8
The Drenards led Cole down the ornate hallway, past a series of marble doors with lowered gold bars, until they came to a doorway that stood open. They waved inside where he found a table hewn out of the now-familiar grainy rock. It was covered with plates and bowls of foodstuffs, but only a single chair sat before it. The Drenards moved Cole to the chair, then gestured to the victuals, almost as if to say “whatever you subsist on can be found here” rather than “look at all the yummy stuff we made for you.”
Cole sampled a few things and didn’t find any of it too unpleasant.
“Thank you very much,” he offered.
None of the Drenards budged. Cole could sense they were waiting for him to get his fill before whatever came next. He felt tempted to draw the meal out, to stall for time, but the cold politeness was unbearable, and his curiosity growled louder than his stomach. He really wanted to know whether they considered him a prisoner or a cherished guest, so he ate just enough to energize him for the day before pushing the bowls away, making several hand gestures he hoped would suggest “no more.”
The leader nodded and said something to the other two in that gentle voice of his. The guards strapped their lances across their backs and began clearing the table; another Drenard entered with a second chair and topped Cole’s water up.
Having the large creatures swirl around him in furious activity completed the young prince illusion from the bathroom mirror, making him feel extra ridiculous. Even more so when he was “crowned” a few moments later by yet another Drenard male, who came in and showed him a red headband just like the one his escort wore. The thing was held reverently for Cole to see, then the alien reached up and placed it around his forehead—arranging it just so.
The rough material itched his scalp; Cole reached up to scratch it, but the Drenard pushed his hand down gently. He decided it was best to quietly bear the discomfort.
While the new Drenard tended to him, the others finished cleaning up, their movements uncannily orchestrated. Every action was performed with a precision that reminded Cole of his own military training. When the maneuvers finally completed, he found himself left in the room with just the presumed officer seated across the table. A glass of water stood before the Drenard, full, and sweating slightly.
“My name is Dani Rooo,” Cole thought.
But why did he think that?
His right hand came up to touch the red band, as if it knew the answer.
“No it’s not. My name is Cole,” he thought to himself.
“Hello, Cole.” The Drenard across from him opened his mouth and made a funny shape with it. The voice in Cole’s head was his own, but they weren’t his words.
“You have to think on the surface, or speak aloud. I cannot hear you unless you’re forming the words in your head.”
An image flashed in Cole’s head. A woman. Aunt Carol? Crazy aunt Carol who heard voices. Gods, he hadn’t thought about her since he left Portugal. What in the world made her come to mind?
“Let’s start with where you found Anlyn Hooo, Cole.”
Now he understood how Aunt Carol felt. His own voice was in his head, and it was telling him to do things. He had a powerful urge to grab the red band and throw it across the room.
But something told him that wouldn’t be a wise move.
“Can you hear me?” Cole thought it out loud in his head.
“Very good. Now, where did you find Lady Hooo?”
“How does this work?” Cole asked, unable to concentrate on the alien’s question with so many of his own, both sets of thoughts jumbled up in the same head. “Do you speak English?” he added, tossing another on the pile.
Dani Rooo leaned back in his chair. There was silence in Cole’s head for a moment.
“Do you know why life forms are so similar, Cole?”
It seemed a bit off-topic, but he was interested in playing along. Not so much by the question—a classic in xenophilosophy—but by the tone of his own voice. It was as if the alien across from him knew the answer and was just testing him.
“Because they’re the simplest solutions to common problems? Problems of survival?”
Dani made the shape with his mouth from earlier. Cole labeled the expression a “smile,” then realized he no longer had to guess.
“Do you find my answer funny?”
“No. But it does make me happy. Women and youth are not very good at keeping secrets. The combination almost guarantees a spill of information. With Lady Hooo unconscious, there’s no way of knowing what you know or don’t know.”
“Trust me,” Cole thought to Dani, “I know less than nothing. Why don’t you fill me in—how’s Anlyn? Am I a prisoner here? Where are my friends? And how are you talking in my head?”
Dani leaned forward and placed both hands, wide apart, on the table. “Whose soldiers are outside the door, boy?”
They stared at one another for a while. Both thinking—but deeply. Silently. Dani leaned back again, folding his hands in his lap. “Forgive my outburst. I am worried for Lady Hooo as well; as such, I am not myself. According to Lady Fyde—”
“Molly?! Where is she—?” But Cole couldn’t force his thoughts to rise above the alien’s.
“—insists that you rescued Anlyn from captivity, and if this is true, you deserve an answer. So. I will give you one before we begin our session. One answer, an honest one, to any question you like. And then you will begin responding to my questions.”
