Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (21 page)

“
Engine
cooking is an old custom. I only knew about it because I recently
had a lot of time to read,” Annalise offered a fake smile. “Which
is also why I knew how to sever the magnetic locks on that car.”
Annalise turned to Melanie, who flattened her pants and sat in the
dirt. Davion pulled his robes around his waist before sitting,
revealing stocky pants that could have been as old as him. “Good
job, by the way. I certainly couldn’t have done it in
time.”

Melanie looked at Davion. Her
eyes followed him. She then spoke as if she’d been trained to do
so: “Thank you for the opportunity,” she said. “I learned more
about myself than I remembered about vehicles.”

Davion patted her on the knee.
He leaned forward, and they began to chat. Kayt paced against the
side of the road, sipping from the water and spitting some out
after swishing it around. Quiet pervaded the twilight. It wasn’t so
quiet that nerves sank in; however, it was quiet enough for us to
feel entirely comfortable doing nothing. I helped Annalise with the
food. Shortly, I realized that we’d brought no utensils or anything
to pick the steaks off the engine with. I picked at the first
steak, startled at the heat, and pulled my fingers back. Annalise
laughed and pulled out a second rectangle of convection foil. She
set the sheet over the steaks, wrapped the edges together, and
flipped the meat just as effortlessly as she’d set them on. I
placed my hands behind my back. Kayt, noticing the exchange,
concealed a smirk. After a few moments, all three of us turned
around to the sound of Melanie scrambling off the ground.

“
Just deep
breaths, Melanie.” Davion stood in front of her, and shielded us
from noticing that she’d stood and was clutching at her head like
someone had set it in a vice.

“
Stop,”
Melanie barked.

“
You can beat
this. Just put it out of your mind,” Davion said. It felt like we’d
all walked in on a private conversation.

Annalise and Kayt looked to me,
as if I had some answer.

I shook my head and
shrugged.

Melanie pushed her hair back
over her head with a trembling hand. She turned away from us all.
“Praying isn’t going to help this one, Davion.”

“
Then
confide. I gave you many options, Melanie. To only provide one
option in a crisis would be ridiculous. There are millions,” Davion
stood and attempted to join her. She stepped away before he could.
“Just choose one. Let me help you. Like when we were in the garage.
Take my hands.”

“
It just
doesn’t make any sense,” she yelled. The words were directed at
Davion.

We all wanted her to say what
was on her mind – that the Belovores were monsters and deserved a
horrible punishment, or that we should find a way to arm ourselves
with the most painful weapons we could imagine and strike back.
Kayt turned and attempted to draw another sip from her water bottle
to conceal that she’d started crying again. Annalise watched the
ground, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Melanie, or Davion – who
opened his arms to Melanie like she was his lost child.

“
All those
people,” she began. “And all I could think of was following you to
get some information that might not even be relevant anymore. That
poor boy died because we couldn’t work fast enough, and for what?
His death did absolutely nothing to hurt or hinder our chances of
survival.”

Annalise perked up. She shot me
a look that was sudden and neurotic. Her eyebrows crooked. ‘What
does she mean?’ she mouthed.

“
What we’ve
talked about, Melanie. If you can learn to trust me, then you can
learn to trust your faith,” Davion said. “Let me continue the story
of Admiral Perry. Allow it to take your mind away before you start
to think of things that will force you to question that which is
most important.”

“
I don’t
really want to hear about them right now,” Annalise said loudly.
She nudged towards Kayt, who’d chosen to turn around and pace away
from the group at the mention of the ‘poor boy.’ “This isn’t the
right time.”

Melanie took a few silent
breaths. Davion wrapped a hand around her and escorted them back to
their seats. She pulled up her lips in a fake smile, and they sat.
In what must have been a mirror recreation, Melanie leaned over and
rested her head against Davion’s shoulder. She closed her eyes. She
mouthed something that acted like a prayer, and slowly calmed her.
The panic attack seemed to be ebbing, but – since none of us knew
it was coming – we didn’t know how to deal with them. If she had
another one while Davion wasn’t near, I was certain it would cause
more damage than good.

