Hagab’s curse was loudest of the three. In their hurry to exit the Pletori he hadn’t reconnected rings with his brother. Once they were out of range of security he could have readjusted his ring, but he hadn’t thought of it. The blocking his brother had used emanated to all thumb rings in Hagab’s vicinity, thus muting Coreg and Payat’s rings to the alerts. He quickly aligned the ridges on the inner circles of the small circular device. As soon as he did all three of them received a low level shock to their skin and the oval report symbol lit up.
Payat smacked at Hagab’s head. “Idiot. We’ll be locked up for disregarding this call.”
Coreg used the plaque to hit Hagab in the same way. Hagab stumbled backward and gave a chirping laugh to cover the pain and humiliation. “No. They won’t catch us. We have to do this now.” He waved a pink finger at the plaque. “The coordinates. We take the ship. You pace us there.” He rubbed his head. “Like you said. We’ll be heroes. Promoted.” He glanced around belligerently, as though daring them or any of the furnishings to object.
Coreg wasted another moment to shake his head and shame Hagab with a mortifying pause, but in fact he agreed. When Payat clucked his tongue to begin another rant against Hagab’s intelligence Coreg cut him off, dubbed him a bigger idiot, then stomped out of the room, calling back, “Follow me. Our only problem is if the Intimidator has been taken by someone else.”
♫ ♫ ♫
YEAH, I SURE didn’t expect to see that face. “Marcum!” I just about fell over. And I definitely wasn’t going to time-pace. “What— How?” I scanned him from head to foot. No doubt, it had to be Marcum. Because those were my clothes he was wearing. Totally out of place here. His hair was blacker, if that was possible, and shorter, tiny bristles stuck out in every direction waving like the feelers of searching insects. His face shone with a fresh tan, those crazy eyes lasering through me as if he’d acquired Superman’s x-ray vision. And he was wearing Reeboks that were crushing small arrowheads that looked like stone thorns.
“Hellew.” He looked from me to Selina who was blinking hard at him and, I could tell, trying to do her time-bending thing. She couldn’t manage it in her weakened state. Nope, no time-bending. Too bad. It would have given her time to recover while my confused gawking was going on. I couldn’t help but think of a certain superstar singing Hello, it’s me …
Marcum kept his body turned toward First Commander Cotay with his arms straight at his sides. His demeanor was a hundred times more submissive and respectful than I had been and I wondered if my previous actions had put me in line for some Klaqin discipline.
Marcum identified himself to the commander. I followed their short conversation for the most part. Cotay made some throaty clicks I hadn’t learned before, then all of a sudden four guards rounded the corner and jogged up to the Commander. Something was up and apparently he had no option other than to hand us over to Marcum. He gave Marcum instructions then a nod and a word of dismissal to me and Selina before rushing off with his guards. Whew, I didn’t think I was in trouble, but you never knew. Marcum helped me move Selina down the passageway and whispered words of encouragement to her in English. Man, despite his funny “hello” his accent was spot on.
“Dude, how’d you get here so fast? You’ve obviously been to Earth. We’ve only been here a day or so. I think.” I couldn’t think of a way to equate our experience to Earth time. Plus there’d been a lot of time-bending and pacing.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I spent eight of your moon cycles on Earth. I lived your life.”
Okay, that was shocking. I processed what he said, in a perfect mid-western accent by the way, as we helped Selina down a passageway and walked her into the room Cotay had instructed. The room remained dark until Marcum waved his arm. A large sphere on the wall glowed and I could see that the room resembled a lounge.
“Careful. Set her here.” He was telling me to be careful with her?
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Selina said, keeping her eyes on Marcum. I didn’t like that one bit. I replayed that time I saw them kiss. I should have hit him harder then.
“Marcum.” Selina said his name a little too slowly. “Marcum, is my dad with you? I mean, are our dads with you?”
