by Chloe Garner
“Are you broken?” it asked.
“Um,” Olivia answered. The word came, but she didn’t have many more. The interpreter that she’d had implanted when she was in elementary school was just as high-quality as any other of the same vintage, but she hadn’t had much exercise with it, spending her entire life in the US, and her brain didn’t trigger it nor interact with it anywhere near as efficiently as the jumpers, for instance.
“Your friend, is he abandoning you?” the individual asked.
Olivia took a step back, then got angry at Cassie for saying she acted like prey.
Sure she did, but it was rude to point it out.
Troy was here.
Somehow, he was here, and she was here to help him.
She was here for a reason, not just wandering around hoping to discover one.
“I can’t climb,” she said slowly.
“No,” the creature said. “Neither can he.”
Olivia looked up at Cassie, where she had just reached the midpoint of the cliff and was continuing up without any sense of concern.
“Not… like you,” Olivia said, hoping that the word she’d used for ‘you’ was right. It hadn’t felt right.
“Band Rung are the best climbers,” it said. There was emotion there, but it was like describing a new flavor of ice cream. All she could say was that it wasn’t… bad? It wasn’t one she’d met before? She wasn’t sure.
The white, slitted eyes took her in with an eerie lack of lids, then it wrapped an arm around her and started for the rocks.
“I will take you,” it said.
Olivia should have screamed.
Should have thrashed.
Should have at least fought.
But between the jumps here and the water and the sharks and the waves, her panic response broke.
She just froze as the creature walked her straight to the cliff face and started up it as though it was just as simple as flat ground, even with only three limbs.
It could just drop her.
Take her up thirty feet and let go, to see what happened.
The thought just made her freeze harder, then slowly reach up to grip the creature’s arm with fingers that tucked under her own chin.
Its grip was amazing. Like being wrapped in a thick belt, she dangled from its shoulder like she was anchored there. It wasn’t going to drop her on accident; she wouldn’t just slip away. And the part of her mind that trusted everyone, liked everyone, was certain it wasn’t going to do it on purpose. It was a nice creature, helping her up after Cassie, trying to make sure she didn’t get left behind.
They got up even with Cassie and then passed her, and Olivia could have sworn she saw a smug look on Cassie’s face as they went by. The creature crested the cliff and stood, putting her down on her feet way, way too close to the edge, given the depth of the fissures running past her in the dark rock.
“Llargon,” the creature said.
The dark rock ran, dotted here and there by pioneering plants with vivid green leaves, for several dozen feet before it began to break away, giving way to shrubs and then trees. They were foreign to her, angular trunks and wide leaves, but the color of green was not. They were sucking down the same frequencies of light as on Earth, and they were a beautiful green.
The rock broke down further and the ground dropped below the level of the cliffs, a plateau eaten from the middle by a jungle, and down in the bottom of the bowl ringed by dark rock cliffs, there was a golden city.
It rose up out of the jungle not unlike the tropical ruins of Central America, but it glimmered in the sun with a metallic sheen. Not gold, literally, but bronze, perhaps, or another warm-colored metal. The buildings were wrought with it, and big trees grew up out of the buildings, shading the lower levels and - Olivia realized - obscuring how big the city might have actually been, under the canopy. There might have been twenty or thirty feet of city below the trees that she looked down on from where she stood.
Cassie came up over the edge of the cliff, accepting her box from one of the creatures.
“Thank you,” she said easily. “That’s a lovely climb.”
“The cliffs here are best,” another of the creatures answered with a tone that Olivia thought had a sense of friendly to it, but it was still very foreign to her. There were more words, but Olivia couldn’t make them out.
“Thank. You,” she said slowly to the individual who had helped her up.
“It’s nice of you,” Cassie said. “I know you’re struggling with the language still, but you should know that it wasn’t just magnanimity that got you up here.”
“What?” Olivia asked. Cassie nodded, still grinning as she looked out at the city.
“Oh, yes. We’re prisoners.”
*********
The Lumps kept a very low profile.
Wherever they were, they were acting just like humans, as far as Jesse could figure out.
He was checking power grids and the internet, transportation, food consumption, every record he could get his hands on, legally or otherwise, and while he did find a number of interesting things on the planet, he didn’t find anything that looked or acted like a Lump.
They were nearly as adaptable as Palta, not as smart, but they didn’t need to be. They bought what they couldn’t figure out, and they hired what they couldn’t do.
Given how they’d gotten here, they’d be willing to steal to get themselves started, but they weren’t stealing big things, and Jesse couldn’t find any evidence of them killing anyone. They were willing, but it was a big splash, and not their style unless they had to.
They preferred it when people gave them things, instead.
They liked power, as a species, but they weren’t monolithic. Weren’t predictable.
He found himself thinking about things the way he imagined Cassie would. The way a human would track the Lumps, with his knowledge.
How had they gotten out? He could answer that. Perception manipulation past the guards, skate past the mockery of a modern security system, out the door, and away from the new building. After that, they were just people on a large, bustling base. They’d walked across it, gotten to a stretch of fence where they could work for about a minute and a half without anyone noticing them, and they’d been out.
