Trion Rising, page 12
But instead of jumping away, she couldn’t make her legs move. Finally the woman she’d been talking to pulled her aside, just before the transport sideswiped her, jolted her to the side with its force field. And through tinted windows she saw the calm face of the condemned man who looked straight at her with piercing eyes, as if he knew her.
And he did. If she lost touch with everything else, she knew her name— the name this man clearly spoke as he passed by.
Oriannon.
Through the glassteel? She pulled the earbud out, creeped out by the voices. First the boy’s voice, now the man in the transport. But they echoed in her mind.
You’ve got to follow him, Oriannon.
By that time she thought the crowd might have attacked the transport if its force field had not been active. A couple of kids actually tried but bounced away. Others yelled, “Faithbreaker!” and waved their fists. And where was the boy who had caused the scene up front? Oriannon shook her head to make sure it wasn’t all a dream.
Shook her head again, and the crowd had vanished.
14
How long had she been standing there, by the side of the road? Oriannon couldn’t be sure. The way her memory had been coming and going, she couldn’t be sure of anything. Her hands shook.
I’m coming unglued!
And what did she really know? Just that she’d been standing there in a fog, maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. By this time the crowd had disappeared, and so had the boy.
Yet even though she somehow knew she was supposed to, she still couldn’t remember his name, no matter how hard she tried. And now the tears blurred her vision— tears for what she had seen, tears for the headache that throbbed in her temples. Now all she could really remember clearly was the man looking out through the transport window at her, calling her by name.
“That’s it!” she yelped, glad that no one was watching her talk to herself. A few meters away she spotted a familiar-looking lev-scooter, half hidden in a cerise bush. Something about that bush. She stepped closer for a better look.
“Hey you!” A man stuck his head out a second-floor balcony window, just above the street. “Is that your scooter?”
Oriannon looked closer at the blue-and-white two-seater, sleek but good and beat up. She had to admit it looked awfully familiar, as if she had ridden on it, even.
“Uh …”
“Well, you need to get it out of my garden, you hear? What is it with you people? You think you can trample all over the place, and just leave your trash anywhere you please? The show was over a half-hour ago.”
Oh. That told her how long she’d been out of it, anyway. Just standing there, or wandering around in a daze, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t answer.
“You hear me?” he went on, “Because if you don’t get out of here now, I’m calling a security!”
“No, no. I’m sorry about your flowers.” Oriannon threw her leg over the worn saddle and slapped the side of the scooter just below the steering wheel. The little machine came to life, lighting up a little control panel and winding up its force field.
How had she known how to do that? Didn’t matter now. The scooter finally worked up enough power and bobbed up on a bubble of air. She rocked back and forth for a moment, smashed a few more blooms, and finally managed to back away.
“NOW what are you doing?” yelled the unhappy homeowner. He brought a comm to his ear and started shouting all over again. “Hello, Security? I have a girl here in front of my home, smashing all my flowers, and …”
Oriannon didn’t hang around to hear the rest of his story. She wheeled around and put the Court of Justice behind her, retracing the route the transport had taken. Strange. Even if she had forgotten most everything else, she knew exactly which street to follow, which direction led out of the city.
And she remembered the man, the prisoner taken away. The way he’d called her name through the window. The strong pull she felt now, the tug to follow.
You’ve got to follow him!
This way? Here in this part of the ancient capital, streets hardly seemed wide enough for a person walking and a little lev-scooter like hers. But she wound her way through the mid-day crowd, some taking shade under brightly colored blue and green awnings strung over the narrowest parts of the street. She picked through the market crowd, ignoring tantalizing smells of pluq fritters and spiced teas, weaving right and left and eventually turning onto a wide, tree-lined avenue past five-story clusters of ivory stone apartment buildings and neighborhood shops, moms walking little pet treb bears, and bustling open-top transporters full of people on their way to and from work. Bright red and yellow banners hung from balconies, fluttering lightly in the breeze, and she gazed at them to try to remind herself. She knew this place, but still the fog held her in its grip, making her feel like a stranger in a strange land.
I can’t even say where I live, she told herself, or who my family is.
So she pushed on. Twenty minutes later the avenue took her into rolling hills, where the traffic thinned and trees began to outnumber the white stucco buildings and rooftop gardens of the city. Beside her she noticed a mass of giant water pipelines— at least ten or fifteen of them— all painted a mottled tan to blend into the landscape, but sticking out even so. Who could miss Corista’s lifeline, where all their water came from? She’d just never seen them so close before.
She glanced over her shoulder one last time to see the suns reflected in glittering domes and red tile roofs, then twisted the handle grip all the way towards her and held on as the scooter surged ahead and the scenery flashed by. What was her hurry?
Find him!
Crazy, but she knew she’d taken the right way, past checkerboard fields of ebony-flowered waspseed plant, and she ducked down behind the little plexi windshield so the bugs would not splat in her eye. And, as the world flashed by, every hour brought her closer. Four hours, then five … She lost track.
