The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (7 page)

“I'm a woman, not a hen,” Althea retorted when I'd suggested it, then told me she wanted to feel life inside her, to cradle our child with her body. She writes poetry too.

A strong contraction. She squeezes in a breath and digs nails into my hand so hard she draws blood. I grit my teeth and bear it. When the contraction is over she smiles wearily. Strands of auburn hair stick to her damp forehead. “I'm sorry, Jay,” she whispers, “I guess that's what they call sympathy pains.”

I wipe her forehead as another contraction hits, and I take her hand again. “Dig in all you want, Al, if it helps.”

“Jay. Oh Jules!” she cries, and I hold her and whisper the poem she translated from Sappho in her own interpretation, and asked me to learn for the birthing:

“I have a child, as fair as golden flowers is she, my little Lisa/Julian, all my care. I'd not give her away for Lydia's wide sway, nor lands that men yearn for.'

She didn't want to know whether it was a boy or a girl either.

And then the birth. How do you describe that? A piece of the great mystery. Five fingers per hand, five toes per foot. I remember thinking the pattern had held! My little girl, my Lisa. They even let me hold her. God, she was ugly. Blotchy. All wrinkled. Screaming her head off at the indignity of having to enter this world of cold and glaring light and the weight of her own body, like a fish being dragged ashore.

I opened my eyes, leaned back against the tree and tried to picture Lisa's face. I saw only Ginny's.

Silk was staggering and she hung her head. I watched Buj pace in tight circles. I never liked crotemungers. It's the way dark oil bubbles from under their lumpy skin, and how the squat creatures rip them open against a tree, or your leg, if you hold still, releasing smelly fluid to coat their pitted hides. I just can't take to their rank odor. But mostly I don't like the way they snap up flat tails to expose shriveled maroon backsides that swell to look like long-jawed heads, even if it does confuse the predator.

No, I never petted a crotemunger, except the sick ones at my sanctuary. It's their rows of black eyes that catch -“

My sanctuary!

The animals I treated there. The plague. I squeezed my eyes shut. My mind the swimmer, stroking upwards toward recollection. Like the reflection of sun glancing off a submerged image. The rattle of invisible shackles.

I stared at the leaf.

“What are you doing now, Jules?” Christine asked. “Deciding how many angels can fit on the stem of a leaf?'

I chalked up her insensitivity to Loranth control.

“Would you like to know how leaves make food for the tree?” I smiled. “I just remembered.”

She took a step toward me. The Venus image faded. I once had a fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Cloak. We called her cloak and dagger.

“Suppose you explain about food to the Master when we return without any because of you?”

I peeled the leaf from my knee, cupped it and extended it out into the rain. A tiny pool accumulated and spilled into my shaking hands.

Christine searched the close horizon for Trump and Pike, and didn't notice as I drank. When had the rain turned so cold? When had the heel of my foot become infected and begun to throb so insistently? When had my arms become raw with scrapes and bruises? When had I realized that I was shivering with a cold that went down to my bones? “Maybe he can feed us all on a loaf of bread.” I looked up at her. “And a fish.”

“He could! He could make the desert bloom.” She swept an arm to encompass the area, but I was more intrigued by the way her breast lifted beneath the torn shirt, exposing a nipple. “He could turn this whole desolate land into a Garden of Eden.” Her eyes took on a glazed look as she stared past me. “Except that we're not worthy.”

I'd seen that look before, on faces of fanatical political and religious followers, in history tapes. It seems to precede the first rumblings of war or the founding of new cults. Had I worn it myself not so long ago?

“You're right,” I said, filling the leaf. She gasped as I drank. “The flood is more fitting anyway. It drowns serpents.”

“That taboo!” She pointed to the leaf. “My God, that's taboo.”

“He's not my god any more, Christine, and he shouldn't be yours. Don't you get it? He's no god. Maybe a devil.”

She still pointed at me like an avenging angel.

“Ask yourself,” I said, “why shouldn't we drink from somewhere else beside his pool?” I gingerly touched my left heel.

“Because I have a skin of water from the Sacred Pond,” she answered. “There. Around Faun's neck.”

