The Edge

by Leslie Lee

part. None of your aliens have resurfaced. Apparently. And we Hellbornes have a saying." Here it comes. "Time makes wounds old friends."

  The Hellborne made a signal. The cage suddenly wobbled knocking Mak over. He didn't move until it came to rest. So this is what solid ground felt like. It'd been so long, he'd forgotten what it was not to sway back and forth. His last memory of terra firma had been the hangar where his captors had handed him over to the Hellborne.

  The cage rested near a drain where the water they used to hose him down with flowed. The ground itself was an orangish sand packed with small smooth pebbles. He felt it for the first time through the bars under his right arm upon which he had fallen. The Hellborne sprung up and used some tool to cut the bars. They had welded him into the cage. No locks here. The bars thudded onto the packed sand. The Hellborne pocketed the tool and walked away with his chair, leaving Mak in the ruined cage.

  His prison was the centerpiece of a circle defined by a low wall of brown bricks. The wall, maybe three feet high, was topped with a whitish concrete, plain and smooth. He knew every brick of that wall, every imperfection in the concrete. Behind the wall, grew a thick purplish green hedge. He couldn't see beyond the hedge. Oddly, the cage wasn't directly in the center, but was offset a little. A tall and curved, metal arm held the prison off the ground by about three feet. The diameter of the circle was about fifty feet. Bushes and trees on the other side of the wall blocked his view beyond the perimeter. Two gaps in the wall each covered by brick archways allowed people to come and go. There were always Hellborne traveling back and forth. The way the archways were constructed didn't let him see beyond the circle. The guards, who were nowhere to be seen now, usually sat on one of the concrete benches attached to the walls. Above him, a few wisps of pink cloud painted the sky. The single tree he used to track time obscured some of the stars that started to appear. At night, one of the twin moons usually shone down on him. The Hellborne liked to stroll through the circle. Sometimes even around him. With or without their company, the sun baked him, the wind chilled him, the rain soaked him, the snow froze him. One season after another, death was coming to him.

  He considered the opening in the cage. This didn't appear to be a trick. The Hellborne had been more than abusive but had stopped just short of outright torture. Except for the starvation. And exposure. And lack of facilities. And verbal abuse. And throwing things. And hitting him. Still, he had picked up their language while he hung there. The adults would open books and read to the children, sometimes picnicking during good weather. He could just barely make out the words on the pages but he could read a bit now. Then, there was the university not too far away. He knew about the university because students would come and eat lunch here. After he had picked up the rudiments of the language he'd learned some things about Hellborne. Sometimes the students even threw scraps his way. Learning to eat Hellborne food was not as bad as he had feared. From people's conversations, he even had a pretty clear idea of the layout of the city and its surroundings.

  The guards would keep people from doing serious damage to him. After a while, they'd even taken to disallowing very large clubs. Or knives. Someone had tried to shoot him once. He'd been screaming about Mak being the devil. The guards grabbed him and beat the man, a Human, to death. There were no more attempts on his life after that.

  The sun was going down behind his time tracking tree. He struggled to sit up. If this was a new form of misery, at least it was different. Not trusting his rubbery legs, he crawled out. Tentatively, he grabbed one of the bars. It was just long enough to use as a decent staff, if a bit heavy. Using it for leverage, he struggled to his feet.

  Two Hellborne suddenly walked into the circle. He tensed. But they ignored him and continued out through the other side. He knew them. Or rather who they were: Students studying history. From overhearing previous conversations, he knew they were on their way to an evening class on Unity Government. The quarter was just starting. He'd read the schedule of classes posted on a bulletin board which defined part of the perimeter that was his existence.

  He watched them disappear. Then, slowly, began to follow them. The class began soon and it sounded interesting. Thud, shuffle, shuffle. Thud, shuffle, shuffle. At this rate, he estimated his journey would take close to forever. He got to the archway and paused. This was the threshold where he would leave behind all he had known for the past five Hellborne years. Through the archway, he saw the concrete path to the college building was longer than he had guessed but not by much. Clank, shuffle, shuffle. Clank, shuffle, shuffle.

