When the sounds of the patrol had somewhat receded in the distance, I placed the unicorn's horn in my pack, found a free vine and swung across the stream. I thought I saw, in dim outline, the shape of the dead unicorn resting peacefully just beneath the surface of the water.
Earlier I had heard sounds in the sky, but the morning mist had been too heavy for me to see anything. The sounds were definitely mechanical, suggesting a flying vehicle of some sort. Kyle says they are spacecraft and can fly across vast reaches of space, like the spaceship that brought us here. Kyle tells a lot of stories. I don't always know which ones are true. Kyle is younger than I, after all. Children like tales.
The sounds in the sky ended with a strange high whistle and the rustle of something heavy falling through trees far away. I thought I felt the ground vibrate slightly beneath me when the sounds ended in a muffled thud. Normally I'd have investigated, but I had more important business to attend to—tracking the path of the fleeing unicorn.
I stayed right behind the patrol for a short distance, noting that they were heading toward the area from which the sounds of the falling vehicle had come. Sometimes I was right behind the rearmost guard and could have touched him, given him a nudge that would have undoubtedly pushed him over, but I didn't want the patrol to know I was there. After a while, they took a wrong turn, one definitely away from the area of the earlier sounds. Tincans are poor at tracking. I decided to see if I could locate whatever it was that had fallen from the skies before they did.
It was not too hard to find.
The wreckage was on a spit of sand surrounded by reeds, in the middle of a swampy area. Metal, in hunks, pieces, and jagged shards, lay about. The main craft, what was left of it, sat at an angle and it looked like a touch could unbalance it and send it plunging into the water.
I was about to investigate, when there was a movement in the upper part of the wreckage. A transparent canopy atop the ship shifted a bit, then slowly rose into the air. Framed by the mist, the movement spooked me and I scrunched down where I was, in a clump of bush. A head seemed to emerge out of the wreckage and for a moment I thought it was floating alone, bodiless. But that was an optical trick. The head was actually connected to a body. Laboriously, the man pulled himself out of his ship.
He was a tall man, slim but with a definite hint of solid muscle. His hair was as long as Kyle's, but blonde. His face, well, I thought he looked like a god. I had not seen a man that attractive in some time, a good long time. After all, except for my clandestine visits to the prison, I never see an adult. All my time is spent with children much younger than I. For whatever reason, libidinous or otherwise, I liked this young pilot immediately, even though he was in a dazed and nearly unconscious state.
He virtually tumbled out of the opening in his ship and into swamp water. I thought of the unicorn sliding so gently beneath the water's surface, but this time I was ready to spring forward and save the man before his head went under. Fortunately he recovered a bit and propped himself up against the side of his vehicle, his spaceship as Kyle might call it. With his right hand he felt his leg and winced. Even from my distant vantage point, I could see that the leg was bleeding, possibly broken. He looked around, eyes bleary. He was clearly trying to get his bearings, trying to figure out what he was doing in this dismal misty swamp.
I was about to reveal myself to him and offer help, when I heard the sound of the tincans' patrol, clanking through the forest behind me. The man obviously heard the same sound, for his head lifted and, his eyes now clearer and somewhat frightened, he leaned a bit toward the sound. Before I could call to him, he pulled himself around his ship, moving very quickly for a man who had to drag a hurt leg behind him. I wanted to call out to him, but couldn't. The patrol might detect my position, although tincans weren't usually adept at finding anything. The safer course for me was to remain concealed and quiet.
I could hear the man splashing through the water, then some muffled noises on the opposite bank. The patrol was getting closer. I definitely could not call out to him. Nor could I swim across the water without leading the patrol right to the pilot. Instead, I had to watch the pilot disappear into the mist. No matter, I knew. I could locate him again later. For the moment I held position.
The patrol appeared, not far from my original hiding place. A tincan arm pointed toward the wreckage and a different tincan head nodded in agreement. They took a package from a shoulder pack, an inflatable boat, and rode across the narrow passage to the wreckage. It was clear that they were deliberately keeping their arms high from the water's surface. Tincans are afraid of rust, Kyle says, that's why, if they go near the water at all, they act so oddly.
