Ascending - James Alan Gardner [133]
Because of the snagging and yanking, moving through the jungle was almost as strenuous as running. It was not out-of-breath strenuous; but the constant exertion made my insides feel watery. Then my head went watery too—not a sudden dizziness but a growing sense of disconnection, as my feet kept walking but my mind drifted off. I found myself dreaming of the lovely brightness in my Tower of Ancestors: how peaceful it had been to lie empty for the past four years, without worrying about thorns, or awful Shaddills, or the many ways my life had never gone anywhere…
Muddled blankness crept up on me so stealthily I did not feel it: blankness from fatigue and insufficient food. Time passed in a blur, which is to say, in a discontinuous jump…because the next thing I knew, I was leaning in great exhaustion against a dirt-encrusted wall, with my cheek and nose pressed into the grimy surface.
I turned my head blearily and saw Lajoolie staring at me with fearful concern; the others, however, had focused their attention on a door in the wall a few paces away from me. This door was the metal kind that slides open and shut. At the moment, it was closed…and there was no obvious mechanism for opening it. No doorknob, no latch, no button, no dial.
“We could bash it down,” Uclod suggested. He turned to Lajoolie. “You wouldn’t mind doing that, would you, sweetheart?”
Lajoolie gave me a plaintive look, suggesting she would mind very much: I do not think she wanted to use her great strength ever again. Her face overflowed with relief when Festina said, “No bashing if we can help it. For one thing, it’ll make noise. For another, the door might have defense mechanisms—alarms or maybe stunners.”
“So what do we do instead?” Uclod asked.
Festina ran her hands over the door’s surface, obviously groping for unusual features. As she did, she told the rest of us, “Look around nearby. Maybe there’s a hidden switch.”
“Or maybe it can only be opened from the other side,” Uclod said. “Maybe it’s voice-activated and you have to know the password.”
“I realize that,” Festina answered testily. “But let’s check for other alternatives.”
So they checked, looking under bushes, digging in the dirt and fingering the blank wall as if it might conceal some secret access mechanism. Their earnest activity soon maddened me; still propped against the wall, I cried out in my own language, “Open up, you foolish door!”
The door slid silently open.
How To Talk To Me
Festina’s mouth gaped wide and she stared at me. “What did you say?”
“I told it to open.”
“In what language?”
“My own…which I now suspect is actually the Shaddill tongue. And do not shout at me for not telling you sooner; I am very upset the Shaddill indoctrinated my people to speak their villainous language, and perhaps I am also in a weakened state physically and emotionally, so if you scold me, Festina, I shall cry.”
She came forward and wrapped her arms around me. I leaned into the embrace…and unlike the time when she hugged me in the Hemlock’s transport bay, I did not feel self-conscious at all. To tell the truth, I was too tired to feel much of anything; but it was comforting and agreeable to be held, not to mention that it helped me stay on my feet.
Festina whispered, “Do you really speak Shaddill?”
“I believe I do.”
“Under the circumstances, that’s a wonderful