Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Unlike his voice and words, the pain didn’t feel like something he’d done deliberately.

  He fought it back, holding me tighter.

  I’m really fucking hungry, wife, his mind murmured. Gaos. We’d better go eat. We’d better go eat now, or I’ll end up taking you back to the room.

  I gripped his arms in my hands, nodding.

  I felt the pain too, but I almost didn’t care.

  I was just so glad he was there.

  Relief suffused me––more relief than I could feel all at once, more than I could think through. A part of me just wanted to curl up against him, to go back to his room and his bed and take off our clothes so we could curl up into and around each other.

  I didn’t want to think about Cass.

  I didn’t want to think about Balidor, and whatever he’d been doing with Cass.

  More than anything, I didn’t want to think about what he’d said about Cass being different now. I didn’t want to think about the way her eyes looked when I first met her gaze, the guilt, fear––the hope I’d seen in her eyes when they met mine.

  I didn’t want to think about how worried she’d looked, sitting on the floor in black leggings and Balidor’s white dress shirt.

  I didn’t want to think about how much she’d looked like my friend.

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  So I didn’t.

  13

  NEW MEXICO

  LAST PRESIDENT OF the United States, Moira Brooks, watched the woman across the fire from her warily, her wrists tied together and to her ankles.

  Her stomach growled as she watched the seer stir something that looked and smelled like meat chili in a small organic pot she’d placed on a stone in the fire.

  A second container, also collapsible and organic, held a spicy-smelling liquid that wasn’t familiar to Brooks, but reminded her vaguely of cider.

  It was just the two of them now.

  They’d stopped for the night.

  Apparently, at least one of them was also about to be treated to real food.

  Brooks herself hadn’t put any real food in her stomach for about five days, nothing apart from bites of condensed military rations and water.

  Truthfully, Brooks was surprised they’d stopped at all, even though it had to be after midnight. The seer had picked up the pace of late, despite abandoning their last vehicle, which unfortunately housed an old hybrid electric and gas-powered engine, not solar.

  Rather than looking for a new one, or staying by or on the road, the seer pulled off into the dirt, coasting the truck to a stop near the edge of a cliff.

  She then proceeded to empty what she wanted from the truck––a military assault rifle, a container of magazines, a large skein of water, two packs, and Brooks herself.

  Outside, under that beating New Mexico sun, she announced they would be continuing on foot.

  She made Brooks help her push the truck off the edge of the cliff once she had everything out of it she wanted. Along with the seer, Brooks stared down into the gully as the truck careened wildly down the steep bank. She watched the truck disappear into a thicket of scrub brush and hard-looking trees, what might have been a bosque back when that part of the river contained actual water.

  Then the female seer led them out into the New Mexico desert.

  She took the heavier pack, shouldering it on with the rifle as if they weighed nothing. She had Brooks carry the water and most of their food in the second pack, cuffing her wrists except when the seer needed her to have her hands free to climb.

  They walked like that for most of four days.

  Now they were further north, in a land that looked different from what Brooks remembered seeing from the truck as they drove along the highway. There were few to no buildings up here, for one. She hadn’t seen a single living person, although they had come across bones, here and there, and some of those had looked human.

  It was hot, and dry, especially for October.

  Even so, she couldn’t say the land itself was uninteresting.

  Plateaus, bluffs and dramatic mountains broke the horizon in the distance. Some fell directly in their path, forcing them to walk over or around. Giant rock formations, unusual and otherworldly, stood stark and beautiful against a pale blue sky that seemed to go on forever.

  The nights held so many stars, the black bowl of sky looked like something from a virtual painting.

  Brooks had trouble seeing the whole thing as real at times, even in daylight.

  Only in her imagination and movies did such landscapes exist.

  She heard coyotes, owls, foxes, even bats. Some of the noises alarmed her, not having been an outdoorsy sort of person for most of her life. She’d certainly spent no time sleeping outdoors, or traversing across a desert empty of any sign of human civilization.

