by Chloe Garner
Troy held his breath.
*********
The Gana truly weren’t that far behind them. It was only about fifteen seconds before they came charging through the woods, fast on heavy, short legs, and angry, though as stable as Oma. Troy braced, trying to pick the right way to protect himself, get Olivia out of there, get Oma moving. The gun was worthless, but it was there in his hand, anyway.
And they were moving.
Still.
The Gana men never slowed their charge down the hillside.
They stood and waited, Troy didn’t know for what, specifically, for about another minute, then Cassie nodded.
“With me. Let’s go.”
And they were running again.
This wasn’t the same headlong rush down the hill. Cassie was picking her way, choosing it by signs only she could read in the landscape. Oma kept up effortlessly, paying attention to everything but her own feet, while Olivia and Troy struggled, stumbling and gasping. He was in better shape than her; he did everything he could to help her, but in the end, at that speed, all you could do was manage your own path. And Olivia was fading fast.
Finally she threw herself down on the ground.
“I can’t,” she said, a gasp clogging her throat for a moment. “I can’t do it.”
Cassie turned, looking back behind them for a moment.
“My trick isn’t the one that’s going to shake them,” she said. “They have a sense of smell like a dog. We’ve been going over the most difficult route for them to track, and we were masked for a few minutes in the glade, but they are coming, and they will kill you, Olivia. It isn’t much further. You just have to make it into town.”
“I can carry her,” Oma said.
Cassie stood.
“You have the strength?”
“The light even here is enough,” Oma said of the gentle shadowing under the trees. “I’ve powered a city my entire life on the light coming down a tunnel. I can run carrying a wisp of a girl.”
Cassie nodded.
“Let’s keep moving, then.”
Olivia looked like she wanted to argue, but she let the Gana woman pick her up, and they were moving again. Without Olivia to worry about, Troy was more confident on his feet, he fell less, he slipped less, and he did better keeping up, but he was still the slowest of the three.
Another ten minutes and they were in view of the buildings. Twenty and they were under the awning of the first of them, slowing to a walk.
“In here,” Cassie said.
They followed her into a small shop, where she purchased something that might have been clothing and might have been floor covering, Troy couldn’t tell for sure.
“Do you have a pad for customer use?” she asked.
“Of course,” the pale-skinned woman who took her payment said. “It’s just there.”
Cassie nodded, taking them over to a section of floor. She played with the electronics on her arm for a moment, then nodded.
“Right. Troy, you’re up first. Don’t wander.”
He went to stand where she motioned, and the room vanished. He was in a large, violet-colored space, surrounded by foreign terrestrials who seemed completely unconcerned with him. He stepped off of the marked section of floor and went to find a chair. He wasn’t sure what everyone was doing, but it was clear that they were here to do it. No one so much as looked at him.
He sat and waited, but nothing happened.
So he watched.
The room had no windows, just a lot of people standing and sitting, and they were all fidgeting. The fidgets looked intentional, rather than burning time, but he couldn’t make sense of them at all. The species represented were diverse, as far as his eyes could measure them, ranging in skin tone and build, as well as configuration. There were foreign terrestrials with two, three, four, and six ground-contacting appendages, and all manner of skeletal shapes. In the corner, glancing up at him only once, there was a tan-skinned woman who could have been Italian, in the right light.
Troy found it hard not to stare at her.
They didn’t have devices or other objects of any kind that he could see. Just those little, intent motions.
And then Cassie was there.
“Troy,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He tore his attention away from the Italian woman and went to join Cassie.
The room disappeared again, and she pointed him at a lounge chair of some kind in an empty room.
“They’re going to give you a facial. Enjoy it. Olivia will be here in about four minutes.”
He frowned at her, but she was gone again.
He went to sit, not sure he wanted a Minan Gartal facial, but willing himself to at least give it a shot. A few minutes later, a woman with a long head and complex, over-numbered features came in.
“Good morning,” she said warmly. “Welcome to Gelt Renan Cleansing. Is this your first time with us?”
“Um. Yes,” Troy said.
He’d never had anything in his life resembling a facial. And he’d just spent the better part of a morning running down a hill. The conversion was ridiculous, and he found himself struggling with a sense of surrealness again.
He smelled bad.
“Welcome, we always love to see new guests. It appears that your session today is a gift?”
“Yes,” he said again, hoping that was the right answer. She motioned with a long, lean arm.
“Well, your session has been detailed very well. I’ll be ready to begin just as soon as you get changed.”
For a facial?
He looked at the spot where she had indicated, where it appeared someone had attempted to mummify a coat rack.
He looked back at her and she giggled.
“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s…” She hid her face behind the bit of electronics in her hand, then straightened again. “For your privacy, as you care to express it. It’s designed to be used by any number of body types. You should find it comfortable.”
She gave him an affirmative little body motion, something like a cross among a nod, a bow, and a hop, then turned and left.
He turned to look at the strips of cloth again with skepticism.
He only had a minute before Olivia was going to show up with Cassie, and he really didn’t want to be wrestling with how to make a toga out of a twelve-inch wide strip of cloth when they got here.
