by R. C. Lewis
RUN.
More than the anger, the hurt in his eyes burns into me. “The Agnac may get what they wanted after all. And you’ll never tell me why, will you?”
Because this Khua might have answers…which means this might be the only way to save my brothers. That’s why.
I mouth the words, hoping he can read my lips. I’m sorry.
Then I run.
“Liddi!”
I ignore him. I don’t know where I’m going—where I can go—but I run anyway. He’ll catch me. He has longer legs and knows the territory. My only advantage is that I caught him by surprise. It gave me a head start, but it won’t last. My feet nearly fly out from under me as I run down the far side of the hill, but after that, there’s a long flat stretch before the hills rise up again.
Tiav still calls after me, but there’s another sound, this one from my left. Heavy footsteps, too heavy for Tiav. I glance to the side and find a silhouette in the moonlight. A very large silhouette. Haleian. He’s running a path that’ll converge with mine in moments. Maybe he’s a keeper who was already nearby when Tiav called. He’ll catch me with zero effort, but I have to try. I’m about to adjust my course to move away from both him and Tiav, but my gut stops me.
JUST KEEP GOING.
Having a crystal disk talk to me without a voice is freaking me out, but the conviction of the impressions keeps me moving.
As expected, the Haleian quickly reaches me, and I brace myself for impact, but it doesn’t come. He doesn’t tackle me to the ground. Instead, he grabs me by the arm and waist, slings me across his back, and continues without breaking stride. If anything, he goes faster.
I’m clinging to the back of a stranger who feels like he’s made of solid rock, except rock could never move so fluidly, with such speed. He climbs the next hill like it’s level ground, and I know without looking that Tiav is falling behind.
“Don’t—Liddi, stop! You can’t—you can’t hide. We’ll find you!”
They probably will. Even if they can’t follow the broken heart I’m trailing, they can probably follow the Haleian’s huge footprints. As the alien cuts toward the low mountains rising in the distance and Tiav’s voice fades, I wonder if I’ll ever hear it again. If I do, it will never sound the same, never have the same care and life in it. I stole that from him when I stole the disk.
Not that I intended to steal it.
I have to think about something else. The Haleian helps on that front.
“If you’re wondering, my name is Yilt. Quain sends his regards.”
My first thought is that I didn’t know Quain was a him. My second thought is to wonder how Quain knew to send a Haleian to help me tonight, and why he did it. The Khua around my neck tells me the answer by way of my gut…maybe…or it’s just my own best guess:
I’ll find out when we get to where we’re going.
Like every other day that week, Liddi’s friends decided to play skip rope during lunch. And as usual, the bossy ones declared Liddi would be last. She didn’t mind. She was fine watching the others.
If you found a portal high, if you found a portal low,
Where in the Eight Points would you go?
Sampati was always a popular choice, even though no one was very good at jumping that fast. Some of the kids said picking Sampati showed you liked your home and had proper technologist pride. Others chose Yishu because they could make everyone laugh with their silly dancing, and Pira always chose Erkir because it was easy.
Finally, Liddi’s turn came around. She ran in under the rope and started jumping.
“Ferri!”
The twirlers dropped the rope, but everyone was already running like they had a head start. Which they did.
Liddi always chose Ferri.
I RUN. WELL, YILT DOES, MOSTLY. He put me down for a while in a small slot canyon where it was hard enough for him to fit through on his own. As soon as we came out, he picked me up again.
I hide. Flyers have been passing overhead at least once an hour. Every time they do, Yilt hears them coming. He stops and covers me with a length of super-thin cloth from his enormous pocket. Something to keep heat sensors from seeing me, I guess. While I peer from under the sheet, Yilt just stands close to the nearest tree, concentrating like he’s trying to name his ancestors from shortest to tallest. He doesn’t say anything about it, but when the flyers clear and he picks me up again, I notice his body is cooler. It makes me wonder if he can consciously control his own temperature.
