by Lucia Ashta
He shrugged. “No, your Highness. I don’t see any clear path. There’s nothing pointing the way to our next step. But perhaps we’ll come across the next step if we choose one of these alternatives. When we don’t reach out to meet our destiny, sometimes it reaches out to grab us.”
I nodded in appreciation of this young man’s wisdom. It rang true.
“So it’s between options one and two. Forgive me, Tanus, but I can’t sit around and do nothing.”
“No. You never have been able to do that,” he said, already surrendered to my choice.
“So what’ll it be? One or two? Lila, make the case for your option.”
“If we go to the splicing facility—”
“Which we’d have to break into, and it has crazy insane security systems in place,” Tanus interjected.
“You’ve broken through the security before,” Lila shot back before continuing. “If we go to the splicing facility, we may discover some explanation for how it is that you were able to transport free of any machine. We may also discover something—I’m not sure what—that could explain why you’ve lost your memory.”
“Or we could discover none of that. When Dolpheus and I were last in Lord Brachius’ facility, we found little to nothing to clue us in to what goes on there.”
I nodded in recognition that Tanus had spoken, but focused on Dolpheus. “And you, Dolpheus? Why do you think we should go to the royal palace, or otherwise deal with a public appearance of some sort?”
“Because the people of Origins need the reassurance and the stability that would come from it. Because if your father doesn’t wake up soon, Lord Brachius will mount a coup d’état, one that’s likely to be successful. And Brachius won’t care about casualties.”
“But we still have to figure out how we can bring Ilara to the public without risking harm to her. She’s not even safe within the royal palace, no matter how many guards are assigned to protect her. We have no way of making sure we can keep her safe. We need a solid plan before we can do what you suggest,” Tanus said.
“And do we need a solid plan before we can go to your father’s splicing facility?” I asked.
“Not really. No plan will do us much good. Breaking into my father’s lab is a dangerous proposition, one that could land us with unforeseen complications.” Tanus eyed Lila meaningfully. “Once we figure out how to get in—and I have no idea how we’ll get all of us past intelligent security made precisely to prevent what we’ll be trying to do—we’ll just have to look around to see if we find anything Dolpheus and I didn’t find last time, or that Lila hasn’t been able to find in all her time working there. We’ll be looking for one grain of sand among trillions.”
“Okay,” I said, as I thought that neither of the options sounded particularly good. “So let’s flip a coin. That is, if you have coins here.”
“We have coins,” Dolpheus said. “In fact, you’re on one of them.” He asked the others, “Do any of you have a coin with the Princess on it?”
“No,” Kai said, feeling around his pants, a bit like the ones I thought men wore to Renaissance fairs on Earth, even though I’d never been to one.
“No,” Tanus said. “But I have one with the King on it.” He handed it to me.
I received it, and then didn’t move again for some time, long enough for Tanus to stand and move next to me. “Are you all right, Ilara?”
I nodded, unsure if I could form words. Finally, I whispered, “It’s my father.”
“Yes, it is,” Tanus said.
“No. I don’t mean it’s the King. I mean it’s my father, from Earth, or Sand, or whatever.”
“Your father, who works at this auto plant you spoke of, has the same face as the King, your father here?”
I nodded.
“That’s fascinating,” Lila said. But I said nothing. Instead, I tossed the coin into the air. In a crowning bizarre moment in an already ridiculously bizarre day, I watched my father’s face tumble through the air to determine my destiny.
I caught the coin, slapped it on my forearm, and stared at my dad, more somber than he usually looked. “Heads it is,” I said, only to myself. Then, “We’re going to the splicing lab,” to everyone else.
I hope you know what you’re doing, dad, I thought, even as I tried not to think about what it felt like to be light years (or however distances between planets were actually measured; I wasn’t sure) away from him. We’d been close when I was younger. Once I left home to forge my own way, I’d seen less of him and my mother. But it had been comforting to know they were there if I needed them.
