by C. Gockel
“She can stay with us for the night,” Esther said. “But we should put her on a caravan up to the Northwest Province as soon as possible.”
“The Guard was looking for her earlier,” Volka said .
Esther and Joseph looked at each other, and then back to Volka. “This is what you’re going to do…”
Not ten minutes later, Volka was walking home with Kevin, Gabrielle, and a dozen other members from church. “It will rain in a few minutes,” Kevin said, sniffing the air.
His mother sniffed, too. “More like fifteen minutes.”
Taking out a pocket watch that had famously belonged to his father, Kevin said, “Let’s have a contest. I say ten minutes; my mother says fifteen. Anyone else? I’ll buy a roasted rat—or fresh one—for the winner.”
Volka tried to play along to hide her unease, and then she heard a car approaching the intersection ahead from the cross street. No weere owned cars. It was either young humans looking to go to a “weere house,” security, or worse, the Guard.
Light above caught Volka’s vision. She was nearsighted, but the blurs in the sky were too regular to be meteors—they could only be Guard starfighters. Far off in the night, someone began to laugh maniacally.
A moment later, she was blinded by headlights.
“Halt! Put your hands up!”
“We landed!” 6T9 laughed, all of his circuits alight. Hanging by his knees on a branch of a tropical Luddeccean pine, he could see the Guard starfighters in the distance. They hadn’t even circled back. His mind reached for the local ether—a habit he had at any new outpost—and, of course, got silence. Ethernet had been forbidden on Luddeccea for over 100 years .
“This doesn’t count as landing!” Carl’s voice hummed into 6T9’s mind.
“We’re still able to communicate even though there is no local ether!” 6T9 exclaimed.
Carl squirmed and hissed. “As I explained to you numerous times during our trip here, I am a quantum wave bending member of a collective consciousness. I create ethernet frequencies with my brain and the quantum wave . I don’t need any primitive ether tower or satellites to communicate with you!”
“I just didn’t think it would work,” 6T9 replied. “What’s the range on your brain and the quantum wave?”
“The quantum wave is infinite!” Carl declared.
“So, you can talk to anyone anywhere over the ether?” 6T9 asked.
Carl coughed. “Err…no, only a few hundred meters.”
“So, you’re sort of a primitive local ether hotspot?” 6T9 sought to clarify.
“Can we focus on landing?” Carl snipped.
“This counts as landing!” 6T9 declared, giving the werfle a squeeze.
“You’re hanging upside down fifteen meters above the ground,” Carl retorted. “And there’s water below.”
6T9 shrugged. “We’re fine.”
At that moment, he heard a creak in the branch. His hold on the werfle loosened. Carl Sagan’s nails ripped into his skin a moment later. “Argh!” 6T9 screamed in surprise. The werfle slipped from his arms, climbed up his torso and thighs to the tree branch, and skittered closer to the trunk.
“If you had given me warning, I could have activated my masochism app,” 6T9 harrumphed. Not that it would have worked; he wasn’t programmed to enjoy carnal relations with animals or children, but he wanted the werfle to feel bad.
“You need to get off that branch,” Carl Sagan said.
Extending his arms, 6T9 said, “Can’t you just appreciate the brilliance of our landing for a moment? That was an exit worthy of James or Noa.” It was a monumental achievement, and he felt like he’d cleared some hurdle, or finished some rite of passage.
Carl Sagan hissed. “You haven’t—”
The branch shuddered, cracked, and shattered. 6T9 tumbled down. His shoulder hit one branch, his back hit another. He managed to catch himself with his legs on a third—and then that cracked and shattered, too. The next thing he knew, the back of his head hit something hard.
He blinked. He was looking up at a cloudy sky, lying in a few centimeters of water laden with toxic metals and a slurry of other noxious substances. His sensors lit and identified it as dangerous for human consumption or long-term exposure. The area’s radioactivity level was less than ideal as well.
“—landed yet.”
The words came over the ether. 6T9 tried to identify the channel, but could not.
