Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (14 page)

“Beartush?” Lisa patted his hand.

Silence fell.

“Yesh, Lisha!”

“Can we eat now?”

Where were the children?
I wondered as Briertrush led us to his cave and introduced us to Reuf, a sienna male, much smaller than he, and Lyella, a golden female with stiff burnished braids that ended in twists of small woody pods. They rolled around her shoulders as she moved. Reuf and Lyella nodded sideways at me, and smiled at Lisa as they prepared supper.

I nodded back, sideways. They looked at each other and their lips twitched toward a smile. Oh well. I had tried. Ruef moved away from the fire to give Lisa and me the choice place on a large woven mat.

“Thank you,” I said, and took off Lisa's jacket, my own, and sank to the mat with a groan. Lisa huddled beside me and we watched Lyella deftly flatten dark dough into cakes on a wooden dish. Ruef stuffed the cakes with orange pulp, folded the dough, tucked edges, and slipped them into a stone pot of bubbling liquid over the fire. It smelled tart and spicy, good enough to eat, but I knew better.

“I'm so hungry, Daddy.”

I hugged her against me.

Briertrush retreated to a dark niche in the cave's rear. Something crinkled and he returned with a brown paper bag marked Laurel's Fast N' Healthy Foods to Live By.

“What's in there?” I asked.

“Good humane thrings.” Humming deep in his throat, he sat, crosslegged, wagged his head at Lisa and removed containers from the bag. I pictured sautéed goose liver and oyster balls, but couldn't connect them with the smells.

Lisa opened a container and gasped. “Look, Daddy!” She reached inside, withdrew a fistful of french fries.

“You like Catch up?” Briertrush spread red packets of ketchup before her. “Or mush hard?” He spread packets of mustard.

“Ketchup!” Lisa bit off a packet's end and spread ketchup on the fries.

Briertrush removed more containers, gave Lisa a soyburger, offered me two, and fries, and cold coffee and small rolled apple pies in paper sleeves. “Like you thris, Julesh?”

I opened the roll, studied the soyburger and chuckled. “I'll take a chance.” I bit into it. “It's delicious! What happened to Bjorn's cookbook?”

He hunched forward, elbows on knees. “Couldna understan one word ta Terran page.”

“Good!” I took another bite. ”Wha brains an' eggs an' oysta thresticles?”

I laughed. “Balls. Don't worry about it.”

One container held something green. I opened it. Broccoli! ”Eat thris, young Lisha,” our host urged. “You grow brig as Briertrush.”

I shook my head. I'm about six feet, and Briertrush loomed over me at his seven-foot height. He clacked teeth, pulled the lid off a cup of milk and set it before Lisa. She giggled with a mouthful of fries. “If I grow that brig, I won't be able to fit in my house anymore! I'll get stuck! Like Alice in Wonderland.”

Wonderland, indeed.

“Eat slow, Lis',” I said. “Briertrush, where did you… You went into Laurel for this stuff?” I looked at the food. “They'll know we're with your people.”

“Haf friens, Briertrush haf, in humane habitrat. Threy bruy me thris food ta Terran swift food.”

“Fast food,” I corrected.

“Threy Terrans against siar.”

“Against the czar? You have friends in some sort of a rebel movement?”

He flicked back lips.

“So, these rebels told you we were coming?”

He glanced at Ruef, then talked to him in Kubraen. Ruef went to a corner, returned with something rectangular under a cover and set it down. Briertrush lifted the cover. A sublink. A goddamn Terran sublink! ”Hear from rebels with thris ear.” Briertrush stroked the unit and touched dials. I put down the burger and reached for the link. “Here, let me see that. I can reach an Interstel field branch on this.”
For what it was worth,
I thought, if Interstel were really corrupt.

He shook his head, a definite shake, not a wag. “No off-planesh contact anywhrere. Control siar…czar ta spacelinks.” The wrinkles between his eyes deepened. “Control czar all.”

“The czar knows we're on the planet, Briertrush. Those were his people at the tunnel entrance.”

He nodded. “We have watchers on hills surround thre village, an' place ta good hide you an' Lisha. Stray you with thre people.” He put a hand on my knee. “Julesh, alwaysh stray you with thre people. Othrerise all in trouble.”

