by Rayner Ye
“They sound terrifying. You haven’t told me where Mahaaraanee is, though.”
Kala bit her lip and looked away. “We assassinated her forty years ago, ten years after her invasion. We tried to rebel, but lost and escaped to land.”
“Roobish joined us too,” Kaal said. “She died last year.”
“At ninety-four,” Kala said.
“And your father? Mahaar?”
“He rebelled too.” Kaal looked at his feet, and his words trembled between clicks and taps. “He died of a waterborne disease, along with many others, not long after we came down here.”
Aedre frowned and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
They didn’t speak for a minute.
“Who rules there now?” Aedre asked.
Kaal rubbed his face. “A Satsang army general—General Kai. He rules a military government of White-Biluvianss up there.”
“He has close ties with Chairman Yark and his White-Biluvian council. They’re all evil.” Kala let out a long sigh. “Kuanja, Artheus, New Bilu and Old Bilu are not even a part of Plan8 anymore. Mayleedians have given up and renamed the Alliance Plan4.”
“That’s crazy,” Aedre said.
“Would you like a drink?” Kaal asked. “We have chocolate milk, bean milk, nut milk. You can have it hot or cold. Sweetened with honey if you prefer.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Kala stood. “We have everything.”
“I’d love chocolate milk.”
“Goat’s milk or cow’s milk?” Kala asked.
“Cow’s milk, please.”
“Okay.” Kala bounded away, then looked over her shoulder. “We’ve had forty years to form an organised community. I hope your people will be happy living with us and agree to join our cause.”
As Kala disappeared into the tunnel, Aedre’s heartbeat became sluggish. She chewed her inner cheek. “What cause?”
Kaal straightened. “Rebellion.”
“Biluglass blocks Haunted River, and I don’t have a star-key.”
“We must do it another way. Some of our community live on Giok’s west coast and are making ships as we speak.”
Kala returned with a coconut shell of chocolate milk and tipped its contents gently into Aedre’s mouth.
She gulped it down, then smiled. “Thank you.”
Kala nodded and stood. “Will you join our revolution?”
Aedre squinted. “I don’t think I’d be much help. You’d have to carry me everywhere. The villagers want peace, and so do I.”
“They won’t find much peace with a constant threat of Chloroplasts, Satsang, and White-Biluvians.”
Owl and Crow
Aedre lay on a mat, eyes gazing at stone above.
“You have a visitor,” Kaal said.
Two Native-Red women lifted Aedre’s shoulders and upper back, while a man shoved straw-filled pillows behind her.
A feathered woman materialised from the darkness of the tunnel.
Aedre’s gasp echoed through the cavern. “Sharr Shuvuu. How’d you get here?”
“I have a key. I’ll take you home.”
“To Eeporyo?”
Sharr Shuvuu’s eyes filled with tears, and she laughed. “No, Silly. Back to Nerthus.”
Kaal and Kala exchanged excited looks.
“You must go,” Kaal said. “Return to your father.”
“I agree,” Kala said. “Roobish always talked about the guilt of leaving her father on bad terms.”
Sharr Shuvuu rubbed her chin and peered at Kaal and Kala. “Are you Satsang?”
“Yes. I’m Kala, and my brother’s Kaal.”
“I don’t understand how you can breathe. Don’t Satsangs need high concentrations of oxygen to survive?”
“Going through time-portals changes that somehow. Changes our biology.”
Sharr Shuvuu frowned. “I’ve heard Satsangs are dangerous.”
“Who told you that?” Kaal asked.
“A crow woman.”
Aedre’s eyebrows shot up. “Crowleen?”
“How’d you know her?”
“I have Roobish’s memories. Crowleen often appears in them. She’s dangerous, though. She stabbed my friend. Does she still have a key?”
“Yes. Crowleen went to the pyramid in Giok to get the one you put in the altar.”
“Did she find it?”
“No. Crowleen said your friend took it.”
“But she still has one?”
Sharr Shuvuu nodded.
Aedre’s face went cold. “She’ll come looking for you.”
Fear crossed Sharr Shuvuu’s gaze.
