Ardulum

by J. S. Fields

  “Her parentage only concerns my geneticists,” Ran replied sharply. “I’m more concerned about why you seem to be so interested in her.”

  “Fair enough, Captain.” A light flashed to Ran’s left, indicating the president had sent a file. A large file. Ran opened it on a secondary screen, and a delicate script began to scroll. The captain’s confusion lasted only a moment, before a word in bold text caught hir attention.

  Ardulum.

  These were encounter stories, descriptions that, while protruding and flowery, mirrored a history Ran knew very well. Except the Ardulans here had been met as gods, not equals. They were worshipped, revered, and, if the president’s cautious attitude was any indication, still held a surprising sway over the modern population.

  Ran grinned, the edges of hir lips pulling high, allowing hir tongue to flick across pointed teeth. If only the Markin had visited. Xe made a note to send a Cell-Tal team out immediately, accompanied by a Hearth Talent. Cell-Tal could make significant strides in the export market here if Ardulans were so cemented into the native belief structure. Bring a few Ardulans with them, and Cell-Tal could likely access even the andal trees in old-growth reserves. In the interim, however, there was a clear way around the current hurdle, which would satisfy both of their needs.

  “President Neek,” Ran began in an even tone, spreading hir hands in an open gesture. “The girl is not a god, but I can see her usefulness to you in such a capacity. She comes from a small group of defective stock that was traded to us by the ruling class of a visiting planet. Ardulum. In much the same way you might keep beasts of burden, we have cultivated these Ardulans…trained them in the basics of language so they can be useful to the sentient species. I see no reason why you should be left without one. Certainly a being such as yourself could manage to keep the existence of such creatures quiet—we wouldn’t want every planet in the Charted Systems clamoring for their own.” On an adjacent monitor, Ran brought up photos of the four Ardulans currently on Cutter 77. “I’m sending you a manifest with Ardulans we’d be able to provide immediately in exchange for the preadolescent. Their Talents are listed below the profile. Select any one you feel would be most important for your task.”

  When Ran looked back at the viewer, expecting to see the president delighting over the Ardulan manifest, xe saw only a pale face and searing eyes boring directly into hir own.

  “Ardulum” the president whispered, his tone soft and dangerous. “The planet that vanishes.”

  “Technically, it propels, but that isn’t important. About that list.”

  The president shook his head, blinked several times, and began to scroll through the options. “Aggression, Science, Hearth, and a menagerie of specialties from each. Just as in The Book of the Uplifting.” His expression turned from guarded to impressed. Ran snorted at the quick transition. “Still concerning. I have a planet that believes in Ardulum, Captain, and in the majesty of its highly intelligent species. The girl you’re after is sentient, there can be no doubt about that, and powerful. If the Ardulans you carry are merely chattel—some defective off-breed—they can be of no use to me. I will not put my people’s belief structure in jeopardy, even for the Risalians.”

  “The girl has shown promise in weapons in the past,” Ran noted, trying to drive the conversation. “And the adult Ardulans on my ship are quite powerful as well. Other than that—the girl can’t speak, and neither can any of the others. As religion is mostly interpretation, that should only work in your favor.” Ran sent the document again, to press the issue. “We have two options if you’d like to stick with that skill set, both very well trained and highly obedient.”

  The president was silent as he considered. He ran a sticky fingertip over the rim of his mug, circling the dark contents as he did so. Ran waited patiently, the whine of the cutter’s engines and the swaying of green branches outside the window in the president’s office helping hir to soothe the anticipation.

  After another few heartbeats, the president looked back at the screen. He placed the mug down and splayed his fingers widely across the tabletop in front of him. “For my purposes, and in the interest of interstellar peace, I would prefer the second don female. She looks enough like the one we have here that we could pass off a younger adult as the girl just into second don. And I want the exchange done here, on Neek. We can’t risk our ships being dissolved by the girl when attempting to transport her.”

  Ran put the requisition into the computer as the fluttering in hir chest settled. “Done. I will have the second don Aggression female prepared for transport. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Should you encounter any issues with your Ardulan, please do not hesitate to contact me on this channel. Cutter 77 out.”

