by Eric Vall
Neka smile, tentative but so hopeful my heart cracked from the sheer beauty of it. “You don’t have to pick, CT,” she said. Her eyes flickered down, but this time shyly, almost coyly. “We know you. You have a big heart. Enough to share.”
“Share?” I echoed dumbly. I glanced back at Akela. “I don’t understand.”
The mechanic shrugged, but at least she met my eye, even if she was red all the way down to her chest. “We have feelings for you, and you have feelings for us, so we share.” She looked at a loss for words.
“But won’t, I mean, I don’t want to make anyone jealous or hurt either of your feelings,” I said as I glanced between them.
Neka took a step forward and gently grabbed my hand. Her dainty fingers squeezed around mine. “It’s okay, CT,” she assured me with a brightening smile. “We talked about it.”
“Yeah,” Akela added, emboldened by the other female. She also stepped forward and took both mine and Neka’s hand. “We talked and we both care about each other,” she went on as she smiled at the cat-girl. “We don’t think it’s romantic, but there’s a type of love there, different from what we feel for you. I don’t know. The two of you make me feel things I’ve never felt with anyone, ever.” She shrugged again, an embarrassed smile tugging at her mouth, but her eyes bright and hopeful.
Neka giggled and nodded her head. Then, her expression turned soft and oh so lovely as she looked into my face. “But regardless about what we feel for each other, we’ve discussed it and decided we’d like to both try being with you.” She got shy again, her ears flickered, and her tail came up to brush against my wrist. “If you want.”
“I-I’d like that,” I mumbled and my eyes dropped to the unrestrained grin that split the cat-girl’s face. “But,” I added quickly, “I just want to make sure that if at any point you feel uncomfortable--”
“We’ll discuss it,” Neka cut me off, as she nodded her head enthusiastically and moved closer so she pressed along my side. I looked over at Akela, who dipped her chin as she tried to hide her own grin of happiness. I let go of her hand and tilted her face up to mine.
“We’ll discuss it?” I asked her quietly, just to make sure one last time.
She met my eyes, her own brighter than the most precious gems in all the universes, and nodded her head. My thumb brushed over the swell of her lower lip, and my eyes locked onto them as they parted with a sigh.
However, a knock sounded at the door just then, making the three of us start and look up.
“Dawn is approaching,” Cy’lass hissed through the door. “We must leave now, CccT.”
I looked back to Neka and Akela, stricken, but the two women just smiled, spared a glance at one another, and leaned in simultaneously. They both pressed their lips to the corners of my mouth, the caresses soft and warm, a promise for more before they pulled away.
“We’ll talk more after the trial,” Akela said with a gentle smile. Neka’s tail twitched mischievously behind her.
My heart pounded in my chest, with joy and adrenaline and a hundred other things I couldn’t even name right now.
But I knew one thing…
“In that case, I’ll be quick,” I responded with a rakish grin.
Chapter 18
Cy’lass wasn’t joking around when he said the second trial had to begin by dawn. The moment Neka, Akela, and I stepped out of the Almort equivalent of a hospital, the prince and his advisor both took me by an elbow and propelled me as quickly as possible toward the tower at the center of the city. I winced and struggled to match their pace, my assistant and mechanic jogging to catch up, but the Cy’lass and Slal’ops were relentless.
Finally, we rounded a corner, and the city’s central courtyard opened up before us. The tower loomed overhead, lit as always with hues of blue and green, and at its base gathered a crowd of Almort.
The crowd was nowhere near the size as the ones from the feast or the first trial. There were no drums, no bonfire, no building energy. In fact, the hundred or so people that waited all seemed to be holding their breath, save for a few hissed whispers. I wondered if there just hadn’t been time for word to spread that I had, indeed, woken up from my small, inconvenient coma.
