Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  In Edinburgh, the vehicle hurtling towards my flat’s building had accidentally been severed from that lock, the first accident of its kind in thirty years. It brought out cries of more efficient systems and the need for all vehicles to have unbreakable bonds between Transit and car. I say this because I did a lot of reading about the Transit Authorities back on Earth before I gave up my life for Sondranos. I’d hoped for a chance to convince TA to rebuild my apartment. I’m sure, if any of the people decrying Transit for more diverse uses had seen her, they would have applauded Annalise for her use of the overheated engine. Even Melanie, who cringed as the drops of blood and oil from the meat formed a polite stream over the block, couldn’t steal that away from her. The task took me back into the classroom – back to Glasgow at St. Michel’s.

  Daniel chose this moment to show.

  I’ve already mentioned the times when his voice came into my mind, pervading my auditory senses like a popped balloon; however, this was the next stage. Just shy of a mile away, I saw him standing in the shadows. His short crop of blonde hair, much like Melanie’s, brightened in the hint of sunlight. He wore what he did when I last saw him: jeans with holes at the knees, a tee-shirt with St. Michel’s emblem embroidered over the breast, and slippers. The shadows touched his rigid cheekbones and gaunt nose, making him look sick, a bit like Max Schreck in Nosferatu makeup.

  ‘They act like he’s not even gone. Like he was nothing more than a barnacle scraped off the keel of their ship. They would do the same if you were gone,’ his voice carried across the distance and planted in my ear. ‘You could be dead right now had you stuck it out near the Abbey. Why didn’t you? One less person to drag around. One more dead body in the numbers when all this is over. That sounds about right. A number. It doesn’t matter if you die now, or had already died, or when you’ll die because that’s the fullest potential you’ll ever live up to. Am I right, or am I right, or am I right?’

  I shook the voice out. That wasn’t Daniel. The last time I’d seen him had burned much more than his image into my brain; his ploy at getting me to stand up for myself had seeded into my subconscious, and finally bloomed. The steaks cooking on Annalise’s engine took me out of it, and I realized that seeing Daniel had taken less than a second. It was like a dream – you wake up knowing it happened, but can never hope to place when.

  Shaken, but determined to put it away for the time, I joined Davion and Melanie crowding the engine to watch the meat cook. She’d brought two large roasts that had been cut into inch-thick steaks. They sizzled on the convection foil. Melanie watched this with bated breath. Kayt stumbled out of the car, drawing our attention. She’d been sobbing, and her chest caught with each breath. Her sleeves were wet.

  “Let her be,” Annalise warned us. Kayt slowly stumbled away from us, and further along the road.

  Annalise dove into second bag, the one I’d packed. She stopped at a small patch of dirt in the view of both the headlights, where she sat and pulled out each item. One box – the half-empty one of crackers – threatened to tip over. The rest balanced unevenly in the soil. I turned back to Kayt and watched as she pondered which way to go. She paced away from the car, in the opposite direction as us, turned around, and then headed towards the engine. Davion prodded Melanie to sit around the makeshift campsite before Kayt got close.

  Kayt wiped at her upper lip and came over to us.

  “I’ve never seen anyone cook using their engine,” she said. She’d tied her hair back in a tail using a rubber band. A few stray strands waved in the slight breeze. Annalise, still at the campsite, heard her, and pulled out a bottle of water out of her bag. She peeled the label off the front and crumpled it in her hand. I barely caught sight of the label when she handed the bottle to Kayt with her free hand. The bottler’s company had a slogan written in mock-cursive that read: Never Leave Your Friends Behind; Never Leave Your Bottle Behind.

  Kayt cracked open the lid and sipped at it.

  “Engine cooking is an old custom. I only knew about it because I recently had a lot of time to read,” Annalise offered a fake smile. “Which is also why I knew how to sever the magnetic locks on that car.” Annalise turned to Melanie, who flattened her pants and sat in the dirt. Davion pulled his robes around his waist before sitting, revealing stocky pants that could have been as old as him. “Good job, by the way. I certainly couldn’t have done it in time.”

