Tales from Ardulum

by J. S. Fields

  Look, the voice said. The sound was flat, but underneath it, Emn felt the growing terror. Wind caught her hair and blew it into her eyes. The smell of salt stung her nose as bits of dirt powdered against her ear. Larger pieces of the ground spun around her. The soil under her feet shifted. She heard a terrible cracking, then a popping, and then the sound of a world being sliced at its seams. There was no andal to scream, but there was no need. The voice screamed. Emn screamed.

  A long, rounded shadow fell across her, but Emn didn’t need to look up to know what was looming in the sky, what monstrosity had visited this planet and traumatized its people, destroyed its ecosystems, and mutated its weather and tides. The air shook. When the ground gave way, Emn let herself be devoured.

  THE FIRST THING Emn felt when she awoke was the rawness of her throat. The second thing was the soft feeling of cloth-covered breasts against her cheek, and the third was the weight of one of Atalant’s legs threaded over hers. She didn’t trust her eyes yet, so she slid her hand to Atalant’s hip and gripped the rounded bone there. Atalant’s even breathing turned erratic, but she didn’t stir, so Emn edged her hand over and cupped Atalant’s backside. The dream, the connection, the whatever it was, felt far away now and was slipping from her mind in sheets. What had seemed so terrifying that she’d screamed her throat raw now felt like a lingering chill that she could smother with Atalant’s mouth. Emn opened her eyes to an unmade bed, artificial sunlight creeping up the unpainted wall of their room, and Atalant staring groggily down at her.

  Emn stroked the flesh under her hand, traveling down to cup the junction where bottom met thigh and then back up over the hip and around again. Atalant wasn’t wearing pants, but she was wearing underwear, and that was unfortunate.

  “This was not how I expected this morning to start.” Atalant’s voice sounded as raw as Emn’s throat felt. Emn pursed her lips and reluctantly dragged her head from its perfect pillow.

  “Are you lodging a complaint against my hand?”

  Atalant croaked a laugh. “No, but maybe I could have some explanation first. You screamed for an hour, Emn! You finally stopped when I dragged you to bed and you buried yourself, well—” Atalant gestured to her breasts.

  Emn tried to shrug nonchalantly. “They’re comfortable. Familiar.” Still, Emn felt that, despite all their time together, she had not had sufficient time to explore how the slope from shoulder to breast melted seamlessly into dark areolas and pert nipples, how a short breath of air raised numerous points of sensitivity, how—when she cupped each—she had to work to contain them. Atalant’s breasts captivated Emn. Apparently, they captivated her enough to shake her loose from the shared dream, and now that it had blurred almost to nothing, Emn was grateful for the reprieve.

  “Do you remember anything?” Atalant sat up, which brought in a rush of cool air as the blanket slid from their bodies. Emn shivered and sat up as well, but no matter how much she tried to chase the dream, she could mostly just remember feelings.

  “I remember being afraid. I remember…heat. I remember panic. Maybe some red hair. There might have been red hair curling in front of my eyes.”

  “An Ardulan?” Atalant asked, her voice unusually high.

  “This was…” Emn raked her mind for memory fragments. “This voice belonged to someone…a gatoi? Not Ardulan though. Not Neek. There were…there were feathers. Maybe quills?” Emn rubbed at her forehead. Feathers seemed ridiculous. Surely her mind had made that part up.

  “A subspecies? There are hundreds, you know. Ardulum has been traveling for a long, long time. Those tapestries that we, ah, eventually hung—” Atalant cleared her throat. “—they don’t go back through Ardulum’s entire history. Your telepathic reach, Emn, is farther than even Ardulum’s, I’m willing to bet. You might have been right. This might be a genetic cousin you’re connecting to.”

  “If I am, shouldn’t you be able to hear them, too?”

  Atalant ran her fingers through a mess of tangles near the base of her skull. Her brow wrinkled. “Maybe? Maybe not. I’m not Ardulan, Emn, much as the andal tries. Without the andal’s help, my telepathy isn’t as good as an Ardulan’s and certainly nowhere near yours. I hear what the andal hears, and not all subspecies can hear the andal. The Keft can’t. I’m sure there are others.”