  The screen blanked, and Ran leaned back in hir plush chair. Xe would have to oversee the transfer, unfortunately, but if it meant retrieving the girl quickly and without fanfare, it was worth the risk. If the process took much longer, xe would be risking the girl’s metamorphosis. If she began her incubation into second don—or worse, emerged—outside of Risalian control, there would be no way to contain her. There would be no way to protect anyone; not the Risalians, not the Neek, and not the other innocent beings of the Charted Systems from the unfocused telekinetic power of an untrained adult Ardulan. Cell-Tal had experimented with that scenario before, at their former laboratory on the Korin moon. Mercifully, only a handful of Risalians had lost their lives, but the lab had been reduced to glucosic sludge, and an entire genetic line had to be sterilized.

  That couldn’t happen again. Not with this line. There was time. Ran just needed to be patient. In less than an hour, xe would be on a skiff, bringing their second don gunner onto Neek. The swap would be made, and Ran could return the girl to Cell-Tal’s holding facility, hopefully before she began her transition.

  Patience. Ran inhaled deeply and then closed hir eyes. Xe pictured the waterfalls of Risal, the sparkling, green water, fish arcing through river foam. Hir progenitor swam in the clear water, diving for silver fish and long, black eels while Ran stood in the waterfall’s path, letting the cascading pressure wash away hir tension. Edging on the idyllic scene, however—just in the corners of Ran’s mind where xe couldn’t chase it away—was the image of an unfettered second don Ardulan female, free in the cellulose-drenched Charted Systems.

  Chapter 13: Neek

  Destroy the blasphemers! Burn their temples, demolish their ships! They have transgressed against Ardulum, and only through Ardulum can one walk in the light.

  —Excerpt from a network broadcast outside the Charted Systems, October 22nd, 2060 CE

  Neek awoke with a start, the whine of settees fading into the distance. She tried to throw off the sheets, but they stuck to her torso as she sat up, copious stuk streaming from her fingers. She’d had that stupid andal dream again—the one with the weeping trees in the too-still forest. The erratically recurring nightmare had haunted her since she was a child, but now it occurred with frustrating frequency.

  Neek knew better than to expect a return to sleep. Instead, she ran a sticky hand through her hair—managing to mat the fine strands even further—before standing and throwing open the shutters to her window. Two moons were up in the early morning light, and the tide was just cresting the horizon. The stillness in the air calmed the pilot’s breathing but not her mind. To the east, a squadron of settees practiced formations, the reflected crimson apparent even at a distance. Neek’s hands jerked in tandem with the movements of the teardrop-shaped ships. Circle down and in for sudden thrust. A full counterclockwise rotation followed by an upwards jab for a descending loop that just brushed the treetops. The gentlest of strokes to send the settee into a smooth lateral glide.

  A settee dropped, plummeting directly downward. Neek watched the nose of the ship struggle to right itself, the pilot likely slipping over stuk-covered controls. The settee leveled off, but only after shearing tops off of several andal trees in the nearby plantation.

  “Idiot pi
lot.” Neek slammed a shutter over the window and turned away. She didn’t need to be watching training exercises. She needed to get off-world before Emn became the president’s new religious figurehead. Any escape attempt, however, would require Emn’s assistance, which Neek wasn’t certain how to request. Besides, the knowledge that she was only kilometers from her family—and that she would have to leave without seeing them—weighed her down.

  “Hey, Emn, want to help me blow up part of my planet? Maybe you could just impale the president on an andal twig and then we could steal his ship to get off-world.” It felt ridiculous to say out loud, even as she tiptoed down the empty hall. Just to her left was a small end table with a piece of chewed andal lying on the top, the curly bark still attached in some places. Curious, Neek popped the unchewed end in her mouth and tried to rip off a section with her molars. Bits of bark and sapwood came off, sticking to the roof of her mouth. She gagged. Once the material dislodged, she chewed slowly, noting the surprising spiciness of the wood, and finally managed to swallow.

