The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1)

by Tara Jade Brown

  “Do you think we will have another shower above us?” I heard Stevanion ask behind me.

  I looked up. Clear blue sky with no clouds in sight. The slowly folding navy blue blanket promised a clear but cold night.

  “I do not think so, but it might start while we are asleep,” I said. “Let us find a protected position before we rest.”

  Not long after, we found a tree similar to the tree that protected us the night before, only this one was somewhat different. Instead of a wooden trunk, its large leaves started at the ground and reached a few feet over our heads. The stem was dark green and hard, with overlapping scales covering the height from the ground to its leaves.

  I sat close to the base. Stevanion sat as close to me as the IP distance allowed, so he could still have leaves protecting him from the possible shower.

  We didn’t talk.

  The night fell, covering us in complete darkness. With no visible moon on this planet, stars were the only light, decorating the black vacuum like sprinkled diamond dust. I had seen stars many times before, but somehow now, from here, they looked miraculous.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed movement and looked back at Stevanion. He was shaking in his sleep. This didn’t surprise me. His skinsuit had been wet throughout the previous night and most of the morning.

  I looked around at the neighboring trees.

  Barely visible in the night was a short but wide beige tree that I remembered from before. The bark was quite different from other trees I had seen here, and it peeled off in thin layers.

  I rose, walked to the tree, and peeled off several of the large sheets. They were warm and soft to the touch. I brought them back to Stevanion, and without saying anything, I layered them on top of his body as fast as I could without them falling off and without me touching him.

  I moved away quickly.

  I didn’t know what else to do.

  I sat down leaning on the succulent green trunk, warm under my protective skinsuit, and fell asleep.

  I woke up late the next morning. The sun was already high in the bright sky. The air was pleasantly warm. I looked at Stevanion. He was still sleeping; soft tree sheets were spread around him on the ground. He wasn’t shaking anymore, which made me feel calmer.

  I looked up. High in the trees, a softly humming breeze mingled with the birds’ songs. I stood up and stretched, all my muscles aching.

  I heard Stevanion waking up, and as I turned to look at him, seeing his pale and tired features, I had my first Vision in the awake state.

  My eyes were open, but I barely registered Stevanion’s puzzled look. The sounds around me were now dimmed and replaced by tones a lot clearer and crisper than reality. A white veil from both sides of my field of vision closed off the view of my surroundings completely and displayed—the Vision. And I watched all of this through a nauseating combination of fear and curiosity.

  A man is lying still on an erected wooden bed. He is pale, his eyes closed, and I can feel the recognition rising at the back of my mind. I don’t want to let it surface. I focus on the figure lying there that hardly resembles my current companion.

  At that moment, he coughs a heavy, throaty cough, his face a grimace of pain. Someone else is there, too. I see the back of a woman, wearing a light brown dress. She comes to him, supports his shoulders until his coughing frenzy stops, and then helps him lie gently back on the bed. He resumes his corpselike posture, not moving, barely breathing.

  “What is wrong with him?” the woman next to him asks and as she turns, I realize that it is me.

  Another woman comes into my Vision scene. She has long dark hair and is also wearing loose beige clothes.

  “I’m sorry, Dora,” she says. “I don’t know. It seems he has a flu. Just a regular flu. It normally lasts for a few days only, but it’s as if his body doesn’t have the means to fight it.”

  I look back at him.

  Stevanion is dying.

  Dying from a viral disease that Descendant immune systems never learned to fight.

  The Vision disappeared at that moment, and I was looking right into Stevanion’s wide eyes.

  “You had a Vision. You can see while awake!” he said.

  “Stevanion, we are not alone. There are people living here. And we need to find them, fast.” I stood up and started walking, continuing in the same direction. Stevanion followed, trying to keep up.

  “This is truly significant.” He was breathing fast and talking at the same time. “This occasion is unique. This is something the High Council needs to know right away. What did you see? Which Descendants?” He caught up and looked at me.

  I stopped and turned to him.

  “I do not know. I can not say,” I said, breaking our locked gaze. “I have never seen them before.”

  “But… you have been to so many Uni planets, Dana.”

  “They seemed… well, different.”

  Stevanion moved backward just a little bit with a slight sense of fear in his eyes.

  “Could it be that we are in the Human settlement? Somewhere on Zema4?”

  He might actually be right.

  “I cannot tell. I do not know,” I said out loud.

  “Were the people in your Vision… amicable?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “And we need to find them soon. Or they us.”

  “Why? What is the urgency?”

  I looked at him, not sure if I should tell him the truth.

  “There is something else I saw.”

  He waited patiently and calmly, in true Senthien manner.

  “Stevanion, in my Vision, you are sick. And it is caused by something on this planet. And we need to find people, soon, because they might be able to help you.”

  “And you are sure they will want to help us?” he asked, as if he wasn’t concerned about the information about his health he just received.

  “I am sure their intentions are to help us, yes.”

  “All right. Let us continue,” he said in a flat voice as he took a step forward.