“It's polluted, Chris. Here, drink some of this.” I extended the full leaf.

“I will not!” She threw a furtive look at the family. “He'll punish you.”

I crumpled the leaf, flung it away and went to Silk. “He's been punishing us.” I shivered as rainwater ran through branches. “Right now I wouldn't mind a little Hellfire. Maybe a couple of steaks charcoaled over brimstone.” I winked at her.

Silk's flanks heaved and she whimpered plaintively. She turned her smooth head to watch me as I examined the wound. It was deep all right. Bone showed. But it had stopped bleeding. It needed to be cleansed, sutured, antibiotics to fight off infection. What did I have? Mud and leaves! The rain would wash them off. I patted her neck, saw Faun nudge closer and Christine look on expectantly. I felt like an imposter about to be exposed. Death had tracked my shadow much closer than any healing power. I was the real harbinger of plague, the scythe in the reaper's hand. “Stop crowding me, will you?” I threw over my shoulder.

Christine took a step back.

I rubbed a hand across my mouth. It would have been so easy to crawl back under Sye Kor's will. For all my glib retorts to Christine, I longed for immersion of self into oneness with the family again. To humble myself and allow the Master to make my decisions, take on my responsibilities. My guilts. Could he exorcize Ginny's ghost from a closet in my mind? Was his control really so tyrannical, I suddenly wondered, or did we meet him halfway in surrendering ourselves? I rubbed Silk's ears where fungus tends to grow in the moist skin under loose folds. Faun pawed the ground as he kept guard, and Buj continued to pace, pause and sniff, while we waited for Pike and Trump to return. There isn't much between Buj's stiff ears besides instincts, but crotemunger packs normally prey on slaotees and only the family's drugged allegiance to Sye Kor kept an uneasy truce beneath that tree.

I had a thought. This time very much my own.

What if I returned to the Loranth's lair as though I were still a zombie member of the family? But this time I'd study Kor with a clear mind, hopefully discover a few Achilles fins, then make my escape during a hunt and alert Cape Leone to this dangerous species.

Could I bring it off? I knew more about his methods now than I had the first time he'd hooked me with his tel power. I was sure I could feign dazed loyalty if he decided on a deep mind probe. If I succeeded I could tell Cape Leone's authorities how to approach the slug while still blocking his mindgrip. It might save lives. Human and friendly alien lives. Then again, if I failed, it might end mine.

I pictured a gravestone at the sanctuary:

Here Lies A Jungle Juicer.

He Died For The Good Of All.

That sounded about right, like they'd be better off without me. I leaned against the transparent trunk and stared at my warped reflection in a shiny branch.

Christine came around to face me. “What is it, Jules? Tell me what's wrong with you?”

“That depends on your perspective.”

She put a hand on my arm. I felt a stirring. “We're all one family and the Master wants us to help each other. I want to help you back into the fold.”

I stared at her bland trusting face. “Suppose I told you that the master's a slave keeper who doesn't care two fig leaves or an apple or a snake for you?”

The expression of beatific trust drained from her face

“Suppose,” I continued against the odds, “you let me help you out of the fold and back into self-autonomy?”

Her pressed lips were stained with berry juice from last night's meager supper. “What you're proposing is a danger to the family and to our Master.” She smiled tightly. “But you see, I don't believe any of it. No. You just haven't learned the way yet. The right path. It keeps you acting out of ego, like a spoiled brat who is concerned only with self.”

“That's not true.” I found I couldn't take my eyes off her breasts, the nipples showing through the torn wet blouse, and off her hips, smooth through torn pants, and the glimpse of dark tight hair like a hidden nest between her thighs. “I think about other people all the time.” I dropped my gaze to her muddy feet. Slender ankles… Crotes! I sat on a soggy mat of leaves beneath the tree, drew up my knees for warmth and to hide what was going on in my own crotch.

“I don't want to see anything happen to you, Jules.” I saw her intense look as she stared at me. My clothes were pretty torn too.

She slid down beside me with her shoulder touching mine.

Oh, shit.

