by C. S. Wilde
Luck factor? This is getting weirder by the minute.
Zed stands and rests both hands on his pear shaped waist. “I peeked into your mind as soon as you woke up, James Bauman. I cannot venture far into your thoughts if you’re unconscious. I can see your dreams, like watching a movie, obviously. But that’s all.”
I snort. “Yeah, obviously.”
His brow wrinkles. “Are you engaging in mockery?”
“Maybe.”
Zed rolls his eyes and shakes his head as if he were asking some higher power for patience. “You see, once you woke up, I entered your mind and saw that you’re closely acquainted with Ah’rbal-ack-to.”
“You know Chuck?” He does! Chuck had called him before, that’s why the comm redirected to Zed when I tried to use it! Relief washes through me, soothing as a lullaby. This is not the end, not yet. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”
Zed nods. “I used to be Ah’rbal-ack-to’s contact at the base. I helped him smuggle his ship into the Earth by simulating a malfunction in the scanners.”
I understand the luck factor now. That shred of hope I was trying to get rid of now blooms in my chest, warm and soothing, and for the first time since I woke up, I feel like I can really breathe.
Zed chortles. “Do not think of me as a hero, human. My assistance will not come cheap.”
My excitement deflates like a pierced balloon. “B-but you’re Chuck’s friend.”
Zed wrinkles his nose at the term. “Friendship. Another human concept I never really understood.”
I glare at him from beneath knitted eyebrows. “Fine, what do you want, kid?”
His red lips show white, predatory teeth that cut the face of a seemingly harmless blonde girl. “Many things. First, I want to become Ah’rbal-ack-to’s disciple. He said he wasn’t taking new students, that it could be dangerous. I do not care.” Zed’s will to put his life in danger in the name of knowledge reminds me of Miriam and all we went through. Zed has the same passion for answers burning behind his irises, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Curiosity did kill the cat. He continues, “I figure Ah’rbal-ack-to will grant me this if you speak in my favor.”
With a shrug, I say, “All right, that seems like a reasonable request.”
He forms a V with his fingers. “Second, I want to study you.”
“What?” I gasp. “No way.”
Zed frowns. “Why?”
“Because I’m not a lab rat. Besides, you could always read my mind and get all the information you need.”
“I suppose I could.” He scratches his chin. “But as a student of human interactions it’d be a shame to fail to interact with you, especially considering you’re the mate of Miri’et-eh, the poster female for the rebels.”
My eyes widen and my breathing stops. “Miriam’s not a rebel.”
“She is to us,” Zed says nonchalantly. “The resistance worships her.”
I didn’t even know there was a resistance. This is not good. If Miriam’s story is inciting rebels and revolutions, it won’t be long until the prime minister asks for our heads.
“Oh, the prime minister wouldn’t order her death.” Zed waves his hand dismissively. “He released some images of her rotting original through the Comm Tendrils as a way to scare resistance sympathizers, but he must know that if he kills Miri’et-eh now, he creates a martyr.”
I swallow dry. “What if he finds out that Miriam left the Earth?”
“Then he’ll have plausible reason to end her life.” Zed peers at his red nails with raised eyebrows as if he’s reminding himself to schedule a manicure. “If you want my help, all my requests must be fulfilled.”
It’s not like I have a choice. “Fine, I agree to your terms.”
Zed shakes his head. “I’m not done yet. Third requirement: I wish to study Miri’et-eh as well.”
Holding an exasperated sigh at the back of my throat, I say, “I can’t make promises for her.”
“But you can put in a good word for me, human.”
“The name is James, not ‘human.’” Blowing out that exasperated sigh, I add, “Fine. I’ll ask her to let you study her. I’ll do anything you want, just take me to her.”
His eyes sparkle and he claps his hands together. “Wonderful!”
I nudge my shoulder toward him, showing half of my back to highlight the black cables around my wrists. “Now, about setting me free…”
The shine in his eyes dims and he bites his full lips. “We have no chance of leaving the Earth without being spotted by the base, though.”