  I sighed silently and continued walking. I understood him perfectly. Any Senthien would act exactly the same way, taking the Vision on an as-is basis and acting in the best possible way to enable the best possible outcome.

  I took the rest of the food bars from my pocket and offered one to Stevanion. He accepted one with a bow of acknowledgment.

  I hoped we would find people fast, because without food, we would not be able to last much longer.

  We had been walking at a good pace for the first sixty passes, but with the lack of food and water, we got tired quickly and kept tripping over branches and holding onto trees and lianas as we passed. I was in the front, keeping leaves and bushes out of our way, when all of a sudden, I stopped in my tracks.

  I was not standing on densely covered undergrowth anymore. I was standing on a beaten path.

  My mind was racing.

  This path has been used.

  By somebody. Recently.

  I quickly looked to the right and then to the left. On both sides, the forest made a green tunnel above the trail, the top of it still slightly opened to the rays of this planet’s star. My heart was pounding, and I could hardly control my breathing to keep from giving away my excitement.

  “We are standing on a path, Stevanion. Someone made this path.”

  Stevanion didn’t respond.

  I turned to look at him.

  His eyes were closed, as if the brightness around him was blinding, and his body posture showed exhaustion.

  “We will find them, Stevanion,” I said with obvious emotion in my voice, my usual neutral tone gone.

  He then opened his eyes and looked at me. I expected him to say something, but he didn’t. There was no strength in him anymore. Then he closed his eyes again, swayed a little bit, and fell on his knees. Just before he hit the ground, I jumped toward him and caught him under his arms.

  His body was pressed to mine and his head slumped over my shoulder. I closed
my eyes tightly. I had to exert all my willpower to endure this lack of IP and not let him go. I sat on my knees and leaned Stevanion’s head on my lap. Then I lifted my head and looked both ways on the path, wondering what to do.

  At that moment, an image came to my mind, as clear as a recent memory.

  A Vision. In an awake state. Again.

  I closed my eyes. Keeping them open felt pointless. I dived into the subconscious display behind my eyelids I could not escape from. After a short moment, the Vision was gone.

  I blinked few times. I did not understand this at all. I never heard of anyone having Visions in an awake state—and now I’d had two of them.

  Why?

  Why now?

  Why here?

  I looked around at the green surrounding me, satiating my craving for pure nature.

  It’s this place.

  It must be.

  I took a deep breath. In some illogical way, I felt the musical harmony of the birds above binding me to this place.

  Stevanion coughed and I looked down at him. He looked at me, his eyes thin slits under the bright light. I expected him to move away at this unusual proximity, or at least to comment on it, but he did neither. He closed his eyes again, tried to swallow; failing, he coughed again.

  I looked at the path.

  “A group of people,” I said to Stevanion without looking at him. “Two… no, three, coming from… ” I turned my head to the other direction. “That way. They will help us.”

  Then I looked down at him. “They will help you.”

  But he was too weak to answer. His eyes half closed, he was at the edge of consciousness. I looked up to the path again. And waited.

  After less than ten passes, I heard the rough sounds of heavy feet on the trodden soil.

  “Stevanion, can you stand?”

  Stevanion opened his eyes and slowly nodded. I helped him up and stood next to him, holding his arm for support. I looked back down the path. My heart was racing.

  Then—they came into sight.

  They were three.

  And I had seen them before.

  Chapter 5

  “Hello!”

  I heard the strong voice of the large man leading the group while he was still more than twenty IPs away. The group continued walking, despite my lack of response. They came to a halt at an uncomfortably close distance.

  “I am Peter Wallace. This is Simon,” he said, moving his hand to his right, “and Patrick.” He motioned to his left.

  He had a dark brown beard, which covered half of his face, and all I could clearly see were his pleasant honey-brown eyes.

  “We’ve been looking for you for two days,” he said with a smile. “Most Jumpers stay where they land, and it’s easy to find them, but you… ” He smiled again and shook his head. “We thought we wouldn’t find you anymore.”

  “Until we came across your tracks on our way back,” said the man who Peterwallace had introduced as Patrick.

  “Fortunately, you chose the right direction. You could have gone the other way, deep into the jungle. We’d never have found you there,” said Peterwallace.

  Although I had seen them, and I had expected them, I was still so taken aback that I could not respond.

  Peterwallace’s features took on a worried expression. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Peterwallace. I understand you.” My voice was firmer than I thought I could muster. “My name is Dora Dana Dasnan. My companion needs assistance.”

  Peterwallace came even closer and looked at Stevanion. He was conscious but so exhausted that he could not lift his head. The man detached a leather bottle-shaped container from his belt and opened the top. Slowly opening Stevanion’s mouth with his hand, he poured in a bit of water. Stevanion swallowed two sips and then coughed.

  “He’s dehydrated,” Peterwallace said, giving me the water bottle, and with one smooth motion he scooped Stevanion up in his arms.

  “Take a sip—you need it, too!”

  The idea of putting the bottleneck to my lips just after it had touched someone else’s slightly revolted me.

  “No, thank you, Peterwallace. I am not thirsty.”

