Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business RAINBOW GIRL - Book 8 - THANAR

CHAPTER ONE: RED SIGELLIAN

Dori spent very little time on Xolnar, only long enough to determine that her mother’s brother, Gaal Jendrich was still alive, and living in a long-term-care facility called Stillwater on the planet Thanar. She arranged to stay in a hotel near the facility for a few days.

Gaal Jindrich looked much older than his eighty-some years. His body long and wiry, his face was a mass of wrinkles. His head was shaved bald, but he had a couple of days of grey stubble on his face. His skin looked like it had once been tough and leathery, but had now faded to a pasty yellow-white. He sat slumped in a hoverchair, but straightened his back when Dori introduced herself.

“Andres’ and Eva’s little girl, all grown up,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in… well, never.”

“I wonder what you could tell me about my Mah,” said Dori. “I never really knew that her well.”

“I didn’t know her that well myself,” said Gaal Jindrich. “I was fourteen when I left home; she was just a toddler back then. I actually knew your father much better.”

“Really?” said Dori, surprised. “How did you know my father?”

“We was nearer the same age,” said Gaal Jindrich. “Andy was a couple years younger, so he looked up to me, like. We knocked around together for a couple years, working odd jobs; then before either of us turned twenty, we went into business together. Prospectors, you know. We’d hunt out and mine rare minerals and metals, and even not-so-rare metals, from various asteroids and burnt-out suns around the galaxy. It was a fair living, for awhile. Then we discovered Superboy Planet.”

“Superboy Planet?” said Dori. “What in the world is that?”

“Apparently, it was created about a thousand years ago as a monument to the Legend of Superman, by some planetary engineers. Nobody knows who. A bad job, though. They used a lot of weird, unstable materials in the construction—I suppose the engineers were from before when the art of building planets was pretty much figured out. Anyways, the whole surface of Superboy Planet thermonuclearly fused into Sigellian. Nasty stuff, but right useful, if you’re an engineering physicist. Valuable, too. We mined it a little, but it was a whole lot more than we could handle. Eventually sold the whole claim to a big mining concern near Betelgeuse. Got a pretty penny for it, too.”

“After that, we both wanted to settle down. Your father married Eva, my little sister. I though she was too young for him. I married Natalia Kovski, who was closer to our age. Your Aunt Nat and I bought this place here: Stillwood Retirement Home and Geriatric Hospital. Nat worked as the head nurse here for a lot of years, and audited the statements we got from the accountants. Me, I just sat back and collected the money. We came to live here ourselves, about twenty-five years ago. That was the plan for our old age. Living together in our own Retirement Home. Your Aunt Nat passed away only about a year ago, just a little bit before I heard your father died.”

“Did you have any kids?” asked Dori.

“Nope. Never took the anti-dote, if you know what I mean. A flock of children just wasn’t in our long-term plan.”

Gaal Jindrich sat up a little higher in his chair. “Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He guided the hoverchair through the halls, until he came to a small, private room. There was a single bed, a table, two chairs, and a small dresser.

“Sigellian is interesting stuff,” he said. “Not too bad for regular folks, although it still ought to be kept in a lead-lined box. But for people infused with hyper-bio-energy, it’s deadly.”

He pulled a small box out of one of the drawers in the dresser. It contained four tiny flakes of faintly glowing metal, one ruby-red, one gold, one sapphire-blue, and one silver-white.

“Pure sigellian,” said Gaal Jindrich. “All four isotopes. Very rare stuff. Sigellian radiation corrupts H-B energy. The red variety causes bizarre, unpredictable effects. The gold variety just plain neutralizes the energy’s effects on living organisms. The blue stuff, the most common isotope, can cause weakness, sickness, and even death. White is even worse than blue, for plants. Suppresses the quantum-'cheating' efficiency of chlorophyll, and the other –phylls, kills them almost instantly.”

