Chapter 12
Indiz falls,tumbling through the air. He’s going to hit a bridge. I half close my eyes, but he lands in a crouch like he’d planned it. Then he gets up and without looking at me disappears into the dark. My heart thumps against my ribs. I close my eyes against the wave of dizziness that comes from looking down, but that is worse.
If I fall, I won’t land gracefully. I’ll make a bloody mess. Slowly I crawl backward, sweat beading and my mouth dry, until I’m on the walkway that winds up the walls. Then I sit. The wall at my back is reassuring, but I still have the long walk. I draw in the cool air, knowing I need to make it on my own as Indiz won’t be there to distract me and cajole me. I wait, hoping he’ll return.
By the time my heart has steadied, I realize I’m once again alone. Should I have lied to him, or told him another time that his people are dead?
I creep along the walkway, trying not to look down, or into the dark doorways. But I’m alert for the slightest of noises, or a glimmer that doesn’t belong. I am convinced those lights are the ghosts, the people that built and own this place. While they may not technically be ghosts, but they aren’t flesh and blood either.
I saw a light before I first saw Indiz too. When I find him, I’ll ask what they are. I’ll demand answers. I can’t live with the secrecy, but I don’t want to sit and wait in his room. I’m allowed in the common spaces, so I will claim one of them as mine.
The next wide doorway I reach, I go in. The moss growing in the cracks of the rock means it’s dimly lit, enough to see by until my eyes adjust. This room is nicer than the common area on Indiz’s level. There are hide cushions on the floor, a table in the middle and shelves on one wall. Candles and flint are set to one side of the table, and what looks like games and books are stacked on another to the side.
This is as good a place as any to claim. I’ll make a plan; maybe wait here for a few days, then head back to the ship and hope Indiz is wrong about everything.
One hundred and three years since the war ended. Longer since he crashed. I don’t want to share his fate, forgotten and abandoned. But I don’t want people coming after me and crashing, like they did in my dreams either.
I set up a candle, and try to light it. The spark refuses to catch. Each time I strike more angrily. “Oh, come on.”
That time it lights, the spark leaping from flint to candle as though I’d placed it there myself. Armed with a candle, I browse the shelves. The books are old, and some are crumbly. Others seem to be made of synth-paper and are quite sturdy despite their age. None of them are written in Basic. For all I know they could be manuals or fiction. I skip the books and pick up a game made of smooth pebbles that look like gemstones and a board dotted with holes. It looks like a game we played at home, only fancy. We played with rocks in the dirt, while this has been made for purpose.
With the game and the candle, I settle onto a cushion.
I don’t know how long I spend there, moving pretty colored precious stone about and trying to stay busy. For how many hours has Indiz done the same thing? I haven’t been here two full days yet and already I can feel frustration and the need to do something itching in my veins. I’m used to being busy, to having a task list and jobs to do. Reports to write. Data to analyze.
How does he fill his days?
Over one hundred years…alone and waiting. Did he crash near the end of the war so there were no Selouans alive to search for him? But emergency beacons are actioned by whoever is nearby. The Dhervi should’ve picked him up. And if they had, they must have crashed too.
No one was able to rescue him.
No one will rescue me.
I shove the game away and rest my face on my arms and sob. All the fear and the worry floods out of me. I can barely breathe. I’m crying so hard. I don’t want to be stuck here. I spent my life trying to get off the ground, to be more than a farmer, and now I’ll be scratching around the barren mountain for food with an alien who should’ve died years ago.
Nothing makes sense and I don’t know what to do.
My breathing hiccups. I should get up and go and find him. Or maybe I need to go for a walk and find myself. I can leave the city, no one is keeping me here. But outside there is only coldness and death waiting.
My nose twitches and I’m sure I smell food. I lift my head as Indiz walks in carrying a platter loaded up with meat and what I assume are vegetables.
“I’m sorry I left you, again.” He holds out the platter like a peace offering. “I let my grief take control.”
I sigh. There are worse fates than being stuck on the prettiest planet in the galaxy with a man who knows how to cook and who seems to care about me. Have I even tried to care about him, or have I been too focused on the impossible? “I should’ve found a better way to tell you.”
He puts down the platter and sits next to me. “I have been here for a long time and come to terms with never seeing my people again. But to learn they were gone? It was a blow to the heart.”
I understand that. While I never want to go home, I’d be devastated to learn my family was all dead.
“I’m sorry.” The words are too small for the gravity of the situation. He is the last of his kind. Sure DNA was kept of his race, but the culture is gone. I’m not that ignorant about aliens. I put my hand over his.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone up there when it is clear you dislike heights. I have forgotten what that fear is like.”
“I don’t mind them. I’m afraid of falling. You didn’t fall though.” I level my gaze at him, wanting to be stern and get answers. However, my eyes are puffy and achy and I’m sure my nose is red too. I’m hardly a threat. I sniff, aware I’ve made a mess of the sleeve of my tunic, which is really someone else’s. I hope they don’t want it back.
Indiz breaks off a small piece of meat with something that could be a large fork, but it only has two prongs. He takes the meat off the fork and offers it to me with his claws.
I open my mouth and accept the tidbit and it is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. Different to the stew last night, this has been roasted in a way the meat-sub scientists can only dream about creating.