There was a sound to his right. His eyes slid in that direction, and he saw an animal on the bank. It was a rat or a werfle. He silently counted its legs—ten—it was a werfle. It was standing among many trees. A forest. Why was he in a forest lying in cold water? What was he supposed to do? He blinked. He should wait for his owner, obviously. His brow furrowed. Who was that?
“Now, you have landed.”
The words came over the ether again, but the channel did not have an identifier.
The werfle blinked.
“Werfy,” said 6T9.
“Lizzars, your Q-comm has disconnected and you’ve lost your brain,” said the unidentified speaker.
6T9 spoke back to the voice in his head. “Are you my owner?” His databanks didn’t have an owner in them. He used to belong to Eliza. He didn’t remember her selling or exchanging him.
“Close your eyes.”
6T9 complied. He was programmed to obey any available human, even if their channel was unidentified, if his owner could not be found.
“I’m going to go get help,” the unidentified human said in the ether. The werfle ran away, and the human’s voice echoed in his head. “Pretend to be asleep.”
Keeping his eyes closed, 6T9 pretended.
Volka threw her hands in the air, letting her umbrella crash to her feet. The other weere did the same.
“Don’t say anything, Kevin,” Gabrielle whispered.
“Silence!” screamed a human man.
Volka could barely see—the light was too bright. She scrunched her eyes shut, and a moment later, she heard approaching footsteps. Wincing, she opened one eye and exhaled in relief. It was regular security, not the Guard. One of them walked over to Gabrielle. “Raise your head!”
Gabrielle complied, grimacing in pain from the blinding light.
“You’re not her,” said the human man.
Volka exhaled. Joseph and Esther had forced Myra to give her fine wool coat to Gabrielle. She had the same nearly human ears and black hair as Myra did, and she was a bit stout. Esther had said, “It will be enough to fool the humans in the dark. They have terrible night vision.”
Volka said a silent prayer of thanks, but then the bright light was in her face. “You!” said a human she couldn’t see in the glare. “Where is the woman you were with earlier?”
He was so close she could smell peppered lizzar meat on his breath, yeasty bread, cheese, and the cider he’d washed it down with.
Volka bit her lip and tried to remember what Esther and Joseph had coached her to say. “Myra Susiman? Oh, she told me she was going home to her mother’s,” she squeaked.
The light swung away from her face so quickly that even the dark was blinding. “Got that?” the security officer asked.
“I think the Guard was already there,” said another security officer.
“Well, maybe she was running late and is there now,” said the first, walking away. “Let’s go check it out.”
“Get off the street!” someone shouted at them, and they scurried to avoid being run over. The car kicked up dust that pelted their faces as it took off into the night. For a moment, Volka and her companions stood immobile, hands still aloft. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she could smell fear and anger oozing from her pores and from her fellow weere. Her hunger was gone, and she thought if she ate she might be sick.
“They didn’t shoot any of us,” Gabrielle said, putting down her hands. The other weere followed suit, and Volka bent to pick up her umbrella. The security officer had stepped on it, and it was hopelessly mud
dy.
“We should be thankful,” Gabrielle said. “Thanks be to God.”
Volka’s free hand formed a fist at her side, but she knew she should be both thankful and ashamed. She’d brought this on them.
Kevin stamped a foot, spun, and looked up, running a hand through his hair. He smelled more angry than fearful to Volka. And then he dropped his hand, and the tension left his body. “What’s going on up there?” he whispered, eyes on the sky.
Following his gaze, Volka forgot her anger, fear, and shame. Spotlights were illuminating the clouds above them. There were also more Guard starfighters. Volka swallowed. “Just exercises,” she said. If it was an invasion from beyond the system, the warning sirens would be on. Wouldn’t they?
