Trang (46 page)
Authors: Mary Sisson
“He wanted—?” he asked, gently.
“He wanted to know about
Guantánamo,” Shanti repeated. She was glaring at him with an equal mixture of
astonishment and irritation.
“
What?
” said George.
Shanti turned to George. “I saw
him, too. In a dream—several dreams, actually. I saw a gold Host who wanted to
know all about Philippe and his nightmares. He described the dreams to me, and
one was of Patch’s birthday party, which got interrupted by General Jesus’
thugs, who tortured him.”
Shanti and George stared at each
other for a moment.
“
I’m
not crazy,” she
snapped. “
I
have an
implant.
”
“When did you see him?” Philippe
asked.
Shanti was still talking to George.
“I
dreamed
about him, OK? I wasn’t
flying,
I’m not
crazy,
I
didn’t fucking
hallucinate.
It was when I was on Titan and on Earth
before Arne got sick. The Host was trying to figure Trang out—or I was trying
to figure Trang out, something like that. So it was a lot of questions about
Guantánamo and stress disorders, that sort of shit. He said that Trang was
seeing people getting tortured, and that it was happening over and over.”
“And then we got back to the
station and you never dreamed about him again, right?” asked Philippe. Shanti
stared at him for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s because he was back with
me. He can’t stay with one person when he goes through the portal; he has to go
to someone else. So right now, he should be with one of you. We’ve got to find
him and talk to him—he might know something.”
Shanti walked to the far end of the
room. George was shaking his head.
“What do you think?” she asked, not
turning around.
“About what?” George replied, his
composure slipping. “Chasing after something you saw in a dream and he
hallucinated? Seeking advice from a delusion? Oh, I think that’s a
great
idea.”
Shanti turned to George and stared
at him for a moment.
“I don’t like it either,” she said.
“But I saw what I saw.”
“Come on, George,” said Philippe,
almost begging. “They’re
aliens.
They’re mysterious
.
We don’t
know what they can do.”
Shanti shrugged. “They could be
telepathic or something. You can’t say it’s impossible.”
They were silent for a moment.
“There’s one way to find out,”
Shanti said. “Put me to sleep.”
“What?” asked George.
“That’s how I’ll see him, right?”
she said. “Just get my suit to dope me up, and I’ll dream about him.”
“I am
not
going to sedate
you,” said George. “In case you’ve missed what’s going on, we’re in kind of a
tight situation here, and we need everyone to be alert and awake.”
Shanti thought for a moment. “You
can knock me out and then wake me up again—I’ll have a hangover, but it
shouldn’t be too bad. If he’s crazy, then we’ll know for sure. And if he’s not
crazy, it might help.”
George sighed. He shook his head,
and then sighed again. He seemed to come to some sort of decision, and
shrugged.
He turned to Philippe. “You say you
can see him when you meditate?”
Philippe nodded.
George looked at Shanti. “I’ll
hypnotize you,” he said. “That will put you—”
“—in a deeply relaxed state,” Shanti
finished. “That’s a great idea—you do me, then I’ll do you, so we’ll know for
sure.”
“You know how to hypnotize people?”
asked Philippe.
“Yeah, it was part of the whole
survivalist thing I grew up with,” she said. “It was supposed to be for pain management,
but we mainly used it to make people wet themselves.”
“That’s always fun,” said George.
“Where do you want to do it?”
The doctor stood up from the
platform and gestured at it. “What’s wrong with here?”
“Just, uh, just be sure not to put
your feet on it,” Philippe said, anxiously. “It might be a dining platform, and
they have a big taboo about that.”
George and Shanti looked at each
other for a moment.
“Trang?” said George. “Would you
mind waiting outside?”
“Do you think that’s OK?” Philippe
asked. “Or maybe they want us all to stay in here?”
“I don’t think the door’s locked,”
Shanti replied.
Philippe tried the door, and sure
enough, it slid open. He stepped out into the hallway, and then looked back at
Shanti and George, who were staring at him blankly.
