AKLESH (Under Strange Skies) (10 page)

Gar obeyed and humored the little old woman, hoping there would be a point to this somewhere. He stretched his fingers and felt along the table till he reached the center and his finger tips encountered the shell. He smirked.

“Keep you eyes closed and pick it up,” she instructed.

“Ok,” he said. “Now what?” It was then he felt the bumps on the shell. The shell he’d held in his hands before didn’t have bumps. He was confused. “This isn’t the shell.”

“No, it’s not,” said the Healer with a chuckle. “Try again. Find the right shell.” Gar kept his eyes closed and put down the shell he was holding.

He stretched his hands along the table but discovered that every couple inches was another shell, and they were all different. He marveled at how fast the healer had placed the other shells on the table. Some were prickly, others the wrong size. He tried to remember exactly what the shell had looked like and its size. Finally, at the far edge of the table his fingers came across a shell missing a small chunk. This was the shell. He held it up.

“Good,” said the Healer, taking it from him.

Gar opened his eyes and saw that there were about a dozen different shells on the table.

“What was that all that about?” he asked.

She smiled then stood up.

“Follow me.”

She led him outside the hut and walked over to a railing that looked over the expansive landscape surrounding the keep. The sun was beginning to rise on their left, its light beginning to flicker through the purple leaves of the great tree.

The entire horizon was taking shape with the tans and violets of that world. They could see over the smaller trees, which in reality were quite tall but dwarfed by the keep. They were at the top of it.

Even though the height was dizzying, the old woman leaned forward on a wooden railing attached to the balcony.

“It’s beautiful, is it not?” she said regarding the view. She did not expect a response but took in the sight with a deep breath.

They stood together in the early morning light. He could see a rolling river on their right as it turned away from them. The lush forest spread out like a blanket. It rose into soft rolling hills in the distance. On the left the trees tapered off into pale plains that stretched as far as Gar could see.

“The first thing you must learn is what we call ‘reaching,’” explained the Healer. “When you are joined with someone you have a connection to them stronger than any they might have with a child or parent. When you try, you can sense them, even over many miles. Tell me, Gar, how did you know you had found the correct shell on the table even with your eyes closed?”

“It had a flaw,” said Gar.

“Yes,” said the Healer. “And you knew this because you had seen it. You had touched it. You knew it enough to recognize it. So, when you searched for it among the other shells, you could tell the difference.”

“So?”

“What you did was create a mental picture of the shell in your mind and then, as you reached out you felt for the thing that matched the picture in your head. When the Aklesh ‘reach,’ it is the same idea.” To illustrate her point she closed her eyes and lifted her hands toward the purple hills. “We send our thoughts, our minds into the distance with the image of the person we are connected to. When your mind finds the mental spark, it recognizes it.”

“I send my mind out?” said Gar skeptically.

“Really?”

“It is the only way we will be able to find our lost kinsman,” she said, bringing her hands down and turning to Gar. “And only you will be able to do it. Will you try?”

He sighed and repeated the way the Healer had stood, closing his eyes and holding out his hands, his palms facing the same direction.

“That’s good,” said the Healer. “Now hold the idea of Kai in your head.”

Gar brought the image of the tribesman into his head, as if it were a picture or portrait.

“Now that you are thinking about him, push you mind out across the land. Try to extend it across past the river over to the hills in the distance. Use you mind to search him out like when you were trying to find the shell among the other shells on the table. Let you other senses be your guide.”

Gar imagined that his conciousness was speeding over the country, as if he was flying like a bird. Was he really reaching his mind out? Gar immediately felt stupid and dropped his hands.

“Isn’t there anyone else he’s connected to in the tribe?” asked Gar. “Someone who can actually do this?”

“His father died many years ago,” said the Healer. “But Kai has one of the strongest minds in the tribe. He might be able to make up for what you lack.” Gar’s shoulders sank. The healer gently turned him towards the horizon. “Try again.”

***

If Dr. Jenna Hines had known what she was signing up for five months earlier, she never would have accepted the job.

But now it was too late.

It wouldn’t have mattered how many credits she had been offered or how much good it might do for the Galactic Empire, no work was worth the inhumane tasks she was now required to perform against her will.

Her mentor, Professor Kalen Huss, had said the work was of great importance.

During her time in university on Orestus he had been a man of monumental influence. To be asked onto a project by him was like being asked to tea by the princess. This initially helped her to overlook the fact that the research was illegal to do on a galactic protectorate. Besides, it was for the greater good. The other deciding factor had been the money she was getting for the assignment, which would help her family. They were not wealthy by any means. She had only come as far as she had by lucky breaks and pure determination.

The poor animals that died for the cause would mean her family would live without worry.

But the mercenaries who had hired them weren’t satisfied with just testing on the creatures that lived on the protectorate and had moved on to the humanoids that peopled the primitive planet.

Jenna had been the only one to raise a protest when these morally hateful acts began to take place.

Her mentor quickly reminded her that she was in no position to tell anyone what to do in regards to their ethical practices. He was a man of pure science, she was learning, and in his view casualties were inevitable. When she pushed the argument further and refused to cooperate, the leader of the expedition, an ex-military brute named Rhoed, kindly informed her that any attempt to sabotage the mission or contact the outside world would put her and her family in harm’s way.

