Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance)

by Veronica Scott

  Celixia opened the red box and handed Bithia a cylindrical container. The erstwhile goddess opened it with a fluid tap on the right side and drank it in one long swallow. “Marvelous to be able to eat and drink again. I can’t tell you the pleasure of the simple act.”

  “Take it easy since it’s been so long,” Nate said as Celixia crumbled a dense breadlike substance packed with dried maroon-striped berries. “You don’t want to overtax your digestive system all at once.”

  Bithia nodded, her mouth full of the bread. She reached for the second flagon of what Celixia had called the Two Wines and swallowed more slowly. “This room is only part of the installation we have here at Nochen. The panel there”—she nodded at the facing wall—“opens into the main research chamber, storerooms, private quarters. I can get my things, including clothing that’s more appropriate.” She frowned at her glimmering dress.

  Nate realized she must be wearing a nightgown. She glared at him. Too late, he remembered Bithia could read any thought of his she chose, except for the ones behind the mental block he had on details of the storehouse excursion. He changed the subject from clothing to escape. “Can we get out of this complex? Into the city maybe? Or even better, into the open countryside?”

  Bithia, chewing with gusto, nodded.

  Into Nate’s head came the sequence of the symbols to push to open the access to the rest of the installation. He located the correct portion of the display and keyed the circuit. Silently and efficiently, a panel slid back, revealing a lighted passageway beyond.

  Intrigued to find out what lay ahead, Nate waited while Bithia finished her mouthful. Then she stood, a bit shakily, brushing crumbs from her clothing. Instantly, Nate was at her elbow, steadying her, earning himself a breathtaking smile.

  “Well, boys and girls, shall we see more of the marvels of Fr’taray?” Thom asked. “Left to yourselves, you two would stand and make googly eyes at each other all day.”

  Nate escorted Bithia across the healing chamber and entered the passageway, the others close behind. The wall silently closed behind them, leaving no sign of their ever having been in the healing chamber, save for a few crumbs on the stair and two discarded containers.

  The Sleeping Goddess of Nochen slept no more on her metallic couch.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As the wall panel slid closed behind him, Nate found himself in a brightly lit, featureless hallway ten yards in length. The floor sloped sharply upward. Bithia walked forward with confident eagerness, so he trailed her, senses alert for trouble of any kind. At the other end, the passage opened into a large room. Jaw dropping, hand on her chest over her heart, she stopped on the threshold. “This isn’t right. Where are all the experiments? The supplies?”

  “Place is a mess, all right, ma’am.” Taking point, Thom stepped past her and Nate and moved into the center of the room, examining the disarray. “Kinda reminds me of the storehouse. Personnel cleared out of here in a hurry too.”

  The lab had been gutted, equipment and furnishings torn from their stands or wall fastenings. A few bulky pieces of unknown equipment sat askew on the floor. Several items appeared to be in the process of being disassembled, parts of all sizes and shapes spread on the floor, as if the technician stepped away in the middle of the task, expecting to resume later. One huge item hung suspended precariously from a nest of tubes and struts. Another tall set of shelves had been toppled to the floor, broken containers surrounded by ancient chemical stains etched onto the surface of the floor. Crates like those Nate had seen in the storehouse lay scattered here and there on the room’s periphery, dozens of small flat items spilling from them, fanning across the cold black floor. Thom squatted to retrieve a handful of the tiny, colorful disks, letting them slip through his fingers back to the floor like glittering drops of water.

  “Data records.” Bithia’s attention was drawn by the sound. “But those were the most precious thing to my father and his team. He’d never leave such things in disorder and upheaval. And why were people dismantling the lab? And so haphazardly?”

  Nate hoped they weren’t going to come upon more corpses. He didn’t think Bithia was ready for murder mysteries involving people she knew. The destruction of the lab appeared to be upsetting her enough. “So this isn’t the condition the room was in the last time you were here?”

