Humans Wanted

by Vivian Caethe (ed. )

  “Oh, well, a sidekick’s job is to keep the hero amused, carry the bags, and express admiration when the hero does something very clever and saves the day.”

  Tinis’s eyes widened. “I did not know there were such things. I would enjoy having a… sidekick. Tell me a story of your people.”

  Rish was all too happy to talk as he loped beside her small, mincing steps. “Well, we Humans are pretty new to interstellar relations. We’ve been trying to find inhabited stars for more than a century, so you can understand how exciting it was to find so many different species of intelligent life in such a small area of space, not that space is small.…”

  Shutting out his voice, Tinis reached out with all her senses, feeling toward home and the minute trace of horom that Ga kept to demonstrate her talents to visitors. One of the families who had come to discuss her services had gifted Tinis with a particle of her own, scarcely more than a molecule. It was embedded in the identification bangle on her wrist. She wished sincerely that both portions were large enough to move matter at that distance, and that she had had the training to join them and make the transit in a twinkling. Still, the two fragments of mineral spoke to each other. She could follow the vector and find her way home.

  Once she had fixed upon the point, it was easy to keep it in the forefront of her mind. With sufficient ultraviolet rays beaming down upon her from the blue sun, she would never lose contact. They walked in between the massive stalks of colorful homeflowers and sandy green shrubclusters, with Rish remarking upon things that were different than on his homeworld.

  Just to amuse herself, Tinis reached out another tendril of her senses, feeling for more horom elsewhere. It was so rare, only one or two homes had any within them. A few bits of it were on the move, a couple on ships transiting to distant worlds or space stations, and others being taken from one place to another, there on Ocet. She touched numerous busy minds surrounding the few traces within the meadow valley, where the universities and training centers grew in shrubclusters. Tinis was proud to think she would be in one of those someday, learning to be a navigator and creating those transitions herself.

  She felt sad that the families who had come to visit their home had not all been interested in sponsoring her education. They were wealthy enough, Mo said so. They all checked her ID bracelet, to be certain that Tinis was entitled to the Oghal lineage she claimed. They surveyed her intelligence assessment, health records, images of her at play, and watched her pass tests of horom detection with one hundred percent accuracy. Under the guidance of instructors from the Ocet Grand University, she had actually moved an object from their facility to her home by joining the two vibrations, proving her natural aptitude. All the families had been impressed. A number wanted to think about the proposition. A few went away, broadcasting the attitude of dismissal.

  One … one family bothered Tinis. Even Ga, who had always been ambitious for the offspring’s success, had noticed. The Sughul clan paid no attention to the rest of her qualifications, only scrutinizing the search results. They put a question to her parents: would the Oghal clan be willing to consider Tinis as a spotter to horom mining? The mineral was depressingly difficult to find, making it expensive far out of proportion to its rarity. Spotters would make the search far more cost effective. She would be well-paid. Ga, horrified, had disabused them of the notion. Tinis had the talent for navigation. She wouldn’t work as a lowly miner. The Sughul family had withdrawn, but not before making two more attempts to convince Ga to let them take Tinis.

  She had too much time to think while they walked in the direction of the family flower. Something in the evil place where she had been held reminded her of the Sughul family. The taint seemed to have followed her to the place where she had been hiding when Rish found her. She even felt a sense of it coming from him. She looked up at the Human. He caught her glimpse and stared down at her, showing small, white mouth bones in the Human way. She sensed no malice in him, but could he be an unwitting pawn of the Sughul family?

  “We should go toward the main road,” Tinis said, suddenly wanting the trek over swiftly. “We can find a waiting point for public capsules and hire one to take me to my home.”

  He squinched his lumpy face.

  “Do you have money? Will they take your ID for transport?”

  She looked down at the thin white bangle and sighed. “No. But if we explain it is an emergency, they will notify the nearest Peacemaker.”

