by Susan Kite
Riss, something’s going on, she thought at first meal one day.
I noticed, he thought back.
We need to separate. I’ll go to the collection room and you go somewhere else.
“I want to go read this morning,” Riss said.
“I’m tired of reading. I’d rather go see sha-Greelon’s crystal collection. They’re fascinating.”
Riss grunted. “You’ve seen them a thousand times!”
“So? I still like to study them. I’d love to see those crystal pillars where some of the crystals came from.”
“That’s the trouble with you. You’re always dreaming of things you can’t have. Me?” Riss poked his chest. “Me? I know when I’ve got it good. Food, big place to stay. No snow or ice winds.”
Don’t overdo it, she thought.
“I’m going to the reading room. Join me.”
She shook her head. Riss shrugged and left. As she figured, the newest servant followed Riss. The old Ologrian female servant silently gathered up the dishes. Corree freshened up in the micro shower and brushed the narrow strip of pelt down her back. She changed into the blue robe Greelon had given her before heading into the collection and specimen room. Corree pulled out the large tray of crystals and carefully lifted the lid.
She looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching her. Before Corree had only gazed at the specimens through the clear covering. A crystal in a corner box drew her and studying it through a protective sheet wasn’t good enough. She pulled the cover off and gazed at the intriguing crystal. It was blue like Mendel’s sun. The more she gazed at it, the more it seemed to pulsate deep within itself.
Corree realized that while there wasn’t anyone in the room with her, there was still the possibility she was being watched. She bent down to gaze at the jagged facets of a deep red stone, letting her hand brush against the blue gem. She almost gasped at the shock of the contact. It was burning and freezing at the same time. Currents of some kind of power flowed up her arm and into her brain. She saw a blue sun like Mendel’s exploding, sending flares that felt as though they were searing her eyes.
Corree drew her hand back to her side as casually as she could and her vision faded. She realized this was something from the past. What did it mean, though and how; why was she seeing this? Corree glanced askance at the gem, and then felt several others. None of them gave her the same reaction as the blue one had. Where did Greelon get this? She studied the label. Some of the letters were hard to make out. Rare blue greelonexer. Greelonexer? That meant Greelon had discovered it. But where? The crystal forest? That was where the rest of the stones in the tray had come from.
“I am glad you are enjoying my collections,” Greelon said from behind her.
Corree almost dropped the tray. She slid it farther into its slot. Why hadn’t she sensed him coming? It was uncanny that he had arrived at this time. It wasn’t mealtime.
“But some of the crystals could be dangerous to handle.” He stood beside her. “Ah, the crystals from the Equatorial Crystal Forest. My finest, in my opinion.” Greelon had always been modest about his accomplishments, but the pride in his voice was unmistakable.
“Sha-Greelon, did you discover that stone?” she asked, pointing to the blue stone.
“Yes, I did. That is only one of two that I have ever found. The other one is in the Science Museum.”
“And you discovered them in the Crystal Forest?”
“Yes. They were on the surface, but partially hidden by ruptured wire crystal debris. I only found them because the wind blew them clean.”
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed and then added before he thought her reaction unnatural, “It is the same color as Mendel’s sun. It reminded me of it.”
“Perhaps when we go to the Crystal Forest, you may find one for yourself.”
“You are teasing me,” Corree said, surprised at the statement.
“No, I am not. I would truly like to take you there. I am trying to arrange a trip. You have learned so much and adapted so well to our culture.”
“But you said it was dangerous there.”
“You and Riss are tough, Corree-levret.”
“Riss can come, too?”
“Don’t you think he would like the challenge?”
“Yes!”
“Do not expect anything immediate. The request has to go all the way to The Hand and The Claw.”
That Greelon was even trying to do this for them thrilled her. Then another thought crossed her mind. This might be the means for her and Riss to escape back to Mendel. Corree quelled her excitement.
“Why would your leaders allow Riss and me to do this?”
“I usually go about this time each year. It was only a matter of getting permission to take two assistants.”
“So they don’t know…?”
“It is not hard to guess, Corree-levret. But you cannot spend all your time in my estate, especially if you end up…exiled here.”
Corree turned away. She hadn’t wanted to deal with thoughts of permanently living on Alogol, but now Greelon had said it. It was imperative they figure out a way of escape.
The time they had to wait turned out to be shorter than any of them expected, though. Only two six-days later, at the evening meal, Greelon announced that they were going to make the trip. Corree almost knocked her chair over in her excitement.
“When, sir?” Riss asked, his eyes gleaming in anticipation.
“You both need training in equatorial survival,” Greelon said. “In perhaps three six-days.”
Corree had always considered herself capable of doing almost anything. She had been under water, in the mountains as well as in the forest, but this training was hard! Most of the instruction was with the equipment they needed for such an excursion. The winds and heat were extreme at the equator. An explorer, even one with her skills, could not survive without the environmental suit.
“If a snow cat pounced on me with this on, I’d roll all the way down the mountain,” Riss complained.
