For the Love of Gelo! (23 page)

D
arkness.

Silence.

So this is what it feels like to be dead, I thought, to cross over to the Nebula Beyond.

I heard a faint noise ringing in the void. A growl. It was my own z'iuk. I felt . . . hungry.

But that wasn't right. How could I be hungry after I'd died? Perhaps . . . perhaps I wasn't dead.

To test the hypothesis, I opened a single eye. The world was painfully bright. After a moment, this formless light began to resolve itself into a room. It was made of old broken concrete. I was lying on a woven grass pallet with a short wooden table beside me. On the table was a small crystal statue: a woman with a shield and spear. A few vines crept in through the open window. Outside, the sun was shining.

A big blue shape in the corner shifted, and I felt a surge of panic. I was sharing the room with a thyss-cat, the most fearsome predator on all of Gelo. The beast tilted its head, and its yellow eyes locked with mine.

“Hamburger,” it said.

“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!” I screamed, startling the thyss-cat.

Just then, an old brown-feathered Aeaki came bustling in. Somehow I knew his name was Rezuro, and he was a member of the Oru clan. He didn't seem to be afraid of the beast.

“Shoo! Go on! Get out of here,” he said to Pizza. Chastened, the thyss-cat whined and slunk off.

“I heard it . . . It was . . . It said . . . ” I mumbled. My head felt foggy, and I suddenly realized that everything hurt.

“It's all right,” said Rezuro, easing me back onto the pallet. “Relax. You need to rest.”

“But . . . I . . .” It was hard to argue with him. I felt as though I'd been sat on by an usk-lizard.

“Is Chorkle awake?” cried Nicki, bursting into the room. She was followed by Hollins, Little Gus, and Becky, who had one of her arms in a sling.

“Yes, but please try not to agitate it,” said Rezuro as it left.

“Chorkle!” cried Nicki, hugging me tightly. There were several spots on my body that I hadn't realized were in pain.

“How are you doing?” asked Hollins.

“Pretty banged up,” I said.

“You should see the wall you hit,” said Becky.

“What happened to Eyf?” I asked, remembering my fall.

The humans looked at one another. Hollins held up his hand to quiet the others. He stared at me. At last, he spoke slowly in Xotonian. “Eyf is . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

I felt my is'pog sink. I opened my gul'orp to say something, but no words would come out.

Becky punched Hollins in the arm. “Dude, say ‘fine'!” she yelled.

“Ow. Sorry,” said Hollins. “I always blank on that word. ‘Phaeti' means ‘fine,' right?”

“Seriously, just do the homework,” sighed Nicki.

“Anyway, Eyf is fine,” said Hollins. “A few bruises and scrapes, but she's fine.”

“And Taius?” I asked.

“He gave us back the . . . ” said Hollins, catching himself and then lowering his voice. “He gave us back the
you-know-what
, and he surrendered. Just offered himself up as a prisoner.”

“Becky zapped him with his little electricity gun anyway, though,” chuckled Little Gus. “You should've seen it.” Little Gus pantomimed putting his hands up, then snapping his body totally rigid and flopping onto the ground.

Becky shrugged. “Well, I owed him one,” she said.

“He also gave us this,” said Nicki, removing something from her pocket and handing it to me. It was a small metal device with multiple wire and tubular outputs. “I guess he had it in a hidden pocket the whole time.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The nyrine quantum inducer,” she said. “He stole it to sabotage Core-of-Rock's reactor. He thought the Vorem prisoners could escape if he disabled the city's power supply. I guess it didn't work.”

“Another brilliant plan by Taius Ridian,” scoffed Little Gus. “I'm being sarcastic,” he clarified. “That guy is dumb, and I hate him.”

“Eh . . . he's okay,” I said. I could tell by the looks on their faces that the humans didn't agree, but they weren't going to argue with a sick patient.

“Well, you might need to convince him of that,” said Nicki. “I think he's lost the will to live.”

“Good,” said Becky.

“Anyway,” said Hollins, “with the nyrine quantum inducer, Ydar should be able to fix the reactor and get the Stealth Shield up and running again.”

“And you'll be able to contact Earth,” I said, “with that, uh, thing we found. . . .”

“Tachyonic ansible,” said Nicki, grinning.

“Right,” said Hollins. “And maybe we can even figure out how to install that hyperdrive into one of the Xotonian starfighters!”

“‘We'?” said Becky. “Just say ‘Nicki.'”

“I can't believe it,” I said. “You'll be able to go home. Finally, you're going to see your parents.” I choked up as I said it. The humans looked at one another with concern.

“Don't worry,” said Becky, placing a hand on my thol'graz. “We'll get Kalac back.”

I nodded and wiped my eyes. I hoped that what she said was true.

Rezuro poked his head back in. “All right, I'm afraid Chorkle has had enough excitement for now,” he said. “It just woke up, you know.”

The humans nodded, and one by one, they filed out of the room. Little Gus was the last to go.

“Gus, wait,” I said.

He turned.

“I heard it,” I said.

“Heard what?”

“I heard Pizza say ‘hamburger.'”

He smiled. “Sure you did, little buddy,” said Little Gus, patting me on the i'arda. “Sure you did.” And he was gone.

• • • •

We spent two more weeks on Kyral. The day after I awoke, Nicki and Hollins left Hykaro Roost accompanied by an armed escort of Aeaki from several clans. They hoped to return after they repaired the
Phryxus II.

Rezuro continued to treat me using traditional Aeaki remedies—herbs and foul-smelling poultices. He even told me something of his past. It turned out that Azusu the Raefec was his cousin. He told a few embarrassing stories about her younger days that I'm sure she would have tossed me from the top of Oru for even knowing.

