Undazzled

by Chance Maree

  The hair on her huge, bulging forehead was shaggy, and the color of old cream. The one eye she could see was large, brown, and amazingly wide-open. The other eye was on the other side of her face, so she could only see one in the mirror at a time. Her nose was big, dark, and wet, with cavernous nostrils. Only after spotting a sharp, curved horn did she gasp. Bovidae.

  Pots raised her fingers to stroke a hairy cheek. The touch sensation felt as it always had. The tip of her nose, although rhinarium, felt no different than it had all her life.

  Beneath horns, Pots saw her floppy ears twitch in response to outside bursts of laughter, music, and shouts.

  “I have a PhD in astrophysics.” Pots watched the bison mouth contort to form words. “And I'm a…cud chewer?”

  Pots lifted her chin and observed that, yes, indeed, she had a beard. Jacob's not going to like this. She drew up her lips. A grotesque smile. Two incisors jutted from her lower jaw. Pots opened wider. Two rows of flat, pearly molars lined the back.

  Seeing her buffalo face in the mirror delivered a greater shock than anything she had ever experienced before—greater even than flying through space enmeshed in the brain matter of a giant worm-mole. She fought the urge to run screaming ape shit straight to the nearest medical facility. Pots froze. She was out of tranquilizers. She tensed her abdominal muscles to keep from being torn apart. Take a deep breath. I'm okay. I'm okay.

  Pots looked into the mirror again. A wide brown eye stared back. Her nostrils fluttered outward as she exhaled. Pots turned off the tent lights.

  ⁂

  The mirror lay once again in the bottom of the storage chest. Pots stuttered and itched through her morning routine. She, like all the first passengers aboard Alpha Horizon, had undergone psychological screening for a high sense of survival instincts and environmental adaptability. The best strategy was, as it had always been, to find a new purpose. With a field telescope strapped across her back, Pots emerged from her tent.

  At the community center, the supply dock had not yet opened. Through some means which Pots couldn't quite understand, she recognized the hunky elk unlocking the grates to be Josh, the attractive young man who restocked water bottles on the ship. Some people are gorgeous in any guise.

  Only a full veil would have hidden her buffalo face. Pots's hand could only cover her nose at best. Chin up. She dropped her hands to her sides and did not avert her gaze.

  “Morning…Josh, is it?”

  “Hey, beautiful,” the ruminant grinned.

  The line was corny, yet Pots smiled. Josh looked straight at her and hadn't turned away. His gaze made Pots feel normal.

  “I was wondering when my favorite lady would come along, and here you are.”

  Pots laughed. “I make a stunning cow.”

  “Cows are okay, but when I look into your dark, mysterious eyes, I see someone mythical, and complicated. You, Pilot Pots, have that inner beauty thing working for you.”

  “I'm blushing, in case you can't tell.” Pots peered inside the doorway to the storage area. “Can I borrow an air board for the day?”

  “Going exploring?”

  “She's borrowed that board every day for the past week.” The stock manager, a coyote-faced man, seemed to materialize from nowhere. He grumbled, “When are they going to assign you a job?”

  Josh bristled. “Give the lady some respect, Wile E. Pilot Pots was flying the worm-mole for months while you did nothing but sit on your ass.”

  “She's not a pilot anymore, is she? This isn't a vacation resort. The woman has to pitch in like all the rest of us.”

  News sure gets around fast. “Look, I'm not going on a picnic.” Pots patted her telescope.

  “This city's supposed to house a quarter million people by winter. You academics—none of you have any real skills, but you don't want to dirty your hands, neither. They should at least find something for you to do in the kitchen.”

  Pots considered the damage the coyote's head would do to her telescope. Before she could make a decision, Josh shouldered his way between Pots and the coyote guy.

  “Plans have probably been changed. Nobody will come here until they fix these hallucinations. They'll send our share of people to Gaia, at least until those ‘academics,’ as you call them, get things figured out.”

  The coyote snapped, “Where have you been? The same thing happened to the people on Beta-2-Nun.”

  “I've turned off my com,” Josh said.

  “Me, too. I enjoy the quiet.” Pots's skin—hide, whatever—burned. She pulled at the neckline of her tunic.