“Not our business, that’s for sure,” said Gabrielle, grabbing her son by the arm, jerking him into motion. The rest of the weere followed. The rain started, but no one bothered to check the time and see whose nose had been more accurate. They walked in near silence, and, one by one, they went their separate ways. Volka’s house was at the edge of the weere settlement, and she walked on alone after everyone else had departed. She kept her umbrella raised defensively, even after the drizzle became a downpour. She wanted someone to challenge her. She wanted an excuse to fight. She couldn’t fight a human, but she could fight another weere.
Tears of frustration pricked her eyes by the time her house came into view. Built by her parents, her house sat on the corners of the foundations of a pre-Revelation building. Erosion in the past century had washed away the land around it, and the foundation rose in four pillars nearly two meters above the ground. Her father had put a wooden platform on top, and the house was built atop that. The walls were wooden ply-board; the roof corrugated iron. Cozied up next to the house was a boat for the days in the late wet season when the home would be surrounded by water. On the far side of the platform was a water tank on stilts—she could just see it over the roof. She walked to the foundation columns and carefully sniffed beneath. She could smell the faint odors of solvents she used to clean her brushes and oil paints. She didn’t smell any rats in her traps, alas, but there were also no humans, weere with ill intent, or poisonous wenlizs. Her nose twitched and she sniffed again. There was, however…a werfle?
She took a step and drew up short, a powerful surge of worry in her gut that made her limbs go cold. She took a shaky breath and tried to be calm. Was it her own worry, or someone else’s? Usually, her own feelings started in her head and worked their way down to the rest of her. Sometimes though, another person’s feelings took hold, and that always started lower down, and were sharper and more sudden. She looked up to the sky. Was it Alaric’s worry? Mr. Darmadi hadn’t said anything of him lately. She shook her head and bit her lip. Alaric would say she was being silly, thinking she could sense his feelings even when he was far away. Her face reddened. And her priest would tell her that if she did sense the emotions of someone else, it was the Devil’s doing.
Ignoring the illogical worry, she rounded the foundations to the stairs. Sure enough, a giant orange werfle was sheltering under the overhang by the front door. It had probably scared away her rats—werfles were as bad as cats for that. She lifted her hand to shoo the creature away.
“Squeak,” it said plaintively, kneading its claws in the wooden platform as though to say, “I’m wet, too.”
“I have no rats for you!” Volka said, shaking her hand at it.
“Squeak,” said the werfle. She felt a tugging in her gut and imagined it saying, “Help me, help me…” She tilted her head. It didn’t look hungry—a pet that got lost? It probably had its venom milked in that case.
“Meep,” said the werfle, and it shivered visibly. Maybe it wasn’t hungry, but it was definitely wet and the night was getting colder.
Setting her umbrella against the wall, Volka approached the creature, hand out the way Alaric had shown her. She held her breath, worried it might bite, and only released it when the werfle brushed its head against her fingers. It produced a rumbling in its chest that was quite pleasant. Alaric had liked werfles, and he’d spoken fondly of their “purr.”
“Well,” she sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to let you spend the night.” She scratched it behind the ears in a way she always liked, and it leaned into her touch and purred louder. She’d thought Alaric’s fondness was a human thing—but she was beginning to see the creature’s charms.
“Come on,” she said, taking out her keys.
“Squeak,” said the werfle, standing on its hind legs and pulling at her wet trousers with its front paws as though to say, “Don’t go.”
“We’ll go inside together,” she reassured it.
The creature twined between her legs and then left the shelter of the overhang. “Squeak,” it said, but Volka swore she heard, “Come with me.”
Volka tilted her head. “You don’t have to go out there.”
“Cheep,” it whined. “Come, come come.”
The rain pattered on Volka’s head before she’d realized she’d obeyed her obviously overactive imagination. She didn’t remember coming down the stairs and looked back in alarm. She’d left her umbrella. She never left the house without being armed with it or a walking stick.
The werfle twined between her legs, and pushed against the backs of her calves with its head. She swore its purring was a coded message. “This way, this way…”
Above her head, spotlights were still searching the clouds. A starfighter flew so close that the ground reverberated in its wake. The werfle’s purring grew louder and more insistent. Wiping raindrops from her eyelashes, Volka wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “I have to go back,” she told the werfle.