Cole considered the offer. In his heart, he wanted to know where Molly was and whether she and the rest of the crew were safe. His natural curiosity, however, wanted to riddle the inner workings of the red bands. Meanwhile, the philosopher in him shouted down the rest, wanting to know the root of common forms, the riddle that taunts every theory in the field of biology and serves as the foundation for all major religions.
These questions and more rattled around in Cole’s head. He saw the muscles in Dani’s vast neck twitch under his blue skin and could sense—could almost know—that he was becoming impatient. It just made it harder for Cole to think. To choose.
Panic spilled over his litany of queries, drowning them, making it impossible to pick the best response. The pressure to get it right dried his mouth out. He felt as if something important was taking place—and he was about to blow it. He reached for his sweating glass of water.
Dani leaned forward, mirroring his movement, his mouth contorting into a new expression. “Well?” The strong and confident version of Cole’s voice sliced through his worrisome thoughts.
Then, in a flash, Cole’s very confusion provided the answer he was looking for. It dawned on him that he was being offered a single answer from Dani, but that didn’t mean it would be the last question he ever asked anyone. Many of the trivial ones would be answered in time, if he was patient. In fact, the reason he had an impossible time choosing was because he didn’t know the trivial from the profound. And that was the question.
Cole’s hand, still frozen in the shape of a cylinder, stopped short of the dripping glass of water. He brought his other hand up and clasped the two of them together. Leaning toward Dani, he forced a calm thought to the surface:
“My question is this—” Cole took a deep breath. “Which question should I have asked?”
Dani froze for a moment, then his mouth changed into something new. A shape with teeth. One of his large, powerful hands shot up into the air between he and Cole and came crashing down with lightning speed. When his flat palm hit the stone table, it rang out like a cracked whip, an impossibly high note ringing in the air for too brief a time to have been so loud. The glass of water leapt up, throwing a small wave over the lip to join the puddle of condensation below.
Dani’s entire body shook, his cooing transforming into a growl as throaty pockets of air moved back and forth through his vibrating cheeks. The Drenard raised his hand from the table, pointed at Cole, then made a fist. He shook his head, which roared with the vibrato of a small engine. He waved his fist in the air and hit the table with it again.
Cole leaned back in his chair, distancing himself from the display. When Dani shot out of the seat across from him, he wondered if he’d been wrong—if he really did have only one question left in him. But Dani didn’t rush around the table in attack, he strode out of the room and into the hallway, fighting to form words through the amplified and gruff cooing sound.
Swiveling in his chair to watch the alien go, Cole felt his body surge with adrenaline, preparing for danger and defense. He heard Dani struggling to give commands to someone outside, the sound of coarse hacks mixing with the forced purring of their language.
Less than a minute later, his interrogator returned and stood in the doorway, a beverage of some sort in his hand. The Drenard took long swigs from it, his physical attack subsiding.
“Dani?” Cole squeezed the mental word through a crack in his confusion.
His interrogator raised one hand and continued to drink. “I am fine. I just haven’t laughed that hard since I was your size. It felt . . . amazing.”
Dani lowered the glass and tilted his blue head slightly to one side, took a deep breath, then let it out. “There are two ways I could answer your question. If I answer it honestly, I will cheat you, for the truth is: that was the question you should have asked. I only realized this as soon as you thought it to me.
“I could satisfy my end of the bargain by admitting this, couldn’t I? I could point out that you did ask me the right question and you would get nothing. But your choice suggests something interesting: that you are looking for the beginning of a path, rather than a method of skipping to the end. And even though you will never walk down the trail you seek—not now that you are here with us on Drenard—I would like to reward you with more answers than I initially promised.”
Dani took another long pull from his stone cup, studying Cole over the lip. When he was done, he made a popping noise with his mouth, jerked his head to the side, and formed in Cole’s head what he assumed were the same words:
“Come with me,” Dani thought.
Cole stood, the surge of fear draining away, and followed Dani into the hallway. Two armed guards framed the door, but Dani acted as if they weren’t there. He turned left, away from Cole’s room and further down the long passage. Cole hurried to keep up, having to nearly jog in order to match the alien’s long strides.
As they hurried past room after room, Cole noticed more than half had gold bars lowered in front of the door. He read them as “occupied” signs, wondering which one Molly was being kept behind.
He wondered it too loudly.
“She’s not on this hall,” said the voice in his head. “Males only. Women have an extremely important status in our culture, unlike your own. Ah, so many answers that I feel like giving you now. Even if Anlyn pulls through and confirms our worst suspicions about you, I will always respect you for that single insight.” Dani looked down at the carpet. “And the laughter,” he added.
