Eye on Orion (21 page)

“Aaaahhh!” Shander hit the steering wheel with his fist. “I am extremely tired of waiting.” He turned and scowled at me. I tried my best to look pitiful. I didn't think I'd need to act too much. I was sure I looked awful.

“So what information did the scientists give you when you came here? How did you know where to find me?” I wanted to keep him talking. I had to give myself more time to come up with a plan.

“I went to your father, gave him some Tamire, and forced him to tell me his plans for bringing you home. He told me about the spare medallions with only a little hesitation. He informed me about Ramal and how to locate him, how to Travel here, and how to get back.”

“What did you do to Ramal?”

“He didn't give me a chance to say anything. He recognized me and attempted to resist. I put an end to it rather quickly. Unfortunately I wasn't able to use any of this on him.” He swirled the liquid in the bottle around. “When he first saw me, he resisted strongly. By the time I subdued him, he was beyond the power of suggestion. I looked through his paperwork and took his portable phone and medallion with me. I did a bit of research, but it wasn't too hard with all the information you can get through computers here.”

“So you left him dead?” I asked, feeling tears form, even though I didn't know Ramal at all.

“I'm sure it didn't take him long to expire. Don't you think it's better for him to die here trying to protect you, than go home and face a trial when I am in power? This way is much more humane.”

“Being beaten to death is humane? You don't deserve to be in power. Rommader will be destroyed under your rule.”

“Not destroyed.” He shook his head. “Improved.”

“You deceive yourself. Someday, someone will stop you.”

“Not likely. I have a talent to get people to do what I want and make them think it is what they want as well. I'll be unstoppable once I get enough people behind me.” He smiled, and his eyes glinted wickedly.

“So why do you need me? Why haven't you taken over?”

“It will be much smoother to do it following the law of the land. If I took over by force, rebels would want to take it back from me. If it's done under the law, I won't have to worry about people who thought I did it wrong. Tweaking the law is easier than overthrowing it completely.

“Besides, my talent doesn't work on large populations all at once, and there are a few people who aren't as susceptible to my charms. Those who have strong wills don't seem to be affected by it. As you, yourself, are proof.” He looked me over skeptically. “Plus, who wouldn't want a woman such as yourself as their queen?”

“Yuck. You are a creepy old man.”

Shander chuckled. “It seems your spirit has returned. I believe it is time to try again.”

I looked at the clock. It was almost eight thirty. I didn't feel nauseated right now so I doubted I'd be able to get out of trying the same way as before, but I had to stall somehow.

“I won't go with you,” I protested again.

“You will.”

He pulled the leather chord off his neck and reached into the back seat. I slapped his hands as he put it around my neck, but he just chuckled. I contemplated grabbing the bottle of Tamire out of the breast pocket where he'd slipped it, but thought it might be better to try that outside.

“Now don't give me any more trouble, and we can have a much more pleasant experience when we get back home. If you cause me difficulty here, I will cause you much more difficulty there. If you want your father to retain whatever health he has, then don't force my hand.”

“Fine!” I huffed.

He got out of the front seat and opened my door. The heat shocked me after the cold air conditioning of the car. I moved slowly because my head still felt funny, but my stomach was undeniably better. The heat on my bare feet was excruciating. I stepped back, trying to put my feet in the sliver of shade the car cast. It amazed me how the temperature could get this hot here in the summer, even with the white salt crust reflecting the heat. Much hotter than in town a few hours away.

I fell against the door as I stood there pretending to have difficulty with my muscles.

“Why you are reacting so badly to the Tamire? No one has ever done this before.”

“Maybe it works differently here on Earth,” I suggested.

“That could be it,” he agreed.

“I need more time to recover. I feel extra dizzy.” I held my head with one hand and placed the other hand on my stomach, trying to make him think I still felt sick.

I closed my eyes and searched for Jai again. When I found him I concentrated and stayed focused on him for as long as I could. It felt like holding onto a slippery rope as someone pulled it from me. My headache increased, and I complained about it too.

“We must Travel soon.” He looked up into the empty sky. “I've been gone too long.”

“I can't remember exactly how to get there,” I mumbled.

“You only have to remember where you came from,” he sighed.

“But my head is hurting too much, I can't concentrate on anything. I need to sit down.” I sat back in the car and put my head between my knees. I looked at the salty ground below me. Smooth, bubbled-up bumps reminded me of reptile skin, except where it was broken in places by my footprints.

“This waiting is very annoying,” he snapped.

“Well then, you shouldn't have drugged me, now should you?” I snapped back.

“Would you have preferred a more
humane
treatment?” he asked.

I looked up at him. He had one eyebrow raised.

“No.” I put my head between my knees again, muffling my words. “I think the heat is making it worse,” I lied.

“Then get back inside the car and I'll turn on the air conditioning again.”

“We should wait until dark when it is cooler out there before we try this again,” I suggested.

He grunted as he closed his door and started the car.

“You know, I'm beginning to think it would have been much easier to just overdose your father on the drug I've been giving him.”

“You have been drugging him?” I asked.

“Yes,” he nodded casually. “I can't believe how well he's held on. It has been an unfortunate thing for me with the Healers. They have been able to help him fight the effects of the poison. They can't cure him completely because they don't know what exactly is wrong with him. This poison is undetectable, but they are able to help just enough that he is holding on.

“If he would die and get it over with, then the people would be happy to have me be the ruler while they waited for you to return. Then I could have either let you stay here forever because no one would send for you, or I could have sent someone to dispose of you. I'd be the ruler, since there would be no one as qualified as I am to take over.”

“You will pay for this. One way or another, I will make you pay for what you are doing to everyone on Rommader,” I said quietly, but he only chuckled softly and leaned his head against the headrest to wait.

