“Believe me, I’m not complaining,” she said, subduing her voice, then letting it grow teasing. “I just wonder if someone came and replaced you in the middle of the night. If so, I wonder if it’s my duty to report it…?”
Trazen let out a low chuckle. Even so, his expression grew perceptibly more taut before he flicked his tail a little sharper behind his back.
“You wouldn’t know if they had,” he said softly.
It took a beat for the meaning of the words to sink in.
Then Jet flushed.
She averted her gaze from his high-cheekboned face.
She turned over his words, looking for some other meaning, but kept circling back to the one. He’d just made a crack about the fact that he’d refused to sleep with her. Whether that crack was to let her know he’d been sleeping with someone else or merely to remind Jet that he’d refused her, she had no idea.
Either way, it felt like a blatant dig.
She found herself remembering the times she’d asked––begged him, really.
As the memories resurfaced, she felt her face warm more.
That time, it felt more like anger.
Knowing he would have seen that, not only from the color that must have risen to her cheeks but from their damned infrared lizard eyes that could see heat spectrums as well as visual light, didn’t help.
Tightening her jaw, Jet looked back out the window.
They didn’t speak again until they reached the outside of the eating establishment.
By then, the sun had disappeared past the horizon line.
4
Museum
Trazen took her to a part of the Green Zone Jet had never seen before.
As she stepped out of the trolley, she felt nerves ripple her skin as she glanced up and around at the buildings.
The nerves weren’t for her safety really.
Rather, Jet felt her reality tilt slightly as she looked around, reassessing some portion of her understanding of the Nirreth world and how things worked here.
This part of the Green Zone looked significantly different from what she’d grown used to, living in the center. It looked different enough, Jet found herself thinking the center might not be as representative of Nirreth society as she always assumed.
She remembered what Trazen told her, about Isreti and his fanatical followers wanting to make sure the “lesser Nirreth” knew their places, along with humans and other non-Nirreth.
Looking around, Jet found herself thinking that a lot of those “lesser Nirreth” might live around here.
The center might just be where all the rich Nirreth lived.
The wide-open spaces appeared to be less here, for one thing.
Those rambling, nature-filled parks, spotlessly free of trash and nearly spiritual in their quiet, appeared to be totally absent from this part of the Green Zone. The buildings Jet could see looked to be located mostly above-ground, and much closer to what she thought of as human-like in design.
They were also packed a lot more tightly together.
In fact, the more Jet looked around, the more the buildings reminded her of what she’d seen in the bombed out human cities of Vancouver and Seattle. These may well be built deeper into the ground in ways Jet couldn’t yet see, but they’d obviously been built upwards too, with organic-looking additions in different colors, made of different building materials that snaked up into the space below the Green Zone dome.
The outside of the building directly in front of her had either been designed to emulate human architecture, or actually contained some remnants of human architecture that had been expanded upon or added to by the Nirreth who used the building now.
Looking up the walls, Jet found herself thinking it was the latter.
Something about the style of the building was familiar to her, or perhaps reminiscent of something she’d seen in one of Chiyeko’s books. The materials were almost like mud on the outside, a dark, rich red in color, with a sandy texture that blended strangely with the blue-tinted, more metallic additions of the Nirreth builders.
Jet put out a hand, touching the rough side of the original building.
“What is it?” she said, not thinking about who she was with.
Trazen answered her anyway.
“Adobe,” he said.
When she gave him a puzzled look, the tall Nirreth only swished his tail, a gesture of mild impatience as he glanced up the mottled sides of the building himself.
“…The original structure, at least,” he said in Nargili, hissing softer. “I assume that is what you were asking. It is a material long in use by the indigenous humans from here. It is older than the place they called the United States.”
Jet nodded, but her brow furrowed.
Maybe that’s why she remembered it.
Mishio had books on the original people from these lands, meaning all of North America. So did her mother. Some of them lived out here, in the desert.
They must have been the ones to build these mud homes.
Her hand still on the sun-warmed clay, she glanced up, seeing the blue metal that merged seamlessly out of the dark red. Her eyes took in colored windows, then focused on snaking designs that lived in the metal itself. It must be art, she found herself thinking in wonder, making out shapes of trees and strangely elongated animals, only a few of which resembled anything she’d ever seen on Earth.
Someone painted or etched something into the outer hull of the metal.
Something about that art struck her as containing more raw feeling than anything she’d seen in the sterile art galleries of the Royals, or even the smaller, private galleries that dotted the wide streets of the center.
She focused on a snake-like depiction of some water creature, black and white with a long, perfectly formed tail. It struck her that it looked like an elongated version of an orca, the giant, black and white dolphins she’d seen in the Sound.
Chiyeko told her they were the last of their kind, which is why they huddled together.
Chiyeko said once they were all gone, the soul of the world itself would end.
