Alliance (21 page)

I glance up in the direction that the
light is shining from and see a woman standing on a rise above us,
although the light is shining so brightly that even I cannot make
out who she is exactly. Her voice sounds familiar, although I do
not place it immediately.

“
Come here!” says the
woman, whose voice I now recognize as Palos's. “Quickly, before
they recover!”

I do not hesitate to listen to her calls.
I activate my boosters and go flying away from Kalcan and the
dwarves, heading directly toward Palos. She dims her light so I can
see her, but it is still bright enough that Kalcan and his minions
are incapable of following me.

I land next to her with no problem, and as
soon as I do, she shuts off the light glowing from her ring. With
that light gone, I can now see her much better than before.

Palos looks similar to how I remember
seeing her last, although her pointed nose appears to have been
broken and hastily repaired with skyras magic and her robes have
been slashed and cut in several places. She looks like she has been
through a fight, which makes me wonder if she fought against
Reunification at the Foundation's base. Scanners indicate that her
body temperature is low, no doubt due to the coldness of the
mountains, although her robes appear thicker than usual, which
probably help keep her warm.

“
Palos?” I say. “It has
been a while since I last saw you. You look terrible.”

She shakes her head. “It doth not matter,
machine. I will explain to ye what happened later. For now, we
must—”

I hear something large flying through the
air toward us. Looking over my shoulder, I see Kalcan flying up at
us, apparently having fully recovered from the blinding light. He
is flying at us so fast that I can barely follow his movement,
although I do notice his dwarves following him from a distance.

Before I can fire my finger lightning
bolts at him, Palos grabs my arm and pulls. The next instant,
Kalcan, his dwarves, and the pit vanish, replaced instead by an
empty, small cave—not the arctic vampire's cave from before—which
has barely enough room for the two of us.

As soon as we materialize in the cave, I
pull my arm out of Palos's hand and step away from her. The
teleportation makes my optics blink rapidly for a moment before my
focus returns, which is odd because I did not suffer from any ill
effects from Delanian teleportation earlier. Perhaps Palos did not
do it correctly this time.

Shaking my head, I look and see Palos sit
down on the cave floor, panting and sweating. She looks tired and
hungry; indeed, a quick scan of her body shows me that she has not
eaten in some time. Her skyras energy level appears unusually low
as well, which makes me wonder how she managed not only to create
that blinding light, but also to teleport us away from the pit. She
must be much stronger than she appears.

“
Thank you for rescuing
me, Palos,” I say as I dust some snow off my shoulder that I did
not notice before. “You were just in time.”

Palos nods, her chest heaving up and down
as she wipes sweat off her brow. “Ye … are welcome, J997. I
consider ye an ally, right now the only ally destiny has chosen to
bless me with. 'Tis the only good blessing I seem to have right
now.”

I look around the cave as she speaks. As I
noted before, it is a small cave, with nowhere as much room as the
arctic vampire's cave. Its temperature is low, although not
freezing low, which is due to the fire burning nearby. It is not a
large fire by any means, but due to the size of the cave, it does
not need to be in order to heat this place well.

I see no traces or hints of vampiric
occupation, which is good because the last thing I need right now
is to anger another arctic vampire. Having seen the power that
Kalcan and that other arctic vampire wield, I think I can live the
rest of my life without getting into a fight with another.

Looking down at Palos, I say, “Palos, what
happened to you? What happened to the Foundation? How did you know
where to find me?”

“
To answer your last
question, J997, I did not know where ye might be,” says Palos,
shaking her head. “When the Head told me to go and get ye from the
meeting room to ensure ye would survive in the event that the base
fell, I discovered ye had gone missing. 'Twas a terrible thing that
drained my hope from me and made me feel awful. Finding you by that
pit was as much of a stroke of luck as winning a game of
roll.”

“
It was indeed lucky for
me that you chose to go there,” I say. “Anyway, Kalcan told me that
the Foundation lost the battle against Reunification earlier. Is
that true?”

Palos sinks her face into her hands. “It
is, as much as I may wish it wasn't. Reunification's attack on our
base was so sudden that we barely had time to rally those agents
who were not wounded or dead from the previous assault. We were
utterly crushed.”

“
I am sorry to hear
that,” I say. “How many agents survived?”

“
I know not,” says
Palos, without raising her face out of her hands. “When it became
clear as a summer sky that the Foundation was lost, I ran. I know
not even where the Head is, though to be honest, I wish not to know
that, for she will be exceedingly angry with me for my desertion if
she ever finds me again.”

Palos sounds completely broken, although
her attitude does not extend to me, seeing as I am a robot. Still,
I understand that broken attitudes like hers can affect the
effectiveness of organics in stressful situations, so I should
probably find a way to cheer her up soon.

First, however, I need more information,
so I ask, “After Reunification's assault on the Foundation's
headquarters, what did you do then?”

“
I hid in this cave,”
says Palos, gesturing at the small cave in which we stood. “'Twas a
terrible blizzard blowing, you see, and I needed some place out of
the wind and snow to hide. I chose this because it is well-hidden
and hard to find if ye know not where it already is.”

“
After that?” I
say.

“
After that, I slept for
hours,” says Palos, still not raising her face to look at me. “I
was so distraught that it was the only thing I knew to do. When I
awoke, I was tired and hungry, but I did not dare leave my cave,
lest Reunification's agents were searching for me
nearby.”

“
But you did leave
eventually,” I say. “After all, you came and helped me, did you
not?”

Palos looks up at me. Tears are running
down her pale face, which makes her look even more pathetic than
before. “That I did, that I did. I went out because I was so
overcome with guilt over my desertion that I wanted to redeem mine
self. And I decided to do that by destroying Reunification's pit,
the one where I saved ye.”

