Theodora looks up. “Back from another joyride.”
The flying saucer is coming in to land, its blue-white hull beautifully illuminated by the setting sun.
I take a sip of an alien brew that kind of tastes like chamomile tea, but has a bitter note that I’m slowly starting to like. “Maybe he found her.”
“Callie?” Theodora snorts. “I don’t think he’s even looking for her. She can’t be that far from that beach. She must be in one of the closest villages. He can see them all from up in the air. Heck, we can see some of them from here.” She points out into the jungle.
We’re on top of the big, red mountain in the Borok village. The peak is flat and has an adjacent cave, and we Earth girls call this “the penthouse.” From here, we’re high above the trees of the jungle, and we have a free line of sight in almost every direction.
And sure enough, there are little yellow pinpoints of light here and there in the jungle. Most of them are caveman villages, and some may be temporary campfires for outcasts or hunting parties.
“Maybe he thinks it’s a useless search,” I suggest. “I’m not even sure what to think anymore.”
“I’ll believe Callie’s alive and well until the day I die,” Theodora states. “Unless I get really strong evidence to the contrary. And even then, I’ll keep looking for her.”
The saucer settles softly down on the flat, red rock. It’s an eerie thing, so quiet and alien. And it’s even worse on the inside. But it flies, and it’s our only mode of transportation that doesn’t involve walking.
The hatch opens, and Dex the alien drone comes buzzing out.“The saucer is in better shape than I thought,”he screeches in his broken voice. “It can reach the stratosphere without much trouble. I wonder if the Plood know how impressive this thing is.”
“We don’t know if they built it,” Theodora says tersely. “Any sign of Callie in that stratosphere of yours?”
“In the stratosphere? No,”the drone says, bobbing slowly in the air while his rotors spin.
“No,” Theodora echoes with a dangerous flatness in her voice. “She hasn’t grown wings since we saw her last. So you’re not really looking for her?”
“Well, I have charted the likely villages that her abductor may have come from,”Dex says defensively.“But I know we don’t want the saucer to be too noticed by other tribes, so I don’t gotoo close. I will conduct the search as I see fit, and I hope you can respect that.”He flies off with a whine from his rotors as he descends the stairs to the ground level, where most of the village is located.
“What does he do down there, anyway?” I ask.
“Mostly he spies on everyone and makes snide comments,” Morgan says. “Wearing out his welcome pretty fast among the cavemen.”
“I wonder what his deal is,” I muse. “He was super helpful in the beginning, Theodora, helping you and Karet’ox.”
“He’s not looking for Callie at all,” Theodora growls. “Someone should take that saucer and do a real search.”
“Is it easy to fly?” I ask, draining the mug of bitter liquid. “Those panels look weird to me.”
“They’re weird, but I think anyone could fly it,” Theodora says. “With some practice.”
“We could just ask Dex to show us,” Morgan says. “But of course, if he says ‘no,’ he will also be aware that we’re thinking about it. If he’s worried about us taking the saucer away from him, he might stop coming back here, and we’ll never see him again. Oh, did I just have a discussion with myself? Sorry.”
“It was a good discussion,” I tell her. “But Theodora did ask him. Right?”
Theodora looks out over the jungle. “He wasn’t interested in showing me. Tried to deflect my attention.”
Cora comes up the stairs and bends over just to breathe. “Someone should. Install. An escalator. On this mountain.”
“The escalator is on order,” I tell her. “It’s just that they have to invent electricity first. Then they have to invent gears, and then moving parts, and pulleys, and all kinds of stuff. Should be here in about two hundred years.”
“Someone tell them it doesn’t need to be that complicated,” Cora says as she sits down on a wooden bench. “You really only need a caveman to carry you up the stairs. Or a team of them, so you get a new one every ten steps.”
“Nice. Too bad you could never use it. Sprisk would murder all those guys for touching you.”
“That would be a concern,” Cora agrees. “He does take the husband-wife thing very seriously. Well, then he’d have to carry me himself. Serves him right for being so possessive.”
“Still guards at the foot of the stairs?” I ask.
“They’re still there, and I don’t expect them to leave,” Cora says. “All the cavemen know that there are two new unmarried women in the tribe, and they all want to look at you two. They know that the surest way to get married is to abduct an Earth girl. And seriously, they’re not wrong.”
