The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Read online

  “Good afternoon, Chosen,” came a cheery voice from the doorway.

  “Nurse Ratchet,” Minu grumbled.

  “Now, you know my name is Yukiko,” she replied, her disgusting saccharine cheeriness undiminished. “I don't know why you insist on calling me that.” Minu smirked, her command of old earth movies as a rhetorical foil against the medical staff was just about her only weapon. “Time for some exercise.”

  “Come back after lunch,” she said and glanced at the stack of tablets sitting on the desk. Did some of them have dust? “I've got too much work to do now.”

  “You've dodged too many sessions,” the ever perky dealer of pain admonished. “Now, up and out of that bed!” Minu tried to complain again but quick as a flash the nurse was there, slid an arm expertly under her and had Minu swung out and onto her feet. And that was the problem. Signals from her nerves met cybernetic linkages, hesitated, complained, and pain shot up her leg and threatened to make the knees buckle.

  “Damn it,” she gasped and struggled to stand. Unlike most of the time, she succeeded and stood on her wobbly feet. The damage done to her legs was extensive, but not as much as what the kloth did to her right arm years ago. This time they managed to salvage the limbs. The bones were now dualloy, the joints moliplas hybrids, and many of the muscles were synthetic cybernetic actuators (same as was in her arm), but at least the skin was hers. Scars and all. ”I'm turning into Frankenstein,” she mumbled.

  “Okay Frankenstein, let’s take a few steps!” Yukiko laughed. Minu put her left arm around her, wishing she was on her right side but the nurse seemed to know better, and took a tentative step. The pain was just as bad.

  “How come it hurts so fucking much?” she demanded for the hundredth time.

  “Like your doctor explained,” the nurse began for the hundredth time, “the link between your bone and the cybernetics must grow together naturally. If you do not exercise that connection, it will not be as strong. Also the neural interfaces between the new artificial muscles and your nerves are still healing. Your arm was more straightforward. Instead of the main nerve linkages, in this case there are hundreds more when living muscles have been grafted to cybernetic ones.”

  “They should have just taken the whole damned legs,” Minu complained. Then as now, Minu horrified Dr. Bane by suggesting they simply take the legs off then. It was of course medically unethical to remove salvageable body parts, even if it would make more sense.

  “You are just being stubborn. You Chosen are such babies, sometimes.”

  “Watch it,” she warned the petite Peninsula tribe nurse who just smiled in reply. “How did you end up all the way on the other side of the planet, anyway? Ouch!” One more step towards recovery.

  “Many in my family have become scientists and technicians working for the Chosen, including my only brother. So I came here to be closer to Tranquility where he serves. Medicine has always been something that interests me.”

  “And it was only a small step from medicine to torture! I understand now.” Yukiko made a little good natured laugh. It had proved impossible to get under the girl’s skin, no doubt it was the main reason she'd been assigned to Minu after the first therapeutic nurse was sent away in tears.

  “You are doing much better today!” the nurse said. Minu snorted then realized it was true. After the first few agonizing steps it was much less painful, the majority of the hurt coming from the dualloy pins in her upper thighs. They provided additional stability to the new metal/bone joining while it grew stronger. With growing optimism, she took some more steps.

  Later that afternoon as she was gagging down some lime gelatin, there was a knock at the door. Minu looked up to see Cherise standing there with a box in her arms. “Ready for a visitor?” the dark skinned woman asked.

  “Absolutely,” Minu laughed and waved her in. “Pardon me if I don't stand; there isn't any ass in this damn gown.”

  “Nothing I haven't seen before,” Cherise said with a smile full of meaning.

  “Very true,” Minu agreed, her cheeks turning hot. “What did you bring me there?”

  “Something to make you feel better.” Cherise brushed the door closed with a foot as she came in and sat the box on the tray Minu was using to eat in bed. Her friend cleared away the food tray and the offending contents, taking a sniff of the gelatin and dropping it in the trash with a grimace.

  “Yeah, doesn't taste any better than it looks.” Minu opened the box and inside found a big stuffed rabbit. “Okay, sure.”

  “What; doesn't make you feel better?” Minu shrugged so Cherise took the rabbit and with a rending tear pulled its head off.

  “That kinda makes me feel better...”

  “I got to get you out of this place,” Cherise joked as she stuck a hand into the severed neck and began to pull. Amidst a puff of stuffing she produced a bottle of Minu's favorite brand of honey mead.

  “Oh, fuck yes!” Two glasses were secreted; one in each leg, and the arms held flat bread wrapped Rasa mutton sandwiches. Soon they were sipping mead and munching the sumptuous sandwiches. “You are a lifesaver,” Minu said around a huge mouth full.

  “So I've been told. How're the legs coming?”

  Minu stuck one out from under the sheets to show it off, metal pins and all. “It hurts still.”

  “At least it’s not gray.”

  “Yeah.” Minu decided not to mention her trying to talk the doctor into an outright amputation. “Dr. Bane says its insides are from the same stock as the arm. After the Vendetta, they bought a large supply of the same models. Got them pretty cheap, from what I hear.” Minu held up her right hand and turned it around, admiring the design. She'd long ago gotten used to it as part of her, despite the color difference and only having four digits. “He said the salvagers that sold them to us don't know the origin, and nothing comes up in the database we have access too. Whatever species they’re based on must have come and gone long before we were even cavemen.”