Eyf came to visit me often and told me long stories, most of which had no ending. In fact, they often didn't seem to have a beginning either. The stories were mostly middle. I didn't mind, though. I found her happy presence a great comfort, and I didn't feel like talking much anyway. Little Gus brought me warm bowls of his eponymous soup—far superior to the seeds and berries that Rezuro fed me—and taught me to sing some of Pizza's “favorite” jazz standards. Becky came too, and we spun out elaborate predictions for what we thought might happen next on
Vampire Band Camp
. We were both pretty sure that Clyve wasn't
actually
dead.

At last Rezuro allowed me to leave the chamber. Becky, Little Gus, Eyf, and I walked between the old skyscrapers of the city on swinging rope bridges. Hykaro really was a different city from above.

Everywhere we went, the Aeaki cheered Eyf when they saw her. As she got closer to each one, they bowed low as if she were their leader, and they fumbled their words. It was strange to see her treated with such deference.

“In the past, nobody ever, ever talked to me because they didn't like me,” she laughed to the humans and me. “Now they don't talk to me because they do!”

Eyf had become the symbol of a new movement in Hykaro Roost. Formerly, it had been a place to trade goods, where peace was just a means to an end. Now, I saw members of different clans socializing. Mixed groups of them traveled the city together. Sometimes I heard them laughing among themselves and singing strange old songs. They even deigned to interact with the odd flightless outlanders from Kyral's new moon. Ornim and Chayl tried to teach them oog-ball, but the sport didn't take.

In short, the city seemed less like the remnant of a lost world and more like the seed of a new one.

I visited Taius once by myself (none of the humans cared to accompany me). He occupied a drafty room on the tenth story of an empty building. Though there was nothing keeping him there, he never left. Taius was a prisoner in his own mind.

I brought him a portion of Little Gus Soup or “wryv,” as the Vorem called it. He barely ate. He spoke even less.

“You know, by keeping the Q-sik from your—from General Ridian, you might have saved the universe,” I said. “The universe is pretty important.”

He nodded, but nothing would cheer him up. I sighed. At last, I rose to leave.

“You know,” he said, “I think . . . I miss him. How stupid is that? He said he'd destroy me, but I still miss him.”

“Not stupid,” I said, shrugging. “I know how you feel.”

“Because what if he is right?” said Taius. “Without him, what am I? I don't know.”

“I do,” I said. And I left.

A few days later, the
Phryxus II
—patched and repaired—landed in Hykaro Roost. Nicki and Hollins exited the craft, followed by a boisterous pack of Aeaki. They were thrilled to have flown in an actual starship.

“What's the big deal?” asked Becky, shaking her head. “They fly every day. They don't even need a ship to do it.”

Ornim, Chayl, the humans, and I loaded the starfighter for departure. We packed the tachyonic ansible and the hyperdrive, as well as several boxes of files from the underground bunker. I wanted to learn more about the history of the war against the Vorem. Inside one of these file boxes, discreetly wrapped in a sheet of parchment, I smuggled the strange device that I'd found inside the lead box marked with the eight-pointed star. I'd come to think of it as the Q-sik's companion piece, though its purpose was anyone's guess.

A crowd of Aeaki gathered to see us off. Eyf stood at the front with old Rezuro and the warrior Tanihi at her side. It seemed as if the Aeaki wanted her to say something. She looked around sheepishly and cleared her throat.

“The Aeaki and the Xotonians were good friends a very long time ago—members of a League of Free Civilizations,” she declared in her loud, sonorous voice. “Today our two peoples are friends again. Today a new league is born!”

I gave Eyf a big hug, and the Aeaki cheered.

Beside us, Hollins stepped forward as though he meant to address the crowd. The other humans glanced at one another nervously. If he was going to speak to them, it would have to be in Xotonian. Hollins cleared his throat, and I winced. A hush fell over the crowd. The Aeaki might have put aside their differences, but what would happen if some strange outlander accidentally called them all “pudding” for no good reason? Nicki placed a gentle hand on Hollins's shoulder to stop him.

“Look, Hollins,” said Nicki, “maybe you shouldn't—”

He smiled and waved her off. Then he turned and spoke to the crowd in Xotonian. “Hello,” he said. “A human leader from long ago once said: ‘There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.' The Aeaki are now on a long and difficult road to rebuilding your world. But you've already done the hardest part. You've taken the first step.”

At this, the crowd exploded. I couldn't believe it. His Xotonian—even the translation—was flawless, poetic even!

“What? How did you . . . I mean you're not . . . ” whispered Nicki, dumbstruck.

“Maybe I'm capable of more than
you
know too,” said Hollins with a grin.

“I take it back,” said Eyf, impressed. “This big one is not simple at all!”

“Are you sure you don't want to come with us back to Gelo?” I asked her. “We have fried cave slugs!”

Eyf made a face, which hardly seemed fair since I'd seen her gorge on squealing yellow grubs.

“No, Hollins is right. There is very, very, very much to do here,” she said. “The Aeaki here have learned to work together, but there are many, many more out there.” She waved toward the horizon, the rest of Kyral. “I think it is my duty to help them figure out that they do not have to fight one another.”

“We must be united,” said Rezuro.

“For when the Vorem return,” said Tanihi, finishing his thought.

“When they do,” I said, “the Xotonians will stand beside you. If you need us, we'll be right up there.” I pointed toward Gelo's pale outline in the afternoon sky.

“Ugh. Speaking of Vorem,” said Becky, turning away and heading toward the cockpit.

The crowd parted as Taius silently walked toward the ship. I'd asked him to come back to Gelo with us, and he said it made no difference where he went. Hollins privately described this attitude as “super emo.”