In a Suspect Universe

Part I: Homeworld-1

Part I: Homeworld

Chapter 1: Storm Track

He fell from the sky in a burst of light. But he was no falling angel or god.

He was a man.

He crashed onto the hood of Riley’s jeep, his face pressed against her windshield and his stark blue eyes staring into hers.

Riley hit the brakes. The vehicle plowed across the sand and the man tumbled away from view.

Shock kept her still. She had just missed death. Half a second more and he would have fallen through the jeep’s open frame and thrust her head against the steering wheel, probably breaking her neck.

She leapt from her seat into the Great South Desert’s first big storm of the season. Wind raked the sky with grit. The smell of glass and crushed stone struck her nostrils as dust blew against her.

The man lay on his side, sand pooling on his jacket and slacks. Blood stained his left shoulder. He stared at her as if recognizing her.

Then he flinched in pain and his head turned away. She reached under his arms and tried to lift him, yelling, “Get up! There’s a storm coming!”

He winced, held his shoulder. But he stood unsteadily and followed her. He needed her support but he was able to stumble his way to her vehicle.

She pushed him into the passenger seat where he fell onto the cushions. She lifted his legs with his worn boots and set them inside. Luckily the door had been removed, leaving room for her to maneuver. She tied the safety harness around him. He gave her an enigmatic look of sorrow, longing, and resignation.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said, but the wind screamed over her words. She knew what was coming. She hurried to the driver’s side, leapt behind the wheel and gunned the engine. The intake filters were supposedly good enough for this drastic weather. A Desert Ranging Vehicle was a capable tool for exploration and back-country travel, but she often abused it.

The man looked indifferent to the turmoil, caught in his own private grief.

She bullied the vehicle across the dunes while the sand rose in tornado-like columns. The towers strutted across the desert—vicious, destructive. When the pillars enveloped her, she had no visibility and she couldn’t rely on the vessel’s tracking device.

As the tornados retreated, she glanced behind and saw a great darkening pall, like a line of hills made from eddies and swirls—the stronger second wave of the storm. The outlying finger-like tornadoes preceded a shroud that people on Homeworld called the “devil’s hand.” The twisters plowed ahead like a rake while the bigger destruction bulldozed behind. She had to reach her shelter before the hand’s “palm” covered her jeep—slapped down and squashed her like a lid.

She drove the vehicle as fast as she could. Her shelter sat at the top of a gully that sloped up to a rocky plateau. She charged for the chasm while frightened she might hit the walls, crippling her vehicle and burying it in the sand.

Her passenger glanced behind into darkness, finally showing awareness and unease.

She entered the canyon. The wind lessened. Her path sloped upward and she believed now she was in the home-stretch.

A great blackness swept over them.

She trampled the accelerator. The vehicle didn’t move faster, just kicked up sand. She yelled in frustration, “Come on! Get me there!”

The darkness moved on. Maybe it was just an outlier of the main gale, a tornado blowing horizontally and not the “devil’s palm” itself. They still had a chance! And the vehicle moved faster now with greater traction on the gravel pavement and rock of the gully.

After a burst of speed she saw her trailer and storage tents, almost hidden behind curtains of dust.

She quickly pulled into the fabric shelter where she kept her vehicle and other tools—she was concerned he would see them, would guess what she was doing. She jumped out to close the flaps but grit-filled air rammed against her, eye-searing, brutal, not the fine dust of a normal storm. It thundered over her and knocked her down.

The man pulled her upright, supporting her with his one good arm.

They looked at each other as the world’s sands tore around them.

They tried to close the openings to the hut, but this was impossible. She shouted, “Forget that! Come in here!” And she led him through a cloth-covered framework that flapped madly, barely secured.

They reached the trailer. She opened the door and sand blew inside.

They shut the barrier behind them while the storm screeched, like metallic whips striking the walls. She knew the stabilizers might not hold. The whole trailer could tilt over and become buried.

They locked windows and doors. Wind crept in through unknown leaks and dust scurried across the floor.

The pall of sand at the storm’s center now poured thickly over them, punctuated by bursts of lightning that stabbed from the darkness and flashed in the windows. Riley once had seen such a storm from high in an aircar. It resembled a huge dark-brown spider, striding on cords of lightning legs behind a sheaf of tentacle-like tornados. It terrified and thrilled her.

She and the unknown man stood together, facing outward, staring at the walls, caught in the center of an invisible battle. The besieged trailer rocked on its supports. The lightning pierced and thunder crashed.

They moved closer to each other.

Then, abruptly, the lightning stopped, the sand-pall thinned.

A soft light entered the windows.

After a long time holding her breath, Riley said, “Okay. That should be the worst of it.”

The man collapsed onto the single couch. He looked broken, defeated, his face caked with so much dust he resembled the victim of a bomb explosion. His lips were cracked, his blond-brown hair filled with sand. He touched his shoulder and flinched. She again noticed how bloody it was.

“How bad is that?” she said.

“Not serious.”

“Let me check.”

“Really, don’t worry.”

But she could see a hole in the arm of the jacket—a bullet wound? She said nothing, but she got her medical kit and took out tweezers, gloves, sterile wipes, alcohol.

