Chapter Three Waiting for the Stars
At breakfast the next morning, Braan asked, "So, are you leaving today?"
Her face flushed. She had been hoping to find a way to stick around a little longer. Besides being a good-looking guy, Braan was smart, good company, and she was fascinated with what she had stumbled across here.
"Well... I'd like to stay a little longer, if you don't mind," she answered.
He grinned. "I'd love the company. It's been lonely here for a long time."
"Why are you alone? Isn't all this a lot of work?" she asked, taking a drink of mixed fruit juice. The novelty of it being cold was still amazing.
"I did have a partner, but he was killed trying to keep a pack of wild hungaas from eating all the fruit. It has been a lot of work. I tried to hire some local help, but they were all too afraid." he said. He eyed the young woman seated across from him. "Why are you different?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. All these things you've shown me are incredible, but I know it's all just what people have invented. Nothing to be scared of. Besides, my whole life was in a city of empty houses and wreckage and trash. Seeing and learning new things is exciting."
She really was amazing, he thought.
"Well, if you will help me do some things around here, I'll pay you back by teaching you what I can in the time I have left," he offered.
It was her turn to grin. "Deal."
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They were walking to the rocket when a chittering noise caught their attention. It was coming from the direction of the gate. They ran over to see what it was. Large, red, hard-shelled animals traveling on low legs and armed with snapping pincers greeted their eyes. They were chittering back and forth, looking for food.
Sintel gasped. "Snailbiters!"
Braan looked at her. "You know what they are?"
"Yeah, I came across them while traveling through the Sandy Desert. You can outrun them, but they are persistent, and dangerous if you get trapped. Those pincers can snap you in half."
"Are they after the fruit?"
She shook her head, eyes not leaving the invaders. "As far as I know, they only eat meat."
"And that means us!" he pointed at the unwanted visitors.
The snailbiters had apparently noticed them, because they had changed direction and were heading toward the humans.
"The Nomads showed me that a hard whack on the head between the eyes will kill them," she offered.
"Then let's get some weapons!"
They ran back to the main building, where Sintel got her staff, and Braan got a longer metal pole from a storage room.
They found the creatures milling about the closed door. "We can't go out that way. Over here." Braan led the way out a side door. "You go first, and show me what to do."
They charged the pinkish-red creatures, and Sintel waited until one looked directly at her, giving her a clear shot at its head. Swinging her thick wooden staff hard, it slammed down between the 'biter's eyes, and it immediately quit moving, the pincers dropping to the ground.
There were about a dozen, and it took some time to dispatch them all. Twice Braan was almost a victim of the pincers, but a shout from Sintel alerted him. Finally the task was finished, and Braan brought over a cart, where they loaded the dead.
The 'biters weren't good to eat, so they took them out the gate and some way down the road before dumping them off. As they made their way back, behind them they saw other forest animals taking an interest in the food.
Braan closed the gate behind them, and showed Sintel the trick to opening it from outside.
Putting the cart away, they rested in the dining hall and had some lunch and cold fruit juice.
The afternoon was spent with Braan showing Sintel around the facility. He told her about how the black panels took in the sun's light, and used it to run machines. She grasped the basic concepts, but the details were too much to take in all at once so she just went with it. It was more important to know how to run them than know what made them run.
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Days passed, and Sintel grew more familiar with the advanced technology she had found. Braan taught her his language and alphabet, which as a seasoned traveler, she picked up quickly.
When the orbits of the ships overhead permitted, they watched them sail by. The cargo rocket finally met up with the other part and they had joined together. That made Braan very happy. Everything was fine; it was just waiting for him.
When the Goddess rose, he brought out a telescope and showed her the shapes of the land and water there. He pointed out a tiny prick of light near a shoreline that he said was their new city. She looked at both him and the new land with wonder.
During the day she helped him with various chores, closing up and locking away things to be left behind. There were no more animal attacks or visitors.
Many evenings they sat and watched the stars, talking about anything and everything, such as her life in Ishtar, the people she had met, where Scales might have been taken. He told her of the city his people had built, and the wonders still found there, even though they were breaking down over time, and no one was left to repair them.
They climbed the ladder and Braan showed her the inside of the rocket. Behind the controls there was a small living space for two, matching the two chairs in front. He assured her he could control it by himself.
When she asked about the upstairs room, he said "That is where information about the rockets comes in. Sintel, I trust you,
so if you go up there, PLEASE don't touch anything. It's important."
When she did go up, it was only as far as sticking her head above the floor. She saw tables, chairs, books and papers, and other things she didn't recognize. She shook her head and went back down.
Some twelve days after her arrival, Braan took her to a locked metal door in the cliff behind the building. On it was carved,
in Braan's language, "Caution: Dangerous Materials Inside".
"What's this?" she asked.
"Our library. The collection of everything my people learned over millennia, kept safe until it can be used again," he said,
pulling out a key.
She was puzzled. "A library? Then why have that written on the door?"
He smiled. "Knowledge is power, and can be dangerous according to the use it is put to."
She chuckled. "Never thought of that."
"I'm showing you this because someone needs to know. The only thing I ask is that, if nothing improves for people, then at some point in your life you tell someone else who can be trusted with the secret, until you or they judge the time is right,
and the knowledge can be used." He offered the key, which was a plain piece of stamped metal with a hole on the other end.
"You... would trust ME with this?" she said with wonder, looking at the key. She made no move to take it.
"Yes, I would," he said, "You are smart, brave, bold, and not afraid of new things, even if you don't know what they are. I think you are the ideal person to make this decision."
She hesitated, thinking. "I'm still searching for Scales. What if I lose the key on my travels?"
"There are six more copies hidden in safe places in this valley," he answered, "If you accept I'll show you."
"Let me think about it first," she said.
"I understand. This is a huge responsibility," he nodded.
They spent the afternoon gathering fruit in the wild garden. Sintel had just put an armload in the cart, when she suddenly sat down where she was, and cried. Braan dropped his gatherings and ran to her.
"What happened? Are you bitten?" he asked kneeling down beside her.
She looked at him. "I'm just a simple, dirty, ignorant... barbarian. How can you even think of trusting me with... what is literally the key to the future of the whole world?"
Relieved, he sighed and smiled. "Sintel, you are an extraordinary young woman. If I didn't think you could handle the responsibility, I wouldn't have offered it to you." He stood up.
She looked up at him. "You really believe that?"
"Yes." He offered her a hand, which she took and stood up.
She held out her own hand. "I accept."
He gave her the key, and she tied a thong through the hole in the back, and secured it in her hip pouch.
"Thank you," he said, bowing slightly.
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That evening, Sintel took a bath, and afterwards emptied her backpack on the table in her room. There at the bottom, folded carefully, was a pale blue night shift she had rarely worn. It had been her mother's, and one of the few things she had to remember her by.
Putting it on, she gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, swiped at her hair, and left the room.
Going to Braan's room, she knocked lightly, and a moment later it opened. They gazed at each other for a long second, then he moved aside to let her in. The door closed behind him.