The Time Ender

by Debra Chapoton

  He stepped back and observed the scene. Yes, every tool was in the correct hand; he hadn’t inadvertently switched objects, but something was amiss as if time had moved ahead a few frames. But Selina lay still as glass, a near perfect specimen for them and a flawless mate for him. Her eyes were open, sightlessly staring at the nearest Gleezhian. He touched her hair, bent to smell its perfumed ends and brushed his cheek against hers.

  A thousand promises came to mind, but he whispered the greatest one into her ear. Then he kissed her lightly, as he had before, and straightened. Her eyes were half-closed, mid blink. Impossible. Or had he lost his grip on time?

  He stepped into place and took a breath; it caught in his throat and burned from the dry Gleezhian air.

  ***

  I CALLED ON every brave bone, cell, nerve and drop of blood I had to get me through another honest to goodness alien probing. I stared at the closest guy. Hairy with a green-eyed leer.

  Suddenly and inexplicably I relaxed. They pointed various contraptions at me and made a range of suspicious responses, from low groans to high multi-syllabled words. They chattered excitedly over one readout I must have impressed them with. Couldn’t imagine what, but my fear level plummeted and my bravery index rose.

  I specifically worked to keep from time-bending, but in the normal slowness of Gleezhian time I had plenty of minutes to ponder this mess. In fact, I think I had a micro-vision—a super short instagram story … sort of. It was more like a memory of something that didn’t happen: Marcum bustled around the room, leaned in to tell me a galactic truth, and sealed our union with a “you may now kiss the bride” lip brushing.

  Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t.

  I’ve been called wishy-washy more than once. That’s another hugely complex facet of my intergalactic personality. I prefer to replace wishy-washy with irresolute since it sounds less spineless. On the one hand I could avoid direct eye contact better than a cowering puppy, but on the other hand my status as time-bender should allow me an appropriate amount of dignity and, ahem, some bit of modesty. The current situation left me vulnerable yet feeling invincible. Yeah, wishy-washy.

  Same for my feelings. Maybe it’s a teenage thing: I liked Marcum and feelings for him kept cropping up; I liked Alex and feelings for him kept wavering.

  Crap, my gut was cramping up. My bladder felt full.

  At last the science guys ended their inspection and analysis of my one quarter Klaqin, three quarters Earthling constitution. They packed up their gear … thankfully before I committed a sanitary transgression of major proportions.

  They left in a noisy chattering of strange words and gestures. Their robes faded abruptly into shadow as the primitive lighting here—candle flames!—shrank from a golden blaze to gas stove blue, with the whoosh of a hurried exit.

  Marcum shook his head and looked down at the red mushroom floor, though his eyes were clearly looking through it. He scowled and maintained his remote stance.

  I sat up. “What? What is it?”

  I stared at the floor too. The mushrooms had company. Seed pods were wedged between the tough stems.

  I jumped onto the ground and bent to retrieve a handful of the pods. They were hard and sharp and if I wasn’t careful they would cut like razor blades.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to formulate a few English words for the conclusion these pods brought me to. “Seeds. Not thorns here. You did a time stoppage, didn’t you?”

  Marcum never blushed, but his eyes gave away the truth. Without thinking I brought my other hand to my mouth and brushed away the lingering touch of his lips. I knew it.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “they would have hurt you.”

  He stepped nearer and stuck his hand into the squishy flooring and recovered a dull gray cylinder, labeled with, of all things, a hashtag.

  “What’s that?”

  “It is the power core to an apparatus that would have made you scream. As it is they are now most impressed with not only your superhuman strength, as measured with a faulty device, but they are in awe of your ability to resist pain.”

  “And that’s going to help us?” I let the seed pods fall back into the cracks between the mushrooms. I pressed down with my toe, but the mushroom heads were rubbery and resisted my squishing.

