Point of no Return

Harsh Reality

Seven

Harsh Reality

It was thirty minutes of journey on Tile’s wrist watch. All had been quiet during the journey. And no one bothered to even cast a second look at the strange suit-wearing creature that was now in their midst, except the one Tile had followed on the line. Now that they sat on the same seat in the metal cabin, she kept looking up at him. Meanwhile, all through the journey, Tile kept thinking of a possible way to leave this God-forsaken place called Kuv. But then he thought, “would they even let him leave?” As much as these creatures did not look like hostiles, something about them was not to be trusted. They were too unassuming and somewhat careless. Tile decided to initiate a conversation with this friendly one next to him, perhaps with the hopes of making friends for such need in the future.

“You have a name?” he asked.

“Uzira,” she replied blankly but happy for the attention she had just gotten. It seemed she had been craving for it all along.

“Lovely name,” Tile said.

“Yes it is. It means blue moon. Blue moons are lovely and that makes my father love me more,” she said with a sharp blink in the large eye.

“Wow. That sounds lovely indeed. Is your father here?”

To answer his question, she just turned and pointed to the older one who had been following Tile on the line with a grunt. He was now perched solemnly and alone on the seat behind Tile and Uzira.

“You have blue moons here?”

“Yes, once every eaon”

“What is eaon?”

Her explanation made Tile to come to an understanding that an eaon here was an equivalent of a year on earth. Then she added: “the next moon will be blue. It always marks the festival of the pure.”

“We have blue moons where I come from too, but ours takes longer to occur again,” he said. “We just had one in this eaon, we call that year. The last one was seventy-four eaons ago.”

She did not answer, just gawped at him foolishly. Then Tile seized the moment.

“What do you think they are going to do to me?” he whispered into her friendly ear.

“They will want to know your mission here, why you came. Our queen-goddess, Isu, will also be consulted to know why she sent you to us. But if she desires you, then you will be sacrificed to her.” She said the last sentence with an air of assurance as if Tile was supposed to be glad for such honour of been a sacrificial lamb.

He did not need to argue. Neither did he need to ask more questions. More questions meant more devastating realities as it was turning out. Why was someone supposed to feel glad to been sacrificed to some unknown goddess? He sat as if he had just swallowed a fish-bone that got stuck in his throat. It was Uzira who spoke now.

“You are afraid,” she stated with knowing clarity.  Then she added: “I know you think you are here by accident, but I know Isu sent you here to help us against the Ugubulugu.”

“What are those?” Tile asked, frightened but curious. He had never fought in his life, and that sounded like it may come down to doing some fighting.

“They are our enemies, they like killing us, and we keep running and hiding from them.”

Although Tile was not martial-inclined, he knew that his ordinary strength, even without skill could take on three or four of these sluggish-looking things. And whoever these Ugubulugu were, he would prefer this second option than been sacrificed to some goddess. The part of engaging the Ugubulugu in a fight sounded heroic… and perhaps he may get out of it alive.

As they sailed above a shiny looking dwelling below, a small city perhaps, the cabin ceased flight and descended with the same speed and precision as it had taken off. Tile felt as if all the belongings in his bowels would come vomiting through his mouth.  As it landed, the door flew open and Boju led the way once more. And in the same orderly manner, they strode out, Tile still following Uzira close behind.

As soon as he stepped outside, Tile quickly took in his new environment. There was a sophistication here that he would never have imagined. It looked like a new settlement they just started. As a matter of fact, the building was still ongoing. They were moulding houses out of the crusted metal they used for the flying cabin and the gadgets Boju operated. The substance looked like mercury and as clear. It was mixed as mortar that looked heavy and thick like mud-metal. Then they used crushed stones to build magnificent-looking buildings with it. The paste seemed to dry up in just a matter of minutes and form crust. This made it easy for them to build tall structures in just a few hours. They thereafter used the paste as plaster. When the plaster was done, it looked like giant metal houses. Most of the buildings looked twelve-storey tall. There were magnificent cranes built with the same metal-crust material and was used to convey building materials almost automatically to the topmost areas. This was amazing.