  “I may not be an academic, but my guess is that people would rather come here and hallucinate than die.” The stock manager stood tall. He apparently liked feeling superior.

  “I'll get a board for you, Pots,” Josh said. He brushed past the coyote guy. “Despite what they think, canines aren't in charge around here.”

  ⁂

  The lightweight laser-propelled air board transported Pots and her telescope 40 kilometers in less than two hours. From satellite footage, Pots knew the ridge overlooked a good portion of the natives' camp. She would have to be careful to go unobserved, so she hid the board in a clump of brush about 100 meters from the top and scurried from rock to rock, watching for patrolling guards.

  Perched and settled, Pots focused her telescope on the Ostarian camp, which consisted of a hundred or so circular framed tents with a crown open to the sky. In one of the tents with its sides rolled up, Pots could see women seated in a circle, sewing. Children were playing outside. Four gray-haired men were repairing a wagon. One small boy was unsuccessfully herding a goat.

  Pots zoomed the scope close enough to see details—from the old men's oily pores and unruly brows to the women's wrinkles and nose hair. Human eyes, lips, teeth, smiles, and long hair that must have never been cut—little of which grew on their faces. The only animal heads were on domesticated livestock—horses, chickens, pigs, and goats. Lots of goats.

  Wind whipped through the grassy reeds and carried with it human voices. Nervously, Pots slipped the strap of the telescope over her shoulder and hurried down a slope to her air board. The board uplifted quickly, nearly toppling over, but Pots righted it and moved forward. She heard a sound like thunder. From over her shoulder, Pots saw a horse and rider galloping alongside her. Pots ducked and veered left, expecting at any moment to feel a blow, or the sting of an arrow. The rider—a young boy—followed, and when she saw him smiling, Pots realized that she'd been challenged to a race.

  The horse was fast, perhaps as fast as the board, but Pots feared that one wrong move would cause her to lose her balance. The boy, however, was fearless. He rode with his body plastered over the horse's withers as though he were part of the animal, communicating in flesh and whispers. The air board shot up over a mound of stones, and Pots rolled bottom over top into the dirt.

  First was a sensation of numbness, then of pain. Pots searched the sky for surveillance drones. Hopefully the security guys will stop laughing long enough to send help.

  She lifted her head and then checked legs and arms and found swollen knots and bruising, but no bones appeared to be broken. After moving slowly to a kneeling position and then cautiously up on her feet, Pots glanced over and saw that her air board was surrounded by four young native boys. The one who had challenged her to a race noticed her first. He was gangly, short, and with a wiry fierceness that, as he walked toward her, was displayed like a national banner.

  “Kortu.” A brown fist thumped upon a brown chest. From the way the other boys deferred to him, this lad bore the makings of a pendragon.

  “White Buffalo Woman,” Pots said, pointing to herself.

  The other boys stood behind Kortu. All four heads tilted and every dark eye squinted.

  “White Buffalo Woman,” Kortu repeated, testing the words with perfect inflection.

  Pots eyed each of the boys with what she hoped was the countenance of a menacing buffalo.

  Kortu pointed at the air boar
d. He mimicked Pots's riding stance, and then pointed at his chest.

  Pots had no difficulty understanding his meaning, but she was intrigued by the sight of a boy without pinkies. Trying not to stare, Pots straightened her back and muttered, “Dream on, kid.”

  Kortu said something unintelligible while invoking a web of gestures between himself and the board. Pots shook her head in the negative direction but when she finally and openly laughed at the stubborn optimism of youth, the boy picked up a sizable rock and threatened to pound it upon the board.

  “Okay, okay.” Pots scrambled to the board's defense. “But first,” she said, pointing at Kortu's horse, “I get to ride him.”

  Pots pulled at the neck of her tunic and stretched the fabric from her stomach as the boys huddled and conferred, exchanging whispers and sly glances among themselves. She detected scoffs, smirks, and other signs of adolescent gnat-brained delinquent amusement.

