by Patty Jansen
The collected energy from the beams made that pillar throb with power. The air vibrated with it. It crept through her veins. Warmth spread inside her, familiar, soothing, and calling for more. Every fibre of her being wanted to go to that pillar and submerge herself in the energy it radiated. If it was what had brought her here, it could get her back home.
Rough voices sounded behind her. The five men clambered up the sand dune, silhouetted by the light. One of them pointed.
Jessica ran.
Her thoughts soared to the stars, to a place where the sky was blue and a single sun beat down on the tarmac of the airstrip at Barrow Creek and her father’s police car stood parked on the other side of the gate. He leaned against a fence post, a crooked smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye and hugged her, grumbling, “Welcome home, poss.”
She reached the circular wall and heaved herself on top into the full blast of power from the central pillar. Every particle of her body screamed with life and with the hunger for more power.
Yes, she could do it; she had to, for the sake of her parents. She would find a way back home. She would run or hide or fight the natives, go back to the beach and catch another lizard, kill it before it had a chance to bite, eat it raw if she couldn’t make a fire, build a raft and paddle to the city on the island, swim if it sank, and learn to communicate with those she found there so they could help her. If it took the rest of her life, she would find a way back home.
A long, clear note pinged across the meadow. The beams of light that passed overhead went from white to red and faded. The “eyes” at the top of the circle of posts ceased to shine. Vibrations in the air stopped and there was . . . silence.
Behind her, the first of the two suns dipped below the horizon.
Someone whistled at the ridge.
Jessica jumped off the wall. An all-too-familiar stab of pain shot up her legs as soon as her feet hit the ground. Now she had done it. In some way, this strange machine had charged her to breaking point, like when the plane went down. How stupid was that? Why hadn’t she run for the river as she had intended?
Jessica crouched and pressed herself against the wall.
When those men reached the circle of poles, she would have to do something, or they would be tanning her hide. She didn’t think she could trigger another flash, or at least not on purpose. She could make a web—but would that risk that person at the other end grabbing hold of her again?
What then? Make a dash for the river?
The brown water looked inviting, but there was no way she could run that far, not like this.
More whistles followed, closer this time, and the thuds of running feet. Female voices shouted in a language full of consonants, punctuated with loud snaps like the cracking of a whip.
Jessica peeked over the wall. Even moving her eyes hurt.
A line of figures ran across the field. Agile like hunting cats, they sliced through the vegetation. Glass-bladed knives glittered at their belts. They stopped, facing the approaching men.
Jessica’s pursuers had come to a stop on the hillside. One of them spoke, his voice rough.
Several female voices replied with shouts.
That was a piece of luck. If these guys were going to have a conference, maybe she could still get away. She turned . . . and stared into a circle of faces. Small, lithe creatures human-like enough to call them people reached only to her chest. Their eyes were at least three times the size of a human’s, pools of liquid brown. Their hair, black or greying, was rolled into dreadlocks or woven into ornate braids with beads and bits of coloured fabric. A faint muddy scent drifted on the breeze. She recognised that smell from the people she had thought were poachers.
There were about twenty of them, naked except for white aprons. Patterns of white and grey zebra stripes or leopard spots graced their upper arms, elbows and shoulders, but faded on their faces, and on their chests, which had pale, rounded breasts.
Jessica backed into the wall, holding up her hands. “Look, I’m unarmed.”
Stupid. Aliens only spoke English in the movies.
The females continued their staring game. One of them muttered a word, avya, another repeated it, until it went around the group like Chinese whispers. Avya, avya.
It made her nervous.
“Well, guess you’ve never seen a human being before. Suppose we’re kinda ugly to you.” God, she was saying stupid stuff, babbling. Her head throbbed with a monumental headache. A cloud of sparks swirled under her skin.
The spectators shuffled aside for an older female. Wispy white hair hung to her waist, threaded into plaits adorned with beads. The low light from the setting suns made the grooves and wrinkles in her face stand out like canyons on a topographic map. One of the aproned females spoke in staccato tones, but the old female silenced her with a wave of her hand and faced Jessica.
Her eyes were huge. Gold spots floated in the irises, the pupils black and fathomless. Long, delicate eyelashes, white with age, blinked. She reached a wrinkled, paper-skinned hand for Jessica’s upper left arm and whispered, “Anmi.”
Jessica looked down . . . and nearly fainted. The birthmark spots that had always marked her skin had joined up to form a pattern. Two signs glowed with bright phosphorescence: one like a small ‘n’ with a long loop down, the other like a mirrored numeral three.
Jessica rubbed the skin, but she knew it was pointless. The phosphorescent lines matched the familiar spots on her upper arm perfectly. They could only be part of the same thing, some kind of tattoo, and something in the air—that weird installation that collected sunlight—had brought out its radiance.
It was like . . . biology class a few months ago. Their teacher had used a blacklight on a group of cowrie shells, which had looked pretty, but ordinary, in daylight, but glowed brilliantly pink under the blacklight’s rays.
That’s how the tattoo on her arm shone.
