Omphalos

by Harper J. Cole

  “Actually, I … I’ve forgotten how to solve this, it was a long time ago when I worked on it. I can’t do it anymore.” No, don’t say that! If they think I’m useless they might kill me. “I mean, maybe I can, but I don’t want to at the moment.”

  Frowning, Koli translated Gypsy’s refusal for her commander. His reaction was terrifying. Gypsy could actually see the rage spreading across his face as Koli spoke, teeth baring and pale scars reddening beneath his stubble. In a sudden explosion of motion, he seized one of the chairs from its place by the table, whirled and smashed it against the nearest wall, with splintered wooden pieces flying everywhere. Before these had even come to rest, he was standing over Gypsy, bellowing at the top of his lungs, spittle flying from his mouth while she cowered and pressed her hands to her ears. It took Koli some time to pull the enraged man away, after which she became the new target for his diatribe.

  Finally, there was silence, except for the commander’s ragged breathing. Gypsy slowly lowered her hands from their protective posture – this time, when they shook, it was with fear. She had half-expected violence from the first moment she saw Ayakopi, but suspecting a violent nature was one thing, having it displayed in so visceral a manner was quite another.

  At length, Koli returned to Gypsy’s side, albeit with one eye still on Ayakopi where he stood glowering by the door. “Please do not be the frightened one; you are valued. The Commander is only upset because our effort to save you from Monosade was so big. I hope you will help us?”

  Gypsy wanted very much to say yes. They might kill me. Worse, they might torture me – I couldn’t take that, I just couldn’t. Any of the others could handle this better than me, any of them! Why does it have to be me?

  Then she thought of her mother, and those long days Gypsy had spent after her loss, hiding away behind a closed door. She thought of Jess Ryan weeping for a stolen love. A single death could cause unspeakable grief – how much worse might a war be?

  On my hands, if I help them. Got to try to resist. If nothing else, at least try.

  She looked up to meet Koli’s gaze.

  “I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

  * * *

  Gypsy’s refusal brought no immediate reprisals – the two Anasadans simply withdrew, urging her to think it over. She had no intention of changing her mind without a more direct form of coercion, and her body was giving her other things to worry about: unwelcome symptoms including headaches, stomach cramps and diarrhoea. She coped with these as best she could, picked at a meal which an unsmiling guard brought her, and was happy when she felt weary enough to retire to bed.

  Soon after she awoke, Koli visited – alone, much to Gypsy’s relief. The doctor carried with her a bundle of clothes.

  “How are you?”

  “Oh, fine thanks.”

  “These are for you.” She set the bundle on the floor. “Chopiko Base serves our needs, but is always cold.”

  “Thanks,” replied Gypsy, though she had no intention of changing out of her familiar yellow garb. It was an incomplete outfit now, and she missed having the other six colours to choose from, but wearing it gave her existence at least a shred of normalcy.

  “Also this.” Koli now held up what looked like a spray can. “Kills the solazu bugs. Harmless to Gypsy.”

  “I don’t want to kill them.”

  “No? But I saw you on the camera before you went to sleep. You moved all solazu out of your bed first. They frighten you.”

  “Oh, no – it’s the other way around really. I was worried I might roll over and crush them by mistake.”

  Frowning, Koli wandered over to the table. “You have left the meat from your meal.”

  “Yes, no offense, I’m very grateful, it’s just I’m vegetarian. That means-”

  “I am also the vegetarian. You will eat what I do from now.” Koli turned and studied Gypsy; the human, seated once more on the edge of her bed, shifted uncomfortably and wondered what her captor was thinking. “You do not want to kill,” said the doctor at length. “Or make harm for others.”

  “That’s right,” said Gypsy, grateful to be understood.

  “But you allow harm to yourself and say nothing.”

  “Erm … what? I don’t…”

  Koli pointed to Gypsy’s ankles. “You bleed.”

  Glancing down, Gypsy saw that she’d missed a few traces of menstrual blood while cleaning herself up. She shifted her feet to hide them. “No.”