“We're one family,” she said in a soothing tone. “We should be close to each other.”

I closed my eyes and imagined the Loranth leering at us if we made love.

She brushed her hand through my hair. “Did I ever mention to you that you're a handsome specimen, with your blue eyes and blonde hair?” She cuddled closer. “I love the way your eyes are shadowed when you stand in the sun.” She smiled. “And the way I have to look up at you because you're tall.” She rubbed against me. But sometimes you look like a child who's lost his favorite toy.”

“Oh, no. I know exactly where it is. Blessed are the lotus eaters,” I said, “for they shall know no regrets.”

“Don't you understand yet?” She sighed. “Regrets are the result of setting impossible standards, like building match stick houses and not expecting the wind to knock them down. Jules, you're so wrapped up in your own concerns, like a true disbeliever.” She shivered and huddled closer to me. “Hold me?” she whispered. “It's cold.”

I put my arms around her and she cuddled against me. It worked, for me. I felt much warmer.

“You're at war with yourself,” she lectured, “when all you really need to do to win is surrender self.” Her right breast pressed against my arm.

She is not in her right mind,
I told my erect penis, which wasn't listening to anything short of gene transference.

Think of Althea,
I thought.

Why?
My penis answered,
she's not thinking of us?

Christine's eyes were big and round and softly inviting. So were her breasts. Dammit! It's not fair to take advantage!

She wants you,
my penis answered.

“Sye Kor blesses us with peace,” she murmured and cuddled even closer. “What is self compared to that?” She lifted her face to mine.

I kissed her cheek. “Yeah, I know. Be as the onion. Drop the layers of self one by one, till nothing remains except Sye Kor. I've been there. Trouble is, Chris, I have this talent for turning gold into baser things with a touch. You were almost killed by Yeth!”

“There is no real death.” She brushed her lips against mine.

“Sye Kor tell you that? Croteshit! Then there is no real peace.”

I felt her breath on my cheek. She rested her hand on my thigh.

Oh. Don't do that!

“There's peace in oneness with Him.””

The opiate of the true cult believer.

Her shoulders glistened. I watched rain trickle down the inner curve of her breasts. It was nice to notice these things again.

Right now I didn't care about onions, aliens, or family get-togethers in the lair. I just wanted her, so much I would have promised to kiss Kor's ugly rubber ass if I could feel Christine's legs wrapped around my hips. Feel myself moving inside her, her sweet body pressed under me. I lifted my hand to her breast, brushed away dirt and water. She looked up, surprised.

I continued brushing. Hell, I could've missed a spot.

She smiled.

“Speaking of oneness,” I said and rolled her under me. I ran my hands through the remains of her shirt and cupped her breasts. Her pants ripped even more as she lifted and I pulled them off her. Rain pattered on my butt when I slipped out of the remnants of my pants.

My penis had been right. She arched her back and kissed me. But there was no passion in it. We were both muddy as I rolled back on top of her.

She parted her legs like wings and I found what I was looking for and pushed into her, gently at first, then with more passion.

I was approaching climax but she wasn't. I held back as long as I could. “Christine. I'm trying to wait.”

“Don't,” she said.

I moaned as the orgasm flowed through my body in waves.

We parted and I laid on the wet, muddy ground.

Christine got up and put on her soggy clothes.

Our family of reptiles and amphibians were gathered around us, watching, like voyeurs.

“Was it good for you guys,” I asked, still breathing heavily. I looked at Christine's impassive face and I felt sad. It obviously hadn't been good for her.

“Jack, are you in the workshop?” Annie's voice came, metal-coated, through the housecom.

Jack loosened the lathe chuck, releasing a smooth wooden rod, and went to the com. The raucous sound of his fifteen-year-old daughter's airbike, which she lovingly tuned in the garage, rattled plasmatic sheets of siding stacked in rafters.

“Cush it, Gail,” he called to her as he flipped on the com. The untimed engine shuddered to a coughing halt, exposing his daughter's string of expletives. “Always more Christcroting important than anything I slimeshitting have to do!” She stared at her father over the curved seat of the bike from where she sat on a box behind it. “Oh, shit,” he heard her mumble. The silence lengthened like a tortured shadow.