For some reason that escaped her now, Jet repeated Chiyeko’s words in front of Richter once. Laughing, Richter informed her that the Nirreth were the only reason any orcas still existed now. He claimed the pod had been cloned and modified from the few remaining living specimens, then modified genetically so they could withstand the higher toxin levels of the oceans following the war.
According to Richter, the Nirreth recreated the black dolphins just like they recreated dinosaurs, and blond-haired humans with blue eyes.
Jet asked Anaze if that was true.
Later, she asked Laksri.
Both told her essentially the same thing as Richter, though they could clearly see Jet didn’t want to believe it.
Pushing the memory out of her mind, Jet looked up, taking in more of the building, then scanning more buildings on either side of the narrow street. She saw a round, colored-glass window, like a giant flower between the two towers up above, surrounded by more of those art renderings of animals and trees.
The depictions had so much detail, so many colors, the window looked like a sun surrounded by seething, multicolored rays.
Trazen just stood there, behind her, watching her look.
She had an awareness of him––just because she always seemed to have an awareness of him now––but she still jumped when he spoke, if only because he’d remained silent for so long.
“This used to be old Santa Fe,” he said, using English. “Do you know it?”
Jet shook her head, gazing up at the sun depicted in Nirreth stone and glass.
“The lower building was a hotel once, I believe,” he said, his voice still casual. “This whole area is now owned by the Shinkara.”
Jet turned, staring at him in bewilderment.
Trazen didn’t meet her gaze. He folded his long-fingered hands behind his back, just above his tail.
“It is tradition for them to own
half of any settlement,” he continued in the same unreadable voice. “Normally they are asked to pick out their area first, before the areas sold privately can be put up for sale. In this case, they picked the location of the Green Zone itself, in addition to choosing this part of the settlement as their own.”
Glancing at Jet, he seemed to assess her reaction before adding,
“As is also traditional, they donated these areas to any Nirreth who did not have the means to own property of their own.”
Jet turned the information over in bewilderment.
When Trazen’s scrutiny intensified, she forced her expression still, nodding her acknowledgment of his words.
“You do not approve?” he said. “You think it is stupid perhaps? Sentimental?”
“Why here?” is all she said.
Trazen’s lips lifted in a faint Nirreth smile. “Why not here?”
Jet looked around at the reddish-brown buildings that formed the base for everything that had been built over them.
“It just seems like there was a reason,” she said finally. “They must have liked something about it.”
“Presumably, yes.”
“What was it like before?”
He gave her another dense stare. That time, she saw a flicker of confusion on his face, what might have been a question.
It was gone as soon as she saw it.
“There are images, Jet,” Trazen said, purring a softer impatience. “I should not have to provide you a history lesson on the past civilizations of your own people.”
Jet felt her jaw harden, but didn’t answer.
He was right of course.
But it hadn’t escaped Jet’s notice that a good chunk of educated Nirreth she’d met seemed to know more than she did about the history of humans and Earth.
That would be even more true soon.
Soon, only Nirreth would write the histories of Earth. Especially after the adults Jet had grown up with died off, leaving nothing but next-generation skags like her. Jet found herself wishing now that she’d paid more attention to Mishio and Chiyeko’s stories, as well as those of her mother and her uncle and aunt.
If she ever got back to the skag pits, she would help Chiyeko hoard the print and picture books the adults stored in the stone lighthouse to keep them from being ruined in the damp.
She knew a lot of Earth’s histories had been electronic prior to the Nirreth coming.
Now, a few moldy books were all the skags had left.
She tried to keep the thought off her face.
“Come,” Trazen told her, motioning with his head.
Despite the bluntness of the command, he used the polite version of the gesture and the less familiar version of the word in Nargili. Even his tail coiled behind his back in a more accommodating and respectful articulation.
Jet found all three things strange given what he’d said to her in the trolley about remembering her place in front of whoever they’d come here to meet.
“You haven’t told me my role yet,” she said, still looking him over warily. “Have you still not decided? Or did you plan to tell me inside?”
Trazen’s dark eyes remained unreadable.
He took hold of her arm, his jointed fingers gentle.
“Come, Jet,” he urged, pulling her closer to him. “We should go inside now. It is not particularly safe out here.”
“Meaning?” Alarm touched her voice as she glanced around at the empty-seeming street. Streetlights had flickered on at some point while she’d been staring around at the adobe and metal buildings, and now those lamps colored everything orange.
“How is it not safe?” she said.
“It’s not safe for humans,” he explained. He tugged her deeper to his side, his dark eyes reflecting light from the street lamps. “Come, Jet. Or we will be late.”
Jet stood at one end of a long, rectangular room with high ceilings.
Still lurking by Trazen’s side, she fought to keep from staring around too obviously.
The building was crammed full of more Nirreth than she ever would have imagined while standing outside. It also looked significantly more luxurious than it had from the sidewalk, although in a way that differed markedly from the opulence of the compound of the Royals, or of Trazen’s own property.
For one thing, it was a lot more cluttered.
For another, the opulence itself was pretty hit and miss.
