NAAN (The Rabanians Book 1) (36 page)

“Gasses, byproducts, deadly molecules, inflammatory process in the lungs,” I mumbled myself as I walked back to the house. “Gasses, byproducts, deadly molecules, inflammatory process in the lungs,” I said out loud, frustrated. I had no doubt at all that in any normal place science would have known about such a critical chain of events long ago.

“Are you sure you want to go?” asked Su-thor when I groaned under the weight of the backpack.

“Is your breathing okay?” I asked in return.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Then let's do it. I promise you will not regret it.” I turned to Moah who stood next to the open door of the car and looked at us in silence. “I have a telephone. We'll call if there is any problem.”

Moah nodded, got into the car, and left.

Earlier that morning I had stood impatiently at the bottom of the stairs, waiting. It was only one day after my disturbing visit to the university. As I waited for Su-thor to come down from her room I hoped she wasn't having second thoughts. I really needed this trip, and hoped she would join me.

Her language had improved since we’d arrived. She was finally starting to learn the language in an orderly manner. The delay brought to mind another time I had waited on her. It had been back when Soey, one of the Doctor's teachers, came to meet her. I was still in pain and I had come down from my room only for this visit. When she finally came down from her room, she sat across from me, completely ignoring Soey. 

I thought she was just excited, but when Soey started to talk she smiled at me and said she’d never thought she would need to learn a new language. Then, for no reason I could guess, she started to cry. Soey had looked at me in confusion. After a great effort, I rose from my chair and took him aside. I told him that she didn't feel well and asked to postpone the whole thing for few days.

Later Su-thor explained to me that she suddenly realized that learning a new language had made her realize that she would never see Mampas again. She was sad and sensitive for days afterward. It hurt me to see her like that, especially since I remembered her so differently; strong, opinionated, and not giving a damn about anything. . I hoped the beautiful scenery of Naan would take her breath away as it had mine, that maybe it would help her forget Mampas and bring back the strong, fearless girl I had met on Mampas.

     “Let me know when it becomes hard,” I said after walking for a while. “We are in no hurry.”

“I think I’m okay now. At first it was hard to take the stairs at the house.  It's easy now.”

We stopped after an hour for a short rest. “This is where it happened,” I said and looked around. “See, all these trees are new.”

“The incident,” she said.

I nodded. “I was lucky. Very lucky.”

We continued to walk and the trees grew taller. Finally we arrived at the bottom of the mountain. 

“The elevation starts here,” I said breathing heavily. “How do you feel?”

“I’m okay," she replied breathing heavily too. "How far do you want to go?”

I looked at the trail leading to the mountaintop. “I want to go at least to the lookout point at the summit. From there you can see the whole town on one side and amazing chain of mountains on the other.”

“I thought we weren’t in any hurry,” she said.

I looked at her. “You’re right,” I said and lowered my backpack. “We can camp here tonight and continue in the morning. It's going to be dark anyhow before we reach the overlook.”

“I don't think I'll ever get used to this,” she said gazing at Mampas rising behind us.

“Get used to which? That Mampas is in the sky or that there's hardly ever a real night here?” I asked.

She pointed up and said in Mampasian, “That is the great desert, that is Ses, and up there is Kolsar.” She passed her hand on her eyes and wiped away her tears.

I repressed a sigh. “Let's stop here,” I said and leaned back on the backpack.

“No it's okay, I want to move on,” she said.

“It doesn't matter. I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“I am enjoying myself a lot,” she said and more tears sprung from her eyes.

“I am sorry you feel like this.”

“I don't know what I feel. I am sorry I hurt my father. I know I caused him a lot of sorrow.”

“Yes,” I mumbled thinking about the explosives he’d planted in my body and the recent visit I’d had from his people. We never spoke about this. I was half dead for few days after they injected the explosives. I never asked her if she knew about what they’d done.

She lifted her head, sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I was his soldier more than I was his daughter. Now I am a disgraced soldier. A traitor. I only hope he will let me be at peace here.”

“You are overreacting,” I said. I wanted to tell her that her father loved her so much that he’d sent people over to warn me what would happen if anything happened to her, but I kept silent.

She looked at me with watering eyes. “There is no mercy for the Desertians. This is what has kept them together for so long. People are killed for small infractions and what I did was far from a small infraction.”

“But you are his daughter,” I said.

“You are naïve if you think that makes it simpler.”

“I mean, he won't hurt you.”

“Expect nothing and plan for the worst. This is a common Desertian saying. I don't expect he will come here to hurt me, or you, but you should be prepared if someone suddenly appears in your room in the middle of the night and tries to stab you.”

He is loaning you your life
. That was what the burnt old man had said. I guessed that meant he could change his mind at any moment.

She started to walk and I hoisted the backpack and followed her.

