Alpha Rising (27 page)

The smaller boy moved alongside his brother.
Staring from wild-looking eyes, both kids pointed their spears at
the intruders.

Bach looked at Star. “I guess we’re supposed
to get orange tongues, too. It has to be okay or he wouldn’t have
eaten them.”

As the brothers looked on, Bach and Star
lifted their headgear just enough to eat the citrusy berries. Then
Bach stuck out his orange-tinged tongue. Star hesitated for a
moment, then did the same.

Seeming more pleased than his big brother,
the smaller boy shuffled his feet in a little dance and stuck the
white flowers under his brother’s nose. Then he tauntingly shook
the flowers toward Bach and Star and yelled, “Hex.” Both kids
yelped gleefully, then beat a hasty retreat along the arena, dust
flying from their bare feet as they ran.

Star looked at Bach. “Hex?”

“
I think they’re just
playing. But I’m trying to figure out why they’re still here if all
the children are missing.”

“
Those on the other planets
said that kids are disappearing slowly. We must check on that as
soon as we get home.”

Bach looked around. “We didn’t read much
before we got here. What does Baalbek contribute to the co-op
effort?”

“
Meat, and minerals, and
the people have great physical strength.”

The two continued around the clearing’s edge
at a safe distance from the event. The sound of a heavy, thumping
drumbeat shook their insides, and tinkling rainsticks, warbling
wind instruments, and intensifying chants and yells added to the
ceremonial composition. Women spectators lined the distant
sidelines, and over a hundred body-painted males joined in an
ever-circling dance around a five-foot-high bonfire in the center
of the arena.

“
Just looking at that fire
makes me hot,” Bach said. “Startin’ to sweat.”

“
Me too,” Star replied. “It
must be hotter here than recorded in the logbook. I feel it through
the E-suit.”

Bach bobbed along to the drumbeat. “I like
this music. Wonder what’s going on?”

“
Seems a bit ominous to
me,” she replied.

“
The celebrants don’t seem
to know we’re here,” he said, “but I have a feeling we should stay
under cover.”

Star pointed off to one side to a sprawling
tree with a makeshift platform nine feet up. “I saw those two boys
scurry up a rope ladder on that tree. Maybe they’ll tell us what’s
happening.”

Bach and Star headed to the tree tower. When
they looked up at the platform, two faces and four black eyes
glared down.

Star shouted to the boys over the noise.
“Will you come down and talk to us?”

Crouched on their knees, the expressionless
children said nothing.

Star stood on her tiptoes and extended her
hand, but the boys didn’t move.

Bach noticed Star’s face covered in sweat.
“I’m uneasy, too,” he said, moving closer to the tree. “Here, let
me try. I know they’ll see me smiling through this headgear.” He
yelled up to the kids. “Don’t be afraid. We’re friendly.”

In one quick move, the boy with purple stars
around his eyes thrust his hand toward Bach.

Bach jumped back.

The youth gripped the open edge of a giant
snail shell and lowered it toward Bach as if he wanted him to take
it.

Bach stretched until he hurt, waved his arm
back and forth, and came within a fingernail of the shell, but the
kid wouldn’t give an inch.

Then the boy’s lips curled up with a smile.
He drew the shell to his mouth, and with one long blow produced a
hornlike blast that trilled to the skies above Baalbek. The
ceremonial music stopped abruptly and hundreds of savage faces
focused on Bach and Star at the base of the tree. A lone drumbeat,
like a signal, drove the mob of chanting natives with raised spears
toward the intruders. A large native emerged from the throng and
strode forward. His body seemed a walking wall of muscles.

“
Uh-oh. He must be the high
chief.” Bach shielded Star with his body.

The stately leader, covered head to toe in
shimmering gold paint, looked like a gilded idol wearing a white
leather loincloth. A flash of light sparked off of a golden,
sun-like medallion embedded in his forehead.

The tribe hummed like a swarm of bees as the
chief strode forward, smooth muscles quivering with each step.
Three yards from Bach and Star, he stopped and planted his huge
bare feet wide apart, and with a flip of his head, flung
shoulder-length dreadlocks from his face. He raised his left hand
and the aroused natives fell silent.

