Queen of Their Colony (Kindred Tales)

Leaving the three of them standing in the middle of the cavern, she crossed over to the glowing green door on the wall. Instead of a door knob, this one had a latch but when she tried to pull on it, her hand passed right through.

“Just like with the other door,” Terra muttered to herself.

But even if she’d been able to grab the latch, she doubted she would have been able to open the door. Because just above it was a kind of combination lock—a complicated-looking one with four dials—one with numbers, one with letters, and two with symbols she had never seen.

“Wow. Okay, let’s see how we solve this.”

Terra slapped the door and, sure enough, glowing letters began to appear on its surface just as they had on the door leading out of DY-12.

“To open the door, it takes four,” she read aloud. “Okay, four what? All four of us?”

But then she looked lower and what she saw made her groan.

Right below the single glowing sentence were four more lines—but these weren’t sentences. At least, not literary ones. They were mathematical equations but even Terra, who had passed honors calculus with flying colors, couldn’t make heads or tails of them. That was because many of the symbols were ones she’d never even seen before. The first equation looked something like this:

A/2-???-?=2%?????? > ??&??BX??=?

And they only got harder from there. The other three equations were even more complicated-looking and Terra was certain she couldn’t even begin to solve them.

“But I bet I know who can,” she said to herself. They had needed Tem to open the first door. This door looked like a job for Rive—the Brain of the colony.

“Rive? Rive, come here,” she called, still staring at the glowing equations. Then she remembered that the Monstrum were all stoned out of their minds. “Oh, right,” she muttered.

Turning away from the green door, she went to get Rive, who was frozen in place exactly where she’d left him. Terra had been distracted earlier, but now she was struck by the look on his face—he looked like a man experiencing something so terrible he couldn’t even speak about it.

“Oh, Rive, honey! Are you all right?”

Terra reached up and took his face in her hands, tilting his head down, she looked into his eyes.

For once, his oculars were completely clear and she could see that his pupils were pinpoints of pure fear. It seemed like he was looking right through her.

“Rive?” she said again, shaking him. “Rive, look at me! See me! I’m right here!”

“T-terra?” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes focusing on her at last. “Oh Goddess, is that really you?”

“Yes, honey—it’s me.”

She felt absurdly protective of him. Yes he was a huge Monstrum warrior, big enough to snap her in half like a matchstick if he’d wanted to, but the look on his face was so vulnerable it made her want to cuddle him like a hurt child.

“Rive, what is it?” she asked gently. “What are you seeing? Tell me!”

“All the horrors of all the Seven Hells,” he whispered numbly. “Oh Goddess, Terra—make it stop! Please, make it stop!”

“I will, Rive—I will if I can,” she promised. But how?

Clearly the big Monstrum was on a “bad trip” and she knew from experience with her roommate in college that all you could really do in that situation was make the drugged person comfortable until the drug they’d taken had run its course.

But that could take hours—maybe even days, depending on how many of those damn spoors he breathed in, she thought. We can’t wait that long. Poor Rive is going out of his mind—I need to help him now!

But how could she help him? Terra was wracking her brain and then, suddenly, she remembered the old grandmother daisy and what she’d said about the Chirrips and their spoors.

“She said they affected males more than females,” Terra muttered to herself, thinking fiercely. “And she said the only way to get them out of the male’s system was through their ‘stamen.’”

But did that mean the only way she could clear the drug from Rive’s system was to jerk him off? It seemed like a crazy idea, but it was the only idea she had. And hadn’t the last door had a sexual solution to it, as well? Remembering V’rone lapping so hard between her legs, Terra had to admit that it had. So as strange as it seemed, she was going to try it, she decided.

After all, what else could she do?

“Rive, honey,” she said, looking up at him again. “Rive, listen to me—focus on me,” she told him when he at last looked down at her again. “I’m going to touch you, okay?” she told him. “Going to try to make you feel good to help you come out of the dark place you’re in.”