He wondered if she was worried about him. Now that his cirq was burned out, he had no way to get a message back to her to tell her that he was okay. Maybe she’d get worried and would send in the cavalry after him.
Jameson drew on his psych training to put himself into a calmer space. Getting anxious about this whole thing would do him no good. He needed to deal with it serenely and objectively.
His muscles felt better, but his punctures still pulsed and ached. He did his best to ignore them.
He helped Quince gather a few more of the obieberries to supplement their food. He used the time to clear his head, and to think about his next course of action. Which at the moment was basically to wait and do nothing. He was out here in the wilderness with a relative stranger. She seemed nice enough, but he had no way of knowing if she was telling him the truth, or if she was really on his side. In the heat of the fight with the hoversport, he’d thrown himself into her arms, almost literally, but what did he really know about her motives?
On the other hand, there were no suitable alternatives to sticking with her, at least for the time being. He had no clue where he was or how to get back to civilization from here. He’d have to bide his time, and then take his chance if and when it came.
In the meantime, he could gather more information.
Jameson wondered where Xander was. If he had survived the last attack. If he was even then on his way to rejoin them.
He carried a shirt full of berries back to the campsite, handing them over to Quince. She had refilled their canteens from a nearby stream.
Quince put the berries into a small, airtight container, sealing the lid. “I found a few tubers too,” she said without looking up. “They’re really good cooked over an open flame.”
“I’ll bet.” He rubbed his temple where his cirq had been. He felt strangely alone without it. “Quince, where does pith actually come from?”
“Somewhere in the Outland.” She still wouldn’t look at him.
Jameson knew when someone was lying to him. He tried again. “You promised Rogan you’d set him up with a regular supply. Come on, tell me. It’s why I came here. You owe me at least that much.”
This time she did look at him, as if she was assessing his request. Finally, she nodded. “It comes from the other side of the waygate.”
“The waygate?” He searched his memory of all the materials he’d read about Oberon. He didn’t remember anything about a “waygate.” “Do you mean the Split?”
She shook her head “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You’ll have to wait and see. Let’s go. We have a lot of ground to make up today.”
He frowned. He didn’t like being shut down like that, but if his experience to date with Quince was any guide, that was all he was going to get for now.
She mounted the cycle and gestured for him to do the same. He climbed up behind her and put his hands around her waist.
The bike lifted into the air, and they left the little copse of trees to continue on through the forest.
All the while, he thought about home, wishing he were there instead of this awful, godforsaken place.
Chapter Ten: Flare
MIDAFTERNOON BROUGHT Quince and Jameson down into the Theseus River valley. Quince knew the land here like the back of her hand. She’d spent a lot of time out here over the years, first on her own, and later keeping an eye on Xander and Alix, Xander’s boyfriend. She’d even camped with them a couple times.
She still didn’t know what had become of Alix. The man had gone out on another camping trip with some friends and had never come back.
For his part, Jameson had been strangely silent for most of the day.
Quince sighed. She supposed she would have been too, in his position—all alone on a strange, alien world, and forced to face his own heritage in such a physical, personal manner. It couldn’t be easy on him.
She glided to a halt on an empty, rocky hillside, overlooking the river far below. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, still that worrying red color—a sign of what was coming.
The fog that shrouded the valley in the early morning had long since burned off, and the blue and silver trees and silver fields filled the valley from where they had stopped down to the river’s edge. On the other side, the Red Sands stretched off into the distance. “Need a bathroom break?”
“Yes, please.” Jameson’s hands slid back from her waist and he dismounted, almost running to the privacy of a nearby tree.
Quince smirked. “Don’t go too far.”
“I don’t plan to. I’m still hurting from the last time.”
She got off the bike herself and stretched her arms. Riding for such a long time was starting to take its toll on her body. She wasn’t as young as she used to be.
The sky was clear and greenish blue above, just like a normal day.
Jameson rejoined her, looking relieved. He squinted off into the distance. “So that’s the river?”
“The Theseus, yes.”
“What’s the red beyond it?”
The far side of the river was bounded by rust-colored dirt for as far as they could see. “That’s the Red Sands. It’s the desert here on Oberon, and it stretches for hundreds of kilometers south, east, and west.”
“Where are we going to meet Xander?”
“Upriver a bit.” She pointed to the east, where the Pyramus range loomed in the distance, the edge of the world. “I plan to take us down to the Theseus and cross over to the far side. The journey will go a lot faster over the desert sands, following the river.”
Jameson was silent for a moment, looking back and forth across the panorama revealed below. “It looks empty out here. Where are all the people?” He looked tense and tired.
“Along the coast, mostly. There are three other cities besides Oberon—Egeus and Philo in the south, and Hippolyta in the north. There have been a couple attempts to settle the Outland, but they’ve all failed.” She didn’t mention the reasons, which were varied, but mostly came back to the same thing, in her mind. Oberon didn’t want them here.
