Chapter 8
ARDRUC
Elena’s angry footsteps passed my lab on her way to the station’s kitchen. Too early for a midday meal, so she was after another cup of that vile liquid stimulant she liked so much.
No matter where they were born in the galaxy, humans seemed drawn to coffee, which had originated on Earth and been perfected by the monk-gastronomists on Bacora. As it brewed, the stuff smelled wonderful, but paradoxically tasted aggressively unpleasant to my palate.
The deeply contented way Elena always sighed and closed her eyes after her first sip of the day made me smile despite my misgivings about the beverage.
I stared at the images and scrolling data on my monitors as the computer analyzed last night’s spectacular display of large-scale electrical discharges, but none of it registered.
One wonders how someone as wise and knowledgeable as yourself ended up working alone at Nova Cal, Elena had said, her eyes full of anger and disdain. Is it maybe because no one can stand you?
Her scorn had ruffled my feathers far more than her words. I might have few friends and no family ties, and a long list of current and former colleagues who likely had little to say about me that was positive, but I had always commanded authority and respect.
Not from Elena, however. For all my achievements and knowledge, she did not consider me enough of an expert to accept my word about the impossibility of living korae.
Today was the first time she had confronted me rather than shrug me off. It was the reaction I had wanted to provoke with my dismissal of her bizarre claims about seeing small tendrils of plasma, but it did not feel like a win—very much the opposite.
I had been cruel to her today, condescending and dismissive, hoping to break her will to stay. The price of doing so was that my stomach churned and cramped. I had barely made it back to my lab without becoming ill.
Rather than give up and leave Nova Cal, she had dug in her heels and declared her intent not only to stay to study her precious fungi, but to engage in research within my own field—or at least adjacent to it in that astrobiology had some overlap with atmospheric science.
Damn it, could she not just leave me in peace?
I slammed my fist on my desk, rattling my bank of displays and the stack of datapads next to the interface, just as Elena’s footsteps echoed once more in the hallway, coming back from the kitchen.
The footsteps paused. Behind me, the door to my lab slid open.
The reflection in my computer screens showed Elena and Forux. Her eyes still sparked with anger, much like those of her companion.
Today she wore her long hair tucked behind her ears. The sight of her loose hair made my hands tremble because I yearned to run my fingers through the silky strands.
“Ardruc?” she asked. “Everything okay?”
The note of concern in her voice unexpectedly pricked my conscience—and made me growl. I did not want her concern or for her feelings toward me to soften. The more distance we kept from each other, the better.
“Yes,” I said without turning around, my voice brusque. “I knocked something on the floor.”
I watched her reflection as she glanced around my immediate surroundings. Maybe she knew I had lied. The sound of someone punching a desk sounded nothing like an impact on the floor…and there was nothing on the floor of the lab. I kept my workspace tidy.
“I am busy,” I added before she could say anything else. “Thank you for your concern.”
With a sigh, Elena muttered something and left. It sounded like Asshole. A few moments later, from down the corridor, I heard the door to her lab slide closed.
The data from last night continued to scroll across my screens, but I found myself struggling to focus.
For the past several weeks, I could barely eat.
I slept poorly. Since the subject of my studies occurred erratically throughout the day and night, my sleep schedule was irregular at best, but I had never had difficulty sleeping when I needed to until recently.
I had even resorted to taking medication, hoping that would grant me six hours of uninterrupted sleep, but I woke repeatedly.
My abilities to reason, observe, and analyze were my most powerful and important strengths. At the moment, the data on my monitors might as well have been the scratchings of baby sand spiders.
Meanwhile, just now I had gone into Elena’s lab and found her hard at work analyzing her own sets of data, her brow furrowed in concentration, and found myself embittered.
Nothing was less like me than jealousy. Jealousy was irrational and unproductive—especially jealousy of Elena, who thought she saw living plasma.
With a snarl that puffed smoke from my nostrils, I took off my lab coat and tossed it on the desk, shut off the screens, and stalked down the hall, around the corner, and to the end of that corridor to apartment one, Nova Cal’s largest.