“Why did you do it?” I asked after a few seconds of silence.

“Why did I save you?” she said to herself as if even she didn’t know.

“You sacrificed everything for me. Why?” With the sword hanging over my head, and over the people I cared about, this question suddenly bothered me.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess I didn't want your blood on my hands.”

“My blood on your hands?”

“I was the one who caught you! Did you forget?”

“If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else,” I said but I wasn't so sure it was true.

She smiled. “You are talking with a rebel from the Desert of Mampas. You cannot soothe me with such words.”

“Still, you are a rebel. After what I did to you, you should hate me, not risk your life and destroy everything that is important to you in order to save me.”

“So why do you think I did it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. That is why I am asking. Maybe you are a very conscientious person.”

She laughed and sniffed.

I laughed with her, but then her face became serious. “I betrayed the Desertians, I betrayed everything I was brought up to believe, so how can you say I am conscientious? What prevents me from betraying you tomorrow?”

“I think this is exactly what defines a conscientious person. You followed your heart instead of following the rules. You ignored other people’s interests and did what you thought was right.”

She shook her head in disagreement. 

“You didn't betray them. You didn't hurt them. All you did was act out of compassion for me and for the poor Naanites. I don't think this is a betrayal.”

We continued walking for a few more minutes.

“Let's stop here,” I said. “We'll set up the tent and I’ll prepare a tasty dinner.”

“Maybe I don't believe in their cause anymore,” she suddenly said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I did what I did, not because of my conscience, but because I don't believe anymore in what they are doing.”

I opened the backpack and started unloading it, thinking about her words. She was silent, but from time to time she gazed at the sky. She didn't say anything.

“Was that your house? The place where I was in the desert?” I asked hoping to change the subject.

“You mean the base?” she said with a smile.

“Why is that funny?”

“It's one of our bases. I know the place as well as I know myself.”

“You lived there?”

“You could say that. I spent most of my childhood there. Later I moved between bases until I was qualified to leave for the city.”

“So you didn't have a real home,” I said.

She scowled, “The desert is the home of the rebels.”

“I thought that was only temporary.”

“What was temporary became permanent for all eternity.”

I nodded. Another mine. “I understand there are hundreds of such bases in the desert.”

“Yes.”

“Why did Mampas ever agree to this?”

“It started with acceptance, some one hundred or two hundred years ago, GST.  They thought they would split Mampas. The desert for the rebels and the rest for the Occupiers.”

“And you say I am naïve,” I said. “The whole idea is ridiculous. It's like dividing a fruit between the flesh and the peel.”

“The flesh and the peel,” she mumbled. “I suppose that is how the rebels feel today, but you need to understand their position some two hundred years ago if you want to know what they were thinking back then.”

“I guess they thought things would change in time," I said. "Maybe they thought they could take what they could get and fight for the rest later.”

“Maybe, but they’ve been fighting ever since, and nothing has changed.”

I placed Moah’s soup on a small gas stove and we lapsed into silence again. It seemed as if every time we spoke it only brought us back to the same subject. 

“You know, I never asked you about your mother,” I said.

She grinned. “Maybe it's because I never had one. She was killed when I was little. I was told she had an accident.  She crashed in the desert leaving no trace.”

I shook my head and sighed. “I am sorry,” I said. “And I am also sorry that I cannot find any lighter subjects for discussion.”

“Her name was Ma-thor. It was long ago and I don't know much about her.”

“You said you were told she had an accident?” I asked but she didn't respond. “It sounds as if you don't believe that is what really happened.”

“I don't know. I was very little.”

“You think something else happened?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe it was an accident, maybe something else. Sometimes “accident” is a code for something that went wrong.”

The soup boiled after few moments. I handed her a cup. She looked at it and said, “All of your questions revolve around me as if you don’t have life.  What about your parents?”

I sat next to her. “My father left before I was born and my mother died a little while after.”

The words came out of my mouth fast and I thought about the symmetry in the sentence. All of the bad things that had happened in my family revolved around my birth. I suddenly remembered the things Daio said the day Su-thor and I landed here.
We cannot thank you enough
.  

“So you also didn't know your mother,” she said.

I took a sip of the soup. “We sure had screwed up childhoods,” I said and she laughed, but the tears came back to her eyes soon enough.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Life is bad,” she said her voice trembling.

“Life is not bad. How could it be with such great soup?” I said and was relieved to see the smile returning to her face.

“Did you notice we are speaking Mampasian?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes,” she repeated in Naanite. “It's hard for me to express myself in a foreign language when I feel bad.”

I nodded and wondered what we could talk about without making her feel bad all over again. “I think you will be a great mother,” I said at last.

She gave me a funny look. “I am not so sure,” she said.

“And I am sure that your mother and my mother were both good, and that they did their best to make sure that we would have good lives.”