  “I’m afraid of more accidents,” Rish said, dropping his voice to a murmur. “Besides, my credit globe was smashed in the accident. So was my communicator. I’ll have to ask my friends to help me get a replacement.” He held out a handful of blue glass shards. The lumps on his face spread farther apart in concern. “Without them, I have no ID. I could get in trouble being out here without documents. Your governing families don’t like unidentified aliens wandering around. Please help me.”

  Tinis felt sorry for him. He was so unprepared for being far away from home, much more than she was. She took his hand again. “Then we will walk.”

  They plodded on, in between the stems, treading the dark red grass and the sweet-smelling purple blooms that grew among it, stepping carefully over rocks to avoid the venomous millipedes that often hid beneath them. She had never been so far from home before. Her estimate that it would take fifteen time-measures to reach home began to seem too optimistic.

  The sun reached noon height. From the loud pouch on Rish’s back, he produced a strange round hat with a protruding bill that shielded his eyes, and a folded cloth of soft, spice-scented white fabric that he tied over her head. It formed a little flap that shaded her face.

  “I think you’re getting too much sun,” he said. “Do you need a couple more berries? Some water? Do you need to rest?”

  “Not yet,” she said. She had been shocked that he would touch her without permission, but the cloth was a comfort. How kind of him to think of it. She rubbed a fold of it between her fingers. It felt … well loved.

  She scanned the meadow and the secondary lanes that crisscrossed it. To keep Rish from being detected by the authorities, they should take as few roadways as possible and stay away from shrubclusters that might have sentry beasts. She pointed to a gap in between two stems through which she could see bright violet garden blossoms. “Let us go that way.”

  The tall wild grass gave way to a carpet of white lichens. Blooms of every color had been arranged in undulating beds along the edge. She glanced up at the bright yellow homeflower above them, wondering if she could beg the inhabitants to notify her family and save them the rest of their hike. But the scent of evil still haunted her. She didn’t know whom she could trust, and that included Rish. She wished she had studied Humans more.

  Rustling in the flowerbeds drew her attention. She caught her breath as a brown millipede, almost as long as she was, erupted from among the bushes. Tinis froze, terrified. The beast made straight for her, its sharp mandibles clattering.

  “Run!” Rish said. “Now!”

  She dithered for a moment, torn as to which way to flee. The Human picked her up with one hand and tossed her effortlessly up against the stem of the house. She caught the thick stalk with all four arms and did her best to hang on. From a pocket deep inside his green tunic, Rish drew a silver wand and fired off a blossom of red. The burst enveloped the millipede’s body. The gigantic crawler tossed its head and kept moving toward Tinis’s perch. Rish’s dark eyes widened, showing white circles around their center. “Mama padrona!” He fired again. The burst burned two of its legs and one bulbous eye. It let out a fierce hiss and swished its forked tail.

  Tinis cowered. Such beasts came in from the wilderlands occasionally, hiding in undergrowth. Every homeflower had modern systems installed to protect them against the millipedes and other dangers, but they were inside, not outside. They hunted their prey remorselessly and tore it to pieces. Their bite was poisonous—Rish probably didn’t know that!

  “Don’t let it bite you!�
�� she screamed.

  “I won’t,” he called back, not taking his eyes off the creature. He didn’t sound as frightened as she thought he should be. He dodged back and forth, as the millipede’s head swiveled on its top body segment. It lunged at him. He evaded it with more dexterity than she believed a Human could show, then stepped forward on one foot. She gasped. The creature went for his leg. He brought the other foot over and onto the back of its head, then crushed downward. The body went insane, thrashing and clawing at him with all its sharp feet. Rish ignored the snags and tears to his green trousers, as he fired the wand again and again, until the body sagged to the ground.

  When he was certain the twitching creature was dead, Rish left it and went to hold out his arms to Tinis. She dropped into them and examined his face with concern.

  “You let it scratch you,” she said, almost accusingly.

  “Well, you told me not to let it bite me,” he said. “I guessed you had a reason not to warn me about the claws. Was I wrong?”

  “No … no! You are smarter than I thought you were. I hope you are not hurt too badly.”

  He showed his mouth bones again.

