Trek It!

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  And she had never expected that she would have no one to blame but herself. Just by being onboard Exogenesis, she had exposed herself to countless unforeseen and uncontrollable threats, any of which could easily have taken her life. Without warning, she could have been snuffed out by an alien microbe or an engine core breach or a meteorite penetrating her environmental suit.

  How could she have known that her true enemy would be herself?

  And how could she have known that she, a linguist, would die because of a word?

  Mazeesh.

  Thinking back, she still couldn't figure out how she'd gotten it wrong. The pieces had all fit together – her own comprehension, the output of the multiterpreter device, Nalo's reaction to her response. He had said that the city was the most beautiful in the world, that it had the most mazeesh; in reply, she had said that it was the most beautiful city that she had seen on any world, and she had likewise used the word mazeesh.

  He had thanked her for the compliment. Why then did the same word trigger a riot and a death sentence when she had repeated it to the other Vox?

  The way things were going, Mariko didn't think she would ever know.

  Her tiny cell was starting to heat up.

  At first, she thought it might be her own body heat, accumulating in the cramped confines. Then, as the temperature continued to rise, she decided that another explanation was more likely.

  The Vox weren't coming back to retrieve her. She would not be carted off to die by injection or electrocution or some other gruesome means.

  She would never see daylight or breathe fresh air again, however briefly. She was in an oven, and the heat would cook her alive.

  As the temperature climbed, sweat trickled over her body, soaking her uniform. Breathing became increasingly difficult, especially with the unyielding gag sealing her mouth shut.

  She squirmed in the tight space as the smooth, curved surface beneath her became unbearably hot. Reaching up, she found that the hatch was slightly cooler, and she twisted around to press her back against it, wedging her feet under her.

  As she looked down, she saw the surface around her boots emit a reddish glow.

  And the temperature continued to rise. Before long, every inch of the pocket's internal surface was painfully hot to the touch, even the hatch. Wrapping her arms around her knees, Mariko clenched into a tight fist, shrinking as much as she could away from the scalding walls.

  Tears and sweat poured down her face, sizzling when they dripped onto the glowing floor. Her feet roasted as the heat radiated through the soles of her boots, which felt as if they were on the verge of melting.

  Still, the temperature climbed. The reddish glow brightened and intensified, consuming the lower half of the cell and spreading higher.

  The air grew so hot, it hurt to breathe. Mariko felt dizzy and drowsy, but the sleepy feeling was welcome. The best thing she could do, she thought, was to drift off and miss the last few broiling moments of her life.

  When she nodded off for what she knew would be the final time, it was with a mix of resignation and relief. She was young and didn't welcome death, but she was prepared to accept the consequences of her mistake.

  And she thought that Captain Swift and the Exogenesis deserved a better communications officer, anyway.

  She shut her eyes, and the bright red glow yielded to blackness.

  Then, something gave way underneath her, and she fell.

  Mariko dropped hard onto a solid surface, and her eyes snapped open. She felt dirt beneath her but could see nothing beyond a blinding beam of light that blazed in her face.

  Wiping sweat from her eyes with the back of a hand, she squinted into the beam. It bobbed around, so she could tell it came from a handheld light source…but she couldn't see who was holding it.

  Then, the beam swung away from her and back to illuminate the shadowy figure behind it.

  It was Nalo.

  Mariko was too dazed to do more than sit on the ground and stare at him. She was having trouble adjusting to the fact that she was still alive, let alone seeing a familiar face.

  When the brown-furred Vox played the light around their surroundings, Mariko saw that they were in a pocket hollowed out under the cell. It was a small space with a low ceiling, so willowy Nalo had to kneel and duck his head.

  As he had done earlier, Nalo spoke slowly and without clicks or buzzes for Mariko's benefit. "Sorry about the heat," he said, waving a bulky device slung from his shoulder. The device had a long barrel that ended in a glowing red bulb, and Mariko guessed that it had been used to melt open the cell. "Better than being dead."

