He stood up to enter the contraption yet again when Rakhabi’s’ thoughts burst into his mind.
“I need you, come quick. Please!” That was it and then she was gone. He had not sensed any physical pain, only an emotional terror that must now be a barrier keeping him from responding directly to her.
“Guards!” he yelled. “I need to return now. I need you to make a portal for me. I cannot do it on my own.”
The guards all tensed, but only their leader who had been squatting by the fire seemed to outwardly react. “Why? What’s going on?” he demanded. He stood and crossed the space between them seemingly without thought.
Yakobe had jumped down from the contraption and took a step back at his abrupt approach. He backed up against the cool jagged pieces of metal before he realized what he was doing. “It’s my life mate,” he said stepping forward again. He didn’t even notice that the metal had cleanly sliced a cut across the back of his arm. “I don’t know what the problem is, but I have to go to her. She needs me. Please?” He was getting desperate. Thankfully, the guards understood his dilemma. He waved two others in from their positions surrounding the crash site and a few moments later a distortion materialized between the tips of their staves. It grew until it was large enough to walk through. A fourth guard entered first. Yakobe was right on his heels.
They materialized in the tesser room, and the guard guided Yakobe onto the lift in the corner of the large domed room. Yakobe barely noticed the myriad of colors flickering across the webbed walls. His one thought was to find Rakhabi and as soon as possible. They faded out of sight and back in on a different lift in an alcove of a corridor not far from where Yakobe’s suite was located. He didn’t wait for them but strode off towards his room easily taking in the markings on the walls of the corridor that appeared as he ran his hands along the wall and focused on his destination. Those markings had previously been hidden and meant nothing to him, but very accurately gave the illuminated reader their exact location in the sprawl of the palace. It was another fine example of these city dwellers, but they didn’t fascinate Yakobe at the moment. His only interest lay in their ability to get him to where Rakhabi was. Her distress was still locking him out of her thoughts.
He passed quickly through a door leading into the corridor that adjoined his suite and strode towards the guard standing at attention outside his door.
“Are you Yakobe?” the guard asked as he approached.
“Yes, I am going to find my soul mate.” He was not intending on pausing but bursting through him if need be to get into the room.
The guard shifted his stance and spoke quickly. “I know where she is. I will take you to her if you will just follow me.”
Yakobe stopped abruptly. “Take me to her. Let’s go. What’s wrong with her? Is she O.K.?” The guard couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so he set off down the corridor. Yakobe continued to grill him until he realized that the guard wasn’t saying anything, and he just gritted his teeth in frustration and followed the guard.
That was what the guard had been waiting for and he twisted his broad shoulders to look at Yakobe past his thick, stern eyebrows. “Your soul mate is fine physically, but she is taking the situation with the nlaikha quite hard.”
“What nlaikha? What situation? I haven’t heard anything.” There were both frustration and relief in his voice.
The guard intentionally began to slow down to give him more time to explain before they arrived at their destination. “The nlaikha I speak of is the one under the Mwene’s care that is with child. It appears that she has not been doing well. She has had some type of reaction or rejection of the baby, or both, I am not sure. What I am sure of is that your soul mate has become somewhat attached to her over the past moon cycle, and is not only taking her condition hard but is fearful that she will experience the same thing. They have had to sedate her, but she is in no danger, nor will she be unless she does not calm down and doesn’t cause something herself.”
The guard paused in the corridor and looked at Yakobe as if he were being inspected.
“What?” Yakobe asked. “Let’s go!”
“You will do her no good in this condition. You must calm down before I take you any further.”
Yakobe almost tore into the guard in frustration but recognized that he was right and turned full circle practically growling to himself before he stopped with is head against the wall and took a few deep breaths. “You don’t know what it’s like—how hard it is to be away from anything that seems normal and have the one person in the entire world you can understand and depend on cry out for help and not know what’s going on or be able to help in any way. I hear you though. I can do this. I am calmer now.” He tried to take the pleading look out of his eyes but didn’t succeed very well.
It was enough though. The guard regarded him calmly for a moment and then turned to the door panel close to where they stood. “She is here,” he said simply placing his hand on the access plate. The door slid to one side revealing a small sterile room. It was one of many linked by open doors and see-through glass panes. Rakhabi kneeled on a protrusion under the glass and was looking through it watching some healers and mlaikha scurrying around. She didn’t notice him enter.
He rushed over and sat on the wall bench beside her. He clasped her hand in his and at his touch, she started and then fell into his arms sobbing. As soon as he touched her, the mental barrier to their communication evaporated and he knew everything. He drew her in to comfort her and looked through the clear glass pane to where the nlaikha clung by a thread to both her life and that of the child’s.
The healers were frantically trying to save their lives. Yakobe could just hear them through the glass.
“I don’t know if we can save her and the baby,” said the one.