At length the paved road turned to gravel, which turned to dry, hard-packed red dirt. Didn’t matter. She hadn’t seen another scooter, another vehicle, for the past half-hour— until now.
Whoosh. Backwash from the big gray truck-sized transporter knocked her sideways, nearly throwing her into a spin. She squeezed the brake and applied rear thrust, which only spun her more. Finally she pulled to a stop in a dusty ditch, but only after bouncing off a couple of small boulders.
One more dent in this thing won’t matter. She coughed and watched the back end of the familiar-looking transporter disappear over a hill, back the direction she’d come.
Was that what I was following? she asked herself, biting her lip in concentration. No, she decided. Maybe it had been, but not any more. So she waved away the dust, pushed away from the boulder, and continued on her way. The scooter complained and whined beneath her. Maybe it had taken one too many bumps.
Still something told her this was the right way to go, and she urged her little lev-scooter on as fast as she dared, flying up and over hills, almost losing her way except for the washed out trail of dust left by the transporter’s force fields. That, and the ever-present pipelines snaking their way over the hills. Yes, this would be the way.
But something else was happening, something odd, and every once in a while she checked over her shoulder to make sure. Trees had long since disappeared, replaced by ragged outcroppings of rocks. And now as she crested yet another hill she was sure of it.
Look at the shadows! They lengthened and darkened in ways she’d never seen before. And behind her, instead of being overhead? The three suns of the Trion had lowered in the sky. She pulled off her shades and still felt as if she was traveling deeper and deeper into a darkened closet.
At the same time she shivered at a wall of cooler air, though she had to admit there was something here that cleared her head. New smells, pungent and prickly, tickled her nose, almost like spices Mrs. Eraz cooked with in their kitchen. They seemed to soothe away the last of her mind-splitting headache. She breathed deeply, then noticed something new on the side of the road. This time she had to stop.
“Weird.” She thought no one had ever told her that white ice lay on the ground like this. And cold! She giggled when she touched it for the first time, then picked up a handful and squeezed. It even smelled like this strange land— dark and full of secrets. Had she crossed over into Shadowside yet?
Not yet; she probably still had a ways to go until the border, and she guessed it would be marked. So she shivered and squeezed her shoulders, trying to set aside all the reasons she should turn back. It wasn’t too late yet.
Oriannon only felt the pull to follow, as if she was standing in a stream and the current would take her if she let it. And still she knew this was the right current, the right direction. Never mind the shivers and the fear. So once more she mounted the scooter, and it moaned beneath her this time, hesitated for a couple of seconds— and finally sputtered back to life.
“Come on …” Oriannon willed it up the next hill, but the higher she climbed the slower it crawled. She tried not to think of what she would do if it decided to break down way out here. On the next crest, though, it seemed to jerk less and speed up more. Good.
Only now with each kilometer the shadows grew longer, the sky turning from light violet to maroon to nearly jet black. Just like up in the shuttle, with …
“With who?” A particle of memory had just hit her, she knew. Something about riding into danger, very much like today, only they were high above Corista and … and that was all she could remember. She just didn’t know where the thought had come from, or if it was real. Maybe it had been a dream of some kind. In any case it was out of reach, like the lights that had started to blink above her head— stars that they could never see in the always-daytime of Corista.
Only problem was, pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. The shadows had grown so long that they’d melted into each other. It did help a little that the white ice seemed to glow with pale blue and green sparkles that showed her where the hills rose and fell. Still she pushed the scooter, kept the throttle turned full, and it responded by screaming and whining louder than ever. Maybe this place that was pulling her on, kilometer after kilometer, maybe it would help her put everything back together.
Or not. Now she crouched behind the cracked windscreen, shivering, wondering if maybe she should give up this quest and turn around. But to where? The city and her foggy past had disappeared far behind her. The only thing that made sense— in a strange sort of way— lay ahead. Never mind the weathered orange warning sign that leaned precariously over the road: Restricted Zone Ahead.
At least she knew the border was just ahead now. A single light blinked in the distance. And only a few minutes later she slowed at the sight of a lone guard tower set on rusting metal legs but tall enough to overlook several hectares of barren scrubland.
The light, it turned out, was a slowly spinning yellow warning blinker, bright enough to shine for many kilometers in the twilight. She eased back on the throttle even more, letting the scooter coast the last few hundred meters, and held her breath.
I haven’t come all this way to stop now, she told herself.
“Hello?” At first Oriannon expected a security to jump out of the little shack at the base of the tower, but she couldn’t make out even a dim light through the window. The scooter finally wheezed to a halt, though she pumped the throttle to try to keep it alive.
“Don’t die on me now!”
But the scooter’s force field had already slipped away, leaving her no choice but to park it in the gravel. She took another breath, stepped clear, and checked out the guard house once more.
“Anybody here?” She raised her voice, though it occurred to her she really didn’t want to know the answer to her own question. Still she ventured closer, heart beating loudly, ready to run.
Still nothing.