The construction was been done in a deep valley, and the surrounding mountains were as tall as the Kilimanjaro and full of giant stones from which they got sufficient material to build. Most of the foundations were raised from the foot of the mountains and a good part of its growing height attached to the mountain walls. The buildings in the southern part were already completed and in use. Only the northern part was still under construction.

“It will take the Ugubulugu a little longer to find us now,” Uzira said behind him. “Here is more secure, bigger, beautiful and stronger.”

“It’s not long you came here?” Tile asked.

“We started this Cretѐ three satri now.”   

Tile soon understood that Cretѐ was a settlement, a city even, like a state or province, but smaller; governed by a Kanka, an equivalent of a Governor. All the Kankas were answerable to the Magu, a president or emperor of sorts. satri was plural of satr, which meant a week.

Tile had expected that his arrival would be greeted with a beehive of amazement. The ones at home coming out in numbers to gather around to see the strange creature, like Boju and his team had surrounded him earlier in the sands. But this did not happen. Most of the laborers stopped work and gawped several seconds at him and resumed their work as if it was nothing spectacular. Of course they seemed surprised to see his kind, but this was no big deal, as far as they were concerned, or so it seemed. Tile even had to think that perhaps they had seen worse.

A large dog now approached them. It was a size of a fattened calf, but it was a dog. It was bluish green and with a large single eye on its forehead. It let out a large, loud, wild bark and made to charge at Tile. Tile was already about to scramble back into the flying metal casement when Uzira let out a long, loud, shrill whistle and the dog which was called Vaketa, began to wag its exaggerated, bushy tail and dance around Uzira.

It was her pet. Surprisingly, she jumped unto its back like it was some horse. Vaketa came close and started sniffing Tile. Boju who had been giving assignments to the rest of the team now approached them.

Then he said in his baritone: “Uzira, bring the eartiling.” At the mention of ‘eartiling,’ the Mugulubu who were nearby and had heard Boju, quickly corked their ears and stood up from whatever they were doing and glided in their usual lazy gait to come take a closer look. “Yea right, you are just realizing,” Tile thought.

Uzira led the way on dogback. Tile followed. As they went past Boju, he too followed Tile from behind. Uzira’s father, who was called Taku, also followed them. They strode to the south where the buildings were now settled in. As they got in this section, large single eyes stared through the open windows with amazement. A tall blue and yellow flamingo walked majestically past them to the opposite direction. It was as tall as a giraffe.

After a while of trekking, they got to a magnificent entrance and Uzira alighted from her dog. The facade had a telling grandeur and the porches were majestic. The large crusted aluminum-like pillars glowed beautifully in the amber sunlight. As they stepped into the building, it was beauty all over. The metal seats and desks were occupied by several Mugulubu. They were busy looking into table-top screens. Most of the screens were built into the desks. As far as Tile could tell, only a few seemed detachable. Other screens similar to the one’s in the cabin in which they had traveled were mounted to the walls, only that these ones were bigger. In their usual sluggish manner, the occupants of the desks, about five of them, raised their heads from whatever it was they were working and stared blankly at Tile. They stared a little longer than the ones who had been outside, but not longer than necessary, then resumed their work. Were those computers? Tile thought he’d ask Uzira when he got a chance again, but for now they had to go where the commander was taking them.

They walked past the lobby, or whatever this palour was, and went to the wall at the far end. As they got to the wall, Boju pressed an unseen button to the wall and two doors miraculously slid open in a two-way direction. Rainbow lights automatically came on within. Inside sat another metal cabin balanced delicately on large black conveyor belts of sorts. Boju stepped in and operated the gadget on his wrist and this cabin too slid open. They all got inside and sat on the metal seats except Uzira. It was now her turn to press a button. A shiny keypad fell open and she typed into it with amazing dexterity and precision and then went to join Tile on the seat. The metal box began to glide off gradually until it picked up speed and sped deeper into the belly of the building. It took about ten minutes at top speed before the box automatically glided to a halt. They climbed down and stepped into a large hall that was as large as a football pitch. There were no occupants here, large as it was. Only screens on the walls and glowing rainbow lights.

