CHAPTER 17

Tara

It wasn't the happy and triumphant reunion that I'd hoped for.

I was with Kris, Nick, and Lon again, but now we were all prisoners.The Caloxi had somehow attached the four of us to a huge slab of some kind of crystal/ceramic/metal alloy that I couldn't begin to identify, and I doubt any scientist from Earth would recognize.But either the slab itself or some mechanism inside or possibly behind it gave off some strange, tingling energy field that held us against the surface of it, facing forward, pinned there as if we were a part of the thing.It was an even better way to immobilize a prisoner than the force field column in which they had me at first.We were absolutely stuck.

My three Guards had recovered from being knocked out.We were on the slab in a much larger chamber than the one in which the Caloxi first held me.And we were staring out into the chamber at about a dozen of them, led by Neegan and Catrox, the ones who originally confronted me.The chamber was unfurnished, strangely, except for one chair.Catrox had a bag made of the same pearlescent fabric as his clothing, slung over one shoulder.This was an encore of my first minutes with those two, except with all four of us as prisoners engaged in a mutual staring session with many more Caloxi.

This worried me.The way the four of us were pinned could conceivably give the Caloxi the chance to be much more hands-on about "studying" us than when it was just me inside that force field.They could effectively do anything they liked with us, and we could do nothing about it except watch and wait our turn to be put through any kind of dangerous "examination."

And that was why I spoke up."Why are we here now?What do you plan to do with us now?"

Neegan and Catrox were standing out in front of the others.Neegan said, "You shall all now be subject to psi-empathic probes."

I felt a shock of dread hearing that.Unable to turn my head to Nick, pinned at my left, or raise my head and look beyond him at Lon and Kris, I could only guess they felt the same way, especially when I heard Nick say in a wary tone, " ‘Probe?You're going to ‘probe' us?What does that mean?What exactly do you plan to do?"

That word—probe—conjured some very disturbing and frightening visions.I could imagine some very invasive things being done, things that might feel like a kind of violation.A cold sweat broke out on my brow.I protested, "This isn't right.You're a civilized people.You must have morals.You must have principles.You have to know there are things that you don't do, ways that you don't treat other sentient beings.You mustn't do this."

"If you suspect we mean to probe your bodies, female, you are correct only in part," said Neegan."It is your emotions we seek:for it is in the emotions that all truths and intentions are found.Our probe shall be empathic in nature."

"Empathic?" Kris repeated, wondering.

"There are among us individuals like Catrox," said Neegan, indicating the younger one at his side, "who are possessed of empathic powers, capable of sensing the emotions and responses to physical stimuli in other beings."

"It was those among us with this gift," Catrox explained further, "who did root out the Soorn spies upon this planet and enabled their capture and summary execution.I was among the empathic hunters who did accomplish this deed for our people.It is I now who shall interface with the brain and nervous system of each of you.I shall enter your memories and experience all that you have felt.My probe will reveal your true nature to me.Nothing shall be concealed from me.I shall know who and what you are at the deepest level.In that way we shall know the proper way to deal with you—and if necessary, the proper way to dispose of you and render you incapable of harm."

"Why bother with any of that?" Nick protested."You might as well just kill us outright.That's what you want to do with the Soorns, isn't it?Why not simply kill us as well?"

"We know the Soorns from our past battles with them," Catrox replied."Their nature is malevolent.They are taught from their youth to hate any sentience that differs from their own.The Soorns are a lost species, lost to their own paranoia.They are a menace and a tragedy.But your species and that of the female are new to us—a potential threat, but an unknown one.The female questioned our morality.We do possess morals, yes, and principles.And our principles demand that before we destroy you, we must know all about you.Entering your minds and sifting your emotions, I shall learn who and what your two species truly are."

"But this isn't necessary!" I argued forcefully."We can talk to each other, listen to each other!Please let's talk!On the surface, people are fighting and dying!The sooner we talk, the sooner we can find a way out of this!"

"Our way," said Catrox, "is faster and more efficient than words.Things may be concealed in speech.In our way, nothing can be hidden."

Neegan waved a tendril-like finger through the air at each of us."Would you bind over a prisoner for execution with no knowledge of whom it was that you would slay?Would you not deem such an execution unjust?Your lives will not be forfeit without an accounting of whose life we shall snuff out."He lowered his arm, having made his final pronouncement."Catrox—proceed."