The room she stood in now had been crammed, pretty much floor to ceiling, full of human artifacts of various kinds.
Jet stared around at all of it, stunned.
Her eyes met a completely random assortment of human-made objects: jewelry, pottery, life-sized stone figurines of animals and peoples, rugs, paintings, knick-knacks, pillow covers, geodes, pyramids, obelisks, old road and shop signs, machinery parts, coffee mugs, plates, couches, chairs, eyeglasses, false teeth and glass eyes, ornate tables, wind chimes, wooden bureaus, old car parts, wagon-wheels, garage door openers, silverware, coins, stuffed dead animals, movie projectors, golf clubs, gold and silver medals.
Some of those things were beautiful, possibly even priceless.
Quite of few of them were… not.
A wide stone altar stood at the far end of the high-ceilinged room, covered in more figurines and what looked like an old-fashioned telephone, topped by a castle-like structure in miniature and painted wooden images of people wearing headdresses and feathers and mangy dead animal skins.
Above all of that junk, a bigger-than-life dead man hung from a wooden cross, made of stone or possibly ceramic, covered in painted blood and with his eyes rolling upwards towards a stained glass skylight.
She’d seen that dead man before.
A few of the families in the skag pits came from that religion, but Jet didn’t know much about it, really. Her eyes kept going back to him though, if only because his likeness somehow dominated the room.
Different-colored lights shone on the various artifacts, particularly at the room’s apex where the giant crucifix hung, but also inside the room’s alcoves, which housed rusted machinery along with a myriad of paintings, glass and ceramic figurines, gold masks and goblets, silver platters, manikins wearing rich but moth-eaten clothes, plastic flowers, metal sculptures, pottery, garden gnomes, shovels, pitch forks, lawn chairs, motorcycles.
Jet even saw a wheelbarrow that seemed to hold nothing but children’s toys.
The ceiling itself fascinated Jet, with its high stone arches supported by wooden beams bigger than any tree Jet had seen alive.
She felt like she’d walked into a museum.
A museum of human civilization, put together by drunk and/or crazy people.
The only thing missing were stuffed humans themselves, maybe scattered among the tables where the Nirreth patrons now ate and talked, tails swishing between the clink of glasses, plates, jewelry, and utensils.
Jet stood obediently by Trazen’s side as she took in the Nirreth faces and clothes, noticing they were a lot more varied than what she generally saw in the center.
These Nirreth didn’t look poor exactly, but they were definitely more casual in manner and dress. There was something less pristine and freshly-scrubbed about them, too.
She didn’t move as Trazen signaled for a female Nirreth. She continued to stand there, silent, as Trazen spoke to that same Nirreth after she approached, letting her know who they’d come to meet.
Jet did notice Trazen had been right.
She didn’t recognize the name he mentioned.
Jet was still standing there, her fingers clutching Trazen’s thick arm, when the female Nirreth motioned for them to follow her.
She walked them right into the center of those crammed-together tables and Jet crossed the room without meeting anyone’s gaze, hoping not to be recognized, especially after Trazen’s cryptic comments before they came inside.
She was still walking, huddled more or less against Trazen, when she felt eyes on her, intensely enough that she flinched.
/> She turned without thought.
Squinting in the direction of the stare she’d felt, Jet caught a glimpse of a form behind a patterned rug that hung over a doorway.
It was dark there, just beyond another row of life-sized human statues, so Jet couldn’t see much about whoever it was. She noted more than one person peering at her from those shadows. She also noticed at least one of them was Nirreth.
She frowned, staring in that direction, until a prod from Trazen got her to look away.
She faced forward just in time for Trazen to lead her through another rug-covered doorway.
He escorted her past where their Nirreth guide held the rug up for them to enter, then steered Jet down a more dimly-lit corridor decorated with real candles in cast-iron sconces.
Jet was looking around at the white stucco walls when another rug was pulled aside in front of her, and she found herself being led into a room lit only by real flames, this time in the form of a giant fireplace. The outside of that fireplace was strangely rounded, blackened by smoke, and appeared to be made out of the same material as the outside of the building.
It gave the hearth an igloo-like look, even with the thick rug lying on the tile floor just past the hearthstone.
Turning away from the fire, Jet focused on the table that stood in the center of the room, directly under a wrought-iron chandelier also covered in real candles.
Seeing the Nirreth sitting there, waiting for them, Jet sucked in a breath.
It was Laksri.
5
The Meeting
Jet fought to breathe, unable to do anything but stare.
She looked at him, at the armored clothing he wore, the dark red cloth tied around his head, hanging down between his shoulder blades. She stared at his dark eyes as they drank her in, the star-like flecks in the black irises, the long fingers where they rested on the wooden table next to where he sat, his tail coiled around the wooden bench.
She couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t even think.
It didn’t occur to her anywhere in that pause to wonder at Trazen’s lack of reaction at her side. She caught the grim look on Laksri’s face as his eyes flickered from Trazen back to her, but she didn’t really understand that, either.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 73