Fellowship Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  Grignal considered the destination. That Sidanne was being sent to a city like Balgique-en-Leurre was a clue. It was a large city, larger than most shield cities, yet it had decided against erecting a shield and its rulers had chosen to remain free of the tram line circuit. The reasons, like most things on Altarus, could be found in politics. Balgique-en-Leurre was rooted firmly in the badlands. Many of its residents had been tainted by the badwinds, and many others had been rejected or ejected by the larger cities. As backward and poor as it might be, most of its residents felt like they’d found a true home, and they refused to kowtow to the tram cities.

  Balgique-en-Leurre was also famed for its Temple, the home to one of several surviving religions on Altarus and the one almost universally adopted by those with psychic powers. Was Sidanne the key to some plan of theirs? Had they foreseen some event that involved Sidanne? Had they kidnapped her to prevent it? Or to cause it?

  Grignal stared at the picture of Sidanne, imagining what she must have gone through before being put in the cryosleeve. She would feel nothing at this point, but he still imagined her lonely and helpless inside the unremarkable gray case.

  One of the young trampoline acrobats popped into Grignal’s tent, saying Bayard wanted to see him. He rushed over to Bayard’s tent, pausing only to send an apologetic glance to the mother of a toddler scared witless by Grignal’s presence. Bayard had decided to hide the case in the city. He had researched the best place to leave it, one that might give them an option to pick it up again if they so chose.

  Grignal felt uncomfortable abandoning Sidanne—it felt like he’d be leaving her to die alone and unwanted like a piece of trash—but Bayard’s word was like a gavel struck, and so Grignal waited until early in the morning. In a city the size of Ale Surçois, and as large as he was, no time was perfect, but several hours after midnight was as close as he was going to get. He wrapped the case in a harness and climbed the nearest building when Ijia signaled that that park was clear enough. He reached the top and continued, higher and higher, spanning buildings and bridges and walkways.

  Nearly an hour later, he made it to the top of one of the city’s tallest structures—a commercial building that had fallen on hard times. Less than 70 percent of the space was filled, and few of the businesses required anything resembling tight security. As Bayard had guessed, Grignal found no cameras mounted on the top of the building. There was a crysteel communications tower and an access door leading into the building, but otherwise it was clear.

  Grignal nestled the case near the base of the tower, where it met the stairwell’s brick enclosure. Wrapped by the beaten tarp as it was, it looked hidden enough.

  He moved to the edge of the building, for he was breathless from the climb. City air was always stifling, but up here it was less so. Grignal had long ago learned to enjoy the small victories in life. He breathed in the dry air and the scent of ozone and the fainter smell of artificial pine. The shield glimmered. This high up, he could hear its telltale thrum. The tram yard, only a half mile away, held seven white trams, each with several hundred cars. Grignal wondered what it would be like to travel that way, to take one day to reach the next city instead of two months.

  A personal transport swooped over the terminal and landed at the top of a building several dozen stories higher than the one upon which Grignal stood. What kind of power must a man like that wield? The owner of a great company? Jaubert Rousseau himself?

  What sort of life might Grignal have had if he’d been born instead of manufactured in a Kyngani clone vat? He flexed his hands, examined the rugged skin of his forearms. It felt strange to him that there were no scars, that the Kyngani-bred ability to heal was so utterly complete. He had been grown—grown. He had never truly felt like a Kyngani. He felt much closer to the land and the cities and even the badwinds than those of his own race. It felt like Altarus had given birth to him.

  And so when the armistice had been signed and the Kyngani were preparing to evacuate, Grignal had chosen to stay. How could he return to a planet he’d never seen? It meant nothing to him. It meant less than nothing. Altarus was the only home he’d ever known, and he knew even then he loved humans. They were complex and inventive and beautiful in their own way. His own race had never treated him like more than an inventory number attached to a weapon.

  Another transport flew above the building. Grignal ducked as low as he could manage and waited for it to pass.

