Shimmer by Mark Bilsborough

Simone wiped the sweat from her forehead and brought her canteen to her mouth. She’d drained it already but maybe, just maybe, she could eke out another drop. The main sun was still high in the sky and she had the Ridge Hills between her and town. The second sun would be joining its closer twin soon, then she’d be in trouble. What bloody fools colonised a planet with two suns? Still, she was one of the bloody fools who’d decided to join the ride to what she’d been told would be a great adventure. Well, this was an adventure she could do without. Head pounding, throat parched; already she’d begun to stumble.

She’d stop and rest in the shade if she could find any. But then they’d catch up. She had no choice, not really. She had to press on and hope that she had the reserves to haul herself over those hills and back to the safety of the colony.

When she’d stolen the bike she hadn’t checked it had enough charge to get her out and back. But she’d not planned this – spontaneity always comes at a price. Now it was a useless lump of metal gently boiling in the desert heat and she was staggering home on foot. She had her prize, but that wasn’t going to do her any good if she was dead.

Behind her, monsters howled.

She managed another hour before she collapsed, on her knees, mountains seemingly as far away as they ever were. The howling was closer now, calls repeated, echoed and answered. She’d been warned that the Djinn were intelligent. Intelligent and resentful.

When she’d ridden into the Djinn village she’d been surprised at how like the colony it was. There were rudimentary buildings, roads and clusters of the fascinating things on every corner. Hard to tell because of all the shimmering but they even seemed to be wearing clothing, just like people. She tried to look at one directly but all she got was juddering movement, as if the image was blinking in and out of existence, jerking and weaving like she was watching mist coalesce and dissipate. They only became clear if she looked at them from the corner of her eye and even then the impression lacked solidity. Working theory was they were out of phase with reality, somehow, half here and half somewhere else.

They had what she wanted though. She roared into what the satellite images suggested was some sort of religious compound, skidded her wheels deep into the sand, dismounted and dashed to a plinth at the centre and grabbed. The first time she went straight though it but the second time she held onto something solid. She felt a pull vibrating through her body as the object tried to phase out, but it stayed solid long enough for her to ram it in her bag. Then she was back on her bike and, testing the limits of the machine’s acceleration, she was gone.

The Djinn she passed just stopped and stared, or at least that’s what she imagined. They had no time to react: they probably had no idea what was happening until she was well on her way.

But then she lost power. And the howling started.

They’d be mad back at the colony when they found out what she’d done, assuming they found her. Should she call them? She’d be in trouble for sure if she did. But the howling was loud enough now to drown out the sound of her own ragged breathing. She was already in trouble: the question was, what kind of trouble did she want to be in?

The kind that ended up with her being told off but alive, she concluded. So she grabbed her comms device from her pack and thumbed it into active mode. And stared at a blank screen. She pressed again but the device stared sullenly, and blankly, back at her. Maybe the sun, or the strangely oscillating thing in her pack, had caused it to stop working.

The object – the Shimmering Orb. Maybe her bike hadn’t run out of power at all. Maybe the orb had drained it, just like it seemed to have done with the comms device. The Djinn worshipped it, which is why she’d wanted it. The scientists back in the colony hadn’t been able to observe it close up – something about non-interference in native development – but they’d all been talking. She was doing them a favour, really. Cutting through the bullshit. Bringing back the prize.

She looked up, surrounded by shimmering shapes. Was she going to die? She picked up the orb, clutching it to her. She could feel its pull, feel it trying to shift out of phase. Then the Djinn started to take more tangible form, the shimmering coalescing into something more solid. The vibrations coursing through her seemed to ease as though the orb had given up trying.

Behind the now solid Djinn the Ridge mountains flickered and shimmied. Gnarled, alien hands reached out. She got to her feet, dejected and confused, and they took hold of their sacred orb. It looked more solid now, dull, grey and encrusted with tiny flickering pinpricks of crimson light.

Now that they’d stopped shimmering the Djinn looked vaguely human. A little tall, perhaps, and a little gangly but not at all what she’d expected. They trudged off, back to their village, leaving her in the sand. Maybe, she thought, they were sentencing her to a long and lingering death now they had their precious prize back. Or perhaps they just didn’t care. But then the last one turned and threw something at her. An animal skin, full of liquid.

The water in it was enough to take her back over the hills and down to the colony. She’d be fine if she lied about where she’d been. She’d tell them she took the bike for a spin, then the power ran out. Almost true – she’d just miss out the bits about the Djinn and the object.

But as she walked into Main Street she couldn’t help but notice the buildings were flickering slightly, moving in and out of focus. Some people approached her. She couldn’t see them clearly, unless she tilted her head slightly and looked at them out of the corner of her eye.

And then she realised. Back in the desert, the orb hadn’t given up in its struggle; it had won.

She was in the Djinn’s world now.

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Mark Bilsborough is a science fiction writer based in England. You can find his work dotted around the internet in places like Electric Spec, The Colored Lens and Every Day Fiction or via his website, www.markbilsborough.com. He’s on Twitter at @MarkBils