Summerhill (38 page)

Tek’s scent did wonders for his mood, too. The otter had initially seemed worried about letting Summerhill get too close, and had waffled and made excuses about irresistible urges, but his ability to protest had quickly run out. That scent did incite some nice urges, but they weren’t anything that either of them seemed to mind.

Whenever they kissed, the effect was even more potent. If they kissed for long enough, sometimes Summerhill would feel his tongue start to tingle, and his mind would briefly play innocuous little tricks on him.

“Would you tell me?” he asked.

Tek scooted back along the grass, situating himself between Summerhill’s legs with the dog’s arms still wrapped around his torso. “It’s kind of a long story.”

The glow of the orange sun disappeared below the horizon, though the vibrant, cloud-streaked band of twilight would linger for some time to come before dusk turned into night. The scents of flowers and otter were caught up on the evening breeze and brought to Summerhill’s nose. Stars began to pop out against the deep, dark purple.

Summerhill drew his arms even more protectively around the otter and looked out over the city, across the fields of Rydale, and at that beautiful sky beyond. He smiled, kissed his lover between the ears, and thought of how lucky he was to have been given a place such as this.

“Go right ahead,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Thirty-Eight

Pioneers

Katherine stood next to her own powerless escape pod, right at the edge of a rocky precipice that overlooked a vast alien landscape. Light flooded the eerie valley below, light that was a greenish-yellow, coming from a swirling sun that took up a wide arc of the horizon behind which it was slowly sinking. Bizarre peaks rose against the strange-colored sky, not jagged or angular, but stringy, almost organic, looking like they’d been poured there.

Gas-bag creatures floated by, silhouetted in front of wispy purple clouds. Tendrils hung from their undersides, like the tentacles of a jellyfish. From down in the valley came the cries of other creatures, echoing off of the winding, twisting canyon walls that cut through the landscape like hastily made scribbles.

Deeper in the valley, in the shadows of mountains that looked like they were slowly melting over the course of a million years, were faint blue lights. From this distance, it was impossible to tell if they were natural, artificial, or something else entirely.

Katherine didn’t turn around, but she spoke as though she wasn’t the least bit surprised that Summerhill had appeared out of thin air right behind her. “You know, the last time I used a Consortium escape pod, the damn thing had the courtesy to drop me in the middle of a crowded space lane where I got picked up within minutes.” She held one arm out and gestured to the alien valley below. “This? This is new.”

“New can be good sometimes,” Summerhill replied as he stepped up next to her. “Sometimes looking forward to the new is better than dwelling on the old.”

“Now you really do sound like my granddad. Not that that’s a bad thing, I suppose.”

Summerhill twirled the blue Rydale flower between two fingertips, then held it up for Katherine. “Here. I brought you a souvenir.”

Katherine took it, but she didn’t look particularly impressed. She held it, examined it, spun it around like Summerhill had, and then eventually just started to chuckle, shaking her head. “Thank you,” she said with an honest smile as she tucked it behind one ear. “It’s beautiful.”

From off in the distance came a shrieking cry as some kind of red flying reptile with a dagger-like beak speared one of the gas-bag creatures. A sound like a gunshot echoed through the valley as the gas-bag burst like a balloon.

“Part of me almost thinks the Consortium did this on purpose,” Katherine said. “Let me escape to a booby-trapped escape pod that drops me on some alien hellhole planet in the middle of nowhere to live out my punishment with no hope of escape.”

Summerhill smiled and patted her on the back. “There’s hope of escape,” he assured her. “I’m here.”

“Oh, sure,
you
can escape.” She stared back out over the landscape. “That still leaves me stuck here.”

“I’d never leave you stuck here. You know that.”

Katherine turned back to look at him, and she smiled again. “I guess you’ve helped me out of worse. Do you have any brilliant ideas, then?”

“Not yet. But we’ll figure out something. We always seem to do better when we’re together.”

That made Katherine’s smile widen, and she laughed again. “May as well get my gun, then. Looks like we’re in for a long hike.”

