CHAPTER FOUR: DANOVAN tel’DARIAN

We slept there in the grass, without shelter or fire, just two lovers, spent, under the stars. And when we woke the next morning, we bathed in the stream, completely unselfconscious.

I dreamed of my mother’s face, and the sound like broken glass and splintered wood that heralded the coming of her end. I dreamed of my father and the look on his face, the look of utter despair. I woke trembling in the night and drew Araceli close to me. She turned over and nuzzled my neck, and I held her, and thought of my mother’s last words to my father: It was a great joy and a great privilege to love you…Then I dreamed of a peaceful future, the one I saw before the attacks, just me and Ara and our brood of hybrid children, existing peacefully in a repaired Hiropass. When I woke, I thought for an instant that perhaps that future was still possible. But we had a lot of work to do first.

I was grateful that Araceli had had the wherewithal to pack some supplies, and we sat, eating our fresh fruit and drinking jugs of filtered water, before we climbed back into the rover and continued on our way.

The day was clear and bright, not a cloud in the sky as we continued to head in the direction of the smoke, rising into the air. We were far enough away from Hiropass now that we were two beings in a swath of empty, open land, and eventually even the tall grass gave way to rolling fields. So when we came upon another rover, headed in the opposite direction that we were headed, they were hard to miss. The rover didn’t look like ours: it was low to the ground, in silver metal painted in shades of green in a very poor attempt to camouflage it with the surrounding scenery. There were windows at the front, clear and open, and as we drew nearer, we could begin to discern faces.

“Who do you think they are?” Ara asked, leaning forward in her seat with her elbows on her knees.

“I don’t know.”

“Is their rover military grade?”

“Hardly.”

We drew closer and closer, until we could see that there was a Galatean woman and a Human man in the rover, their eyes wide as saucers and locked on us just as ours were locked on them.

Nearer, ever nearer, and I slowed the rover to a halt expecting them to do the same. But they didn’t. They drove right past us. And maybe under different circumstances, I would have thought nothing of it. But this was the day after an attack on my home village, and these two strangers in their low-grade camo rover were headed directly for Hiropass. So I turned our rover around and followed them.

“What are you doing?” Ara asked.

“Following them. To make sure they’re not headed for Hiropass.”

“What if they live in Hiropass?”

“They don’t.”

We drove in silence for a few moments, and I was gaining on them. But then they stopped so suddenly that I had to slam on the brakes to skid to a halt behind them.

They came out suddenly, and the man was wielding a crowbar like a baseball bat. He was tall and young, with black hair and wide, green eyes that were wild with fear. He was broad by human standards, larger even than his Galatean companion, who was slight and short and rather squat, about Araceli’s size, actually. Except this Galatean woman was the rose gold color of oxidized Quaridium Drolide, and she glistened in the afternoon light.

“Get out of the rover,” the man demanded, firm, but uncertain. I gestured for Araceli to stay put, but I climbed out as he asked, my hands up defensively in front of him. “Who are you?” The man went on. “What do you want, and why are you following us?”

“We’re following you because we thought would stop. But you didn’t, and now you’re headed in the direction of a village I’m trying to protect.”

“Village?” he asked, “What village?”

“Hiropass,” I said. “Isn’t that where you’re going?”

“No,” The woman said, taking a few tentative steps toward me. “No, that isn’t where you’re going.”

“So…where are you going?”

“That’s none of your business!” The man shouted, inching forward.

“Whoa, whoa—calm down,” I said. “I mean you no harm.”

“How do we know that?” The woman asked, her pale white eyes narrowed beneath the jutting ridge of her brow.

She had a good point—it was just my word against hers that I wasn’t there to harm her. And Araceli must have seen me faltering when she climbed out of the rover, her hands up just as mine were.

“We’re headed to the Leviathan crash site,” she explained. “But there’s been an attack on the Galatean village of Hiropass, and we were just concerned you might have been involved.”

“Well, we’re not,” the woman insisted. But again, her word against ours.

“Hang on,” the man said, narrowing his eyes at Araceli. “You’re that woman from the newsfeed. I saw your picture—they’re looking for you.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m Dr. Araceli Cross.” And she extended her hand to them, like they’d come over for supper. I eyed her dubiously.

