Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  With the chrome-plated Makarov semiautomatic pistol, snugged in its nylon holster inside the kit, Leena might have held the creatures at bay long enough to make her escape, back at the banks of the river.

  With the signal flare, she might have been able to call for some assistance, or else set fire to one of the creatures, for all the good it would have done her.

  With the kit's folding knife, she might now be able to cut her bonds and free herself, possibly even making into the forest's wilds far enough and fast enough to elude her captors.

  With the emergency rations, she might not be as damnably hungry as she now found herself. When her stomach had first growled, hours before, she'd thought for a moment it was the call of the strange creatures.

  But the survival kit was carried on the back of one of the monsters, and Leena saw no clear way to freedom.

  They were taking her somewhere; that much was certain. If they intended to eat her, whether alive or cooked and prepared after her death, it appeared they didn't plan to do so immediately. From time to time one of the jaguar men would growl a few syllables, curt orders to the others Leena assumed, but for the most part the group traveled in silence. They padded along the forest track single-file, making hardly a sound. With her eyes closed, Leena found she could scarcely hear even the breathing of the creatures at her head and feet. The jaguar men moved through the forest like ghosts.

  Leena could not say with any certainty how long they'd been traveling. Her awkward position, hanging uncomfortably by bruised numb ankles and wrists from the pole, and the pounding of her pulse in her ears as the blood rushed up each time her head fell backwards, left her oblivious to the passage of time.

  There was only Now: this moment, with the pain, and the anxiety, and the fear of her imminent and unknown death, surrounded by the silent figures of the strange catlike creatures.

  After an eternity of that moment, something happened, and the tenor of her pain changed key. Leena had been on the edge of consciousness, straddling the border between delirium and sleep. Something changed, and she struggled to clear her thoughts enough to understand what.

  She had stopped moving, no longer gently rocking back and forth with each silent step of her bearers. The party had come to a halt.

  “Tar’elmok,” she heard the creature in front say.

  It was dark, the bare moonlight painting the forest in indistinct grays. Some hours had passed then, at least, if not more. Was it still the same day? How long ago had Leena first glimpsed this strange world of monsters? How long since she'd lifted off from Baikonur towards the heavens and glory?

  “Alal’kasen’lak,” answered the creature behind, barely above a silent breath.

  The creature in the lead, who carried Leena's survival kit in the bag at its back, held up one hand, palm forward. Leena strained to see in the low light, and could just make out the glints of the retractable claws extending up and out from each fingertip.

  “Tar’tamedt,” shouted the lead creature, and in an instant the configuration of the party shifted. The two creatures at Leena's head and feet released their hold on the pole, jumping one to the left, the other to the right, letting their captured prey fall unceremoniously to the cold ground. Leena struck the ground spine first, the breath punched from her lungs in a painful sigh, and looked up dazzled to see the strange creatures circle around her.

  Eight muscled backs of black-and-white-spotted golden fur confronted her, dimly seen in the gray light. The party's full complement faced outward, hands raised defensively, some holding long staffs, some knives, but most with their hands empty, their only weapons their extended claws and bared fangs.

  Leena could hear the jaguar men now. They were no longer silent ghosts slipping through the forest. There was a low rumbling noise, like distant thunder, climbing slightly in pitch and volume with each passing second, that sounded from somewhere deep inside the creatures' chests. Their breathing was louder, too, sounding closer to panting.

  Above these rising sounds, Leena heard the noise of some movement from the dark forests beyond the circle. Still bound hand and feet, still crippled by pain-numbed limbs, she tried to lift up on one elbow to see farther through the legs of her captors.

  The sounds of movement from the trees increased, and were joined by similar noises from the opposite side of the circle. The creatures tensed, and began to roar.

  Leena understood at last. Her captors, somehow, were afraid.

  Just then a figure, white in the moon's low light, burst from the trees and rushed towards the circle, metal glinting cruel and long in his hand.

  The jaguar men were under attack.