  Wearing a smile full of mischief, Kortu led the alarmingly head-tossing, snorting, wide-eyed beast to Pots. One of the other boys ran beside the horse. He bent forward and locked his hands, offering a leg up invitation. The word the boys kept repeating could have been ‘hurry,’ but Pots wasn't certain.

  Reins gathered in one hand, Pots hopped alongside the moving horse and boys until she saw an opportunity to place her toes in the pair of intertwined hands. She ignored the pain in her legs and arms, and now her back, and sprung up quick as she could to straddle the unruly animal. Pots felt a gathering of muscle a second before the beast charged forward. She grabbed the reins and fists full of long, dark mane as the horse gathered speed. Pots fought losing balance. She drowned in a barrage of sensations—the thrusting of the horse's hindquarters, the sting of its mane whipping her face, and wind and thundering hooves deafening her ears. Soon, fear slipped away, as did thoughts of anything outside the rhythm of the hooves.

  Pots melted, as she had with Alpha Horizon. She imagined she had slipped into both beasts—into outstretched bodies and long spines, along their nervous systems into brain matter, until she saw with their eyes—honeyed space as delicious as a grassy terrain beneath an endless sky. Pots's own body dissolved—like a substance that had never existed—herself, her life, and her craving for life vanished, immaterial in speed and wind.

  All too soon, Pots felt her mount tire. The horse slowed to a canter, and then a trot. They were overtaken by Kortu on the air board. He sped by, and from the brief glimpse that Pots had of his face, the boy was alarmed. He doesn't know how to stop, Pots thought. She had intended to give Kortu instructions. Air boards were easy to operate—they had begun as children's toys. Earth’s board-savvy children had grown into adults skilled enough to ride the air boards at high speeds and over rough terrain.

  Kortu had watched Pots operate the board, but he'd seen only her tumbling dismount into the dirt. Kortu must have tried to slow down, but the board's speed appeared to be increasing. Pots urged the horse to follow him. If she could catch up enough to mime the lean and foot-drop technique, the board would at least slow down enough for the boy to leap off. In the distance, Pots saw Kortu and the air board disappear over a crest.

  The crest dropped severely, and the horse skidded to a stop. Pots pitched over the horse's neck and nearly rolled down the rocky hill. Kortu lay below, motionless among the rocks.

  CHAPTER 12

  Commander Gunner Dovmont

  Taoist paradoxes haunted Gunner—they challenged him—he stalked them like game. One riddle, profound and in need of solving, never quite fathomable in any honest sense, was wu wei—Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone. Anyone who claimed to understand that was lying—at least Gunner thought so, until now.

  With cold, flat eyes and raspy voice, Gunner peered at the corpse and said, “We do nothing.”

  Deputy Lieutenant Thomas dismissed the recovery team from the outpost. Gunner zipped closed the body bag.

  “I'll take care of it, sir,” Thomas said. He picked up the body and laid it where Gunner pointed, in the shade of the tent. “Agent Barbara Percy has arrived. She's waiting at the communication center.”

  Gunner turned his back. “Who's our medic?”

  “Dr. Otto.”

  “What is he?”

  “Avian.”

  Gunner held up Viper Tactical Binoculars to scan the pit work underway by the Waste Engineering team. “Have Dr. Otto preserve the body. Be discreet. I want Jacob Reynolds to perform the autopsy. I don't care where Reynolds is, or what he's doing—have him flown here immediately.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Gunner sniffed. He turned in direction of the camp. Motoring over the series of rises between the outpost and the communications tent was a military-issued scooter whose driver, in a bright red dress, was most definitely nonmilitary. “That's Agent Percy approaching, isn't it?”

  “Waiting didn't suit her, sir.”

  “She's reptilian, too.”

  The government representative—or agent, or, as some say, corporate spy—maneuvered the solar powered scooter close to the tent and dismounted in what the two men observed to be an endearingly awkward, vulnerable, and utterly feminine manner.

  After glancing sidelong at Gunner, Barbara Percy walked directly to the corpse. The commander turned and watched as she squatted and unzipped the body bag. The spy blinked at the sight of the partially smashed skull. The boy's pale face was stained with dried blood. Barbara stood, still gazing down at the corpse. “This is the first Ostarian I've seen. I was told they look human.”

