Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (10 page)

“Daddy, a ghost!” Lisa pointed at the woods and ran to me. Demon eyes winked and shuffled through macabre ground branches. A deep growl ranged over the black woods.

The hauler.

“It's a truck,” I told her. “It's just a truck, Lis'.” I grabbed Tikkie by his collar and we retreated to the motor skirt again as headlights bounced over roots, snapping their backs.

About twenty meters long, the hauler had an automated cab, I saw with relief as the vehicle swung wide and backed to the module, its rear lights blazing. Cargo doors rolled open. Tikkie barked at it and Lisa held him back.

”Stay here, Lis, and keep Tikkie here too. I'll be right back, OK?” This unmanned hauler could be our way out!

She nodded solemnly. “Don't be afraid, Tikkie.” She stroked his neck and hugged him. “You're a big dog now.”

I moved carefully toward the truck. No signs of life, but there were cameras on its hood and sides.

I expected that. I approached from the rear, maneuvered below the cameras' fields of vision to the front of the vehicle, and tried the cab doors.

Locked!

I attempted to burn a hole through the door, then the lock, with my stingler. They didn't burn. Whatever material they were made of was impervious to light, hand-held beamers.

I returned to the back of the long cargo bay and watched a conveyor belt rumble out of the hauler and snap in place on the module's main hatch. Robot arms inside the module systematically hooked crates and set them on the moving conveyer belt, which carried them into the hauler.

I climbed to the truck's bay and scanned crates with my flashlight. There were no 'bots inside, I was relieved to see. I set the flashlight on its base. With the stingler on hot I burned through the straps of one of many unmarked crates, then coughed as acrid smoke filled the compartment. The cover creaked as I opened it and dug under soft packing material. I came up with something heavy and round wrapped in thick enzylastic. I unwrapped it and peeled off the covering.

Crystal!

Yes. More a diamond, but warm to the touch. The size of a tennis ball. I was surprised at the weight of it as I lifted the orb and turned it. The facets caught every hint of light and reflected them against walls with pristine clarity in the smoky air. Light and warmth emanated from its glowing center. My fingers tingled. I held the warm globe blissfully to my cheek. I'd go get Lisa and –

A sudden image!

It held me, wiped away concern for my daughter, the burn of my cold fingers, as I felt torrential rains beat down on early seas. Black rock sizzled under the assault of lightning. Volcanoes cracked and spilled lava in births of land. Swirling ash and vaporous clouds. Asteroids crashed to the surface, bringing water that pooled and merged as a volley of asteroids tore into the early planet like bullets.

The image surrounded me, drew me in with a sense of primal energy and expanded my own being till I no longer knew where my consciousness ended and the planet's awareness began. I nestled against the planet's skin, suckled power from magma bubbling through sea fissures. I grew, envisioned life and drove myself deep, my tendrils spreading, as currents pulsed beneath me.

Vision…to desire…to fulfillment. I plunged my being into hot seas of organic soup and scattered coils of DNA.

Life, I made the slumbering planet say. Life! I allowed the rains to end, the sky to clear. Clear to emerald. Primal life… Microbes. Drifting in seas where broken sunlight danced on rocky floors. The delicate living cells, imbued with my gift of DNA, multiplied and combined under my guidance. I extended my being into the planet's mantle, folded the earth above me, and felt a tidal surge of love as my spawn awakened to consciousness. And finally, questing awareness.

”Jesus and Vishnu,” I muttered, lowered the crystal and stared at it. Had this globe, acting as catalyst, glommed me onto Great Mind, the Loranths' name for that unknowable entity beyond space and time which we call God? Or just made this image seem more real than the conveyor belt and the cold?

Lisa!

I leaped down from the hauler's bed, felt the same guilt and remorse, which had haunted my dreams of Ginny not so very long ago. I stuffed the heavy crystal into my pocket, heard gears reverse as the extended belt prepared now for loading the module with crates of crystals. Cameras swiveled to track the procedure. I took a circuitous route to the back of the module.

“Can we go in the truck now?” Lisa asked. “I'm cold, Daddy!”

“Sure we can.” I rubbed her arms through her jacket and glanced at the bloody trail left by the pilot's body. But not into Laurel.

