Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  “You have that?”

  “Many different kinds,” Cassie said. “It’s important, though, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  “And it’s empty.”

  “The sickness came to us during the weeks of maturation,” Charm said. “Some of them fell sick so quickly that they never got to go home.”

  Charm stood and walked to the end of the room, kneeling.

  “The city is so large, many of them would get lost if they had to find water on their own, so they have their own supply,” she said, putting her hands down into a small basin and drinking. She stood and shook her hands out. “What would you like to see today?”

  “I think I would still like to go remember Arma today,” Cassie said, referring to the last city she and Jesse had passed through on their way here. Charm put her shoulders back, though Cassie sensed that Charm still wasn’t completely happy to go. Cassie wondered if it would feel like a ghost town to her. Cassie had seen enough of the city, now, to at least have a point of reference to compare it to the smaller town, and she wanted to spend a few hours there, at least.

  Charm led the way back out of the room and to the exit, opening the iron door and waiting for Cassie to follow her out.

  “It’s a miracle you don’t break those tiny little fingers of yours,” she said as she lowered the door back into place as Cassie brushed the dust off of her hands. “And your feet, like paddles. How do you walk?”

  Cassie laughed.

  “Humans do break their fingers, but not as much as you’d think. We’re pretty quick about getting them out of the way when something threatens them. And I’d ask you how you manage to work all those toes at once. You must not walk until well after you can talk.”

  Charm made a point of gliding along on her toes, straight-legged for a ways down the road, then resumed the much faster combination of walking and shuffling that Cassie had such a hard time keeping up with over the rough ground. On the flat, Charm could have out sped her by perhaps a factor of two.

  “Will you show me your real feet?” Charm asked. “Under the mysterious shoes.”

  “I’m telling you, a hundred years from now, you’ll all be wearing them.”

  Charm looked at her so-called feet.

  “I don’t see how. Or why.”

  “Fashion,” Cassie said, and Charm barked a laugh.

  “If they come to me and ask me to wear glass on my feet, I’m throwing them out in the rain,” she said. Cassie had to, again, consider that they had very few materials to pick from.

  “I’d like to see that,” she answered. They kept up their friendly conversation as they made their way to the nearby town. It was further than Cassie remembered. Charm pulled a door open - it would have been rude for Cassie to do it, unless there was no one else - and they went down into the abandoned space.

  “So how were they different from you?” Cassie asked.

  “They were more formal,” Charm said, running her hand down the wall as she walked. “I met a boy from Arma who called every woman he met ‘ma’am’, no matter how old she was. He called my baby sister ‘ma’am’.”

  It was the first reference Charm had made to having a sister, and Cassie left it well enough alone, having a good enough guess as to why it hadn’t come up before.

  “So would you know people from here, as part of your normal life, or was it like they were a very long way away, and people that you knew knew people from here?”

  “It is a very long way away,” Charm said.

  “It’s not any further than the iron fields,” Cassie said. “Or where the blacksmiths work.”

  Charm’s shoulders made a tiny up-and-back tick, a dismissive agreement.

  “A woman would never walk this far except for important ceremonies, or to be bound.”

  “How do you know how to find everything?” Cassie asked, looking at Charm suspiciously. The woman made a motion with her hand that Cassie didn’t recognize.

  “I listen,” she said. “The men talk about nothing else.”

  Cassie suspected most of the other women wouldn’t have had a clue how to find the blacksmiths, but she kept it to herself. Charm’s mood was rapidly souring.

  They explored for a while, finding where the food was stored, and where the infirmary had been, then stopped at the overflowing cistern and drank before they went back outside.

  There was a blond woman standing outside.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked in Gana. It was an accusation. Cassie stopped short, stunned.

  “Who are you?” Cassie answered, frowning hard and approaching her. The woman turned away and jumped.

  “Who was that?” Charm asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cassie said.

  “You don’t know her?” Charm asked. Cassie shook her head, too distracted to try to modify her communication to make it easier for Charm to understand.

  “No.”

  “But she was like you.”

  “Yes,” Cassie said, looking at the ground where the woman had jumped. The shiny surface of the road was unscored. It was a very good jump.

  “Where did she go?” Charm asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cassie said.

  “But she was like you,” Charm said more emphatically.

  “Charm, do you have a word for a thousand thousand thousand?”

  “Three thousand,” Charm said, not entirely understanding.

  “No, like ten thousand, only a thousand thousand.”

  “A million.”

  “And a thousand million?”

  Charm frowned.

  “There’s a word, but I don’t know it.”

  “Yes, well, there are nine thousand million of my people, where I come from. I don’t know all of them.”

  Charm stared at her, stunned more by her tone than her words. Clearly the number was too big for her to even confront.

  “Then why is she here?”

  “Why was she here,” Cassie said. “I don’t know.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Cassie was thinking too hard to be as civil as she would have liked.

  “Probably back where she came from.”

  “Where is that?”

  She’d spoken Gana.