When she turned to head back to the escape pod, Summerhill stepped in against her side and stuffed his hands into her pants pocket. She cried out in surprise, but he drew out her dog tags before she could stop him.

The dog held them up to his face, the metal of the tags glinting in the light of the green sun. He jostled the metal chain, and then a third piece he hadn’t noticed before dangled out from between the two tags themselves.

It was the small rectangular orange-and-blue pendant that Katherine had worn back on the
Nusquam
and during their journey within the nevereef. Now that he was seeing it up close for the first time, Summerhill could make out the intricate series of lines carved into both sides. After staring at them for a few seconds, he recognized the pattern as being the same style as the intricate wood grain on the dimensional doors he’d found. “What’s this?” he asked.

Katherine’s lips curled up into a proud grin. “That, Mr. Summerhill, is one genuine Consortium hyperspace modulator circuit.”

“You mean the thing that they’ve been hunting you over all space and time to get back?”

“That’s the one.”

“You said you’d sold it!”

“I lied.” Katherine winked, then grabbed it back from Summerhill, along with the dog tags. “I’m a liar and a thief. It’s kind of what I do.”

Summerhill thought back to the corridor outside the flight deck aboard the Consortium ship. “Wait, so when you let me wear your dog tags for good luck—”

“Hey, if we got split up, I figured it was better for the magic talking dog who can block lasers to have it.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m sure it had nothing to do with making sure I’d take the heat if things really went to hell back there.” The dog sighed, his ears pricking back up as another of the flying reptiles shrieked through a nearby canyon. “But wait, why’d you take it back when you could have gotten away from it forever by leaving me behind in the escape pod bay?”

Katherine grabbed the energy rifle out of the escape pod, then punched Summerhill on the arm. “First of all, I’d never have just left you there to get caught. I could have fried the last escape pod, too, if that had been my plan.” She held the circuit and the dog tags back up. “And the reason I keep this, Mr. Summerhill, is that as long as this is in my possession, I know for sure that there’s a roughly five hundred year span in my universe where the Consortium can do bugger all. The trick is making sure that’s the time frame I manage to get back to.” She eyed the circuit as it caught the eerie light from the alien star. “And hey, I bet I could make enough money to buy an entire planet if I ever found someone I could actually fence this to.”

Summerhill rubbed the sore spot on his arm and rolled his eyes playfully. “You know, I’m glad you consider me a friend.”

“It’s better than being an enemy of the Consortium all by myself.” Katherine stuffed the dog tags back in her pocket. “Speaking of which, I’m dying to see what it is you do to them in the future that gets them as scared as they were back there.”

“Hey, see?” Summerhill pointed out. “That’s how you know for sure that we’re going to get out of this.”

“I know for sure that
you’re
going to get out of this.”

“And I’ll always stick with you.” Summerhill reached up and touched the flower behind her ear. “Which means we’re getting out of this together.”

Now Katherine was the one to roll her eyes. “Come on. We need to figure out how we’re going to get down from here. Looks like it’s going to be a pretty treacherous climb.”

Summerhill stepped up to the edge of the overlook. “I can help us get down a lot faster.”

“Ooh, can you create some kind of vine or tree or whatever? Because that would be—”

“Oh, no. I’ve got something much, much better in mind.”

Katherine raised her eyebrow and lowered her rifle. “Why does that worry me?”

The dog turned around and offered Katherine his hand. “Here,” he said, wagging his tail. “Let me show you how it works.”

Slowly, Katherine’s hesitation melted away, and her lips evened out into a trusting smile. “Right, then. What do we do, exactly?” she asked, putting her hand in his.

“Nothing less than the impossible,” Summerhill said, and with that, he stepped off the edge, bringing Katherine with him.

About the Author

Born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Kevin Frane spent time living in Japan before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2002, where he has worked in video game localization in addition to his writing career.

His first novel,
Thousand Leaves
, was nominated for the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Novel for 2008, with the follow-up
The Seventh Chakra
nominated for the same in 2010. His novella
The Peculiar Quandary of Simon Canopus Artyle
was nominated for the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction for 2010.