I tried to leap forward and confront Neegan close-on, face to face, but the force holding us to that slab held us so tightly that the effort of my muscles was reduced to nothing, which made me burn inside.I raised my voice, desperate with anger, "You don't have to do this!There is no need…!"

But Neegan waved his arm and called, "Silence!We will brook no more arguments!Bring forth the chair!"

My protest turned to a grunt of enraged frustration.Nick, beside me, said in a maddeningly calming tone, "It's all right, Tara.You tried—for all of us.You did your best."

I gritted my teeth and suppressed a scream.The idea of Nick, my protector, being reduced to surrendering with me right beside him, was infuriating and terrifying, a mix of impotent emotions that I hated.It was none of my doing, I knew, but I felt as if the fate of the colony were now in our hands, and we were failing everyone.

The chair had no legs; it levitated over the floor.One of the Caloxi pushed it along and brought it to a rest between Catrox and Neegan.I noticed for the first time that there were lighted disks on the ends of the arms of the chair, where the sitter's hands would rest.

Neegan said, "This augmentor chair will assist Catrox in processing the emotions that he will receive from the four of you.Before he begins the process of sifting your emotions, Catrox will now affix each of you with the empathic melding rings.Catrox, proceed."

Taking his bag from his shoulder, Catrox opened it and produced four rings, each one about the size of a tea saucer, that reminded me of the engraved Caloxi artifacts in my room.As my Guards and I helplessly clung against our will to the slab on which we were mounted, Catrox put one ring on the forehead of each of us.The rings clung to our foreheads with what I guessed was a similar force to the one in the slab.My ring emitted a mild tingling, warming sensation, as if some kind of relaxing, tranquilizing drug had been injected into me.This in itself made me angry.I didn't want to be tranquilized.I wanted to continue at least raising my voice in resistance, but I couldn't.An almost pleasant numbing sensation came over me, which added to my futile anger.

Once he had attached a ring to each of us, Catrox stepped back and sat in the chair, putting his hands on the lighted disks, and shut his eyes.Neegan stepped back and away from him and a silence fell over the chamber.

I began to feel as if I weren't alone in my own head, as if what was going on in my head were an image on a screen and someone was in there, sitting in the dark like the audience in a theatre.Along with this feeling came an odd tickling in my stomach, as if I were being lifted from the floor and levitated like Catrox's chair.Then another feeling settled over me, a sense of calm and warmth, and something like intoxication.I drifted into something that reminded me of a dream state, as if I were asleep but aware.These feelings were frustratingly pleasant.I didn't want anything to feel pleasant now.Some part of me wanted to resist and submit at the same time.Submission won out.The empathic disk had me where Catrox wanted me.And the other presence in my head could only be Catrox, an alien being with whom I had failed to communicate one way, who was now communicating with me in a way that I had not asked for.The feeling was one of intimacy, like someone touching me, that I hadn't invited.

A dreamlike flow of memories washed over my mind.There were so many of them.There was my mother's face, smiling as she waved at me in a spaceport back on Earth, before Daddy and I boarded a spaceship.Mom was reassuring me that everything would be all right, that she loved me, and my parents' divorce had nothing to do with me.There was a view of Earth from space—Earth, a planet that humans had first done everything to ruin, long ago, which had taken generations to rehabilitate and restore to glowing blue and white beauty, spinning in space.There was space itself, an infinity of stars in the black expanse.Playing like a holofilm in my mind were other Earthlike planets where humans now lived, looming and whirling into view and spinning away; and ships moving between the stars, carrying a peaceful humanity that had learned to care for its planetary homes instead of abusing them, to live on new worlds around other stars.

So many past experiences blossomed in my mind, and with them so many past feelings; the pleasure of swimming in warm waters, of riding on melobeasts on beaches and across fields, of being in deep and beautiful forests and strolling through gardens and smelling the flowers.And laughing and sharing secrets with friends, enjoying their closeness.

And then, of course, came the most intimate feelings of all—the feelings shared with me, and given to me, first by boys and then by men.Letting a boy touch me for the first time, on my hair and my face, and then on other places; and him letting me touch him in the same ways.The experience of a boy kissing me.The experience of all the other wonderful things that a girl, or a woman, wants with a boy, or a man, that she thinks is beautiful.And then…the experience of all those same things with a man who is more than a man; a man who is also a wolf.That passion and energy and pure abandon that a woman can only feel with a man with an inner, proud self that is an animal, strong and proud and free and wild.Being with a man like that makes a woman feel filled with all the passion and all the life in the world.It makes her feel connected not only to her innermost self, but to everything that is wild and pure and joyous.It almost makes her feel as if she is a wolf herself.