“
There will
never be a right time,” Davion said. “I respect that. But I feel
there is something in what I will tell you that might shed light on
this situation. Admiral Perry’s actions influenced much more than
the colony you see around you. The Belovores were a stagnant race.
Showed signs of age reaching as far as five hundred of our years,
considering their healthcare system, which they called
sub-par.”

“
They’re
working with someone,” Annalise pushed the words out quickly, eying
me. “We heard someone in the group making a pretty good case for
it. But that doesn’t mean we need to hear your stories about it,
right now.”

“
It’s okay,”
Kayt interrupted. She stood between us all, and shook her head.
“You don’t have to protect me. I want to know more about what
happened. I need to know who killed my best friend, and why. If
Davion has some kind of insight, then I want to hear what he has to
say.”

Annalise rubbed her eyes. She
bit her lower lip, looked at the meat, and then offered Davion an
alternative. “Wait until we’re eating,” she said. We locked gazes.
“That way those of us who don’t want to hear can focus on our food
instead.”

What she said with her eyes
was: ‘I want Kayt to have some kind of distraction when the story
gets too real for her.’

Davion agreed on the
settlement.

He pulled out one of the boxes
from the bag at the centre of our makeshift campsite and offered
the contents to Melanie. She took the box of crackers, popped two
in her mouth and grimaced at the taste. She eyes were streaked with
red, and she still staggered each breath as if they hurt. Davion
ignored it by turning to his side and wiping dirt away from the
spot next to him, as if to create a seat for Kayt. She downed the
rest of the contents in the water bottle and sat cross-legged. I
waited with Annalise, who had turned her attention back to the
steaks.

“
We need to
protect her,” she mumbled.

“
I know,” I
said.

“
She doesn’t
know where she wants to be, grieving or angry. We can’t let the
angry part take over, so right now we have to let it happen while
we can still control it,” she said. “Later we might not get the
chance. We’ve gotten ourselves this far; we can’t let this group
degrade.”

“
We?” I
wondered if she sensed that I was challenging her definition of the
term.

Annalise sighed. She bit her
lip again, and turned away from the meat. “Yeah. We. I’m sorry
about how I acted back there. I’m used to being selfish, but I feel
like I’ve been put in charge of this group, and like all the
responsibility is on me. We’re here because of my car; we got to my
car because I said it was there. But you’ve been helping. I have to
acknowledge that, and I’m sorry. We’re not alive just because of my
own doing; everyone’s had a hand in it.”

I didn’t respond; I don’t think
I needed to.

The steaks were done within the
minute, and – after Annalise pressed the meaty side of her wrist
where thumb met palm to test the cook of the meat – she took the
sides of the wrapped convection foil and set it in the centre of
our circle. Annalise pulled out a second water bottle and poured a
few drops over her hands while the other bottles made the rounds.
We each took a section of steak and ate with our hands while the
boxes and bags of random items I’d bagged were passed around.

Davion began just as I’d tasted
the first bit of engine-cooked steak, which Daniel might have said
contained the flavours of every place that car had been. All I
could taste was smoke and flavourless beef.

“
Admiral
Perry and the
Irene’s
expedition went as expected for a year – save for the sudden
inclusion of the Belovores,” Davion took small bites, enough to
speak around. “However, the relationship and the implications of a
shared colony didn’t begin to fully realize until a year
later.”

Admiral Perry
sits, fingering the
red dyed tablecloth
dangling from the edges like a paper napkin. The riots have calmed,
but the worry is still there. Sixteen different file folders sit on
his desk in old fashioned paper documents, each one detailing how
the colony will fail. Hours ago, he tried sorting them by
importance, but felt deadlocked when he couldn’t decide between the
economic downfall or the lack of a proper sanitary system causing
widespread illness.