I’m probably not a very relaxing
sight for either of them right now,
he thought, and quietly closed the door
behind him.
The hallway was empty; the doors
leading to it were all closed. Their room wasn’t under guard, which Philippe
hoped was a promising sign.
Nonetheless, their reception on the
defense station had been decidedly chilly, and Philippe decided he should stay
by the door and not go wandering about. Most of the Hosts they had seen here
had not been priests, so presumably they had no translation devices, and Max
had not left the portable translator with the humans.
More fundamentally, it had been
hard to miss the difference in attitude between the Hosts here and the Hosts on
the diplomatic station when they arrived. On the diplomatic station, even the
Hosts without translators would thrum and look friendly; here they were all
much more guarded, and some were obviously made uncomfortable by the humans. It
seemed likely that the Host population at large was not quite as enthusiastic
about aliens as, say, Ptuk-Ptik or Max.
It was also entirely possible that
the Hosts suspected the three of them of having links to the attack simply by
virtue of their being aliens—especially aliens who had shown up at the wrong
place at the wrong time. Philippe suspected that their guest quarters could
quite easily become their prison cell.
If our positions were reversed,
he
thought,
any Hosts visiting Earth would fare very poorly.
Philippe sat down on the floor by
the door and waited. The walls here were slightly soft, like on the diplomatic
station, and the one behind him gave just a bit as Philippe leaned against it.
He pushed with his fingers into the floor and decided that it was a tiny bit
soft as well. He put his hands to his face, rubbing it through his protective
hood. They needed some kind of help, some kind of guidance, from Creepy or
anyone, really.
His thoughts were interrupted when
another door onto the hallway opened and a Host came out. He looked quizzically
at Philippe, who waved. The Host hastily walked away without saying anything
audible.
A few minutes later, two Hosts
appeared at the end of the hall, hurrying toward Philippe. “Human diplomat,”
said one of them.
“Max!” said Philippe, standing up.
It was Max and the merchant’s nephew.
“You are well?” asked the nephew.
“We were told you were suffering,”
said Max.
“No, no, I am fine, I am quite
well,” said Philippe, a little puzzled.
“You were on the ground,” said the
nephew. “We were told that you were seen on the ground and flailing in agony.”
“We thought perhaps you had
fallen,” said Max.
“No, I was just sitting, resting,”
said Philippe. “I was on the ground, but I was just resting.”
“I understand,” said Max, looking
relieved. “I believe you were seen by one of the soldiers, who thought you were
in distress. Among the Hosts, people lay their bodies on the floor only if they
are sick or injured.”
“Were you seen by a soldier?” asked
the nephew.
“I was seen by a Host whom I did
not know,” said Philippe. “He may have been a solider.”
“It is extremely simple to
determine if a Host is a soldier with certainty,” replied the nephew. “If you
examine the markings on the third bodily segment, soldiers are marked very
clearly as such, just as priests and merchants are.”
Really?
thought Philippe.
“How is your planet faring against
the attack?” he asked. “Has the portal reopened?”
Max’s face fell. “It has not,” he
replied. “The soldiers have put our defenses fully into action. The planet
itself remains protected, although we have not yet been able to repulse the
attackers. The portal has not reopened, which is a source of great concern and
despair.”
“Why is that?” asked Philippe. “Is
it important to your defense?”
“Not in a physical manner,” said
the priest.
“The defenses were largely built
with the expectation that any attack would come through the portal, however,”
said the nephew. “The large weapon on this station cannot be aimed elsewhere
but at the portal.”
“That design was always considered
improper by the priests,” Max said.
“Has this ever happened before?”
Max looked shocked by the question.
“Never since the portal opened,” he said. “We have never been attacked by our
friends.”
“Do you know what the Cyclopes
want?” asked Philippe.
“Dominion,” Max replied, glumly.
