Portals

by Ann Christy

  That walkway is the only way?

  Drives Too Hard hops again. I think those hops might be like punctuation. Crews needs only one way. Crew comes through the Monitor part of station, over there.

  And that ladder thing? What is that for? I point to it and Drives Too Hard sounds almost like its shrugging.

  We use it.

  We get a little more touring done, see more facilities, more machinery. A few Kassa come near and I see their necks stretch as they give us the once over. We’re done with the big-ticket items. As Drives Too Hard leads us back across the work-floor, I eye the ladder-like thing that may be my only route to the ship’s hatch.

  The ladder is very tall, perhaps a few hundred feet or more. It’s far, far too tall a ladder for me to try, but I may have no choice. I’m not crew yet, so unless I figure out how to get a tour of that area without Hub being involved, I doubt I’m going to be able to manage entry like the crew does. Also, the elevators would be very hard to reach, given that I’d have to weave through all the working Kassa to get to them. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be any access point from the elevator platform to the ship anyway.

  If almost looks like the ladder is my only logical point of entry. The ladder isn’t even a ladder really. To me, it looks more like very steep stairs with too much space between the steps.

  No matter how bad it is, I have to try.

  Drives Too Hard says goodbye at the door and the words are lovely, if somewhat odd. May your home be noisy and your labors happy.

  We have no such words on Earth that I know of, at least not in America, but I remember what my grandmother once told me about a greeting she used. The saying has become popular in America and is often misused or misunderstood, but I know the word. The move is awkward in the gloved suit, but I put my hands together almost correctly.

  Namaskar.

  I hear the echo of the translation, and it’s very like the one my grandmother explained to me. The words aren’t precisely the same, but close enough. I bow to the light within you.

  For a moment, I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing, but I think Drives Too Hard is simply trying to understand it. Then it surprises me one last time and mimics my posture almost perfectly, only with two pairs of appendages.

  That’s probably the best way to say goodbye I’ve ever seen. Then he’s gone, scurrying away toward the machinery in the distance. I turn off my implant, because the pressure of accidentally sharing information is back in full force.

  Just like before, we’re buffeted about in the room, but then I’m surprised by water sheeting down on us.

  “Whoa! What’s that for?” I ask.

  Jack’s mouth twists behind his helmet shield, probably because I turned off my implant. “We’ve got to wash off the residual atmosphere. You would burn yourself if you touched your suit. Not with heat, but with chemistry.”

  Their air inside seemed just as clear as the air out here, as far as I can tell. My suit is the exactly the same drab non-color it was before. “What’s in their air?”

  “Do you want the particulars or just in general?”

  “General please! I’m still not sure what’s in my atmosphere entirely.”

  The water stops, and the smile is back on Jack’s face. He shakes his head inside his suit and says, “You’ve really got to get that stuff learned. It’s important to know that sort of thing for the body you’re in.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So, what’s in their air?”

  We step out of the chamber and start toward the still waiting car. I’m anxious to get my suit off after all this time, so I’m hurrying. Plus, I need to pee. And soon.

  “It’s basically corrosive to human flesh. It would kill my original form in a few seconds, but a human would take a little longer to die. It would burn your flesh, but breathing it would burn your lungs right away. Mucous membranes are especially vulnerable.”

  “Jeez. And it doesn’t harm the machinery?”

  “It’s not that corrosive, but over time it might. I’m not sure how that’s handled, but I do know that their work in preservative coatings is second to none. I think Hub uses all their inventions in that arena.”

  Once back in the car, we strip off our suits and I can’t believe how good it feels.

  “Okay, I don’t want to be rude here, but I really need to get back to my room in a hurry.” The car zips along quickly, jostling my bladder as it turns.

  “Why? Do you have plans?” he asks, grinning at me. “Have you found a different date for dinner?”

  “You are such a guy. I swear you are. No, I have to pee. And if I don’t get there soon, I will do it in this car.”

  He backs up at that and says, “I’m not in favor of you doing that.”

  “Then you’d better hurry and get me home.”

  I’m not sure, but I think the little car speeds up.

  Thirty-Two

  My brain is full to bursting, but even more than that, I want to capture and explore what I can before any of it fades. I want to look over the details I recorded—assuming I recorded them properly—and absorb anything useful into my plans.

  Jack doesn’t do more than give me a gentle tease and a kiss goodbye, which I appreciate. Particularly the kiss if I’m honest. As soon as the door closes, I bring up the image of my painting with all the annotations on it.

  Thinking instructions can be a bit of a muddle. Think too hard and you get a hot mess of conflicting or corrected commands. If you don’t think precisely enough, you can get something not even remotely like what you asked for. There’s a certain skill to it that takes practice.

  At first, the glyphs alter into letters and numbers, but they don’t mean anything. Then I realize that I’ve translated only the actual symbols, not the meaning. I try again and see that the image is exactly what I thought it might be.

  Everything is on there. Length, height, locations, uses…everything. There’s even a thrust number that I have no clue about at the back where those arrays are. Mentally flicking the layers forward, there are more numbers and labels. The bridge is located forward—at least I got that part right—and on the same level as the hatch. That’s good. I know what hallway to start down and that’s a huge deal.

