The Sisterhood

by Juanita Coulson

  Not that these guys would give me a glance if I did, she thought. They’re in too much of a hurry. Are we going to a fire? I hope so. I’m cold.

  She quickly became grateful she’d been enrolled in self-defense classes for months and was Outreach’s top base runner in the city softball league; otherwise, she’d never have been able to keep up with the pace the men were setting. Once, when she stepped on a pebble, all of them stumbled to a temporary halt while she howled and clutched her instep. “Quiet!” Fox Face ordered in a loud stage whisper. Then they resumed their flight, Renee hobbling and hopping, being towed by the big blond man.

  Why the hell was she putting up with this nonsense? It was turning out to be a lousy dream, and after such an interesting beginning, too. About now, being run over on the expressway would be an improvement. That, at least, would guarantee her a ride in a nice, warm, dry ambulance.

  But if it was a dream, it was awfully damned logical in some respects. For one, she was trying to keep up because she didn’t want to stay where she was — with the threat of more mysterious explosions.

  Chayo was leading the way. His floppy hat and cloak afforded him some protection from the rain — the other three now resembled drowned rats.

  Are these damned walls going to go on forever? she wondered.

  Maybe. But the foursome didn’t. Chayo came to a stop in another cul-de-sac and opened a door. Fox Face moved forward. Chayo shoved him back and bowed to Renee, inviting her to go first. She wasn’t sure she wanted that honor. It meant walking further into the unknown, and was patronizing, to boot. SOS’s charter included lots of caveats against tolerating patristic courtesies — those demeaning pats on the head designed to placate women while actually keeping them “in their places” when it came to equal job opportunities and full social status.

  Everything hung fire as she dithered. They were a quartet of dripping statues. Fox Face studied Renee calculatingly, then seized the lead, hurrying on inside. Renee was relieved that he’d broken the impasse — and paradoxically irked with herself for being so relieved.

  The heavy door was made of intricately carved wood with brass hinges, and the panels were wet, of course, from all the rain. The entire thing was very, very solid. Renee patted it in passing. It was a delightful change from all of that crummy stone.

  Beyond was a room reeking of the Middle Ages. Dark, oaken furniture, tapestries, and a gleaming, broad-planked bare floor. Correction, pseudo Middle Ages, Renee decided after a second look. The tapestry patterns were art deco. So were the carvings decorating the chairs and tables. They looked brand new, designed by a computer, not by cottage-industry craftsmen in a castle. Contrasting with the fake aura of past ages, a golden orb hovered in the room’s center with no visible means of support. The object radiated light and warmth, and Renee was drawn toward it as if by a magnet. Reacting to its heat, what was left of her clothes steamed and her hair began to stink. She marveled, wondering what such a futuristic gadget was doing amid the quaint decor. What was she doing there, for that matter?

  Fox Face shook himself like a wet dog and stuffed his shirttail back into his pants. He was a flashy dresser and had good taste, even if he also had a foul temper. His clothes were form-fitting, made of an iridescent red-and-black fabric.

  Prince Chayo had gone to a blank spot on the wall and punched some invisible buttons. Instantly, a TV-size area lit up and the image of a beautiful brunette appeared. She and Chayo conversed for a few moments in a language incomprehensible to Renee, then the screen cleared and the wall returned. Chayo nodded, his expression bemused. The entire exchange had seemed to be a check-in with his answering service.

  Now that there was adequate light, Renee could examine her unasked-for companions. Despite her first impressions, she now realized they weren’t quite human — or certainly weren’t from any racial or ethnic stock she’d ever encountered. Chayo’s skin color was that of melted butterscotch ice cream. And his hands had only four fingers, lacking pinkies. Fox Face’s complexion was so pale it was translucent, far beyond lacking a tan; but he had the normal complement of fingers. Tae was closer to the standards Renee was familiar with, except for his eyes, which were abnormally large and a startling, glittering bright blue.

  Who were these three weirdos?