  Melanie looked at Davion. Her eyes followed him. She then spoke as if she’d been trained to do so: “Thank you for the opportunity,” she said. “I learned more about myself than I remembered about vehicles.”

  Davion patted her on the knee. He leaned forward, and they began to chat. Kayt paced against the side of the road, sipping from the water and spitting some out after swishing it around. Quiet pervaded the twilight. It wasn’t so quiet that nerves sank in; however, it was quiet enough for us to feel entirely comfortable doing nothing. I helped Annalise with the food. Shortly, I realized that we’d brought no utensils or anything to pick the steaks off the engine with. I picked at the first steak, startled at the heat, and pulled my fingers back. Annalise laughed and pulled out a second rectangle of convection foil. She set the sheet over the steaks, wrapped the edges together, and flipped the meat just as effortlessly as she’d set them on. I placed my hands behind my back. Kayt, noticing the exchange, concealed a smirk. After a few moments, all three of us turned around to the sound of Melanie scrambling off the ground.

  “Just deep breaths, Melanie.” Davion stood in front of her, and shielded us from noticing that she’d stood and was clutching at her head like someone had set it in a vice.

  “Stop,” Melanie barked.

  “You can beat this. Just put it out of your mind,” Davion said. It felt like we’d all walked in on a private conversation.

  Annalise and Kayt looked to me, as if I had some answer.

  I shook my head and shrugged.

  Melanie pushed her hair back over her head with a trembling hand. She turned away from us all. “Praying isn’t going to help this one, Davion.”

  “Then confide. I gave you many options, Melanie. To only provide one option in a crisis would be ridiculous. There are millions,” Davion stood and attempted to join her. She stepped away before he could. “Just choose one. Let me help you. Like when we were in the garage. Take my hands.”

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” she yelled. The words were directed at Davion.

  We all wanted her to say what was on her mind – that the Belovores were monsters and deserved a horrible punishment, or that we should find a way to arm ourselves with the most painful weapons we could imagine and strike back. Kayt turned and attempted to draw another sip from her water bottle to conceal that she’d started crying again. Annalise watched the ground, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Melanie, or Davion – who opened his arms to Melanie like she was his lost child.

  “All those people,” she began. “And all I could think of was following you to get some information that might not even be relevant anymore. That poor boy died because we couldn’t work fast enough, and for what? His death did absolutely nothing to hurt or hinder our chances of survival.”

  Annalise perked up. She shot me a look that was sudden and neurotic. Her eyebrows crooked. ‘What does she mean?’ she mouthed.

  “What we’ve talked about, Melanie. If you can learn to trust me, then you can learn to trust your faith,” Davion said. “Let me continue the story of Admiral Perry. Allow it to take your mind away before you start to think of things that will force you to question that which is most important.”

  “I don’t really want to hear about them right now,” Annalise said loudly. She nudged towards Kayt, who’d chosen to turn around and pace away from the group at the mention of the ‘poor boy.’ “This isn’t the right time.”

  Melanie took a few silent breaths. Davion wrapped a hand around her and escorted them back to their seats. She pulled up her lips in a fake smile, and they sat. In what must have been a
mirror recreation, Melanie leaned over and rested her head against Davion’s shoulder. She closed her eyes. She mouthed something that acted like a prayer, and slowly calmed her. The panic attack seemed to be ebbing, but – since none of us knew it was coming – we didn’t know how to deal with them. If she had another one while Davion wasn’t near, I was certain it would cause more damage than good.

  “There will never be a right time,” Davion said. “I respect that. But I feel there is something in what I will tell you that might shed light on this situation. Admiral Perry’s actions influenced much more than the colony you see around you. The Belovores were a stagnant race. Showed signs of age reaching as far as five hundred of our years, considering their healthcare system, which they called sub-par.”