I continued to stare at my father’s face, engraved in a maroon-colored metal. “Can I keep the coin?”
“Of course you can,” Tanus said.
I pocketed evidence of my father as King of an entire planet. In case I was going to wake up from this dream after all, I wanted to have this at least, to prove to myself that I wasn’t entirely crazy. While I was in the dream, however, I had things to do.
“Let’s go,” I said, and they all moved to follow.
THIRTEEN
WE MADE it to the threshold of the room, far enough that the nerves of leaving the only space I’d known on Planet Origins had begun to brew in my stomach, when Lila stopped us. “Wait,” she said.
I turned to find her behind the rest of us, studying me. “You can’t go like this, Princess. You’ll stick out anywhere we go, even more than usual.”
“What do you mean?” Tanus asked with a scowl.
“Relax, Tanus. I’m referring to her clothes. Everyone will stare at her clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” I asked.
“That’s a good question. What are you wearing?” Lila said.
“What do you mean? These are perfectly good clothes.”
Lila pinched the fabric of my jeans. “What is this material? It’s so thick and unwieldy.”
I loved jeans. I was a jeans kind of girl. My jeans were tight and hugged my curves in all the right places. “It’s fabric, and it’s comfortable.” My jeans even had a little spandex in them. There was little I couldn’t do in these jeans. “I climbed a mountain, in a rainstorm, in them, and I did just fine.”
“Hunh,” Lila said. “But you would have done better in material that didn’t absorb water or sweat, like these.” She swung her leg around for me to admire. It looked like she was wearing leggings.
“I hope you don’t think you’ve cornered the galactic market on leggings, because we have them too.”
“Leggings? Is that what you call them? Whatever ‘cornering the market’ means, these are not leggings. They’re mutable clothing. They adjust to temperature and activity, so that I’m always dressed appropriately for anything I’m doing.”
“Hunh,” I said, and Tanus smiled at the lack of triumph in my voice.
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to be jealous,” he teased. “You left some of your clothes here, and I kept them all these years that you were gone. You can change before we go.”
“Excellent,” Lila said. “The Princess can also get rid of whatever shirt and footwear she’s wearing. We’ll all be better off.”
I was unexpectedly defensive about my rain slicker and hiking boots. They’d been good to me on many adventures. But I didn’t say anything more. Clothes that changed to respond to my needs sounded super cool.
Tanus grabbed my hand and resumed our progress toward the doorway. “You can change while we get weapons.”
“Weapons?”
“Of course. You don’t expect us to break into the most fortified facility on the planet without weapons, do you?”
“But I thought this was your father’s facility.”
“It is. But that doesn’t make it one bit safe for us.”
“He’d hurt his son?”
“He would.”
None of the emotion I’d expect to see in the face of a man who just admitted that his father would harm him was evident. I imagined it had to exist, however.
Dolpheus sidled alongside us. “Take his word for it,” he said. “Lord Brachius would kill you too if he saw you.” My eyes widened. “He’s the one who tried to kill you in the first place.”
“Don’t scare her too much,” Lila added. “I didn’t see either one of you using your weapons when you broke in last time.”
“Yeah. But we managed to slip in a… different way than, uh, we’ll be able to with you,” Dolpheus said. His normally intelligent face was twisted into an expression that tried to convey inscrutability; it didn’t work.
Lila laughed, and I wanted to. “Being enigmatic doesn’t work well for you, Dolpheus,” she said. “Keep to your lady’s man act instead.”
Kai’s quiet voice, filled with reason and equanimity, sprouted behind us. “So how did you get into the lab then?”
“Dolpheus and I kind of transported in,” Tanus answered.
Kai whistled softly in the universal expression of Holy shit. “Really? That’s incredible! The security measures of the lab are supposed to be impregnable to transporting and everything else.”
“They are. Supposed to be, I mean,” Tanus said.
“But they aren’t?” Kai asked.
“No, they aren’t. But breaking in goes far beyond the usual skills needed for ordinary transporting. And you don’t even know how to transport yet, and Ilara may not yet feel up to it.”