  “I don’t know,” Cassie said. Where did a pretty human woman get off speaking Gana? “We need to go find Jesse.”

  “There’s a small problem,” Charm said, coming to stand next to her.

  “What’s that?”

  Charm paused for a long time.

  “I can’t feel my feet.”

  The way back was terrifying.

  Charm had been able to fake being able to walk in Arma, but on the road, the fact that she was unable to coordinate her toes meant that she crept along unsteadily, like a toddler wearing her mother’s shoes. She leaned hard on Cassie, and Cassie did everything she could to keep the other woman from going down, ignoring the rate at which she lost skin on her hands, her forearms, her shoulders. They switched sides when she couldn’t take it any more, and then back again.

  “I’m hurting you,” Charm said, pulling away and stumbling, falling hard on her side. Her hand wasn’t enough to catch her. “Just leave me.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” Cassie said.

  “You can’t carry me the rest of the way back,” Charm said.

  “Like hell I won’t,” Cassie muttered in English. “Get up.”

  “It’s too far.”

  “We’re getting back. I’m not leaving you out here.”

  Not with a strange blond human running around and the last rain storm long enough ago that it could rain again at any time.

  “You’d come back for me,” Charm said. “Just go get help.”

  “I’m not leaving you. Get up.”

  “You aren’t strong enough. I’m not strong enough.”

  “Yes. We both are,” Cassie said.

  “I had more time,” Charm muttered, then coughed her agonized sad noise. “I had more time.”

&nb
sp; “Stop it,” Cassie said, pulling her back onto her feet. “Put your arm across my shoulders. Keep moving.”

  Cassie put her arm around Charm’s waist. The flesh there was softer and less textured, but it was still enough to pull at her shirt. The fabric wouldn’t make it forever.

  They walked.

  Charm sobbed.

  “I’m dying,” she said.

  “Yes, you are,” Cassie said. “But Jesse is trying to help, and you can’t give up.”

  “I was going to be the strong one,” Charm said.

  “You are,” Cassie said. “You are so strong. But you can’t give up.”

  “What point is there?” Charm asked. “We’ve all seen what happens. Some of the men talk about just walking out into the lava fields and never coming back.”

  “Fight it,” Cassie yelled. “Stop giving up.”

  Charm leaned her head against Cassie’s, coughing more sobs, but they limped on.

  Cassie was running out of dry spots on her shirt by the time they got back to the city. She wiped her hand off in the middle of her back, ignoring the pain, just trying to keep the blood from dripping. It was a dumb goal, really. It didn’t change anything, but it felt like it wasn’t that bad, if she wasn’t dripping blood.

  She left Charm, unstable on her feet, but upright, and opened the door.

  “Help us,” she called. “Please, help us.”

  She stumbled sideways and landed on her hip, unwilling to catch herself on her palms. She heard noises down the hallway and she looked at Charm.

  “They’re coming.”

  Charm nodded. The Kenzi woman was nearly catatonic with pain. Cassie wiped her hands off again. She wasn’t alone. That was what was important. She wasn’t alone on the side of a road, feeling like that.

  Several men Cassie vaguely recognized came out. One of them went straight to Charm, and the other hesitated in front of Cassie.

  “Help her,” Cassie said, feeling her head start to drop. “I’m fine. Help her.”

  Wordlessly, he left her.

  Charm made a noise of protest as they lifted her and carried her past Cassie, but they kept moving.

  Cassie breathed.

  The deterioration had happened so fast.

  She’d gone from being awkward on her feet to nearly unable to work her knees, to so crippled from pain that she could barely hold herself up by her arm across Cassie’s shoulders.

  Cassie couldn’t carry the woman, strength of will or not, so she’d forced her on, on her feet, the last couple of miles. Step after step.

  But she hadn’t been alone.

  Cassie wiped her hands off again, then wearily went in, looking up at the door, but unable to muster the energy to close it. She would tell the first person she saw that she’d left it open, and hopefully they would be willing to forgive her.

  Her feet found their way to the infirmary, where she muttered something to someone about the door.

  “Cassie,” Jesse called from down the hallway. She pulled her head up, eyes remaining on the floor. He ran to her.

  “Cassie, you have to tell me what happened.”

  She shook her head.

  “She’s sick,” she said.

  “Good God,” he said. “I need water.”

  She jerked her head back, indicating the path toward the water room, but he was leading her further into the infirmary. His hands were gentle, looking for places where her shirt wasn’t torn to guide her. She collapsed onto a hard bed and he left. She leaned against the wall. He’d be looking after Charm. She shouldn’t be alone.

  He came back with a bowl and knelt in front of her. She tried to tell him that he needed to work on Charm, but he either didn’t hear her or didn’t understand her, or she failed to speak at all.

  “You need to tell me what happened,” he said. She blinked, her head rotating side to side all on its own. He pulled her shirt off and put it into the bowl, wringing water out of it a few times.

  “I wish I had something better, but they don’t have any cloth,” he said.