They strode all the way to the wall at the far end and Boju repeated the same operation on the wall. This time, the interior cabin did not move forward, it went straight upwards for a better of three minutes before it stopped. They now stepped into a well furnished hall, half the size of the one downstairs. There were several females that looked like ushers or palace maidens, doing one task or the other. All the males held long lances similar to the one Taku had. Down to the wall was a magnificent metal throne, on which another one-eyed Mugulubu sat, dressed in heavy fur and distinguished, seemingly polished leather. A crusted metal crown rested on his green-moth head. He was bare-foot however, and seemed to have lost the other leg from the knee, which was replaced with a crusted metal leg, built permanently into the stump. Boju approached him and spoke.

“Ubata Kanka. Str ror rha hum ga rho.”

Heavy Jesus!! Tile exclaimed in his mind. So these guys have another secret language? Then it was Uzira speaking now.

“Ubata Kanka. Rho hum rho hum brutu bhu.”

The King majestically turned to Taku, but Taku only nodded briefly. Boju continued to chatter in his new riotous language. He said something that elicited the same reaction he had gotten from the labourers who had heard Boju call him eartiling. Tile kept hearing earti in Boju's long gibberish narrative too. Every other of the creatures in the court were now staring at Tile blank-eyed. Then Boju went to his operation on the wrist. To Tile’s utter shock, a screen on the wall nearby that had been showing all those strange one-eyed creatures automatically changed display. What Tile was seeing now was his greatest surprise.

He saw himself falling from the sky, naked. His arrival. Soon, Boju’s metal cabin eased onto the edge of the sandy area where they had taken off earlier. The eight that had come alighted and strode to where he was lying naked. However, Tile noticed that the difference with this television was that there was no sound on any of them that Tile had seen so far; just the video and pictures. Boju had said something to Uzira who picked up his clothes. He saw everything that had transpired earlier right before his eyes like a movie.

As they were unto this exercise, the door through which they had come fell open and two other Mugulubu glided into the hall. The other was male and the other female. They wore no leather or fur, but came on stark naked and without shame. Now, Tile saw that the males too carried a tail, an even longer one. What amazed him however was that both of their organs looked exactly like human. The female too had a beautiful triangle carved in-between and down through her loins. The male had a phallus and a scrotum exactly like human. No wonder they had stared at him in surprise when he was naked. The only difference, their pubic hairs were the same smooth-green spirogyra. They arrived and saluted the king in their language of gibberish. Then the Kanka asked in the tongue which Tile could now understand.

“Ipotu, ask the queen-goddess if this is a sacrifice for her,” he said with a nod in Tile’s direction. Tile noticed that he was now trembling. He had known all along that these guys were not to be trusted. He had not yet woken from the shock of how sophisticated these creatures were and how their security system was something even the CIA needed to come for tips, and now he was been spoken of as sacrifice. Uzira noticed his fear, and genuinely felt sorry for him. She too secretly wished that Tile should not be for dead.

Ipotu held hands with his female counterpart facing each other and they began to mutter under their breath. The pupil in their single eye rolled and hid in the lid. Only the yellowish-blue iris remained. They stayed in this position in a better of twenty minutes and at a point seemed like they were lifeless statues.

When they came back to life, Ipotu turned and looked at Tile carefully then turned to their king.

“Isu has answered our prayers. This one will need some cleansing,” was all he said and headed out the same way he had come. The female too followed. When Tile looked at this female creature from behind, he came to agree that these were very beautiful in their kind if not for the tail and one eye that made them look animal. But his mind returned back to the harsh reality that was now dawning on him. So finally, he was some sacrifice for some alien goddess. He resigned himself to fate.

***********************************

Ken stood planted at the doorway, unable to move. He was now staring into the blank dead eyes of Baba Ortwar. A white foam covered his mouth and there was a painful wince on his face as he lay on an old spring bed. The bed looked even older than the house itself and with dirty sheets similar to the curtain on the doorway.  Kennedy tip-toed backwards as if he were on reverse gear until he got to the main entrance. He turned and exited the rickety building. No words could explain the terror that now gripped him. His heart drummed like a bass band against his now stressed chest.  As long as he was concerned, he was done for. He looked quickly about to make sure no one saw him and then sprinted like a demon to his car. He started the engine and sped off on James Bond speed in the direction he had come.