Jack watched her head sink below the seat. “Yeah, I'm here, Kit,” he told Annie. “Feeding time at the zoo yet? I can smell the turkey right through the vents.”

“It might never be feeding time, Jack, if that thermoprobe keeps sparking and burning the bird. Come on up and hook in the diagnostic, will you? I think it's the keypod.”

Jack ran a thumb over the smooth wooden rod which would serve as the mainmast for the model schooner his three-year-old son Robbie held in his lap, and realized he wanted to finish the ship as badly as Robbie wanted it finished. “Come on, Kit, you're the electronics tech around here. I work in wood.”

“You'll be carving wood instead of bird for supper, dear, if you don't get your sweet derriere up here. I've got to finish weaving the school flag for the Day One Celebration.”

“Daddy?” Robbie said. “You gonna finish my boat?” He sat amid wood shavings on the workbench, impatiently swinging his thin bare legs. He shoved his finger into a bored hole in the model's deck.

“Schooner,” Jack corrected and winked at him. “Soon as I talk your mother back into the kitchen.”

“I heard that, Jack!”

“Tell you what, Kit, you stay with the bird and I'll take the brood on a hike tomorrow.”

“Why not take it right now?” she said caustically.

“What?” he heard her say to Terry, their twelve-year old. Annie's voice was spiked with honey. “Terry just told me that the tele M's refusing to send instructions to the hotpod and now it won't bake the yams. I'm going into the crafts room and lock the door, dear. I'll see you and the brood at supper time.” The com crackled off and Gail's bike plodded back to uncertain life like a great shuddering beast.

Jack winced. Why the Leone kids were into old combustions with their smoke and noise was something he'd never understand.

“Daddy, it's stuck!” Robbie suddenly wailed, and tried to twist his finger out of the small hole. “Get it out!”

“Here, let me see that, Robbie.” Jack gently pulled on his son's finger. It stretched, wedged tight. He tried to turn it.

Robbie howled.

The cry was drowned by the chimes of the front doorbell.

Jack took a container of oil from a shelf and squeezed out some around Robbie's stuck finger and the base of the wood, then carefully worked at freeing the finger.

“Jack?” Annie's voice came through the com again. “You have a visitor. He's coming around to the garage entrance.”

“Jules?” Gail said breathlessly. Her head rose above the bike's seat.

Jack had seen the way his daughter looked at Jules, the sudden flush of color in her olive skin, her inability to walk without tripping over imaginary objects whenever Jules was around. He was grateful for his friend's casual attentiveness to her. But Jules was missing. He had been for some time.

“His name is Stanley Fields,” Annie said. “He's from the Institute.”

“Maybe he's got news about Jules. I mean Mister Rammis.” Gail absently wiped her hands on a rag as she got up and stared through the raised garage doors.

“Don't count on it, Gail.” But Jack felt a quick hope.

“Daddy, I gotta pee,” Robbie said pathetically. His lips trembled as he stared at his stuck finger.

“OK, Robbie, hold on.” Jack gently pulled the finger. He felt it move.

“Jack, are you there?” Annie said.

“Where else would I be, Kit?”

“He said he wants to talk to you about Jules.”

Gail caught her breath.

Jack worked Robbie's finger free and wiped off the oil.

“That's about the cleanest this finger's ever been, scoot.” He tousled Robbie's hair, glanced toward the yard and steeled himself for the news.

Robbie giggled and held up his finger. “Look, Daddy, is still there!” He licked his finger and studied it as though it had just grown.

Jack lifted him off the bench and Robbie headed for the bathroom with the schooner tucked under an arm.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, Kit?”

“Let me know if he's heard anything. I'll have my fingers crossed while I'm trying to salvage this cursed bird.”

Two months had passed since Jules left to search for Christine Saynes. Two months! How many weeks since the transmitter was found attached to a groat, after the police search and rescue team spent an hour calling into its cave for Jules to come out, that there was no use hiding. That the cave was surrounded and the police were armed. The groat had emerged growling, with the transmitter locked around its tail

“Dumbshit groats themselves!” Jack mumbled.