  “They’re working with someone,” Annalise pushed the words out quickly, eying me. “We heard someone in the group making a pretty good case for it. But that doesn’t mean we need to hear your stories about it, right now.”

  “It’s okay,” Kayt interrupted. She stood between us all, and shook her head. “You don’t have to protect me. I want to know more about what happened. I need to know who killed my best friend, and why. If Davion has some kind of insight, then I want to hear what he has to say.”

  Annalise rubbed her eyes. She bit her lower lip, looked at the meat, and then offered Davion an alternative. “Wait until we’re eating,” she said. We locked gazes. “That way those of us who don’t want to hear can focus on our food instead.”

  What she said with her eyes was: ‘I want Kayt to have some kind of distraction when the story gets too real for her.’

  Davion agreed on the settlement.

  He pulled out one of the boxes from the bag at the centre of our makeshift campsite and offered the contents to Melanie. She took the box of crackers, popped two in her mouth and grimaced at the taste. She eyes were streaked with red, and she still staggered each breath as if they hurt. Davion ignored it by turning to his side and wiping dirt away from the spot next to him, as if to create a seat for Kayt. She downed the rest of the contents in the water bottle and sat cross-legged. I waited with Annalise, who had turned her attention back to the steaks.

  “We need to protect her,” she mumbled.

  “I know,” I said.

  “She doesn’t know where she wants to be, grieving or angry. We can’t let the angry part take over, so right now we have to let it happen while we can still control it,” she said. “Later we might not get the chance. We’ve gotten ourselves this far; we can’t let this group degrade.”

  “We?” I wondered if she sensed that I was challenging her definition of the term.

  Annalise sighed. She bit her lip again, and turned away from the meat. “Yeah. We. I’m sorry about how I acted back there. I’m used to being selfish, but I feel like I’ve been put in charge of this group, and like all the responsibility is on me. We’re here because of my car; we got to my car because I said it was there. But you’ve been helping. I have to acknowledge that, and I’m sorry. We’re not alive just because of my own doing; everyone’s had a hand in it.”

  I didn’t respond; I don’t think I needed to.

  The steaks were done within the minute, and – after Annalise pressed the meaty side of her wrist where thumb met palm to test the cook of the meat – she took the sides of the wrapped convection foil and set it in the centre of our circle. Annalise pulled out a second water bottle and poured a few drops over her hands while the other bottles made the rounds. We each took a section of steak and ate with our hands while the boxes and bags of random items I’d bagged were passed around.

  Davion began just as I’d tasted the first bit of engine-cooked steak, which Daniel might have said contained the flavours of every place that car had been. All I could taste was smoke and flavourless beef.

  “Admiral Perry and the Irene’s expedition went as expected for a year – save for the sudden inclusion of the Belovores,” Davion took small bites, enough to speak around. “However, the relationship and the implications of a shared colony didn’t begin to fully realize until a year later.”

  Admiral Perry sits, fingering the red dyed tablecloth dangling from the edges like a paper napkin. The riots have calmed, but the worry is still there. Sixteen different file folders sit on his desk in old fashioned paper documents, each one detailing how the colony will fail. Hours ago, he tried sorting them by importance, but felt deadlocked when he couldn’t decide between the economic downfall or the lack of a proper sanitary system causing widespread illness.

  The short end of it is simple: there isn’t enough food, water, and precious resource to go around. And on top of that, they’ve suddenly found themselves as the mentors to a species they’ve only just learned existed. Learning their language wasn’t an option – upon a medical examination, it was realized that no human tongue or vocal combination could create the proper dialect needed to converse with the Belovores. However, the natives learned English – and two forms of Russian – in a matter of weeks. By then, the fear of the creatures had gone. Admiral Perry longs for the days when mimicry and accurate translation was the root problem.

