“A fair complaint, Captain, but you’ll have to take that up with the Federation lobbyists and your union,” it pointed out.
“All right, the full package, please. I’ll get it eating and sleeping and renaming my crew by the time we reach Andromeda, and then we can scare it half to death with a fake asteroid before we head toward deep space to actually die without assistance or recourse,” the captain agreed, slumping.
“Ink here, please. And here, and date it here with your registration number and take-off date,” the agent replied, swiftly pulling the long form back onto the holoscreen.
I don’t think I will ever forget the sound his footsteps made on that hostile world.
Crunch CRACK crunch.
The sun beat down through the cloth of his shirt. Hot and uncomfortable, I huddled beneath the material. Whatever my discomfort, it was better than direct exposure to the harsh, unforgiving rays of the sun. I thought, briefly, of him, knowing him to be one of the paler breeds of his species, without even the dubious protection of melanin to shield him from the sun’s radiation.
I wondered if he burned so that I could be protected.
Crunch SNAP crack.
Oh, Merciful Mother, it hurt, it hurt so much.
Crunch CRACK crunch.
I opened my eyes, and everything was yellow, colored by the material of his shirt. From my position I could see a glimpse of the ground—dark gray plates of slate, like a pile of fish scales. I saw them shift and crack each time his boot came down on them.
How many miles could he carry me, underneath the sun, over the hot slate?
I closed my eyes and I thought of you, Salaseal. I thought of happier days, before we went careening out over the galaxies, away to that awful planet.
“You’re sending a what?” I asked, unable to believe what Salaseal had said. She turned from the clear glass of her tower wall, and the light of the green moon slid over her opalescent skin. “I am sending a human on the expedition,” she repeated, her voice calm and matter-of-fact.
I shook my head, still unwilling to believe that she would be so stupid. Salaseal was educated, after all—one of the finest scientists to ever come from the Halls of Silq.
“Sal,” I said exasperatedly. “Sal, you can’t be serious. They’re violent animals. They wiped out life on their entire planet, for Mother’s sake!”
“Ciliaso,” she sighed, reverting to the childhood version of my name. “That was ages ago, and the humans that we have in the Collective were not the ones responsible for that.”
“They’re the descendants of the ones responsible,” I persisted.
“They’re the descendants of the ones that the Red Queen decided to save,” she retorted, the decorative, feminine fins on her head waving back and forth, as they did when she was annoyed.
“They still have those violent tendencies; you know that.”
She sighed at me and looked back out through the glass at the fungal forest below. The green moon cast everything in a soft light, muting the vibrant color of the mushroom trees, blending together the shadows of the climbing molds and decorative truffles. A breeze stirred, sending a cloud of spores to drift sedately over the monochromatic landscape. On the horizon, I saw the pale sliver of the white moon as it ponderously began its month-long journey across the night sky.
“Yes, Liaso,” she said. “Humans have a great capacity for violence. They also have one of the greatest capacities for love, empathy, loyalty, creativity … I could go on!” She turned away from the window again, this time crossing the room and draping herself over her carved shell divan “They are extremists,” she continued, looking at me with serious, dark eyes. “They are survivors. Three expeditions have gone before us to this planet—all of them have failed, and only one of them had a crew member return alive. You remember Drog, the Ursoid mercenary?”
I winced, remembering. Drog had not lived long in the satellite hospital he had been admitted to.
“The human is coming on this expedition,” she concluded. “We will bring back the flucurial, and we will use it to stop the plague on Hapsoid. I would build the entire crew of humans if I thought that the company would allow it.” She tilted her head, her expression lightening. “What’s the matter, anyway, you think your cultured sensibilities can’t stand a few months in the company of a barbarian?”
Crunch crunch SNAP
I missed my home. I missed the cool light of the green moon, the warm damp of the fungal forests. I missed the welcoming eyes of my family’s pet armor bug, and the smell of sporeing season.
“You doing okay, Lia?” The human’s harsh voice startled me from my misery.
My speech organs were so dry, it was hard to say anything for a moment. “No,” I rasped, wincing at the sound of my own voice.
“Ah, it’ll be fine,” he said.
If I could have spared the energy, I would have thrashed my mouth tentacles in surprise. “How can you say that?” I asked. “We alone survived the explosion! I’ve lost …I’ve lost …” My stomach rolled queasily at the thought. “We have no supplies,” I continued, “no ship, no communications …” I wanted to say more, but I could not. My mind was still too shaken to fully wrap around the horror we had been through.
“You’re still alive,” the human pointed out. “I’m in good shape, and hey, maybe we will find this magic cure-all that the Lady Sah-le-seel was so keen to get.”
Salaseal, if you could have heard how he pronounced your name … “I suppose I must admire your stubborn delusions of hope,” I muttered.
He laughed—that barking sound he always makes when amused, so like the sound that mating ocean-cats make. “I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me, Lia.”
Perhaps he was right. I remember the first thing I thought when I saw him.
Oh god, he’s got metal in his face.