  He turned to the case in its nook. It had sounded, for a moment, like a young girl was whimpering.

  Grignal told himself it was impossible, but as he stared at the case, he wondered if he could leave it here. Sidanne might be found, but then again she might not. She might find her way to safety, but unsupervised recoveries from cryofreeze did not always go well. It was too risky, Grignal thought. Why not wake her up now and make sure she was safe? She couldn’t incriminate the troupe, and in fact, her safe return might ease up the attention that would surely be focusing in on the troupe even now.

  Grignal, feeling like he’d given himself a direct order, dragged the case into the open and removed the tarp. Cryosleeves typically had a failsafe shutdown sequence once their integrity was compromised. The only ones that didn’t, in fact, were those used to hold highly secure parties in cryogenic freeze, ones that interested parties would rather have dead than kidnapped.

  Grignal picked up the case and hugged it to his chest. He locked his hands together and squeezed, compressing the case, harder and harder. The blood in his veins pounded; the tendons in his wrists screamed. The hinges of the case were pressing so deeply into his chest that he was sure it was drawing blood. And still it held.

  He released a growl and renewed his effort. Minutes seemed to pass. His head throbbed. His bones were cracking. Surely they were . . .

  He released one final scream.

  And the case gave. A sharp hiss released into the air.

  Grignal set the case onto the concrete tiles. A dent rested along one side, just below the security pad, and two of its corners had sizable gaps. Grignal tore the handle off the access door and used it to lever the gaps wider. He was finally able to creep his fingers under the lid and rip the case open.

  His arms went limp; he staggered backward.

  Lying within, under transparent glass, was Sidanne.

  A readout and keypad were embedded within the glass near the ruined lock. The glass—or the liquid beneath it—tinted Sidanne’s skin blue. Electrodes covered her shaved head, her naked chest and arms and legs. Her skin, even tinted as it was, seemed extremely pale. The effect could be from the freezing process, but Grignal couldn’t explain away how positively emaciated she looked. Her knees and elbows stood pronounced against the rail-like limbs attached to them. The knuckles on her hand stood out like a ninety-year-old arthritic’s. Her jaw stood out against her sunken cheeks, and every single rib seemed to be fighting to escape her skin.

  Grignal recalled from the article that she would be around fifteen now. She looked anything but. Had he not known her age already he would have guessed her to be ten years old, perhaps eleven. She looked more like a malnourished child from the badlands than she did a young high-society woman living in one of the planet’s most powerful cities.

  Grignal shivered when, with a hiss, the cryosleeve’s blue glass hinged upward. Sidanne stirred.

  “Can you hear me?” Grignal asked her after a time.

  If she did, she showed no response.

  “You’re safe. I’m here to help you.”

  All she did was shiver.

  “Hold on, I’ll get something to keep you warm.”

  Grignal went to retrieve the tarp. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  One moment he was reaching for the tarp, the next he was on the ground lying prone, staring at the bright horizon. His limbs were limp and numb, and they tingled. His nose tingled too. Even his tongue tingled. He rolled over, feeling a wetness against his cheek. Drool? Vomit?

  He stared up
at the sky and realized with shock that the sun had already risen. How long had he been unconscious? He’d been going for the tarp, which—turning his head—he realized was still there. Had he been attacked? Had someone drugged him and taken Sidanne?

  Sidanne.

  He rolled the other direction. The case was still there. He pushed himself onto his knees. He felt queasy, but the feeling passed quickly. He crawled to the case and found it empty.

  Grignal realized at that moment what had happened. He hadn’t been drugged. He’d been knocked unconscious by a psi. During his indoctrination for the war, he’d been given techniques to fend off such attacks, but the armistice had come shortly after, so he’d never had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of a human psi attack.

  Nearly all cities—especially a large city like Alé Surçois—required that someone like Sidanne be registered, but when the girl in question was the premier’s daughter, there would be courtesies offered and favors called in.

  “Sidanne?”

