by Matt Snee
Douglas Daniel repeated what she had said, “The Triborg?”
“It's gone!” the Captain shouted. “And so is Jennifer.”
“He took her too?”
“Yes.” Tess inflected that the Triborg was the main priority.
“What was the deal?” the Captain interrupted, angry with everyone. Then he shook his head. “We have to go now!”
Douglas Daniel frowned in acceptance and turned back. The Shadow Puppet stood for a second. “What was it like?” Its breathy voice oozed.
“Holy,” Tess answered, though she had not seen it. She stood as tall as she could, trying to be as noble as she could in front of the Shadow.
The Captain wondered what evil lingered inside the Puppet. This was the deal Jennifer had made? How could she—with them?
The Shadow Puppet turned and returned to the dream ship. They watched as it walked softly across the lustrous sand, cape billowing. The Captain stared into the back of its skull; he hated it.
Tess looked at him. The Captain glared back.
“Let's go,” he said. “What about the other Delphiniums? The babies?”
“It is part of their trial for them to return on their own,” Tess explained. She tilted her head up, proud. “It's our way, Earther.”
He was silent. He entered the ship. The interior seemed ceramic. Lights and indicators glowed a pale blue, interspersed between what looked like pieces of art. It was luxurious, but in an understated way. The ship was large; there were multiple hallways, rooms, staircases, a large hold, and other amenities.
When they reached the bridge, they took seats in the back, under the light coming in through the dark-tinted iron-glass. Douglas Daniel, stood on a raised pedestal in the room's center. He pointed up and the ship lifted into the air. The Captain could feel the slightest motion. The ship zapped away, with only the faintest vibration of motion echoing through their bodies. The Phantom Ray was powerful, a star ship of ingenious and radical proportions. The Captain wasn't yet used to space travel, but he could tell this vessel was top-of-the-line. The best part was the artificial gravity, which was satisfying and convincing.
Plerrxx touched his mind. “We've escaped again.”
“No, we haven't,” the Captain told him. “Not while Jennifer is captured.”
The Mmrowwr nodded. It was an almost universal gesture. “Then what do we do?”
“We grab her back,” Tess said. She sat next to them.
“Where will he take her?” The Captain knew there must be answers.
“I don't know,” Tess answered. “That's highly variable, but he will probably not go under Ganymede's ocean. There would be no escape for him there. He knows he is pursued.”
“But Jon Jason is strong,” Plerrxx commented. “How can we defeat him?”
“With the Delphiniums, in concert with the mechanites—the soldiers the Shadow Puppet revealed to us—we can fight him.”
“Must there be violence?” Plerrxx asked.
“How can you trust them?” The Captain was incredulous.
“Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils,” Tess told him, putting her hands up, as if she had no choice in the matter.
“And what about afterwards?” The Captain couldn't believe the Delphiniums would ally themselves with such forces.
“We'll save that war for another day.” Tess measured her own voice as she spoke.
* * *
They did not return to Ganymede. Instead they stayed in orbit off Io, far from volunteer forces. They waited for news from the Delphiniums in the city.
News came - Jon Jason was to make a big appearance after the seasonal automobile race, which was a day away. The rumors said there would be a special announcement, and a public hanging.
“Jennifer!” The Captain gasped. He drew in air scornfully. “Jon Jason would kill her, wouldn't he?”
“The Dunleavys can be treacherous,” said a voice behind him. It was Douglas Daniel
The Captain pursed his lips together, trying to nullify the anger that erupted within him. He certainly didn't trust Douglas Daniel or the Shadow Puppet. He thought of Earth and how Jennifer had described the Shadows' tyranny. “We must go now!” The Captain could not wait.
“No,” Douglas Daniel told him, bracing him back. “We must wait until the event. That is when Jon Jason will be most vulnerable. He cannot control that situation, all those people, the open air…”
“And what if we don't make it in time?” the Captain pleaded.
“We will make it in time, son. I promise it.” Douglas Daniel's eye glinted and he put his hand to his heart. “I will make up for my fathers.”
