by J. M. Page
Rufus’s other eye lens popped up and they tilted together to give him an angry look. “Your father—”
Celine huffed. “I know. Daddy thinks that all humans are evil and won’t hesitate to kill a modder on the spot.”
Rufus’s eyes flashed red again, but Celine ignored it.
“But he’s in trouble. Maybe I can help him? Besides, Dad says a lot of stuff and we don’t always believe him.”
“But… But… Celine!” Rufus whined this time, trying for the pitiful route instead.
She patted him and pressed onwards. “I’ll make a note of your objections,” she said, fighting a little smirk.
More worrying than the urge to smile was the strange fluttering in Celine’s chest at the mere sight of this strange man. Something about him intrigued her, fascinated her, and propelled her feet forward despite Rufus’s protests.
Where did he come from? Was the walled city real? And he a citizen of it?
It seemed like a stretch to her, but he had to come from somewhere. Humans didn’t just fall out of the sky, unless her father was to be believed.
A familiar tug of impatience made her roll her eyes. Sometimes, her father was so old-fashioned. It was her father that insisted they all remain holed away in the tunnels.
He told a story to anyone that would listen. A story of a human doing just what Celine thought impossible: falling out of the sky. The man crashed and when Abatu, Celine’s father, tried to help him, the man turned weapons against him, threatening his very existence.
Of course, the way Dad told it, only his quick thinking and super fast legs had gotten him out alive.
“They hate us for being different and fear us for our advantages,” Dad always said.
Celine wasn’t sure she bought what the old man was selling. Even if the walled city did exist, it was a pretty big stretch of the imagination to think that a millennia-old prejudice still survived.
The man trudging through the dunes ahead of her stumbled. Every step looking to take more effort than the one before it. His feet sank further into the soft loose sand and he fought to free himself. Celine's chest constricted, wondering if now was her time to help him. Or if there was a time she should help him.
For all she knew, he could deserve this. Maybe he was a criminal on the run. Why else would he be venturing out into certain death?
She frowned. She didn’t think he looked like a criminal, though it would be pretty hard to make that judgement without another look at him. A long look.
He tumbled forward, face down in the sand, and Celine held her breath.
“What are you thinking?” Rufus asked, his voice more tart than usual. “I know that look.”
She thought it best not to answer that. He’d only protest more.
The man struggled to make forward movement, crawling on his stomach as the swirling winds began to bury him.
“Celine,” Rufus hissed again.
“I can’t just let him die,” she hissed back, edging ever closer to the stranger.
He still pulled himself forward. Slower and slower until he stopped moving altogether.
Ignoring the buzzes and squawks of protest from Rufus, Celine darted over to the man, scrabbling for purchase in the sand.
She arrived moments before he’d be completely buried and quickly set to work digging him out of the sand. She managed to get him rolled over and then hefted him up with her arms on either side of his chest, lifting him by the armpits.
One the one hand, it wasn’t so difficult to drag him across the sand, but that hand was mechanical.
On the other hand, Celine had a lot more trouble keeping her grip and soon her muscles reached exhaustion.
“Just…” she heaved him with her as she stepped backward toward cover. “A little…” she grunted with the effort of pulling him. “Further.”
Even her mechanical arm wasn’t really suited for this kind of heavy lifting and her shoulder screamed with a deep burning ache.
Just when she was sure she couldn’t possibly pull him another step, the sand underfoot gave way to solid rock and the wind quieted.
“Are you crazy?” Rufus trilled, unable to contain his alarmed whistles.
The stranger grunted, but remained otherwise unresponsive.
“Shh.”
Rufus had the good sense to look apologetic. As apologetic as a homemade pocket robot could look, anyway.
After a pause, Celine frowned at the still man and sent a worried look to her robotic companion. “Do you think he’s—?”
Rufus shuddered. “I don’t know!”
“Why don’t you check it out?” Celine said, taking Rufus off his perch on her shoulder. She set him on the floor of the cave and watched from a healthy distance.
Rufus inched closer and closer to the human man, needing constant encouragement from Celine as he went along.
Finally, Rufus nudged the man’s foot, but he didn’t budge.
Celine huffed, resigning herself to actually going over to the guy despite the strange crackling energy buzzing in her lungs.
It didn’t take her long to realize he was wheezing, every breath shallow, raspy and labored.
She propped his limp body up against the wall of the cave and used the position as leverage to work the dust from his lungs. She alternated between forcing water past his lips and swatting him between the shoulder blades to make him cough.
The third time she brought her canteen to his lips, the man’s eyes opened. For a long drawn-out moment the world hung there, suspended in time. The longer the moment went on, the more Celine was sure the pressure inside of her would make her explode.
But she didn’t explode. The stranger’s honey-gold eyes flickered to her mechanical arm — the one holding the canteen — and he flinched on instinct.
As quickly as they’d opened, the man’s eyes closed, leaving Celine alone without a clue of what to do. Again.
Only now there was another despair choking her: the knowledge that her father was right.