“We’ll see,” I said, without a single idea as to how I would intentionally transport. I’d never stopped being the kid on the playground who never shrank away from a dare.
“I can figure it out,” Kai said, hopeful.
“We know you can, kid,” Dolpheus said. “But learning to transport takes time, and until you learn, it can be extremely dangerous.”
“I’m sure I can—”
Tanus interrupted. “Dolpheus is serious. If anything, he’s underplaying the dangers of transporting. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.” Kai nodded. “Well, they’re all true. Every single one of them.”
“Even the one about two people trading body parts, and ending up with an extra arm or a missing leg?”
“Even those, Kai. It’s wise to take it slowly. You have the makings of a great soldier. Be patient with yourself as you learn. You have lots to learn, but also lots of time to learn it in.”
“You can leave me behind if you have to, since everyone else can transport.”
“We will, but only if we have to. And I haven’t seen that we have to yet. So let’s go get some weapons,” Tanus said as he led me through the door.
As confidently as I could, in damp clothing that made rubbing sounds with each of my movements, I walked next to Tanus as an equal (or as close to it as I could muster). I determined to keep my breathing calm as each step took me farther into uncharted territory.
FOURTEEN
WE LOOKED like a band of bad-ass misfits, and I couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement of coming adventure. I was potentially lost forever on an alien planet, unable to return to my own, in a world replete with dangerous unknowns. Yet I was suppressing one of those giggles that was a gateway to uncontrollable laughter. I was giddy not only from the excitement, but also from the sheer overwhelmingness of the situation. I couldn’t imagine what was happening to me had happened to many others.
I was fully outfitted as a princess of Planet Origins. Princess Ilara, whether that turned out to be me or not in the end, had discriminating taste in dress. It seemed impossible not to think myself a bad-ass hottie, even though I tried, embarrassed that I should have the thought in the first place. I wore sheer leggings, a.k.a. mutable clothing, that shimmered and reflected light. They skimmed every one of my curves.
An indigo skirt went over the leggings, although it did little to suggest modesty. It wasn’t the kind of skirt one wore to assure a boyfriend’s parents that their son was dating a good, wholesome girl. Next came a tight crop-top with another sheer layer over it that slipped suggestively off one shoulder. I’d clamped several bracelets made from that same maroon metal as the coin on my upper arms, and traded my hiking boots for some more like Tanus,’ designed for stealth and speed. To complete the look of bad-ass princess, I slipped a circlet, made from some kind of metal that looked like a combination of silver and steel, onto my crown, my dark hair loose and long around it.
I was used to drawing looks of appreciation from both men and women back on earth—although I didn’t usually dress to garner attention—and I received them here on Planet Origins too. Even Kai couldn’t resist running his eyes across me, although he was the only one that attempted discretion in doing so. Still, no one looked surprised to see me outfitted like this. Apparently, on O, the princess of the Andaron dynasty drew her power from her sensuality as well as her blood and position. I couldn’t imagine any princess on Earth dressing this way, especially not in public.
Tanus came over and snaked an arm around my mostly bare waist. The way he did it, I knew he’d done it hundreds of times. We fit together. Desire to believe that I was the woman he wanted me to be burst to life. I didn’t push it away. I leaned into his embrace. He brought his lips next to my ear. “I can’t wait to trail my tongue across your entire body,” he whispered, not caring whether anyone overheard. His breath was hot and titillating, and for a moment I forgot where we were going and what it was we were going to attempt.
But then he pulled back and studied me. “Do you remember how to use the weapons you’ve chosen?” Surreality crashed back down on me like a wave in the ocean I’d turned my back to. We were about to break and enter. I’d been no saint on my home planet. But I’d not been a criminal either.
“Uh, no. I’ve never used, uh, weapons before.”
He gave me a how-cute-she-thinks-she’s-never-used-weapons-before look. “Sure you have. You’re quite skilled with them.”
