by Lucia Ashta
“Now,” Aletox said, returning his attention to Ilara. “Where would the King send you?”
“It’s not fair to make her figure it out,” I interjected. “She doesn’t even remember the King.” There were so many fears I was omitting from my words, principal among them was that Ilara hadn’t forgotten, that she never lived the memories to begin with.
He pinned beady eyes on me. “You know the King. You know him better than most of us.”
He knows I went into the King’s memories, I said to Dolpheus. How is that possible?
I don’t know, Tan, I really don’t. But he’s said a few things he should have no way of knowing. Unless we have a birdie among us, and that seems unlikely.
Before I gave away our ability to mind speak with each other, I jumped in with the first thing that popped into my addled mind. “The King would send her wherever she would benefit the King the most.”
“Yes, Tanus, I just said that. Maybe you aren’t my son after all. No son of mine could be this slow to catch on.”
I glared but otherwise ignored him. “What’s most valuable to the King on Sand? The pure sand that can only be found here. The pure sand that’s on the opposite end of the spectrum from our coarse, black sand. The pure sand that’s worth fortunes in roones, more than that, its worth can’t even compare to roones.”
Aletox arched one eyebrow. Again, I ignored him and those annoying black eyebrows that looked painted on his forehead.
“If the King sent the Princess to Sand, which he did, then he’d want to get some information about how better to harvest the pure sand and transport it back to O. So he’d send the Princess to wherever the purest sand is.” I’d heard this from the King’s own lips when I’d been a visitor in his memories.
Aletox said, “That’s right.” He turned back to Ilara. “So, Your Majesty, where is the purest sand on Sand?”
“Seriously?” Ilara said.
“Deadly,” Aletox said.
“The deserts or beaches, I guess. What’s considered the highest grade of sand on Origins?”
Lila answered her, words still slightly slurred. “The finer and whiter the grain, the purer it is.”
“Man, I don’t know. There’s what Oers would consider ‘pure’ sand all over the place. How am I supposed to know which of all the places has the purest and finest?”
“Guess,” Dolpheus said.
“Guess?” Aletox said and whirled on my friend. “You want her to guess where we land the transport machine?”
“Hey, asshole, do you have a better idea? If you’d said something of this before, maybe we could’ve figured something out. But you didn’t.”
“Do you have some kind of search engine? Internet, or something like it we could use? We could find the answer in seconds that way,” Ilara said. “From the blank looks on your faces, I’m guessing you have no idea what I’m talking about, so... I’m sure there are plenty of beaches that have pure sand. But the only place I can for sure say would have a shitload of sand and probably pure sand would be someplace like the Sahara Desert. But the Sahara Desert’s a big, hot, dangerous place.”
“Then let’s go to the Sahara Desert,” Aletox said, and they sounded too much like famous last words for my taste. “Where is it?”
“In Africa.”
“And where’s Africa?”
“It’s a big continent, er, land mass, kind of shaped like this.” Ilara drew in the air with her fingers.
“All right,” Aletox said. “I’ll find it. Now, make sure you’re buckled up. This could be a bumpy ride.”
Now those were famous last words. After what we’d already survived at the hands of this man today, I didn’t want to imagine how bumpy it could get.
I made sure my harness was tight as blood drained from my face. A quick glance at my friends confirmed that we were one scared crew, holding on for our lives.
2
“You know, maybe we should talk about this some more,” Ilara said at precisely the same moment the vunter capsule began to shake any coherent thoughts we’d managed loose again.
I’d wanted to agree that we absolutely should talk about our destination more before descending onto an alien planet in the middle of a continent that looked like a misshapen triangle from Ilara’s air sketch. I would have argued that where we touched down should take into account a great many more factors than Ilara’s guess. I would have accused Aletox of sloppiness and wondered why he was so quick to come to a decision when all of our lives hung in the balance—had he given me the chance.
But keeping my teeth from breaking and my insides from leaching into the cabin required all my attention. The shaking and lurching wasn’t as bad as it had been during the jump across the galaxy. That wasn’t saying much. During the jump, I’d wished for the mercy of death. Now I just begged for it to be over already.
By the time we crossed the gaseous threshold into the planet’s atmosphere, I didn’t give a flying fuck where Aletox brought us down, I just wanted to be free of this death trap. I swore never to take stillness for granted again.
My head rattled from side to side across the tight space between the headrest’s curved sides. Any attempt to keep my head still was useless. How on O had Aletox not added some kind of strap to keep your head in place when he designed this transport machine?
Then we went into a free fall. My stomach lurched upward into my chest cavity, where it didn’t belong, and all I could register was that the fall of death was quieter than I ever imagined it to be. Nothing vibrated anymore. The ride was finally smooth, but was plummeting us far too quickly toward the hard surface of the planet below.
At this rate, death would arrive swiftly. Hazily, while my ears popped painfully and darkness began to cloud the edges of my vision, I wondered if I’d become a good man before I died. Had I managed it? I knew I wasn’t a great man; perhaps that required a selfless temperament different from my own. But had I become a good man before death? Was I a man worthy of a great woman’s love and a loyal friend’s trust?