He had been ruthlessly persuasive, in many ways that made her shudder every time he passed near her.

So she was stuck with no way to get back to the civilized galaxy and a distasteful regret of her decisions.

Jenna did not mind whether or not she got in trouble for her involvement with these lowlifes. It was her own fault for not reading the fine print.

But she could not bear to bring her family any more heartache or strife. She was now painfully aware that the people she found herself working for would stop at nothing to get what they wanted.

Jenna figured it was prudent to keep her mouth shut and finish the work she was contracted to do. Then she would return home and try and forgive herself for the monstrosities she’d been forced to commit and the abuse she was made to endure.

They had reduced her duties to that of practical work on animals. But this didn’t help as she also did observation on the two humanoid captives that now lay in the cells in front of her.

The one in the right cell had been there for a while and was nearing his demise, the experiments and testing having taken their toll. Jenna had seen this before.

H12 was weak and his skin had grown ashen, the blue and grey almost fading into one sickening color. His eyes would fall upon her from time to time, then roll back and he would either pass out or rest. She hoped he would expire soon.

He’d lasted longer than most. But his pain now was excruciating to watch.

The humanoid in the left cell had only recently arrived. He had been brought in that night and had been awake for about four hours. He was young, possibly somewhere in his early 20’s. Healthy, yet small compared to the other of his kind that they had acquired. Since he had been awake, the young native had done nothing but stare at her.

She lamented the fact that their language wasn’t included in her basic linguistic database.

But the scientist wasn’t sure what she would say. Perhaps she would beg their forgiveness for what her kind had done or were about to do to them. If they could speak for themselves, maybe it would force the others to see them as sentient beings and not just test subjects.

But they would never know.

Jenna’s job was to monitor the subjects and see if they attempted any telepathic communication between themselves. Their cells were designed to scan the captives for any signs of a mental interchange. They would continue in this stage for a few days, then practical testing would be started on the newer one while the other one would be put down, if it didn’t expire before then. Her job was to notice if there was some physical manifestation of the communication.

The new one would not stop staring at her.

He seemed unaware of the other captive sitting barely a foot away. They were safely behind a light shield. The younger one had figured this out when he had tried to crawl out and gotten shocked.

He had made no attempt to contact the other one. Not even verbal.

Staring was not uncommon for the natives.

All the subjects stared but would seldom make eye contact when engaged directly. Any time one of the scientist or mercenaries did stare back, the subject would look away or flinch. Of course, they probably had never seen people from other worlds. She tried to see it from the primitive’s perspective. All these strange beings and materials around them would be intriguing and frightening to the natives.

Maybe fear limited their telepathic abilities.

It was too soon in the research to tell. Inevitably they’d find the source, synthesize and mass produce it. Till then, the answer eluded them.

The one thing they were certain of; it had to do with the gland on the center of their foreheads.

All the creatures on the planet had one, or something like it, just like they would have eyes or mouths. But, the dissections were proving useless.

This one’s stare was not like the others. He looked her directly in the eyes, as if studying her as well. He stared at all the people that had come in and out, as if assessing them all. He was proving much different from his predecessors. She made a note about this on her hand interface.

Jenna ran her fingers through her dark, curly hair, cracked her neck and stretched. Then she studied the subject more intently, hoping to figure him out. She was intrigued by his different behavior.

“What is it about you that makes you so unafraid?” she mused aloud, more to herself than to him. “Who are you?”

“Kai,” the young captive said abruptly.

His sudden speech startled her. The young native had leaned forward, still staring at her.

“Kai,” he said again.

She had heard the natives speak before but it had been only gibberish to her. All of the scientists and crew on the ship had the standard nano-language sequencing the Galactic Parliament injected all citizens with at birth. There had been none of the more exotic languages from the galactic protectorates in the programming since. That would be illegal, and no one on the crew had that kind of authority, even Rhoed.

She wondered what the word ‘kai’ meant in his language. ‘Help’ maybe or ‘out’?

No one had attempted to translate, probably because that would make the subjects too human. It was a shame she couldn’t understand. But they were probably better off not speaking the same language. Then the mercenaries on the crew would just torture the information they needed out of the subjects. If this had been an official science mission, the team could have pursued these answers in peaceful, non-intrusive ways as opposed to the barbaric methods they now found themselves forced to use.

The native sighed. He pointed to himself this time and said “Kai.”

Her jaw dropped. None of the subjects had ever tried to communicate this clearly before, mostly out of fear. This one was trying to tell her his name very specifically.

She leaned forward as well, pointed at him and repeated what she had heard.

“Kai?” she said catiously.

“Yes,” he replied. “What is your name?” Jenna dropped her hand interface on the floor.

***

Gar had gotten a few hours sleep and for once there hadn’t been any strange dreams. The fuzzy awareness of Kai’s emotion was not on his periphery and he wasn’t sure why, but for some reason it bothered him.

Not long after waking up he walked up the many stairs to the top of the keep, stepped onto the balcony, stretched out his hands and tried to

‘Reach’ for Kai.

Each time he would call up the basic framework in his mind of what Kai looked like; male, his height, younger, grey/blue skin and white hair. As instructed, he would attempt to stretch his mind to the horizon and hunt.