by Calista Skye
I find a spot where I can keep an eye on the elevator beam and at the same time take a step back to be out of sight.
God, I wish that alarm would stop.
I’ll wait here. It might be a while. That robot has a lot of landscapes to search through—
The beam flickers, and the robot stands there.
Then another.
“Shit.”
Then another and another, until there have to be thirty of them or more.
Ah. Of course, it’ll take less time to search through the hanging gardens if you send a whole bunch of robots to do the job.
But Delyah isn’t behind this. What has happened to her? Has the ship gone crazy? Was that some kind of tripwire thing I triggered when I started using the controls down by the main Weirdness?
I withdraw to my first defensive position, which is now much less useful. I can maybe surprise one of these things. But all thirty? Nope.
The ground is soft, and I can’t hear the robots walking on it, but also because the quiet waterfall does give off some noise. I lean out from my hiding place to take a little look at them in the flashing light.
The robots are advancing fast and on one front. They’re scouring the landscape, marching abreast with fifteen feet between each one. They’ll be here very soon.
What I should have done was to get down into the pool and silently ducked under the surface when the robots approached, hiding there until they’d put that part behind them. But now that’s become impossible. They’ll see me the moment I step out from behind the artificial cliff.
Thirty robots.
I know Delyah and Brax’tan fought and won against many more back when they first came inside the ship. But Brax’tan had a sword and he is a caveman.
None of those things are true for me.
Anger flares up in me. Why did Juri’ex have to leave me now? Couldn’t he see that he left me fucking defenseless?
The anger is better than despair.
“Haaiiiaaah!” I jump out from my hiding place at the first sign of movement nearby. I swing the club and hit the first robot right in the face, and it falls over backwards. It’s not as heavy as it looks.
That makes my first plan more interesting.
All the other robots spot me and come for me, reaching out in front of them with long, shiny fingers.
I plunge into the pool and climb up on the boulders under the waterfall. The weight of the water might help me keep them away.
They all follow me blindly, plunging into the water and trying to climb the slippery boulders. As I was hoping, the cascading water does aid me in keeping them at arm’s length, as they’re so light they have problems moving against the flow from above or even standing upright.
But they come at me with mechanical tenacity, and I swing the club again and again.
“Delyah?” I yell, just in case. “The robots are trying to kill me!”
Well, she might hear it somehow. But the siren is very loud.
I swing again and again, wishing I’d picked baseball as a hobby instead of the violin. But of course, that wasn’t my choice, either. ‘Your father would have loved to hear you play that Beethoven sonata. It was his favorite.’
I mostly miss. The few times when a stroke connects, it sends robots flying. But they get back on their feet and keep coming at me, arms outstretched. There’s a zombie-like quality to them. They don’t care about injury or damage, they just want me.
“Get the hell away from me!”
The club is too heavy. I should have made a smaller, longer one. Already, my arms and hands are getting tired. I can’t keep this up, and those robots are just too tenacious.
All I can see is a wall of long, pointed fingers and their lifeless eyes.
The light flashes on and off. The sirens are about to drive me crazy.
The robots will never stop. They wouldn’t know how.
I should just give in and let them kill me.
For a second, I let my hands drop.
No! I won’t let the despair win. I just solved the mystery of faster-than-light travel! I have to live long enough to see it through.
But I also have to get away.
I mobilize all my power and swing the club wildly back and forth, fending off the five closest attachers.
Then I throw the club at the others, jump into the water, swim over to the other shore, climb up, and sprint towards the elevator beam.
I don’t look behind me. Those robots can run fast, but so can I. When I have to.
I run forwards into the beam, with no idea how close the nearest robot is.
Then I repeat the moves from before, just stepping fast out of the beam before I dive into it again.
I reach the uppermost level, the pretty gardens. The alarm is going here too, just as loud and flashing as lower down.
I keep running towards the stairs.
As I recall, the first robot was pretty slow in getting down them that first day, so maybe they’ll be even slower in going up it.
This is a much longer run, and I’m already tired from the fighting.
The despair tugs at me every second, tempting me to just give up.
But no. The girls trust me. Delyah trusts me. Juri’ex—
Fuck.
I can’t even think about him without my throat constricting dangerously.
Okay, that’s the last thing I need right now.
My breath is going raspy and there’s a metallic taste in my mouth as I run, forcing myself to keep going and not slow down. I was never one of nature’s runners, and despite the lower gravity on Xren, my thighs and calves are starting to burn. I’ve been running entirely too much lately.
But I jump small streams, cut across beautiful patches of garden, and crash through bushes. When I reach the wider stream, I do what the robot did last time and wade through it. I don’t have time for the detour that would take me over a bridge.
When I get to the stairs, my breath whistles in my throat and threatens to drown out the siren.
But that wasn’t all. Now I have to climb stairs, in a dress that’s three times its usual weight because it’s soaked in water.