  He gave me a side look but didn’t comment.

  “Let’s go back to the village!” he said to Simon and Patrick. Then he turned to me and said, “And Dora, it’s just Peter.”

  At first, we all walked in silence, our feet crunching the soil underneath our feet. Peter kept watching me intently, and I tried to keep my eyes on the path.

  “You told me,” I said after a while, still not looking at him, “that other Jumpers stay where they were ported. Which other Jumpers?”

  “I thought you might be interested in that. You all are!” His smile was broad, as if revealing a best-kept secret. “You will hear more from Old Mike once we’re back in the village, but in short, in the last couple of months, we’ve had a number of people being teleported here. Like I said, most of them are so shocked they just stay where they were dropped, and it’s easy to find them. But you… ” He looked at me speculatively over Stevanion’s head that was drooping on his shoulder. “You didn’t.”

  We continued for some moments in silence. He kept looking at me as we walked, and finally I said, “Why are you looking at me?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, but you… you don’t look very Human. I mean, you do, sort of… but your eyes—they are so green. They don’t look—Human. I don’t mean that in a negative way,” he quickly continued. “It’s just… you look—alien.”

  “I am not an alien. I am a Senthien, a race of the Descendants.” I turned my gaze back in the direction we were walking. “I guess you must have seen many Descendant porters in the last few months.”

  “No,” he said, looking back at me. “No, all of the Jumpers were Humans.”

  Humans?

  I stared back.

  Does this mean that every mistake the Mind made was with a Human?

  “I… do not understand,” I said.

  “Aye, me neither.” He laughed. “But one thing is for sure: If you’re not Human, then you and your partner here are the very first Descendants to have been ported to Earth.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  Earth!

  The word pierced my mind, and I let out an audible gasp, my eyes wide open.

  “Earth?” I whispered.

  Peter stopped and looked back at me. Behind his beard, I could recognize a smile.

  “Hmm—you didn’t know, did ya? I guess not being a Human, you couldn’a… well, Dora, welcome to Earth!” He continued walking to catch up with the others.

  I was frozen for a moment, my gaze empty on the ground. Then, realizing I was falling behind, I pressed on.

  We walked for more than two hundred passes. I was getting tired, but I didn’t want to ask for a break. Peter was still carrying Stevanion, who was either unconscious or so exhausted he couldn’t find the strength to protest.

  The vegetation had changed as well. The trees here were very high—twenty, perhaps thirty IPs—and their trunks were thick and brown, wrinkled as the rough, dark soil we were walking on. Their bright green leafy crowns spread high up on top, completely shadowing the ground.

  And then, I started recognizing a new sound, first faint and then louder and louder.

  Voices.

  Human voices.

  I searched the surrounding area, expecting to see houses or domes or some kind of living quarters arranged on the ground, but there were none. And although the voices became so clear I could almost recognize the words, I did not see anything. All around me were high trees and fern bushes.

  Peter turned toward me with a grin on his face and lifted his index finger in front of his chest. For a few moments nothing happened, and I just kept looking at him and waiting with polite patience. Realizing that I didn’t understand his gesture, he said, “Look up.”

  Understanding now what the gesture meant, I followed the direction his finger was pointing.

  I gas
ped.

  The trees were connected with a dense net of hanging wooden bridges. The larger trees harbored broad platforms, and some of the smaller ones had tiny wooden bases that connected two bridges together.

  Peter stopped next to one tree that had regularly interspaced protruding sticks, starting from the bottom of the tree and spiraling all the way to the top. They were made out of wood but were definitely not the natural part of the trunk.

  “Come, Dora. Let me show you our village,” he said and motioned me to follow him to the tree. He started climbing, setting his feet on the wooden protrusions, carrying Stevanion as if he was no burden at all. Simon and Patrick didn’t follow, obviously waiting for me to go first.

  I swallowed heavily, but my face stayed calm, my distress hidden beneath a well-trained mask.

  I placed my foot on the first protrusion and slowly put my weight on it. Logic dictated that if the protrusions could hold Peter’s weight together with Stevanion’s, they could certainly hold the weight of someone who, coming from a lower G-field planet, was a lot lighter than any of the inhabitants of this Old Earth. Still, I needed several steps to gain confidence in these stairs that led up the tree.

  When I reached the small wooden base, I was gasping for air. My muscles hurt and my windpipes burned with the fast airflow I was now forcing into my lungs.

  So much for the E-showers…

  They were made to strengthen muscles for routine movement on other Descendant worlds. They were not, apparently, made for climbing.

  “Are you all right?” Peter asked. He made a motion as if he was about to touch my shoulder, but thinking better of it, he let his hand drop down again.

  “Yes, Peter. I. Appreciate. Your. Concern,” I said, one breath between each spoken word.

  “All right,” he said, not looking very convinced.

  After a few moments, I looked around. The large platforms I saw from below were not merely platforms. They each supported a wooden cottage. Through the windows, I could see orange-gold flickering light.

  Patrick now came to our platform. With four people on this small space, I started feeling uncomfortable. We were well within one IP from one another.