“They want governance of the diplomatic station—which is, of course, completely
improper—as well as pledges that we will send them items of value for no
restitution and acknowledge their superiority in some symbolic fashion.”
“Endless Courage and Brave Loyalty
broadcast the demands. They are here on the attack ships,” said the nephew.
“Cannot translate is extremely unhappy.”
“He refers to his uncle the
merchant,” said Max.
“I apologize,” said the nephew.
“I take absolutely no offense,”
said Philippe. “I share your uncle’s distress at that news, and he has my
sympathies. I, too, believed that I had established a trusting relationship
with them, particularly with Brave—”
The door opened. George was
standing in the doorway, looking perplexed.
“Oh, hello,” said Philippe.
“I, um, I think we found him,” said
George, scratching the side of his neck and closing the door behind him. “Your,
ahem, your prophecy guy.”
“He means your messiah,” said
Philippe to Max.
Max immediately brightened up.
He’s
excited, but he’s not surprised,
Philippe realized.
“Shanti wants to talk to your
military commanders right away,” George said.
“I will tell them,” said Max,
hurrying away.
“Well, but, uh—she needs something
to draw with, too,” said George to Max’s retreating form. He turned to
Philippe. “Do you think they’ll listen to her?”
“She is a female,” said the nephew.
“They may not do what she says to do, but they will listen to her as she says
it.”
Shanti opened the door and walked
out. Her eyes were half closed, and her face was without expression. There were
tears on her face, and she was breathing like she’d been running.
George jumped when he saw her, but
quickly recovered. “Shanti, please tell me where you are going,” he said, his
voice deep and calming.
“To speak with the Host military
command,” she replied. Philippe saw her eyelids flutter. “It’s very important.”
“You can do that in just a little
while,” said George in a soporific voice. “We’re setting that up right now, so
you can relax about it and stay relaxed. What I want you to do is to take a nice,
deep breath, and with that breath I want you to return to that nice, relaxed
state, that nice, relaxed hypnotic state.”
She inhaled deeply, and her eyelids
stopped moving.
“It is OK if I touch your arm?”
George asked. Shanti nodded. “I’m going to lead you back into that room, and
then we’ll come out again when they’re ready for you. They’ll be ready and
listening in just a little while.”
“OK,” she said. George led her back
through the doorway and closed the door, still looking perplexed.
Philippe and the nephew stood
nervously outside the door until a Host came up, chirping. “He is here to take
us to the commanders,” said the nephew.
Philippe opened the door. Shanti
was sitting on the platform, her arms out. Her palms were turned upward and her
index fingers and thumbs were touching. “Now you’ve got Twinkle,” George was
saying.
“They’re ready for us,” Philippe
said.
“Is it OK if I touch your arm?”
George asked Shanti. She nodded. “OK, I’m going to lead you over to the Host
military command.”
She stood up, and they began
walking.
They followed the Host, who led
them through the wide corridors to a room. Despite the differences in
design—the proportions were way off, and instead of there being stairs, the
floor slanted upward—it was obvious to Philippe that this room served as a
small auditorium. Max stood at the lowest point in the floor, facing platforms
behind which stood a number of somber-looking Hosts. Philippe noted with relief
that Max had placed the portable translator on the floor.
“Do you have something she can draw
with?” asked George. The portable translator chirped.
“Yes, this drawing utensil,” said
Max, holding a rather chubby-looking cylinder.
George looked at it. “Can you
please explain to her how to use it?”
“Yes. Greetings, taller female human,”
said Max.
Shanti didn’t respond.
“Max is talking to you, Shanti,”
said George. “He’s going to call you taller female human.”
“Oh,” she said, straightening her
posture further.
Max showed her how to use the
drawing utensil—apparently if you held it at the right angle, it emitted what
looked like a laser beam. That didn’t seem very helpful until Max showed that
if you pointed it at the wall behind you, the wall held the mark. Point the
other end, and a different colored beam erased the mark.