  Weakly, Mariko nodded.

  "We need to go now," said the Vox. "Follow me."

  Then, with the long-barreled device slung over his back and the flashlight stuck between his teeth, he dropped to all fours. Whipping around, he shone the light on the entrance to a tunnel, just big enough for Mariko to crawl through.

  With a flick of his tail, the otter-like being disappeared into the entrance.

  Mariko waited for a moment before getting onto her hands and knees and crawling after him. For all she knew, she was going from the frying pan into the fire.

  But at least this way she would live a little longer. As ready as she'd been to pay the ultimate price for her mistake, she found that was something she wanted after all.

  *****

  Chapter Six

  Swift felt like the newest exhibit in an alien zoo.

  Dozens of furry faces peered through the transparent wall at him and Turner. The Vox spectators jostled and jockeyed for the best view, pressing their snouts and sometimes their entire bodies against the see-through polymer barrier.

  "Nothing like a little privacy," muttered the Exogenesis captain, turning away from the gaping onlookers.

  Yet again, he surveyed the bounds of the small cell into which he and his chief engineer had been thrown. Though all four walls were transparent, the one facing the mob of street-side curiosity seekers provided the biggest distraction. Two other walls bordered adjacent cells from which handfuls of Vox prisoners stared back at him. Another wall faced the corridor through which he and Zeke had been led; somewhere in that wall's surface, there was a door…but after sliding shut behind them, it had melted into the surrounding polymer and could not be seen.

  Swift wished that he could melt into the polymer and disappear, too. By keeping his back to the gallery window, he didn't feel so conspicuously stared at…but there were still the Vox prisoners on either side and the Vox guards lined up in the corridor. Also, thanks to the transparency of the entire building, Vox looked in from the floors above and through the walls of all the other cells and rooms on Swift's level.

  On the bright side – and it wasn't much of a bright side – Swift could search his surroundings in all directions for any sign of Mariko or J'Tull…not that there was any sign of them.

  When it came to J'Tull, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. As he and Zeke were carted off from the ministers' tower, Swift had seen J'Tull break away from the mob and run toward him…only to be caught short by a knot of attackers. Before his line of sight was blocked by the Vox captors hauling him off, he had last glimpsed her plowing into her opponents, arms and legs whirling in a ballet of Hephaestan martial arts.

  As long as he couldn't see her in the prison complex, Swift held out hope that J'Tull was still at large.

  On the other hand, he just hoped that Mariko was still alive. She had been the focus of the Vox's rage; her absence suggested more dire possibilities.

  "Still no sign of them?" said Zeke, sitting on the floor in a corner opposite the ogling crowd. The only other place to sit was a bench jutting from the wall closest to the gallery window, molded from the ubiquitous transparent polymer.

  Swift shook his head. "How long would you say we've been in here?" He couldn't check his wrist chronometer because the Vox had taken it, along with Zeke's chronometer and communi-link.

  Zeke grimaced as he dabbed at
bloody scratches on his arm with a strip of cloth torn from his sleeve. Of the two of them, he had taken the worse beating in the riot. "Seems like a week," he said, "but I'd guess an hour or two."

  "That leaves eight or nine hours until the fleet gets here," said Swift, kneading his hands. "We may get that up close first contact with them after all."

  "Oh, good," said Zeke. "And they seemed like such nice guys."

  "I don't think the Vox paid much attention to our warning," said Swift. "All they cared about was that one word Mariko said."

  "They weren't listening before that, either." Zeke hissed as he dabbed at a particularly sore scratch. "They're not exactly a trusting bunch."

  Swift paced to the wall of a neighboring cell and placed his palm against it. The three Vox occupying the cell stared back at him but didn't move. "We need to keep trying to talk to them," he said. "Maybe someone will listen."

  "That'd be tricky," said Zeke, "even if we had a clue how to speak the language."

  "At least we know one word not to use," said Swift. He smiled, but it took an effort; he had such an awful headache, he felt like his skull was going to split open. "That's a start."