Apartments two and three were mid-sized and very comfortable.
Dr. Rg had occupied one, and I had reserved the other for potential visitors to the facility.
On her arrival, I had assigned Elena the fourth apartment, the farthest from my own and the smallest and most utilitarian.
After all, she had brought very little with her besides clothing, a few personal items, and Forux.
Any distinguished visitors—especially ones who might provide funding—could not be expected to stay in our most humble quarters.
The fact the facility had not hosted visitors of any sort in two standard years was beside the point, or so I told myself.
I took my lat’sar case from my closet and sat on my neatly made bed to run my hands over it. The smooth surface felt as familiar as my own skin. I knew every scratch and dent in the case.
The damage in the bottom right corner of the lid had happened the night I fled my parents’ compound.
In my haste to get over the wall, I had banged it against the stone.
I could have purchased a new case at any point in the fifteen years since, but I preferred to see the light damage.
It reminded me of where I had come from. What I had endured. What I had escaped.
The dent in the case was a symbol of my freedom, and of the price I had paid to become Dr. Ardruc Husiorithae, noted atmospheric scientist and asshole.
The price was something someone like Elena Regis, who had grown up in privilege within the highest academic circles, would never understand, even if I told her. Which I would never do.
With my lat’sar case secure on my back, I locked the door to my apartment on the way out.
I had no concern that Elena would try to enter my quarters and there was no one else at Nova Cal, but even so, I kept the door locked at all times.
It was a matter of principle—a subtle pushback against the total lack of privacy in my early life.
I exited the building via the door closest to my apartment, which did not force me to walk past Elena’s lab. I preferred to slip out unnoticed and not cause her to wonder why I had left or where I was going, or why I was bringing my lat’sar.
A wide deck encircled the facility, which was built on a platform above the rocky slope. The autumn day was cool, with a light breeze that stirred the leaves on the trees. I inhaled deeply a half-dozen times, clearing Elena’s scent from my nose, even if I could not banish it from my bones.
I had come to Hyderia to lose myself in my studies of what was to me the planet’s most fascinating attribute: its unique and nearly constant high-atmospheric plasma discharges.
In my opinion, no better location existed for study of these phenomena.
Each kora was unique in shape, size, location, color, and intensity.
The data flowed endlessly and the images captivated me—scientifically speaking, of course.
I could envision myself living out my life on this station, funding permitting, and even retiring here, with the permission of the Nyvoran government.
All my research was geared toward those two ends.
There was no room in my plans for Elena or her theories. None at all. And yet my hearts and soul yearned for her. I puffed smoke from my nostrils in irritation.
Rather than take the stairs down to ground level, I stretched out my wings, inhaled deeply, and took flight.
I soared over the Nova Cal facility in widening circles, climbing from just over the rooftop to a a hundred meters or so above the ground.
Such a pure and simple joy to fly like this, even for a short time.
I spent most of my hours on my human feet or sitting in my lab.
I did not begrudge that, since my research gave me as much fulfillment and satisfaction and even pleasure as flight, but it did make me treasure my time in the sky.
I could not land in the thick forest, so after about fifteen minutes of flying, I landed smoothly on the ground in the clearing next to the station. From here, I would walk to my destination.
Four paths extended beyond the immediate area of our mountainside facility. They served multiple purposes, from ways to exercise to leading to scenic points where I could observe the sky with portable equipment or even my naked eyes.
I took none of those paths.
Instead, my muscles warm and body full of adrenaline and endorphins from my flight, I followed my own habitual way into the trees.
My destination was a small natural clearing bounded on three sides by fallen trees.
The boundaries appealed to me. I knew every detail of this path and that clearing.
It was comfortable, and far enough from the station that I could not be overheard.
Some days I strolled, enjoying the fresh air, peace, and stillness of the forest, where only birds and quiet rustling of small mammals could be heard. No humming or quiet beeps of machinery. No alerts from a computer. Not even the smell of synthetic material except my own clothes.