  “Probably looked a lot like us.”

  “Except gray,” Minu agreed. “Did you know there aren't any other hominids out there in the Concordia?”

  “I didn't know that.”

  “Me neither, until I met the Squeen at the end of the battle on Serengeti. Once I could think straight again I did a search and confirmed it. We hairless apes haven't done well in the Concordia, only two others in the last 100,000 years, and both of the others just up and disappear.”

  “How does a species just disappear?”

  “Ask the Squeen, they managed to do just that.” Minu also found out when she woke up that the Squeen were allowed access to a functioning Portal by the Beezer and quickly departed for parts unknown. She hadn't pursued the supposedly long lost species any farther yet. Finding a camp of them on a supposedly dead world was coincidence enough, running into a group on Serengeti was like getting hit by lightning, twice in a row. She needed to get cleared for duty before she started trying to solve any more mysteries.

  The two women sat eating their contraband meal in silence, finishing only a minute before a nurse stuck her head in to be sure everything was okay. The nurse narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the two, both smiling at her in return. She sniffed the air and Minu hoped it didn't smell like mutton sandwich and mead. “Good grief,” Cherise said when the nurse finally left, “when you getting out of here?”

  'Next week, but I'm not going to be allowed to return to duty for another two months.”

  “Excellent!”

  “Hardly, I have stuff I want to do and a lot of it means being on duty.”

  “You are a certified workaholic, you know that?”

  Minu just shrugged. “I don't have any family, or a love life, what else is there to do?”

  “I can take care of one of those two...”

  “Shhh,” Minu hissed, “they might be monitoring us in here.”

  “They wouldn't dare,” Cherise said, but still let the subject drop. “I have some leave saved up, why don't you come
home with me for a few weeks?”

  “Sure, I'd rather live in the Chelan and not be able to work than spend a week living here again.”

  “I haven't lived here for months; I bought a house back where I grew up.”

  “Desert Tribe? I don't even know what city you're from.”

  “City? Hardly a city. It’s a little town called Naomi, about two hundred clicks from Mt. Sahara.”

  “Oh, well, I don't know...” Minu thought quickly for a reason not to go, then thought again about how selfish she was being. Aside from a small dinner with Pip's family after he'd been critically injured, she'd never been to the homes of any of her best friends. And she knew the least about the Desert Tribe people.

  “Quit making excuses, and just say yes.”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “Great, I'll fly you there in your own car when you get out of the asylum.”

  “Chosen Minu, time for exercise!”

  “Yes nurse Ratchet.”

  “How many times...oh, who is this?”

  “My friend, Cherise.”

  “Nice to meet you, Chosen. Do you need rehabilitation too?”

  “Not a chance, nurse.”

  “Okay, then get out now.” Cherise lifted an eyebrow and Minu gave her a 'don't ask' look. Cherise leaned over and gave her friend a little hug and then got up to leave. “Oh, Chosen Cherise?” She turned around at the nurse’s call, “please don't forget to take that empty mead bottle?”

  Minu was so happy to be out of the hospital ward that she didn't even care that she couldn't drive her own car. Oh sure, she could if she tried, but the doctor had specifically forbade her to operate any vehicles for risk of damaging her still healing legs. With the temporary support bars removed, at least she could wear shoes again.

  Cherise operated the red sports model aerocar with a practiced hand. All her friends now owned the flying vehicles, if none of them were quite as fancy as Minu's. Of course she was the only one among them that didn't really have any other bills to pay, so she'd spent all her savings on the vehicle two years ago. Her account balance was creeping upwards again, but would take some time to recover.

  To stave off boredom, the friends watched movies on the car’s entertainment system, played cards, and napped during the flight. It was two hours from Ft. Jovich to her little island retreat, but it was six hours from Steven's Pass to the town of Naomi in the Desert Tribe territory. “Quite a commute you've got yourself,” Minu said when the trip was half over.

  “I have regular duties nearby at the harvesting facility on the southern steppes, less than an hour by air, so it works for me.”

  “No boyfriends?”

  “I wasn't impressed with your experiences. A few guys have tried, but it doesn't strike my fancy for now.” They hadn't talked about what would happen during their time in Cherise's home town. It was an unspoken understanding that she would be Minu's lover any time she wanted. After long months of training, the brief but bloody battles beating back the Tanam, and then her extended time under the ministrations of nurse Ratchet, the idea pleased her greatly. Deep in her heart, Minu knew a celibate life didn’t appeal to her nature.

  As they were beginning their descent from twenty thousand meters, Cherise sighed and turned towards her. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Yeah. You see, I told my father that I was coming home with you, and he told my sister...”

  “Oh no, Cherise!” Minu whined.

  “Yeah, there's going to be a celebration in our honor. Well, mostly your honor.”

  “Ugh,” Minu spat. “Just tell me no bureaucrats or reporters.”

  “We don't have reporters, but the tribal elders are sort of like bureaucrats. Don't be that way; I didn't plan this!”