“Tikkie? C'mon!”

Though I felt his hunger as a craving in my own mind, I dragged Tikkie away from an open crate inside the hauler as it ground its slow way through snow. This cargo was not for eating. It was for growing plants from seeds and animals from fertilized eggs. I wanted no trace of our presence left behind.

Lisa was asleep.

“Stay away from there!” I whispered, as though Tikkie could understand. But he recognized the command in my voice. He hung his tail and licked my hand. ”All right. Good dog.” He licked harder and delicately chewed a finger. I let him chew for a while, then absently pulled dangling ice balls off his fur as I read labels on the boxes. One Hundred Frozen Fertilized Red Plymouth Rock Chicken Eggs. One Hundred Frozen Fertilized Black Angus Cattle - Guaranteed Breeders.

I felt sick as I pictured the czar's people growing real animals and slaughtering them for meat, instead of eating mock meat grown from cloned parts of animals. Another crate held the fertilized eggs from a champion Arabian stallion and mare.

I dug for packages of food, digestalls, those tiny pink pills that make it possible to break down and digest alien forms of cellulose. I sat back when I came up empty. Empty spread to a feeling inside me too. I would have given a lot for those pills just then. I shook my head and dug deeper. Boots, sweaters, socks, thick mortex winter gloves!

Cold air blew through vents in the cargo bay walls. I shivered as I checked through them for searchers.

The road was clear, but strange colored lights sailed between lumpy yellow trees. I wished I had the time and the peace of mind to examine them closer. There was a wealth of flora and faunae to study on Halcyon.

I eased off Lisa's boots and replaced her thin socks with a thick woolen pair. They reached above her knees.

“Cushy!” I chuckled, after dressing myself in a heavy black turtleneck sweater, thick socks, gloves, boots, a blue winter jacket, and a wide- brimmed Western hat that would keep off the snow. The turtleneck felt warm over my chin as I stared out the forward window. Real cushy. This merchandise was expensive to import. Was it more lucrative for the czar to keep workers in the mines and import staples instead of producing them here on Halcyon??

Could well be.

The crystal. If Lisa and I were ever in danger of being caught, I'd have to get rid of the crystal I'd taken real fast.

With the bizarre woods behind us, the automated hauler traveled an icy road between towering snow-sheathed trees with ruby-laced trunks as we climbed to mountainous terrain.

The hauler suddenly lurched to a stop. I went to the forward window, my stingler drawn, peered out, and smiled. A low, fat animal, seeming headless and tailless, so covered with snow he looked like a moving carpet, waddled across the road. After he passed, the hauler jerked forward.

A pool of lights appeared in the distance as we topped a ridge. Laurel, sprawled in a valley between the flanks of dark mountains. The hauler turned southeast, probably toward the czar's territory. Lisa was still asleep, with her thumb in her mouth, as the hauler droned to a lower gear and descended a steep hill.

I closed my eyes and let my head drop forward to stretch my tight shoulder muscles. Would be nice to sleep. Nice to avoid the drumbeat of time dragging us closer to whatever lay ahead, with Lisa's fragile life in my unsteady hands. I'd been through some harrowing escapades on Syl' Tyrria, but my responsibility had always been only to myself. It was scary as hell to know Lisa could be killed if I made the wrong decision. Considering the vicissitudes of life as outcasts on this alien world, things could turn tragic no matter my decisions.

I sighed, checked the gratings again, then sat beside her. Small and light as she was, she was a heavy burden. My love for her, the imperative to keep her safe, existed before life itself, I think, as one of the universal laws of life.
Keep the offspring safe!
It kept me more a slave to the silver crote than ever Kor had with his tel-probes and neurochemicals.

I rested my head in my hands.
Damn you
, I sent to the silver being.
Damn you for forcing us to come here! Damn you for leaving us out here on a hostile world. Damn you!

Tikkie felt my anger and slinked away. I think animals are natural telepaths. Either that or canny readers of body language.

I got up and checked the gratings again. Laurel was behind us as we continued southeast. I took out the weighty crystal with both hands. Sparks of light caged me in a soft white aura.

