Eyf took a deep breath. “Well . . . I’m not an Oru.”
The crowd gasped. Azusu considered Eyf’s words for a moment. “You’re right,” she said at last, “you’re not. You’ve lived in the village. You’ve eaten our food. But you’re not an Oru. Never were. You may do as you wish.”
Eyf looked taken aback. It was as though this was the first time in her life that she’d actually gotten what she wanted.
“But,” continued Azusu, “if you leave here with these aliens, don’t you ever expect to come back.”
Eyf’s beak fell open. Azusu had already turned to hobble back into her long hut. The crowd dispersed, and before long we were alone. Only, Hisuda, Ikuna, and Aloro remained. Since they had found us, it was the three hunters’ responsibility to watch us until we left the village. Eyf too remained. She seemed to be in a daze. The humans and I approached her.
“Eyf,” I said to her, “thanks for the offer. But you don’t have to help us if it means losing your home. What’s wrong with your Raefec, anyway? She’s as hard as an usk-tusk.”
“Azusu’s not that bad. Kyral is a dangerous place, so she has to be dangerous too,” said Eyf. “I want to help you. I’m not sure why, but I want to.”
“You don’t even know us,” said Nicki. “We could all be serial killers.”
“We’re not though,” said Becky. “Except Hollins.”
Hollins, hearing his name, spoke up. “Because saying hello. Of hello, tiny bird-face!” He extended his hand in a friendly greeting.
Eyf cringed, though, and buried her face in her wing. She looked mortified.
“Don’t mind him,” I said. “‘Tiny bird-face’ is, uh, a great compliment where we come from. If we really like something, we might say it’s, uh, very ‘tiny bird-face.’ Right, everyone?” The humans nodded.
“No . . . I’m not upset,” whispered Eyf from behind her white feathers. “It’s just . . . I’m . . . not used to so much conversation.”
“The fact is,” I said, “we do talk all the time. Sometimes we even argue.”
“Do not,” said Little Gus.
“But if that makes you uncomfortable, Eyf, all the more reason not to leave Oru,” I said.
“No, no, no,” said Eyf, still hiding her face. “I like it. I think—I think I might have a lot to say. . . .” After this statement, though, she was quiet for the rest of the night.
No one offered us lodging in a garbage hut, so we slept under Kyral’s stars beside the dying firepit—the humans, Eyf, and myself on one side; Taius on the other. I didn’t ask where Eyf normally slept, but it was presumably no more comfortable than the hard ground. Hisuda, Ikuna, and Aloro roosted nearby, blasters at their sides.
While the others drifted to sleep, I laid awake, head on my pack, thinking of Kalac. Somewhere, it might be looking up at the same glittering sky. Or not, I suddenly realized. My originator might have already passed to the Nebula Beyond. I felt a pang of terror. I almost wanted to leap to my fel’grazes and leave Oru that instant.
Instead, I shifted and saw two red eyes glittering at me from across the embers. Taius Ridian was awake and staring at me. I rolled over to face the other way.
In my dreams, I saw Taius looming over me, holding something in his clawed hand. It was the Q-sik, glowing with fearsome power. He leveled it at me and—
I awoke suddenly in the night. The fire was totally dead. Someone was standing over me. Not Taius, but Ikuna the hunter. She quickly hushed me before I could say anything.
“Don’t believe the Raefec or her coward servants,” whispered Ikuna. “We Oru hate the Vorem.”
I nodded.
“We have been forbidden from giving this one what he truly deserves”—she threw a wing in Taius’s direction—“but that doesn’t mean that you can’t.”
In explanation, she handed me something. It was cold and heavy, made of metal: Eromu’s blaster.
Chapter Eleven
I could tell Nicki was getting frustrated. “See, it looks like a dolphin wearing a sombrero,” she said to the Aeaki. They stared back blankly. Even if Kyral had either of these two things (it didn’t), they couldn’t understand the human words.
