by Chogan Swan
The two of them conversed in Nii as they worked, with occasional remarks to Kest in English, as he lay covered by a towel.
At last, Tiana said, “Your ribs won’t trouble you now, but avoid being pummeled for a few days.” Then, she stepped to the head of the table. “For this next part—with your permission—I’ll be taking Ayleana on a tour of the terminal end of your central nervous system.”
“My brain?”
“Yes, gold star. But, other than making an inventory and treating any serious damage from shocks and blunt trauma, I won’t be doing anything. We will need to put our fingers in your nostrils to deploy filaments. I will lie on you, so Aylie can reach around, but we’ll need to move you to a mat on the floor for more stability.”
Kest stood. Ayleana was already rolling out a large exercise mat, and—when she motioned to him—Kest lay on his back.
Tiana sat down next to him. “To increase your brain activity in the right nodes, I need to give you a dose of a compound. From your point of view, doing that will be equal to what you might call a French kiss. After that, you will be only semi-conscious, and you may have strange dreams. Do not be concerned. It is necessary for optimal results. If you can, relax. Do I have your agreement to proceed?”
Kest swallowed and nodded.
“Once the filaments reach your brain, you will not be able to move.”
Acta Vila!
The nii exclamation he’d learned from Ayleana somehow seemed right inside his head.
Tiana’s face—looking so much like Ayleana’s—approached his, and her lips sealed against his mouth. The tip of her tongue tapped his teeth. Kest opened in response and her tongue moved over the top of his and slid to the back of his mouth, into his throat. The taste of the compound drenching her tongue triggered a strong suckling reflex. Kest pulled hard, like an infant at its mother’s breast, and it moved deep into his throat. He felt his mind drifting away as Tiana's tongue pulled out of his mouth, and she lay on top of him, her torso resting on his hips.
Fingers slid over his cheeks. A gentle stretching at his nostrils followed. But—though he registered other sensations—the rest could only be compared to an arousing dream.
Kest’s awareness floated back up to the surface of his mind. When Tiana and Ayleana disengaged the filaments, Ayleana handed him a bathrobe.
“Your brain chemistry was a little scrambled from the Taser shocks,” Tiana said. “That was why you were fatigued and sleepy. I dosed you with a repair compound. You have a strong, active eidetic function, and the compound will restore that. You should notice it becoming stronger than ever after the compound takes full effect.”
Kest nodded understanding. “My ribs feel much better too. Thank you.” He slid into the bathrobe.
Tiana turned to Ayleana. “Aylie, why don’t you take Kest to my bedroom so he can have that nap? Keep watch on him until it’s time to go. If he has trouble dropping off, give him...” Tiana said something else in Nii.
Ayleana said something back in the same language then smiled at Kest and jerked her chin toward the door.
Kest followed her down the hall to a large bedroom. Its walls were painted a warm, soothing red. Kest hung the robe on the bedpost. The king-sized mattress proved to have a memory foam top that cradled his body when he crawled under the covers. The last thing he remembered was Ayleana’s warm skin snuggling up behind him and her tail wrapping around his leg.
~~~{}~~~
Kest woke when Ayleana took her arms from around him and climbed out of bed. She pulled back the window shades, letting the late rays of the sun pour into the room. Kest watched her graceful body move around the room. Her back and the skin above her waist was a smooth shade like milk chocolate, but her legs, tail and feet were pigmented like her branch sister’s. They swirled with a mesmerizing dark cherry red like twisted woodgrain as it mixed with the chocolate color of her upper body.
“So I guess that you were originally colored the way your legs are all over, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The things I have to put up with to get by in this world.”
“It’s a pity. Your original colors are so beautiful, like Indian rosewood.”
She turned to him and grinned. “Thank you. You are also pleasant to look upon. I’m about to take a shower. If you like, be lazy for a few more minutes, but if you want to shower before we leave, you should come in the bathroom with me. The stall is big enough for eight little girls and me at once, so I’m sure you can fit in too. The solar panels give us plenty of hot water, and it all goes down to the garden, so no carbon footprint at all!”
