Rishi pulled her close, burying her head in his chest and held her tight for a minute. Even after everything they'd been through there was something clean and male in his scent that eased the tension inside her. Her released her and studied the enormous space.
“To ensure we would not repeat our past mistakes. Scratching for survival, as you put it, might not satisfy your people, but at least we are alive. According to the stories, when the sky wars broke out, we destroyed half the stars in the galaxy. What we have here is less, but if we destroy what we have built on this planet, we hurt only ourselves.”
“That's a high price,” Kara said. “I'm not sure my people would make the same choice.” She had learned something of the Maruts’ history, and pondered the changes that had brought an intergalactic spacefaring race, with technology advanced way beyond what her people had achieved, to accepting the fate of living as nomads. What a tragedy that they'd amputated their past in order to survive and create their future. “Isn't there plenty of room in space for everyone?”
Rishi shrugged off the question. “I'm sure you're right, but that's a question we must discuss when we're around the campfire after our marriage ceremony.” He pulled her close.
She made a weak effort to push him away. “I need more time, you, you, Marut tribesman or I'll slap that stupid grin off your face.” She raised her hand as if to hit him, but he caught her wrist.
“With pleasure,” he answered his eyes glinting with enjoyment. “We Maruts like a woman with spirit.” He laughed as he released her. “But we can't stay here forever, much as I'm tempted to spend eternity here with you.”
“Oh, just say the words. I'm hungry.”
“As you wish, gradhaig.” Rishi repeated the ancient phrase slowly and carefully.
A light pulsed over on the far wall, and a drawer slid out with several packages on it.
They stood motionless until Kara strode over to the shelf and stared down at half a dozen small containers. “Wow! I guess this confirms we're in the place where everybody ate. These must be their version of space rations, though they don’t look like anything I've ever seen.” There were two cups, and four square-shaped boxes made of a substance she didn't recognize. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn the ship had scanned them on entry, assessed their vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, directed them here, and produced something to redress any imbalance. They grabbed the cups and boxes and sat at the nearest table.
“Can we eat this stuff?” Rishi asked, poking a container with his finger, and looking at it as if it held poison.
“If they're synthetically manufactured, yes.” She leaned forward, animated. “If the ship can preserve itself, respond to spoken instruction, and synthesize food, it's possible other parts are still in good working condition.”
Rishi's face lit up. “You're suggesting it might fly among the stars?”
“That's not what I meant, but, yes, since you mention it, it's a possibility.” She speculated about the location of the control room. Maybe they could look for it? First they’d try the food, though. Hopefully it was edible.
They opened the cups. The liquid sloshing gently inside appeared to be clean water.
“You first,” Kara challenged.
''Typical spacer. Get someone else to risk their lives first, eh?” He sniffed the liquid and drank a sip. “Mmm, tastes fresh and sweet. Like you, gradhaig.”
“My name is Kara.” She emphasized each word. “Not gradhaig. Please call me Kara.” Suddenly she'd had enough. “My father gave me that name.” Her voice caught in her throat as her fingers fumbled at the edges of the container. “And what does that word mean anyway?”
His eyes narrowed at her tone. “Beloved,” he said quietly, “gradhaig means beloved.”
She stared at him, troubled by the unconcealed emotion on his face. The silence in the vast empty room weighed on her.
“We can mind-speak to each other. That is the sign, and you will see our ability to communicate in that way will increase as time passes. Is it too much for you?” he asked softly.
“Yes.” She looked at him. His eyes glowed amber in the muted light, and for once she had nothing more to say. Instead she tore the top off the box. “What's this? You try it first,” she said staring at a brown square lump. “After all, it was designed for your metabolism.”
“You will get used to it,” he spoke gently. “We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
Says you, she thought. “Eat. I'm starving.”
Rishi sniffed the food, before picking it up, licking it, and letting the taste settle on his tongue.