After Celine was satisfied that the strange man was breathing on his own without trouble, she ventured out of the cave, instructing Rufus to stay behind and keep an eye on the guy. He didn’t like that plan.
Without anything better to go on, she headed North. She didn’t have much hope of finding anything, but she needed time to think. Now that she’d saved this guy, what was she supposed to do with him?
He was crashed in the desert and not doing so well. Was she supposed to take him back home?
That would go over real well with her father.
She considered hiding him somewhere else in the tunnels, but quickly dismissed it. Rufus would blow their secret within a day.
But that still left her precisely where she’d started.
As long as she kept walking, though, she wouldn’t have to face that decision. Or the consequences it’d bring. So she kept walking. Trekking across the desert like her ancestors must have done thousands of years before her.
Though, if legends were to be believed, they were leaving the walled city. Not trying to find it. Celine shook her head at the entire notion of searching for a mythical walled city of legend to save the impossible human that fell from the sky.
The very same sky that she longed to catch a glimpse of, instead of the endless fathomless dust.
The same sky that seemed out of reach, even as the dust around her seemed to calm.
The sudden lack of dust should have tipped her off, but Celine was too wrapped up in her own thoughts and calculations to notice the change. Or the looming shadow that grew closer.
Something, she couldn’t say what, fired off a warning shot way back in the recesses of her mind, and Celine looked up, instantly stumbling backwards with a gasp.
“No way…”
It was an honest-to-goodness wall.
More shocking than the giant monolithic wall towering over her was the complete and utter lack of dust.
Celine cautiously unraveled the covering around her he
ad, expecting at any moment to be pelted with tiny airborne needles.
But the stinging never came. Nor did the coughing.
In fact, Celine threw her head back and sucked in deep lungfuls of air, giving way to giggles.
It was real! The wall, the city… and somehow — miraculously — they’d figured out how to stop the storm from encroaching. She felt like dancing with the sheer excitement of it.
But there was no time for dancing. Now that she knew the city was real, she needed to bring the stranger back to the wall for his own safety. Clearly he didn’t belong in the Wastelands.
Celine couldn’t ever remember moving so fast. Part of it was urgency — the man needed medical attention, and her father would be wondering where she was. Part of it was pure unadulterated joy.
The walled city’s existence opened up a whole new world of possibilities. She was excited to try to harvest parts from one busted up spacecraft, but they probably had whole fleets of those things. They probably left the planet like it was no big deal, all the time.
They probably…
As she neared the cave and Celine’s thoughts turned back to the man inside, she slowed to a stop. They probably would never let her anywhere near their city with her robotic arm.
She remembered the way his eyes had focused on it. How he’d flinched.
And as much as she hated to admit it, Celine knew her dad had been telling the truth about humans all along. If he was in better shape, who was to say this human wouldn’t kill her?
Just because he made her feel over-inflated and fizzy didn’t mean he wasn’t a bad guy. She didn’t know anything about him. Not even his name.
If he was the murderous kind of human, she’d probably be better off just leaving him to fend for himself. The city wasn’t far. He could maybe make it on his own if he knew which way to go…
She stepped back into the cave, still not sure what she was going to do beyond retrieving Rufus.
“Thank goodness you’re back!” Rufus said, rushing over to her to do figure eights around her ankles. “He kept mumbling something about ‘modders,’” Rufus said with a tremble.
Celine’s jaw clenched and she knew what her father would say.
“One less human to worry about.”
She sighed. Nope. No way she could take Dad’s route on this one.
With another great heave, she managed to get a good grip on his prone form and began to drag him toward the city, one exhausting step at a time.
At the base of the great sandstone wall, she propped the man’s limp form and looked up toward the sky with her hands on her hips.
How was she possibly supposed to tell anyone he was there? She didn’t know the way in — if there even was a way in — and her time ran short as it was.
Rufus didn’t like the lack of dust as much as Celine did. He seemed to find it suspicious and had no problem voicing his concerns.
“Let’s go now before your father finds out what you’ve been up to!” He rocked back and forth on her shoulder, unable to keep still.
The man groaned, trying to sit up and failing. Celine crouched at his side, taking care to keep her arm hidden from view.
His eyes fluttered open and Celine felt that same strange weightless sensation as their gazes met, his full of confusion.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe soon,” she said while Rufus whined into her neck.
Rufus… That was it!
Celine turned to the little bot with a broad grin and he recognized the mischief in an instant.
“What is that look for?”
“Nothing,” she lied, plucking him from his perch.
She flipped Rufus over in her hand and opened his access panel.
“Celine! What are you doEEEEE—”
Celine winced, covering her ear with one free hand and lifting Rufus up with the other, the high-pitched siren wailing. Her ears rang, but Celine still held Rufus above her head, his modified siren echoing off the solid wall.
She thought she’d go deaf before anyone in the city heard, but then, there were deep voices rumbling under the shrill wail.
Celine squinted into the distance and spotted the shadows growing near.