  The attack was swift, concentrated, and confusing. Leena, lying hands and feet bound on the unforgiving ground, perceived it only as a series of sounds and obscured images. Metal on metal, metal on flesh, flesh on flesh, and the quick ballet of shadows and shapes dancing fatally over her were all Leena managed to follow.

  The pole from which she'd been suspended lay across her, pinned between her legs, pressing down into her stomach, and resting against one side of her helmet. Her hands were tied together, but only looped over the pole, so as she flinched away from the sounds of battle first on one side, then the other, she found herself inadvertently working her hands up and over the pole's end.

  The attacker, a blur of white and metal in the moonlight, was joined by another from the clearing's far side, a hulking shadowy figure who plowed the leader of the jaguar men to the ground, snarling and bloodthirsty.

  While the jaguar men's leader and his shadowy foe thrashed across the rough forest floor, the other attacker moved like a shot from one end of the clearing to another, shouting and laughing by turns.

  The first of the jaguar men to fall collapsed backwards over Leena, a gruesome rent opened across one side of his neck and down his chest, a black bubbling ribbon in the moon's low light. Leena's breath was knocked from her, the pole pressed harder against her chest, the helmet forced to one side, with her legs from the waist down trapped beneath the insensate hulk of her captor.

  Leena struggled to free herself, working her shoulders and hips from side to side and reaching her hands back and over her head for any hold. Snaking her way out from under the jaguar man's bulk, her hands slipped loose over the top of the pole without warning. Pausing for breath, the fierce struggles continuing all around her, Leena brought her bound hands down and against the fur and muscle of the jaguar man's side and pushed for all she was worth.

  The fallen form would not budge. Leena fell back, the jaguar man immobile, and took a deep breath. Gritting her teeth, her parched dry lips splitting from the effort, she pushed again, harder and longer, and slowly the jaguar man began to move. Angled slowly up on one arm, rolling up on his side and pressing into her knees, the senseless form lifted off her waist and stomach.

  Leena paused in her exertions, unable to continue without rest. A glint of moonlight caught her eye, from below. Dazed from hunger, exhaustion, and the shock of her present circumstance, Leena looked with slow-blinking eyes to the unconscious jaguar man's back and saw the mesh bag still hung over his shoulders. The mesh bag, and the metal glint of her survival kit within.

  Her hands, bound and encased in their thick insulated gloves, lunged for the kit. Leena's first thought was just to retrieve the kit, to take back that which had been taken from her. It was only as her hands brushed against the hard metal corners of the case, and brought to mind the contents and their uses, that she saw a more immediate purpose.

  With gruesome luck, the strap holding the mesh bag in place had been almost completely severed by the blow that had felled the jaguar man, so it was a matter of relative ease to pull the bag away from its back, and the kit away from the bag. It remained, then, to open the kit.

  A dark figure flashed before Leena's eyes as one of the combatants leapt over her, whether jaguar man or attacker she couldn't say. Leena ignored their threat, and concentrated on the kit.

  She battered at the
simple metal latch, her fingers useless in the thick fabric of the gloves. She dragged the kit up onto her chest, angling her head up within the helmet for a clearer view, trying for finesse. It was like threading a needle with a plumber's wrench. The sturdy catches on either side of the case's lid both had to be opened, but in opening one her exertions seemed always to shut the other.

  The melee continued, and someone kicked Leena's side, almost knocking the survival kit from her grasp. As she scrambled to maintain her hold on the kit, inspiration struck, and she turned the case on its end, leaving the two catches positioned one above the other. Holding the kit in place with one hand, she could angle the other up far enough to flip open the latch. Sliding her hands carefully down the case, she then repeated the procedure, and the lid flipped open with a snap.

  There was a shout and an accompanying groan from somewhere to Leena's right, but she ignored the sounds. Pushing the kit back onto its base and down onto her thighs, careful that the lid not close again, Leena pulled herself painfully into a sitting position, the deadweight of the jaguar man still lying across her knees. Breathless, she pawed with bound hands through the contents of the kit, finally closing her thick-gloved hands on a piece of nylon-wrapped chrome and steel.

