Twenty-nine
Given more time than he wanted to think about Myla's
incredible tale of a flight across the universe, Jeremy dreaded her
return. He dreaded a confrontation with the creature she called Jeep. He
had tried to believe her story a flight of fantasy. He could see all too
clearly that it was not. The black sky above the crimson sun was bereft
of stars. They had to be a very long way from home.
The skiff reappeared as a flash of light in the black
sky. It streaked down like a meteor, decelerated and touched down gently
close to the dome's airlock. Jeremy retreated to the far side of his
refuge when Myla
approached the airlock with a little green, insect-like alien bounding and
leaping at her side. Once inside the dome, Myla called out to him.
"Jeremy, come out and meet Jeep! Why are you acting this way?"
"You don't know?" he said disbelieving. How could
she not suspect?
"I know everything I need to know to keep the Hive
away from me." She flashed an uneasy smile. "Am I missing something more
important than survival?"
"You don't understand how impossible all of this is!"
Jeremy cried in alarm.
"Then help me to understand," she said, her tone of
voice, and that, too, was a mystery. The child he had known was gone. In
her place stood a far more mature and keenly knowledgeable entity.
Jeremy didn't think it wise to challenge her, except
that his very behavior was giving him away. He had no way to hide his
fear. "Everything you said that has happened to you." He shook his head
frantically. "None of it is possible. It couldn't have happened."
"But it did."
Jeremy pointed to Jeep. "It's got to be that thing.
I don't know what else could be responsible."
Myla glanced back at Jeep with a frown. "What
happened that you think is so impossible?"
"Myla, you're just a kid!"
She grinned. "So?"
"So? So, you don't know anything! You couldn't have
done the things you said you did!" You couldn't have survived outside the
transport!"
She considered his accusation with a pout, clutching
her bandaged arm. "What else couldn't I have done?"
"Myla, you can't interface with Dikki without
augmentation, a buffer and an interface!"
Myla looked uncomfortable, but shrugged defiantly.
"It's not so hard."
"A twelve-year-old girl can't hold the Hive at bay!
Or the Alliance!"
"Dikki helped me."
"Dikki is hardly more than a toy! Dikki's not some
kind of superhuman mentality! That's what it would take!" Jeremy stabbed
a finger at Jeep. "That thing! It has you hypnotized into
believing you were the cause of all those things happening. It helped
you!"
Myla moved back and sat on a rock. "If she can fool
me, she can fool you, too, Jeremy Kael. Why are you so special that it's
so obvious to you and not to me that I've been fooled?"
Jeremy gave it a moment's thought and discovered
himself backed into a corner by his own logic.
"Why are you so afraid of her?" Myla said softly,
hurt rather than angered by his outburst.
That hardly mattered. He shook his head
frantically. "Myla, I've got to let somebody know what's happening here."
Myla followed his gaze and glanced back at the skiff
gleaming on the landscape of carbonaceous rock. "You can use it, if you
want. If you want to talk to General Hague, go on up to the courier and
see if the Hive will let you. Maybe it'll help if you talk to Dikki about
everything that happened to us. But I think you're wrong about Jeep. Not
entirely, because odd things have happened, but mostly."
Jeremy didn't know how to explain it to her. "Myla,
you're just a kid."
Myla saw it in his eyes then, his fear and
revulsion. "Jeremy, what are you thinking?"
Jeremy sidestepped the girl. He didn't want to
discuss it with her. If she didn't know, it had been a mistake to bring
it to light. "Please. Let me try to contact General Hague. Anybody.
I've got to know what's happening."
"Because you don't believe me. You don't trust me.
Well, go on and do whatever you want. Whatever it takes. I'm not going
anywhere."
Jeremy bolted for the airlock. He cycled through the
airlock, but reeled back when the outer door opened and the drop in air
pressure sucked the breath from his lungs. Cold so intense that it sent
his skin aflame blinded him in an instant.
He dropped him to his knees in shock. He did not
feel himself fall face down to the black rock of the inhospitable world on
the edge of nowhere, but he understood now what Myla was to have brushed
off the cold and the near vacuum as inconsequential. The wall of darkness
swallowing him whole was a more than welcomed refuge from that horror.
