Found Girl

by Pauline Baird Jones

  He had to chuckle. Her gaze looked…unfettered. Of course, his experience with mind control was from the movies. He changed the subject. “I thought I heard them say we are lost.”

  “We are not just lost,” Arian said, “this place, this system is a sanctuary.”

  A bird sanctuary. Why was he not surprised? “So what does that mean for us?”

  “At any other time, I think it would not mean good things for the Boyington,” she said, her brow creasing again, “but they seem exercised about the omen, the munshi. It is my hope that it is a…”

  “Game changer?” he supplied.

  She considered this and then nodded. He wanted to grab her arm, to stop her, and protest. He did put his hand on her arm, but there was a kind of hooting protest behind, so he slid his hand down her arm until he held her hand. “If you’re doing this for us…”

  Her hand gripped his back. “I wish to help you, but this…this leap is also for me.” She touched her free hand to her heart again. “I feel it here and here.” She touched her head. “There was a purpose in my collection—a purpose that was chosen for me by someone else. A purpose I can not see. The Phoenicopterian asked, but they did not require. I chose. I choose to aid them if I can. This feels correct to me.”

  Coop stared down at her. “And then…”

  “And then I ask for their help for you.”

  “And if they can’t or won’t give it?”

  Her lips thinned into a straight line. “We find another way.”

  He grinned, his hand tightening on hers. “I like the way you think.”

  Her lips bloomed in a smile that dang near took his breath away. “And I like you.”

  For the first time in his life, Coop was sorry a woman hadn’t used the scary, other “l” word.

  * * *

  Was she in charge of her mind? Her will? Arian felt Coop’s grip on her hand, the roughness of his palm against hers. She heard the soft scuffle of their steps against the alien surface, inhaled the old dry smell of this place. The strangeness of it felt as if it sharpened her clarity, her sense of where she was, of who she was.

  And who she was becoming.

  That thought almost stopped her forward steps. Becoming? She faltered but managed to keep going, and no one appeared to notice. Who was she becoming? The person she’d been meant to be? Or someone else? In her observations of Coop’s people, she’d noticed they aligned themselves somewhat differently based on circumstances and who was with them. When they were off duty, for instance, they were more relaxed. Her life before had not allowed for variation in who she was. Perhaps it was variations of herself that were emerging, not some other personality trying to overtake her mind.

  She considered the memories she could not remember having. Even factoring those in, she did not feel as if she were losing herself so much as becoming what she’d always felt she could be. As if restraints were falling away. That did not mean the memories did not trouble her, but so far they had helped her, not hurt her.

  She felt oddly happy, considering they were heading into an unknown situation with considerable risk. She traced the line of emotion back to Coop and his grip on her hand, rather than any confidence in herself. She wished she could pucker up, but she sensed that kissing was something one did in private, or if not complete privacy, then not in this particular situation. However, if it looked like they were going down, she would like to go down kissing him.

  She felt her lips curve up at that thought and how it would look to others. Slanting a discreet glance, she caught him looking at her. He grinned and squeezed her hand. She was unsure if he wished to convey that they could do this, or he wished to kiss her, too.

  They’d been walking for what felt like a long time, traversing a series of hallways that seemed to be taking them higher. It was difficult to be sure, since there were no windows, but she felt a resistance, felt pull as they climbed, as if the core of this planet had a light grip on them.

  It is called gravity, the force that holds a thing onto a planet’s surface.

  Gravity, she repeated to herself and was surprised when an equation appeared in her mind. It had both scientific and symbolic meaning she would have liked to consider at another time.

  No dust arose from their passage. If she had to guess, she would say the walls and floors had been constructed of highly refined mud that had hardened over a considerable passage of time. The scent of old dirt mixed with the rather spicy, somewhat earthy smell of the Phoenicopterians that drifted back as they walked. She sensed air currents shifting this way and that, and sometimes it seemed she passed vents giving off the distant hum of machinery. She wished she could stop and touch these places, connect with what she sensed deep below.