But after a moment, the man took her by the hand. “Dr. Mason Wieland,” he said. “Botanist.”

“Geneticist,” Ara replied with a smile, before turning her attention to the rose gold Galatean, who took Ara by the hand and smiled.

“Cleoh cal’Viernan,” she said, her voice low and calm, a welcome change in timbre. “Healer.” I didn’t shake their hands, just waved from where I had mine in the air.

“Danovan tel’Darian. Confused former soldier—let’s dispense with the pleasantries. Would you please tell me where you’re going and what you know of the attacks on the Leviathan, the GenOriens base, and now, on Hiropass?”

Mason and Cleoh glanced nervously between themselves, communicating in that silent way that gave them away as being intimately involved with one another. But eventually Cleoh turned her attention to me and began to speak. “We don’t know anything about the attack on Hiropass, and we’re sorry to hear about it,” she began, “but we do know that the attacks staged against the Leviathan and the GenOriens base are linked to a conservative terrorist organization—”

“If you want to call them that,” Mason interrupted.

“Which, I do,” Cleoh insisted. “What else do you call terrorizing civilians and murdering babies.”

“Murdering babies?” Ara echoed, alarmed.

“Yes,” Cleoh confirmed. “They’re here for the hybrids.”

I looked over at Ara, just as she locked her eyes on me. That’s precisely what my mother had said. There were people who knew about this group, whoever they were. People who were trying to protect the hybrid progenies of human and Galatean pairings.

“Who is in this…terrorist cell?” Ara asked. “Humans? Galateans? Who would want to kill babies?”

“It started off as a human organization, the RCB they called themselves, resistance to cross-breeding. But since they’ve arrived planetside, Galateans who share their values have joined them. And now they call themselves The Cleansing.”

“The Cleansing?” Ara scoffed. “How very end of days.”

“They have plants in all of the major organizations that fund expeditions, trade agreements, and, yes, scientific research and development,” Mason went on. “Their goal is basically to make everything the way it was before the humans and the Galateans discovered one another. They have people in the military, people in business, finance. People in GenOriens.”

“So, what, their end goal is just to…eliminate everyone who has anything to do with the melding of the human and Galatean populations?” Ara asked, and I saw her cheeks color with rage and frustration.

“Yes,” Mason confirmed, “I think that’s precisely what they’re doing.”

“Their further intent is to drum up support,” Cleoh went on. “Every news broadcast that covers these events just instills more and more fear, for humans and Galateans. Eventually, we think, the human ships will turn around and go back to Earth, and we’ll close our borders to any further trade agreements with the humans.”

“And then we’ll just resort to spying on one another,” Mason interjected, “until everyone forgets this happened, and two hundred years from now, someone tries again.”

“And then it starts all over.” Ara heaved a sigh and looked at me, but my expression was as blank as my mind. I had no idea what we should do. Fortunately, Cleoh did.

“Come with me,” Cleoh said. “I want to show you something.”

“Cleoh—” Mason began to protest, but she silenced him with the wave of her hand before turning on her heel and heading back to the rover. Ara and I exchanged curious glances, but we did as she bid us, walking around to the passenger’s side of rover, which was much more worn down up close than it had appeared from a distance.

Cleoh opened the door to the rover and shielded from view whatever it was she was going to pull out. “Mason,” she called, bent over the seat, “bring out the food and the blankets, would you? It’s about time to eat anyway.”

With a sigh, Mason did as he was told, and came around to pull tents and blankets, pillows and baskets from the storage compartment in the rover. This momentarily distracted both Ara and me from what Cleoh wanted to show us. And when she turned around, we saw what was at stake:

A hybrid baby.

The baby was so small, no more than a month old, with skin the color of her mother’s, like brushed rose gold. The baby was wriggling its little fists in the air, cooing happily as its mother bounced it. “Her name is Shae,” Cleoh said. Bounced her, as her mother bounced her. Shae didn’t have a brow ridge like her mother, but had the strong forehead of her father, and her father’s dark eyelashes. On the top of her head was a little tuft of fuzzy, pale yellow hair, and her eyes were white, like her mother’s. She was beautiful. Strange, but beautiful.

