Breath of Life (The Gaian Consortium Series) (2 page)

“Dad?” I said. “Are you okay?”

He still wouldn’t look at me, but crossed the room and fell rather than sat down on the beat-up sofa my parents been talking about replacing for years. Once there, he hunched over, his hands clasped between his knees.

“Peter?” my mother asked. She sounded almost concerned.

Then he did look up. Whatever had happened on the trip home, it had taken its toll—shadows smudged the skin below his eyes, and every line on his face seemed somehow deeper than it had been before he left. Finally his gaze fastened on me. His lips compressed, and then he said, “Anika, I’ve done something terrible.”

“What?” I couldn’t imagine my father, who sometimes could be misguided but who I knew was incapable of hurting anyone, doing something so wrong that it had aged him ten years in a single day.

He looked past me to my mother. “The transport is wrecked. Ran off the road about seven kilometers from here. I thought I could walk home.”

She bit her lip. We all knew that even with insurance replacing the transport would be difficult. We’d been nursing the vehicle along for years. Transports newly drop-shipped here cost far more than what our meager insurance would give us for the wrecked vehicle.

I said reassuringly, “It’s okay, Dad. The important thing is that you’re home safe and you’re all right.”

The glance he gave me was so wretched, so full of despair, that I couldn’t help taking a step back.
 

“Is it?” He shook his head. “Sit down, Anika. I have something I need to tell you.”

Since I didn’t know what else to do, I did sit down, even though my stomach knotted and little shivers of dread began crawling down the back of my neck. Whatever he had to say, it couldn’t be good.
 

Without really looking at either my mother or me, he went on, “I’d never seen rain like this before, but I knew the road…or I thought I did. It’s washed out—I went over the side and hit a boulder. Still, I had my breathing equipment, and I knew about where I was. It wouldn’t be a pleasant walk, but I didn’t want to wait on the off chance that a patrol might come by. So I grabbed what I could and left.”

I said nothing, but only watched as his hands twisted around themselves, almost as if they’d taken on a life of their own and he was powerless to stop them.

“I walked for a long while,” he went on. “Then my breath got short, and I stopped to look at the gauge on my breather. It was fine—it had to be fine, as I’d double-checked it right before I left town. But it wasn’t.” He lifted his shoulders, even as he frowned. “The membrane must’ve gotten torn in the crash or something. I knew I was still at least four kilometers from home, and there was no way I’d make it with what I had left.” He hesitated. “I kept going. What else was I supposed to do? And then I saw them, off to my right.”

“Saw what, Dad?”

His hands finally ceased their wringing and instead hung limply over his knees. “Moonflowers. Fields of them. I knew the only way I could survive would be to take as many of them with me as I could. So I went into the nearest field and began cutting them down with my utility knife. Had about a half-dozen gathered when I heard…” He shook his head. “I can’t describe it. A shout, or a cry, or maybe a combination of the two. And I looked up to see a Zhore bearing down on me.”

“A—Zhore?” I asked. Then my brain caught up with the situation. “You mean our neighbor?”

“If you can even call him that.” My father stared down at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. “I apologized for trespassing—told him my breather had malfunctioned and that I needed the flowers or I would die. He told me he didn’t care to hear my excuses, that I had been stealing his property.”

“You really spoke to him?” I asked. Despite the dire expression on my father’s face, I couldn’t help being just a little excited. After all, so few people had ever exchanged even that many words with one of the elusive aliens. “What did he sound like?”

“What did he—” A shake of the head, followed by, “He sounded like a man, I suppose. An angry man. I told him that I was no thief, and offered to pay for the flowers. He didn’t say anything to me for a few seconds. Finally he replied, ‘I have no use for your money. What else do you have to offer?’

“I told him I was only a homesteader, that all I had was my little bit of land and my family. That seemed to interest him, and he asked who my family members were. So I told him about my wife, and my daughter in college off-world…and I told him of you, Anika.”

I didn’t see how that had any bearing on the situation, but I decided not to say anything. I worried that any more interruptions might stop my father from telling the rest of his story.
 