  He started to wash her. Her arms, her sides. Someone brought in a fresh bowl of water and he made her drink out of it before he resumed trying to get the crusted blood off. She bled fresh for a minute, then it stopped. He whistled.

  “You’re going to feel that for quite a while,” he said. Between the cold and the pain and the water to drink, her mind was clearer.

  “You need to help Charm.”

  “You need to tell me what happened.”

  “What does it look like happened? She’s getting worse.”

  “She’s in end-stage, Cassie. She was fine this morning. What happened?”

  Cassie shook her head.

  “We just went to the next town. I don’t know. She was moody, so maybe she was getting worse before we got there and just didn’t say anything, but most of it was after we left.”

  “Do you think what made her worse was in the next town?”

  Cassie closed her eyes, trying to play through everything they had done, and she shook her head.

  “I really don’t.”

  He sighed.

  “Do you have any better ideas?”

  She wished she could drop her head into her hands, but her hands had no skin left, and she would have just left bloody handprints on her face.

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “Then I’m going to send some men over there to collect samples. I’ll send them in here for you to tell them everything you touched.”

  She nodded, growing numb. He pulled his shirt off over his head and helped her into it. She started to argue, but he shook his head.

  “I’ll be fine. You rest. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  He put his hand to her face.

  “You’re something else, you know that?”

  She closed her eyes, overwhelmed, crushed with grief, and in an increasingly sleepy fog, and started to try to find a way to lay down that didn’t find any of the raw flesh across her shoulders.

  And then she was bolt upright, and in the next moment she was in the hallway.

  “Jesse,” she said. He turned. “She drank from the water in the dormitory.”

  She stirred from a deep sleep, knowing she was hiding from something but unable to remember what.

  And then she was very much awake, and remembered.

  She wanted to be there before Charm died.

  How long had she been asleep?

  Her body rebelled, fresh scabs cracking and tearing fresh wounds deeper into her flesh, but she ignored it.

  Jesse was sleeping along the far wall.

  “Jesse,” she said, standing. She stuck her head out into the hallway. There was no one there.

  “Cassie, sit back down before you hurt yourself,” Jesse said from behind her. She ignored him, going out into the hallway. She needed to find Charm.

  They were all dead.

  Every room had a dead Kenzi in it.

  She put her hands in front of her mouth, not hearing Jesse behind her.

  She’d slept too long.

  No one was even keeping watch over them.

  No one was left.

  She had to find Charm.

  Her friend was in a bed near the end of the hallway, alone. Dead. Cassie put her hands over her mouth to hold back the sobs.

  “Will you be quiet?” Jesse hissed. She looked at him, and his brow creased in empathy. “Cassie, she’s asleep.”

  Cassie’s hands fell, and her chest heaved once, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said. He put his hands very carefully on her arms, turning her to face the room again. Charm’s chest rose and fell, and Cassie sobbed again, choking on it.

  “You’re in worse shape than she is,” he whispered, “but I wish you wouldn’t wake her up, anyway.”

  She turned to look up at him, shaking her head.

  “What happened?”

  “Copper,” he said. She wiped her face with the backs of her hands, ignori
ng the salt sting there.

  “What?”

  “They don’t have copper in their diets. Or in the environment at all, best I can tell. And while the copper doesn’t have any effect on them, it turns their bacteria into super-bugs that they can’t fight.”

  “Where was it?”

  “It’s everywhere, I think. Maybe it came in with the last lava flow, I’m not sure. But the water in the dormitory was really, really heavy with it. That’s why it made her so much worse so fast.”

  “How did you fix it?”

  He gave a soft chuckle, turning her to face Charm’s room again and putting his arms around her.

  “I gave them more copper,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Boiled down the water until the copper started to precipitate, then had them drink it.”

  “How did that help?”

  “The bacteria thrived with a little copper, but most things can’t take too much of something like that. We’ll have to sort out copper poisoning, if their bodies decide they’re sensitive to that level of exposure, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.”

  Charm stirred and saw Cassie. Jesse let her go, and Cassie went to hug her. Charm put out an arm.

  “I’ll hurt you if you touch me,” she whispered. The spreading red patches on Jesse’s shirt made arguing seem unwise, so Cassie nodded, then put her shoulders back, wiping her face with the backs of her hands again. Charm took Cassie’s fingers very gently between her own fingertips and pulled them away, looking at the tears running down Cassie’s face.

  “It is beautiful,” she said after a moment, reaching out to touch her face. “Do you cry for me?”

  “You’re okay?” Cassie said.

  “I’m okay,” Charm said, looking at Jesse, “thanks to your friend.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “You should have left me,” Charm said. “I hurt you terribly.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cassie said. “He’s looking after me. And I wasn’t going to leave you like that.”

  Charm put a fingertip to Cassie’s forehead, then touched her own forehead.

  “You are a true friend, and the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

  “Cassie,” Jesse said. “She still needs to rest, and so do you.”

  Cassie took Charm’s hand in her own and squeezed it as gently as she could, then turned and nodded to Jesse, following him back down the hallway.