  Velric became their Ambassador. Of course, his name was only a fraction of the name the Belovore went by in his own circles. He often spoke about the female Belovores – nearly indistinguishable from human eyes – and how they loved speaking his name. He spoke of it like a bachelor speaks of conquests, yet with the longing of settling down. Admiral Perry wonders, often, if names are a sexual concept with the Belovores.

  Velric enters the chamber when Admiral Perry picks up the first of the folders. Instead of opening it, he drops it against the desk, leans back and closes his eyes.

  “We have two years,” he says.

  “I am apologetic for the burden my people have caused,” Velric says.

  Admiral Perry sighs. “I’m not blaming you.”

  “Your tone suggests otherwise,” Velric sits in the chair opposite the Admiral, reaches out with a chelimb and grabs one of the folders. He flips it open as if it were splayed out in front of him on an angled platform.

  “My tone suggests a great many things, Velric,” Perry says. “But the one you’re sensing is fear. The one we aren’t allowed to show.”

  “Fear of something, or fear for something?”

  Perry straightens up and clasps his hands together. He ignores the question and substitutes his own. “Any news on your people’s front?”

  Velric sets the folder down. “I am afraid it is not any different from where we were when you landed. If anything, our plight has worsened. My people are afraid. They hear your stories; watch as your people perform tasks that take years, rather than centuries. They hear about the growths your people have made in such a short time, and they wonder when we will do the same. They wonder if we will, also, as capability has become of much debate. My brethren have no answers for them.”

  “Stagnancy,” Admiral Perry interrupts. “We kept using that word, forgetting that you move slower. Even the slowest progress looks indefinite to other eyes.”

  “Yes. That is the word that we have grown to fear. Our lives are very long compared to yours. You have already seen the effects,” Velric says.

  Admiral Perry remembers – that should be file seven or eight. With long life comes the will to take things slowly. Those wishing to do business with the Belovores often end up waiting months. Belovore crops last two years before they begin to rot, but all the reports show that they take twice as long to grow. Belovores consume minerals from the root vegetables and through a sort of synthesis that also causes the armour plating to grow over their skin.

  At first Admiral Perry assumed it was an exoskeleton; now, he knows it’s the sign of an old and well fed Belovore. However, their agricultural speed takes a lot of room away from the farmers wishing to set a more human time scale for the colony. That was another file: turnaround time for Earth-based crops.

  “I am pleased; however, that the friendship between our two peoples h
as grown to trustworthiness,” Velric interrupts Perry’s thought processes.

  The interruption only causes more distraction.

  File eleven. Violence. Some colonists partake in the local stills, and when the Belovores happen to be lurking about in the night – often taking care of their own business, or meeting up with family members – the drunk colonists have the potential to become frightened. One colonist filed a report claiming the Belovore was hunting him down and trying to devour him on the spot. The truth of the report was that it was a female Belovore attempting to help the colonist stagger back home, and she’d had trouble learning English, so her gesticulations were taken as threat. This common occurrence leads to an unhurt Belovore, and, sometimes, a seriously injured colonist. Admiral Perry has nicked the weapons problem early, having required them only of military personnel, and even then, the charged bullets can only stun. The Belovores, as repeated to Perry through Velric, find this amusing. Most of their children complain of humans hiding in their burrows, intent on stealing their chelimbs while they rest. Dichotomies abound.

  The thought occurs to Admiral Perry in less than an instant.

  No semblance of his conscience plays a part in it.

  He believes the phrase came from an old professor at the Aeronautics school he was trained in, and Perry repeats the phrase verbatim to Velric: “Sometimes you need a big change. Not a small one; something big enough to jumpstart your life. I suppose you could say a mid-life crisis for your entire species.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “On Earth, humanity was stagnating. Not many changes save for technological ones in hundreds of years. Sure, the quality of life got better, but the inherent flaws in the system remained the same. When International Aeronautics made the discovery of Aurichrome, and started their spaceflight tests, it seemed we were on the edge of a new frontier.”