Cole glanced up at his walking companion, his head just above the Drenard’s elbow. It felt strange to be having a conversation without eye contact and in the near-silence of their bare feet shuffling through the lush pile of the runner.
“You have yet to answer the question,” Cole reminded his unusual captor, “nor have you asked me what you want from us. We just came to drop off a friend and get some supplies—”
“We will sort that out when and if Anlyn recovers—and all of my hopes are that she will—but you will not be leaving Drenard anytime soon. We cannot allow that. Anlyn should know this, which is why we find the story you and your friends are giving us a bit hard to believe. Especially since there are . . . inconsistencies.”
Cole wondered what this meant as they reached the end of the hallway. Dani paused in front of the massive door that spanned the width of the passage; he turned and addressed the consternation on Cole’s face and in his thoughts. “Forget these things for now.” The alien waved one hand and reached for the door with the other. “You will have many years to dwell on them here. But first, let me show you where here is,” he thought.
With that, Dani pushed the large door open and entered the next room. Cole followed—and stepped into a prism, a carpeted cube of dancing lights. The wall across from them was identical to the one they had just passed through, yellowish marble bisected by a closed door. Cole scanned for the source of the spectacle. It was the wall to his left, revealed as Dani allowed the door to swing shut. The entire face was transparent glass, or crystal even. His human brain had a difficult time absorbing the view beyond.
It was a sunrise—or sunset—that defied his own understanding of what potential beauty that meteorological event could possess. The colors banded gradually through every hue imaginable. Between neighboring buildings, he spotted a horizon gilded with gold; it turned through the oranges and reds, but there were colors between that Cole’s boy-brain simply had no vocabulary for.
His feet took him closer to the sight, as if of their own accord. He craned his neck up as he neared the glass, watching the last of the deep violets as they were absorbed into the black of space. What made the sight truly unique was the way the colors moved. It was a sunrise or sunset in action. Waves rippled up now and then to make the rainbow shimmer, like the Northern Lights of Earth, but brighter and with more color, all of it sqeezing between towering buildings to all sides.
“Wow.”
It was all he could think. He wondered how it translated in Dani’s head, if it came across as a soothing coo or a baby’s babble.
“The view is better from the roof,” Dani thought.
Cole didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t until he saw it for himself.
Dani strode across to the wall opposite the glass and called for a lift. Cole followed. He walked backwards, still riveted by the sight. The elevator arrived just as he did and Dani guided him in, thinking bemused thoughts at the mesmerizing effect his planet had on another human.
Cole grunted as the elevator doors squeezed the colors away. The lift moved—and fast. He could feel it in his legs, still weary from the exercise. Despite the obvious speed with which they were traveling, the ride was a long one, and both men rode in silence, mental and otherwise.
When Cole felt himself lighten several kilos, he knew the ride was almost over. The doors opened, and he followed Dani into the morning, or twilight, air. Not knowing which time of day it was irked Cole; he needed a label for what he was seeing, as if the word might bottle some of the splendor. As they walked toward the side of the building facing the glorious sight, Cole asked Dani in his head: “What time of day is it?”
“There are no days here,” Dani replied.
Cole barely heard his own voice give him the answer. It was more beautiful on the roof.
All around them stood a transparent barrier shielding out what sounded like a powerful wind. Cole could hear it race through holes in the enclosure above, a crisp zephyr descending to swirl around them. The walls held back the air, but there was nothing obstructing the view all the way to the horizon; he saw none of the other buildings that had been crowding the view from the room below. Here, Cole could gaze from one edge of the horizon to the other, and in no two places could he find the visual feast repeated.
He pressed his head to the glass and peered down, spotting the rooftops below. Observation platforms dotted most of the structures, which got progressively shorter as they went toward the horizon, stepping down so each building behind had a view. The city didn’t go very far into the distance, he saw. No more than a dozen kilometers, possibly less—the height made it impossible to gauge.
He turned to his interrogator-turned-tour guide.
“No days?” he asked.
“It’s hard to turn away from this sight at first. I know. It takes many years to become used to it, to take it for granted, even. However, to understand, you need to walk with me and look at the other two views.”
Staggering backwards again, his eyes locked on the dancing lights, Cole slowly moved with Dani—reluctant, yet curious.
“Drenard is like the moon of your Earth. One face is gravitationally locked with our two stars, just as only one side of your moon ever looks down on your planet.”
