by P. K. Lentz
“Fizz... bik?” Arixa spoke the name of the absent dog-man which she was meant to believe had saved her from certain death. She said to her present company, “You’re human.”
“Forgive me for not introducing myself,” the man said with a kind smile. “My name is Vaxsuvarda. Yes, I am human. You might try moving now.”
Arixa wiggled her fingers and flexed an arm, feeling pins and needles on the skin. She brought the arm before her face and found it to be the one she knew, with its familiar inked bestiary. She could take nothing for granted. She attempted to push herself up and succeeded. Her captor, or host, Vaxsu... something, made no move to assist.
Looking herself over, she accepted herself to be uninjured. Maybe better: at least one scar which had been below her right knee had disappeared.
She now vividly recalled her fall, the snap of many bones on stone.
She should have been a cripple for life, if she had lived.
Yet she was healed.
Something felt wrong with her head, a certain lightness. She put hand to temple and realized that her braids were gone. Instead her scalp was covered with fine, soft hair of a length not much greater than an inch.
“It was necessary,” her host explained. “Dr. Fizzbik was also prepared to remove your tattoos in regenerating your skin, but I convinced him to make some effort in preserving them. I felt sure they must hold special meaning to you.”
Fingering the soft hair which felt nothing like her own, Arixa began to feel her strength return. She looked squarely at her host, appraising him. Being human, he was the lone familiar thing in this polished, strangely lit environment.
For what her steppe-born instincts were worth in this strange place, she sensed no deception or ill intent on his part.
“Many thanks,” she said, and meant it. “That loss would have pained me. You will have to repeat your name, possibly more than once.”
The man with the pointed beard smiled his acceptance of her gratitude. “Vaxsuvarda. Some call me Vax. You may, if you like.”
“Where do you come from... Vaxsuvarda?”
“That...” Vax began with a strange and thoughtful look, “is no simple question. Or you could say it has two answers. My ancestors came from a city called Parsa, which once stood to the south and east of your land.”
“I know of it,” Arixa said. “An empire of old. Persia. My ancestors fought them often. And won.”
Vax laughed softly. “Congratulations.”
“What’s the other answer?” Arixa prompted.
“That is the unsimple part,” Vax said. “My birthplace, from your perspective, would be... the heavens.”
Three
“I had a vision,” Arixa told the Persian after giving some thought to what he’d said.
“I know. I supplied it.”
“Are you one of...” Now Arixa was able to feel a bolt of fear. “The sky vessel I saw...”
“No, no, no.” Vax was emphatic. “That was a Jir ship.” He shook his head. “There are many barriers to your understanding. We must—”
“My vision was that of the Ishpakians,” Arixa deduced. “It is what they warn will happen to all cities, and why they urge us to leave them.”
“Yes...” Vax said uncertainly. “Long ago, human visitors like myself engineered such faiths in nearly every culture by showing men and women what I showed you. We could not stop the Jir, or even risk being caught acting against them, but we hoped at least to save a few tens of thousands of lives by hampering the growth of cities.”
“The Jir...?” Arixa repeated the word as if to retain its memory on waking from the cannabis dream she presently inhabited. “Then it’s true? The Ishpakians are right? Our cities will be destroyed by these... gods?”
“Not gods,” Vax corrected. He pressed his lips together in seeming reluctance, but continued anyway. “What you saw, to be clear, was not only a vision of what is to come, although it is that. The destruction that you witnessed was the true record of a past event. That city was called Roma. The Jir erased it two visitations ago, just as they erased Persa and kidnapped my distant ancestors.”
“I saw the skyboats taking people away.” The vivid recollection haunted Arixa.
“The Jirmaken—the Jir military—sells them to offset the costs of their visit to Earth.”
“Slaves...?”