  “Do not feel shame. The women of my world know the red cycle as well.” She pointed to the bundle of clothes. “You will find material to help in there.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not, no…”

  “I saw also on the camera you often hold your head. Why is this? Your system is clear of the drugs Matha gave you.”

  “That’s just withdrawal symptoms.” Koli looked blank; she evidently didn’t know that phrase. “From my own drugs. I take them to help with my OCD – it’s a type of mental illness.”

  “We can try to make more for you. What are they?”

  “I think they increase how much serotonin my brain takes in. Or decrease, I’m not sure.”

  “What is serotonin?”

  “I don’t know.” But I should know, she realised. It’s my brain; how could I never think to read up on it? “It’s a naturally occurring chemical, or something…”

  Koli raised a calming hand. “I will read on this subject. We have certain information on you from the Ramirans – perhaps it will hold the answer. Does this threaten your life?”

  Gypsy shook her head, which made it go fuzzy again. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. But I’ll be more prone to … strange thoughts.”

  “Then I will do what I can in the morning.” Koli’s words surprised Gypsy – she thought this was the morning. “I need rest. Koroko na ma krisola. Please call for me if you are in pain. I will be near.”

  “Sorry,” said Gypsy as the doctor turned to leave. “I didn’t understand that bit in your language.”

  Koli paused in the doorway. She smiled sadly. “It means, ‘I go to my grave.’ We shall speak again soon.”

  * * *

  As the days passed in Chopiko base, Gypsy began, in her own slow way, to adapt. Her “red cycle” came to an end (she rather liked the Matan euphemism, and adopted it herself in her inner monologue). No replacement serotonin regulators were found, but her headaches soon began to ease off, leaving her feeling brittle but clear-headed. She began to acclimatise to the lower gravity as well, and could soon walk from one end of the cell to the other without swaying too much. To distract herself from thinking about her situation, or the pad of paper they’d given her to write about the properties of Kinkawa equations, she watched a lot of television.

  Koli had showed her how to operate the screen, explaining that there was no live programming but a substantial archive to choose from. Gypsy found herself enjoying the sports broadcasts the most, as these were easy to follow once she knew the rules. A popular game featured two teams in a three-dimensional glass labyrinth, complete with anti-grav technology, trying to force a ball into the opposition’s goal area with a mix of skill and power. Like a high-tech version of Rugby, she decided.

  To her surprise, Gypsy also found herself enjoying Hearts in the Permafrost, an Anasadan soap opera. She could hardly follow the dialogue at all, but the overzealous acting was often enough to get the point across.

  “You’re smiling,” said Koli one morning, as the two of them finished their breakfast of roots and seeds while enjoying the latest instalment. “And yet the episode is sad. Zuzu has found his wife with another man.”

  “Sorry, it’s just so naff and over the top.” Gypsy indicated the screen, which showed an extreme close-up of Zuzu’s horrified face as the credits rolled: eyes wide, mouth wider, hands pressed firmly to cheeks. “I like it because it’s the sort of thing we have on TV back on Earth. I guess that makes me feel less lost.”

  “We are similar in a lot of ways. Your people have
fascinated me since you appeared, but when I’d learned enough of your language to begin reading some of the stories you sold the Ramirans, I didn’t find what I expected. Instead of alien motivations and alien feelings, I found much to recognise in your, your…”

  “Drives?”

  “Yes! That’s the word.”

  “Your English is really getting very good. I can’t say the same for my Matan.”

  “Perhaps you are missing the confidence?”

  “Oh, that’s always true, but I don’t have an ear for languages.”

  “You are not what I expected.” Koli looked thoughtfully at Gypsy, as she often did. “You do not show anger at being taken, or ask questions about where you are. You constantly insult yourself and avoid praise. Why is this?”

  She’s a psychologist as well as a doctor. Friendly, but always observing, probing. Trying to find a way to make me work for them, I suppose.

