Then had come the Plague, the ancient war with the Kinley. Though the Lucien had rained bombs down upon those Kinley humans, and had admittedly been the first to strike, the humans had not retaliated in kind. Instead, they had devised a biological weapon against which the Lucien had no defense. They had released a plague upon Rheat, and it had, within a matter of weeks, killed every man, woman, and child upon the planet. None had survived. Only the few Lucien living in their asteroid colonies had escaped death, and the Kinley had ever afterward been known as Plaguers.
But Adaiz would not dwell on thoughts of those times. His mission was here and now and, when successful, would prevent such devastation from ever recurring.
“Elder Brother, shall we have an Opening?” Adaiz asked.
“Yes,” Enon replied, cocking his head to one side in agreement. “It will be good to relax our minds that they may better absorb this environment.”
The two of them sat down facing each other, their legs crossed in front of them.
They began with three deep breaths. Though Adaiz was the younger brother, he had passed Enon in understanding and application of the Katalla-Oman, the book of self-knowledge, and Enon now respectfully deferred to him in matters of meditation. As they began their breathing, Enon was following Adaiz’s lead. When they expelled their third breath, they allowed their eyes to float closed.
“First is awareness of body,” Adaiz said softly.
They relaxed themselves by feeling every muscle. Slowly, as Adaiz became aware his muscles, they released their hidden energy and became neutral. He could sense his organs and his skin; he could feel his whole body.
“I am aware of it,” Enon whispered, echoing Adaiz’s own mind.
“Very good. Second is awareness of environment,” Adaiz intoned quietly.
Adaiz let his awareness travel beyond his skin, beyond his body. He perceived the grass beneath him and felt a slight breeze on his forehead. Being in open air on a planet was an awe-inspiring experience. The blue of the sky seemed to go on forever, and the horizon appeared to him impossibly far away.
Adaiz reached out for Enon’s mind. When he touched it, instead of peaceful relaxation, he could feel the thoughts churning in his brother’s head.
“Older Brother,” Adaiz said softly, “your mind is loud.”
“Yes,” Enon whispered, “you are right. It is difficult today, in this new place.”
“For me also. Shall we try again?”
“Yes.”
Adaiz started the ritual over, and this time, as he expanded his awareness, he felt his mind floating through the past hours of their journey. They had landed on Earth the night before, hiding their small shuttle ship in the lush cloud forest to the north. They had been working their way south ever since, out of the forest and into gentle hills at the edge of wide grasslands. Adaiz found himself both dreading and longing for his first encounter with the native humans, though he could not understand this emotion. After all, he was Lucien, and there was no reason to believe he would feel anything special for the foreign creatures who made this world their home.
Adaiz caught himself. His own mind was becoming loud. He dissolved these contemplations and concentrated, instead, on perception of the world around him. His body sat on grass, his face was brushed by a breeze, there were scents of water and animals and vegetation in the air. Slowly, he knew these things, he felt these things, he became these things.
Ten minutes later, when they surfaced and became aware of their bodies again, Adaiz felt powerful and relaxed. His mind was his to control.
In predawn of the following day, they came up over a long, low rise and saw, nestled in a clearing between bushes and trees, the object of their search. Enon, whose eyesight was somewhat better than Adaiz’s, spotted it first. The sky was still dark. Only the east was yet light, but when Adaiz squinted his eyes, he could see the Plaguer pod, a dark-brown shape that was too regular in this wild land.
The two of them worked their way toward the landing site as the sky grew lighter. In half an hour they were approaching the pod across its clearing. From this proximity, Adaiz saw that it had been a very hard landing, indeed.
The pod appeared to have skidded before settling. There were several long grooves where it had torn away vegetation. The bottom, spherical half of the ship had dug itself three feet into the soil. The top, cylindrical half pointed out from the ship at an awkward angle.
They signaled to each other, and each of them pulled his hood up over his head and checked to ensure his weapons were ready. Adaiz approached first. As he neared, he was hit by the smell of the ship. It was a sickly chemical burning, which he guessed must be coming from the propulsion system. Even three days after landing, the odor was acrid and strong.
He reached the pod and glanced around it. He could see no one. He touched the outer skin of the sphere and felt that it was tough and slightly warm, almost…alive. The Lucien were aware that the Plaguers’ technology was heavily based in biology. It seemed biology extended even to the outer layer of their ships. Near the upper cylinder, where there had clearly been an explosion, the skin was scarred and scabbed like real skin would be, and in many places he could see that it had attempted to regrow.
He located the hatchway, which stood ajar, and gestured to Enon that he was going to look inside. Enon tilted his head in assent.
Adaiz peered into the pod. The controls had all gone dead. The interior was hot, too hot for human comfort. There was no one in the sphere. He pulled himself in and glanced up into the cylinder, where the air was even warmer. It too was empty. He quickly dropped back down and out, already sweating.
He found the human occupant of the pod outside, lying close up against the craft, in the shadow of the cylinder, which hung above the man’s body at a thirty-degree angle from the ground. In this early light, it was almost impossible to make him out. All Adaiz could tell was that the figure was human.