“I am? Why?”
“A life of royalty isn’t safe. When you’re a princess, there’s always someone that wants to kill you.” He said it matter-of-factly, and I did my best to take it that way, but had no luck. “You began training to defend yourself almost as early on as I did.”
“Tanus, I don’t know. I don’t remember anything like that.”
“I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Tanus deliberated but didn’t answer. Instead, he lunged at me. He was fast. He went for the knife strapped to my thigh. He nearly got it too. But I was also fast. I knocked his arm out of the way and drew my hands up to protect my torso, moving into a fighting stance. He wedged his knee between my thighs and I knew he would have been able to take me down if he wanted. Still, he hadn’t gotten the knife.
“See?” he said.
I saw. All the same, it was hard to believe. Not only did I look like I belonged in this band of rogues, but I also apparently possessed the skills to seal the deal. Even so, I could unearth no memory of ever studying any kind of self-defense. Had the day not already been as outlandish as I thought possible, I would have allowed myself the luxury of shock and sputtering: Wha—? When—? But there was no point in it. I was deep in the rabbit hole, and I was headed farther down into it.
“Don’t worry. It’ll come back to you. I promise,” Tanus said.
“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep.”
“I never do,” he said, “especially when it comes to you.” Then he took me on in a leonine stare that I had no answer for except to meet it.
Long beats of my heart thudded by like this before Lila finally interrupted. “Are we going to stand around making googly eyes at each other, or are we going to do this already?”
Dolpheus passed us by and clamped a hand on Tanus’ shoulder as he went. “Oh, we’re going to do this all right. I can’t wait to figure out what the hell’s going on here.”
Kai and Lila moved to join Dolpheus, waiting for us at the doorway that led to the outdoors. “Tan, man. You coming or what?”
Tanus grabbed my hand, led me to the door
, and opened it for me. Ahead of them all, a princess, I walked through the doorway. I stepped out into the bright sunshine of a new world without any real idea where my steps would take me.
FIFTEEN
THE SUXLE SUN, a deep ochre fireball, shone overhead. It looked more like the photos of the Earth’s sun from outer space than it did like the steadily bright yellow-glowing sun I saw from the Earth’s surface. Nonetheless, its feel was familiar. My skin warmed beneath its heat, arriving from who knew how far away.
The sky, currently a violet magenta, was morphing as we began the walk toward the stables. Colors of a spectrum I’d never seen before sparked in the dawn. Tears moistened my eyes and I had to pull my jaw shut, mindful of one of my father’s characteristic sayings: “If you leave your mouth hanging open, it’ll be your fault and not the fly’s.” He said lots of offbeat things. Jerkily, I pushed away thoughts of my father before they could deliver me someplace melancholy.
I brought my focus to the here and now. I imagined the sky would ultimately turn yellow, once the sun completed its rising, as it had been when the Auxle Sun dominated the skyline. But I couldn’t be sure. The framework that explained the workings of the world while I was on Earth didn’t apply.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go without me?” Kai was saying. “We wouldn’t have to use the horses if it weren’t for me. You could all transport to the splicing lab.”
“Aye, we could, man,” Dolpheus said. “But we’re not going to. You’re a part of this… team… of sorts. We want you along. If we can’t have you along, we’ll let you know.”
Kai nodded, a string of conflicting emotions scurrying across his face as if he were a shape shifter who couldn’t decide what he wanted to morph into. Joy that Dolpheus wanted him along, relief that he hadn’t excluded him, and fear of being a burden were evident, among other emotions that I didn’t understand. I wondered what Kai’s story was, and why he possessed such ebullient admiration for Tanus and Dolpheus.
Tanus led me past Kai. As he did, he offered Kai a smile of encouragement. Kai rewarded him with appreciation so great that it prompted me to compare Tanus to a father and Kai to a son who wasn’t used to receiving notice. Kai fell into step with us, nearly clicking at Tanus’ heels, a loyal companion, like a dog (I had a high opinion of dogs).