Piranha - Chapter 5: Hide and Seek, Part 1

Elly jolted awake as a hand gripped her shoulder.  She sat upright with a gasp.  

It was Rayman, standing grinning beside the bed.

“Come on, Elly!” he said.  “Can’t sleep now, we have work to do!”

“Isn’t it the middle of the night?”  She looked around for clues as to the time.  The ship’s lighting and temperature automatically lowered during the “night” hours.

“Yeah, exactly.  C’mon, get up.”

As she unwrapped herself from the blankets, shivering, Rayman was pacing in long rapid strides around the room.  He halted at last and said, abruptly, “Do they guard me here?  I haven’t seen or heard anything.”

“You were so sick I think they stopped after they sent me.  I’ve only heard a guard pass by a couple of times during the day.  I told you, the boss probably isn’t thinking about you right now.  He doesn’t think a lot about things he doesn’t see.”

Rayman looked at her wryly.  “Survive by staying out of sight, eh?”

She had involuntarily hunched a little, wrapped her arms around herself, making herself small.  She looked up at him with wide serious eyes.  “Yes.  I don’t like him to see me.”

Rayman had recommenced his pacing.  “So I can leave here then without being noticed?”

“At this time?  I think so.  But where do you want to go?”

He stopped beside the table and swerved to look at her.  He snatched something yellow-green and silver, almost as long as he was, off the table and held it out, giving it an impatient flap.

Elly gazed at it with some surprise.  “That looks like an old jacket of Hellio’s,” she said.  “He’s been dead since... a long time.  Where did that come from?   Are those all old clothes on the table?”

Rayman threw it disgustedly back onto the table and turned back to her.

“That’s right.  Elly, I’ve been digging through every cupboard and drawer in this cabin, I can’t find anything usable.  I mean, what kind of clothes are these?  All decorated with metal and shiny stuff.  Not to mention that they’re five times my size...  But they look ridiculous.”

Elly shrugged.  “Hellio liked that kind of thing.”

“Well, I don’t.  And I have to have something.  Look at me!”  He made an impatient, half-laughing gesture indicating his dirty, hopelessly oversized bathrobe, wrapped so many times around him he resembled a round pink bonbon, and tied up at the bottom to keep him from tripping.  “Imagine trying to terrify a shipful of vicious pirates looking like this!  Heck, imagine trying to run without – unwinding!  Elly, I need real clothes.  And I need–”  He stopped.  He smiled grimly.  “There’s a lot to be done and it has to be done quickly.  Very, very quickly.”

“All right,” said Elly.  Then she added, “Terrify?”

He chuckled.  “Ah, how I talk.”

After a quick meal and some discussion, Elly led Rayman out into the corridor.  (It felt eerie to him, disorienting, after so many days in a small room to be moving through the endless, half-lit, shadow-filled, twisting hallways, looming with bulky wooden crates and metal storage boxes.  Even more disorienting, at least in this section the ship looked as though it had grown rather than been constructed, a senseless tangle of corridors, some with walls of wood like an old-fashioned boat, giving way to others with dented, scratched metallic bulkheads, all contorted, looping back on themselves, joining at weird angles, an unmappable nightmare.  But Elly knew her way through.)  They crept quietly through the dark.  Rayman now and then took her arm to halt her, they held still and silent for a moment as he listened intently.  The corridors were deserted, however.

They passed through several junctions, went down a level – “Elevators are noisy, let’s take the stairs,” Rayman murmured to her – and arrived finally at a cavernous, nearly unlit corridor, and then at an oversized, cracked, chipped, but very thick wooden door that looked as though it had been stolen many ages ago from some barn.  It had no button or handle, but an old-fashioned, worn leather strap attached to it.  Elly took hold of the strap, and with all her strength dragged on it until it slowly began to slide sideways.  As it opened, Rayman put a hand into the crack and gave the door a shove.  It slid suddenly several feet – nearly toppling Elly, who was still hauling on the strap.  She gave a startled squeak, he grabbed her arm before she fell and steadied her.  Then they moved cautiously into the unlit room.