He sat and waited.
The woman from the spa came in again to check on him, and he told her he was waiting for his friend.
“Yes, I have two on the reservation,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He tried not to fidget his fingers.
He was an officer of the air force. He was on a mission, as ambiguous and open-ended as that was, in truth, and he was doing his job.
He was not going to be stared down by a mummy scarecrow.
But the thing was winning.
“You two are here for about thirty minutes,” Cassie was saying as she appeared with Olivia. “I’ll come and get you afterwards.”
“Wait,” Troy interrupted as Cassie turned. She looked at him, eyebrows up. “What is that and how does it work?” He indicated the strips of cloth. She frowned at it and went to feel it.
“Ah,” she said, looking over at him. “I see.”
“Not funny,” he answered, and she grinned.
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
“That’s our clothing for the next half hour,” Troy said as Cassie hid her face by turning away again.
“It’s what?” Olivia asked. Troy nodded.
“They take skin really seriously here,” Cassie said. “I didn’t account for that.”
“Where are we?” Olivia asked.
“It’s a Minan Gartal spa,” Cassie said. “All right, let’s make this work. Olivia, come stand over here.”
Olivia glanced at Troy and he shrugged, at a complete loss. He’d prefer people have guns than deal with this. She stood in front of Cassie, who wrapped the cloth aro
und her over top of her existing gown-shaped clothes.
“Hands where you don’t want seen,” Cassie said. Olivia’s eyes flashed alarm, and Troy looked away.
“You’re going to have to do this for yourself, Troy,” Cassie said. “Have to watch.”
He turned his face back, watching as the white cloth shrunk tight into a bikini-top shape.
“You should still be able to take off the clothes underneath,” Cassie said. “Everything you touch will shrink to shape. If you need another band, just add it.”
“What?” Olivia asked.
“You’ve got it, right?” Cassie asked. “I left Oma at the farmers’ market.”
And then Troy and Olivia were staring at each other.
“She isn’t serious,” Olivia said.
Troy opened his mouth and closed it.
The woman from the spa returned.
“Oh, good. Your friend has made it.” The woman made an awkward wiggle and hid her face behind the electronic device again. “The pawr is intended to be worn alone.”
“I’m getting there,” Olivia said sourly. The spa woman gave her odd little hop-bow and left. Olivia glared at him.
“Don’t you dare enjoy this.”
“I have to go next,” he said. “I really don’t think she planned this.”
“Don’t care,” Olivia said, turning her back. He looked away again, waiting several minutes.
“Okay, fine, whatever,” Olivia said finally, coming and throwing herself into the chair next to his. He glanced at her. It was a bandage-bikini, sure enough. He didn’t laugh.
He was proud of himself for that.
He was a bit giddy from the run, and punch drunk from the rest of the morning, and he wasn’t sure, moments later, how he’d managed not to laugh, as he tried to figure out the shrinking cloth for himself, but he didn’t.
“You suppose this stuff just disappears if you aren’t careful?” he asked. He’d tied himself a knot around his hips that seemed like it was going to do well enough, but it was working up to atomic wedgie status pretty quickly.
“Ha,” Olivia said, not looking at him. He went and sat down, the idea of fabric that shrunk to non-existence under his hands sort of taking his imagination for a moment.
“It’s not that big a deal,” he finally said, laying back in the chair. “We’re safe here, we’re going to get facials, whatever that means in their book, and then Cassie is going to save the daughter of the king from a lifetime of imprisonment.”
“Yay for us,” Olivia said, still not looking at them.
The spa woman returned, and seemed satisfied enough with their not-clothes.
“Okay. We’ll get started then, if you’re ready. Would either of you like refreshment?”
“No thank you,” Olivia said.
“What have you got?” Troy asked, making the decision that if Olivia was going to be that sour about it, he might as well get into it.
“I’ll bring the tray,” the woman said, leaving and reappearing within moments with a tray of small munchables and colored-glass beverages. He sampled them at random, enjoying himself immensely.
Another foreign terrestrial joined the first one, now, and began mixing things in a ceramic jar.
She took several long looks at Olivia, then picked more things out of the cart and mixed them.
“Do you find that your skin is too wet or too dry, most of the time?” the woman asked Olivia.
“Dry,” Olivia said. It wasn’t quite as antagonistic as it had been, but she still clearly didn’t want to be there.
“And you?” the first woman asked Troy.
“Kind of normal, I guess,” he said. She took this as clear direction and set off mixing her own set of chemicals. He looked at Olivia, but she still wasn’t making eye contact.
So he shrugged, lay back, and sipped his drink.
If you were there for the duration, you may as well not worry about it.
*********
He had a cloth across his eyes that smelled botanical, though the specific flowers and herbs involved were all foreign to him. It wasn’t unpleasant, though he still would have preferred someone be shooting at him.
His skin, everywhere, toes to hair line, was covered in paint of some kind. He wasn’t sure if it was a grease or a lotion or a mud, but it was covered, and he’d been instructed to lay still and ‘let it work’. Olivia was silent, next to him.