I think about taking off the disk with the Khua hitching a ride. It would be just as safe in my pocket. But my hands are busy enough clinging to Yilt most of the time. When they’re not, it just seems easier to leave the disk where it is. Silly as it feels, I try thinking questions at it. Who are you? What’s going on? Why did you do this? No response. Nothing to say now that I’m running like it wanted.
And it definitely wanted. Energy doesn’t want, so I have to accept that Tiav and Shiin and Kalkig and everyone were right on at least one point. The Khua are alive. They’re aware and they want and they communicate and they decide…they just don’t do it in anything resembling the way we do. I can’t wrap my head around it beyond accepting that it’s true. That must be what the Aelo spend their whole lives doing, trying to make sense of it.
The knowledge both fills me up to bursting and leaves a gaping void of uncertainty. I don’t know what the Khua being alive is going to change, but I do know I don’t have a lifetime to figure it out.
After uncounted hours, as the sun finally teases the horizon, we arrive at a road with a streamer waiting for us. Yilt and I both get in. He doesn’t know how much I hate the streamers; I’m not sure he’d care if he did. He’s been careful enough about keeping me safe, but I can’t exactly say he seems concerned about my mental state. Or the fact that I’m exhausted.
Just like every other time I’ve been in a streamer, I close my eyes. I can’t stomach the warped rushing of the world outside the windows. The upside is that the trips are so brief.
Except not this time.
It keeps going. Maybe twenty minutes. Possibly longer, because there’s every reason to believe I doze off. I open my eyes with a start when the sudden sensation of non-motion returns.
Night’s approaching again, with the remnants of dusk holding on a little longer, highlighting that we’ve traveled a long way with the crazy speed of the streamer. We’ve stopped on a street with nearly identical single-story buildings. I don’t see any larger buildings in the distance, so we’re probably not in a big city. There’s something strange about these buildings, though. Their single story is a little too tall, and so are the doors, which are also a little too wide.
Yilt is about to get out of the streamer, but I tap his arm to stop him. A gesture at our surroundings with raised eyebrows is enough to communicate the question.
“This is Cim. A Haleian settlement for when we get tired of bumping into things in the cities.”
Fair enough. If I were as big and solid as they are, I’d probably want a little more open space, too.
We go inside, and I discover the building is a house, furnished in a way that’s both simple and comfortable. Comfortable for Haleians, anyway, which means everything’s a few inches too tall for me. Yilt gestures for me to sit on a cushioned chair, so I do, but my feet don’t reach the floor. I feel like I’m eight years old again.
“There you are, Yilt. More eventful than we expected?”
I turn at the voice, but we’re alone. It comes from a computer screen on a nearby table, displaying Quain’s shielded face.
“You could say that,” Yilt replies. “Something happened at the Khua, and the young Aelo turned on her. Look.”
He gestures to the disk dangling from my neck. As always, Quain has no expression for me to read, but he—if Yilt calls him a “he,” I guess I can, too—makes a slight hiss.
“Unexpected. And intriguing. Liddi, you are still unable to speak?”
Yes, obviously, nothing’s changed on t
hat front. I may have a bizarre energy-based being around my neck, but I also still have a hyperdimensional transmitter implanted in the same vicinity. Worse, I no longer have access to Tiav’s symbol-reading program, and I only have a couple of words locked in my memory.
“Are you able to commune with the Khua as the Aelo do, now that you have the disk?”
The weird feelings and impressions I had before come to mind, but I don’t know if it’s the same. Tiav said what some of the other races called communing was just watching and listening to what the Khua “said” inside, then trying to make sense of it. No deep understanding, just gut instinct and guesses.
My only answer is a shrug.
“If you can communicate with them as you cannot with us, it is important you do so. And soon.”
I open my expression to look as curious as possible, hoping Quain has enough experience with Ferinnes to read it.
He does. “Unlike the others on the planet with you, we detect the energy of the Khua in much finer detail. Since before your arrival, the energy has been changing. Either the Khua are trying to tell us something, or something is very wrong.”
