Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (10 page)

When he tells Daniel about
technically losing his job, fury comes to the forefront. It’s been
four months since Casey Hayes; three since Leon’s flat was
destroyed. Leon has previously told Daniel none of this out of fear
of change. Anger, confusion, all of these things are based on how
long it took Leon to say something. Yet the justification remains:
when he thinks of it, he remembers all the ones who’d come before
who’d fly away based on the smallest of changes. Leon doesn’t want
this, he truly loves Daniel. He can’t risk it.

However, tonight, Leon has
explained everything. It would have become too hard to hide.
Daniel’s eyes shrink into a what-is-wrong-with-you glare; his lips
tighten as he keeps his thoughts at bay. Leon knows that Daniel is
angry with him and not the news of his job or his destroyed
flat.

“
Did you not
fight back?” Daniel paces around the room. His questions begin to
sound like blame. Leon knows something else – something unspoken –
fuels the conversation. This is the unspoken thing that has
destroyed all the previous relationships; the monster behind all
the arguments and dissatisfactions.

Leon answers, “What was there
to fight back against?”

Daniel stops when Manny, the
first terrier of two, rushes up to him wagging his tail back and
forth like windshield wipers trying to calm a storm. Coto sits
beside Leon, offering what little comfort he can by cradling his
head on Leon’s leg. Every now and then he remembers to scratch the
terrier behind the ears, but it’s hard enough trying to make sense
of the thoughts rushing through his brain to keep the motion
steady. The dog crooks his head to the side whenever the rubbing
abates.

For the moment, Leon can still
see his classroom and Casey. In the moment, he can’t remember
anything about that day but her. The girl with the phoenix wrist,
the lecture about A.A.M. Gen Literature - nothing remains but her.
Leon remembers a quote his grandfather once said about blinking,
and how, no matter how fast life can move, the worst moments of
life imprint on the back of your eyelids, and blinking is God’s way
of grounding us in reality. ‘That really happened,’ it says.

Leon blinks his frustration
with himself off. Daniel takes a deep breath and looks away,
towards the television bolted to the wall.

“
Why haven’t
you told me any of this until now?”

“
I don’t
know.”

“
It’s been
more than long enough for you to say something – how much of the
last few months have you been faking?”

“
None. I just
didn’t know what to tell you. I had money saved up. I thought I
could rebuild it all, or find a better place.”

“
You didn’t
deserve it anyway,” Daniel says, stopping by the television long
enough to catch his reflection – he turns away from the sight.
Leon’s heart thumps loud enough to sound like bass coming from the
flat upstairs.

“
What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“
I mean, you
aren’t good enough at what you do to keep that kind of position.
You would have lost it eventually.” His eyes bore through
Leon.

“
Is that what
you really think?”

“
What do you
think?” Daniel asks.

Leon pauses.

“
Damn it,
Leon. If you really take pause at that, then I don’t know what to
tell you anymore.”

He looks away from Daniel and
steels his nerves.

“
I know you
more than you know yourself, Leon,” Daniel says. “Listen to me. You
don’t deserve a comfortable job, you don’t deserve a happy
relationship, you don’t deserve any of that.”

Leon says nothing. He can sense
the nerves in Daniel’s voice fraying. “Damn it, Leon. I’m trying to
get a rise out of you. Wake up!”

“
I don’t
understand,” Leon says. He does understand, he just doesn’t want
to.

“
I know you
care about that job… sometimes you care more about those stories
than me, and that’s fine – I knew what I was getting into. But did
it ever occur to you that you’re allowed to stand up for yourself
once and awhile? If you love me, why are you letting me say these
things? You’d defend me in a heartbeat, so why not something you
love more than me?”

Leon lets more silence answer.
Daniel scoops Manny from his spot near his feet and falls into the
chair next to him. He pulls his weight to the left so that he
doesn’t end up lying against Leon in the process. Coto wakes up and
licks at Leon’s fingers, silently saying ‘don’t stop
scratching’.

“
I love you,
Leon. You know that. But you’re going on about these things like
they’re the end of the world. That wouldn’t be a problem except, I
mean lately, you fall behind and let things continue to happen.
Professor Arthur Leontes Bishop doesn’t just let his life fall
apart, does he? Is he really that passive?”

The only response Leon can
muster is: “I’m not the same Professor.”

Daniel slumps in the seat an
arm’s length away. Manny crawls over Daniel’s lap, joins Coto, and
watches Leon. “Well, it’s just a big old pity party, isn’t it?”

Leon ignores this. He can feel
a familiar kind of anger growing beneath his chest, and he wants to
find something to calm the acid bubbling in his stomach. He doesn’t
want to be here. The worst part is that Leon doesn’t really care
about the flat right now. It was almost there. The realization that
would have kept Leon where he is. But the past is simply too
strong. It holds a firm grasp on his fears, and holds his
tongue.

“
I think you
might need to take some time to yourself. Get some fresh air and
learn to recognize what really matters to you,” Daniel
says.

Leon nods and smiles. “I better
go,” he said. Daniel clicks his tongue and looks away. Coto shoots
him an insulted glare. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

When Leon leaves, he’s still
not sure what’s happened.

He climbs into the cab of his
Mini and jerks on the seatbelt, letting it slide around his waist
and fasten. He wishes for the time when they were manual and
weren’t connected to the engine’s wiring. He clicks the ignition.
At first the engine doesn’t start, so he clicks it again and again
until it growls to life. The electric system engages and power is
restored to the cabin. His hands shake as he grips the wheel with
one hand and plugs in his destination on the dash computer.

