Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “50-50 now, 40-60 next time if yu bring me the same quality, and nothin that’s known outsida its owner. No one will offer yu better.” He holds the ring out to me.

  “All right,” I say, hesitating just long enough to let him think he’s won.

  Sodum opens the drawer under the table again and gets out an envelope. I watch him write something on it, slip the ring inside and seal it, then shut it inside the drawer.

  “Come back in two weeks. At night, that door. I’ll teach yu t’open safes.”

  Back in the front of the store, he slides his card through the credcomp and keys in his password and account before he steps aside. My hand shakes slightly as I complete my end of the transaction. Is this really happening? I watch my account go from C75 to C575. It’s all I can do not to shout out loud.

  “Tell yer mother she can reclaim her ring within ten days.”

  I look at him blankly.

  “Standard practice.” His eyes narrow and flick sideways, where his clerk’s waiting on a customer nearby.

  “Of course,” I say. “My mother will expect that.”

  On the way home I stop to purchase two spacebags. This is really happening.

  ***

  Etin walks by my room as I’m packing my belongings into the spacebags. He stands at the bedroom door watching me.

  Don’t speak to me, I think. I’m going and nothing you can say will stop me, so don’t say anything at all. He doesn’t, but he keeps standing there. I find myself packing more slowly. Why should I be glad to see him? He’ll offer to take me out for a caf and gel, or to an action holovid—he knows I love them. Then he’ll ship out again tomorrow, next week at the latest.

  I’m not being fair, even if it is true. Etin has to go on every run the Homestar makes. He lost money hiring a professional trader for some of the runs during our father’s illness and has to make it up now with continuous runs. Oghogho gets to go with him as an apprentice trader between study terms. Eventually they’ll be able to take turn-about, as Etin and Father used to, and Etin won’t be gone so much. Well, that’s no help to me now, living with a mother who never speaks to me, rarely even looks at me, and a sister who’s little better.

  I walk to the closet and take down three jumpsuits—the last of my things.

  “I hear you translated at an Immigration Investigation. How did it go?”

  “Fine. They paid well.” I answer too quickly. He knows me enough to hear my nervousness. I take a silent breath and say, “I’m leaving.” Let him blame my tension on that. “I’ve registered with the College of Translators and Interpreters.”

  “You’re only fifteen.” He hasn’t moved from the door, but his voice has changed, is softer.

  “I turned sixteen last week.”

  “I’m sorry, Akhié. I’m away too much.”

  I shrug. What good are regrets? It’s not as though anything will change. I’ve found my own way out, anyway.

  “You’re still too young,” Etin continues. “No one there will be your age.”

  He thinks I might be lonely. I almost laugh out loud. As though I could be more lonely anywhere else than I am right here. But that isn’t Etin’s fault.

  “It’s what I want to do,” I say instead. “It’s what I’m good at.” I begin folding the first jumpsuit into my bag, not looking at him. “They’ve given me early admission. Why not? I’m already doing the work.”

  Etin smiles. “One job and you’re an interpreter? But I’m glad it went well. It was good of Dr. Eldrich to recommend you.”

  “They needed me.” Etin always assigns good motives to people, deserved or otherwise. “No one else can speak Malemese.” Why would they want to? If Seraffa wasn’t a port world of traders and merchants for all the outer inhabited worlds, I would never have found lesson flashdrives on such an insignificant and little-used language. I know that now.

  When I was ten I thought it must be an important language, because my father spoke it. I couldn’t understand why my brother wasn’t studying it as an apprentice trader.

  Etin is silent, watching me fold the second jumpsuit carefully into the spacebag. “She can’t help it, you know,” he says.

  I feel my stomach clench. “She could if she wanted to,” I answer after a moment. I can barely get the words out. My hands fumble, folding the last jumpsuit. Etin comes in and takes it from me. Shaking it out, he begins to fold it again. I sit on the edge of the bed with my head bent. I thought the hard part would be getting the money.