I nodded.

Lyella sat beside Briertrush and stroked his back. ”What's the code to contact the rebel movement?” I asked and fingered buttons on the sublink.

He looked at the ceiling and I thought his expression turned sour. “Ah. Move ment no more. Move no thring 'tween czar an' Terran mines.”

“What are you saying? The rebels have been defeated?”

“Hear only thris one message, come you an' Lisha. Tell Briertrush no thring more. No plans from RECOILish.”

RECOILish? The rebel movement?”

He nodded solemnly. “Thrink move no more ta rebels.”

I put down the coffee, got up and stood by the cave entrance, staring down the dark shaft. Joe Hatch, my former father in law and former W-CIA operative and a thousand other military tags could run a counterterrorist war better than I. They could flick this czar off Halcyon like a flea off a dog's back. So could Interstel. Couldn't they?

I was sorry I never questioned Joe about Interstel. Though if Interstel were corrupt, he'd carried that secret into retirement. Speaking of which… Was secrecy so vital to the silver alien that he only wanted my help? And Lisa's? I rubbed a hand over my eyes. What was the alien hiding?
Continuance,
he'd stated.
Of what?
Observe, learn,
he'd ordered.
Develop your tel skills.
To what end? Just to kill the czar? Why couldn't his Kubraens do it? Or the rebels? I moved in darkness deeper and more twisted than these passages, while Althea and Joe and Abby lived with the anguish of not knowing what had happened to their little girl.

“Shit!” I slammed the wall with an open palm. “Briertrush. I saw a glow in the west on my way here. What was that? Is there a village in the mountains?”

He stoked the fire pensively. “Home Kubraish Mountain.”

I sat down near the fire. “You mean your people's home before the czar?”

He dipped his head. “Mean the center ever thring, before thre human colony, before thre mines, before thre czar.” He looked up. “Our Spirit.”

“Your God?”

He chuckled, said something to Lyella in Kubraen. She hissed through parted lips as she removed steaming cakes from the pot.

“No, humane,” Briertrush said, “Kubraish Spirit.” He stared at the fire.

The silver tag? A chill crept up my arms. Then what sort of being was he? I restrained more questions. I needed time to think. I watched Lyella cut the cakes precisely, in what seemed almost ritual fashion. She separated the pieces into three portions, small, I thought, for people of their size. She laid them on dishes and gave Briertrush two portions.

He murmured to her, picked up a piece and chewed slowly, obviously savoring it.

I lowered my head and realized how scarce was their food.

“Why don't you just take it all back?” I said. “Terrans came here with the hope of starting a community that wouldn't desecrate this world.”

He lifted the wooden poker and studied it. “Thris good fo cook.” He flicked a glance at my empty holster. “Not so good fo weapon against humane fire.” He wiped his plate with the last piece of cake. “Kubraen people have not thre…aris tre fo killing.”

“The experience?” I offered.

He shook his head, brows knitted. “Canna explain, thris concept na plain ta humane mind.” He dragged a long finger through dirt, drawing the inevitable circle. “Aris tre,” he repeated and hissed, frustrated, as I also was, at the limitation of language.

Lisa licked her fingers. “Daddy, I gotta go potty.”

“Where are your bathrooms?” I asked.

Briertrush said something to Lyella.

She got up, took Lisa's hand with a smile and led her down a passage.

I stared at Briertrush's silver eyes. “I think it was your Kubraish Spirit who summoned us to Halcyon. And not gently either.” He turned to Ruef and spoke softly in his native tongue. Ruef got up and left.

Firelight danced on Briertrush's thick warm skin, fluttered his tunic with its draft. He placed another log in flames and watched it spit bubbles of fluid. “Know only thris, Julesh. Star Speaker, she who ish center now, tell thre people welcome here two humanes.” He looked up and his eyes caught the red light of fire sparks.

“Did Starspeaker have a clue as to how I'm supposed to complete my mission?” I asked the question softly, controlling a desire to shake him by his pulpy ears until the Great Kubraish Plan bounced out of his mouth.

