Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  Jesse wasn’t going to like it, but she said what she thought.

  “I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong,” she said, finding her mouth shaping into a sardonic sideways smile. “My people are militaristic by nature, and I find that when you review the evidence, both sides always think they were in the right, and I tend to find my sympathies split. It would be more correct for me to say that war is bad and that my interest is to see it ended, but the truth is that I’m much more interested in seeing wars ended justly.”

  “Even when that involves the genocide of a portion of a race?”

  Jesse was watching her with a careful expression, but he didn’t seem to be masking dismay. She wondered how far out of line she was.

  “I don’t think it usually goes that far,” she said, turning back to the Url. “Usually, the vast majority of the opposing population is innocent.”

  “I didn’t ask probability,” the first of the Urls said. “I asked a question of morality.”

  “If every one of them has to die to achieve justice…” Cassie started, then mentally shrugged. She could say it. “Yes. Then they all should.”

  The Url turned back to Jesse.

  “What an interesting creature you have brought us.”

  “I like her,” he answered.

  “She is unsuited to remain a part of this council,” the same Url said.

  “I understand,” Jesse said.

  “What?” Cassie squawked.

  “But we find your mind interesting,” the other Url said. “You have not come to discuss and consider. You have come to see and to learn. We will send you away to do that, while we take the council of the Palta.”

  Cassie turned to face Jesse, who shook his head.

  “It isn’t a punishment,” he said.

  “No,” she answered in English, “it’s the grownups sending the children to the kids’ table.”

  “I’ve never pretended it was anything else,” he said. “It doesn’t make the kids’ table a bad place to be.”

  She glowered at him, then turned to find the Urls looking at her.

  “You’re upset?” one asked.

  “I’m an adult, in my own culture,” she said.

  “But you are young, yet, aren’t you?” the other asked. “Considered headstrong and impulsive?”

  Cassie tried not to be insulted at this, because the only part of it that she could reasonably be insulted by was that they’d figured it out. She dropped her head.

  “Yes.”

  “Your perspective will be good for the upcoming Url,” one of them said, and she raised her head again. The Url turned to the one with the odd skin patterning. “Send for Jeen and Aland.”

  He nodded and left. The Urls faced Cassie again.

  “They will come for you in a few minutes. If you will leave us to counsel with the Palta, now.”

  She bristled again, mentally, but did as she was asked.

  The Adena Lampak with the strange skin returned, giving her a not-unfriendly glance as he passed her and went to stand next to the Url again. The wind whistled against the taut skins and the fire light flickered a comforting, muzzy pattern around the room. Cassie found a space on the floor and sat. Jesse had taken a cross-legged spot in front of the Url and it appeared that the elderly Adena Lampak was dismissing most of the rest of the groups that were still waiting.

  “You’re the human?” someone asked. Cassie looked up at a striking Adena Lampak who stood in the doorway with a companion.

  “I am,” she answered, standing.

  “I’m Jeen, and this is Aland,” the graceful creature said, approaching. The corners of his mouth turned up. “What did you do to get kicked out of the summit?”

  “You smiled,” Cassie said.

  “So did you,” he answered.

  “I didn’t know you could,” Cassie said, feeling a bit bashful.

  “Neither do they,” he answered, holding out an arm. “Let’s go get something to eat. We’ll talk.”

  Cassie followed the pair through a maze of stairs and walkways, then stood and wrung water out of her ponytail while the pair of Adena Lampak arranged a meal of fish and some other things Cassie didn’t recognize on plates that looked like giant mussel shells. They set up slings to sit on and Cassie joined them.

  “So which of you is which, again?” she asked.

  “Aland,” one of them said, holding his hand over his chest, then turned it out to face the other Adena Lampak. “Jeen.”

  “I have questions,” Cassie said. They both smiled, relaxing into the slings and picking at the food.

  “Let’s hear them,” Jeen said.

  “How do you tell each other apart?” Cassie asked. “I know that’s really rude, but…”

  “Not really,” Aland said. “We understand that you read facial structure and various kinds of coloring to aid in identifying individuals. It’s reasonable that you would struggle, because our facial structures are very similar, and they change.”

  “They change?” Cassie asked. Jeen split her jaws wide, and Aland pointed.

  “Rows of teeth,” he said. “As the sets grow out, the shapes of our faces change, going through phases.”

  “That’s why the guy who swam me in had such a bad underbite,” Cassie said, regretting it as she spoke. The Url laughed.

  “We get overbites, too, when the top row begins to fall out. It keeps our teeth healthy.” Aland tipped his head back, looking hard at her. “You only have the one set?”

  “Two,” Cassie said. “Lose the first in childhood.”

  He nodded.

  “At any rate, we tell each other apart by very subtle differences in color and body-form. Height, weight,” he turned his head away. “The ridges down our backs are unique, so we can always tell who is who from behind or above.”

  “How do I tell you apart?” Cassie asked.

  “Scars,” Jeen said. “We don’t have any. Everyone else does.”

  “Why is that?” Cassie asked.

