Planet Albeata Ch 1-2 The Changers

Dr'en trudged into the suffocating warmth of The Fist's ship.  He had already deposited the young noblemen in their respective families' ships.  They were still flushed from the excitement of killing their first Gorn, but he knew from the slaves on guard duty that Tr'ai had not returned to the camp.  His bones and muscles ached, and he hadn't even taken the time to clean the gore off his favorite hunting blade.  The trembling of his bad leg increased with each depressing step toward an audience with The Fist.

Cr'ai will blame me.  He'll say I'm the one who lost his brother and my fate will rival that of Br'ar's. 

Two years before, the youngest son of the Ai family, Ek'ai, had been injured by a thrashing Gorn.  The unrelenting stream of blood from Ek'ai's open wound, had drained him of life in less than a day.  Two years ago there had been no Marconan ships, with their beautiful crisp, clean medical rooms, to save the boy.

Br'ar had been the lead hunter on that trip and his punitive death had been a spectacular event that was still merrily discussed in the eating halls of the palace.

Dr'en limped painfully down the narrow passage to The Fist's chamber. Muted sounds of a raucous drinking song grew louder punctuated by bursts of laughter.  He hesitated outside the door.  He was too old to run, and maybe – just maybe – Tr'ai could be found before he froze to death.

Dr'en entered the gloom of the monarch's large chamber and the slave at the door rapped his staff on the floor, announcing:

"Magnificent Fist!  Entering your court - Chief Weapons Master, Dr'en!"

The Magnificent Fist (Cr'ai to his family - which didn't include Dr'en), was lying on a velvet throw, surrounded by several courtiers and concubines.  The Fist was drinking, the courtiers were singing, the concubines were serving in every capacity, and all was right with the world.

Best to get right to it. Dr'en decided.  His voice rasped a little as he began.

"Your Highness, Tr'ai is missing.  After we finished with the Gorn and the ship came, we sent slaves up the trail to search, but," he faltered, "they couldn't find him."

The Fist opened one bloodshot eye and focused it on Dr'en.  His response was preceded by a long wet burp.  "Take more slaves.  Find him," he slurred drunkenly.

"It's too cold now – but we could find him using that locator thing that's on your ship."

The Fist made a dismissive motion, "So?  Go and do it."

"You are on the controls, your Magnificence."

After some huffing and puffing, The Fist rolled off his perch and wavered on the floor.  He removed his velvet throw to reveal the shining buttons and screens of the ship's main control panels.

Dr'en summoned the slaves who had been specially trained by the Marconans to fly and maintain the ship.  When the slaves appeared, Dr'en was surprised to see they wore odd new Marconan-style clothes.  As the slaves busied themselves at the controls, Dr'en speculated that sly Cr'ai had put the slaves in strange Marconan clothes in order to amuse himself by ordering around Marconan look-alikes.

The Fist was intensely jealous of the Marconans. He envied the incredible advanced technologies of their world.  He had recently begun to trade Albeatan metal ores for the fantastic ships and amazing devices which came from the distant planet called Marcona. 

As the slaves activated the ship's receivers, he prayed that Tr'ai's communicator could be located, more for his own life than for Tr'ai's he admitted shamefully to himself.

* * *

Idiots! O'ba thought as he heard the last arrivals to the Village Warm House bicker over their stolen equipment bag.  O'ba knew that the noble families had come up to the canyons for their annual Gorn hunt.  He recognized the white bag held by the men and understood its significance.  The innocuous white bag could put all of them in danger – especially him.

When he was a young slave in Komdor city, he sometimes hid in a dark corner of the kitchen where he worked, secreted between giant sacks of potatoes and onions. 

His work in the palace kitchen was exhausting.  The kitchen was a steaming, stuffy, loud and abusive place where thick, pungent, aromas stifled his breath.  The kitchen's fiery braziers spit at him and only one beating during a wretched day of work was considered lenient. 

However, his kitchen service gave him respite from the slave quarters.  He could still smell the fetid stink of sour sweat, mildewed bedding, and the nauseous reek of the half rotten food the slaves were given to eat.  The most loathsome odor came from injured or sick slaves whose flesh was slowly corrupted by horrid, untreated diseases. 

When he was too tired to journey back to the disgusting slaves' quarters for his day-rest, or too wary of the fearsome cold to endure the journey for his night-rest, he would scurry into his safe, warm, hidey-hole between the vegetable sacks.  As he nibbled on bits of food stolen from the garbage, he listened to the gossip of the household slaves.  Every interesting conversation which transpired in the palace was repeated in glorious detail to entertain the weary, envious kitchen staff.

So O'ba knew exactly what the bag was, and cursed the foolish men.  Now, he would have to get involved.

O'ba greeted the men in his usual easy style, and gestured questioningly to the bag.  The men stared suspiciously at O'ba, but offered a statement.

