Passage

by Thorby Rudbek

  “H-how is this being arranged?” Judy asked at last, carefully avoiding Latt’s face as she knew her emotions were seething just below the surface.

  “Both the Canadian and our own government have prepared passports for Latt, so he’s now officially a dual citizen!” Professor Hardy grinned as he announced this politically powered progress.

  “Citizen of two Earth countries, and two planets, too?” Leroy slapped the now-legal alien on his back, wondering what they had put down as place of birth.

  Latt grinned back at him and then at Isaac, looking a little bemused.

  “And Ruth has already booked the flights and laid out a comprehensive itinerary,” Isaac explained pointedly to the entire group. “She said she had no doubts as to Judy’s willingness to perform this service – on behalf of Terry, of course, and was confident that the destinations and accommodations would prove suitable…” Isaac did not indicate exactly what they would be suitable for.

  Everybody except Latt and Judy already knew.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Some things are just too alien for a warrior-Narlav to understand – Paranak

  Kirrina got up, dropping the wrapping for her mid-morning snack into the partly vaporised shell of the Matrix modulator that she had been using as a garbage can since the previous day, when she and Paranak had removed it from inside Citadel. She looked over at her work companion and determined to make another attempt to understand him more fully.

  “What would you do if you had to choose between saving my life and saving the life of a Narlav?” she said suddenly, hoping to get an unguarded response from her still enigmatic fellow-engineer before he had time to consider the implications of her question fully.

  Paranak turned from his study of a replacement module for a small percentage of a life support system, which he had brought over from the vast spare parts storage on the far wall. His arms started to move slightly in the mode that indicated indecision, so Kirrina was disappointed at first, but not terribly surprised by his response, when it finally came.

  “I do not know… this is not possible. I must protect my own, but you are also my own. If they were from another of the Narlav dominions which Craklav was still technically aligned with, I might… aah!” He threw his hands downward. “Such questions do not become a warrior. I act as I know I must, as the situation develops. Is this not enough for you?”

  “Yes, that is more than enough,” she agreed with a smile, though her fears were still present. “You have spoken as a true warrior and I respect that, for you are truly the greatest Narlav warrior I have ever fought.” She swung her arm as fast as she could, and her hand connected with Paranak’s head in the most powerful smack she could manage. The sound rang and echoed from the walls of the immense hangar, but the Narlav warrior hardly noticed that she had touched him with the Narlav equivalent of a slap on the back.

  “I will make sure we leave before my people return, so this situation will not occur,” he guaranteed her with the total confidence of the supremely arrogant, and the merest hint of a backward, subservient lean.

  Kirrina followed him back up the ramp into the almost completely gutted interior of the Scout Craft’s Control Centre, her hand still stinging uncomfortably, and they began to work once more. The silence which descended was not an uncomfortable one, but Paranak broke it a few minutes later with a grunt of disgust as he finished the testing of one of the simplest of the remote sensors and found that it, too, had suffered a complete and irreversible failure.

  “I wonder why such a design was used; this equipment is far smaller than the Narlav equivalents, but what use is it like this?” he explained as he started to remove the unit from its mountings.

  “It must be the Virtual Interior Compartment effect. I can’t see how you could conclude anything else,” Kirrina said reluctantly as she activated the automatic assembly tool in the reverse mode and watched as the console high on the Control Centre wall, which she had tested before her meal break, started to sag downwards. “None of the equipment we’ve tested functions in any of the self-test modes, even the stand-by. It must be that this Matrix effect causes complete micro-circuit obliteration when the effect collapses.”

  “The VIC defining modules continued to function, and they were embedded in the structure during the failure, too.” Paranak pointed out. “Why not the rest of the equipment?”

  “Maybe … That one really baffles me. It would have been so much easier if all the equipment survived unscathed like those parts did.”