I didn’t arrive at any conclusion of my worthiness before the darkness claimed my vision and I could no longer sense anything, save one last groaning, gagging sound somewhere in the cabin.
Then, for the second time in an hour, there was nothing.
3
When I came to this time, I knew right away I wasn’t dead. I was slumped forward in my seat over my harness, which cut severely into my flesh. My head throbbed terribly at my temples, and every part of my body scolded me for the abuse. A thin trail of saliva hung from the corner of my mouth to my thigh, but I couldn’t move to wipe it.
I waited, precisely as I was, because there was nothing I could do like this beyond mourn the fact that I’d decided to trust Aletox, the one man I knew with certainty wasn’t worthy of my trust, and I’d allowed those I cared about to trust him as well. It’d been a mistake, probably the worst in my life in a long line of bad mistakes.
As time, an objective witness to human agony, ticked on, I realized we weren’t moving anymore. I would have been relieved, but that was an unachievable state when you felt blown apart into a million fragments. Had a giant shoved me into his mouth, chewed for a while, and then spit me back out, I might have felt better.
Eventually, the tortured sounds of my companions began to pull me out of myself. It was a replay of our earlier attempts to recover from the jump across space. Only now we were beaten down and defeated. Alongside Dolpheus, I’d fought in battles, leading soldiers even, for days without rest. No foe or beast could keep me from barreling forward to accomplish my immediate purpose, even when I didn’t fully agree with my orders.
Aletox and his hellish device had elicited the surrender I’d never before given in four hundred forty-three years of life, most of which I’d spent fighting.
When he spoke, I wanted nothing more than to push his foul voice away. I wished to force him out of my reality, to never have to see his sharp, unyielding features again.
But he p
ersisted. Damn him.
“You can exit the capsule whenever you’re ready,” he said as if nothing extraordinary had happened, as if the five of us regularly hurtled through space at astonishing speeds that our bodies proved they weren’t meant to withstand.
Aletox unclasped his restraints, ran agile fingers across a holographic board in front of him, then stashed it away. All transport functions shut down, deanimating the space machine into little more than a vunter can. One that I was desperate to be free from.
He avoided all eye contact with the five of us. Even though I couldn’t turn my head to see my friends, I was certain they must be glaring hatred at him as I was.
Aletox stood, which on its own was astounding, and crossed the cramped floor of the capsule, nimbly skirting puddles of bile.
He’s not human, Dolpheus said, his words as wobbly as my thoughts. That explains a lot.
Aye, I responded. I can’t even understand how he’s standing, let alone operating complex machinery.
Aletox opened the multiple fasteners that held the door closed with sharp clicks. Each one pierced my head painfully, the clanks echoing through my brain until they dissolved into a ringing that seemed as if it would never end.
Aletox didn’t even ask if we were ready before he pushed the door open.
The moment he did, Planet Sand gave us an intense and wholly overwhelming greeting, especially in our weakened state.
The light was so bright it made my eyes water. Even as I tried to blink against the blinding white, a wave of heat slammed into me, making it hard to draw a breath. Then sand blew into the cabin as if it were as desperate to flee Planet Sand as we were to flee the vunter death trap. It whirled in on a wind, peppering my exposed face like thousands of little buzzers stinging my vulnerable flesh all at once. I couldn’t move my arms fast enough to shield my face from the onslaught, my reactions were dulled. So I scrunched my eyes shut and my face into a grimace as I took the pounding of several fortunes in pure sand.
It invaded my nose and my ears. I coughed, then gagged when it coated my mouth.
“By the oasis, man,” Dolpheus yelled, “close that damn door!” As soon as he finished speaking, Dolpheus began coughing so violently I was sure he must have inhaled enough sand to buy a family home on O.
My eyes and mouth were closed against the assault, and I wished I could close every other orifice as well.
Finally, with several grunts more than he’d permitted himself when we were hurtling toward death, Aletox managed to pull the door closed. The wind of Planet Sand howled a complaint, yanking the door open again, showing Aletox how insignificant he was compared to its might.
Aletox struggled to pull the door shut again for so long that I wondered if there was any way I could get my body to rise so I could help. We needed that door shut before sand buried us inside this death trap. I refused to die in a vunter can. Better to die a warrior’s death in the maws of a mowab than this. But then, maybe we’d been doomed to that fate since we first stepped into it.
But as I was trying to wangle my body into some semblance of functionality, with a savage roar, Aletox pulled the door shut again. This time, he held on until he’d snapped three of the fasteners closed. Then he leaned against it, panting until he started to cough.
His coughs were drowned out by our own. We coughed until it hurt. I wheezed and tried to open my eyes. Sand scraped my eyeballs until I gave up, resigned to closing my eyes again.
A long time passed where there were plenty of the sounds of human beings recovering from the wrath of nature and stupid vunter design, but there were no words. A loud thud stood out against hacking and heavy breathing and then Kai said, “Holy hell. Aletox, are you okay?”
Was something wrong with the invulnerable Aletox? After he’d withstood space travel like a god, had the sand he’d likely come seeking taken him down? I had to see for myself, but my eyes burned and teared.