I tore my eyes away from Shae and looked over at Araceli who wore a look of stark awe. Her blue eyes glimmered with the threat of tears, and she reached her arms out almost automatically, wanting to embrace the child. “May I hold her?” Ara asked, and Cleoh cast a glance over her shoulder to Mason, who gave his consent with a single nod of his head. Cleoh handed the baby to Araceli, and Ara hugged her close, bouncing her gently in the swaddling of her white blanket.

“She’s healthy?” Ara asked, ever the doctor.

“Yes,” Mason confirmed. “Colicky from time to time, but what baby isn’t?”

“How was the labor?”

“Long,” Cleoh confirmed with a knowing smile, “but, I’d wager, no more or less painful than any other labor that the universe has known.”

“Who knows about her?” I asked, standing protectively at Ara’s shoulder, as if I myself could shield that baby from harm should a shuttle descend from the cloud cover and start firing on innocents again.

“No one,” Mason said. “Not even Cleoh’s family. She and I left Pyrathas just when she began to show, and we’ve been living a nomadic life ever since.”

“But why did you run?” Ara asked. “What made you want to hide?”

Cleoh and Mason shared another one of their knowing looks, and I could see them having an almost telepathic argument, one which Mason lost. He sighed and spoke: “I was stationed here with the human military sent to protect GenOriens’ interests in Pyrathas. I heard some chatter over the communicator that they were to round up anyone who’d had any sexual contact between species. I’ve been in combat units, and I’ve been behind desks, and I know what it sounds like when people are going to be detained without due process. And I loved her,” he looked over at Cleoh, the warmth of his affection radiating out of him. “I love her. I couldn’t let them separate us, and I couldn’t leave her alone while she was carrying my child, so…we ran.”

“We stop in towns from time to time—we saw the newsfeed about you in a tavern in Dietford. But we haven’t shown anyone our Shae,” Cleoh said, “until now.”

Araceli handed the baby back to Cleoh and glanced desperately between her and Mason. “Don’t show her to anyone else,” Ara said, her tone low and urgent. “Stay out of towns at all costs. Do you understand? Don’t let anyone know that this baby exists, and do not go into the towns. They’re razing the towns looking for women pregnant with hybrids.”

“And,” I added solemnly, “they’re just slaughtering the men.”

Mason nodded his head in understanding. “We’ll do as you say.”

“What is your plan?” Cleoh asked. “It seemed as though you were headed into the heart of things—towards the crash site, yes?”

“We’re going to find Christian Ward,” I said. “And we’re going to see if we can ascertain just how high up this conspiracy reaches.”

“The Ward family is a major player in this conflict,” Mason said, propping his hands up on his hips as Cleoh placed the baby in a small bassinet on the seat of the rover.

“How do you mean?” Ara asked, crossing her arms almost defensively in front of her. Mason proffered a chagrinned little smile, arching one thick brow over one bright green eye.

“Due respect, Dr Cross,” he began, and I did not care for his tone, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, since you’re sucking at the teat of the Ward empire.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mason,” Cleoh interrupted, “don’t.”

“No, I’m not going to skirt around it just because she’s engaged to be married to that shellacked buffoon.” Mason stared her down like he hated her just as much as he hated Ward, as much as he hated the entire situation into which their actions had forced him.

“That’s enough,” I spat. “I get that you’re frustrated, and that you blame the Wards for a lot of that frustration, but I will not stand here and let you insult her.”

“Danovan, it’s all right,” she said, not looking at me. “He’s right—as far as he knows, I’m part of the problem. Mason, I want you to understand that I have no intention of marrying into that family. Do with that information what you will.” There was something of a silent standoff happening between the two humans, but eventually all the fight went out of Mason, and he relaxed his posture.

“I’m sorry,” Mason said at length, a cloud crossing his features. “I guess I’m just a little on edge.”

“You’re a new father,” Ara said, smiling warmly. “It’s to be expected.”

