For the Love of Gelo! (20 page)

Good
, I secretly thought, because I was angry at the universe, but mostly I was angry at myself. I scowled and ate my dinner in silence.

• • • •

Days passed. Up in the morning. A leafy packet of food. Search the Midden. Back to the coops. Another packet of food. Sleep. Repeat.

The Aeaki around us grew more and more restless with their imprisonment. Those who were deemed to be a flight risk (literally) were forced to work with heavy manacles chained to their legs. More fights broke out among them. Once, one of the prisoners even attacked a Vorem guard. She tried to peck right through his black helmet—and actually succeeded in putting a big spiderweb crack in the visor—before three other legionaries dragged her away. No one ever saw her again.

Those Aeaki who hadn't been imprisoned watched us—from perches in nearby buildings—toil in the Midden. The hostility in the air was palpable. The Aeaki prisoners hated their free brethren and probably vice versa. The prisoners hated one another owing to a mix of old clan rivalries and a general mistrust for anyone who didn't have the same color feathers. Together, they all hated the Vorem.

“Maybe the free Aeaki will rise up,” said Hollins one morning as we walked to the Midden. Hundreds of Aeaki in little clan groups watched us from above as we marched through the city.

“Ha. That would mean different clans working together,” I scoffed. “It will never happen.”

You see, my anger had faded to resentment, then to self-pity, and finally to hopelessness. I found myself barely talking all day long. My mind was constantly wandering yet somehow always empty. Slight changes in my daily routine—such as the Vorem leading us by a different route to the Midden—vexed me greatly. The details of our journey across Kyral had become fuzzy in my mind. I could only remember the Midden and the coops. And reaching for the Q-sik, only to find it gone.

Sometimes I'd suddenly realize that one of the humans had been speaking to me for minutes at a time and I hadn't been listening at all.

“So what do you think?” said Becky, glancing at a nearby legionary. He had his back to us.

“About what?” I asked. It was midday on Kyral, and the sun was beating down on us as we sifted through more offerings. Needless to say, my sunburn was worse than ever, which hardly helped my mood.

“About that,” said Becky, wiping more dirt off it.

I took a closer look. It was a poster that showed an impossibly complicated snarl of brightly colored lines. The lines were speckled with hundreds of little white dots. All were labeled.

“I don't know,” I said. “I wouldn't hang it in my dwelling. But what is art, really?”

“It's not supposed to be
art
, Chorkle,” said Becky. “It's a map. I think—I think it's, like, an old subway map. Of Hykaro Roost.”

“Ah,” I said. I hadn't been much of a conversationalist of late. And truth be told, I wasn't particularly interested in the history of Aeaki public transportation.

“Don't you get it?” she whispered, looking around once again.

I shrugged.

“That's where the coops are,” she said, “down in one of these old train stations. That's how we could escape. Through the tunnels.”

“Those tunnels are all walled up now,” I said, trying to burst her bubble.

“So we break through. I've broken tons of stuff in my day: lamps, teeth, promises to get better grades. Breaking a wall should be easy enough,” she said. “And then we use this map to figure out where to go.”

“How?” I said. “We can't take it with us.”

“I can't,” said Becky. “But you can.” She tapped her head.

I sighed. She apparently expected me to somehow memorize what looked to me like a plate of rainbow svur-noodles.

“Impossible,” I said. “It's just a mess of squirmy colored lines.”

“No, Chorkle,” said Becky. “They're not lines. They're tunnels. They're
turns
.”

I blinked. She was right. Once I imagined the colored lines as different passages intersecting one another underground, some fundamental part of my brain kicked in. It wasn't hard for a Xotonian to memorize a bunch of turns.

Becky studied the map. “There are six walled-up tunnels leading out from the coops—”

“Here,” I said, pointing to a white dot where three lines intersected: purple, yellow, and green. I checked the label beneath. “It's called Central Crossing.”

“Yeah, that's it,” said Becky, nodding.

Mentally, I tried to place myself inside the tunnels and orient myself to the geography I knew of Hykaro Roost. With my frib, I traced the lines of the tunnels.

