Part 29

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Orren held her pistol upright and looked down a path leading through overgrown foliage and down into some sort of hidden building. Looking to her other side, she gestured her head slightly toward the ornate central structure that must be prime quarters overlooking the principal biodome gardens. She then looked directly to the horizontally challenged Nebari lady patiently waiting for her to continue.

"The central building?" Orren tried prompting Tannac to talk. Tannac's heavy black eyes only stared back, perhaps busy with her own thoughts. "Right then, you search that way, I'll search this. I can't believe an operation this important is down to such insipid co-ordination."

"They all seem to do that, don't they?" Tannac dryly replied.

Orren made to reply, but realized she was right. "They do" she marveled at herself. "You are going then?"

"No."

"Don't be ridiculous" Orren looked as if amazed that everything had gone mad. "This is a massive complex, so it's best if we each take areas. Why am I explaining this to you? Go that way" Orren gestured with her gun, turned and began down the path toward the concealed building, halting a moment later when she noticed Tannac casually following her instead. Slowly turning, the sebacean gave an annoyed glance to the sharp and nearly white Nebari shadowing her. "Are you going to be hard to get rid of then?"

Tannac narrowed her eyes and smiled a broad, lazy grin. Orren widened her eyes, muttering something to herself about recalcitrant Nebari and continuing with her well armed shadow. "Unacceptable co-ordination for any operation of even the most remote importance" Orren muttered.

"If competence was the goal, then I wouldn't leave it to a distracted, out of place sebacean with no familiarity of the area and a wasted tink-head" Tannac pointed out, checking her pulse rifle while they continued. She bumped into Orren when the sebacean suddenly stopped.

"Why are they?"

"They? For one reason- in Nerri's Resistance Militia, incompetence is the rule not the exception. No one in its ranks is remotely ideal for the Cause, but then, there aren't many living who are. Bursamen is probably the best member on this world. I think he would mature into an excellent servant to the Cause, if he lives long enough to temper his imprudence."

"You?" Orren asked.

"I'm frelled, and anyway, I'm not from here or Nerri's Resistance Militia. I just fell into helping this sorry outfit while I circle the drain. They pulled me in, really. I need a smoke. Bursamen's kind of cute. I liked his big needy eyes. I suspect we might find out the other reason if this goes badly. So we will see then."

"It will go badly then?" Orren asked at the entrance. Tannac looked at Orren as if wondering what else Orren could possibly have been thinking. Orren sneered to herself and entered. To the surprise of neither, there was no sign of security. The unprepossessing entrance led to a nondescript corridor. Empty rooms branched from the corridor, which led the pair on an extended walk.

"Where is she?" Orren whispered to herself.

"Where is anyone?" Tannac added.

"Exactly" Orren added. "The central structure then?" Orren asked again.

"Not there" Tannac replied in a hollow voice.

Orren followed Tannac's distant look to one side. "All right then" Orren nodded and continued ahead.

"Not going to insist on every particular?" Tannac seemed amused that an unwanted interrogation wasn't happening.

"No" Orren replied, more like she was stating fact than a choice. "Is there some reason I should, then?"

"No reason, stomper hips. Looks like I picked a bad day to stop smoking."

Orren stopped after a few moments and turned to Tannac. Tannac backed against the wall. "All right. What did you find in the central structure?"

"Madness" Tannac replied with wide eyes and the trace of a smile. "Weird dijma" she leered.

"Weird dijma" Orren repeated, only flatly. "That's almost interesting isn't it. The door at the end of the corridor to my left should lead out. I suggest we find another area to search." Orren continued to the door, and it led outside into the biodome with no sign of trouble in sight. "Do you know Chiana, the Sister, then?" Orren asked.

"I need a smoke. I thought I was the Sister. But I recovered" Tannac simply replied. "I wonder. What is the Sister to you?"

"An assignment" Orren seemed to chose her words carefully. "More critical to anti-Establishment interests than most people understand."

"Do you know what the Sister means to Fenas?" Tannac wanly frowned, rummaging through her pockets.

"Many people appear to have taken the Sister as a sort of spiritual partner, or some sort of representation of the simple individual becoming empowered with immortality, to prove that individuality will survive and overcome the Establishment's conformity" Orren summarized. "A nice sentiment with ridiculous connotations."

"You find Fena hard to understand?" Tannac put a drop of liquid from a vial she carried into some sort of tube, set a lighter to it and helped herself to a drag of smoke. "Some people need the hope she offers. Some simply like the idea of someone being thought special. There are numbers of reasons."

"Yes I understand that" Orren functionally replied.

"Do you?" Tannac blew out a smoky breath. "She is my....everything."