That weird feeling comes again, the instinct-from-outside, telling me the answer.
PROBABLY BOTH.
Yilt informs me this is a safe-house, but without the program to read off the symbols for me, I can’t easily ask why they have one, and Yilt doesn’t volunteer the information. Despite hours of being carried across the countryside by the guy, I’m not sure what to make of him. At least Durant’s age, if Haleian life spans and aging patterns are anything like ours. Built like Reb’s laserball-playing friends, only more. Maybe that’s what gave me the impression that he’s not too bright. He got us all this way without being caught by the keepers, so he can’t be completely stupid.
I just don’t know. It’s hard to get to know someone when you can’t talk.
Somehow Tiav and I managed. Only now he thinks all my non-words were lies.
“Liddi, are you listening?”
I push the sudden surge of emptiness back to my toes. Yilt’s trying to explain the safety protocols in the house, and no, I haven’t been listening. I lower my eyes, apologetic.
“You’re probably too tired to remember anyway. Go on and get some sleep. We’ll try again in the morning. And hopefully the Khua will tell you something.”
I’ve been “thinking at” the Khua all I can, trying to get it to respond to me, with no luck. But sleep sounds good. At least it’s something I know I can succeed at. I curl up on a too-large and too-high bed and close my eyes, emptying my mind and allowing it to float.
I do float. I float out of the room and away from the safe-house, up and out until I’m surrounded by white light. The same white light. The light inside the portal, like with Tiav. Only Tiav isn’t with me. No one is.
Wait. Someone is. One of my brothers?
No.
My brothers don’t come, but someone’s still here.
Yes, I am.
The Khua is here, somewhere.
Not somewhere. I am here. “Here” is me.
Not helpful. Dreams rarely are, but maybe this one will be. I want to ask a question, but the words don’t come. The Khua waits, circling me. I feel her motion, without any visual clues.
Her. Why do I think of the Khua as a her?
If we were male and female, I would choose female. That is why.
She answered that question, but I wasn’t asking her. That means something, and I try to work it into something useful, but an image of Tiav emerges instead. The aching emptiness swells, and I can’t focus on anything else. I hurt him, the most solid ally I had on this planet. The first person to care about me without knowing about JTI and wealth and fame, my fate and my failures. And it’s because of this Khua, because she stowed away in the crystal disk and made me run away.
I didn’t force you. You had a choice.
It didn’t feel like a choice.
That’s because the right choice feels like no choice at all. Would you choose differently?
No, I wouldn’t. Thinking back on that moment, I realize she’s right. I did choose. When I realized it was my first real hope of helping my brothers, the choice was made. It might break my heart all over again, but I’d choose my brothers every time. I just hate that I had to choose in the first place.
The Aelo is skilled, but he didn’t understand, and we don’t have time to wait for another to come to us. You are the one who’s been to both sides. You understand what’s happening.
No, I don’t. I’ve been bumbling and fumbling ever since my brothers went missing.
You know who puts us in danger, you know those she’s using to do it, and you know catastrophe will be the end of it all.
Minali. Yes, I know about that. But the Khua talks like I’m some kind of chosen one meant to save everybody. I’m not. My family tried that. It didn’t work.
No, you are not chosen. You are the one who chose. And you are the one who still chooses.
The teacher showed the children a new game. New for the other kids, anyway. Anton had taught Liddi before she started school. He also told her it wasn’t just a game. It was to teach kids the basics of circuits and resistors and switches.
As much as Liddi liked playing with her big brothers, running around with six-year-old kids who didn’t really care about keeping the rules was a different kind of fun.
She chased Pira through half of a double-bind—a parallel circuit—and caught her before a teammate could throw the switch. Pira hated to lose, so she wrenched her arm out of Liddi’s hand and screamed.
“Cheater!”
“Liddi.”
Liddi whipped around at the teacher’s voice. She hadn’t cheated—she’d been following the rules better than anyone—but the teacher glared at Pira before turning back to Liddi.