They stood in front of the glass that ran down one of the building’s sides. Dani fell silent for a moment and looked down at his feet. “You are the second human I’ve had this conversation with. On this very rooftop.” He looked at Cole and continued to think aloud. “It was an accident then. My being up here nothing more than mere chance. And now—” He stopped and made the coughing sound from his fit of laughter. “I am considered a human expert, sent to deal with you and the girl.”
“Molly—?”
Dani raised his hand, his thoughts overpowering Cole’s. It wasn’t pleasant to be shouted down with one’s own voice, Cole decided.
“I’m sorry to drift off like that. The similarities to that old conversation took me back to better times. My people are extremely sensitive to symmetry. Look at why.”
He pointed out the glass at the line of buildings stretching off in the distance, converging like the train tracks in Portugal Cole grew up near. Both men thought back to ten years ago, but their memories were a galaxy apart.
“Drenards live on a line. A border between light and dark. That way,” he pointed back to the colors, “is a boiling land where even shadows can turn to ash. And over there,” he nodded to the darkness opposite, “you have a frigid wasteland where your breath will freeze in your lungs.” He paused and looked back over the city stretched out toward forever. “Most of our people choose to live on better planets now, but this is where we evolved. Along a thin halo—a temperate respite—crushed between two extremes.
“There’s another significance inherent in the shape of our habitat. It isn’t just a line, it’s a circle. It’s the root of our fondness for symmetry. For things that repeat themselves.” He turned and faced Cole. “The universe is like this. Our lives are like this. I’ve been here before, just like this. And if you look hard, you will see the same story playing out in your life. Things beginning and ending the same way. The same conflicts with the same resolutions. It keeps going, but not on its own. Each cycle requires work.”
“I don’t understand,” Cole responded. “Why are you showing me this? What’s the question I should’ve asked?”
Dani turned away from him and peered through the glass. “You remind me of him,” he thought. “The only other human I have spoken with like this. He brought so much hope. But that’s not why I think of him, it’s that neither of you seem anything like the . . . humans our war department deals with every day.”
Cole tried to force another question through, but the Drenard’s thoughts were too powerful.
“I cannot speak of the war, so do not ask. Come and look at what I love about the rooftops.”
Dani led them to the next side of the building, the one opposite the shimmering rainbow. Some of the colors bled around the elevator structure, stray bands of subdued prettiness that rode the glass overhead. But once they reached the far side, the spectacular view was just a throbbing memory. Now they were overlooking the dark side of Drenard, the sky bursting with stars and fuzzy galaxies.
A thick swath of unbelievable density let Cole know they were looking toward the center of the Milky Way, right along the width of the galaxy. Billions of pricks of light stood out; he could even see the glow of a pink nebula, the color of planets forming. The sight made him feel a long way from home and choked him up inside. One hand went to the cool glass while his thoughts warped back to Earth.
The two men fell quiet again, Dani giving Cole a minute to absorb it all—or perhaps the Drenard was taking a moment for himself.
It was the human that broke the mental silence:
“Beautiful,” he thought, unable to know the soothing purr this word translated to in Dani’s head.
“Beautiful, yes. And even more dangerous, my friend. Nothing lives on the surface. Well, almost nothing. The fire on the other side fuels the life of our planet and drives many of our customs with its ancient and inhospitable landscape. Over here, we find the absence of everything. Just powerful winds which are nothing more than the air being sucked from the cool low pressure to rush toward the rising heat.
“I brought you up here so you could look at yourself, Cole. And to give you an honest answer to your sage question. Up here, my boss will not hear and there is no guard to trust with a secret.” He turned to face Cole. “You are very much like a Drenard,” he thought. “You have a hot side and a cold side and you use them to balance one another. I feel your anger, mostly when you dwell on the well-being of your friends. And I also feel your patience, which you use to temper yourself. I believe you are one of the few of your kind that is trying to live on a line, just as a Drenard must.”
Dani turned from Cole to gaze at the stars, then his eyes drifted down to the planet’s surface. Cole looked as well, out over the shadowed land as black as ruined Glemot. His own voice was clear in his head as Dani thought: “The question you should have asked, Cole, and that I would not have been allowed to answer, is this: what is fusion fuel made of?”
Cole rolled this around in his mind for a moment. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” he thought to Dani.
The alien nodded slowly. “It’s the start of a path, young friend, and one that leads far over the horizon. You can’t see the end from here because of the long walk. Now let’s get below before my superiors become suspicious.”
He turned and walked back across the roof, leaving behind a confused and disappointed human.
And not for the first time in his life, nor in that same spot, Dani thought.
Quietly.