Chapter 8:
Old Earth was an ugly planet as far as Talon was concerned. The hoverways that arced along the edges of the landing fields for ships looked worn and tired and the buildings, many of them ancient, all seemed to sag under the weight of gravity.
The air was thick with carbon and other emissions and the scent of rocket and ship fuel. They joined the scan in line behind a very boisterous group of earthlings that had been taking a holiday on a pleasure planet. Naturally, one of them had come back with some kind of venereal scum and had to be yanked out of line. The man protested viciously and screamed when the monitors pointed out that not only had he contacted venereal scum but that he was in need of emergency medical treatment.
He caused such a fracas that when Talon and Jessica reached the kiosk where documents would be scrutinized, the man behind the counter gave those documents only the briefest of glances before pointing them toward the health monitors.
The line for the monitors was also long. They stood waiting, neither of them speaking. The risk was great, and they knew it. Revants were unknown in the universe for the most part due to their near extinction and the fact that few of them traveled much or, when they did, they traveled disguised as those similar races.
They both checked out clean and whole and were waved through to the other side past the security and medical lines. Talon’s footsteps were light, but his heart was heavy. Jessica’s words kept ringing in his ears. Did she truly care so little for what he thought of her?
He had not expected her to love him just because she had come into his room and had sex with him. He had always found those who made it simply for love to be a little ridiculous in fact. But the truth was that it seemed that he was more emotionally invested in that than she had been. It also seemed as if he had managed to fall head over heels in love with a human woman who literally could not care less about him.
“I am a means to an end for her. My war is her war, and so we have become allies. That is the whole summation of what lays between us as far as she is concerned. She does not know, and she does not care, how I feel about her. Perhaps I should’ve told her. But what would that do? It might make her leave the ship sooner, and that is the last thing that I want.”
Talon was not used to feeling so many emotions over anyone.
Falling in love had never been high on his priority list. He had other things to do. His race lived many centuries, and he was already in his third, but every single one of those centuries had been marred by war, by slavery, and by his determination to build an empire so that he and his siblings could purchase that planet they now owned in order to start over and to save their race.
Jessica spoke softly. “We have to get into a public hover. They are all automated, and there are surveillance nodules everywhere. So there’s no chance that we won’t be seen at all. I think my disguise is strong enough, and yours as well, but we need to take as few chances as we can.”
He glanced over at her. She had spent an hour in her chamber after they had docked, using a tool to darken her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. She walked with her knees bent just a bit to give the impression that she was shorter than she was. She had also chosen very bright clothing that would draw the eye to them instead of to her face.
Aliens were as common on Old Earth as they were everywhere else. He had deliberately forged his papers to make himself seem like a member of a race whose body type and skin color were similar to his own, and he had shaved his beard and slicked his hair back with oil so that it looked very dark. It was not much of a disguise, but it might be enough for what they had to do at the moment, and it would have to do until he could find a way to disguise themselves even more fully.
“I am following you.”
Her head turned slightly, and she said, solemnly “Only for now.”
Only for now? He sighed inwardly but kept up his pace beside her. They came to a public transport hub and climbed aboard one of the small hovercrafts that perched at the curb. Once inside, Jessica slid credits into a slot and then used a screen to map in the coordinates that she wanted. She settled back into the seat, and the hovercraft lifted off from the curb and headed out over the city.
Talon looked down at the place. It came to him again that it was probably the least beautiful place he had ever been in and that he would not like to live there. Jessica said, “I used to think that this must be the biggest city in the entire universe.”
He leaned back in the seat. “I suppose you know better now.”
“I do.”
Regret hung in every single syllable of those words. He felt that regret, and what’s more, he heard something else in her voice as well, something he recognized because he had heard it in his own too often. It was the sound of somebody who was homesick and who had managed to glimpse a small bit of their homeland.
They sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Eventually, the hovercraft set them down in front of a massive building with a crumbling limestone and granite façade. They exited the hovercraft and Talon expected that they would go into the building, but instead, Jessica headed down the street without a word.
Talon fell into step behind her and then caught up. He opened his mouth to ask her where they were going but before he could her elbow brushed gently against his arm and she sent a pointed gaze in his direction. Then her eyes drifted upward just a bit to the right.
He let his eyes make a casual sweep of the terrain, and he quickly spotted the surveillance nodules located along the street. She waited until several large and noisy crafts were going over to lean into his body, “We must take the grates. I am warning you that this is very dangerous and to have your weapons drawn as soon as we enter.”
He whispered back, “You did not have to tell me that.”
Every instinct in his body and brain was telling him that there was danger lurking very near. He could practically smell it.
They stepped into a building that bore a vast and colorful awning bearing the words Hotelier Honnist Toronto. Talon did not have time to register anything about the place because just as quickly as they had stepped into it, Jessica had him by the hand and stepping out of a small side door, one so hidden by a large plant that it was barely even noticeable.
They stood in a filthy alley. Garbage piled into the neatly marked receptacles sent a terrific and foul odor into the air. Jessica tilted her head right and left and then sighed, “They have not yet put surveillance nodules here. They’re too afraid if they do the good citizens of above will see what is right below them in the tunnels and then they will have to explain why they let such wealthy and privileged people live above such danger.”
He asked, “How do they not smell it?”
Her smile was bitter. “Oh, they live in the rarefied air, don’t you know? Besides, the terra rats are allergic to sunlight, and the houses don’t dump their trash here. Their trash goes out through a system of compo flushes that don’t have pipes that come down here. Instead, it lands on the trash crawlers, and it is dumped down here daily.”
Talon’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “So you are saying that they just built this place to be a dump site? Why do they not reuse their trash?”