“Ok, as long as we leave the little girls out,” Kest said.
“Good, I miss having someone to scrub my back. They try, but don’t really have the upper body strength needed. Besides, they've all gone home with their mommy for the evening.”
“But I've seen how your arms move. You can reach everywhere on your back.”
“It’s just not the same,” she said with a sigh.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Great! I’ll return the favor. You’ll see what I mean.”
~~~{}~~~
Kest was helping Ayleana clean the kitchen after they’d made sandwiches for him. After his nap, he’d felt back to normal, but ravenous. Ayleana made three huge Reuben sandwiches with pastrami and creamy coleslaw, and Kest finished them one after the other. Chasing them with ice coffee laced with almond milk.
Ayleana helped herself to whatever was in the bota box, but that, and tea, were all she touched.
As he put the last plate in the drying rack, Ayleana glanced up. “Our ride will be here in about four minutes,” she said.
“You didn’t smell that,” Kest protested.
“No, I heard a motor and Amber just sent me a text. She said we had five minutes, and she’s always early.”
Ayleana pulled a couple of jackets from the coat closet and handed one to him.
Kest put it on. The temperature had dropped into the fifties. The dark, nylon-canvas tactical jacket had a new matching tactical cap in one pocket, leather gloves in the other and a collapsible bottle in the pocket labeled Tiana’s Go Juice.
Nice.
“The moon is full,” Ayleana said. “But there’s also a flashlight built into the visor if you need it. We can take it slow to get back down the hill. They’re still a couple minutes out.” She picked up her guitar and went out the door.
Kest followed her shadowy figure back to the path and down the hill. When they reached the bottom, a gray ambulance—built on a truck chassis and running dark—was pulling under the canopy to execute a three-point turn. The back doors opened and subdued light shone out. Amber held the door for them.
Ayleana stepped inside, and Kest followed. The inside of the ambulance seemed sparsely supplied for medical emergencies. Instead, automatic firearms hung on racks. An HK belt-fed light machine gun was attached to the roof with a swivel housing. The housing looked designed to deploy a gun station to the roof at a moment’s notice.
Daniels, sitting on one of the bench seats waved to him.
“You aren’t driving?” said Kest.
“Nah. We’re running dark, so the ambassador is driving.”
“What’s with all the guns?” said Kest as Amber shut the doors and the ambulance started ambling down the hill.
“Well in the past we’ve had some problems with drug smugglers,” said Daniels. “We’ve reached a detente with them though. We now buy their raw materials and turn them into pharmaceuticals. More recently, we’ve been having issues with other folks. But talking about that is above my paygrade.”
Ayleana laughed. “Well nobody pays me enough to keep my mouth shut. INS has been sticking its nose into the Nation’s jurisdiction, though we asked them to stay out. They’ve even tried to stop our own border guards on patrol. Also, the DHS sends teams in, lately tribal police have been stopping them and requesting they leave tribal territory at once. We don’t stop for them, and they’ve bee
n warned that interfering with our border teams and other law enforcement and medical personnel can land them in jail. But, they keep pushing. The administration in DC has decided to be the bullying big brother. They’re pissed because we aren’t cooperating with their wall-of-shame project and the rest of the UN has recognized the Confederacy of Tribes as a nation. Lots of folks from the nation have relatives south of our border. The Tribal Nation has the border under control, but the INS doesn’t want to cut its payroll, or pay us for keeping the border safe either.”
“Us?”
“Sure,” Ayleana said with a grin. “I’m a Native American just like you. The documents are here somewhere.”
“Do I have other tribal relatives here too?”
“Amber, Jonah, Tiana. Daniels is the only white man in thirty miles at this time of night.”
“Unless you count the DEA, INS and DHS,” Daniels said with a snort. “Pushy bastards.”