  “So, what do we do?” Emn grabbed a handful of the blanket and threw it from the bed. “I’m officially grumpy.”

  “I vote we call Corccinth. She knows Ardulan history better than anyone. But first, we have a nice, leisurely breakfast and bring everyone else up to speed. Your concert yesterday unnerved even Yorden, so I think some reassurances are in order. I know I feel a lot lighter thinking about this as an issue in interstellar communication, instead of…”

  “Instead of something going wrong with me, since the only ones who would know how to fix it would be Cell-Tal.” Emn could hear the bitterness dripping from her words.

  Atalant puffed out her cheeks and slowly exhaled. “Don’t melt me, but it might be a good idea to reach out to them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with you, but… Yes, we need information—but don’t you also need, I don’t know, closure?”

  Emn could only glare. There were plenty of words she wanted to use. Picking only a few choice ones was difficult.

  “Cell-Tal has your information,” Atalant continued softly. “We don’t know anything about your genetics, Emn. If we have a wayward caller, understanding your telepathy may help us find them. But even if not, I think you…you probably just need to talk to the Risalians. What they did to you was horrible, but they’re diverse and the most irritating ones are all dead. You can’t go through your whole life hating every one you come across.”

  “I hate everything you just said.”

  Atalant nodded and patted the area next to her. “I know. But you’re not arguing, and I appreciate that. Reward? Apology?” She lifted her thin shirt—the one that hugged her hips and waist so well that Emn had often tried to convince her to wear it during the day—over her head and let it fall to the floor. She wore nothing underneath.

  Emn’s breath caught. “You may have to apologize for a while,” she said as she pushed Atalant back down onto the mattress. “Also, we may miss breakfast.”

  THEY EMERGED INTO the galley a few hours later, washed, dressed, and ravenous. Yorden, Nicholas, and Salice were already there, sitting at a round table with a deck of playing cards. Nicholas hunched over his hand and interrogated his cards while Salice looked amused and unconcerned with the entire ordeal. Yorden… Emn could tell when he looked up to greet them that he hadn’t slept well. His hair was unbrushed, which he’d gotten a lot better about since Salice had come aboard, and there were dark circles under his eyes. An empty mug sat to his left, a deep-brown stain on the inside.

  Atalant broke from Emn, keyed in the code for her favorite breakfast into the food printer, and then leaned against a bulkhead while it printed. “Did you actually take Salice to see the Minoran cabaret last night?” she asked incredulously.

  Nicholas placed his cards into a neat pile on the table and turned to look at Atalant. “They did. I left after an hour. Much like horses on Earth, the Minorans are…endowed, and there is a lot of flapping. Also, the alcohol was way too strong. I could hardly see after the first one.”

  Salice’s laughter tinkled through Emn’s head. It was followed by an image of Nicholas laughing far too loudly as he tried on a Minoran bell skirt, his orange drink only a quarter of the way gone. Emn sucked her lips in, trying to stifle a smile.

  “We’re still on for today though? Unless…healer?” Nicholas looked from Atalant to Emn and then at Yorden. “We’re going to get an explanation, right?”

  Yorden sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s why I’m still here, anyway. Quite a show you put on for us yesterday, Emn. What is going on?”

  Emn looked at Atalant, who shrugged and took a large bite of bacon. Please brush your teeth before you kiss me, Emn sent.
Atalant winked.

  “We think…we think I’m picking up some telepathy, or a version of telepathy, from another subspecies. Unfortunately, the connection isn’t stable enough for me to really communicate, and the images slip from me like dreams when I pull out of them.”

  Yorden set his cards down and stared at Emn with a very disconcerting paternal look that made Emn feel like a first don again. “Are we going back or forward, then?” he asked.

  “What?”

  Salice pushed an image of Corccinth to Emn, followed by an image of a generic Risalian colored with distaste.

  Emn frowned while Yorden continued, apparently unaware that Salice had already explained. “Are we going to head back to Ardulum so Corccinth can sort it out, or are we going to go to Risal and let Cell-Tal poke around?” He took a sip from his mug, tapping the bottom when no liquid readily appeared. “I assume Corccinth is preferred, but I can’t imagine Atalant didn’t argue that the Risalians would likely have answers.”