“'You will know', Speaker shay, 'when time ish ripe as fruit on winter mountain trees'.” He threw the wooden poker into the fire and stretched out on his mat, hands behind his head. “Till time ripe,” he said sleepily, “jush observe, learn, an' develop tel skills.” He closed his eyes and exhaled through nose slits.

No fucking kidding! Tel skills? Then they knew! What else did they know and weren't saying? It took me hours to get past my mistrust of the aliens' motives and finally fall asleep. Something awakened me. The three Kubraens were asleep on their mats.

Lisa slept beside me, huddled under a fibrin blanket someone had covered her with. Lyella had washed Lisa's face and brushed her hair.

I lay awake and watched my daughter. Firelight touched her round cheeks, her delicate mouth, curved slightly downward. She looked even more innocent in sleep than when awake. I touched her mind lightly but she wasn't dreaming and I withdrew. Was she really as beautiful as I thought, or was it just the instinct to believe one's offspring is perfect? She had dreamed this place while still at home. So the silver tag prepared her for the trip even before my visit to Joe and Abby. Was my daughter's function here simply to awaken the maternal and paternal instincts in the Kubraens? If so, he'd accomplished it with a heavy hand. I sighed. Would that it were that simple.

I studied a wall rug of golden stars and intricately detailed planets, none familiar. If the silver crote was powerful enough to rip apart a stuffed doll on Earth from here, why did he need me?

The fire was dying. A ray of sunlight from the ceiling grate lit curling smoke. My alien friends were nocturnal. By nature? I wondered. Were those slitted eyes evolved for night vision? Or was
nocturnal
necessary now that the czar ran their planet?

But something had awakened me.

I lifted my head and looked around. A small tailless lizard, wearing a braided collar around his black neck, shuffled across a wicker basket and watched me with a cold green eye. I lowered my head, sighed and was half asleep when I felt a pressure against my mind. I tried to open my eyes, couldn't!

Someone was probing. Not Lisa, but someone close.
Get out,
I mentally ordered.
Out!
The intruder slid past verbal thought with a power I'd never encountered except from the silver crote. I tried to yell, to sit up.

My limbs were rigid. This was not dream, unless it were a megadream. Whoever he was, he was going for a deep probe. I felt him…no, her, I intuited, drill through layers of resistance, deeper than the silver being had ever gone, or even Sye Kor's devastating interrogations. With a frantic surge of energy I imaged a mountain between us. Red fault lines cracked. Lava spewed and the mountain exploded.

Fear tightened my throat. Or was that the intruder's grasp? I tried to cry out and my throat clamped. A warning? I was afraid to draw in breath, afraid I couldn't. The grip loosened and I gasped in a lungful.

I moaned as she dissected my mind, past culture, past memory, past instincts, down to a wet response to light and touch. I was aware of my heart beating with a primal determination that spoke of early creatures crawling doggedly out of shrinking tidal pools. This being could subdue personality, I knew on some level, or drive down to subconscious depths…and all that resided there.

Great Mind. Don't let Lisa be under attack!

A terrifying plunge into blackness. The beat of my heart seemed faint, a distant drum from another plane of existence.

Drifting, while her probe burrows like a mining laser. She plunges into that protected mind womb where our deepest feelings abide in their true form. I block her with a vision of Shiva.
Fear not,
Shiva whispers, His arms and legs sway in a cosmic dance. He holds up a palm.
All rests well in God.
The hand reaches out to me. Blood flows from its pierced wrist.
For your sins
. Christ smiles, becomes Buddha, beneath his Bo Tree, pressing the ground with fingertips. She curls the fingers into a fist that breaches the walls I erect.

I empty my mind and she flounders in a void. We touch…a non-state of being. My defenses weaken in that eternal place so close to geth state. I feel myself drop into a black well of my own making. My dead sister's face begins to materialize.

Quickly the probe withdraws. The well develops an iris of light that expands and envelopes me. Layer by layer I put on desire, hostility, illusion, those garments of life, and close back into self.

I heard myself moan. Had the munger found what she was looking for? I didn't think so, and that was grounds for smugness. I tried to sit up but a command in my mind kept me down. I managed to open my eyes a slit. My breath came in quick shudders as a female Kubraen disappeared around the cave's entrance. Beneath her robe, her wrinkled legs were transparent. Muscle, bone, arteries, reflected firelight like frosted glass. I wanted to follow her, but my muscles refused to respond. Sleep, was an implanted command the creature had left behind. One of the commands? I pried my eyes open and moved them to see Lisa. She slept soundly.

