121: elements, part three

The fact that the human species has found no equals, nor any near-equals, in regards to intelligence has baffled the supporters of some models of galactic evolution while simultaneously affirming others.  The earliest estimates date back to ancient times when only a few dozen words were inhabited by humanity.  Some believed that since various stages of independently-evolved life had existed on worlds already known, it was only a matter of time before humanity found something that roughly approximated itself on an as-yet unexplored world. Others, however, relied on computations of the rarity of human evolution — they, of course, assumed that men had evolved on a single world at some time much further in the past, a theory that is itself still questioned — and supposed that the likelihood of it happening again, even given the vast number of habitable planets in the galaxy, was slim to none.

It should be noted that the types of life already existing on newly inhabited worlds has varied greatly in the history of colonization.  (Full details on life forms, catalogued by world, can be found in Appendix 285 – Life in the Galaxy.)  Some worlds, such as the barely-habitable Pavnory were found with only traces of innate life though, through human technology, even such worlds could support a relatively large human population.  Even more to the point, Hannus, a world with almost ideal temperature, gravity and atmospheric conditions for human life, was found with almost no life whatsoever aside from a few fragile families of plant life.  On other worlds, such as Brentishiar, colonists found varied and diverse eco-systems, which included vibrant populations of large type-a predators, most notably the so-called Jungle Mammoth, an eight-foot tall, six-hundred pound, six-legged mammal capable of traveling at speeds of up to seventy miles per hour despite its large size.  Indeed, it has been the very presence of this creature that has prevented further exploitation of the Brentishiar’s remarkable potential for food production.  Efforts have been made…

…among the many primate species found on several worlds throughout the galaxy, perhaps the most notable are the so-named daywalkers of Klin.  Though they are not as physically imposing as the ten-foot tall Briggidanes of Tonipur or as resilient as the air- and water-breathing “Fishmen” of Falts, they are certainly the most devious, and perhaps most intelligent of all non-human creatures discovered in the galaxy.  We must say “perhaps” here because the daywalkers, though they have been confirmed by many eye-witness accounts and, in a few cases, photographed, they have proven themselves experts at anticipating human movement.  This has served them dually: they are known to converge on a stranded miner in a matter of minutes on many sectors of dayside; and they have been remarkably avoidant of capture for study (though it should be noted that Klinian authorities have not been the most diligent on the front of scientific research).  Some have survived daywalker attacks, and they report a form of communication between the members that resembles human language….

…whether these creatures are a natural evolution of the planet or some distant relative of the humans that first settled the planet is, as yet, unclear…

the girl, perhaps twelve poked a sleepy head around the corner.  she looked at Leah for with mild surprise for a moment, yawned, pushed her stringy blond hair away from her eyes.

“hi,” she said plainly and turned toward the kitchenette.

Leah looked at her in dumb shock over the counter that separated the sitting room and the kitchenette for a moment, watched the girl dispense a glassful of water from the wall tap.  “hi,” she said finally, still frozen on the couch.

“who are you?” the girl asked nonchalantly as she watched her glass fill.  it did so, and she released the dispenser button, shuffled back into the sitting room, the legs of her loose-fitting blue and pink pajama pants brushing swishing against each other as she walked.

“i’m…Leah,” Leah said.

“thanks for bringing him home,” the girl said, pulling herself up onto a tall armchair.  her feet missed the carpet by a few inches, and she held the glass in front of her with both hands.

“is he your brother?”

“oh, Perry?  yeah.  i was talking about dad.”

“how did you…” Leah’s question trailed off.

the girl shrugged.  “it happens a lot, since mom died.  most of the time, they don’t stay, whoever finds him.  sometimes they come back and ask for whatever money they spent to get him home.  usually they don’t.”

Leah stared at her uncomprehendingly.  the girl was not even alarmed by the presence of a strange woman in her home, and much less so that a stranger, any stranger, had been the one to bring her father home.  what has been done to you? she asked silently.  aloud, she said, “can i ask your name?”

“Gladiaw,” the girl said distastefully.  “i never liked it, but i guess it was my grandma’s name.  dad says it’s a real popular name back home.  i’ve never met anyone else named Gladiaw.  don’t you think it’s a stupid name?”  before Leah could answer, Gladiaw continued, “well, i do.  but i guess we don’t really spend a lot of time at home.  dad’s always taking us on these trips.  he says it’s how we make money, but i don’t really know.  i mean, what’s the whole point of making money if you’re never even home?  Shami says her dad makes plenty of money, and she never has to leave Illar.”

