Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

  They’d told him that Maman didn’t love him, but they also told him that she was dead. He didn’t want to believe either story, and he clung to the idea that somewhere out there Maman was moving heaven and earth looking for him. He made up a million stories in his head where he’d wake up one morning and there she’d be, a laser blaster in one hand and the other open, ready to hug him to her as they prepared to go home.

  Londo’s companions told him that this ship was in outer space. Then they had to explain what outer space was. Now Lon knew that wherever Maman was—maybe she was on that planet called Earth—it would be next to impossible for her to find him. He understood intellectually. But he kept thinking up new stories.

  And his new-found friends kept dying. Depending on what kinds of experiments the Lectori were performing, they sometimes lived for as many as five days. Usually they only lasted two.

  Deserted by the entire universe, by dozens of friends. Lina tried to put the pieces of his story together with some other logic, but it always came back to this. She pressed her hand against her mouth, aghast at the life Lon had had to lead.

  He began to punch the walls, too. Sometimes he wouldn’t cooperate in gym, but just stand there and punch the walls. He didn’t want to help the Lectori in any way. He only wanted to go home, to find Maman!

  There was one companion, he recalled—though he didn’t want to admit it—that he’d ignored completely. He couldn’t take it any more. Londo ignored the kid, who looked to be about the same age as he was, blond and brown-eyed, crying there in the middle of the track. Londo merely walked to the gym wall and punched it with all his might until his hands bled all the way down his arms. He didn’t give a damn.

  He never saw the kid again. Didn’t even know his name.

  The Lectori sat him down for a talk after that. Only he could help these other children, they said. They wouldn’t kill them any more, but only if he cooperated. They knew now that the children couldn’t keep up with him, couldn’t take what he could take, so they were only there for quantified comparison. The Lectori would only take them as far as they could reasonably stand—if he cooperated.

  How long had he been with them? How many years? One? Five? They’d had to get a new bed and later on another to keep up with how he’d grown. Time meant nothing to Lon. He had no way to measure it other than by the intervals he was allowed to sleep. The lights in the ship were always on, never even dimmed, so it was eternal day. He realized that the Lectori couldn’t shave his head any more for some reason, so he tried to keep track of the passage of time by how long his hair was getting.

  There came a period when there hadn’t been any companions for some while. Instead, Londo bore a constant barrage of strange and painful experiments, the usual agonies with new equipment that often whined nerve-scratchingly when they used it. But now they had to tire him out before they could make him feel pain. His powers weakened when he got tired.

  “I didn’t know that,” Lina said softly.

  “It’s not something I like to advertise. They don’t weaken that much anymore, but I can still get awfully tired at times.”

  One day they took Londo into a room he’d never been in before. To his present-day eye it was a lounge, but to his child’s mind it was a palace full of comfortable furniture with cushions. He knew about palaces. Sometimes one of the aliens would read to him from French children’s books to keep him distracted. There were palaces in those books.

  Here was a rug on the floor, pictures on the walls. A large window looked out into blackness with multi-colored pinpoints of light shining in it.

  He pressed his face against the smoothness of the glass and stared. Those must be stars. Etoiles. His companions had told him about them. They were a part of outer space, but they were also visible from the planet Earth. He didn’t remember them.

  A large picture hung in mid-air in the center of the lounge. It was just a frame that, when he came in front of it, suddenly turned into a man, a man cut off by the frame. Gradually Lon realized that the man wasn’t really there. He remembered TV; the books had TVs in them. This was like that.

  This was a three-dimensional moving picture of a middle-aged, haughty-looking man wearing shiny clothes that covered him everywhere except the head. Maybe that’s why the Lectori had put a robe on Londo. He tugged at it, unused to clothing.

  The Lectori bowed to the screen while Londo regarded the man curiously. He seemed human enough. He had a pointy chin, but not incredibly so. The vertical, oval pupils of his eyes were the oddest part about him. Tiny, perfect ringlets of hair made his head look like it was covered with hundreds of small springs. Around his forehead he wore a wide golden circlet with a large red stone on the front.