She glanced back over at her traveling companion. “How are your wings?”
Jameson flexed them experimentally. “Really strange. I haven’t gotten used to them. How they move. How they feel. They still itch.”
“I can help with that.” She pulled a bottle out of her pack and opened it, pressing it against her palm.
Jameson wrinkled his nose. “That smells nasty. What is it?”
“It’s an oil extracted from wetreeds. I know it smells pretty bad, but when I was growing out my wings, it was the best thing.” She dipped her fingers into the unguent and turned him around, rubbing it gently into the skin of the new wings.
“Oh my God, that feels good,” Jameson said, moaning softly.
Quince smiled. “Told you so.”
“You just happened to have that with you, huh?” He looked at her over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed.
“No, I knew you’d need it. Not that you deserve it.” She snorted. “Running off like that into a nest of wereveren. You’re probably hungry again, yes?” He seemed to be loosening up. The Outland had a way of doing that to you, in the same way that the city tensed people up like tightly wound springs.
“A little.” His stomach grumbled. “Okay, a lot.”
She finished covering his wings with the soothing ointment and put away the bottle. They were already twice as wide as they had been the day before.
Taking out her knife, she peeled one of the tubers she had unearthed earlier in the day. “These are really good cooked, but not too bad raw. Something like an apple, but not as sweet.” She handed him the peeled root.
He took an experimental bite and nodded. “Yeah, not too bad. Kind of a hint of cinnamon.” He finished the tuber in short order. “Can I have another?”
She peeled him another, and one for herself.
Jameson took it and frowned. “How long am I going to be hungry like this? I feel like there’s a hole in
my stomach.”
“Until your wings are grown out. Probably another week or two, and even then, you’ll probably need more calories than you used to.” She handed him some obieberries, which he also downed quickly. “Your body is changing inside too. Your muscles are growing, and your bones are getting harder and lighter to accommodate flight.”
He’d wished for wings, and it seemed like his wish had come true. Why did it feel like more of a curse? “It’s weird. I can feel things changing. It’s like having a phantom limb. Or, I guess, like a phantom limb that became real.”
She nodded. “You’ll get used to it soon enough.” She remembered the wonder of her own first flight, on that other world so long ago. “You ready?”
“I guess so. I could probably eat another five of those.” He looked hungrily at her saddlebags, but no more food was forthcoming.
“Come on.” She climbed back on the bike. “I want to make it to the river before it gets dark.”
He climbed on behind her, and they set off down the hillside, back into the forest.
XANDER RODE his cycle over yet another empty field. As they got closer to the river, they were passing more and more abandoned farms, many of them mostly overgrown by silver creeper vines or large patches of yellow hachmoss.
He glanced back at Morgan each time to see if there was a flicker of recognition for any of the farmhouses they passed, but the boy remained silent. He wished he could reach inside the kid’s head and pull him back firmly into reality.
Xander glanced up at the sun above. It had taken on almost a reddish tone, something that alarmed him. He didn’t know much about astronomy, but he did know that Oberon’s sun was supposed to be yellow. The countryside around them seemed bathed in blood tones, and Xander wished for the hundredth time that he could connect to the grid to find out what was going on.
The boy didn’t seem to notice.
The shuttle traffic passing overhead had increased. Every fifteen minutes or so, another one flew up from Oberon City spaceport in the distance, or came down from Titan Station. There was definitely something afoot.
He guessed they’d be at the Theseus in another hour. They were making good time now that the forest had receded. The river valley had many open meadows, the silver grasses tipped with blue blossoms, looking like nothing so much as a waving sea in the distance as the winds blew up from the Gildensea.
“You okay?” he called back to Morgan.
“Yes. Is hungry.”
“You are hungry… oh never mind.” The boy’s body was still catching up from who knew how long a period of neglect, and he was constantly starving. Xander had spotted some obieberry bushes a ways back, and hoped to find them some river apples once they reached the Theseus. “We’ll stop to eat once we—”
The sky exploded in light—radiating lines of color across the spectrum that raced through the atmosphere. His cycle’s dashboard went wild, the display flashing and showing garbled images and lights before ultimately going dark. “Hold on!” he shouted, extending his wings to slow their forward motion and guide the bike to a halt. It dipped and bounced along the ground, skidding over the silver grasses of the meadow below. Pieces of vegetation, dirt, and rocks rained over them as the bike ground to a sudden halt.
Xander took a deep breath and opened his eyes. They were down, and the bike hadn’t flipped. That was something. He dusted off his jacket and shook off his wings and looked back at his little charge. “You okay, Morgan?”
Morgan was silent, his eyes wide. He pointed up at the sky ahead of them.
Xander looked up and gasped. One of the shuttles was careening out of control in the distance, plummeting rapidly toward the ground. It must have lost power like the bike had when the… whatever it was had happened, but those Oberon-to-Titan Station shuttles were built to glide for a bit without power—they had to enter Oberon’s atmosphere over the Split, after all. So whatever had happened must have caused some serious electrical damage.
