The Faarian Chronicles: Exile (5 page)

The Robot was next to me, talking as usual. I looked at him
briefly, heard him saying something about water and not holding my breath, and
tuned him out. What did it matter, anyway? After a while he stopped talking,
having either said what he wanted or given up.

My father’s words came back to me, ringing in my ears as if
he was there.
Life’s an adventure, Sunny.

I mentally rolled my eyes, but for the first time I thought
I understood what he was trying to tell me. This was
my
life, the start
of
my
adventure.

“Make the most of it,” I said to myself and raised my head.

The walls around me now projected the view outside so we
could see what we passed in a sort of I-Max panorama, without the spinning.
Funny, I didn’t get pressed into my seat or thrown forward from the speed
changes. I just had to avoid looking at the spinning central navigation column
to keep my stomach from splattering everything around me.

Our first stop was as surprising as everything else had
been, and was only a short hop away. I recognized the house as we set down on
the helipad behind it – Russ’s house.

I remembered the other two empty seats on the other side of
the ship when I boarded. Oh God no, Russ couldn’t be coming with us, could he?
Please, please let us just be picking up more cargo from his parents.

As soon as we landed, a dozen people streamed out the back
door of the house, not seeming to notice the dark as they crossed the expansive
lawn toward us. I put my hood up and scooched as far down in my seat as
possible to avoid being seen by Russ, who was chattering away at the front of
the group. Now that we’d stopped, I wasn’t sure if the scene outside was still
being projected on the walls or if it was the real thing. I felt like I was on
display in a fishbowl.

John and a man I didn’t recognize (his dad?) both carried a
couple of duffel bags. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that Russ was
empty-handed.

They hugged the travelers goodbye as they prepared to board
the ship. I tried not to stare at John as I was struck again by how cute he
was, even while wearing that Rocky the Flying Squirrel hat again.

He looked up from hugging a couple of Russ’s little sisters
and caught my eye with a little smirk. I jerked my head away, mortified at
being caught staring. Okay, they could definitely see in.

Father and son climbed the stairs to board the ship and
tossed their bags high atop the pile of crates, John easily climbing the stack
to strap them on. I didn’t even realize I was watching again until he spotted
me and winked from the top of the pile – right before the whole thing started
sliding under his feet and he had to scramble to hang on.

“John,” his father admonished and I didn’t bother trying to
hide my laughter.

The Amazon woman, Myrihn, shook her head and mumbled
something about not even needing to bring back supplies.

“Probably just a pleasure trip to meet women,” she grumbled.
John’s father must have overheard because he pinned her with a look across the
ship and nodded with cold politeness before disappearing around the navigation
column to take one of the two empty seats. Myrihn ignored Teague’s elbow to the
side and resumed perusing her
Cat Fanciers
magazine with her apparently
habitual sour expression firmly in place.

John didn’t look my way again as he too disappeared out of
view with red cheeks. If I leaned to the side over my bags on the seat next to
me, I could see his brown leather-clad arm after he took his seat.

I kept expecting to rocket up through the stratosphere but
my mother had apparently booked us on an eco-tour. Either that or it was some
kind of bribe for the women sent to fetch me. They seemed fascinated as we
hopped at warp speed from the Rockies to the redwood forests of California,
over a pod of whales in the Pacific, then all the way across the U.S. to
Niagara Falls and the Everglades. I hoped we were invisible since a helicopter
couldn’t move this fast.

"Next stop, the Bermuda Triangle," the pilot
finally announced. Ugh, when would the eco-tour end?

When we stopped again, I looked down past my feet and saw we
were hovering over the ocean, the ship’s large spotlight illuminating water so
gorgeous and clear I felt like I could see all the way to the sandy bottom. The
Amazons oohed over a few schools of brightly colored fish, a couple of small
tiger sharks and a manta ray, but compared to the orca pod earlier, the
wildlife here wasn’t real impressive. Was that it?

I was about to turn and ask the Professor’s disembodied head
floating next to me when a wide beam of bluish-white light was emitted from the
bottom of the ship straight into the water below. With the boxes in the way in
the center of the ship, I couldn’t see the exact source of the light, but I saw
what happened when it hit the water.