I lay down on the back seat, finding it much more comfortable now that I could use my arms as a pillow. I closed my eyes and started imagining ways that someone would rescue me.

It was always Jai who came to save me. Each new idea was more unlikely than the previous one, but it did calm me down as I waited for the inevitable.

Traveling

When dark finally came, Shander opened his door to test the temperature. It was cooler, so he made me try it again.

I sat up slowly, aware the dizziness was lessening. I still tried to act as unwell as possible, but he noticed the difference.

“It looks like you are feeling better now. You are not as pale as before.”

“I still have a terrible headache.” It was true. I did have a headache from trying to concentrate on finding Jai. He kept slipping away from me.

“I'm sure you'll be able to concentrate long enough to focus your attention on the medallion and remember your way back home.”

“Are you sure I'll be able to do it? Who knows where I'll end up? You will have yourself to blame because of your impatience.”

“I could do this without you,” he threatened.

“Of course you could,” I shrugged. “But like you said, doing it with me will make it easier on you.”

He threw his arms in the air, huffed and took a few steps away from me.

I reveled in the fact I irritated him. I felt so angry at him for what he'd done to me, not to mention Amira, her father, their planet, and, of course, Jai. I wanted to give him as much grief as I could.

“Why don't you walk around a little to see if the fresh air will clear your head? Maybe you'll be able to burn off the remaining effects of the Tamire.”

“Fine,” I mumbled.

I slowly started moving around. After a minute or so, I lay down on the still warm ground, and looked up into the darkening sky.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I'm resting. I'm too dizzy to keep walking. Lying down helps me clear my head.”

I could see a few constellations already. I looked up and found the big dipper and the pole star. That helped me calm down and center myself. I would Travel back to my house, but I was still concerned with what he would do when he got back to Rommader.

I didn't know how to stop him. I thought about trying to get the bottle of Tamire out of his pocket and spraying him. If it made him pass out, then I could drive back home and get the police. If it only made him susceptible to my suggestions I'd tell him to Travel to the sun or some uninhabitable planet he could die on.

But just when I'd decided to do that, I noticed the bottle was no longer in his shirt pocket. I could see a bulge in his pants pocket.
Great, there goes that idea
.

As I stared at the sky, an idea began to sprout. I hoped it would work.

“Since my head hurts, I haven't been able to figure out exactly what to do to get back home.”

“You just remember the journey backward.”

“But what about taking into account the rotations of the planet and the movement it has made in its journey around the sun? It is in a different location than when we got here. We have to alter our return to account for that,” I explained.

“What?” He stepped forward and frowned at me as I lay on the ground.

“They told us to make sure we calculated the return a little differently depending on the length of our time here.”

“Your father never said anything about it to me.”

“Well, how much do you trust someone you torture and trick into giving you the information you want? Maybe he left that part out so you wouldn't be able to…” I clamped my mouth shut, pretending I'd said more than I'd meant to.

“So what kind of calculations do we need to make?”

He'd taken the bait. I tried not to let my excitement show.

“Well, they told me on Earth we would rotate at a speed of a little more than a thousand miles an hour going around each day. We move through space on our way around the sun at more than sixty-six thousand miles per hour. It takes the earth three-hundred, sixty-five days to travel around its sun.” I faked a headache again and rubbed my temples while I tried to figure where to go with this.

“Do you remember the numbers in relation to our planet?”

“No. I wasn't told I would need to know them. Think and I'm sure you'll remember.”

I closed my eyes and frantically searched my mind for something plausible. I tried to remember if Jai had ever mentioned their facts. Nothing came, so I prayed my next words wouldn't make him suspicious. “On Rommader we rotate at only nine hundred miles an hour because the circumference of the planet is less than Earth's. We also go a little slower because it takes us less time to travel around our sun. Our year is only three hundred, sixty-one days. Does that sound right?”

“It could be.” He nodded.

“I think it is, so we have to subtract the difference in the days it takes each of our planets to travel around their suns, and multiply it by the difference of the speed of our planet rotations multiplied by the number of days we've been here.”

He looked at me a bit skeptically. Had I gone too far?

“Do you have a paper we could figure this out on?” I asked.

He walked back to the car and grabbed something out of the front seat. He used the glow of Ramal's cell phone to light the paper for me.

I did the figures and explained as I did it.

“Here, look at this. We subtract three-sixty-one from three-sixty-five and get four days difference. Then we subtract nine-hundred miles per hour from one-thousand miles per hour and get one hundred.”

“But you said Earth moved a bit more than one-thousand miles per hour.”

Thinking quickly, I said, “It doesn't have to be exact, because once we get near our planet, we'll feel its pull and be able to get home.” He seemed to buy it, so I continued, “Then we multiply that by the four we had earlier. Getting four hundred. Then we multiply that by how many hours we've been here.”

I stopped to think of how long Jai and Amira could have been here. I knew it was more than three months. “I think I've been here for one-hundred, thirty-seven days. One hundred, thirty-seven days multiplied by twenty-four hours a day gives us... three thousand, two hundred, eighty-eight hours. So four hundred multiplied by three thousand, two hundred, eighty-eight is…” It took a little time to do the math, but I finally came up with an answer.

“So we adjust our location by one million, three hundred, fifteen thousand, two hundred miles,” I said triumphantly.

“But I've only been here for three days,” he reminded me.

“Then you multiply three by twenty-four by four hundred, getting twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred miles,” I answered after I'd figured it out on the paper.

“Well, I don't think we need to worry about your calculation. The new medallion has no memory of a place Traveled from. It hasn't been used in my Travel here. I will use it to return home since I remember it well. You will use my other medallion. It will be able to follow where I came from. You won't have to adjust your location. I'll hold onto you, and we'll return to my location.”