Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance (6 page)

Naeesha walked fast through the woods. She still had no idea what she was doing. The more and more she stayed with Marko, the less and less she wanted to be with him. She dreaded the quiet moments when he would try and talk to her, and prefered to keep walking forward as fast as she could, as though she could get away from him.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to him, it was just that she didn’t know what to say. There was so much she
wanted
to say, but when she opened her mouth to try and talk, only anger came out. Anger for his leaving. For his betrayal. For blaming it on her. She was angry that he’d been with her for so long, then just disappeared overnight.

That’s what she needed to tell him, but whenever she thought about it, it just made her too mad to speak.

The punch wasn’t about picking her up - she was grateful that he spared her so much walking. It was about letting out some of her rage in the only way that she knew how.

She could see the Halian camp fading into distance through the thick tree cover. It was the first time she’d seen one up close, and it was a wildly different experience than seeing one from the air.

Up in the clouds, looking down, the camps were just a tangled mess of wood and canvas sitting on a field of mud. But that obviously wasn’t the complete picture.

From up there, you couldn’t smell the spices of their cooking, or see the many colors of their world. You couldn’t hear the lilting music that carried out from a dozen different places, and you couldn’t feel… she wasn’t sure what the feeling was, but it was undeniable.

“It takes some getting used to,” Marko said.

“What?”

“What you’re feeling. It’s the Halians.”

“What are they doing?”

The world was suddenly very chaotic. There were butterflies in her stomach and a knot in her throat and she felt like crying and laughing all at the same time.

“They aren’t really doing anything. The Halians project their emotions outward, it’s just how they are. Everyone around them can feel it.”

“How does anyone keep from going crazy?”

“Like I said, you get used to it. You learn how to separate the group’s’ feelings from your own and it gets easier.”

Of everything that Naeesha was feeling, it was fear more than anything. She didn’t like it. She’d never really felt fear like this before.

“What are they all so afraid of?”

“The Wild. The Alderoccans. Their futures.”

“You keep talking about the Wild. What is it?”

“Sit down,” Marko said. “I don’t want to talk about it around the Halians. They’re… sensitive.”

He leaned against a tree, and Naeesha sat on a fallen tree across from him.

“When the Halians are exposed to strong feelings like terror or rage or horror, the feelings can overwhelm them. They create a feedback cycle, and grow stronger and stronger until they take over completely.
That
is the Wild.”

“I don’t understand.”

Marko sighed and took a deep breath.

“Okay. Let’s say something happens and it makes you angry.”

“Alright.”

“Well I feel your anger, and it makes
me
angry. And then you feel my anger and it adds to your own, and you become even angrier.”

“I think I see where this is going.”

“The Halians are strong, but these people have been through so much that some of them are starting to break. Once one of them loses control, it can spiral out of control in just seconds. They would be okay, but every day there’s more and more pressure on them. I don’t know how long they can hold together.”

“How do you stop the Wild once it comes out?”

“You can’t. Not really. All you can do is to let it burn itself out, to starve it. The fear and the hate and the rage that it causes only make it stronger. If you try to fight it, you’ll only create an unstoppable monster.”

“The thing in the Dynasty compound.”

“Exactly. It was a Halian that was alone and afraid and trying to get out of its prison. When someone finally came, they tried to hurt it.”

“Where did it go?”

“Nobody knows. It probably wandered around in the woods until the Wild left it.”

Naeesha got up from the log and looked towards the camp.

“You’re sure it’s safe?” she asked. “They won’t want to hurt me for everything I’ve done?”

“I wouldn’t go telling them that you were in the Alderoccan military, and I can’t promise that nobody will
want
to hurt you, but nobody
will.
They truly are a peaceful people. You’ll see.”

***

The doubt in Naeesha’s mind did not last long. As soon as she and Marko emerged from the woods, there was a swarm of Halians all around them. The feelings that she felt from them were overwhelming at first. Happiness and relief like she’d never felt it before. Curiousity, too.

Marko addressed them in their own language. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she could feel the Halians’ emotional response go from concern to relief to wonder to pleasure to grateful friendliness.

“I told them that I walked very far over difficult ground, that I found you in the mists, and that you told me where to find a camp for our people. They are eager to meet you. This is the first time that many of them have seen a human.”

“I’m happy to meet them too,” she said cautiously.

She’d seen many Halians, but never this close. They always made her uncomfortable. Their unblinking third eye in the middle of their foreheads, the supernatural calm that always seemed to float around them, even in the middle of firefights. Their deep red skin stretched over long, lithe bodies.

They all seemed warm and friendly, but Naeesha couldn’t separate what she felt now from what she’d felt after so much fighting. She was grateful that the Halians couldn’t feel what
she
was feeling. If they could, they probably wouldn’t be quite so trusting of her.

“Follow me,” Marko said. “I need to give my report.”

The crowd before them parted, and Naeesha could see the Halian tent-city with new detail. All of the buildings - some of them quite large - were made out of the same heavy canvas. The tents were so close together that it was impossible to walk between most of them, and they formed tight, curving canyons of cream colored cloth through which she and Marko walked.

A cloud of curiosity followed wherever they went, a barrage of secondary emotions close behind.

