You were an unwilling student. It was necessary to understand your alien mind.
Within the shimmering light on the hill, a figure was seated in diaphanous veils.
I never enrolled, I sent.
Her tel presence hovered till I lowered my shields, though I knew she could slash through them as easily as those veils she wore.
You may ask me one question, she sent, for each advance you make. Do you agree?
What sort of advance?
Take the globe in your hands.
I lifted it and almost dropped it from the weight.
With each advance you will come closer to penetrating the center of the globe with your mind.
What's inside it?
The way into your own nature, which is prerequisite for your mission. When you succeed in that final probe, you will be powerful enough to lead us to the Kubraish Spirit in the Mountain and the mission He requires of you.
The silver tag, right? I replaced the globe. He's your Great Spirit…right?
Yes, Jules. Not God, but Spirit.
I thought so. Why should I care about his mission? He's been exposing my daughter to dangers.
Neither you nor Lisa have a choice. Pick up the black flower.
I did. Do I have your word, and the Spirit's word, that Lisa won't be dragged into his Great Plan, whatever that may be?
No.
I let the flower slip from my fingers.
Your daughter's journey back to Earth begins here. There is no other path. Pick up the flower. Please.
I picked it up. I want a guarantee that she'll be safe, then we can talk about paths.
My people have agreed to protect the child with every life in the village. That is all we can offer. Let the flower teach you to focus your powers.
I twirled the stem. I could use a hint on just how to do that.
The knowledge is in you, Earth son. Seek after it.
I sat at the base of the tree, studied the flower and visualized myself as a bee, glassy wings folded, pollen sacs empty, squeezing down between petals to the flower's heart to find nectar that I imaged as knowledge. This is ridiculous, I sent.
The globe hovered above me like a blind eye on its translucent pedestal. I focused my tel power on it, willed it to open to me like the flower. Smoke roiled within the sphere. I thought I was penetrating it but my tel power suddenly turned on me and I found myself peering into the dark recesses of my own mind. I didn't like what I found there and broke the link. Starspeaker!
I am here.
You didn't tell me the globe was going to fight back.
This is not a battle, Terran. The lessons would be without purpose if it did not assist you in turning inward.
I focused on the dark flower instead and cautiously lowered my mental shields. A babble of voices breached the walls of my mind, shattered the coherence of thought. Broken images flickered behind my eyes, bits of Kubraen conversations, shards of emotions, passions, rushed in through a vortex that threatened to suck me down. I squeezed my temples and felt as though a band of wet leather were tightening around my head.
Canal locks! I projected and imaged shields rising.
The shields refused to budge. No safe corner in my fragmented mind! Feelings crashed against my brain like broken glass. I dug fingers into dirt to anchor myself in the physical world. “Starspeaker!” I cried. I wanted to jump up and run blindly.
Concentrate on the flower, she sent, her mental presence at some still center of the riot within my brain. Why do you fight it? Let only the flower exist for you.
OK. Ok. But my…my shields. I tried to raise them, couldn't. Damn, I can't…can't think.
Daddy! Lisa's tel-link came through like a small light in a fog.
Lis'? No! Don't…don't get caught in this! I projected a web, a spider at its center, to warn her away.
She opened a path through the chaos, added her strength to mine to try to lift the shields. I felt them rising. Her tel power had strengthened! But she pushed back unsuccessfully when Starspeaker forced her out of the tel-link.
As your eyes discriminate and sort out the maelstrom of forms and colors entering your brain at each moment, let the flower be the eyes of your inner being.
Holding the flower in both hands, I locked my gaze on petals and fought to regain the image of the bee, to mold it against the turmoil of emotions invading my mind, as though it crawled across the lens of a kaleidoscope.
I had it! I held it in my mind's grip, clung to the image and blocked out everything else. This way lies sanity! I focused on the bee and guided it like a tiny lifeline between the bulwarks of silken petals, down to huddled safety beneath stamens and into the pistil at the flower's core.