The sebacean scowled and swallowed. Then she narrowed her eyes on the Nebari. "You're in love with her?"

Tannac calmly smiled, but left a question in her face. "No" she decided, checking her other pulse pistols. "No I pity her, she can't be blamed. I- and others, I think, are in love with things we want to believe- all these things that have been imagined in her name!" Tannac narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "I wouldn't recognize her to see her and know her even less. It is all such a parody, but it's been my life."

"You'll be all right. You'll like her fine" Orren told her so flatly that Tannac had to wonder if she was ordering her or stating her opinion.

Tannac looked at Orren for a moment's realization that she'd heard the brusque woman's kind of friendliness. "Isn't it odd? You'd probably be right thinking the real Sister and I had little to nothing in common."

"Less than you'd imagined and more than you'd thought. At least that's how it is when you love somebody." Orren stopped and creased her brow in thought. "I think." She shrugged. "For me."

"Oh you're in love?" Tannac was amused. "He or she?"

"He" Orren gave a pointed look back at Tannac.

"Pity. You'd make such a fine man for another woman."

Orren stopped and turned to one side, not quite looking at Tannac. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"We're in the body we're in, but as for ourselves, not all of us conform well to what people think a male or a female is. If you were to chose a body appropriate to the person underneath the trained exterior? It's at least as true for sebaceans. Half the sebacean women I've seen are women, and half the sebacean women I've seen are men. But then, half the Nebari men I've seen are women. You've got more manliness than half the men I know."

Orren turned sideways in thought. "How horrible" she remarked, starting along the path again toward another structure.

---

Fire danced in Larran's eyes, fixed on the sight of the flames rising to Chiana's skin. His gaze trailed down to the fire set to the combustible chemical-impregnated bands of the containment tube and along the flames where they began to dance near her skin. His eyes jumped to Chiana, eager to catch any clue of movement.

"Do not deceive yourself that I would not burn you" Larran huskily warned as near her ear as he dared to get. "It's time to cease your foolish games, or I promise you will not enjoy the consequences."

Skarle peeled the wet wrapping fabric from John's body and poured fresh cold water and burn healing agents onto the slightly reddened skin of John's back. Some water and treatment not accidentally spilled onto John's scalded manhood, which Larran had ordered be left untreated. The Bannik quickly wrapped John before Larran could turn his attention toward the human again.

Chiana's stiffened body made no response to the flames, now sizzling the sweat as the skin released it. Larran angrily signaled Skarle to extinguish the fires. Skarle rushed to pass Chiana back out of the tube and extinguish the flames.

"Why!" Larran shouted to Oshana, crouched into a corner between the emptied containment tubes that had held the wretched products of his ruthless experiments in his attempts own the Sister.

"She's not there, he's not there" Oshana looked to him with eyes wide. "Now."

"Then I will go where she is and put a stop to this pointless evasion. Now." Larran looked back to Skarle, who began to wrap Chiana's steaming body. "When you're done, leave her naked. Let them see their so-called Sister in a new light." He glared back to Oshana. "Come. Do not delay."

Oshana rose to a stand, looking to Larran with dread. "She may not be there.....either. Or! She could still be there and- and come out when you go in!"

"In which case" Larran placed his fingers under Oshana's chin "you will divert her if you wish to keep her safe, do you understand?" Oshana looked down and nodded. Larran snarled and pulled off her mask. He smiled with a lustful glee into the light that spilled from her while his spirit separated from his body.

---

The studio audience held its breath on cue. Chiana blinked at the hoops of fire she was to run through. There was a frightening sense of reality to the flames. "Why- why do we, you need to do this again?" Chiana stalled.

John kept a forced smile over her head at the audience and answered between his teeth. "Because I get a sudden feeling we've got to stay on the air. I don't know why. Something is going on out there and we'd better stay in here. You were interested in this stunt a moment ago."

"Y-yeah, that you'd think of this, didn't, didn't think you ha-had it in you, mm, but the ah, the flames are ah really, kind of real."

"I got the idea from you, well except maybe the microbikini. You did it with nothing. Remember? Ready Pip?"

"Well n-no, and I'm n-not naked yet, I've got this dren on" Chiana adjusted the top of the microbikini. The odd so-called clothing John had called for fell apart in her hands. She looked at John.

John scratched the back of his head a moment, then looked back at her. "Ready Pip?"

"N-not ah...."

"Here we go" John took her arm and shoved her down the ramp toward the hoops.

"Finally" Sputnik said, running alongside Chiana.

"Wha?" Chiana looked at Sputnik, clothed from neck to toe in a shiny leather costume of orange and red flames. Sputnik took her hand, and together they leapt in through the hoops.