Elly held up her lantern.  There was little visible but darkness which swallowed up that feeble light without revealing any limits.  At what seemed star-like distances, Rayman could make out tiny glassy and metallic reflected glints scintillating all around.

“This is just the storage room?” he asked Elly.  “What’s out there?”

“Let’s close the door first,” she whispered.  She went over to the wall near the door and, as Rayman yanked the door shut, she located a light switch.  She turned it on.

The room was immense, bigger than most buildings Rayman had been inside in his life.  It was crammed, heaped, strewn with junk of incredible variety, the plunder of countless raids on countless planets:  everything from broken chairs to bundles of velvet drapes, tables, filing cabinets, clothing, game pieces, decorative knickknacks, books, boots, alien beasts in various states of taxidermy, blankets, plates, costume jewellery, helmets, the occasional suit of armour...  some things neatly stacked, most simply tossed into piles; some of it appearing very ancient, all of it very dusty, and the majority of it broken, rusty, dirty, torn, or playing host to a number of rare species of mould.

Rayman stared.  “This must have been collecting for centuries,” he said.  His voice echoed a little in the depths of the room.  

“It’s only leftovers,” Elly said, with a shrug.  “Booty that isn’t worth anything.  Possessions nobody else wanted to take when a pirate got killed.  Junk.  But sometimes I find things that are useful.”

Rayman stepped forward and, reaching carefully over a delicately balanced heap, gingerly pulled on something black.  After a couple of sharp tugs it came free – a big hat.

Coughing, he beat some of the dust off it.  He looked it over.  Then a little smile quirked at his mouth.  

“I see what you mean,” he said.

***

To comb through that ramshackle vista of rubbish was a daunting project.  However, they tackled it methodically.  Picking through the disorganized heaps and clusters of junk, they began to tease out a small pile of their own, of things in decent condition that might be of use – various items of clothing, belts, buckles, bolts of cloth, together with other random odds and ends pounced on by Rayman that made no particular sense to Elly.  But it wasn’t a speedy process.

“We need to get back to the cabin,” she said at last, nervously.  “It’s got to be near morning.  You don’t want to be found in the hallways.”

“How often does anyone come in here?” Rayman asked.

“Hardly ever.”

“That’s what I thought.  Elly, let’s stay here today.  There’s a lot to do, and there are still some other things I need to look for.  You can go get some food and water and bring it here when it’s safe.”

“What else are you looking for?”

“Various things...  Like this for instance.”  From a fold in his robe he took out a black scabbard half the length of Elly’s arm.  He drew from it a dagger that glinted in the wan overhead light.  “It’s in good shape, isn’t it?” he said softly.  “Not a speck of rust.”

“Weapons?” Elly said.  “Any weapons you find are going to be useless, Rayman.  They wouldn’t dump them in here unless they were broken or too old to be worth bothering with.”

Rayman slid the knife back into its housing with a soft snick and tucked it back into his clothing.  His eyes flicked towards her and away again, half-shuttered, looking suddenly hard, tired, a little wary, nervously on edge.  “Useless is kind of a relative term, isn’t it?  Right now, any something is better than nothing.  – What’s that up there?”

Cautiously, they scrambled up onto another shifting junk heap.  Rayman picked up a small wooden box containing a thin, tubular, ornately carved metal and wood object, which widened at one end into a curved handle.

“Is this some kind of gun, Elly?”

She didn’t want to touch it.  “Yes, of course.”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.  How does it work?”  He turned it over and over, carefully, examining its moving parts.

“I couldn’t tell you.  I don’t know anything about guns.”  She winced.  “Except that I know you pull that thing there and the bullet comes out here!”

He smiled a little.  With a look of intense concentration, he again rapidly inspected it.  “It’s not loaded,” he said.  “Seems clean though, considering.  Parts work smoothly.  Not damaged.  Not even that dusty, it hasn’t been here all that long.”

Elly pointed to a small bag also contained in the box.  “That looks like a powder case.  I’ve seen those.  Sometimes the pirates use old pistols like that in duels for fun.  They load them with stuff from that kind of bag.”