I watched them inspect the wreckage. One of them climbed through the hole from which the pilot had emerged. Another took a communicating device out of a compartment in his arm and spoke into it. I couldn't hear what he said, but obviously he was reporting that the pilot escaped. A third tincan noticed some trampled-down reeds and pointed toward the bank. Quite accurately, actually. It was almost exactly where the man had pulled himself out of the water.
I realized I could help the man not one bit by crouching and watching the enemy track him down and corner him. My best move was to find Kyle and the rest of his band.
As soon as I was far enough away from the patrol, I started running. Kyle would be in the cave, I knew, and it was there that I found him, looking as petulant and surly as ever.
CHAPTER FOUR
Starbuck awoke to find the underside of a leaf dangling in his face. At first he could not focus upon it, nor could he figure out what he was doing staring up at a leaf. Gradually, feeling the wet ground beneath him and seeing the high curved tree roots around him, he realized that somehow he had fallen asleep in a hollow at the base of a tree. His head rested against a thick lumpy patch of moss on the tree's trunk. He felt something like he had felt years ago when he used to curl up in a big armchair back home, an ancient piece of furniture that had been his foster father's favorite. Gawr had won it in a raffle and, even though it was far too lumpy and was covered by a grainy hard-textured upholstery, he had convinced himself that it was the best chair in the universe. Starbuck was not sure whether or not he was pleased. Actually the chair had never been too comfortable and the hard lumpy ground and the uneven surface of the moss was a trifle too much like the original.
Slowly the leaf, drooping down at him from a low-hanging branch, came into focus. He was fascinated by the leaf's bluish green color and its almost perfect triangular shape with rounded corners. He reached up and touched it. Its surface was furry, with miniature thorns all over it. The thorns, little spikes really, were not sharp enough to puncture his skin, but they did create a mildly painful tingling sensation in his fingertips. Touching the other side of the leaf gently, he pulled it closer to him. The branch did not give easily, but he was able to move it enough to bring the leaf into a better light. He saw that it was really more blue than green, and that there was a speckled effect caused by a deeper shade of blue at the tips of the tiny thorns. The veins of the leaf were unusually thick, almost as thick as human veins. He wondered if a liquid would spurt out if he punctured one of its veins with his thumbnail, and if the liquid would be something he could drink. On this strange planet he could imagine becoming a vampire of leaves, a vegetarian vampire. He decided it was best not to puncture the vein or to mar the leaf any further. He let it go, watched the branch vibrate a couple of times upon release, then come to quick almost rigid motionlessness.
What, he wondered suddenly, was he doing taking up nature study now, with a platoon of Cylons scouring the forest for him? As the memory of his flight from the Cylons came back to him, he realized that he had been listening for some time to clanking and rustling sounds—evidently Cylons making havoc of greenery. It sounded like the search party was coming near.
He tried to scrunch down further into the hollow. But that, he perceived immediately, was not going to work. If they came anywhere near the tree
, there was a good chance they would see him. The roots were not high enough, the single overhanging branch not enough cover.
Trying to pull himself up, he felt again the throbbing pain in his leg. Each throb felt like a fist inside his leg ramming at the same already hemorrhaging area over and over. Grabbing at the drooping branch, he found it to be remarkably firm and unresilient. Using it as lever, he stood up. The effort exhausted him, however, and he could not move for a moment. Looking outward, at the bizarrely beautiful and complex network of jungle, he realized suddenly that the gray and black color at the center of his view was not vegetation at all, but a Cylon warrior looking right at him. His heart started beating faster and it was all he could do to remain motionless. The Cylon did not seem to be seeing him, even though he was looking right at him. There was something wrong, what was it? It was like a missing piece in one of those Tauron holographic puzzles—you could tell a chunk of it was missing but the three dimensionality of the images obscured the location of the vacant area. Then he perceived what was wrong with the picture in front of him. The red light. There was no red light. Or, rather, there was a red light but it was not functioning, not moving from side to side on the Cylon helmet as it normally would do. This Cylon warrior was not moving at all. It had reached this part of the forest, right next to Starbuck's tree, and died standing up.