The beam seemed to vibrate violently for a full minute, and
I heard a sound like a tuning fork, sending all the sea life zipping off as
fast as their fins could carry them. I turned to the Professor to ask what was
going on.

“Just watch,” he said before I could even voice the
question, a hand reaching out of his projector and pointing down at the water.

A thin, red laser beam shot down the middle of the vibrating
white light and hit the ocean, causing the already warm-looking water to bubble
as if boiling. Without warning, the pilot's cockpit dropped from the central
navigation column, through the bottom of the ship, and into the water, yanking
the rest of the ship into the ocean with a great splash. As if drawn by a
magnet to the ocean floor, we started sinking - fast.

Chapter 5: The Big Flush

I looked around in alarm but the Amazons only sat, chatting
about animals and seeming unconcerned as seawater gushed in around us. Though
the pilot's cockpit was now outside the bottom of the ship, I still couldn't
see the others through the empty navigation column. It was as if the ocean was
sucking us under, filling the ship with warm seawater through thousands of
holes that had appeared in the hull.

The Professor took my panic in stride. “It’s okay, Sunny.
Remember what we talked about earlier,” he said calmly. “Take deep breaths
until we go under, and then blow all the air out of your lungs,” he instructed.

“What?”
I exclaimed. Maybe you should have made a
point to pay attention when he was talking, the little voice at the back of my
mind whispered.

“Stop! What are you people doing? Are you nuts?” I was
yelling now over the noise of the rushing water. Myrihn and Teague turned to
stare as if I was the one who was crazy, but they still weren’t doing anything.
I tried to see Sensei across the ship, but the darn central nav column was in
the way.

What was this? Some sort of cult, and I was supposed to die
quietly with them? The bath-warm seawater was now up to my chest and rising
fast. I struggled to get free of my harness.

The Robot projected his hands underwater, put them over
mine, and emitted a glowing, mini-force field. It felt like heavy rubber,
stretching a bit, but keeping me from being able to open my harness or reach in
my pocket for my Leatherman to slice the straps. 

“Sunny, look at me. Look at me!” I looked even though I
didn’t want to. Everything inside me was screaming to get out of there; the
water was up to my neck now. His image was getting wavy, projected through the
water.

“You will be fine, you have to trust me,” he said. I took
one last deep breath and held it as my chin went under. “It’s very important
that you blow all the air out of your lungs when we go under.” I shook my head
frantically, salt water stinging as it splashed into my eyes. “You won’t be
hurt, just do what I say!” And with that, our heads went completely under.

I held my breath as I looked around at the others, bubbles
rising from their mouths. This was crazy! What if I couldn’t survive that way?
He motioned for me to breathe out. I shook my head, my cheeks puffed out like a
bullfrog’s, and my eyes felt like they would bug out of my head any moment. He
motioned more urgently now, looking down through the clear hull as we were
approaching the sea floor, finally putting his hands over my shoulders and
giving me a shock. The brief jolt forced the air from my lungs in a rush of
bubbles just as the magnetic pull became a thousand, no, a hundred thousand
times more powerful.

We ripped through the soft sand of the ocean floor as if it
wasn’t even there and entered a darkness so complete, so extreme, it was like
all light had been sucked out of the world. I quickly lost all track of time
and wished futilely for my old waterproof Snoopy watch with the glowing hands.

I was going to suffocate - again! How long had it been? Half
an hour? More? My heart hammered in my chest. How long could I last before I
passed out and sucked in a lungful of saltwater? My eyes burned and my lungs
started to ache, begging me to take a breath.

After what seemed like forever, the central nav column moved
back up into place inside the ship and we popped up to the surface like a cork.
The walls that made up the top half of the saucer rolled down like car windows,
allowing the water to gush out. The ship’s engines hummed again, lifting us
above the choppy surface so the remaining water could drain from her hull as if
through a colander.

I took a deep breath of the fresh air now surrounding me,
hoping to clear my head and slow my racing heartbeat. The wind blew through the
hull and across my wet clothing, making me shiver, but when I took another deep
breath into my lungs it was only a weak imitation of the air on Earth. I
automatically started to breathe faster, sucking in lungful after lungful with
no real benefit. The breeze coming in through the windows felt refreshing and
cool, but tasted stale and stagnant. The Robot heard me gasping.