  She lifted it to her mouth, and unsnapped and pulled loose the nylon holster with her teeth. Then, carefully, she worked one gloved finger into the trigger guard, and thumbed off the safety.

  Her wrists and ankles were still bound, her hands still encased in insulated leather and an unconscious monster still pinned her to the ground. With the chrome-plated Makarov semiautomatic in her grip, though, Leena suddenly felt more in control of the situation.

  Leena looked up, and her grip on the Makarov tightened.

  A man stood over her, breathing heavy with exertion, naked to the waist and gored black with the blood of fallen jaguar men. In one hand he held a curved sword, in the other some kind of pistol.

  Leena aimed the Makarov at his chest.

  “Maht elmok,” he said, smiling, and Leena pulled the trigger.

  The pistol's hammer fell on the empty chamber, hitting only air, and Leena was out of options.

  Her instructors in the Red Army had drilled into her the three basic laws of small arms care: always keep the safety on when holstered, keep the clip fully loaded whenever possible, and leave a round chambered at all times. It seemed that whatever support technician at Baikonur had provisioned the survival kit had not had the same instructors.

  With her wrists bound, Leena could not position her hands to pull back the slider, was unable to rotate a cartridge into the chamber. The Makarov was useless, deadweight.

  The man standing over her slid his own pistol into an ornate holster at his waist, and angled his sword away and to the ground. He seemed to smile, through the grime and sweat and splattered blood freckles across his cheeks, and chuckled slightly. Leena tightened her grip on the Makarov, hoping he might bend close enough that she could slam the barrel against his grin.

  “Kestra,” he said in surprisingly tender tones, reaching his free hand to her, palm up and tentative. “Mitra,” he added after a short pause. “Kare. Caraid. Amicus.”

  He kept on, slowly repeating one set of syllables after another, watching her closely in the low light. Leena narrowed her eyes, suspicious.

  “Amiko. Ami. Amigo.”

  Was this madness, or some sort of test?

  “Freund. Friend.”

  The syllables were resolving themselves into words, familiar but certainly not Russian. English, perhaps? It had been years since she'd heard it spoken, not since her days in the army at the listening post in Berlin.

  “Drug,” the man said. Friend.

  Leena's eyes widened.

  “Vy…” she began, uneasily. “Vy govorite po-russkij?”

  Do you speak Russian?

  The man nodded slowly, and smiled sheepishly.

  “No, I'm afraid not,” he said, and Leena struggled to bring her rusty English up to speed. “Not very well, at least.”

  Leena relaxed her grip on the pistol, her arms lowering. Was he American? Where precisely was she?

  “Kto?” she began, and then shook her head violently as though to loosen long-dormant skills. “Wh-who?” she finally managed, snaring the appropriate pronoun as it raced through her thoughts. “And where this?” she added uncertainly. She inclined her head to one side in the dome of the helmet, indicating the mysterious surroundings.

  “So you're a new one, as I'd assumed,” the man answered, cleaning his sword's blade on the fur of one of the fallen foes, then slipping it with a steel whisper into a hanging scabbard opposite the holstered pistol. “Did you hear that, Balam?” he shouted to one side, out of Leena's line of sight. “She is new after all. You owe me a drink at my earliest convenience.”

  There came only a growl in response, but from her awkward position, pinned beneath the insensate form of the fallen jaguar man, she could not make out the source. She was able to follow the man's English better and better with each passing moment, the ancient engines of her forgotten training slowly revving to life.

  “I'm sorry we don't have time for formal introductions,” the man said, leaning down and grabbing the unconscious jaguar man by his harness and hauling him bodily off of Leena's legs. “But more of the Sinaa will be on us in numbers shortly, if we're not quickly away.”

  Leena's lower body unencumbered, the man stepped forward and, reaching down, slipped his hands under the pits of her arms and drew Leena to her feet.