  “Not at all. If the staff was going to take the time to disassemble the fixtures and box the records, why didn’t anyone come to the healing chamber and set me free? I was so close, one hall away. How could they have done all this work in here and not bothered to come for me?” Bithia’s voice faltered. “What happened? To my father? Why was the work stopped before it was complete?”

  Nate took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “We’ll probably never know. Maybe ignorance is for the best, all things considered. There must have been reasons, probably good ones, in their minds.” He cut off her protest with a shake of the head. “I realize the concept’s a hard thing for you to accept. I know the events happened just yesterday for you, or a few days ago in conscious time, but it’s been thousands of years here. Even if we had the answers, knowledge wouldn’t bring your father and your friends back. We have to concentrate on the here and now, and it’s essential we escape the city without delay.”

  “I—I know you’re right. It’s hard to—to accept, to take it in.” Bithia raised one hand to her eyes and dashed away the welling tears. “When I dreamed of leaving that cursed device, I visualized myself walking through the door and finding things as I left them. My father, my friends, the team I came here with—” Breaking off, she shut her eyes as if in pain. “I understood the impossibility of my dream, but the last thing I expected to find would be this mad chaos.” She leaned against Nate, face set in a pained expression, and assessed the disorder surrounding her. “It’s too chaotic to even know what to touch first to set things back to rights.” She laughed ruefully, staring into Nate’s face. “And there’s no need for me to take on the task in any event. Of all the ridiculous things to think about, given our real problems—”

  “Clothes, ma’am? I believe you wanted to change?” Thom said helpfully, as if a more mundane subject might ease the tension.

  Bithia seemed grateful for the distraction. She regarded her beautiful, but inappropriate, lavender nightgown with disfavor, plucking at its pleats with her left hand.

  “My private meditation compartment is across the lab and on the hall to the left. My clothes should be there. I don’t want to be escaping across the length and breadth of Talonque in the nightgown I’ve worn for centuries. Come on.” Bithia led the way, keeping one hand clasped in Nate’s.

  Atletl and Celixia trailed them, curious but apparently not impressed. This room held none of the flashy mysteries of the healing chamber, only piles of strange equipment and scattered bins and incomprehensible data records. A strong sense of complete and final abandonment hung in the lab. It was like a gigantic broken puzzle, missing pieces and impossible to reassemble. There was nothing there to hold any of them, save Bithia, and she was trying hard to focus on the actual needs of the moment. Through their link, Nate sensed her grief and anxiety under the relatively calm surface she was maintaining.

  “Are you doing okay?” he asked, bending to speak privately to her. “You’re favoring your right leg. Are you in pain?”

  Bithia laughed ruefully. “Habit. My leg was so damaged by the tolokon venom before I went into the healing chamber that I could barely stand. I’m used to limping.”

  She keyed the open symbol to let them into the farthest left portal of four set into the opposite wall. The eexit led to another short corridor, lined on both sides with small rooms, like whitewashed monks’ cells. The door to each was gaping open. As he passed, Nate could see all the rooms were empty and featureless, as if freshly constructed and yet to be used.

  “Samia’s, Tedesk’s, Rebehr’s—” As she walked, Bithia recited the litany of who’d claimed ea
ch room in her time.

  “What was this area for?” Nate asked, trying to interrupt her stream of consciousness about her lost friends and colleagues. “Temporary quarters?”

  “Yes, I think I told you our main base was in the mountains. This facility in Nochen was for field research, so we all had our own small space to keep a few things while we worked on assignment in the area. I could catch a nap between duties, meditate, be private with another person if I so desired. But I don’t understand why my team’s possessions are cleared out, as if everyone left had time to pack but didn’t come release me.” She walked faster, stopping in front of the only closed door.

  Bithia freed her hand from Nate’s and tapped a quick sequence of musical notes across one of the pearlescent disks on the massive bracelet circling her left wrist.

  “What is that thing?” Nate asked. “I figured it for a piece of jewelry, but if you’re using it to open doors, it must be more than a gaudy bauble.”