“Will you camp with us tonight?” Cleoh asked. “We have tents, food. Even a generator. You’ll be comfortable.”

I was eager to get to the crash site, but we didn’t have much daylight left. “Yes,” I confirmed, as Ara’s searching eyes asked the question of what I wanted to do. “Yes, thank you. We’ll camp with you tonight.”

~ * ~

We drove to a patch of trees near the river, clusters of bull roses nipping at the air as we passed. Mason and I began to pitch the tents—fine, sturdy things of thick brown canvas. We unfurled thick, clean rugs on the packed dirt floor of the tents, and Cleoh scattered some pillows atop the rugs, making things very cosy indeed. Ara entertained little Shae—insofar as an infant can be entertained—and I helped to gather the supplies and fill the two tents with blankets and jugs of our filtered water. Mason and I built a campfire, and by the time the light began to dim with the onset of evening, things were very cozy indeed.

Araceli handed little Shae back to her mother, and the five of us sat close to the dancing flames of the campfire. I watched the mother feed her baby from her breast and marveled at the simple beauty of it. I watched the father rise to his feet and bend at the waist to press a kiss to the top of his mate’s head and sweep his fingertips with loving reverence over his daughter’s crown.

Would I ever have that? Would we? Was it possible for us to carve out such a future for ourselves? And did she even want one?

The baby slept in Cleoh’s arms, and she and Ara murmured to one another as Mason and I set about preparing meat to cook over the open fire.

“How did you meet Cleoh?” I asked, both of us turning Caromay meat over the fire.

“She was a healer assigned to my regiment,” he explained, his voice hushed enough so that the women could not hear him above the crackle of the fire. “I fell in love with her the first instant I saw her,” he went on. “The light glinted off her skin, and she looked like she was made of Lover’s Gold, the very thing we had been stationed to protect.”

I smiled as I glanced up at the Galatean beauty, and my own human beauty next to her, but then something that Mason had said gave me pause: His regiment had been stationed to protect Quaridium Drolide. Lover’s Gold. “Humans were protecting—what, exactly? A Vein? In Pyrathas?”

“No,” Mason went on, withdrawing his meat and examining it closely. “No, we were overseeing safe shipment of the material, from the mines in the hills, through Pyrathas, and to the military vessels that would take it off-planet.”

“I didn’t think humans could get it anywhere but here,” I mused quietly.

“They couldn’t, until recently.” Mason put his hunk of cooked meat onto a tray before he took my roasting spit from my hand and added my meat to the tray as well. He took a knife from his pocket and began to slice the meat, which sent steam rising into the air between us, with delicious smell that was nearly enough to make me forget what had given me pause. “But they recently opened up a line of trade,” Mason went on, “so I was just one of the men who was sent to guard it.”

“The Galatean government kept the stuff tightly gripped,” I mused quietly. “Why the change of heart?”

“Couldn’t say.” Mason smiled thinly up at me, then, and turned to the women to announce: “Food!”

We chatted companionably while we ate the meat, as well as some raw vegetables and fresh fruits, and a tart that Cleoh had made the last time she’d had access to a real kitchen. And perhaps, under more fortuitous circumstances, it would’ve been pleasant to be amongst a couple like ourselves. Maybe I could have just focused on envisioning what our future might look like, what our children might look like.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, and that Mason’s presence on this planet at all had something to do with the bigger picture. Quaridium Drollide was rare, but Galateans used it in much of their technology; it surprised me to hear that they’d opened up a line of trade with the humans. What precious metal could they possibly possess that would compare in value with Lover’s Gold?

We left the fire to burn out when we turned in for the night, and Ara and I curled up on some of the borrowed pillows in one of the borrowed tents.

We laid together in silence for a long while; I could hear the baby fussing in the adjacent tent.

“Ara,” I said, my tone low and searching.

“Hm?”

“Do you know anything about what the humans might want with Lover’s Gold?”

She turned over to face me, her head resting on the bend of her arm. Her eyes were dark blue pools in the dim light, and they searched my face for meaning. “Well, it’s valuable,” she said, and her whole tone was a shrug.

