Call of Worlds

by K. D. Lovgren

  “Do you think we should at least visit them?” Aata said.

  “What if they freak out?”

  He mulled this over. “We could try to talk to them on holo.”

  “That’s possible?”

  “It hasn’t been, but with Mech’s help and your rank we could, I bet.”

  “What would we say?”

  “That they’re not forgotten. We’ll come back for them. It will give them hope.”

  “And if the hope is crushed, would that be worse than never knowing we tried?”

  “I think the hope is worth it, no matter what.”

  Kal nodded. “It’s better if you talk to them. I’ll tell Mech to hook you up. I don’t want to be there.”

  Aata studied her, trying to read her mind, she thought. He didn’t look like he’d had any success. “If that’s how you want it.”

  She gestured at the open door to his rooms.

  He passed through. Kal strode back through the long corridors to the enormous, dark cavern of a storage space where their selected roller sat. She dumped another load in the back, then eyed the roller next to this one. What if they took two?

  It made sense. They’d increase the possibility of at least one of them making it. Jabbing the second roller open, she started splitting up the stores, putting enough for either roller’s occupant to survive, even if the other didn’t make it. Making two trips back to her own rooms, she gathered more supplies. Aata’s voice carried out into the hallway as she passed. She heard someone else’s voice. She couldn’t place it. She heard crying. Putting her head down, she walked faster.

  By the time Aata joined her at the rollers, she had them both well-stocked and ready to go. He took in what she’d done and gave a curt nod of approval.

  Leaning against the back of a roller, Kal folded her arms, facing Aata, who stood with his hands hanging down by his sides.

  She cleared her throat. “It was bad?” Her voice didn’t carry in the dead space of the storage vault. It swallowed her words up.

  Aata took in a deep breath. He held it for a while and let it out, air wheezing out of a balloon. “They’re lonely. They’re messed up.”

  “More than you?”

  She didn’t mean it as an insult or a joke, but he smiled a little. “It’s hard to tell how messed up I was before you woke me.”

  “What do you want to do? Is it wrong to leave them?”

  “Yeah. It’s wrong, all right.”

  “We could let them loose in the Land. No one comes here but us. Tell them to keep quiet. At least they’d have each other and more room. The whole ship.”

  Aata jutted his chin out, rocking his head back and forth, considering. “What if they decide to leave? Or do something to the ship?”

  “Do you think they would?”

  Aata ran his hand over his stubbly chin. He’d told her he shaved every time his beard got soft. Kal didn’t try to decipher the meaning of it. Rituals kept a person sane. She knew that.

  “I don’t know them anymore. I can’t say what they’d do or wouldn’t do.”

  “It’s up to you. You were in their place.”

  Aata covered his ears for a moment, as if keeping something out of his head. He dropped his hands and stretched his neck. “I told them if we survived we’d come back for them and that we were very motivated to survive. Didn’t come halfway across a galaxy to go out now. They all understood.” His mouth was a flat line. “Good people.”

  “We’ll come back. We’ll make it right.” She had carefully not asked who they were. She didn’t want to know. It would make it harder to leave them.

  He nodded.

  “Do you remember how to guide a roller?” she asked, trying to lighten his mood.

  He gave her a look.

  “Prove it, flyboy.”

  Sooner than seemed possible, they were flying up out of the hollow, away from the Land. The fact they were in daylight made the expedition chancier, but by mutual consent they couldn’t wait one minute more. It was time to get out.

  Kal knew Aata would struggle with the light after so long in dimly-lit rooms, and she gave him goggles to wear. She supposed the four people on the Land had not been through Flicker’s precious decontamination process, but they had damn sure been quarantined, and to Kal that was good enough.

  She led him in a roundabout loop, heading west toward the vicinity of the Ocean so as to avoid passing near the camp—not east, which she didn’t know as well. They had to bypass the camp on one side or the other to head toward the mountains, as the camp lay between the Land and the mountains.

  Aata was keeping up fine. Kal could have shouted for joy at the feeling of being free on a roller to go where she wanted. At that moment she knew she could make it right, convince the others there had been a mistake.

  Mech would help her. Cooley would believe Mech.

  They’d made it to the shadows cast by the Ocean, which Kal made a wide pass around before she redirected north. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  Zooming north, brushing through grasses so tall it hid the rollers from view, they would pass closer to the camp than at any previous point. If someone was looking in the exact right place, they would see the movement of the grasses made by something passing through, like the rustle when a snake slithers by beneath the line of vegetation.

  Kal felt invincible. She had escaped. She had rescued Roan. Aata. She would rescue them all.

  The mountains remained their inscrutable selves as she rolled toward them, looking as far away as ever. She knew it would be like this for a long time. Settling in for the long roll, out of the corner of her eye she saw something casting a shadow and looked over. It was the tableland, where Roan and Tess had taken her that first day out of the biohab.

  The place of indoctrination. Where she could welcome Aata to Demeter. The sacred place. She swerved.

  Aata followed.

  She hoped he was as concerned as she had been when the roller started ascending the near-vertical side of the tableland. Chuckling at her cleverness and his surprise, she roared up the side, launching up over the edge with a rush of joy that felt like rebirth. The tableland was magical.