“And that's where Ridian is keeping Kalac,” I said, pointing to another station thirteen turns from Central Crossing. Its name on the map was “League Tower.”

Becky smiled. “Good eye, Chorkle,” she said. “I was afraid we might have lost you, pal.”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and feeling the fog clear a little. “I don't know what's been wrong with me. It's just, I trusted Taius. And I can't believe I lost the . . .”

“It's okay, Chorkle,” said Becky, placing a hand on my i'arda. “If things always worked out, just imagine how boring life would be.”

Just then, we heard a nearby Aeaki squawk. It sounded like there might be another fight about to break out. Becky and I followed the noise. Hollins and Little Gus joined us.

Several Vorem legionaries had surrounded the shrieking Aeaki, but there was no fight. I gasped. There, beneath a mound of sports equipment and broken crockery and industrial cables was a complex cylindrical object with four curved tubes radiating out from it. All of us recognized it immediately.

“The one hyperdrive on this whole planet,” said Hollins. “And now Ridian has it.”

T
he Aeaki who found the hyperdrive—Ikabo of the Olo clan, apparently—was never seen again. Rumor had it that her “reward” came from the end of a blaster rifle. The legionaries, as always, were silent. And even though a hyperdrive had been found, the Vorem still forced us to search the Midden every day. Hollins guessed that Ridian was hedging his bets. Why not try to find another one while he tried to salvage the first? He had all the free labor he needed.

All of this drove prisoner morale to a new low. Fights among Aeaki were an hourly occurrence now. There were two more incidents of Aeaki attacking the guards. One male tried to fly away from the Midden and was shot down by the legionaries, in front of everyone. After this incident, all of them wore chains.

The situation in Hykaro Roost was deteriorating fast. But then something happened that pushed it from unpleasant to urgent.

One afternoon, while we were returning from the Midden, we passed several Vorem in the passageway that led to the coops. They were installing something around one of the support pillars: a black box with a single blinking red light. The Aeaki had no sense of what they were doing, but the humans understood immediately: The Vorem had wired the tunnel with explosives. With the push of a button, they could destroy our only way out and leave all of us prisoners sealed underground. I didn't doubt that the instant Ridian knew his hyperdrive was functional, he would do just that.

With still no sign of Nicki or Eyf, the humans and I prepared for our escape. We didn't have an exact plan, but we wanted to be ready when the opportunity presented itself. Each day we each secreted half our food away. I figured that to find the Q-sik, we might need to retrace our steps all the way back to Oru. Hollins did push-ups in our cell, for “strength conditioning.” Becky said he was just doing them to prove he could. I drew and redrew the subway map each night in the dirt of our coop so the humans could study it.

One evening, the old Oru was pushing his squeaky cart through Central Crossing and enduring the usual verbal abuse of the other prisoners.

“Oh boy, oh boy! I sure hope it's seeds!” said Becky, her voice thick with sarcasm.

“If you like seeds,” said Little Gus, “you should really try the nuts.”

As usual, the old Oru said nothing as he pushed four packets through the slot. I thought I caught him giving me a strange look. I was about to say something, but he was already gone, wheeling his old cart to the next coop. He probably wouldn't have answered anyway.

I noticed that my leafy food packet was larger and heavier than normal. Perhaps I'd accidentally gotten a double or even triple helping. I wasn't sure I wanted extra seeds, but even so, I unwrapped the folded leaves.

There—instead of my usual dinner—was a small homemade technological device. It took me a moment to recognize Taius's static electricity gun.

On the inside of the leafy wrapping, one word was scratched in faint human letters: “Tomorrow.”

• • • •

“Help!” pleaded Little Gus to the guard. “Please, I think it's choking!”

The legionary waved him off. Compassion was not the Vorem legion's guiding principle.

“Choking! It does having choking!” repeated Hollins. The guard was still unmoved.

“Look, you have to help,” said Becky, pressed against the mesh of our coop. “This is the offspring of the Xotonian leader. If it dies, don't you think Ridian is going to be mad at you?”

The guard cocked his head. This approach seemed to strike a chord with him. He looked around, but his overnight comrade was off somewhere, patrolling the far side of the chamber. He cautiously approached our cell, blaster rifle out.