That wasn’t the most jarring thing about the human—they are, after all, most unlovely creatures—but it was the first thing my eyes were drawn to. The polished metal stud glinted from its place in the human’s right ear, eye catching both by its shine and the brutal implications it held.
I wasn’t the only one interested in the piece of metal, but unlike my fellow Silvasian and the slender, bird-like Eatherla who gathered around the creature, I didn’t intend to lavish attention on him for his self-harm.
“Did you grow it?” asked the young Silvasian, leaning in so close his suckered mouth arms nearly touched the human’s face.
“No, no,” trilled the Eatherla, eyes shining with admiration, “it is a wound that he decorated. We have the practice among my people. It is considered a sign of great courage and virility.”
“Uh, well,” the human said, his mouth edges turning upwards, “you’re probably closest Skee; it’s just a piercing.”
The Eatherla’s feathered crest rose in confusion. “I do not understand,” she admitted. “Is that not what I said?”
“He means he did it himself,” I interrupted, unwilling to watch the farce any longer. “He punched a hole in his ear and put a piece of metal into it to keep it from closing.”
The young adventurers looked at me in disbelief, then turned their shocked gazes onto the human.
The human, rather than having the sense to be embarrassed for his barbarism and wanton disregard for his own health, just nodded his head. “Right,” he said.
Crunch.
The rhythm of the human’s walking stopped; I thought it never would. He had been walking for hours, far longer than I would have imagined him capable of. I opened my eyes and, to my terror, saw a glimpse of green beneath me.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, only to shudder in pain as he removed the shirt from my back, jostling my terrible wound.
“Setting you down,” he said with a sigh, placing me on the deceptively fine and soft grass. “The sun’s just about down, and we should stop for the night.”
Despite my fear, I was alarmed to hear of the time. “You walked for the entire day?�
� I asked. I must have slept without realizing it. “Did you stop?”
“I was only walking,” the human said.
Aghast, I looked at our surroundings. The green veldt was like the one that we had landed on. It was elevated ground, and from atop it I could see the slate flat the human had walked across. It was so vast I couldn’t see the end, couldn’t see where we had landed.
That brought back the severity of our current situation. “We can’t stay on the grass!” I protested. “Not after what happened.”
The human sat down next to me, and I finally looked at him. “Your skin!” I exclaimed. What had been as pale as the flesh of a suede mushroom at the beginning of the journey had turned a bright and startling pink. It was especially bad over the curve of his shoulders, where the skin had gone tight and angry, but looking at his face, I could see that all the high points were kissed with red. “Radiation burns,” I said, feeling sick with sudden guilt. I had been afraid of what would happen without his shirt to protect him.
The human looked at his shoulder, then back at me. He shrugged, and I saw him wince. “I’ve had worse,” he said. “It’s just a sunburn.”
I remembered hearing tales of radiation burn victims. A burn so bad that it changed their skin color and had put them in the hospital for days. The human, quite literally, shrugged it off.
I didn’t know what to say to his callousness. He said nothing about my silence, probably taking it for fatigue. Looking away from me, he unclipped the bottle from his belt. He took a small sip, then offered it to me.
The scent of water nearly drove me mad. I clasped the bottle in my suckered face arms and guzzled the sweet, life giving water, unable to think of anything else. It wasn’t until the bottle was nearly empty that I realized just how much I had drunk.
“You did not drink enough,” I accused as he took the bottle back.
He shrugged again, despite his burn. “I know you cuttle-fish guys need more water than we do.” He must have successfully read my dubious look, because he continued rather defensively. “I kept a rock in my mouth, it’s fine.”
“A rock?” I asked, confused.
“Sure,” he said, pulling the pebble in question from his pocket. “It’s an old marching trick I read about. You keep a rock in your mouth, and it makes you salivate, and you don’t feel as thirsty.” He finished the rest of the water in one quick swallow, oblivious to my shock.
I closed my eyes. It was too much. I was injured, probably delirious, and the human got more and more bizarre the more time I spent with him.
It was a sign of my illness that I didn’t remember our danger until then.
“The grass,” I said weakly. “We must get off of it.”
“And what, spend the night down on the slate?” He shook his head. “No way—you remember the weather reports of this planet. We’re staying on the high ground.” He stood up with a grunt and picked me up, careful of my wound. I finally saw what lay waiting behind us. “See?” he said. “I found a cave for shelter and everything. The universe provides, little friend.”
A barbarian to the end.
“What is that?” I sneered, coming unannounced into the recreation room of the ship. The human looked up at me, making one of his unreadable faces.
He knew what I was talking about—he couldn’t play dumb this time. He raised the shinning bit of metal he had been playing with. “It’s a machete,” he said. “I’m making a new grip for it.”
My mouth arms curled in disdain. “Why?”
The furry little ridges on his face went up. “Well, it’s not like I don’t have the time—you must admit, things get boring on the ship.”
“No, no,” I said, continuing to sneer, “I mean why would you bring such a primitive thing? We gave you a blaster, didn’t we? Isn’t that enough weaponry to satisfy you?”
The furry ridges went down again. “Blaster won’t do much against the plant life,” he grunted, half turning away from me.
I trilled my derision at him.
