by C. S. Wilde
Zed looks at him quizzically. “And how should a security officer look?”
The leader shifts on his feet slightly, being publicly called upon like that. “Have your vessels been changed to withstand whisar vocalization?”
“They have not.” This sends a jolt of suspicion across the leader’s expression, but Zed ignores it and adds, “I caught human rebel James Bauman leaving Earth. I managed to follow him and trap him. According to my records, Ah’rbal-ack-to—”
“James Bauman?” The leader narrows his gaze at me as he cautiously approaches. His eyes widen right before he pulls his bulky gun to an inch of Zed’s head. The humming of a loading phaser weapon bursts from within the gun. “State your last words, security officer Zed’phir-lack.”
“Stop!” I shout, but he doesn’t seem to understand me. So in my mind, I repeat, “Stop!” I stretch my hands to him, trying to get between him and Zed, but the gun is too close to Zed’s head. “He’s just a youngling, don’t hurt him!”
“Don’t listen to him,” Zed says unblinkingly before leaning his forehead against the tip of the gun, almost as if he were silently defying a bluff. Zed’s either way too brave or he’s lost his mind.
The leader seems baffled, perhaps a little annoyed. So he lowers his gun and grumbles something I can’t understand.
Holy shit, it worked.
He narrows his eyes at Zed, who immediately crouches on his knees and howls a horrid cry that makes me wonder if someone is drilling into his skull. Wait… the leader is the drill, he’s invading Zed’s thoughts. He’ll know everything soon enough. And then it’ll all be over.
Zed’s howls soon wane and I help him up, draping his arm over my shoulders. I glance back at the closed exit. We were so close…
An elated sharp-toothed grin crosses the leader’s snout before he orders his platoon to lower their weapons. Then he booms a laugh, a sound between a pig’s grunt and an elephant’s trumpet that stings my brain. “That was dangerously close to a disaster.” He taps Zed’s shoulder a little too strongly, and if it weren’t for me, Zed would’ve probably fallen to the ground. “You’re a remarkable youngling, Zed’phir-lack. I haven’t met such an insanely brave creature before.”
The leader bows to me with a hand over his heart. “Mak’lo-to, at your service, James Bauman. I assume you’re looking for your mate.”
21
-Miriam-
The cockpit is a mess of smoke, wires and metal. My brain thrums a little inside my skull, but considering our landing, it’s a wonder I’m not in worse shape.
“Status report,” Chuck shouts, but I can only spot his silhouette through the curtain of smoke.
The ship rolled like a ball once we hit the ground, but Chuck managed to use the remaining power on auxiliary jets to stabilize the landing. That’s the only reason why we’re not upside down—or dead.
“I’m fine,” Sol’ut-eh says from beyond a thick, dark-grey fog.
“As am I,” I cough.
The emergency hatch on the ceiling pops open, and the heavy steps of a whisar body thud on the metal floor, which surprisingly, is intact.
Sol’ut-eh’s silhouette comes to view as the smoke slowly dissipates. She’s checking the panels near the co-pilot’s chair. “Communications are working fine,” she says. “I’ll send an SOS to the base.”
“No,” Chuck says. “It’s best if they don’t know. We don’t want questions raised, not before we find Werhn-za’har, correct?”
The blurry form of Sol’ut-eh nods.
Chuck walks toward me, his face stained with soot but no cuts or bruises on his skin. He grins as he detaches my seatbelt. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
I stand up, staring at the destruction around us. “I wouldn’t quite describe it that way.”
He taps my shoulder and hands me my backpack. I throw it out of the hatch and jump out, quickly fixing the backpack over my shoulder.
Sol’ut-eh follows, though her backpack is a lot bulkier than mine, considering her size.
Looking back at the pod, it’s hard to understand how we survived the entry into Do’yanian atmosphere. Thin smoke comes out of the remaining lava-hot panels and the thin cracks on the ship’s shell have grown into full-on canyons.
From my side, Sol’ut-eh shakes her head as she surveys the damage, “I’m glad I allowed brother to steer the ship.”
