For the Love of Gelo! (3 page)

“Well, I've talked to the Observers,” said Nicki. “Some of their old manuals do mention faster methods of communication: hyperlight, tachyonic ansible, and a couple of others. But the Observatory doesn't have any of this stuff.”

“That's probably intentional,” I said. “Jalasu Jhuk wanted Gelo—and the Q-sik—to remain hidden from anyone who might be looking for it. Outgoing calls would not help with that.”

“I guess for now, then, we're stuck with good old-fashioned radio waves,” said Hollins. And he repeated his message a handful more times before the communications console flickered and went dead.

“Or not,” said Becky. The Observatory was now powerless, totally dark. After a moment, Little Gus flicked on a human flashlight (humans suffer from a sad and crippling inability to see in total darkness; in my experience, they don't even want to discuss the possibility that they might need more eyes).

“Well, I suppose that's it for today, everybody,” said Ydar to the other Observers. “Take the rest of the day off. Spend some time with your offspring. Try to get some exercise.”

The Observers, used to spending their time hunched over glowing screens, stood and stretched uncertainly.

“Sorry, children” said Ydar to the kids. “Feel free to borrow some cyclopaedias when you go.” It pointed to the shelf of the dense astronomic tomes.

“Yay,” said Becky.

Previously, these ancient cyclopaedias had been sacred holy books of the order, completely off-limits to the uninitiated. Now Ydar was encouraging anyone who had the time or the interest to study them for clues as to just where in the wide universe we might be. I hadn't borrowed any before—they were notoriously dry reading, and I worried that with extra homework my Xenostryfe III skills could suffer—but I figured I might as well give it a shot. I grabbed a thol'graz-ful at random.

“Ah,
Spiral Arm 314229 of the Turech Galaxy
,” said Ydar, smiling with approval at one of the books I held. “An underrated classic.”

As we descended the spiral steps of Dynusk's Column, the children were quiet. Their mood was glum. They missed their parents and their planet.

I too was quiet. I felt responsible for their predicament. My actions had accidentally stranded them on Gelo. Through my curiosity, and a boundless love of Feeney's Original Astronaut Ice Cream, I'd involved them in Gelo's ancient war with the Vorem Dominion and somehow gotten them trapped on the far side of the universe.

I wanted to help them contact their parents. I wanted to help them find a way home. But at that moment, I simply wanted to cheer them up. So badly that I was even contemplating drastic measures. I still had a few Feeney's Original Astronaut Ice Cream bars—the universe's most delectable treat—hidden in various secure locations around the city. I was on the verge of offering one of these to them when Nicki spoke.

“I wonder what Mom and Dad are doing right now,” she said.

“Probably polishing your awards,” said Becky. Nicki nodded in satisfaction.

“I hope everybody on Earth isn't, like, an ape now,” said Little Gus.

“Don't worry,” said Hollins, “we're going to make it home. We'll think of something. ‘All the resources we need are in the mind.' Teddy Roosevelt said that.”

“But
what
will we think of?” asked Gus.

“If we knew that, we would have already thought of it,” said Hollins.

We walked through Ryzz Plaza, past the iridium statue of Great Jalasu Jhuk. Whole neighborhoods of the city were totally dark. With the power outages, certain foods had become scarce or even disappeared completely. As we passed through the market, we saw some stalls deserted, while others had incredibly long lines. Xotonians grumbled at one another and jostled to get to the front.

“Hey! How come mine doesn't have any fried mold on it?” cried Dyves, prodding the cave slug it had just purchased from Sertor's stall.

“The mold fryer needs power to run,” said Sertor, brandishing its spatula like a weapon. “And there isn't any power!”

“But I'm on the Xotonian Council—”

“I don't care if you're Jalasu Jhuk itself! There's no fried mold left. And if you don't like it, I'm happy to serve you up a nice thol'graz sandwich!”

Dyves gritted its ish'kuts and blinked back tears.

Tension was building in Core-of-Rock. Regardless of losing the Stealth Shield, our broken reactor was making everyday life much more difficult. Air and water circulation had slowed. All the occupations and hobbies that required power were curbed. Public sanitation, medical care, and agriculture suffered the most. Rumors of the departing Vorem trireme didn't help matters.