Even the human needed some sleep, and as it got dark, he finally drifted off into slumber. I lay awake a little longer, the cold of the cave floor contrasting with the heat from his body. My stump throbbed painfully, and the horror of the missing limb gnawed at my gut.
Why was he helping me? I had never been kind to him, he had no reason to bond with me. This human couldn’t possibly think of me as a friend, and I certainly wasn’t blood related to him. He had no reason to save me, to carry me those many miles, to give me his water. Merciful Mother, I didn’t even look like him, not like the Eatherla did, with her two legs and two eyes.
Maybe it was a normal human reaction, though. The universe’s orphans, that’s what they called them in school, remember? Always so willing to adopt anyone into their “family.”
I finally dropped to sleep just as the rain started. I don’t remember if I dreamed.
I awoke to a crooning sound. The pain in my limb throbbed, keeping me from focusing. Finally, I realized that the human was making the noise. “What is that?” I rasped, wincing at the weakness in my voice. The sound stopped.
“I was just singing a lullaby,” the human said. “My voice isn’t as pretty as Skee’s, I know, but …” he trailed off.
Singing. He used his same speech organs for singing! If I could have laughed I would have, but I didn’t have the energy. “Was that your first language?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “And the song’s all the way from Earth.”
Did he sound sad? I would be if I knew my planet was dead, dead by the hand of my own species, no less. It made me feel oddly close to the human, that sympathy.
“Want to know what it means?” he asked.
I didn’t, but I didn’t have the energy to speak anymore, so he told me anyways.
“It’s about the singer’s son,” he explained, “who goes far away from home and dies before he gets back.”
Utterly morbid, but I expected no less from a human.
“Let me see if I can translate it,” he said. “Um, Oh Danny-child, the uh, the flutes the flutes are beckoning, from field to field and down the mountainside …” He broke off into a hum. “Not quite the same,” he sighed.
I felt him sit up behind me, and only with the sudden cold did I realize how much warmth his body had given me.
“Sound’s like the rain stopped,” he said.
He was right, the rain had stopped, and it left the world transformed. The slate basin we had walked in the day before had been filled to the brim with water. It lapped at the edge of the sinister grass, and I was suddenly, unashamedly grateful that the human had made us sleep on high ground.
The human was unfazed by how close we had come to drowning. “Here’s a bit of luck,” he said, setting me down and filling the bottle. He drank, then drank again, then filled the bottle so I could drink. Then he filled the bottle a third time, buckled it to his belt, picked me up, and set off over the grass without further comment.
“You don’t seem quite so chipper this morning,” he said after a while.
I took my time in answering him. The water had revitalized me, but not by much. “I am dying,” I said simply.
“Ah, Lia, you’re not dying.”
“I have lost too much blood, and my primary limb is gone.” I was too tired to sound irritated at his blind hope. “I am going to die out here, just like the rest of the crew. Just like everyone who came before us.”
The human was silent for a while, and I thought maybe I had finally made a dent in that unbreakable optimism of his. The thought made me inexplicably sad.
“It is weird that we haven’t found any of those ships,” he muttered. “They all landed near here.” Then, louder, he continued. “This flutewhatsit that we’re supposed to find …”
“Flucurial,” I corrected.
“Right that. It’s supposed to be a cure-all. If we find it, will you live?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “No one’s found any in centuries. Most o
f its properties are probably exaggerated.”
“It’s supposed to cure that plague though, right?”
I thought of the images from Hapsoid and nearly lost the water in my stomach. Living tissue rotting, blood running from eyes like tears, children with their entire faces fallen away …
“Yes,” I said weakly. “It is their only hope.” Did he grasp the importance of our mission? Did he know about flucurial, that it had been used up before synthesizer technology had become advanced enough to replicate it? He knew that we had gotten reports of it from the first exploration to this planet, and he knew those scientists and their ship had been destroyed before they could send any of the precious substance home, but did he care?
When I died, would he go on to find the flucurial on the off-chance that he would be rescued? I didn’t know, couldn’t know, how his alien mind worked.
I thought of that first doomed crew. What had killed them? The harsh sun, the unpredictable weather? The exploding grass? The vicious, carnivorous plant life that had taken out the Ursoid crew?
What would kill us?
The sound of the human’s footsteps was different on the grass. Muffled, soft. I could only hope that his tread was light enough that it didn’t trigger an explosion.
“Don’t land in the slate,” I directed, looking through the window of the bridge. “That’s how the crew sent after the Ursoid Mercenaries died—those slate basins flood.”
Obedient, the lizard-alien (I never could pronounce its name, nor that of its species) steered the ship into a perfect landing on the bright, green grass. “Excellent,” I said, releasing myself from the suspension seat. All around me, the rest of the crew did the same. Asoi, my fellow Silvasian, Skee the Etherla and her nest-sib, Hak, the lizard-alien, whom everyone had ended up calling Hiss, since that was the noise he made most often.
And the human, of course.
I was looking forward to having some space from him. Three months in a small ship had been quite enough. “Go take that skewer of yours and scout around or something,” I said. “Make sure none of those carnivorous plants are around.”
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