He watched, helpless, as the shuttle plunged to the ground on the other side of the Theseus, crashing in the desert almost directly south of their current position and sending up a huge fireball.
He turned away, his eyes closed. All those people.
He dismounted, checking to see how Morgan was taking it. “Are you okay?”
The boy seemed to have lost interest in the shuttle. He was looking down at his hands as if they were new to him, flexing them open and closed. There was something wrong with him, Xander was sure of it.
“Morgan!”
The boy looked up at him, shrinking away from Xander’s loud voice. Then he started to cry.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” He was an ass. It was foolish to expect Morgan to act like a normal child. Something had clearly happened to him that had traumatized him deeply.
Xander scooped Morgan up and held him tightly. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.” He patted the boy on the back, feeling Morgan’s cheek warm against his own. They stood together like that for a long time, and eventually Morgan’s sobs became muffled and then finally stopped altogether.
Xander set him down gently in the tall grass. He pulled out an MRE—one of their last ones—and handed it to Morgan to eat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
Morgan took the meal, his big serious eyes looking up at Xander.
“Eat that. It will make you feel better.” Inside Xander cringed. I’d make a terrible parent.
He turned away, looking over the bike that was now covered in dirt and debris. “I have to check out the cycle and see how bad the damage is.” And try to figure out what the hell just happened.
He looked up. The strange colors were still dancing in the sky, though they were less intense than they had been. They reminded him of the Northern Lights. He and Alix had seen them once on a trip to camp out in the Rim Forest, not far from the Northern Glacier.
Some kind of solar flare, then?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. They were lucky to have come to ground without serious injury.
While Morgan ate his meal contentedly, Xander set about checking the condition of the bike.
QUINCE GLIDED her hoverbike to a halt on a small rise directly overlooking the waters of the Theseus. They’d made good time—shortly after stopping on the hillside, they had broken out of the forest into the more open lowlands that bounded the river on its northern side.
Below them, the river curved in a wide loop. The rendezvous spot. “That’s where we’ll meet Xander,” she told Jameson.
“If he makes it.”
She glared at him and started down the hillside toward the river.
Another twenty minutes brought them down close to the shore. She searched for a good place to set up camp and settled on a spot above a small inlet that was shaded with tartanga trees, their broad, tripartite silver leaves shading the campsite nicely from the sun.
Jameson was looking up nervously at the trees above. “Are there… wereveren here?”
Quince laughed in spite of herself. “You’re safe. They don’t come down this close to the water—they’re only in the forest in the higher elevations. We might see a swamp bear or two, but they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.” She tucked the cycle under the cover of the trees. Satisfied that it could not be easily seen from above, she dismounted.
She found a shaded spot with level ground.
Jameson followed.
“Can you set up the camp? We don’t need the deterrent field this time.”
He nodded. “Where are you going?”
“To see if I can find us a treat for dinner.”
She waved and set off toward the Theseus. It was about a hundred meters away, an easy walk, and it felt good to be up on her feet again. She stretched her wings out behind her and her arms to her sides.
On her way down toward the water, she glanced up at the sun again. It had definitely turned a pale red. Jameson hadn’t noticed, but he was still essentially an off-worlder.
Well, he was and he wasn’t, but he didn’t know the way the sun was supposed to look here.
She guessed they had another week, at most. They should probably push on overnight, but Xander wasn’t here yet, and she needed a rest after the last two nearly sleepless nights.
It would do no good if she crashed the cycle and got them both killed.
The river spread out across the valley here, filling in little inlets and eddies along the shore where big patches of wetreeds grew, their thick, green and silver-striped stems full of the soft pulp she’d used to make the gel that eased poor Jameson’s itching. She might need to harvest a few more before they moved on.
As she approached the inlet, she smiled. She could also see the lily pads from here that heralded the fruit she was searching for.
She waded into the cool water and pulled up one of the plants, exposing the trailing roots. Nestled within the roots were three river apples, small red fruits about the size of her closed fist. She pulled the knife from her belt and cut them free, repeating the process a dozen more times. When she was done, she had a shirt-full of the sweet fruits.
She trudged out of the water and was climbing the hill toward the camp when the sky lit up in angry rainbow colors, undulating ribbons that were as beautiful as they were dangerous.
She looked up at the camp. Jameson had seen it too, and was staring up at the sky in awe.
A great roar half deafened her, and a shuttle spun past overhead, end over end, coming in from Oberon to the west trailing a long line of black smoke.
It continued on toward the east, dropping out of sight after a minute somewhere across the river.
The explosion when it hit sent up a cloud of debris and smoke and fire, close enough to shake the ground beneath her feet.
She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a gasp. It was starting already.
She hurried up the hill to the camp to reassure poor Jameson—this was well outside the man’s realm of experience. She was worried herself—she’d known what to expect on an intellectual level. This was real and immediate.
Skythane Page 11