by Diann Read
DARTMUTH, DARCIE
5066-8-0529
ADRIAT, FLT SURGEON
She had taught him characters as a small child, reciting the sounds of the shapes as she guided his finger across a patch of smoothed sand. Writing words and then sentences had been a game between them, until he’d grown big enough to learn to hunt. He hadn’t had much use for it since then.
He remembered, though. Dropping the chain into his bag, too, he studied the form in the bed furs for several moments.
Myriad fears and feelings tumbled through his mind. Fear that if he left he would return to find she’d died in his absence. Urgency to go, to bring help to her. Guilt, for not telling her of his intentions.
He needed to tell her, somehow, so she wouldn’t be left wondering about him. He took his knife from his belt and, using its point, scratched words into the hard soil of the lodge floor:
Mum I go to find my father to help you I come back soon. Tristan.
He sighed, slipping the knife back into his belt, and crawled outside.
Night had settled over the camp, stirring the ganan to activity. The midsummer evening breeze in Tristan’s face felt like a cool breath after the day’s harsh sunlight. Game bag in hand, he moved to the next shelter and squatted down at its entry. “Pulou!” he called.
His companion pushed the doorflap aside and motioned him to enter. He ducked inside, scanned the circle of faces around the fire, touched his forehead in respect to Pulou’s mother.
Her face and throat bore the scars of many matings and her streaked mane had thinned and whitened, but the infant at her breast established her authority. Her title of jwa’nan identified her as clan matriarch, the mother of her people.
She said, “You go away, almost-son.”
“Yes.” Tristan bowed his head to her. “I hunt for my father.”
The jwa’nan studied him, unblinking. “Why do you need your father? My children don’t even know their fathers.”
“I don’t need him,” Tristan said. “My mother does. He knows how to help her sickness.”
“Ah! You go in jwa’lai, out of duty to her.”
“Yes, mother.” He used the word for her title.
“It’s good,” she said. “Your mother is like Yung Jwei to you, your life-giver. She gives you life, you give her your duty.”
“Yes,” said Tristan.
“But hunter who goes alone brings back no peimu.”
Beside Tristan, Pulou said, “We hunt together, mother.”
The jwa’nan nodded approval. “Good. You come home with almost-son’s father.” Shifting her infant, she reached out to brush each of their foreheads with the backs of her fingers in a sort of benediction. “Good hunt.”
Tristan met her gaze cautiously. Her own kind held her latent savagery in dread respect, but she had shown sympathy to a pair of stripeless, clawless strangers. “Peace in you, mother,” he said, and crawled backward from the lodge.
Pulou emerged beside him and rose in a fluid motion. He beckoned to Tristan. Like shadows, they melted into the dark beyond the clustered shelters. But Tristan couldn’t help glancing back once at his mother’s lodge.
Though twice Tristan’s eighteen years, Pulou stood only to the human youth’s shoulder. He took the lead, scanning the terrain with pupils so wide their irises seemed nonexistent.
Unable to distinguish obstacles in the moonlessness as easily as ganan could, Tristan watched Pulou place his feet, watched his hand for warning signals, and followed.
They skirted the knoll of the pyre and entered a gully which led onto open plain. It carried no water this late in the season, and the scrubby trees hemming it rustled in the breeze. Tristan stirred them no more than Pulou did.
They left the ravine and trees as the first moon edged above the horizon, illuminating untouched miles of prairie.
When Pulou glanced at him, Tristan looked skyward for the twin stars, turned his right shoulder to them, indicated the direction with a nod. Pulou moved off and Tristan matched his pace, a jog that crossed great distances with little effort.
* *
Face and shoulders streaked with dust, Tristan crept to the ridge’s crest and settled flat on his belly. Early morning sunlight slanted over his shoulder, casting detail into minute clarity. He studied the valley below as if for game and blinked at the flash of sun on a ribbon of water. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he spotted the human camp where Haruo had said it would be. He put his hand back, motioning Pulou to join him.