“Come,” Adaiz said quietly to his brother.
Enon joined him, and together, they peered down at the crumpled shape.
“Is it alive?” his brother asked.
“I don’t know,” Adaiz said. He removed his robe and got down on hands and knees in his trousers. He crawled up to the man, feeling the heat radiating from the cylidner. The man’s back was to him, with his stomach hugging the skin of the pod. He was not moving. He appeared badly wounded and was tangled in a suit of red clothing. Adaiz pulled gently on the man’s undershirt and rolled him onto his back.
Something was odd about his shape, but the man still lay in shadows and was difficult to see. He seemed fairly small.
“He’s breathing,” Adaiz said softly. The man’s chest was moving, but shallowly. He put a hand to his neck and felt a faint pulse. The skin was cold and moist, as though he’d been through a fever and his body was now running at a subnormal temperature.
The red fullsuit was over the man’s legs and half tucked under his body. Adaiz took hold of it and pulled the man out of the shadow and into the blue light of dawn.
He could see him clearly then. And in a surprised flash of understanding, Adaiz realized that it was not a man at all. It was a woman. The knowledge was shocking somehow. It was a girl. Not him, but her. She.
“It’s a woman,” Adaiz said slowly.
“Interesting. I’ve never seen one.”
“Neither have I.”
Indeed, she was the first human woman Adaiz had ever seen in person. The few humans who had been bred by the Lucien were all male, for the male gender was slightly less prone to infection and disease, and the Lucien had not wished to breed both sexes. He had seen pictures of women in books of anatomy, but never in the flesh. Looking at Pruit, Adaiz noticed immediately the differences in her appearance, differences he had not imagined from looking at mere pictures. Her coloring was just like his, but her build was slighter, more curved, more delicate.
His eyes moved to her hands and legs. Her ankles were in the suit, but above the suit line her legs had b
listers and dark singes of black. Her hands were also purple with burns. One of her ankles looked broken.
“Omani’s Heart,” he breathed, “that was a rough landing.”
Enon studied her with him, but his eyes could not as easily discern the magnitude of her wounds. “Do you think she will heal?” he asked.
Adaiz knelt and studied the red suit. Its surface was very tough and finely woven. It was thick and quite heavy, and he could feel unknown mechanisms within it.
“I’m not well enough trained in human physiology to answer that,” he said. “But I think her suit is intended to repair her. I’ll try to attach it to her properly.”
“Mark her first.”
Adaiz tilted his head in agreement. Marking her was needed, for they wished to follow this woman, if she recovered, and find the technology she sought. He withdrew a small marker from his pack and gently eased Pruit onto her side. He pulled up her shirt and ran a hand along her spine. It was different, he noticed, from his own. The arch was more pronounced, and her waist curved down into it. Her lines were nicer than his, he thought.
He placed the marker tab against her mid-back and jiggled it. He felt the tiny metal mole within the tab release and slide under her skin. Then he studied her back. The marker made a tiny additional bump along one of her vertebrae, almost unnoticeable.
“I’d prefer two for safety,” he said.
“It seems sensible,” Enon replied.
Adaiz marked her again, lower on her back. His placing of the second mole was better. Only his knowledge that it was there allowed him to see its location.
“While you tend to her, I want to examine the pod,” Enon said. Adaiz could tell the girl was of little interest to his brother.
“All right,” he replied.
Enon moved off, leaving Adaiz alone with her. He rolled her onto her back again and sat looking at her for several moments. Her face was covered with bruises, but despite them, he was intrigued by her features. They were gentler and narrower than his own and, he thought, more pleasing to the eye.
He found that he wanted very much to touch her, to let his hands run over her body. Even now, he felt himself reaching for her. It was something about the difference between her and him. The difference made him long to bridge the gap and be close to her.
He stopped himself and studied these feelings. They were urges of his own body, he quickly realized. Is this what humans feel? he wondered. He did not like the sensation of being at the mercy of his flesh.
He brought his attention back to the work at hand. She was hurt and would die without his help. He busied himself untangling the red suit and pulling it up flat beneath her. His chest came into contact with hers as he did so, and he was surprised by the electric sensation this produced in his own body. He looked down at her breasts beneath her shirt. In his studies of human anatomy, he had wondered many times about breasts. They seemed unwieldy features, but now that he saw them up close, he realized how well they complemented the female form. Gently, he lifted up her shirt and looked at them more closely. They were each about the size of a fruit that could fit neatly into his cupped hand. Her copper skin was lighter beneath her shirt, and her breasts were light tan. The nipples were much darker, a reddish brown. They were beautiful somehow.
The urge to touch her—not to touch, he realized, but to caress—was great, and it could not be justified as professional curiosity. This in itself made him recoil. Growing up without human women around, Adaiz had prided himself on living without the urges of the flesh. He had always felt superior to his Lucien friends, who seemed to lose the ability to fully control themselves when an attractive female was near. He would not give in to such a physical demand. He took a deep breath and quieted his mind.
The sun was nearing the horizon now, and Adaiz could already feel the air warming up. He pulled her shirt down to cover her and tucked her arms into the sleeves of the suit. He flipped the suit gloves into place over her hands.