I climb the first three steps, higher and less comfortable than they should be. The steps are so narrow that my hip is in constant contact with the inner wall. On the other side there’s only a sheer drop.
The robots have reached the stairs, and the first one is on the way up. Their progress isn’t fast, but neither is mine. And I can’t afford to fall down from here. They can.
My breath wheezes in my ears and my thighs could catch fire at any moment. The despair that reminds me so much of Troga threatens to cloud my mind.
But hell, Caroline beat Troga. All we girls who were kept captive by that little dragon survived. So the despair she created in us was all fake.
I keep climbing, staying as close to the wall as I can. If I fall from up here, it’s curtains.
By the top of the stairs I’m on all fours, using my hands to help because my legs are pretty much out of commission.
I drag myself up the last step and peer down.
The robots are only about halfway up, obviously having trouble with the height of the steps.
Fine.
Damn, that siren is going to drive me crazy.
I take three seconds to put my hands on my knees and breathe deeply, then seek out the elevator that will take me up to Delyah.
18
- Juri’ex -
The night is dark and humid. Hot, too. There will be a thunderstorm tonight.
I stand still with my back to the alien ship.
Did any of this really happen?
Was I really inside it?
Was Ashlynn with me?
Did I Mate with her?
Was it just a fantasy, a dream?
This is the jungle. That is the alien spaceship Bune behind me.
If I turn around, will it still be there?
I start walking in no particular direction. It’s of no con
cern. Soon, it will not be there. Ashlynn and her friends will be going home, leaving Xren forever.
Of course, they’ll prefer escaping if the alternative is to fight the dragons they fear so much. Better to flee and leave their enemy for us to fight.
It is quite an ingenious plan. Incite us against their enemy, then escape when they appear to be arriving.
Was that their plan all along?
For some reason, it doesn’t ring true. If it were, Ashlynn wouldn’t be the way she is. She wouldn’t be as unguarded or as sincere. There would be a slyness to her. And if there’s one quality she doesn’t have, slyness is it.
A barb of longing hits me again. Her face is so open! So real, so present. She wasn’t hiding anything. Even her climax she let me see on her face, heightening my own joy in the moment to true bliss.
She just wants to go home. And can I blame her? I know what that feels like.
I walk across the plain. At some point, I will make my way to her village.
Oh, the pain that will create.
Then I will never return there. I will help my friends handle the two dragons by our home, then try to talk some sense into Curt’on.
And then?
My fantasy of founding a new tribe is only a fantasy. It can work for aliens, because they are females and can make their men work together. There’s a reason every other tribe has men of only one stripe, not of many colors like the alien tribe. They must be like that to function. One color for each tribe.
Yes, a fantasy only. But with Ashlynn, it all seemed more than possible.
Of course, I could go back to my old tribe and fight for the chief’s position. But the old chief must be dead by now, and I have no beef with whomever replaced him.
Perhaps the treehouse on The Island is the place for me, after all. Rax’tar is gone, but maybe the others will return. Or, maybe I can stay there with Curt’on.
Whatever happens, my life from now on can be fine. It will not be great, because the light will have gone out of it. Ashlynn’s eyes don’t shine the way mine do, but somehow she has the sun in her. A warm, bright sun that radiates in her smile and her touch and her voice.
A sun that will never brighten my days again.
She will leave. And from what little I understand of what went on in that last room, I think she will leave soon.
Better then that I leave her first. The more time I spend in the light of her sun, the deeper the shadow will be in her absence.
I reach the end of the plains and turn around to see that alien thing one last time before I duck in among the trees.
It is a huge, dark presence. Looming there with all its alien meaning and tech. Somewhere in there is an alien woman who even now fills my mind.
I was blessed to have known her and her warm embrace.
Just when I’m about to turn my back to it for the last time, the spaceship lights up.
First, I think it’s just lightning. But no. It comes from the spaceship.
Huge beams of light and colors reach skywards from its top, lighting up the dark clouds in every shade of the rainbow. Thin beams, thick beams. Intense white light and light the same color as my stripes. Flashing and moving and exploding in splendor. Completely silent.
It lasts for just a little while, but when it ends I’m blinded and the only thing I can see are those intense stripes, as if etched into my eyes forever.
I blink many times, but they won’t go away. It’s like when I make the mistake of staring at the sun for a split second – that round disk is all I see for a good while after.
I have never seen this happen. But I have heard of it. It is well known that Bune would sometimes light up in glorious displays of light and colors. The shamans say it is a demonstration of the Ancestors’ power and divinity, but they are plainly wrong. That alien spacefaring thing has nothing to do with them.
Should I return? Is this Ashlynn signaling to me?
But I know in my heart that it isn’t. And even if it is, what could she say? She will leave. Everything she has done here has been because of that.