She was glad he let the subject of their relationship drop. Her emotions were still in turmoil. She'd neither forgotten nor forgiven him, but she had been, and still was, drawn to him, and the memory of his skin next to hers wouldn't stay out of her mind. But foremost they had to stay alive, find a route out, get back to the tribe, then and then only would she think about her feelings for him. For the moment, they were a team, working toward a common goal, but that was it. They had no future together.
“So far, so good.” He took the smallest of bites chewing it with care. As the taste unfolded, he smiled. “Mmm, tastes like Yleni's breadcakes. But still,” he replaced the block in the box, “we wait a bit longer. If I start foaming at the mouth or anything unusual, stick your fingers down my throat and I’ll vomit. Can you do that?”
She thought he was joking but a glance at his face told her he was serious. “Sure,” she said scrutinizing his face for any change that meant the food was unsafe. She didn't mention that a technology which kept water fresh for perhaps centuries, possibly millennia, could easily lace the substance with a fast-acting toxin that would make vomiting futile. “Any ill effects?”
“I feel like cramming the lot in, but better slow and alive, eh?”
They waited in silence for a few minutes more, then Rishi picked up the whole square and ate it with gusto.
Kara picked hers up. It didn't resemble the samples she seen at the Academy of the synth rations spacers ate. How a spaceship retained the ability to produce the stuff after, well, maybe eons, was a sign of how advanced the technology must be. She nibbled at the brown block. “Aren't you going to eat any more?”
“I'm full. Besides, it’s not good to eat a lot after fasting.”
By the time she finished her square, she, too, was stuffed, and the fare had tasted good if unattractive to the eye.
“We have enough for at least the next while,” he said, scooping the boxes up and using the leather rope to tie them into a bundle, then looping it over his shoulder. He might have ripped his jerkin to shreds, but he was remarkably inventive in finding other uses for it.
“I want to search for the control center.” Kara tossed the remark out, hoping Rishi would still be too intimidated by his surroundings to object.
“No. We must find a way out. We have to rejoin Ikeya and the tribe. He will be greatly distraught, as will Yleni, at our disappearance.”
“But—”
“Kara, no.”
She bit her lip. This was important. Didn’t he understand this was a once in a millennium discovery? But he was the one who knew the prayers. She tried to wipe the sullen expression off her face.
“Another time. I promise you, we will come back.”
She gave up arguing. “Okay, but how do we make it understand we need a means to return to the surface?” she asked.
“It?” queried Rishi.
“Yes, the spaceship. It protected itself and us from the collapsing mountain, let us in, fed us and next we want it to show us how to get out. You said it yourself. We can't stay here forever.”
“Open the way to our deliverance,” he murmured, looking at her. “Say it with me, Kara.”
She was glad he hadn’t called her beloved. That was getting more than aggravating since she’d learned the meaning of the word. She tried to repeat the phrase, but all she could manage of the ancient prayer was a mangled stream of unintelligi
ble syllables.
“You've not got it quite right. Try a bit more slowly. After me.”
“Are you sure? If I get it wrong, anything could happen. We might be vaporized or something.” But she needn't have worried. Rishi was a good teacher, correcting her pronunciation with patience till she had it down pat.
“Okay,” Rishi said, “let's do it.”
Chapter Sixteen: The Mountain Maruts
Mountain Marut Proverb:
Hospitality is the emollient that softens our exchanges and firms our relationships.
Kara screamed as Rishi disintegrated.
They had clutched each other’s hands for comfort as they stood in the dining hall chanting the prayer or instruction or whatever it was to the spaceship command hub. The vessel responded, and the lights in the room dimmed, except a few on the far side, indicating another corridor. The slap of their boots against the metal floor was the only sound that broke the eerie silence as, hand in hand, they followed the long curving silver corridor. Eventually they came to a small circular room with two circles of light winking on and off in the center of the floor. Both felt jittery, not knowing what to expect. As they approached, the distance between the two flickering circles forced them to drop hands. The instant they stood on the circles of light, the blinking ceased and a humming noise began.