Ten times the size of most gan camps, he guessed, the human one consisted of square lodges in rows, a brown patch in the midst of endless undulating green. Beyond the lodges stood larger buildings, and beyond those, a cluster of white bowls with walls higher than the lodges: nests for things that flew. Machines that looked like squatty animals with long necks loomed over the white nests. The steel necks moved up and down and swayed from side to side, lifting, moving, and setting down burdens hanging from ropes. Their creaking carried on the breeze like the calls of frogs on spring evenings.
Tristan studied it all for several minutes. The uneasiness he’d felt on the night of their departure from camp settled over him once more. But this new anxiety wasn’t for his mother. Eyeing the square lodges, he remembered what Haruo had said about flat-teeth. Remembered the derision in his tone, and wondered again what had caused it. Wondered if it had anything to do with the things his mother had told him from his childhood—the real reason he hadn’t told her of his departure. His stomach tightened under his ribs. “Flat-teeth,” he said finally, in a tone like Haruo’s.
“Funny to hear you say it that way,” said Pulou.
Tristan didn’t smile—he couldn’t—and Pulou said, “Your father isn’t here.”
“No,” Tristan said. “I know that.”
Pulou cocked his head. “He’s where?”
“There.” Tristan pointed at the sky. “Where my mother and I fall from when I’m little.”
“You fall in big, shiny egg,” Pulou said. “Pelan and I find you in it.”
“Yes. We go back in one, too.” Tristan pointed. “Flat-teeth have them in those white nests.”
* *
Sitting back-to-back with Pulou in the gathering dusk, Tristan watched the brush for the slinking shapes of jous and chewed on a strip of dried meat. Shifting enough to tip his head back, he studied the stars already visible over the ridge behind them.
“Little brother,” Pulou said, “jous don’t come from sky.”
“There’s no jou sign or howls for two nights,” Tristan said. “Flat-teeth scare them away from here, like peimus.”
“You do what?” Pulou asked.
“Look at stars.”
Pulou moved behind him, depriving him of his backrest, and peered over his shoulder. “Your father is where?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Tristan.
“Your mother knows?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t ask her?”
“No.”
“Why? It’s jwa’lai for her.”
Tristan lowered his head. “I don’t tell her that I go.”
Pulou twisted around completely, staring at him through wide eyes. “She doesn’t ask you to do it?”
“No.”
“That isn’t jwa’lai—”
“It is duty!” said Tristan. “But if I tell her I go, she tells me not to, and—” He shrugged with finality.
Pulou understood that. Disobeying one’s mother was unthinkable.
Silence lay heavy for some time before Pulou asked, “Why does she tell you not to go?”
“Flat-teeth are like jous to my mother,” Tristan said. “When I’m small there are big fights between my mother’s people and other flat-teeth, and many are killed.”
“Fights between clans?” Pulou cocked his head. “That’s stupid! Why?”
“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “That’s why we stay with gan
an and don’t go live with flat-teeth when we fall from sky. But they have things that fly to stars. No other way to find my father.” Tristan’s tone turned serious; his mouth had gone dry. He glanced at his companion. “It’s dangerous, Pulou. You don’t have to go with me.”
“Hunter who goes alone,” said Pulou, “can’t watch for jous all ways at once.”
His face remained almost expressionless but his tone reminded Tristan of a protective older brother. Tristan met his amber eyes. Studied them for a long moment, almost questioning.
Pulou looked around and rose. “It’s dark enough,” he said, and paused to stretch. “Come on, little brother.”
Tristan scooped up their canteen and balanced its cool weight in his hand. Half full. He offered it to his companion first, then took a long drink himself and slung its strap over his shoulder.
Pulou chose their path down the side of the canyon, moving with an ease that still challenged Tristan.
The canyon opened onto a bench that rolled down to the human camp in a series of gradual slopes. At the bench’s foot the brush and prairie grass ended, separated by a line of upright poles from grass that grew in rows, so tall that its seed tassels reached Tristan’s chest. The breeze chased waves over its expanse like ripples from a pebble dropped in water.
