Hellhole Inferno (40 page)

“You may save your people,” Lodo said, “but we will lose all that Xaya was. In the slickwater pools are a large proportion of our memories, our personalities.”

“The Ro-Xayans want to destroy everything. That much is clear,” Adolphus said. “They delivered no ultimatum, asked for nothing—neither here nor at Candela. They don't seem to care what sort of collateral damage they inflict.”

Keana turned to face him. “I've thought of a possibility,” she said.

*   *   *

As her thoughts grasped the idea, Keana felt her alien companion respond inside her. Uroa knew the Ro-Xayans, even remembered some of the individuals, and provided her with images of the esoteric factional debates, the friction, and finally the split that tore the race apart … Zairic and his visions of
ala'ru
, his dream of the race ascending to a higher plane of existence, while the Ro-Xayans insisted on preventing that at all costs. They wanted to trap the Xayan race to its mortality and physical form.

Through Uroa's thoughts, Keana could remember how the Ro-Xayans had left their planet, abandoned their comrades, and dispatched the killer asteroid to shatter any possibility of
ala'ru
. And the silent, malevolent enemy would ensure that nothing survived this time.

Giving only a glance to the two Originals, she turned to General Adolphus. “The Ro-Xayans are out there right now, guiding the asteroids. I want to go there and face them, talk with them, act as an emissary. If I could have a high-speed ship and a pilot, we'll travel to those asteroids and send out a call. It's been centuries since the original rift—I am both human and Xayan. I can be a liaison, unlike anything the Ro-Xayans have experienced before.”

Encix reacted angrily. “That will do no good. We cannot waste our efforts or provoke the enemy. Our only goal now must be to reach
ala'ru
as fast as we possibly can.
That
must be our solution.”

Ian Walfor turned to Keana. “I have my ship. Tanja and I can take you out there, but I don't think the Ro-Xayans want to be found.”

“A preposterous idea!” Encix said. “You must not communicate with that insane faction.”

Keana rounded on her. She thought of her own mother imprisoned in the bungalow at Slickwater Springs. For years, the Diadem had also ordered Keana around, held her back, forced her to become weak and manageable. “You don't command me.”

Encix shoved Keana with a wall of telemancy, but Keana dredged up energy from both Uroa and herself. She had been growing stronger and stronger during the joint telemancy exercises, steadily improving her abilities. Many shadow-Xayans were equal to the Originals, but Keana had become more powerful than the others. Now she drove the force away from Encix, summoned her own telemancy, and retaliated. She found a strength that was unfamiliar even to her, and she kept pushing until Encix was forced down.

“You don't order me,” Keana repeated. Uroa gave a satisfied whisper inside her mind.

Waves of anger and fear emanated from Encix.

The General's eyes narrowed in concern. “I'm willing to try any possible solution, but the asteroids are already coming. Even if you find the Ro-Xayans, what can you accomplish?”

Keana felt calm and hopeful. “What do we have to lose?”

Walfor smiled. “Why not let us try? If the Ro-Xayans are out there, maybe Keana can make them feel guilty.”

After a long pause, Adolphus said, “It may be a fool's errand, but we have no good alternatives. Try it.”

“It is not a fool's errand,” Lodo said. “I agree with Keana-Uroa's approach, and I volunteer to join the expedition. Perhaps together we can make headway with the Ro-Xayans.”

Encix had recovered, straightening her flexible body. “This must not be done!”

“It will be done.” Adolphus nodded to Walfor. “Ian, load your ship, take whatever fuel you need, and depart as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I have to recapture that stringline hub so we can start evacuating.”

 

52

After enduring so much adversity already, Bolton Crais had become fatalistic about their chances of survival.

Yet now, as the alien Jonwi guided the two humans into the red weed forest, Bolton felt as if he had received a reprieve. In the back of his mind, he had never expected Escobar's foolish escape idea to succeed; confidence alone wasn't enough of a plan. As proof of that, the Hellhole wilderness had killed Yimidi and Vingh, and seriously injured Escobar.

This strange alien, though, was giving them a second chance.