Crap, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe he ditched them on Azoss and followed us here. But that didn’t make sense if he was wearing clothes I know came from my closet. I glared at him, but he kept his eyes on Selina. His face looked a lot different now that I paid closer attention to him. Eight months on Earth? What was going on?
♫ ♫ ♫
MARCUM SETTLED HIMSELF in a seat opposite the Earth couple. He hoped he’d gotten over Selina in the lengthy time he’d spent in their world, but no. One look at her and he was smitten again, time-bending or not, she made the minutes slow and his heart quicken.
“I landed right after the attack,” he said, more to Alex than to Selina. “And no, your fathers didn’t come with me. They’re still on Earth.”
“I was at some kind of funeral banquet thing when the attack happened. Then I found out Selina had been abducted. They sent me with Coreg to one of those learning cabs to see if I could figure out what was going on.”
Marcum analyzed Alex’s sputtered recap and clucked without thinking. “You know then, don’t you?”
Selina straightened up, leaned less on Alex, and asked, “He knows what? That we made a huge mistake in coming here?”
Marcum looked down at Alex’s blue boot-like shoes, the same regulation style as Coreg’s, but half the price. His own had worn out considerably on Earth—well, accidentally blown up—and he’d found Alex’s Reeboks sufficiently comfortable. He looked up and gave them the truth in his best English, now peppered with slang. “Yup. You nailed it. I never should have allowed you to leave with Coreg. My bad.”
Selina let loose with a giggle. “Hellooo. Who are you and what have you done with Marcum? You never talked so much or so well.”
Marcum raised his shoulders and his eyebrows.
“Really?” Selina blinked hard and went on, “You picked up all that in what, two days on Earth?” She stage-whispered to Alex, “I don’t think that’s Marcum.”
♫ ♫ ♫
“DIDN’T YOU HEAR what he said?” I petted Selina’s good hand. “He said he was there eight months.” An old Cyndi Lauper song puddled on the edge of my thoughts … time after time … and I asked Marcum, “Can you explain how you spent practically a year on Earth and yet we’ve only been here a short while?”
“I’ve no idea.”
He stared at the floor. I made quick eye contact with Selina, who, I was glad to see, had perked up considerably. I fingered both my thumb ring and hers and thought about her statement. Maybe this wasn’t the real Marcum, but I didn’t know enough about him to ask a question to prove whether he was who he said he was or not. Something bothered me about his presence. I had blurted out that I’d been in a learning cab and he implied that I must know something. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Marcum couldn’t possibly be here—not unless he was a time-pacer after all.
“Ask him something, Selina, something only he’d know.”
I could tell she was running a list of things through her head like stuff they’d said to each other, that kiss, and who knew what else. I rubbed at my nose. That was our secret gesture that said I liked her, loved her really, and she acknowledged it with a quick nose tap of her own before she spoke. “So, Marcum, what was your first favorite food on Earth?”
All right, that was a safe question. And even I knew the answer.
“Pie,” Marcum said. He passed the quiz, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I’d have to keep my eye on him.
“Now what?” I said. “We’ve established that you’re you and time is different on Earth. But we’ve got a problem here and now. I’m pretty sure neither Selina nor I can leave this place. Something weird is going on. There are Gleezhians in here.” Marcum’s eyes went wide and he held up a hand to stop me. I assumed that was a gesture he lear
ned on Earth.
He pointed at Selina’s thumb ring that I was wearing on my finger and made a twisting motion. I lifted my eyebrows—huh? He reached forward and I let him fiddle with it. It snapped and lost its shine.
“Okay,” Marcum said, “they’re not listening now.”
Great. I quickly reviewed all my previous statements. Who were they and what were they listening for? I suspected Coreg had something to do with the eavesdropping. I wouldn’t doubt anything. I directed the conversation back to my original statement: “I have a theory. Based on what I read and heard in the learning cab. And it’s that First Commander Cotay is either a traitor to your planet or involved in something pretty covert.”
“Explain.”
