The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) (16 page)

The shuttle landed without a sound.  I hadn't seen one in action and was impressed.  It looked boxy like the main cube ship and was designed for carrying cargo.  You could fit a couple of elephants in it.  Not surprising since the intended purpose was to collect species from planets for Shaval.  He probably had a massive zoo right next to his pimped-out mansion.

An unseen light source flooded the area around the ship.  The side hatch slid silently open.  Ciirr poked out a tentative tentacle and peered around the edge.  He trumpeted a sound.

I tapped into Nick. 
He just said, 'Hello, human'.

Nick waved.  "Hi, Rrilk."

His name is Ciirr.

"Hi, Ciirr."

Of course Nick's pronunciation didn't even come close to making it understandable to Ciirr.  But it's the thought that counts in my book.  Ciirr stiffened his walking tentacles and approached.  Nick shrank back.  Ciirr paused, his front tentacles up in a sign of peace.  Or maybe that was the gesture for "Please don't hurt me, scary human."  Sometimes I mix the signals up.

Hold out your hand to him.  He'll rub his tentacle against it.  Don't freak out.

Nick cringed.  "Oh, God.  Oh my God.  I wish I'd peed beforehand."

Ciirr inched closer to Nick's outstretched hand.  His tentacle extended so slowly I wondered if it was moving.  It reached Nick's hand.  The tentacle flinched.  Nick closed his eyes.  Ciirr mustered more courage, or either Kyle took motor control and rubbed his tentacle quickly over Nick's arm.  Then he trumpeted another greeting and asked Nick to follow him into the shuttle.

I translated.

"You were right about one thing," Nick said.

What's that?

"They stink to bloody high heaven."

Nick boarded.  The seats were high but not too difficult to sit on as they were designed to have tentacles draped over them.  They resembled tall metallic mushrooms.  Ciirr looked uneasily at Nick.  I could have sworn his tentacles pulled to the opposite side of the cockpit even though Nick was sitting behind him and to the right.  Ciirr inserted his tentacles into the control sockets and the shuttle lifted off.

An emergency symbol flashed on the communications holographic display.  Ciirr answered.  Zhrrii's frightened face appeared.  It amazed me how much I could interpret now.  But that look meant something bad was going on.

"Shaval contacted us.  He knows we traced his transmission.  He is coming for us."

Oh, crap.

"What?" Nick asked.

I hadn't meant to transmit that. 
Looks like Shaval is coming to visit.
 
I've got to get back to base.  Can you manage?

"Well, Ciirr hasn't eaten me yet, so I'm good."

See you soon.

I unlatched myself from his body.  Kyle emerged from Ciirr.  We looked at each other then flitted back to Atlanta without a word.  I went straight to Zhrrii and merged.

Did Shaval give an estimated time of arrival?

No.
  She reached out to the display and played back a recording.  The transmitting symbol appeared and the same synthetic voice spoke.

"Worker Zhrrii, an unauthorized trace was sent from your location.  You will confine your crew to quarters and await investigation."  The transmission ended.

That could be a month from now,
I said.

We are afraid.

I am too.

I withdrew from her and went outside in time to see the shuttle with Nick landing.  "That was fast," I said to Kyle.

"They make our jets look like toys."

I tapped into Zhrrii and told her about Nick's arrival then tapped into Nick.  Zhrrii approached him.  She wasn't frightened like Ciirr.  She'd seen human bodies, but this was her first living human.  She shivered with fascination.

"He is like the climbers from our world.  But he is missing a rear appendage," she said.

Show me a climber.
  Zhrrii thought of something that looked like a monkey with tentacles.  I tapped into Nick. 
Zhrrii thinks you look like a monkey.

Nick laughed.

Fascinating
. Zhrrii thought.

Nick's eyes widened. 
Wow.  Hello, Zhrrii.  I can understand you.

I realized with a start that I'd tapped into both of them without disconnecting from one or the other.  I transferred the Rrilk language to Nick, something I'd meant to do earlier but had forgotten.  I also passed along a few other tidbits about body language, but Nick winced and put a hand to his head.  Apparently organic beings couldn't take on too much transferred information at once.  At least Nick would have the language.  He wouldn't be able to speak it, but he could understand the parts that were within the range of human hearing.

As much as I wanted to foster understanding between my people and Zhrrii's, I had to find Anil and prepare him for Shaval.  He might kill the Rrilk from space or send in some other aliens to kill them.  We had to be ready to act fast.  I called Anil and gave him an update.

"How are things with Harb?"

"He's a fast learner but impatient.  At least he and his followers are being respectful of the Rrilk."