Bach suddenly felt like he couldn’t swallow.
A stream of sweat trickled from his throbbing temples, down his
neck, onto his pulsing chest. He hyperventilated and struggled for
a breath.

Star latched onto his arm. Weak and
perspiring, she whispered, “I feel sick.”

The chief’s dark eyes dissected the pair
inch-by-inch.

Bach extended his arm hoping for a
handshake, and coughed out the word, “Peace.”

“
Do not speak!” bellowed
the high chief. He placed his hand on Bach’s shoulder and, with a
powerful grip, shoved him to the ceremonial circle and seated him
in front of the roaring fire. An underling delivered Star to a spot
beside Bach.

Bach could barely speak. “I’m suffocating,”
he said to Star. “These E-suits are supposed to withstand higher
temperatures than this.” When she didn’t reply he turned to look
and saw her face deathly white behind her headgear.

She swayed forward, voice fading. “Not the
suits … the orange berries.” In desperation, she peeled off her
headgear and gulped in the thick, hot air.

A sharp whistle from the chief summoned a
statuesque, bronze-skinned woman from the sidelines. Black ostrich
feathers fastened to white cording covered her delicate areas, and
thick gold cuffs adorned her neck, wrists, and ankles. So bright
were the whites of her eyes and teeth, Bach noticed nothing else of
her face. She handed two wooden cups to the chief. He stirred them
with his finger, made a cooing sound, then handed them back. She
forced the cups into Bach’s and Star’s hands.

Bach eyed the concoction—slimy and red, like
a pigeon’s blood. “We can’t drink this!” he stated. “We don’t
understand your customs.”

“
Elixir increases strength.
Reveals most powerful and brave,” the chief declared. “Bravest
chooses from possessions and family members, then rules
Baalbek.”

Bach’s chest heaved with every breath.

The chief wrapped his huge hands around
Bach’s headgear and lifted it off. He pointed his spear to his
captive’s forehead and looked at the cup. “Drink!”

Bach’s eyes rolled up in his head. He pushed
the cup toward the chief. “Can’t do this … ate berries … no
time.”

The chief leaned his massive frame to within
a few feet of Bach’s face. The native’s black-eyed gaze came with a
push of his spear into Bach’s upper chest, making a wound just deep
enough to pierce the skin. A rush of blood spread outward like a
target on the white, sweat-soaked E-suit. “Drink!” said the chief.
Next, he pointed to Star. “Drink!”

Unable to focus, she gagged. “What is
it?”

“
Strengthening
elixir!”

With closed eyes, she tilted the cup of
crimson slime. Words to Bach were a gurgle. “Don’t compete…!”
Warlike chanting escalated when she slumped to the ground.

A final effort spewed from Bach’s lips, “I
won’t drink this.”

Two underlings hovered over him. Words were
unnecessary.

Head spinning, bathed in perspiration, Bach
drank from the cup. He held back the swallow as long as he could,
but before long his throat spasmed involuntarily and something that
felt like a clot of congealed blood slid down his esophagus into
his retching stomach. Hundreds of haughty eyes glared, and yelping
voices rang in his ears as he entered a mental struggle to control
his destiny and fight the effects of the sanguine sludge. When the
elixir collided with the anesthetic effects of the orange berries,
a final protest rolled off Bach’s thickened tongue and numb lips,
“Can’t be part of your planet….” Then his ears rang, the
surroundings turned double-imaged, and the ceremonial pyre cast a
netherworldly glow on warpainted faces bobbing in and out of his
sight. For a split second, a spark flashed from a decorated lance
and, in his woozy mind, something looked like the Creator’s symbol.
He turned to tell Star, but his thoughts ground to a halt, his head
spiraled forward, and reason was no more.

The chief grumbled and flailed his hand
above the catatonic pair. “Weak ones! Elixir finds no
strength!”

Four natives carried Bach and Star to the
base of the lookout tree, and the ceremony resumed. Yodeling men
and women joined hands and performed a hopping, foot-stomping march
as drumbeats echoed, flames blazed, and the arena swarmed with
howling warriors brandishing pugil sticks and hurling boulders
toward distant markers in an all-out bid for supremacy. Amid war
cries and cheers, young and old battled each other, and round after
round of flaming arrows found their marks in tree-stump and
animal-skin targets.