With the same concentration, Rayman inspected the bag.  Then, as Elly watched in surprise, he shook a little powder into the gun muzzle, inserted a metal pellet, pushed it in with a thin stick, all from the bag.  He put a little more black powder into a sort of cup on top of the gun.  

Then he held the thing up, pointed it carefully at a picture some twenty feet away, leaning up against an old chest of drawers (a particularly hideous portrait of a pirate that looked as though it might have been painted by a group of monkeys), pulled back the flint mechanism, gritted his teeth, and fired.

The recoil from the gun flung him right off the heap he stood on.  He flipped backwards, crash-landing some feet away, rolled end over end down the hill, setting off a minor junkslide, and stopped with a thud at the bottom.  An assortment of small trinkets slithered after him.

Elly scrambled down quickly, brushed the dust and rubbish off his face as he lay blinking.  He lifted his head with a small groan.

“Boy, those things pack a kick, don’t they?  I didn’t think about that.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, sure.”  He got to his feet, hunted around till he retrieved the gun, and climbed back up the hill.  Again he loaded it, and, as Elly, still at the bottom of the hill, covered her ears, waiting for him to be launched once more into the air, he again fired at the portrait.

This time, lightweight though he was, he didn’t budge from his spot.  He looked over to where he’d aimed, then grinned down at Elly.  Climbing up beside him, she took in a sharp breath.  The two of them scrambled over to see.  The bullet had pierced the pirate’s face right in the middle of the nose.

“I was aiming for between the eyes,” he said.  “A couple of inches off.  Not bad for a first shot, eh?  Well, the other first shot didn’t count.”  He drew back his lips a little in distaste as he examined the bullet hole.

“How did you know how do that, if you’ve never seen one before?” she asked him, as they returned to the heap of their own adopted possessions.  Rayman tossed the gun and the powder bag in their box carelessly onto the pile.

He shrugged.  “I pay attention.”

***

Using as a pattern an old shirt that more or less fit him, they took some of the cloth they’d found, and scissors, needles and thread that Elly kept hidden, and worked out how to make something he could wear.  Elly had often had to repair or make clothes for herself and for the pirates, and though a little disconcerted to be creating a shirt with no visible exits, she was able to come up with something that he found reasonably comfortable.  The prospect of escaping the bathrobe seemed to cheer Rayman up a good deal.  As she worked, he continued to explore the room, coming up with new items of clothing that could be altered to fit him, and apparently further ideas.  

She sewed as quickly as she could, while still doing good work – Rayman had insisted particularly that the clothes needed to be well made, thick, and strong – but after a while, she found herself sitting with the work in her hands, her fingers holding the needle.  Her eyes focused far down the room, on him, that comical little pink-swathed form hopping from one big malformed hump of junk to another, digging doglike into the side of a mountain of trinkets, narrowly dodging another avalanche, sneezing explosively at the dust billowing up, and coughing and laughing all at the same time.

And it came to her that she was smiling.  That was something she hadn’t done very often in her life.  Until lately.  The past few days.  And she realized, too, that what she was smiling at was – the sensation of life, how else could you put it, a feeling of life vibrating the air around her.  Which was something else practically unknown in her life on the ship (rather the opposite).  ...Yes, a liveliness, an outward motion, an enthusiastic reach so intense that in its aura, anything, even clambering over heaps of shifting dust and trash, even her small patient work with the needle, became a matter of delight.

And deep inside her chest she felt there was growing a little center, a reflection, a concentration of that delight.  It radiated out to cradle, to warm her whole being.  It was something she had never experienced before, except perhaps as an infant in her mother’s arms.

And it was by far the strongest when her eyes focused on him, on the source of the radiation.  On Rayman.  

As she gazed at him, after a while he paused.  His head turned to look in her direction.  He smiled a little.

Her own smile disappeared as he got up and started over towards her.  Quickly she turned her eyes to her sewing.  

He went to his personal junk pile to toss on another object.  Again he turned to look at her.

“Elly,” he said, in a gentle, wryly teasing tone.  “Elly, you know, not to startle you or anything...  but you look happy.”

