Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  “This isn’t what we are,” Aland said. “You and your officers are welcome to come up to speak with the Url, and to see that your caretakers and infants are receiving good treatment. We will shelter your army until the predators have passed, and then we can figure out what to do next with your caretakers. Or you can attack and doom us all. We don’t have the warriors to turn you away. Your planning has seen to that.”

  “Or I can stall while you bring in your warriors from the sea towers,” Cartan said.

  “This is my child, Cartan,” Pane said. “Born in open water because the Commander sent our caretaker away with Klath. The Conspiracy was right. End this.”

  Benth burbled and squeaked, and Cassie started up the stairs. The child needed to get back into the water. She couldn’t worry about Adena Lampak politics any more than she already had. Cartan had heard them out. It was all they could do.

  They’d spoken with Klath.

  They’d seen the caretakers with their infants, residing in three of the city’s towers.

  And now they stood before the Url, Cartan and three of his top officers.

  “Those are our caretakers, and they have hatched their offspring,” Cartan said. The words were drawn from him like they cost him blood.

  “We understand that you were fooled,” the Url said. “The damage that is done is behind us.”

  “You wouldn’t help,” Cartan said. “Our children were dying.”

  “We offered everything we could think of,” the Url said.

  “How did it get to be so widespread?” Jesse asked. “Did Mab actually get to all of your cities?”

  “No, it spread,” Cartain said. “Slowly at first and then…” He cut himself off.

  “The Adviser,” one of the officers said. “He proscribed a new diet.”

  “Always the chemist,” Jesse said, shaking his head. Cartan looked agitated, and it made Cassie nervous. Suddenly he roared, drawing a bone knife from wherever it was they hid them, and charged the Url. Her knife met his chest before she realized she’d moved. She saw raw hatred in his eyes as they came down to look at her, and she felt his body stiffen as he changed the direction of his attack. The feeling of the knife sliding through his flesh was one she would never escape.

  She gutted him, sweeping to the side to avoid the decelerating plunge of his fin, and stood, staring at the wall, as first the knife and then the Adena Lampak fell to the floor. No one else moved.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Humans must live with terrible violence,” the Url said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Cassie didn’t move. She didn’t regret it. Didn’t even consider regretting it. One of the Southern Adena Lampak shifted.

  “There was no other way,” he said finally. “Cartan was too embroiled in the anti-Conspiracy for it to end another way. We will take his body back and set it adrift. Many of the warriors will have caretakers in your towers and would like to see them.”

  “Of course,” the Url said. “You won’t spend the darkness at sea. Bring your troops in. There is much to be done.”

  Cassie heard the warriors lift Cartan’s body and leave. Aland came to stand in front of her, facing the Url and not looking at her.

  “If they won’t say it, I will,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

  “You would have done the same,” Cassie said.

  “No,” he said. “That’s why Jeen and I will be Url. But we need warriors.”

  She nodded. Jesse came to stand with her.

  “We need to go,” he said. “I need to check on something.”

  She frowned on him, looking for the normal sparkle in his eyes, but it wasn’t there.

  “We aren’t coming back this time, are we? Really, this time.”

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing is impossible, but there’s something wrong, and…” He licked his lips. “We need to go.”

  She said a quick goodbye to Aland and Pane, telling them to send her farewells to Jeen and Benth. It shocked her a little how hard it was to go.

  “Good luck,” she said to Aland.

  “Time is long,” he answered. “You should come back to us; see what we do with the second chance you gave us.” His face settled into a confident calm. “Someday.”

  She nodded.

  “Someday.”

  And then they were gone.

  The sky was gray and impossibly high above them. Tall black-and-gray buildings stretched toward swirling clouds. They were on a cobbled street with a surface that was smooth enough that it reflected light and that was grippy under her bare feet. Jesse sighed.

  “She’s been here,” he said.

  “How can you tell?” Cassie asked.

  “It’s supposed to be rush hour,” he answered, beginning to walk. She followed after a moment, staring up at the buildings.

  “Where are we?”

  “Xhrahk-ni,” Jesse said. “One of my favorite places.”

  “When was the last time you were here?”

  “Before.”

  He turned down one street and then another, going in a door. Cassie found herself in a clothing store.

  “We have a section upstairs,” Jesse said.

  “What?”

  “We look silly,” he said.

  “There’s no one here,” Cassie said.

  “So?”

  She looked down at her sun-hued skin and skimpy wardrobe and had to admit he had a point. Jesse stood at the bottom of the stairs and a gleaming platform lifted him, carrying him to the top of the stairs. Cassie hesitated, then stepped onto the square of metal on the floor. There was a thrum of energy and then she was looking through what might have been under-lit glass, but it wasn’t. The stairs slid by and the platform deposited her on the upper floor.

  “What is that?” Cassie asked.

  “Don’t ask,” Jesse answered. She frowned at him and followed.

  “Why have stairs at all?”

  “Fire code.”

  She boggled at him, unsure if he was serious.