The Captain wanted to believe it, surrounded by people he didn't know and didn't trust. Even Plerrxx seemed hidden to him, not committed. Tess was unpredictable, and more silent about her plans than Jennifer was. He was all alone here.
A memory struck him when they had been in the “House of Ladies”. Jennifer had leaned into him and whispered in his ear. He had been able to feel her hot breath on his skin, and her quieted voice had been as pretty as ever. “No matter what happens,” she had said to him under the blanketing bedlam, “you can trust me. We're together in this, to the end. I remember my promise.”
Her promise. Before they had embarked for Jupiter, she had vowed that once all this was over she would return to Earth with him and lead a normal life, making up for all the years she had spent alone in the Devasthanam.
“We're not always going to be together. I'll be careful if you are careful. Our connection goes beyond the living world now,” she had whispered amidst the scantily clad seductresses. “When we are apart we will still be linked. Just trust me.”
The memory only filled him with more pain. Had she known this would happen? He had to have her by his side again.
He could no longer keep his eyes open and went to sleep in quarters that Douglas Daniel had provided. It was a small room with a full-sized bed and a window looking out onto the cosmos. Nightmares wracked him.
He finds himself with his father again, watching football on television. His dad is sunken into the green couch in the living room of their house. A beer stands rigid in his father's hand. His dad's hair is unkempt, and he is clothed in dirty sweatpants and a t-shirt. This is the day of the week where his dad does nothing but sit, watching men collide into each other and rip a strange-shaped ball from each other's possession. The Captain's dad would drink beer, munch on chips, smoke cigarettes, and yell at the television.
The Captain sits down on the floor, watching the pictures of the crowd at the game. It is more people than he has ever seen. Kalansket is small, and the Captain dreams of bigger places. His hands absentmindedly play with his little metal toy cars, which are lined up in front of him on the carpet. He sits cross-legged.
The dream is an amalgamation of his memories of the Sundays he spent with his dad. The seasons outside change by the moment, and there is a constant sunset in the background, spiking colors this way and that, clouds dazzled with light.
“Isn't it strange, Cap'n?” His father asks during a commercial break, pointing at the screen. The Captain nods, in absolute agreement.
His mother makes occasional appearances—she is in the kitchen, reading her book and cooking all day, popping in every once in a while, to ask the Captain's dad a question, or to speculate on the reasons for the score. She stands in between the two rooms, her back against the doorway. Her hair is dark and her lips are painted a soft red. Sometimes she is in a dress, or jeans. An apron is always wrapped around her waist.
It was a warm, comfortable dream, colored in sacred light. Time appeared infinite. When the Captain awoke, he felt rested as though he had slept for days instead of a few brief hours. He found Tess and asked her if there was any news.
“Not yet, I'm sorry. We just have to wait.”
The minutes slowed to a crawl. He stared out the ship's windows, wondering in what direction he could find Earth. He tried to imagine where Jennifer w
as and what she was doing right now. His mind stretched out but found nothing.
Plerrxx asked the Captain if he wanted to play a game. “The Mmrowwr are always equipped for games,” he explained. “It will pass the time.”
The Captain resisted. He was in no mood for games.
“C'mon,” Tess jumped in. “I'll play. Do you have a three-person game?”
“Of course I do,” Plerrxx told her.
“Then let's play,” Tess said, with authority.
The Captain acquiesced, despite his thoughts being elsewhere. Plerrxx pulled out his stack of Mmrowwr cards and handed them to the Captain to shuffle. The Captain took the deck reluctantly. He soon found his hands enjoyed the repetitions of shuffling the lightweight, colorful cards. After he was done shuffling, he passed them out.
“Only six each,” Plerrxx instructed.
