Chosen (HMCS Borealis Book 2) (28 page)

Heather squeezed his hand, looking at him from under the brim of her battered hat.
 
She wore similar old clothes, ill-fitting enough to hide her shape and dirty enough to blend in.

Elan smiled at her, but realised she couldn't see his face, so he gave a brief nod.
 
She grinned momentarily, but kept her head down.

Heather was slowing down.
 
He could feel it in her hand, in the way he had to tighten his grip, to tug at her to keep her moving forward.
 
They'd need to stop somewhere to eat.
 
Find a safe place to—

Elinth
.
 
He knew the face, saw it staring out at him from the back of a junk peddler's stall.
 
The smooth, white marble face of Elinth, one of the five Palani Divines.
 
Mistress of Sorrows, of night and the underworld.
 
How fitting, he thought, that a statue of her face would be here.
 
Before he realised it, he had led Heather through the crowded, narrow street to the vendor.
 
People shoved by them as they stopped next to the scrap-metal counter.
 
Behind it, a bald-headed human man was hunched over, twirling his fork in a bowl of noodles.
 
He glanced up at Elan and Heather.
 
"Hey," he said, going back to his noodles.

Elan tried to disguise the harmonics in his voice, leaving him speaking with a grating croak.
 
"That statue," he said, pointing to the sculpted face of Elinth.
 
"You have people bringing things from Palani space?"

The man took a look at the statue, then at Elan.
 
There was suspicion in his narrowed eyes.
 
"Yeah."

"So would you know a ship headed that way?"

Behind the counter, the bald-headed man kept watching Elan, while quietly lifting a forkful of noodles to his mouth.
 
"Nah," he said as he began to chew.
 
He glanced back at the statue on the back wall, then returned his attention to the bowl.

The stall was at a narrow part of the alleyway, and passersby had to slow and thread through each other to move along.
 
A burly woman in a torn jacket bumped into Elan, making him take a step back.
 
The same woman then bumped into Heather, causing her to lose her grip on Elan's hand and spin around, falling hard against the wall.
 
Elan helped her back to her feet, but she was moving slowly.

Underneath the cloth covering his face, Elan bit his lip, trying to avoid the sensation of fear lurking in his mind.
 
With fear comes panic, and with panic comes disaster.
 
All he could see was an endless crowd of dirty, nameless faces:
 
travellers in a world he knew nothing about.  It was part of a rough, brutish, self-absorbed culture he hadn't seen before.
 
Nothing at all like the gentle, friendly humans he had encountered back on Earth.
 
Was this the true face of humanity?
 
Were the Pentarch right about humans after all?

He glanced again at the stall, at the vendor focused on his bowl, at the looted statue of Elinth, for sale in a dirty shop on a battered station.
 
A station forgotten by the same humanity that had once, in hope and pride, built it at the star nearest to home.

Not letting go of Heather's arm, he reached into his jacket pocket with his other hand.
 
Pulling out his credit chip, he thumbed at the display until the amount matched the listed price for the statue on the wall.
 
He leaned forward and tapped the credit chip against the vendor's datapad; the two chirped in unison.

That made the bald human take notice.
 
He gently put down his bowl, and turned in his seat to face him.

"How about now?" asked Elan.
 
A hint of his harmonics had returned to his voice, and he coughed to suppress it.
 
"Know of any ship headed to Palani space?"

"The Greenhouse," said the man.
 
"Talk to Beatty."

"Greenhouse?"

The vendor nodded, jerking a thumb in the direction they were already headed.
 
"Keep going that way.
 
Fifty metres or so, go two decks up."

"Is there a doctor up there?"

"Clinic," the man said, watching Heather swaying on her feet.
 
"Same deck as the Greenhouse.
 
Can't miss it."

"Thank you," said Elan.

"Yeah," replied the bald man, turning back away from Elan.
 
He reached down and picked up his bowl and fork.

Elan took Heather by the hand, pulling her behind him.
 
He kept his body in front of hers, pushing with his other hand to nudge people from their path.
 
Under their feet, the rusted decking was slick with water, oil, and worse.
 
Rusty water dripped on him, running down his jacket and dropping to the floor, where rivulets disappeared through gaps in the plating.

Hawkers shouted to make themselves heard over the sounds of arguments, muffled conversations, and the occasional sharp peal of laughter.
 
Behind the sounds of people was the constant mechanical din: rattling fans, hammering pumps and groaning plates.

The stairwell was even more congested, packed solid with a mass of people trying to go up or down.
 
Shoving, swearing bodies pushed their way through, against the flow of traffic.
 
The air was thick with the stink of unwashed bodies, urine, and smoke.
 
Elan adjusted the cloth over his mouth, making sure he could breathe through it.
 
Through his goggles he could only see the back of the man in front of him, slowly taking one step at a time up the stairs.
 
Heather had moved close behind him, her hands heavily on his shoulders, and he could hear her laboured breathing.
 
He didn't know how she kept moving, the way she seemed so exhausted.
 
They needed to rest, give her a chance to recover her strength.
 
The thought kept haunting him, that he shouldn't have dragged her away from her homeworld, that anything that happened to her would be his fault.
 
He just had to keep climbing one step at a time.
 
Everything would work out.
 

After many physically punishing moments in the stairwell, Elan saw a gap and forged ahead, pulling Heather behind him, to surface into the relative openness of the deck.
 
High on the wall, over the heads of people shoving by, the faded paint of an arrow pointed along the corridor.
 
'Clinic', it said, in English and two other human languages.