The confusion in my mind eased and I rested there, and became the furry bee.
Jules, you have made an advance. Come out now and concentrate on the globe.
It's dangerous out there. Will you let me raise my shields?
Your shields are the means you use to keep yourself detached. You must confront the storm and tame it, alone, naked.
You ask too much.
When I probed you in the cave, you blocked your truest feelings.
We Terrans have a strong belief in our right not to be exploited by anyone, including mental invasions by alien races.
Yes, you will face your coming confrontation with only your self.
I mentally sighed. Then how do I tame this herd of buffalo stampeding through my brain?
They are the desires, the appetites of the beings around you, and those primal instincts you deny within your self. It will be painful, but let the globe teach you to unveil your untaught nature. Only when you trust yourself and embrace your deepest feelings will you succeed in your mission.
Right. Open up like the flower? There are bees of the subconscious, Speaker, and they have stingers.
It is the only way. When your mission is completed, your daughter will be returned to her home on your own planet.
I stared at Speaker, so remote on the hill. Without me, I take it?
That is one possible effect of the mission that no one can entirely predict.
Not even the Kubraish Spirit? I waited, but she didn't deign to answer. As long as Lisa makes it home.
With or without you, you will be remembered, Jules. The thought came sadly.
Don't bother. I've got friends…and enemies, waiting in geth state. Sometimes I think oblivion would be the better state. I allowed my imaginary bee to buzz above petals. Voices and passions swooped down like a crowd of waiting spiders, and though I tried to allow them in, it was a rending of my soul. I retreated to the safe chamber again and felt Speaker's disappointment.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I seem to be trapped in the illusion of self, as you would call it.
Yes. It is enough for your first lesson.
My mental shields unlocked and lifted. The bee image dissolved. I closed my eyes and realized how tight were the muscles of my shoulders.
But time is short, she sent. We will continue soon. Ask your question.
Why do you need me to lead your people to the mountain?
Because, you, Earth son, are technological man.
You mean the mountain's guarded by the czar's people? Guarded with Terran weapons?
Weapons that you understand, but there is another reason. It is not my place to explain your purpose on our world. My purpose has to do with continuance.
The Kubraish Spirit's continuance?
You have asked three questions.
I felt a gentle humor in her mindtouch. I have answered two. Now you, on your side, must not begrudge me the lessons I will impose.
There was so much I wanted to know. When's the next lesson?
Soon. When your mind has assimilated this new growth.
Why me, Speaker? You're a much more powerful telepath than I am. Why can't you accomplish your Spirit's mission?
My people grasp technology with only the vaguest of skills.
Oh
. What's penetrating my own subconscious got to do with –
Earth son! It is impolite to attempt to alter the terms of an agreement.
Can we renegotiate?
There was a long pause.
Since you are a willing pupil, and an alien, two questions for each advance. Done!
Starspeaker? I felt her mental sigh. Where are the children?
There was a pause, a sad one, I felt. Children are not born of a dispossessed and dying race.
The adolescents seem strong enough, I ventured.
Yet they do not achieve puberty on the austere food of the rocky plains, and…there is another reason.
Oh?
I felt her dismal mind tone as one feels the bleak spaces between stars on an interstellar voyage. Stars, I knew now, were what she loved and yearned for. Were stars the Kubraen perception of peace? Because your people are dispossessed from the Spirit Mountain? I asked gently.
Without Spirit's vitality, which is waning, there will be no continuance for my people.
Her head tilted skyward, as though that were her natural position. The light dimmed, her quiet presence faded from my mind. She became a dark silhouette against stars.
My head throbbed as I walked down from the shrine and I felt Speaker gently touch a place within me. The headache vanished and I silently thanked her.
Lisa?
I touched Lisa's mind, found her absorbed in a stretch of her tel powers to locate a site designated by a Kubraen who verbally guided her toward it.
