by Mike Kilroy
And Zack’s, too.
He was shorter than normal for his race, thin and frail, very circumspect but a surprisingly able fighter. Lucan, though, found clever ways to avoid killing his foes in the two short battles he and his group had been thrust into.
In the first, he slammed the blade of his thin sword through his felled opponent’s cloak and into the marsh, pinning her there. Lucan removed his adversary’s metal mask, and then shed his, pointing to his eyes, and then hers; at his lips and then hers; at his ears, and then hers and whispered “We are the same.”
He was run through by a sword a moment later, but as he lay there, bleeding out, he reached his hand toward the pinned girl, who reached her hand toward him. As he died, their hands were clasped.
In the second setting, Lucan emptied his gun, which contained metal pellets his people once used in a war long ago, and convinced the rest of his group to do the same. They stood, the pellets forming mounds at their feet, and waited for their enemy to attack.
Once they finally arrived, ready to spill blood, they paused at the sight of Lucan and his disarmed group.
The truce didn’t last long; Lucan was the first to be ripped apart by the fired buckshot, but he smiled and thanked their God of Forgiveness as he died.
Zack read about the others who weren’t quite as enlightened as Lucan, but not as boorish as Harness, or aloof as Cass, or melodramatic as Zill or as pensive as Brock and thought Lucan had a much easier time than he.
Mizuki sat across from Zack at a table in the dining hall and also intently pored over the pages. She smiled, too, when she read about Lucan. “He sounds a lot like you.” She peered up at Zack with a slanted smile. “They are fascinating.”
Zack had a sobering thought. “What if I fail?”
Mizuki countered quickly. “You probably will. It’s an impossible assignment. I should know.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Would you rather I coddle you, or tell you the truth? You strike me as the kind of guy who wants the truth, so I’m giving you the truth.”
Zack grinned. She was right. He did want the truth, no matter how blunt it was. “How did you cope while living with us?”
Mizuki paused, took a deep breath and spoke. “It was difficult. Everything about your race is a riddle and a contradiction. You are so complicated. My people took the path of simplicity. We don’t have all the distractions you have with your technology. Sure, we have gadgets, but very few of them are designed for entertainment. They all serve a purpose. Your race is preoccupied with leisure. You make things more difficult than they need to be and you suffer for it.”
Mizuki rose, walked around the table and stood close to Zack, so close in fact he could smell a hint of her fragrance and feel her warm breath on the nape of his neck. She pulled up her tank top to just under her breasts to show off her flat stomach, which had several tattoos of symbols similar to the ones sketched on the walls of her room. She turned and showed him her back which was covered with an intricate design in violet and red and other colors that blended into a beautiful collage. It was quite stunning.
She turned again and pointed to a tattoo just above her navel, a beautiful swirl of amber and rose that looked similar to a yin and yang. “We get this tattoo when we reach seventeen. It means we have matured and we can make our own decisions—two paths. Most of us decide to stay with our clans to tend the fields or work in the factories to make our simple goods. Others chose to become philosophers or artists or teachers. I chose a third path. I chose to be an explorer, to seek out new ways of doing things. For that, I was shunned. As is our custom for the shunned, my given name was stripped from me. There is no tattoo for that.”
Mizuki continued. “We have a very rigid belief system. It can be good. It can be bad. But it helped me assimilate to your culture. There are many things I dislike about your kind, Zack, but one of the things I admire is your passion. You have so much passion, misplaced most of the time, but passion nonetheless.”
Zack wondered what he was passionate about and had no answer, which only depressed him. Mizuki clearly had zeal, clearly had a path she wanted to pursue. It was obvious that was why the Ankhs had tapped her.
She definitely had a Spark.
He hoped she would be able to resume her quest on her own terms one day.
Zack, for a lack of anything better to say, muttered. “I want to get a tattoo some day.”
Mizuki lowered her tank top and punched him hard on the shoulder. Her knuckles were still razor sharp. “You don’t strike me as a tattoo kind of guy. Tattoos are viewed quite differently in your culture.”
Zack shrugged. “Most people get them just to get them. I want mine to mean something, like yours.”
“I can give you a tattoo, just so you know. That’s one thing my people are all pretty good at.”
Mizuki sat back down and leafed through more of the dossier on the Omians. She whistled a tune Zack did not recognize. He figured it was a song from her planet and he thought it much better than anything created on Earth.
“What was the worst thing about the time you spent with us?” Zack asked.
Mizuki had a quick reply. “The food. Ugh. So gross. It made me sick every night.”
Zack read more pages, and then re-read them. He had a sinking feeling.
This is hopeless. I could never blend in with my own people, how am I going to blend in with the Omians?
“I can’t do this,” Zack said. “How am I going to do this?”
Mizuki reached her hand out and grabbed his. “Just do your best. Collect information. But keep your head down. I didn’t keep my head down, and I had to get out. I got replaced by Fred.” She put a disdainful emphasis on his name. “He’s a piece of work. So negative. You’d think a race that has been around as long as his would be able to relax a little.”
“You’ve seen Fred?”