“The Zhore made a sound that might have been a laugh,” my father went on, his words coming more and more slowly, as if he had to drag them out of himself. “And he said—he said—” He broke off, and knotted his hands in his wet hair. For the first time I realized just how gray that hair had gotten over the past ten years.
 

“Said what, Peter?” my mother inquired, as she took out the second ear bud and laid her tablet aside. Maybe she really did care about what he had to say after all.

“He said he would forgive me my theft if I—” My father licked his pale lips and said, “If I brought my daughter to him.”

A heavy silence fell, as my mother and I exchanged puzzled glances. What use could a Zhore have with a human girl? Never mind the fact that what our alien neighbor had proposed was even more illegal than the minor trespassing and petty theft he’d accused my father of. There were some sectors of the galaxy where people were traded like commodities—or so I’d read, anyway—but Lathvin IV wasn’t located in one of them.

“A horrible joke?” I asked, and my father shook his head.

“No, Anika. I tried to tell him what he asked was impossible—and illegal—but he wouldn’t listen. Told me to breathe of the flowers, as by then my own oxygen supply had almost run out, and I did. I wanted to have enough breath to argue with him, if nothing else. He said he could make things difficult for me—bring me up against the magistrate. He pointed out that if the ruling went against me, I could lose the homestead.”

“Well, we can’t let that happen,” I said, my tone flat. Crazy as it might have seemed to someone outside the situation, somehow complaining about giving myself over as chattel to a vindictive alien seemed petty when measured against the possibility of losing the piece of land we’d struggled to survive on all those years.
 

My father replied, “It’s insane, and we all know it. We can fight this thing—”

“With what?” my mother interjected. “We don’t have money for a lawyer. Are you going to defend yourself? We’ve all seen this Zhore’s property—he can probably afford to hire an army of lawyers if he needs to.”

I knew she was right, but somehow it didn’t feel that great to listen to my mother calmly point out all the reasons why it would make much more sense for me to hand myself over like a good girl. Technically, at twenty I was considered an adult and could do as I wished, but the truth was that I depended on them for everything. The best way I could help them now was to go to the Zhore.

“It’s all right, Dad,” I said, my voice calm enough, even though an odd, fluttery sensation had started somewhere in my midsection. “We all know there’s no way you can let him take you to court. You’ve worked so hard on this homestead—I won’t let you lose it.”

His eyes looked suspiciously bright, but he stared back at me without flinching. “And I won’t let my daughter give herself over to a monster.”

“I’ve been of age for almost three years. You really can’t stop me.” The words sounded firm and reasonable. I almost believed them.

A few seconds passed, seconds in which he sat there and watched me as if he hadn’t really ever seen me before. “You mean that?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’ve done so much for me. Let me do something now to help you.”

He was silent, but somehow in the sudden slump of his shoulders I saw he wouldn’t fight me anymore.

“Besides,” I added, and managed to summon a smile, “I’m ready for a change.”
 

I had spoken only to hearten my father, to attempt to erase the miserable look on his face, but I realized once I had said the words that I actually did mean them.

Only after I packed my few meager belongings did I understand how little I had accumulated during our years here on Lathvin IV.
 
Some changes of clothing, the precious gold ring my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday and which I knew they really couldn’t afford. My own tablet computer, smaller than my mother’s and not as powerful. I used the desk computer for my schoolwork, as the tablets weren’t set up to connect to the subspace grid, but of course I couldn’t exactly take that with me. Somehow I doubted the Zhore would allow me to continue my studies, but if he did, well, he was rich enough to get me my own desktop unit with subspace relays.

The storm had blown itself out, but the world was still sodden as my father and I set forth. My mother begged off, saying her head ached. I wanted to hate her for her cowardice, but maybe it was easier for her to make her farewells inside the familiar walls of her own home. An odd numbness had overtaken me, and I could only hug her briefly before I followed my father out to the airlock.

 
The Zhore’s instructions had been that I should come immediately, even though by that time it was almost twenty-three hundred. They used Gaia time on Lathvin, even though the planet’s natural day only had twenty-two hours; our hours were shorter than Gaia standard to compensate. Still, late was late, no matter how you calculated it.