  Machines.

  Coop lifted his free hand, rubbing his neck, then it drifted down, settling over his radio. He caught her look and said, “I hope Tiger and the others are okay. Long wait for them.”

  She heard a faint crackle she suspected was an answer. She hid a smile. “Do you think they are well?” she asked, her eyes wide and carefully innocent.

  “Yeah,” he said, giving her a quick, slashing grin.

  It warmed her that Coop was here, that he’d chosen to take this leap with her. Perhaps he did trust her. It was both a comfort and terrifying. What was she leading them all into? What if his trust was misplaced? She did not wish anything to happen to him.

  The corridor made a sudden, steeper climb and she smelled fresh water from above where a bright light beckoned. Their path leveled out and they emerged into a large hall or cavern. Light fell down on the space from some source far above, casting strange shadows onto a floor that felt more spongy than the hard corridor they had been traversing. In the center of the cavern was a large basin filled with water that looked as if it were being filled from a structure in its center. This structure curved up, twisting in many lines that rose out from the water reaching toward that distant light. Water also flowed from lower places in the center structure, splashing into the basin. The play of water against water was almost as rhythmic as the music on the ship. She tipped her head. The shape felt familiar to her in some way.

  Their guards gently herded them toward the basin, their hosts continuing down another passage without them. The guards blocked that and their retreat. Her companions shifted a bit, uncertainty written on their faces. Then finally they all turned toward the water.

  “Nice fountain,” Coop said, with a wary glance at their guards, he extended a hand into one of the streams. “Chilly.” He withdrew his hand, shook it, and wiped the remaining moisture onto his pants.

  “You probably shouldn’t interact with substances on this planet,” Gessner said, bending over the water as if he wished to touch it, too.

  “I think we’ve moved past that, doc. If we’re hosed, we’re hosed,” Coop said, though she noticed he looked at his hand, flexing it like he expected it to suddenly grow another digit.

  Dr. Derwent moved close to her.

  “You need to loop me into the negotiations.” His voice was low but urgent.

  “I will attempt to do so,” she said absently. The falling light now revealed strange designs in the walls, not visible unless one stood in the center. She circled the fountain, her eyes on the walls, fighting the urge to touch, to connect—to interact—with this place. She completed her circle, stopping by Rhubreak. He’d scrambled up onto the lip of the basin and now regarded the center carving. What do you think?

  That you have made great progress.

  What do you mean?

  You have learned to shield your thoughts.

  How did he know this?

  I was not supposed to notice the sudden silence?

  He didn’t feel hurt or offended, but perhaps he shielded that from her. Am I doing the correct thing?

  It is a little too late to wonder that.

  It felt right when I did it. Now…I am not as certain. I wish I knew what…

  …we don’t know? It will become clear
in time. There was a pause. This is a most curious place.

  Was it? The hall was wide but narrowed as it rose toward the light. Were they in one of the spired structures they’d observed as they arrived? The coloring of these walls was more colorful than the passages. The mud reflected the light in a variety of colors, some coming from the drawings, others from the play of the water and light. Did this mean something to these Phoenicopterians? Was it important or merely decorative?

  Dr. Gessner stepped back, tipping his head so he could observe the carving in the middle of the fountain, a look of awe forming on his face. His hand traced the pattern in the air in front of him. “A double helix.”

  Coop exchanged a look with Arian. “What?”

  “That statue in the fountain, it’s a double helix. DNA, the helix represents DNA strands.” He shook his head. “I wish the colonel had let me bring my camera.”

  Dr. Derwent tipped his head to one side. “DNA? Theirs?”

  “Well, I would assume so. If I were going to go to the trouble of making a statue, I wouldn’t put someone else’s DNA there.”

  “DNA?” Arian asked. A statue. She filed both words away for further consideration. It must have taken great effort to shape the mud. She felt a stirring of something, a sense that she had seen something like this before.