“Everyone get back!” ordered the guard. The humans did. The legionary unlocked the door of our cell and peeked inside.

He found me lying on the ground, not breathing, my skin an oxygen-deprived shade of blue. The Vorem prodded me with the tip of his heavy boot. I didn't move. He looked to the humans for support. They stared back at him, terrified.

“Is it . . . dead?” asked Little Gus, his voice quavering.

“Shut up,” said the guard.

“Please, that's my second-best friend there!”

The Vorem knelt beside me to feel for a pulse. But then he realized that his hand was covered with a heavy armor gauntlet. He removed the gauntlet and—

An arc of electricity jumped from Becky's hand to the Vorem guard's bare skin. He convulsed for a few seconds and then flopped on the ground.

“No fun, is it?” said Becky to the unconscious guard.

I sat up and changed my skin back to its normal color. Hollins had already grabbed the legionary's blaster rifle. He tossed the octagonal coop key to Little Gus.

“Go get Ornim and Chayl,” said Hollins. Gus turned to run, but then froze. The other guard was jogging toward us, blaster out. He must have heard something.

Hollins fired at him but missed. The guard stopped and then ducked behind a row of coops. He returned fire, knocking a chunk out of the concrete wall behind us.

“Damn,” said Hollins, trying to get a sight. “I can't shoot him without hitting the other prisoners.”

Hollins leaped to his feet and ran after the legionary. I followed him. Little Gus and Becky closed the door to our coop, locking the unconscious guard inside.

Hollins fired and missed again. The legionary now crouched behind a big pile of rubble. All around us, the Aeaki prisoners were squawking wildly. More red laser blasts flew our way.

Hollins fired back, but the legionary was already gone. He'd made a break for the long passage to the surface—the only way out.

“He's going to leave and come back with reinforcements!” I cried.

Hollins gave a nod, and we ran after the fleeing guard, up the tunnel, and toward the city above. Hollins sent laser blasts whizzing past him as we went.

We lost sight of him. But around the next bend, he popped out from behind a concrete pylon and returned fire. Hollins screamed and tumbled to the ground.

“I'm fine. I'm fine,” said Hollins, scrambling for cover behind a broken chunk of asphalt as I caught up to him. “Except . . .” He held up the blaster rifle—or what was left of it. It had been blown to pieces.

The legionary knew we were unarmed, and he wasn't running anymore. He walked back toward us now, leading with a hail of red laser blasts. We were pinned down, totally defenseless. All we could do was wait for him to arrive and disintegrate us.

“Well, we gave it a shot,” whispered Hollins. “‘It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.' Teddy Roo—”

Just then, I heard something: a familiar voice echoing down the passage behind the legionary.

“But if igneous is formed below the surface, it is called
intrusive
. There are more than seven hundred types of igneous rocks. Most of them are formed beneath the planet's crust.”

The Vorem whipped around to see someone standing in the hallway between him and the surface—a lone, frizzy-haired figure clad in a sensible sweater.

“Can it be?” I whispered.

It was none other than my fifth-grade geology teacher, Ms. Neubauer.

The Vorem grunted with surprise and started wildly shooting at her.

“Now if you'll please sync your workdrives to location seventy-six, you'll find a quiz covering today's material,” continued Ms. Neubauer impassively while dozens of laser blasts whizzed harmlessly through her. “Please complete it by the beginning of class tomorrow.”

The Vorem realized too late what was happening. A rusty door burst open beside him, and Becky flew out. With a wordless battle cry, she charged the guard. Fully armored, he must have weighed at least three times as much as she did. But she hit him just below the knees and took his legs right out from under him.

He tumbled to the ground, and his blaster rifle bounced away down the corridor. Two seconds later, Hollins was pointing it right at his face. The confused legionary slowly put his hands up.

“Nice work, Becky!” I cried.

“Not Becky,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face.

“What?” cried Hollins, doing a double take.

“Eyf, can you hand me my glasses, please?” she said. Eyf stepped out of the darkened doorway, trembling.

“Hi,” said the little Aeaki as she handed Nicki her glasses.

“Nicki?” cried Hollins in disbelief. “But—but you tackled that guy like some kind of maniac. That's not really . . .” He trailed off.