  His voice icy with sarcasm, Fox Face said, “Is it all right now, Prince, if I —”

  Chayo didn’t let him finish. He lit into the skinny man, verbally chewing him out with a stream of gibberish. Tae waited mutely. He’d let go of Renee’s hand as soon as they’d entered the room. Now he stood motionless, a slowly growing puddle accumulating under his enormous boots.

  “All right. All right!” Fox Face exclaimed, sighing in resignation. “But I don’t like it. Pushing the odds, and at a time when that’s extremely dangerous.” Chayo flipped back the hem of his cloak, tossed aside his floppy hat, and shook rain off his baggy jumpsuit. He folded his arms across his chest, determined to outlast his opponent. Fox Face assumed a braced-for-action pose. “Very risky, especially after what’s happened,” he muttered. “If they detect us again …”

  Then he went rigid, staring into nothing. A long pause. And another feedback whine and pop.

  Now Fox Face had two pendants. As his eyes refocused, he cringed, glancing all about warily. After a few minutes, when it was plain nothing further was going to occur, he straightened and came toward Renee. The second pendant, a mate to the ones he and Tae wore, dangled from his beringed fingers.

  The pendant’s jewel was fascinating. Renee compared it to the miniature tesseract model in the campus’s math building. The little stone inside the metal wires positively seethed with shifting hues: gray, green, and gold.

  Fox Face gestured for her to put it on. She considered that option too long for his patience, and he forced it over her head. The chain caught in her hair, and she yelped.

  “Must you be so brutal, Martil?” Prince Chayo demanded.

  She understood him! And now that he wasn’t spouting all that gobbledygook, Renee discovered that he had a sexy voice to go with his cute face. He hadn’t spoken English, though. In fact, his speech patterns really hadn’t altered. Yet he suddenly had become comprehensible. The effect was that of being handed headphones in a language class or the UN, or of watching an expertly dubbed foreign film. She looked down at the pendant, the only new element in the affair, and touched it tentatively.

  “I — I am sorry.” Fox Face — Martil — was regarding her. He did look apologetic for pulling her hair. Then he shifted back to business. “Now you can understand Chayo as well as me, and he can understand you, I might add. You do understand?”

  As she nodded, Prince Chayo took her elbow, steering her closer to the warmth-giving golden orb. “Esteemed Lady, please avail yourself of the comfort of my Lith. We sincerely regret any distress we may have caused you …”

  Martil cut off the niceties just as Renee was beginning to enjoy them. “Not now. We have more important matters to attend to first.” His mop of black hair straggled over his forehead and around his ears, framing the intensity of his hazel eyes. “Lady Whoever, I will make this as clear as I can. Tae is going to contact your thoughts. We are going to learn who you are, what you are doing here, and why you almost killed us a short time ago.” That big, smiling hulk named Tae moved toward her, one paw reaching for Renee’s head.

  Chapter 2

  SHE parried, knocking his arm aside, bracing herself. “Just hold it right there, or I’ll put a serious crimp in your sex life!” Renee wasn’t sure she could actually deliver a kick hard enough to disable the blond, even though her self-defense skills were fairly tightly honed, and she’d been forced to use them a couple of times in the past to get out of sticky situations. Neither of those guys had been the size of Tae, however, or had looked nearly as tough. “You have a lot of nerve-blaming me for what happened,” she yelled, working to sound fierce. “I’ve already had a hard day. I was driving along, minding my own business, when you bozos kidnapped
me and yanked me here — wherever this is. You probably wrecked my car, doing that. You got me soaking wet, stole my clothes, bruised my foot, and pulled my hair. I’m the one who’s got explanations coming, not you!” she finished, glowering up what she hoped was a threatening storm.

  Tae’s fingers were arrested in that reaching-out pose, and his grin was widening, which Renee hadn’t thought possible. Still, her threat had worked; he wasn’t making any further moves toward her.

  “The Esteemed Lady is correct,” Chayo said, looking worried.

  Martil grimaced. “You are obliged to say so, of course, from your cultural point of view. Oh, very well. I will rephrase.” He bowed mockingly to Renee. “There is a problem in communications here. It can be resolved if Tae serves as a medium of interchange. He will not infringe upon your privacy without your permission. He will merely make it possible for the Ka-Eens to operate at full translational efficiency. There are terminologies they will not be able to render well, since they are non-anthropomorphic.”