In spite of the pain in his leg and the proximity of the patrol, Starbuck's easily aroused curiosity was piqued. He had to go and inspect this stalled Cylon. Carefully raising his hurt leg over the lowest root with his hands and taking care to place it gently on the ground on the other side, he managed to take a step away from the tree. The ground between him and the Cylon was fairly level, just a few mysterious small funguslike plants that flattened like a sponge under his feet, and he found he could limp to the Cylon without appreciable difficulty.
He came at the Cylon from the left side, cautious because he might, after all, be mistaken—this apparently lifeless being could actually be using some devious new combat trick, luring the enemy by pretense of complete inertia. When he stood next to it, he reached out and touched the Cylon on the shoulder.
"Hi, big boy, wanna dance?" he whispered.
Clearly this was not a dancing Cylon. Starbuck's nudge did, however, cause it to move. It rocked forward and backward, nearly fell over, then righted itself. Touching the warrior more gently a second time, Starbuck traced a path from its helmet, checking the un-moving red light, down its metallic tunic to its ammo belt. The surface was smooth and cold everywhere.
Starbuck wondered what, in the interests of science, he should do. This was, after all, the first Cylon that anybody had encountered that had died a natural death. There were scientists on the Galactica who would donate the key to their medicine cabinet to have a shot at examining a naturally dead specimen. This moment could be historic, even. What kept Starbuck's name out of the history books, however, was that he did not have a single notion of how to take advantage of the opportunity.
Well, he had to try. He reached an arm around the figure and found that he could lift it easily. Were it not for his hurt leg, he could have carried the damn thing on his shoulders. Now, that made no sense. A Cylon killed on the battlefield could only be lifted by two or three humans. How could this one be so light? It felt as if there were nothing inside its uniform. He remembered the red knight of his therapy room fantasy. This Cylon's lightness reminded him of a suit of armor without a knight in it. Could it be that this was not a dead Cylon at all, but merely an abandoned uniform?
Setting the warrior, or warrior-shell, down, he continued his investigation. At the lower center of the torso he found a small thin box, welded to the body. He'd never seen anything like that on any dead Cylon. He pried at it, but the sealing was too firm. Whatever this creature was, it was lighter than a real Cylon and if, as Starbuck suspected, the box contained a cybernetic programming device, it was apparently powered electronically.
The clanking sound of the search party trudging through some nearby foliage interrupted Starbuck's research. As he started to move away, looking for a suitable hiding place, he became acutely conscious of the leg pain. It was getting worse, as if whatever was affected was growing or spreading. Struggling over a fallen tree, he caught his bad leg in a branch and fell forward, his face sliding into a tangled growth of blue and purple flowers. These were not the kind of blooms you took to a loved one or sick friend; their odor was noxious, and he almost choked on it. The effort of disentangling his leg from the branch made his leg hurt more and he nearly lost consciousness. Wincing, he painfully and slowly slid his leg off the trunk of the tree. But now he could not stand up again, and the Cylon patrol seemed to be getting closer. He could not care. The pain would kill him first and, besides, he was giving in to the need to be unconscious. Blissfully unconscious.
He slid easily into a dream. His foster mother Doreen was chatting with Cassiopeia, who was nodding her pretty blonde haired head vigorously and often. Starbuck crawled closer to them (they were seated on the edge of his childhood bed, the one decorated with the decals of early-series vipers). When he got in range of their voices, he heard Doreen advising Cassie about the kind of foods he liked and how to prepare them. That's not fair, he said to them, it's a conspiracy. I'm not the marrying type. And I'm giving up socializing along with gambling. But they paid him no attention, he was invisible to them.
