by P. K. Lentz
“We are far from Scythia,” Vax announced quietly.
Arixa put a palm to the panel, which was smooth and utterly flat and ever so slightly cold to the touch. It was a window, filled from edge to edge with a sheet of Parthian transparent ceramic.
More impossibilities.
“Svialand?” Arixa whispered.
“Even further north than that. No one lives here. Men and women could not survive long in this cold. You can see why Fizzbik flew to Scythia to get some air and stretch his legs”
“But you can live here.” While speaking, she stared blankly at the near featureless field of white.
“With advanced technology,” the Persian said, switching back from inadequate Scythian to Nexus-G.
Arixa slid her fingers down the smooth, transparent surface. The act produced a peculiar squeaking sound.
“Glass,” Vax named it for her, another Nexus word.
“I would ask how we got here. But I can guess. The lights we followed. Your skyboat?”
“Shuttle, yes,” he said. “Would you excuse me a moment?” In spite of the request, Vax did not leave. After some peculiar wiggling of his fingers, he said while looking away from Arixa, “Zhi, would you please come to the Lookout to meet our guest?”
He followed the odd request with another unnatural hand movement and then looked again at Arixa with the faint smile, as if to indicate he understood her confusion.
“Sensors in my fingers trigger various functions,” he explained entirely in Nexus-G, for Scythian would hardly do. “One such function allows me to communicate with people who are not in my immediate presence. I addressed my colleague Zhi, who is in another part of this base.”
Arixa looked at his hands. They did not appear unusual. It was difficult to conceive of speaking to someone across walls and distance without yelling. But then, it was a less impressive trick than causing someone to witness the long-ago destruction of a city without actually being present.
“Could I speak to Ivar?” Arixa asked hopefully.
“No,” Vax replied. “Both parties must possess the capability. Dr. Fizzbik could give it to you, if you chose to remain with us. That, and more.”
Arixa did not give thought to the suggestion. The idea of letting someone alter her body held no appeal.
Alter it more, anyway.
“How many people are here?”she asked. As she used the word ‘people,’ a new question occurred. “Is Zhi human?”
“She is,” Vax affirmed. “The Jir devastated the largest city of her culture, the Han, and abducted her ancestors, as mine were taken from Parsa. Zhi is not very talkative, but you should meet her. As for how many, at present it is just myself, Zhi, and the Doctor at this installation.”
While tracing invisible lines with her finger on the smooth, marvelous glass, Arixa asked softly, “Why do the Jir do this to our cities?” Then, more urgently, “Will they do it to Roxinaki?”
The door irised open behind them, and Arixa turned to see a human female enter. She wore soft clothing that covered torso and all limbs in a uniform black, with a line or two of blue here and there. Her hair was blacker still, straight and shiny and cut not quite so short as Arixa’s regrowth, but short enough that its ends barely grazed her neck.
Her skin was pale, but not of the same tone as Ivar’s, and her features had a delicate appearance.
Most striking were her dark eyes, which had an elongated shape. Arixa had heard about folk to the east of Scythia whose eyes were of such description, but she had never seen any.
The woman’s mouth was a thin, serious line which did not open or change in expression to greet Arixa. Nor did Arixa speak or smile. The two merely regarded each other until Vax spoke.
“Zhi, I thought that you might see to getting Arixa suitably clothed for Dr. Fizzbik’s tests.”
The Han woman gave a curt nod.
“Arixa,” he continued, “please feel at liberty to ask any questions you like of Zhi.” He smiled. “There’s even a chance she’ll answer them. She has not imprinted Scythian as I have, so use Nexus-G.”
Arixa had a more immediate concern: “Tests?”
“Non-invasive. Simply a measure of your new capabilities. The results should greatly interest you.”
Vaxsuvarda put a hand lightly on Arixa’s shoulder, over the short sleeve of the white shift she wore. It was the first time he had touched her. The move seemed hesitant and tentative, as if he didn’t wish to transgress or seem too familiar. Whatever the calculation behind the Persian’s manner in dealing with her, it succeeded in making her feel comfortable and respected, two things that a savage probably had little right to expect when visiting the halls of gods.