No problem.
But what then?
The foreign terrestrials at the dorms didn’t have money. They didn’t have access to it, and very few of the people they’d have had contact with would have paper money. They needed access to a digital environment to get money from most of the people they’d met. Lumps or not, it took a little bit of learning to figure out that one.
It had taken Jesse an hour, the first time he’d walked away from base.
But they would need clothing and transportation, and both of those cost money. They couldn’t just continue on foot. More, they wouldn’t just continue on foot. Not any more than he would have.
He walked along the sidewalk closest to the fence where they’d gone through, just watching.
Seeing it the way he’d seen it for the first time.
Noisy, internal combustion engines.
Hard surfaces. Nothing clever or dynamic about them. Concrete and asphalt.
The universal presence of grass.
The land around the base was well-kept and civil. Domestic.
They’d been around humans for several months longer than he had, when they’d gone missing - presumably. Hard to be certain when the last headcount had been, for sure, but Jesse figured Donovan would have destroyed all records of them, if they’d gone missing and he’d known about it.
They understood humans. That Jesse believed. They knew how to look human. Could have easily stolen clothing to prepare for leaving. They’d move like humans. No one would have noticed them, here. But they’d have been seeing this all for the first time.
Making a plan on the fly.
Toward what goal?
It mattered.
They’d bought their way
here. It certainly hadn’t been a fortune, but it was enough, and they’d given up their personal comforts to come to this prehistoric planet, where they were held as prisoners.
Possible they just wanted to get away.
Lumps had enemies.
They could be legitimate political refugees, ones who had gotten fed up with the facility and walked out the door.
The problem with that theory was an old rumor about Lumps and Wob-wobs.
A very old rumor.
Wob-wobs were power brokers. Manipulative and smug, they liked shadows and weak minds.
Lumps weren’t anywhere near that slick or that… predictable. They hit hard, and they knew what they wanted, but Wob-wobs had no restrictions on what they were willing to do. They were bad. Lumps were just aggressive.
The rumor, though, had been about an old, secret alliance between a group of Lumps and a small cartel of Wob-wobs who hadn’t just hidden away political and legal hot potatoes, but who had rather identified planets that were… underdeveloped, as it were, and they came in and developed them as they saw fit.
Or they’d brought in heavy mining equipment and gutted them.
Or they’d forcibly married the king’s daughters and became supreme emperors.
Or something like that.
Old rumors sprung legs.
But Lumps and Wob-wobs. That was core to it, and the Wob-wob in Washington combined with the Lumps here…
It made him uneasy.
They would need to get a car.
Which meant stealing one or buying one. He didn’t think they’d have the ability to rent one.
He set off toward the nearest used car dealership.
*********
Cassie seemed unconcerned.
The Band Rung weren’t hostile toward them. They carried Cassie’s case and they helped Olivia across the roughest ground.
But Cassie hadn’t been wrong. They walked with them long past any possible sign of civility. The one who had carried Olivia was quiet most of the way in, just taking her elbow or wrapping his arm around her waist from time to time to make sure that she wasn’t going to fall.
They respected Cassie, but he seemed to think Olivia was rather fragile.
Olivia would have been offended if, one, she hadn’t given them that impression herself and, two, if she didn’t feel a bit fragile if she was honest.
Finally, she looked over at the Band Rung who was walking with her.
“What’s your name?” she asked. She would have introduced herself, but she didn’t have a sound for her name, and she didn’t think that her name in English would be something they could repeat.
“I am…” he started slowly, looking around at the trees. Cassie had pointed at the individuals around them about ten minutes before and just said ‘girl, girl, girl, boy, boy, boy’, then winked and went on. Olivia wasn’t certain she could tell them apart without Cassie confirming it, but maybe. She had no idea how Cassie could tell for sure.
The Band Rung looked down at her again finally, white eyes blinking.
“I am Breath of Air through Spring Leaves,” he said.
“Do you have spring here?” Olivia asked, looking at the trees again. She would have guessed they were tropical, always in summer.
“No,” he said, “but the Band Rung have many cities. I have never seen a spring, but I know what they smell like.”
Olivia frowned, thinking about it. Spring did have a smell. She just wouldn’t have jumped there.
“What do they call you?” he asked.
She looked over at Cassie.
“Can you help me?” she asked.
“She’s called Tree of Cleansing Fruit,” Cassie answered in the odd Band Rung language. Olivia wrinkled her nose.
“Cleansing?” she asked in English.
“Would you prefer salad dressing?” Cassie replied.
Olivia glowered at her and Cassie grinned.
“How do you translate your name?” Olivia asked.
“Beautiful Wanderer,” Cassie said, grinning wider.
“Cleansing Fruit and Beautiful Wanderer?” Olivia asked. “That’s not fair.”
“You could have picked your own,” Cassie said. “You were the one who asked for help.”