Today, despite my lingering tiredness from poor sleep, I felt impatient, so I walked briskly. In twenty minutes I reached my destination.
In the clearing, I set my lat’sar case down, closed my eyes, and listened. Nothing.
Perfection.
I sat cross-legged on the ground and opened the case.
My lat’sar lay snugly in the soft, shock-absorbent material that prevented it from being damaged.
My mother’s mother, the only member of the family to resist full immersion in the religious sect, had gifted me the lat’sar on my tenth birthday.
My parents had allowed me to keep the gift as long as I solemnly vowed to never play anything but the group leader’s own compositions on it.
I had kept that vow until the day I fled the compound at nineteen.
From that day on, I took great satisfaction in playing every composition I fancied, including some of my own. And I could not recall a single bar of anything written by the man who had stolen my family from me. That was a pleasure too.
Inhaling and exhaling slowly, I stretched my back, arms, and shoulders until those muscles felt warm and loose. Then I focused on my wrists, hands, and fingers. Every step of this process was methodical and precise—a meditation that freed me from agitation and disquiet, at least for a while.
When I felt at peace, I picked up my bow, settled the body of the lat’sar on my shoulder, and rested my chin on the curved piece on its front.
The weight and feel of the instrument was as familiar as that of my wings.
I tuned all five of the upper and lower strings, then drew the bow across them, closing my eyes as the pure notes filled the air.
I spent a few minutes playing a series of scales—one of them, coincidentally, developed on Elena’s home planet of Fyloria—and then more complex sequences.
When I played The Sea Winds, my favorite composition by a Fortusian composer, all my world was in tune once more. The piece was perfect in every way: mathematically precise from beginning to end, as if a complex equation with a simple solution had been transformed into music.
Fortusian lat’sars made the most perfect music in the galaxy. No other instrument came close.
A flash of movement caught my eye. I turned my head, the song cutting off with a squeak of the bow.
For a fraction of a second, I caught sight of a meter-long tendril of shimmering red next to the trunk of a tree. And then it vanished around the side of the tree, moving as quickly as it had appeared.
Blinking, I lowered my lat’sar and bow into my lap.
My hearts thundered in my ears, and my thoughts slowed to a crawl. I did not…just see…a tendril of kora…hide from me.
I set my instrument gently in its case, leapt to my feet, and dashed to the tree. My sharp sense of smell caught the lingering scent of ozone. All the hairs and feathers on my body prickled, but no sign of anything remained.
In a kind of daze, I turned and froze.
A red tendril of plasma, as thin as a few hairs—either the same one I had spotted by this tree, or an identical one—danced over the strings of my lat’sar. A single, pure note filled the air.
The tendril shimmered, sparked, then darted into the shadows of the forest, vanishing from my sight as the note faded.
What in the names of all the gods above and below had just happened?
When I picked up my lat’sar, I found a scorch mark on the wood near one of the sound holes—the only mark on the otherwise pristine instrument. My gut contracted, though I could not be certain whether the damage or the tendril’s appearance had caused it, or both.
I raised my face toward the sky, as if answers might be found there, but the thick foliage obscured my view.
When I looked back at my lat’sar, I almost expected the mark to have disappeared.
The scorch was tangible evidence that something had touched this instrument—not only touched it, but played it.
I waited several minutes, but saw no sign of the tendril again.
For the first time in many, many years, I found myself utterly at a loss. My stomach churned, as if the very planet on which I stood had betrayed me. As if my own reason had betrayed me.
Elena had claimed to have seen one or more of these tendrils five hundred kilometers from here. This one was half a kilometer from our facility.
It was possible Elena and I were not alone at Nova Cal.
Despite what I had seen, I clung to my scientific knowledge. There must be an explanation for this. A rational, scientific, quantifiable explanation. One that did not prove Elena right and me wrong. What it might be, though, I had no idea.
Infinitely more unsettled than I had been when I arrived in the clearing, I packed up my lat’sar and headed back to the station as quickly as I could run.