He carefully touches one crystal crescent. “What are you trying to do with this?”
“I don’t know. It might be broken.”
He prods another part. “Why do you think it’s broken?”
“It doesn’t fly,” I tell him. “Dex could fly it. But only barely. He said it was damaged, I think. Or that it would not obey him. Then after a while we landed here, but it was not a soft landing. Dex called it a crash landing.”
“Hmm. Who is Dex? That’s not the name of one of your friends.”
I try to figure out how to describe an AI-controlled flying drone to a caveman. “Dex is not alive. It is a…” Of course I don’t know the word for ‘machine’ in their language. “It’s a flying thing that can talk and move, but it isn’t a Small or a Big. Or a man or woman. It’s hard, and it has parts that spin very fast.”
He slowly turns his head. “It has parts that spin?”
Something about that look on his face… “Have you seen such a thing?”
He scratches his chin. “Well, the Envoy in the village has parts that spin very fast. And it’s alive and talks and could maybe fly. But it’s damaged. Crazy, we think.”
Butterflies take off in my stomach. I’d heard him mention the Envoy before, but I never asked more about it. “How long has it been in the village?”
“Some years. Three years, maybe?”
“What color is the Envoy?”
“It’s black, mostly. Some red spots. Some yellow.”
I grab his arm. “That’s Dex!”
“The Envoy is not Plood,” Kenz’ox says. “He said so.”
“Only this ship is Plood,” I tell him, excitement filling me. “The girls are not. I am not. Dex only came aboard at the space station. What does the Envoy say? Has he mentioned us? The girls?”
He taps one fingernail on a console. “The Envoy has said a lot of things that are plainly crazy. It keeps laughing at us. We don’t know what to believe. At first, the shaman said it was an envoy from the Ancestors, but then it said some terrible things, and he changed his mind, claiming it had been sent by the Darkness. Now I think the chief has taken it into his hut.”
“You said he’s damaged?”
“It said it was in a fight with an irox. The irox lost, which we know because we found it on the ground not far from where we found the Envoy. But it also damaged the Envoy and caused it to fall.”
I think about it. I now know where Dex is. If I could get him here, and he could tell me how to fix the saucer, then we should be able to look for Callie from the air—if he didn’t damage his propellers in the fight. He wasn’t that big, but he seemed robust. He was made from metal, I think. Obviously some kind of alien drone, but he learned some words in English from listening to us girls talk. By the end, we kind of trusted him—not that we had a choice; he was flying the saucer.
I know there’s an actual dragon alien in Cora’s tribe, but she said he’s extremely hard to get to do anything. And I know what it feels like when he’s close—a paralyzing terror unlike any other I’ve ever felt. So he won’t work as a search-and-rescue vehicle. But Dex might. And the saucer might.
“Kenz’ox,” I begin. “Dex may be able to get this ship to fly. And he’s in your village. I know you can’t go back there. But you and Aker’iz can come with me to the Borok tribe. Just to look at the village. Just to see if you could live there. The chief there may agree to send me to your tribe, along with warriors, and ask to see Dex. To see the Envoy, to talk to him. Maybe give your tribe things they want in exchange. Iron, maybe. Fabrics. The Borok tribe has very many things. For you too, if you decide to come back here. I am going. Now. And I want you to come.”
It’s very quiet inside the saucer, and I feel as if the temperature drops.
Kenz’ox slowly stands up as well as he can, bending his neck. He looks at me emptily for a moment. Then he turns on his heel and walks out.
19
- Kenz’ox-
The world spins around me as I stagger out of the ship and over to Aker’iz’s little crib. The griket gets up and wanders a few paces away, tail circling above it.
I suppose it had to come to this. I knew that Dorie wanted to leave. But I also thought she was happy here, that she had changed her mind. She wasn’t spending all her time inside the ship; she was smiling and laughing and joking with me. She cared for Aker’iz in a way so natural it made me stare in awe. She made things, did things, and seemed as happy as any tribesman is in any tribe.
And all along, she was just itching to get away, just as much as before.
Damned Envoy! Why did it have to be found by my old tribesmen? Why did I have to mention it to Dorie?