Her comfort was such that she didn’t mind complying with Vax’s request to leave him and enter the tiny, close-walled elevator with a stranger.
“I will see you again shortly,” Vax promised.
The door irised shut. The faint sensation of movement once more arose in Arixa’s stomach.
She had only just met Zhi, and shared no words with her, but she knew something about the woman already, conveyed by a look in her differently shaped eyes and the way she carried herself.
“You’re a warrior,” Arixa said.
This won her a look from the other woman who, like most females, was shorter than Arixa.
Zhi nodded.
“You’ve killed men?” Arixa asked.
“Away from Goros, humans do not kill humans. Generally.”
The door opened, and Zhi exited the moving chamber. Arixa kept pace behind.
“You fight the... Jirmaken?”
Zhi did not quickly reply but walked a short way into a plain, rectangular room and turned right, where a new opening irised on the wall. Stepping into it, she somehow caused a small, handle-less cabinet to pop open. From within she extracted a gray one-piece garment of the same type she wore.
Handing it to Arixa, Zhi stepped back across the threshold of the small room and said, “You may dress in here.”
“I’m not sure I know how to put it on,” Arixa confessed as the door began to separate them.
Zhi caused the iris segments to halt and reverse, opening the way again.
“I can help, if you are not too modest.”
In answer, Arixa shed the white shift. Half a minute later, the Han woman sealed the front of the garment, by some unfamiliar contrivance, over Arixa’s breasts.
While they were almost face-to-face, Arixa repeated, “Do you fight the Jirmaken?”
Again, Zhi’s reply was not prompt. But this time it came eventually: “I long to.”
“Why must you wait?”
“Battlemind advises it.”
“What is Battlemind?”
Zhi’s small mouth twisted. Her assistance complete, she stepped out of the small chamber. “An artificial intelligence. I can hardly explain such things to you.”
“Because I’m a savage?” Arixa asked. “Yes, I am. Humans kill each other here in great numbers. If you long to fight, you should return with me to Scythia. I would introduce you to battle.”
Zhi didn’t answer the invitation. Perhaps she had not understood that it was genuine. She walked the short distance back to the elevator.
“How powerful are the Jir?” Arixa asked. “Do your people and Fizzbik’s not have enough fighters to threaten them? Are your skyboats too few, or inferior to theirs?”
As the elevator door opened, Zhi faced Arixa. Surprisingly, her small mouth was upturned in a half-smile.
It quickly vanished, and Zhi answered seriously, “The Jir are capable of crushing any rebellion.”
“Rebellion?” Arixa echoed in surprise. “You mean that you are their subjects?”
“All sentient beings in the galaxy are subjects of the Jir.”
Arixa absorbed this statement. No concept for the Nexus-G term galaxy existed in her vocabulary, but she inferred its meaning nonetheless, perhaps assisted by this so-called imprinting.
It meant everyone, ever
ywhere.
“Then the Jir are gods, after all.” She stepped into the elevator.
“That may be the term best suited to your level of understanding.”
“What did we do to make enemies of gods?”
“What did we do?” Zhi repeated.
The door irised open on the room where Arixa had first entered the elevator with Vax.
“Yes, we humans and the dog-m... er, Fizzbik’s folk. How did we anger the Jir?”
Zhi’s bloodless lips went tight again. “I’m sorry. You have given no offense, but I have no wish to be your teacher. Or your friend.” She gestured for Arixa to exit the elevator. “I’m certain we will never meet again, so I wish you safe passage.”
Arixa was taken aback for a beat, but stepped through the open door and looked back at Zhi.
“Safe passage to you, too,” she said quietly before the door’s segments resealed.
“A dog, am I?” came Fizzbik’s gruff voice from behind.
Arixa spun to see him standing in a freshly opened iris.
“In your absence, I perused depictions of that uncommon animal. Its forms are varied, and I resemble exactly none of them.”