“Some. Their fates are many and varied. Some are lucky. Settlements of free humans exist, largely thanks to the Gaboon, the race of your personal savior, Dr. Fizzbik. Now that you’ve had some time to adjust, I think it may be time for you to meet him. The Doctor does not speak Scythian, but you will find—”
Vaxsuvarda stopped and turned toward a circular expanse of the polished wall which suddenly fragmented into six segments that shrank and disappeared. Until this moment, Arixa had not managed to identify any means of egress to the room. Now she understood that this iris-like feature was a door.
In the round opening, the dog-man appeared. It continued into the room and straight toward Arixa. The opening sealed behind him.
Arixa’s breath caught in her chest. She steeled herself, as she might in battle, in the face of a sight which was not menacing, exactly, but certainly unsettling.
The dog-faced, four-foot tall ‘doctor’ looked Arixa over with an expression she had no hope of reading, for she was not acquainted with the facial expressions of dogs. As he studied her (she began to try thinking of the creature as ‘he’ rather than ‘it’) she studied him back.
His face was not that of a wolf, although the fur that surrounded his wide, black nose and hung off the end of his blunt snout in a graceful wave was grayish.
“Arixa, meet Dr. Fizzbik, one of the Gaboon Harmony’s foremost human experts.”
“The foremost,” the dog-man corrected.
Arixa’s appraising look became one of puzzlement even as a furry, three-fingered hand gripped her jaw and turned her head left and right to allow Dr. Fizzbik to examine each ear.
The two had not spoken in Scythian, yet Arixa understood every word.
“As I was about to explain,” Vax said to Arixa. “During your recovery, we took the liberty of imprinting your brain’s speech centers with Nexus, our preferred language for inter-species communication. Variants of it account for divergent vocal cord structures. Humans speak Nexus-G, while Gaboon use Nexus-M. Your two dialects may sound different, but that will not interfere with comprehension.”
“Stop talking, Vax,” the gray dog grumbled in a voice which sounded very much like a dog should sound if it could form words. “You lost her at imprinting.”
“Her culture may be primitive, but she is not stupid. Far from it.”
Vax looked directly at Arixa as he spoke these words, not in Scythian as before, but in a version of the language used by the dog.
“Try speaking it,” Vax urged her. “Just will it. It may be difficult at first, but you’ll manage.”
“You... are...” Arixa began haltingly. The syllables which emerged in her own voice were unfamiliar. “...a dog.” The last word did not translate, but remained in Scythian. “I am... talking to... an upright dog.” Again, the last word went untranslated.
“Let’s get past that, shall we?” Vax advised.
“I must be dead,” she continued, marveling at the strangeness of what her mouth and mind were doing. “Or I’m in a cannabis lodge. None of this can be true.”
Fizzbik emitted a sharp bark. There was no other way to describe it. “First she smashes herself. Now this! Your ‘not stupid’ hypothesis is short on evidence.”
“This encounter would be a shock for anyone,” Vax argued calmly. “I think she is coping well.”
“Dr. Fizzbik...” Arixa ventured, penitently. “I was raised better than to insult a... man... while a guest in his home. Especially one who has given me gifts. I’m told that you saved my life in more ways than one. Never has anyone said this more truly than I now do: I owe you my life. Please accept my apologies and deepest gratitude.
”
Vax smiled broadly.
Fizzbik scratched his furry chin and twisted his muzzle in some unknown expression. “Hmm, maybe she is not fully stupid. Only clumsy.”
“She speaks a fresh imprint with high fluency,” Vax countered. “Not stupid, indeed. As for clumsy, if that was ever true, I suspect your efforts have remedied it.”
Arixa comprehended the language of Vax’s last comment, but not his meaning. Another mystery piled upon a heap of them.
While they spoke, she slowly swung her lugs over the edge of her platform and lowered bare feet to the smooth floor.
To be surrounded by so much metal! And nowhere a trace of sky.
“A race called the Jir,” Arixa summarized, “swoops from... somewhere... lays waste to the cities of men, and carries humans to the heavens. Another race, the... Gaboon? is friendly to us. I wish to better understand all of this.”