“Hold on, I'll catch up with you guys,” said Little Gus, and he peeled off and headed toward the butcher's stall. Then he stopped. “Wait. Can somebody lend me ten x'yzoth crystals?”

The humans looked at one another, then at me.

I sighed. “Ten x'yzoth,” I said. “That's an awful lot. How about . . . none?”

“Gotta be at least ten, Chorkle,” said Little Gus. “Prices have really gone up!”

When he met us later at the usk-lizard stables near the city guardhouse, he was carrying a wrapped parcel.

A young guard named Ixoby nodded and opened the gate. Inside, dozens of the huge, dull-eyed usk-lizards placidly chewed dried lichen in their stalls. The humans and I set about bridling two of the great beasts that we knew well: Goar and Gec.

“Well, they may not be the swiftest usk-lizards . . . ” said Hollins, holding his nose and patting Gec's haunches.

“Or the smartest,” said Becky as she watched Goar chew on an old piece of rope for a minute before determining it wasn't food and spitting it out.

“But Goar and Gec definitely stink the least,” I said.

Gec snorted as Hollins and Nicki climbed onto its back. Becky, Gus, and I climbed onto Goar's.

“Ha!” cried Hollins.

“What's funny?” I asked.

But before anyone answered, we were galloping through the streets of Core-of-Rock and out into the Unclaimed Tunnels. It was unnerving not to see the Stealth Shield, the traditional Xotonian boundary between civilization and wilderness.

We traveled onward into the cavern system. Behind me, Gus squinted and shined his flashlight around in the darkness. I suspected he was hoping for a glimpse of his phantom Vorem.

The usk-lizards carried us through a thick scrub of spiny dralts, past fields of pulsing purple geodes. At one sharp bend in the tunnel, we disturbed a huge flock of rockbats. For a minute, the air was thick with them as they flew past by the thousands.

“Whoa, careful, Nicki,” said Hollins as he made a protective gesture to cover her from the flapping mass of gray wings.

“They're just rockbats,” said Nicki, frowning. “They're totally harmless.”

After an hour of riding, we came to the place called Flowing-Stone. It was nine turns from Core-of-Rock, and even the humans knew the way by now. Flowing-Stone was a gnarled old philiddra forest growing on the site of what had once been a thriving city. Long ago, Flowing-Stone had been completely destroyed in a Xotonian civil war. An occasional stone ruin poked through the mist like a broken bone, the only remnants of its existence. The whole place had an eerie, haunted quality. With the death of our reactor, I wondered if Core-of-Rock would end up like Flowing-Stone.

Goar sniffed the air and slowed to a walk. Then it stopped altogether. Becky yanked on the reins as the usk-lizard began to shake its head from side to side and tried to back up, bumping into Gec, who bellowed.

Now both the usk-lizards were snorting and stamping and making low whining noises in the backs of their throats. They smelled something out there in the forest. Something that scared them.

“Oh, here we go,” said Becky, shaking her head.

I checked my own skin. It had turned the same dappled gray and black as the forest around us. This was a Xotonian camouflage reflex, the unconscious reaction to a nearby predator. I sighed.

Suddenly a blue six-legged beast—a thyss-cat, the apex predator of Gelo's ecosystem and just about the most terrifying sight a Xotonian could hope to see—came tearing out of the darkness toward us. Becky and Hollins fought the reins as their usk-lizards howled in distress and tried to flee. The thyss-cat hunched and sprang high into the air. It landed right on top of Little Gus, knocking him out of the saddle.

Gus and the cat rolled over and over on the ground, a ball of blue fur and human limbs. I heard a high-pitched mixture of yowling and giggles.

“Pizza, heel! Heel, dude! C'mon, Pizza!” said Little Gus, wrestling with the young thyss-cat, which was now much bigger and far stronger than him. “When are you going to learn how to heel?”

“Maybe when you stop carrying raw meat in your pockets,” said Becky.

“Good call,” said Gus, pulling out the parcel and unwrapping it: two fresh usk-lizard flank steaks from the butcher's stall. Pizza bolted them down in a gruesome and bloody display. Goar and Gec stamped nervously.

“And that's why Pizza's got to live way out here,” said Hollins, shaking his head and suppressing a gag.

