by Chloe Garner
“How is he royalty if he doesn’t act any different from anyone else?” Olivia asked.
“Should it matter that he’s royal if he isn’t actively ruling?” Cassie countered.
“What else do you do that makes you royal but rule?” Olivia asked. Sure, there was the English royal family, largely a symbolic figurehead as far as she’d been able to figure out, though she knew that the family had a profound emotional place in the hearts of the English couple in her PhD program at Stanford. Olivia just didn’t have another model to draw on. Royalty was a foreign concept to her. The idea that someone should be in charge because they had the right genetics was inconceivable to her.
Cassie laughed.
“The permutations of rule that humans have tried are pretty impressive, but the universe has more,” she said.
The light coming down from above was getting more sparse, and Olivia’s eyes began to adapt to the dim, but the ground was getting harder and harder to cross. As she peered forward, she saw things moving, and Cassie stopped.
“This is as far as we go,” she said.
“What are those?” Olivia asked.
“Golwaith,” Breath of Air said, coming to stand next to them. The Band Rung formed a line to either side, looking out over a section of forest floor that was almost completely dark.
“Enemy,” Cassie translated. “Why keep them so close?”
“Low-shufflers,” one of the other Band Rung said.
“We don’t like them, and they get into everything,” Breath of Air said, “but they aren’t an enemy to us.”
Cassie actually looked surprised.
“Then what are they?”
“Pity,” another Band Rung said. “They remind us of pity.”
“They aren’t alive,” Breath of Air said. “Not like we are. Haven’t been since anyone can remember. But they were, once, in our stories, and they gave up their minds for the ability to find the things that they craved.”
“Truffles?” Olivia asked. The word actually came to her naturally.
“Excellent guess,” Cassie said, “so long as you mean it metaphorically.”
Olivia shrugged.
She’d take the compliment.
“They became walking plants,” Breath of Air said. “We pity their folly, and we tend them, because they tend the trees.”
“Are they what the side-walkers took?” Cassie asked.
“Side-crawlers,” a Band Rung near the end of the line muttered.
“No,” Breath of Air said. “There are many things that keep the forest healthy. These are one among many.”
He wound his arm around Olivia’s waist and took hold of something overhead that she hadn’t even seen, pulling her up off of the ground. She grabbed hold of his arm and tried not to wiggle as the ground, already dim, disappeared below her. Breath of Air climbed like a geared machine, smooth motion, rather than one big pull after another. Against the sheer rock face, it had been continuous grips, but climbing a black vine in the darkness, Olivia suddenly appreciated how powerful he was.
She looked back to see how Cassie was coming up - whether she would climb or let one of the Band Rung carry her - but she couldn’t get her chin around Breath of Air’s arm far enough to look down, and she really, really didn’t want to move any more than she had to, to simply to breathe, for an instinctive fear of falling.
Eventually, dozens of feet up, they started reaching branches again and the light changed back from gray-black to green. Breath of Air swung with an agile motion, letting go of the vine and flying toward a branch some ten feet away and six feet down. Olivia closed her eyes and tried not to scream as his body coiled and landed.
Her feet found something solid underneath them, but she was grateful that Breath of Air didn’t let go of her. Tentatively, she opened her eyes to watch as four more Band Rung flung themselves across the gap to the branches. A fifth came into view carrying Cassie; the Palta woman managed to not look like baggage. The Band Rung sprang onto the branches and let Cassie go.
“If you let me go, I will fall,” Olivia said quietly to Breath of Air.
“I know,” he answered. Several other Band Rung started off across a loose network of branches and thick leaves, hands and feet all in action as they grabbed this bit or that of a tree. Cassie followed along, mechanical and capable, but with nothing like the Band Rung grace. Breath of Air went next to last, following Cassie and carrying Olivia. Over and over again, there would be nothing underneath them but deep darkness, and Olivia tried not to think about the fact that Breath of Air was down a limb, compared to the others. She tried to keep her head up.
The city of Llargon was bigger, yet, than she had guessed. What she’d seen from the broken plateau was just the top tiers of it; the trees were taller and grander than she’d estimated, and the bowl that the city was built in went much deeper into the ground. Ahead of her, she saw a veritable mountain of orange stone, shaded in green and gold by the trees growing up around and through it and covered with the dark bodies of Band Rung.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Wait until you see the view from the top,” Breath of Air said with good humor.
“Will I be allowed to?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t think you are a threat. Your friend might be, but you? You couldn’t get out of the city without help.”
“That’s very true,” Olivia said. “I don’t think Cassie could, either.”
She said it before she thought of the technology Cassie was wearing on her arm, then remembering what Cassie had said about not being able to come here directly.
Maybe they really were stuck.
“I think you underestimate your friend,” he said. “She moves like a stone, thrown.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said.
“They always go where they’re headed,” he said, not quite a punch line, not quite a truism.
Olivia wasn’t sure if she would be betraying Cassie, if she agreed, so she didn’t. Not out loud, anyway.
