Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “God doesn’t need the cyber link.”

  I let that one lie. If God decides to talk to her, I’m pretty sure I won’t be asked to translate.

  “Why won’t Malem just give it to them?” I ask, looking out the portal. “Malem has more water than they’ll ever use.”

  “I don’t know. There must be a reason.”

  Iterria hangs red-hot outside the portal, a dying planet surrounded by cold space. All those people having to leave their homes and the O.U.B. sends a novice Select with a sixteen-year-old language teacher.

  “Chalk one up for space,” I murmur; “One down for humans.”

  “Not yet,” Agatha says.

  But after an hour of language lessons I’m certain Iterria is toast if it’s depending on Agatha.

  “How did you pass your examinations to become a Select?” I finally ask her.

  She looks at me, and I know she’s got the seeing-right-through-you part down. But there had to be some studying involved, too, and if she could do it then, she can do it now. So I stare right back at her.

  “I prayed,” she says. “I closed my eyes and prayed. I don’t even know who examined me. I never saw them.”

  “And you passed?”

  “They told me my explanations were incoherent but all my answers were right. The wrong words but the right ideas.” She smiles. “Maybe on Malem—”

  “On Malem,” I say “the right words matter very much.”

  ***

  I check my spacebags one last time before leaving my room. The pouch containing my father’s gem is tucked among my clothes near the bottom of the second bag. Somehow, in the short time I’ll be here, I have to find out if it is a Malemese diamond. Sodum never actually saw it, after all. For all I know, Malemese diamonds are just a myth. The ship’s engineer seemed to think so. The one time I broached the topic with him, he just laughed at me.

  I drop the flash on Malem and the two on Kandaran into my spacebag, along with my travel-tab. According to it, the original Malem settlers took a vow of poverty. If they still keep to it, that may explain why they won’t sell their water.

  The idea of intentional poverty gives me the creeps, to tell the truth. The Select and the Adepts don’t own anything individually, but they have the entire wealth of the O.U.B. behind them. That’s not poor. Poor is when nothing stands between you and disaster. If that’s the Malemese’s choice, they are crazy. And it probably means there aren’t any diamonds here.

  While my bags are inflating I pull on the full-length woolen tunic I’ve been told to wear over my jumpsuit. It’s hot and heavy and it itches where it touches my skin at the neck and wrists—I have to stop myself from taking it off again. I leave the heavy black boots I’ve also been given beside my bags and go to find Agatha. After three months in space I can’t wait to go outside, even on Malem.

  There’s no response when I touch the door to her room. She’s not in the caf. I go to the com room and find her standing in front of the portal again. As politely as possible, I ask her whether she’s packed up yet.

  “Have you seen them?” She gives a quick little nod toward the portal.

  I walk over and look out. It’s early afternoon but the sun I have longed for is hidden by dark clouds. I can hardly see through the heavy precipitation that falls in torrents onto the gray soil—and bounces back up! Hail? I’ve heard of frozen rain, but never seen it. Several figures hurry from a small stone building across the open landing field, stooped over to protect themselves from the stinging onslaught. I watch, fascinated, until I remember I’m about to go out in that.

  Two Malemese men are close enough to the ship for me to see. Their dark hair clings dripping to their scalps under light brown arms lifted to shield their heads from the hail. One of them looks up at the ship, his open mouth revealing a missing tooth as he yells something to the other over the wind. They both wear plain dark robes, several layers by the bulky look of them, similar to the itchy woolen thing I’ve been given to wear on Malem. The wind buffets them roughly as they fight their way to the ship. They look cold, dirty and underfed.

  “Beautiful,” Agatha whispers. “They’re beautiful, and I can’t even speak to them.”

  Maybe they look better when they’re not sopping wet, but beautiful? I stare at her. Her face is tense and pale. She must have meant something else.

  “You’ve learned a lot of words,” I say. “And you’ll get better.” I hope so, anyway.

  “I don’t know what to do. They didn’t tell me anything. They never do.” Agatha’s voice is close to breaking. It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about the Order now, not the Malemese people. “I don’t think they trust me,” she says.

  “I’m sure they know you’re loyal.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean, I don’t think they believe I’m very competent.”