The short end of it is simple:
there isn’t enough food, water, and precious resource to go around.
And on top of that, they’ve suddenly found themselves as the
mentors to a species they’ve only just learned existed. Learning
their language wasn’t an option – upon a medical examination, it
was realized that no human tongue or vocal combination could create
the proper dialect needed to converse with the Belovores. However,
the natives learned English – and two forms of Russian – in a
matter of weeks. By then, the fear of the creatures had gone.
Admiral Perry longs for the days when mimicry and accurate
translation was the root problem.

Velric became their Ambassador.
Of course, his name was only a fraction of the name the Belovore
went by in his own circles. He often spoke about the female
Belovores – nearly indistinguishable from human eyes – and how they
loved speaking his name. He spoke of it like a bachelor speaks of
conquests, yet with the longing of settling down. Admiral Perry
wonders, often, if names are a sexual concept with the
Belovores.

Velric enters the chamber when
Admiral Perry picks up the first of the folders. Instead of opening
it, he drops it against the desk, leans back and closes his
eyes.

“
We have two
years,” he says.

“
I am
apologetic for the burden my people have caused,” Velric
says.

Admiral Perry sighs. “I’m not
blaming you.”

“
Your tone
suggests otherwise,” Velric sits in the chair opposite the Admiral,
reaches out with a chelimb and grabs one of the folders. He flips
it open as if it were splayed out in front of him on an angled
platform.

“
My tone
suggests a great many things, Velric,” Perry says. “But the one
you’re sensing is fear. The one we aren’t allowed to
show.”

“
Fear of
something, or fear for something?”

Perry straightens up and clasps
his hands together. He ignores the question and substitutes his
own. “Any news on your people’s front?”

Velric sets
the folder down. “I am afraid it is not any different from where we
were when you landed. If anything, our plight has worsened. My
people are afraid. They hear your stories; watch as your people
perform tasks that take years, rather than centuries. They hear
about the growths your people have made in such a short time, and
they wonder when we will do the same. They wonder
if
we will, also, as
capability has become of much debate. My brethren have no answers
for them.”

“
Stagnancy,”
Admiral Perry interrupts. “We kept using that word, forgetting that
you move slower. Even the slowest progress looks indefinite to
other eyes.”

“
Yes. That is
the word that
we
have grown to fear. Our lives are very long compared to
yours. You have already seen the effects,” Velric says.

Admiral Perry remembers – that
should be file seven or eight. With long life comes the will to
take things slowly. Those wishing to do business with the Belovores
often end up waiting months. Belovore crops last two years before
they begin to rot, but all the reports show that they take twice as
long to grow. Belovores consume minerals from the root vegetables
and through a sort of synthesis that also causes the armour plating
to grow over their skin.

At first Admiral Perry assumed
it was an exoskeleton; now, he knows it’s the sign of an old and
well fed Belovore. However, their agricultural speed takes a lot of
room away from the farmers wishing to set a more human time scale
for the colony. That was another file: turnaround time for
Earth-based crops.

“
I am
pleased; however, that the friendship between our two peoples has
grown to trustworthiness,” Velric interrupts Perry’s thought
processes.

The interruption only causes
more distraction.

File eleven. Violence. Some
colonists partake in the local stills, and when the Belovores
happen to be lurking about in the night – often taking care of
their own business, or meeting up with family members – the drunk
colonists have the potential to become frightened. One colonist
filed a report claiming the Belovore was hunting him down and
trying to devour him on the spot. The truth of the report was that
it was a female Belovore attempting to help the colonist stagger
back home, and she’d had trouble learning English, so her
gesticulations were taken as threat. This common occurrence leads
to an unhurt Belovore, and, sometimes, a seriously injured
colonist. Admiral Perry has nicked the weapons problem early,
having required them only of military personnel, and even then, the
charged bullets can only stun. The Belovores, as repeated to Perry
through Velric, find this amusing. Most of their children complain
of humans hiding in their burrows, intent on stealing their
chelimbs while they rest. Dichotomies abound.