I linked with her and was surprised at her concentration. I had a vision of a steep road with wrought-iron benches winding through winter fruit trees. An ivy-covered stone wall. Was it only my suspicious mind that made me think the high wall was a rampart of Wolf Ridge Keep?
“I found it!” she shouted. Her laugh carried from the circle of light around the small fire as she clapped her hands.
The group murmured and reached to stroke her shoulders. I quietly withdrew my probe. Her power was growing with the swift ability of a child's flexible, questing mind. Was the Kubraish Spirit helping things along?
A movement caught my eye and I paused to watch a lanky quadruped with layers of heavy black fur chew tree bark not five meters away from me. His jackrabbit ears were cocked in my direction. Bark lay at his feet as he extended an elongated snout through the trunk's ripped skin. Two small animals nibbled the shredded bark. His flanks heaved as he sucked liquid and I was not surprised to smell sweet syrup.
I smiled at the irony of this world. Too bad it hadn't been settled before I went off to Syl' Tyrria to search for mammals. It might've saved me a trip and my marriage. The Kubraens were obviously mammalian and so was this creature. I took a few quiet steps closer and he stamped a horny hoof and yodeled deep in his throat. The two small animals bolted.
“Peace,” I said softly and turned to leave. And stopped. Looming ahead was a large circular hut, dark, half hidden by a grove of broad-leaved crooked trees.
I went to the stone entrance. From it I saw the Western sky-glow framed by a peaked wooden portal set between trees like an abstraction of a mountain.
I lifted the ragged cloth hanging from the doorway, brushed cobwebs off my hand and smelled incense as I entered the hut's musty interior.
Shafts of moonlight breached gaps in the rotted ceiling and touched rolled mats on the dirt floor. Something fluttered out through rafters, leaving a hanging pot creaking. I steadied the pot, then let it go quickly when I saw what it held. Blackroot! The carnivorous branches from the landing site. But these dried roots merely scraped sand in the bottom of the cracked pot when I cautiously shook it.
My eyes adjusted to the faint light and I saw multi-faceted spheres suspended from the ceiling. Some caught rays of dusty light as they twirled in a breeze that pushed through broken beams. Painted wooden stars and planets again, the integral symbols in Kubraen culture, or religion, or both.
“What?” I said, starting at a sound. I turned. No one there. Soft music ran through my head, drowned a distant whine from outside. I thought the singers with Lisa had resumed their tune, until the music grew, became a chant that emanated from straw and wooden walls, from dark rafters. And from inside me.
Dust suddenly swirled at my feet in a gust of wind without source. I coughed and held my breath as the dust took on form, thickened, became silver Kubraen figures who whirled and clutched branches of writhing blackroot as they danced.
I moved toward the entrance, my heart pounding, and heard the whine outside increase to a steady drone. Beads and glassy bells on the figures' wrists and necks kept a primal beat that drummed through me as they shook the branches and shuffled around a ghost fire blazing in the hut's center like shadows of flame. Bright rugs and paintings suddenly appeared on the shiny walls.
A Kubraen woman materialized, sitting on an exquisite rug before the fire with a coal-black child on her lap. As each dancer passed them, he dipped his squirming stick into a bowl of white paste and chanted as he stroked the babe with the tip, until the crying child was streaked from head to flapping feet.
Starspeaker? I sent. Are you doing this? No answer. Somehow, I knew she wasn't. The chanting swelled inside me, gripped me with its beat, as though I had known, myself, the full joys of those lost days on the Spirit Mountain. Above the dancers' heads a globe within a globe within a globe held a silver marble suspended in its core. I touched it with my mind, closed my eyes and locked with a new spirit in geth state. Who are you? I sent, and swayed as a vision of night that had nothing to do with suns and planets was suddenly ripped by a rush of brilliant light. I snapped my eyes open.
A pale Kubraen figure, arms crossed, rose out of flames. The far wall was visible through her body as she lifted her head toward me. I caught my breath. “Gwis!”
She stared back.
“Gwis,” I whispered. “What killed you? My God, is Lisa all right?”