  “Perhaps the standard of construction is inferior to that of my people,” Paranak suggested with more than a hint of pride as he lowered the offending sensor onto the ramp and pushed it, watching it slide slowly down to join the sizeable collection now forming on the floor of the huge repair and maintenance facility. “Such total system failures have not, to my knowledge, occurred in any of our Pakak, or even in our much older Warrnam. I think they are much safer, more reliable.”

  “Oh, come now,” Kirrina said in exasperation as she continued her work removing the console. “How can you possibly say that? After learning that this ship survived essentially unscathed through five centuries, though no maintenance worth mentioning was performed in that period!”

  “Perhaps your father did more than you realise.”

  “Or my mother,” she reminded him, watching the subtle downward movement of his hands as he still resisted the horrifying knowledge now resident in the deeper recesses of his mind, which would tell him, if he let it, that human females were no less intelligent than human males.

  “I help you in this endeavour because you are my blood brother, or almost so,” Paranak reminded her in what she thought of as his stern, school principal voice. “If not so, this constant joking would mean an end to our teamwork.”

  “But you know! Come on, Paranak! Or shall I call you Korpatnal, you are so–” she complained with considerable self-confidence, knowing his temper, but her words were cut short by the unexpected breaking of the last restraint on the console.

  The Narlav turned, enraged by her reference to the main vegetable of his home planet, a bulbous and greenish-grey cabbage-like plant almost four feet tall when mature, especially as he had noticed his skin developing an unusual green tinge recently. His mood changed abruptly, however, as he saw the console dropping towards her, and he reached out with his impossibly long arms and caught it with a super-human, almost super-Narlav, outlay of will and strength, preventing it from crushing her to the floor.

  Kirrina looked up as she heard his sharp hiss of pain, and she dropped to her knees and rolled rapidly to one side, out of harm’s way.

  “Ah! Pain! I am a warrior still!” he exalted, as he maintained the large console in the same position despite the effect it was having on his still-damaged torso.

  “Let it go!” she cried, afraid that his wounds would burst open once more.

  Finally, after several more seconds of rapid breathing, the alien did so, and the useless equipment crashed to the floor and bounced heavily across it and off the edge of the ramp, from which point it descended abruptly to the hangar floor with a sound akin to distant thunder.

  Paranak turned and observed Kirrina coldly with his cat-like eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, trying to suppress her multi-faceted emotional response to his rescue and her oh-so-narrow escape. “I was afraid for you. I d-d-didn’t want you to damage yourself. If you died, there would be no one else here except me… a-and R-richard. But I still can’t contact him. He’s too deep for me to reach. I would be alone on this deserted planet if you were to–” She cut herself off short. “I n-n-never want to be alone again.”

  Paranak continued to study her as if she were a filleted fish that had unexpectedly started to talk.

  “To relinquish my hold immediately that you were out of danger would be a sign of extreme cowardice. As a warrior, I must savour such moments, especially if they allow me to serve my blood-brother.”

&n
bsp; “Not if they hinder your ability to serve me in future, by causing old wounds to be reopened. Anyway, it’s blood-sister,” Kirrina insisted. “I am not your blood-brother.”

  “That is true; you are not my blood-brother. Not yet.” He whipped out a short, white-bladed weapon that Kirrina had never before noticed from the decorative lattice-like structure around his right leg, one of the few areas on his body that were not totally exposed. “One thing remains.”

  Kirrina gasped as his arm shot out; her mind flooded with sheer terror as she had just discovered what his intention was…

  And the ivory-like, razor-sharp edge cut deep into her right calf, slicing through a long section of muscle before hitting the bone.

  Paranak held her upright as she swayed against him, and he felt the pain of her wound join with his far lesser pain as he repeated the action on his left leg and brought the bleeding flesh together, allowing his orange and her bright red blood to flow and mingle. He shouted his ritual challenge to the emptiness surrounding him, and in the echoes resounded the battle cries of a thousand attacking Narlav warriors entering the hangar.

