door. Alex checked the door and found it dead-bolted from the inside. Strange, he thought, it was unlike Norio to lock his doors. In fact, Alex couldn't remember there being locks on the door in the first place. He looked down at a tiny lizard near his foot. It stared back at him, seeming confused at first, and then darted into the shade.

  Alex got the sudden feeling he'd been noticed. A look up and down the street, and then the rooftops, revealed no sign of anybody. It was quiet, as most people either had to work over the weekend on repair teams, or simply took advantage of the fair weather to get out of town and visit someplace less damaged. The peculiar sensation, not fear, but a feeling of being in the wrong place washed over Alex. Feeling the need to get out of sight, he opened the small gate on the side of Norio’s house and slipped into the shaded alley that led to the back yard. Stepping over a variety of potted plants along the flagstone path toward, he looked over his shoulder, fully expecting to see someone following him. Nobody was there.

  Alex reached Norio's greenhouse and eased himself inside. He was careful to twist the knob as he closed the door so it wouldn't make a clicking sound. The sun shined in through water-stained windows in the roof, diffusing throughout a fine mist that filled the greenhouse. Strangely, none of the windows were broken. Apparently, the guster missed this part of town completely.

  Pacing back and forth for a minute, Alex wondered what made him feel so paranoid. He composed himself, t
hen opened the door to the alleyway to see if anyone was there. Still, nobody was there. It wasn’t just that there wasn’t a person there. The birds were no longer chirping. Even the lizards had vanished. Then, as quickly as it had started, the uneasy feeling disappeared.

  Why would he feel like he'd been in the wrong place when he spent so much time at Norio's house? Everybody in the neighborhood recognized him, even if they never spoke, so Alex was at a loss to explain the sensation. He scolded himself for being so childish. As for the animals, he must have scared them away himself.

  Alex wound through the collection of tropical plants in the greenhouse, wondering what attracted Norio to such a wide variety of Arionese flora. Whether they were fuzzy or waxy-looking, purple or red, leafy or prickly, Norio had a keen interest in each of them. It was one of the few things that Norio had tried to give Alex an appreciation for that he just wasn't interested in. Water nozzles along the ceiling sprayed water on the ordinary plants. Other, more exotic plants were fed a distillation of liquefied sugar or alcohol. There was a new planter by the far wall that had nothing in it, save for a muddy waterfall that dribbled over broken pieces of charcoal. It occurred to Alex that the pumps in Norio’s garden weren't affected by the guster’s electromagnetic field, either. Then again, all the watering mechanisms in the greenhouse seemed new, so he guessed Norio had simply replaced them. With them running, he wouldn't have to tend the plants at all.

  He walked to the back door and found it locked, just as the front door was. The same bad smell seeped from the back door as well, stronger due to fresh breaks in the door frame. Judging by the condition of the frame and hinges on the back door, it wouldn’t be difficult to force his way in. Instead of damaging something he’d have to fix later, he made his way back to the alley hoping to find an open window.