Those whispers, however, grew louder as we reached the edges of the crowd. Blue eyes turned to blink at us in surprise, but the Almort hastily stepped aside when they saw their prince. Chins dipped reverently in our direction, but Cy’lass didn’t even pause to acknowledge them. He just pulled me faster and faster through the throng of people, until we came out the other side, and I stumbled to a stop.
As I stood there and panted as the injuries left by the Malog made my vision go spotty. Once I caught my breath, I finally lifted my eyes to find U’eh standing before me, his face unreadable, his eyes dark and fathomless. As the two of us stared at each other, even the whispers at my back seemed to die down until the only noise in the courtyard was the pounding of my heart.
Cy’lass nudged me forward a bit, and I took a few tentative steps forward that brought me within two meters of Chief U’eh. The chief continued to stare at me for a beat unblinking before he raised his arms, head, and voice to address his people.
“The starman has completed his first trial,” U’eh began, and his voice echoed across the plaza. He didn’t sound particularly pleased when he said it, and that made a primal spark of pride flare in my chest before it was drowned out by my racing pulse.
“In slaying the Malog, he has demonstrated strength, skill, and a commitment to provide for our people,” the chief continued, with only the slightest stutter over all those compliments. As I stood before him now, I could tell he hadn’t expected me to survive the first trial. He thought I was weak like the other Corporate brokers who had come before me. He didn’t think he’d have to make this second speech, and it showed in the way he grudgingly spat out his words.
“In accordance with our laws, the starman must now begin his second trial,” U’eh hissed, and his eyes swung back around to pin me to my spot. There was less ceremony in his voice, more urgency. I couldn’t tell a discernable difference in the light level around us, but maybe dawn had arrived.
I lifted my chin and met the Almort chief’s stare. I braced myself for the next challenge, even though I was still barely conscious, even though the cold fish Cy’lass made me eat before we ran here sat heavy and hard in my stomach. I told myself that I had survived the first challenge that I had exceeded it in fact when I killed not one but two of the Malog.
I was Colby fucking Tower, and I could handle whatever the Almort threw at me next.
“For your second trial, starman Cccolby Tower,” U’eh clicked, “your mind will be tested. You have proved that you possess great physical skill, but now you must also demonstrate your intellect. We are not the brutes the starmen have judged us to be. You must show you understand this and that you can come to understand us in turn. So, Cccolby Tower, answer me this riddle, and you will pass the second trial: What is something you may keep, even after you have given it to another?”
U’eh paused to let the question sink in before he went on. “You have until dusk, then you must return here and give your answer. In the meantime, go into the city, among the people,” he said with a grand sweep of his arm to Ka’le around us. “Watch them and learn, but there is one rule you must follow, starman.”
The chief held up one of the six webbed fingers on his right hand, and his eyes bored into mine. “Speak to no one,” he hissed. “Speak not at all. If you are seen breaking this rule, and I assure you, you will be seen, you fail the trial. If you are as sharp as you claim to be, if you are worthy, observation and your own cunning will give you the answer.”
I blinked and reeled as my brain struggled to process all the information U’eh had just thrown at me. Hell, I had just woken up from a two-day coma less than half an hour ago. A riddle? The second trial was a riddle? That… I was not expecting that. On the one hand, my body nearly sagged with relief. At least I wouldn’t be ad
ding to my injuries today unless things really went wrong. On the other hand, however, warning bells went off in my head.
U’eh said that this trial was a test of my intelligence, but it was also a measure of my observation and comprehension skills. The answer to the riddle would somehow become apparent the more I observed the Almort, but the problem was I’d been on this planet less than a week, and half that time was spent unconscious, while the other half had been spent fighting dangerous, lethal, alien creatures. I hadn’t had the opportunity to absorb the city properly and the Almort, and now I was expected to do it in less than a day?
I opened my mouth to ask for a clarification on the deadline, but a sharp glint in U’eh’s eye stopped me. I froze there, jaw agape, breath held tight in my lungs. Shit. The trial had already started it seemed. U’eh’s warning and rule hissed at the back of my brain, “Speak to no one. Speak not at all.”