Tikkie came back on unsteady legs as the hauler bounced through ruts. He stretched his neck to sniff the globe, his muzzle silvered by light, sneezed, and went to lie beside Lisa.

Something moved within the crystal's heart. I waited for it to take form. It didn't. But when I closed my eyes the blackness behind my lids was shot with stars. The image became three- dimensional. A cocoon of space wrapped around me like a blanket while I drifted weightless toward a nebulous mass with stars burning through it.

On a hunch I sent:
What do you want from us?

That which you cannot yet give. Continuance
. A sense of despair. His. Like a requiem for time itself.

I tried to disentangle myself from it.
Where the hell were you half an hour ago?

I watched.

I hope you found it entertaining. Did you keep Bjorn's mind locked with my tel suggestions?

To 'lock the mind' is a tel endowment you must develop yourself. My mindlock is too powerful for trifles.

Then he's called down? Are they after us? Are you purposely trying to get us
killed?
I lifted the crystal above my head but hesitated to smash it against a wall. “Damn you!”

You Terrans are all ravagers.

No.
I lowered it to my lap.
No, not all of us.

Lisa moaned in her sleep, tel-linked, I think, to our confrontation.
What do you mean 'continuance'?
I sent.

For now, observe.

Observe what, our deaths? Look, should we go to the Kubraen village? How do we get there? We're moving away from it but I can't take Lisa into the middle of this wilderness on foot! It's just too cold.

A swirl of anguish.

Lisa cried out.

I felt a deep rift, as though the source of life itself was exposed and sucked dry.
Whose pain is that? Yours? Ours. How about just a hint on what this is all about? You want
me to kill the czar, isn't that it? OK. Tell me how
to do it if his keep is impenetrable. And give me your guarantee for our safety. You're never around when –

Develop your tel skills! Observe. Take initiative and survive.

About that last one.

My laws are rigid, tied to the laws of the universal! If I must locate another being for this mission, I will.

Another telepath? Great! But first get us back to Earth. I didn't ask –

But you do! You tax me with your questions
. He was fading away.

What's inside this crystal?

The body of Halcyon.

The planet itself?

Gone.

I rubbed my throat through the turtleneck as that vast loneliness I'd come to associate with our links descended on me again.

Lisa settled into quiet sleep. I leaned back and sighed. Tikkie watched me with his head between paws. I pictured the canal locks, lowered them and locked onto his awareness…

…
The rumbling of a hard floor against my chest and belly, my penis sheath. The smell of wood and wool. Pressure against my claws as I dig in to steady myself. The odor of close humans, not unpleasant. My belly empty. When will the human feed me?

I closed my eyes, but I had to smile, though it was a bit twisted, at the sense of security he felt to be with our pack. My “canine” hearing was acute and I discerned the far-off wail of an airship. Why hadn't I thought of locking onto Tikkie's heightened senses before? The sound of the ship faded toward Laurel. I broke the link when Tikkie whined and shook his head.

We were passing ranches. With the breaking of clouds I could distinguish the dark shapes of horses against the snow fields. Ahead, a few separate lights from outlying structures flecked the night. It all seemed so natural. Not much different than the small Colorado rural area where Ginny and I lived for a while as foster kids.

Sure. Except that here there be tigers, of a human sort.

Time to disembark. The next ranch house was about 200 meters in from the road. Five horses were gathered around bales of hay in a corral near a barn. The overhanging luminescent sign read

Four-Hour Trail Rides.

Four- Hour Hay Rides.

Do It The Natural Way.

There must be saddles in the barn, or a tack room. Better still, an aircar in the garage, though aircars are more easily tracked by satellite than horses with riders.

I studied the house as the hauler rolled slowly through the woods. It was late and the lights were out.

Did they hang people in these-here parts for stealing aircars? I threw the bay door switch and it rattled open. Cold air swirled in. How about for stealing crystals? Oh yeah.

I gently shook Lisa. “C'mon, baby,” I whispered, “we have to go now.”

“Don't want to!” She kicked.

“We've got to, Lis'.” I hit the switch to raise the bay door. The hauler ground to a stop as the door rattled open. I threw our gear into the snow and picked her up. “Hang on,” I said as I jumped. We hit soft snow and I fell. Lisa cried and kicked the ground. “I want Mommy!”