Corree compared the suit to the rounded shell of a mollusk she had hunted with Lenden’s group.
“Unfortunately, there has to be several layers or you would burn to a crisp down there,” Greelon explained. “If the wind didn’t peel your skin off first.”
Gradually they got used to the awkward rolling gait of the suits. You could pick up things with the bulky mitts; it just took time. Corree learned to use the grabbers. When she was sure she was ready, Greelon would see something else that needed improvement. Finally, after an extra six-day of training, the scientist was satisfied.
The night before their departure, Corree was too excited to sleep. Would their ship be one of the upper stratosphere shuttles that was also capable of space flight? If they weren’t allowed any freedom on board, it wouldn’t matter.
Riss’s faint thought touched her mind. Doesn’t matter what kind of a ship it is; we’ll take it home anyway.
With that last thought, Corree finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
“Why haven’t we heard anything?” Windemere growled. His servo-chair jerked forward and back as though it could pick up on its occupant’s agitated thoughts.
“Perhaps they have a blackout,” one of the younger scientists suggested.
“A blackout?” Windemere shouted. “A blackout?” Then the wheezing cough began. The servos and scientists worked frantically on the old man. It was a long time before Windemere could speak and then it was only a gasping whisper. “Not even a blackout…could keep that kind of news out. The mutants failed.”
Only one of the scientists had the guts to say what they were all thinking. “They figured it out before she could spread anything.”
“No!” Windemere shouted before he broke into more coughing spasms. This time the servos were barely able to bring the old man back. “No,” Windemere whispered. “My plans can’t fail. I won’t fail. There is another way….” The voice got weaker and weaker befo
re fading away. Bells, whistles, and excited squawks sounded as the old man expired.
The scientist closest to the dead man reached over and silenced the raucous noise with a touch of a button. “Everyone fails at least once in their lifetime,” he muttered.
“What do we do now?” the youngest scientist asked. “And what did he mean by another way?”
“I don’t know. He never told me anything other than the plan with the two mutants. We can’t worry about that now,” the older scientist muttered. “We let the servos take care of Windemere while we try to do some damage control.”
The console beeped. “Incoming ship,” a mechanical voice intoned. “Federation envoy.”
“As I said, gentlemen, damage control. There will be hell to pay for this failure or if Windemere’s deeper plans are discovered.”
Another scientist observed the scene on a monitor. The watcher bore some resemblance to the dead man in the chair. “Even if she did fail, we have other ways to take care of the enemy, Uncle,” he said to no one in particular. “So you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
****
Corree watched the pilot’s hands move from one console to another. There was no hesitation. The Ologrian didn’t even look where he put his fingers. She only hoped there was some sort of manual explaining what the different buttons and switches did. Oh, yeah, here is a manual so you can steal our ship. Corree almost laughed aloud.
Now her mutated body was pressed back into the cushioned seat. It was easier, Greelon explained, to go up into the lower reaches of space and approach the equator from a high angle, than it was to fly along the surface. Corree had read about the atmospheric conditions on Alogol and understood the reasoning.
They were in the first level of space and Corree felt her body trying to float away from the cushion. She wanted to release the restraints and float free, but she knew they would begin descent in just a few minutes. Sprawled on her face in front of everyone was not a good way to begin an expedition like this.
“How are you feeling, Corree-levret, Riss-levren?” Greelon asked.
“This is fun,” Corree admitted. “But I would love to free float.”
Greelon made his clicking noise of amusement. “The null gravity room isn’t enough?”
“That’s artificial; I want to try the real thing.”
“Perhaps another trip. This is too short to allow for such a thing.”
Riss had said nothing. In fact, Corree thought he looked ill.
Greelon noticed it, too. “We will have gravity soon, Riss-levren.”
Riss’s only acknowledgement was a slight nod.
As though on cue, Corree felt the restraints loosen slightly as she settled back onto the couch. Soon the smooth transition became a bouncing like a skip-slider jumping across the waves of a pond. She felt a little ill herself. The turbulence lessened, but the space skimmer still bumped all the way to the surface. Her view port darkened to deep twilight as they entered dense dust clouds. The ship bucked upward once and then evened out. They landed with a slight bump. Even before the engines were shut off Corree could hear the screaming wind.
“I don’t think I’m up to this excursion,” Riss said suddenly.
Was he faking so he could steal the ship or really ill? She couldn’t feel his thoughts. “Are you sure?”
He nodded and glanced nervously at the monitors. “Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t mind wind, but this is way beyond that.”
She and Greelon put on their equipment. Greelon checked her suit before they stumped into the airlock. The pilot worked the hatch controls and the inner hatch shut behind them with a hollow thud. Despite the special suit, Corree’s ears popped when the outer door opened. Wind wrapped around her, trying to jerk her off her feet.
“Attach this to your suit,” Greelon instructed, handing her the end of a tether rope. “Make sure your air and pressure systems are working properly before we start out.”