  Gypsy had a suspicion that she was being manipulated. Once she’d had time to think about it, Ayakopi’s chair-smashing burst of anger had struck her as artificial, a ploy to make the doctor seem sympathetic by comparison. Nor did the fact that she had eventually seen through the act mean that it hadn’t worked. She did like Koli; soon, she may depend on her, the way she’d depended on her mother, and Annie to a lesser extent. Already their meals together were the highlight of her day.

  Seeing what’s happening to me and preventing it are two very different things, Gypsy decided, then felt a sudden wave of dread that she couldn’t explain.

  “I’m worried about what might happen to me if I’m too pushy,” she said in reply, choosing to ignore the harder parts of Koli’s question. “I am interested in what’s outside my cell, though.”

  Again, that searching, clinical appraisal from Koli. “Today, you’ll find out,” she said at length. “You are an honoured guest, as I have told you. Honoured guests do not belong behind bars. I will start by taking you up to the surface, but please change into the clothes we have provided – it will be very cold.”

  “The surface?” Gypsy had rather imagined them to be inside a mountain, but she supposed being underground made just as much sense. “I don’t want to take these off,” she said, indicating her yellow skirt and matching top. “I could put another layer over it though.” She picked out a thick hooded coat from the pile in the corner, checking carefully for solazu bugs and gently removing the two she found nestling in the interior fur before putting it on. To these she added some boots, also furred. The two feet of cotton skirt visible between the winter garments looked incongruous, but she’d never been one to worry too much about appearances.

  Koli guided her out into a stone corridor with many more barred doors leading to other cells. All save one of these was empty – the very last one in the row. The doctor pointed to it as they approached, issuing a warning not to stray too close to the bars.

  The ever-cautious Gypsy was already hugging the corridor wall long before they reached the occupied cell. An unpleasant surprise was waiting for her when she passed by the bars and looked through, for the occupant was standing inches from the barrier and looking right at her.

  It was the Matan who’d abducted her.

  He said nothing as she dropped her gaze and scurried past, keeping as close as humanly possible to Dr. Koli until they were through another door and safely past the prison corridor.

  “That was him!” she blurted, as they moved into a broad circular room with numerous other passages leading from it. Gypsy barely took in their new surroundings, which boasted equipment lockers and machinery whose purpose she did not care to guess at.

  “Yes. Colonel Matha of Monosade,” said Koli as she guided Gypsy into another passage.

  “But, he’s the, the one who … what’s he doing here? I mean, in a cell?”

  “As I said, he is of Monosade.”

  It took a moment for the name to sink in. “Oh, that’s the other one. I mean, you’re Anasade. But I don’t understand. Why would someone from the planet I was already on want to kidnap me? And bring me to you?”

  “Please put this on.” They were standing before a small cubicle which looked like an elevator, and Koli had taken a pair of what looked like metallic surgical masks from a tray to one side. She helped Gypsy fit hers in place. The inside felt more like plastic; it covered her mouth and nose, and seemed to mould onto her face. Stuffy and claustrophobic, but air was coming through with no problem.

  Koli donned a mask of her own, then gently guided Gypsy into the lift.

  “The air is bad on the surface,” she explained as she pressed a button clearly marked with an up arrow. “Without filter it can kill.”

  “Oh, okay.” As the lift jerked and began a somewhat unsteady ascent, Gypsy resigned herself to learning no more about her abductor. Abruptly though, Koli twisted a hand in a gesture that Gypsy couldn’t decipher, and provided a brief explanation.

  “I do not know all the details. Colonel Matha is from the Monosade military, but works in a secret terrorist group called kajanakara.” She spat the word out with a flash of anger – the first that Gypsy had seen from her. “That means Icebreakers, in your language. They are obsessed with our destruction, and saw your knowledge as an opportunity to further that cause. Matha was the central figure in their plan to steal you away.

  “Our spies on Monosade heard about the plan, and came up with their own. Ayakopi hasn’t told me how, but they intercepted Matha’s ship and took him prisoner.”