  “Thanks, little one. It’s just a few grazes. I can mend the pants when I get to my friends’ house. Let’s go on. Hope we don’t meet any more of those.”

  Instead of putting her down, he held her cradled in one of his big arms and let her direct his path. The ride was a novelty. Humans were far more sturdily built than Ocetians. Even Ro had not carried her around like that since she was very small. She had to admit that it felt very comforting.

  When they had to cross roadways, she directed Rish behind bushes and stalks to hide him from passing capsules and other pedestrians. He pulled leafy branches around to conceal the two of them from view. His caution at being caught out without identification meant they had to go out of their way again and again. Always, her link to the horom meant she knew how to point toward her home. Soon, they would be close enough that she would be able to sense her family, and they her. They must be so worried!

  Every so often, Rish offered her a sunberry or two and a sip of pure water from a clear, flexible sack. His long strides fell into a rhythm that lulled her. He only spoke if she asked him a question or if he needed to be reassured of their vector. In the heat and the softness, she drowsed off to sleep.

  “Merda!”

  The sharp exclamation awoke her. The sun was at a much more acute angle than it had been. Tinis raised her large eyes to Rish’s face. He had a device in his hand, like a primitive communicator. When he saw her looking at him, he snapped it closed and shoved it into the pack on his back.

  “What is that?”

  “A tracker,” he said.

  “What are you tracking?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. “I thought you didn’t know where you were going?”

  “It’s not a where-tracker,” he said. “It’s a who-tracker.”

  “Your friends?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.” He clutched her a little closer. The force of his embrace made her squeak a protest. He opened his arm slightly, and patted her on the head. “Sorry. We have to run. Keep me on beam, Lady Tinis.”

  “I’m afraid!” she cried. “Who are you, Rish?”

  “Your friend,” he said. “I will never harm you. Trust me just a little while, all right?”

  She had no real choice. He was so much stronger than she was that he could break her bones the way he had smashed the head of the millipede.

  He veered around the edge of a huge dusty-green shrubcluster. Ululations sounded behind them. She feared guardbeasts. The gray-scaled insectoids were large enough to eat a youngster her size. Rish must have understood that meant peril. He dashed up the nearest slope and over a rise, plunging them into the thicket of untamed undergrowth along a narrow track that must have been a beast-trail. Tinis ducked down to spare her thin skin from the thorns that lashed out at them.

  More sounds came from behind them, and voices. She could not pick out any words. They weren’t the angry tones of a Ne’ru’bu or the quick burr of a Piridian voice, but Ocetians. To her horror, she realized that she recognized one voice. He had been in the evil place. He was one of her captors! There was something else about him that troubled her. An attractive hum that sounded in her mind made her realize he had a fragment of horom in his possession. It would respond to the one on her person, a reaction perceptible even to those who were incapable of uniting their emanations. Terrified, she nestled into Rish’s arm.

  “That way,” she said, as he hesitated at a fork in the rough-trodden path. Rish turned at her direction.

  Rapid, rhythmic pounding came from inside his torso. She didn’t sense fear in him, but resolution. Branches and leaves slapped at them as Rish ran, leaping over the roots of home flowers and ducking down into hollows.

  “How many are there?” he asked her.

  “Three and a protector,” she said, at once. “They are angry—how do you know I can sense them?”

  He smiled. “You’re pretty special, Lady Tinis,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Running in the shade with the sun beginning to go down, her mental faculties began to blur. She snatched the cloth from her head to let the fading beams strike her pale blue skin. The ultraviolet restored her. At the edge of her sensing abilities, she felt the comfortable aura of her homeflower. She wrapped all four arms around herself as her mind regained its acuity.

  Rish had a tracker that told him they were being followed, but how was it the Ocetians behind her came to be following them? Was he pretending to be afraid? She delved into his emotions with all her senses, desperate to believe in him. He had shown so many talents and abilities that she had never suspected. Was subterfuge among them?

  “You know, that tickles,” Rish said, without looking down at her. “It makes me itch behind my eyes and inside my ears. Why not just ask me what you want to know?”