Kara looked up at the ceiling, and over at Rishi. Which was when she screamed. Afterward everything went black. She floated in nothingness. Rainbow colors swirled and twisted in the most wonderful patterns and shapes. For the briefest instant she saw her mother’s face, looking down at her, eyes crinkled with laughter and love, her soft suntanned hands reaching to stroke her face with a tenderness she missed. She opened her eyes to a pale sky, and breathed in the soft wind smelling of desert sand and the stink of satyrs. The breeze carried the cool freshness of early morning.
Rishi moaned.
She sat up, looked at him, and everything came back in a rush. "Rishi!” The spacecraft had transported them to a small hillock. Behind them rose foothills, and further in the distance, the mountains. She could hear tinkling bells like those children sometimes put around the necks of the baby satyrs in order to find them when they wandered away from their mothers.
"Gradhaig! You disappeared. You became nothing.” He stared at her, grief-stricken.
" F'talah ya'alamein kharishnah,” she whispered softly. "Show us the way.”
" F'talah ya'alamein kharishnah,” he repeated. "Do you believe what we have seen is real?”
"The two of us sharing an identical dream? Yes, it was real.” Her brain kicked into overdrive, and she gasped as she understood what had happened. The Maruts’ ancestors had developed a particle transporter device. This was an idea her people had worked on for a very, very long time, but despite great advances, they’d never yet developed one that reassembled molecules in an identical state. Research had been abandoned after a series of disasters, taken up, and again put on hold.
"We must not speak of this to anyone.” His expression was grave. "You must believe me in this. We must tell no one, no one at all, till we find Ikeya. I trust him alone. He'll know what to do. Besides nobody would believe us, or that the Artefact revealed itself to a rakshasa.”
She bristled at the term. "How is it then, you call a foreign devil gradhaig?” She scowled at him.
"Sometimes we cannot explain the workings of, how would your people say it, the universe. Promise me you will remain silent about this.”
Kara bit her lip. This was bigger than anything else she’d discovered about the Maruts… but it wasn’t her secret to tell. At least not yet. “I promise not to tell anyone about the most amazing discovery I am ever likely to come across in my—”
“Oh, gradhaig,” he cut her off, leaned in close, and the gold sparks in his eyes glittered in the sun. “There is much more for us to discover in life.” He kissed her gently on the lips. “Thank you.”
She tried to ignore the heat in her cheeks, and how ridiculously happy she was to have pleased him.
The tinkling bells came closer.
Rishi’s eyebrows rose. "This could be the same tribe that sent those warriors into the cave after us.”
A satyr kid bounded up the hill toward them on its woolly stick legs, coming to an abrupt halt when it espied them.
Rishi leapt up and had the animal by the scruff of its neck, ignoring its mewling as it fretted to be free.
A skinny curly-haired boy of around seven, followed by a girl with a similar cast to her face, came clambering up the slope. They stared, their eyes large with astonishment as they saw first Kara, then Rishi holding the little satyr.
"Greetings, Traveler.” Rishi uttered the ritual phrase. "I believe this belongs to your tribe?”
The boy’s eyes widened even more, but he recovered his manners. "Greetings, Traveler,” he replied, and gave a small bow to Rishi.
"This is what you are chasing?” Rishi gave the lad an encouraging smile as he led the protesting kid toward him.
The youngster produced a length of rope and tied it around the kid’s neck.
The younger girl, looking so like the boy she had to be his sister, stood behind him ogling the strangers.
Kara gave the girl a smile, heartened when she responded with a big grin.
"We'll follow you as we wish to greet your Shanwatah,” Rishi told him.
The lad nodded casually as if finding strangers in the desert was normal, though his powers of speech seemed to have departed after the ritual greeting.
Rishi waited a minute as the brother and his sister ran ahead. The little girl kept looking over her shoulder at Kara and giving her tentative smiles.
