by Lucia Ashta
“Most certainly.”
“Why would you ever do that? That’s crazy. You’re lucky he didn’t order your head cut off on the spot.”
“I did it to find you. I needed to gain his trust so he would tell me where he’d sent you. I’d figured out by then that you must be on another planet, but I had no idea which one, and the universe is a big place.”
“So he told you where he sent me?”
“Not exactly.” Tanus looked uncomfortable; the Princess noticed.
“Let me guess, he tried to exchange the information for something he wanted.”
“You know him well,” Tanus said, his voice rueful. “We both have shitty fathers.” Tanus even had two shitty fathers to choose from. “There’s too much to explain like this. Life’s been... complicated since you left.”
“Life’s been complicated for me since I left, too.”
Tanus nodded at her, and she nodded at him. It seemed that they’d reached some kind of impasse. The normal factors with which one judged circumstances didn’t seem to readily apply in our situation—any of them.
It seemed as if the conversation was finally over when Tanus said, “How did you find him?”
“Hey, other me, my name is Jordan, not ‘him.’”
“And my name is Tanus, not ‘other me.’” But there was a hint of a smile on Tanus’ face, as if he’d eventually find humor in life’s cosmic joke.
The Princess sat back in her chair and stared out into the courtyard. The Palm trees were motionless in the small space, there was no breeze to alleviate the heat or the situation. “As soon as I arrived on Sand, I started mind speaking to you. I figured that our connection was strong enough that you would hear me, no matter what distance separated us.” She looked at the cup in her hands. “I thought you’d hear me, just as you always did. You didn’t always hear me at first, I managed to sneak into your mind plenty of times before you discovered me there, but I thought you’d eventually feel me,” she said bleakly.
“I definitely felt you, even if I didn’t hear you.”
“I didn’t think you did. I received no response, nothing that indicated that you heard me at all. And I was all alone here, on this big planet, without anyone to help me.” And scared, she’d been scared, I thought, reading her emotions as easily as I could read my own, even if she did a better job of hiding them from everyone else.
“I was desperately looking for you.”
She smiled a sad smile, then wiped it from her face. “You didn’t hear me. But Jordan did. I didn’t find you, but I found him.”
“And let me guess, he came running.”
“More or less,” said this woman who was obviously used to men jumping to please her.
Jordan moved his empty teacup to the side and leaned his forearms on the table. “Now that I’ve been patient, and you’ve talked about a gazillion things I don’t understand, will someone please do me the fucking courtesy of explaining what the fuck is going on, and what any of it has to do with me?”
Yudelle said, “I think we’re going to need something stronger if we’re to keep talking.”
Tanus started to speak, but before he could say anything, she said, “I know, I know, we have plenty to clarify and I won’t duck any more of your questions. And in that case, we’re definitely going to need something a lot stronger.” Over her shoulder, she said, “Bring out the bar,” and several of her men hopped to it.
I’d never been a big drinker, but today was a day unlike any other. Bring on the booze.
10
There’s a saying that goes, when back on a planet you weren’t sure was your home, but now you are, and when your double is sitting at the same table as you, along with a man you love, who might or might not still be allowed to love you, along with his holographic twin, getting hammered makes it all better. Okay, obviously there isn’t a saying like that, because that would be insane, but I still couldn’t see how drinking a bit to alleviate the situation would interfere.
After all, we were only human—at least I hoped we were, I was beyond taking anything for granted—and there was only so much a human girl could take. When Yudelle ordered a Bloody Mary, strong, I asked for one too.
No one at the table turned down a drink, even Lila, who looked at her glass as suspiciously as if it contained poison. But she apparently decided there came a point when a girl had to throw caution to the wind, and if ever there was one, this was it. She took a sip of a Long Island iced tea, per the Princess’ recommendation. She became more animated once the bar arrived.
Jordan, looking comfortable with a double martini, double olives, in his hand, said, “So am I going to get some of those answers you promised me now or what? Though I agree that drinks in the middle of the day to smooth the path for batshit crazy is a wonderful idea. Then once I wake up from this craziness, I can blame it on the booze.” He was back to grinning, and I found myself wishing that Tanus would smile that much.
But then, Tanus’ life had obviously been much different than Jordan’s. Before I realized what I was doing, I said, “It’s nice to see you smiling.”
Everyone realized I was talking to Jordan, but I refused to blush, even though I hadn’t meant to say what I was thinking. Tanus’ eyes seemed to be trying to bore a hole into the side of my head. Resigned, I turned to him. He looked angry, no jealous, no... I had no idea, but I decided honesty was still the way to go, more so now than ever. I smiled demurely at Tanus. “I was just thinking how nice a smile would look on you.”
My response seemed to appease him. “Perhaps I’ll smile more once I have more reason for it, once so many people aren’t trying to kill us.”
“Well no one’s trying to kill us on Earth.” I was going to continue my reassurances, but stopped to address the Princess. “Right? You haven’t done anything while I’ve been gone that would have changed that, right?”
She laughed, but her laughter was nothing like Jordan’s. “Are you trying to suggest that this planet is any safer than O? Are you actually from Sand?”