  Renee gulped and limited herself to one query. “Ka-Eens?”

  “The pendants. They are Ka-Een entities. Yours is a loan, as it were, though apparently you have no need of one for … ah! No matter. More of that later. Understand that while the Ka-Een has tremendous powers, it also has its shortcomings. Permit Tae to bypass one of those. I promise you will not be harmed.”

  Had she read too many of the wrong kind of novels? They must have rotted her brain! How else to explain this screwy dream? But … it was going on far too long for a dream, and it didn’t feel like a dream. Her emotions were a jumble of astonishment, fear, and curiosity.

  “Telepathy, huh? Well, okay. Go on.” She closed her eyes as Tae’s fingers touched her forehead. There was no shock or pain. Not even the alleged esper tactic of someone rummaging through her head. Disappointing. She opened her eyes. Martil was smirking at her. Chayo seemed faintly embarrassed.

  “Convinced?” Martil asked scornfully. “May we begin? Your name might be the appropriate first courtesy, since I gather that you’ve already learned ours.”

  “Renee Amos.”

  “This will go much faster if Tae guides your tongue. Don’t try to speak for yourself. Simply begin thinking about what was happening shortly before you … joined us. Omit nothing.”

  With effort, she attempted to re-create the moment on the expressway when it all had come unraveled. She even reproduced her mental ramblings. Words tumbled out, without any conscious work on her part. Odd phrases she wouldn’t have used ordinarily — as if these circumstances were ordinary. “Expressway” became “vehicular path.” “Car” became a complicated description starting with “four-wheeled, internal-combustion-powered engine …” A few terms sounded like her. For one, “cultural minority” to pinpoint a woman’s status in the U.S. in the late twentieth century. Feeling as though she were interrupting herself, she protested, “You’re changing some stuff.”

  “No. Tae is converting them for our benefit. That is necessary, Renee Amos.” Martil’s tone had softened a bit. “Your normal phraseology will be meaningless to us unless the Ka-Een’s translations are interpreted by Tae. Continue.”

  Renee did so, or rather Renee-Tae did. She suppressed the flood of questions she wanted to ask, because those tended to interfere with the flow of words. When that occurred, Chayo and Martil seemed annoyed at having the thread of her account broken even for a second.

  It all sounded so … uninspired. Her growing up on the edge of the city. The humdrum lives her parents and she had led, and her predictable grief at their deaths. Scrimping through university on her bare-bones scholarship and making up the difference as best she could with hamburger-flipping night jobs. Lucking into a grad assistantship while she tried to find a more permanent position, without success. Seriously considering going back into study and switching her major to get a degree in clinical counseling or a similar set of credentials. With those, maybe she could move up to an important slot with Social Outreach Sisterhood or another service organization, and really contribute to the world. Until she did, she was going to remain a tiny, insignificant cog in a massive, slow-moving instrument for change …

  And so on.

  When she spoke through Tae, Chayo and Martil had noticeably different reactions. Prince Chayo was utterly bewildered by what she was saying. Martil nodded smugly, and once he murmured, “How quaint. How typical of that level of a patriarchal humanoid culture.”

  Finally, it was all there. Her little nothing of a life, spread out for dissection. She’d brought herself and events up to date, including her fierce resentment at being yanked out of her own milieu, ordered around, dragged along unwillingly and thoroughly scared into the bargain. The words stopped, but Tae didn’t remove his fingers from her forehead.

  Martil sat down in one of the oak chairs, sprawling there. “Oh, they will rejoice, back at HQ, over this exhibition of the unforeseen range and strength of the Ka-Een. Indeed. ‘A minor inconvenience,’ as they will call you, Renee Amos.”