  Outside the building which housed the classroom, a couple of students had set up a table. Clank, shuffle, shuffle. It was a long way but he had the time. And he finally made it to the table.

  "Would you like to buy something to eat?" the young woman said brightly, her black teeth gleaming. She was sharply dressed in what he knew to be the latest fashion. Her voice was soft. He used to think the Hellborne language sounded like somebody clearing phlegm from their lungs. But now he could hear the soft nuances in the sibilant coughs and throat clearings comprising the language. "It's to fund a dance."

  She didn't seem to notice he looked like the worst kind of scum who inhabited the lowers where he had grown up. His every bone ached with the effort in getting this far. It'd been the longest he'd traveled as a free man in so long that he couldn't remember.

  He cleared his throat and in Hellborne said, "I have no money."

  "No! Really?" the young man said looking him up and down. "I thought you must be super rich to dress like that."

  Mak reached down and tore off, easily, a scrap from the jump suit. It was almost orange. He held it out to them.

  There was a moment of silence. Then the young man reached out and accepted the scrap in his palm. The woman motioned at the table for him to choose. It looked like a feast but was really just sandwiches wrapped in plastic. There was even one he recognized as ham and cheese on whole wheat. Instead, he picked up a gluckt. A vegetable which was stuffed with an aromatic herb that he knew could be gathered up in the mountains half day's journey away by transport if there was no traffic. He had gotten to really like them from the pieces thrown into the cage. And he'd sworn to never eat anything from Earth ever again. Unless it was a blueberry filled donut. He'd make an exception for that.

  This gluckt was fresh and unspoiled, dense and heavy in his hands. It was the first time he'd ever had one whole. The first bite was wonderfully clean and meaty. It was like a pastry. The young woman nodded her head in agreement with his choice.

  "Yeah, this is going to be one fine dance," the young man said, putting the orange scrap into a small plastic bag which went into a metal tray with their money. "All this cash flowing in, I can hardly keep count."

  "I bet we can auction it off for a good price," she said.

  "Oh yeah," he scoffed. "Let's hear the first bid on this crappy piece of cloth."

  He left them bickering and continued to make his way up the stairs into the building. Room forty-two. That was where the class was according to the conversations he'd overheard. He tottered forward feeling stronger. The gluckt had the odd but welcome attribute of not only dealing with his hunger but also quenching his thirst. The tile cooled his bare feet. He wondered if he could swap some scraps of cloth for shoes at some time. And some clothes. Half his butt was hanging out in the breeze.

  He pushed on the door but it didn't budge. Locked or maybe he was at the wrong room. Leaning on it though made it creak just a little. He pushed harder and finally it swung in enough for him to squeeze through. The class room was large, a semi circle theater with the students looking down on a stage.

  The lecture had already started but the professor paused to look at him. The room of Hellborne turned as one to stare at him. He stopped and almost turned back. But he'd come this far. He shuffled to the closest chair and collapsed, exhausted. When was the last time he had sat in a chair? He finished the gluckt slowly. The juice dribbled down his scraggly fu man
chu beard and mustache.

  "Are you completely finished, Mak?" the professor asked dryly.

  He wasn't surprised the professor knew his name. He had been a frequent visitor to Mak's little corner of the Universe, lecturing in the outdoors to a series of classes. Shoving the last piece into his mouth, Mak nodded.

  As one, the class turned from looking at him to looking at the professor. The student closest to him though shifted away and looked like he was trying to subtly hold his nose.

  The professor smiled at his students. He was a little pompous, a little arrogant about his own knowledge and intelligence. When he wasn't around, the students would make fun of his overblown manner of lecturing. It didn't help that he was a chunk even for a Hellborne. A stubby round guy who loved to dress in bright greens and reds. Mak's eyes hurt looking at him.

  The professor moved away from the board where he'd been diagramming something and moved to the front of the stage. He puffed himself up and in a voice that sounded like boulders cascading down from a mountain top, began.

  "The storm has come. No longer a rumor. No longer a threat. No longer distant. The storm is here. It is engulfing us. It is engulfing us all. The storm is the enemy. The enemy is