The clearwater lake on our left seems filled with molten glass that’s green at the borders and dark blue at the bottom. According to the pod’s diagnostics, the ship used in Werhn-za’har’s landing rests thirty feet underwater.
How Chuck managed to land here even with a malfunction, baffles me. I don’t have the words to describe how good of a pilot he is.
If I squeeze my eyes just enough, I can spot a rocky, circular form in the bottom of the lake, right before it all turns dark blue.
“Do you think Werhn-za’har is down there with his meteorite ship?” I ask Sol’ut-eh.
“I hope so.” She shakes her head. “But he’s smarter than that.”
Chuck’s backpack flies from inside the ship and drops to the ground. He follows, jumping out of the pod. There’s a belt wrapped around his back, attached to a bulky phaser gun. Another belt circles his waist, containing three knives and a machete. It’s odd seeing a child covered in heavy weaponry.
Sol’ut-eh grins and unpacks a phaser gun from her backpack, wearing it now in the same fashion as Chuck. The gun’s black strap diagonally crosses her purple tunic with golden embellishments.
“Why are you both armed to your teeth?” I ask.
Sol’ut-eh taps her forehead. “It’s this planet’s magnetic field. It severely weakens our telekinetic abilities.” She motions to the gun strapped around her back. “Don’t worry dear, brother and I have been trained to deal with every possible scenario.”
I turn to Chuck with narrowed eyes and pressed lips. “Thank you for telling me.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t wish to give you any reason to worry.”
As always. “Why don’t I have a gun, then?”
Sol’ut-eh frowns in a way that says I just lost my mind. “You’re a researcher.”
She’s right. I wouldn’t know how to handle a weapon. In fact, I never wanted to. Now, however, I wish I did.
The forestation here is gigantic, thanks to Do’yan’s gravity which is slightly weaker than the Earth’s. Every leaf here is the size of a small car, every leafstalk as thick as my arm.
We start covering our pod with fallen vegetation—we don’t want any locals finding the ship. If we could use our telekinesis, we’d be done a lot sooner, but considering the size of this flora, it won’t take long.
Most leaves feel rough at the touch, others smooth. The plants display varying tones of blue and yellow. The colossal tree roots are brown though, something akin to bark.
Chuck analyzes everything with his pad before we touch it, since we don’t know how the wildlife and chemical reactions of this planet can affect our human bodies. Sol’ut-eh seems less worried, probably because she knows Do’yan well.
“Have you tracked Werhn-za’har yet?” I ask, wiping sweat off my forehead.
“It’s not like he has a locator on him, dear,” Chuck replies, analyzing a leaf with his pad. “Now it’s mostly just guessing.”
This doesn’t worry me. My former mentor is quite good with his guesses and he also spent an eternity under Werhn-za’har’s care. In fact, Chuck knows how Werhn-za’har lives, breathes and thinks. Once, he was just like him.
At some point, I already know what the good leaves look like, so Chuck’s testing feels unnecessary. We’ve covered half the ship when I spot a red, heart-shaped leaf the size of a Labrador. Without thinking twice, I grab it.
“No!” Chuck bellows, his pad beeping madly. He slaps my hand and the leaf falls on the ground.
“What?” I cry. “It’s shaped exactly like the yellow ones.”
“It’s another variation!” he roars. “They’re pois
onous to the touch!”
Blisters the size of buttons erupt on my fingers, then spread to the palm of my hand, trailing a path that burns my skin.
Sol’ut-eh grabs a Medi-tez from her backpack, but she doesn’t have to. The pain coursing under my skin, I can stop it. I know this as easily as I know how to breathe. The venom and I, we’re both aggregations of particles, spinning at enormous speed. One and the same.
I hold out my hand, preventing Sol’ut-eh from jamming antidotes into my blood stream.
“Are you mad?” she yells, pushing all her massive weight against my forearm.
A simple thought: I am stronger. And then I am. My body doesn’t buckle against her weight, and when she gives up, her chest puffing and her eyes wide, she presses with her limited telekinesis. Sol’ut-eh’s attempts are soft tingles on my skin, thanks to Do’yan’s magnetic disruption and my newfound… abilities? Is it power coursing under my skin, or simply the knowledge, knowledge of how the universe’s invisible gears move? Particles, everywhere, shifting to my purposes, flowing in and out of me.