  “When you were born she called you ‘babydoll’. I used to watch her bathe you. You were so small, and bright. One day you looked at her and said, as clear as anything, ‘mommydoll’. Mother laughed with happiness. I heard her telling Father about it in a netcast.

  “She thought it would make him smile. But after that trip to Malem he never smiled. And he used to smile all the time, and laugh—you got your sense of humor from him—and lost it with him. We all did, especially Mother.”

  “Why did he even go to Malem?”

  “I was eight when he left. I remember them quarrelling about it. Mother said it was too far; the trip would take too long to be worth it. But the O.U.B. wanted transport there and they were willing to pay well. And Father thought by taking them he might get a foot in the door to trade with Malem.”

  “No one trades with Malem.”

  “That’s what Mother said, but Father was always an optimist. He even went to the trouble of learning Malemese.”

  “An optimist?”

  “You didn’t know him then. He changed after Malem. When he came back... I don’t know. He was feverish, not always rational. When his fever broke—well, you know how he was.

  “Dr. Eldrich tried everything, none of the meds would work on him. He embarrassed me. I was nine years old and ashamed of my father.”

  “What happened to him there?” I don’t want to hear Etin’s confession. I idolized my father. When the other kids laughed at him I cut them off cold. Just as well. I don’t need any friends prying into my secrets.

  Etin shrugs. “He never spoke about it, not even to Mother. We know soon after he landed an epidemic broke out. A strain of coronavirus, as infectious as the one way back on Old Earth in 2020 but much more virulent. It is said to have decimated the population of Malem. They shut their port even more rigorously to foreigners after that.”

  “But father didn’t get it.”

  “He did, but he survived.”

  “The fevers and nightmares.”

  “Dr. Eldrich could never confirm if they were related. I’ve always thought it was something else, something he saw, or maybe something he did on Malem. I guess we’ll never know.”

  “At least he didn’t name you something awful.” Etin means “strength” in Edoan. A good name, unlike mine, which means “sorrow.” Who names their kid that?

  “Akhié isn’t your official name. Mother wouldn’t name you sorrow. But that’s all he called you when he got home, and he was so fragile, always on the brink of fever and despair, she was afraid to openly name you something else. Soon everyone was calling you Akhié.”

  “What’s my real name, then?”

  He frowned. “Mother called you pet names—little bird, babydoll—your first few years. Then she called you Akhié, like Father did. I don’t think you have an official name; just your birth registration number. I guess you could pick one and register it, if you wanted.” He grins at me.

  What does he want from me? ‘Oh goody, I don’t even have a real name’?

  “I’ll think about it.” I get up and seal the two spacebags shut. The lining around them begins to hum and gently swell as oxygen is sucked out through the tiny nozzle and replaced with helium. In a few minutes they are so light, despite their contents, they gently bob beside me as I hold their strings.

  “You don’t have to go, Akhié. You can live at home and attend the College of T and I. Oghogho commutes to her college.”

  “Hers is closer. Anyway, I can’t stay here. You d
on’t know what it’s like.” How could he? Even when he’s home he only sees how things are for him.

  So I tell him: “Owegbé hates the sight of me. She’ll always remember that at the end I could understand Father when she couldn’t.”

  “Try to see it her way, Akhié. Malem took her husband from her. Malem devoured him. Even on his deathbed Malem claimed him. She hates Malem; hates the people, the language, the planet, hates the thought of it being in the same universe as us. How do you think she felt when her daughter began speaking Malemese too?”

  “That’s why she hates me?”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She’s afraid for you. And maybe afraid of loving you too much.”

  “No fear of that.”

  “Try to understand...”

  “No! It’s more than that. She blames me for his death even though she doesn’t know... what you and I know. And when she looks at me like that...” I swallow, and choke out, “...I think she’s right.”

  I know she’s right. I killed him. Etin knows. And now I’m a thief, as well, which he can’t ever know.