  They wove through departments of strange styles and fashions, some laying on shelves and tables, others suspended from the ceiling or free-standing on the floor. Cassie hoped to recognize forms, eventually, but was at a loss when Jesse stopped.

  “This is it?” she asked.

  “Trust me,” he said. He went through a line of rolls of fabric, like toilet-paper and toppled one, collapsing it into a fold of cloth across his arm. He showed her a marking inside of it.

  “That’s the mark you’re looking for. That should fit you. Look around and see if you see anything you like.”

  “This is a practical joke, right?” Cassie asked, looking at the rows of fabric.

  “Just find something so that you aren’t dressed like a primitive,” he said. The piece he had given her was a deep red, and attractive enough a color.

  “This is fine,” she said. “Now what?”

  “Dressing rooms are that way,” he said, indicating.

  “Jesse, it’s a shower curtain without a rod.”

  “Just go put it on,” he said, browsing. She found the dressing rooms, strangely familiar, compared to everything else, and held the fabric up. When she straightened it, it re-formed its cylinder like a pop-up tent. Useless. She stood next to it in the mirror, then the texture of her sides caught her eye. They’d warned her about scarring, but she hadn’t really thought about it, until now. Both sides and across her shoulders, the skin was whitish and slightly pocked. She had cuts on her legs and the teeth marks on her ankle. Her face was still salty over an uneven, freckled suntan that was bordering on a burn. Her hair stood wherever the salt water had left it, despite repeated attempts to flatten it. She looked every bit the castaway. Worse, she could see the signs of age in her muscles and her skin that had gotten her dismissed from being a jumper in the first place.

  She wasn’t eighteen any more. Nor was she twenty-two.

  She had left behind the first quarter-century of her life, an
d she couldn’t ever go back.

  She looked back at the tube of fabric, rolling her eyes and sarcastically bending it so it collapsed again and then pulling it over her head. If he expected her to wear it, this was the only way it was going to qualify as clothing.

  “Caterpillar style,” she muttered, shifting her shoulders up through the material.

  Then it started to shrink.

  She tried to get her arms out, but they pinned quickly to her sides as the tube pulled tight around her waist. She struggled another moment, then her arms broke free.

  She stood in front of the mirror in an ankle-length dress. She tested how tight it was around her knees and found that it stretched easily, without bunching or distorting the rest of the skirt. When she dropped her foot again, the skirt stayed looser, swaying across her shins for a moment before falling still.

  She opened the curtain to find Jesse standing in a long robe. In general form, it wasn’t much different from what she wore, but it hung in a heavier shape, and was a suitably masculine shape.

  “How did that work?” she asked.

  “It’s form-fitting, and then configurable,” he said. “You could do the hourglass shape if you wanted…” He put his hand to her back and the fabric at her waist squeezed her, emphasizing her hips. “Or you could make an empress waist out of it…” The waist dropped loose and the dress tightened across her chest. “Or you could wear it like it started…” The cloth re-settled comfortably and he took a step back and to the side to look at her. “Which looks great on you.”

  She pulled at it an glowered at him.

  “And you couldn’t have told me that before.”

  He shrugged.

  She raised an eyebrow and he shook his head.

  “Keep moving.”

  She wanted to say something about him taking her clothing shopping and then complaining about how slow they were going, but something about him was anxious and she kept it to herself, following him back to the front of the store.

  “Stand here,” he said, motioning next to him. The doors stayed closed for a moment, then he ran his thumb down the back of his arm and they sprung open.

  “Payment?” she asked. He nodded. “One way to get rid of lines at the register.”

  “And all staff,” Jesse said. “The store runs itself.”

  “It what?”

  They walked down the street a short way, where Jesse stopped at a map. He motioned over it a few times, moving the map and zooming it, then tapped something, and the air stirred around them slightly. Cassie looked around.

  “Where are we?”

  “Does it matter?” he answered. “You didn’t know where we were before.”

  “Doesn’t mean it isn’t the right question,” she said. The corner of his mouth turned up and he approached something that looked like an ATM. He put the back of his hand against what should have been an IR scanner, on earth, and the machine whirred for a moment, then dropped a capsule in a cellophane wrapper into a slot.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  “What is it?” she asked, picking up the small capsule.

  “Supplement,” he said. “You travel a lot, eat a lot of strange foods, you may not be getting the nutrition you need simply because the minerals or the cellular structure on the planet don’t match. You get along fine for a while, but…” he shrugged, dropping the pill to the back of his throat.

  “You’re saying earth-food doesn’t agree with you?” Cassie asked. He shook his head.

  “I’m fine. Just showing you how to work the machine.”

  She watched him for another moment, then put the back of her hand against the reader. After a moment, a half-dozen pills, individually wrapped, dropped down the slot one at a time. Jesse nodded.

  “You weren’t metabolizing well,” he said. “I could tell.”

  “You could not,” she said, picking up the pills. “What’s in these that I don’t need?”