“So what do we do if we run into them?”
“I suspect you might find out,” said Amber, crouched over a display screen. She opened the door to the driver’s cabin. “We have an INS patrol on intercept.”
Chapter 13 — Trip
From the front cabin, Tiana’s voice drifted back. “INS vehicle, we are an authorized medical transport in route to a medical emergency. You are not to interfere. Also be advised you are trespassing on Native American soil in violation of international treaties and may be subject to penalties including fines and incarceration. Tribal police have been notified.”
“Still closing,” said Amber.
“Deploy caltrop,” Tiana said.
Daniels opened a cabinet and pulled out what looked like a cross between a rubber tire and a volleyball. He opened a panel in the floor, placed the ball in the opening and shut the panel. “One in the tube,” he called.
“Deployed,” Amber announced. Then... “Engaged.”
From where he sat, Kest could see Amber’s screen. The dot marking the INS vehicle continued to close on them, but a new green icon appeared that skittered sideways to put itself in the path of the white dot.
The radio speaker from the front hissed as the channel activated. “This is Immigration and Nationalization. Clear this channel immediately and pull...” The message ended with a popping sound. A light flashed behind them. The pop and the flash came at the same instant the white dot and the green icon intersected.
“Send a text to the tribal police with their location,” Tiana said. “We don’t want them stumbling around out here dying from thirst.”
“Right,” said Amber. “We don’t want that...” Her fingers tapped on the keyboard a few more times. “Message sent.”
“What just happened?” said Kest.
“Targeted EMP mine,” Ayleana said. “It fried their batteries and electronics. They are dead in the water. The tribal police will pick them up, issue fines and let them out when the fines are paid. Trespassing just cost the INS one vehicle and twenty thousand dollars in fines. Let’s hope they aren’t stupid enough to resist arrest.”
Kest shrugged. “Perhaps the incarceration will be good for their souls. I wonder if it should be a requirement for law enforcement candidates.”
“You mean we’re like missionaries?” said Amber, a note of glee in her voice.
Kest shrugged and smiled. “Just a thought.”
“My maternal great uncle would have been so pleased.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Pleasing my great uncle posthumously? I can assure you it doesn’t.”
Kest rolled his eyes. “Close encounters with illegal aliens like La Migra.”
Amber laughed. “I like that, the INS as the illegal alien. I’m sending a note to the public relations chief at our UN representative’s office.”
Her fingers blurred on the keyboard as she typed. “I would describe our encounters as sporadic but persistent. It doesn’t surprise me we get them, but most of the people under the tribal umbrella don’t have the tools to defend themselves. We’re working on it from different angles, legal, publicity and exposé pieces...”
“And occasional hi-tech defense?”
“Right. My personal favorite. You don’t have a problem with that?”
“Not as long as it’s sustainable,” Kest said.
“Good answer,” Amber said, looking up from her screen to give him a long, appraising look.
“So, would you say it is then?
“So far, yes, but the tactical situation is... fluid.”
Kest contained a laugh. “I expect that’s an understatement.”
Tiana’s voice came to him from the open door to the driver’s section. “That’s part of what we’ll be talking about and showing you, Kest. But, Amber is right. You are asking good questions.”
Kest leaned back and stared out the rear window at the moonlight on the desert landscape. Ayleana pulled her guitar out of its case, tuned it to a modal Dsus4 and picked out a melody that hovered somewhere between minor and major. She explored the melody line for a few minutes then added chords and started a vocal line that Kest guessed was in her native language. Her voice, when she sang, would never be mistaken for human in this song. It blended two notes or simple chords in her voice box sometimes including one note as a drone while carrying the melodic progression with another. The modal tuning allowed the ending—when it came—a sense of blended triumph and tragedy. Kest almost couldn't breathe.
Ayleana put the guitar back in the case and leaned against him. By reflex, he put his arm around her.
“Was that a song from your home world?” said Daniels.
