Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  The plane behind him lost radar contact with Harold’s Hornet, and the pilot tensed up, knowing it meant either the ‘enemy’ had crashed, or was turning to take him on. And knowing who this is, I can almost guarantee he hasn’t crashed, not His Majesty, Harold Morton, uncrowned king of Cold Lake.

  A moment later he changed course and crossed the ridge a little further west and north than Harold had, in an attempt to fool his opponent. A flashing light on his Heads-Up Display indicated he had sustained fifteen rounds of simulated cannon fire from Harold’s twenty millimetre gun, and he was considered eliminated. He swore, and only then did he see the victor, as the CF-18 fighter slipped past on his starboard side, wing tips waggling slightly in greeting and celebration.

  Harold got back to base about twenty minutes later, and heard the news about his son as he walked into debriefing. He persuaded his commanding officer to wait for his report, and rushed to his car and on to the hospital, just in time to see his son discharged.

  “Hey, Dad!” Aaron shouted proudly as he spotted his father coming through the emergency doors. “Look at my awesome cast!”

  Miyoko waited until her son had finished displaying his ‘war wound’, then hugged her husband tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. Then she looked up at his tanned face and grinned with relief. “I didn’t even faint this time,” she whispered in his ear.

  Harold looked at her, both amusement and pride evident in his expression. “I get back just in time to find everything wrapped up; what am I supposed to do now? Looks like you handled it great without me!”

  Miyoko slipped her hand in his and together they walked out to the parking lot, following their ‘warrior’ son.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  First impressions

  Five days had passed since Kirrina had placed Richard within the isolating confines of the only remaining operational medical facility on Outpost Twenty Seven. She got up with the sun as usual, but this day her body was really rested for the first time since their arrival, as she had sat down at the Scout Craft maintenance facility for a brief rest after about five hours work the previous morning and instantly succumbed to sleep. When she had woken up flat out on the floor about three hours later, just in time for her mid-day meal, at first she had been annoyed with herself, but after a few minutes she had grudgingly admitted that it had probably been nature’s way of compensating for the extra-long days on the Outpost planet. In any case, the second half of the day had seen her complete most of the preparations for re-entry into the almost fossilised interior of her Citadel, and this was by far the most productive day she had had to that point.

  After finishing her preparations for the day’s work and eating a brief but very nourishing breakfast to carry her through the long morning, Kirrina went down to the Life Support Facilities and punched in the access code she had programmed into the door mechanism. Looking across the room as the security panel slid out of the way, her nerves settled down as she saw the stack of crates still piled high on the container that held Paranak’s body. She walked over and checked Richard’s console as usual. His vital signs were now showing slight but definite indications of improvement, but she had not been able to make contact with his mind since his incarceration began. There was still no trace of his thought patterns, though she probed as deeply as she could.

  Kirrina found herself suddenly facing the other way, her legs twisted painfully under her, as she was wrenched around in the grip of alien hands!

  The Narlav’s broad body stood impossibly rigidly before her, his widely-spaced eyes staring through her as though she were a steamy cloud of vapour generated from a fresh pile of manure, obscuring the view of a far more interesting and challenging hunted creature. The tough hand on her shoulder dug deeper into her muscles, the two thumbs making movement impossible, and the other hand came up and encircled her neck, cutting off her sharp intake of breath abruptly. How did he manage to escape? The boxes, I…

  Kirrina felt his thoughts flood into her mind once more as the gnarled skin on his fingers and thumbs sank deep into her wind-pipe and the side of her neck. Hatred, revulsion, and contempt swamped her own thoughts, and she felt herself beginning to go limp as her oxygen-starved brain struggled to reassert control of itself. Desperately she gathered her last ounce of will-power and opened up her mind to the alien, attempting once again to bridge the gap between their diametrically opposed outlooks, but her intentions disintegrated as she started to lose consciousness, and she opened up to him more completely than she had ever done, to anyone, before.

  The room started to blur, then, incredibly, the hand at her neck slackened off and disappeared behind the grey bulk of the alien, and the Narlav warrior knelt before her, leaning back in what she now knew was the position of complete surrender to a superior. The other hand remained on her shoulder, in contact with her skin now through the partly shredded jumpsuit that had torn as she had been spun around. This still firm hold was fortuitous from Kirrina’s viewpoint, for without it she would surely have fallen to the floor.

  “Paranak,” she croaked, after gasping in a significant volume of air. “Why…”

  “You know my name!”

  “I can hear… you thinking–”

  “I cannot proceed with your elimination;” he cut off her explanation abruptly, his eyelids moving in their strange diagonal manner and back, across his expressionless yellow eyes, briefly breaking his formidable stare. “I remember how you resisted your impulse to kill me when I could no longer act like a warrior should.” His voice sounded deep, but surprisingly smooth as it emanated from the wide mouth. “You spared my life, so I am bound by my own law to protect you from all harm.”

  Kirrina collapsed to the floor in front of him as he belatedly released her shoulder and lowered his incredibly long arm to his side.

  “You have just spared my life also,” she said hoarsely.