Abruptly they changed, Doreen became Gawr and Cassiopeia became Athena. Gawr told Athena she was wasting her time with Starbuck. Even if he chose her, life with Starbuck would be dreadful because he had no conception of real love. Love for him was a kind of fantasy game where you rode unicorns and pretended to be a hero. Starbuck could not communicate with Gawr and Athena either. A moment later they, too, had disappeared. In their place was a white unicorn, looking something like the one in his therapy room fantasy. It was prancing nervously but slowly toward him. He was no longer in a jungle. Now he lay in a pleasant green meadow. The unicorn's head leaned down toward him and sniffed at him.
"Don't worry," Starbuck said to it, "I'll make a first class dinner. Colonial warrior, medium rare."
He fully expected the unicorn to talk back, since this was a dream. The animal only continued to stare and sniff. Joining it was a mottled gray and white unicorn. It touched Starbuck's shoulder briefly with its horn. Starbuck sat up with a start and shook his head unbelievingly. He could have sworn the unicorn had spoken. Reaching up he grasped the unicorn's horn with one hand and concentrated. Well-being was communicated, and friendly concern. Suddenly he knew he would be all right.
"Sure," he said, "everything's all right. In dreams."
"You're not dreaming."
At first he thought that the gray-white unicorn had spoken again, but looking up he saw a young man sitting on the white unicorn. This youngster had obviously been the speaker. He was dressed in a green tunic over dark brown trousers. There was a flat green cap on his head, under whose brim flowed fairly long brown hair. He looked no more than fourteen or fifteen years old.
"You'll be all right," said the other rider, a strikingly attractive young woman, who resembled the young man and wore similar garments. She seemed, however, to be older than the boy, and a little taller. She was slim, but hardly boyish, and had long dark brown hair, just a shade darker than the boy's. Her hair reached almost to her waist. She was lovely, just right for a pleasant dream of a pleasant meadow. But wait, both said this wasn't a dream. They were right, it wasn't. Gawr advising Athena to drop Starbuck had been a dream, but he had awakened from it. To see unicorns? That made even less sense.
He would have worried about it further, but the pain in his leg interfered. He moaned, winced, closed his eyes, and was immediately asleep again.
CHAPTER FIVE
FROM MIRI'S BOOK:
We had a close call rescuing the pilot. Kyle, who hadn't wanted to come back for the man in the first place, continued to be sullen all the way to the clearing where we finally located our q
uarry. The man was startled awake, but looked at us as if we were just another episode in a dream he was having, and quickly went back to sleep.
"Guess I'll have to heft him up onto Demon," Kyle muttered, his voice sarcastic and angry.
He had a tough time lifting the man, who outweighed him a good bit, onto the back of Demon. The task would have been easier if I had helped him. But he has to ask me for help, he knows that. I won't help him unless he asks. He didn't ask.
Once the man lay limp across Demon's gleaming white back, Kyle swung up behind him and said:
"Let's ride, sister."
He's taken to calling me sister. It provides him some sort of childish amusement. Anytime he says something with the word sister in it, he's able to deepen his voice till it sounds grownup. Most of the time his voice breaks when he gets emotional, and he's always getting emotional about something.
We had hardly turned around to head back for the cave, when a tincan voice, that obnoxious noise which reminds me of a metallic gargle, ordered us to halt. Kyle leaned forward, his hands gripping Demon's mane tightly, and was about to make a run for it. Typical of him, ready to act before thinking, before assessing the situation. The tincans surrounded us, their monstrous bulky rifles pointed at us. We might have been able to escape on our own, but I thought it was a fool's run. The only thing that made it possible was Kyle's tendency to act the fool when he could put action into a heroic light.
One of the tincans said to the apparent leader:
"Our commander will be pleased with us. Not only do we capture the human who is our objective, but we also trap the two biggest pests among the children."
"Yes, Mudhole," the leader said. "This will definitely bring us praise from Spectre."
It's hard to discern anything particularly meaningful in the tone, pitch, or rhythm of a tincan voice, but I was sure I heard a distinct squeak of self-satisfaction from this one.
Battlestar Galactica 4 - The Young Warriors Page 5