I shut my mouth with an audible click, and I didn’t think I imagined the disappointed look on U’eh’s face. I pursed my lips and inclined my head at the chief, to which he responded with a bared flash of teeth.
“The second trial of the Akornath has begun,” U’eh cried loudly, and lights flared along the scales of his face. From behind me, Cy’lass gave a loud, chittering cry, that Slal’ops and then the rest of the crowd echoed. I felt their voices deep within my chest as I turned to face them.
The host of Almort was a mass of uplifted faces and flaring bioluminescent lights. However, even in all that chaos, my eyes immediately found Neka and Akela, who stood a few meters away, just a step in front of the undulating crowd. My heart simultaneously warmed and gave a stutter at the sight of them, and I could almost feel the phantom caresses of their mouths against mine.
Neka gave me a bright smile of encouragement and waved with her ears and her tail perked at attention. Beside her, Akela also shot me a supportive smile, but it quickly bled into a smirk as the mechanic brought up her arm and tapped at her wrist. I remembered my last words to her before we left the hospital after she promised we’d speak after the trial, “In that case, I’ll be quick.”
The blood instantly turned to fire in my veins at the silver-haired woman’s implication. I grinned devilishly at her and then Neka and felt confidence and surety surge through me.
In the last month alone, I’d been terminated from the only job I’ve ever had. I’ve bested gangsters, saved a space station, battled monsters on both the land and sea, and walked away victorious from all these situations.
This riddle would be a piece of cake…
Or so I had thought.
Six hours later, I found myself sitting at a table in Ka’le’s large, open-air market, and I was no closer to an answer than I had been when the crowd dispersed around me after U’eh’s declaration. I petulantly spat out another fishbone onto the plate in front of me and tilted my head back with a sigh.
I had taken the chief’s advice and spent my day strolling about the city. I must have walked every city block. I skirted the edges of Ka’le, where swaths of wildflowers grew, purple and blue and pale, pale white, like dots of starlight in the swaying grasses. I walked passed the residential pods and the school with its ponds for the young. I circled the refinery from all sides and watched the transport trucks import raw X’ebril and export its refined products. I went by the hospital again, and this time I noticed that a strong odor of brackish water surrounded the building, something strong and earthy and wet.
I had walked multiple kilometers through Ka’le before I finally made my way to the marketplace, my feet sore, my tongue parched, and twin aches that pounded in my head and stomach. I had collapsed at the closest table I’d found and sat there brooding as the Almort went about their lives around me.
U’eh’s riddle had been circling the drain in my brain all day, but I didn’t have anything to show for it. Nothing in any of my observations of the city or its people had yielded an answer. As I sat at that table, I contemplated everything I had witnessed, all the little details of Ka’le and the Almort that I had filed away.
I noted that each of the five tribes of the Almort had a specific style: the people of the marshlands wore fabrics of green and dark, mud brown, the Desert tribe wore sandy colored lengths of fabric that wrapped around their heads and the lower halves of their faces, and the tribe from the mountains that were mined for X’ebril wore thick and stiff looking leathers in grays and bleached whites. I also noted that, while I had seen members of each tribe as I walked about the city, most of them were concentrated here, in the marketplace, while U’eh’s tribe, the people of the Plains, were more ubiquitous throughout their capital city.
In addition to all this, I noticed how the tribes interacted with each other, how they behaved when only one tribe was present. I saw how the Almort traded, ate, and sold their wares. I watched Almort mothers and fathers with their children, who ran and screamed and reveled like any child of any species.
And in all this observation, not once had an Almort spoken to me.
I had made it a point not to approach anyone to avoid the temptation of conversation, but I thought I would be tested more. However, aside from some stares and poorly concealed gestures in my direction, it seemed the Almort were content to ignore me and go about their lives as usual.
So, I sat at my table, and I people watched, while I turned U’eh’s words over and over in my mind until they were polished and smooth, like a stone in a riverbed.