“Pardon my friend,” said Little Gus, “but it actually looks like a banana playing football.” This did nothing to clarify the shape of the drawing in the dirt for Hisuda, Aloro, and Ikuna.
To figure out where we were going, we needed to know where we were. Based upon our flight path when we crashed, Nicki determined that we were anywhere from two hundred to a thousand kilometers from the distress beacon.
At first Nicki had pulled out her holodrive and brought up a spinning three-dimensional projection of Kyral. It wasn’t detailed, but it showed the big features (such as the aforementioned dolphin/banana sea). The map even showed a general radius from which the distress beacon of the Phryxus II had emanated—a dishearteningly large circle, several thousand square kilometers wide. Still, it was better than nothing.
Eyf was fascinated, but holographic projections proved too much for the other Aeaki to comprehend. Hisuda kept waving her wing through the hologram to disrupt it. When she couldn’t, she ultimately declared the device to be “magic spells.” Ikuna and Aloro agreed that they wanted nothing to do with it. Privately, I suspected that they didn’t even understand they were looking at a map. They probably thought Kyral was flat.
So Nicki put away the holodrive and resorted to drawing the geography in the dirt with a stick. This garnered scarcely better results.
“Have any of you been to the sea?” asked Nicki. “The sea? It’s like a very big lake. With lots of water.” The Aeaki shook their heads. Despite the mobility of flight, none had apparently ranged far from their home.
“I have been to Hykaro Roost,” said Ikuna unhelpfully.
To aid Nicki’s presentation, Hollins even tried pulling out a simple instrument called a “compass” that he’d somehow carried with him all the way from Earth. As I understood it, the needle of the compass was a magnet. On Earth, it would always point toward the northern pole of the planet. Here, though, it was useless. The needle spun wildly, sometimes lingering in one direction or another before spinning again. Kyral’s magnetic fields were simply different.
Hisuda also declared the malfunctioning compass to be “magic spells.” She took it from Hollins and smashed it against a rock before he could stop her. Then she handed it back as though she had solved a very pressing problem.
“Does broken,” said Hollins sadly.
At last the Aeaki gave up and wished us good luck in a manner that indicated they were glad to be rid of us.
“Be careful with that one,” whispered Hisuda as she pointed to Eyf. “She’s not an Oru.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t heard!” I yelled, startling her. Hisuda shrugged at our folly, and the three hunters took off, flapping back to the village high above.
And so we all stood together in the forest at the base of Oru’s cliff. Our packs were filled with Aeaki food, such as it was. Mostly it consisted of little packets of seeds and nuts wrapped in leaves. Each of us had been given one fire-charred creature on a stick, presumably to eat (or maybe just to to ruin our appetites so we wouldn’t get hungry at all). Whether it was rodent, lizard, or other, none could say.
We were free to continue our search for Kalac and the others. I, especially, was eager to start. But we had no idea which way to go. We were at a loss.
“Okay, I’m going to throw a stick up,” said Little Gus, “and when it lands, whichever way it’s pointing, that’s the direction we start walking.”
He picked a stick up off the ground and tossed it high into the air. We watched as it hung for a moment, then fell back to the ground and landed right on Hollins’s head.
“Ow!” cried Hollins, and he followed that with several of the expletives the humans had forbidden me from using.
“And it seemed like such a foolproof plan,” said Becky.
“Okay, sorry, Hollins,” said Little Gus. “Obviously, this navigation system needs some fine-tuning. Let me try it again.” He stooped to pick up the stick, but Hollins kicked it away from him, at which point Nicki grabbed it, bagged it, and labeled it “stick.”
I sighed. So far we were off to a great start.
“You,” said a voice from behind me, “Xotonian.” I turned. It was, of course, Taius Ridian. Again, he’d climbed down the sheer cliff without the aid of any rope.
“What do you want?” asked Hollins in human-ese, stepping forward. “Are you trying to start something now that we’re not in the village anymore? No zapper now, tough guy. You really think you can win in a fair fight?”