  “I am not going to Risal!” Emn stalked towards the door, fuming.

  Salice sent another image of herself looming over a gray-clad Risalian as xe ran a dermal scanner over Emn. She could feel the other Ardulan’s disgust at the thought of the Risalians, but behind it was worry, and that was harder to ignore. Especially coming from Salice.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a vacation,” Emn muttered at the ground.

  “If we get this sorted quickly—say, maybe by inviting a Cell-Tal engineer to meet us tomorrow to do a quick once-over—it still can be.” Yorden walked to Emn and put a beefy hand on her shoulder. “I burned a planet to save Atalant, and I like the Neek people. Don’t think I wouldn’t do the same for you, Emn.”

  Emn managed a small smile. Yorden’s words helped the twisting, sick feeling she got when thinking about anything involving Risal, but nothing would ever get rid of the underlying anxiety. Atalant was the same any time they talked about her homeworld, so it wasn’t that Emn didn’t understand her own emotions. They were rational. She had every right to be angry. She just…hated that the Risalians knew so much about her. That information, her genetics, was hers. That it was likely stored in some Cell-Tal database, accessible to any Risalian inquiry? That was infuriating.

  Never alone, Atalant sent. She slid up next to Emn and wrapped an arm around her waist. Emn let go of a sigh and curled into Atalant’s arms.

  “You say that, but we’ll end up surrounded by Mmnnuggls, or sentient fungi, or it’ll turn out Ardulum has a twin world somewhere. Our history with…weird stuff.” Emn buried her face in Atalant’s neck and sighed again when Atalant ran fingers through her hair. “I’m just saying that it’s always more complicated than we think. Especially with Risalians around.”

  Yorden patted her shoulder before sitting back down. “There will be one Risalian against the five of us. Three of you can manipulate cellulose with your minds. I think the odds are, for once, in our favor.”

  EMN SAT IN the middle of the long, plush bench in the Lucidity’s lounge, wedged tightly between Atalant and Nicholas. Salice sat on the other side of Nicholas, her face creased into a scowl. Yorden waited outside the ship, in the hangar bay, for the arrival of Captain Ran’s progenitor, Wan, whom Emn really just wanted to shoot in the face. It was just an exam. That’s what everyone kept telling her. That’s what she kept telling herself. Just an exam to make sure she was all right. A final effort to salvage their first vacation.

  Yet, no one spoke. Memories from Salice bled together with Emn’s own, sinking her mood further. Nicholas had stopped cracking jokes over an hour ago, and even Atalant’s hand on her thigh failed to distract.

  Ran.

  Emn still had a billion emotions tied to the Risalian captain, even if she had shot hir dead herself and then burned everyone on hir ship. Every footfall on the braided carpet of the Lucidity felt like her mother’s heartbeat. Every sniffle, every throat clearing, was an echo from Ran’s cutter. She could spend a lifetime running from those memories, or a lifetime drowning in them. Confronting them had never been on the list.

  The door to the lounge slid open. Yorden entered first, turning ever so slightly to the side to pass through. Emn caught a flash of blue before she looked at the floor—lost herself in the yellow and orange weave of the carpet that surrounded her toes. Her heart hammered in her chest. Atalant’s fingers dug into her skin, although what an eld of Ardulum had to fear from a Risalian scientist, Emn couldn’t begin to guess.

  She heard Yorden pull two chairs forward, and then there were blue feet in her range of vision, the toes ending in curved, black claws. Emn drew her eyes up, her brow wrinkling as she did so. Red cotton pants with a white drawstring. A bare chest with pale-blue skin showed a patchwork of iridescent purple scales. The Risalian’s cheeks were sunken below hir cheekbones, hir lips were thin and drawn into a tight line, and hir hair was a shocking white.

  Yorden inclined his head at Wan. “As we discussed, this is Wan, the progenitor of Ran and the former head of Cell-Tal.”

  Because of course Ran’s family was alive. Of course they were also entrenched in Cell-Tal. Of course Yorden couldn’t have found a Risalian—any Risalian—unaffiliated with the being who had killed her mother and had controlled every aspect of her existence.