I nodded, never taking my eyes from hers, different from mine only because she’d chosen contact lenses that tinted her eyes violet, while I’d chosen blue.
“If you’re from here, how could you possibly think it isn’t dangerous here? There are more killings and wars here than on O, that’s for sure. Maybe not in the time of the Harals or the early rebellions, but certainly now.” She spoke to Tanus. “My darling, you’re safe. You don’t have to worry about being killed here.”
But I wasn’t letting her drive this conversation, not with her calling Tanus ‘my darling’ and shit. “For your information, since we’ve arrived on Earth, Tanus has nearly died of sun exposure and dehydration, was mauled by a pack of wild hyenas, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something, oh wait, that’s right, he was shot, not once, but twice, by armed assholes. And as if that weren’t enough, Yudelle took him into the pyramid where it sucked up his energy and used it for some kind of energy transference emission beam of light... thing.” I might’ve been a storm chaser, but I was mostly involved in the adrenaline-pumping side of things, not the scientific lab research aspect. “So your offhanded assertions that Tanus is safer here than on your precious O are unfounded.” I plastered a triumphant look on my face and then wondered what the hell I was doing.
I took a big gulp of my Bloody Mary. See, this was why I’d never allowed myself to fall in love before. I must have, on some level, known I’d become a rambling, defensive, jealous fool. I continued drinking until Jordan saved me from myself.
“You were the one responsible for that blast of light?” Jordan’s eyes were nearly as wide as they’d been when he first saw Tanus and me. “Seriously, dude?”
Tanus said, “Yes, I suppose. From what Yudelle has said.”
“Wow, that’s rad, man, for real. The news is already suggesting it might be a sign of the upcoming apocalypse.” He chuckled. “Oh man, you’ve caused quite an uproar.”
I asked, “Do people kno
w the light came from the pyramid?” There, I sounded like an intelligent enough human being. Good for me.
“Oh yeah, people know. There were a bunch of tourists outside the Great Pyramid of Giza that caught the light exploding out of it on their cameras and phones. The footage has made its way around the world already. A beam of light shot out of the top of the pyramid while the capstone—get this—hovered to the side of the top. The light pulsed like a shockwave and spread across the desert as far as the cameras captured. It was wild.”
Yudelle said, “Then we’ll need to leave here right away.” She looked at one of her men standing at attention behind her and nodded. He rounded up the rest by eye, and all but the one tending bar left in a hurry.
Wow. Who was Yudelle on Earth, other than an apparent badass?
Jordan continued, “Okay, right on, I guess, I still have no idea what’s going on.”
But no one could say he wasn’t being a good sport about it. “Did the cameras capture us coming out of the pyramid?” I asked.
“You were there too?”
I nodded.
“Wow. This day has been a trip, that’s for damn sure. No, when the shockwave started rumbling toward them, the tourists finally decided maybe it would be a good idea to take shelter from it, even though they really couldn’t. Although, there’s some guy and his wife talking to every single news station on the planet, telling anyone who’ll listen that the people responsible for the Great Pyramid Blast—that’s what it’s being called—were He-Man, She-Ra, and their merry band of friends, or something a lot like that. I though the light blast had done something funny to their minds.”
Jordan gave a pointed look around at the blades and swords strapped to every one of us. We might have exchanged jeans and t-shirts for our mutable clothing from O, but we’d kept the weapon straps. I had knives strapped to each bicep and my thighs, and that was just for teatime.
“She-Ra I take it?” Jordan asked me.
“I think so.”
“And He-Man?” he asked Dolpheus. “Or wait.” He turned to Tanus. “He also looks like He-Man. Two He-Mans.” Jordan chuckled and pulled on his martini.
“What is it?” Narcisse asked.
“It’s just that if you’d told me how my day was going to go, I wouldn’t have believed it. No way would I have believed this shit. Seriously, if I’d had my fortune read and some kook had looked into a crystal ball and told me this—any of this—I would’ve laughed in their face. Not that I’ve ever had my fortune read, I’m just saying, this is bonkers.”
“Try landing on a foreign planet and being told you’re the princess of it,” I muttered.
“That happened to you?”
“Yep.”
His green eyes widened. “Now that would be something.”
Tanus asked the Princess, “You were already in the city when the condenser beamed light? How? Why? Is this where you’ve been living?”
“No, we’ve been traveling, looking for you.”
“You didn’t tell me we were looking for him,” Jordan said, and he sounded put off, with damn good reason.
Again, the Princess ignored him and I wondered how long Jordan would remain mollified by her promises of explanations and rewards when she continued to treat him like this. I would’ve marched out of this house ages ago. Or maybe I was fooling myself—the draw of the unbelievable too great to walk away from.
The Princess said, “We were in Cairo before the condenser went off because my instinct was pushing me this way.”
Tanus said, “You felt me on Sand?”
“I don’t know if I felt you, I just knew that I had to come here. So I came as fast as I could.”
In other circles, this explanation might have seemed ludicrous. But not in the present company. It was exactly what I’d done that took me to O in the first place. And it was the reason Tanus, Dolpheus, Lila, Kai, and I had traveled to Earth. We’d followed our intuition to the splicing lab and Aletox’s machinations.