She blushed painfully, as though caught in a horrible indiscretion.  As she spoke, her voice cracked uncomfortably.  “Happy?  Is this happy?  I’m not even sure what that word means.”

“No wonder,” he said.  “Here.  Let me check.”  

He walked right up to her.  He put his face so close to hers that he was about to push her over with his nose.  He shut one eye and peered with the other deep into her wavering glance, fixated her mercilessly, his own eye bright, wide, merry; glinting a little with mischief as she blushed even harder.  “Hm,” he said.  “There’s something down there...  Wait.”  Grinning slyly, he pulled out an ancient nautical spyglass, opened it up, and putting it right to her eye, pretended to peer in.  “Hmm,” he rumbled, now in a ponderous, authoritative voice,  “Hm!  Yesss...  Just as I thought.”  And he announced, with finality, as if having established a scientific fact, “I regret to inform you, Miss:  it’s definitely happiness.  Very bad case.”  Folding up the little telescope and sliding it into a pocket.  “Nice to see that,” he added quietly.  And he beamed at her, with such a self-mocking, good-natured air, as if inviting her to laugh at his nonsense, that she blushed more than ever.

Then his eyes flickered, his gaze slid away from her.  His smile faded.  He turned to go back to his hunt.  “Elly, kid... Better get back to work.”  

She did.  Oddly enough, despite the excruciating embarrassment he had just put her through, that deep low purr of happiness was still there.

After he had completed his survey of the room, he returned and settled down to help Elly with the work.  She showed him what she was doing and how to do it, which he picked up with his usual speed.  As they worked, side by side, she noticed a look of a sort of ironic mischief on his face; he chuckled from time to time, privately, as he made a new hole in a belt with his sharp dagger, polished an old buckle, or with surprisingly fine rapid stitches sewed up a seam she had cut to alter a jacket; he seemed to find it all a pretty good joke, although he didn’t explain why.  

Eventually he sent her out of the room to scrounge up some food and water while he continued the work.  And when she returned, he had completed many of the alterations she had shown him how to do, as well as adding some unexpected details of construction or decoration here and there that made her gasp with surprise.

“Why, that jacket’s beautiful!” she told him.  “And it’ll stay on even if you don’t button it!  How does it look on you?  Try it on!”  

The sparkling light in his eyes went dark instantly.  He tossed the jacket aside.  “Not now,” he said in a low voice.  “Not right now.  Elly, what have you got to eat?”

They cleared a spot on the floor and began their meal.  

“Elly,” Rayman said as they ate, “The fact is, I hardly know anything about this ship and these pirates, except what I saw of them on the planet.  Can you fill me in?”

She put down her food.  “About what?”

“Well, you said before that you – um – they – uh – well, let’s say, are the pirates really robots?  I thought they were, but I get the idea from some things you’ve said that, uh, maybe they’re not.”

She blushed.  “Some of them are.  The important ones are.  Maybe the ones they sent to your planet mostly were.  But there are lots who aren’t, lots of them are human type beings.”

“Like you?”

“Oh, but much bigger.  They come from a lot of places.  I think that when the robots capture prisoners from different planets sometimes they make them into pirates.  There are a lot of them, maybe even more human pirates than robots.”  She blushed again.  “I wouldn’t have survived on this ship if it hadn’t been for them.  The robots aren’t interested in me.  And they don’t eat!  But they have slaves too.  There are a lot of slaves on the ship, mostly humans.  They do a lot of the work, and they make the food for the human prisoners and pirates and so on.”

Rayman was absently shredding a bit of bread.  “Okay.  And... how does Anaconda run the ship?  How does he choose his, his targets?  How often do they land on a new planet?  Do all the pirates share in the booty?  What kind of...”

He stopped.  Elly was looking at him with a piteous expression.  “Oh,” he said.  “I’m sorry.  That’s okay, don’t worry, I’ll find out for myself.”

They were quiet for a little while, picking at their food.  After a few mouthfuls, Rayman seemed to have lost all interest in eating, only methodically mashing his bread and cheese into an indistinguishable lump while his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

Finally, Elly said, “Rayman... aren’t you hungry?”