I sit up straight. “You only get all those favors if you take me to Miriam.” My voice comes out harsh, and I can’t help but feel a little guilty. After all, this full grown woman is an alien youngling, perhaps not older than Chuck is right now. Then again, he made all those stupid requirements...
Zed peers at me for a while. “If Ah’rbal-ack-to took off in his spaceship, he must’ve found a way to get out, and it didn’t include blocking the scanners, since I wasn’t there.”
His eyes widen and he runs to the door. His car beeps outside. Zed soon returns with a bulky apparatus that looks like a portable video game console. He sits by my side and aims the apparatus toward the roof. The wide screen shows a broken blue trail against an ebony background. “Oh, Ah’rbal-ack-to is good.” Zed smiles to himself.
He taps the screen, increasing resolution. A few blinking dots start connecting a path among the stars. The screen flashes red once, then twice, and Zed grunts something I can’t understand. Whatever he’s trying to do, I’m on his side.
Zed keeps trying until he sighs deeply, the way one does when giving up. “It’s impossible.”
“Come on kid, you can do this.”
“I’d prefer if you called me by that simplistic Zed of yours, rather than ‘kid,’” he grumbles.
Okay, kid. This I leave loudly on the first layer so Zed can hear it. He cringes and bites off a remark before returning his focus to the screen. “You do not understand. The route Ah’rbal-ack-to took was impossible. You may even call it miraculous. If I can’t find his track and follow it, then this entire plan will be for nothing.”
Zed tries one more set of keys and the dots connect, one after the other. Finally, the screen flashes green.
“Success!” He grins, showing me the screen and the connected dots that are now neon-yellow. “But… Mak-tahar?” His red lips twitch. “What would they be doing there?”
“What’s Mak-tahar?”
“You humans call it Orion’s Belt. It’s the least interesting spot in the universe.” Zed makes a face similar to that of a child who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables. “No one wishes to be stationed there. It’s the place where careers go to die.”
It doesn’t matter why Miriam and Chuck went there. “Can you take me to them without raising suspicion?”
“I suppose we’re about to find out.” Zed starts untying the cables around my wrists and ankles, and once I’m free, I rub the throbbing red lines on my skin. He quickly goes for the door and I follow.
Just as we leave, I halt. “Shoot, I forgot about Casey!”
Zed frowns. “The human girl I trapped?”
“Yeah, she’s Chuck’s granddaughter—”
His jaw drops. “Genetically speaking, you mean? That’s impossible!”
I shake my head. “No, it isn’t. Chuck changed his vessel and had a child a long time ago. It’s a long story.”
He slams a hand on his mouth, a smile creeping in his left cheek. “A hybrid? I must study her too!”
I rub the bridge of my nose. “Later, okay? You already have enough subjects for your studies. Look, Zed, we have to take her with us.”
A loud laugh bursts from Zed’s full lips and he slaps a slender hand over his mouth, a chuckle escaping here and there. I guess he’s as surprised as I am at his own reaction. He clears his throat and straightens his stance. “You wish to endanger Ah’rbal-ack-to’s offspring by taking her with us? Are
you mad, human? I don’t look forward to being the object of Ah’rbal-ack-to’s wrath.” He takes what looks like an electronic car key from his pocket and presses a button. “There, I’ve undone the lock. We must hurry now before she realizes she’s free.”
No need to tell me twice.
12
-Miriam-
There are five planets in the Doya’tep system, but only Do’yan is populated, a type C3 world ten times Earth’s size.
Most whisar bases stay on ships for mobility, but the one we’ll be visiting is located on Do’Zun, the moon of Do’yan. One could find such a choice dangerous, but Do’yan is populated by a civ. level two, which means its inhabitants won’t be mastering space travel for a very long time, if ever. I go over these facts to ignore the tension stretching the walls of my lungs.
We’re going to a whisar base. To the death of us both.
Chuck taps my shoulder, clearly sensing my unease. “The Do’zun base researches a solar system with insignificant value. The base is the smallest and most unguarded of all. We have nothing to fear.”