  Still in the air, before her wheels hit ground, she saw something on the plateau. They weren’t alone. Somebody was already here. And it was too late to turn back. The roller landed with a jounce, bumping her up in the air again briefly before she landed for good. Staring out the front screen, she saw another roller parked not four meters away. In front of it, two figures. Roan Morra—the original. Or was Aata the original? And another she didn’t recognize, hidden in a biohazard suit.

  Aata’s roller sprang up behind, swerving to miss her, skidding to a stop at an angle just in front. She and Roan locked eyes. Then he turned his head. He and Aata saw each other.

  The figure in the biohazard suit took off her helmet. It was Sif.

  Kal had a split second to decide. She could charge off the side of the tableland, knowing Aata would follow her. Knowing Roan and Sif would get in their roller, too, and give chase.

  Roan and Sif.

  The cave, where she’d hoped to stay for a few days, was blown. Roan would know to look there now. She didn’t know another place. She could try to find one in the mountains. But if they were already looking, she and Aata couldn’t sneak back to get supplies. Her plans were shot. The truth was they couldn’t survive out here on their own. Not yet. She knew it, and Roan knew it.

  Kal stepped out of her roller.

  The wind had died down, for once. It had never been so still on the tableland.

  “What are you doing here?” Kal called, to Sif.

  Sif had her helmet under her arm. Like a normal person. “Kal,” she said. She even smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

  Kal felt all the blood in her body rush and expand. “You never liked me, Sif. Remember?”

  “I never got to know you as myself. The real me. I think the real me does like you.” She took a step forward. Kal flinched
, but she didn’t step back.

  “It’s just me now. I promise you. Things are different.” Sif had a hand out, palm facing down, fingers splayed, as if calming a wild animal. Gently, gently, her hand motions said.

  “I’m afraid your word isn’t good enough.”

  “I know.” Sif’s face was different. It showed actual emotion.

  “What new game is this? Try it on someone who has a chance of believing it. Like Roan, here.” She jerked her chin at him, where he stood like stone.

  “Kal?” he said.

  “I met the original.” She said the words that could hurt him the most. Nothing could hurt as much as seeing him with her enemy, after he had done nothing to keep her from being locked up. She jerked her head at Aata’s roller. It was his cue to step out.

  Both Sif and Roan froze in shock. Kal could have sworn Roan had seen Aata when Aata first appeared in the roller, but it seemed not. Maybe he hadn’t recognized himself. Had he known Aata was one of those locked up?

  What hadn’t crossed Kal’s mind was what Aata would do when he saw Roan. As it turned out, as soon as he untangled his legs from the roller, he started running. Right at Roan. Right at his other self.

  Aata tackled him to the ground, Roan’s shock playing into his hands as Roan clearly didn’t expect it, clearly didn’t expect any of it. Aata punched him square in the jaw.

  “Aata! What are you doing?” Kal ran after him. Aata and Roan were rolling in the dirt and grasses, a blur of perfectly-matched fighters. Only one was much angrier.

  Sif helped her try to peel off Aata. Kal’s mind whirled with the entanglements among the four of them. All she could handle was what was in front of her. She kicked one of them and twisted the ear of the other. With Sif applying some kind of pressure point grip on one of their necks, they finally rolled apart.

  Aata was in his apricot pajamas, which distinguished him from Roan. Roan’s lip and nose were bleeding, his face streaked with dirt.

  “What the fuck?” Roan spat blood on the ground.

  Aata paced in front of them, walking off his need to fight. Kal jumped in frustration. “What are you doing?”

  Aata braced his palms above his knees to catch his breath. “This fucker right here.”

  “What did he do?” Kal looked back and forth between them.

  “Kal,” Roan said.

  “Why didn’t you speak up for me? You let me get locked up. I didn’t see you anywhere. I know you know how to sneak into the Land. You didn’t come to check. You left me there, like you did him.” She hadn’t let herself think about Roan’s betrayal until now. Partly because she’d thought he might be locked up, too.

  Yet she’d known right away the person next to her on the Land wasn’t the Roan she knew.

  “Him? I left him there?”

  Kal stepped back, holding her hands up. “I don’t know what happened on Sextant. You wouldn’t tell me. I had to find out for myself, once I was locked up like the other inconveniences.”

  It was as if she and Roan were the only ones there. She forgot about the other two. Her eyes were on Roan. The first Roan.

  Roan stepped closer. “What did you find out?” Roan looked like he was going to cry. Kal felt her anger waver.

  “You thought I left him in there?” He took another step. “Kal. It’s me. I brought you here. Remember? With Tess. And the cave. In the roller. That was me.”

  Kal took another step back.

  “What did you do with him, huh? What did he tell you? What happened?”

  “I…it wasn’t what you think.” She whipped up her anger. “Where were you? Why didn’t you find me?”

  “They told me you were being deprogrammed. That Noor had figured out a method and you had to be isolated while it took effect.”

  Kal nodded rapidly. “And you believed them? Right.”

  “All of them said it. So yes, I did. What did he tell you?” Roan didn’t seem to want to look at Aata. He angled his chin to the side, that was all.