  He searched, much more wary now. He kept his mind sharp, ready to tighten his focus should she attack again. The tower above was clear, so he slipped along the edge of the roof, studying the dizzying number of floors below. He found her on the northern face, two stories down, naked and frail as a newborn robin. She was huddling against the biting wind that Grignal barely felt. She must have been trying to gain entrance through a window after finding the access door locked.

  “Up here, Sidanne,” Grignal said.

  She looked up and screamed, tried to shimmy along the ledge outside the windows, but as stiff as she was the danger of falling was great.

  “Please, no!” Grignal pulled back to keep his profile small, less threatening. “I’m here to help.”

  She stared up. Grignal had never seen a child’s eyes open so wide. As gaunt as she was the expression was sickening. Grignal remained, sending her calming words, and the more he did so the more she edged away from the heights of panic.

  Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her entire body jerked.

  For a moment, the city tipped upside down. Grignal felt like he was going to slip over the side with Sidanne, and they would both fall to their deaths. But the feeling fled as quickly as it had come.

  Grignal slipped over the side, dropped one floor, and used its ledge to slow his descent. He reached the second ledge just as Sidanne fell free. He caught her gently but firmly and laid her over his shoulder. She weighed nothing at all; it was unnatural.

  The climb back to the top of the building was awkward, but he gained the roof after several aborted attempts. He laid the tarp on the ground and cradled Sidanne onto it, and, not knowing what else to do, held her body still until the convulsions had passed. When she woke a few moments later, Grignal wrapped the tarp around her for warmth and to give her some small amount of decency.

  Sidanne cleared her throat several times before speaking. “Stay away from me.” Her voice was gravelly, raw.

  In the distance, a horn sounded five times. A tram was leaving the terminal. Sidanne’s skin seemed to have regained a little bit of color, and her cheeks didn’t look quite so sunken now.

  “I won’t come any closer, unless you try to jump again.” Grignal smiled, a gesture Sidanne didn’t return.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “A friend.”

  Her look said she thought the notion dubious, but she said nothing. She did, however, take in the city around them, and the more she did so, the more relieved her expression became. “I’m still in Alé Surçois?”

  Grignal failed to hide his surprise. “You knew where you were going?”

  “I remember my father and mother arguing. Father wanted me to go to see a man, a specialist. Mother forbid him from sending me away.”

  “What sort of specialist, Sidanne? Why did he want to send you away?”

  “Because . . .” Sidanne looked utterly confused. “I was passing out, headaches and . . . My father . . . My mother, she . . .” Her expression turned to worry and then one of outright horror.

  “It’s all right.” Grignal said. “Memories can be fuzzy after you wake up. It’ll pass in a few hours.”

  She looked up at him, a desperate expression on her face. “I need to get back to my mother. I need to go home.”

  The access door behind Sidanne creaked open. Remmiau stepped onto the roof. His eyes thinned as he alternated glances between Grignal and Sidanne. “What’s going on here, mate?”

  Sidanne tried to get up, but her simultaneous attempt at keeping her decency and getting away from Remmiau caused her to tip over. Remmiau shot forward, wrapped one arm around her neck, and hauled her up to her feet.

  “Stop it, Rem. We were talking.”

  Remmiau stared at Grignal like he couldn’t believe his ears. “Talking?” He tightened his hold on her neck and with his free hand retrieved an ampoule from his coat. When he pinched it between thumb and forefinger, it emitted a tiny crunch. He then waved the activated anesthetic beneath her nostrils.

  “Stop it!” Grignal wanted to intervene, but he was afraid he’d hurt Sidanne if he was too forceful.

  “Like we don’t have enough trouble, you big bloody lizard.”

  Sidanne’s eyes lost focus. Remmiau set her down roughly on the tarp and stared at Grignal. “It’s nearly noon. You been playing footsie this whole time?”

  Grignal already felt like he was on shaky ground. Remmiau always seemed to do that to him. “She’s in trouble, Rem. We need to help her.”