“So you think they want it for just…jewelry? Or…”

“I’m not sure,” she mused. “I suppose…they could be interested in developing its use in technology, but I haven’t heard anything about that. And a research organization like GenOriens publishes its project findings, its upcoming projects, things like that. What we do is pretty above-board, you know, we have a board of directors we have to answer to.”

“Yeah…”

“Why do you ask?”

I turned onto my side and propped my head up on my hand. “Mason was telling me that his regiment was positioned to oversee a shipment of it. They were loading it onto a military vessel when it came through Pyrathas.”

Ara paused, chewing contemplatively at her lower lip. “I do remember seeing one thing,” she said, that little crease appearing between her eyebrows. “GenOriens commissioned a study of the chemical compounds that made up Quaridium Drollide, but it was pretty standard stuff—breaking it down to its base molecular level, just so that we could better understand it. I remember Dr. Pierce commenting on a report he’d read about it, but he didn’t say anything that would’ve caused any alarm, or anything like that. He didn’t even say what the findings had been, only that a team of GenOriens biochemists were looking into it.”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” I remarked, turning over onto my back with my hands behind my head, my elbows winging out to the side. “Maybe I’m just overthinking everything.”

Araceli was quiet for a long time, but I could feel those discerning eyes on me, even though I wasn’t looking at her. She took in a slow, deep breath, and asked, “How are you? Really?”

“I’m fine.”

“Danovan,” she said, reaching out to splay her fingers across my chest. “Your mother was just killed. There’s no way you’re fine.”

“I am,” I said, forcing myself to look at her. “Of course, I…I’m…I grieve the loss of my mother, but we have a job to do.”

“Actually, we don’t,” she said, sitting up so that she was leaning on one hand and gesturing emphatically with the other. “It’s not on us to fix everything. I’m just a scientist, you’re just a soldier. We’re just two people, against what’s looking like an entire cross-planetary conspiracy. We don’t have to save the world, Danovan. We can decide to do something else.”

Then it was my turn to sit up. I don’t know what it was about her little speech that made me see red—she was right, really. But nevertheless, the very notion of complacency infuriated me. “So, what, we’re just supposed to…to let them get away with this?”

“I’m just saying—”

“They’re murdering innocent people, Araceli,” I balked. “Babies. Infant babies. They’re murdering them. We don’t have any choice at all—not if we want to be able to look ourselves in the face every morning.”

She was nodding her head, but part of me wondered if she actually didn’t want to take this on. If, perhaps, she was more interested in preserving her own life than the lives of countless others. It was the first moment I had ever doubted her.

“Danovan, I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” I spat, my anger a derailed train. “We’re helping these people, Ara. We’re not just going to let them die.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts and eyed me levelly. “I want to know exactly what you propose we do, Danovan tel’Darian. Because if we’re an army, then we’re a very small one, and I have to tell you, I’m not a very good shot.”

I ran my tongue over my lips and got to my feet, pacing the length of the tent. I wondered, briefly, if Mason and Cleoh could hear us and decided it was probably best that I keep my voice as calm as possible. “It’s not about taking them down,” I said. “We don’t even really know who they are. And even if we did—I’m not stupid. I know we’re not an army.”

“So,” she began, canting her head gently to the side. “What, then?”

“So, we expose them. We find out who they are, and we tell the worlds what they’re doing. We broadcast on the NewsFeed to your world, and to mine.”

She was nodding, nodding her head, and she lifted her hand to brush a few errant auburn curls out of her eyes. “And then what?”

The question hung in the heavy air between us, and it took all the fight out of me. “I’m not saying I won’t do it,” she continued, “I just want to know what we do after we expose this great conspiracy. I mean, do you expect that we’ll actually live through it? Do you think that we’ll be able to settle down, you and me, and live out a nice, normal life? Have little pink hybrid babies of our own? Because I just don’t think that’s in the cards for us.” I sank down, sitting near to her and she grabbed my hand in hers. “I just think we need to be realistic here.”

“If I tell you, yes, we’ll die for this—does it change what you want to do?”

She was quiet for a moment, her eyes locked on mine. But eventually, she shook her head, loosing a few more curls to fall into her eyes. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t change anything.”