  It felt grainy going down her throat. She coughed, trying to move bits that seemed stuck. Not one of my brighter ideas, she thought to herself. She put the twig back down and decided against mentioning her experiment to anyone. She wouldn’t put it past Yorden for having given the andal a go, too, but likely he’d had the foresight to wash it down with something alcoholic.

  Her wanderings ended at the door to the room that Emn and Nicholas shared, the two beds divided by a wood partition. She pushed it open, careful to minimize the creaking. Emn had chosen the left side of the room. In a towering bed carved from a single andal tree, the girl was still fast asleep, curled into a ball with the sheets splaying out around her in a pinwheel pattern.

  Neek’s feet carried her inside to Emn’s bed, where she knelt. It’d been two days since the science minister’s visit. Neek had avoided the girl since, making excuses to leave the house or lock herself in her room. The avoidance made Neek feel childish. That some part of her clung to a fairy tale religion was embarrassing. Emn came from a Risalian lab. She didn’t use magic. She used cut-and-dried science with some skilled telekinesis. If fungi could break down cellulose with enzymes, why couldn’t a sentient do it in a more mechanical fashion? Perhaps the Ardulans of legend were the same—just travelers with an extensive scientific potential, capable of impressing a primitive planet in their attempts to make contact. Except that line of reasoning led to the possibility that there was in fact a planet moving around in the cosmos, which brought a whole separate set of issues and far too many possibilities.

  Asleep, the girl seemed too small to be the cause of the constant tickle at the back of Neek’s mind. With the morning light reflecting off the girl’s translucent skin, she could imagine Emn older—a young woman Nicholas’s size, with determined eyes, and carrying the ceremonial two-headed spear described in Neek’s childhood history texts. She imagined them sitting together at a fast-print shop, eating perf food so standardized you could taste the outlines, or together in a divey spaceport, discussing Neek politics and history. She imagined Emn with children of her own, happy and carefree, on a planet where no one feared her.

  A smile crept across Neek’s face as she gently wove her fingers into one of Emn’s loose fists. The girl’s sleeping mind slipped into Neek’s, and she felt the familiar pressure build near the base of her skull before tapering off into a lighter touch.

  “I wonder if you’ll ever get to see Ardulum,” Neek whispered to Emn. “If it does exist. Our artists paint it with reverence—this place they’ve never seen. We all dream about it. Even the president, I bet. Even me.” She paused as Emn shifted in her sleep, clasping Neek’s hand tightly as she turned onto her other side. “I wonder how things will change, now that you’re here. Or if they will at all.”

  Neek felt Emn’s mental connection alter as she slowly came into consciousness. I didn’t mean to wake you up, Neek told her. Go back to sleep. I’ll go away.

  An emphatic negative pushed its way into Neek’s mind, and she laughed softly. Or not.

  Emn sat up, still clutching Neek’s hand, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the other. What am I supposed to change? Emn asked sleepily. I don’t have any other clothes.

  No, little one. Not clothes. Lives. I think you will change lives, if the president lets you. If you want to.

  What I want is— Emn’s thoughts halted at the loud rapping on the front door.

  The noise jarred Nicholas, who leaped out of bed. “I’m ready!” he shouted sleepily. “Let’s get ’em going out fight ship!”

  “Somehow I don’t think that will help, but I appreciate the thought.” Yorden yawned as he walked past the bedroom door. “How about we start with seeing who it is.” Yorden pulled at the coppery handle, paused, and then took a step back. “Can we help you two with something?” Yorden asked. “Seems a bit early for more testing.”

  Neek’s heart stopped, or at least, that’s what it felt like. In the doorway stood two heaven guards. Their gold robes just brushed the floor, the edges of the fabric trimmed with a deep green. Crimson piping followed the collar and swooped over the shoulders. Their feet were bare, indicating command posts. Behind them, Neek could see a settee idling on the beach, the crimson paint reflecting a glowing halo in the light of the sunrise.