“Take your hood off, Sunny,” he said wryly. I did as he said
and felt immediate relief as my hair soaked up the sun’s rays coming through the
now clear-as-glass shell of the saucer. I noticed that everyone else had taken
their hats off too and were now fluffing long tresses in the sunlight. Myrihn,
Teague, Sensei, the pilot – everyone I could see had long hair, some curly,
some straight, all green. The shades varied, from darkest evergreen to bright
new spring grass.

I did a double take as the Robot’s shaggy brown mop suddenly
turned vivid emerald in an effort to fit in. Even though my hair was dyed
black, it was working, like I was breathing in through the hair shafts and out
through my mouth. My hair worked! It actually worked!

“Unpleasant, isn’t it?” the Robot said with a look of
distaste. At first I thought he meant the air, but… he didn’t actually breathe.
I looked at him in confusion.

“The wormhole,” he clarified.

A wormhole. So, that’s what that was. Unpleasant had to be
the understatement of the year, even for the Robot.

“You know, another minute of you holding your breath like
that and it would have been much worse. Don’t you remember me telling you that
air expands in the wormhole?” I shook my head. “Well, I did.” He rolled his
eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you would listen to me next time.”

I didn’t reply.
I’d
appreciate it if he would tell me
important things when I wasn’t freaking out about leaving my whole life behind.

The windows and holes in the hull closed once more, shutting
out the breeze that was cool on my wet track suit, while we hovered, slowly now,
over land. I focused on how nice the sun felt on my left side… my right side.
It felt like there was sun shining on every part of me, soaking into my skin
and sucking in through my scalp with a warm tingle.

Confused, I looked around at the pale purple sky above and
immediately saw not one sun, but two. One was larger than Earth’s sun, but not
as bright and distinctly reddish. The other seemed tiny in the sky, a daytime
star so bright white that it bleached the lilac sky surrounding it.

Macawi was part of a binary star system, I remembered now.
But I guess that was one of those things I had to experience for myself. My
muscles felt relaxed and energized at the same time, as if the sunshine flowed
through my hair to run through my veins like warm syrup.

It was really a miracle that Macawi could support human life
at all in a binary star system, but then life on Earth was a miracle too. On
both worlds, everything had to be just right; temperature, atmosphere, the very
makeup of the air and water, all had to fall within very narrow parameters.
Both somehow managed the insane feat of supporting human life, but there the
similarities ended.

It wasn’t long before the ship came to a halt, still
hovering in the air - and the bottom literally fell out of the ship.

The crates that had been stacked so neatly tumbled out and a
ringing
clang
reverberated through the air as they hit metal a short
distance below. Teague and Myrihn calmly grabbed long, hooked poles off the
wall and jumped out the trapdoor on either side of the falling boxes. I gripped
the edge of my seat, thankful now for the harness that strapped me to the wall.

Teague and Myrihn now stood on the top edge of a huge metal
shipping container sitting below us, shoving at the cargo with the long poles
to fit it all back together like building blocks. It wasn’t their method of
packing that had me staring, but rather that they jumped into, out of – and
over – the ten-foot-high steel box like it was nothing.

I couldn’t see anything special that they were wearing, no
jet packs or spring shoes. And it wasn’t truly like jumping. They seemed to
sort of fuzz out and then zip to their destination, like they were on extreme
fast forward for a millisecond. Obot the Robot was watching me with the closest
thing to amusement on his face I think I’d ever seen.

“How are they doing that?” I asked.

“They phase,” he said with a shrug, as if that explained it.
“Some people here develop that ability… others never do.” His lips pursed as if
he disapproved. “It’s the two suns. Combined, they give Macawans energy that
doesn’t exist on Earth.”

“So… I might be able to do that?”

Another shrug. “I wouldn’t count on it. It’s tied to the
chlorophyll, our ability to absorb energy.” He looked at my hair with my
green-streaked brown roots showing. “You’re deficient.”

I made a face at him. “Gee, thanks.”

After all the cargo was unloaded, the saucer moved away and
landed. Everyone still aboard unbuckled their harnesses to stand and stretch in
the energizing rays of the suns streaming through the hull. I wanted to scream
‘let me out of here!’ but I waited – impatiently - with everyone else to exit.