  “She’s in trouble?” He exhaled noisily. “We’re in trouble. The Men in Red came to the park a few hours ago. Took everyone.”

  Grignal could only stare. “Everyone?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “Bayard?”

  “Quick one, aren’t ya? Yes, Bayard, Ijia.”

  Grignal felt his guts tighten. “Ijia?”

  “Everyone. Which is why we need to get her somewhere safe. We need to make a deal with her good old dad and get the hell out of this city.”

  “How did you get away?”

  He grinned his pointed-tooth grin. “Don’t I always tell you I’m slippery as greased shit?”

  Nothing was adding up. Grignal trusted Remmiau to a degree—he’d never caused him any direct harm—but if there was one person Grignal thought might sell the troupe out, it would be Remmiau. And then there was the way Remmiau had acted last night: he seemed too eager to get this deal done.

  “Rem, we need to talk to her mother.”

  “Why, to pick up some diapers? Nothing doing, big boy. We’re heading underside and setting up a talk with the premier. Word is he’s willing to talk to get his precious daughter back.”

  “No, her mother will help. She was trying to protect her from Jaubert.”

  “What’s that mean to me? Nothing. Now get your leathery backside moving, we don’t have much time.” And with that Remmiau turned back to the girl and began tightening the tarp.

  This smelled really funny and Grignal couldn’t let Remmiau run the show. Not this time. Things were too important, especially when the entire troupe and a girl’s life were in the balance.

  “Come on,” Remmiau snapped.

  Grignal picked up Remmiau.

  “Hey, get off!”

  Stepped to the edge of the building.

  “Grignal!”

  And held Remmiau out over the edge.

  “Stop!”

  “Listen to me, Rem,” Grignal said calmly.

  “Stop it!”

  “I said listen.”

  Remmiau breathed in great gasps of air. He was on the verge of hyperventilating.

  “We’ve never quite seen eye to eye, you and I. But I’ve put up with it for the sake of keeping the peace. But this is different. This girl is caught up in something strange, and we’re going to try to get her out of it.”

  Remmiau stared.

  “You need to nod, Rem, so I know you understand.”

  Remmiau nodded.
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  “Good. Now you and I are going to figure out a way to get to her mother. She’s going to help us get Sidanne and the troupe out of this. All right?”

  “All . . . right,” Remmiau croaked.

  “One more thing—and this is where you need to listen real close.”

  Remmiau nodded.

  “You don’t have to nod, ’cause this is just the way it is. If I figure out that you’re lying, that you’ve made some kind of deal for your own benefit, I’m going to pop your head from your neck.”

  Remmiau stared, fear plain in his eyes. There was indignation there, too. Grignal hoped it was sincere.

  Grignal threw Remmiau to the roof. He collapsed immediately. “Now how can we get to Sidanne’s mother?”

  They took Sidanne to a safe house Remmiau had set up before he’d come to find Grignal. She woke a few hours later while Remmiau was out digging for information. Remmiau turned up nothing, but Sidanne said she could get them inside her family’s apartment, where her mother would surely be. Remmiau didn’t like it, but he couldn’t think of a better plan. So with the last of their liquid credits, Remmiau bought a digital key that would allow them inside the premier’s tower. It only granted janitorial access, but it was enough to get them to the penthouse floor. Sidanne said she would take care of the rest.

  They met two guards at the entrance, but since Jaubert was attending a public function, they were unprepared for this kind of opposition. As agreed, Remmiau watched the front entrance while Sidanne and Grignal searched the penthouse for Ettienne. The air smelled humid, an uncommon luxury in any city.

  They found Ettienne a few minutes later in a lush, sprawling room with a beautiful view of the entire city. Sidanne ran into her mother’s arms, while Ettienne stared at Grignal, her face a mixture of joy and confusion. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and her green eyes shone in the dim ambient light. She was beautiful, and the resemblance to Sidanne was unmistakable: strong cheekbones, pointed chin, delicate ears.