From the front seat, Tiana answered. “No, it was the song the dymba sang for us when we left their planet to return home. The herd wrote the song to pledge their alliance with us.”
“My closest friends were dymba,” Ayleana said. “When the niiaH destroyed their homeworld, our entire ninth fleet was wiped out in the battle—as were two niiaH slave fleets—but the niiaH wanted to send a message.”
“You may not have remembered this yet, Aylie,” Tiana said. “But that song and the news of the battle brought the rest of the worlds not under niiaH rule over to our side. It was directly responsible for the Tyrant Empire’s decline.”
“Thank you for telling me. When I woke this morning, I remembered hearing about the destruction of the dymba homeworld. Some of my friends from dymba were with me. They sang that song to comfort each other.”
The rest of the trip was quiet except for occasional station-keeping remarks. Kest watched the moonlight on the desert. Ayleana looked out the same window, but he suspected she was looking at the stars.
Chapter 14 — Climb
Kest woke from dozing when he sensed the ambulance coasting to a stop. A gust of chilled night air drifted over him from the open door to the front cabin. Ayleana’s head rested below his arm, and his own rested on... something soft. With a guilty start that almost translated to his body, he realized his ear was nestled, quite cozily, on Amber’s bosom—the right side to be specific. He tried to think of a strategic retreat, but couldn’t come up with any ideas.
“I’ll pretend I’m asleep too,” Amber’s voice whispered in his other ear.
Kest realized he couldn’t sit up without waking Ayleana. “I hate to wake her up,” he admitted, whispering back.
“It’s fine; my nipple was enjoying the companionship anyway.”
From the driver’s seat, Tiana announced. “We’re here. Everyone can stop whispering now.” Her remark was punctuated by the front doors opening and closing.
Daniels stepped over Ayleana’s guitar and climbed out the rear doors. Kest, now blushing, sat up, rousing Ayleana. “Did I miss something?” she said.
“We’re here, though I don’t know where here is,” he said.
Ayleana sat up. “We could go outside and see.”
“Good idea.”
“I was having such a nice time,” Amber said with a disappointed sigh.
Kest
, with Ayleana’s weight still on his legs, raised his head off Amber’s chest. But—as Ayleana stood and her weight no longer kept his legs anchored—his body rocked back and his ear and cheek dropped back onto the warm cushion.
Amber giggled. “Back so soon, are you?”
“Sorry,” Kest said and sat up again, grabbing the back of the seat to keep his weight forward.
“Oh?”
“I meant ‘thank you for your kind support’,” Kest said and scrambled out of the ambulance. Behind him, Amber laughed and grabbed the back of his belt to lift herself out of the seat.
“You two seem to have had fun,” Ayleana said as they climbed out of the ambulance.
“I’m afraid I slept right through it,” Kest said.
Amber snorted. “Maybe it’s just because you made me laugh, but I think my milk dropped again—after all that work weaning fifteen little girls.”
Kest rubbed his face, suspecting the blush there would be a frequent occurrence around Amber.
He looked at the surrounding area, trying to distract himself from the memory of the side of his face landing on Amber's breast. The sky was lightening in the east. He checked his watch. Sunrise would be here in a few more minutes.
Jonah and Tiana were climbing a nearby rise.
Daniels climbed on top of the van, cradling a bullpup with a sniper scope.
“Come on you two,” Ayleana said. “I’ll race you to the top.”
“Fine with me,” Amber said, “but give me a minute to warm up; I’m old and rickety compared to you youngsters.”
“Ok, we’ll hike to that big rock, then run from there.”
Kest spoke up. “This is the Sonora, it has poisonous snakes, scorpions and...”
“Don’t worry Kest,” Amber said, “Just stay on Aylie’s six, she’ll avoid the varmints.”
“But I thought we were racing.”
“Ha! You and I may be racing, but not with her. You might as well try to catch a cheetah in a hundred meter dash.”