There was an appreciative laughter all around.
“There is a… was a technical university a few days’ journey south of this village.” His voice changed again, becoming louder and more authoritative. I wondered who he had been before his beauty sleep.
“We went there, two years after our de-freeze, and though most of the buildings are ruined, one of them in particular is extremely well preserved. We think this might be a computer facility, perhaps even with its own self-contained power source. But – we couldn’t get in, although Patrick here worked there before going cryo.”
He lowered his gaze.
“However, it seems we got some high-tech support in the last teleportation jump, and I hope that with this new knowledge, we just might figure out how to get in and, if we’re lucky, find something useful.” He smiled again, radiating enthusiasm and hope.
“All right, enough talking! Let’s eat whatever’s been crisping in this fire. It smells delicious, and it shouldn’t be ignored any longer.”
And with that everyone laughed and started conversing again.
I glanced down, gathering the courage to look at my Vision man again. A few moments later, I looked up.
He wasn’t there, though his group still was. I looked around to search for him and found him talking to the old person who had just spoken.
He was squatting, leaning his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging between his legs, and that’s when I noticed he was only wearing shorts. He wore nothing on top.
Though his body was crouched, the fire in front illuminated his frame. My eyes followed the lines his muscles made under his skin, slowly sliding over them from his chest down to his stomach, ending up at the string that held his loose beige shorts. And that was…
—irrelevant!
Why am I doing this?
I had no reason to look at the suntanned skin stretching over his abdominal muscles at all! But I just couldn’t detach my gaze. My nanoprobes promptly signaled an alert: my heartbeat was a bit faster than normal, and it did not correspond with the level of motion I was doing.
This did not make any sense. I did not make any sense!
I peeled my gaze from his body and looked up at his face again and saw him looking straight back at me and—smirking?
I closed my eyes and swallowed.
Moons of Senthia! He must have seen me staring.
I quickly stood up and made my way out of the circle, carefully avoiding people sitting in smaller groups and occupied with their own conversations. My head was bent down, and I made sure my eyes looked nowhere but the path beneath my feet on the way back to the village.
I had so many questions on my mind. Who was he? What was his name? What was he doing here? What did that old person have in mind when he mentioned a high-tech Jumper of the last port? Did he mean me? Did he expect me to help them? Could I help them at all?
On one hand, I wanted to turn around and get my questions answered right away. Senthiens immediately pursue answers to open questions they have. They need to know all the facts because facts help them project Visions.
But on the other hand, I just couldn’t. My body did not respond at all as I was used to. I needed to calm down, I needed to gain control again.
“Dora!” I heard Rick’s voice behind me.
I stopped and as I turned in the direction of Rick’s voice, I found myself looking directly at the man from my Visions. Dazed by seeing his bare chest so close, I blinked a few times and then quickly looked up into his eyes.
And for one long moment, time stopped.
There were no people. There were no other sounds. It was just the two of us, our faces only a few inches apart, each and every rule of interpersonal space broken and forgotten.
My Visions did not do him justice, I realized, feeling the weakness in my knees and trying hard to remain standing. His eyes were deep and dark, hidden in the shadows of his eyelashes. A few strands of his short dark hair fell to his forehead. He was so close to me I could almost feel the warmth of his body, radiating the heat of a day spent in a sun.
“Ah, Dora!” Rick caught up with us and was now standing beside us, seemingly oblivious to the transfixed looks we were exchanging in front of him. “It looks like you already know each other. Cool! Old Mike wants to talk to you because of the trip to the old city.”
“Dora,” said the man from my Visions. His voice was deep but soft.
“Um, I thought you guys knew each other,” Rick said, looking at each of us in turn. As neither of us replied, Rick took a short impatient breath and continued. “J, this is Dora Dana Dasnan. She is our last Jumper, the one Old Mike was talking about. Dora, this is J.”
J. His name is J.
“Nice to meet you, Dora.” This might have been a good time to say something, but I just couldn’t find the words.
“Guys, could you please come back with me?” insisted Rick.
J looked at Rick. “I don’t understand. Why would Mike want to talk to Dora about the trip?”
“Well, she might be able to help us get in the computer facility. She’s a Senthien.”
“Senthien?” J seemed puzzled. He looked back at me.
“Yes,” jumped in Rick. “That’s why she had access to computer technology no one else had.” Rick was glowing, a broad grin on his face.
The thick wall of interpersonal space finally kicked in, and I took a step backward.
“I will respond to Old Mike’s request for the exchange of information, but I do not understand the urgency,” I said calmly, my Senthien façade back on my face.
J’s expression changed. He frowned just slightly, his eyes narrowing as he looked back at me.
“This is so exciting!” Rick was almost jumping up and down on the spot. “This really might be the breakthrough!”
I then turned to Rick and gave him a long stare, communicating that my question had not been answered. Rick’s head slumped to his chest and he exhaled impatiently. Then raising his eyes to look at me, he said, “Look, I don’t know all the details, but there is something important about the timing. So could you guys please come with me?”