"We took it from some young prince, lying dead in the Gorn paths."

"Really?" O'ba asked putting just the right amount of admiration into the question.

Flattered, the leader of the seven launched into the story of the bag.  The way he recounted the events, it was like an epic journey to slay Vroks.

"I was the one who heard the sounds from the bag and I was the one who pounded it to dust." 

If he puffs himself up any more he may explode, O'ba thought derisively.

O'ba pretended to think about the story, then asked, "When the sun rises, and The Fist finds the body of a noble – without his bag – what will he think happened to the bag?" 

They hemmed, hawed and stuttered, and finally ventured that he would think an animal carried it off. 

An animal!  They're so stupid it's almost funny.  But they're dangerously stupid.

O'ba ran out of patience.  As a runaway slave, he had the most to lose.  He challenged them.

"No animal would carry away a bag of metal things.  The Fist will think that tribesmen killed the noble and took his bag." 

They whined, "But he was already dead." 

"Even if he was, The Fist won't know that.  He will suspect the tribesmen and he will take revenge upon the closest village – our village." 

* * *

The temperature was relentlessly descending and Tr'ai found that with every falling degree his hopes of rescue dwindled.  It had been hours; why hadn't his brothers and Dr'en come to get him?

He crawled across the icy carpet of snow to the side of the canyon.  The miscenoe vines hung in thick profusion from the top of the steep rock wall.  He wondered if he could be spotted by a searching ship if he could somehow climb the vines to the top of the wall.  He shook his head dispiritedly as he realized that it was too dark to even see the top. 

Some of the vines were weaker than others and broke when he tugged on them.  He knew that even if he could ignore the pain in his ankle, and find strong vines to climb, the cold would still sap his strength long before he could reach the top.  He was in perfect condition, tall and strong, but the Albeatan night was indifferent to mere mortal perfection.  It would dispassionately freeze any evolutionary paragon into an ice cube, no matter how perfect it was.

Tr'ai yanked down as many vines as he could.  He snaked some vines around his body and then folded others against the ground and the rock wall.  The vines should help insulate him against the bitter cold, he hoped as his teeth chattered.

He pulled up his collar as high over his ears as he could, tucked his numb hands into his arm pits, and burrowed into the nest.  Then he did something that he hadn't done for many years. He prayed.

* * *

At the noblemen's camp, Tr'ai's brothers Cr'ai and Yah'ai, raged about what to do.  Yah'ai demanded to take one of the ships and go looking for Tr'ai.  Cr'ai was all for ordering out all the slaves and the noblemen to search on foot. 

Dr'en listened to the two of them argue and thought that The Fist would spare no expense to find his brother, especially if that expense was merely in the lives of others.

Dr'en had a vested interest in finding Tr'ai as soon as possible – his own life.  Now The Fist was concentrating on finding his brother.  If his body was found, The Fist's attention would soon turn to Dr'en.  Blame blunts the edge of grief.

After Dr'en learned from the ship's principal slave that Tr'ai's communicator was not sending any signal, he did the unthinkable.  He glanced surreptitiously around, ascertained he was unnoticed, and asked the slave how they could find Tr'ai.

"All the ships are equipped with radiant heat sensors.  They could locate a heat signature the size of a body – if it was still living," the slave answered nervously.

Armed with this knowledge, Dr'en approached the other nobles to throw his backing behind Yah'ai's plan to search for Tr'ai by ship.  He silently prayed that the scanner the slave had spoken of would indeed find a living body.

* * *

After almost 8 hours, Tr'ai began to succumb to the desire to sleep even though his body shivered uncontrollably.  He knew that if he fell asleep, he would soon be falling into death's soft arms.  He racked his brain to think of any way to signal the camp, but he had no communicator, no flares, and didn't even have a flint to start a fire.  Before long he snuggled further into his nest of vines and faded off to sleep.

* * *

Tr'ai was barely aware of being dragged across the snow to a hidden opening in the rock wall of the canyon.  Some part of his consciousness was elated that the searchers from the camp must have managed to find him.  He moaned in pain as those moving him deeper into the cave jolted his broken ankle.

* * *

Tr'ai woke hours later to find that he was alive, out of the snow, but definitely not rescued by his brothers.  He was prodded by hands he could not see and dragged further into a cave system.  He could feel cold rock beneath him and smelled old wet moldy things.  He spoke to them, but they would not reply.  He decided he must be dreaming.

As the creatures pulled him further into the caves, he felt warmer.  They stopped just inside the entrance to a water filled cavern illuminated by phosphorescent plankton.  He saw that the creatures which had brought him there were man shaped, but not men.  Their eyes were too big, and their noses and mouths were barely slits.  Strangest of all is how they changed color.  They seemed to take the color of what ever they stood beside.  They gave him a fur to lie down upon, and left as he slid back to unconsciousness, convinced that this was the last dream he would ever have.