I drifted off.

And had a dream, also implanted, I knew, as I observed a Terran mining crew gouge deep into the planet's bleeding heart.

Something brushed my face. I awakened to silence and the pungent odor of burned wood. The fire had died. I sat up, my mind my own again, and touched my cheek. In the blue light of a drifting blob I saw that the cave was empty, including Lisa's mat! I threw off the blanket.

“Lisa!”

The only sound a scurrying lizard. I scrambled up, grabbed a glob light by tendrils and dragged it with me as I ran into the passageway. Dark sockets of caves there. “Lisa!” My call echoed down empty halls.

I ran through the winding shaft, past hanging wooden masks and gourds with painted faces. My breath kept catching in my tight throat.

After a sharp right turn, the passage broadened into a cavern with a maze of branching tunnels. I turned, there in the center of it, the floating lamp spotlighting me. “Lisa!”

“Wha?”

I spun. Gwis was a pale ghost in blue light, hands held behind her back, stretching her tunic over sagging breasts.

“Where's Lisa?”

She swung her arms around her frail white body and extended my jacket to me. Was she the attacker in my sleep? I stared into her silver eyes, pictured my mental shields lowering like canal locks and probed her mind for an image of my daughter. I couldn't read her expression but she casually scratched under a thick ridge of flaking skin on her cheek and scraped it off. Beneath, her flesh was transparent. Pulsing veins showed through. It distracted me, which might have been her purpose. The silver being's tel power rose up between us and lashed out to shatter my probe. I took a step back and retreated mentally as well.

He was gone. I grabbed Gwis' arm. “Where's – “

A narrow, many-legged creature wiggled around our feet, lifted the horny strip of discarded skin between pincers and raced away. “Where's Lisa?”

Gwis smiled, as though approving my anger, and handed me the jacket. “Come.”

She led me through a wide corridor with broad Kubraen footprints in soft soil. Paintings of animals, mountains, stars, and the inevitable three circles with a black dot in the center, lined clay walls as I followed her up a passage lit by hanging bowls of candles.

Ahead, pale light and the sound of deep Kubraen chanting. A sudden shriek pierced me like jagged glass. ”Lisa!” I dashed through a stone portal and out into night. “Li – “ She sat on a tree stump by a small fire, dressed in her snowsuit, and clapping her hands in time with the chanting. I felt myself go weak with relief. Gwis hissed out a chuckle behind me. I turned and threw her a harsh look. She lowered her gaze.

Five Kubraens, wearing only tunics and capes in the snow, chanted around the fire, throwing a tune to each other. A sixth played a curled wooden flute. Their ivory and buff-colored bodies rippled with red hues of firelight. Black shadows slashed their puckered skin as they swayed and clapped softly. Lisa picked up a shrill note, charged it with a simple melody that ended in a giggle and passed it to an ancient male who sat beside her. He took up the giggle deep in his rutted throat and put an arm around her as he lengthened the sound to the staccato hoot of an animal. I watched as he nodded it on to a lanky toast-brown female across the fire.

Lisa lowered her hands. She stopped singing and stared at the flute player, who suddenly released his instrument. Instead of dropping, it floated inches from his nose. She laughed as it drifted across the fire and began to dip into flames.

“Ah, grive it back, Lisha,” the flute player pleaded, as though she'd managed the feat. “Prease?”

She just giggled.

I smiled at Lisa's delight as the flute spun slowly back to its owner. He reached out and caught it.

Starspeaker's diversion? Whoever had devised this bit of magic, I was grateful. My daughter was long overdue for some fun in her life.

I shrugged into my jacket, glanced around and saw that we were in a meadow dotted with groves of trees and lit by blobs. Hundreds of Kubraens, perhaps the entire community, sat or moved about in shadows. Then I looked up and drew a breath.

A spiral arm of the Milky Way blazed above a dark sweep of mountains like a bent bar of luminous silver. Three small moons hung yellow and orange and white over the sky glow.