Olivia would have never thought of that, to make up her own name.
The Band Rung was watching her.
“Do they call you Breath of Air through Spring Leaves, or do you have a…” Olivia paused, her vocabulary not well-enough developed yet.
“Nickname,” Cassie supplied. Olivia recognized the word when she heard it.
“Breath of Air,” he said. “Why have you come to us?”
“We’re looking for my friend,” Olivia said.
She didn’t have a more powerful word than ‘friend’ to pick from, and she wasn’t sure that Troy was more than that, to her, just now, so she went with it.
“Is your missing friend like you?” Breath of Air asked.
“No,” Cassie said without looking over. She was watching the plant life go by with rapt attention, and Olivia was surprised that she was catching everything in the conversation.
“He isn’t?” Olivia asked in English again.
“You know that’s rude, right?” Cassie asked. “Not to mention suspicious.”
“I don’t use my interpreter a lot,” Olivia said. Cassie shrugged.
“Try harder.”
“How is he not like us?” Olivia asked in Band Rung.
“He’s invisible,” Cassie answered.
“What?” Olivia asked.
“Is she unwell?” Breath of Air asked.
“I’m fine,” Cassie said. “The plants here. They’re suffering.”
“Yes,” Breath of Air said. “We tend them, but we run short on supplies.”
“What’s missing?” Olivia asked.
“Stolen,” Breath of Air said. “Stolen.”
“Conflict,” Cassie said. “I knew there was conflict.”
“Side-walkers,” Breath of Air said darkly. Olivia looked at Cassie, who shrugged.
“How can you tell that the plants aren’t healthy?” Olivia asked.
“They don’t smell right,” Breath of Air said. “And they blow wrong in the wind.”
Cassie nodded.
“They’re set up to catch all of the sun, but the sun is making it through to the ground,” Cassie said. Olivia looked up, the dappled sun glinting at her through the leaves overhead.
It was subtle, but she could at least see what Cassie was talking about.
“I was here before,” Cassie said. “No one was concerned, then.”
“There are many ship-wrecks off of the coast of Llargon,” Breath of Air said. “But no one ventures up the cliffs. They are ours.”
“Ah,” Cassie said. “I see.”
“Where is Troy?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “But I want to see what’s going on here. It’s possible that that’s what caught his attention.”
Olivia looked over.
“You asked me to come with you because I know him,” she said. “How am I supposed to help if we aren’t even going to look for him?”
Cassie tipped her head as she looked over at her.
“Is that all you are? The woman who chases him?”
In the first moment, that stung, and it did goad Olivia, but then she shook her head.
“I don’t like this kind of thing,” she said. “I came because you said there was something wrong and Troy needed me. You said that it wasn’t his fault that he shut me out again, and that you needed me. You don’t need me to come get ourselves taken captive on some other planet while you figure out why the trees are unhappy.”
Cassie nodded.
“Well done. Yes. I don’t know where he is. He can move at the speed of light, Olivia, and it’s only when he stops and pays attention to something that I have any hope of tracking him. The only hope I have of finding him and taking him back to Earth is if I can find some
thing that kept his attention long enough for me to catch up. I’m hoping that this is it.”
Olivia looked forward, at the glinting buildings that she could only just make out through the heavy leaves overhead. They were getting closer.
“Llargon,” she breathed. The language was so sharp and short and closed and guttural, and yet the words they spoke were so elegant and flowed. Olivia couldn’t make those things fit together, and yet, there it was. She looked at Breath of Air.
“What will happen to us?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The side-walkers steal, but you aren’t side walkers.”
“No,” Olivia said. “We’re… ground walkers,” she said.
“Very good,” Cassie murmured.
“You don’t climb at all,” Breath of Air said.
“I’m offended by that,” Cassie said and he looked at her with flat eyes. If there was expression there, Olivia couldn’t find it.
“We will escort you to the holding rooms,” Breath of Air said. “After that, what happens to you is up to the elders.”
“You’re royalty,” Cassie said. “Why are you carrying around foundlings?”
The same expression.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Your markings,” Cassie said. Olivia raised an eyebrow, moving her head to try to take in all of the markings on Breath of Air’s face, but they were just a random scattering of white marks, to her eye, like a big cat’s markings. Surely they were unique, but she couldn’t read anything of meaning from them.
“You’ve studied the houses of Bollow?” Breath of Air asked.
“No,” Cassie said. “But you’re still royalty, and I still want to know why you’re the one walking us back to the city.”
“Band Rung royalty aren’t the same as royalty within other species,” Breath of Air said. “We are expected to participate in our cultures and to live lives that are not withdrawn from each other.”
“Then what makes you royalty?” Olivia asked. Breath of Air glanced at her.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
The rest of the Band Rung around them spoke quietly to each other, and Breath of Air fell back into step with another of them, leaving Olivia to walk next to Cassie.
“This is my favorite part,” Cassie said. “Figuring out how they work. Matching up body with culture and environment and looking at how the machine grew. It’s amazing, and it’s always different.”