11
Once again, Dani was not with the group that arrived the next morning. Instead, there were four guards with lances and two other Drenards wearing the layered tunics with ornate cloaks on top, the outermost tunic pulled up and tucked over the belt. Both of the latter also had red bands around their heads; one of them reverently held out another to Cole.
He had never put one on himself, but he knew the seam went in back. He adjusted it until it felt as if it lay in its habitual place, and his own voice soon filled his head with thoughts.
“Human boy, do you really wish to initiate the Wadi Thooo Drenard rite of passage?”
“Yes.” He tried to think it with a powerful calmness, but it sounded meek—even in his own head.
“Very well. Follow us.”
The two officials spun, their cloaks spreading out and rustling into one another. They marched toward the end of the hall, and Cole hurried after. In the room with the lift shaft, Walter stood waiting with two more guards; the boy fidgeted with his tunic and kept adjusting the red band on his head.
The two officials instructed them to wait, then disappeared through the hallway leading to Molly’s room.
“Hello?” someone thought in Cole’s head.
“Is that you, Walter?”
“Haha.” The boy laughed, but with Cole’s voice. “Your esses sound funny, too!”
Cole looked at Walter’s metallic face and found it difficult to reconcile his own voice with the Palan’s thoughts. He didn’t seem near as annoying without the hiss and the creepy way his mouth moved. Cole knew there was no way they’d be allowed to take the bands with them, but couldn’t help but think how nice they’d be for alien relations. Or just for inter-crew relations, for that matter.
When Molly came out with the officials and her own red band on, Cole fought to control his thoughts, to keep them deep. Especially seeing how the loose tunic moved around Molly’s body, exposing parts of her side through the wide opening below her arms—
He tore his eyes away, focusing on Walter’s face. He could hear the boy starting to greet Molly, but the officials were able to dominate all their thoughts.
Fortunately, for Cole.
“Follow us,” one of the Drenards said; it was impossible to know which one.
????
They were told it would take half of one of their Solar days to travel to the staging area. After a long descent in the lift, they exited into an extremely busy lobby. Drenards, all males and all wearing variations of the colorful tunics, walked purposefully from one place to another. Almost all of them took a keen interest in the alien precession, but were polite enough to not gawk. Much.
Cole looked around for Dani, or a sign of Edison, but found none of the latter and wasn’t sure he’d recognize the former in a crowd. The blue planes that made up the Drenard face had distinguishing details too fine for their unpracticed human brains.
“Where’s Edison?” Cole heard one of his friends ask the guards—
There was no reply.
The guards maintained a protective ring around them as they were escorted across the shiny floor of petrified wood. Cole tried to get a glimpse of the planet through the lobby glass, but all he could see was crowds of people and maybe another building beyond. They were led down a flight of moving stairs and to a platform crowded with Drenards. Cole spotted two small females among them. He also noted that both had several large males encircling them. Protectively.
Behind the crowd, a transparent tube ran the length of the platform, instantly recognizable to Cole as some sort of transportation. Their group waited in a tense hush, Cole wondering if the silence was due to their presence.
After a few minutes, their ride appeared—a long metallic lozenge that slid to a noiseless halt. The glass tube parted in several places with the pop of a pure vacuum taking a whiff of air, then the transport’s inner doors opened and disgorged an array of colorfully garbed Drenards.
Their escorts kept them pressed to one side as the two crowds fought to switch places.
Cole watched these new arrivals startle at the sight of them, their glances pulled away quickly, then transforming into sideways stares. A shiver ran up Cole’s spine; the raw number of deadly Drenards crowded around him felt nothing like the few he’d gotten used to in the rooms above.
Then it occurred to Cole that they were this planet’s enemy as well. He imagined what sort of stir it would cause to lead two Drenard captives through Grand Central Station in New York. He remembered what he’d felt when he first saw Anlyn in the Darrin system, and it made him feel ashamed. He glanced at Molly, whose eyebrows were down, her forehead wrinkled in thought.
Once inside the transport, they were given plenty of room. After pulling away from the platform, the vehicle slid to a stop at one station after another, repeating the process of unload, load, gape. Cole felt like a specimen on display. Some sort of alien protozoa in a glass test tube.
After a half dozen or so stations, however, he went from feeling like a scientific curiosity to something more like a zoo animal. The clusters of adult professionals gradually morphed into large groups of Drenard youth, as if thousands of field trips were converging on the same locale.