Last week Hallarin terminated the search and told his people the groat fiasco was to go no further than the police station doors.

Jack picked up a sil of beer, sipped the sharp native brew, then wiped his mouth and studied foam through the transparent container. He had gone over the barroom incident with Jules many times. He should have let Jules leave before Hallarin showed up.

“A croteass police grunt down to my boots!” he muttered.

Was Jules dead somewhere in the fibrins? Or had his friend just decided to walk away from it all after failing to locate Saynes, and found himself a place with water and good aerial cover?

He's capable of that,
Jack thought. The sulky son of a bitch.

He pictured Jules sitting on a rock somewhere in the deep plains, brooding, with only Gretch for companionship, and saw himself going through life wondering, always wondering, like the relative of someone who went missing in action.

“Ah, the aroma of spring flowers!” Stanley Fields stood at the open garage doors, smiling broadly through a wild red beard and delicately sniffing one of Annie's prize brandywine roses in his hand. “What is so fair as a rose of Ilarian,” Stanley recited, “that I could lie contented in eternal sleep beneath it.”

You will if Annie catches you,
Jack thought.

Robbie was back. Jack lifted him onto the workbench.

“Hell's spikes!” Gail said in disbelief. “That's one of Mom's prize roses.”

Stanley waved it under his nose with a flourish. “Surely your Mother would not begrudge me a drink of its fragrance?”

“She'll spank you,” Robbie warned.

Stanley was short enough to walk under a garage door not fully raised without stooping. But he neglected the unwritten code of waiting to be invited inside. He limped as he approached Jack, holding the rose and his smile. Jack took the pudgy freckled hand Stanley extended, refrained from tightening his grip as he shook it, and maintained an air of quiet reserve. “Jack Cole.”

“Stan. Stanley Fields.” He looked around the woodworking shop. “You do outside work, Mister Cole? I've been looking for a good carpenter to make me a rocking chair.” He put a hand on his side and grimaced. “My back.”

Jack picked up the wooden rod and handed it to Robbie. “Here, pumpkin,” he told his son, “try this instead of your finger.” He glanced at Stanley. “I'm not for hire.”

Robbie rammed his tongue inside his cheek and solemnly inserted the tapered rod into the deck. “It fits, Daddy, it fits!”

“That's good, scoot.” Jack lifted Robbie off the bench, then went to the cooler and took out another sil of beer.

“What'd you expect, squirt?” Gail told her brother.

Robbie ran outside with the schooner, calling for his friends.

“You hear something new about Jules?” Jack asked casually and handed Stanley the beer.

“Only that he went looking for Christine Saynes.” Stanley gestured expansively, slamming the flower into the lathe. Petals fluttered like broken butterflies. “And now they've both gone missing.”

Jack saw Gail's stricken look. “You came all this way,” Jack asked Stanley, “just to tell me that?”

“Christcakes!” Gail turned on the audiovis system with a voice command. The set blared Dinean stonefry music. A diminutive holo of an alien vocal group materialized on the unit's tiny stage. The figures jerked as they sang.

Stanley held the rose in his teeth while he took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt tail. “I think there's something out there,” he lisped around the stem.

Jack turned to the audiovis system, shouted “Lower the V!”

The volume plummeted to an intimidated murmur.

“Always sogging out the tunes,” Gail muttered as she returned her attention to the airbike and screwed in a new sparkplug. “Black hole static and sunbeam jamboree. That's all growns know.”

Stanley removed the rose from his teeth. “I said I think there's something out there, Mister Cole.” His features lost their benign expression as he threw a glance out the garage entrance.

Jack followed his gaze past Annie's flower bed, hedges, the swept walk throwing heat waves in afternoon sunlight. “You mean something besides dinosaurs?” he said with an edge.

“Oh, they're not dinosaurs.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jack brushed woodchips from his workbench into a wastepaper basket.

“Christine was always very cautious in the field,” Stanley said, “and yet…”

“Jules is no slouch either.”

“So what happened to them?” Stanley shrugged the question.