  “I … I’m sorry,” she said. “It is rude to intrude on another sentient being’s thoughts.”

  “It’s okay. I wish I could do that sometimes.”

  “Are you truly afraid of the people behind us?” Tinis asked.

  “Yes,” Rish said grimly. “I really am.”

  Tinis.

  Mo? Tinis almost cried out in relief. The warmth of her parent’s mental voice enveloped her.

  Oh, my child! Where are you? Come home!

  I am coming! Find me!

  “What is it?” Rish asked, leaping over a jagged rock and bounding up a slope. He had reached the heath adjacent to the park only a hundred lengths or so from her homeflower.

  They were runnning in the open now. She looked over his shoulder. Three Ocetians hurtled out of the undergrowth in pursuit on foot, followed by the domestic robot which had guarded her in the evil place. They looked and felt very tired, much less than the Human carrying her. If he could outpace them for just another quarter measure, Mo would feel where she was and send Ro and Ga and some of her cousins to their assistance.

  Suddenly, she spotted the rounded lavender petals of her homeflower peeking up above the surrounding undergrowth. Her longing to be back home and safe made her throat tighten.

  “There it is,” she said, pointing. Rish nodded and turned toward it. The pounding in his torso grew more urgent.

  One last obstacle remained: the big main road that wound among the homeflowers in their cluster. She and Rish had to cross it, and that meant being out in the open where Rish could be seen. To her horror, the Ocetians brandished weapons that radiated dangerous energy signatures, and the protector had a spray like the one that had been used on her in the evil place to sedate her.

  “Are they your enemies?” she asked.

  “Now that you mention it, yes,” Rish said, his mouth bones set together grimly. “Hang on, Lady Tinis.”

  “My family is coming,” she said. “They will protect you.”

  Almost as soon as she said it, the bushes at the top of the slope parted, and the family travel caps
ule hurtled toward them. The side hatch opened up, and Ro came out of it running. Xir eyes were wide with horror, but xi brandished a cultivation rod xi must have picked up from the garden on xir way out of the homeflower in one of xir left hands. Five, six, seven more steps, and Rish came abreast of Tinis’s progenitor.

  “Take her,” Rish said, thrusting Tinis toward Ro. “Get out of here!”

  “Thank you,” xi said in Human. Rish turned and dropped to one knee, aiming his wand weapon at the oncoming trio.

  “Rish! Help him!” Tinis screamed over Ro’s shoulder, but her parent ran to the open capsule, tucked xir child into the waiting arms of her three elder cousins, and tapped Ga on the wrist. The capsule shut and rolled back up the hill. The bushes closed behind it, shutting off Tinis’s view of Rish just as red energy bolts began to fly. “Help him!”

  “No. You are our concern.”

  The capsule buzzed rapidly over the surface of the road and plunged down the other side of the rise toward the roots of their homeflower. As soon as the conveyance stopped, Ga kicked open the hatch. Tinis’s cousins bundled her into the stalk and urged her up the ladder to the main chamber. Mo was waiting, wearing the white worry-robe of a parent in crisis, and enveloped the offspring in her arms. Tinis enjoyed the embrace, feeling safe again among family.

  “Child, your return is more than opportune,” the delicate progenitor said. She gestured with the upper of her left hands. Tinis looked up to see several visitors sitting on the cushions of honor. “The Sughul clan heard of your disappearance, and came to offer their sorrow.”

  Tinis fought free of the embrace.

  “You honor us with your presence,” she said, hastily sketching the correct bow with all four arms. “Mo, I must use the horom.”

  “Child, no demonstration is necessary,” her parent said, with an expression of concern on her smooth face. “Our visitors have already indicated they believe in your talent.”

  “It is not a demonstration!”

  Ro seemed surprised by her youngest child’s insistence, but pointed toward one of the storage buds along the wall. Tinis’s senses had already told her where it was. She tore open the crisp folds and took the glowing golden crystal from within it. It warmed in her hands, awakening a kind of kinship within her, as though tying her to something infinite that she longed to touch. Tinis couldn’t stop to enjoy it, not then.