He opened his jacket, his shirt, and undershirt. He was dressed for a colder climate than the desert. The top of his arm was covered in blood. “The bullet hit you?”

He nodded.

She wiped the area and found a perforation wound, a shallow through-and-through with the exit larger than the entrance, superficial. It would ache a lot but no bones or arteries were hit. She applied pressure until any more bleeding stopped. “I’ll clean and dress it.”

He didn’t argue. He looked embarrassed. A stoic calm settled over him even though he was in obvious pain.

She cleared the area of any dirt or threads from the shredded clothing, applied clamps that would close the gaps and then wrapped the arm in gauze. She cleaned the bruises on his face, neck, and hands too, which might have come from a fall or a fight. (She had seen the results of fights before.)

He didn’t speak and his hands trembled. She assumed he was in shock—but shock from what?

“I have painkillers.”

He shook his head, but then, after a moment, “Please.”

She brought them and he thanked her.

The wind marauded around the trailer, scraped sandpaper nails against the metal. But the grit lessened, and the silence between them grew noticeable.

He spoke first. “How long have you been here?”

“You mean in this trailer?”

“At this spot on the plateau. We’re at the top of the ravine, correct?”

“You know this place?”

“I came here once. When did you come?”

She hesitated. If he had been here before her then he might know what she had found. “Six months ago.”

He looked disappointed. He murmured, “Six months.” Then, “This trailer, it’s been here that long?”

“Yes. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Look, I have a claim to this place. I own habitation and exploration rights. There were no other takers.”

“It’s yours. I don’t want it.”

“But how did you—”

“I’m telling you I won’t bother you. Just let me rest here a bit. I’m tired…and I hurt.”

This last she felt was added to generate sympathy. “But then what? You can’t just walk out of here. There’s no place where you can go.”

He closed his eyes, appeared to fall into temporary sleep.

She leaned closer.

His head jerked sideways and his eyes sprang open. He had been asleep. He was that tired. His ice-blue pools stared at her. And he said, “I’m not interested in your Airafane stonework.”

This shocked her. He knew exactly what she had found.

“I saw the ruins when I was here the last time, which should prove I’m not interested in them. I made no claim. Coming here now was just an accident.”

She didn’t believe him. “How did you get here? And why the hell did you fall out of the sky?”

“My aircar lost power and dropped into the storm. I had no control, so I jumped out. I was low enough.”

She said nothing about the burst of light, that she heard no aircar or saw no wreck.

“Look,” he added, “I promise not to tell anyone about your find. I know that’s what you’re worried about. Just let me rest here and I’ll leave in a few days. I have a cache of supplies on the other side of the massif. I left them there long ago, with a locked DRV. If you take me to it I can drive off on my own. You won’t see me again and no one will know you’re here.”

She leaned back and shouted at him, “I’m not after Clips!”

He remained calm, seemed unsurprised by the outburst. “Neither am I. So please . . . trust me.”

She still didn’t believe him. Everyone wanted Clips, the hidden Airafane trinkets from the past filled with their secret alien technologies, which led to incredible wealth for their finders.

But discovering one would make her too accessible, too public, too known. She did not want that.

“I assure you,” he added, “just give me a few days to get back in shape, and then I’ll leave.”

His focus did seem far away. He was emotionally as well as physically hurt, preoccupied with something she believed had nothing to do with her.

But he also had a gunshot wound.

Still, she surprised herself. “All right. You can do that.”

He looked surprised too. “So, you trust me?”

“No. But for now I won’t ask questions. Only for now.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” He reclined on the couch, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.

After waiting a bit, she gave out a long and shaky breath.

The wind stirred outside, strained the cords and metal struts. Tendrils of dust slid around the room.

The man groaned a little, rolled over, settled more comfortably into his sleep.

A notebook fell from his jacket pocket.

The pocket had a flap but it became loosened when he pushed his coat aside for her to bandage the wound.

She stared at the book.

Then, after a minute or two, to make sure he breathed deeply, she lifted it away from him.

It was nothing special. A worn and well-used pocket notebook with black leather cover, the insides made of real paper and not hiding a disguised touch-screen or cellpad.

She opened it to a random page and read several hand-written lines, of a poem apparently.

I am destruction,

I am the storm,

I bring revelation

Of what lies hid.

Your world’s unlikely,

Your time is false,

My new perspective

Comes dark from within.

You’re alone and frightened,

Tormented, un-free.

Your life and your planet

Are suspect, my friend.

To this chaos, this blight,

You have no key.

The words touched her where she didn’t want to be reached, where she kept her uncertainties and fears locked. He couldn’t have known her when he wrote them, but they seemed to speak directly to her.

She turned more pages, stopped, read.

He slides his finger

Down her face

In a raw sensual

Arc of longing.

He touches her lips,

Lightly, lightly.

His fingers tremble.

His hands thus

Destroy all art,

Replace design

With pure sensation,

To love her in a language

That came before words.

The lines didn’t use the personal “I” but she was sure he lived this experience, that he hid behind a vague third-person point-of-view to protect himself.

She knew that pose well.

Rage grew in her. She lived alone, and yet this man fell from the sky and almost landed in her lap. He spoke in riddles, wrote of terrors, and described a woman he obviously loved.

She read from one more page:

And now, after long years,

As I hear bat squeals