  “Emn,” Wan greeted when her eyes finally met the Risalian’s. Xe inclined hir head, leaned forward slowly—so slowly that it seemed comical—and placed a leather bag onto hir lap. “Yorden has already inspected the contents. Would you like to as well?”

  Emn flashed her eyes to Yorden.

  “They’re legit, as far as I can tell. Genome sequencer. Handheld X-ray thing. Couple of computers with lasers. All with a ton of cellulose. You could melt them in a heartbeat.”

  “Tempting.” Emn glared at Wan. “Why are you in red?” she demanded. “Why are you here?”

  A soft, sad, little smile ghosted across Wan’s face. Emn snorted.

  “I’m a scientist, Emn. Just a scientist. You’ve only…rather, all you were ever allowed to see was the military side. The Risalians aren’t just the Markin and the captains. We’re not even Cell-Tal. Most of us are just…beings. Beings trying to live and make a contribution.” With hir eyes steadily on Emn’s, Wan lifted the flap of the bag and took out a flat piece of biofilm the thickness and width of Emn’s pinkie finger. Xe handed it to Emn, who refused to take it.

  Wan’s voice softened. “I resigned from Cell-Tal the day Ran died. I’m here because Yorden put in a call to the Markin Council for the Risalian most familiar with your creation. I can best assess whether or not anything is amiss. I have no blessing from Cell-Tal, nor do they know I am here. However, I still have access to all their archives. I built most of their tech.”

  “You built me,” Emn spat.

  Wan nodded. “With Ran, yes. I built you. But thanks to the files Eld Atalant provided, I have the original Ardulan base code, too. If you’ll put this biofilm on your forehead, the diagnostics will only take a few minutes. Combined with Keft and Neek genetics, we should be able to figure out how to fine-tune your telepathy to access this new frequency you’re hearing.”

  “Her head isn’t a radio,” Nicholas interjected, sourly. “You’re making this sound too easy.”

  “It is simple. She’s a standard mammalian biped, just like you.” Xe held up the biofilm as calmly as if they were all having breakfast coffee. There wasn’t even a hint of purpling at hir neck slits. “This could sequence your unique genome in an hour. I could cure you of any genetic condition in two. We may not have the ethics quite down, but the science is sound.”

  “But you could just, like, put that on and reprogram her then!” Nicholas stood and glared. “This is a terrible idea.”

  “Fun thing about that though.” Atalant’s hand slid from Emn’s knee and snaked around her waist. Emn smiled smugly. “The Aggression Talent is so flexible. I get even a sense of danger from Emn, and Wan gets classified as a weapon. Then, I get to melt hir.”

  This
time, Wan’s neck did flush. “I came here to help.”

  “Which is probably all that’s keeping you alive right now,” Yorden countered. He turned to Emn. “This whole thing is ridiculous on a galactic scale. I get it.”

  Emn had too many conflicting emotions swirling in her gut to respond. Yorden was an amazing captain. An amazing friend. But he hadn’t lived her life. He’d lived a life, and it had been hard, she knew, but this was… His past was locked away on some backwater planet. He’d successfully avoided it for over half his lifetime. Emn did not have that luxury.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Emn finally managed to mutter.

  Yorden pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah. I get that. But I also get the Risalians, Emn. I know them way better than I ever wanted to, and I know that when they don’t wear tunics…they’re opting out. Like me. Like us. Xe isn’t a good person, but xe isn’t actively engaged in morally reprehensible behavior, either, not that any of us really have the blank record to judge that. And we need you sorted. Give hir a chance, okay? If xe fucks up, we shoot hir.”

  Emn’s jaw set. “I hate you,” she said to Wan.

  “I know.”

  “I wish your entire species was galactic sludge.”

  “Sometimes, so do I.”

  “There is no way you can ever atone for what you did.”

  Wan’s neck slits resumed their normal color. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.”

  “Fine.” Emn slumped back against Atalant, her eyes narrowed. Wan leaned in, and Emn felt the faintest brush of claw against her forehead before a wet, viscous substance adhered to her skin. She shivered.