“You’re correct,” Arixa lied with hand over heart. “It was a first impression, and as first impressions often are, it was wrong. You are a handsome... Baboon?”
“Gaboon!” four-foot-tall Fizzbik barked in annoyance.
“Gaboon,” Arixa corrected herself.
“Get in here!” he grumbled.
Arixa followed the irritable doctor into a room she had not before seen. It differed from the others primarily in the particular shape and placement of the unfamiliar objects within. Once the door had shut, Fizzbik waved a couple of said objects at her, pressed a few against parts of her body, and then directed her to perform various simple tasks. Finding no cause to object, even if she didn’t understand, Arixa quietly complied.
She gripped a bar which inexplicably became heavier and heavier in her hand. When her straining arm could no longer hold the bar aloft, the test was ended. She placed her foot on a panel and applied downward pressure until it yielded. Under instructions to react as quickly as she could, she tapped bright spots that flared into being before her eyes like ghostly insects. She balanced on one foot atop a small moving platform for as long as she was able.
None of the enigmatic ‘tests’ were strenuous for more than a moment, and she didn’t break a sweat. Over the course of half an hour or so, she stood in certain places, moved certain ways, and manipulated certain objects, often repeating the same tasks two or three times until Fizzbik declared she was done.
“I don’t have baseline results,” he said, whatever that meant, “since you came to me in a non-functional state.” He stressed this, as if insult were intended. “But in general terms, you are presently four-point-six times stronger than a typical, unaugmented Gorosian female, with reflexes one-point-nine times faster than average.” He added, “Hmmph! I had hoped for better on the second number. Next time.”
He looked at Arixa with his big, dark eyes and said, “Go on, get out. Shoo!”
Before Arixa reached the door, and while she was pondering the meaning of four-something times stronger than female something, the iris opened in front of her, revealing Vaxsuvarda.
“Greetings, Arixa,” he said. “A good result, Doctor?”
“Ask ‘it’ yourself,” Fizzbik answered. “Or wait until I share the full report.”
Eager to have Vax explain it better, Arixa repeated what Fizzbik had told her moments ago. “What does that mean?”
He chuckled. “Arixa, it means...” He paused for thought and resumed, “Among other things, say there was a stone heavy enough that it required four women to lift. Well, you could now lift it alone.”
“But...” Arixa began to question.
Then she realized the pointlessness of questioning this when she had accepted twenty other marvels this day.
She looked down at her arms, which felt no different. Or... perhaps just a little different, now that she thought of it.
“Thank you,” she said with a bow directed at Fizzbik, who grunted in return.
“He was glad to do it,” Vax said. “He’s a Gorosian expert and loves a chance to practice. Now, Arixa, I was hoping you would dine with me. I’ve prepared a meal.”
Arixa averted her gaze awkwardly. “It’s rude to decline a host’s invitation, but if I am truly free, then my wish is to return immediately to Scythia and my war band.”
Fizzbik snorted.
“Of course,” the Persian said quietly. “I’ll return you. Perhaps you could eat on the way.”
“That would be ideal.” She looked down at herself and said, “I can hardly return home dressed like this. Do you have my clothing and armor?”
“Armor, she calls it,” Fizzbik inserted. “Didn’t protect her from rocks!”
“We have it,” Vax answered. “Come.”
Before leaving, Arixa turned to Dr. Fizzbik and said, in imitation of Zhi, “I wish you safe passage.”
“Humph!” he said back. “Safe passage.”
Five
The Persian showed Arixa where her armor of bronze scale and leather was stored, along with her sheathed dagger, trousers and linen tunic. While Vax excused himself to package her meal for the trip, she dressed, finding her garments to be torn in places from her fall, but cleaner than before. Her armor likewise sported some fresh dents, but had been cleansed of blood and grime.
Vax returned bearing a fat white disc in one hand and her war-pick in the other. Looking Arixa over in her gear, he smiled briefly then resumed guiding her through the metal halls.