Gladiaw paused to take a drink of water, and Leah jumped at the opportunity.  “Illar…is that where you’re from?”

“yeah,” Gladiaw said after several long gulps from the glass.  “but we hardly spend any time there anymore.  i never get to see Shami.”

“who’s Shami?” Leah prodded gently.

“oh, Shami’s my best friend!  we were born on the same day — our mom’s knew each other since they were kids, i guess.  do you want to see a picture of her?”

before Leah could answer, Gladiaw set her glass of water on the floor, stood up and hustled briskly to the room from which she had originally emerged.  Leah heard rustling in the far room, and took the moment to take a few long breaths.  as unexpected as the day’s events had been, she certainly had not anticipated a conversation with a precocious preteen.  as the rustling sounds continued, Leah allowed herself to consider her position.  she felt invested in this family, somehow.  to be sure, there was nothing preventing her from escaping the awkwardness of her current predicament.  from what she’s seen, she doubted Lim, the father, would even remember their encounter.  Perry certainly would, but he had the least capacity for seeking out his one-time rescuer.  Gladiaw seemed so used to this that she would likely dismiss Leah an simply another one, and move on.  Leah considered this option seriously. a familial imbroglio was not something she’d been looking to involve herself in.  still, she knew that a life felt could not be unfelt.  she questioned her own ability to simply move on once she left, to forget them once they were no longer in her presence.  she knew, though, that she had a simple task, and that was getting to Issac.  that meant getting to Klin.  as much as she personally felt for Perry, Gladiaw, and even their drunkard of a father, the only reason she had left Dulvern, the only reason she was on this world at all, was to get to Klin.

and yet, and yet.  Illar.  Illar. Gladiaw had spoken it casually, and expectedly so.  she would have had no way of knowing Leah’s desination: she’d hardly learned her name.  and, even if the girl had known Leah’s destination, it was unlikely that she would grasp the relevance that her home world had.  in fact, Leah considered it to be a quite unlikely stroke of luck that she even knew the relevance of Illar, or that she had even heard of the planet in the first place.  she had never been to Illar, but in her studies of Klin, limited though they admittedly were, the name Illar had come up multiple times.  the worlds were relative neighbors, existing only a few light years apart from each other.  in fact, Illar was the nearest habitable planet to Klin.  from what she had read, StarEx had largely ignored the world over the last several hundred years for two key reasons.

first, it was poor, and poor in several ways.  it had few if any mineral resources beyond what it required to subsist.  and what it required to subsist was not great, given that it was a warm, damp, oxygen-rich world that consisted primarily of jungle.  plant growth rate was so high near Illar’s equator, in fact, that the world’s inhabitants had long since given up any urban or industrial efforts there: it was simply too difficult to resist the teeming plant life, even with the most modern of technologies.  as such, the majority of the world lived near the poles, where it was relatively cool, and where the undergrowth kept itself to a tolerable minimum.  it was also near the poles that humans would walk out their doors without immediately being overcome by intense heat and humidity and breathe the open air without risking oxygen intoxication.

second, Sallar was very nearby.  unlike most known solar systems, the Tradiar One system, so-called for its star, had exactly two habitable planets.  the far more populace of the two was Sallar, while Illar was largely forgotten.  slightly more distant from their star in orbit, Sallar had an almost ideal mix of fresh water and land, a near-perfect atmosphere, exactly the right thickness and composed of almost exactly the ideal ratios of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon-dioxide, and all the other trace particles that made up a world’s airy blanket.  it was highly industrialized, well advanced, and peaceful.  they enjoyed their position as Klin’s favorite star-hop, and did nothing to upset the routine of steadily-flowing exchanges of goods and services.  unlike Illar, Sallar had massive tracts of land devoted to crop production — a possibility which Illar’s dense and chaotic growth prevented for its inhabitants.  these crops translated into profits for Sallarian farmers, as Klin, with its dearth of arable land, turned to Sallarian farmers, who were more than happy to except money of the cash-rich Klinians for what were relatively cheaply produced foodstuffs.  the fact that Sallarians could sell their crops to Klininas high above their production costs while Klinians could buy food for far below what would have been their own production costs made it the very definition of a mutually profitable relationship.

and so, Illar was largely ignored.

but, Leah had not ignored it.  she had been fascinated by the resilience of its people, their traditions, their devotion to their jungle world.

and now, she was enamored with its proximity to Issac.