  “I’m afraid of what I’ll become if I stay here—if it isn’t already too late.”

  “Come on the ship with me. You’re too young to start college. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll be with family.”

  I smile a little. “I’m a land-lover, Etin. I couldn’t live in space for months and months, without the wind and the soil and the sunshine.” The thought makes me shudder.

  “How will you pay to room at the college?”

  “I told you. The job paid well.” This is the question I’d feared. C75 would never have got me into college, let alone a room on campus. “I got a... grant. And I’ll work. Next year, I’ll get a scholarship. I have Father’s gift for languages, remember?” And other gifts of his, as well, I think, resisting the urge to touch my pocket where the small leather pouch lies hidden.

  How well did either of us know our father? Perhaps I’m the one who followed his real trade, not Etin.

  The spacebags bob gently behind me as I walk down the hall to the door. I don’t look back, even for Etin, as it closes behind me.

  Chapter Four

  It takes me two months—the last week barely eating—before I go back to Sodum’s shop. Tuition and residence cost more than I thought, and the part-time job I expected to find—well, who’s going to hire a college freshman when they can hire a senior? The money I made from the diamond ring is spent.

  I could move back home and commute two hours to the College of T & I. Owegbé wouldn’t turn me away. But she wouldn’t welcome me, either. I don’t need that. So here I am in the middle of the night, somewhere near the back of Sodum’s store. It’s cloudy, the only light comes from the narrow, solar-powered panel that runs along the jutting edge of the roofs in front of the stores. Here at the back of them, it’s almost pitch dark. I’ve been up and down this unlit street twice, looking for the entrance to the alley. If I could just walk past the storefront and orient myself it would be easier, but the front street is too well-lit with sidewalk panels as well as the rooftop panel, and I don’t want to be seen near the store.

  Why shouldn’t I steal? I ask myself as I walk slowly in the dark. My father did. Apparently not very successfully or we’d have been better off—unless it was all used up during his years of illness. All but the magnificent diamond with its black, secret center. He wouldn’t sell it and neither will I, not ever. I only wish I knew its secret. According to the info-net, GoTo, there may be diamonds mined on Malem—extraordinary ones, if it’s true—but no one’s ever brought one away from Malem to verify the rumor. It could just as easily have come from a dozen other places where my father traded, but none of them describe a stone like his.

  Wait, there: I stop at a break between two buildings and look down a narrow dirt walkway littered with garbage. On either side the dirty walls of buildings rise up, barely discernable from the black night as they recede into the alley. I shiver, peering into the pitch-black alley.

  This is only temporary. Next year I’ll win the second year scholarship. But that won’t feed me now. My empty belly is more insistent than my fear, so I step into the dark. Four paces in and the darkness becomes tangible, a midnight space I have to force myself to walk into.

  I grope with my hands along the wall that I think is the outside of Sodum’s store. If I’ve got the right block, the right alley. How far along is his store? It’s been months since I sold that ring to him, I can’t remember the block front clearly, let alone the back. If I hadn’t passed him by chance at the station, where I was trying to shoplift something to eat, I wouldn’t have remembered his offer to teach me at all. On impulse I dropped my bag in front of him and, bending to pick it up, set the date for tonight’s meeting.

  I feel the indent in the wall that means a door, and knock quietly. No answer. I knock a little louder. Why doesn’t he open it? He should be waiting for me. What if this is the wrong alley? What will I say if someone other than Sodum opens this door?

  A sudden, sharp hiss makes me jump. Further down the alley, a door has opened silently.

  “Come ’ere! Quickly!” Sodum whispers in a fury. He’s dressed in black; all I can see is his white, skeletal hand on the door and his pinched face stretched over a bald skull. His archaic spectacles catch the thin light coming through the door and shine out at me with what appears to be black, empty sockets behind them. I back away.

  The hand not on the door appears, making small, rapid gestures at me as he scans the alley. “Get in! D’yu want t’be seen?”