“My weapon?” she inquired.
“I’ll stow it in the shuttle, if you don’t mind.”
Disappointment was palpable in Vaxsuvarda’s voice, and in his silence afterward. Arixa assumed this was due to her refusal of his invitation to stay, but she let the matter lie. There was no possibility she would permit even an hour’s delay in returning home if it was in her power to avoid it. This was not her world, and it could never be, even if not for the strong forces of duty and loyalty pulling her back to the steppe.
Vax led her to a chamber that was taller and wider than a chieftain’s pavilion. Arixa quickly gathered that its purpose was to house the trio of identical, house-sized objects which sat evenly spaced on its floor. Spherical and gray and marked all over with intricate lines, these skyboats, if that’s what they were, didn’t resemble the ones Arixa had seen in her vision of devastation. Nor did they resemble anything in her experience, for that matter.
A round doorway irised open on the lower half of the nearest sphere’s smooth surface, and a platform descended. At the same time, some of the surface markings began to glow with soft green light.
Vax went straight to the sphere, stepped up and passed through the opening, his head disappearing first, his feet last. Arixa followed less swiftly, not from doubt but rather to allow body and mind a bare moment to adjust to yet another strange thing she was being called upon to do for the first time.
She found herself in a chamber awash in pale green light and slightly larger than the felt tent under which she was accustomed to sleeping. Like a tent, this space’s highest point was its center, with the walls curving gently upward to meet it.
In her mind, she had slept in her tent only last night. Could forty-four nights truly have passed?
Various shapes protruded from the walls of this chamber. Vax, having stowed her war-pick and white container somewhere, sat upon one of these protrusions and conveyed that Arixa should do the same on an identical one nearby. She did so and found it comfortable, conforming to to the weight and shape of her body.
So startled was she by the sudden emergence of belts which extended across her body at several points that she began to struggle. She gave the Persian a threatening glare, thinking he had betrayed and trapped her. When she realized that the same had happened to him, she calmed.
; “It’s for our safety,” he explained.
In front of Vax’s seat alone, and not Arixa’s, ghostly images appeared, as if someone had painted in air with a brush dipped in many colors of light. She stared, but could make no sense of what was depicted.
Vax obviously understood. He interacted with the designs, causing changes in them using swift motions of all ten fingers. A high, droning sound filled the air of the chamber, faint but pervasive. Arixa began to experience a sensation similar to what she had felt in the elevator, that of motion felt within the body, whilst the outward senses perceived none.
Vax looked at her with a glint in his dark eye and said, “Behold.”
With a few movements of his fingers, the polished curve of smooth wall opposite Arixa transformed, becoming brilliant white. As earlier, when her vision adjusted, she understood that the whiteness was that of a vast snowfield extending unbroken in all directions. Only now her view was from far above. More than that, the ground was falling away. Or rather, as she shortly understood, she and the skyboat were rising skyward.
Arixa inhaled sharply, fingers clamping onto the hard edges of her seat. With deep, shuddering breaths she gazed out at the land in wide-eyed wonder, seeing it as a falcon must. At first all was white, but then her eyes began to find details: a distant tree here, a peak on the horizon. Slowly and smoothly, the view shifted as she... flew.
Gradually, her fingers eased their death-grip and her breath steadied, although the latter remained quick with excitement. Sparing a glance for Vaxsuvarda, she laughed in astonishment.
She saw a frozen river winding like a glittering snake across the white field. She saw towering evergreens that looked like mere blades of grass poking through snow. She saw hills and mountains which seemed hardly more than anthills.
Over such forests and fields and hills as these, men had bled and fought and died. They built their cities and dug their graves. But from up here, the vantage of gods and falcons, all was peace and silence.
“If you will tolerate but a few minutes’ delay,” Vax said softly, “there is something else I would very much like to show you.”
A short time ago, Arixa had not been willing to brook any suggestion of delay. Now, on the contrary, it did not even cross her mind to refuse. Her head bobbed rapidly in an unthinking and emphatic affirmative.