  Kirrina passed out then, and he had to support her totally as her body went limp in his arms. Such thin skin! How do these poor creatures survive? He looked down and found he was standing in a pool of red blood. I must stop the bleeding. He shifted her sideways, momentarily concerned at the alarming amount her body was bending – so different from the Narlavs’ almost stiff torso – and carried her body to the Aircar as a father carries his sleeping toddler, though no Earthly father had legs jointed like his. Paranak placed her inside on the seat that was ergonomically optimised for a human, lifting her head and resting it against the chair back as it flopped over the side in a way impossible for a Narlav, then looked around for something to catch the flood of disgusting red blood from the deep wound he had inflicted so unthinkingly and effortlessly on the despicably weak alien form of his blood-brother.

  His own blood trickled down from his flesh wound, almost reaching his three forward-facing toes before it coagulated, already starting to form a brown scab on his grey, tough-skinned leg. Ah! Here! Paranak rummaged behind the seat and found a rolled length of white fabric somewhat like sailcloth. The fabric seemed almost too easy to tear, but it was all he had. He ripped the torn grey fabric of her jumpsuit from her wounded leg and wrapped the makeshift bandage tightly around the cut area in an attempt to ensure that the blood could no longer escape. Then, climbing awkwardly into the Seagull beside her, he balanced his feet up against the Transplyous and slammed the door closed. A moment later the Aircar rose a few feet above the floor of the hangar and shot off, through the wide-open exit, towards the medical facilities. As the craft tilted and swerved, the floor soon became uniformly red.

  Kirrina would have been impressed once again, had she been conscious, to see how well he handled the streamlined, powerful craft, though he had never flown it before. Paranak landed in the Medical Emergency Centre, having taken only seconds longer in his emergency flight than she had just a week earlier in hers, and lifted her relatively light body effortlessly from the Seagull. He laid her in one of the coffin-like boxes and ran his strange but incredibly versatile hands over the control panel, activating the device. He had left the lid open, so he watched with great interest as the fabric which he had wrapped around her leg seemed to dissolve under the influence of a fine pink mist which filled the lower end of the isolation unit. Next, a purple spray covered the section of calf from which still rapidly oozed the repulsive red blood. This alternated with a clear mist, cycling about a dozen times, until the flow of blood had ceased, and the wounded area was left glistening under a clear coat of gel-like liquid.

  The unit reverted to standby mode, and the medic area became as quiet as a crypt.

  Minutes passed, and Paranak waited patiently.

  Some time later, Kirrina sat up, her hands gripping the edge of the container to support herself. She looked into Paranak’s yellow eyes with a new understanding of his actions, which had come to her somehow, as she drifted back into consciousness.

  “We are blooded.” She stated solemnly.

  “You and I.” Paranak swivelled from side to side in confirmation. “Are truly of one blood now,” he said almost reverently as he helped her stand up.

  Kirrina bent down and felt her leg as she stepped gingerly out of the life-support unit, discovering a transparent coating of a substance akin to plastic over the wound, which was holding the torn flesh together and preventing further bleeding.

  “You didn’t realise that your knife would cut so easily.”

  “The knowledge was within me, but I did not seek it,” he admitted. “Now you too have felt pain in this bonding.”

  Kirrina sat down on the nearest empty life-support canister and sighed. I have felt much pain because of you, my strange friend. She reached up unconsciously and ran a hand over the dark, painful bruises on her neck, then put the throbbing, injured leg up on the canister to allow the blood to flow away from the cut. The pulsing sensation diminished somewhat, allowing her to think more clearly.

  “Paranak, if we are to be such… warriors together,” she picked the word carefully. “There should be total truth between us. Please sit down; we must join our minds once more.”

  “You may control me, as I am still duty-bound to serve you,” he stated gravely as he folded his legs underneath his stocky body and reached out his arms easily, bending them so that they rested on her thighs, allowing her to take his tough hands in her much smaller and softer ones.