Gladiaw emerged from her room with a paper print of a photograph.  Leah noted its antiquated form, but reserved comment.  the girl smiled at Leah, and hurried over to her couch, flopped heavily on the cushion beside her.

“see?” Gladiaw said, pointing at the faces on the print.  “that’s Shami, and that’s me!”  it was a standard picture of two girls reaching eagerly for their teenage years: they were smiling brightly, caring for nothing beyond the moment they were in.

“she’s pretty,” Leah said, surmising the photograph.  “and so are you.”

there was a pause, and Gladiaw’s finger fell slowly from the picture, though she still held it in front of them.  then, Leah felt pressure against her right arm.  it was the fuzzy head of a young girl.  Gladiaw, still holding the picture in front of them, snuggled in to the space between Leah’s arm and breast.  Leah felt her breath rise, then fall, then rise and fall again, more slowly.  then, “i wan’t to go  home.”  Gladiaw was crying.

**

Issac stumbled towards a dayside cabbie.  there weren’t many of them on the streets of Gorshen, but he had found one.  he seemed even more seedy than any of the others Issac had encountered, but time was not on his side, and so he would not be choosy.

“hey,” Issac called out, squinting, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the intensity of dayside’s sun.  his steps were unsteady, but determined.

as he approached the groundcar, the driver eyed him suspiciously.  “cen i help ya?” he asked dubiously.

“yes, please,” Issac said, panting as he stopped in front of the cabbie.  the driver seemed to recoil at the scent of Issac’s breath.  “i need to get to Ish Rocks.”

“who?”

Issac shook his head at the man uncomprehendingly.  “i’m…Issac.”

“na, i mean, ya know, who ya talkin’ about?”

“um, Cillian.  have you ever heard of him?”

“nah, ain’t never hear of ‘im.  but tha’ ain’t whatcha said a minni’ ago.”

the driver was losing patience.  Issac was losing patience.  he knew he was drunk, but he didn’t think he was that drunk.  he said, “you asked me who.  but if you don’t mean me, and you don’t mean who i’m looking for…are you asking what your own name is?”

there was a look of realization on the cabbie’s face, and he almost smiled.  “nah, nah, not who like who, who like where.”

“wait, so you said ‘who’ when you meant ‘where’?”

“same thing!”

“oh, jesus christ,” Issac said, flopping his arms to his side.  “fine.  good.  okay.  i need to get to Ish Rocks.”

“i know tha’s whatcha said, eh.  but there ain’t no such place as Ish Rocks.”

Issac felt his blood go cold despite the intensity of the sun.  “you’re…you’re sure?”

“i been drivin’ cab for twenty years, son.  ain’t never hearda no Ish Rocks.”  Issac put his hand to his forehead, turned slowly, took a few steps away.  “i have hearda Ish Barrens,” the driver said.

Issac whirled.  “what?”

“i also hearda Mish Rocks.”

Issac blinked hard at him.  “say that again.”

the driver shrugged.  “i hearda Ish Barrens and Mish Rocks.  you wanna go to one of them?”

“where are they?”

“hop in,” the driver said, gesturing to the back seat of the groundcar.  Issac obeyed, and the cabbie circled the car and sat down in the driver’s seat.  first, he clicked on the meter, Issac noted with a little irritation, then he clicked on the projection map.  “we’re here,” he said, pointing to a dot in the center of the screen.  he tapped a control near the outside of the screen, and the map zoomed out.  Ish Barrens is up here–” he pointed at a low-density area a ways to the north of their current location, “and Mish Rocks is over here.”  he scrolled the map down and to the right, and indicated another low-density area outside the south-eastern corner of Gorshen.

“how far?”

the cabbie shrugged.  “maybe, half an hour to th’ Barrens, forty minutes to the Rocks.  hard ta say this time’a day.”