  "The way this day's been going," said Zeke, "I'll bet we come up with some other words to make 'em mad."

  Swift rapped on the transparent panel separating him from the next cell. "Hello," he said, but the three Vox in the cell did not respond or even budge. "Swift," he said loudly, placing his hands on his chest. "I am Swift."

  The steady stare of three pairs of black pearl eyes was his only reply.

  "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," said Zeke.

  "Swift," repeated Swift, again touching his chest…then extending his hands, palms up, toward the three Vox. "You?"

  This time, his reward was more than he'd bargained for.

  "Swift"

  It started with a single voice, but not from the cell next door. Swift heard it clearly from the direction of the gallery wall, from someone in the gawking crowd outside.

  It didn't stop there. As soon as he looked their way, the crowd grew more agitated…and the word was repeated by multiple voices.

  "Swift. Swift."

  More voices joined in, and still more. Soon, it seemed that every Vox in the gallery was calling his name.

  That wasn't all they were doing. As the Vox chanted, they copied his gestures, clapping their clawed hands against their chests. When they reached out, palms up, as he had done, they added another word to the chant.

  "You? You?"

  The level of the clamor rose, becoming loud enough in the cell that Zeke had to holler to make himself heard.

  "Monkey see, monkey do!" he said. "Maybe they'll throw us a banana!"

  Stepping to the gallery window, Swift raised his hands toward the audience, exciting them even more. As the Vox raised their own hands, they hopped and danced and thumped against the wall, causing the colorful tints in the polymer to ripple.

  "Swift! Swift!"

  "Listen!" Swift shouted over the din. He pointed a finger straight up in the air. "Up there!" he said.

  "Li-sten! Li-sten!"

  "Up there! Up there!"

  Swift's headache was getting worse. "Ships!" he said, swooping his hand down in a smooth arc meant to suggest the flight path of a spacecraft. He repeated the gesture with his other hand, then again with both hands. "Many ships!"

  The audience copied his gestures and chanted his words with wild enthusiasm. They bounced around and flashed their teeth and yelped in a high-pitched, quick-fire way that sounded to Swift a lot like giggling.

  They were laughing at him.

  "Forget it," he said, throwing down his hands in surrender.

  "For-get it! For-get it!" howled the Vox, every one of them throwing down their hands in the same way.

  "You're a hit," said Zeke with a grin.

  Swift scowled. "This is going to be harder than I thought."

  "Har-der than I thought," repeated the Vox. "Har-der than I thought."

  Sliding down to the floor beside Zeke, Swift tipped his head back against the wall and sighed. Zeke chuckled and sympathetically patted his shoulder.

  Five minutes later, their interrogators arrived, pushing gurneys that bristled with evil-looking attachments.

  *****

  Chapter Seven

  When she finally emerged from the tunnels into an underground vault, Mariko got halfway to her feet and collapsed.

  She had no idea how far she'd crawled, but it felt like it had been miles. Her hands and knees were raw and throbbing; her neck and back ached fiercely. She felt like dirt caked every inch of her, even under her eyelids and uniform and skin.

  It had not been an easy trip. Nalo had led her through one claustrophobic tunnel after another, traversing what had seemed like an endless network of intersecting passages. While the brown-furred Vox had scooted briskly along like a minnow through a coral maze, Mariko had struggled to keep up. Several times, she had been unable to wriggle through tight spaces, and he had had to dig her out.

  Toward the end, Mariko had faded and fallen far behind, losing all sight of Nalo and his flashlight in the suffocating pitch black of the tunnel. She had had an awful moment there, wondering if she had been abandoned to die in the darkness, if Nalo had been an executioner and not a rescuer all along.

  Marshaling what had felt like her last reserves of strength, she had managed to drag herself forward, eventually glimpsing the faint glow from the exit…but the weight of her ongoing ordeal finally crushed her when she reached the open space.

  When she dropped to the dirt floor of the vault, not only did she not want to get up, she didn't think that she could.