“You know that a ton of Klaqins were banished to encampments at the edges of the livable side of your planet, right?”
“It’s not talked about. Most people my age don’t know, but yeah, I know. We’re in one of the banishments now. Here, below ground, at the Edges.”
“Your society is a little light on females, I’m sure you’ve noticed. You’ve been training to fight the Gleezhians, but what I learned is that there were three treaties between your planets. Each one was broken after specific events.”
Marcum nodded for me to go on.
“The wars have been going on for generations. My dad once told me a story about the winter wars. Since you don’t have winter here I guess he was using an Earth word, but he must have meant the wars took place in areas like this—at the edges of darkness on this frozen landscape. What I learned from the archives was during those wars the banished Klaqins made peace with the Gleezhians and in exchange for their women they received all kinds of Gleezhian technology and weapons.”
Selina made a sharp breath-sucking sound and took my hand then. Totally distracted me. She spoke softly, “But the Gleezhians are cannibals. Did they eat the women?”
Her question brought my focus back. That was a nauseating thought. I didn’t know the answer. I looked at Marcum.
CHAPTER 11
♫ … time after time … ♫
COREG HAD NO trouble sneaking the three of them into the hangar and onto the Intimidator. He checked the ship’s functions and found them freshly primed with galactic lard.
“Strap in. This is going to be fast. I’ll have to use the camo at start-up.”
“That’s a huge infraction,” Hagab said, pushing Payat toward the wall seat and taking the command chair. “And the sensors will catch us anyway.”
Coreg huffed at him. “You’ve never time-paced with me, have you?”
“Only on bridge battles, never been in space with you. Or with Marcum.” Hagab of course didn’t mention that Coreg’s time-pacing had actually saved him from a potentially fatal fall from the bridge. He was still reeling from the humiliation in Payat’s father’s office. He’d been shamed by both Coreg and Payat. He couldn’t think of a way to redeem himself.
Payat interjected, “Yeah, I’m interested to see why old Dace judged you and Marcum as so special. I never understood why you won the purlass wrist band after showing up naked from the infiltration mission.” His tone betrayed his jealousy.
Coreg pushed his feet into the indentations and pressed his hands above his head. The tiniest of smirks, something he’d observed on Earth, played at his lips. In a nano-time-unit they were half-way to the second moon’s orbit.
“Impressive.” Payat shook his head and turned his attention from Coreg to the screen. “Now what?”
“I’ve locked onto the location you found out. Put the helmet on and listen. We should be able to assess their vulnerability from here.”
♫ ♫ ♫
MARCUM DIDN’T ANSWER Selina’s question. I guess it was obvious that of course the Gleezhians must have done the despicable cannibal thing. After all, I was raised on bedtime stories of witches and ogres and trolls—and Gleezhians—that feasted on bad children and unfortunate trespassers.
I finished my explanation with a clear reference to the shortage of women. “It’s a long-term battle plan on the part of the Gleezhians. They can’t seem to beat you so they’re hoping to wait you out … until you go extinct. They want your planet and all its water.”
Marcum’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed, but he kept quiet. Selina looked at me all doe-eyed and I knew she was thinking ahead, like how I’d taught her to play chess, and she’d make the same leap to the same conclusion I had: I may be a pawn in all this, Coreg and Marcum too, but she was the queen.
None of us said anything.
I grew suspicious of the amount of time we’d been left alone. Who kidnaps a time-bender and rescues a time-pacer only to leave them unguarded? I stood up and let Selina’s hand drop into her lap. I paced the room. And I do mean pace. I did a Mach 2 on time as I examined every nook and cranny of the lounge.
“Alex?” Selina followed my every move. “Don’t you think a slower inventory would be more productive?”
“Sure,” I said, “go ahead and do your time-bending thing and I’ll check the space again.”
“No need, bro.” Marcum stood. I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at his choice of slang. He talked like my old buddy, Niket Patel. I wondered if he’d been hanging out with Niket during his time on Earth. “I’ve already checked everything here.”