She was more than curious herself. She didn’t know much, if anything, about Halians outside of the battlefield. Seeing little glimpses into their world only heightened the sense of mystery that surrounded them. She gathered that they ate and drank and needed shelter, just like a human or a Watcher would. They had beds - although they looked more like nests than what she was used to sleeping in.

The biggest tents, she realized, were the Halian’s sleeping quarters. They were big open spaces, a few fire pits in the middle, the outside of the tent ringed with sleeping nests and packs and clothes. Closer to the middle was sitting areas, small tables, Halians crowded around and talking to each other.

One tent must have been their dining hall. It was filled with long tables, and the most incredible smells drifted out from it. When she walked by, it was empty except for a few people moving around in the depths of the building.

The city was, as far as she could tell, completely primitive. There were long lines of people walking through the street with buckets of water and other goods on their heads. She didn’t see any electricity or high technology. There wasn’t even anything with a motor, as far as she could tell.

Marko lead her into a bigger, more open part of the city. A market, she guessed. The tents here were all colorful. People in plain tunics with bright belts around their waists stood out in front of the tents shouting into the crowd. She had no idea what they were saying, but she could see people going up to the tents and leaving with something tucked under their arm. What was strange was that as far as she could tell, no money traded hands.

“What is this?” she asked Marko.

“The town bazaar. Everybody brings whatever they’ve made or grown or foraged and give it to one of the organizers. The organizers make sense of what the town has, and help people find what they need.”

“How do they decide who gets paid for what?”

“Paid? The Halians don’t have physical currency. The closest thing they have is reputation.”

“Aren’t there people who take more than they give?”

“Sure,” Marko said,” but the Halians believe that nobody has to earn the right to eat. Come, we’re almost there.”

They left the bazaar and went down another winding street. This one was wider. The tents were further apart, and all of them were empty except for a large round table. She noticed that people were beginning to file into the street behind her, and they turned into some of the tents as they walked past.

Marko lead her to a small tent at a dead end in the street and beckoned her inside. A few Halians walked inside and they all sat down around a big wooden table.

“This is the small circle. Anybody who has news to share comes here and tells the others. Then -- we’re ready to get started, one minute.”

A huge Halian with brilliant white tattoos over all of his arms and chest rose and began to speak. There was an undeniable force to his voice. It boomed in the small tent, filling the space. Naeesha could feel awe from the others around her.

The big man sat down after a moment, and another Halian stood, spoke, and sat down. The response to their message was largely happy.

Then Marko spoke, and everyone was joyful.

Everybody in the circle spoke their turn, and when the last person had shared, the all stood up and filed out of the tent. Marko hung back with her and they walked out together.

“Now we go to the big circles and share all of the news that we have learned.”

She followed him into another tent that was already filled with all sorts of Halians, big and small. Marko didn’t wait for a moment before talking. Judging by the rapid shifts in the feelings around her, he must have been going through all of the news in one fast, unbroken speech.

A second after he finished, the room erupted with speech and an indecipherable noise of emotion.

“What are they doing?” Naeesha asked.

“Discussing. Now comes the mixing. The entire community will discuss the news for five minutes. Then, everybody moves to a new tent with new people, and the discuss the news. After an hour, everybody has talked to everybody about everything.”

“Then what?”

“Then we eat.”

The next hour went by in a blur. Naeesha couldn’t follow any of it, not even the feelings. There were too many, too fast. Marko tried to keep her updated, but it was impossible with so much going on. She didn’t even realize that they had finished until she walked out of her tent and everybody was funneling out of the street.

She and Marko followed the crowd through the bazaar. Many Halians stopped and picked up huge baskets and carried them through the streets. They were all headed to the same place. The hall that she’d seen earlier.

It hadn’t seemed
that
big before, but even after every Halian in the city was inside, there were still plenty of seats to chose from when she and Marko walked inside near the back of the crowd.

“Here,” Marko said. “I want you to meet my friend.”

He sat down in the middle of a nearly empty table next to a Halian child who was so excited to see Marko that Naeesha could feel it over the noise of thousands of other emotions. They talked for a minute, and the child turned to Naeesha with a smile.

“Hello,” they said with only a trace of an accent.

“You speak Alderoccan?” she asked.

“Marko taught me. My name is Kiran.”

There was a contagious amount of excitement in every part of the child. Their voice, their feelings, the way that they moved. It was a
lot
just to take in.

“I’m Naeesha. It’s nice to meet you.”

Without warning, the child jumped up from their seat and ran off. Naeesha leaned across the table and asked Marko a question that she’d always wondered about.

“The Halians,” she said. “Do they have sex?”

“Frequently and unabashedly,” Marko said.

“No,” Naeesha said, trying not to imagine the entire dining hall erupting into a spontaneous orgy. “I mean do they have like, boys and girls?”

Marko laughed.

“Anatomically? Yes. But it doesn’t map onto a cultural or social concept for them.”

“Er, what do you call them?”

“‘Them, they’, that sort of thing. Or just by their names.”

“Weiiiird.”

“Just different. You get used to it.”

Kiran returned out of the crowd.

“Here,” they said. “I brought this for you.”

It was a small wooden figurine, beautifully carved. It was a little bigger than her fist, and depicted a sprawling tree with small creatures all around it.