Holy shit didn’t half describe it. And those stripy-skinned humanoids still stood staring at it, bright pink dots reflected in their huge eyes. What the bloody hell did they think she was?
The old female pointed at Jessica’s chest and repeated, “Anmi.” Then she pointed to herself and said something like, “Ikay.”
Did it matter what her name was? These looked like the same type of people who had killed Martin and the businessman. They had captured Brian. They were going to kill her anyway. Kill her and eat her like cannibals and feed the bones to the lizards.
“Well, you got that wrong. My name is Jessica. You hear that? Jessica. Jess-i-ca.”
The old female pressed her finger to lips. “Poh-poh-poh-poh—Anmi.”
“Suit yourself. Can I go now? Those guys over there are after me. I need to get to the city to catch the next spaceship to Earth. You see, I’ve got an appointment with the basketball team, but now I’m a bit late, I sort of got lost along the way and ended up on the wrong planet.”
She didn’t even know what she was saying. This was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. She stumbled a few painful steps, grasped the top of the wall to haul herself over, get out of here, but something glittered at her chest. A knife; no, more like a machete, the blade clear as glass. The female holding it was a fierce creature. Black zebra stripes on her shoulders gleamed with a coating of oil. Lean, muscled and ready to spring, a fighting Amazon.
The white-haired female Ikay gave a harsh command that sounded something like, Alll.
The Amazon relaxed her hold but something wound around Jessica’s arm and held it in an iron grip; some kind of snake-like thing, banded black and white. Jessica attempted to prise her fingers between the coils and her skin, and found its end: a small, white-haired tip. She realised where it came from. These people had tails.
“Let me go, I tell you—let me go. I’m not going to harm you.”
She struggled against the tail’s grip. Swirls of sparks raged under her skin, but if the Amazon saw them, or if she felt the heat, she didn’t show it. Pricks of pain went acr
oss Jessica’s shoulders, her stomach and her legs. Strands of light snaked when she breathed, forming into the familiar web.
Jessica tried to withdraw it. She could make Angus do what she wanted, but he was a bull, and there was only one of him. Now the web wove over the entire group of natives and there was no way she could control all of them.
Ikay grabbed her arms, and shouted harsh words.
Jessica’s skin burned. She struggled. Every movement hurt. There was pressure inside her looking for a way to escape. She wanted to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t move. Before her eyes, the blue-veined web formed out of strands that came not from her body, but materialised from Ikay’s skin. As they curved and reached out for Jessica, she retreated.
Ikay gave a sharp command. The Amazons took hold of Jessica’s shoulders, and brought her to her knees, until she faced Ikay, who bent forward until her huge black eyes filled Jessica’s vision.
Jessica closed her eyes. She could not let that web connect with her. She could not let that woman do whatever she did with those blue strands. Read her mind. Erase her memories. Kill her. Those things she had done herself.
But closing her eyes made no difference. The web not only shone through her eyelids, but it strengthened. The force at the other end pulled at the heat inside her.
Jessica wanted to scream, but her voice didn’t cooperate.
Images flowed into her mind. She saw some huge, hive-like structure in the forest. A boat floating to a jetty. There were houses in the background, and people hauling nets. Children, their skin completely striped. A group of white-haired elders in heated debate. Snapping tails, furious hand gestures. Invaders have come. We must kill them. They fell from the sky.
And then she was in another place entirely . . .
Grey light filtered through a window, over empty tables and chairs in some sort of eating house. Not normal tables—the surface was a crystalline screen with strange characters . . . which she could read. The menu.
It was raining heavily outside, a curtain of water that obscured the view beyond a grey building on the other side of a street. A man sat by himself in the corner near the window, his spidery hands—the index and middle fingers much longer than the others—clutching a cup.
He looked up; a smile crinkled the skin around deep-set eyes, the irises yellow with a black rim. “Daya.”
Jessica drew back a chair. Once again she was in the body of the strange man—that’s why she could read the menu.
“How are you, Wonan?” the man asked, and it was strange to have the sound come from her mouth.
“You seemed in a hurry to talk to me.”
“I am—thank you.” The last words to the woman who deposited a glass on the table. It contained a vivid blue drink, a trail of vapour rising from its surface.
Daya picked up the glass. Jessica felt it as he held his breath and took a large gulp. His mouth burned, and when he swallowed the feeling tracked all the way into his stomach. Warmth spread through his body. He sighed; he needed that.
Wonan blew steam off his tea. “So, what is the problem?”
“I’d like to have your thoughts on something. I’ve tried a lot of other things, but I keep coming back to the same conclusion.” He twirled his glass. “Say you wanted to fool the Exchange, how would you do it?”
“Fool the Exchange?” Wonan leant back in his chair, frowning. “To what end?”
“To make an aircraft disappear. A craft that is unaware that it’s being transferred.”
Yellow eyes fixed his. “You’re talking about unilateral translocation.”
“Yes.” Daya cringed. Like the fifth dimension and the eighth sense, unilateral translocation was one of the subjects philosophers liked discussing but no researcher in the sciences seriously believed existed.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know. Yet it happened. Something fooled the Network into accepting reciprocity for a craft that had no ability to do so. A craft that had no Exchange capacity, no anpar control, and no communication.”