When they stood nose to nose, it was clear Hollins was a few centimeters taller and several kilograms heavier. Still, I remembered how deadly quick Taius had been in the fight aboard the T’utzuxe.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, alien,” said Taius. “Your language sounds like barking grybbs to me.”
Beside me, Nicki and Little Gus were trying to look tough (with mixed results). Becky had a thick branch in her hands. She was ready to fight. Eyf had already alighted in a tree too high for Taius to easily reach. I had one thol’graz in my pack, gripping Eromu’s blaster. I felt the weight of the Q-sik beside it.
“But Homo sapiens don’t interest me at the moment,” hissed Taius in Hollins’s face. “I want to speak to you. Chorkle.”
It gave me a chill to hear him utter my name. “I don’t think we have anything to say. You should leave us in peace,” I said. “It’s best that you go your way and we go ours.”
“And which way would you be going?”
“I . . . we’re going to . . . see, there’s this dolphin-sombrero sea and . . .” I trailed off. He had me, and he knew it.
“I thought so,” he said, stepping past Hollins. “Let’s talk. Alone.”
“Ha ha. Good one, Junior,” laughed Becky at Taius. “You might be a creep, but at least you’ve got a sense of humor.”
“I’m unarmed,” said Taius, ignoring her and speaking only to me. “You may keep your energy blaster. If that makes you feel safe.”
He’d either guessed what was in my pack or had seen Ikuna give it to me in the night. I pulled the weapon out and stepped toward him. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll hear what you have to say. But it won’t make a difference.”
“What? Are you nuts?” said Little Gus.
“Chorkle, he’s dangerous,” whispered Nicki. “I mean, not that I’m scared.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Come on. Follow me.” And Taius did. We walked a few dozen meters into the forest, just far enough to be out of earshot but not out of sight of the others. They all looked on with grave concern, ready for action. I could see Eyf flitting nervously from branch to branch.
“So?” I said to Taius. I aimed the energy blaster at a point between his eyes, with my frib on the trigger.
“So,” said Taius, “your Xotonian ruler is somewhere on this planet. In danger. You’re trying to follow the distress beacon from its ship.” They were all statements, not questions.
I didn’t want to give him any information he could use against us, but he already knew. So I nodded. “Not ‘ruler,’” I said. “‘Leader.’” Did he also know that Kalac was my originator, I wondered?
“Without your starfighter’s sensors, you have no way to locate the beacon,” he continued.
Here, I said nothing. Again, he was right, and he knew it. “Well, I do,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He reached to his belt and unclasped the little black square. “Is this the beacon you follow?” He held it close to my ear. I instantly recognized the staticky Xotonian chime! Kalac’s chime!
“Yes, that’s it!” I cried, unable to contain my excitement.
He quickly palmed the device. “This is a zowul, a Vorem emergency tracker,” he said. “But I recalibrated it to pick up your beacon instead. Your rul—your leader’s ship is not far from here, really. A few hundred kilometers at most. But you’ll never locate it on your own.”
“So why are you telling me this?” I asked. “Just to taunt me?”
“No,” said Taius. “I offer to help you.”
“Oh, and why would you do that?” I asked. “Just out of the goodness of your is’pog—I mean heart—I mean whatever gross organ pumps gross Vorem blood?”
He looked momentarily confused by the metaphor. “No,” he said. “Kindness is weakness. I would do it to serve myself.”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked around and sighed. “I’m trapped on this world. No Vorem legion behind me. The Aeaki are worse than useless. I have no way to contact my father. No way home. I’m in a worse position now than when I was hiding like a vermin in your asteroid’s tunnels.” He sounded truly pathetic as he spoke.
“It’s a little late for sob stories, Taius,” I said. “Maybe you should have tried for sympathy before you wrecked our only starship.”
“I didn’t mean to crash the ship. And I don’t ask for sympathy.” He spit the word out with disgust. “I ask for a promise: If I locate your leader, you must do everything in your power to get me back to my—to General Ridian. Believe me, if there was some other way, I would try it.”