  “Deoxyribonucleic acid,” Dr. Gessner said, without removing his attention from the statue. “The building blocks of life. You like machines? This is where living machines, where everything that lives and grows, comes from. DNA is the greatest computer in the universe. It can make skin cell or a whole human from the same genome.”

  “It is very large…” she said.

  “This is just a representation of DNA. The real thing?” He pushed his hands into his hair. “You can’t see the cells this creates with your eyes.”

  Arian looked at her hand. Turned it over. Felt on the edge of knowing something…

  “Skin cells, organ cells, every part of you is made of billions of cells. And they all have genomes, DNA inside them, telling the cells what to do, what to be.”

  “What would it want them to do or be?” Still, she stared at her own palm.

  “Well, they know when it is time to make more skin or fight a sickness. In theory, with a strand of DNA you could grow…” he stopped.

  “Grow what?” Arian asked, a chill creeping over her that was not atmospheric. It was quite warm in this chamber.

  “Well, anything that grows. We have cloned plants for years, even cloned some animals.”

  “Cloned?”

  Dr. Gessner nodded. “A genetically identical organism. In theory, it’s a way to save an endangered species or bring back an extinct one.”

  Coop looked up, studying the statue. “There are days I wish I could clone myself,” he admitted.

  Dr. Gessner chuckled. “We all have days like that.”

  Arian stared at him. “Why would you desire an identical you?” She found it difficult enough to understand a single Coop.

  “Well, so we could get more done,” Coop said, “but my clone would probably not want to do the same things I don’t want to do.”

  “Technically that’s not possible,” Dr. Gessner said. “A clone does not acquire the memories of the original.”

  “Does…it…not?” Arian asked, surprised her voice sounded merely curious. It felt as if a sound reverberated through her mind. Like the bell that called them to the town square for judging after the season of the harvest.

  “In theory, the clone would need to go through the learning process, like a baby, even if its body were full grown,” Dr. Gessner said, his tone still absent, his gaze locked on the statue. “And even then it wouldn’t be exactly the same as the original, because it would have different experiences.”

  It. He’d called the clone an it, even though it was an almost exact copy of a human.

  What am I? She looked down at Rhubreak, careful to direct this question only to him. Am I an it?

  I do not have the answers you seek. But you do not look like an it to me.

  Her lips twitched, easing, but not erasing the sudden tension, her sense that she’d learned something important. Or not learned it? That seemed a better description. She studied her surroundings once more. If this DNA was so important, why would they place it here?

  It could be a place of worship. I have only been in human religious spaces, but this has some of the sense of that.

  She started to ask him the meaning of this new word, when, like a flower opening in her mind, she knew. No, it does not feel like a place of worship. It felt more like a memorial, a place of remembrance, to her. Were the other drawings for their honored dead? She turned, studying them more closely. Some of the drawings were more faded than others. And there were empty spaces. A work in progress?

  A stir, in the corridor where the Phoenicopterians had gone, called her from her thoughts. She turned as the guards fell back from the corridor ahead. It was indicated they should proceed that way now. After a short traverse, they reached two massive doors, so tall they appeared to reach upwards—and narrow—as they disappeared into the shadows of the circular cavern above their heads. These doors had many shapes carved into their surface. Flamingoes and other birds flying together and fighting other birds. One bird was so hideous of aspect that she shuddered. Its beak was sharp and long, his head grizzled and it appeared to hunch its black feathered shoulders, the splay of its webbed feet as sort of dark mockery of the flamingoes more graceful feet. She knew, she did not know how, that this was a Mycterian. The enemies of the Phoenicopterians. If these truly were their enemies, then she could see the need for a sanctuary.