  “We’re select,” Aland said. “We don’t hunt because we have more important things to do with our time and energy.”

  “I miss hunting,” Jeen said. Aland nodded.

  “It’s what we’re built for.”

  “Some days I think about just diving off of the tower and going out looking for a scalna to fight.”

  Aland snorted.

  “Your luck, you’d hit a school of peert instead.”

  Jeen gave him a dismissive wave.

  “Is it rude to ask which of you is male and which is female?” Cassie asked.

  “Do you call yourself female?” Jeen asked. Cassie laughed, conceding her point. Jeen continued. “I am a woman. He is my man.”

  “And you have a third… person… in your relationship?”

  “We have not found a caretaker yet,” Jeen said and cast a glance at Aland, “and we are unlikely to.”

  “Why is that?” Cassie asked. “Is it because you are going to be the Url?”

  They took a long moment looking at each other, then Jeen turned to face Cassie again.

  “We should probably show you. Please, eat. We’ll come back to that.”

  “What is all of this?” Cassie asked, picking up one of the plates.

  “Oh, you’ll have only had swimming animals on your trip here,” Aland said, then proceeded to explain the origin of the various foods they had.

  “You farm?”

  “That’s insulting,” Jeen said, giving Cassie a smile. “The sea floor is inhospitable to everything, but various plants and animals can thrive under certain conditions, and we’ve learned to create them. I imagine it’s the same for you.”

  Cassie wavered her head side to side, then nodded. They ate, and then Jeen and Aland stood and led her back out into the storm.

  Outside, the storm had grown in intensity to the point that the sunlight was becoming unreliable. Cassie huddled against the wind and followed the Url down a stairway around one of the great pillars. They pulled as
ide a skin and Jeen took a torch from inside the doorway and led Cassie and Aland down a stairway that continued down the inside of the tower. Cassie peered down into the murk, surprised that she hadn’t considered that the towers might be hollow.

  The stairs wound down and down, and then Jeen stopped, lowering the torch so Cassie could see the rise and fall of water at their feet. Cassie squinted, looking down into the water.

  Unlike the water outside, the water here was nearly clear. There were signs of waves, but Cassie realized that the amplitude was nowhere near high enough to be driven completely by the waves outside.

  “Clearly you have some water flow through here,” Cassie said. Aland knelt and nodded.

  “Four layers of wall damp out the worst of the turbulence.”

  As her eyes continued to adjust and get more adept at seeing into the water, she realized there were dozens of figures along the sea floor.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Those are our caretakers,” Jeen said, holding the flame out further over the water. Cassie knelt, looking harder at the shifting figures.

  “They’re what?”

  One of the creatures made a shuffling path up the submerged stairs, coming to look at Aland. It only bore a vague resemblance to the Adena Lampak on the stairs with Cassie. The skin was the same, and the eyes were hauntingly similar, but the shape of the creature’s body was rather more like a leather-skinned crab with a long, wide side fins and a paddle-shaped tail.

  “Those are you?” Cassie asked. Aland nodded sadly, putting his palm against the surface of the water.

  “About a quarter of our eggs hatch as caretakers, the rest are male and female. They don’t breathe air; they spend their entire lives underwater, and they have no concept of spoken language, but we can communicate with them through underwater noises and physical interaction. They watch over our eggs and keep them safe and healthy until they hatch, and then they nurse the children until they’re old enough to leave the water.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Cassie asked.

  “These are healthy and happy,” Jeen said. “But they are the only ones we know of.”

  “What?”

  “The largest population of caretakers was housed at Elsa, and the few who survived its destruction weren’t able to make it to another tower that could offer them refuge,” Aland said. “They need to be guarded constantly. They’re equipped for caring for eggs, but they can’t defend themselves from predators in the open ocean.”

  “How did they survive before you had towers?” Cassie asked.

  “How did your people survive before they had shoes?” Aland countered. “Poorly, I imagine.”

  “Yes,” Cassie said. He nodded.

  “Our histories are different from yours, because nothing is constant here. What we remember is what we have told each other, season after season. All we know is that those were dim times, and the first tower-builders are celebrated as heroes.”

  “What about the rest of them?” Cassie asked, indicating the caretakers.

  “Systematically poisoned,” Jeen said, a bitter edge on her voice. “We were so busy fighting for Elsa that the attention of the community turned away from our nurseries, and by the time we realized that there was something taking out nurseries in city after city, it was too late to warn the few places that had them, still. They took great care here, and caught the Other who was poisoning the nurseries here before they got all of them. His skin was ripped from his flesh and hung from the city tower until there was nothing left of it, but what he did can’t be undone.”

  “So these are the only ones left?”

  “Presumably the Others still have their caretakers, but we don’t know where they are.”

  “Can’t you care for your own eggs?” Cassie asked.

  “Our eggs take four years to hatch, during which their temperatures and orientation must be carefully regulated. It changes from day to day, and the caretakers have the instinct to do that,” Jeen said. “No one has ever successfully raised an egg without them.”

  “Could you… share?” Cassie asked.