“Yeah, me too,” I mumbled under my breath. Tikkie bunched his legs and leaped into deep snow.

I picked up Lisa and brushed off her clothes. “Maybe we can go for a ride in an aircar.”

She pouted and wiped her eyes. “With a vis?”

“A vis? I don't know. We'll see.” I carried her toward the garage with Tikkie trotting behind.

“I don't want to run away anymore, Daddy,” she said sleepily. Let's go home.”

“That would be nice, Lis'. But right now we've got to be quiet.” I tried sending her soothing thoughts.

“I had a bad dream,” she whined.

“What happened in your dream?”

She just closed her eyes, leaned her head against me and chewed the glove over her thumb.

I pressed her close as I walked and held down the sense of despair that squeezed my throat, afraid she might read it.

The horses whinnied as we approached, but the house was far back from the corral. I stayed in shadows as we moved toward the garage. Tikkie chased a big bay Thoroughbred around the corral. Dumbshit dog! The animal kicked out at him, but missed. Tikkie yelped anyway and darted out of the corral with his tail between his legs.

“Stay here, baby” I put her down. “Daddy'll be right back.”

“I want to come!”

“OK.” I sighed and picked her up again. “Daddy's going to try to get us an aircar. It'll be real cushy.”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Daddy?”

”Yeah, Lis'. What now?”

“I love you better than Uncle Charlie.”

Against all the odds, I felt a warm glow. “I love you too, baby.” I kissed her nose. “Better than anybody.”

We moved through shadows to the garage with Tikkie behind us. I avoided the doors. They might be rigged with an alarm system. Instead, I went to a window, carefully inspected it for laser beams, pressure plates, heat and motion sensors, and anything else that resembled an alarm trigger. Nothing. I opened it and lifted Lisa inside, then climbed in after her.

It was dark, but I saw the silhouette of a small vehicle, a ground-skimming GT hovar. Good enough. “C'mon, Lis'.” I opened the door and we climbed in. But when I tried to start it I realized it was retinal coded. Dammit! “It won't start, baby. We'll have to take a horse instead.”

The barn smelled warm and musky.

A large brown dog trotted up on stiff legs, head low. Tikkie saw him and disappeared somewhere inside an empty stall.

“Nice dog,” I said, my hand on the stingler. He jumped up and humped my leg.

I shoved him off and he growled. “You horny bastard!” I whispered. Then I saw the alarm tag on his collar. It was blinking red. He'd marked my pants with a glow patch on his chest and activated a signal.

“Son of a bitch!”

I should have known. In a small communal colony, there wasn't much thievery, and alarm systems were expensive, like everything else, to import.

It was useless to brush the pants where it glowed. Somewhere in Laurel a signal was alerting the police, who were probably alerting the czar! No matter the planet, there's always a spiker around when you don't need one. But even with air mantas, it would take them at least fifteen minutes to reach the ranch.

I cursed as I opened my pocket knife, dug into the glowing pants material and sliced around it. My underwear showed through, but didn't glow. I kicked the piece of material into a mound of horse manure.

“I guess it's a horsey back ride, Lis'.” I hefted a saddle, blanket and bridle over my shoulder and started for the door.

“Daddy, your pants are ripped. Are they your good pants?”

“Naw.”

“Can we go in the house? I'm cold.”

“We can't stay here anymore, Lis', and I need you to help me look for a better place. Be a brave girl for a little while longer. OK?” I scooped some grain from a bin into a metal bowl as we headed toward the corral.

The house was still dark.

A big horse, a chestnut, shied as I approached, his breath smoking in cold air. He was a young quarter horse and looked strong enough to plow through snow all night.

I offered him the grain, patted his neck and talked to him as I slipped on the bridle and tied him to a post where the barn blocked the view from the house. I saddled him quickly, threw on our supplies and tied it all down.

Tikkie sniffed a chicken coop and started the chickens squawking. Though it went against my principles, it would've been nice to take a few with us. Lisa needed a good meal of protein.

I drew my stingler and aimed at a fat hen. She looked at me and clucked. I holstered the weapon. I just couldn't do it.