Arixa’s palace tutors would be as proud of her for that sentiment as her childhood military trainers already were of the name she had made for herself at the head of the Dawn.
“I feel this knowledge holds grave implications for Roxinaki and my people. Yet the question that springs first to my mind is a selfish one.”
“Ask it,” Vax urged.
“What’s to become of me?”
“Why, you’ll be sold, of course,” Dr. Fizzbik muttered. “Stupid, clumsy human like you has to be worth at least a quarter-gram of satranium!”
Arixa’s heart froze in her chest.
“Doctor!” Vax exclaimed. “How can you expect her to know that is a joke? She has only now met us.” Looking straight at Arixa, Vax assured her, “You are as free as you were when you—”
“Fell off a cliff!” Fizzbik finished for him before turning away to occupy himself with some of the many unrecognizable fixtures that lined the edges of the room.
“What becomes of you is up to you, Arixa,” Vax went on. “Dr. Fizzbik, whose abilities far exceed the bounds of his personality, would like to run—”
“Like to? I will!” Fizzbik added without giving his attention.
“—some tests on you. You see, I mentioned that you were better off now than when you arrived. You will find that the good Doctor has augmented your body in many ways. You no longer need worry about becoming ill, for example. Your strength and endurance will be greater. Your injuries will heal faster. Time will take a diminished toll on your body. Your reflexes will be swifter, your metabolism more efficient.”
“Metabolism!” Fizzbik interrupted. “Try translating that into Savage!”
For all that he mocked her, Fizzbik was right; Arixa failed to comprehend the word.
But Fizzbik’s mockery failed to anger her. She still couldn’t read dogs very well, but she did sense that Fizzbik’s insults were good-natured, much like Ivar’s. If Fizzbik had found it worthwhile to save—and augment—her, he could hardly rate her as worthless.
“I must be a savage, Fizzbik...” she said, smiling as she might at Ivar, “since I can’t stop thinking what a warm blanket I could make out of your pelt.”
Fizzbik spun and growled, his wide, dark eyes narrowing. Just as quickly, they unnarrowed and the growl stopped. He made a more human noise, like “Hmmph,” and turned away.
“Sadly,” he said, “this subject’s sense of humor could not be augmented.”
Vax laughed. “To do that, you would have to know what humor is, Doctor.”
“Careful. She has an excuse for boorish behavior. You do not!”
When the Persian next looked at Arixa, he was smiling. He stopped on seeing Arixa’s hollow-eyed expression. He stepped closer, for the first time coming within arm’s reach, as if having concluded she would not attack.
“As soon as the Doctor records the results of his work on you,” he said, “you will be free to go. Assuming that is your wish.”
“What else would I wish?”
He raised a sharp, black eyebrow. “If you are awed by what you have seen already, there is immeasurably more to see and experience. Recruitment of native Gorosians is rare, but not unheard of. You could... well, join us. If you wished it.”
Gorosian? Arixa sensed that the word in Scythian would be human.
“Only if I can get her under my scalpel again!” Fizzbik said. “I’ve made a breakthrough in my project and need a volunteer. I’ll show her who’d make a good blanket...”
“Don’t worry. He likes you,” the Persian said.
“I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” Arixa said somberly. “And I want to learn all I can from you while I remain here. But I’m sworn to my war band. The Dawn is my family and my duty. While I live, they need me, and I them.”
The Persian nodded. “An admirable sentiment. I might make the case that they... along with our race... is better served by your remaining with us. But I will save that argument for later.”
“Not much later, I hope,” Arixa said. “I must depart.”
She could feel the fullness of life returning to her limbs. With it came an eagerness to move. She wasn’t sure whether to believe what had been said about her being stronger and swifter, but she looked forward to finding out.