She dipped her head, brought it back up, then turned and took her place beside the woman and child.
A scream! Outside.
Gwis and the dancers were gone, dissipated back into smoke. The globe hung onyx black. Dust settled around my feet, around musty rolled rugs and the blackened stones of ancient fires. My throat constricted as I thought of Lisa. I turned to run and slammed into Briertrush at the entrance.
I grabbed his tunic. “What happened out there?”
He caught my wrist and squeezed hard. “Told you, humane, ta stray with thre people!”
I tried to break his grip, couldn't. “Where's Lisa?”
He lifted his chin, his hairless brows, and hissed out a breath as he stared at the dead circle of stones and ashes. “In place better thran Crei Gwis!” His lips drew back and he squeezed harder. My hand was numbing.
“Gwis is dead, isn't she?” I said.
“Ah!” It was a snarl.
I yanked my arm but could not free it. “Dammit. Let go! If anything happened to
Lisa – “
He pushed me against the wall. A wooden strut jabbed my back and beams cracked. “Could snap like wood your bones, Terran.” His close breath smelled bitter and warm as stale beer. “Could feed ta blackroot thris humane flesh!” He clamped my wrist, then let it go with a flinging motion. “Lisha hide in place safe. Told you ta stay with people!”
I rubbed my arm. “What happened to Gwis?” My voice came out hoarse.
He went to the circle of stones and gazed down. “Czar patrol land ta village!”
“Jesus! I told you they would.”
He threw aside stones, one barely missed me. “Told you ta stray with people!” He reached under ashes and lifted a trap door. “When I run search for you, patrol fire ta me. Run I harder. Get here!” he commanded and gestured to the trap door.
I stayed where I was.
“Gwis take stone in hands an' smash patrol humane ta head.” He peered up, his tight jaw muscles stretching skin. “Guards kill her. Get here!”
I backed to the hut's entrance instead, my gaze f
ixed on the spot where her spirit had sat, and clutched the hanging drape. “Forgive me, Gwis.”
Outside, human voices.
“They won't stop with Gwis,” I told Briertrush. “They'll tear this place apart until they find me and Lisa. We're the ones they want.” I pointed to the open trap door. “They'd find a roach in there with their sniffers. Where'd you hide Lisa?”
“Get you here!” There was threat in his alien voice as he stood. “Thris chamber lead ta tunnel.”
“That won't stop the sniffers.” I thought of the dead pilot. “If I scrambled their signals, they'd know it started from here, and they'd use your people to find me…and Lisa. I've seen what the czar's warriors do to their enemies.”
From outside came a rumble. The ground lurched beneath our feet.
“What was that?” I held onto a pole. The rumbling died. The ground quieted. But my legs still tingled. “What the hell was that? Earthquake?”
Briertrush looked disturbed as he glanced out the door. “Never no earthquake thris place.”
“Briertrush,” I backed through the doorway, “keep using the sublink. Keep sending out messages to passing spaceships. Until you break through and find one that will get Lisa back home to Earth and will alert her grandfather on what the czar's doing to your people. He'll know what action to take with the W-CIA.”
“Get you here, humane!” His eyes widened and he started toward me.
I knew I could outrun him as I turned and strode outside.
“Julesh,” he whispered from the doorway. “Julesh! Need you ta trake us Mountain!”
Daddy! Go hide, Lisa sent. Hurry up, Daddy!
My vision blurred as the ground shifted again. I caught myself and maintained my feet till it stopped.
Are you doing that, Lisa? I sent incredulously. Raindrops splattered on my shoulders.
I'm making them scared. Hurry, Daddy! I have to stop now.
I paused with my jaw dropped. Had she caused this storm, or just increased its intensity? This was no time for questions. The czar's warriors would have no qualms about killing these people in their search for me and Lisa.
Lis', stay with the Kubraens. Do what they tell you, baby. I walked toward a group of warriors.
Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) Page 14