  No one spoke. Neek stood rigid, unable to move. She didn’t recognize the man or the gatoi—they were easily a decade older than her, but she knew their caste well enough. With bone-white skin and red-tinted eyes, both belonged to the oldest family line on Neek, a line that prided itself on being able to trace back every ancestor for thirty generations.

  “Did you need something?” Yorden asked gruffly. “We haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  The gatoi stepped forward, zir jawline tense. “Orders from the president came this morning. The Ardulan girl is going to be field-tested at the president’s northern facility and then given a new physical this afternoon. She should be back in the early evening.”

  “Wait, you’re taking her away?” Nicholas asked, joining everyone else in the main entryway. “The medics have always come here before. Why do you have to take her to this facility?”

  The gatoi’s eyes wandered from Nicholas and casually took in the room. “These tests cannot be done on-site without danger to bystanders.” Zie offered Yorden a clipboard with a legal-looking document attached.

  Yorden glanced at Neek before handing her the clipboard. “An official seal and everything. Emn must have really shaken someone up yesterday.”

  Neek’s mind raced. The Heaven Guard had no medical training, nor were they used for routine transport. Their sole purpose was to patrol the sky, searching for signs of Ardulum. To be called in for this—it was too official. Too formal. Adding to the mystery was the presence of the gatoi guard. Neek’s third sex was in decline, the unique chromosome set destabilizing with each successive generation. A gatoi wouldn’t be risked in any type of conflict situation, unless zie was sent to diffuse Neek’s own suspicion. Zir presence was a clear warning, except Neek couldn’t determine for what.

  “I assume you require an interpreter,” Neek said, wrapping an arm around Emn’s shoulders. “No doubt you’re well aware of the communication difficulties between her and, well, pretty much anyone else except me.”

  The guards looked at each other, unsure. The male then turned to Neek and crossed his arms across his chest. The wide sleeves of his robe fell to his wrists, exposing more brilliantly white skin. “Exile, would you just shut up and let the president do his job? This is a matter of science, nothing more, and the paperwork doesn’t specify for a translator.”

  Yorden moved forward and addressed the guards. “Obviously someone screwed up the paperwork. Imagine how much time it’s going to save when you show up with Emn and her translator.” He clasped the gatoi on the shoulder. “As a captain, I can tell you that crew initiative and ability to think on one’s feet is essential for promotion. No one likes a guy, er, sentient, who
can only follow orders.”

  The guards looked at each other again, the gatoi shrugging zir shoulders. The male dropped his arms and looked from Neek to Yorden, and then back again. “I—”

  Neek moved forward and pushed herself between the two guards. “Well? What are we waiting for? I’m sure the president doesn’t want to be kept waiting. Let’s go.”

  The gatoi shrugged and placed zir hand on Neek’s elbow, guiding her towards the ship. “Let’s just take her. We can always send her back,” zie muttered to the male.

  “Okay, but if anyone asks, it was your idea,” zir colleague responded as he trailed behind. “I refuse to be the one responsible for her if she goes after the president again. You didn’t see what happened the last time they were in the same room together.”

  * * *

  The settee landed just outside a large government building on the outskirts of the capital. The guards ushered Neek and Emn off the landing pad and into a small, empty, sterile-smelling room just inside the entry doors. There was nothing within—no furniture, no decorations, and no beings. Neek’s stuk crystallized on her fingertips. They’d been in the settee for just over two hours, the guards alternately staring at her with open disgust or bantering about other guard members. Some of the clarifiers Neek recognized—most she did not. Some of the events they discussed—the most recent graduation ceremony, the training exams, the flight drills—brought back sharp memories. Memories that needed to stay buried.

  The guards ushered Emn and Neek to the center of the room and then stood at attention. They were facing another door some ten meters away; the door from which they’d come was still open and letting in a warm breeze and the smell of summer.

  The emptiness of the room bothered Neek. For a private meeting with the president, it made sense. He had most of his meetings in private rooms, including the ones that involved her. For heaven guards to escort an Ardulan to such a room, however, seemed contrary to the Heaven Guard’s mission. If they knew of Emn’s existence, yet brought her here…