  In the area near the cargo bay, there are lists of vehicle configurations possible. I think this might be a load plan of sorts. I have no idea what all these vehicles are for, but apparently a whole lot of different ones will fit into the back of the ship.

  This isn’t perfect, but it’s something. This image is more than I had.

  I pull up the image of the ladder and walkway. Can I do that? If so, how do I do it safely? The height of the ladder is just as awful as I thought it would be, but I’m glad to have a number at least. Suddenly, I get an idea. Rock climbing. I never did it, but my mom and I sometimes watched people on the wall at our gym before going off to do our own thing. They wore safety harnesses. Safety harnesses could work. Not the same of course, but the same general idea might be just the ticket.

  Instead of unhooking one and moving it up once I’m at the end of it, I can release it and then hook on a new one. I can repeat that process the whole way up. The lines would have to be made of something both light and able to withstand the Kassa atmosphere.

  Scribbling in my notebook as fast as I can, I make lists of everything I’ll need and how I’ll use it. Using pen and paper is safer. No one is going to accidentally read that in my brain and no one goes through my belongings here.

  I feel more resolved, yet also far more nervous by the time I finish. It’s going to be scary, and there’s no way to deny that it might be dangerous. It’s not going to be easy, either mentally or physically.

  And I can’t forget Jack in this. I really like him. He’s what I would choose as a partner in life. He’s not just beautiful. It’s not just that he makes my heart beat funny and my insides do flips. He’s also all the things a true friend should be. And I know he cares for me like I care for him. />
  I’m going to leave him and if this works, I may never see him again. I probably won’t see him again. I’ll be giving him up forever, I think. That concept is one of the hardest ones for me to accept.

  *****

  As I eat dinner and contemplate my next steps, I think about Drives Too Hard. I wonder what being a Kassa is like. And what is a silent brother? I can’t forget that tease of his. Does that somehow go with that phrase about my house being noisy?

  “Hub, can I access information on the Kassa? I’m curious about some things I heard.”

  “Yes, Lysa. You’re familiar with them now, so their cultural files are open to you.”

  I try that, but the flood of information is like a dam breaking, and I back out of it quickly. “Hub, that’s way too much information and I’m still not very fast at parsing it. Can you answer some questions maybe?”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Right. Well, the Kassa that gave us the tour said something and I think it was a tease. It asked another Kassa how it wasn’t a silent brother. And also, when we left, it said something about may our house be noisy. What’s that about?”

  “You are correct in assessing that as a joke of sorts. A silent brother is a Kassa that does not develop properly during transformation. They are left outside the walls of Kassa cities as food for the only predators that prey upon Kassa on their home world. Likewise, to hope that another has a noisy house is a blessing, a wish that they may never have a silent brother.”

  I’m really horrified by this. A vision pops into my head of one of those bad historical movies where they put a perfectly adorable baby on a cliff top to be eaten by birds or whatever. I have a hard time believing such a friendly group gives up their kids to be eaten.

  Either the look on my face or something else gives away what I’m feeling, because Hub says, “It’s not what it may seem.”

  “Right. They feed their kids to wild animals. What’s not to understand there?”

  “Shall I explain?”

  I plop down on my bed and squish a pillow under my head to get comfortable. If I’m going to listen—and I am, because I really want to know—then I might as well get comfy. “Please.”

  What I hear is both entrancing and horrifying and every bit of it leads to more questions. I can understand how the Kassa were spurred to evolve as they did. And also, why they were anxious to go into space becomes clear.

  The Kassa are one of two technological species on their planet, but of course, they weren’t always technological. Their planet uses the predation model, but a more controlled version than Earth’s because the planet is so stable and lacking in change. They barely have seasons there. The Kassa are the prey of the other advanced species.

  As they were preyed upon, they grew more complex, first building large underground warrens, then blind tunnels, then traps, then walls, then tools…and so on. Their predators, the Krissa, advanced along with them, locked in an eternal battle for life against the battle for food.

  At some point, the Kassa naturally evolved an alteration in their reproduction. Instead of rarely giving birth to a failed offspring, they began to have as many as half fail. They are called silent brothers.

  The Kassa have no childhood, per se. They’re born and immediately wind themselves into a type of cocoon. They can hear and feel vibrations, but they have no active memories of this time. While inside their cocoons, they grow, but they also learn from their elders, who teach them basic information. Even if the offspring have no specific memory of it, they emerge from their cocoon knowing whatever they were taught.

  But not all emerge whole. The silent brothers are not Kassa when they emerge, but merely a type of armored grub, without mind or any hope of life. They die quickly.

  And there are just enough silent brothers to keep the predator population steady. Not enough for them to grow too numerous, but not so few that they will breech Kassa walls in search of more.

  It’s terrible and sad, I think, though they’re apparently well-adjusted to this reality. Hence, the words, may your house be noisy. It is a hope that you will have no silent brothers born to your family.

  “So, that’s why they wanted to go into space? To find a way to leave the Krissa behind?”

