Page 4 of Stellar Drift
She was pretty sure they’d done the right thing by giving him the drug, but doubts kept creeping into her thoughts like weaver ants scouting for juicy beetles.Three-plus years of necessary isolation had very likely reduced her relationship candidate checklist to "can fog a mirror," and her hormones couldn’t be trusted alone with the man.
Even if she was suddenly free of obligations and secrets, she didn't want to fall desperately headlong into anything — or anyone.Making that mistake twice in her life was enough.
But she wasn’t free, and at the end of the day, he was still with the Citizen Protection Service.She wasn’t making that mistake again, either.The CPS was supposed to help minders, but as far as she was concerned, that was the biggest lie in the galaxy.They employed hundreds of thousands of telepaths who could pry into her thoughts or sifters who could mess with her brain chemicals to make her eager to babble her innermost secrets.Or even worse, cleaners who specialized in gouging out memories or twisters who permanently distorted them.Those she had personal experience with, and the CPS had treated Elkano the same way.
The locals wouldn’t thank her for bringing the CPS down on their heads, either.None of them cared that the CPS staff were all minders.A high percentage of the locals were, too.They cared much more about the Makaan Nature Reserve and preserving the close-to-the-land lifestyle.Endemic prejudice against minders in the big cities — and the galaxy at large — made creating isolated cooperatives in the wilderness an attractive alternative.
But the CPS loved rules, especially the ones about forcing children ages twelve and seventeen to be tested for minder talents.Avoiding that was another incentive for locals with kids to stay beneath the CPS’s notice.
All things considered, she couldn’t let him awaken in her autodoc, much less see the rest of her home.So her choice was to take him back to his aircar to wake up there, or take him to Irakat Collective and let them deal with him.
Except it was Trading Day in Irakat, which drew people from up and down the river and enforcers from Joro’s compound looking for kicks.She’d have to answer far too many questions about how and when she found the ranger in the first place.And Houyen might not appreciate waking up with strangers.
Really, her only option was to take him back to his aircar and let him wake up on his own.She’d ask Elkano to send cameras to monitor him and the aircar to make sure he woke up and was able to operate his vehicle.
She patted Kyala’s shoulder.“Come on, my friend, let’s get the airsled.”
He’d likely have headaches and feel like he got pushed off a skyskimmer for a few more days, but he would probably live.
Which was good, since the infinity fever was likely her and Elkano’s fault in the first place.
Chapter 2
CPS Base, Ryaksha City, Qal Corona • GDAT 3235.004
Houyenwaitedforthedoors blazoned with the Makaan Nature Reserve Ranger Service logo to slowly iris open.They seemed as tired and achy as he was.
The attached hangar behind him, where he’d parked the surplus military aircar, smelled like someone had spilled a dekaliter of overheated lubricant, then doused the area with astringent antifungal to mask the odor.As he trudged into the base’s main building that held staff living quarters on one side and the working offices and command suite on the other, a lesser version of the oily antifungal smell followed him down the hallway.The duffle bag’s strap cut into his shoulder like he was carrying rocks instead of the usual extra clothes, wilderness gear, and sampling kits.The ringing in his ears nearly drowned out the echoes of his footsteps.
His assigned quarters were too close to the hangar entrance for his liking, but he was grateful for the proximity now.Once inside, he sealed the door behind him and dropped the bag, then headed for his private fresher.It was a much-preferred alternative to the aircar’s dropseat compost toilet or the great outdoors, where bloodthirsty insects zeroed in on exposed tender flesh in a heartbeat.
A glimpse of himself in the mirror wall startled him.Based on the way he felt, he should look like an animated corpse, but he didn’t look anything other than exhausted and muddy.Ever since awakening in his aircar, he felt untethered, as if he’d been drifting in some interstellar void and was just coming back to civilization.
Four hours ago, he’d woken up hot, groggy, and disoriented.Ringing in his ears swelled and ebbed with each breath.His upper center chest ached like he’d been punched.The ripe, sour-sweat scent from his clothing nearly set his nose hairs on fire.
