I was by no means an expert on the mental and physical health of Evgans, but she was definitely a far cry from the girl I’d met in the forest a week ago. Her tunic sagged against her withering body—she’d lost weight since the start of our journey—her cheekbones more visible, while the skin atop them hollower. Dark circles pervaded beneath her eyes, and her once bronze, healthy complexion was growing mottled and clay-like. Perspiration had left a white coating around her hairline and jaw. Even her emerald eyes lacked luster now.
In front of us was the hub’s main communications control board. I had reached my original destination—plan alpha—and was now torn between signaling the OSC for a rescue, and sticking around to find out more. I wanted to know more for her sake; at the moment handing her over to a governing body that had purposefully caused diaspora on her people and subjected them to ethically-challenged experiments didn’t sit well with me. But at the same time, she was deteriorating in front of my eyes. It wasn’t guaranteed that she’d survive this place, even with my guardianship. Handing her over was a potential threat to her life, but so was keeping her here.
And so I stared at the control board—listless, conflicted, with hands resting on my knees as I idly flicked the rivet of a small inflammable device I’d found on the mess-hall ground. We hadn’t shared a word since we sat, and I wondered if Laith knew the gravity of this room; of my silence. One thing was certain, I made terrible company.
“Do you want any?” Laith asked, holding out an opened tin of brown mush.
“No.”
She retracted, shrinking like a violet. I reconsidered.
“Alright.”
I took the tin and shoveled a fingerful of mush into my mouth. It tasted better than it looked, but not by much. Laith watched me carefully as I worked the ancient food around in my mouth. “Good?” she asked, unable to read my expression.
“Not at all,” I said, and she giggled. “What is it supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might.” She studied the can, then held it out to me. “Meat, I think? What does the label say?”
“Aksaba. That isn’t a word. Probably the brand name.”
Laith shrugged and scooped more into her mouth. “It’s salty, at least.”
“You like salt?”
“Who doesn’t?”
I smirked in response. “Drink more water, then.”
“You sound like Akani,” Laith said, and her face saddened. She looked away and set the can between her legs. I watched her, silent. After a moment she looked back at me, eyes brimming with tears. “I miss my home, Zira.”
“I know you do. I’m sorry.”
Laith wiped the tears away, nodding. “Is something bad going to happen to me?”
Her question made me pause. I licked my lips, averting her eyes. “Not if I can help it. Although, I’m at a difficult fork in the road.”
“What?”
I nodded toward the communications panel in front of us. She followed my gaze. “That right there is our ticket out of here. All I have to do is power it on and send a transmission. But… once you make it to O-1, I don’t know what’ll happen to you.”
Laith’s cautious eyes wavered between the control board and mine several times before she said, “Tell me what you know. Please. I’m not a child; I can handle it.”
That quaver in her voice made my pulse quicken. And, in this fleeting moment of weakness, I buckled. I told her everything I knew. For the first time while under the employment of the Court of Enigmus, I committed a contract-breach. And it wasn’t nearly as devastating as I’d imagined.
Laith deserved to know. Simultaneously, she deserved to have a say in what would happen next. I’d always looked down on other scholars who’d strayed from the chaotic-neutral alignment upon which we walked, but now I could empathize. I understood.
She took the information better than anticipated, even as I expressed concern that Akani and her father had known. Laith’s housemaid had marked her with that chin tattoo, making her an easy target to identify—;
By friend or foe was still up in the air. Experience told me to always think the worst. I kept that part to myself.
Laith was silent for a while, eyes trained on the floor. She fidgeted with the hem of her tunic, cognizance muddying her face as she processed the facts. “‘Kitch.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That’s what I miss the most about home. ‘Kitch in the morning, with Kessu.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. I just let her talk; she was evidently working through some grief. Laith went on for a full ten minutes about a kickball game she’d played with a friend. I feigned interest, even asking her a few questions about it.
“I worry about him,” she said. “What will happen to Kessu if Svissa is attacked?”
“Does he have money?”
“His parents were very affluent.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry. The poor are always the ones who suffer in war. The rich have the option of bailing early.”
Laith gave me a sideways look, appearing thoughtful. “Seems like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Oh yeah?” I bristled. “And why is that?”
“The expression on your face.”
Guilty as charged. I’d been a child of war once upon a time, shat out on a miserable hell of a world by equally miserable people. Laith had things she missed about her home, and that was where we differed. My home had been nearly two decades of squalor and disease. No one would ever miss that. But instead of answering her, I used this opportunity to finally change the subject. “What do you want to do?”
“Do?” she asked, confused.
“Do you want to risk going to O-1, or do you want to risk it here? I’m letting you decide.”
Laith hesitated. “I thought I was supposed to follow your instructions.”
“And I’m instructing you to decide.”
“If we stay here, where would we go next?”
“There’s another hub forty miles east from here. There could be more information available. If we’re lucky, it might even be occupied.”
Laith frowned. “How would that be lucky?”
“It’s always easier to interrogate someone.”