“Answering the crow’s statement about Satsangs being dangerous,” Kaal said, “she’s right. Our grandmother killed so many natives when she invaded Kuanja.”
“But...” Sharr Shuvuu frowned.
“Kala and Kaal aren’t evil,” Aedre said. “They’re rebelling.” Her breath left her at a revelation.
“What’s wrong?” Kala asked.
“Sharr Shuvuu has a key. We could take everyone to a safer world and a safer time.”
Kaal shook his head. “No. That key’s for you to return.”
“You can have it after I go back through. It’ll be inside the altar.”
Sharr Shuvuu hesitated. “I’d like to return first, before heading back to Eeporyo.”
“You’re coming?” Aedre asked.
“You can’t move. You need someone to carry you.”
Kaal and Kala held hands and exchanged sad looks.
“Once Sharr Shuvuu has returned, you can use the key to save your people,” Aedre said to them.
“But we want to rebel,” Kaal said. “Not run away.”
The four of them exchanged opinions about what to do, and stories about what they’d been through, and then waiters served them a feast.
Sharr Shuvuu wiped crumbs from her lips with a napkin and looked at Kala. “You could use the key to stop Chairman Yacopo from making his army of plant-people. Then, none of this need ever happen.”
Kala gave her brother a sideglance. “Chairman Yacopo lived on New Bilu. It’s a water-world. If we could intend to have a submarine, no problem, but we wouldn’t be travelling by river and rain.”
Aedre’s neck tightened. She shook her head. “Time travel’s riskier.”
“Any pyramids in New Bilu would be underwater,” Kaal said.
When Aedre said she was ready to leave, a man picked her up. Sharr Shuvuu followed them into another cave while Aedre said goodbye.
Gus volunteered to join them on their journey to the pyramid. Stars twinkled as guards pulled them in a wooden wagon, and night insects chirped in the humid air. No Cloroplasts attacked them, and all seemed safer than the native’s fears.
When they reached the pyramid, Gus carried Aedre to its altar and lowered her onto his lap. Sharr Shuvuu sat beside her, retrieved the key from her bag, and slotted it in.
“Will you be strong enough to carry her into the light?” Gus asked Sharr Shuvuu.
“She won’t,” Crowleen’s voice cracked the darkness. “But I will.”
Sharr Shuvuu grabbed Aedre.
“I’ll take you back, Aedre,” Crowleen said.
Aedre’s eyes bulged. “But where?”
Three guards aimed their guns at Crowleen’s advancing shadow, then gasped when they saw her up close.
“I’ll carry you back to Eeporyo, Lass.” Crowleen switched to birdsoyo language. “I want my key Sharr Shuvuu stole too.”
“Please,” Aedre said in their same Eeporyovian bird language. “Let me go home to Nerthus.”
Crowleen placed a hand on her feathered hip. “If you put that key in here to get to Nerthus, you leave open another portal to return through. It’s too dangerous.”
Aedre spoke in a flat, monotone voice. “The portal will only remain open for whoever last used it.”
Crowleen’s beady eyes bored into her. “From Nerthus, not from here. Anyone could travel through a pyrami
d with a key in its altar.”
“Like the key in Eeporyo’s altar?” Aedre asked.
“I don’t want any keys,” Aedre said. “The tribe wants to stay here and rebel against its invaders. You can wait for me to go, then take this key back to Eeporyo.”
“Who will carry you?”
Sharr Shuvuu’s voice trembled. “I will.”
“Listen.” A guard stepped forward and aimed his gun at Crowleen. “I can put a bullet in this bird, right here and now.”
Crowleen grabbed a dagger and threw. It slammed into his upper arm.
The guard reeled back and fell.
Bang!
His companion shot the crow.
The bullet lodged into her black-feathered chest.
She fell.
Aedre’s heart thrashed. “No! My friend!”
The injured guard clutched the wound to his upper arm.
“I’ll carry you,” Gus said to Aedre. “Sharr Shuvuu can come too. We’ll take you home to your father.” He looked at the guards, then nodded towards the altar. “Leave the key here so we can get back through.”
Tears rolled down Aedre’s cheeks. “What about Crowleen?”
“She can die here,” the wounded guard said.