Mizuki shook her head vigorously. “No. No. No. I haven’t see Fred. I haven’t seen any of them. They are very secretive when it comes to their appearance and ‘talk’ isn’t exactly the right word. It’s more like Fred talks and you listen and then Fred goes away. Jerk.”
“I talked to George. He seems compassionate and friendly, like he really cares.”
Mizuki shook her head again. “Don’t be fooled. They only want our ‘Spark,’ whatever that is.”
“You don’t trust them?”
Mizuki leaned across the table, her jaw set in a rigid frown and her eyes resolute as she whispered, “Not as far as I could throw them, and I imagine that isn’t very far. They are desperate and afraid. They are too calculating and cold for my tastes. This isn’t going to end well for any of us.”
Zack felt his heart thrum faster in his chest. He had allowed himself to be lulled by his plush surroundings and his grand purpose in this undertaking by the Ankhs. He had even been appeased by their apparent intense interest in his planet and customs. The fact that Mizuki was wary of them added to this rekindled dread.
“What do we do?” It was a simple question, but he could tell one without a simple answer.
Mizuki backed away and shuffled through the papers stacked in front of her. “Not sure. Hopefully we’ll figure something out before they find another fifteen” She made a slashing motion across her neck with her long index finger. “I have a bad feeling about what will happen when they do.”
Zack feared an even deeper cut was coming.
Part II
Chapter Two
Big Brother is Watching
“He’s not pale enough.” A man Zack had not met yet, white as one of Mizuki’s moons, said through what looked like bloodless lips. He wore a drab robe over his bulbous frame and had a mop of brown hair on his egg-shaped head. Zack thought him an odd little man, smarmy and repugnant. He even smelled foul.
“Maybe you should go down there, Eb,” Splifkin grumbled, his green face beginning to take on a slightly red hue.
Eb, who took notice of this modest chang
e in pigment, shuffled back and re-examined Zack. He pushed a clubbed finger into Zack’s cheek. “It’ll have to do.”
Splifkin rolled his considerably large eyes and sighed. “Glad you approve, Eb. Now go. I’m tired of looking at you.”
Eb smiled, nodded and meandered his pear-shaped frame out of the room.
Splifkin turned his flinty eyes on Zack. “Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t want to hear ‘I think so.’ I want to hear ‘I know so.’”
Zack stammered. “I … I know so.”
Splifkin sighed. “Great. You go in a few days. Now go. I’m tired of looking at you, too.”
Zack beat a hasty exit. He knew better than to linger.
Apparat shuffled toward him, a ream of paper propped precariously—and most likely uncomfortably—atop his bald head.
“I think I got it. I think I got it,” Apparat announced.
Zack was unmoved. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Zack. I’m sure. Shall we?”
Zack followed Apparat into the room and screeched the chair legs along the linoleum floor as the odd bald man sifted through his considerable pile of papers. He took a gulp from a mug filled with a thick, pulpy purple liquid and smacked his lips as he looked at each paper with an ever-widening smile.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Apparat said, pushing the stack toward Zack. “It’s all in order. Sign where indicated.”
Zack grabbed the first sheet and began reading. It was written in English—or at least appeared to him as such—but made no sense. Typed were random words shoved together into impossibly long sentences.
Zack looked up, perplexed, and Apparat bowed his head.
“What’s wrong now?”
“It’s gibberish. Can I ask you something? Does it matter? Why do I have to sign these anyway? Would it make any difference if I didn’t?”
Apparat snatched the paper from Zack and placed it carefully on the stack. He looked at Zack as if he had been mortally wounded, as if his feelings were deeply hurt. “It’s a custom on your planet to sign contracts, is it not? I mean, just about every decision you make requires you to sign something, correct?”
Zack nodded and chuckled.
Apparat was not amused. “The Ankhs were just trying to adhere to your beliefs, signing papers to be one of them. I was just trying to help. If you don’t require my help, I have other, more important things to do.”
Apparat stood, scooped up the stack of papers and placed them again on the top of his head. “Good day,” he said as he stomped away.
Eb stuck his head into the room and then waddled in. He stood uncomfortably close to Zack.
“Don’t mind him,” Eb said with fetid breath. “People hate him almost as much as they hate me.”
“Oh, people don’t hate you.” Zack knew they did.
“Thanks, human boy. You’re kind. But you’re mistaken. I am despised. It’s my looks and my odor. I can’t help it. I’m also kind of pushy. I can’t change that, either.”
Zack felt for Eb. He was a misfit like himself, just a different kind of misfit. He was just as out of place as everyone here, it seemed—except for perhaps Splifkin.
“Tell me about yourself, Eb.”
The albino was shocked and put his stumpy hands over his chest. “Oh, you don’t want to know about me. No one wants to know about me.”
“I do.”
“No.” Eb shyly smiled. “No, you don’t.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t interested and curious.”
“Well. Okay,” Eb said, shuffling around the table to sit across from Zack. “I’m a Zorgite. We’re a simple people from a simple planet that is far, far away from here, I’m sure. We were brought here and put into the arenas just like everyone else and, obviously, lost quickly and terribly. I don’t know how many times I saw my entrails spill out of my gut. We’re not fighters. We’re intellectual. We have a great attention to detail. The Ankhs saw that in me and decided to keep me around as a sort of troubleshooter. It’s not a bad job.