I reach up and touch the handle of my sword.
I still have it. And as long as I have my blade, I am a warrior. Anything can happen.
I turn my back to the alien colossus and walk on.
19
- Ashlynn -
The door opens to the control room. It’s very quiet. All the lights are on, but outside the window all is dark.
“Delyah? You asleep?”
There’s no reply. And if she can sleep in this bright light, then she must be very tired.
I tiptoe further in among the alien instruments and consoles. The corner where she keeps her furs and skins is empty.
Her clothesline lies on the floor, drying dinosaur skin garments still on it. Her old spear with a rusty iron tip lies discarded close to the door I came in. It wasn’t there last time.
The whole place looks messy, as opposed to back then.
The consoles seem to mostly have gone dead. There are very few lights on them.
And Delyah isn’t here.
I did fear it. With the robots acting they way they did, it was at the back of my mind that something must have happened to Delyah. But I didn’t think that thought all the way to the end. Because I had no idea what was at the end of it. Just that it was something very, very bad.
For a split second, I wonder in horror if maybe she left with Juri’ex. But no, she wouldn’t leave me here. Not with all these weird things going on.
And Juri’ex?
He must have been out of the ship before the robot shit started. He had ample time. And determined as he was to go, I can’t believe he would leave me alone if he knew anything bad was going down. He nearly died for my safety a couple of times in the jungle.
“Juri’ex.” It comes out thin and pitiful.
He’s gone. And was he wrong? Am I not preparing to leave? Did it not make me genuinely happy when the tachyon stuff and the Weirdness fell into place in my mind?
I was happy.
But not for me. For the girls! For Delyah and all her work. For the other Dragon Girls who weep sorely in the night, just wishing to see their families again. For the mission, for making me feel good about finally being For…
...me.
Fine, I wanted to go home to Earth. I want it. But not if the price is this high. Not if the price is giving up my once-in-a-lifetime love.
I guess I should have told him.
I collapse onto the floor in the alien control room, too exhausted to care about who can hear my pitiful sobs.
But couldn’t he see it? Could he not see in my face that I would never want to be separated from him?
I guess not.
I don’t know how long I sit there, hugging my knees.
Outside the windows, the light is slowly coming back as the Xren sun is about to rise.
I slowly get up on my sore, stiff legs. I have things to do. First, find Delyah. Second, throw the lever down there that will turn on the escape ship. If not for me, then for the girls. None of them know how to do it. Not even Delyah. You need my newly found understanding, the one you only get by staring into the Weirdness and letting it stare into you.
I look out the windows, into the mist. There’s no movement anywhere.
I turn around, and the blood freezes to ice in my veins.
On the alien window right behind me, there is writing.
The letters are two feet high, impossible to see when there’s only darkness outside, but all the more obvious and chilling now that there’s daylight behind them.
Delyah has hurriedly scrawled them in blood, and she barely had time to finish the last letter:
DRAGON
20
- Juri’ex -
A new day is glowing on the horizon, but my soul is as cold as ever. I’ve been walking aimlessly, not being watchful, as if I wish for some Big or aggressive Small to come and rip me apart.
No, I don’t want that. Not really.
I don’t wish for anything right now, except to not have my thoughts filled with Ashlynn every second.
On the other hand, I want nothing else.
“Idiot,” I scold myself. “Could you not have given her some time to speak? Of course, she was happy. She had just solved the mystery she was sent to solve!”
But that wasn’t it. She was happy because going back to her home planet was the only thing she wanted. I counted for nothing.
I try to empty my mind and walk on.
There’s a huge carcass in the distance. I have seen many such things before. The largest Bigs look like bloated mountains when they die for whatever reason, old age or disease or perhaps some equally large rival. They provide wonderful feasts for the carrion eaters who will flock to such a carcass by the hundreds. If the stench of the rotting Big isn’t enough to keep any man away, the endless numbers of small Bigs and Smalls around it will.
I prepare to walk a large circle around this one.
But as I come closer, I see that there are no carrion eaters around it or on it. There is movement, but only a distance away from the dead Big.
It is a gatagank, one of those huge things we spotted two of on the way here. And now a third? I shake my head in wonder. And no scavengers crawling all over it?
I walk closer than I normally would, then closer still. There’s no stench, and the few creatures nearby escape when they see me coming.
I walk all the way up to the dead gatagank, as large as a hill.
It is burned. There are scorch marks all over it. The long, thick neck has been burned clean off.
I can smell it now. Singed skin and charred flesh.
It’s completely unheard of. Gataganks never catch fire. Certainly never more often than other Bigs. Perhaps, if caught in a forest fire, they’ll burn. But there has been none.
And even then, it wouldn’t look like this. These burns come from outside. The gatagank itself was not on fire.
The strangeness of it all gives off a clear warning: don’t come closer. Even the scavengers understand it.