  “We'll have enough time for questions and answers soon enough,” the man said, gingerly pulling the Makarov from her grip and snugging it into his belt, “but for now, it's enough for you to know that this is Paragaea, and that you are far, far from home.”

  Leena looked on, still dazed, as the man untied her wrists and then ankles with a few deft movements.

  “Are who…?” she began, struggling with the syntax. “Who…” She paused, moving her arms in glorious freedom, shifting painfully from leg to leg. “Who are you?” she managed.

  “My apologies,” the man answered with a slight smile, giving her a shadow of a bow. “My name is Hieronymus. Hieronymus Bonaventure.”

  He stepped to her side, taking her elbow, and steered her towards the far side of the clearing.

  “And this is my friend, Prince Balam.”

  Leena looked up, and before her towered the hulking, shadowy figure she'd glimpsed tussling with the leader of the jaguar men before. It was another of the jaguar men, but with black fur instead of golden. His clawed hands and the lower half of his broad jaws were spattered with shining red blood, shimmering like strings of rubies in the faint moonlight. He wore a leather harness with gold fittings, a loincloth of deep forest green draped between muscular thighs, and one of his ears was deeply notched, an emerald dangling from the other.

  The black-furred jaguar man smiled, teeth like sabers glinting wickedly in the low light, and Leena was not sure whether she'd been rescued, or had fallen into the hands of an even darker threat.

  They traveled through the darkened jungle tracks not making a sound, the English-speaking man in front of Leena and the black-furred jaguar man following behind. The going was difficult, with Leena still swaddled in her pressure suit with its helmet and heavy boots and gloves, but they pressed on without pause. Only when they had gone several kilometers did the man and his jaguar companion seem to lower their guards, and they drew finally to a halt.

  Minutes later, Leena sat near a fresh-kindled campfire, soaking up its warmth, her eyes fixed on the two figures sitting on the far side of the flickering flames. Neither she nor they spoke, though a strange smile peeked from the corners of the man's mouth.

  Her shoulders and neck ached from the long hours spent wearing the heavy visored helmet, but to rid herself of the weight she had no choice but to remove the whole suit. The helmet on the SK-1 pressure suit could not be removed, another safeguard on the part of the chief designer, out of
fears his cosmonauts would panic in their capsules and remove them while still in flight.

  Leena removed the heavy gloves, awkwardly loosening the clasps holding them connected to the oversuit and then shaking them to the ground, her bare hands luxuriating in the free air for the first time in hours, if not days. With her hands free, she began working at the fasteners and fixtures holding the oversuit in place. In theory, the suit was designed for a cosmonaut to remove without aid, since the Vostok capsules were intended to land across a broad and sometimes unpredictable range of terrain. Even so, Leena had never removed a suit on her own before, always able to call on the Star City technicians when necessary.

  Now, as she bent and twisted into uncomfortable contortions to reach inaccessible fasteners, she wished she had a few of those technicians on hand now.

  “Do you need any assistance?” asked the man from across the fire.

  It took Leena a moment to sift through her long-disused English vocabulary and parse out the man's meaning.

  “Net,” she answered, and then quickly translated, “No.”

  The man replied with a shrug, and sat back to watch. The black-furred jaguar man at his side made a noise back in his throat that might have been a growl, or a chuckle, Leena could not say which.

  Finally, Leena managed to strip off the orange nylon oversuit and attached helmet, and the heavy leather boots, and was left standing in the grey-checked pressure liner. It was form-fitting and warm, too warm for the humid night air, but it was lightweight, and that at least was some small comfort.

  Suddenly, the black-furred jaguar man was on his feet, bounding to Leena's side. She shrank back, raising her arms defensively, wishing her Makarov was in her hands and not still snugged at the waist of the other man. The jaguar man's attention was not on Leena, though, but on her discarded oversuit. He grabbed it up in one claw-tipped hand, removed a wicked-looking knife from a sheath at his hip, and with three sure moves cut loose the helmet from the material of the suit.