"We need a pow-wow soon.  Whatever Shaval throws at us will be nasty.  I want a plan in place."

"Lucy, you've become quite the leader."

"This is survival, mister.  Of course I'm going to get bossy."

Anil laughed.  "I'll return soon for the pow-wow.  I'm at a critical stage with Harb and lessons are necessarily delicate."

"Don't want to bruise that ten-gallon ego of his."

"Yes.  But left alone he could damage our operations."

I snorted.  "Ok, see you after the next Rrilk sleep period?"

"Sounds good."  He disconnected.

Kyle emerged from Ciirr and approached me.  "We're going to run that shuttle test."

"Going to get your body?"

"Yeah.  Might as well get yours while we're there."

I shuddered.  "I'll go with you."  I informed Zhrrii of our plans.  She wanted to come.  She'd seen images of me in her mind, but hadn't seen my physical body yet. 

It's gonna be nasty,
I told her.

Kyle merged with Ciirr, and I with Zhrrii.  We directed them to our neighborhood.  I'd lost track of time.  It had been almost four months since D-Day.  I wasn't sure I wanted to see my body.  It'd probably be filled with roaches and worms.  Maybe maggots.  The thought nauseated me.  Zhrrii caught some of my emotions and asked me what was wrong.  I explained it to her and she made a snuffling noise, the Rrilk equivalent of gagging.

We will treat your body with respect no matter the condition.

We arrived.  I left Zhrrii and found my body in roughly the same position it'd been in.  Unseasonably cold weather had only barely helped.  My body was swollen and smelled terrible with pustules, blistering skin, and some bugs skittering around.  It hardly looked like me.  I wanted to puke.  Kyle walked beside me and whistled.

"You're a hot mess, girl."

"Your body can't look much better."

Zhrrii and Ciirr entered.  I merged with her again.  They lay our bodies out on the floor.  She took out a small pen-shaped device that sprayed a disinfectant/preservative on my body and the bodies of my family.  I'd expected the corpses to be stiff, but the effects of rigor mortis had long since subsided.  I thought I was past caring about the physical vessels that used to be mine and my family's, but had to hold back tears when they brought in my brother's swollen, blistered little corpse.  I hadn't spoken to my parents since the day Ms. Tate and her goons had tried to forcibly convert me to their religion.  I wondered what they'd think of this horror.

I am so sorry, Lucy.  I wish Shaval did not do this to your people no matter how badly you treat each other here.

Sometimes I think we deserved it.  But anyone who can mass murder like this is a monster too.

Zhrrii twitched her tentacle in a nod.  They picked up the bodies and moved them into the shuttle's cargo bay.  Once there, they sprayed a translucent gel over the bodies that hardened.  At least now I didn't have to look at them.  After collecting the corpses from Kyle's place, we returned to base.

How can we keep track of whose body is in which shell?
I asked as they moved all but Kyle's body from the shuttle.  The gunk they'd sprayed on the bodies concealed their identities, not that it was easy to tell with the nasty putrid skin.  If Kyle's travel plan worked, we needed to know which bodies had to be loaded on the shuttle.

The gel contains nanomeds, tiny robots, which sample DNA and enter the information into the ship database.  I will tag the records with your names,
Zhrrii said.

I left her and found Kyle.  "We should find the bodies of our other team members.  Even if your plan doesn't work, we can find a safe place to hide them for the time being.

"Sounds good."  He looked at the shuttle and bit his lower lip.  "I'm off.  Wish me luck."  He and Ciirr left in the shuttle.

I contacted the rest of the group and asked them to take their hosts to their corpses in one of the other shuttles.  I hoped we'd have all the bodies collected within a few hours.

It took longer.  Some people couldn't remember exactly where they had been on D-Day.  At least two team members' corpses were charred beyond recognition, one due to a car wreck after death, the other due to a natural gas fire.  Scavengers had snacked on Bethany's corpse.  Half her face was gone and her guts were hanging out from a hole in her stomach.  I took secret delight at the look on her face when we retrieved it.  Chris was there too and it took all my willpower not to shove my gruesome glee in their faces.

Jane didn't want me to go with her to retrieve her body.  I covertly followed her anyway and figured out why.  Her body lay barely clothed at the base of a dance pole in a strip club.  She'd quit her job at the Flying Biscuit and started working at the Pink Leopard.  I decided there was no reason to confront her about it.  I wish she'd shared it with me though.  It hurt not to have her full trust, especially after all we'd been through.  Especially after dying, for god's sake.