  “Are you in the habit of sharing your mate?” Aland asked. “We understand that in bisexual cultures, it’s difficult for you to understand, but this is not a simple service task that the caretakers undertake. They are bonded to the parents and the offspring as deeply as you are to your man.”

  Cassie spent a moment considering whether to try to explain the complexity of human relationships - especially the modern exploratory ones - and decided against it. She understood their point.

  “We all lost parents in the genocide,” Jeen said. “The old caretakers watch over the younger ones, even after they’re done raising children, and they died in the same attacks.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said. Aland stood.

  “This is why we war,” he said. “They tell us that it’s not for us to focus on, that we should continue our training as Url, but…” He shook himself. “They undervalue our input. The fact that we aren’t trained doesn’t make our thoughts less valuable. And to bring in an outsider rather than consult with us…”

  “The outsider is versed in the ways of war,” Jeen said. “And your confidence in yourself hardly makes a strong case for your maturity.”

  “We are Adena Lampak,” Aland said. “We lost family in the attacks and friends in the wars, and they keep us locked up here with our studies. What good are we to our people if, by the time the Url thinks we’re ready, there are no people left?”

  “You think we’d make better decisions than the Url?” Jeen asked.

  “I think the Url would make better decisions with us,” Aland answered. Cassie followed them back up the tower at a distance, not wanting to intrude. Jeen turned back.

  “You shouldn’t think that this is a sign of crumbling solidarity,” she said, reading Cassie’s face. Cassie rushed to catch up. Aland turned back to her for a moment, then continued up the stairs.

  “This is our job, for now,” Jeen continued as Cassie gained the stair behind her. “Challenge the way things are, then struggle to understand the differences between how they could be and how they are, in as great a depth of understanding as we can manage. We fight because we should always be on the opposite side of the argument until we can find nothing more to argue over.”

  “Then we will be ready,” Aland said.

  “That’s… strange,” Cassie said. Jeen laughed.

  “It’s so much our nature, anyway. All Adena Lampak fight, just to see what the outcome is.”

  “I wasn’t sure that you had whole conversations, before this,” Cassie answered.

  “Everyone’s very reserved, with the war, and because they don’t know whether you’re worthy,” Aland said. “The older Adena Lampak refuse to have conversations with anyone unworthy, because they think it’s a waste of time. We tend to think…”

  “We just haven’t had those conversations yet,” Jeen said. “We’ll probably feel the same, at their age.”

  “So we should show you the city,” Aland said. “They said that you came to see.”

  Cassie looked back down at the shadows over the surface of the water.

  “They’re okay,” Jeen said. “This is how it’s always been, as long as we can remember. I don’t know what will happen next, but they’re okay.”

  The city was spectacular. Great rooms and spas and businesses; Cassie discovered that only Adena Lampak of a specific age range and temperament manned the outposts. The rest of them lived in cities like this one, where there were creature comforts and social networks and comerce. It was spartan, without doubt, but they weren’t just walking fish living in trees.

  Jeen and Aland were playful, in their way, and combative with each other any time the opportunity presented itself. Cassie found herself relaxing into their company more and more easily as time went on. She still slept in the room she shared with Jesse, but he was rarely there. Jeen told her that his counsel had proved useful to the Url, and h
e was spending much of his time there, and Cassie had said something sour that had made Jeen laugh.

  Midday several days later, Aland showed up at the room.

  “The tides have passed,” he said. “We can go out today.”

  “You don’t just stay here?” she asked. He laughed.

  “Our skin starts to itch if we’re out of the water for too long,” he said.

  “Don’t take him seriously,” Jeen called from somewhere behind him. “It’s just something we say.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “I see. More salt water.”

  Aland frowned.

  “Your trip here was uncomfortable for you, wasn’t it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Yeah, but it’s not anyone’s fault.”

  Aland snorted.

  “The guards are always obsessed with making good time. They dragged you underwater the whole time, didn’t they?”

  “There’s another way?” Cassie asked.

  Aland shook his head.

  “All they care about is making good time.”

  “Come on already,” Jeen called. “Bring the water glasses and the air hose, and let’s go.”

  “Air hose?” Cassie asked.

  “Should be in here,” Aland said, sliding past her to search through one of the trunks. “Here. Do you need help with the glasses?”

  She hadn’t mastered the goggles, yet, so she let Aland help her arrange them, and the he checked them to make sure she’d glued them down right.

  “Ready to go,” he said, handing her the hose. He shook his head as she got the tubing straightened out. “Never could imagine being able to breathe through your mouth underwater,” he said.

  “You don’t?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “Only in air. The water pressure closes down the air and food pathways in our bodies so that they’re completely separate.”

  “Huh,” Cassie said. “That doesn’t feel weird?”

  “Air feels weird, if either of them does,” he answered. They went back into the hallway and into the next room, where Jeen hefted a strap attached to a large container over her head, letting it rest against the ridge down her back.

  “Are we ready, yet?” she asked.

  “Set,” Aland said.

  “If we don’t get going, they’re going to organize an escort for us, even if we don’t want it.”