The flight attendant stared down at me with a slightly blank look in her eyes.
"That sounded like it came directly out of the training manual."
I laughed. That was not the first time that I had had someone accuse me of sounding like a textbook.
"I guess it's like my grandmother always said, 'You can take the professor out of academia, but you can't take academia out of the professor.'"
The flight attendant giggled.
"I love old-fashioned sayings like that. I haven't heard that one since I was a little girl." She gave a sigh and peered over her shoulder briefly, "It looks like it's just about lunchtime. Can I get you something?"
I nodded.
"Yes. I'm starving. Thank you."
I had packed snacks in the luggage I kept with me at my pod, but I hadn't anticipated the somewhat small portions they served me on the ship and had already eaten almost all of them so I was rationing them carefully so that they lasted throughout the rest of the voyage. When the flight attendant walked away, the pod chamber fell still and quiet again. Even the other attendant had turned off his game and was somewhere else in the ship helping prepare the meal. I let my mind wander to Uoria again and what could be waiting for me there.
I thought about Leia and what the university had told me about the first student who had made the journey to the new planet. It had been two months since the brilliant but troubled young art student had made the courageous decision to the be the very first Earth student to join in the exchange program with the Denynso and make the trip to Uoria to study the culture and the land. Since she left, the university hadn't heard anything about her, and while many of the other professors and even the organizers of the program felt that there was nothing to be concerned about considering how intensive the level of study would be suddenly arriving on another planet where there had been no previously established school or connection, I had felt a twinge of nervousness every time I thought about her.
I didn't know Leia extremely well. Our relationship had not gone far beyond the level of educator and student, but I had always felt a personal interest in her. Though Leia didn't talk about it, I could tell that this was a young woman who was constantly struggling with her own set of demons from her past and was constantly running. She ran by choosing to go to the university. She ran in the type of art that she created. And she ran by being eager to be the first student to sign up for the exchange program even though it was completely uncharted territory and no one had any idea how the engagement with the Denynso was going to go. It seemed strange, even, to call the program an "exchange" program considering no students from the other planet had made the decision to go to Earth to study. Instead, they had requested a professor be sent to the planet in order to instruct them about the history, culture, and environment of Earth.
The lack of news from Leia and the seemingly evasive response of the Denynso when they asked questions about what they wanted to know about Earth and why they didn't want to send their own students or representatives to Earth to learn instead had made it more difficult for the university to find a professor willing to take on the challenge. Even those who didn't think it was strange at all for a young girl on a study abroad program to not check in with the university or send any type of update were reluctant to involve themselves in a program that didn't seem thoroughly planned, especially considering it was designed to foster cooperation and involvement between Earth and a culture known for being fearsome and ruthless warriors.
Though scientists and journalists had had successful excursions to Uoria over the years and had brought back a tremendous amount of information that helped to illuminate the culture and facilitated in laying the foundation of greater cooperation and involvement between the two species, they also brought back stories of aggressive, violent men who towered over seven feet tall, a vicious other species that roamed the planet and engaged in bloody warfare with the Denynso, and laws that governed that visiting humans under the threat of severe punishment. This veil of mystery had made the other professors too afraid to leave their positions on Earth and embark on the journey. Despite my own nervousness, however, I had been intrigued by the stories and eager to find out more. After the Denynso representatives had finally gotten back to the university to tell them that Leia had been on a personal retreat during her time on Uoria gaining inspiration for her art but had recently emerged and had gained special permission from the king and queen to extend her original six month stay into the indefinite future, I decided that if the young, embattled girl could dive into the experience so completely and so quickly, and gain such incredible meaning from it that she decided to leave her home planet and live on Uoria, maybe I should be courageous as well.
With no husband, children, or anything else concrete tying me in place at the university, I finally stepped forward and volunteered. That had been only a day before the scheduled flight, not enough time for me to put together a real lesson plan for the classes or even really narrow down what I wanted to teach. The program had given me fairly loose guidelines about how they wanted the instructing structured, leaving most of the planning and management completely up to me. Without really knowing what age group I would be teaching, what they wanted to learn, or what type of environment and resources I would have access to, I had brought with me as much teaching material as I could and spent the journey putting together my ideas. It was yet to be seen what would really happen once I arrived and got started.
Chapter Two
The ground furled away behind Ero like a ribbon as he ran through the forest, his feet pounding into the soft undergrowth with an intensity like fire. Gnarled roots rose up to trip him and branches brushed at his skin, but he was moving too fast to really notice either or for them to impede his speed or his progress. He ran like he had never run before, with a speed that far surpassed any of the other Denynso. A skill that he had learned about when he was still young, his ability to run faster and harder than anyone else was something that he rarely shared with anyone else. He used it instead as his way of escaping when his mind was filled with too much thought or emotion. Even if he didn't have anywhere to go, he would run. His feet brought him wherever they wanted to go, through the dark forest, over the rocky ledges, or through the wide fields behind the village. He ran until he had no energy left inside him, then he would collapse to the ground and let the darkness of sleep make everything go away.