  Jesse leaned over to read a screen.

  “They’re intended to be taken every hour. Get your levels up where they should be without overwhelming your system.”

  “That’s not possible,” Cassie said. “How could a machine know that from looking at my hand?”

  Jesse laughed.

  “That’s what I love about this place. They never asked why not.”

  Asked. She caught it. She wanted to encourage him, suggest that maybe there were pockets of population left, like with the Kenzi, but he knew things she didn’t, and she kept it to herself. She pocketed the pills, not certain on whether she intended to take them or not, and started off after Jesse again.

  “It is eerie,” she said. The streets were wide, built for lots of volume of people or vehicles, and storefronts were still lit and attractively kept, selling all manner of products. They passed a cafe with scrolling images of food transparent on the windows and various kinds of tables outside. She found the one for upright-walking people, and could imagine the body types that would use the couches, but many of the others she had a hard time imagining.

  “It’s sad,” Jesse said.

  “Why isn’t anyone here?” Cassie asked.

  “They put up the flag,” Jesse said.

  “What?”

  “Most civilized transport technology communicates with the destination to ensure that visitors are welcome,” Jesse said.

  “Data packets,” Cassie said. Something about tiny portals at synchronized rates and digital communication. Mostly it meant ‘don’t put your hand there’, when you were on-planet.

  “Something like that,” Jesse said. “They’ve asked everyone to stay away.”

  “So why did we come?” Cassie asked.

  “Palta don’t really pay a lot of attention to things like that,” Jesse said.

  “Ah,” Cassie said, pretending that explained everything. Jesse jumped them across another map and then from the lobby floor of a building up to a room.

  “You can get showered and get something to eat, if you want,” Jesse said. “I need to go see if I can find someone.”

  “Why are you leaving me here?” Cassie asked.

  “Because only the invited actually spend time with the species that lives here, in their half of the civilization.”

  “Their half?”

  “They’re tinkerers. They love to try things and solve problems no one has noticed yet. Some kind of marketing genius got a hold of them a few centuries back, and they started building tourist cities, but they don’t live in them.”

  “Where do they live?” Cassie asked.

  “Underground,” Jesse said. “Just wait here. I’ll be back soon.”

  Cassie was nonplussed at being left out as Jesse once again went to play with the big kids, but she couldn’t argue that a shower and a real, cooked meal sounded amazing. She watched as Jesse left, then found the bathroom. The device for the shower was complex and labeled with marks that she wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be characters or symbols. She wondered for a moment how common a water shower really was for foreign terrestrials, and whether some of them might have showered in chlorine gas or sulphuric acid, but went on faith that Jesse would not leave her alone in a room with a death chamber in it.

  He probably deserved that much.

  Didn’t he?

  In the end, she pushed buttons, discovering various soap-like gels, several foams, a long piece of string, and a rock-dispenser before she found that the water control was on the other wall. The water that came pouring out of the ceiling was perfect. Cassie washed her hair and her face and for the first time in a very long time, felt as though her thoughts were unimpeded by salt.

  It was lovely.

  She spent some time trying to figure out the room service function, eventually ending up with an adventure of a meal that was entirely edible. As she wolfed it down, her thoughts turned to Mab.

  Jesse knew her. And the woman had been there, at the volcanic Kenzi planet. Putting aside what would turn a Palta genocidal, it was as though Mab had
been waiting for them. And she’d been surprised to see Cassie.

  And here they were on an empty planet, one Jesse had headed straight to, once they’d seen the Adena Lampak off in the right direction.

  They were breadcrumbs.

  Intended to bring Jesse here.

  Where Mab knew he would come.

  There was every chance Cassie was leaping to conclusions with too little data, but she couldn’t sit still, now. She carried her food to the window as she finished it, looking out over the still city. Everything worked. The food was fresh, the clothes sold, the cafes advertised. Transit, if that’s what Jesse was using to jump around the city, was working. The shower had rocks to dispense.

  And yet it was empty.

  Jesse loved this place, and Cassie could see how it would suit him.

  But if this was the first place he thought of…

  She put the plate on the table.

  He’d said to stay.

  “Right,” she said aloud to the empty room, then left.

  How do you find a Palta on an abandoned planet?

  How do you find a stairwell in a world where everyone is accustomed to jumping from place to place?

  Analytically and with great patience.

  What Cassie eventually found was a door that lead outside.

  An alarm went off when she opened it - there was every chance that’s what the writing on the inside of the door was intended to communicate - and she stood looking twenty stories down to the street. There was language, out of which her implant only grasped a few articles and the word ‘you’. She half-hopped, half-fell off of the energy platform that tried to take her out the door, landing back on the safe floor inside the building. The door started to swing closed, and she stood and pushed it back open, this time letting the platform take her out away from the building and to the surface of the street well away from the building.

  She looked back up to watch the door swing closed above her, then went looking for a map.

  The map responded to her the same way it had Jesse, and she scanned the city, trying to understand the layout.

  She needed data.