His eyes came reluctantly into focus.  “What?  Oh.”  He looked at his food.  “Yuck.  Sorry, Elly, I didn’t mean to waste it.”

She reached into her small food sack.  “There’s a little more if you–”

He shook his head, putting up a hand.  “No, don’t bother.  I don’t want any.”

“But you asked me to get it.”

He chuckled.  “Well, you need to eat once in a while, too, don’t you?”

She looked at the floor, miserably.  She wasn’t being allowed to do her job again.

“Look,” he said, “Would it make you feel any better if I – if I tried to explain why you shouldn’t worry about me?  Because I get the feeling you, ah, do.”

He pushed the food away and shifted over to sit a little closer to her.  “I really don’t like to talk about this, usually, but, well.  It’s about the way this body I have is different from your kind.”  

Although by this time she had almost forgotten how startling she’d found him at first, she focused on him now with new attention.  He looked at her earnestly, though with some unease.

“It’s an odd thing, Elly,” he said, “but I’ve come to think that maybe all people from other planets aren’t like my kind.  All the ones I meet seem to be made, well, more or less like you.  Even most of the other creatures on my own planet are like you.  So it’s no wonder you think I’m weird.  Come on, I know you do.  Why not?  I was pretty startled myself by your kind when I first saw one.  

“But since then I’ve seen lots of solid-bodies.  I think I’ve finally managed to figure them out.

“Of course, you know solid bodies are made of all this – heavy scaffolding.  Well, mine isn’t.”  He smiled, diffidently.  “Yeah – see, my kind operate just by – well, we just move, we don’t use a framework to do it.  Light and easy.  Seems so completely simple to me, but if I ever say anything about it to a solid-body I get this same blank look...

“I guess you can say my kind is made of energy.  We move by directly handling energy.  You get what I mean?  My body’s not just these parts you see, it’s a – field, an energy field that changes in size and shape, and the more solid parts move within it.  It’s so ridiculously simple!

“What I really don’t get is why the scaffolding style of body caught on and the energy kind didn’t.  I have to admit... solid-bodies always seem to me to be – well, heh, limping around on crutches.  But maybe a person doesn’t have to be as... energetic, to handle a propped-up body like that.

“No, I really couldn’t figure out solid-bodies at first.  I thought they were machines, like robots.  Except that they were obviously alive.  But the interesting thing to me, Elly, is that I’ve finally come to see that solid-bodies aren’t really all that different after all.  Okay, yes, an energy body is lighter, tougher, stronger maybe, can take heavier blows and energy impacts, needs less fuel and maintenance, all that; after all, matter’s kind of smashable stuff, isn’t it?  But even if they’re made out of some different sort of stuff, solid-bodies have a living energy field too.  They run their bodies the same way really; the living energy is still what moves the body.  Only with less ...  confidence – like they need the reassurance of all that solidity, or something.  They trust the scaffolding more than their own energy.  ...You use energy to move a leg, I use energy to move without a leg... Well, honest, it seems simple enough to me!

“You don’t think we’re the same that way?  No?  Well, why do you think you could – you could feel my emotions the other day?  That’s just perception of the energy field.  Yours perceiving mine, you perceiving me...  Why do you think I could ...  Well, anyway, I can control the energy of my own body and maybe sometimes affect the energy of someone else’s, depending on circumstances ...  It’s nothing unusual.  No, no, it’s perfectly ordinary.  You could do it too if you didn’t worry about it and just started trusting your own perception.  You do do it.  Everybody does.

“You’re not buying this, are you, Elly?  Yeah, well, I’ve noticed solid-bodies usually don’t seem to have much confidence in their own – their own power.  Only in scaffolding.  ... Well, it doesn’t matter really.”

She was thinking it over.  She said, “What about the robots?  Aren’t they alive too?”

He looked at her with sudden sharp attention.  “Alive?  Do they seem alive to you?”

“Oh, yes.  Yes, they do, they are.”

He seemed to be intently working over this bit of information. “Alive?  Maybe it could be.  I don’t know how, but then I don’t know how any of us are alive, when you get down to it, where the field comes from.  But if they’re alive, you could sense that.”