“You enjoying yourselves?” Cassie asked.
He pulled the cloth off of his eyes.
“About time,” he answered.
“It isn’t bad,” Olivia said. Cassie laughed.
“This is the trick,” she said. “We need to move, now.”
“Kinda gooped up here,” Troy said.”
“Bring it,” Cassie answered. “Don’t care. Get your clothes and we need to go. The window closes in fifteen seconds.”
“What window?” Olivia asked, sitting up.
“Now,” Cassie said. Troy was already grabbing both sets of clothes, and went to stand next to Cassie.
“What happens if I stay?” Olivia asked.
“I may not be able to find you,” Cassie said. “Five. Four.”
Olivia sighed and made the walk to the portal pad as Cassie’s countdown expired.
They left the quiet room and found themselves standing in the middle of a busy space, probably recreational.
“Why are you naked?” Oma asked.
“Long story,” Troy answered. “Why are you naked?”
“Gana don’t need clothes,” she said. “We’re covered by our own nature.”
“Right,” he said. “How do I get this off?”
“Not now,” Cassie said.
He looked around, registering, now, how off things were.
People looked panicked. They were realizing something invisible to him, the knowledge spreading quickly from person to person as they tried to use the things in their hands or interact with fixtures within the space.
The noise rose, spreading not just through the recreational space, but outside of it, people shouting, fear.
“What happened?” Troy asked.
“She did,” Cassie answered. “Stay here.”
He frowned after her, then started trying to scrape the stuff off of his skin. He wanted to be dressed and armed when whatever was coming happened.
Olivia put her arm out for her clothes, and he handed them over.
“It absorbs,” she said after a moment. “Just get dressed.”
Ah. That would explain why it was so hard to get off.
And the disappearing clothes thing actually worked out pretty well, there, too.
A few minutes later, Cassie reappeared, followed by two female Gana.
“Asp, Alk, this is your sister Oma.”
“There is too much noise here,” Oma said.
“It’s a very noisy city,” Asp agreed. Alk looked at Cassie.
“You have the means to escape, even now, when it’s too late?”
“If I hadn’t waited until now, there would be no escape,” Cassie answered. “You should say your goodbyes.”
Asp and Alk took a very long look at each other, then bowed low.
“I will care for her,” Alk said.
“I will remember,” Asp answered.
“Maybes for another day,” Alk told her.
“Always,” Asp said.
And then they were done. They did not touch. Cassie gave a quick nod.
“You’re going to be on your own, getting back up to the palace,” she said to Asp. “You should go now. They’ll have a very hard time getting here, but when they get here, I want you to be long gone.”
Asp looked at Oma.
“It’s a promise long overdue, never made,” she said.
“I am the Goddess of the Gana,” Oma answered. “I am abandoning my people.”
“You are teaching your people a lesson that Ka, our warrior great-mother, would want them to have.”
“What is that?” O
ma asked.
“To survive,” Asp said. Oma considered this for a moment, then looked at her arms again.
“They will survive?”
“Gana always survive,” Alk said. “We should go.”
Cassie nodded another agreement. Asp paused for a moment, then turned and made her way through the increasingly-agitated crowd. Troy looked up and, in the moment before the world disappeared, he realized that the buildings had gone dark.
*********
The buildings overhead in the next moment were busy, electronic, and haunting for reasons Troy couldn’t immediately identify. The city was tall, even compared to Minan Gartal, but the street was empty.
They were quiet for a moment, looking around at the great buildings.
“Where are we?” Asp finally asked.
“Xhrak-ni,” Cassie said. Her voice was quiet. “I don’t think anyone will ever come looking for you here, but even if they do, you’ll be impossible to find.”
“Where is everyone?” Oma asked.
“The few who are still alive are underground,” Cassie said. “They are builders, but something bad happened to them a little while ago, and they shut down the planet. They’re just here waiting to die, now.”
“How did we get here?” Olivia asked Troy even more quietly. “There was no portal.”
He shook his head, trying to get as much information as he could before he even started thinking. The city was dead, but it lived on, on its own. Full of electronic ghosts with no choice but to keep doing what they’d always done, even with on one around to appreciate it.
“The whole planet?” he asked. Cassie nodded.
“Very sad,” she said. “And very, very hard to get here.” She looked at Alk. “You’re going to have to be clever to make it here.”
“Why is that?” Alk asked.
“You have no money,” Cassie said. “They have everything you could possibly need for a hundred lifetimes, here, but you’re going to have to figure out how to work with the machines to get them to give it to you. Some of it you can probably get free. Other things, you’ll have to earn money to buy it.”
“Asp said that I would be unable to use digital currency,” Alk said. Cassie nodded.
“I found a way around it,” she said, taking a strip of computing membrane off of her arm and holding it out to Alk. “That’s a blank identity. Just an account number without a name or anything else attached to it. Anywhere else in the universe, that’s going to cause massive issues, because no one lets you have an account without a name, but here, no one is going to care. If you can find ways to get the system here to give you money, you can then spend it to take care of yourself.”