  The car dropped below the meager cloud deck and spread out below were endless kilometers of brown desert broken occasionally by cultivated green zones along streams and intermittent roads. As the car went lower Minu could see settlements along the green zones, far fewer than would be expected in other parts of Bellatrix with such wide open spaces. Finally the car banked and dropped towards a town no bigger than any of the others she'd seen since they began their descent. “Naomi?”

  “Home,” Cherise said with a big smile, her beautiful dark features lit by the afternoon light flooding through the canopy. “Remember, it’s Julast in the desert.”

  “I went through the trials, how bad could it be?” Once the car sat down at the town’s small landing area Cherise locked the controls and opened the wide gull wing doors. Heat washed in as if an oven door suddenly opened. “Woof,” she said simply.

  “Don't say I didn't warn you.” Cherise climbed out then came around for Minu, helping her out then handing her the simple dualloy forearm crutches she'd been given by the therapists upon her release. She stood and got her balance as Cherise got their bags and locked the vehicle. Minu looked around through the heat haze and noticed no one was waiting for them. Maybe this gathering would be low key? She examined the nearest town buildings and found them unspectacular. They looked like brick and mortar with wooden roofs and simple shutters. Except for the adaption to local materials, not that different from what you'd find in a Peninsula tribe house, the other less advanced tribe on Bellatrix. But unlike the Peninsula people, the desert tribe wasn't primitive by choice, but by location and circumstances. Civilization reemerged around Minu's Plateau tribe, nearly on the other side of the planet. Technology was slow to come to this remote location of the planet, and the desert was a very harsh place with limited resources.

  Regardless of their circumstances, the Desert tribe people were proud and self-reliant survivors. Every year they sent more people to serve in the Chosen, and a disproportionate number of the soldiers called the Desert tribe home. In the Chaos times, they’d been fierce warriors. They were one of the few tribes to resist being conquered by the insanely warlike Rusk.

  Beyond the modest ceramic concrete parking area the streets were simply hard packed dirt, easily discernible from yards and other property by the collection of wheel tracks. Minu tried to imagine what the roads were like on the rare times it rained. There was no one else on the road or in sight as Cherise led her around a gradual turn and past dozens of small buildings that had to be homes. Her legs were really beginning to hurt and she hoped it wasn't much farther. Then the center of the town came into view and she moaned. The square was full of people of all ages, and that accounted for there being no one to meet them when they grounded. Cherise grabbed her arm and unceremoniously hauled her forward.

  Once they were in sight a cry went up from the square and every face turned towards them. Minu didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't a song. All the people’s voices joined to form one in verse, all directed towards them. Of course Minu couldn't understand the words but it had a very melodic sing-song quality that she found pleasing. Despite the surprise a smile came to her face.

  “It is our people’s way,” Cherise explained, “a tradition we brought all the way from Africa, on old Earth. They sing to welcome a returning daughter, and a new member of the tribe.” Unbidden, tears joined the smile on her face as they walked.

  No one rushed to meet them as they walked. The people only waited patiently and sang their song. It didn't seem to repeat and had as many verses as they needed. Finally as they approached, the people in the crowd slowly moved around them until they were standing in a circle. “What do I do?” Minu asked, afraid to offend anyone.

  “Nothing, just wait until they are done.”

  Minu hoped it wasn't too long, her legs were on fire and the good Dr. Bane warned her against excessive standing for another few days.

  Just as quickly as the song began, it ended. A dozen children carried the last rising note past the point of any adults range. The effect was beautiful and a little haunting. “Thank you,” Minu said, because it was all she could come up with. A cheer rose from the people and in a moment they were squeezing in around her.
For some reason they all wanted to touch her head and Minu wondered if that was another tradition. All she could do was nod and smile. Unlike a lot of tribes on Bellatrix, they’d clung to their native language which she understood to be Ethiopian. Something else she quickly realized was that Cherise was not unusual for her people in many ways. The women were all beautiful, thin figured with well-shaped breasts, and quite tall. Minu hadn't felt so short since she remembered attending Chosen functions with her father as a young child. And the men! They practically towered over her. Yet none of them treated her as anything other than a very special person, an honored guest. And more than a few men were casting appraising looks at her thin figure.

  Finally some of the English speakers made themselves known, something she was very glad for because the Concordia translator didn’t handle other human dialects. They all seemed to think she was single handedly responsible for making Cherise a Chosen. Since she’d been the first to be Chosen from Naomi, that was a big source of pride to their town. They also thought Minu had defeated the Rasa and the Tanam. She did her best to dissuade them of this, but to no avail. Finally, and to her immense relief, they were guided to a beautiful grass covered area a few hundred meters away where a big bonfire was blazing and dozens of tables were laden with food of all sorts.

  At first she was concerned because not a single chair was in sight, then she spotted two Concordia made office chairs set to one side and was guided towards them by Cherise. Minu nearly fell into one with a groan of pleasure. When she turned to Cherise to ask her about the chairs, she found an older man sitting in the other chair instead. Confused, she looked around and found her friend sitting cross legged on the ground and deep in conversation with a woman who could be her twin sister.