"It’s better this way, rather than wait till he tells his people about us and they come looking.” His eyebrows drew together and a small frown marked his forehead.
"What are we going to say? I mean how do we explain why we’re out here by ourselves? And what of those two warriors? If this is the same tribe, they’ll know we stole their food.” She was worried. How would this new group treat her, a foreigner? They might hate her more than some of Rishi’s tribespeople. On the other hand, could it be worse than being kidnapped and tossed in a well, or being buried alive under a mountain?
"I'll tell them…” he paused, the frown deepening. She could see the wheels turning furiously in his head. "I'll say our tribe ran short of water, and we were seeking a well when we became lost in a storm.” Relief replaced the frown. "Those two men are dead, and may have been sent in to check the stores, and decided to come after us straightaway without informing anyone else of our presence. It’s a chance we’ll have to take. If they ask you, why you didn’t stay with the women, you say we are newlywed. They’ll accept that as a reason.” He appeared satisfied with his explanation. “Is there anything else?”
"Where are the water bottles? And the food you had?” She panicked. That would be enough to convict them if this turned out to be the tribe whose cave they’d sheltered in—and raided.
"They,” he groped at his waist where he’d tucked the food packets away, "are gone, along with the food we took from the Artefact. Forget them. Listen, Kara,” he grabbed her shoulders, turned her to face him, and shook her to get her attention. "You are my wife. Here, among another tribe, your life may depend on it. Let me do the talking. In public, Marut women do not express their opinions too much. If they ask you too many questions, just pretend you don’t understand. Okay?” He shook her a bit harder, his face intent.
"Yes, yes. I got it.” She wasn't happy but she understood. This aspect of Marut culture was the hardest to swallow. Colonists appreciated brains not brawn. "You big master, me obedient submissive wife. You talk, I listen.” She stared at his chest, her mouth a tight line.
"Gradhaig,” he hissed. "Look at me!”
She stared at him, her resentment clear.
"You do not yet understand enough of our ways yet, but pretend, if nothing else. Please, Kara, if you want to see your father again
, you must do as I say.”
That he could manipulate her so easily was maddening, but she recognized that, in this, she would have to do as he bade her.
He pulled her to him, squeezed her against him, before kissing her. “Come. Remember, this is for your protection.”
Kara gritted her teeth, a habit she seemed to be doing a lot since that kallin bear had appeared out of nowhere and decided she’d make a tasty snack.
They hurried to catch up with the two children, watching the baby satyr pulling against the rope, determined to go in any direction other than the one they were leading him.
The sun leapt clear of the hills and its heat struck them a mild blow, a warning of what the day would bring.
Kara pulled her shawl over her head. Rishi smiled in approval, and she snorted bad-temperedly, but let him tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
He took her hand, and they followed the two children up another hill, but even before they were halfway up, the pungent animal smell of satyrs assailed them. As they gained the summit, Rishi gasped. Spread out before them were the carts and herds of a huge tribe.
With a proud smile on his face, the boy waved his arm. "Welcome to the camp of the Northern Mountain Tribes.”
The tents sat in the familiar circular formation, but here, the tents spread out in three increasingly large circles, the satyrs contentedly grazed the extensive lappa bushes beyond the camp.
"This tribe is far greater in size than ours.” Rishi spoke in an undertone, as he studied the encampment.
"How do they supply such numbers?”
Rishi shrugged. "Each tribe organizes itself. Just as we do.”
Within sight of his people, the youth became more confident. "Come, I will take you to Shanwatah Hitam.”
Rishi pulled her back. “My apologies,” he said softly, as he pulled her shawl even more forward, hiding most of her face.
She put her hands up to push the scarf back, but Rishi grabbed her wrists, stopping her “What are—”
“Shh.”
“I can hardly see where I’m going!” she protested.
Veiled Planet (Hidden World Trilogy Book 1) Page 14