Dori was feeling nauseous looking at the sigellian. There was a buzzing in her skull, her head ached, and she was having trouble focusing. Gaal Jindrich looked up at her in alarm.

“Oops! Sorry,” he said, snapping the lead-lined box closed. “Who would have thought that Andres and Eva’s little girl would turn out to be meta-human.”

Dori’s head cleared, and her stomach felt better immediately. Her head still hurt, though. “I didn’t think…” she paused. “Well, of course I should have known, but…”

Gaal Jindrich gestured towards his small cleanroom. “You’d better take a look in the mirror,” he said.

Dori had grown bat-ears.

“The effects usually only last one to three days,” Gaal Jindrich re-assured her. “Same as the gold sigellian. Whatever hyper-bio-abilities you had though, they’re pretty much shut down for awhile. Now don’t be angry with an old man, will you?”

“I think I need to go back to my hotel and lie down,” said Dori. “But there is so much more I want to ask. I never imagined my Dah as a young man… Can I come visit you tomorrow?”

“I could do with a little lie-down myself,” Gaal Jindrich admitted. “Come back any time. I’ve got nothing scheduled tomorrow except a Dominoes tournament.”

CHAPTER TWO: FAMILY TIES

Dori returned to the hotel. The effects of the red sigellian were progressive; by evening, her eyes were affected, and her fingers had become webbed. She purchased a pair of wrap-around sunglasses, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant. She received surprisingly few inquisitive stares; most people, she assumed, just saw her as another visiting alien. She went back to her room, lay down, got up, paced the floor, and finally decided to check out the night life on Thanar. Locally, there was a bar, a pub, another bar, and a bar with a small dance club attached. She decided to hit them all.

As she sat quietly nursing a drink, she noticed something. It was as though she had had quiet voices in her head for years, and they were all silent now. She felt not unlike the way she had felt with Irveang—at peace. Her ‘Rainbow Girl’ powers were gone.

She stayed out until the bars closed, then walked the empty, darkened streets. Her hands now had claws, and she could feel fur growing down her cheeks. She went to bed when the sun rose.

In the late afternoon, she forced herself out of bed, soniced and dressed. She wanted to speak with Uncle Gaal again.

“People will mistake you for a Langstromite,” he said.

“Tell me about my father,” said Dori. “He and Mah never seemed rich. What happened to his share of the Superboy Planet claim?”

“Well, it seemed like a lot of money at first, but split two ways, and after taxes, it didn’t seem so much. Not like either of us were set for a life of leisure, you know. Your father bought out my shares in the cruiser we used for Space Prospecting, and took Eva to Xolnar, planning to put his mining skills to work there in the pluridium mines. Worked out OK, I guess. Him and Eva would save up all year, then take the cruiser out to some exotic planet for a week or two vacation. I know he did buy a nice little house there, and they could afford to have kids. You, in particular. Then Eva got sick. Your father blamed himself, I know. At first, he thought maybe she’d picked it up on one of their vacations, then he started blaming pluridium radiation.”

“Pluridium isn’t radioactive,” said Dori. “Just highly toxic, when unalloyed.”

“Yeah, well, he still blamed himself,” said Gaal Jindrich. “Not really rational about it. I sorta lost touch with him after Eva passed, but I think he might have spent more money than they could afford trying to get her well. Maybe spent a lot of money trying to get himself well, too. Clinical depression, they call it, you know?”

“What ever happened to your cruiser?” Dori asked.

“No idea. If he didn’t still have it when he died, then he just must have sold it,” Gaal Jindrich replied. “He had a little case of sigellian flakes, too, just like mine. I thought you would have recognized it, that’s why I wanted you to see it. Guess not. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Uncle Gaal, I’d like to go visit Aunt Nat’s grave, if you don’t mind,” said Dori.

“I don’t mind at all,” said Gaal Jindrich. “In fact, it would be nice if you would take me there with you. I haven’t been since the funeral.”

“Can we set a date for tomorrow morning?” Dori asked, as she saw the sun setting outside the Stillwater window.