“okay.”  shit, he thought.  his memory was the definition of fuzzy, and he had to make a choice based on that alone.  ‘Mish’ could have easily become ‘Ish’ by the distortions of his brain under whatever weapon Vize had hit him with.  that seemed more likely than him confusing the word ‘Barrens’ with the word ‘Rocks.’  but then, he remembered conversations with Cillian and Sorensen earlier in his stay on Klin about places whose names ended with ‘Rocks.’  in fact, now that he thought about it, the place where the wreck of the Lathan Devers, his uncles ship that had brought him to this world at the cost of the crew’s life, had been found in a place named Spuria Rocks.  as far as he could recall, he had not heard anyone talking about a place called a Barrens.  so, it made some sense that he might have replaced the second, more unfamiliar word with one heard several times.  “what can you tell me about them?” Issac asked.

again, the cabbie shrugged — it seemed to be the only gesture he was capable of.  “what’ere ta say?  Ish Barrens…lots’a sand, been reports o’ daywalkers out there–”

“those red things?” Issac asked, remembering the aggressive primate creatures that had attacked him shortly after his crash landing on dayside.

“yeah, yeah,” the cabbie said dismissively.  “no minin’ there, i know.”

“what about Mish Rocks?”

“pretty much same thing,” the cabbie said.  “just some rock formations.  i think there’s a li’l collar there–”

“collar?”

the cabbie waves his hands in exasperation — so apparently he was capable of more than one gesture.  “a, y’know, opening to a mine.  but i don’t think it gets used too awful lot.”

Issac sat back, thinking.

“so where to?” the cabbie asked.

“i’m thinking,” Issac snapped.

“meter’s runnin’, pal.”

“i know.  i’ll pay.”

“suit yerself.”  the cabbie sat back in his seat, withdrew a tobacco pipe from his breast pocket.

Issac considered the timeline.  it had been…several hours.  how many, he was not exactly sure.  they had arrived at Lambrix’s place not more than ten hours ago.  he’d woken up less than five hours before now.  that meant that Cillian had been wherever he was for at least five hours, but less than nine.   if it was nine, he might already be too late.  if it was five, there was a good chance Cillian would still be alive, but he felt sure that a half-hour drive to plus a search of one location would reduce the chance of finding Cillian alive at the second location to almost zero.  that is, if Cillian was even at either of these two places.  but, fuzzy though Issac’s memory was, it was the only thing he had to go on at this point.

so, then, it still had to be decided.  he rubbed his left temple, wishing his thoughts were just a little more cohesive.  he cursed himself — it was his own fault that his mind was as foggy as it was.  nevertheless, he went over the arguments again in his head.  it remained logical that a single letter would be omitted than an entire word replaced — and so Mish Rocks had the upper ground.  still, it remained a possibility that he had replaced ‘Barrens’ with ‘Rocks,’ inserting something he was familiar with in place of something he wasn’t.  there were other factors to be considered as well.  if what the driver said was true, there were likely to be more people at the Rocks than at the Barrens.  even if there was only occasional mining activities at Ish Rocks, the chances of human interaction was greater there than at Mish Barrens.  however, which direction this tipped the scales depended on the motivation of the people who had placed him there.

Issac had woken up in a town.  so, they had not intended for him to be left entirely alone.  again, this reasoning implied that Ish Rocks was the more likely of the two destinations.  and, come to think of it, if they’d wanted either or both of them dead, why not just kill them there?  there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason for that.  thus, it seemed probably that they wanted Issac and Cillian to be found, or at least for there to be a high possibility that they would be found.  again, the odds were tipped in the favor of Ish Rocks.

there was one more criterion that needed consideration: survivability.  the Rocks were more likely to provide haven from the sun: any amount of shade increased survival time.  especially if Cillian could follow a ridge for extended period of time, he could get much closer to civilization without direct exposure to the sun.  and, as Issac had already considered, he was more likely to run in to another person, and there was a good chance that whatever person that was would know Cillian and go out of his way to help him.  then, there were the daywalkers to be considered: the driver had mentioned them in reference to the Barrens, but not the Rocks.

that settled it.  if Cillian was in either of these places, he was more likely at Mish Rocks.  but, if he was there, he was much more likely to survive.  if he was was at Ish Barrens, and Issac went to the Rocks, Cillian was surely dead.

“take me to Ish Barrens,” Issac said, feeling at once hopeful and  defeated.