“Not really something ‘the smart one' would do?” She finished his sentence as she deactivated Ms. Neubauer and collected her holodrive from the floor of the tunnel.

“Well . . . yeah,” said Hollins.

“Well, maybe I'm not so
smart
after all,” she said, smiling. Then she frowned. “Wait. No, that's not what I meant.”

“No, I know what you meant,” said Hollins. “You're capable of more than I gave you credit for.”

Nicki nodded.

“But how did you manage to get the static gun into our food?” I asked.

“That was all Eyf,” said Nicki, smiling. “She managed to persuade Rezuro—that's the name of the old-timer who pushes the food cart—to help. He's an Oru, you know.”

“Finally, an Oru who isn't a jerk or a mold-brain!” I said. “Thanks, Eyf!”

Eyf shrugged modestly. “I just kept talking and talking until he finally agreed to help. . . . I can talk a long time.” If she hadn't been covered in feathers, we might have seen her blush. “I think there are many Aeaki in Hykaro who do not like what is happening,” she said. “I've tried to tell them what you said. That they don't have to fight each other.”

“Um . . . can I go?” asked the Vorem legionary, startling us all.

“No!” we cried in unison. We'd all temporarily forgotten he was still there.

“But . . . they've detonated the tunnel,” said the legionary. His hands were shaking now.

“What?” I asked.

He nervously pointed. There, on the wall, was the black explosive device. The red light on it was no longer blinking.

Eyf, Nicki, Hollins, and I looked at one another for a split second.

“The rest of the prisoners are still down there!” I cried.

And we ran as fast as we could, back down toward the coops. The legionary leaped to his feet and made for the surface.

I don't know whether he got out or not. Ten seconds later, we heard an ear-splitting boom echoing down the corridor behind us. The walls of the passage started to shake and splinter. There was a great rumbling noise, and I felt a wave of heat.

We reached the end of the tunnel just as it collapsed with a deafening crash. Shards of metal and chunks of concrete as big as me whistled past us. The air was filled with choking dust, even thicker than the storm in the Glass Desert.

Hollins, Nicki, and Eyf were beside me, coughing. Hollins's mouth was moving, but no words came out. All I heard was ringing.

As the dust settled, I realized we were sealed inside the old train station. But worse than that, the walls of the chamber now wobbled uncertainly. Huge cracks were spreading through the structure. The collapse of the tunnel had severely damaged the chamber. The whole place might fall in on itself at any moment.

As the ringing in my ears faded, it was replaced by the sounds of Aeaki shrieking in terror. I looked around. About half were now out of their coops, but the other half remained caged. Some were flapping around blindly through the dusty air of the chamber, colliding with the walls and each other in their panic.

We found Becky, with Ornim and Chayl, surrounded by an angry mob.

“Stand back!” cried Chayl. It had a length of old pipe clutched in its thol'grazes. Though much smaller than an Aeaki, Ornim and Chayl were no pushovers in a fight.

“Come on! We freed you!” cried Becky. “This is super ungrateful!” She was ready to fight too, but there were far too many of them.

“You outlanders don't belong here!” screeched an Aeaki.

“We're going to die in this hole!” screeched another.

“Do not!” cried Hollins, waving the energy blaster over his head. “Staying calm!”

A big Aeaki went for Ornim, who ducked out of the way and grappled at her feet. Chayl swung the pipe, and it thudded off her wing. She squawked in pain and stumbled back.

“Everyone, please!” cried Nicki. “Just quit fighting for a second! We have to . . .” No one was listening to her. Another crack spread up the wall.

Hollins fired an energy blast at the roof, temporarily bathing the dark chamber in red light. And for a moment the Aeaki did stop fighting. As one, they all turned and stared at the weapon. Then they rushed Hollins.

“I don't . . . want . . . to shoot them!” Hollins screamed desperately. All around him, Aeaki were pummeling and jostling him from every angle, each one of them trying to pull the weapon from his hands. A wing battered his face, leaving his nose bloody. A clawed foot kicked me in the back, and I fell. Aeaki wrestled and pecked one another in the dirt around me.