“It’s beautiful.” A delightful giddiness takes over me. “Can’t you see it?”
The venom travels up my bloodstream, leaving a trail of glistening red blisters before reaching my shoulder. Soon the poison will be in my brain, micro-particles of venom sailing through micro-particles of me. They will paralyze my lungs once they reach my cortex and I’ll asphyxiate to death.
My blood, no, what makes my blood—atoms, electrons, quarks—connects with what makes the venom, breaking the threat apart, turning its foreign particles into my particles. We’re all made of the same material, it’s only arranged differently. Like thousands of tiny puzzles that are too easy to reshape. I can fit them anywhere.
The red blisters quickly retreat back to my fingers until they disappear completely.
“Did you see it? The venom followed my command!” Euphoria takes over as I glance from Chuck to Sol’ut-eh. “I can control the singularities now!”
Chuck glares at me as if he just witnessed a miracle. “How did you do that?”
Did he not see it? The answer is obvious. “Puzzles!”
His stare tells me I’ve lost my mind, Sol’ut-eh’s too. They might be right. What I’m saying makes sense to me, but it must sound crazy to them. They don’t understand. Until a few moments ago, I didn’t understand either.
After a silent moment, Chuck says, “If you gain more control, soon you won’t fear your abilities.”
I shrug. “That’s good, no?”
Chuck shakes his head. “Without fear, you’ll dare further, cross lines you wouldn’t before, until you lose yourself completely.” He hands me my backpack, then turns to Sol’ut-eh. “Leave the pod uncovered. We don’t have much time left.”
***
We cross the jungle, walking around humongous trees the size of skyscrapers, dodging giant leaves and bushes. We could’ve brought speeder bikes to move faster, but Sol’ut-eh told us that the magnetic field severely disables them. It’s also the reason why we can’t contact the base until a certain hour and place. Our positioning has to be under the spot where the magnetic field is weaker.
Down here, we’re on our own.
Blue and yellow vines the size of horses hang in our way, so Chuck and Sol’ut-eh use their weakened telekinesis to lift them off our path. I told them I could help, I just had to rearrange the puzzle pieces and poof, no more vines, but Chuck said that using my abilities might cause another singularity, one that could be my last.
The urge to connect with everything around me comes in surges that require focus to control. I could disappear here, blend in with the fabric that makes all of this. It would feel so good... James. Earth. Home. My particles belong home, I must remember that. Particles without purpose have no meaning, and my purpose is to be happy with James.
A few bugs that resemble flying fishes—rainbow scaled skin and bugged out eyes—buzz above us, their thin, veined wings beating faster than an eye blink. There’s a familiar combination of particles within their sharp stingers… poison. One prick and we’d face a painful ending. After the incident with the venom, though, I can withstand this. I can withstand anything.
The air here is thick and stuffy, quite similar to terrestrial rainforests. Sweat glues my clothes against my skin. Maybe I could use my powers to cool my body, but Chuck’s reminder echoes in my mind and that’s enough to stop me. I’m coming home, James, I promise.
Chuck walks ahead with his bulky phaser gun wrapped around his back, the knives on his belt sometimes clanging against each other. Sol’ut-eh follows behind me with her gun at hand, eyes darting everywhere as if she’s expecting an attack.
I bet I could rearrange the particles of their guns, turn them into flowers, birds... even a star.
A conversation might help me ignore these urges. “Chuck, if we meet Do’yanians, it’ll be first contact for them.”
He lifts a yellow leaf off our path with his telekinesis. His body shakes and the leaf wavers in the air. For a moment, it seems he won’t be able to make it, but then the leaf swooshes away, granting us passage. “Yes,” is all he says.
“Well, the implications might be catastrophic,” I continue. “Shouldn’t we have used Do’yanian vessels for this mission?”
He shrugs without turning back. “We can’t know if our bodies would withstand the transition. We are, technically, human.”
Technically.