J and I looked at each other for a moment, and then J said, “C’mon! Let’s talk to Old Mike.”
He made a quick sideways movement with his head in the direction we’d just come from and then started walking.
“Dora. Dana. Dasnan,” he said looking back, a half-hidden smile appearing at the corner of his lips.
I looked up at his dark eyes, getting completely lost in them. A moment later I moved my gaze away, hoping my emotions did not show on my face.
“What do people in Uni call you?” he continued.
“Dana… people in Uni call me Dana.”
“I like Dora. It sounds… warm.”
I glanced back at him. He was looking forward and had a smile on his face.
We reached the other side of the circle where Mike was sitting.
“Dora.” Mike slowly stood up to greet me. “Excuse my old bones. Standing up takes more effort than it used to. I am Mike. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I acknowledge your hospitality,” was the only thing in my vocabulary that seemed appropriate.
“Please, Dora, J, sit with me a little bit.” His old voice had a pleasant rumble to it.
J pointed to a wooden log. He waited for me to sit first, and then he sat on the log next to it.
“Dora,” Mike said, “you heard me mention the building at the old university. Now, we fairly often go to the city… ah, ruins, to—I guess the best word is—scavenge useful items.”
I looked at Mike, my expression flat, not understanding his words.
“It means,” J said, sensing my confusion, “that we take stuff—different items—from the ruins that we might have a use for here in the tree village, like… let me think… metal, or sharp objects, or cables. You know, things to use when you don’t have anything.” He smiled.
I had the most peculiar need to smile back at him, but no
t understanding this urge, I refrained and turned back to Mike.
“Thanks, J,” Mike said. “So, very early on, perhaps two years after we woke, we tried to enter the computer building, or what we think is a computer building… Patrick worked at this university before the cryo and he thinks it’s very likely that this particular building is a computer facility.
“As I said, we didn’t manage to get in. It just looked… impenetrable. So, what I am hoping, what we are all hoping”—he moved his hand in a circular motion—“is that you, coming from a society with more advanced technology, might be able to help us enter. Perhaps you’ve seen something like that before.”
“Yes, I understand. I will be in a better position to tell you of my ability to help you when I see the entrance.”
Mike nodded. “Of course, Dora, of course,” he said and glanced at J. “And – this is also our question for you – would you, please, join the group going on this trip? Your help would be extremely useful.”
I looked at all three of them in turn and then answered to Mike, in my usual Senthien voice, “Yes. I think this is advisable. I will go with the group.”
Rick exhaled audibly.
“Thank you,” Mike said. “Thank you, Dora. We very much appreciate it.”
“Rick said the trip needs to happen soon,” I said. “Why?”
“Yes, there is a certain urgency to leave. The reason is that the way there crosses a river,” Mike said. “At certain times of the year, the water level rises dramatically, and when it does, we cannot cross it anymore for several months. It often happens that it overflows, flooding the area.”
“This will happen soon,” J continued. “We only have about two to three weeks.”
“That’s why it’s important that the group leaves fairly soon,” said Mike.
“I understand.”
“If you do manage to get inside the facility,” said Mike after a moment’s break, “we were also hoping that you can help us to access the computer system, in case it’s too advanced for us to understand.”
“What is your need for a computer system?” I asked.
J answered my question. “Well, first of all, accessing information about… well, everything, would be really valuable to us. Until now, we only had the knowledge that someone had remembered or worked with. Before cryo, knowledge was available at our fingertips. We could find out things about health, medication, building, cooking—everything, really—by connecting to the Internet. We don’t have that information. And now is the time when we really need it.”
“I understand. I myself do not have great expertise in the area of computer technology. However”—I lifted my arm, showing the E-band—“there is a high probability that this interface will be able to connect to a computer once it is fully charged.”
“That sounds great!” J said and nodded to the other two.
Mike continued enthusiastically, “What we are also hoping to find is some information that will help us figure out how to power up our underground installation.”
“You want to go back and live underground?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, no!” Mike said and laughed. “But there is a whole infrastructure down there, like fridge rooms and heating stations… but it’s all out of juice.”
Juice?
“Battery power,” J said, answering my unspoken question. I looked at J, his lips curling into a half smile.
I lowered my gaze to the ground, distracted for a few moments.
“So,” I said, after I gathered my thoughts again, “if your installation has no more electricity, why then were your cryo-crèches still functional?”
“Well, we think that low power actually initiated the de-freeze process. When it was clear that the crèche maintenance power was running out, the thaw program was initiated—and we woke up,” J explained.
“I understand,” I said.
“We will have a rundown of the trip at Mike’s hut in two days’ time, an hour after sunset,” said J. “Could you please come? Perhaps you can give us some valuable pointers even before we leave.”
“I will, of course, help you to the best of my abilities. But I cannot guarantee the success of this expedition.”
“We understand that, Dora,” J said, looking at me with an enigmatic glow in his eyes. “But you are the best hope we’ve had in years.”