  Paranak looked at the red welts on her neck with considerable interest.

  “The first time, when I saw you bending over me in the water and I tried to kill you, I thought that the soft skin there indicated that would be a good point to inflict death. But you did not die then, despite my superior strength. I thought it was because I was wounded, but…”

  She reached out to his foot and touched the tough nails on the three-toes uppermost, aware that her life might still be in danger unless she could really establish clear lines of communication. Now you can understand me. Search your mind; you will find me there, just as you are in my mind.

  The irises of his cat-like yellow eyes contracted suddenly. His mouth opened slightly, then closed again. Kirrina was aware of many vague and half-projected thoughts as the still-kneeling Narlav tried to do what she could do so well. And he failed. He pulled his foot away, unconsciously wiggling the vestigial fourth toe on his instep as he did so. “How do you do that? I have not heard of any Narlav who could speak into another’s mind as you can, let alone a slave.”

  “I am not a slave,” she replied simply and boldly, though the very action of speaking caused a pain like the touch of a red-hot poker in the side and front of her neck. “I have always been free,” she said with a touch of pride.

  “Then I must declare you the superior warrior; such a power would make any Narlav invincible.” Paranak leaned back again, crossing and interlocking his double-elbowed arms behind his back. Kirrina found the image in her mind of a ritual killing, performed by the victorious warrior on a vanquished Narlav positioned just as this one was.

  She shook her head, finding the associated feelings of triumph that had been deposited in her mind to be too cruel and callous for her liking, and wishing she could somehow erase them.

  “Look inside yourself,” she urged him again, aware that he had not yet done so, for she had recognised with a flash of incredulity – almost of horror – that she had been speaking his language since he had spared her from death.

  “I am a human being from a planet which has never known your kind,” she spoke
coldly in English to test his receptivity.

  Wrinkles appeared on the grey skin between his widely spaced eyes, an alien version of a frown of concentration. “How… is it that… I can understand and… speak this strange language?”

  “When I am in physical contact with you, I can join our minds together,” she explained patiently in his tongue once more. “When you had your hand around my neck,” she reached up and gingerly touched the painful bruises already forming. “I almost lost consciousness. As that happened, the barriers which normally separate the deepest parts of human minds from direct contact were dissolved. You received my language, and even my ideals, as I in turn received yours.” She ended her explanation with a strangely ambivalent, mixed feeling of regret and gratitude.

  Paranak stared back at her for a long time, his eyelids blinking down diagonally from centre top to outside bottom every few seconds, which motion served to break the illusion of lifelessness in his feline optics. Then his arms reached out and took her hands in a grip that was almost gentle enough not to hurt. Kirrina suppressed a gasp as he lifted up her hands, then raised himself fluidly to his feet and pulled her upright. He released her hands and watched as she lowered them to her sides, then he walked slowly around her, studying the way her head moved, as she watched him in turn. Finally he stood before her again.

  “I have never really looked at your kind before; they only work in the fields on Craklav, so I did not have many opportunities, or the desire.” He observed the shade of her hands and her face with increased interest. “Perhaps you are not well?”

  “I am fine, apart from almost being killed by you!” Kirrina found herself smiling despite the strangeness of the situation. She noted, now, that there was no trace of the spacesuit materials that had been on the grey body when he was unceremoniously dumped into the medical unit, in fact, there were no coverings whatsoever. Apparently Narlavs had no use for clothing.

  “But you are not very grey!”

  “Humans are not supposed to be grey!”

  “The ones on my planet all are. And your mouth, it is wider than most on the slaves I did see; this must mean you are developing, progressing to be more like a Narlav.” He hammered hard on one side of his incredibly broad and solid head with a closed fist.

  Kirrina laughed. “No, no. It just means I am smiling; I am so happy to be alive, and to find that the being which came to my Citadel with such hatred for humanity has stopped long enough to think and observe.”

  “Never has such a thing been known, in all the history of my people.” Paranak folded his arms as his uncertainty increased.

  “I am a part of your history, now.” Kirrina murmured. “We are like this.” She twisted her first finger around her second finger and held it up before his wrinkled eye-space.

  “Never has a bond like this been formed before,” he admitted wonderingly. “And these ideals you mentioned, they are like mine!”

  Kirrina suppressed an urge to disagree, but her reluctance to comment was enough to make his elucidate.

  “‘No Narlav may ever attack another Narlav without first declaring his intentions’,” he recited. “‘Each Narlav must do for himself, all that he can do.’ ‘A Narlav will do for his brother what he would want his brother to do for him, especially in times of war.’ It is taught to us from the moment we leave the nursing beasts. This is what your creed believes; I can see it all clearly now! For there were many wars on your planet – Earth? – also, just as there have been in Craklav’s history.”

  “That is true, but I would prefer never to hurt anyone,” Kirrina stated carefully. “Sometimes, for the protection of the innocent – “

  “– Many millions were killed, indiscriminately.” Paranak interrupted, then he whistled as he found more in his mind about her recent experiences. “Sometimes you did hurt them, you even controlled one like a mindless automaton, and another… you killed one, you did… no… more than one!” Paranak bowed backwards once more, but without lowering himself completely to the floor as he had done before.