“Human bodies are fragile,” Sol’ut-eh says from behind. “Besides, Do’yanians haven’t mastered proper language yet. Our presence will be long forgotten by the time they begin proper cognitive thinking.” She shrugs as we walk on. “Maybe a thousand dratas from now, someone will discover paintings of us inside a forgotten cave’s walls.”
“Is that why you aren’t using a vessel?”
She smirks. “Using a vessel wouldn’t have been of much help.”
“Sol’ut-eh!” Chuck stops and swivels, staring at her from beneath his red eyebrows.
“Miriam should know, brother.” Sol’ut-eh turns to me. “Do’yanians are cannibals. They eat their own and anything with flesh, basically. It’s why I assign two security officers for every researcher who comes down to the planet.”
My stomach clenches and a shiver courses through my spine. “Cannibals?”
What kind of barbaric creature could eat their own? Of course Chuck and Sol’ut-eh are armed to the teeth, this planet is inhabited by monsters. The idea of being cooked weakens my legs, yet soon I remember that I could turn fire into water, or perhaps disintegrate the Do’yanians, rearranging their particles into thin air. As soon as the thought comes up, nausea takes over. They’re life forms, conscious on the most basic level. Killing them would be wrong, even considering the threat they could pose.
A bug buzzes to Chuck’s right, its stinger ready, but with one swift move, Chuck pulls the machete from his belt and slices it in half. The meaty pieces bump against the ground, white flesh covered in green slime.
“You don’t need to worry about the Do’yanians, dear.” He sheathes his machete and keeps trailing the path.
Soon we reach a hill that reveals endless yellow prairies. Wind blows softly against my skin, then goes on to swirl upon the amber grass fields. The air here is so fresh, not as stuffy as back in the jungle, so I take a deep breath. Chuck follows, his red hair plastered all over his face, while Sol’ut-eh watches the large huts that lay in the distance. They seem to be made from pieces of bark and straight branches, much like the housing of indigenous tribes on Earth, but I can’t be sure from this distance.
Thin trails of smoke come out of the huts. The Do’yanians are cooking something, and I can guess what. Still, as barbaric as they may be, this is the start of a civilization, happening right before me. It’s exciting in a way, like watching a glassblower sculpt a tiny horse from molten glass. James took me to see that once, before we were married. I couldn’t take my eyes off the glass until the horse was formed.
Two deep breaths added to the memory of James’ sweet smile, and the urge fades.
I pull out three pieces of dried ukula from my backpack and hand two to Chuck and Sol’ut-eh.
“So, brother dear,” Sol’ut-eh starts as she takes a bite of the ukula, “will you tell us why exactly this is the best route to follow?”
Chuck narrows his eyes at Sol’ut-eh, almost as though he isn’t sure if telling her is a good idea. If she knows where Werhn-za’har might be, she could leave us to avenge her deceased mate. However, I simply can’t fathom Sol’ut-eh doing that, not after all she did for us.
Chuck seems to reach the same decision. “At first, it was a gut feeling. If I were in Werhn-za’har’s shoes, I’d position myself far from the locals, but I’d keep an eye on them so I could run as soon as they came close.” He points to a mountain looming ahead, standing miles away from the indigenous aggregation like a watch-tower of faded dark blue. Someone close to the top would have a perfect vantage point. “As we drew closer to the plain, my pad caught faint emissions of quantum energy emanating from that mountain,” he says with pride in his tone.
“Hmm… the fastest path to the mountain is through those plains.” Sol’ut-eh points to the huts. “We might run into trouble.”
Chuck glances at me with worry before he takes the last bite of his ukula. “We don’t have another choice.” He pushes a button on the gun behind his back. A spiraling sound hums inside the weapon as it loads.
***
The thick forestation becomes scarce only a few miles before the village. We had followed the ridge of the forest where we could easily hide from passersby, but now we’re out in the open, in a way. The yellow grass towers over us, and even Sol’ut-eh is well covered. Getting through without being noticed won’t be so hard after all.
Chuck’s pad guides us through the sea of grass. To our left, I can see the tops of the big huts, rising like tiny brown islands in a yellow ocean.