Once inside the thick oasis of alien foliage, Jonwi placed the comatose Escobar on a thicket of swollen spores and fleshy groundcover that sent sparkling tendrils into the air. Jonwi seemed concerned, but preoccupied, as he moved about his self-contained Eden.

Bolton was numb with dismay and exhaustion, not to mention physically weak and starving. He slumped against the tall, floating stalks of red weed, while Escobar clung to life, still bleeding, still unconscious. Jonwi, who seemed to have an affinity for the lush growth around them, tended to the barely alive man. He pulled the leathery leaves of the red kelp down, separated the fronds, and draped them across the battered and bloody Redcom.

Bolton tried to lift himself up. “What are you doing to him?”

The Xayan turned his smooth head and glassy eyes toward Bolton. His antennae extended and twitched. “I am preserving him, surrendering the energy of some of my plants so that his life functions continue, though it will barely sustain him.” Jonwi wrapped the thick red fronds around Escobar, as if preparing a mummy. “Eventually his own survival mechanisms must come into play and do the work.”

“Does that mean he has a chance now?”

“A chance.”

The thick weed forest was alive with reawakened native species—floating and sparkling spore pods that drifted into the air, insect analogues, small grazing creatures, and even larger predators that avoided Jonwi.

Looking at the cocooned body on the ground as the alien continued to wrap more weed strands, Bolton frowned. “Shouldn't we get him to a medical clinic, one that knows how to treat humans? You could use your telemancy to transport him to the shadow-Xayan colony by Slickwater Springs—or Michella Town has a larger facility. My … wife is one of you. Keana Duchenet, and I think her Xayan companion's name is Uroa.”

Jonwi froze, then tended to his work again. “I am not part of that faction. My duty is to remain here.” He gazed upward, as if looking in the direction of some distant star system. “Those others are not my friends and would not be pleased to see me.”

Bolton rose unsteadily to his feet. “But you're Xayan.”

“I am
Ro
-Xayan. I came back to awaken this planet, to restore the plants and animals from specimens we preserved before the asteroid impact. We thought our world was ready to receive the gift again. We did not know the others had survived.”

Not understanding, Bolton knelt over the Redcom. There, in midday sunlight, Escobar lay on the ground cover, his damaged face visible through the wrapping that covered his body. One eye was swollen shut, and his cheeks showed deep cuts. On his torso, now wrapped in the red weed shroud, the gashes from the burrow foxes were much deeper. Internal organs had been damaged.

But he seemed to be healing under Jonwi's care. Escobar's breathing was shallow. His body needed a great deal of rest, and nourishment, and Bolton could only hope that he could heal himself.

Despite all the strangeness around him, Bolton was not afraid of the strange alien. Jonwi seemed alone, but in charge of this isolated extraterrestrial Eden. Jonwi kept turning his oversized eyes up to the sky, and seemed to have a kindly, if sad, expression—though Bolton was not at all certain he could judge Xayan moods. He found himself intrigued by the creature's calm, almost stoic demeanor.

As night fell, the dense red weeds felt like a comforting shelter rather than a dangerous place. Escobar remained unconscious, and Bolton tried to remain awake as long as possible, feeling obligated to stand guard, but the rushing, humming sounds of insects and the drifting weed spores lulled him, and he finally succumbed. After their ordeal of the past several days, he felt safer than he had since escaping from the POW camp.

The next day, Jonwi returned just as Bolton awoke. The Xayan came up to him, indicated Escobar. “I monitored your companion through the night. His condition has not changed. He is still alive.” He parted tall stalks of the weed and gestured with an arm. “Come, let me show you what I have created here.”

Bolton followed him. Though constant hunger thrust knives into his belly, the sense of wonder slowly captivated him. Grazing creatures moved over the vegetation, unlike the lumbering herd animals he and Escobar had encountered on the plain. Colorful insects danced among showers of sparkling spores that erupted from bursting, fecund nodules. He found it strangely beautiful. “You … created all this?”