What is something you may keep, even after you have given it to another?
After several hours, while I was deep in thought with my head in my arms, definitely not cursing my own hubris, a noise startled me into looking up. An Almort male, a vendor from a nearby stall that I had noticed before, stood in front of me. His arm was still extended from setting down a plate of food on my table. I blinked up at him in confusion, but he only clicked once at me and nodded down at the food. Before I could consider what this meant or what to do that wouldn’t cause me to automatically fail the trial, the Almort male turned on his heel and walked back to his stall. I looked from the food to his retreating back, but my stomach growled fiercely, and I picked up the first piece of fish like a man half-starved.
That had been about an hour ago, and now I had a neat pile of fish bones heaped on my plate, but still no answer to U’eh’s riddle.
I sighed again in frustration and berated myself.
I had let myself go during my years as a broker, physically and mentally it seemed. Sure, I could usually convince a party to sign a contract in under an hour, barring any ritualistically inclined trials, but it typically wasn’t much of a challenge. It was more about saying the right thing at the right time, hitting the right rhetorical notes. I didn’t have to prove my worth. My preceding reputation did that for me.
However, I couldn’t rely on such formalities here. On Proxima V, and to the Almort, I was just another human, just another starman who looked to be in over his head.
What is something you may keep, even after you have given it to another?
Fucking hell. I scrubbed at my face and let my eyes lazily drift over the crowd that moved throughout the market.
A dozen things could be the answer to this riddle, a hundred even, and I had already cycled through a good number of them. Money, food, happiness, life, death, sleep, etc.
Okay, some of them worked better than others, but I was grasping at straws at this point. Even if an answer seemed to be likely, nothing had resonated with me in relation to the Almort people. The solution had to be tied to them somehow, otherwise, U’eh wouldn’t have told me to go out and observe them. I just couldn’t seem to make the connection, and I was running out of time.
I couldn’t exactly tell how close ‘dusk’ was by now, but I knew it had to be soon. My heart rate was quickly ratcheting up in fear, my internal clock ticking away the seconds.
I thought perhaps Cy’lass or Slal’ops would show up to give me another clue, but I hadn’t seen hide or scale of either male all day.
I knew someone must be tailing me, to enforce U’eh’s no speaking rule, but even as I had stared long and hard into the crowds, no one had stood out.
I didn’t see Neka or Akela either. They must be sequestered to our pod or something to ensure they didn’t attempt to help me, and that was rather unfortunate because I bet the mechanic had answered this riddle hours ago. Her mind was made for puzzles whether they be in the shape of broken down gears or words. My assistant had probably solved it as well because if I knew one thing, it was to never underestimate the tiny cat-girl.
God, I didn’t even want to know how quickly it took Omni to find the answer. He probably had it before U’eh even finished speaking.
I rubbed aggressively at my mouth to keep from cursing out loud. I didn’t know if speaking to myself counted as a disqualifying factor, but I didn’t want to chance it, so I had literally kept my mouth shut all day except to shovel fish into it.
Maybe I should go back to the tower and wait for my time to run out there. At least I wouldn’t have to run across the city that way if and when I figured out the answer.
I shook my head and scolded myself. When I figured out the answer. Not if, but when.
I made to push myself out of my chair and stand, but just as I did, I heard something that had my head snapping up, and my eyes scanning the skies. It was a peculiar sound, one that only someone who had been around spaceships would recognize. It was a noise like a popped balloon, except deeper, more bass, and half a second later it was accompanied by a slight tremor that shook the ground and rattled the table I had been sitting at.
The sound was a sonic boom that was made when something broke through the upper levels of the atmosphere, and as I tilted my head back, I saw it.
A small, burning dot fell through the sky, like a star rocketing to the planet’s surface. Except this star had a trajectory, had a target, and as it descended closer and closer to Ka’le, I saw that it was painted in the red and blue colors of Terra-Nebula.