  “Yes.” He stared at me with an expression I could not interpret, but at least it didn’t creep me out. Okay, husband, I thought. No, wait, no way was a quick Gleezhian banner twist and sleeping potion toast going to make me married to Marcum. I didn’t agree to anything.

  “Well, can you do another time-stop so we can get to our people, the Klaqins and the Earth guys that came to help?”

  He shook his head so slowly I expected to hiccup when he finished.

  “No,” he said. “For my plan to work we must go through with the ceremony, accept the peace treaty for our planets, and … and—”

  “And?”

  “And then make a decision. I will need the advice of my parents.”

  “And you speak Gleezhian now?”

  “Fluently. I had lots of time to learn.”

  I thought of the hundreds of times I must have stretched out Spanish class, but I wasn’t any better at it than Mingzhu.

  Marcum motioned toward the door and said, “I have access to the entire royal residence. I want you to see something.”

  I sure hoped it was a bathroom.

  “When I conferenced with Alex and his father on the Liberator … remember? … you and the Special Commander females remained on the Fighter Five.”

  I nodded, remembering.

  “We had a productive discussion concerning time-stopping. We concluded that the planet I put into a stoppage would actually be at a disadvantage.”

  He stopped talking; I was supposed to make a deduction I guess. I pretended to think, screwing my eyebrows together and pursing my lips.

  Marcum opened the door and checked the passageway. After a quick appraisal he led me out. I hadn’t noticed before, but the walls and ceiling were as smooth as unpainted metal. Possibly this structure had been built into a natural crater and the ground or foundation left raw. The fungi growing in the room we left did not extend into this hall. I stepped on a harder surface which, when I looked down, reflected the smokeless candles on the walls.

  “A disadvantage?” I echoed his last word in an attempt to focus on what he said and not on the marvels and curiosities of a royal Gleezhian residence.

  “Yes, at least it seemed so when we analyzed it. I am not entirely certain. I did ever-widening time stoppages here and did not encounter a paralysis of my ability, though it did get more difficult to execute.”

  He had his hand on my back to keep me walking at his pace. I practically had to jog to keep up. It dawned on me how weird it was to scurry down these halls, unarmed, and yet to feel completely protected by Marcum. He once told me he was about my age, but he acted super mature right now and I swear either his calmness was rubbing off on me or I was in complete denial about the seriousness of our predicament.

  “Selina.” Oh, how my name slipped off his tongue with devotion. “I think I am losing my power.”

  And that statement halted the direction of my thinking. “Your power to stop time?” Holy cow, that was a game changer. My feet stopped as if they’d been ordered to. “Marcum, what are we going to do?”

  “You’ll see. I’m going to show you.” He urged me to move on.

  We came to a guarded set of wide double-doors; the sentries straightened at the sight of us, but kept their weapons lowered and acknowledged Marcum with a clear pronunciation of his name and a praise-like gesture. Marcum spoke a word or two in Gleezhian and they stepped aside, pulled open the rusted access and allowed us entry. I suspected Marcum had become a celebrity on Gleezhe.

  We stepped through to a dark, low-ceilinged porch and I realized we hadn’t entered, but rather exited the royal structure. And it was night. After the endless sunlight of Klaqin I’d expected the sam
e here, but Gleezhe orbited its sun in a daily rotation like Earth.

  The air was cooler, but not drastically so. As my eyes adjusted I saw that the sky was masked in low-flying clouds. And flying they were. A sudden gust of sandy wind struck our faces and Marcum reached for my neck flap and pulled the material up over my head. He grabbed my hand and twisted my thumb ring until it vibrated my knuckle. Suddenly I could see through the flap.

  With a good degree of night vision I watched him regulate his own ring and then pull the white front flap of his uniform over his head. A crack startled me as an object hit the metal door and I swear something popped loose. Then a whooshing draft sent more dust and sand to ping us with alarming force.

  “Walk behind me,” he said. I followed at an angle, close behind and to the right so I could see where we were going but still benefit from the bulk of him as a shield. The ground did not teeter totter much at night, at least not enough to make me lose my balance or make me nauseated.