“Jesus,” I breathed.

A Kubraen carrying an armload of wood squeezed past me with a head wag as he went through the portal. “Jayshus!” he whispered and I moved aside.

The air was warmer than last night's storm. Lower altitude or just clear skies? Beyond the meadow, a crescent river lay frozen, caught between forest and mountain, its frosted surface reflecting the sky's spiral curve like a shadow thrown by the galaxy.

Gwis came around to face me. She smiled, touched her hand to the right side of her neck and licked her fingers. “Kubraish destriny,” she whispered in what I took to be a humble tone, and lifted her gaze to the sky.

“Kubraish destiny,” I repeated, touched my own neck and started toward Lisa.

She took my arm. “Lisha learning lesshon good. Come!” She tugged on my sleeve. “Come.”

Blue and green light blobs lit the meadow from different levels. Some were tied close to stumps for those who dug up roots and tubers and threw them into baskets. Others were returning from the black woods beyond, swaying blobs tracking their paths, with full sacks of something slung over bare shoulders.

Gwis guided me around a sitting male who worked a marbled rock slab with a chisel of stone and a real mallet. A gift from their human friends in Laurel? When I paused to study the design, the artist drew back to give me a clear view. The carved figure was a lot closer to human than Kubraen. Behind it a large amorphous silver being drifted before a field of stars.

I stiffened. The silver crote who had summoned us to this world! I turned to Gwis. “Terran destiny?”

She smiled, lifted my hand and touched it to her neck. My fingers came away sticky and I smelled a tangy aroma. I restrained a reflex to wipe my hand on my pants.

Gwis' broad bare feet were silent on flat stones as she led me up a path, past chattering youths, by their gangly look, who scooped handfuls of white paste from a large common pot and rolled the stuff into thin sheets.

I stopped to watch a charcoal male squeeze out a hard breath, then wipe a hand across his neck and knead the sticky fluid on his fingers into the mound of paste. By the light of a tied blob, I saw an opening beneath the youth's stringy ear, covered by membranous tissue and smeared glossy now. Drying white sheets that were stretched across the ground fluttered in a sharp breeze.

Food or clothing?

These people were a xenologist's dream. Why weren't they being studied? Perhaps xenologists were not welcome in a Terran colony that had abandoned its high ideal of conservation for the more human reflex of greed, or was I being too critical of Laurel? I shrugged.

Gwis yanked me to a halt before a series of three red engraved portals where the path ended in a grove of majestic spiky trees. The aroma of molasses was strong. She touched her hand to her neck, then to her forehead. I did the same.

A crash at my feet! I jumped aside as a heavy wooden pod rolled to a stop. A ball of green leaves plunked down beside it. ”Shorry,” a Kubraen called from high branches, his prehensile feet glued to the trunk.

“Sokay,” I said, looking up, and wiped stinging dust from my eyes as an amber-skinned female vigorously scraped fungus off a lower bough. I rubbed my tearing eyes, stumbled back and felt a jagged edge of something press my hip. I turned.

Set atop a glass column of symbols and figures, a black marble globe rested in an embossed silver clasp. Fresh tubers, small woven straw figures, roots, nuts, strange flowers fashioned from painted wood shavings adorned the column's base. I reached a hand to the globe, hesitated, and turned to ask Gwis about this altar.

She was gone.

If it were taboo to touch the globe, she would have warned me. I laid a hand on the round smooth surface and felt a warm tingling. After my experience with the crystal globe, I'd expected no less. From the crest of a dark hill, a glimmer of light flickered and grew.

The musician and singers stopped. Only Lisa continued the chant until someone hushed her. Overhead, the rustling of the Kubraen in the tree ceased. I bowed my head as a tentative mindprobe touched my thoughts like the brush of bird wings.
Gwis! You weren't so gentle with me in the cave,
I sent to her.

You were an unwilling student. It was necessary to understand your alien mind.

Within the shimmering light on the hill, a figure was seated in diaphanous veils.

I never enrolled
, I sent.

Her tel presence hovered till I lowered my shields, though I knew she could slash through them as easily as those veils she wore.

You may ask me one question,
she sent,
for each advance you make. Do you agree?

What sort of advance?

Take the globe in your hands.