“You lead,” Pulou said. “You can see over it better.”
Tristan strode past the nearest pole—and crackling light struck his shoulder, knifing through bone, tendon, nerve. He staggered back with a cry, gripping his arm.
“Tsaan Jwei!” said Pulou behind him. “You’re hurt, little brother?”
“I—don’t think so.” The tingling already had begun to recede, dissipating to his fingertips. Tristan flexed his hand. “It’s all right.”
“It comes from poles?” Pulou asked. “It looks like lightning.” He reached past Tristan.
His hand seemed to jerk back from the flash by itself. He shook it, hissing quick breaths through his teeth. “Tsaan Jwei!” he said again, and jabbed at his forehead.
Tristan eyed the pole, keeping his distance. Tristan had never seen bark that smooth, and the marks on it didn’t look like knotholes. The pole stood taller than himself, and probably four full arm-lengths from the next pole, which looked exactly the same. He paced back and forth a few times, studying them.
Perplexed, he scooped up a stone from beside his foot and hurled it between the poles. It spun an untouched arc. Startled that no lightning struck it, he flung another stone after it.
“You don’t hit anything,” Pulou said.
“I know,” said Tristan. “But there isn’t lightning.” He considered that, picked up another stone, hurled it at the pole.
It connected with a shatter of blue light and dropped.
“Tsaan Jwei!” hissed Pulou, and touched his brow again.
Tristan barely heard him. The first two stones hadn’t touched anything, even the ground; he could imitate that with a long jump. He backed up a few paces.
“You do what?” Pulou asked.
“Jump,” said Tristan, “like stones.”
He misjudged his leap, hadn’t quite cleared the line of poles before he tucked his head to take the fall in a roll. A scintillating blow caught him across the chest, smashed the breath from his lungs, stiffened his spine. He collapsed into the long grass and lay there gasping.
He didn’t see the lightning behind him, didn’t hear its sizzling strike. He heard only an urgent voice calling his name. Felt a quivery hand on his head and shoulder as the pain began to recede.
He opened his eyes. Pulou squatted beside him. Tristan turned over and sat up slowly, still gulping for breath.
Pulou sat panting, too. Sweat gleamed about his nose and mouth, and matted his mane on his forehead. His eyes bore a vicious glint in the aftermath of tsaa’chi, the ganan’s physiological threat response.
“Be calm,” Tristan said. “I’m all right, Pulou. Be calm. I’m not hurt.”
He watched Pulou’s breathing steady, watched the fury fade from his eyes. They rose together, and Tristan took the lead, wading into the field.
The second and third moons had risen by the time they emerged from the grass onto a trail wide enough for four or five people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. It ran between the square lodges like a stream bed at the bottom of a gully, and Tristan, chewing his lip, paused to look for white walls above the rooftops. “This way,” he said at last, and slipped into an alley.
Behind him, Pulou said, “Too close, too hard, flat-tooth lodges,” and ran his fingers in a soft, rapid thudding along the ribbed shell of one. Tristan signed at him to be quiet and ducked beneath a square hole that shot yellow light across their path.
Pulou didn’t duck. “Look, little brother,” he said.
When Tristan glanced back, Pulou had stretched up to peer through the square hole. The light escaping from it cast garish patterns across his striped face. Wary, Tristan slipped up beside him.
A hand of humans, four adults and a child, sat in a circle to eat from something flat and stiff that seemed to rest on their knees. Tristan studied clothing not made of peimu hide that covered all but their hands and heads, eyed skin as bare and stripeless as his own, recognized snatches of phrases in Standard that sounded monotonous compared to his mother’s. These flat-teeth were his own kind, yet everything about them seemed strange. More alien than the striped face at his shoulder. A shiver coursed up his spine.
“Look at their hair!” said Pulou. “It grows on their faces!”