My answer seemed to make her wary. She looked at the control board while I flicked the rivet of the inflammable device again, awaiting her decision.
Click. Click. Click.
A beat. “Alright, let’s go.”
I raised my brows, surprised. “You’re certain?”
“I’m not certain about anything, but I at least know you. I don’t want to…be without you.” She looked away, embarrassed. “I mean, not like—”
“Yeah, I got it. Pack your things, then.”
She quietly swept everything into the satchel. I watched her struggle with the cache for a minute before rolling my eyes and snatching it off of her, throwing it over my shoulder instead. Laith murmured a sheepish thanks and I responded by gesturing to the door with my free arm. My eyes followed her as she shuffled into the hall, before settling a final time on the communications board.
So, it was official; I was going rogue.
Adrial would certainly be surprised.
Unless I came up with a semi-decent excuse as to why I’d ignored my alpha-task. I’d have to think of one quickly; they would call me as soon as my location strayed from the hub.
One thing at a time.
XIII
THE EASTERN REGION OPENED INTO A SAVANNAH, which was a bittersweet discovery. The sparse clustering of coiled trees amid rocky terrain promised an easier climate, yet with an easier climate came the threat of settlements. If the group of armed soldiers that’d attacked the ship could be anywhere, it would be here.
We’d trekked for several hours before the sun descended on the horizon, casting the sky in a violet-maroon wash. The sound of skittering and chirping fauna made us slow in caution. Up ahead there was an oasis—a waterhole, framed by large ro
cks and canvased by a long, spiraling tree with only a tuff of leaves at the top. The place was vacant, save for a silhouette of something small and bipedal. It was too small to be a threat, but the way in which it moved mimicked that of a miniature person, splashing at the bank of the waterhole. Laith found this odd as well, frowning in confusion. She whispered my name, matching my pace.
We were still several hundred yards from the bank when I got a clear look at what was there. It was in fact not a miniature person, but some kind of robot. Its body was a metallic box in desperate need of polish; its legs and feet were two sharp prongs wedged into the muddy bank. It held a filthy bucket, scooping water up from the hole with its clamp-like hands, only to dump it back a few moments later.
The sheer absurdity of seeing something like this in the middle of nowhere made me freeze. Laith’s vision wasn’t as good as mine, so she couldn’t have known what I saw. When I stopped, she looked back at me, alarmed.
“What?”
I didn’t reply just yet, scanning our surroundings for the tiniest indication that someone else was here. A pair of bat-like creatures looped in figure-eights above our heads, but that was it.
“Stay behind me,” was all I said, and she quickly fell into line.
As we approached the robot paused mid-swing of the bucket, turning its head toward us. Its neck was made of coils, its face a crudely painted mask of porcelain. Half of it was missing, revealing a tangled mess of circuitry. Surely it wasn’t very intelligent; one misstep and it would short itself out. Water and wires made a terrible combination. I could only wonder what it was doing here, and why.
It studied us, and we it from the other side of the watering-hole. Dusk had whisked away the scenic sky, shrouding the area in shadow. The robot didn’t move for several minutes; I could hear the gears turning in its head, perhaps trying to determine if we were friend or foe. It seemed I was wrong; this was an android, not a robot. A form of artificial intelligence—crudely designed or not—on a dying world like this made me wonder about its history. As far as I knew, AI wasn’t commonplace in the OSC, save for navigation systems of military fleet ships.
I wanted to submit a query for O-2 historical records regarding its demographics and cultural history, but doing so would alert Enigmus of an update in my thread. By some act of a miracle no one had called to inquire why I was nearly a dozen miles away from my previous location. I wouldn’t stir that pot. Not yet, anyhow.
Instead I instructed Laith to fill up her empty water canisters. She seemed hesitant by the frightening android staring at us from across the bank. I told her to ignore it, and she did, albeit with some reluctance. Eventually the android continued with its futile cycle of scooping and dumping water, paying us no further mind. The water wasn’t completely clean, but the wind was merciful here and we could boil it in empty tins wherever we decided to set up camp. There were enough trees and boulders to offer decent shelter now.
After Laith was finished, she knelt on the rock overlooking the water with the satchel at her side. She studied the android, a twinge of sadness in her expression. “What do you think it’s doing?”
I dropped the cache and leaned against the trunk of the tree, folding my arms. “Not sure. I’ve been asking myself the same question.”
“Can it hear us? Does it know we’re talking about it?”
“I don’t think so.” Then again, attica didn’t have any banks for machine languages, and there were plenty across the Multiverse. Most of the machine civilizations the Court of Enigmus had encountered were hostile. They didn’t like ‘organics’. But that was another story. “It’s getting dark. We shouldn’t be here much longer.”
Laith didn’t respond at first, and with a gust of cool wind came a series of digitized sounds. They reminded me of a soundwave data-stream; a sequence of analogs bridged by digital space. And then I realized the sounds were coming from the android.
“It’s singing,” murmured Laith.
So it was.
“I think it likes our company,” she said, laughing softly.