“No,” Aedre said. “We mustn’t let her die. She’s family.” Aedre changed to Birdsoyo. “Crowleen. On Nerthus, there’s a pyramid in Neem, close to its capital Rodon. It’s one of the most developed cities on Nerthus. Let’s go through that pyramid together. We’ll take you to a hospital there.”
“No. I’ll return to Eeporyo, then go home to Hearthrum. Don’t worry. I’ll leave your red friends this stinking key.”
Sharr Shuvuu shook her head. “Thank you. But you’ll never make it over the sea. Heaven’s Island is remote, and any hospital will lack medical equipment for hybrids.”
Aedre nodded. “Let the guards take you to the caves. There are good facilities there.”
“Promise to take care of her,” Sharr Shuvuu said to the guards.
“If she doesn’t throw any more of those knives,” the wounded man said through panting breaths.
Homeworld and rescue
When Aedre, Sharr Shuvuu and Gus departed the Nerthus’s pyramid, sleet dampened their skin. They shared Aedre’s aurashield, as Gus carried her.
“I need to travel by river and rain,” Aedre said. “Find cash for a hoverchair or wheelchair and for tickets and food.”
“Yes,” Gus said.
“I must inform Akachi I made it back to my homeworld too.”
Gus pointed at a bridge. “There’s the place to travel from. No one’s around.” He lowered her onto the wooden platform.
“We’ll keep lookout,” Sharr Shuvuu said. “Take as long as you like.”
“But you’ll get wet and cold.”
“Don’t worry,” Gus said. “I’ll huddle under Sharr’s wing.”
“In your dreams,” Sharr Shuvuu said.
“I won’t be long.” She forced relaxation upon herself. “Take me as a ghost to Akachi.”
***
Aedre drifted in a luxurious glass dome surrounded by dusty moonscape peaks and valleys.
Her chest tightened, and her gaze clouded on two people in front of her. Where’s Akachi? Where am I?
A Sax woman with cream skin and cropped bleached hair stood with an attractive black and red-striped Markazean male. They talked to an older woman residing in an airSphere, who looked like a Sax Nerthling too and had bleached hair like the younger one.
“What shall I do?” The Markazean asked the older woman, rubbing over a shaved undercut bordering a high top-knot.
“Put her in cryosponge, but be careful—Delisa is in there, somewhere.”
Aedre tapped a fist against her lips. Who are these people? This girl’s called Delisa and someone’s occupying her? “Akachi, are you there?”
He didn’t reply.
“So, you don’t want me to deactivate anyone?” he asked the older woman.
Aedre cocked an eyebrow. Deactivate? Like the slaves in Bamdar’s Yiksaan?
“Of course not!” The woman in the airSphere rolled her eyes. “It’s all been a fix. I don’t want everyone shipped out. Only staff, concubines, Delisa, Noomy Foster and Inga.”
Aedre stilled. Noomy Foster’s Yasmin’s mum. This is glass city. That woman doesn’t want everyone shipped? The trainee girls and noomies will explode?
The man sighed. “There are only two hundred cryosponges per spaceship. You’ll need a second.”
The older woman nodded. “Guards can go in the second ship, and you can join them. Make sure that ship has a robot to put you in cryosponge last. Then you can oversee everything else.” She hung up, and the airSphere dissolved.
Aedre swallowed and lifted her chin. “Make me inhabit this man.”
“Don’t put me in cryosponge yet, Benberg,”the young woman said. “Mummy’s wrong. It is me. I think someone’s inside her and making orders. She honestly said before she’d make money from shipping everyone out.”
That must’ve been Akachi talking. These evil bastards wouldn’t want to ship everyone out. It would cost too much. They’d just want concubines who’d passed the exam Yasmin had told her about. Aedre would play the role, of this man, though.
“Show me Delisa’s passcode.” Akachi mindspoke to the system. “Dammit, woman. Give me the damn passcode!”
Did the woman he was occupying know the passcode to deactivate the girls and noomies? Aedre’s eyebrows drew together.
A bald doctor collected her and the young woman, then took them to a medical bay.
As the young woman lay on the bed, Aedre mindspoke to the system, “Allow me to speak to this woman and show me images in her mind.” She yelled at the woman,“What’s the deactivation code?”