Jonwi tended a nest of scuttling crab creatures that retreated from his ministrations. When the alien departed, the crab creatures returned to their activities. “Before the asteroid struck Xaya, my faction was careful to collect specimens of the basic life-forms that were expected to become extinct. We knew that once our planet was ready to reawaken, we would need to rebuild the ecosystem and reseed the planet with all the life-forms we had harmed. In this, we planned quite meticulously.”

Jonwi led Bolton through the vegetation, allowing him to drink greedily from a little waterfall—clean, sparkling water that ran down a cluster of rocks into a pool. But Bolton was trembling with hunger, and the native Hellhole species were incompatible with human biochemistry. However, the alien suggested some fleshy plants and fungi that the Ro-Xayans had crossbred with species from other worlds. He suggested they might be digestible by humans.

Despite his gnawing hunger, Bolton asked, “What if it's poison to me?”

“What is the alternative?” Jonwi asked.

So Bolton ate the plants ravenously, realizing he would die soon enough without sustenance. He suffered no violent reaction, so he ate more. He would have to try to feed Escobar as well, perhaps something mashed and liquefied.

Bolton didn't ask how Jonwi knew about human biochemistry. He was just glad to be alive, although he didn't know what to do next. The alien had such a trustworthy, nonthreatening manner that Bolton accepted his suggestions.

When Bolton tolerated the first food, Jonwi showed him fat, purple berries to eat, a tree with thin strips of edible bark that tasted delicious and chewy, and harmless antlike insects in a tree that could be consumed for protein. After eating from this exotic smorgasbord, Bolton's knotted stomach settled, as did his painfully sore and constricted muscles. Now he just had to worry about the Redcom … and about getting back to civilization alive.

But it became apparent that Jonwi did not have any connection with the aliens who were allied with General Adolphus. “A rift occurred in our species,” Jonwi explained. “The complex reason for this split is not easy to explain, but it was devastating. My faction departed this planet because we did not wish to take part in
ala'ru
. To stop the dangerous racial ascension, we exterminated our fellow Xayans with an asteroid strike.”

Bolton stared. “You were responsible for wrecking this planet?”

“My faction was.” He held his head high. “But we saved Xaya's key life-forms. Since the impact, we have been monitoring this world for centuries, waiting until the environment was stable again. When it was ready, we seeded the landscape with embryos, spores, roots, tubers, and cultured seeds in order to re-create the home that we had damaged so severely. But we knew that would be a tremendously long process.”

Jonwi seemed to revel in the lushness of the vegetation, animals, and insects he had fostered here. “We understood that Xaya would never be exactly the same as it was, and many of our seeds and embryos did not survive the centuries of waiting. I arrived here only recently to guide the large-scale awakening. Previously, when our scout ships dispersed the basic life-forms, we saw the scattered human settlements, but were unconcerned about them.”

As the alien glided through the red weed forest, Bolton followed him, curious. He suddenly understood. “You didn't expect any of the other Xayans to survive, though.”

“We did not even know they existed, didn't know about Zairic's slickwater or the preservation chamber used by a handful of Originals. I was sent here to help Xaya reawaken, but now we know that our enemies did survive after all. And, worse, they are rebuilding their telemancy through a powerful symbiosis with humans. They have managed to generate a very strong form of telemancy. They are approaching
ala'ru
once more, and the danger this poses is greater than ever. Their telemancy set off numerous alarms that called my people back from their long interstellar journeys.”

Jonwi's strange voice took on an ominous tone. “We had so many ambitious plans for this world, such high hopes. Yet, all of our efforts—all of
my
efforts—have been for naught, our hopes dashed. Sadly, Xaya has only a short time left now. Everything has changed.”

He gazed up at the sky again. “The Ro-Xayans have no choice. The threat is too great. My people are coming again to destroy this world—completely this time. The asteroid bombardment is already on its way.”

 

53

Working deep in the Vielinger iperion mines, clad in a decontamination suit with a faceplate, Erik Anderlos climbed the metal stairs to the observation platform. He felt angrier than usual because the seals in his work suit were defective, allowing the ultrafine, toxic dust to sift in. He had coughed up blood from his lungs this morning, and felt raw dryness in his throat. The iperion residue was killing him and all the other colonists seized at Buktu.