Kyle returned a day later, full of stories about his trip out of the solar system.  Apparently there wasn't a lot out there except dust and emptiness but he'd made it past the barrier.  We took all the team members' corpses in the shuttle and made a test run after his return to make sure it'd work.  When we were almost there, Kyle's friend Mike vanished.  Kyle contacted him and discovered that the invisible leash had yanked Mike out of the shuttle.  His body was one of the unrecognizably burned ones so apparently we'd grabbed the wrong corpse.  Oops.

Well, that was why we were testing.  I sent Kyle and Mike to find the right body and to keep testing until it worked.  Mike was one of the team members I trusted the most next to Kyle and Anil.  The dark little monster inside me wished Bethany's corpse had been unidentifiable, that she'd been the one yanked out of the shuttle and preferably catapulted into the sun by some freak chance of physics.  I didn't know how serious she and Chris were, but thinking about them made me sick with anger.  It distracted me like an itch in my brain.

Mike came up with an early detection net to give us a heads up when Shaval arrived.  We asked the different Rrilk crews around the world to send their shuttles into orbit and keep an eye out.  The shuttles had sensors that could detect objects up to two light years out.  They had to be calibrated to keep asteroids, planets, and other space junk from signaling a false alert.  I left that stuff to the geeks.

Jane and her host used one of the monstrous centipedes to dig underground tunnels and caches for Rrilk to hide in should Shaval decide to kill them with conventional means.  I didn't think the poor Rrilk would stand a chance, tunnels or not, but it didn't take long and I didn't see any harm in it.  Plus it was neat watching those bugs dig.

Surprisingly, the people in our group actually did what I asked and came to me for advice.  It was quite a turnaround from my pathetic attempts at self-exile.  I never thought of myself as a drama queen, but things had gotten out of hand before I met Anil.  I finally felt somewhat in control, not letting my emotions dictate my actions, even if the enigmatic Mr. Shaval, radioactive space turtle, was about to rock our world.  And I was damned curious to know what he/she/it/they looked like.

Anil arrived a couple of days late.  He apologized but said leaving Harb before his first controlled merge with a Rrilk wouldn't have been a good idea.

"The size of his ego is alarming," Anil said to me as we reviewed the last few days.

I shook my head.  "I don't know what else to do about him except hope he'll come into line.  When is that kid going to learn there are rules of conduct even for ghosts?"

"Careful, Lucy.  You're starting to sound like an adult."  Anil winked.

"I know.  Scary, right?"  I put a hand on Anil's shoulder and looked him in the eyes.  "We still don't have your body.  Do you have relatives you want us to collect too?"

He shook his head.  "No.  My master was the only family I had.  If we can find his body, that would be enough."

"Sounds good."  I paused to collect my thoughts.  I really hoped Anil had some idea what our next move should be.  At this point I felt like we'd prepared the best we could.  "You're our best.  We're going to need you when Shaval arrives.  I think a fast possession is in order, especially if he comes in guns blazing."

"You may be right, but I don't recommend anything too hasty.  The Rrilk took a while to assimilate.  Shaval may be so different that a fast possession is impossible."

"Which is why we're relying on you to be our first contact."

"I don't think it should be me."

"Who else can do it?"  I gave him a horrified look.  "Oh God, you don't think Harb should try do you?  I know he's aggressive, but I don't trust him with that kind of power."

"There's no way I'd recommend Harb for that operation.  In my opinion there is one who rises above the rest even if this person lacks confidence at times."

"Jane?  Kyle?"

"You."

My face warmed, but the praise felt good and I broke out in a huge smile.  "Me?  I suck compared to you."

He laughed.  "I'm too cautious.  You have a better sense of when to press ahead."

"Maybe I'm just lucky.  I was aggressive with Zhrrii out of necessity."

"See?  You lack confidence.  Nevertheless, you're my pick for Shaval."

The good feelings vanished, replaced by a stab of fear.  "What if I mess up?  I don't think I can take this pressure.  Please, Anil, don't make me do this."

"You wanted the person best suited for this.  You are that person."  He smiled.  "Besides, Shaval may not be who or what we expect.  I suggest you arrange for alternate plans."

He was right.  All my fears and worries had congealed into a straw man.  Shaval might have other minions we needed to control in case he didn't show.  I put out a call for a general meeting.  Against my better judgment I sent for Harb's team as well.  He'd only get pissed off if I left him out now.  I also told him to collect their bodies if they hadn't already.

"We have secured our bodies," Harb told me.  "We will be the ones to care for them."

"That's fine.  It's better to keep them in separate locations just in case."  We'd already stored the bodies in separate underground bunkers, the ones Jane had made.