There were more Band Rung around, now, and the path underneath them was more and more organic and less and less gaping, open space. Breath of Air unwound his arm from her waist.
“Stay on the fortified leaves,” he said. The surface underneath her had a soft feel, like loam or soggy wet ground, but it had a brilliant green color, a leaf with the footprint of a car. She took one tentative step and found that it hardly gave at all. Breath of Air peeled up the far side to show her a network of fine branches - cut, or fallen - underneath it. The leaves stretched out in front of her like a path, and while she still had a sense of vertigo, looking off to either side, she could walk without looking like a complete fool so long as she stayed in the center of the leaves.
“All right,” she said to Cassie. “Explain it to me. How in the world is Troy managing to get here, escape you, and travel at the speed of light?”
Cassie glanced at her with a coy look.
“I thought you’d find that one interesting.”
Olivia crossed her arms, and Cassie laughed.
“Okay. I’m sorry. It really is a big deal and you do have a right to know, now that I’ve dragged you into it. It’s just…” She looked around with a big sigh. “You can’t tell me that this isn’t better than being cooped up in a lab in the bowels of the portal building.”
“Can and will,” Olivia said. “I don’t like heights.”
Cassie shook her head.
“What they’ve done is amazing.”
“I’m sure it is. Send me samples of the leaves and the creatures back there on the ground, and I’ll tell you all about them.”
Cassie laughed again, then shook her head.
“Stuff back on base is a mess, O.”
“I’m aware,” Olivia said. Cassie shook her head.
“Nope. You aren’t. Donovan was bringing foreign terrestrials to earth as political refugees, and surprise, surprise, some of them came with bad intentions. They boob
y-trapped their room and escaped, and Troy hit the trap - along with Benji - when he went looking for them.”
Olivia nearly stopped walking. Cassie grabbed her elbow to keep her moving.
“So who is back on base?” she asked. “Do you have… like a robot or something? keeping things going while you look for him?”
Cassie gave her an evaluating glance, corners of her mouth deeply down, then shook her head.
“No, but I like how you think. The booby trap split him in half. His spirit went rocketing off to do something fun, while his brain and the rest of his body kept doing whatever it was he had on his calendar. He didn’t even know it happened. Jesse is going to have to tell him about it.”
“How could he not know that?” Olivia asked. “Didn’t it hurt?”
“Knocked him out completely,” Cassie said. “But it’s not like a human medical professional is going to pick up on it. They sent him back to work.”
“His… spirit,” Olivia said. Cassie nodded.
“Pure energy. Speed of light. Wherever he wants to go, so long as he can get there by water.”
“Water?” Olivia asked. “What does it have to do with water?”
“I’m fuzzy on that, yet,” Cassie answered. “Jesse thought it was obvious, but there’s something about the technology… the science of it that I haven’t put my brain around, yet. All I know is it works, and I’ve all but done it.”
Olivia didn’t think she’d ever heard of Cassie admitting that she didn’t know something, even before she’d been Palta.
“Oh,” she answered. She shook her head. “Wait. Energy. None of this makes any sense. How is he energy?”
“That one’s tricky, too. I wouldn’t have actually believed it, if I hadn’t met an energy creature here just recently. I’d never heard of anyone splitting into two, either, but I’ve been tracking him, and there’s no reason to argue with the theory. It’s what happened.”
Olivia looked back.
“How do you catch one? What’s in the box?”
“Tracking gear, mostly,” Cassie said. “You don’t catch him. If he decides to leave us in the dust, we just keep going.”
“For how long?” Olivia asked. Cassie nodded.
“If he gets away from us more than a couple of times, I’ll take you back if you want. Find a couple of reference points and jump you home. But I’m going to keep tracking him until I catch him. Doesn’t matter how long it takes.”
Olivia felt a cold chill.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said. Cassie shook her head.
“I told you, I needed another set of eyes, and someone else who knows him. I can’t manipulate him, and I can’t outrun him. We have to do this straight up, and if we don’t get him the first time… This could take years.”
Olivia did stop walking, and she pulled her arm away when Cassie tried to keep going.
“He’s gone evil,” she said. “And so has Benji. You can’t just let it go on.”
“If you know anyone who knows Benji as well as I know Troy and who also knows how to do low-friction point-to-point transfers underwater, I’m game to help out,” Cassie said. “Until then, I’m doing my level best to find Troy.”
“Could have fooled me,” Olivia said.
“Excuse me?” Cassie asked. Olivia felt like she should have felt bad, but she was afraid and fear made her either wilt or charge, and for the moment she charged. Even if it did involve watching her feet the whole time.
“I’m just saying that it feels like you’re more interested in exploring the city than you are in finding Troy.”
Cassie looked her over. It made Olivia angrier that she appeared to be impressed.
“They are one and the same,” she said. “But I’m glad he has you here to advocate for him. This is the part of Troy that always ached when he looked at the stars. He wanted to see planets and species and explore everything. The part that loves adventure and new things. And he left the ocean, here. There was something that interested him, and I can only hope that, chasing after things that I find interesting, we discover that he got caught up long enough for us to have a conversation with him.”