And then from the strand of trees beside her house she heard the moan.
“Moan again! Louder!” the unidentified human who’d discovered him minutes ago instructed 6T9 over the ether.
6T9 complied. “Ahhhh…” He made it as deep and breathy as he could.
“Can you moan like you’re in pain?” the human asked.
Over the ether, 6T9 responded, “I was designed to fulfill most human sexual predilections. I can do a moan that is an excellent facsimile of pain.”
He waited. He heard footsteps approaching. A warning light was flashing in the periphery of his vision. The water was lowering his core temperature below optimal levels. A subroutine activated that began diverting extra power from his already low battery for heat. He’d have to recharge soon.
“Well?” asked the unidentified human in the ether.
“Well, what?” 6T9 asked.
“Moan like you’re in pain! She’s turning away.”
“Oh, certainly,” 6T9 responded. Aloud he said, “Uhhhgggghhh.”
“Say, ‘help me,’” the human commanded.
“Help me,” 6T9 moaned.
The footsteps approached, and he felt warm fingers on his cheek.
“May I open my eyes?” he asked aloud.
“Yes,” someone responded in a feminine voice completely different from the one in his head.
6T9 opened his eyes, and found himself staring at a human woman with animal ears and fur on top of her head. To the unidentified human, he said across the ether, “Oh, a furry. I am unlikely to be able to fulfill her.”
“A what?” said the human.
“A furry. It’s not always sexual,” 6T9 hastened to explain across the ether, referring to his local databanks. “But in the case of someone who has obviously had herself augmented to look like a wolf—”
“Do you not remember our conversation about the weere?” the human said. “At all?”
“I do not,” 6T9 replied silently.
The woman spoke aloud. “Can you move? ”
6T9 sat up. “Yes.” He was wearing something on his back, and he had something heavy on his chest.
“You could move?” said the human.
6T9 saw the werfle on the bank of the stream in the periphery of his vision, but his focus was
on the woman. She was sucking in on her lips, and her eyes were wide. She looked afraid.
“Yes, I could move,” 6T9 replied over the ether.
“Bang the back of your head on a rock,” the unidentified ether speaker said.
Letting himself fall back into the stream, 6T9 did. Every circuit flared, his Q-comm chip snapped back into place, and a memory of the last few minutes came rushing back. Above him, he heard the call of nocturnal pterys—a small, pterodactyl-like species native to Luddeccea. He hadn’t noticed them without his Q-comm—they hadn’t related to him. A millisecond later, his emotion apps kicked in, and he found himself flushing with embarrassment. He’d been an idiot.
The woman held out a hand. “Do you…need…help?” She wasn’t quite meeting his gaze as she said it, and the hand reaching toward him was trembling. It wasn’t a tremble he’d associate with the anticipation of “I’m going to get a spanking” he got when engaging his bondage and discipline act for a partner’s pleasure. It was pure terror. The water was cold, but frightening the woman made him colder still. “I’ll be all right in a moment,” he lied, in a soft voice he hoped was non-threatening. She nodded and took a half step back.
Sitting up slowly, 6T9 touched the front of his jacket. Eliza’s ashes were safe, as was his single recharger. He still had the hover pack on his back. To Carl, he said silently over the ether, “We don’t have the remainder of the gold we were going to use as currency, and we don’t have the mining charges to get Sundancer out of the glacier.”
Carl bobbed his head. “For the second, we may be able to appropriate some of the mining charges being used to blow into the Red Gorge for the magni-freight line. As for the first, I have no idea how we’ll manage.” His eyes narrowed. “Or how we’ll even get to Libertas from Luddeccea.”
6T9 shrugged. His mind, out of habit on reboot, reached for the local public ether again. And again, he got silence. He shook his head. He was lucky. At least he could access Time Gate 1 through his Q-comm.