  “Much more than mere adornment.” The mere suggestion seemed to strike Bithia as highly amusing. She extended her left hand to him so he could examine the device more closely. Thom leaned over Nate’s shoulder to see better. Amused, Nate stifled a chuckle. His ever-practical friend had no interest in jewelry, but technology drew him like a moth to flame.

  “It’s a gilintrae,” Bithia said. “We all have our own, of varying degrees of sophistication and usefulness. My father gave me this when I graduated from the final set of advanced classes required to be accredited for a field expedition. It’s one of the best, much better than what I had to use as a student.”

  Gently, Nate manipulated her wrist to see all the detail. The face of the braceletlike device was approximately three inches in diameter, he estimated, and covered with densely packed, miniature iridescent disks, like scales on a fantastic fish. There were three smaller dials at equidistant points on the main surface outlined with a thin rim of gold, each set with a different precious stone. A string of roughly one-carat diamonds outlined the edge of the face, nestled side by side in an unbroken string. A ring of even bigger diamonds, interspersed with gems he didn’t recognize, was set into the heavy gold outer rim. On the left and right sides, sat three tiny sapphire-topped buttons, each a different geometric shape. The massive golden band holding the gilintrae snugly on her slender wrist was an interlocking series of flat plates, each inscribed with a different symbol.

  “I’m impressed,” Thom said. “Even if it doesn’t do anything but open doors, the thing is amazing.”

  Bithia laughed again, gently untangling her hand from Nate’s loose grip. “We use them for many purposes. I should have been able to open the healing chamber with it, but my father blocked the menu of commands, as I told you. I’d discovered the secret of stealing power from the healing device in dribs and drabs and stored my cache in the gilintrae, which is how I was able to use it to project myself to you the night you’d been beaten and help you, Nate,” she said, giving her attention to the door of her assigned room. Quickly, she tapped a sequence, her fingernails flashing between the tiny disks on the face of the device and the large gems on the rim. After a moment, she frowned and tapped again. “It’s not responding.”

  “Could your father have left the door locked?” A reasonable enough precaution for a devoted parent to take, in Nate’s view.

  Eyebrows raised, lips compressed, Bithia obviously didn’t agree. “Against me? My own door? Why?” Her musical voice held a note of annoyance.

  “None of this makes much sense. How could it after all these centuries? You want us to blast it open?” Nate unholstered his Mark One and pointed the weapon at the recalcitrant door.

  She pushed the blaster aside. “No! From what you described about how the weapon works, my possessions would be destroyed along with the door. Let me try one more time.”

  The third time was the charm. The door slowly slid partially open. A blast of stale air gusted out, carrying dust and shreds of debris that could have been paper or fabric or some other perishable commodity. Nate grabbed Bithia and pulled her aside, out of the path of the mini storm. Thom threw himself to the far side of the open portal. Atletl and Celixia retreated toward the lab.

  “This expedition to the Lady’s private chambers is perilous,” Atletl said. “Do we need to continue the quest?”

  The inrush of air to the corridor stopped, leaving a pile of dusty gray debris piled untidily along the floor and into the open room opposite Bithia’s. Nate held her back and peered into the chamber assigned to her. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, whatever your father left for you didn’t stand the test of time.”

  “But if he went to the trouble to seal off the room, he should have applied a stasis lock to keep the contents of my room intact for me,” she said. “To do otherwise makes no sense.”

  Nate didn’t answer, choosing to silently stand aside and let her proceed. Bithia squeezed sideways through the stubborn portal and came to a standstill in the center of what had been her room. He prevented the others from following, blocking their view and shaking his head. “Leave her alone. Thom, see what’s at the other end of this corridor.”

  After a few moments, Bithia left the room. Nate straightened from where he’d been leaning against the wall while she worked through her emotions about this new puzzle. He looked at her questioningly.