An image, 8826, floated across her mind before the doctor imjected her with anaesthetic.
Lost in Glass City, Aedre found her way to a bathroom. Once there, she locked the door. “Restrain this man in an interior sound-proofed airSphere and aurashield so he cannot get anyone’s attention.”
She couldn’t move or talk, completely wrapped in a film, and two glittering shields orbiting her. She nodded, satisfied. “Put me in that middle-aged Sax woman’s body, and make me contact Glass City’s security.”
***
She emerged in a pod under a blue sky and surrounded by snowy meadows. It looked like the Enderland she’d just left. Her fingers turned holographic dials within the woman’s airSphere.
A man materialised. “Can I help?”
“Put Benberg in a cell and don’t listen to a thing he says. He threatened my daughter and has gone insane. I ordered for all the women and girls to be deactivated.”
He arched an eyebrow. “This is getting problematic, Pak’Shirl. If neither you nor Delisa know the deactivation code—”
“I do rememeber.”
His face relaxed. “I’ll carry out your orders right away.”
She logged into Pak’Shirl’s identity panel and deactivated everyone, then bound herself in the bathroom, like she’d done to Colonel Benberg, but used pre-existing technology and placed the Pak’Shirl’s aurashield ring and airSphere remote in another room.
Tingling all over, cold expanded in her core. I’d better inhabit Benberg before the guards find he’s been restrained. “Put me in Benberg and remove my binds.”
In Benberg’s body, Aedre exited the bathroom and walked around until guards put him in confinement.
After that, she space-shifted to Female Rights and Protection on Mayleeda and handed over all video footage. They had Mayleedian spaceships already situated in Eeporyo’s solar system, and got help from Eeporyo’s central government—The United Wheel—who gave them soldiers and more spaceships.
FRAP still needed her service in Glass City, so she returned to the bridge and asked Sharr Shuvuu to join her, while Gus kept watch. Sharr Shuvuu inhabited Pak’Shirl and gave instructions to load all guards into cryosleep on the firs
t spaceship. Without resistance, Aedre announced to the women and girls she would shortly rescue them from slavery.
Back in their rented accommodation, Aedres insides vibrated with warmth and care. She hadn’t felt her physical body for a long time, and although she remained paralysed, tears of hope for a cure stung her eyes.
***
Due to midwinter holidays in the north of Nerthus, Aedre and her friends could only book seats on a maglev in five days time. Luckily, it continued to sleet, so Aedre’s fabricated wad of cash paid for tickets, a station-rented hoverchair, a luxurious rented pod close to Birchwood’s station along with an android nurse, and food to fill their kitchen and stomachs.
By the time the sky cleared, they were comfortable. The day before their maglev trip, rain fell on Birchwood again.
Aedre’s stomach fluttered. “I’m gonna see Akachi. Stay here, and I’ll hover to the river.”
“No way” Sharr Shuvuu said. “We’re coming with you.”
***
She emerged in a dark bedroom—not a glass pod but a house made of brick. Wooden beams crossed the ceiling. Shards of dawn slid through a crack between curtains, and birds tweeted outside. A light snore resonated from a bundle under covers on the bed.
“Present myself.” Her heart thudded within her ribcage, wanting to join Akachi in the warmth of his arms. “Wake up.”
He rolled to his side.
She kept her hood on.
“Am I still dreaming?”
“No, I’ve travelled to you.”
“River and rain?” He pushed himself up.
“Yes.”
He swung his legs over the side of his bed. “Are you in the future?”
“No.” She stepped from shadows and lowered her hood. Dawn’s sunrise dazzled her eyes. “My friend, Sharr Shuvuu, came to Giok and brought me to Nerthus.”
“You’ve joined your father?”
She nodded. “Not yet, but soon. We’ve got maglev tickets to Enderland tomorrow.”
“I’m happy for you.” His face dropped. “What did you find out there?”
“Can I tell you another time? Don’t know when the rain will stop.”
He nodded. “Yasmin, YuFu, Apek, and I may have failed to bring down Glass City for that reason. I inhabited Delisa and—”