An hour had passed when
Bach began to awaken and his thought processes registered a distant
sound.
A drumbeat. I hear it and feel it
pulsing in my stomach. Where am I?
Teetering between stupor and awareness, he thought he felt
something wet trickle over his nose and lips. The sensation was so
real he slapped his face. Someone giggled. Flat on his back, he
opened one eye, then the other. High above in the lookout tree, the
lion-faced boy swung a bucket, splashing more water down on his
head. Bach propped himself up against the tree trunk and brushed
the water from his E-suit. He noticed the ring of blood and ran his
hand over the circular stain. The wound beneath hurt at his touch.
A slow, deep breath of the stifling air brought a whisper aloud
just to hear himself speak, “I’m still alive … but my head’s
splitting.” He reached over and touched Star’s limp body on the
ground beside him and gently whisked her long dark hair from her
face. That’s when he saw two pairs of bare feet close by, one
larger than the other. He looked up.

A muscular, dark-skinned man looked down.
Painted silver wings adorned the man’s upper body and brown woven
fabric covered him from waist to knees. The pretty woman beside him
wore a gauzy yellow tunic that matched painted yellow spirals
encircling her arms and legs. She scolded the boys in the tree and
chased them away, then knelt beside Bach and passed a cluster of
white flowers under his nose. “Inhale,” she instructed. He closed
his eyes and did as she said while she talked. “The two brothers
are the last children on our planet. Troublesome they are, but they
saved you from harm by giving you hex berries. They took you out of
competition.” She moved to Star’s side and passed a cluster of
white flowers under her nose.

Star awakened to a dizzying hum of sounds
inside her head. “Ohhh, what happened?”

“
You endured a mix of hex
berries and the warrior’s potion,” the woman replied. “The berries
prevailed. You’re lucky the elixir of strength didn’t.”

Holding his forehead, Bach groaned and again
sniffed the invigorating flowers. “Elixir or not, we don’t have the
strength to compete against your people.”

“
Strength is our gift,” the
man said. His body reflected his statement. “The Creator gives
everyone a gift.”

The natives sponged the Alphamates’
dust-coated faces with moist, almond-scented leaves and, as Bach’s
and Star’s senses returned, gave them mint-flavored seeds to eat to
lower their body temperature and neutralize the effects of both the
hex berries and elixir.

Bach looked around to get
his bearings and noticed the natives’ spears poked into the ground
alongside his and Star’s headgear. The symbol he thought he’d seen
on a spear by the fire just before he passed out, hung from both of
the spears.
Am I still dreaming?
Legs wobbling, he stood and touched the crossed
circle. “The Creator,” he said. “I don’t believe it … you just said
something about the Creator.”

“
Yes.” The woman pointed to
her mate. “Jett and I commune with him.”

“
And your name?” Bach
asked.

“
Maya.”

“
Maya and Jett, we’re here
to take you with us.”

“
We cannot leave,” Maya
whispered. “Jett must win the challenge.”

Jett nodded. “Then I will decree sovereignty
for my planet.”

To be sure that no one else could hear, Bach
moved close to the natives. “My name is Bach. Star and I are under
instructions from the Creator to find two chosen ones from
Baalbek.” He pointed to the symbol. “This is the sign we seek to
fulfill a special mission. Please come with us.”

Maya spoke with hushed excitement. “A
special mission! Jett saw a bright light in the sky outlining
clouds that formed that symbol. He claimed it as a sign of the four
winds guiding us. Now I understand. It was the Creator’s
signal.”

“
Yes, his calling. The time
has come,” Bach said.

As if planned, the noisy competition
stopped—no gongs, no snail shell signals, just an unexpected end.
From twenty yards away, a group of natives pressed forward like
animals with hungry eyes, waiting for a signal from their leader to
charge.

Maya and Jett stood stock-still with Bach
and Star beside them.

Faint war cries rose from the pack and the
two pint-sized snitches pushed their way to the forefront, jabbing
the air with their little spears as they moved to the chief’s side
with their tiny white teeth bared.