**

Ordella sat in the back of the bar, occupied one of two seats at a secluded high-top in a dark corner of the floor.  the place was moderately busy, and she sipped at a glass of sunset and tonic as she gazed over the faces of the occupants — none were familiar.  the band on stage played overly-aggressive music, and did so poorly, to an audience that was largely uninterested.

she’d heard the name of the bar before — Bywel — from a man she knew once long, long ago.  and the name of Sorensen had been associated with it.  she didn’t know exactly what he looked like, but suspected that she might know if she saw him, for a variety of reasons.  no one even close to matching his supposed description was here, though — and she had looked over the faces of all of them.  there was one kid, at the bar, who she guessed was not a daysider.  but he was certainly not Sorensen.  she would have bet her life on it.

a shaft of blue light cut into the dimly-lit room.  a young couple walked down the steps, arm in arm, and the door closed behind them, returning Bywel to its usual darkness.  she watched them closely for a moment.  she determined quickly that they were dayside kids, perhaps in their late teens.  from what she knew, they’d probably been working in or around the mines for a few years now, though their hours weren’t as long or as hard as their parents’.  it was only a matter of time, she knew, that they would be living the dreary and ultimately static life of a dayside miner.  they knew it, too, but today they were enjoying themselves.  she followed them with her eyes for a moment.  they stopped at the bar, and spoke to the outworlder.  he tried to blow them off, but the boy, probably trying to impress his girlfriend, persisted.  it became clear what the boy’s objective was: a cigarette, and the outworlder surrendered one.  the couple moved on, disappeared behind a section of wall, and Ordella turned her focus back to her bubbling drink.

her projection disk vibrated in her pocket, and she pulled it out.  a yellow light indicated that she had received a video message, and she played it.  it was her boss, Gavin Hoyt, exuding imperativeness with all his usual excitement.  it was someone else’s fault that her photog had not shown up yet, of course, but he had gone to great lengths and much personal sacrifice to correct the problem.  more than likely, he’d fucked it up in the first place, but he would never admit it.  in any case, the photog was en route to the station as of the time of the recording, which was about an hour ago, and would land at Gorshen plant in about four hours — a brief interlude for equipping and debriefing was necessary, of course, though she had gotten neither a full equipping or much more than an outline debriefing.  after the message concluded — a falsely encouraging cliché from Hoyt rounded it out — she clicked the disk off and shoved it back in to her pocket.  four hours, she thought.  the arrival of the photog meant the beginning of a stint that was likely to last eighteen hours.  sleep wasn’t that big of an concern — she’d gotten quite a bit of rest at the Gorshen Hotel the night before, seedy as it was.  but the arrival of the photog also meant a definite end to her stay on dayside — once they were done shooting, it was back to the Ring, back to KlinComm, back to shooting monotonous, inconsequential daily bits for the consumption of the planetary elite.  four hours. she wondered if she could find Sorensen in that amount of time or even…him.

she heard the clatter of a barstool falling to the ground.  she looked up: it was the outwolder.  he was whirling away from his seat, rushing toward the door with blind speed.  her eyes flicked across the room, looking for something more relevant, though she doubted she would find anything.  then she considered.  an outworlder.  at Bywel.  what would an outworlder be doing at Bywel?

she felt her projection disk vibrated once again.  she pulled it out of her pocket.  a green light told her she had an incoming communication.  she set the disk on the table, slid her glass of sunset and tonic behind it, out of view of whoever was calling her.  she pressed the answer contact.

“this is Ordella,” she said pleasantly as the image coalesced. she hoped the focused microphone would conceal the repulsive noise of the supremely untalented rock band blasting their cacophonous “music” though the bar.

the visage of Gavin Hoyt materialized, then said, “goddam, Ordella, you’re finally picking up?”

“sir?” she asked as innocently as possible.

“i’ve been ringing you every ten minutes for the last hour!”

“i just got your last message, sir.  about the photog.  i’m all set for him.”

“well, that’s fucking great to hear.  that message is two hours old.  jesus.  you know, if you hadn’t done so much good work for me in the past, Ordella, and if i didn’t like you so much…jesus christ.  they’re all uptight about this Gorshen business, kid.  we’ve got to get something good on this.  something that works for, you know, something that works. you got me?”

“yes, sir.  i understand.”

“i fucking hope so.  he’ll be there in two hours — would have been there two hours ago if i’d had my way.  he’s getting written up, mind you.  and you will to if this shit doesn’t turn out.  okay?”