“We may not be able to save either of them,” said the other, “but we’ll try.”
“What if we just try to save one and not the other, would the chances of that one living increase?”
“It may, but then again it may not.”
“And,” joined in one of the mlaikha without lifting her eyes, “the chances for the other would immediately disappear.”
Yakobe could not believe they were actually considering not helping one of them and tried to yell through the glass. “You have to help them both! They are both lives. Who are you to assign more value to one life over another?” If he hadn’t had Rakhabi clinging to him, he would have rushed in there. It was a good thing he didn’t try. The guard still stood behind him and sidled closer throughout his verbal mini-explosion. The healers looked at him first with chagrin and then with shame. They, even more than others of their race, felt responsible for all life. They had taken an oath but were now trying to rationalize the death of someone in order to preserve the other. They must try to save both! They could not shift into the other dimension in this small room, nor could the nlaikha be moved. They resorted to an older style solution and began to slice the nlaikha across the abdomen.
Yakobe couldn’t watch nor did he want Rakhabi to watch so he drew her back into a sitting position with her back to the glass and talked out loud to distract them both.
“You know she’s been struggling this whole time. Just because she’s in such danger now does not mean that you or our child are in danger too.” He rubbed her pale hands while he spoke as if he could rub the certainty into her.
“I know, Yakobe,” she said. “I am mostly concerned for her though, not just for myself. I have gotten to know her even though she is just a nlaikha. My heart will break if she dies. Then, I will be scared for my life.”
They lost themselves in conversation until the silence on the other side of the glass signaled a change. When Healer Gaio saw them peering through the pane, he came through the door to speak with them. Rakhabi thought back to when she had first seen him, and she had drunk of the dream root tea just prior to having the child set inside her. He seemed to have aged even more just over the last month. Perhaps it was jus
t the stress of the procedure he had just undertaken. His eyes seemed pinched at the sides and he was slow in his movements.
“How is my favorite patient?” he asked with concern in his eyes. He held his hand to the side of her head and placed his thumb over the light rose ruby set in her forehead. His touch was trained and steady, flooding her with a calm reassurance rather than a flood of raw unexposed emotions as would have been the case were he not her trained healer.
“There is no need to fret so,” he began. “The Creator is not surprised by the paths we follow. The nlaikha is fine, though her child shall speak to the Creator before us all. You, however, are healthy. Your child is healthy. We have learned much from this unfortunate event and we will be prepared for the births of your child and Jacinto’s. The nlaikha’s child was much more developed than either of yours. We plan on taking the children before you must labor with them to reduce the trauma as much as possible. We will get them out the same way we put them in. Then we will all celebrate.”
“When do you think that will be?” Yakobe asked hearing the question forming in Rakhabi’s mind.
“We will aim for a fortnight before Double Winter Solstice. You should be recovered enough to participate in the Double Winter Festival and Mwene Crisópraso has some special events planned with you in mind.” Healer Gaio grimaced as he spoke.
“Oh no!” Rakhabi exclaimed. “I can’t. I won’t. I haven’t.” She had a lot running through her mind, but none of it seemed to be able to make it out.
“Oh, you will be fine,” he said, turning, “I can’t tell you more, but you can trust the Mwene. We have much to look forward to,” he added as he walked back into the room beyond.
“Yakobe!” she began.
“I know how you feel and what you’re thinking,” he thought at her. “He’s the Mwene. There’s nothing we can do. And I do trust him. You should too. Most folks don’t even know all that is going on. Why do you think he’s keeping the children of the stars secret? Will he even tell them what is really going on? We don’t know.”
“You’re right. We don’t know. There’s so much we don’t know,” she said out loud as they made their way down the long corridor towards their suite. “Thank you for coming. I hope I never have to find out what I’d do without you. I can hardly wait until I actually have the child in my arms.” Her mind wondered and Yakobe followed its meandering path.
“Double winter. We barely experience double winter back home. It’s been too long since I’ve wandered the paths under the great Kwila. I hardly know what time of the turn it is. Harvest has come and gone. First winter’s day should be this week or next. Full winter should start about a month after that and double winter a month after that. Not quite a month and a half then until I have the child. This will be the longest full winter I’ll have experienced. I’ve always been so far south that full winter was much shorter.” Yakobe wondered about many of the same things. Their thoughts bounced back and forth as they walked silently back to their suite. They mirrored each other’s thoughts perfectly. Double winter was not that far away. The sister’s shadow already was stretching out to embrace the city. The batteries would need to be fully charged because, during those days, no light fell day or night. It was a two-month long eclipse. The cold would be unbearable. It was already cold, but the impersonal and lifeless walls seemed to make it seem colder. It probably wasn’t colder. The designers had found a way to bring heat up from the earth to warm things up, but a floor of wood was so much more practical and warmer. One didn’t have to wear foot coverings the whole time there. They both agreed on that.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
Reunion
The morning they set out from Windfall was one of the warmest they had experienced yet on Magellan. The weather here was proving itself to be very unpredictable. It was either because of their proximity to the coast, the affects of the other planet so large on the horizon, or any number of other factors. It would take decades to figure out. Caleb was driving, and Gaston had called shotgun while Nick and Nicole lounged in the back seat.