Wonan’s frown had deepened. “You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“If you’re right, why has no one made a big fuss about this?”
“They have, on the craft’s home world. But it’s not a Union world and they have no idea even of the existence of the Exchange.”
Wonan’s eyes widened. “Where is the craft now?”
“If I knew that, I’d be halfway to answering my questions. I need access to the translocation records.”
The web crackled and shivered.
Damn, damn, damn. She couldn’t control it. Just when it was getting interesting—he was talking about what had happened to her, wasn’t he?
The restaurant exploded amidst a blur of images that were not Daya’s, but belonged to the tailed people. A boat bringing in a huge fish. Tailed and stripy-skinned people carving it up on the beach. A young male climbing a tree to pick fruit. The images came faster and faster until they blurred together in a stream of colour.
Strands of light flailed and whipped about, until they, too, merged and became a seething stream of white that flowed through her and eroded the knot of energy inside her, like a river eats at a sandy bank. When the light dimmed, all she saw was two large brown eyes that seemed to swallow her. The blue strands and sparks under her skin were gone. So was the pain.
8
A SNAP BROUGHT Jessica back from the trance.
She blinked. Stared. Blinked again.
Orange light gilded Ikay’s face, bringing out gold spots in her huge irises. Behind her some curious females still lingered, but most onlookers had gone back to work.
Doors were open at the bottom of the installation’s central pillar. Jessica could see wire cages inside, with lots of balls that glowed like radioactive caviar. A group of females were wearing gloves and loading those balls into bags, which others carried towards the river.
The air was humid, heavy with the minty scent from the females’ bodies and the wet smell of mud. A breeze caressed Jessica’s skin like soft fingers. The most beautiful thing in the universe. Gone was the burning, the pain, the madness and the recklessness. Gone was the web and the man’s voice and the stranger in the restaurant. With the heat that had fled her body through the web, the anger had melted away.
How had this alien female done that? Because when their minds connected, there had been no doubt: Ikay had done something to drain off the pressure, something none of the doctors she had visited on Earth had ever been able to do.
Jessica stared at Ikay and the remaining onlookers as if, for the first time, really seeing them.
Yes, they were the same type of creatures as the ones who had been following her, the ones who had taken Brian and killed the others. Those men still stood motionless at the ridge, mere silhouettes against the darkening sky. A group of hunting females waited halfway between them and the wall. Why the men should let themselves be stopped when they had fire-spewing weapons was a question Jessica couldn’t answer, but the fact was they didn’t come closer and so it seemed for now she was safe, at least from them. And if these females had plans to kill her, they could have done so a hundred times already.
A wave of fatigue rolled over her.
“I’m sorry to be so rude, but would you have something to eat?” Jessica mimicked eating.
Ikay repeated Jessica’s mimicking, speaking a single word that sounded something like okkik, with short vowels and deep guttural “k” sounds.
Jessica nodded, but at Ikay’s blank stare repeated the gesture again. “Please?”
Ikay beckoned, and led Jessica away from the wall, waving the last aproned workers back to their jobs. The two Amazons followed, still looking wary.
At the gap in the wall another Amazon waited. This one was much younger, her body graceful with female curves and supple, striped skin. Large, long-lashed doe-eyes met Jessica’s in a questioning look. A gorgeous, feminine creature, even in the way she held her knife.
<
br /> Her voice, young and childish, rang like a bell.
Ikay pointed at the chest of the black-haired Amazon and said a single word that sounded like “Alllll.”
The Amazon’s name?
Jessica tried to repeat the word, but couldn’t produce the thick “l” and said, “Alla.”
The Amazon’s glare met hers. Her tail swayed at knee level. It probably meant mildly annoyed.
Ikay moved to introduce the older woman with the leopard spots. This one took Jessica’s bastardisation of her name into Maire without any emotion, gazing into the sunset.
On the other hand, after hearing Jessica call her “Dora”, the young Amazon let forth a barrage of snorts and gurgles that sounded like she was choking. It seemed this was their version of laughter. Jessica chuckled, launching Dora into another set of snorts.
Alla gave her a cold look, and spoke a few harsh words.
Ikay waved around the small group and said something that sounded like, “Pengali.”
So that’s what they called themselves, Pengali.
Jessica repeated, “Pengali.” And then pointed at her own chest. “I’m Jessica. I’m human.” Well, that sounded stupid.
Ikay raised her hand and wagged her finger. “Poh-poh-poh-poh—Anmi.”
Whatever. As long as they gave her something to eat.
A well-worn path led from the power installation to the river bank. Yellowish brown water flowed sluggishly past a line of about ten dugout canoes, tied to each other, into which the working females were loading their bags of glowing pearls. A delivery of charged batteries to the island city she had seen?
Another boat lay on the muddy beach a bit away from the others. The grey-haired Amazon, Maire, took the rope attached to the bow and heaved, dragging the canoe into the water. Dora sprang into the bow, picked up a stick and poked it hard into the sand to keep the boat in place. Jessica stepped in; Ikay settled behind her.