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ASSUMING THAT everyone was to be left alone to rest for the evening, I retired to my designated room and got ready for bed. The TSTA bedroom was small and sparsely furnished, but cool and comfortable. A twin bed was pressed up along the wall with a heavy metal bed stand propped next to it. Across the room sat a chest of drawers with a television perched on top.
I turned a dial on the television, wondering what kind of shows the TSTA would broadcast. The screen flickered, turned blank and then flickered again. Children in black and gold robes appeared onscreen, standing in rows, three lines deep. Their lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything they were saying. I found another dial and turned it. Nothing. I twisted a third dial. After a brief crackle, I could hear a low humming and a percussive beat. I raised the volume. The children were singing, but I didn’t understand a single word. I wasn’t sure whether the language was human.
I turned the first dial again and flipped through a couple more channels to find more children and more music, none of it understandable to my English-only ears. Weirder yet was that on all the channels, the children wore the same black and gold robes. I wondered if that meant the children were all singing the same language and were from the same world.
Yawning, I turned the first dial backward until the screen went blank. I abandoned the television in favor of something more productive: searching through the travel glasses.
I pulled the travel glasses out of my backpack and turned them in my hands. The glasses were filled with Valcas’ memories—his recordings—as well as a small portion of my own. I still hadn’t been able to find any particular order to the events, places and people recorded, though.
I fluffed a couple of pillows on my bed and propped myself up against them. Then I relaxed and searched for recordings of Ray and Ivory.
All I could conjure up were a couple of snapshots of a younger Ivory with long, white hair flowing over military garb. She smiled sweetly, but her eyes flashed something vicious. I grinned. I knew exactly how she felt about getting her picture taken, whether done via camera or recording. Ray was nowhere to be found among Valcas’ memories.
Finding nothing else of use to prepare for tomorrow’s journey, I randomly browsed the recordings captured in the travel glasses, letting them show me whatever snippets they would allow me to see. The more I relaxed, the more vividly the recordings revealed themselves.
The glasses stalled on a picture of an ocean backlit by a sunset. Golden waves lapped glinting grains of sand. I could hear the whisper of the waves as they rose and fell. How nice, I thought. I wondered where and when Valcas had recorded the scene. Better yet, I wondered why.
Just as I was about to doze, I heard a knock at the door, followed by a familiar voice.
“Calla, may I come in?”
I shot up out of bed, removed my glasses and placed them on the bed stand. I looked at my watch. It was 12:32 a.m., EST, Earth time. Not that that gave me any idea what time it was here at TSTA Headquarters. I tapped the watch face as I walked toward the door, trying to find Inter-world Central Time.
The voice at the door belonged to Valcas. What could he possibly want at this hour?
I opened the door and stood in the doorway. “No, you can’t come in. What is it?”
Valcas stood in the hallway wearing a dark T-shirt and black lounge pants. He cleared his throat as he looked me up and down, standing there in my pajamas, a cotton nightdress Enta had made for me back at her homestead. I crossed my arms.
“Of course, sorry,” he said. “I want to borrow your travel glasses. The backup pair I’m wearing has a malfunction with respect to some of the data that I downloaded from your pair.”
I hesitated, glancing back at the pair of glasses on the bed stand. “How do I know you’ll return them to me?”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.” He sniffed. “You were ready to give them back to me at the White Tower...”
I frowned, remembering how I’d wanted to get rid of the travel glasses after Valcas had seen how they’d affected my eyes.
“Okay, fine,” he said, removing the glasses he wore and handing them to me. “I just need to borrow them for a couple of searches that I need to run before we leave tomorrow morning. You can hold on to these in the meantime.”
In the brief moment during which we stared at each other, I tried to see past his eerie orbs and focus on his other facial features. Then, frowning, I took the glasses from his hand and turned to retrieve the other pair.
I stifled a yawn as I handed him the glasses. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” Valcas said, rubbing his eyes.
I sighed. He almost looked normal that way—with his eyelids closed, the way he’d looked before the travel glasses distorted his appearance.
Valcas opened his eyes again, shattering those memories. “If you need anything, my room is two doors down. Goodnight, Calla.”