“Come here, please.”
She followed the teacher to the door and out into the hall. Luko stood there waiting. Shaking.
Everything went cold, like winter had come and the environmental controls failed.
He swept his sister up in his arms, hugged her too tight. She started crying before he said a word and didn’t know why.
Then he told her why. Something about an accident. The details didn’t make sense. Only the bottom line mattered.
Liddi would never see her parents again.
THE NEXT DAY, I OPEN my eyes and commence staring at the ceiling. I have a problem, and it’s bigger than the fact that I’ve just slept until midday. The “conversation” with the Khua is only as clear as a dream. Something about making choices, I remember that much. At the time, I thought I had an idea what choices she meant, but that’s slipped away.
Slipped through my sieve of a brain, just like everything else important. I rub my temples, trying to come up with anything useful. Nothing. Whatever she tried to tell me, it’s gone.
It would be nice to have a name to call her other than “the Khua.”
SPIN-STILL. THAT’S HER NAME.
The name is too strange for me to have made it up, but I don’t hear and feel her voice the same way I did in the dream. Seems like the key to getting answers from Spin-Still is not to ask directly, but that makes it awfully difficult to get the right questions asked. Maybe that makes sense for an energy being, not bound by the limits of physicality, existing in a hyperdimensional state. Makes sense but doesn’t, because I’m still limited to a simple set of three dimensions, plus the fourth—time.
A bang on the bedroom door interrupts my efforts to ask without asking. “Are you awake?”
The only way to answer Yilt is to open the door, so I do. He’s alert, tense, yet I get the feeling he hasn’t slept. Maybe Haleians don’t need as much sleep.
“There’s something you should see.” Without another word, he turns back to the main room, so I follow.
Ferinne doesn’t have media-casts, but their news-vids put Sampati’s to shame. One’s frozen on the screen—an image of my face with text sy
mbols along the bottom. Yilt taps a command to resume the playback.
“Liddi went missing sometime yesterday. The Aelo are concerned for her safety and ask that if anyone sees her, they contact local keepers immediately.”
I look to Yilt, confused. He’s glaring at the screen.
“They’re not talking about the incident with the Khua. Not labeling you a criminal…yet. They haven’t mentioned me. I don’t think that will last.”
His statement confirms he’s smarter than I initially thought, because I think I know what he means. People might panic if they know I’m wearing a Khua around my neck and deliberately ran off. The idea that an unbalanced Haleian took me might be easier to swallow. If they identify him and word gets out, Yilt will be in trouble, maybe even here in Cim.
There’s a single-symbol word I’ve used enough times that I remember it. I pull up a keypad and hunt the symbol down. Why?
He starts to say what I’ve already figured out about why the news-vid isn’t reporting everything, but I shake my head to cut him off. I point at Yilt, then point at the word again.
“Why am I risking myself?” he guesses. “You heard what Quain said. Something may be wrong. That Khua chose to contain itself, to travel with you for a reason.”
It chose. I choose. I understand, supposedly. That’s what it said. But Yilt hasn’t really answered my question. What he said explains why someone needed to help me, but not why he did. I try one more time, pointing to the word before poking him in his boulderlike chest.
He doesn’t guess so quickly this time. Despite their large eyes, Haleian faces haven’t seemed very expressive to me, but I see the change in Yilt’s when he understands.
“Why me? Some of us feel the Agnac have surrounded the Khua with so much ritual and reverence, they’ve forgotten that the Khua live and change. Too many laws and regulations surrounding them. Shiin’alo was wise when she began the Aelo practice of active questioning. Asking new questions seems more important to me than maintaining old answers. When I heard of a visitor from the Lost Points, I thought it might be the jostling we need. Quain knows my views, so he asked me to keep an eye on you once you returned from Chalu. I thought perhaps the Agnac would cause trouble again, so I would bring you here for safety—the Aelo, too, I thought. I didn’t expect this.”