  The Lectori called him Emperor Yanist-Glory, called him Your Imperial Majesty, Your Glory, and Lon watched in wonder as they groveled. This was somebody like a king, maybe. He didn’t look like any king in Londo’s books. Kings had thick gray beards and wore capes with fur collars. But maybe this was a kind of a king. Emperor.

  The emperor looked Londo over critically. He never addressed him. He just referred to him as “the boy” to the Lectori. Londo’s eyes narrowed as he studied the emperor. Somehow he knew that this man was behind it all—behind whatever had happened to him. Behind what had happened to all the other children through the years. Behind the hell that was his own life. And suddenly he knew that the emperor realized that he knew, too. This child knew who had caused it all.

  Chapter 16

  “Yanist-Glory. Where is he now?”

  “I’m the official thorn in the imperial butt,” Londo replied with a grim smile that made Lina shiver. “Gloryboy’s about fifty parsecs over from Earzh. Well, the very edge of his empire is. His central world’s about fifty more parsecs from there. Call it a half-day’s travel to the Empire, a little over a day to Soalok and the Emperor. Close enough to spit. He knows me very well by now, though we’ve never met in person.” He paused. “He’s going to get his one of these days. And I’m the one who’s going to give it to him.”

  He told her more.

  They’d ushered Lon out of the imperial presence quickly, for now there were new experiments to be done. A few days went by, maybe a week or more, before another companion appeared.

  The Lectori reminded Londo of his responsibility and he cooperated. He easily outraced the other boy, Alhad, and left him gasping on the floor. On the bars, he flipped and whirled, leaping into the air and landing lightly, as Alhad stood watching with his mouth open. Lon could almost live on the bottom of the tank now too.

  The next day the Lectori carried Alhad’s body out of the laboratory.

  “He was supposed to live! You promised! You promised!”

  The Lectori apologized profusely. They had overestimated what Alhad could take. The next one they’d give half the dosage. He wouldn’t die. They reassured Londo constantly.

  Two weeks later, Jorge appeared. This time Londo reminded the Lectori of what they had promised, and they agreed, how they agreed!

  And they had taken Jorge’s body from the lab.

  For at least two weeks Lon refused to leave his room. They couldn’t force him to. He realized that he had the power to deny them this, knocking them away when they tried to drag him out. He remained seated tailor-fashion on his bed and banged his head against the wall, knowing that cameras watched him.

  They tried withholding his food. He paced his tiny room and hit the wall with his hands, waiting for them to bleed, but they never did. And then he noticed a very small dent in the wall. He scowled at it with interest.

  Claiming hunger, the next time they approached him, he allowed them to take him out. They gave him some food as a reward before he went to the gym. There he met Kurt. Kurt was doomed, either way Lon decided to play this game. Londo himself might be doomed, but there was a chance that wasn’t true. At any rate, he’d be out of here. They went through all the routines: the running, the jumping—hell, Londo could fly, not just jump—the brea
th control.

  The Lectori removed the electrodes in preparation to take Kurt back to his room. Kurt could tell that they were going to take him away from Londo and began to hyperventilate from pure terror.

  “Take it easy, Kurt,” Londo whispered. “Follow me.”

  Londo knocked down the Lectori attendants and opened the door to the gym. “Come on!” He was out of range of the translator, but Kurt got the gist of it and ran after him.

  Kurt wasn’t fast enough, so Lon picked him up and flew through the corridors, looking for that lounge. There it was! He remembered its window. The books had shown windows. They could be easy to break. Londo couldn’t open the door to the lounge, so he pounded on it with all his might. Finally it dented, then dented some more. With a cracking sound it split open and the two boys wriggled through as Kurt jabbered excitedly in some strange language.