They were quiet for a few moments.  Then, shyly, Elly moved a little closer to him.  She put a hand a little closer yet to his face, looking at him, at her hand; closing her eyes.  He watched her, his quiet smile gradually brightening as he understood what she was doing.

She opened her eyes at last and glanced at him, blushing a little.  She said, “I think you’re right.  At least about you.  Because I think I can feel it–what you said.”

He said softly, “It’s not just me.  It’s only easier with me because I’m, heh – I’m louder!  Crude and unabashed, noisy and not discreet like shy little solid-bodies!”  He looked at her, as she was embarrassedly struggling not to avert her eyes, and his little grin changed, melted, glowed, the dark blue eyes luminous.

“Oh, Elly, little girl, you won’t take any of this stuff personally, will you?” he added, in that soft, rough, wrenchingly sweet voice that had emerged once or twice before, that permeated her body like sunlight.  “What I was saying had nothing to do with you.  You’re no solid-body.  You’re pure light itself.”

She had to look away then.  There was too much life in those eyes, they didn’t allow anything to hide from them.  

And at the same time, she had caught a glimpse of something buried deep in their depths, something silent, so dark and sad she couldn’t bear to look at it.  

But he was smiling.  He gave her a little conspiratorial nudge.  He whispered, “Handling energy... I have a few other little tricks.  Check this out, Elly.”

He held out a hand, palm up, and as she looked at it a faint golden sparkle began to form in the cup of the palm.  Her mouth opened, her eyes widened.

But almost immediately after the sparkle had begun to form, Rayman gasped.  He yanked his hand back in against his chest, he doubled over, pulled his whole body together tightly, and squeezed shut his eyes.  

“Rayman?”

“I forgot,” he whispered, his body rocking slightly.  “I can’t.  I can’t.  Can’t do that here.”

“Here?  Rayman, what’s going on?”

Suddenly much more pale and haggard than he had been in the past two days, he looked at her ruefully.  “See, Elly.  It’s just... He’s got me, that bastard.  He’s got me.  I promised to work for him, and I will.  But if he thinks he’s going to have me fighting for him with this weapon, well...  he can think again.”  The last words a low growl.

“– I don’t believe I can even physically do it out here, away from–”  He sighed deeply.  “Away from the – power, the magic, the – love, of my home.  And I’m glad.  Because I couldn’t stand it.  It gives me – it gives me the horrors even to imagine.  That power was something that belonged to – belonged to...  Rayman ... to his life, his people, his world ... to protect them.  Anaconda can’t have it.”

“But – you are Rayman.”

He looked at her sombrely.  “No.  I told you before.  ... You call me that, but... that’s just because I guess I have to be called something.”  He grinned, uncomfortably.  “I... actually, it... it’s pretty painful even to hear...  It’s... it’s like an accusation.”

Elly didn’t know what to say.  He smiled at her, that sad, quirky smile she had seen so often, that both reassured her and tore into her like a knife.

“I told you, Elly.  Things are going to change.”  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath that caught a little going in.  Then the small smile again, with a thin edge of bitterness this time.  “When try I look at the future, I feel as though I’m asleep, dreaming.  Sleepwalking.  But soon I’ll have no choice but to wake up, won’t I; or the Boss will be kind enough to give me a nudge, in his own sweetly encouraging fashion.  Right?  So, I’m not about to just wait for him.  No, no-ho –  No.”

He tried to smile.  But his teeth clenched, his lip curled back, his big hands abruptly became fists, disproportionately huge, hard as boulders, and Elly gasped at the whitehot flash of rage that seared through the room.

And it was gone.  He looked at her, shaking his head.  “Not doing too well with keeping that in yet, am I,” he muttered.  “It’ll get better.  When I’m sane again.  If I ever am.  Oh, god.  Oh, god.  That bastard.”

***

It was at least late afternoon, and there was still a lot of sewing to be done.  Elly worked at it doggedly, though her eyes were starting to blur now and again.  Rayman was out sifting through more piles of junk; she was startled alert by the occasional explosive sneeze.  She kept on; thinking about the clothes, how they might look on him when they were finished; thinking about the things he had said that afternoon; about how the better she got to know him, somehow, in some way, the more of a puzzle he was to her; her eyes coming in and out of focus, and her thoughts beginning to sprawl.  