  “But what has happened?” Chayo wanted to know. Hadn’t he been listening? “She should not have come here. Only you two were to arrive. The Esteemed Lady Renamos deserves both apology and full explanation of how this outrage has occurred. Most rudely taken from her sphere, and without her permission —”

  “I am aware of that, Prince.” Martil rubbed tiredly at a mole on his chin. Renee smothered a maternal urge to slap his hand and tell him to quit that. He went on. “In terms you and she can comprehend — she was caught in the Ka-Eens’ transference line. She made this journey completely unknown to Tae and me, and definitely unplanned by us. Riding our coattails, as it were. Or, rather, our lead beam, since she preceded us. Presumably unique conditions existed on her world at precisely the right — or the wrong — time. Those allowed her to become trapped in the Ka-Eens’ essence at the moment of transposition. It is not supposed to be possible. To the contrary. You are fortunate to be alive, Renee Amos. I do not know how you accomplished that without a Ka-Een controlling your essence.”

  “This?” She touched the pendant she wore. “I thought it was a translator gizmo.”

  Martil’s eyes sparkled appreciatively. “It is that as well. Ka-Eens are most versatile. But a Ka-Een also enables the one it possesses to travel across great distances.”

  It made a kind of wacky sense, if she granted this was real and not merely a dream induced by shock and blood loss. She’d know better than to tell any of this to Evy or Susan or the others, however, once she got back to the SOS offices tomorrow morning — or whenever. Babbling this sort of stuff could get her classified with the loonies. Worse, it’d make Evy laugh at her.

  “Well, then?” Renee asked.

  Martil looked confused. That surprised her. Wasn’t he Mister Know-All-the-Answers? It seemed peculiar that he hadn’t already thought of the obvious solution.

  “Look, whatever you’ve got going here — and I hope you know now that I didn’t try to take the top of your head off, back there in that stone alley — I don’t need to be mixed up in it any longer. Put me back to where the Ka-Een picked me up. I won’t even complain if my car’s wrecked. You’d better pray, though, that it didn’t run into anyone else after you snatched me from under the steering wheel …”

  For the first time, Tae’s idiotic grin vanished. Briefly, his fingers broke contact with her brow. When he touched her again, he was trembling. His broad chest, visible through the V neck of his tunic, rose and fell rapidly.

  As for Martil, his expression was a study in chagrin.

  Renee didn’t like seeing either reaction.

  “It is reasonable, Martil,” Chayo said. “You must agree. The Esteemed Lady Renamos is most patently an innocent bystander.”

  “Innocent, yes,” Martil conceded. “Nevertheless, her inadvertent hitchhiking in the Ka-Een transference did, indirectly, cause my pain, and nearly got all of us killed. That unexpected leak in the Ka-Eens’ essence beam made it possible for the local Geva
ri rebels to detect our arrival point. It defeated your best efforts to avoid that very problem by selecting isolated and inconspicuous entry coordinates. Let us hope the Gevari were deceived by our ruse and think we’re dead.”

  “Oh. You faked them out with that exploding rag?” Renee asked.

  Martil nodded, smiling weakly. “However, you are no longer a bystander, Renee Amos. Because it is impossible for us to return you to your own world.”

  Something in his gaze made the queasiness in Renee’s gut turn to an icy lump. “You have to!” she cried. “I have work to do. My ongoing cases with abused children and counseling battered women …” Martil continued to shake his head, looking distraught. Renee’s outrage became shivering dread. She pleaded. “Just — just send me back. Turn the Ka-Eens around. Twiddle their dials. Tell them to drop me off on their way home …”

  “Ka-Eens are not vehicles. And you are dealing in matters far larger than you have yet grasped. Where, exactly, would they ‘drop’ you, for example?”

  Startled out of her terror, she admitted he had a point. Where would she land? On top of Everest? The bottom of the Atlantic?

  “W-well, just … on Earth. Preferably on dry land, at sea level. I’ll take it from there. It’d be nice if they park me someplace that’s close to …”

  Chayo was gaping at her. He said in a pained tone, “Esteemed Lady, do not taunt us. Please give them the name of your sphere.”

  “Her word is ‘Earth,’ Prince,” Martil said sharply. “Just as yours is, and mine, and Tae’s. She knows it by no other name. In her dialect, the sounds would be distinctive. But its meaning is the same in every humanoid language.” He stopped scolding the younger man and returned his attention to Renee. “Have you a study of the universe in your knowledge?”