“You know,” I said, leveling the energy blaster at him, “we could just take that tracker from you. Use it to locate the ship ourselves.”
“You could try,” he said ominously. “But even if you succeeded in obtaining it from me, the zowul wouldn’t work.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Here, try it,” he said. And he tossed me the little device. I caught it. Once again it went dead. And once again there was no way for me to turn it on.
“The zowul is keyed to my biometrics,” said Taius. “A highly advanced security feature. I have to be holding it for it to function. This way our enemies cannot use our own trackers against us.”
I tossed it back to him. “You know,” I said, “I find it hard to believe that you suddenly want to help us. Considering you just asked Azusu to lock us up.”
“I only wanted the humans arrested,” he said, truly confused. “Not you.”
“But they’re my friends!” I cried. He looked back at me blankly as though he didn’t understand the concept at all.
“Fine. Whatever you say,” he said with a shrug. “The fact is that you need me.”
I hated to admit it, but he was right. As far as I could see, the only way to find Kalac and the others was with his little tracker, his “zowul.” Still, some bargains aren’t worth making.
“No,” I said, “we’ll find our own way.”
“Please,” he said, all the remaining arrogance draining from his voice. “Your Xotonian leader’s ship is the only way off this backwater planet. I have to get back to the Vorem legion. I can’t fail my father again.” Good, I thought. Apparently, Taius didn’t know that there might still be a Vorem trireme somewhere on Kyral. I wanted to keep it that way.
“The answer is still no,” I repeated, “and if you don’t leave us alone, I really will shoot you. Again. And I won’t aim for your arm this time!” I neglected to mention that I hadn’t been aiming for his arm the first time.
Taius stared at me. I turned to rejoin the others.
“Wait!” he cried. I turned back. He’d lost every bit of his icy confidence now; he looked totally desperate.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s something else,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “You—back in the ship you . . .” He trailed off.
“Spit it out,” I said. “This is your last chance, Taius.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know how your society works. You live in tun
nels. You hide in the dark. You seem weak and cowardly. . . .” I frowned, and he could tell he wasn’t off to a strong start. “I mean, the rules of your world are different from mine, I guess. But among the Vorem, to owe anything to someone is humiliating. But to owe another your life, especially an inferior—a non-Vorem—it’s disgraceful.” He hissed the last word.
It started to dawn on me what Taius was getting at.
“Back on the starfighter,” he said, “you dragged me out before it exploded. You saved me from dying. I owe you my life.”
“You do,” I admitted.
“I have to repay that debt,” he said, “or else I am weak.” He was looking at the ground now. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. It was unsettling to see a Vorem weep.
I stared at him in silence. “Okay, Taius,” I said, lowering the energy blaster. “If you lead me to Kalac, I’ll help you back to your father. And you can consider your debt to me paid.”
He looked up at me, and I could see something different in his red eyes.
“But if you try to pull anything,” I said, “I swear to Morool I’ll vaporize you.”
“I won’t,” he said, wiping his nose. “Just promise me you won’t tell anyone that I cried.”
I nodded.
• • • •
“Absolutely not!” cried Becky. “He electrocuted me. He destroyed our ship. And he ate my phui-chips!”
“You destroyed your own ship,” said Taius. It was like his emotional meltdown had never happened. He was back to full-on sneering villain mode. Needless to say, he wasn’t endearing himself to the others. Becky, in particular, looked like she wanted to choke him until his red eyes popped out of his head.
Hollins stepped forward and poked Taius in the chest. “Does telling,” he said in Xotonian. “Of Vorem did flying to space car called Ridan space car. When does asking?”
“Very good point,” said Taius mockingly. “Should I be writing this down for posterity?”
“What Hollins means,” said Nicki, “is that if we had flown you back to the battle cruiser when you told us to, what would have happened to us? And be honest.”
For the Love of Gelo! Page 11