“Do you see anything?” A voice asked.
“No, but something’s making an awful racket,” another said.
Celine pulled Rufus close again, tinkering with his insides until the siren stopped.
Rufus said nothing, not trusting his voice, but his expression spelled betrayal.
Celine gave him a little shrug. “I had to,” she whispered, scuttling away from the stranger.
The siren had roused him somewhat and he tried to get to his feet, coughing as he did.
“Your Highness!” One of the voices said as it grew nearer. Celine’s back rested right against the barrier to the dust storms. She told herself she just wanted to know he was safe.
“Ben, what are you doing out here?” said another.
“Celine,” Rufus finally said.
The two men helped her stranger to his feet. He said something she couldn’t hear and then the trio looked around, searching.
Celine held her breath and took a step backwards into the punishing dust.
“That was too close,” Rufus whined as she re-wrapped the folds of fabric around her. Celine’s face already stung from the few seconds she’d been exposed, but it didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered now was that Celine knew the truth.
The walled city was real. They had the technology to stop the dust.
...And the man — Ben, she reminded herself — had flinched at her arm.
That was only a small hiccup in Celine’s opinion. Just a minor obstacle in the way of her new goal.
Because regardless of the consequences or the ire of her father, Celine knew she belonged to their world. A world where venturing into space wasn’t a little girl’s daydream, but a reality. A world where she didn’t have to be secreted away in deep underground tunnels. A world where she could breathe freely without choking.
A world with that impossibly handsome man and his bewitching golden eyes.
No doubt about it, she wanted to be a part of their world and nothing would stand in her way.
She trudged through the sand that swallowed her ankles with every step, feeling lighter somehow. A smile stretched her face and refused to disappear.
“Celine! Do you hear me? That was reckless, dangerous, and—”
“I’m going back,” she said.
“What? You can’t! Are you crazy? They’ll skin you alive.”
Celine rolled her eyes. “You’ve been listening to Dad too much. Has he been messing with your inhibition program?”
Rufus’s eyes flashed red for heartbeat. “No.”
Celine sighed, seeing how she’d offended Rufus. “Hey, I was just teasing,” she said. “But since when aren’t you up for adventure?”
“Since it could hurt you,” he answered, his lenses drooping. If ever a robot was able to pout, Rufus managed it then.
“I’m not going to be crazy about it. I have to have a plan. Clearly they’re not going to let me in with this,” she waved her mechanical arm at him. “But I’ll think of something.”
“You don’t belong with them,” he said, still trembling.
Celine didn’t argue with him. Maybe Rufus was right, but she wouldn’t let a little thing like logic stop her.
“We’ll just see about that,” was the last thing she said on the matter.
Her robotic companion had the good sense to let the subject drop too, and buried himself under the protective fabric she wore.
Celine scanned the horizon, or what she could see of it, and studied the nearby rock formations for directions.
Finding what she looked for, she turned, veering off course from the way home.
“Where are you going?”
“Shh, just a quick detour,” she said, patting Rufus absently.
When she arrived at the wreckage, Celine found
the hovercraft all but buried in dust. Of course, dust was a way of life out in the Wastelands and she wasn’t going to let that stop her either. She dropped to her knees, the ground soft as talc, and worked herself into a frenzy digging the machine out.
She didn’t think she’d ever be able to get it operational again, but maybe there were useful parts. At least then she could have something to show for her day out instead of just a head full of fanciful ideas and dreams. And maybe whatever she found would be useful on her quest to get into the city.
That was a big maybe.
“Are you going to stay on my shoulder and be a scaredy bot, or help me with this?”
One of Rufus’s eyes popped up, followed by the other. “Help you?”
“What? You’ve already forgotten your love of cool stuff?”
Rufus vibrated for a moment, conflicted between his residual anger at her and his innate sense of wonder at anything deemed cool.
She plucked him from her shoulder, already knowing what his decision would be, and shooed him toward the opening.
“You know what to look for,” she said.
Rufus looked back at her before he made up his mind and wriggled his way into the narrow opening, the interior of the craft now nearly submerged with dust. There was no way she’d be able to get in there and find her way back out again. Rufus was small enough to explore places like that and usually he loved it.
Today, he was still a little bitter about everything that’d happened.
Despite that, he reappeared a few minutes later, pulling with him what looked to be some kind of control panel and maybe part of a reactor?
“Everything else is already ruined or useless,” he said. Celine thought he sounded tired even though he couldn’t be. Maybe she was mis-reading his impatience with her. She’d have to make it up to him somehow — a thorough cleaning and some fresh gaskets, perhaps.
She took his offered treasures and tucked them away for safekeeping.
“Oh, and this too,” Rufus said as an afterthought. His front panel sprang open and he removed a shiny silver coin that fit neatly into Celine’s palm. She turned it in her hand. One side depicted the walled city with three words in a language Celine couldn’t read. On the other side, there was an emblem with a constellation of stars and the words “Terran Space Force - Instinct, Pride, Valor.”
