Chapter Three
"What's going on?" I asked, staring out the window again, "We landed forty minutes ago. Why am I still in here?"
The flight attendant paced back and forth in front of her, wringing her hands and throwing occasional glances over her shoulder toward the pilot's cabin. She obviously felt the tension and frustration that I was feeling. I didn't like to be kept waiting, especially when I was waiting to be let out of a tiny space ship chamber I had been in for the last five days.
"I'm not sure," the flight attendant said, barely braving a look in her direction, "The pilot just said that there has been a delay. Apparently your escort hasn't arrived at the landing point yet."
"Why does that matter?" I asked, reorganizing my notebooks and papers in my bag again just to give my hands something to do, "I'm sure I'm smart enough to make my way from a space ship to a meeting hall. This planet can't be so primal that they don't have roads, right?"
The flight attendant looked over at her with a touch of desperation in her eyes.
"Actually, I've never gotten off of the ship during one of these flights. I just stay inside and use the sleeping quarters on the top floor to take a shower, sleep, and change between legs."
"You've never gotten off of the ship on another planet?"
"No."
"Your job is to travel around the universe carrying passengers in between planets and you have never once had the curiosity to step outside and see one of them for yourself? You don't wonder what they might look like or what the people living there are like?"
The flight attendant shook her head, suddenly looking even younger and less remarkable as her eyes welled up in tears.
"I'm too afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of what the other species might be like," she said, dropping her tone slightly, "My grandmother always said that we should stick to our own kind and that humans don't have any business running all over other planets intermingling with other species. She says if we were supposed to be interacting with them, that they would already be on our planet and we wouldn't have to travel to find them."
"How incredibly closed minded of her."
The statement should have offended her, but instead the flight attendant just nodded.
"I haven't even told her that this is what I do for a living. She just knows that I work for the university."
I sighed. I will never understand the level of intolerance and ignorance that was still so pervasive. It was as if people got over one hang up that they had and decide that it was awful to have that viewpoint, only to move on to the next one with the same level of intensity and stubbornness. I rubbed my temples, trying to release some of the tension that was building there.
"Regardless, why am I stuck here until some escort comes? That wasn't part of the itinerary the program gave me."
The flight attendant shrugged again.
"Apparently it's against the law for humans who have just arrived on Uoria to travel from their ship unaccompanied. Everyone who visits has to be escorted to the meeting hall where they will meet the king and queen before they are allowed to stay."
I sighed again.
"So who are these escorts?" I asked, "Other academics? Law enforcement?"
"I think they are warriors."
"Fantastic. So between the leading university research department for interplanetary exploration and cooperation and a group of warriors, they couldn't coordinate one meeting. That bodes terrifically for the future of the success of this program."
I was usually calmer and more pleasant than this, but it seemed space travel was pulling the worst out of me. Always described by everyone who met me as headstrong and fiercely independent, I have a very low tolerance for anything that I saw as incompetence, which this level of disorganization and improper handling of a situation definitely was in my mind.
Finally the pilot's voice came over the speaker in the chamber, announcing that the escort had arrived and I was welcome to come to the exit door. The flight attendant looked even more relieved than I felt.
"Oh, good. I was getting worried we were going to have to stay here for even longer. Is there anything I can help you with before I go upstairs for my break?"
I shook my head, reaching out to squeeze the girl's hand comfortingly. No matter what the origins of the fears she was experiencing, they were obviously very real and I suddenly felt bad for her. I hated to see a person feel so limited by their own minds that they were unable to face any changes in their normal situation or confront anything that may alter their point of voice because it was too uncomfortable for them.
"No, I'm fine. You go on ahead. Maybe I'll see you on my trip back in a few months."
The attendant smiled and returned the squeeze with her hand.
"Thanks. I'd like that. They'll have your bags for you at the door."
Without saying another word, the flight attendant scurried across the room and disappeared through the hatch that led to the small chamber where the attendants spent much of their time during the flight and where, I presumed, there was a set of stairs or an elevator that would bring her up into the staff sleeping quarters overhead. Taking a final glance around the chamber, I walked toward the front of the chamber and through a sliding door to the exit hatch.
The other flight attendant stood at the door, holding my bags in each hand and looking like he was still seeing the images from his beloved game flashing on the backs of his eyes. I reached for the bags and took firm hold of them by their handles.
"I can get these. Thanks," I said.
The attendant relinquished the bags, but I had only taken one step down from the ship onto the landing platform when I felt hands grab at them again.
"I'll help you," a male voice said and I looked down at the platform to see a man reaching up to hold onto my luggage.
He was certainly attractive, but if this was one of the famed warriors of the Denynso people, I found myself a touch disappointed and a bit confused. I had heard tales of enormous, powerful men so breathtakingly beautiful that women couldn't control themselves around them, which, I will have to admit, is one of the influencing factors for signing up for the program. The man in front of me was lovely, but at only around six feet tall and quite slender, he was decidedly not enormous and looked less fearsome that many of the professors who walked the halls of the university back on Earth. I pulled the bags back toward me.
"No, thank you, I can do it myself."
"I'm happy to help."
I gave a final tug, yanking the bags out of his hands.
"I have them."
I stepped down from the platform and when I straightened in front of him I saw the escort's eyes travel over my body in a way that I didn't really like. His gaze stayed on me for just a bit too long and I couldn't quite interpret the look on his face. It was somewhere between shock and an emotion that I couldn't define. Finally he lifted his eyes to mine.
"You definitely don't look like the other human women that have come here," he said.
I shot him a scathing look.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
The man stammered for a minute, obviously trying to come up with an explanation.
"I just mean your hair. The other women have dark hair, except for Eden, but her hair is more red. Yours is…golden."
I wasn't convinced that that was actually what he was thinking. Leaving him still muttering, I pushed past and started down the steps of the landing platform.
"What's your name?" he called after me and I heard his footsteps follow me down the stairs.
"Zuri Hase. Didn't they tell you?"
"No. I'm not the original escort you were supposed to have."
"Oh," I said, some of the bitterness leaving my voice.
Maybe something bad happened and that's what caused the delay. I didn't want to be mean to him if his schedule for the day was thrown off just as much as mine was.
"I'm Ero," he told her as he caught up to her, "It's nice to meet you."