He ran now to escape the confusing, overwhelming feelings he had been experiencing for the last few days. They started after he rescued Leia from the Klimnu attack. At first he thought the aggression and anger had been related to finding the mate of one of his friends terrified and in danger only a short time after she had escaped from nearly two months of imprisonment under the hands of the slimy, vicious creatures. Though he was not as large or powerful as the other warriors of the Denynso, he still had within him the ability to grow fierce and angry when something or someone that he cared about was threated, and even though he and Leia had not gotten off to a great start, she belonged to Gyyx, which meant he had loyalty toward her.
When the aggression and intensity were still there the next day, however, Ero began to wonder if that was really the source of these feelings. He was not accustomed to this level of emotion within him, especially when he couldn't identify a clear source, and he didn't like how it made him feel. He felt confused, on guard, and violent to the point that he had gotten into several scuffles with the other men after he heard them teasing him. He was accustomed to their bullying. At a foot shorter than the other warriors and nowhere near as well-built, he had been the butt of nearly endless ridicule and teasing since he was orphaned as a child and left to be raised by the community. In a way it was his form of interacting with them. Over the last few days, however, he had not reacted the same way as he usually did, laughing off the jokes and keeping the negative feelings he experienced toward the other men concealed. Instead, he had lashed out and fought.
After o
ne particularly intense encounter with one of the other warriors, Pyra had pulled him aside to ask what was happening to him. That is when Ero broke away and started to run. He had been running for hours now and was so far from the village that he wasn't sure he would be able to get back before the families came together for dinner. Not that many of the people there would notice. Pyra and Eden, Ciyrs and Elianna, and Leia and Gyyx, the mated couples, were so wrapped up in each other that they didn't really care what happened around them most of the time. The other warriors were still filled with adrenaline and anger after the battle with the Klimnu days before that had ended with them burning the building where they had brought Elianna after capturing her and where she found Leia after they had kept her prisoner and tortured her for 57 days.
Ero turned back and started running the way he came, pushing himself harder and faster until he could barely see what was going past him. He was nearly back to the village when he heard someone call his name. He slowed and jogged back toward the voice, finding Pyra standing at the edge of the forest.
"Running again?" Pyra asked.
Ero put his hands on his hips and glared back at the tremendous warrior, feeling the anger spiking in him again as he saw the teasing flicker in his orange eyes. The orbs that used to be blue were vibrant, nearly glowing orange now that he was mated to Eden and something about them made Ero feel uncomfortable when he looked at them.
"What are you doing here?" he asked accusingly, and immediately felt bad for the tone in his voice.
He didn't understand what the hell was happening to him. He had never been like this and now suddenly he felt like he could tear anyone who got near him limb from limb just for looking at him in a strange way or saying something that he thought might have a negative meaning. Fortunately Pyra didn't seem to notice his aggressive tone, or was choosing to ignore it, because if he had been offended by it and decided to engage Ero in a fight, there was no way the smaller warrior could have overpowered him.
"I have been sent out into the forest to get some sort of fruit that Eden wants."
"You are all the way the hell out here to get some fruit?" Ero asked incredulously.
Pyra nodded and sighed.
"Yeah. Apparently she is having cravings and says that she absolutely has to have this particular fruit and she won't settle for the cooked kind that we already have. She needs it right off of the bush and she needs it right this second."
Pyra said the words in a tone of resignation that said he thought the venture was ridiculous and wasn't thrilled about having to do it, but that he loved Eden so much he would literally go to the ends of the planet for her no matter what it was she asked of him. This was especially true now that Eden was carrying his child. The pregnancy was still not common knowledge among all of the Denynso and those that knew were approaching the situation with caution. Not only was this first birth among the children of the king and queen, but Eden had been a human when she first came to Uoria. She had nearly died at the claws of the Klimnu and the tribe's healer had brought her back to life. In doing so, however, Ciyrs had somehow changed her into a Denynso. The pregnancy was completely unprecedented and no one, not even the elders, had any idea what to expect.
"That sounds like you are having so much fun with this whole experience."
Laughing softly, Pyra shrugged and nodded.
"What am I going to do? You know how women can be."
Ero shook his head, feeling the tingling in his legs and the pent up energy and emotion in his belly that had fueled his hours of running over the last few days. If there was one thing that he definitely didn't know about, it was women. He wasn't mated and no female had ever caught his eye.
"Actually, no. I have no idea how women can be."
He saw Pyra take a step back and give him a once-over that made him feel scrutinized and uncomfortable. A strange growl rumbled in his throat and he had to hold back the compulsion to lunge at Pyra. The larger warrior, the biggest and most fearsome of the species, gave a knowing smile and rubbing his own face with one hand.