She already had, but did so again to please Greelon. Corree tightened her grip on the staff that also served as a repeller. Its subsonic vibrations warded off ground creatures such as snakes and bore beetles. She felt a distant call and jerked forward as though impelled to answer it. Is there another ship out here?” she asked Greelon.
“No, Corree-levret. We were the only group cleared to come today. Why do you ask?” Despite his calm voice, she sensed tension.
“I just thought I heard a voice,” she admitted.
“A voice?”
Corree considered. Had it been a real voice or something else drawing her? She shook her head. “Probably just a shifting of the wind.”
“The wind can be tricky at the equator.”
She felt the faint stirring of curiosity in Greelon’s mind, but Corree didn’t want to try to explain what she had heard or felt, especially since she didn’t understand it herself. In this environment, she needed to focus on their short trek in this foreboding place. Her feet crunched on sand and gravel. She felt a tug on her tether line. The wind was pulling her now.
The signal light above Greelon’s air pack flashed on and off with a cadence that seemed to mimic her heartbeat. They followed a trail Greelon told her had been an ancient riverbed. Soon they climbed up the bank. The wind that caught at them now made what she had felt outside the airlock seem like a tiny breeze in the canopy of the Mendel rainforest.
Corree turned her head away from the steady flashing, but could not see much farther than her hand in any direction. She turned on her directional lamp. Fine brown dust swirled into view. The light did nothing to penetrate the dry fog so she turned it off. Another flash, one much fainter, showed ahead of Greelon. So that’s how he knew where the trail was, she thought. Corree wondered how the first explorer had figured out this trail.
As they reached each flashing landmark, she figured it must have been based on the explorer’s whims. The path was aimless at times. “This is more crooked than a tree lizard’s tail,” she muttered in Federation.
Greelon clacked his amusement.
It confirmed to her that the Ologrian understood her language.
“It was not this bad when we first set up our scientific monitors,” he said.
“You were the first one to come here?” Corree asked, awed.
“No, there have been occasional adventurers over the centuries, but I was one of the team that came to do scientific studies.”
“You said it was better then?”
“It was,” Greelon replied. “The reason we put up the equipment was to study what we felt were extreme atmospheric changes.”
“What kind of changes?” Corree asked.
“We noticed how the equatorial storms were widening out as well as intensifying. At first we thought it might have to do with the extraction of zorit ore. Our power source.”
Corree wasn’t clear about the correlation and said so.
“By taking this ore from the ground, we have created great vacuums in the deep layers of the earth. Also by using it, many thought we were changing the composition of the atmosphere.”
“But you weren’t,” Corree stated, picking up on his slight inflections.
“It creates energy cleanly with only slight changes to the atmosphere.”
“So what caused the changes?”
“There have been increased earthquakes, but not all from collapsing tunnels. I have not been able to verify any theory; although there is one I think is more logical than any others.”
He paused and Corree waited. She knew Greelon would eventually answer the question.
“Our sun is old and is expanding slightly each year. The other problem is that our planet’s orbit is deteriorating.”
Corree hadn’t been sure what to expect, but not this. “How…how long….?”
“Does Alogol have? That is difficult to pinpoint given these new variables. I would guess several generations before conditions are too extreme to continue to live here.”
“At least you have space ships.”
&nb
sp; “To go where?” Greelon asked. “We do not have the advanced hyperdrive technology as your people do.” He sounded resigned. “And your Federation seems determined to control even the one planet that we might find refuge on.” Greelon’s voice had a bitter edge to it.
“But the soldiers who captured us had on survival suits, kind of like these,” Corree pointed out.
“Yes, they did, levret. We do need some protection. Mendel is not ideal for us, but Mendel is stable and the climate in the desert zone is at least livable.”
Corree thought about his words as they continued through the near blinding dust storm. “How long did you know we were coming that night?”
“You were still in the mountains when we detected you and Riss.”
“Have your studies of us helped you figure out how to live on Mendel?” she asked bluntly.
“At this point—no. What is more important to us now is your Federation’s response to your presence here. So far there has been none.”
Corree wished she could confront the scientists to demand an explanation of what they had done to her and Riss. Now she had no doubt that records were doctored to influence her and the others on Mendel against the Ologrians. Why in the world couldn’t humans and Ologrians live together on Mendel?
She felt something pulling at her and checked her tether. It was slack. Something else was calling to her. The “call” was not directly ahead of them; it was somewhere more to her left. “Sha-Greelon, what is that way,” she asked, pointing in the direction of the unknown call.
“Much the same as this. Some crystal beds, a sensor.”
“Can we go there?”
Greelon had turned back so that the red eyes shone through the helmet view plate. He didn’t ask her why, he just made a dip of his chin and turned off the path.
The tugging grew stronger; impossible to ignore. At the same time the wind felt as though it had picked up; almost enough to knock her off her feet. It seemed to come from all directions at once. Corree felt stinging on her skin, especially near the joints of the suit. How was the wind getting into her suit? They had checked it. Regardless, it was and it was burning.