  Even now, as she slumped by an open campfire, she jumped occasionally at a sound that came from outside the ring of light cast by the fire. She felt exhausted, and dehydrated, even though the seer gave her water whenever she asked.

  Given how the seer had knelt down and trussed her up prior to making the fire, Brooks didn’t expect to get a lot of sleep, though.

  Truthfully, Brooks wondered why the seer hadn’t just killed her.

  She had to be slowing her down.

  Then again, Brooks didn’t understand what they were doing at all at this point, unless the female intended to meet up with seer friends of hers somewhere near here.

  The seer must have heard her.

  She looked up from the pot she was stirring with a stick, her dark red eyes reflecting light from the fire. Black braids hung down on either side of her face, framing her angular cheekbones and those inhumanly sculpted lips.

  “I don’t have many friends left, cousin,” the seer said, her voice grim. “If you’re waiting for reinforcements for yourself, however, you might not have long to wait.”

  Brooks didn’t answer.

  Even so, she couldn’t help noticing the frown that touched the seer’s lips, or the sad expression that flickered briefly across her face. Brooks had always been good at reading facial expressions. It was part of what made her a good negotiator, and a good politician.

  Watching the seer stir the pot, she exhaled, deciding what the hell.

  “Why did you do it?” she said.

  It was a question she hadn’t dared to ask until now.

  The seer’s eyes narrowed down at the chili in the organic pot.

  “Did the Bridge do something to you? The Sword?” Brooks pursed her lips. “Or weren’t the humans dying fast enough for you?”

  That time, those red eyes flickered up. Still stirring the pot, the seer stared at Brooks as if she were some unusually intelligent species of animal. Brooks couldn’t help wondering if, from the seer’s perspective, that’s exactly what she was.

  After another pause, the seer blew out her cheeks, making that soft clicking noise seers sometimes made. Brooks never did figure out a precise meaning for that sound, despite all her years of working around seers. She’d heard seers at the White House make that sound when they were thinking, when they were annoyed, to punctuate something they were saying, or to express dismay or sympathy.

  Not all tonalities of the clicks were the same, of course.

  When the red-eyed seer did it by the fire under the New Mexico sky, it sounded like she was annoyed. Or possibly sad and annoyed together.

  “You would not understand, cousin,” she said only.

  Brooks grunted.

  At that, the red-eyed seer frowned, looking up.

  “You are arrogant enough to presume you would understand me?” she said coldly. “Perhaps I should call you sister, then? Not cousin?”

  Brooks snorted openly at that.

  “I don’t know if it’s arrogance,” she said, a faint derision in her voice, in spite of herself. “But I don’t happen to think our species are as different as you seem to. My people betray one another for a whole host of reasons, too, ‘c
ousin.’ Everything from personal vendettas, to sex, money, power, religion, their children, fame, fear, ideology… even a petty grudge. I doubt your reasons are so mystical I wouldn’t be able to understand them.”

  The seer only stared at her for a few seconds.

  From the intensity of that stare, Brooks couldn’t help feeling the other was probably reading her mind. Remembering how easily she’d killed every human member of Brooks’ remaining administration in the control room at Langley, Brooks fought back a stab of nerves.

  “Why am I still alive?” She bit her lip, stopping herself from saying more. When the seer didn’t look up from the cooking pot, she blurted out more words anyway. “I did what you wanted, right? I heard the feeds in the truck. I know what we did to China.”

  A surge of nausea hit at her own words.

  Biting her lip, she fought back the feeling, and the images the feed broadcast evoked while she listened to it in the cab of that truck.

  The silence deepened between them.

  Then the seer clicked again, softer.

  “Yes, cousin,” she said. “We both fulfilled our purpose, apparently.”

  Brooks frowned, hearing the bitterness behind the seer’s words.

  She heard more than that, too.