I lifted it and almost dropped it from the weight.

With each advance you will come closer to penetrating the center of the globe with your mind.

What's inside it?

The way into your own nature, which is prerequisite for your mission. When you succeed in that final probe, you will be powerful enough to lead us to the Kubraish Spirit in the Mountain and the mission He requires of you.

The silver tag, right?
I replaced the globe.
He's your Great Spirit…right?

Yes, Jules. Not God, but Spirit.

I thought so. Why should I care about his mission? He's been exposing my daughter to dangers.

Neither you nor Lisa have a choice. Pick up the black flower.

I did.
Do I have your word, and the Spirit's word, that Lisa won't be dragged into his Great Plan, whatever that may be?

No.

I let the flower slip from my fingers.

Your daughter's journey back to Earth begins here. There is no other path. Pick up the flower. Please.

I picked it up.
I want a guarantee that she'll be safe, then we can talk about paths.

My people have agreed to protect the child with every life in the village. That is all we can offer. Let the flower teach you to focus your powers.

I twirled the stem.
I could use a hint on just how to do that.

The knowledge is in you, Earth son. Seek after it.

I sat at the base of the tree, studied the flower and visualized myself as a bee, glassy wings folded, pollen sacs empty, squeezing down between petals to the flower's heart to find nectar that I imaged as knowledge.
This is ridiculous
, I sent.

The globe hovered above me like a blind eye on its translucent pedestal. I focused my tel power on it, willed it to open to me like the flower. Smoke roiled within the sphere. I thought I was penetrating it but my tel power suddenly turned on me and I found myself peering into the dark recesses of my own mind. I didn't like what I found there and broke the link.
Starspeaker!

I am here.

You didn't tell me the globe was going to fight back.

This is not a battle, Terran. The lessons would be without purpose if it did not assist you in turning inward.

I focused on the dark flower instead and cautiously lowered my mental shields. A babble of voices breached the walls of my mind, shattered the coherence of thought. Broken images flickered behind my eyes, bits of Kubraen conversations, shards of emotions, passions, rushed in through a vortex that threatened to suck me down. I squeezed my temples and felt as though a band of wet leather were tightening around my head.

Canal locks! I projected and imaged shields rising.

The shields refused to budge. No safe corner in my fragmented mind! Feelings crashed against my brain like broken glass. I dug fingers into dirt to anchor myself in the physical world. “Starspeaker!” I cried. I wanted to jump up and run blindly.

Concentrate on the flower,
she sent, her mental presence at some still center of the riot within my brain.
Why do you fight it?
Let only the flower exist for you.

OK. Ok. But my…my shields.
I tried to raise them, couldn't.
Damn, I can't…can't think.

Daddy!
Lisa's tel-link came through like a small light in a fog.

Lis'? No! Don't…don't get caught in this!
I projected a web, a spider at its center, to warn her away.

She opened a path through the chaos, added her strength to mine to try to lift the shields. I felt them rising. Her tel power had strengthened! But she pushed back unsuccessfully when Starspeaker forced her out of the tel-link.

As your eyes discriminate and sort out the maelstrom of forms and colors entering your brain at each moment, let the flower be the eyes of your inner being.

Holding the flower in both hands, I locked my gaze on petals and fought to regain the image of the bee, to mold it against the turmoil of emotions invading my mind, as though it crawled across the lens of a kaleidoscope.

I had it! I held it in my mind's grip, clung to the image and blocked out everything else. This way lies sanity! I focused on the bee and guided it like a tiny lifeline between the bulwarks of silken petals, down to huddled safety beneath stamens and into the pistil at the flower's core.

The confusion in my mind eased and I rested there, and became the furry bee.

Jules, you have made an advance. Come out now and concentrate on the globe.

It's dangerous out there. Will you let me raise my shields?

Your shields are the means you use to keep yourself detached. You must confront the storm and tame it, alone, naked.

You ask too much.

When I probed you in the cave, you blocked your truest feelings.

We Terrans have a strong belief in our right not to be exploited by anyone, including mental invasions by alien races.

Yes, you will face your coming confrontation with only your self.

I mentally sighed.
Then how do I tame this herd of buffalo stampeding through my brain?