Eb peered into the mug left behind by Apparat and curled his lip in disgust before he continued. “Splifkin hates me. Apparat hates me. The Ankhs don’t particularly care for me and I think Mizuki simply tolerates me. I’m lonely and I miss my friends. I miss my planet, even though the Ankhs have given me quite a solid representation of my home world. But for a race with the attention to detail as sharp as ours, it doesn’t come close to satisfying me.”
“What happened to your friends, the ones brought here with you?”
“Oh. Some are here serving the Ankhs as I do. The others are long gone. Dead, I suppose. It takes a lot of energy to keep those habitats going. The Ankhs are very powerful, but even they have their limits.”
Eb picked up the mug and waved it in front of Zack, then showed him the purple ooze stuck inside. “Zorgites are kind of the crud at the bottom of the universe’s cup. I knew we’d be expunged.”
Zack couldn’t believe that to be true. “Every race has value.”
Eb laughed. It was an annoying one, which didn’t surprise Zack in the least. “You are so kind, so beneficent. Don’t lose that, no matter what they make you do.”
As Eb stood and tottered toward the exit, Zack called out, “What’s that supposed to mean? ‘No matter what they make me do?’ What will they make me do?”
Eb turned around, his pale face grim. “I like you, Zack Earnest. I enjoyed our chat.”
†††
Zack stared at the moving shadows across the ceiling, unable to sleep, unable to calm his restless mind or quell the foreboding he felt.
When he heard a pounding on his door, he wasn’t startled. He was relieved because he knew who was at his door—the only face that put a smile on his.
He sat up and yelled, “Come in.”
Mizuki swung the door open and entered, closing it silently behind her. She walked quietly across his carpet and sat on the edge of his bed. “I’ve never been in a boy’s bedroom before,” she said coyly.
“Well, this isn’t really my room, so you still haven’t.”
She laughed and lay down across his legs, staring at the same ceiling he had just studied. He could hear her breathing deeply, and then hold it before she said, “Be careful.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. I’ll keep my head down.”
“I don’t mean with the Omians. I mean with them.”
Zack knew who the them were. “Right back at ya.”
Mizuki slapped his shin with her cold hand. “Just don’t be, well, you, and piss them off.”
Zack laughed. “Who me? I can’t make any promises.”
Mizuki rolled to her stomach and, even in the dim light, Zack could see the concern well in her eyes. “I’m serious, Zack. You think you’re safe because they chose you to be one of the seventeen, but they can just discard you.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. They have been searching for a long, long time. Fifteen or sixteen more, there is little difference to them at this point.”
It was a sobering thought. Zack had long reached his quota on sobering thoughts.
He changed the subject. “You look pretty tonight.”
She did. Her hair flowed down past her shoulders, as silky as ever. He had always been enamored with her big brown eyes and full lashes. He always felt a shudder when she batted them, like she did now. “Well, don’t you have a silver tongue?”
She rubbed his leg with the back of her hand. Even as cold as it was, it felt comforting and soothing.
Mizuki broke the silence. “Can I stay here?” She crawled up the bed to lie next to him. She batted those big brown eyes again and Zack felt that shudder roll and ripple through him. “I want to be uncomfortably warm tonight.”
†††
Zack turned the door knob slowly, quietly. Mizuki hung over his shoulder and he could feel her breath on his ear.
They peered through the crack between the door and t
he jam and heard muffled conversation.
“That looks like a Gorn,” Zack whispered.
Mizuki tsked. “Mercy of the Gods, why do you insist on calling them that?”
Splifkin stood with the Gorn—or whatever his race was called—in front of a door and then pushed it open, bathing them in a bright light.
Zack had known that race to be emotional and this one covered his snout in joy when he saw his new, pampered home.
Zack moved his head slightly to get a better view and recognized him as the one who mourned for his fallen mate, who Zack had saved with the injection from the syringe.
Splifkin laughed at the Gorn’s reaction, his deep chortle carrying the length of the hallway, and then turned and strolled, arms pinned behind him, toward Zack’s room.
Zack quickly shut the door. “He’s coming here. Hide.”
He felt very much what a boy in Maine would feel after sneaking a girl into his room. It felt quite normal, almost mundane.
Zack welcomed anything that felt normal and mundane nowadays.
Then again, a lizard man with razor sharp needles for teeth was walking briskly toward his room. That was anything but normal and mundane.
Mizuki was unimpressed by his boyish panic. She simply stood where she was, cocking her head disapprovingly. “Really? I’m not diving under your bed to hide. Who cares if we spent the night together?”
Zack shrugged as Splifkin knocked loudly on the door, and then swung it open. Apparently Splifkin wasn’t big on privacy.
“You need to come with me, Zack.” Splifkin’s voice was particularly deep and intimidating on this morning. “You come, too, Mizuki. You two are inseparable anyway.”
Splifkin turned and walked away, his arms pinned behind him again.
They were led to a large room with a cozy couch set in front of a giant display screen. Mizuki plopped down and sunk into the leather. She patted the cushion next to her for Zack to sit.