When he was a mere thyss-cub, Pizza was grudgingly tolerated by the Xotonian populace of Core-of-Rock. After all, the humans were heroes, so perhaps they should be allowed to have exotic (terrifying, dangerous) pets? But as Pizza grew, this tolerance gave way to fear. Every day Pizza looked less like a harmless blue furball and more like a nightmarish killing machine. Eventually, the Xotonian Council held a vote. It was decided unanimously that Pizza had to go. After some of our neighbors complained that Pizza had trampled their puffball garden and eaten three welcome mats, even Kalac was for it.

So Little Gus had released the beast—then about the size of an Earth housecat—back into the wild. We had chosen a spot near the waterfall where we'd first found him. It was a tearful scene. At the time, Hollins had said the whole thing was very
Born Free
, referring to some ancient human film.

But that wasn't the end. Each time we passed through Flowing-Stone, Pizza would bound out of the philiddra forest and give Little Gus a forcible tongue bath. Sometimes he even brought us a bloody shugg carcass as a “present.” And Little Gus brought presents of his own: leftovers, fresh meat, brand-new welcome mats purchased just for Pizza to shred. I was loaning Gus a lot of x'yzoth crystals.

“You guys go on,” said Gus. “I can ride on Pizza, my faithful mount and battle companion.” Then he tried to climb on top of the thyss-cat's back. Pizza immediately shook him off into the dirt.

“You heard him,” said Becky, and she spurred Goar forward. Gus stayed behind, wrestling with his self-declared best friend.

The other humans and I left the usk-lizards to graze on moss above and descended the long stone staircase to the only intact part of the ancient city, a place we simply called “the hangar.”

The hangar was a huge iridium chamber, empty save for a couple of spaceships and one messy corner. This small area was cluttered with human things. After the battle, we had brought all that could be saved from their crashed pod: a televisual screen, a dilapidated yet comfortable couch, a stained area rug, and a ping-pong table with one wobbly leg. This ping-pong table was the bloody field of competition for Hollins and Becky. Their high-speed grudge matches made oog-ball look civil by comparison.

It was a little slice of Earth, right here on Gelo. And I suspect that this—even more than solitude or the chance to work on actual spaceships—was why the humans enjoyed spending time in the hangar. In fact, we made the trip to Flowing-Stone nearly every day.

“So, who's up for some ping-pong?” asked Hollins. “What do you say, Becky? You haven't been humiliated in a while.”

“I feel humiliated every time I'm seen with you in public,” said Becky, heading for the storage locker where we kept the snacks.

“No ping-pong for me. I've got ships to fix,” said Nicki.

Two of the starfighters had been badly damaged in the great battle, shredded by Vorem laser fire. Nicki, Hollins, myself, and Becky (when she was in the mood) gathered here to patch the holes in their hulls and repair their malfunctioning systems, using replacement components from the crashed human pod or the mining equipment the humans had left behind.

Eventually the three Xotonian starfighters had been given names to tell them apart. Little Gus's suggestions—
Guswing Zero
, the U.S.S.
Gus-terprise
, and
Little Gus: The Spaceship—
had all been vetoed. Hollins suggested we call one the
Roosevelt
after an ancient human leader (or maybe two ancient human leaders? I was never sure). Becky christened another
Phryxus II
after the human mining vessel. I felt that at least one of the starfighters should have a Xotonian name, so I called the third
T'utzuxe
after the red planet we had left behind.

There was a fourth starship in the hangar that had no name. Not content with trying to master just one type of advanced alien technology, Nicki also spent time working on her “special project”: repairing a disabled Vorem trireme. This ship had been shot down on the surface of Gelo but remained largely intact. She hoped that it could be salvaged. So far, progress on this ship had been minimal. Its sleek black contours were still twisted and charred from the battle.

On some days, the hangar was abuzz with activity—Hollins and Becky had been actively training Xotonians to pilot their own ancient ships. Today, though, we had the hangar all to ourselves. Every sound we made echoed endlessly through the cavernous space.

“A negatively charged induction coil,” said Hollins as he started to work on the
Roosevelt
. “I never would've thought of that. Good thing one of us is smart.”

“I'm not just the smart one,” said Nicki. “I can do other stuff.”