Even at their age, Cole noticed the boys were significantly larger than the females, but not quite as big as the officials and guards serving as their escorts. The young females were just a bit smaller than Anlyn, which shocked Cole. It occurred to him that he didn’t even know how old Anlyn was, nor if she was even officially a Drenard yet.
Molly turned to one of the guards and raised her hand. “Will we be performing the ritual in a group?” she asked, breaking a long mental silence.
“No more questions,” was the response. Cole could see Molly’s shoulders sag as she bit her bottom lip and looked up at him.
He shrugged and widened his eyes. Already, this was not feeling like the best idea.
They stopped at a few more stations, Cole’s ears popping at each one as the vacuum in the tube section filled, squeezing extra air between the door’s seals. When they arrived at the next one, and every passenger on the transport started crowding toward the door, he figured it for the end of the line.
The guards confirmed this, leading them onto the platform. They held Cole’s group up as the last of the children trotted up the steps. By the time they went into the lobby above, most of the young Drenards had already exited the building. Cole could see them through the wide expanse of glass along one wall as they were herded into lines and loaded into land vehicles similar to buses but with aerodynamic domed hulls that stretched nearly to the ground. The metallic panels covering the things gleamed in the colorful sunrise raging beyond them.
Cole watched Molly and Walter gape at the display, enjoying their reaction even though he was nowhere close to immune himself.
The guards waved them toward the door. To either side, small packets of Drenard youth stood marveling at the colors beyond, too excited to even notice the humans. Several of them cooed excitedly, and one of the larger children held up a recording device of some kind. Cole assumed these kids hailed from other Drenard planets. This is the biggest day of their lives, he thought.
Then he wondered if everyone else had heard him.
Outside, the segregation continued as their small group found themselves waved into a large shuttle alone. As soon as they’d seated themselves along the uncomfortable benches lining the walls, the vehicle lurched into motion, heading off in a different direction from the other shuttles.
“I’m feeling unwanted,” Cole muttered to Molly. “Are you feeling unwan—?”
“Silence!” the voice rang harsh in Cole’s head, and he noticed Molly flinch as well. Hearing himself like that made Cole think back, wondering if he’d ever raised his voice with Molly before—maybe in the simulator, once? He resolved to never do it again. It sounded awful. Alien.
More silence ensued, and the bands, with all their latent potential, made it unbearable. Any time surface thoughts bubbled up, one of the Drenards would force them back down. Not thinking, Cole found, required immense concentration, or the sort of daydreaming that came only when it wanted to, not when forced. He gazed through the glass of the domed vehicle as they drove out toward the hot side of the planet, trying to lose himself in deeper, more silent thoughts.
????
The temperature in the shuttle rose noticeably as they drove across the desert. They followed a mostly flat road cut through the small rises, old metal bridges taking them over the shallow gullies. The gullies seemed to grow deeper and wider as they snaked toward the twin suns. In the other direction, they petered out to almost nothing as they twisted toward the city.
After a good number of kilometers, the shuttle turned parallel with the terminator, ushering them far away from the crowds of other hopeful Drenards.
Cole and Molly sat with their shoulders pressed together, each trying not to think too loudly. Heavy gusts of wind would occasionally rock the massive vehicle, causing the occupants to sway as if choreographed. Through the window, Cole followed wisps of fine dust as it hurried after the violent winds. The pent-up power outside the shuttle grew ferocious as they inched closer to the dual suns.
It wasn’t long before Cole felt naked with just a tunic on. Defenseless. Another gust slammed the shuttle and everyone swayed in time, bare shoulders rubbing against each other. The gaiety from the station and the excitement of the Drenard youth had disappeared—moving in the opposite direction. Left alone was a single transport pushing sideways through the wind and filling with a sense of dread.
Losing himself in his new assessment of the inhospitable land, Cole didn’t see the squat building until they were nearly upon it. The driver parked on the sunward side, out of the wind. Even so, an angry breeze whistled into the shuttle as the doors cracked open. As he filed out into the cool air, Cole could hear it battering the rear of the small building, tearing around the corners before whipping through his hair. Everyone’s tunics flapped noisily in the persistent blow as they hurried inside, and above all these sounds, Cole could hear an eerie moaning working its way upwind, coming from the canyons beyond.
The two guards took up positions by the entrance, on either side of an old, large stain that spread out from the door and across the carpet. The two officials waved the group further inside.
“This shelter is for alien use only,” one of them thought. “It has been closed for many of your years; it was reopened for your companion one of your solar days ago. You will rest for one of your nights, and then gear up and depart on the Rite.”