  “I expected to be the one responsible for the first causality.” Gunner’s voice hinted at a sense of relief that surprised him.

  “It was an accident,” Barbara stated, matter of fact. “Where is my old pod mate?”

  Gunner didn't answer. Lieutenant Thomas inserted, “Pilot Pots chose to ride a horse back to camp. We expect she'll arrive by sunset.”

  One of Barbara's eyes moved in an odd manner. An eyebrow would have arched if she still had one. She turned again to the body. “He's a child. Pots must feel horrible. The natives are not going to like this.”

  Gunner grunted, “Natives always find something to complain about.”

  The spy emitted a deep sigh that caused a rise and fall of her chest. “There's always strife when people migrate to other lands. Natives are never wholly assimilated.”

  Gunner nodded, narrowing his eyes. “Still, native discontent is best averted.”

  “You have a plan?” Barbara squatted to study the boy's face. She touched his cheek skin with the tip of her pinky. “Why is it that he looks human, and I'm a gecko?”

  “Space-travel induced hallucination.”

  “We both know that's not true.”

  Barbara wobbled on her heels. Gunner gave her a hand up. “Sounds like you have intel,” he said.

  “No official statement yet, but passengers on the other ships are having the same experience.”

  “No need to divert Alpha Horizon after all.”

  “The second migration is on schedule.”

  Gunner moved away from the tent. The deputy lieutenant and government agent both followed. Stretched before them, a city was under construction. Dirt-carved roads and structures from combinations of wood, manufactured panels, and bricks made of native clay were rising from the fields, along the river, and would soon expand as far as the eye could see.

  “There will be a million people on this planet by winter.”

  “Give or take.” Agent Percy's tongue flicked up and out to lick dust from the transparent membrane covering her eye. “Children will be on board this time.” She stood on tiptoe, protecting the spiked tip of her high heels from sinking into the dirt. The wind whipped her dress precariously high on her still quite womanly thighs. She didn't move to cover them. “What are you planning, Commander?”

  Gunner pretended not to notice Barbara's legs, her tongue's action, or her request. She smelled good, though. “We'll be ready,” was all he said.
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  ⁂

  Primary items: The hydroponic gardens have been assembled in all cities. Satisfactory materials for nanobots' fabrication of machine parts have yet to be identified. News of the native boy's death could not be contained. The natives deployed several search parties. We are prepared for retaliation. Dr. Reynolds will perform the native’s autopsy. Pilot Pots returned to camp on a borrowed horse. Agent Percy remains in Galileo, reportedly taking up residence with Casia Goodfellow.

  The commander deleted that last line before storing the report. He updated his personal log, without mentioning Barbara, and consumed two concentrated hemp protein meal bars and a bottle of water. The meal bars were tasteless, but not as bad as the Zina bricks he’d eaten aboard the ship. Gunner meditated until well after sunset.

  At midnight, Gunner opened the flap to his tent and welcomed six of his first lieutenants. They gathered around his table in a dutiful ruse that included contraband cigars and whiskey. Rumor was they came together to play poker.

  In the chain of command, each first lieutenant commanded one of Ostara's nine cities. Gunner established his headquarters in Galileo, but First Lieutenant Krull, Gunner's longtime comrade-in-arms who incidentally looked as croc-ish as Gunner, was in charge of Galileo's military and civilian affairs.

  The other croc in the group, in charge of Aristotle, was First Lieutenant Brown. Three lizards—Aleksandrov, Snyder, and Chang—headed Kong Qiu, Gandhi, and Baha, respectfully. Holcomb, the only snake among them, commanded Einstein. Each man reported to Gunner. They were his inner circle. Reptilians, all.

  Of the First Lieutenants not in attendance, only one—Lieutenant Tudor, stationed in Socrates—was reptilian. Tudor differed from his comrades in that he had no teeth—he was an herbivore; a turtle, in fact—whereas all others in Gunner's inner circle had the sharp, pointed teeth of carnivores. The other outsiders were Goody, a mighty beaked and fierce hawk in Franklin, and a fanged black wolf, Hernandez, in Mandela.