“Right after breakfast,” said Gaal Jindrich. “When I first set up this place, I made sure they had facilities for a hearty breakfast. I guess hoped Nat and me would live long enough to end up here someday, and a big breakfast was our personal preference.”

By sunset that night, Dori was craving seafood. Fortunately, the hotel restaurant had an adequate assortment available.

“It is certainly less pleasant being a fish-eating batwoman than a Xolnaran bird-of-paradise,” Dori thought to herself. She tried her best to get some sleep that night, but ended up watching a lot of holo on her hotel room’s wallscreen. She picked up Uncle Gaal early in the morning in a rented a semi-spherical Thanaran vehicle. He had been cleaned up and dressed up by the nursing staff, and looked pretty good.

“I have been reading up on you, Dori Aandraison,” her uncle Gaal said. “You are quite the celebrity within your little circle. Miss Xolnar. Socialite. Author. Resistance Fighter with the Legion against the Niedrich Regime, and during the Dominator Infiltration. Fought in the Khund Invasion on Xolnar. Peace-Prize Nominated First Contact Ambassador for the United Planets. An impressive resume. You must lead an interesting life.”

“I get bored easily,” said Dori, truthfully. “And now you can add, ‘Transformed Into A Bat-Headed Alien’.”

“I should take holos, and send them to the Metropolis Society Pages,” said Gaal.

“I’ll send them myself,” said Dori. “It should cause quite a stir.”

Natalia Kovsky’s headstone was plain, just her name. A second, unmarked headstone lay close beside it.

“They wanted to know if I wanted my name on the thing,” Gaal Jindrich noted. “I thought, ‘Why rush things?’ But I did go off the Rejuvium after Nat died, and changed my medlog to ‘do not resuscitate’. Didn’t know I still had family out there. It’s nice you came to see me, cheers me up to know there’s a world outside of Stillwater.”

“I should have come sooner,” Dori said sincerely. “There’s so much I never knew about my parents. Who knew my father had been a Space Prospector? Who knew my parents had such a wanderlust?”

“They must have taken you with them, for at least a couple years’ worth of vacations. I can’t think they would have dropped their plans to see the galaxy just because you were born.”

“I honestly don’t remember,” said Dori. “You don’t know where they spent their vacations during those years, do you?”

“I might have remembered once, forty years ago,” said Gaal Jindrich. “They sent me a holocard every Xolnaran year; but who knows whatever happened to them all. Nat was the one who did the scrapbooking.”

“I don’t know, I thought being here on Thanar, seeing you, and Aunt Nat’s grave… I guess I thought it might mark the beginning or end of something for me, but everything feels just the same. It was really nice to meet you, though. I’ll visit again when I can. Did you and Aunt Nat ever want to see the Universe like Mah and Dah?”

“Not really. Things at home are interesting enough. The world just keeps on happening,” said Gaal Jindrich. “We had to keep making breakfast at Stillwater every morning, even during the Daxamite invasion, even during Mordu’s zombie attack, even back when Earth declared war on the rest of the United Planets. Politics baffles me. Even when Nat passed away… we had to get breakfast ready the next morning.”

“Come on, Uncle Gaal, I’ll take you home,” said Dori. “You really like living at Stillwater?”

“It was built to my personal specifications,” said Gaal Jindrich.

CHAPTER THREE: LEAVING THANAR

Dori went back to the hotel, and slept until sunset. She skipped dinner for the opportunity to browse downtown while the stores were still open. Kleintown on Thanar, where Stillwater was located, reminded her a good deal of Seventh City on Xolnar, but without the snow. Everything was small, and far out of date. She found a little professional photography studio, and on a whim, had some portraits done. She had a set sent to her house in Sixteenth City on Xolnar, and another set addressed to Algolla Drang, Legion Plaza, Metropolis, Old Town Sector, Earth. This second set she sent unencrypted, although any unscrupulous person might have easily intercepted them. She found a late-night eatery, and had the most delicious Hagra Biscuits she had ever tasted. She went back to bed at sunrise.