Heads nodded to affirm that they heard and understood. The thinking continued: “The rules are few and simple. Do not follow one another. Do not assist one another. Choose your own path and capture your own Wadi Thooo. If, in the extremely unlikely event you come across one of our youth that has wandered over this far, please do not interfere with his or her quest. The only advice you will get from us is to stick to the shadows, capture your Wadi Thooo, and try to return safely.”
Cole seriously doubted the sincerity of the last bit of advice, even hearing it in his own voice.
Molly raised her hand up to her shoulder. “What do you mean by ‘your companion’?” she thought.
One of the two officials looked at her, his face expressionless and a chilly blue. “The one you call ‘Edison.’ He requested the rite after meeting with Lady Hooo. You will no doubt be sad to hear that he entered the canyons almost one of your days ago and has not been seen since.”
The thinker turned away from them to begin the tour of the facilities. The other official looked at Molly gravely.
“Only Drenards can become Drenards,” he thought to all of them.
????
After a brief tour, the red bands were taken back, and all three initiates were locked in separate quarters. Even with Anlyn’s testimony absolving them of any crime, they were still non-Drenards on the race’s home planet. Certain rights were not yet theirs to enjoy.
Cole slept fitfully on one of the two small blue cots in his room. When he felt like it should be morning, he got up, splashed some water on his face in the adjoining bathroom, and started his stretching routine.
His internal clock must have been off by several hours; it was that long before his hosts stirred and unlocked the doors. Molly was already up, but they had to go into Walter’s room to wake him.
A simple meal awaited them, along with some water. Around bites, Cole explained to Walter the reason for the heavy winds, how the heat from one side of Drenard rose, leaving a vacuum, into which the air from the cold side rushed.
Although the boy had asked, he began nodding at the answer as if he already knew it all—a habit of the boy’s that drove Cole crazy.
After the meal, the initiates were led to the gear room and assigned new suits and booths in which to change. First, a cloth underlayer went on, followed by the outer lining. These were silver, like foil, and extremely light. The shoulders were a tad low to suit the Drenard frame, which left a pooch of material bunched up on either side. Otherwise, the fit seemed to satisfy the officials.
Next came the boots, and there was a massive assortment of them. Walter had a great time digging through them, hunting for the newest-looking pair. Cole and Molly found some that fit and laced them up over the bottom of the suits. As they moved around and busied themselves with these tasks, the shiny material rubbed on itself and made a racket of sharp hissing. It sounded like three or four Palans on a looting spree.
Once they were suited up, they surveyed one another and took turns giggling. But back in the commons, all levity soon drained away. The Drenard guards stood at attention, the officials rigid and stoic. Cole, Molly, and Walter remembered why they were here—the seriousness of the ritual—and adopted a demeanor to match.
With much ceremony, each of them was given a small version of the guard lance. They lacked a trigger, Cole noted—just solid metal with a point on one end and a hook on the other. Next, each received a cloth map more than half a meter to a side depicting the canyons beyond. To Cole, the layout of the ditches resembled a vascular system or an upside-down tree. Thin and narrow lines, thousands of them, grew larger and fewer in the direction of the suns. A dot of blue ink represented their location in the shelter.
Red bands were passed around for final instructions, their voices filling their heads: “We will wait for two of your days. Not even Drenards can survive in the canyons for much longer than that. Since none of you are expected to enter our caste system or work in Drenard society, do not take unnecessary risks.”
Molly raised her hand. “Have you heard from our friend? Is he okay?”
“The Judges he came with were resting when we arrived yesterday. Now they have gone.”
“Gone where? To help him?”
“They gave him two of your days,” was the response.
“So he’s still out there?” Molly glanced at Cole. He could tell she cared less and less about this ritual, more concerned with Edison. He could practically hear her feelings through the band.
“I’m sorry to say that he would be dead by now,” an official said.
“Concern yourself with not joining him,” came another thought. The two officials stepped to the side and gestured toward the door.
The sky beyond bled rainbows through the glass. The trio shuffled toward the haunting, gorgeous sight, passing over the large stain in the carpet. One of the guards opened the door and the other held out his hands. “Return the bands,” he thought.
They did, and the three friends exited into a strange world full of howling winds and a chorus of moans from the distant canyons. With the bands gone, they found themselves feeling more alone than ever before, the flapping of their suits loud in their ears, no thoughts in their heads but their own.
The Rite of Wadi Thooo had officially begun.