What about the door? She knocked quietly, leg muscles tensed, and tried to slide it open.
No luck.
The window? It was covered with a fine layer of dust, but she wiped it aside with her fist and peered inside.
Completely dark.
“This is really creepy,” she told herself, and she wasn’t sure if she was shaking now from the cold or from something else, or both. She looked up again at the top of the tower, where the yellow revolving light cast a blink of daylight on her once every other second. In between, she thought she heard the faintest glimmer of music— but so faint that she couldn’t tell if it was her imagination or real. She paused. No, the only sound was the wind whistling through the tower legs, reminding her that—
“This is a restricted area!” A distant probe’s voice broke the silence, nearly giving Oriannon a heart attack. “Turn back immediately!”
She sprinted to the idling lev-scooter, worked the starter switch on and off, on and off.
“This is a restricted area!”
She heard it again, just wasn’t quite sure which direction it came from. Perhaps a ways off, but getting closer— fast. Still, she should have known this part of the border between Corista and Shadowside would have been patrolled by probes. She should not have been surprised.
She glanced quickly back in the direction of Seramine, far away now, and all she could see was a thin sliver of light on the horizon where the suns used to be. Ahead, over the border, darkness completely closed in.
“Restricted area!” came the probe again, sounding closer than ever.
But she had already decided which direction she was headed— if the scooter would only cooperate. Too bad it didn’t have its own lights on it, though that would have given her away this time. She tried the ignition one more time, and it finally powered up.
“There we go.” She lifted and coaxed it up to a hover position a few centimeters off the gravel, but this time it sagged under her weight, scraping the rocky ground. Her little control panel indicator between the handlebars flickered. And as she applied full power the scooter fussed and fishtailed.
“Oh, please.” She squeezed the handlebar grips and crouched. “Don’t give up on me now.”
She might have stepped off and pushed if it would have done any good. She did try to lean out with one foot and give it a boost. But that only sent her spinning in circles once more, and the more she tried to make the scooter move ahead the more it complained, until—
Thwump! One of the thrusters came to life, and she rocketed away from the yellow sentinel light, though tilted to the side and almost falling off. Just ahead she could see a stringed red curtain of laser light, about two meters tall, stretching from right to left as far as she could see and hugging each curve of hills.
So this was the border, the edge of Shadowside.
Would she just pass through? Oriannon had no idea, but whatever memories had been driving her on through all these kilo meters, all these hours, only pushed her faster now, as fast as the poor little scooter would take her. It bobbed and weaved and wobbled, but even half-thruster power sent her careening dangerously toward the light fence.
And even if she had been able to see the probe in time, she probably could not have done anything about it, or steered clear. One second she saw it, outlined for a brief second in the blinking light from the tower behind her. She winced and ducked, but that was all. The next second …
Bam! The scooter shuddered, igniting a fireball and sending a world of sparks and flaming shards of metal in all directions. She must have hit the probe head on.
And not only that; her little windshield peeled off to the side, opening the door for an icy blast of wind to hit Oriannon in the face. She grimaced and held on with everything she had as the scooter writhed and twisted, like a terramole lizard caught by the tail, trying to escape the accident.
That flash of red light gave her a tingling sizzle of raw energy. Probably the border fence. She thought she heard the harsh buzz of an alarm somewhere behind her too. Though at this point, that was the last thing Oriannon was worried about.
Right now getting off this scooter was the only thing that mattered. Brakes? She squeezed the handle again and again. No effect, except that it seemed to speed up even more insanely and rocket over a low series of hills. Steering? None of that, either. Maybe that was because she’d left the front end of the scooter behind, in pieces, on the other side of the border.
Now she had no idea what was left of the crippled lev-scooter to help jet her up yet another barren hillside, then around another set of hills and far across a rugged plateau before plunging down, down into a sudden ravine. She could only hold on, her knuckles raw and cold, waiting to be dashed against the hard face of this forbidding landscape.
Instead the reactor whistled in its final agony before the scooter glanced off a boulder to the right, spun off another hard outcrop-ping to the left, and then finally dug in to launch Oriannon off the saddle— still holding to a now-useless pair of handlebars.
She remembered hitting hard enough to knock her breath out, but sliding for quite a ways upside down on a carpet of white ice. The blue and green glittering crystals looked pretty as they sprayed all around her. And then when she slipped to the side— the handlebars finally jerked from her hands— she tumbled into a low spot, on her head and not sure which way was up. Her arm twisted severely, and she felt an ugly snap in her shoulder just before finally coming to rest in a horrible twisted heap.
FINDING SHADOWSIDE
15
How long have I been lying here?
The pain woke Oriannon more than anything else. And it was not just in her head this time, but over every inch of her body. Her legs felt bruised or broken, her back and neck twisted beyond hope, and her arm …
Oh, her arm! She tried to pull it back into place, but just the thought sent flames of pain shooting up from her elbow to her shoulder. At the same time, it throbbed almost enough to make her sick to her stomach.
