The Space Between (22 page)

With moonlight painting the world
monochrome, he could concentrate on walking once he reached level
ground. He skirted along the side of a gully, dodging between
trees. He didn't stop to stare at each wonder the new world had to
offer. Still, he looked left and right, and back over his shoulder
as he went, watching here as a bird settled down to roost, there as
a small furry creature twitched its whiskers at the night air.

It wasn't long before Tuki found what could
only be a road. It was a trail wider than any he had ever seen, and
rutted with the passing of many feet. He stopped, looking one way
and then the next along this wonder, giving no thought to which
direction he might choose, but simply following it with his eyes as
it curved through the trees and grass.

Eventually he chose, following the road in
the general direction of the meteor, where it hung over the
horizon. He jogged all night and into the day, without growing
tired of his surroundings. Each new type of tree was a marvel to
him, each lizard, bird, and animal a wonder of creation. He stopped
for more than an hour in the morning to watch a family of small
animals scampering from tree to tree. When the sun was on high, he
paused to listen to a chorus of blue-breasted birds.

It was not until fifteen days after he had
found the skyglass, with the sun starting its slow descent, that he
saw another person. The little boy, holding a curved, knobbly
stick, stopped his game and stared. His skin was very pale compared
to Tuki's, his hair white and straight.

"Hello," Tuki said.

The boy stared for a moment longer before
turning to flee. His screams could be heard long after he had
rounded the next bend in the road and was gone from sight.

Tuki looked at the place where he had last
seen the boy, then shrugged and followed.

He went slowly along the road, around two
bends, and found himself at the edge of a small, rough village. The
child was standing in the street waiting for him, surrounded by
what must have been every man from the region, or so it seemed to
Tuki. The men were holding farming implements or rusting knives as
long as their arms.

"Hello," Tuki said again, smiling at the men
and nodding. No individual spoke in reply, but the group rumbled
ominously. "My name is Tuki."

"Get away from here. We don't want no trolls
here," a man at the front of the group shouted.

"Biggest damn troll I've ever seen," another
muttered.

"Trolls?" Tuki looked about. He was right on
the edge of the village. Trees crowded in on either side, but he
could see no threat there. The town itself was as still as
death.

"Go." The man who spoke waved a rake,
jabbing it at the air.

"What is a troll?" Tuki examined his
surroundings again and took a step towards the protection of the
buildings. The group of men took a step forward to meet him. Then
another.

Almost too late, Tuki realized that they
were threatening him. He stepped back quickly, raising his
hands.

Before he could say anything the villagers
surged forward. He turned and fled back the way he had come.

A kilometer from the village the men had
fallen behind and could not be seen. Their shouts were ragged and
sparse. Around the next bend, Tuki turned away from the road and
jogged along a twisting game trail, calming his racing heart and
trying to decide what had happened.

Why would they threaten me? I did nothing to
them.

Try though he might to find an answer, Tuki
was left to wonder. Trolls were not to be trusted, perhaps, but he
was not a troll.

He licked his lips and looked fearfully
around. He wiped sweat from his face with a shaking hand and walked
quickly up the hill.

It wasn't long before the path started to
curve back towards the desert, and Tuki was forced to abandon it.
He rested, leaning against a tall, rough barked tree, ever fearful
of being found.

When darkness descended, he was jogging
slowly again, cutting across the slope in a generally northerly
direction. He still knew nothing more than he had earlier. The
humans had threatened him for no reason.

"Maybe they were sick!" Tuki had heard of a
sickness that made people behave irrationally. Keala said that men
often suffered from such an affliction, but he never thought to see
such a thing.

The forest didn't seem as welcoming and
wonderful as it had been earlier. Dark shapes loomed, shadows
offered hiding places for any number of unknown creatures. And
trolls as well, for all Tuki knew. He found himself searching the
darkness for wild animals and humans, expecting either one to leap
into view with every half-heard sound.

He slept for a while, but every sound
disturbed him. So he was walking again well before the Mother
Blower rose. He tracked the position of the meteor in his mind as
the trails he followed wandered lazy courses. He counted his steps
so he wouldn't think of other things. He passed a cabin after the
sun had set once more, creeping around the edge of the clearing it
occupied and quickly picking up the trail again on the other side.
He was so nervous that he lost his count and had to start
again.

He moved silently among the trees, adjusting
his rhythm to the dipping and rising of the trail as he had never
had to do in the desert. Counting each step.

Before the first touch of dawn stained the
eastern horizon, Tuki paused, listening to a new sound that had
intruded on his thoughts of humans and shooting stars. It was a
drumming above his head, as if an army of invisible creatures ran
across the tops of the trees. He cocked his head, then jumped
slightly as water dripped down from above to land among the
tattooed ants on his arm.

He stood where he was for several moments,
listening and watching as more and more drops splashed around him.
All those tiny footsteps?

Is that the sound of water striking the
leaves? It can't be!

Tuki searched the semidarkness for somewhere
to hide, somewhere to get away from all of the water. He found
nowhere, so he started to run.

He didn't know where he was running. After
he started to move through the trees, with the water falling
quicker every moment, he didn't stop to look for shelter. He simply
ran, clutching the skyglass sack in his shaking hand.

After a lifetime of running
through the trees, Tuki suddenly broke out into the open and felt
the full force of the falling water. The Mother Blower was angry
and was wasting all the water the humans would need. It stung his
bare skin, pummeling him like pelted stones. Over his head, he
could see no stars, nor either of the two brothers who should have
been riding high in the sky. The Goddess had closed Her eyes, and
now
nobody
could
see.