  The hiss of his voice is creepy, but I didn’t come all this way to turn and run like a little kid. He’s the one who’s nervous. I walk to the door calmly—well, trying to look calm, just to infuriate him—and step inside.

  The store is even darker than the alley, if that’s possible. I feel my heart pounding and stand still, afraid to move, but as soon as he closes the door to the alley, Sodum flicks the ceiling panels on. He picks up a thin plastic card from the table his eyecomp is on and hands it to me. As I hold it, it becomes as flexible as a glove and follows the contours of my palm, warming to body temperature. I examine the swirl of tiny wires encased within it. The design is vaguely familiar.

  “A palm override,” he says. At once I recognize the design—it looks just like the lines in a human hand. He shows me how to adjust the wires delicately with the edge of my thumb, to fool the infra-red sensor and open his office safe. Not surprisingly, it’s empty.

  “There’s no such thing as a private safe,” he says, grinning his horrible death’s-head grimace at his pun on the word ‘safe’ as he resets the wires so I can try it. It’s trickier than it looks, setting the wires to cover my own palm and fingertip signature in order to fool the lock. When I’m able to open the safe fast enough to satisfy him, he reaches into a lower cupboard and brings out a two-foot square metal box. Each of its sides has a different kind of locking mechanism. He hands me a tiny finger comp and teaches me to break the codes and hack into the two most common types of comp locks. Over and over and over he makes me do it. It’s the middle of the night and I’ve been here a couple of hours at least.

  I’m about to remind him I have to get up and go to class in a few more hours, when he nods his head, satisfied.

  He hands me a flat piece of metal, the top encased in a light film of moldable plastic. One edge of the metal is serrated, narrowing to a rounded end. I stare at it, too tired to care what it is. Then I recognize it as an antique key.

  “Do people still use these?” I touch the silver lock on the third side of the box with the enhanced key.

  “Usually just fer show, along with a sensor. They can be lasered off pretty easy, but that leaves evidence.” His lip curls with professional distaste. He gives me a tiny pick and shows me how to use both of them to open the ancient, mechanical locking devices on the other two sides of the box. Now I have to practice this over and over until my eyesight goes blurry and my hands shake with fatig
ue.

  “That’s the most popular,” he says, pointing to the palm over-ride. “And they’re hard t’come by.” He places the devices in a bag and holds it out to me. “These’ll cost yu C30.”

  “I haven’t any money.”

  His face thrusts suddenly toward me. “Yu have C500!”

  “I used it to pay my first year in the College of Translators and Interpreters.”

  “Yer trainin’ t’be a translator?” Behind the spectacles his eyes gleam. “Embassies, gover’ment offices,” he mutters to himself, rubbing his hands. Again his face thrusts forward, this time twisted into the hideous grimace he considers a smile. “Yu can owe me.” He drops the bag into my hands. “Take care o’ that palm override. I can’t get another. And if yer caught with it yu won’t be treated as a ‘young offender’, they’ll consider yu a seasoned criminal. Remember that!”

  I’m tempted to throw the bag back in his face. I hate the thought of being in debt to this horrible man. And I’m not a criminal! I’m not a thief! ...just one ring, that’s not a real thief. I raise my hand—

  But how can I explain coming here, spending all this time learning something and then not take the tools to do it? There is no explanation. It would be crazy.

  And what if I don’t get that scholarship? Owegbé’s face fills my mind, taunting me: sneaking home, a failure...I lower my hand.

  Sodum grins. He leads me to the back door and opens it a crack, cautiously peering up and down the alley before swinging it wide enough for me to pass through. I’m brushing past him, trying not to touch him at all, when I remember.

  I might never see him again. If I want to ask my question it should be now. He’s the one most likely to know and least likely to mention it to anyone else.

  “Have you ever seen a kind of gem that looks like a diamond but bigger? With colors, all the colors of the rainbow. And a black center.” When I say the last phrase his gaze focuses on me so intently I unconsciously take a step back and bump into the door frame.