  “And just what purpose did you serve?” Brooks’ frown deepened. “Since no bombs have fallen here, I have to assume Beijing was your goal… that you weren’t trying to get China to attack us in retaliation. Unless you only accomplished half your goal.”

  The seer didn’t speak, or look up from the pot.

  “Did you kill the Bridge and Sword?” Brooks retorted. “That was your goal too, wasn’t it? Last I knew, they were both in Beijing.”

  Chandre looked up that time, her eyes cold, despite their color.

  “I don’t know.” Her heavily-accented English grew a faint warning. “And none of this was my design, cousin. None of it.” A heavier note reached her words. “But I suspect you are right as to the goal of the bombing. In both respects.”

  There was a silence.

  Brooks continued to frown at her, studying her angular face in the firelight.

  Was she saying she was manipulated in some way to do this?

  How would one manipulate a seer like her? Was she blackmailed? Did they take someone she cared about? Or was it really some mystical, seer form of coercion?

  Until that day in the Langley intelligence briefing room, Brooks had never seen any seer kill people just by looking at them––well, apart from Alyson the Bridge herself, who’d been caught on surveillance feeds using her telekinesis during the attack on the Black Arrow Headquarters in Brazil. She’d thought it was something ordinary seers couldn’t do.

  Was this Chandre telekinetic, too? Or had she had help?

  Chandre grunted, but when Brooks looked over, the seer only looked away.

  A second later, she returned her gaze to Brooks.

  “As for why you’re alive, believe it or not, I have no wish to see you dead.” Shrugging gracefully with the hand not stirring the chili, the seer tilted her head sideways. “You are on the List. It is possible you are still targeted. I could not simply leave you there, after what happened.”

  Brooks only stared at her. Her eyes shifted to the dancing, sparking flames, then back to the chili while she thought about the seer’s words.

  After another pause, she grunted.

  “Leverage.” She looked up, once more meeting those coal-red eyes. “You’re hoping to use me as leverage. With who? The Bridge’s people? They were the only ones I know of trying to protect those people on the List.”

  Thinking about that, studying the seer’s eyes, she let out a derisive snort.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You want to use me to make some kind of deal. Why in the hell would they listen to you, after you killed their holy leader and her mate?”

  Chandre frowned.

  Turning away from the fire briefly, she rummaged through the big pack she’d carried that day, pulling out two organic metal disks. Brooks watched as she pressed the bottom of each, one by one, transforming them into bowls.

  Pulling the pot off the rock in the fire, she began pouring the chili into the two bowls in roughly equal amounts.

  The bowls rested on two of the rocks Chandre had used to put boundaries around the fire when the seer rose gracefully to her feet. She walked around the fire, and Brooks recoiled instinctively.

  The seer ignored it, crouching down beside her, just like she had when she’d chained her wrists to her ankles. Pulling a chain out of her shirt, she exposed a narrow, featureless cylinder that hung at the end of it and reached for Brooks’ cuffs.

  Inserting the cylinder in openings Brooks could barely see, she twisted.

  The cuffs around her ankles opened.

  A bare second later, those around her wrists opened, as well.

  “There are no utensils,” the seer grunted. “You will need your hands.”

  Brooks was rubbing her wrists, unable to speak for astonishment, when the seer rose gracefully back to her feet and walked back around the fire. Picking up one of the bowls of chili, she walked back just long enough to hand it to Brooks.

  Brooks took it, still watching the other warily, but Chandre didn’t stay long enough to assess her reaction. Walking back around the fire, she sat, cross-legged, and picked up her own bowl.

  Without waiting, she used her fingers to begin shoveling some of the chili to her mouth. The bowl was hot, difficult for Brooks to hold without her fingers hurting, but the seer didn’t hesitate, but simply continued to eat.

  More hesitantly, Brooks began to do the same.

  The first piece was hot, both spice-wise and temperature. Once that first chunk of meat melted in her mouth, however, she eagerly scooped up the next finger-full.