“Then,” the Princess was saying, “once we were in the city and the light blasted through it, that’s when I felt you, my darling. That’s when I knew you were here. I heard your message. I heard you calling out to me, and I made my way here.”
So Tanus’ mind speech, amplified by the pyramid, had worked, and brought my lover’s lover back to him. Yippee.
To the Princess, Jordan said, “So you were using me. This whole time you were using me to find him.”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh but that’s exactly what it sounds like. And who are you, man?” Jordan addressed Tanus. “You’re really from another planet? You don’t look like an alien.”
Tanus said, “Whatever you mean by ‘alien,’ I’m just a holographic representation of the same life occurrence as you. You and I are the same, just born into different worlds, to have different life experiences. I am Lord Tanus from Planet Origins, and I’m a soldier.”
“A soldier, huh? Well, you look like one.”
“And so do you. Why is that?”
“I’m a martial artist.”
“A ‘martial artist?’ You create... martial?”
Jordan laughed. “I train to defend myself, and attack when necessary.”
“So, you are a soldier then?”
“Not really.”
But it was clear that everyone from O perceived him that way. Jordan seemed to notice, but said, “So, is it okay for us to be in the same room together? I mean, are we going to cancel out each other’s lives by being in the same space or something? And them too?”
Clearly, he was referring to the only two other people in the room who looked like twins. At first, it bothered me a bit that I hadn’t considered that after the Princess arrived at Yudelle’s house. But then I gave myself a break for the extenuating circumstances, and said, “Jordan, I think we’re all fine. The Princess and I were in the same room earlier and nothing seems to have happened. Besides, I think that’s more for time travel than identical holographic replicas.”
Finally, all my hours of reading fantasy and sci-fi were paying off. “I think that’s only a concern when the same you travels back or forward from another time and sees you. That’s when the timelines crumble. It’s the butterfly effect on steroids. That’s when you’re really screwed.” I actually sounded like I was in one of my books.
“If you’re sure,” he said, not sounding sure at all.
“Completely,” I said and smiled brilliantly at him and took another sip of my Bloody Mary. Of course I wasn’t sure, how could I be? But for whatever reason, it’s what I wanted to say.
“Pardon me, Madame Yudelle,” one of her henchmen said from the doorway, “we’re ready to mobilize.”
“Aletox too?” she said.
The man nodded.
“Good.” She stood up from the table. “It’s time to go, everyone.”
“Why do we need to leave?” Lila asked. “Isn’t it better for us to stay off the streets until we figure out what to do?”
“Only if we want the entirety of Egyptian authority to descend on us and ask questions we don’t want to answer.”
“So why did we even come here in the first place?”
“Because I didn’t think the energy transference at the condenser would be traced to us. Now I realize we should have left already. It won’t take the Ministry long to piece together enough to conclude that I was involved somehow.”
Yudelle finished her drink and walked to the door. “I suggest you all follow me right this second unless you want to be locked in a dark cell somewhere.”
“I’m not going with you,” Jordan said.
“I strongly suggest you do.”
“Thanks, lady, but no thanks. The Princess lied to me, lots and lots. I’ll be parting ways with her, and all of you.”
Yudelle put a hand on Jordan’s arm. “You look exactly like my son over there. If he’s traced to the pyramid, then you will be to, and the men who will come after you won’t be friendly. People from this p
lanet have been trying to figure out how to work the condensers for ages. They’ll be plenty eager to speak with anyone who managed it, and they’ll use any means to achieve their goals.”
As someone who’d spent most of her life on Earth, I realized Yudelle was right, and I was the first to join her. I’d seen enough movies where secret programs and special forces just ‘disappeared’ people who knew too much.
Jordan said, “You’re Tanus’ mother? From another planet too?”
“That’s right.”
“You look just like my mother,” he said in soft tones that made me realize what I’d been missing all along. No wonder he’d been sneaking looks at Yudelle! But I didn’t put it together with all that was going on, even if my own father looked just like the King of Origins. There was so much to keep track of that I was missing bits.
As bizarre as that must’ve been to process, Jordan got up. Because even if he didn’t understand much about Origins or what had happened with the pyramid, or how there could be a holographic replica of himself, or a copy of the woman he’d been sharing time with, he did understand how things worked on Earth.
“We’d better get moving,” he said. “I hadn’t thought it through, but now I’m surprised special ops aren’t swarming this place already. We need to lay rubber as we get the hell out of here.”
“Follow me,” Yudelle said.
Every single one of us trailed after her.
There’d be time to figure out this mess later. Maybe.
11
This time we crammed into the bigger of Yudelle’s vans, as we kept adding to the merry tribe of interstellar travelers and holographic replicas. But even though the van was large enough to fit us all, the driver still sped out of there as if we were in a low-slung sports car.
Once the driver navigated his way out of the non-stop traffic of the city, and we all started breathing a bit easier again, Tanus asked, “Where are you taking us?”
Yudelle, in the front seat, said, “We’re going to a safe house I’ve set up outside of the city. It’s the only place we can go with Aletox in the condition he’s in and not raise suspicion.”