Chapter 9
That night was full of dreams—dark, damp, suffocating—with broken harsh voices and hooded creatures. I woke up several times, each time cold and covered in sweat. I greeted the morning with relief, a bright and fresh dawn as the birds’ songs echoed in the trees above my cottage.
With my clothes sticking to my skin, it was obvious I needed one of those baths again. I smiled within, looking forward to it.
People should be in baths at least half of their waking time.
I decided to search for the pool myself. Tania had showed me the way, and although I hadn’t tracked it on my nano-map, I was confident I could retrace our steps.
I took the path across familiar bridges to the end of the village and climbed down the tree. Thick, green ferns reaching up to my hips completely covered the ground. As I walked, I kept brushing the ferns with my open hand, enjoying their soft and malleable leaves. Fifty steps into the forest, I slowed down, looking around. I started to wonder if I had taken the right way. The images I was receiving here did not correspond to the data saved by my optic nerve cam. I frowned.
“And where are you off to?” a deep voice called out behind me.
I turned around and saw J, holding some kind of tool in one hand and several beige textile bags in the other.
“I am going to have a bath,” I said, trying to maintain the Senthien tone in my voice.
He chuckled quietly. “Perhaps you’d like to take the opposite direction then? This is a path into the forest. It’s easy to get lost if you don’t know the way.”
I turned, looking at the densely intricate flora ahead, and then turned back to J. “All right. Could you then tell me which direction I should take?”
“With pleasure.” He smiled broadly, his white teeth contrasting his tanned face.
My eyes were glued on his features. Bronzed, slightly rough skin, lines at the outer corners of his eyes where his skin creased when he laughed, and the most wonderful smile…
“Shall we go?” J raised his eyebrows.
I looked back up into his eyes. “O—of course.”
I pressed my lips together and looked away.
For the Moons of Senthia, Dora! Connect to your brain, this is humiliating…
I tried hard not to look at him as we walked back.
“Do you know how to swim, Dora?”
“No.” I quickly glanced at his face and then looked back at the path.
“Okay, well, someone should be there with you. You know,” he said a bit more quietly, “so you don’t go under the water and—stay there. Ah…I could take you…”
Then he coughed once and said, “Shall I call for one of the girls to take you? Perhaps that’s better.”
His voice was low, and he sounded confused. I looked at him, trying to figure out the sudden change in his tone, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was unfocused as he looked into the distance.
“Yes, J. I think this is advisable. I thank you.”
He nodded and continued walking. I was stealing glances at him, but stopped whenever I saw him looking back. There was so much I wanted to know about him, but none of the words actually came out. Here I was, the calm, collected and eloquent Senthien—and my tongue was tied. I frowned and bent my head lower to the ground.
We reached the tree I used to climb down.
“Let me get someone to take you, all right? And I guess you need a towel, too?”
“Yes, that would be helpful.”
He climbed up quickly, jumping over two or three climbing steps at a time. I watched him, dazzled, my eyes following the tight muscles working on his arms and legs, intertwining
and stretching as he effortlessly ascended to the top of the spiral ladder.
As soon as he disappeared above the platform, I had a moment to think about my incoherent behavior.
Is it because I’d seen him in my Visions? Because I feel like I know him and yet I don’t?
Or is it only because he’s a Human and I can finally observe one up close?
I was lost in my thoughts and couldn’t seem to find a rational answer to any of my questions.
Then I heard the sounds of two people walking on the wooden bridge that connected Tania’s hut to the climbing tree platform. J and Tania were talking, but their voices were so quiet I couldn’t hear anything. I gave a command to my tympanic audio enhancers to boost the volume.
“…were tempted, weren’t you?” I heard the ending of Tania’s sentence as she started climbing down.
“Tania, seriously, you’re being ridiculous!” J said with a defensive tone in his voice.
“Am I?” Tania’s voice was so quiet that J, still standing on the platform, couldn’t have heard it, but I could see in her smile and the tone of her voice that she was having fun for reasons unclear to me.
She stepped on the ground, a thick beige towel over her shoulder.
“Good morning, Dora! You should have fetched me. Why did you go by yourself?”
I watched J while answering Tania, “You already guided me to this bath area. I assumed I would be able to find the way myself this time.” My eyes were fixed on J swiftly climbing down the tree. There was something…primal in the smoothness of his movements. I kept looking.
“Shall we go, or do you want to stay a bit and enjoy the view?” she said.
I quickly looked at her. Her head was tilted sideways and she had a crooked smile on her face.
“What? No! We can go.” And I dashed off in front of her.
“Ah, you’re both such pearls,” Tania said quietly.
“What pearls? What are you talking about?” I heard J’s voice call out to Tania as he reached the ground.
“Never mind…never mind,” she said, laughing, and followed me. “Bye, J! See you later.”
The path we now took looked a lot more familiar, and although I felt embarrassed to have to be guided again, I was happy Tania was here.
The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1) Page 9