I sit down in order to be eye level with
Palos. Humans generally do not like speaking with beings above
them, so I think I can make her feel more comfortable if we are on
the same level.

“
Did you Foundation
agents know about the pit the entire time?” I ask.

“
Yes,” says Palos,
nodding. “We have been aware of it for some time now. We set up our
own Delanian base here because we suspected that Reunification
would come to this place in search of what they are looking for,
although they somehow managed to sneak by without us noticing until
they had already dug their pit as deeply as they already
have.”

“
I do not understand how
they managed to move in all of that heavy and loud construction
equipment without you Foundation agents noticing,” I say. “To me,
that does not speak well of your observation methods.”

“
The mountains are a big
place and Reunification used some kind of magic to hide from us,
which we only managed to notice when the Head arrived after her
stay at the Xeeonite base,” says Palos. She punches the floor of
the cave. “But it doth not matter much anymore. They are getting
closer and closer to achieving that which they have been working
toward for years. And we let them do it.”

“
You thought you could
destroy it on your own,” I say. “You thought that would redeem you
for your desertion.”

“
Yes,” says Palos. She
rubs the tears out of her eyes. “Indeed. Although, in truth, I do
not really think I can do it by myself. Likely I would have been
torn to shreds by Kalcan or killed by his dwarves if I attempted to
stop them, which is the fate I deserve for my cowardly
ways.”

She lowers her face into her hands again
and begins sobbing loudly. I do not want her to sob like this
because it makes her far less effective in helping me figure out
what to do next. I should figure out a way to cheer her up.

So, consulting my electronic edition of
Secrets of Humor
, I rest one of my hands on her shoulder and
say, “Palos, do you know what you call a Jikorian merchant who is
willing to sell his own family for profit?”

Palos stops sobbing and looks up at me
with a perplexed expression. With her nose sniffling, she says, “To
me, that sounds like a monster corrupted by greed itself.”

“
No,” I say, shaking my
head. “A Jikorian merchant who is willing to sell his own family
for profit is called a father of profit. Get it?”

Palos stares at me with a lack of
understanding in her eyes. “No, I do not. Is that supposed to be
some sort of joke?”

“
Yes,” I say. “Do you
not find it amusing?”

Palos shakes her head. “No, I do not. I
see nothing amusing in that joke.”

“
Hmm,” I say. “Maybe it
is because you are a Delanian and therefore do not understand
Xeeonite humor. The original joke was in the Jikorian language,
after all, so it was probably some kind of untranslatable pun that
made it funny. Or maybe I just need to work on my
delivery.”

Palos continues to stare at me, only now,
she seems more worried for my sanity than anything. It is the same
look that all of the Delanians have given me every time I tell a
joke. They must not be used to a robot trying to be humorous, which
makes sense, seeing as there are very few robots on Dela at
all.

“
Anyway,” I continue, in
an attempt to break the ice, “let's get back to the topic of
Reunification. So you say that the Foundation's Delanian branch has
been overrun and destroyed by Reunification, yes?”

“
Yes,” says Palos. She
sniffles again. “I know not how many of my fellow agents survived
the slaughter, but I guess few did. However many may have perished,
I must still avenge their deaths by destroying Reunification's pit
and stopping them from achieving their plans.”

“
I see,” I say. “Well,
can you tell me what Reunification is attempting to accomplish? So
far, you Foundation agents have kept it a secret from me by saying
that I don't need to know it.”

Palos looks away from me. “I still doth
not wish to tell ye, but since it seems like ye and I are the only
two who can stand against Reunification now, then I suppose it is
safe for me to tell ye.”

She looks at me again and wipes the tears
from her eyes. “Reunification wishes to reunite Dela and Xeeo as
one world. By any means necessary.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Reunite? That
does not make any sense. Dela and Xeeo have never been one world.
While the two worlds do share some similarities, they have always
been distinct planets with their own histories and courses of
evolution. They did not become connected until Simultaneous
Connection happened over a century ago.”

“
Nay,” says Palos. “That
is false. A long time ago—well before you or I were even thought
of—Dela and Xeeo were once one world. Then, after some traumatic
cataclysm, the one world became two, and thus they have been ever
since.”

“
Do you have any proof
of that claim?” I ask. “Because I see none.”

“
Ye want proof?” says
Palos. “Have ye never wondered why it is that someone can travel
from Dela to Xeeo and survive, or vice versa? Have ye never thought
it strange that skyras exists in both worlds and can be manipulated
by inhabitants of both worlds? Has it not occurred to ye to
consider how odd it is that humans on both worlds are able to
procreate with each other, even despite the years of separation
betwixt our worlds?”

I think about that for a moment. The
proofs she lists off are questions that Xeeonite scientists and
Delanian wizards and witches have been debating for years, among
other similar questions. Yet I still do not believe that Dela and
Xeeo were once one; after all, if they were at one pointed
separated, how did anyone living on those worlds at the same
survive what must have been an extremely cataclysmic event? It
makes no sense.

“
And now Reunification
wishes to reunite the worlds again,” says Palos. She places her
hands together. “The Foundation has been fighting them for years.
We have fought at a stalemate for a long time, yet it seems like
all of our hard work has become for naught, now that the Foundation
is but a tiny shadow of its former self.”

“
Assume I believe you,”
I say. “Assume I believe that, at some point in the past, Dela and
Xeeo were one world. Why should I help you keep them
separate?”

“
Machine, ye are the
dullest robot I have ever had the displeasure of meeting,” says
Palos with a sigh. “Think about it with your mechanical brain. Both
Dela and Xeeo have been separated for thousands of years; they have
developed into their own distinctive, incompatible geographies. By
reuniting them, Reunification risks killing billions of people and
utterly destroying any chance for life on the new world they wish
to create, or recreate, as is the situation.”