“Like when? You just got here.” I moved directly in front of him. “Or so you say.”
We were chest to chest. Maybe he had a few pounds on me, but he didn’t scare me. He didn’t have that sharp edge that Coreg flaunted.
“I learned something on Azoss.” He took a step back and sat again. Yeah, bro, I won that one.
“Do tell.” My patience was running on empty, probably because of the vibes Selina was giving off now. I sat down next to her and took her hand in both of mine. I could tell when she was going to go into one of her seizures, but this wasn’t one of those times. Something was different. Maybe whatever experiment they’d run on her—all that pain—brought out some new genetic reaction. She was a quarter Klaqin after all. I glanced at her other hand, the one that had been puffy and purple. It seemed normal now except for a red streak from her thumb to her wrist.
“On Azoss, right before you left … I learned something about myself.” Marcum said that much and nothing more.
Okay, so he wanted us to pull it out of him. I hummed a few bars of the X-Files theme. Selina got it, but Marcum didn’t.
“Okay, we’re listening,” Selina said. “Hashtag truth.”
Marcum kept his eyes on Selina—she’s my girl, I kept thinking—and then he said, “Alex and Coreg can pace time and you can bend it. I have a different ability … and I’m working on honing it.” He shifted his eyes to me. “Anyway, I used it when I arrived here and checked this whole banishment station from top to bottom.”
“So you’ve been here longer than you said.”
“No … not exactly.”
Hmm, I looked at Selina and she shrugged her shoulders then said, “I don’t understand, but I think we can trust him, Alex.”
I guess we had no other choice. Better him than Coreg.
I took a breath. “We got here and there was a parade for us, sort of, and we were treated like celebrities. Got the thumb rings. Got escorted to that castle and bridge place. They put Selina in with the girls and I got your old room. Crap, we haven’t even slept yet. This has been one horribly long day. Next thing I knew I was at some funeral service and there was an attack. Then I found out that Selina was abducted. Long story short: I got locked up. Some guys, I don’t know who they were, rebels or something, gassed my guard and me—it didn’t affect me though—and brought me here.”
Marcum didn’t acknowledge a thing I said. He turned his attention to Selina and asked, “Who took you? Gleezhians or Klaqins?”
“Klaqins I guess. I didn’t see anyone with six fingers until a few minutes ago.”
Now he nodded. “I accept your theory about the treaty and the extinction plan, but there’s more.�
�
“Well, fill us in.”
“I had a new experience going through the space alley on my return here. Do you know what the space alley is?”
We nodded. It had been a pretty painful experience for me. For Selina, too, until I gave her the helmet.
“It was silent … at first. Then I heard a burst of communications. It was as if the flow of sound had reversed and instead of receiving millions of radio waves from Earth, the alley was inundated with much sharper and clearer communications from Gleezhe and Klaqin. I recorded it all. Then I listened … and learned.”
“Hold on a sec. Once again you want us to believe that you spent eight months on Earth, then did a twenty light year trip here, oh, and stopped along the way to listen to every message sent from two planets? Dude, I don’t think so. I don’t have a clue as to why our concept of time is that we’ve only been here for like a single Earth day, but—”
“Wait, Alex.” Selina leaned forward toward Marcum, a little too close and intense for my liking. “You could do all that because of your special ability, right?” Marcum made a positive two-note hum. “And you’re sure you don’t want to tell us what that is?”
“Not yet … for your safety.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, “so what can you tell us? What’d you hear?”
“The peoples who were banished to the Edges made a secret treaty with the Gleezhian lords. Selina … you know this already … Coreg and I had plotted to kidnap you. Your special time-bending mated with Coreg’s pacing could produce a line of warriors with both gifts. Remember how the battle went when you coordinated with Coreg?”
“Uh huh. And with Alex’s strategy, too.” She squeezed my hand. Good feeling. “But, hey, cue the ref, time out. What do you mean mated?”
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 10