“You figure the police department is withholding information?” Jack lit a puredraw cigarette and blew smoke.

Stanley glanced at Gail, who was listening. “It's a possibility,” he whispered, turning his back to her. “But I'm here because you and Jules were good friends.”

“They're not withholding evidence an' we're still good friends.”

“Of course. Have you been out to the Saynes' site?”

'Sure.”

Stanley scrutinized Jack's expression and Jack wondered if his guest was waiting for some dark secret to be revealed by the lines of his face. Finally Stanley shrugged. “I was there even before the first search parties and after the herd of Leone tourists desecrated the site.” He tapped the workbench as though impatient, his hazel eyes fixed on some inner discord. Suddenly he laughed. “Did you hear the stories?”

Jack shook his head.

“The one I liked best is that they were lovers who signed a death pact, in blood, mind you, and then met at Purgatory Canyon to hold hands and jump off a cliff together.”

Gail stood up. “Jules doesn't have a girlfriend! Dad, can I start the bike now?”

“Take it outside, Gail.”

“Wasn't he married?” Stanley peeled thorns off the stem.

“Still is.” Jack felt a growing dislike for the man. He sipped his beer. “You working up to the reason for this visit?”

“Have you set a timer?” Stanley stroked his beard. “What I dug up at her site was more bizarre than any lovers' suicide pact.” He glanced at Gail, who was sitting on the bike, and lowered his voice. “Here,” he whispered to Jack, and took a photograph from his wallet. “Did you ever see anything like that?”

The photo was of a jagged concave piece of bone. A ruler set beneath it showed its size.

“Looks like part of a skull. Pretty big, isn't it?”

“Big I don't find disturbing on this planet. It's the other characteristics.” He pointed a thick finger. “Notice how thin-walled the specimen is.”

“Then it's not a reptile.” He'd learned that from Jules.

“Or a giant fish that slithered ashore.”

“Mammal?” Jack looked up from the photo. “Jules always figured -“

“I know what Jules was out there searching for, Mister Cole. Personally I thought he was a little meshugge.”

“A little what?”

“Crazy. There are so many other paths evolution can take, as witness our alien friends at Cape Leone.” He waved the rose. “Certainly they all have some mammalian characteristics, just as we have some of their physical traits, but…” He stared at the photo and stroked its edges lovingly.

“Jules isn't just looking for mammals,” Jack said, remembering Jules' explanation. “He's looking for the pattern for mammals.” Jack sipped beer.
Whatever the hell that means,
he thought.

“But look at this.” Stanley pointed to a broken ridge which ran along the skull's brow.

Jack studied the photo again and wondered what he was supposed to conclude. “You think this animal had his head bashed in?”

“That's possible. But you see, Mister Cole. May I call you Jack?”

Jack nodded.

“If you extend this skull fragment with clay, fill in the muscles according to the markings on it, what you get is a large-skulled spherical head. I know.” He met Jack's eyes. “I already did it.”

“Like what? A primate's skull?”

Stanley smiled, rounding pink cheeks. “I admire your loyalty to your friend, Jack, but it's more complex than that. Just believe me when I say this skull once housed a complex brain.” He glanced at Gail. She was studying a gauge attached to the bike's electrical system. His eyes took on a feral intensity. “A
thinking
brain, Mister Cole. I mean Jack.”

Jack frowned. This was not the news he had hoped for.

“Clever enough to trap two pretty smart humans?”

“According to my model, the jawbone is refined, and the one tooth I found definitely belongs to a carnivore. But with an alien mind, who knows from motivations and tastes, let alone behavior?”

Jack's throat tightened as he looked around the garage, the woodworking machines, the garden tools, the old bicycles and overstuffed boxes, the rowboat leaning against a wall. They all added up to time-grown roots that went deeper than the surface appearance of casual clutter. “There's been humans and alien scientists on Tartarus for over forty years,” he said. “By now these…whatever the hell they are, would have shown themselves or been found out.”
Could our security be that inadequate?
He thought. “It's probably just a big animal,” he said gruffly and quaffed beer. “Needs a big skull to stuff in all the instincts.”