“Okay.” The Captain issued them their cards and set his own in a pile on his lap. When he was finished dealing, he put the cards on a nearby table, picked up his hand, and studied it. The cards were colored in pastel inky drawings of towers, fish, moons, and gardens, with Mmrowwrian numbers written on the bottoms. Fortunately, the Captain had already begun to learn the Mmrowwr's numbering system, which consisted of exact drawings of various geometric shapes infused with secondary strokes of pen.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Plerrxx and Tess examined their own cards.
“So…” began Tess, turning a yellow that was almost—but not quite—human. The Captain looked up from his hand to see her raising a golden eyebrow at the Mmrowwr.
“What the heck do we do?”
“Well—first look at the pictures on your cards. Can you see them telling a story?”
The Captain listened to Plerrxx and did what he said. His cards, which consisted of two tower cards, a giant fish, a half-moon, a full-moon, and a last card depicting a flower, wouldn't reveal a plot to even his writer's mind.
“No,” the Captain said, fully convinced.
“That's a good sign,” said Plerrxx. “The more random your cards, the better your hand. Beware a thread of fiction.”
“Okay,” said the Captain.
“Okay…” said Tess.
“Now—arrange your cards in what seems to be the best order for you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tess.
“I mean you must organize your cards using whatever similarities you can find in them. I must warn you that these are switch-cards; they never display the same image twice. The categories, or suits, are always different. There are always forty-five suits. Luck might dispense cards from the same suit.”
“So what do we want?” Tess asked. “What's our mission?”
“The mission,” said Plerrxx thoughtfully. “The mission is to capture the other players' cards.”
“How do you do that?” the Captain asked.
“We take turns guessing at what suits we each have. If we make a match, we capture a card.”
“Hey, how do we know you won't read our minds and cheat?!” wondered Tess.
“Where would be the sport in that?” replied Plerrxx bitingly, obviously peeved.
“Just asking!” muttered Tess. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and peered into her cards.
The Captain did the same. He organized the six cards as best he could, putting the two moons next to each other, but leaving the others how they were.
“Ready to guess?” Plerrxx asked, eyes sparkling.
Was he? For a few minutes he had forgotten about Jennifer. Now the thought of her rushed back to him, and the game seemed impossibly far away.
“Yeah,” the Captain said, not really there. “I guess the half-moon.”
“Darn!” Tess complained. She threw down a card. It had a half-moon similar to the Captain's card. The number, however, was different.
The Captain put the two cards together and filed them among his others, where they just as soon changed designs.
“Good,” said the Mmrowwr. “Now let's go.”
* * *
Plerrxx won of course. It was his game, after all. For a time, the Captain had been hypnotized by the abstraction of the cards and their mathematics; he had forgotten about Jennifer, resting his mind ever so slightly. Tess came in second place, and the Captain lost unequivocally.
An hour had passed, but there was no news. No one knew where Jon Jason and Jennifer were. They'd have to wait for the race to have any hope of saving her. The volunteers were all out on patrol, pushing people around—that was the only news they had. The race was to proceeded on schedule.
The Captain tried to eat.
“Don't worry,” Tess said. “It will be alright. We will strike soon.”
The race loomed before them. The minutes passed like great wheels. He stared out the windows at Jupiter. The god raged, storms spitting up from great depths, lighting clawing the super nimbuses.
He could feel the faint throb of the planet through the hull of the dream ship. The Phantom Ray itself was a marvelous piece of technology, an astounding representation of the future that was like no future he had ever imagined. The translucencies of the hull shimmered. The walls and floors were soft and warm. The engine's rumble was like a tremendous but pleasant distant roar, akin to an ocean or a waterfall somewhere beyond sight. It was a comfortable place. The artificial gravity was especially reassuring. Still the Captain found his own nervousness unbearable.
Plerrxx suggested exercise; Douglas Daniel had installed a gym for himself in the ship for long voyages, and it was free for them to use. The gym was big enough to run in, so the Captain went jogging and then tried out the various pieces of space age exercise equipment. Most of it was simple and gently reprimanded him if he did something wrong.