  We walked around the crater and despite the darkness I had a good appreciation of the size and ingenuity of the building. When we veered away there was less wind to fight against and fewer blasts of gritty gravel. I looked up to see the last bunch of clouds dispersing.

  “Where are we going and how did you get permission for me to leave?” My lips chafed hard against the material as I asked.

  Marcum turned his head my way, pulled his flap down and tugged at mine. We stopped walking at the same instant.

  “I did not get permission. I have been conditioning the guards to accept my nightly excursions into the Gleezhians’ abandoned cities. If we do not return when the sun does there will be a problem.”

  Problem? I didn’t think I wanted to know what kind of problem. As I saw it everything was a problem and I’d spent my life trying to avoid everything.

  “Over there,” he said, taking my hand, “just a little farther.”

  I didn’t see anything “over there,” but I let him pull me along with minimal stumbling in the dark. I wish he’d left my flap up; I was able to see better then.

  A “little farther” turned out to be as far as walking home from school if Alex and I missed the bus, which we had exactly twice. I remembered the first time took forever—I must have been time-bending—but the second time was a breeze. I realized this instant that Alex had probably speeded things up with inadvertent time-pacing.

  I sure wasn’t going to time-bend now. It was getting a little eerie moving so far from other humans. All alone. The creep of minutes lengthened. I imagined the gradual shifting of the planet and wondered if I would witness a Gleezhian dawn. Would there be a rhythm to a Gleezhian day?

  Through my footwear I judged the landscape: hard as concrete mostly, sometimes less so, and pebbled with jagged bits of rocks. From time to time I could make out the shape of a roof or the side of a fallen house. Twice my paranoia kicked in and I sensed alien eyes tracking us.

  A sense of urgency was back as Marcum pressed me to go faster. Maybe dawn was close because suddenly I could clearly see a man-made shape before us.

  CHAPTER 18

  #Surprise

  EMOJI: TIRED FACE.

  Or at least that seemed to be my reflection in the metal siding of what could only be a Gleezhian house. Built into the side of a modest hill, it was windowless with one half-hidden door. I looked again at the mirror image and was struck by how clear my likeness was, but not Marcum’s. His face was no more than a featureless oval, expressionless, with his dark hair loose and looking longer in the reflection. Eerie.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked instead of my real question: what’s wrong with you?

  Marcum pressed his hand along the rounded corners of the door until it popped inward and allowed a wedge of red light to bleed onto our boots.

  I made a move forward. “Wait,” he said. With a strong arm around my waist he lifted me up and over the threshold in an awkward jerking motion. He practically threw me ahead before he took a wide step over the entrance. “There are explosive devices set into the openings. They are hazardous, installed before the Gleezhian beasts went extinct.”

  That was a relief on two levels. I was glad there were no more beasts—if you didn’t include the Gleezhians themselves—and I was glad Marcum was not doing one of those “carry the bride over the threshold” traditions. My heart had fluttered with a shiver of adrenaline at the brief thought that he would know of such a tradition. But I did wonder why they would put explosives into homes that had to bear the lurch and sway of an unfriendly planet.

  “Hool,” a disembodied voice sang out. The Klaqin word startled me.

  “I’ve brought the time-bender,” Marcum said as someone rose from behind a tower of items piled on a table. That person was a Marcum look-alike, only taller. I knew him. It was Jason, the boy—well, he was a man now—who had gone to our school years ago. He had the same blue-black hair as Marcum and since he was wearing white too they looked like bookends, though Jason’s eyes were larger. His nose too. But the Klaqin ancestry showed.

  “Hello, Selina.”

  “Hi, Jason.” I didn’t do the standard confused head shake; I didn’t want to look like a total idiot. Obviously there’d been a lot of schemes, plans, and plots that I’d been left out of. “How long have you been here?”