He pulls out of Daniel’s
driveway and starts towards the A8, towards Glasgow. His eyes are
partly glossed over. A blinded hand turns on the radio, but Leon
doesn’t hear any music. And when Leon wonders whether or not
leaving would be a good idea, the voice speaks up. Fuelling the
voice is everything that Leon has pushed back into his mind for the
past few months: His fears that he would fail Daniel on a more
cosmic level than he could handle; terror that he’s going to pass
into obscurity and that all his students will forget he’s existed.
On Sondranos, it will turn into a mimicry of Daniel’s voice. For
now, it’s bland and toneless. It doesn’t take long for the voice to
convince Leon that leaving as fast as possible is the best and only
option.

‘
You’ve never
been good enough,” it says.

Everyone was
looking at me
.
I
forced a smile and flattened down my hair before locking both hands
behind my head. Annalise winked. Melanie watched me expectantly.
Lancaster tried to hold Kayt’s hand again, but she moved before he
could touch her. A couple tears fell from the corners of her eyes.
I could see the effort in keeping the smile force its way through.
My name. My mind jumped to how easy it was to lie to Melanie in the
cellar.

“
Leon
Bishop,” I waved at everyone.

Chapter
Six:

Trifles and
Time

The first
Belovore to establish
contact with the
human settlers was named Velric. This was what Davion told us as we
made our way through the woods. The trees grew thinner the further
we walked. A couple trunks here and there were wide and peeling
with rotting bark and mould, but most took on the impression of
having been planted to replace other trees in very recent history.
Nobody voiced the fear that more Belovores might be in the
woods.

Velric,
Davion continued explicating, was a child in Belovore years, only
about fifty. Admiral Perry, as captain of the
Irene
, had no idea the Belovores even
existed – nobody did. So when they were forced to land on
Sondranos, what they found was a complete surprise.

Admiral Perry
sits in the
command chair centred on the
bridge. He adjusts his weight in his seat, stifling a tickle in the
back of his throat.

Ahead, the console still shows
the surrounding image of the crater. They’d landed a few moments
earlier, and while the systems began their shutdown, Perry views
the external cameras in privacy. He doesn’t know what to tell his
crew. Instead, he brings it up on the main screen. The image
crystallizes and Perry can see the first pictures of the
settlement. They look much like the images the probe sent, but
clearer, undistorted. A camp is strewn about the interior of the
crater, touching a great deal of the central mass. Buildings no
more than three or four stories high – including raised ceilings,
Perry oddly considers – pop out of the ground. They come in three
colours: brown, grey, and a mixture of the two. The streets are
wide, but Perry can see no vehicles of any sort. He’s sure the
atmospheric break terrified the creatures living on the surface. He
hopes they haven’t gone immediately on the defensive.

He looks back
down to his private console, where he’s frozen the image on a
satellite snapshot of the creatures. Still slightly blurry, he can
tell his crew won’t easily be comfortable around them. The claws
that wrapped around their waists send shivers down his spine. How
they walk bi-pedal, yet interact as if they’d only recently learned
to stand unnerves him. He knows they don’t speak English, so deeply
rooted in his list is wondering how he’s going to communicate with
them. The lives of five thousand colonists and a ship’s crew of
hundreds depend on him. Settlement 257-C didn’t have the luxury of
choosing where it landed anymore, not since they passed the rim of
trade space. Not since they’d lost nearly all their resources when
an electrical accident burned half their stores. The
Irene
, named after one of
the first CEOs of
International
Aeronautics,
would have to make do where
she landed.

“
Let’s meet
the neighbours,” he mumbles and stands. He flattens his uniform
down to look presentable, and travels to the lift. After travelling
down a dozen decks and skirting the engine room, Perry stops at the
disembarkation area. It’s still on lockdown, a handful of guards
with plasma rifles holding steady at the door. They all stand aside
when they see him coming. A technician standing near the release
console watches him carefully.

A security window shows Perry
that a dozen or more have swarmed around the ship. They don’t
appear hostile, but curious. He stands before the hatch and takes a
deep breath before waving to the technician. The tech shakes his
head and switches a lever, which opens the door.

Instantly, the smell of heat
and biofuel fill his sinuses. A metallic breeze wafts into the ship
as the first creature makes its appearance. It smiles. At least,
Perry thinks it’s a smile. It opens its arms, all four of them, and
kneels to the ground. It rests its upper arms on the foot of the
hatchway. The two lower arms – Perry feels uneasy at their
thinness, the way the pincers at the end open and close as if they
have a mind of their own – stick up in the air. The creature drops
its two bottom arms and looks up. Perry can see the plates all over
its body. At first he thought it was a form of clothing, but now
can see that the plates are just extrusions of the skin. Each one
is surrounded by a seam where the skin has hardened into its
genetically given shape. The colour is soft and red, while the
plates are closer to crimson.

“
Choko-sigurat,”
it says. The sounds
are guttural, and Perry doubts – for a moment – that the creature
is speaking. It stands. “
Na dajenko.
Belovore-ah.”

“
What is it
doing?” Perry asks, fully aware that the sentries wouldn’t hear
him.

The creature scans the interior
of the ship, and extends a hand to the wall. It looks at Perry, not
touching anything.

“
Na?”

Perry cocks his head to the
side. The creature pretends to touch the wall, to caress it. It
repeats the word. Perry opens his mouth and nods. “Na,” he attempts
the word. It comes out – as he thinks – sounding like an American
attempting a British accent. Which is to say it sounds nothing like
the guttural mimicry he’d hoped. The creature bows and looks to the
wall. It steps further into the hatch and touches the surface.
Perry winces at its skin scraping against the sheet metal. The
sound is like running nails across a table-top. He watches as the
creature continues stroking the wall.

“
Looks like
they’re more interested in our ship than us,” Russell, his second
in command, jokes, nearly scaring the life out of him as he comes
up from behind.

Perry smiles. “I think you
might be right.”