“i understand.”

and then, with just a hint of kindness, “alright, kid.  talk to you in a day.”

the line clicked off, and Ordella once again closed the projection disk and placed it back in her pocket.  two hours ago. that meant the photog was going to be here in two hours, not four.  her time was becoming short.  two hours.

she scanned the bar once more.  nothing.  she looked toward the door.  the outworlder, whoever he was, was gone.  the outworlder. there was something strange about him.  and, she had no other reason for staying here.  she headed toward the door.

a moment later, she swung Bywel’s upper door open, stepped out into the burning light of Gorshen’s sun.  she heard a noise to her right, saw a groundcar speeding away.  she looked across the near horizon of buildings: there was no one standing, no groundcars waiting.  she looked back to the receding groundcar, decided that the outworlder must have been in it.  “shit,” she said aloud.  she ran her hands through her hair, felt the sweat glands on her forehead start to kick in.  it was an immediate and natural response under the dayside sun; she knew that well, despite her infrequent travels here.  she retreated back to the wall of Bywel’s entrance, leaned against it, slid down into a sitting position.  she felt without hope.

then, another groundcar pulled up to the bar.  it slowed to a stop, and door slid open.  a man paid the driver, then stepped out.  the groundcar sped off, leaving a twisting cloud of dust in its wake.  Ordella ignored it, supposing that the man was just another drunk miner going to Bywel for his nightly fix.  then, she noticed something.  he was tall. not that there were not tall miners, but…there really weren’t tall miners.  not tall, slim miners, anyway.  if they were tall, they were built like Ring warehouses.  and this one was walking steadily.  it was him.  it had to be.  she called out his name.

**

there was another knock at the door.  this one was more insistent.  then, there was the thumping of a heavy metal hammer on the door: they were not waiting for an answer.  it had been moments since he’d gotten what he believed to be a response from nightside.  it was a long, long quest, now finally near completion.  but they were here.

he fought off panic.  he had barricaded the door before beginning his project, leaving himself a surreptitious exit directly through the wall to the light of dayside.  he had not spent three years in this room to not have a contingency.

Gorshen Plant was destroyed, but his hopes were not.  the hopes of the rebellion were not destroyed, and they were further reinforced now that he knew for sure that there nightsiders on the same frequency.

the banging became more intense.  the hazardous-materials teams were sure to get in now; it was only a matter of time.  he rolled onto his back, slid underneath his desk, pulled six plugs out of the wall.  he pulled himself out from underneath the desk, stood, reached behind it, pulled the recently unplugged cabled out from behind it.  he bundled them up around the radio, headed for his exit hatch.  he stopped just before he reached the hatch, stepped back into his office.  he considered it, knew that he would never see it again.  he had spent hours doing research here.  he had spent hours managing miners here.  everything that he was to dayside had started here.  he wondered if everything he meant to dayside would end here.  he pulled open the top drawer of a desk that had moved into the middle of the room at a forty-five degree angle as a result of the explosion, pulled a tall, thin vile out.  there were benefits to being a scientist, he thought.

among his radio work, he’d also pursued a bit of chemistry that would defeat the best of gas masks.  he had hoped to withhold its unveiling until a later date, but it seemed his survival depended on it now.  he grasped the vial in his hand, then tossed it heavily on the ground.

“breathe that, fools,” he said, as he slipped out of the hatch.

as the hazardous-materials workers charged in, their suits did not protect them. one by one, they fell unconscious.  Sorensen knew that they would come to with nothing more than a bad headache in less than an hour.

*

two hours later, Sorensen was on his way to Bywel.  he had deposited his radio at a safe place, and, after taking a series of unconnected groundcars, was sure that he’d lost anyone who might be tailing him.  it had been too long since he’d communicated with either Issac or Cillian, and he regretted that.  if they were to be easily found, they would be found here.

his groundcar slowed to a stop, and he exited, paid the cabbie.  he made his way towards Bywel’s door.  he heard a voice from behind him: it said his name.  he assumed that he was hearing things, and kept walking.  then, he heard his name again.  he turned.  standing in the center of the sunburnt street was a beautiful, angry, blond woman.

“Sorensen?” she asked for the third time.

“yes,” he said noncommittally.  he observed her curly, blond hair, which was very uncharacteristic for dayside women.  then, he noticed her pants — they clung tightly to her legs, drastically defying dayside fashions.  and yet, she knew his name.  then it hit him: she could be only one person.  “Ordella?”  there was shock in his voice.

“Sorensen?”  she strode toward him, desperation on her face.  “is Cillian still alive?”

“i don’t know,” he said, honestly.  ”but i know how we can find out.  come with me.”