  And took me prisoner, thought Gypsy resentfully. “I guess I’d rather be with you than with him,” she said aloud. “Do you know whether … whether any of my friends were seriously hurt when he abducted me?” Please not Annie, please not Annie…

  “They’re all fine,” said Koli, and Gypsy felt a slice of the tension she’d carried within her since waking up here dissolve. She was so relieved that the elevator door opening hardly registered with her. Only the sudden chill about her legs made her glance up.

  The sight that greeted her was stunning, for there over the horizon hung a globe that blotted out half the sky. It was another world, a heavenly body, white and blue, wreathed in clouds.

  “Good golly,” she gasped. “What a massive moon!” Then it clicked. “Oh, we’re the moon, aren’t we? That’s Anasade, your planet?”

  “Yes, Gypsy. This is Chopiko base. It means moon base.”

  “Oh.” I probably should have worked this out a week ago, what with the low gravity and all that, thought Gypsy as she stepped gingerly out into the open. And the Anasadans thought they’d snatched a genius. I wonder whether they’ve got buyer’s remorse yet?

  The moon itself was a pale shadow of the globe it orbited. Stagnant water swirled turgidly about her boots, and spindly, sickly-looking trees rose here and there, leafless, standing in groups of two or three, as though they could ill abide to be alone in this desolate place. Beyond these, there was little but grey earth and greyer stone.

  “A failed planet,” said Koli as she followed behind. “That is what I have always felt. Chopiko wanted to be home to intelligent life, but all it could produce were bugs, shrubs, and fish. Even those mostly dwell in the underground caves – I think the surface depresses them.”

  “I can see why.” Gypsy glanced back the way they’d come, suddenly afraid of being stuck up here; thankfully, the elevator was still there waiting for them, an incongruous cylinder of technology amidst the primal bleakness. “Is something wrong with Anasade? It looks a much nicer place to live, quite beautiful from here.”

  “It is beautiful.” Koli looked wistfully at the colossus in the sky. “A jewel, a diamond of ice and snow. I miss it every day, the way the mountains cradled my home, the crunch as the tundra greeted my steps. But we cannot show ourselves down there. We are the Summer Frost, a group set aside from the government; here we have secrecy.”

  “Oh, you mean you’re like the equivalent of those Icebreaker people?” Seeing Koli’s expression darken, Gypsy hastily changed course. “S
orry, I-I mean, very, very superficially similar. Not similar at all really, in the ways that matter.”

  Abruptly, the doctor’s features softened. “You are right, we are more similar than we would like to admit. We tread between the dark and the light.”

  “Do you worry that people might see you up here?” asked Gypsy, eager to change the subject.

  “We seldom come above the surface, and there are few telescopes built strong enough to spot us. Ships bringing supplies land on the dark side of the moon. Besides, those who look to the sky have their eyes trained on Monosade, not us.

  “I think some in the government do know of our existence, but they are happy to pretend otherwise. They can deny knowledge of us if we fail, consume the rewards if we succeed. Let us go back now; there is much more to see below the surface than above it.”

  Gypsy complied; they took the elevator back down and Koli led her about the sprawling underground complex. The lone human on Chopiko nodded politely while atmospheric generators were explained to her, and tried her best at proper Matan greetings when introduced to a number of Summer Frost operatives, each of whom seemed surly and displeased to see her. She even summoned the nerve to ask a few questions when Koli gave her a tour of an underground waterfall – a glimmering marvel, the water and spray seeming to fly in slow motion in the low gravity as though time itself was catching its breath at the sight. It would have fully engaged her attention on another day.

  All the while, though, her thoughts were on the surface, and the complicated feelings it had evoked. This moon did look a miserable place when compared to the shining world it orbited. Anasade seemed almost to taunt them with its beauty and proximity.

  Gypsy knew that her mental state, always delicate, was shifting in a dangerous direction. Having briefly become accustomed to this place, it filled her now with an elusive sense of dread. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something unpleasant was on the horizon, but wasn’t sure whether that threat was internal or external.