  She tapped the gilintrae, closing the door to her chamber.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, not glancing in his direction. With a visible effort, she straightened, squared her shoulders and then turned to Nate, summoning a smile that didn’t reach her stunning lavender-blue eyes. “I’m fine. I have to take this”—she waved at the now shut door—“as fair warning not to expect anything. Nothing at all will be as I left it. Or as I believed conditions would be whenever I was finally set free. Certainly not like my foolish dreams of finding myself in my own time, with my own people.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe we’ll find something elsewhere in this complex that you can—”

  Holding up one hand, she shook her head decisively. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but I have to be in the present, not clinging to shreds of the past. You attempted to give me this advice in the healing chamber, but I didn’t want to hear it. Now I see you were right.”

  He gathered her in for a hug, hoping the embrace would help. She was trembling and on the verge of hyperventilating. Her chaotic emotions roiled below the surface of their mental link, and Nate could only guess at the effort she was making to function. Offering what silent comfort he could, Nate stood with her in the circle of his arms for a moment.

  Footsteps sounded at the far end of the hall. Thom was reporting back from his explorations of what lay beyond. Nate looked over Bithia’s head, raising one eyebrow in silent question as Thom came closer.

  He shook his head. “Another empty room. Even less debris, or junk or whatever, than back in the lab. Nothing usable.”

  “The room served as the hangar for our flyers, to commute back and forth to the main base on the mountain.” Bithia’s words were muffled as she rested her head on Nate’s chest. “There’s a tunnel to the surface.”

  “We need to go back to the lab, regroup and figure out our next move,” Nate said.

  A few moments later, the five were in a small cluster at one side of the ransacked lab, away from the doors as well as the entrance to the healing chamber. Nate and Thom gathered bins to use as seats, although Nate paced, not patient enough to sit. Thom chose to lean against the wall, arms folded.

  “We have no food, no water, no transport,” Nate said, “but we can get out of the city using the flyer access tunnel. Am I right?”

  Bithia made as if to rise, drawing a protest from Celixia, who was busily working to arrange her incredibly long, thick hair into an arrangement more convenient than its present loose state. Properly chastened by her handmaiden, Bithia held her head rigid and answered Nate’s question. “While reluctant to assume anything now, muc
h less to promise, I think the tunnel should open for us.”

  “Unless whoever deactivated this place,” Thom said, “decided to seal it off permanently.”

  “Where does this tunnel open on the surface?” Nate asked.

  “We flew out of bluffs at the edge of the ocean.” She used a meaningless unit of measure to describe how far away the exit point would be.

  He shook his head. “How long to walk it? A day? Half a day?”

  She had to mull over the question for a moment, apparently comparing her experience of racing through the tunnel in a flyer to the unknown concept of trudging the distance on foot. Estimating the relative times of the two modes of travel left her frowning. Finally, she shook her head, undoing Celixia’s work and drawing another protest from the priestess. “Not nearly so far. Maybe the span of a morning.”

  “Could we descend to a beach, or climb to a cliff top, once we got there?” The last thing Nate wanted was to make the trip through the tunnel and find they were trapped and forced to retrace their journey. Once out of the palace complex at Nochen, he’d make every effort not to see the place ever again.

  Bithia raised her elegant eyebrows. “I never considered making either attempt. I’m a pilot, not a mountain climber. I guess you could get to the beach.”

  Nate scrutinized Atletl and Celixia. “Either of you have any idea where this beach might be? Any legends or myths about it? Could we get inland to our ship, to where we were captured, from there?”

  Atletl shook his head. “I’m from the mountain territories. I know nothing of the coastline.”

  “Celixia? I can tell you have an opinion,” Nate said.

  “There’s a legend.” She restored her hair-brushing tools to the small beaded green pouch at her belt, finally having done as much as possible to bring Bithia’s hair under control.

  Thom groaned. “Oh, great, another legend.”

  Nate frowned at him. “We’ve done okay using myths and legends as our source briefing on this damn planet so far.”