It was less crowded here, with fewer makeshift stalls and buildings in the passageway.
 
Where rows of bright lights once shone, jury-rigged lamps offered only dim cones of illumination.
 
Red lines on the wall, in the same faded paint from centuries past, showed the way to the clinic entrance.
 
The door — once probably an airlock — was now gone, its yawning hatchway cut away flush with the floor.

Stepping inside, the noises and smells of the hallway were abruptly replaced by the cloying scent of disinfectant.
 
The outer wall of the room was lined with worn steel benches, where four slumped figures sat motionless, their eyes studying Elan as he guided Heather toward the counter.
 
A round, short-haired woman sat behind it, impassively watching their approach.

"My friend," said Elan, gesturing to Heather, "she needs to see a doctor."

"Have a seat.
 
You'll be called."

Elan turned around and looked again at the people sitting at the edges of the room.
 
Two of them had fallen asleep.
 
One of them had dried blood spattered and smeared on her shirt, as if she'd coughed it up and wiped it on a sleeve.
 
How could they do this to each other?
 
Was this the price of overpopulation, of a runaway birth rate?
 
The devaluing of individual health, of individual lives?
 
He shook his head, and turned back to the woman at the counter.
 
Elan was searching for something on the counter, and saw it right away:
 
a datapad sat near his elbow, its display showing a financial-transaction interface.

He locked eyes with the woman, whose emotionless gaze went to his hand as he produced his credit chip.
 
It was still set to the amount he'd given to the statue vendor, and he tapped it against the datapad on the counter.
 
The round woman glanced at the chirping display, and her face broke into a thin, insincere smile.
 
"Room one, please.
 
First door on the left."

*
   
*
   
*

The examination room was an impersonal, sterile, stainless steel cube.
 
It reeked of strong antiseptics and chlorine bleach.
 
Glaring white lights shone down on the cold steel table, the reflection glinting off the green tile walls.

"Why am I so tired?" asked Heather.
 
She sat on the edge of the table, her legs dangling over the side.
 
Leaning forward, she rested her hands on her knees, staring at the floor.
 
"And why is it so damned hot in here?"

Elan took her hat from her head, dropping it on the table next to her.
 
Blonde waves tumbled out, oily with sweat.
 
"I don't know," he said, though he wished he did.
 
He knew next to nothing about human biology; how they survived at such high body temperatures was still a mystery to him.

Heather lifted her head to stare at him.
 
"Are you going to keep that getup?
 
Aren't you hot?"

Elan pushed the goggles up onto his forehead but left the face-covering cloth in place.
 
"My coldsuit is still working," he said.
 
"Mostly.
 
Maybe I should lend it to you?"

She managed a thin smile.
 
"I'd go and stretch it all out of shape.
 
Give it bumps in strange places.
 
It'd never fit right again."
 
Puckering her lips, she exhaled forcefully.
 
"I must have an infection or something."

He smiled in return, trying to think of something to say.
 
Here he was, the engineered epitome of Palani wisdom and insight, without a clue what to do.
 
He began to unwrap the bandages that covered his hands, revealing the chalk-white skin underneath.

"What are you doing?" asked Heather.
 
"Someone could come in."

"They could," he replied, dropping the bandage cloth on the table.
 
He placed his palms on the sides of Heather's neck, under her ears, wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck.
 
Her skin was hot to the touch.

She let out a moan.
 
"Oh god, yes.
 
You're so cold.
 
Thank you."

Elan nodded.
 
It wasn't much, but if it gave her some comfort, it was easily done.
 
He wished he could do more.

After a moment, she lifted her head up a little.
 
"So, tell me… your trip to Earth.
 
Was it worth it?
 
What did you learn?"

"Worth it?" he blurted.
 
Judging by the grin that crept onto her face, his expression must have given away his thoughts.
 
"By the Divines, Heather.
 
Yes.
 
Very much worth it."

"You're cute," she said.
 
"So, what have you learned?"

He thought about that for a moment.
 
He hadn't had time for a calm analysis of the pros and cons, assessment and review.
 
He just went with what came to mind, which struck him as a very human thing to do.
 
"Well, humans have come a long way in the past millennium.
 
What the Pentarch told me — about humanity's brutality and thuggishness — may once have been true, but not now.
 
Not as much."
 
He shrugged, noticing how the tiled reflections mimicked his movements.
 
"There's a gap between rich and poor.
 
The rich don't have the same stresses in their lives as the poor do.
 
Life is different for people who are focused on their own survival, their own personal needs.
 
It's the gap that's the problem," he said.
 
"Not so different from anywhere else, I guess."

Heather reached up to her neck, and put her hands on top of his.
 
"Tell me," she said, her voice calm and quiet.
 
"Tell me why you studied our religions so much.
 
You have something to do with Palani religion, don't you?"

He should have told her ages ago.
 
It had never seemed like the right time; he'd always thought there would be a better moment.
 
It was wrong of him not to have told her.
 
"Yes," he said simply.
 
"I was created as a prophet.
 
A figurehead for the Palani religion.
 
I was—"

"Created?"
 
Heather's eyes were wide open, searching his.

"Yes.
 
Created.
 
In a laboratory, by geneticists.
 
They spliced together DNA from Palani prophets of old."
 
Sometimes he felt ashamed of the secret of his 'birth'.
 
But he wasn't ashamed to tell this human woman whose hands were on his.
 
"I told you I never met my parents.
 
I didn't.
 
All fifty-three of my 'parents' died a thousand or more years ago."