The gym was as agreeable as the rest of the ship. After what the Captain had been through lately, he needed to relax his body. He was still bruised from the winds of Jupiter, and a ropy exhaustion pulled at his bones. It was the great fear and anger he felt most, as he thought of Jennifer and how he had failed her. If anything happened to her—
The gym door opened and Plerrx stepped in. He was dressed in nothing but a thick pair of blue shorts, his great chest bare revealing a sturdy “V” of white fur down his torso.
“So?” Plerrxx asked the Captain as he walked toward him across the center of the gym floor, which was covered in an oval of pliant sand.
“Do you know what this is?”
The Captain caught his breath. “No—what do you mean?”
“This is a sparring circle,” Plerrxx informed him. “For fighting, wrestling, gymnastics…”
The Captain didn't see why he would be interested in such things at the moment. Plerrx smiled, purring. “I have an idea how to take your mind off of Jennifer for a few minutes.”
“I don't want to take my mind off her, Plerrxx.”
“I think it would be better if you did and rested before we face Jon Jason.”
“How?” The Captain was annoyed.
“Easy,” Plerrxx said, raising his paws as fists. Then he lunged toward the Captain, grabbing him around the waist and throwing him into the sand.
“What?” the Captain was stunned. He got to his feet again. “Why'd you do that, Plerrxx?”
Plerrxx answered by pouncing on the Captain again, this time taking hold of one of his arms and kicking his feet out from under him. Captain fell to the sand, flipping and landing square on his back. The Captain grunted, the wind knocked out of him.
“Get up!”
The Captain got up. He raised his own fists, but immediately decided not to strike the Mmrowwr in any way. The cat-man had become his friend.
Plerrxx launched himself again, but this time the Captain caught him. Their arms wrapped around each other tightly, each trying to throw the other. They struggled—Plerrxx was strong.
“You see?” the Mmrowwr's voice reflected in the Captain's mind.
“Now you are thinking of something else.” Plerrxx twisted his body, bending and gr
abbing the Captain's left leg. He jumped slightly, taking the Captain with him. He knocked both of them onto their backs in the sand.
The Captain rolled away, his hands digging into the sand, his breath seconds behind him. He leapt to his feet. He may have been middle-aged and out of shape, but he was filled with adrenaline. He suddenly half-remembered the Judo lessons from his youth. A sudden smile came to his face, exhilaration coursed through his veins. He stood carefully as he watched Plerrxx get up.
“It's your turn now, cat.”
“We shall see,” Plerrxx purred, then screeched “Yeeeeeereeeoow!” The Mmrowwr spun across the air, casting his elbow into the Captain's belly. The Captain drew back but simultaneously attacked, grabbing Plerrxx's arm and pulling the cat-man toward him. Plerrxx seemed to expect this; however, did not count on the Captain's speed, as the human gingerly threw the feline onto the ground.
“Good!” Plerrxx spat sand out of his furry mouth. He rose to his hands and knees and then back-flipped to his feet.
“But try this!” The Mmrowwr slipped to the ground and somersaulted toward the Captain, snaking his legs around the Captain's and tripping him down into the sand before jumping back into a ready position.
“Ha!”
The Captain rose himself up to sit upon the sand. He was quite angry. He didn't know how many times Plerrxx had thrown him to the ground, but it wasn't going to happen again. It took a second for him to stand. He felt ready and raised his fists again, still promising not to hit the cat-man. He realized that since the beginning of this the Mmrowwr had retracted his claws. It was another game.
“Now,” said Plerrxx. “Let's get started.”
19. That Which Can Be Taken
“Love is a reckoning.”
–Kitty Pichon, Letters.
Once she was aboard the dream ship, Jennifer was escorted to a brightly lit windowless cell. She was given normal clothes to wear, then left alone for hours. She could hear the hum of the ship and feel the tug of the artificial gravity. They were in space.
Jennifer sat and stared around her cell. It was modern, well-kept, and completely impenetrable. It had a long sliding electronic door, and a fully functioning bathroom with a shower. Nothing but the best for Jon Jason's prisoners.