Expendable - James Alan Gardner [99]
Then….
Then the Supreme Evil’s lair turned into a glittering palace; Jelca and I found ourselves in a sumptuous bedroom; the knowledge came into our heads that we could remain as we were or be transformed into the prince and princess we deserved to be. Crassly put, we were invited to celebrate victory with a virtual fuck, either as cat and tornado or human beings. All things were possible. Soft music filtered out of nowhere, the bedsheets pulled themselves back, candles lit themselves, the walls turned to mirrors….
And in that moment, I saw my archetype fully. The mirrors showed a phantom jaguar: evanescent and fierce, pure ghost white…except for a lurid purple disfigurement on the right half of its face.
That was the “fantasy” dredged out of my mind.
That was what Jelca had looked at all night.
I never asked him out again. I avoided him in the halls. I scarcely took an easy breath until he graduated and was posted into space.
Peaks
An hour after our lark had taken off, the southern mountains appeared on the horizon—grassy foothills first, then thickly treed slopes, and finally stony snow-capped peaks. It was a young range, geologically speaking: its crags were sharp, untouched by erosion. Good climbing if you had the right partner….
No. Stop that train of thought. I was tired of bleeding.
Fingering my cheek, I searched for the first landmark Chee and Seele talked about. The lark had been traveling blind, without charts; we could have been several hundred klicks off course. However, I sighted our target after only half an hour flying above the foothills—a steamy area of geysers and hot springs, simmering with enough vapor to be visible for thirty kilometers. After that, the route was easy to follow: up a winding river valley that snaked its way through the foothills and on into the mountains. Within minutes I ordered the plane, “Land wherever you can…as safely as possible.”
For once, things went without a hitch. The lark had vertical landing capability; it touched down on grass beside the river we’d been following, only half a klick from the entrance to Chee and Seele’s city. Not that we could see the entrance—like everything else on Melaquin, the doorway was hidden—but I was sure we were in the right place.
“This land is strange,” Oar said as we clambered out of the cockpit. “It is very tall.”
“You’ve never seen mountains before?” I asked.
“Oh, I have seen many, many mountains,” she replied quickly. “I am not such a one who has never seen mountains.” She affected an air of blasé sophistication, waving her hand dismissively. “I have seen much better mountains than these. Pointier. Snowier. And ones that did not block the light so unpleasantly. These mountains are very gloomy, are they not, Festina?”
I didn’t answer. Our landing site was shadowy, when contrasted with our flight in the bright sunshine—we were at ground level now, and the sun was low enough to be blocked by a peak to the west. Still, a little shade didn’t mean the place was gloomy…or even very dark. Four nearby peaks still glistened with sun on their snow, filling our valley with a reflected light of heartbreaking quality. The world was clear and quiet: nothing but the murmur of the river and the tick-tick-tick of the lark’s engines cooling.
Peace.
For ten seconds.
Then a man strolled out of the forest, wearing nothing but a red tartan kilt.
A human man. An Explorer.
We looked at each other for a long moment. Then we said in unison, “Greetings. I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples…”
We both broke up laughing.
One of the Family
He told me his name was Walton: Explorer Commander Gregorio Walton, but he disliked his given name and hated his rank. At first, I thought he’d become an Explorer because of his face—the most wrinkled face I’d seen on a