  Alarms went off everywhere. Lon knew he had to be quick. The window showed blackness and stars.

  “No!” Kurt yelled. “That’s outer space! There isn’t any air there! We’ll die!”

  But Londo didn’t understand the language. He barreled at full flying speed for the window, and it exploded open in front of him.

  Kurt grabbed onto a handle and braced himself—but there was only the slightest bit of wind, and that was coming into the ship, not leaving it. Kurt gaped as Lon hovered outside the window against a horizon, under the stars.

  “Viens-t’en! Enfin la liberté!” Londo shouted at Kurt. Why wouldn’t Kurt let go? He flew into the ship again and picked up Kurt, flying him out of the ship. Out into the Canadian Rockies. He headed east because that was a direction away from the ship.

  Lon slowed down when he realized that Kurt couldn’t take the speed. Kurt hung on tightly and didn’t look down for a long time, then finally opened his eyes and looked around. They were in the middle of wilderness, but a tiny light glowed on the ground.

  Kurt pointed excitedly. “People!” he said.

  “Peuple?” Lon asked.

  Kurt nodded. “Down there,” he pointed again.

  Lon changed course and they landed—not very gracefully—next to a house. Londo recognized it as being a house, almost like the one he remembered. Wood and windows and doors, beds and chairs that he could see faintly through the walls. “Une maison,” he said wonderingly.

  “A house,” Kurt corrected him. Eventually someone answered as he pounded on the door. Someone with a shotgun. The man was astounded to see two young, naked boys on his doorstep.

  “Help us!” Kurt demanded.

  “Good lord!” the man said. “Where’d you come from? Where’s your clothes? Where’re your parents?”

  Kurt pointed back to the mountains. “A flying saucer—” he said, and then he fainted.

  Lon looked at the collapsed boy on the doorstep. “Kurt?” He’d never seen anyone faint before. Kurt must be dead. “Non! Kurt!”

  In a panic, he roared away into the night still flying east, away from his captors. He could see their saucer perched miles away on a mountainside. Londo wanted revenge, but he wanted his mother more.

  “And Kurt?”

  “Oh, he was okay. He’s living in Australia these days, along with his family. Second wife, two kids. The guy we found took him straight to the police. They reunited him with his folks. We’re good friends. When he tells his version, he doesn’t faint. But he did.”

  But Londo didn’t know that fainting wasn’t fatal. He kept going and going, flying until he ran out of energy. He landed in a forest and slept lightly, afraid the Lectori would find him and capture him again.

  When he got up, he was hungry. And scared. He knew this must be Earth, and he thought that maybe Maman was still alive. But it looked like a pretty big place, this Earth. Where was she? He flew through the skies of Canada and the U.S. looking for her, unsure whether he’d recognize her or not. She’d recognize him. Everyone he saw wore clothes, so he stole some from a clothesline somewhere—maybe Ohio or Wisconsin, he wasn’t sure.

  But after a few days he became frustrated searching every woman’s face. Walking through the crowds of Earth, peering at women, looking lost— More than once people called a cop over because they suspected that the dirty, rumpled boy with the long hair was misplaced. But cops had a presence about them of authority, of being locked up, that Londo feared. He’d see one coming and he’d fly off, leaving astonished humans staring up into the sky after him.

  Several times he just sat down and cried in frustration. He wanted his maman! Wait a minute. Toronto. She’d said Toronto. That was some kind of place. Where was this Toronto?

  He landed in a city crowd somewhere where he heard French being spoken.

  “Toronto?” he went around asking. “Où es Toronto?”

  After dodging the police, he began asking kids his age. They didn’t know, so he asked some who looked a little older, maybe twelve or so.

  One girl looked at the sun to get her directions and pointed. “Là,” she said. That way. “Deux cents kilomètres, peut-être. Peut-être plus.” Two hundred kilometers to Toronto.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est un kilomètre?”