Stepping into an ‘insignificant’ base is still suicidal madness, even if he knows someone there who can, theoretically, help. However, Chuck has always been extremely good at taking care of himself, and others. I should trust him this time, like I always do, but it’s hard considering his plan makes no sense.
When we cross into the moon’s thin atmosphere, blue and purple blazes dance over our window as if we are diving into a sea of light. The ship quakes and shrieks, and my fingers stab the sides of my seat. Our bumpy entry quickly ends—praise the dimensions—to reveal endless plains of thick ice under a dark purple sky. The sun, Doya’tep, hangs in the upper left corner of the scenery, a tiny orb shedding blue light. Half of Do’yan, a planet made of yellow and blue, stands much closer in the upper right corner.
Our ship lands near four bulky grey blocks that form a big square. This structure more resembles human bunkers than any whisarn construction I’ve seen, which means it’s from before we went through our great filter. This base must be at least a thousand times older than Chuck, and that means a lot, because he’s quite old.
Chuck switches off the engine and we climb down to the secondary deck. The circular window beside the door shows an umbilical cord stretching outside from the third block’s wall. It aims at our ship’s entrance. A slight bump, and then the sound of air and pressure filling a nearby vacuum hisses from beyond our door. Soon a green light above the entrance pops up.
The ship’s monotone voice says, “Exit to main door cleared.”
We walk through the cord, a structure of metal bones and plastic skin that shields us from the outside. Wind blasts and roars against the cord’s thin walls, but they never rip. Above, aurora borealis covers a huge chunk of the atmosphere, fluttering like a green silk curtain against the wind.
“Keep calm,” Chuck reminds me.
I nod, expecting an army of whisars waiting for us at the end of the cord, but instead, the door to the facility opens to an empty room of moss-green walls peppered with dark smudges at the corners. A muggy, stuffed smell takes over my nostrils and the urge to open a window comes up—not that this cloistered bunker has any.
“This is more of a trashcan than a base,” I grumble, feeling the walls slowly close around me. “Is it getting warmer in here?”
“You’ll get used to it.” Chuck stares at a metallic door ahead, and as if on cue, it slides open, revealing a whisar.
The prominent bust and curvy waist, not to mention the lack of bumps on both sides of her head, denote her as female—only males have ingrown horns. Her skin is the usual pearl white, her snout smaller than mine used to be. Her tail swings eagerly behind as she walks atop bulky hind legs.
James says whisars look like a mix between a human and an albino dragon with smooth skin. He’s quite right.
It’s strange seeing one of us again; seeing how I used to look. I’m so used to being Miriam, that my time as Miri’et-eh feels like a fading memory.
This whisar’s size alone is intimidating. Her hind legs must weigh close to a hundred pounds, and she must stand at least three heads taller than me. Even for whisar standards, she’s massive.
Her purple tunic with golden embellishments and a golden belt wrapped around her waist denote her position: primary chief officer.
Stay calm, you can do this, I tell myself.
When the primary chief officer spots Chuck, her blue almond-shaped eyes widen and she bursts into laughter, this raucous sound between a pig’s grunt and an elephant’s trumpet.
I immediately cup my ears. Whisar vocalization is very hazardous to humans and consequently, vessels, but Chuck pulls my hands away. Surprisingly, my brain doesn’t melt into a puddle.
“Our vessels can take it,” he says. “I requested this modification to Werhn-za’har before we were transferred to our final bodies.”
The female keeps laughing into a fit, and Chuck looks the other way, his face closed in an annoyed frown.
Finally, she speaks in our mother tongue, still chuckling every now and then. “I couldn’t believe it when my officers informed me. A human child!” She shakes her head. “The mighty Ah’rbal-ack-to, a toddler!” She guffaws again.
Chuck isn’t exactly a toddler, not from a human’s point of view, but correcting a primary chief officer is never a wise idea.
“I will grow older,” Chuck grumbles.