“How long will these tests take?” she asked. “When I fell, the Dawn was two days from confronting a Goth incursion. It may be too late for me to join the battle, but I would like to try.”
The Persian said nothing. From against the wall where he worked, Fizzbik laughed a low, gruff laugh.
Finding that this reaction alarmed her, Arixa demanded, “What?”
Vaxsuvarda sighed heavily. “Arixa,” he started ominously, resuming speaking in Scythian. “Forty-four days have passed since you came here.”
Four
Arixa hung her head and put a hand over her eyes. Her fingertips grazed the short, fine hair at the fore of her scalp. She took a lock of it between thumb and forefinger and tugged gently in a realization she might have made earlier.
This was not a remnant of her old hair but new growth after her head had been shaved clean.
Forty-four days ago.
Her mind flooded with impressions of the battle missed: the Goth cavalry outriders first surrounded and cut down, then the main body on foot reduced by a withering storm of arrows fired from horseback until it embarked on a futile withdrawal, leaving a trail of pierced corpses in its wake.
Whether she or Ivar commanded, victory was not in question. What pained Arixa was that she had abandoned the Dawn. Ivar would not frame the story as such, nor allow it to be said aloud, if any had a mind to. Most may not even think it, but they would feel it in their hearts.
How long had they searched for her? Not long, Arixa hoped, with the defense of their land to attend to. But had they returned afterward to the scene of her disappearance to search again?
For her remains?
How long had they looked in vain before mourning? Had they sacrificed her horse Turagetes and mounded earth over him along with her belongings and a surrogate slave-body?
Had her father been informed and ordered rituals held in the streets of Roxinaki befitting the death of a princess?
Arixa shut her eyes against the sucking tide of these thoughts. But only for a moment, then she expelled them with a breath and lifted her chin.
She had missed one battle, perhaps even a few. But she was alive and soon would have the pleasure of seeing the looks on the faces of Ivar and her uncle and the rest when she returned.
This prospect was almost sufficient cause to smile. Almost.
“I must return as soon as I can,” she said adamantly.
“Of course,” Vax said with understanding. “I apologize for not telling you earlier, but in my defense, there was, and still is, quite a lot to tell you.”
“Then we had best waste no more time.”
Vax nodded agreement. “To that end, I would show you something,” he said. “Please, come.” He walked to the section of wall by which Dr. Fizzbik had entered, a circle subtly marked off by a frame. Inside th
e ring, gently curving lines were etched inward from the frame, meeting at the center, like the iris of an eye. At Vax’s approach, as had happened on Fizzbik’s entry, the wave-shaped segments withdrew to the edges, revealing open space, turning wall into doorway.
Stepping through, Vax beckoned Arixa. She walked over, and although she looked curiously at the round frame as she passed, she passed through without hesitation.
The room beyond was similar to the one they had left, all polished and shiny, but with fewer furnishings. There Vax caused another iris-opening to appear.
Behind that was a circular chamber small enough in diameter that she could easily stretch her arms out and touch two walls. Vax stepped inside it and turned back to face her.
He smiled at Arixa’s hesitation. “Step in. Trust me.”
Arixa did. The door irised shut. Arixa’s knees bent just slightly, of their own accord, and she felt an odd, subtle sensation in her abdomen.
Seconds later, the same door reopened.
Stepping out, Vax turned back and explained why the room they’d just left had changed.
“The small chamber moves,” he said. “It is an elevator.”
He spoke Scythian, except for the last word, which had no equivalent.
Arixa stepped out into the new room, which was long and narrow and had walls of a darker color. The long wall directly opposite the elevator was inset with a broad panel that glowed white, the room’s only evident source of light.
Vax walked up to this panel and stood facing it. When Arixa failed to do likewise, he motioned for her to join him.
When she complied, and then blinked until her eyes adjusted, she gasped.
The light entering the room was daylight, and the brilliant whiteness was a field of snow stretching away to a horizon blending seamlessly with a clouded sky.