“Or it always does that,” I said, being my ever-optimistic self. “Come on, let’s go.”
Laith stood and slung the satchel around her shoulder, but her eyes never left the android. By the troubled frown she wore it was clear this picture disturbed her, and she probably didn’t know why.
But I did. The disfigured, singing android sentenced to push water around a shriveling oasis was the perfect metaphor for this world. Something beautiful was here once, something with purpose; now left to rot as resources and sentience expired at an equal rate. And for what?
“Greed,” I thought aloud. “This is where greed gets you.”
“Like my father used to say,” began Laith, near-whisper, “you can’t eat money.”
I fought to hide my surprise. It seemed she and I were on the same wavelength, after all.
*
We walked several more miles before finding an isolated spot beneath another cluster of scraggly trees and boulders. The roots had broken from the ground, serving as a knee-level fence partitioning us from the cool eastern wind. Laith started a fire using her scrapped clothes, leaves and tree bark shaved from the trunk with her dagger. We surrounded the fire with rocks to contain the flames, and I used the flammable device lifted from the hub to ignite the kindling.
Laith settled in as we heated tins of water and preserved food, seated with the elite armor helmet in her lap. It stared at me through the flames; I felt uneasy.
And then the dreaded ping came from my conscious stream. They’d finally remembered to check on me. Yes?
—Zira, did something happen at the outpost?
Pariah’s thoughts revealed naïve confusion. Never would he suspect that I’d deviate from the plan. No, not really.
—Then why are you located in another border-region?
The communications system was dead. I couldn’t revive it. I’m heading to another hub. I highlighted the eastern beacon on the map to show him my destination.
— You didn’t update Plan-Alpha.
Thought I did, apologies. I’ll do it now.
There was some hesitation on Pariah’s part. Suspicion, perhaps. I counted half a minute before he said, Thank you.
I’m also about to submit a query for historical records of this region.
—Regarding..?
Pure curiosity. I sent him a visual capture of the android at the oasis.
—Wow, I can’t decide whether I’m terrified or depressed.
Definitely not something I expected to find here. Apparently civ-world tech levels are higher than we thought. Going to do some digging, for personal knowledge.
—Such a scholar.
I’ll send an update now. Expect another once we reach our destination.
I severed the feed without a farewell, returning my attention to the judgmental stare of the elite armor helmet. Laith was spooning warm tinned muck into her mouth with her fingers, paying me no mind. She was hungry, and so was I. Even with the unappetizing state of which the food was in, my stomach growled relentlessly. The absence of stimulants in my system was felt at full force now; I was sluggish, exhausted, but sleep couldn’t happen. Not with us out in the open.
I sighed away the leaden feeling in my shoulders and reached for one of the warm tins, puncturing the top with my canines. Laith winced as she watched me chew open the lid.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“You should know by now the answer to that question will always be no,” I muttered, then emptied half of the container into my mouth like it was a drink. Its texture and flavor was minced and processed, similar to what people had fed their carnivorous animal companions on other worlds I’d visited.
Maybe we were eating animal food.
Oh, well.
Something feral screamed in the distance. Both of us paused, turning toward the sound. It was far enough away that the call was carried by the wind in an echo; no threat to us, but the polarization of the east
ern and western regions, in regards to life, was surprising.
Most of the contracts I’d carried out involving exploration of remote and/or allegedly ‘dead’ worlds always caused self-reflection on the determination of life—not just sentient, but anything. Life was more than simply mechanical molecules using up universal resources; it was the cosmos’s way of learning and recording itself. The sheer persistence of life in the face of such extreme environmental adversity attested that theory.
“Zira,” called Laith, interrupting my rumination. I’d been looking at her all this time, but not really. Resettling my focus, I realized something was wrong. Her voice was quiet and choked, and her expression was pained. “I… don’t feel well.”
Before I could respond, Laith hung her head and vomited her evening meal on the ground, barely missing her feet. When she looked up at me, her lips were tinged blue and her skin had a strange glittery-gold sheen to it.
Was it the food? “Stop eating that,” I said quickly, snatching the cache and rifling through it, looking for every label matching the one in her trembling hand.
As I tossed identical cans away from our site, Laith curled on her side and covered herself with my coat. She said nothing else—only fell asleep, her skin scintillating gold in the fire’s dying glow. I watched her for a while, concerned. Over-exertion? Food poisoning? Practically a thousand other variables?
Analyzing her condition was a waste of time; I’d known that the moment her resonance had shifted. Her body was giving off more heat, using more energy, heightening the pitch and frequency of her signature. Within minutes, her molecular pattern had altered.
And so, it’d begun. The abdeakkan gift.
I hadn’t any idea what to expect, and only hoped it wasn’t as the O-3 propaganda suggested. If it was, I’d just have to hand her over to the OSC as quickly as possible. No one would fault me, or the Court of Enigmus for that matter, about the turn-of-events. A non-conforming event, or ‘business interruption’, as they sometimes put it. But it would be a shame.
Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8) Page 11