  The great doors opened onto an even greater hall, one with a soaring ceiling and filled with light, though a light with a green cast to it. A table—though this did not feel like an accurate word for it—ran down the center of the room. On one half of the table, was a basin or long trough, cut into sections. This side was much higher than the flat side. Chairs ran along the flat, more table-like side, but not along the trough side. At the head of this table, the basin made a right turn, to service the bird standing there, the flamingo from the reception area, the one wearing black and white gear.

  Their guards directed them toward the side with the chairs. Arian did not desire the seat closest to the head of the table but somehow ended up there. Next to her was a seat with another platform on it, for her dragon, she assumed. Coop was encouraged to stand behind the seat next to Rhubreak’s. Neither of the two doctors seemed happy to be relegated to the lower seats, but not enough to protest with more than looks.

  Arian rested her hands lightly on the seat back, but did not pull it out, sensing it was not yet time. At four of the five places there were plates and utensils, cups, and a bracelet of beautiful and curious design. Rhubreak’s place had a sort of basin, with two sections, but no bracelet. From his spot on the floor, Arian sensed a mix of rueful and resigned at his limited view. At least the chairs and service seemed to indicate they were guests, not the meal. She glanced at Coop and saw his lips twitch, as if he’d come to the same conclusion.

  The guards moved away from them, forming a line along the wall at their backs, their heads lifting in what felt like coming to attention. Behind the guards, Arian noticed that these walls also had images of the double helix, though there were differences from the one in the main chamber. Many differences, she realized. Each of the strands had unique features. Above the head of the table was a large clock, at least, that was the closest name she could find for it. It had distinct differences from other clocks of her experience. This one had seven arms and many symbols carved at regular intervals around the central circle. Each of the arms were on a symbol, in intervals of seven, she realized. The tangram. She did not know why she had this thought, other than she knew it also meant seven in some way. Seven, she thought, then, I am the third.

  The Phoenicopterian at the head of the table appeared to signal and the guards honked in unison, this call l
ess strident than back in the other chamber, then all fell silent. Through the door they’d entered, a line of Phoenicopterians entered, led by the other flamingo they’d met. The ones that followed wore different colors and had unique coloring, and other elements unique to them, such as beak shape and the color of their eyes. She sensed that each was a representative of their sub-species.

  “If your companions will don the circlets, it will aid communication,” directed the bird at the table’s head.

  Arian picked up hers, studied it briefly, and slid it on. She held her arm up so her companions could see it “If you wish to communicate with them more easily, you need to wear one of these.” She assumed Rhubreak didn’t need one because he’d already managed to talk to them.

  The two doctors exchanged uneasy glances with each other. Coop’s look was different. He caught her look. “It’s kind of pretty for a dude.”

  Arian had to fight back a chuckle. In the end, they all slid them on.

  “The Draze may be seated.”

  Arian helped Rhubreak up into his seat. He rested his paws on the table and looked around, his beard flaring, then subsiding. Finally, he turned his snout back to the head of the table.

  As if it had been waiting for this, it spoke. “I am Hoteimai.” It moved a wing, indicating the others. “This is Juriojnai, Fukurokai, Bishamontai, Benzaitai, Daikokutai, and Ebusuai.” As each name was spoken, one of the flamingos across from them lowered their heads in greeting, then raised them again. When Hoteimai finished the introductions, they all lifted their beaks and honked, then fell silent.

  “We are pleased to be in your presence. I am called Arian Teraz,” Arian touched her hand to her chest. “The Draze Dragon is called Rhubreak. Captain Jackson Cooper, Dr. Adam Derwent, and Dr. Kevin Gessner.” As their names were called, they each gave a nod. “We thank you for your hospitality.”

  Hoteimai nodded its head. “You may sit.”

  Arian tugged her chair out and eased down a bit warily. This time the seat had padding, which was nice. It also seemed more…welcoming, though that was an assumption, she reminded herself. Now she became aware of being hungry and weary, felt the strain of staying alert. In some ways, it felt as if she’d worked most of a day in the fields, instead of taking a short ride in a ship, followed by a longish walk.