“Guys,” Kai said, “I think we need to help him.”
“I can’t keep my eyes open,” I said. “Every time I try, they burn.”
Kai said, “Well, you might want to open them anyway, it looks like Aletox is dying.”
Usually a statement about someone dying would be more than sufficient to prompt immediate action and a sense of urgency. I couldn’t decide if it was our physical condition that prevented this kind of logical reaction, or if it was just that the man had pushed us all too far for us to care in the way we normally would.
I forced my eyes open. It was terrible, and I had to ignore every one of my body’s instincts that screamed at me to shut them. Tears streamed down my face as I watched Dolpheus stretch a boot toward Aletox’s body. “Aletox,” he said and nudged his body, crumpled into a heap on floor.
“Aletox,” Dolpheus said and nudged again. Nothing. No response. “Dammit,” he growled viciously and he unsnapped his harness.
Dolpheus was only in this mess because of me. I couldn’t let him deal with this alone. But there was a part of me that couldn’t bring myself to care whether the man lived or died. I quickly convinced myself it must be a part of me that felt the pain of a child abandoned by his father, because I didn’t want to explore whether the rest of me could allow a man to whither into death without acting, even if I’d wanted to kill him just moments before. After all, when I thought I was surely dying, hadn’t I wanted to think myself a good, perhaps even a great, man?
A great man wouldn’t allow another to just die at his feet. Neither would a good one.
“Fuck,” I managed through a cough as I unclasped my harness. Once I determined my body into motion, my first urge was to rub the crap out of my eyes. But I knew better than to rub the scratchy stuff that filled them. I stretched my head upward and forced my eyes to remain open, blinking only when I had to, the stinging still unbearable.
Another click told me someone else intended to help Aletox, too.
You can do it, Tan, I said to myself. Come on. You’ve stared down mowabs. You can get out of your seat.
But no matter what I told myself, my body didn’t appear to agree. I scooted to the end of my seat and put weight on my legs. As soon as I attempted to rise, they gave out, and I collapsed on top of Aletox’s legs.
He didn’t move. He didn’t even twitch.
“Fuck,” I said, thinking maybe I should convince myself I was upset because the man, who might be my father, who was a human being (maybe), might be dead, and that I wasn’t upset because the man happened to be our pilot and our only way back home.
Another thump and Dolpheus landed on Aletox’s shoulder. “Ow,” he said, but there was no reaction from Aletox.
I managed to get a hand to cooperate enough to shake Aletox’s legs when Kai rose from his seat. He managed several steps before swaying and lowering himself to the floor urgently. Still, his achievement was impressive compared to mine. My body was struggling to interpret which way was up and which down. I closed my watering eyes and heard Kai dragging himself across the floor to Aletox’s other side.
There’d been vomit on the floor of the cabin before the sand whooshed in, but the three of us slid across the floor inelegantly without regard to it. Our problems were far worse than bile. We were in a shitload of trouble before our pilot collapsed. I had no good words, beyond a string of curses, that could describe the magnitude of trouble we were in now.
We had to have a pilot. Come on, Tan, I urged myself again, willing myself to focus. I snapped my eyes wide open and dragged myself up Aletox’s body until I collided with Dolpheus.
“Aletox,” I said and shook him.
“Aletox,” Dolpheus tried. “Come on, man.”
Kai dragged himself a bit closer. He perched above Aletox’s face. He drew open Aletox’s eyelids, though I didn’t understand what he might be looking for. I looked too and all I saw were red, irritated eyeballs and the same dark, unfeeling irises as always.
Kai lowered his ear to Aletox’s nose and pressed a palm against his chest and waited.
“Well,” Lila said, her voice imbued with a bit of the panic I felt. “Is he alive?”
“Shhh,” Kai said. “Let me listen.”
We all waited, hanging on the sound of a cruel man’s breath. The sand whipped against the exterior of the transport capsule. I shivered as it occurred to me that it sounded like the claws of some ferocious monster that waited to devour us.
“He’s breathing,” Kai said, and there was real joy in his voice. “He’s breathing, he’s fucking breathing.”
I shared his relief and smiled at him and then at Dolpheus.
“We still have a pilot,” Kai said, echoing my thought.
Aletox was a man who used others. It was no surprise then that our relief was rooted only in what we needed from him.
“So what’s wrong with him?” Ilara asked.
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “But his breathing is steady now. Whatever it was or is, he should recover from it and wake up.”
But Kai sounded like he was guessing, which is what I was doing too. I’d never seen a man collapse without apparent cause. He hadn’t fallen, clutching at his chest; his eyes hadn’t rolled back in his head.
He had, however, just opened the door on an alien planet.
“Don’t you have some way to make sure he’s all right?” Ilara asked. “Some fancy machine you can wave across him to heal him? What about that medical kit thing you said you usually carry with you when you go off to battle?”
I looked at Dolpheus. He shrugged. I sighed. “We didn’t.”
“What?” Ilara said. “You didn’t bring a nifty healing tool on a trip to outer space?”
“If you recall, we didn’t plan on traveling across space. We were just going to go into the splicing lab for answers about the splicing process. There were no plans to come to another planet.”