  “You said we couldn’t touch. You said it was dangerous.”

  “I thought it was, then.”

  “You don’t think so now?”

  “No. Stop backing away from me.”

  “I’ll do whatever the hell I want.” Her bare feet scuffed on the grass. They hadn’t been able to find shoes on the Land.

  “You know me better than him, don’t you?” His tone was incredulous.

  Now, when she found him with Sif, he was acting like the old Roan. Before the lightning strike. Warm and open, this Roan was almost impossible to resist. Yet here he was, with the woman who had tried to kill her. On their tableland. Maybe that was his plan, with anyone he fancied. And what would have happened between them in the roller, afterward?

  Overwhelmed by a game she didn’t know the pieces of, unable to understand the players, she sank to her knees, covering her head with her arms.

  Roan sank down next to her. He didn’t touch her. “I want you, Kal.”

  Kal didn’t come out of her position. “Why did you bring her here? Special initiation?”

  “Sif doesn’t have the Carys anymore.”

  Kal raised her head. “He’s met me before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On Sextant. He knew me from Sextant.”

  “That’s not possible. You weren’t there.”

  Kal dropped her head. “Twists and dips in spacetime. We’ve been through the portal. Maybe more than once. Anything is possible. He said he was there first. And he knew me there. We were together, there.”

  Roan was speechless for a long moment, until she looked back up at him.

  At last he said, “You believed him? You believed all that?”

  Kal nodded, her mind whirling. His eyes were Roan’s eyes. But she knew they could turn cold.

  “You were with him, on the Land, just now? With him, like you were with me?” Roan sank down further, his rear hitting the ground as he toppled off his feet.

  “I don’t know.” Kal twisted her hair, pulling it. “I don’t know.”

  “Was he going to kill me?”

  “No! I didn’t know he would attack you like that.”

  Roan looked dazed. She saw the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “He told you things. It doesn’t mean they were true.”

  “Like you,” she said.

  He flinched as if she’d cut him. Roan’s head sank low, his hands hanging limp over his bent knees. As if he’d been beaten. “What are we gonna do, Kal?”

  She lay down. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see the endless sky. Her forearm swung over her eyes to block them both from view.

  His voice was low, just for her. “If he said he was with you on Sextant and you’ve never been there, it wasn’t you. I know you, here. It’s me you know. Not him.”

  Kal rolled over, hid her face in the grasses. They smelled sweet. She could almost imagine she was home.

  “He fooled you.”

  Kal mashed her face further in. She tasted the dirt. “You both did.”

  23

  Starfinding

  When Kal’s world zeroed in, to herself and Roan, she forgot anyone else even existed. There were only the two of them, back in a world of their own, where nothing else and no one else mattered.

  She rolled back up to sitting position, balancing on her feet. Hunkered down, hands resting on her knees, chin pressed into her hands. “I thought it was all real. Sextant, everything. What’s happening to my brain? What’s wrong with me?”

  Roan huddled near her, his hands holding each other as if to contain himself. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you afraid to touch me?” He’d said he could.

  He reached out. She held out her hand. They touched fingertips, holding there, balanced like tightrope artists, waiting.

  Nothing happened, except the rush of familiarity and relief.

  This was Roan.

  A shuffling sound and a crunch drew her attention. Looking up from the imag
inary bubble enclosing herself and Roan, she saw the far roller disappear over the edge of the tableland.

  She leaped to standing, pausing for only a second before racing to where the roller had gone over. Feet light on the tableland, she got there quick as foxes, sooner than Roan. She looked out at the sea of gold and saw the telltale snakelike retreat of the roller. Swiveling her head back, there was only Roan, her Roan, standing next to her. Sif—and the other Roan, Aata—were gone.

  “What the fuck?” Kal said. She and Roan looked at each other.

  There was a long silence.

  “I guess I’m not a very good judge of character,” she said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  They watched the tunneling movement glide away from them.

  Back the way it had come. Back toward camp.

  “Roan,” she said quickly, “they’re going to think…”

  “He’s me.”

  “Why would they go together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t trust her,” she said.

  “Noor said she was clean.”

  “Noor doesn’t know her like I do.”

  “What does he want?” he said. “Other than you.”

  “Why are they together? Why would they leave together?” Suddenly they shared the same thoughts, the same worries.

  “If Sif really is still the Carys--,” he said.

  “We’ve got to get back.”

  They stormed back to the closest roller, launched themselves into the seats, ready to go. Kal willed it forward. Nothing happened.

  “Oh no.” Kal slammed her fist down on the front panel.

  Roan got out. He tried the other roller. Shook his head.

  “How did they do it? What did they do?” she called out.

  He was yanking out modules from the roller he was in, looking at holo images of the power pack, pressing charge modules.

  “They took the brain.” He yelled the message across the wind, which had picked up.

  “Shit.” Kal threw her head back against the headrest. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He was rustling in the back storage compartment now, head down, hidden by the rear hatch. In less than a minute one hand shot triumphantly overhead where she could see it, holding a small oval module with a flat bottom. The back hatch slammed. “If they followed the holo guide, they would have known there’s a spare.”