Tuki ran again, following the path as it
crossed the clearing and plunged back under the trees. The
protection of the canopy lessened the force of the blows, but still
he could hear the Goddess' footsteps as She chased him onwards. And
under the trees he was all but blind.

He tripped on a protruding root, splashing
down into a pile of mud. He was covered in the cool, sodden mess
though he scrambled to his feet instantly and was running again.
Moments later the path dipped down through a gully, and he was
splashing through an ankle-deep torrent. He gasped at the touch of
the water and sprang up and out the other side. He tripped again,
rounding another bend as he started to climb. Lying on the ground,
water running from his dark curly hair, dripping from the end of
his nose, leaving cold tracks across his skin, he saw a huge fallen
tree with a sheltered space underneath.

With a sob of despair, he wiped the water
from his face and hurried away from the path and into the small dry
alcove.

15: Lessons Learned

Kim tried to ignore Meledrin but found she
was reading the same paragraph over and over again without having
any idea what it said.

"Why will they not tell us the reason for
the delay?" Meledrin asked, glaring at the man behind them as if
that might make a difference. Kim was pleased to see that the man
ignored the elf, not even looking up from the highlighted file he
was reading. It was possible he hadn't even heard.

Kim shook her head. "Does it matter?" After
spending a couple of years travelling around the world, she was
used to all sorts of delays. Normally, when left in peace, the
waiting didn't worry her. With Meledrin constantly bringing it to
her attention, time seemed to drag.

They were sitting in the main cabin of the
plane with about a dozen serious men in serious suits. There were
as many empty seats again, all facing a large, flat screen
television hanging on the wall. At the rear of the cabin things
were arranged in a less formal manner. A horseshoe of chairs around
a low table, a desk, and a small bar stocked with all manner of
drinks.

"Do you think the giant bats are blocking
our route?"

Kim gave up and put the book away. "Maybe."
It wouldn't have been surprising.

They'd been sitting on the US Air Force
Boeing for an hour, though they'd been told they'd be taking off
immediately. Kim wasn't particularly worried. She knew there were
thousands of things that could be affecting their take off without
having anything to do with them. Meledrin wouldn't understand the
vast number of people, places, and variables involved. And there
was a war on, for Christ's sake.

But in the end, it
was
about them. Kim was
just getting serious about ignoring the elf, having started a
conversation with a stony faced man in a grey suit, when someone
escorted Keeble into the cabin.

The dwarf looked around excitedly and seemed
to want to go everywhere at once so he wouldn't miss a single
detail. It took him a moment to shift his focus from the location
to the people in it. He had a sneer for Meledrin and a smile and a
wave for Kim.

"Hello, Keeb'," Kim said. She smiled
back.

"Hello." Keeble looked at the seat his
escort motioned him towards, then went and took a different one by
a window. He allowed himself to be strapped in. "Plane," he said,
nodding.

They were moving before everyone else was
seated, rolling towards the runway. Keeble strained to see out the
window, pressing his face against the glass and muttering to
himself. Kim divided her gaze between the elf and dwarf as they
started to pick up speed and finally left the ground.

Keeble was smiling like a boy with a new
bike, and Kim could almost see the thoughts darting though his head
as he tried to see everything at once and work it all out.
Meledrin, on the other hand, took one look out the window then
stared resolutely forward. Only her hands, gripping the armrests
with white-knuckled intensity, showed that she was feeling anything
at all.

When, a short while after takeoff, one of
the CIA officers rose to his feet and went to get a drink, Keeble
quickly unbuckled his own belt and raced to a window that gave a
better view of the wing.

There were three fighters flying escort not
far away.

"How work?" Keeble asked in horrible English
as he grabbed the arm of the closest man. "How work?"

"How does what work?"

"Plane? How work?"

The man glanced at someone else for a moment
and received the permission he apparently didn't really want.
"Well, the top of a wing is more curved than the bottom, so when
air moves past the wing —"

"You do know," Kim said, interrupting the
man, "that he doesn't really speak English."

"Oh. Then how do I explain?"

"Try drawing a picture. I think he might
understand that better than anything. And Meledrin can translate
any bits he doesn't understand."

"Why don't you explain?" But he rose to his
feet and motioned for Keeble to follow him to the other end of the
cabin. Keeble sat down near the low table while the man collected
paper and pen from the desk.

"Coffee?" Keeble asked, pointing to a jar on
a shelf.

"You want coffee?"

"Yes, please." The dwarf licked his lips and
stared at the jar.

The man sighed but made two cups of
coffee.

A few minutes later Keeble and the American
were both hunched over the paper as the man drew a rough, profile
sketch of a wing. Other men and women wandered over to help or just
to watch. The conversation quickly moved from wings to other
subjects.

"What are we going to be doing, exactly?"
Kim asked when Special Agent Tim O'Donnell, the baby-faced man in
charge, broke away from the group gathered around the table. He got
himself a scotch before crossing to sit by her side.

"Sorry, I don't know."

"You don't know or you
'
don't know
'?"

"I really don't know."

"Ah."

"I'm just your escort. And the only reason I
have the job is because I happen to be going your way."

"And everyone else?"

"We were part of a task force working with
the British trying to contact the alien mother ships."

"There's more than one mother ship?"

"This is all top secret stuff, you
understand. If you tell anyone I'll have to kill you."

He said it with a smile,
but Kim had the horrible suspicion he was serious. "I doubt I'll be
left unguarded from now until the war ends, so who would I tell?"
Her reply was delivered with a smile as well, but she had the
horrible suspicion that she would find that
she
was telling the truth.

"Well, there appear to be lots of mother
ships, actually." He took a sip of his drink and settled back. "The
trouble is, they hardly show up on any of our tracking equipment.
There are blobs that may well be one ship or ten."