  A minute or so later, she was eating almost as fast as the seer.

  It was gone far too soon.

  Even so, Brooks’ stomach was uncomfortably full by the time she finished.

  Her system was also absorbing the food so quickly, she was already starting to feel drowsy by the time she set down the bowl. She spent a few minutes more doing her best to clean her hands, using a piece of cloth she’d used to wipe sweat earlier that day.

  It took her a few seconds of rubbing and wiping to get the chili oil off her hands, well enough that her fingers felt relatively dry.

  She was staring drowsily into the fire when the seer got up a second time, walking around the fire to hand her a tall, cylindrical cup.

  Inside was the cider-smelling drink.

  “Thank you,” Brooks said.

  She heard the real gratitude in her voice.

  The seer gave her a bemused look, but didn’t comment.

  Walking back around to the other side of the fire, she sank back to a cross-legged position and picked up her own cup.

  There was another silence while the two of them sipped their drinks, staring into the fire.

  Then, clicking mildly, the seer looked up. Meeting Brooks’ gaze, she tilted her hand in the air, like a bird in flight.

  It wasn’t a gesture Brooks knew the meaning of.

  “There’s a good chance they won’t listen to me, cousin,” she said, continuing their conversation before dinner as if there had been no break. The seer’s dark red eyes flickered up, meeting Brooks’. “It is likely they won’t. But you are all I have, cousin. I have to try.”

  “Why?” Brooks stared at her, oddly frustrated. “Why talk to them at all? Why not just run? Leave me somewhere they’re likely to find me?”

  There was another silence.

  Then the seer sighed, pushing the braids back from her face.

  “I have to try,” she repeated.

  Pausing, she gestured a graceful wave, subduing her voice.

  “I have no illusions your life will win me mine. But it might win me an audience. With the Adhipan. Possibly even with the Council. It might earn me a hearing… before I am killed.”

 
; “Before you’re killed,” Brooks repeated, disbelieving.

  “Yes.” The seer met her gaze, her dark eyes unmoving. “I do not fear death.”

  “You don’t fear death, yet you wish absolution?” Brooks couldn’t stop a note of scorn from creeping into her voice. “Or do you simply want a soapbox to spout your ideology and reasons to any who will listen?”

  Those coal red eyes grew cold.

  “Like I said,” the seer said. “You would not understand.”

  Brooks grunted.

  “I understand fine,” she said. “It’s ego. You can’t stand to leave this world with them thinking badly of you. As if anything you say now will matter, after what you did.”

  Silence fell, broken only by the pop and crackle of burning wood.

  The seer didn’t look up from those flames.

  Still frowning, Brooks watched her angular face.

  “Why tie me up at all, then?” she said after another pause. “Surely you don’t have any illusions I could outrun you out here?” She motioned around at the desert. “Or out-smart you, or trick you… given what you are and what I am?”

  She paused when the seer didn’t answer.

  She watched Chandre take a long drink from the tall cylinder, her eyes on the night sky now, as if she had only just noticed the sea of stars filling the bowl overhead.

  “Why not let me sleep for a change?” Brooks pressed. “I’ll slow you down less, if I get some real sleep. A few hours. I could start now, while you’re still awake.”

  The seer didn’t look at her.

  Leaning back on the palm of her free hand, she only blinked, gazing up at the stars.

  Brooks gave up, sighing.

  She took another sip of the cider, and had to admit, it was good. It warmed her from her throat down to her belly, taking away most of the chill of the desert night. Gazing into the fire, she finished the drink slowly, then set the cup on the red dirt next to where she sat cross-legged on the ground.

  Leaning back on her hands, she gazed up at the sky, too, once more fighting disbelief when she saw the sheer number and brightness of the stars overhead.

  She looked down, about to try and speak to Chandre again, when she started in alarm, her eyes widening when the seer loomed suddenly over her.