“Of course you will.” Her patronizing tone says she isn’t entirely sure.
She wipes her eyes with her long, thin fingers, then bows her head and places a hand over her heart. “Greetings.” Her attention falls on me. “Who’s your companion, brother?”
I gasp. “B-brother?” My voice comes out higher than intended.
Chuck doesn’t turn to me, he merely links both hands behind his back. “Apologies, sister. This is—”
The primary chief officer slaps her hands together in a prayer. “Miri’et-eh! Oh, you look different from the images we’ve seen. Have you lost weight? Oh, these horrible dark circles under your eyes...” She turns to Chuck with a displeased frown. “Brother, you haven’t taken care of her.”
He has, but the idea of fading away or hurting the people I love the most doesn’t exactly provide a good night’s sleep. It doesn’t start an appetite either.
Chuck opens his mouth to argue with her, but before he does, she turns back to me and bends down in an exaggerated bow. “It’s my honor to meet you, Miri’et-eh. Your story travelled faster than data through a wormhole.”
“It’s Miriam now.” I scratch the back of my neck, still unsure about this stranger. For a normal whisar, her reactions seem…off. For a primary chief officer, they’re downright wrong.
“Sol’ut-eh is my younger sister,” Chuck explains. “She’s also the leader of the resistance.”
I can’t help but gape. “I never knew the resistance was organized.”
Rebels run on emotion overdrive and abhor logic altogether. For a long time, they were responsible for random bombings and other horrifying acts to bring down the whisarn republic. Without strategy and common sense, though, their numbers dwindled.
Extremism rarely ends well.
“And is it not extremism,” Sol’ut-eh says, having clearly read my mind, “when the republic declares death to resistance members, death to whisars who do not lock their dark safes, death, death, death, if we dare ask for a choice?”
She does have a point, which is surprising considering she’s a rebel. After all, Chuck and I were lucky that the prime minister decided for exile in our case. The same sentence has not been granted to many.
“The resistance started on the wrong path,” Sol’ut-eh continues, her hands making circles in the air. “Too many emotions, much like no emotions whatsoever, is not the ideal state of mind for any creature. So we found a middle ground, and over time, we became more efficient.”
“Efficient?” I ask.
“I am my brother’s sister,
Miriam.” Sol’ut-eh smiles, revealing a sharp set of teeth. “All those senseless bombings diminished our resources considerably, so now we’re recruiting and peacefully hiding in the Doya’tep system.”
“That’s why you’re in this base,” I mutter, ignoring the fact that she’s planning to go against the republic at some point. “In Doya’tep, you’re practically invisible.” I stop as the wheels in my mind spin. “Why are you telling me all this?”
She shrugs. “It’s only fair, considering you’re the face of my rebellion.”
I chortle, but Chuck doesn’t laugh. He peers at his sister with those blazing green eyes and says, “I’d appreciate if we diverted from politics for the moment, sister.”
“Wait.” My heartbeat spikes, my breathing shallow and rapid. “I’m the face of the rebellion? Have I understood it correctly?”
Sol’ut-eh nods softly to Chuck. “All in due time.”
Before I push further, Chuck’s mighty glare shifts to me, and the message is clear: You don’t need this now.
I open and close my mouth, uncertain of what to say. My curiosity crashes against Chuck’s advice—or was it an order? I never sided with the rebels, nor did I ever wish to, and now I’m their poster girl? Dropping this subject feels wrong, but my former mentor has a point. I don’t need another worry, not now. My head is already spinning with too much information and fatigue.
“How can you hide your feelings?” I ask Sol’ut-eh more as a distraction. “When I tried, I was outed in less than a few hours by a security officer.”
Arthero. The memory of him sends shivers down my spine and a light nausea takes over.
“The great art, of course.” Sol’ut-eh smiles in a cocky way that’s filled with pride.
I crinkle my nose. “What?”
“She means human theater,” Chuck says. “My sister is what humans call a drama queen.”
Sol’ut-eh narrows her eyes at him.