"You might not know yet, but from the looks of things I think you will be finding out pretty damn soon."
For a moment Ero didn't understand what Pyra was talking about, then he saw his eyes give a brief glance to the front of his pants. Ero rolled his eyes and reached down to the try to rearrange the raging erection he had been sporting most of the time since the day of the Klimnu attack. It was an uncomfortable reminder of the strange, unfamiliar feelings he had been experiencing and he was embarrassed to have Pyra point it out to him.
"Shut up," he said, managing to tuck his hard-on in a way that made it not look so obvious.
"Don't worry about it, buddy. You should have seen me when I was first around Eden. It was not a pretty sight. Well," he got a mischievous glint in his eyes, "I guess it was for her."
"Thanks for that image," Ero said, "It doesn't make sense, though. I haven't met any new women since Leia, and I know all this is not about her. I don't understand what the hell is going on."
"Don't stress about it," Pyra told him, starting toward the path leading into the forest, "With the attitude you've been throwing around and that situation you've got going on there, you're going to figure it plenty soon enough."
The other warrior's words bouncing around in his head and somehow making him feel even angrier, Ero started running again.
Chapter Three
"What's going on?" I asked, staring out the window again, "We landed forty minutes ago. Why am I still in here?"
The flight attendant paced back and forth in front of her, wringing her hands and throwing occasional glances over her shoulder toward the pilot's cabin. She obviously felt the tension and frustration that I was feeling. I didn't like to be kept waiting, especially when I was waiting to be let out of a tiny space ship chamber I had been in for the last five days.
"I'm not sure," the flight attendant said, barely braving a look in her direction, "The pilot just said that there has been a delay. Apparently your escort hasn't arrived at the landing point yet."
"Why does that matter?" I asked, reorganizing my notebooks and papers in my bag again just to give my hands something to do, "I'm sure I'm smart enough to make my way from a space ship to a meeting hall. This planet can't be so primal that they don't have roads, right?"
The flight attendant looked over at her with a touch of desperation in her eyes.
"Actually, I've never gotten off of the ship during one of these flights. I just stay inside and use the sleeping quarters on the top floor to take a shower, sleep, and change between legs."
"You've never gotten off of the ship on another planet?"
"No."
"Your job is to travel around the universe carrying passengers in between planets and you have never once had the curiosity to step outside and see one of them for yourself? You don't wonder what they might look like or what the people living there are like?"
The flight attendant shook her head, suddenly looking even younger and less remarkable as her eyes welled up in tears.
"I'm too afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of what the other species might be like," she said, dropping her tone slightly, "My grandmother always said that we should stick to our own kind and that humans don't have any business running all over other planets intermingling with other species. She says if we were supposed to be interacting with them, that they would already be on our planet and we wouldn't have to travel to find them."
"How incredibly closed minded of her."
The statement should have offended her, but instead the flight attendant just nodded.
"I haven't even told her that this is what I do for a living. She just knows that I work for the university."
I sighed. I will never understand the level of intolerance and ignorance that was still so pervasive. It was as if people got over one hang up that they had and decide that it was awful to have that viewpoint, only to move on t
o the next one with the same level of intensity and stubbornness. I rubbed my temples, trying to release some of the tension that was building there.
"Regardless, why am I stuck here until some escort comes? That wasn't part of the itinerary the program gave me."
The flight attendant shrugged again.
"Apparently it's against the law for humans who have just arrived on Uoria to travel from their ship unaccompanied. Everyone who visits has to be escorted to the meeting hall where they will meet the king and queen before they are allowed to stay."
I sighed again.
"So who are these escorts?" I asked, "Other academics? Law enforcement?"
"I think they are warriors."
"Fantastic. So between the leading university research department for interplanetary exploration and cooperation and a group of warriors, they couldn't coordinate one meeting. That bodes terrifically for the future of the success of this program."
I was usually calmer and more pleasant than this, but it seemed space travel was pulling the worst out of me. Always described by everyone who met me as headstrong and fiercely independent, I have a very low tolerance for anything that I saw as incompetence, which this level of disorganization and improper handling of a situation definitely was in my mind.
Finally the pilot's voice came over the speaker in the chamber, announcing that the escort had arrived and I was welcome to come to the exit door. The flight attendant looked even more relieved than I felt.
"Oh, good. I was getting worried we were going to have to stay here for even longer. Is there anything I can help you with before I go upstairs for my break?"
I shook my head, reaching out to squeeze the girl's hand comfortingly. No matter what the origins of the fears she was experiencing, they were obviously very real and I suddenly felt bad for her. I hated to see a person feel so limited by their own minds that they were unable to face any changes in their normal situation or confront anything that may alter their point of voice because it was too uncomfortable for them.
The New Angondra Complete Series Page 54