  Without a word, Nalo scooped her up and carried her into the chamber.

  Through half-closed eyes, Mariko watched as other Vox approached them, chattering and gesturing excitedly. When the Vox bunched around them and pressed close, staring her in the face and touching her with clawed hands, Nalo snapped out a few words and the group backed away.

  As Nalo carried her forward, Mariko weakly looked around. By the dim light of the glowing white moss that clung in patches to the walls and ceiling, she saw Vox at work in an underground camp – tinkering with electronic equipment, unloading containers, adjusting devices that looked to her a lot like weapons.

  As she passed, the busy Vox stopped what they were doing and stared. Sometimes, they spoke to her, but always in the rush of buzzes, clicks, sign language and syllables that she couldn't understand.

  One word did jump out at her, though. She heard it, clear as a bell, as Nalo gently lowered her onto some bedding on the ground.

  Mazeesh.

  Mariko glanced around at the staring onlookers but couldn't tell who had said it. After what had happened to her when she'd uttered that word just once, she wondered why any Vox would dare speak it aloud.

  Unfortunately, the gag that locked her mouth shut made it impossible for her to ask questions, even if she hadn't been too shell-shocked to budge at that point.

  Nalo filled a dipper with water from a nearby basin and carried it to her. Because of the gag, it was impossible for her to drink, but he tipped it into a cloth and used it to wipe some of the dirt from her face.

  Mariko reached up and tugged with both hands at the sides of the gag, but it was fastened to her flesh. Wincing at Nalo, she pointed to the rubbery strip sealing her mouth, silently pleading with him to remove it.

  The brown-furred Vox shook his head. "It is permanent," he said. "Never comes off."

  Slowly, Mariko lowered her hands.

  "Sorry," said Nalo, dabbing with the damp cloth at some of the claw marks visible through the torn sleeves of her uniform. "Sorry for your pain."

  His apology was no comfort whatsoever. The latest bad news left her numb.

  It is permanent. Never comes off.

  A horrific new thought occurred to her. For the first time, she realized that the gag itself was a death sentence.

  If it
wouldn't come off, and she didn't receive intravenous nourishment, she would eventually die from lack of food and water.

  Despite her escape, the Vox had insured that she would pay for her mistake with her life.

  Nalo left for a moment to refresh the damp cloth, then returned and resumed cleaning her wounds. It stung when he touched the open cuts, but Mariko barely flinched; her thoughts were turned inward, focusing on despair and impending death.

  She didn't even pay much attention when Nalo spoke, though her linguistically adept mind continued to translate his words as best she could. "You'll be safe here," he said. "Only a few know how to find this place."

  Mariko stared up at a patch of the glowing white moss on the ceiling. "Safe" didn't really apply here, she wanted to tell him.

  She wondered if he realized that by rescuing her from her cell, he had only prolonged the inevitable…and perhaps guaranteed that her end would be more painful and drawn-out than whatever execution the regent had planned for her. Neither dehydration nor starvation would be a merciful way to go.

  "The word you said," said Nalo. "'Mazeesh.'"

  Suddenly, Mariko's full attention returned to the brown-furred Vox. There was that word again; if it was so offensive and forbidden, why was he saying it?

  "It is a name," said Nalo. He poked a finger at his chest. "For us. For all Vox."

  Eyes narrowed and fixed on him, Mariko listened. There were other Vox nearby; why weren't they screaming in outrage and clawing him to shreds at the mere mention of that word?

  "Once, 'mazeesh' meant beauty," said Nalo. "It was a beautiful flower."

  Mariko's eyes widened.

  It was what she had thought from the start, the sole reason she had used that word at all.

  'Mazeesh' meant beauty.

  She knew she had heard Nalo use it earlier in that sense. The problem was, if the meaning of the word had changed and it was no longer socially acceptable, why had Nalo used it at all?

  "One day," he continued, "visitors came from the stars, like you. They hunted and killed us."