On the three men it did, covering their chins as if to make up for the lack of it around their ears and down the backs of their necks.
Tristan felt sudden disgust. “Mine doesn’t!” he said.
Pulou scrutinized him, and touched his chin with the back of a finger. He grinned. “It starts to.”
“It does not!” Tristan raised a curled hand.
He started at a noise somewhere, a trilling like insects in the evening, but louder and harsher. One of the two young men stood and left the room, and the trilling soon stopped. He came back in a few minutes, securing a belt about his waist. Tristan recognized the object in its pouch; his mother had called hers an E-gun.
The older man began to question him, and the woman and child stopped eating. Tristan could only pick out a few words of their conversation.
“Something came through . . .” he heard. “Have to find out what . . . where it went. . . . monitors went crazy.”
“. . . know what it was?” asked the woman.
“. . . thinks it’s a couple of cat boys,” the young man with the pistol told her. “Animals would run off.”
“What would they want?” the woman wondered.
“. . . don’t know. We’ll find out.”
Tristan looked at Pulou, furrowing his brow. “Cat boys?”
Pulou shrugged. “They don’t look for us. Come on.”
They crept to the lodge’s end, squatted to peer around its corner, and saw the man with the pistol step through a square opening that slid shut behind him. He paused to pull on a hat, glanced up and down the row of lodges, then strode off in the opposite direction, leaving a trail of crunching sounds under his boots. They watched until he disappeared around a corner.
Moonlight flooded the lane between the lodges, and a breeze stirred up swirls of dust. Tristan and Pulou sprinted across it, into a narrower alley. They chose a zig-zag route through the human camp, keeping close to the ground, crouching in a corner once at the noise of nearby boots and voices.
Waiting for them to pass, Tristan plucked nervously at bits of brown skin that peeled from the wall he knelt against. Huddled there, he listened to the sounds from inside: a baby’s cry, a woman’s quiet song.
He jumped when Pulou nudged him and beckoned him to follow.
Occasional humans moved among the long buildings beyond the lodges, busy at purposes only they knew. Watching them, Tristan and Pulou crept from shadow to shad
ow. Like peimus being stalked by a pack of jous, Tristan thought.
Open areas stretched between the long buildings and the walls of the spacecraft nests. Stacks of crates and barrels and the long-necked machines that moved them littered the open spaces. Plenty of cover. Pulou surveyed it and pointed; Tristan, teeth tight on his lip, slipped toward a pile of boxes.
Halfway across the loading yard, he signaled Pulou to stillness and froze on hands and knees, his heart hammering. A human paced among the pallets with a long weapon in the crook of his arm. He passed so close to their concealment that Tristan might have touched him if he’d put out a hand. He pressed himself against the crate instead and held his breath.
The human went by, oblivious.
“Stupid as lomos,” Pulou said quietly. “But lomos know when there’s danger. Flat-teeth don’t.”
Tristan glowered at him, and Pulou grinned. “Not you, little brother,” he said. “Come on.”
A curved wall loomed like a cliff’s face ahead of them. They slipped toward an opening at its base, pausing to listen before moving down into darkness, into a cave that opened at the bottom of the bowl.
Two moons hung almost overhead by now, and their light silvered the skin of the waiting spacecraft. Tristan cocked his head, comparing it to the images in his memory. “Lifepod,” he whispered in Standard.
Pulou eyed it, too. “We go where in this?” he asked.
“To my father’s home,” said Tristan. “Topawa. Maybe he’s there.”
“Maybe,” said Pulou. “Maybe not.”
Tristan ignored him; the spacecraft held his attention. He strode its circumference, raising a curious hand to run his fingertips along its hull, tracing lines meant to carve an atmosphere and slice cold space, studying its symmetry—until he heard footfalls in the entry.
He twisted around and froze, his blood suddenly cold in his veins.
A tall human emerged through the arch, taller still in armor borrowed from figures in Tristan’s unforgotten nightmares, his long weapon leveled in his hands.
A Dominion legionnaire.