  “I had to keep Citadel from them.”

  Paranak swivelled his body from side to side several times, which Kirrina realised was roughly equivalent to a human nod.

  “Yes. If your human enemies had been successful and took your vessel, you would have become their slave. And they would have made you such! Do you deny this?”

  Kirrina looked at him with the soberness of sudden understanding. “You are right, though they might have released me later,” she admitted sadly, hoping to make a distinction between the authorities on Earth and the Narlavs that had attacked her ship.

  “Only when you were no longer useful to them,” Paranak surmised with quick insight. He held up one hand in front of her face and twisted his two fingers and lesser thumb into an intricate pattern, one that left her symbol of unity and closeness in the dust.

  She saw that each digit had one more joint to it than hers did, making such a gesture not only possible, but clearly superior, representing strength, in addition to harmony and understanding.

  “Perhaps we are not so different as I had first supposed,” Kirrina took in his explanation, and found the physical characteristics of the Narlav form contrarily made her feel that she had more in common with him, not less. She contemplated her startling conclusion as she stared as if she were looking beyond the confines of the Life Support facility.

  “I must know,” Paranak began, breaking into her introspection with a total disregard for her sensibilities, and reaching out with both hands until they were positioned near her shoulders. “Can you control my mind, also?” He started to move the grey, gnarled fingers and opposing thumbs slowly towards her neck.

  “Please, don’t, I–” Kirrina realised her life depended on her making some impression on him, perhaps even on finding the key to complete mental control, so she cut herself off in mid-sentence and concentrated.

  Paranak’s wrinkles appeared once more, running vertically in the blank space several inches wide between his eyes, as he noticed her irises change from blue to grey. His arms continued to move, the hands touched her neck, then he stopped.

  “I felt you, just for an instant.”

  “It will get stronger as I continue to practice,” she declared flatly. “If you want to destroy me, you must do so now, for soon I will be able to control you completely.” Her expression was defiant, though her heart raced and her hands felt like ice.

  “If the time does come, I will trust that the human who spared me once… will spare me again.”

  Kirrina’s eyes filled with tears as they slipped back to their normal colour.

  “I will sit down,” she declared, trying to disguise the panic that had almost beaten her.

  Paranak watched as she walked over to one of the empty life-support canisters and sat down heavily on the lid. He tried it, but found it uncomfortable and sat at her feet instead.

  “The other warrior, where is he?”

  Kirrina looked at him, shocked that for the duration of their first real conversation, she had forgotten Richard’s plight entirely.

  “He was severely injured when an automatic defence system detected one of your Narlav laser rifles in his hand and attempted to kill him. Much of his body was vaporised, his organs badly damaged.” She got up and walked over to the console next to Richard’s isolation unit. “I was looking at the readouts when–” She shuddered. “It will be a long time before his tissue has re-grown, and his body becomes self-sustaining again. Then he can be released.” She checked the displays, as she had been doing when Paranak had surprised her, finding no detectable change since the previous day.

  “Two brothers against the might of one of my people’s finest Pakak, and sixteen hardened, skilled warriors,” Paranak marvelled, referring to the arrowhead battle-cruiser by its Narlav name. “Truly you and he should be honoured.”

  “Richard and I are not brothers,” Kirrina began, her face showing her confusion clearly. “We are–” Suddenly she stopped
, aware of a chilling discrepancy in the memories she had absorbed from Paranak’s mind. “I am not a male, I am female!”

  “Ah!” Paranak started to swivel his broad body from side to side in an exaggerated manner. Kirrina realised this was the way all Narlavs showed amusement. “Once more I find you are true Narlav. What humour! What boldness!” He slapped Kirrina on the side of her head, sending her crashing into the console and almost knocking her out.

  She got up slowly, wincing from several new bruises.

  “You must resist this compulsion you have to congratulate me; I don’t know how long I can survive it! Besides, what I said was not meant to be funny; it is the truth. In humans, there are both males and females.”

  “This is so also in Narlavs, but the females are less than nothing. They just sit and eat, and nurse the young.”

  “You mean the ‘nursing beasts’? These are not some kind of alien cow?”

  Paranak’s body swivelled sideways once more, but more gently this time, confirming her assumption.

  “But surely they deserve to be called Narlavs, too?” she asked incredulously.

  Paranak’s between-eye space wrinkled yet again.

  “Although what you say is technically true, it is a great insult to say such a thing,” he admitted finally.

  “I don’t wish to offend, but it is different with humans; both males and females are intelligent and capable of many things. Each individual, being unique, can do some things that another cannot. Obviously the males cannot be mothers, but both can participate in raising their children.” She stopped and tried to analyse Paranak’s reaction, quickly reviewing what she now knew about his species from their ‘uber-mind link’. “Just because your females are mindless and only useful for feeding the young until they are weaned, doesn’t mean that our females are the same. Do you think I am mindless?”