In this strange state of mind, I relived every emotion I'd ever had—all the joys, sorrows, pains, fears, wishes, loves, hates, laughs, thrills, hopes, curiosities, satisfactions, envies.My whole emotional life passed before my eyes—and before the eyes of the alien Catrox.And on some level, I knew he was taking this same journey of feelings with Kris, Lon, and Nick, sifting through all of our memories of things we had all felt, letting them all pass through his alien fingers like sand grains in a human hand.In some corner of my mind, I imagined Catrox becoming one of us, a human or a lycanthrope himself; one being becoming four beings, sorting his way through the mysteries of us.

And, as if across a vast distance, I heard a long, loud moaning—an alien sound of being swept away by mighty, surging pounding waves; of being tossed and carried by it, of being totally in the grip of its power, submerged deep inside of it, being tossed by it and spun around by whirlpools of it.It was Catrox's voice, like a cry for help, captured by currents of emotion.

From out of those currents and waves and whirlpools of feeling came the alien empath's voice."Enough!I have felt enough!"

I felt the touch of alien hands against my skin and the disk of alien technology being pulled from my head.My awareness faded from that emotional dream state back into reality.I saw from the corner of my eye one of the other Caloxi removing the disks from Nick, Lon, and Kris.Looking to Catrox, I saw him sitting in the augmentor chair with his head back and his mouth open wide, taking in deep breaths of air.For a brief but profound time, Catrox had experienced what it was to be a being from Earth.My Guards and I had unwillingly given him that experience.What would come of it now?

Neegan stood over Catrox and put a hand on his shoulder.Slowly, Catrox straightened his posture, lifted his head, and gazed up into the older being's face.

"What did you find?" Neegan asked.

"Something unlike the Soorns," said Catrox in a groggy voice."Something that was once very much like them—warlike, jealous, hostile creatures, filled with hatred, distrust, and greed.And fear—driving, all-consuming fear.That was what I gleaned from the female, something that long ago was kindred with the Soorns, but has changed and become something different."

"And from the males?"

"The males are creatures much like the female, but different still.I found in them traces of racial memories of fear and hatred towards creatures like her; terrible conflict, caused by prejudices against them.The racial memories are violent—oh, so violent.But there is more.There is wildness and passion, tenderness and love—a love of life itself, a total, almost all-consuming joy in the feelings brought by mating.Possessing two bodies, they are highly complex, yet strangely very simple.These creatures, those with one shape like the female and those with two like the males, might once have become like the Soorns, and yet they went a different way.There is aggression, but it is not a desire to punish and destroy.It is a drive to live—to grow and to live.There is curiosity about other life, not a contempt for it.They have much yet to learn, and yet they seem motivated by the desire to learn it.Neegan, I have reason to believe that if we had encountered these creatures under any other conditions, they would have sought to make peaceful contact.Our hostilities against them may have been in haste.Even now I sense in them a loathing and revulsion at the experience of being empathically sifted—but no actual hatred."He gazed over at each of us, stuck in place as we were, and said, "Greater than the loathing of what we just did, especially in the female, is a desire to understand and be understood."

I found my voice again."Yes!That's what I've been trying to tell you all along!We would have told you anything about ourselves, about who we are and what we want, if you had just asked us.Attacking us, taking us prisoner, entering our feelings that way—there was no need for any of this.I am the daughter of the leader of the colonists from my planet.On my authority, I ask you to release us and let us talk, really talk."

The room went silent again.Many looks that I couldn't read were exchanged between Neegan and Catrox, and between Neegan and the other Caloxi in the chamber, before Neegan finally spoke again.

"We must deliberate.There is much to discuss, and it must be done quickly.You will be kept within this chamber while we withdraw."

Catrox got up from his chair, and without another word he and the other Caloxi filed out of the chamber, leaving us where we were.

I heard Kris say, "At least we're not dead."

No, we were not dead.However, we were still caught and helpless.And somewhere far above, there was still a battle going on.People were still fighting.If there was any chance that what we'd all just been through would put an end to this, it had to come soon.