Once enough of his brain cells were firing, myriad mysteries presented themselves.He was webbed into the pilot seat, but it was swiveled to face the back.The aircar door was open, but covered by a stiff and sturdy tarp he recognized as having been made of tough jungle plants by a clever weaver in Axolotl Bend.His head was covered with a colorful town-crafted bug net, rather than the standard-issue version that he had a dozen of in the aircar and his bag.A generic water pouch was in his vest pocket, where he never put them because he didn’t like condensation wet spots on his chest.His percomp gauntlet was on the wrong arm.His boots, pants, and the hem of his tunic were caked with dried mud.His scalp itched, and his hair felt stiff and greasy.
More critically, four days had passed that he couldn’t account for.
He confirmed the galactic date and time from the planetary net and the local time from his percomp and aircar console before admitting no multi-tech failure or coworker prank could explain it.He really had lost four days.
He wrestled with that conundrum as he ran diagnostics on the aircar’s systems, twice just in case, then took off and let the planetary traffic control system send him back to the Makaan Ranger Service base in Ryaksha City.Thank the gods of technology for a working autopilot system.He needed the ninety minutes it gave him to think.
Technically, his first order of business should have been contacting Base Command, but he didn’t know what to tell them.The last clear memory he had was lifting off in his aircar from Irakat Collective’s flitter pad.He’d been in an intense meeting with the administrators for three river towns about their recent surge of fever cases and his idea on the possible disease vector.After that, his memory was a shattered mess, like the one disastrous time he’d tried a hallucinogenic chem.
For example, he was reasonably sure he hadn’t teleported back and forth between the polar ice cap and a volcanic lava flow.Teleportation only happened in science fiction serials.And his dreams, apparently.
For another, he couldn’t fathom why he’d dreamed about multiple conversations between an unknown male and the local woman named Sairy, or why her pet gargoyle was licking his face.Sure, Sairy had caught his attention from the first day they’d met, and they’d seemed comfortably compatible in later interactions, but she remained elusive.No one in the three little towns along the Kalkajalka River knew where she lived, but she visited all of them sporadically.He didn’t even know her full name, so why she’d turned up in his dreams was another mystery.Well, maybe not that much of a mystery, since he’d dreamed about her before because she was sexy and made him laugh.But his recent dreams of her felt much more real.
He remembered fragments of singing and nonsensical conversations.Something about mapmaking and siphoning milliseconds from the planetary communications net.The male voice wanted to add compounded electrolyte powders to a shopping list, then complained that body mass calculations would be unattainable in null-G.Sairy wished that whatever drew wannabe crime lord Falco Joro and her dumb-as-dirt enforcers to build their retreat for the wealthy in the Makaan Nature Reserve would draw her away again soon.
As specific as those memories were, even sharper memories all seemed to center around smells, like something had cleared his sinuses.Antiseptics.Persian roses in full bloom.A salty and fruity liquid.Moist dog breath.
The dream visuals made the least sense of all.Wide doors that his dream-self interpreted as a starship airlock.Drifting in the void in an all-white emergency escape capsule through an indifferent universe.A basalt cave with hundreds of rainforest and riverine plants growing all along the horizontally striated walls, like an abandoned hydroponic farm gone wild.Plants were usually like sparks and flashes to his plant affinity talent, but in his dream, each spark was actually a collection of tiny lights, with unique color combinations for different plant species.Very confusing.
Right now, just standing felt like too much effort.Sticking his head in his fresher basin, he splashed cool water on his face and head, then pushed his hair back, trying to smooth down the unruly spikes.A wave of exhaustion washed through him.His future self would be grateful if he took a shower before sleeping, but he wasn’t sure he had the stamina.
He wished he knew what he’d been doing in the missing four days.Maybe he’d become drowsy, landed the aircar to take a nap, and inadvertently joined a wilderness exploration marathon.He hadn’t sleepwalked since he was six years old, but he didn’t have any better theories just then.