  “Yes, in essence. They discovered life on the planet closest to theirs in orbital distance, but it was incompatible with their life. The atmospheres were as different as yours is to theirs.”

  “If they were more advanced than the Krissa, why didn’t they just kill them off?”

  “Perhaps in time they would have. That’s not their way, though, so perhaps not.” Hubs says this as if being eaten by predators is normal.

  “Well, I’m glad they’re safe now. What happened to the Krissa? I mean, they didn’t know about other space species, so what happened to them?”

  “You are correct that the Kassa did not share that information with the Krissa, for obvious reasons. When the time came, I moved the Krissa and the Kassa who elected to go to the new planet.”

  “But the Krissa had no prey to eat or did they just keep eating the Kassa?”

  “The Kassa provided them with machines that produced the correct nutrients and the knowledge to maintain it. I provided the machines to the Kassa.”

  “That’s very sneaky, Hub!”

  “Merely discreet.”

  I get a sudden flash of understanding. There’s a lot more to this story than might appear on the surface. It just hit me what it was.

  “Wait, you provided the machine! That’s against the rules, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Lysa, but I was not aware of their intentions.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that you didn’t change the course of a species or planet, but you made the materials to do so available to the Kassa and they did it.”

  “I was not told why they needed the machine.”

  “You must have known!”

  “I was not told, Lysa. There was no outward indication of their intentions. At no point was I forced to make a choice that conflicted with my directives.”

  I’m getting perilously close to the edge here, close to dangerous territory that might reveal my intentions. It’s best to cut this off now and pick it apart in the privacy of my head. “Okay, thanks Hub. I’m going to watch TV now.”

  “Goodnight, Lysa.”

  I ponder what Hub told me. I’ve got to ask myself, does that mean that Hub knows what I’m doing? Does it know, but since it hasn’t been told about it, it’s simply making things available to me? I wonder. I can’t know for sure, but I’m forced to consider the possibility.

  And if that’s the case, then I must be doing the right thing.

  Thirty-Three

  It’s sort of strange, but I feel so much calmer with each step I take toward making a break for Earth. I should be getting more nervous, more worried, or more tense, but the opposite is true. What Hub told me about the Kassa and Krissa has given me a confidence about my choice that I didn’t expect. Maybe I’m delusional, but this little feeling inside me says Hub won’t interfere, because I’m doing the right thing. I’ll never know for sure, since asking the question would blow my plan entirely, but I have that feeling.

  In the week since I’ve learned about the Kassa situation, I’ve been ordering all sorts of weird stuff, hoping to figure out a safety line configuration that would work for me. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like I’ve got a mountain of work to do and I’m running out of time to do it.

  So, of course, that’s when Hub pings me and asks if I want to meet another Earth person. At first, I’m tempted to say no, because I really don’t want to get mixed up with anything right now. What if Hub wants me to be that person’s facilitator or something? I’ve got things to do, interstellar spaceships to steal.

  Then again, saying no would be totally suspicious. So, I look around at my disaster of a room and decide getting out for a little while might be okay after all.


  “Sure, Hub. I’d love to. Where and when?”

  My door pings and the pink light comes on immediately. Hub says, “Now and here.”

  “Cute,” I say, making a face at the ceiling.

  When I open the door, I’m taken aback. A tall, extraordinarily beautiful girl is standing there. She’s clearly nervous, because her hands are squeezing each other into jelly at her waist. Behind her is another girl, less tall, but far more relaxed.

  The relaxed one waves and says, “Hi! You must be Lysa. I’m Eleanor, facilitator for Heather. This is Heather.”

  I look from Eleanor to Heather and the tall girl gives me a smile that looks more like a grimace.

  “Eleanor, Heather, good to meet you both.” Heather’s eyes widen when she looks past me into my room, so I laugh and say, “Yeah, I’ve been sorting things and it got out of hand. My room is a bit of a mess.”

  Eleanor shrugs. “Nothing that can’t be picked up.”

  Heather is clearly embarrassed to be caught peeking, because her eyes snap away, and she looks down a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  She speaks so softly that I have difficulty hearing her. I give Eleanor a questioning look and she points to her head, a hint that I should turn on my implant. I’m not keen on that right now, but I do it anyway and answer her ping. Sorry, but Heather is having a hard time with things and Jack suggested a talk with you might help.

  Heather is still standing there with her hands gripped tightly together and looking like she wants to be anywhere except here, but she’s a non-transfer, so she got here somehow.

  I’m not sure what you want me to do, but I can invite you in and do what I can.

  No, Lysa. Just invite her in. She needs another human, we think.

  With a nod, I close the comms, but leave my implant on in case I get pinged. “Heather, you’re the first fellow human I’ve seen. I’d love to chat. Will you come in? I promise none of this mess is actually dangerous.”

  I add a smile in hopes that she’ll look up again. She does and lets out a small, tight breath. “Yes, thank you.” While she doesn’t say anything, the way she shifts her body tells me she wants to get away from Eleanor, so I add. “Eleanor, would you think me rude if I asked Heather to keep me company for a while. You know, just us Earthers?”