  He smirked. The red light, a crookedly installed Klaqin disk, shined down from the wall making his nose cast a shadow beyond his chin. “Long enough.”

  I might have said “uh huh” or something else bland and noncommittal, I don’t know, I was in more than a little shock to see him standing calmly at a table piled with objects from Earth and Klaqin.

  ***

  DEEP IN THE bottom of their elevator shaft prison, Alex continued to cough throughout Henry’s explanation, but managed to find his voice to ask, “What about Selina? Hey, your plan seems doable, sure, but I’m not leaving here without her.”

  “We’re not leaving the planet, just this place. Besides, you have no idea where they’re keeping her now.” A.J., so much like his brother Henry though not quite as tall, stood swinging his gorilla-length arms in sweeping gestures. He focused his interest on the walls of the pit, where ropes of copper hung in tangles and the jagged edges of rare metals protruded. “We have to go up to get out. I’m sure Henry’s right. We can do it by dividing up your boots. They’re magnetized; our shoes are not. The walls are full of grooves and dimples and iron bolts. It should be easier than rock climbing.”

  Attention diverted to Coreg’s and Alex’s boots.

  Coreg shook his head. “If we each wear one that leaves someone out. Unless you expect one of us to stay behind?”

  Henry spoke a word of Klaqin, “Hotah.” Then he switched back to English. “You’re the only one here, Coreg, who speaks any Gleezhian at all. Certainly you’re smart enough to buy us some time. Tell them a different group of guards took us Earthlings away and left you here.”

  Coreg made a harsh clucking sound and bent to unstrap his boots. He eyed the brothers’ feet and pointed at Henry. “I’ll take yours.”

  It took a few moments to switch out boots and shoes so that the other four had a flight boot on one foot and a shoe on the other.

  Alex’s bout of coughing and throat-clearing resumed and his father pounded him gently on the back. “Don’t worry, son, everything will work out. There’s a larger plan, quite intricate, and though it seems impossible now, you need to trust that in the end we will win.”

  Alex held back an eye roll and a swear word, but let a groan escape. A.J. boosted Henry up one side of the enclosure. A few feet more and he’d be out of the pit.

  A.J. helped Mr. Rimmon next and then Alex. Coreg assisted A.J. then craned his neck to watch them regroup on the ledge and continue to climb up the towering shaft.

  ***

  JASON SAT DOWN and lifted a couple things off the table so he could see us. There were other chairs which Marcum swung around to face the table. We sat and Jason talked.

  “
First off, I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that we negated the execution order on your brother.”

  Keep eyelids from leaving eyes. Breathe. Relax. This is good news.

  “And second, if I’m to interpret correctly the partial transmission I received, he’s safely on a ship back to Earth. Your mother, too, for sure.”

  Aaaaand, stay in the chair.

  “The Gleezhians believe they have the purlass capsule, but we sent that on a different, well-camouflaged ship and we will use it as a last resort. What they’ve captured is a glass replica we made with Klaqin sand.” He snorted his laughter. Marcum smiled, but I couldn’t move a muscle yet.

  “Now, are you two married?”

  Time to engage muscles: I shook my head no. Vehemently. Marcum nodded. Cautiously.

  “Stetl-glet himself performed the rite.”

  “Good,” Jason said.

  “Wait, wait. We’re not married.” I super-emphasized the not part. “Why should we be? What the heck is the whole plan? Nobody tells me anything.”

  ***

  ALEX REACHED THE top sweaty, hot and steaming with anger. He sneezed out more red dust and drew a sleeve across his nose only to smear thick blood across his cheek.

  Mr. Rimmon was last, panting, but not any more out of breath than the brothers and with fingers red and raw, scratched and bleeding.

  Henry pulled him the last several inches onto a workers’ platform that scarcely had enough room for four large humans. No one looked down.

  A.J. eyed the struts on the roof supports, then, using his brother for a crutch, he carefully removed Coreg’s boot from his right foot.