I wore my breather and my father had the spare. They were designed so you could communicate easily when wearing them, but neither of us seemed too inclined to conversation. My father carried a halogen torch, and I my little satchel with all my worldly goods. I concentrated on the treacherous ground underfoot; of course the road was well-paved, but mud had flowed across sections of it. In a few days someone would come along with a ’dozer to clear it out, I supposed. In the meantime, we picked our way along and tried not to trip over scattered rocks or stumble into a hole.

Despite the rough going, we reached the perimeter of the Zhore’s property sooner than I would have liked. The moonflowers danced and swayed around us, seeming to laugh in the darkness. A dark path wound through them toward the Zhore’s house.
 

We stopped there. My father said, “You can’t do this, Anika.”

Somehow I’d known he would make one last attempt to keep me from going. I shook my head, wishing that so much of our faces weren’t obscured by the breathing apparatus. There were newer, more streamlined models available, but purchasing them had been beyond our modest means. “It’ll be fine. It’s really like I’m hardly leaving at all. Libba’s the one who’s light-years and light-years away—I’ll just be a few kilometers down the road.”

His cheeks moved, and I guessed he smiled a little behind the breathing mask. “I see I really can’t stop you.”

“No,” I said. “Let me do this, Dad. Let me help.”

And then he took me and gave me a fierce hug before he turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to watch me walk up the path to the Zhore’s house. It was all right. I didn’t think I’d want to do that, either, if our roles had been reversed.

So there was no one to see me move down the dark path through all those pale flowers, which sighed and rustled in the dark. I kept my head up and walked steadily toward the looming bulk of the Zhore’s home—mansion, really, now that I grew closer and saw how big the place actually was. It looked like pictures I’d seen of old houses on Gaia, except something seemed slightly off about the proportions, and the windows had odd little arches above them. Two lights burned blue-white at the entrance, one on either side of an enormous pewter-colored door. As I approached, the door swung inward, opening on an airlock much grander than the one at our homestead. This one looked almost like a vestibule of its own.

Maybe the Zhore had been watching on a closed circuit, or maybe the door was programmed to open whenever someone came near it. I supposed it really didn’t matter. I had set myself on this course, and so I’d have to follow through, no matter what happened.

I stepped inside, then waited for the familiar
whoosh
of the door sealing behind me. I reached up and took off the breathing mask. Fresh air, with none of the faintly recycled scent of the air of my family’s homestead, swirled around me.
 

The interior door opened then, and I stepped out into an enormous room fully two stories high, with a wide staircase directly in front of me. Lights in sconces burned at half-power, gleaming off floors and walls of what appeared to be dark, polished stone. In one corner a wall fountain splashed into the silence.

“Welcome.” The voice was deep and calm, and seemed to come from a spot halfway up the stairs.

I started, then realized what I thought had been just another shadow was the Zhore himself, standing there in his night-colored robes. Of course, I could
 
see nothing of him, just the vague outline of a hooded figure. He did seem very tall.

“Thank you,” I said. What a silly thing to say. Why should I be thanking him for blackmailing me away from my family and my home? I added, in a slightly sharper tone, “That is, I’m here because you didn’t give us much choice.”

To my surprise, he laughed. The laugh sounded human enough at least, although I knew no human being lurked beneath those concealing robes. “You are not afraid to speak your mind. That is good.” A pause, then, “Come here.”

I wanted to refuse, but I doubted that would do me or my cause much good. Clutching my satchel, I mounted the basalt staircase and stopped on the step just below him. He surveyed me for a moment.

“What is your name?”

“Anika,” I replied. “Anika Jespers.”

“Anika,” he repeated. “What does it mean?”

“Mean?”

“All names have meanings, don’t they?”

I supposed that was mostly true, but I found myself reluctant to give him an answer. “My parents said it meant ‘beautiful’ in one of the old Gaian languages.” I shrugged. “Sorry about the false advertising.”