An endless series of hoops kept passing around them, with Chiana and Sputnik hurtling through in place as if flying. The heat from the flames was intense and slowly increasing. Chiana swallowed.

"Sporting, isn't it?" Harvey appeared along Chiana's other side, wearing the gear and helmet of one of Chiana's favorite humans she remembered meeting on Crichton's home world, what humans called a fire-fighter. "We could be in for a little bit of trouble if this doesn't end soon! Are you certain you ran and jumped with enough speed?"

"Yeah but ah, there were only four hoops, not a frelling billion" Chiana pointed out.

"The inferior trelk didn't do it right, of course" Sputnik glared at Chiana before looking past to Harvey. "It's going to burn and force her out."

Chiana returned a mock glare and let go of Sputnik's hand. Sputnik began drifting toward the flames. She screamed. Harvey grabbed his helmet on his head. "This calls for a rescue!" he began drifting under Chiana and toward Sputnik. "Take my hand, my flaming beauty!" Harvey grabbed her hand, but Sputnik continued falling into the flames and screaming.

Harvey grabbed for one of Chiana's legs. "I don't think so" Chiana tried to kick Harvey away instead. He grabbed the belt of the microbikini. To Chiana's amazement, the tiny strap didn't break, and wouldn't break even when she tried breaking it. Chiana struggled to get Harvey's hand free while all three of them began drifting closer to the flames.

Chiana blinked in amazement as an end to the row of hoops finally appeared ahead. Reaching down, Chiana grabbed Harvey's wrist and pulled with all her strength, hurtling them all back up, through the last of the hoops, and into a sudden depthless black.

---

Both Chiana and Harvey fell onto their backs as everything disappeared around them. "Where is she!" Harvey yelled, frantically looking around for Sputnik. His gaze passed over Chiana and stuck. Her askew stare sobered him enough to look around and ask a larger question. "Where is....John? Crichton?"

Harvey worked his way onto his feet. The floor that he guessed was below him wasn't visible, being of the same black void that encompassed them. After standing he noticed his floor wasn't level with the floor Chiana was laying on. "Crichton?" he continued in a less confident voice. "You can't hide from us....."

"Yeah" Chiana turned over onto her side and rested her head on her hand. "Crichton's going to play hide and seek in his own head." Harvey watched Chiana float en situ until she was laying vertically to him. "Got a better theory, squatter lizard?"

"I" Harvey looked down and aside "must admit this looks bad. I've never been this....disenfranchised from him before."

"Well I've been. But then I usually live in my own head" Chiana pushed herself up to arms length from her vertical floor while Harvey stared blankly. "So. Is this the bad guy's doing or what?"

"We must assume so" Harvey paced around her. Chiana propped her head up on her hand while lying on her vertical floor watching Harvey pace around her horizontally. "We must also anticipate that, when his mind recovers cognizance, he may not be aware of events in the recent past, including our presence."

"Ah yeah we'll go hang out somewhere else. Your mind or mine, creepy? Oh that's right, you don't have a mind" Chiana smiled with her eyes widened at him.

Harvey raised a slow, dry look at her. "Oh not much of one, I admit; considering I share Crichton's" Harvey growled.

"For what it's worth it looks like you've got this one all to yourself" Chiana added.

"I often do" Harvey assured her "whenever he focuses his obsessive tendencies upon you" he sneered.

"Oo often?" Chiana's mouth formed a tiny circle before she frowned, impressed.

Harvey approached her and leaned close. "And why aren't you alarmed?"

"Doesn't seem real to me."

Harvey looked aside then back to her. "Really?"

"You" Chiana stood, horizontally to Harvey. "You don't notice anything different?"

"Aside from the obvious, I would have to say it's remarkably undramatic."

"That's....because I'm stuck with you. Look. The bottom's this way. And you're walking that way. Yours your way, mine my way, right? It's usually his way. We're somewhere else, leatherface."

"More likely he is somewhere else, incapacitated in fact. We must be prepared to-"

"-You prepare!" Chiana kicked him, making him spin to stand in her direction. "I'm going to look around."

"Ridiculous, if we become lost-"

"-And that's a problem?"

"Hey" they both stopped at the sound of John's voice and looked around. A distance away, what looked like a square window opened, revealing a close view of a gigantic John, shoulders up to his forehead on his right side, looking in at them. "Knock it off in there, I'm trying to concentrate."

"Hey" Chiana piped up. She started walking toward him but he wasn't getting any closer. "What, did you lock us in here?!"

John thought a moment. "I don't know. Gimme a minute. Just hang tight." John closed the window.

Chiana looked back at Harvey, who looked to her. "Larran" they both muttered in dread.

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