in the strangely tasty, strangely filling meal. In a few short minutes, my belly full, I returned to where I might crash into a good night’s sleep.
The resthouse was little more than a barn with a crude Fricasan bed in it. Fricasan beds were deep, like an open coffin, with a veil that pulled across the top to block out the light.
I slept badly: the bed took some getting used to and I was still excited about my destination, which surely could not be more than a day’s travel away; in the night the window latches banged open several times, waking me when I hovered tantalisingly close to sleep.
Since there was no danger of oversleeping, I rose early and switched off my alarm well before it was due to go off. Once more I gathered my possessions and headed out to the Balloon station. A few early rising Fricasans loitered and stared at me as I sat leaning against a wall.
I was well beyond where the tourists normally travelled. Perhaps these Fricasans had rarely seen off-worlders; perhaps they even wondered about my motive in being here. How long would it be before someone made a guess based on the direction of my travel, which shot directly, like an arrow, into Kisser territory?
Once more, a Fricasan joined me in my basket on the balloon train. But this time, he was less friendly and more talkative. “Hello,” he said in a rough Fricasan accent. “Hello Friend,” once more, as though he had not got my attention the first time. “Where do you come from?” he asked.
I told him I had started my journey on Earth and he nodded as though he had heard of the planet.
“There is nothing to see this way. You should go to Taliwer – the towers are beautiful.” Taliwer was a tourist trap, but I was careful to keep my comments to myself. He shrugged within his taut jacket-cloak, as though it did not matter what I felt, but still he watched me closely.
“Are you from Tick-litz?” I said carefully, trying to be more conversational, although I did not feel like it. I was conscious that my words were loud and extended, as though by those means my galactic would translate more easily into Fricasan.
He grunted an answer, which might have been an affirmative or might have been a growl of anger that his line of interrogation was being side-tracked. He turned away toward the view on his side of the basket, perhaps taking in what I had said so far, deciding what to make of me.
Just when I thought I might open my Vast Universe, he turned back to me: “What will you do?” he asked. After a pause that demonstrated my incomprehension, he tried again: “Where do you go now?”
“To the end of the line,” I tried, hoping to sound casual, as though I might get off anywhere on the route, as though I did not have a destination in mind. I only realised after the words had left my mouth that this might have been the wrong answer.
The muscles around his mouth tightened for a moment.
“I want to go as far from the cities as I can,” I fumbled, hoping to raise a smokescreen.
Again, he went silent, this time studying me with a tilt of his head. “You have family on Earth?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered with a release of breath, glad that the topic had moved to less treacherous grounds. Yet something must have tripped the wires of his suspicion, for what came later was no accident.
Later, in spite of my surroundings, I dozed. The toll of the short sleeps and long days was wearing on me. Once I woke with a jerk to see the Fricasan departing. He favoured me with a scowl and climbed out of the basket without saying a word.
Mid-afternoon, as the sun began to wane, a pleasant heat shimmering across the land, I woke again. Yawning, I set my sight upon the racing landscape. Since I had first lain my head down, we had entered more rural territories. There was hardly any sign of civilisation’s impression being made upon the jungles and grasslands.
Other travellers on the balloon train were equally sparse. For the moment, I was glad for the privacy, to be free from inspection, the like of which my previous companion had brought. What would happen if any found out that I sought the Kissers? And how much longer could I conceal it?
I felt a faint breeze of guilt flow past me, but my need for this adventure overcame any such feelings. There was nothing wrong in what I was doing, no matter what restrictive Fricasan taboos said about what I was questing for; I disregarded them the same as I disregarded any superstitions. I breathed in a lungful of air, dusted with a faint trace of local soil and let any reservations fall away behind me as the train glided onward.
Here there were variations on the tentacle trees that made their urban cousins look like poor imitations. Here, they grew in spectacular shapes, to spectacular heights. Here, they came in a fantastic array of alternative colours. I marvelled on this, taking simple pleasure in the discovery of travel - when it happened.