Over the last two months, Nick had been busy mapping the surrounding area. Nicole had added a layer of her own to his maps showing the variety and density of various plant and animal life. They had both covered a lot of ground, and neither showed any interest in the terrain now bouncing past the windows of the All-Terrain Rover. It would be a different story once they passed the site of their initial landing to the South East. Of the four of them, only Nicole had been South of the landing site. If Franklin wasn’t knee deep in the dirt with the crops, he would have also been along to document their trip. They would all take turns manning the camera during the trip.
It did not take long in the A.T.R. to reach the edge of the now sprawling town of Windfall. After the initial problems they had run into in the muck, they had begun to really make progress getting established. What amazed Gaston the most was the attitude that the team had been able to maintain. It would have been really easy to get discouraged, but the entire group had banded together to get everything accomplished. The environment was harsh on the vehicles and tools being used, and a majority of the equipment needed to maintain everything was still buried in the shuttle. The prospects for getting to that equipment or anything else in the shuttle were slim indeed.
Windfall resembled one of the old towns like Jamestown from the era of Earth’s colonization. A secure boundary had been built using young saplings that had needed to be removed for housing to be built. The result was a thin, rough looking tall, log fence. Each log had been sharpened at the top. The gate was still under construction and would be for some time. Only a couple of houses had been built. The idea was to build the houses of those with children first. There were a lot of children.
Caleb must have been thinking the same thing as Gaston. “What are the chances that we will all be under roof by the time cold weather hits?” he asked.
“It really depends on both how long the construction takes and how long the cold weather holds off. We have made a lot of progress since we’ve had the whole crew here working together. We must have arrived in what passes for spring or summer here because it is still getting warmer, not colder.”
“It will be good to meet up with Outpost and start some cooperation between us.”
“Do you already have some ideas about how you will proceed with that?” Gaston asked. He had to constantly remind himself that he was no longer “captain” of the Windfall, but rather an elected mayor of a budding colony town.
“It will really depend on Outpost’s accessibility. Nick, you haven’t been much further south than the shuttle, have you?” He looked over his shoulder as he spoke. Nick was already asleep—or pretending to be. “The question was rhetorical anyways,” Caleb said smiling at Gaston.
Gaston unzipped his backpack between his feet and fumbled around in it for a few moments before pulling out a sheaf of papers. He extracted a folded sheet and stuffed the others back in. “This is the picture we took from space on our fly-over,” he said opening it up. “Nick compares all of his maps with this view to make sure that the distances are consistent. Windfall is by this bay. This plain is actually the bog where the shuttle landed. This mountain range here to the south is the only real barrier that could hamper our travels.”
Caleb had looked the map over before but followed along as well as he could as he maneuvered around bushes and trees. There was just the barest of tracks still etched out where they had driven from the first base camp. Unfortunately, not all drivers had followed the same route, so in many places, the would-be trail essentially disappeared. Caleb chuckled. “You say it’s the only real barrier, but that’s a big enough barrier to set us apart and keep us from good trade if Outpost doesn’t have the equipment to tunnel through or carve out a road.”
“They were going to head to this area here where the main valley water source flows, so if we can get over the mountains instead of having to go around them by the coast it would sure save a lot of time.”<
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“It will take forever to cross on foot or backtrack and then drive all the way around the mountain range if we try to cross there and can’t. Even then, we may not be able to cross because the mountains go all the way to the ocean.”
“We have what, five days travel until we have to decide?” answered Caleb.
“Yes. I wish we could tell what the altitude is at this gap right here. It looks like we may be able to cross there.” Gaston felt exasperated at all the unknowns. He was a perfectionist at heart and would have loved to have all the details of their trip nailed down. They had already poured over the limited aerial pictures that served as a map. There was just not an easy way to get from Windfall to Outpost. There had been reasons why the two shuttles had landed so far from each other, but Gaston could hardly remember what those reasons were. The only good thing he could see in it was that if the Outpost had landed in the muck with the Windfall, then they would both be buried up to their thrusters as well.
They continued to pour over the aerial shots and discuss different options for the next few days. It wasn’t until lunch on the third day out that they settled on Nick’s idea. Since he was in charge of the mapping he wanted to see as much territory as he could. They decided that they would head as far to the southeast as they could. They would then follow the foothills west towards the coast. They would drive as far to the south as the terrain would permit. It would mean a longer trip, but they would gain some valuable information about their surroundings in the process.
Solar Twins Page 20