  “I do not wish to control you; I just want you to understand why I am what I am.” Kirrina looked into his wide-spaced eyes, and hers faded from blue to grey as she opened up to him. She allowed herself to feel his thoughts, noting his tremendous reserves of arrogance, his determination, and his dedication, first to his people and then to her. Finally, once she had blended so well that she could feel the sharp pain of the still-tender torso wounds and even sense his body curling and uncurling fractionally as he breathed, she searched for the buried knowledge within the deeper recesses of his mind, aware of his resistance, which hampered her attempts at first, then faded gradually as she required nothing more than his willingness to be still.

  Images of Kirrina floated across Paranak’s temporarily sightless eyes, first, as the memories of a child were brought to the fore, there were dim ones of watching her father grow suddenly old, watching him work desperately on some incomprehensible modifications within Citadel’s Moss Room. Then, as clearly as he saw life normally, Paranak saw Kirrina going to school, saw the other humans, both male and indisputably female, studying, ‘goofing off’, playing volleyball, swimming, and simply chatting and laughing in breaks and at lunch.

  Kirrina felt him try to break contact, but she flooded his mind with emotions unfamiliar to him – caring, sharing, needing, giving – until she brought forth her momentous meeting with Richard, her rapidly developing attachment to him and their ultimately successful struggle to escape from Earth. She pictured their panic when the Star Drive failed the first time, their discoveries as they repaired the ancient Scout Craft, their battle with his Pakak, and their hesitant decision not to finish him off after his last attempt to destroy them both. Kirrina sought out and dissolved the barriers, some of which Paranak had inherited, some had been unconsciously built into him by his all-male teachers, and still others, which he had instinctively erected to prevent his own acceptance of her femininity, and she carefully unfolded her desperate, all-consuming need for this other human, and her complete willingness to reserve all of herself for him.

  Paranak realised some indeterminate time later that he was seeing with his own eyes once more.

  Kirrina sat before him, her eyes back to their normal blue, staring at him. Colourless liquid ran in parallel lines down her pale cheeks, her head pounded, and her emotions still ran feverishly high, making the alien feel alive in a way he had never felt before. He coughed, then hesitantly pulled his hands
away from hers, breaking the mental and physical contact. Most especially he was relieved to lose the emotional tint which had coloured his thoughts so uncomfortably and uniquely.

  “Kirrina…” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You are in truth a wondrous blood…. sister.”

  Her head fell forwards as he concluded his momentous disclosure, smacking into his spiral-wound chest with an audible thump, and Paranak found he had to move quickly once more to catch her before she fell off the life-support canister.

  This seems impossible, yet I know now that it is reality. Paranak manoeuvred her limp form a little uncertainly, lowering her gently until she was resting on the top of the white oblong box. He folded her arms across her chest, to prevent them slipping off the edge of the flat surface, inadvertently and unknowingly completing the image of death as represented by the innumerable effigies in the medieval churches of the timeworn Christian world.

  He did not fully understand at this time, but she had fainted as a result of her immense mental exertion, on top of the considerable loss of blood from her blood-bonding injury. Such a strange race. So different to mine, yet also so much alike. He made sure she was not going to fall from the flat, raised surface, then got up and wandered over to Richard’s monitor. Vital signs were slightly improved, but the device had lowered Richard’s body functions to the lowest possible level, and so it did not surprise Paranak that even the powerful consciousness of Kirrina could not connect to the mind of her blood-brother, deep in his – second – comatose condition.

  Paranak reviewed what he had just received from the pale skinned, bright-haired girl. In her kind, there are friends, much as I understand the concept, but as well as that, there are also friendships less reliant on duty than a warrior-bond and more dependent on mutual interests than needs. There is another, more obscure kind of friendship which functions on its deepest level between the male and the female. Like that between Richard and Kirrina. It seems to involve more of a desire to help, to support, to care for and to… cherish. Even something which she calls ‘love’. And this often involves a connection to infants, beyond that of a hypothetical and ridiculous, impossible scheme of joint parenting, which is incredible and unthinkable with the ‘nursing beasts’ of my race in any case, that somehow… He stopped, completely revolted by the idea which had begun to formulate in his mind.