Coarse shouts came from the front of the train ahead. I did not understand, but knew the universal sounds of panic. Muted shouts drifted down the train from the few other passengers; one jumped overboard. The others crouched down low in their baskets.
I did the same, craning my neck to see any sign of what might be ahead. Nothing seemed amiss that I could see. A few Fricasan heads peered over the tops of their baskets at whatever trouble was clear from the front of the balloon train - then abruptly they ducked down into emergency positions. Without thinking, I followed suit, sat on the floor of my basket with my legs against my chest. I sought dim purchase with whatever I could hold onto. I grabbed some loose strands of the rope material that made up the basket and hoped it would be enough. What might be happening, I wondered. In fractured chaos the moments passed by.
There was a heavy sound of something crashing to the ground and the basket shook as though in the hands of an angry mob; it tilted and the sky spun above me;
I slid, not knowing which direction was up or down;
With a tearing sound, the balloon above me tore free and the basket tumbled and juddered, toward the sky for all I knew;
The basket bounced. With a dopplering cry, a Fricasan sailed past my view;
With a jump I was suddenly out of the basket; I crouched into a ball, not knowing if I was falling or flying;
A hand reached out to grab me, but flew out of view before I could reach it;
Then finally, I scuffed to the ground, landing atop my left hand and foot with a slap.
Dazed, I sat beside the trail, watching the debris of the train beginning to settle; a few sheets and ropes still drifted in the wind as if in the wake of a hurricane. As I thought about what had just happened, about how close I might have come to serious injury and how far I was from decent medical help, my limbs began to shake; my palm and ankle began to throb.
My fellow passengers sat in shock or wandered aimlessly up and down; a man helped a woman whose face was covered in gushing blood.
Time passed and things began to settle. But as the sun began to go down, the pain in my leg and hand did not depart as fast as I had hoped. My palm was marked with the pattern of the ground and a bruise was swelling on my ankle.
Passengers began to disperse as it became clear the journey would not resume. The crew made no attempt to stop them leaving. With trepidation, I gathered my rucksack, and after checking my Vast Universe was still intact, began to hobble away from the wreckage, in the direction we had been travelling. It seemed the rest of my journey would be on foot. My only hopes were that the Vast Universe might point me to some edible plants or that the trail ahead might not be as long as I feared.
I left the train and the other passengers behind and walked into the night. There were strange sounds in the twilight, hiccoughs, barks and growls. I did not know from how far the noise carried, near or far. I did not fear the predators the Vast Universe said might be out here, for I knew how much land it took to support a predator and how little chance there could be that one might find me.
Still, as I made a bed for myself of leaves piled on the dusty ground, I shivered a little. Somehow I slept, waking once with a sharp intake as I rolled onto my left hand.
Come the dawn, my clothes were
dusted with the distinctive yellow of the land. My ankle injury had much subsided, but my wrist still throbbed; it was painful to use that hand and my palm began to swell up; my fingers would not close to a fist.
My soul was weary and my sides ached from awkward sleep, not soothed by strange dreams. I shuffled into the morning, following the direction of my intuition. I stuck to the clearings, seeking the wider spaces between the tentacle trees and their stranger cousins, from which long sausage shapes dangled like dreadlocks.
Tiredness ran over my thoughts like sandpaper, wearing down my thought processes until I was capable only of basic, moment-to-moment thinking. Around me the trees looked ragged, debris scattered between them, as though I were stumbling through the aftermath of a storm.
Yet somehow I felt as though I were on the right path. Was some mystical wavelength drawing me toward my destination? It was rumoured that the Kissers ability was rooted in the psychic. Or were there some subtle signs that my subconscious had picked up, which my weary waking mind had yet to?
At last I dared indulge myself in thoughts of what I might find in the village where the Kissers dwelled. It was said that they gave transcendental experience with their tongues. No outsiders had ever seen them before, so descriptions of them bordered on the fantastical. Somehow thoughts of what might lie ahead gave me