***
THE NEXT MORNING WAS bright and sunny, a perfect day for travel by land, sea or sky. I soon learned that my teammates and I would be traveling that day by sky, on a light jet, certified by the TSTA and piloted by Ivory.
Mom hugged me tightly before we set off. Tears threatened to spill from the corners of her eyes.
“Don’t forget to check in from time to time,” she said. “I’ll monitor your movements as much as I can.”
I smiled and nodded, but I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to keep such a promise. Even the amazing TSTA, despite being an Inter-world organization, couldn’t seem to keep track of everything. Mom had told me that much already, back when I found out she worked for the TSTA as a Communications Facilitator.
Mom waved as Ivory entered the jet, followed by Valcas. Ray stayed behind to lend his hand to help me mount the stairs onto the aircraft. He held the back of my arm, just above my elbow, not letting go until we reached the top of the stairs. His touch sent shivers up my arm and down my spine.
Stunned, I looked back at Ray, wondering what that was all about. First, why would he think I needed help going up stairs? And, second, what was with the shivers? Ray was busy scanning the ground below us, so he didn’t notice my questioning eyes or arched brows.
I peeked inside the plane. There were four passenger seats behind Ivory’s pilot chair. I took a deep breath and sat down across the aisle from Valcas. After a moment, Ray followed and sat down in front of me. He pulled a lever on the side of his seat. It swiveled ninety degrees to the right, until he faced the side of the plane.
“Oh,” I said as I realized that I was now looking right at the side of his head.
I reached down alongside my seat and pulled at my lever. My chair swiveled and then locked into place. I cringed. Now I was sitting with Ray at my left, with both of us having a marvelous view of Valcas’ left side.
“Buckle up back there,” Ivory called out from the front of the jet.
Valcas kept his seat right where it was. He turned his head toward us as we buckled our seat belts.
I rolled my eyes at him. “If you’re glaring at us, I can’t really tell, you know.”
In response, Valcas took off his glasses—the pair he’d borrowed from the night before—and handed them to me. Yep, I was right. He was glaring.
“Thanks,” I said, shrugging it off. I handed him back his pair.
He put them on immediately, settled in his seat and looked straight in front of him.
I stretched my neck to the left and watched as Ivory put on a helmet with a dark visor and tested out the controls. As I did this I glanced at Ray to see how he was recovering from Valcas’ stink eye. I blushed. Ray seemed just fine. He was watching me. Again.
I pressed back into my seat and smiled. I could get used to attention from someone like Ray, even if my mind was still swarming with memories of a green-eyed past version of Valcas.
The crackle of a speaker made me jump.
“Test. Test.”
“We can hear you just fine, Ivory,” Valcas said.
Even though she was just a couple of seats away from us, she chose to speak to us over the loudspeaker. “This is your captain speaking, Valcas.”
Valcas sniffed.
“Humor me,” Ivory shot back. “And prepare for takeoff.”
“I’ve never traveled this way before,” I said. “What do I need to do?”
“Shield your eyes,” replied Valcas. “But wait until I tell you when. You’re still learning the differences between searching, traveling, communicating and recording with the travel glasses. I don’t want to lose you should you accidentally travel somewhere else once we’re in motion.”
He had a point. I had no idea where we were going, and so I wouldn’t be searching for our destination or attempting to transport us there. I knew the glasses could be used to communicate with others like a telephone as long as both communicants were wearing compatible glasses at the same time—that, I’d learned from Edgar. I also knew how to record and play back scenes and memories, but I had no idea why Valcas would be concerned about that. More than anything, I was happy to have the travel glasses to shield my eyes from the Blanching Effect. Every one of us had some form of dark glasses or visor with us to protect our eyes—everyone except for Ray.
“But Ray’s not wearing any,” I said.
Ray looked over to me and smiled. “I don’t need them.” He shrugged. “I’ll be keeping watch during transport.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Why would any of us need to be wearing travel glasses if we’re already in a licensed TSTA vehicle?” I asked.
Valcas rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. “It’s just a precaution—in case something goes wrong.”
“Oh, right.” In case we needed to escape.