Dori woke up about two hours after noon, her normal features fully restored. She rushed out to visit Gaal Jindrich again.

“Little Dori,” Gaal Jindrich cried. “I almost didn’t recognize you. I’ll always remember you as my bat-faced niece.”

She smiled.

“I’ve been thinking. I want to tell you a little something more about your mother,” he said. “She was a troublemaker. Always into mischief. Especially liked to thumb her nose at authority, tweak the establishment. Nothing too outrageous, but my folks said she was always talking back in class, correcting the teacher’s grammar and spelling sometimes. Of course, she was always right. I know one spring, she sent away for packages of wildflower seeds, left a trail of them behind her everywhere she went for a few weeks. In the summer, there were these paths of flowers criss-crossing everywhere she had been around town, popping up on people’s lawns. Some people complained to the Town Hall, but what could they do? She was only a kid.”

Dori smiled. It was funny to think of her Mah as a little kid.

“You take after her,” said Gaal Jindrich. “I’ve had an open search for you on the newsfeed on my Omnicom, ever since I learned what a celebrity you are. Well, you made the society pages again today. You must like the attention.”

“Let me guess,” said Dori. “’Transformed Socialite Secret Advisor for the New Substitutes’? With a byline by Mari Polamar.”

“Something else else like that,” said Gaal Jindrich. “I’m going to let you read it yourself. Mari a friend of yours? You sent her these photos?”

“Not exactly a friend, more of a distant, disagreeable relative. And I didn’t exactly send them to her. But she’s been keeping an eye on me, just like you’ve been now. She just uses sneakier, less public means.”

“Well, I will be keeping an eye on you from now on, Dori,” said Gaal Jindrich. “You’re an interesting one to watch.”

The next day was her last on Thanar. She took the opportunity to walk around downtown during the day, for a change. Outside the window of a pet shop, she noticed a squarish, boxy, scaly green creature with pink wings. A thought struck her. She took out her Omnicom, and made a call.

“Hello, Dori,” said Imra Ranzz. “What are you up to this morning?”

Dori realized she had forgotten to check the relative time on Winath. It was 0530, but Imra seemed up and fully dressed.

“I guess it’s a little early there,” said Dori.

“Not a problem,” said Imra. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’m visiting family on Thanar, and I’ve found something that might interest you and Garth. Do you know they sell Thanaran mobidyx as pets here.”

“Oh, yes, in fact, Dacey already has one,” said Imra. “She lets it fly around the farm during the day, but it always ends up sleeping in her room at night. They’re very useful: as good or better than a cat. They snap up the LBB’s on the wing.”

“LBB’s?” asked Dori.

“Little Brown Birds,” said Imra. “They eat up the seeds at planting time, but the mobidyx scares most of them away. Please don’t send another one, though, but I’m afraid one might end up male, and the other female, and Dacey will start breeding the things. Say, I didn’t know you had family on Thanar.”

“I really didn’t know myself, until I looked into it a little,” said Dori. “It’s been nice here, though.”

“Sometimes, I think I could do with a little less family,” said Imra. “What with the kids, and the Dupes, and so on. Good to hear from you though, don’t be a stranger.”

Dori could hear cries of ‘Mom!’ from the background, and took the hint. “I will certainly see you all later, Imra,” she said.

At the end of the day, Dori gave Uncle Gaal a kiss on his forehead, and headed back to Xolnar.

Garth's kid having a moby dick of outer space for a pet (I assume that's what a Thanaran mobidyx is?) is kind of weirdly cute

Yes!



Although in the reprint issue I own the mobidyx's wings are pinky-magenta, not red.

mobidyx! that was awesome.

Dori's transformation was a nice touch, and I like how she shrewdly sent portraits so that Mari Polamar would intercept them. If Mari's snooping anyway, why not give her what she wants?