Olivia started walking again as the Band Rung behind them caught up.
“He’s energy,” Olivia said quietly, still in English. “How can he talk?”
How could they see him, for that matter?
“You keep your eyes open in places that you know he’d want to be, and you’ll see him, if he’s there,” Cassie said. “You should be able to hear him, but I don’t actually know enough about them to guarantee it. But he will be able to hear you. Don’t make a plea to his responsibilities. Play to his emotions, and keep him there until I get there.”
Olivia shook her head.
She wanted to be useful.
She wanted to be the one who found him.
Who saved him.
Who wouldn’t?
But she didn’t want to be the one who lost him.
Or to have him take one look at her and vanish because he hadn’t wanted her to be there.
Didn’t want her to rain on his adventure.
“I wouldn’t have brought you if I didn’t think that you could help me,” Cassie said. “I’ve spent a lot of time by myself, the last year or so, and it doesn’t bother me. I could do this on my own, but you increase my chances of success. I know I’m not your favorite person…”
“I hate you,” Olivia said, then slapped her hands over her mouth. That had been too much.
Cassie laughed.
“Keep that passion,” she said. “You’re going to need it, to get through this.”
They came to the end of the leaf path, looking at a twenty-foot gap between the outlying trees and the city buildings.
It was a moat made of dozens and dozens of feet of air, down to a black, black jungle floor.
“Time to jump,” Breath of Air said.
*********
“Slav,” Troy said, going back to his desk. “Come in.”
He heard the door close as he reached his seat, turning and waiting for Slav to reach the chairs before he sat down.
“Rutger,” Slav said. “You want to tell me what in hell is going on here?”
Troy sighed.
Slav Peterson was a good man.
He and Cassie hated each other like oil and water, but Slav had come through on principle during Cassie’s trial, and while he’d goofed off and failed to send in most every required report, he’d been one of Troy’s most reliable free-lancers for great science, while the lab in Seattle had lasted.
Troy had lots of friends, but he had very few close friends, and this man was one of them.
“Something happened,” he said.
“I’d say,” Slav said, looking around the office. Troy shook his head.
“No, all of this… This is why I got you hired back. Thanks for coming, by the way. But something happened to me a few days ago, and I need someone to watch my back.”
“Where’s du Charme?” Slav asked. It wasn’t bitter. Slav wasn’t the kind of guy who recognized he was in the middle of a blood feud. He just went on with his life.
“Don’t know,” Troy said.
“And the… Palta?” Slav asked.
“Looking for foreign terrestrials who escaped the base,” Troy said. If you were going to trust, you trusted big, around here.
Slav opened his mouth and closed it once.
“Ah,” he said. Troy nodded.
“Yeah. I have a list of things for you to do. A long one. But… I need you to watch my back because I don’t have people sense right now.”
Slav snorted.
“Mister diplomacy?” he asked. “You kept your job after du Charme’s trial. You’re untouchable.”
Troy shook his head.
“No. You aren’t getting it.”
He gave Slav a very brief explanation of what had happened at the dormitory, and Slav had the decency to wait until he was done talking to whistle.
“It happened to Benji, too,” Troy said. “So long as he can do his job, I don’t care.”
Slav crossed his leg across his thigh and leaned back in his seat, draping his arm across the next chair.
“Well, damn.”
Troy nodded.
“I tell people what to do. I don’t ask. I don’t really… care… what they want to be doing. I’m working them as many hours as I can without them quitting their jobs, because there are things that need to be done. That was OSI who just left here, and I…” He licked his lips. “I just told them that they report to me. Basically.”
Slav snorted.
“Wish I’d been here for that.”
Troy nodded.
“Unless there are security reasons that you can’t be in my meetings, you’re going to be in them to tell me when I’m…”
“Losing hearts and minds?” Slav asked, then grinned. “I’m the best you got for that? Where’s your pretty girlfriend?”
Troy shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Slav raised an eyebrow. Troy was pretty sure he had them plucked. One of the things Cassie hated about him.
“Like… she’s missing?” he asked.
“I cheated on her with Cassie, and she was angry at me. And then Cassie told her it wasn’t my fault and she was thinking about forgiving me. We had dinner, and then I…” Troy paused. He hadn’t done anything. That had been a mistake. “I never talked to her again.”
“Hold the phone,” Slav said. “You and du Charme? For real?”
Troy felt nothing.
“Yes.”
Slav whistled again.
“Damn, man. Damn. The ice princess. I mean, I know you guys had a thing going way back, but…” He shook his head. “Olivia is the real deal. Better than you deserve.”
“I didn’t…” Troy said, but it simply didn’t matter to him. It should have, but it didn’t. “You are going to go through all of the debriefs and in-person interviews with the foreign terrestrials Donovan brought onto base…”
“Donovan did the hell what?” Slav asked.