He watched in fascination as the bioarms of the suit grew out and reached for the girl’s skin. Plaguer science was truly impressive. Adaiz would recommend, upon returning home, that the Lucien spend more time studying it.
He gripped the sealing fob of Pruit’s suit, which was down by her hip. He slid it up toward her neck, pulling the suit closed as he did. Near the top, he stopped. There was writing inside the suit up by her chest. He studied it. It was her name, written in Soulene, the modern Plaguer tongue, which he could both read and speak. “Proo-it,” he sounded it out. “Pruit.” Her name. He pulled the fob the rest of the way up and found that he was relieved to have her body out of view.
Only her face remained uncovered, and he pulled the hood out from underneath her head. “Pruit,” he whispered again, not knowing why the name intrigued him so. At the sound of his voice, her eyes twitched. He paused, watching her. They twitched again, then slowly came open, blue human eyes staring upward.
He watched as partial consciousness returned to her. She moved her head slightly. Adaiz felt a quickening in his heart as he realized that she was looking up at him. Her eyes came into focus. Her lips moved, as though she would speak, but no sound came out.
Her eyes fell shut. Adaiz paused for a moment, then reached again for her hood. Before he could move it, her eyes opened again.
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice scratchy with thirst and pain.
Before Adaiz could decide whether or not he should answer, her eyes closed again. This time they did not open. Exhaustion had reclaimed her.
Adaiz sealed her hood into place. She was now completely enveloped in the fullsuit, and as he watched, it shifted itself into an active mode. There was motion in the layers of the suit. It was beginning to minister to her wounds. It would take care of her.
He turned away. Enon was now inside the pod, studying the controls. Adaiz felt no urge to join him.
She. She. She had spoken to him. She had looked at him. She had seen him.
His body was chattering to him all on its own. She.
His mind was loud.
Through clouds of pain and unconsciousness, Pruit saw the face of a young Kinley man leaning over her. She knew he was Kinley by his coloring and features, but behind him was a great dome of blue. She was conscious for only a moment before her eyes fell shut again. This time, however, she was not falling back into agony. She was swathed in her fullsuit, and her body seemed to float in its care. The bioarms had entered her skin and taken over her physical functions.
In long pockets between layers of the suit was biofluid and everything her body would need to make it well. She was hurt badly enough to strain the suit’s resources, but it would find a way to heal her nonetheless.
CHAPTER 20
Eddie stood at the only public phone, and perhaps one of the few phones of any kind, in the town of Dashur, seven miles from the dig site. Dashur sat near the distinct border of fertile land and desert, that almost sharp line where foliage ended and sand began. A small canal off the Nile ran parallel to Dashur’s central street, which was a wide path of dirt and stone, trod to almost cement hardness by generations of feet. There were date palms across the narrow canal, towering over mud-brick huts and small farms that were tended by dark men driving donkeys.
The phone stood outside a small restaurant that served pigeon and fresh pita bread and an assortment of pickled vegetables. Along the street were market vendors selling fresh produce. Several donkeys pulling carts of tomatoes passed as Eddie consolidated an enormous pile of coins from his pockets and prepared to dial. A young boy driving one of the donkeys turned to him and smiled at the sound of the coins, a sprig of grain grass clenched between his teeth. Eddie smiled and flipped a coin at him. The boy caught it neatly and slipped it into his pocket.
The phone was mounted in an open stand, shielded from the sun by a yellow metal box that bore the word “telephone” in Arabic. The box was covered in dust, but other than that it had not been defaced in any way. The phone was an object of some impor
tance to the town and was respected. Eddie leaned in under the lip of the box to shield his head from the midday sun.
A waft of fresh bread from the restaurant hit his nose as he picked up the receiver. He was long since over the typical bout of dysentery, known as the Pharaoh’s Revenge, that a traveler endures in the first few weeks in Egypt, and he was now free to enjoy local foods without fear of the consequences.
He dialed a long series of numbers and then plugged the phone with a seemingly endless stream of change until, at last, he heard the clicks of the call going through. He glanced at his watch and calculated the time difference, realizing it would be the middle of the night in Los Angeles. He decided she would forgive him. The phone began to ring.
“Hello?” The voice on the other end had clearly just woken up.
“Callen?”
“Eddie?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She sounded fully awake all of a sudden, as though she had been eagerly awaiting his call.
“Can you hear me okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s a good connection.”
“Did you—” he started.
“Listen, Eddie,” she said, interrupting him excitedly. “I have news!”
“What?” he asked, excitement gripping him as well, for he assumed she was talking about the same subject on his mind.
“I’m engaged!” She sprang the words on him without further warning.
“What?” He was truly stunned.
“I’m engaged, can you believe it?”
“I’ve only been gone for two months. How could this happen?”
Callen took his tone as humorous and continued, describing the man who had won this commitment from her. Eddie took only parts of it in. He fed another meal of coins into the phone as she spoke. It was hard to believe she was serious.
“He sounds great,” Eddie commented halfheartedly as she wrapped up the panegyric to her betrothed.