  The girl looked down the street they were on. “D’ici à là,” she declared, pointing. That far was a kilometer.

  ““ he asked in French.

  She looked at him like he was an idiot, but he convinced her to show him. Toes and fingers were twenty, and do that ten times. Toes and fingers times fingers times that far was Toronto. Londo nodded thanks and took off into the sky, leaving her open-mouthed.

  “Un para!” he heard her gasp in his wake.

  Apparently the girl had no idea what the true distance was, but she had the general direction right. He found a huge city on a lake: Toronto, but Maman wasn’t there that he could find.

  By now Lon had seen flying people in the sky, and he had a hunch they were looking for him. Flying police, maybe. Maybe people working for the Lectori.

  His frustration built until he thought he would explode. At one point he stopped in the street, leaned against a building, and began to hit his head against it. Then he beat his fists against its steel coating. It started to crumble. People screamed and ran from him, but he didn’t notice. He hit and hit and hit. Then he realized that people were inside the building, so he flew off before they could get hurt.

  But it wasn’t long before he had to hit another building. He couldn’t help it. He was angry! Angry at Maman for not being there. Angry at himself for being so stupid to think that she would be. He cried and hit, cried and hit.

  A red beam caught him in a cocoon.

  “Easy now, fella,” a calm voice said. He looked up to see a man descend from the sky dressed in red, white and black, with what skin that was showing eerily glowing red. “Easy, son,” he said, and though Lon couldn’t understand the language, he understood the tone. He stopped his attack on the building and warily watched the man.

  “Je veux ma maman!” Lon declared.

  “You want your...” The man said slowly. “Oh. Um. Où... Où est... ta maman?”

  “Aucune idée!” Lon shouted, and beat against the red cocoon. It was made of light, but it was solid, too. He didn’t want to be locked up again! Never again! “Lâchez-moi!” He burst from the cocoon and flew off, leaving the man staring after him.

  It only lasted a second or two. The red man followed him quickly through the sky, then backed off and disappeared until Londo thought it might be safe to land and look some more. He walked into the heart of the city with buildings towering overhead and wandered down the streets. Searching, searching...

  The sidewalk crowd slowed. People stared at someone up ahead. Curious in spite of himself, Lon wandered forward. The crowd parted to let whoever it was through.

  It was a man—a man with skin as dark as Trip’s had been, dressed in clothing much tighter than that of the other people on the street. It looked very dynamic with a bright, splashing symbol across his chest and a short white cape.
>
  The man looked directly at him. “Bonjour,” he said kindly. “Je crois que je peux t’aider.”

  Lon stopped. Could the man really help him? “Où est ma maman?” he demanded of him.

  “Je ne sais pas. “ the man said, shaking his head. ““

  “Londo,” he answered defiantly. ““

  “Je ne sais pas,” Hal repeated. ““

  He seemed trustworthy. He had a kind face. He was human, not Lectori. Londo was so tired, so discouraged, so lost...

  Hal held up his hand, a stopping sign to someone behind Londo. When he whirled around, Lon saw the man in red descend quickly.

  “Don’t!” Hal called, and the man backed away, his hands in the air in clear indication that he wasn’t going to do any harm. Hal walked to Londo, who didn’t take his eyes off of the red man.

  Hal crouched to be at eye level with Lon. “D’accord, “

  The red man nodded at Lon. “Bonjour...”

  “Londo,” Hal supplied the name.

  Rico nodded. “Bonjour, Londo. Je ne parle pas le... la... le français, mais... je...”

  Hal chuckled. “II essaye. Il n’est pas vraiment bon, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Non,” Londo admitted. This Rico didn’t speak very well at all.

  Hal smiled at him, still speaking French.

  ““ Hal paused. ““

  Londo took a breath, considering. He looked from Hal to Rico and back. Both men seemed concerned but friendly. Not Lectori. His eyes narrowed. This could be a trick.