She was sitting motionless, with the needle halfway through a stitch, when she felt something pull the sewing out of her hand.  She started; opened her eyes.  

Rayman’s amused face.  “Go take a nap, Elly.  It’s been a short night and a long day, I know.  Go on, lie down somewhere, I’ll work on this.”

“A-aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah, I am too.  I’ll take a rest after you get up.  Go on now.”

An hour’s nap left her almost more sleepy than before, but she got up, returned, and firmly took the sewing back from those hands that looked far too big to handle that little needle with such agility.  Rayman looked up at her with his crooked grin.  She pointed over to the pile of old velvet drapes she’d been lying on.  

“They’re pretty comfortable,” she said.  “I shook the dust out of them.”

“I dunno,” he said, “you look awfully dusty to me!  Okay, okay.  All right, I’m going.”  He went.  

He was obviously asleep almost before his body was fully horizontal.

Half an hour later, he was up again, sneaking quietly off to snoop some more around the room.  Concentrating hard on her work, Elly didn’t even notice he wasn’t lying down until something poked her lightly in the back, almost making her stab herself.  She let out a shriek.

Rayman hastily came around in front of her.  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he stammered.

She was trying to catch her breath, her gold-brown eyes glancing around wildly.

Rayman put his hands on her shoulders to calm her.  Reflexively, her body jerked away.

He took hold of her shoulders again, with a gentle, firm grip, and crouched down in front of her, looking into her face.

She was already calming down, cringing with embarrassment.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No, don’t be sorry,” he said.  “You okay now?”

“I’m okay.  Oh, I’m really–”

“No,” he said.  “Don’t be sorry.”  His rueful smile.

It was late night.  They had been in the storage room, working hard, for close to a full cycle of night and day.  After spending more time helping with the clothes, adapting some boots and gloves to his body style, Rayman had taken one last tour around the place.  He returned holding a small fighting knife.  He showed it to Elly, shaking his head.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said.  He went over to the nearby pile of things he had collected and began to go through it, separating out the items he still wanted to keep.  “I’m going to have to have something more than a couple of knives and that little exploding toy.  When those brutes attacked my planet, they carried some major firepower.  And some of them seemed to have it built in.  Elly, do you have any possible idea how I could get a real gun?  Any kind at all?  In fact, more than one?”

Elly sighed, finishing off a last stitch.  “There are other storage rooms besides this,” she said.  “And there are weapon storage rooms.  But I’ve never tried to get into one.  I’d have to talk someone into letting me in...”

He stopped what he was doing and turned towards her.  “No.  Don’t put yourself into that kind of danger.”

“I don’t think it would be dangerous–”

“They all know you’re with me, don’t they?  It would be dangerous.”

She looked at him with growing surprise.  “Do you think so?  Why?”

He went back to his pile.  “It is dangerous, and it’s going to get much more so.  You’re not just you anymore, Elly.  You’re associated with me.  Don’t let them know you’re looking for weapons.  In fact, best not to be seen at all any more than you can avoid.”

She came over to help him sort the pile.  “I’m sure I can get into the weapons storage rooms at night.  They’re not guarded much.  The things in there aren’t so valuable, they’re just the everyday weapons everybody has.  But I’ll have to sneak in, and I have to find things that aren’t locked up; and that will take time.”

“Time,” said Rayman, “That’s something I’m rapidly running out of.  Probably already have.”  He looked at her sombrely.  “Do what you can, Elly.  I was sick for too long; and frankly I’m getting very concerned about somebody deciding to take an interest in me.”

Then, with a small sweet smile, he touched her lightly on the shoulder.  “Oh, yes,” he added.  “I did find one thing that was kind of important.”  And he showed her two large empty sacks.  “Booty transporters!”

He grinned at her.  After a moment, looking into his smiling eyes, she found herself with a little grin on her own face, in return.

[End of Chapter 5, Part 1]