  I understood what she meant and had hoped to sidetrack it. What can I say? She’s probably right. “They made you a Select.”

  “I passed the tests. I don’t think they were happy about it.”

  “You are a Select,” I tell her. “They sent you here, didn’t they?” I wait until Agatha nods. “You’ll know what to do. You always do, better than them.”

  I remember Agatha at my trial saying, “It seemed the right thing at the time,” and the Adept replying, after a pause, “Then it must have been.”

  “They trust you,” I say, certain I’m right. “They just don’t understand you.”

  Gradually the strain in Agatha’s face eases. She opens her eyes. I remember Jaro’s instructions on social skills and give her a cheery, confident smile.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There’s a decontamination unit at the station,” the captain says to Agatha, not even looking at me. “Take all your things. The Malemese shoot anyone who brings something into the city, hasn’t been checked and buzzed. Building’s to the left.” He steps aside and opens the hatch.

  A fierce gust of wind and hail howls in through the opening. Agatha staggers back, falling against the captain. He grins and helps her regain her footing. She opens her mouth to say something, apparently thinks better of it, and reaches for her spacebag. I follow her out of the ship.

  My first step launches me straight into the gale, which blows me backward, slamming me into the side of the ship hard enough to expel the air from my lungs. A bark of laughter comes from the hatch before it closes. I struggle up carefully. The captain could have warned us about gravity being lighter here. Too bad I hadn’t vomited all over him, not just on his boots.

  The pounding hail and the wind make it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. We shuffle along the ground holding hands against the ballast. My spacebags whip about crazily, threatening my tenuous balance until I stop and deflate them half-way. Then I’m forced to carry them above the ground—they aren’t made to withstand the tear of twigs and stones.

  I’ve never been so cold in my life. My cheeks sting, my eyes are running and I can barely feel my fingers, let alone move them. By the time we reach the spaceport we’re breathless and shuddering with cold. I’m wondering whether the ship, with its life-support turned off, can be worse than this.

  The port is small and dark inside. It keeps out the wind and hail, but other than that it’s not much warmer than outside. There’s a desk and a chair just inside the door, with a man sitting at it and a woman standing beside him. He gestures for us to leave our bags beside the single standard decontam unit in the middle of the building.

  Decontamination procedures are thorough to the point of paranoia. I have to strip to my underwear before entering the unit. Once inside, I’m ordered to rotate slowly, like a piece of meat on a skewer. The woman gives me a blanket while I wait for my clothes to be buzzed at a higher intensity. One thin blanket. I shiver in the damp, unheated building with the wind and hail pounding against it. I watch the man go for my bags, terrified he’ll empty them, but he only deflates them and throws them into the unit. None of my tools are large eno
ugh to show up on a scan as a weapon, so I breathe easier.

  They treat Select Agatha with a little more consideration, but not much more. When she and her things are deemed ‘clean’, the man tells her to report to the hospital within two days to have her aud-vid implant removed. I’m so shocked I can barely translate his demand, but Agatha receives the news calmly.

  “It’s standard practice here,” she tells me as we dress quickly behind a flimsy curtain. “They’ll reinsert it when I leave.” The curtain blows aside as I hear the door to the building open; I barely catch it in time to preserve our modesty.

  The captain is talking to the two Malemese officials when we pick up our bags. He turns and calls out, “I depart in two standard weeks. At noon. If you’re coming, don’t be late.”

  Agatha pulls open the door. A gust of freezing wind makes me gasp. My woolen robe is still cold and damp from making my way to the station, but I hug it tight around me. When I look back, the captain’s talking to the two Malemese again, so I leave without answering him.

  The hail is abating. By the time we fight our way across the landing field it’s stopped. The wind, however, is still fierce. It batters our spacebags, slowing us down as we struggle to hold on to them. I keep close to Agatha, letting her break the wind somewhat for me. This is her mission, not mine; I’m only here till the ship leaves. At last we reach the grain elevators we were directed towards and huddle against them, shielded from the wind, catching our breath.

  Agatha leads us down the narrow dirt streets of the city. The buildings are close on either side and tall, most of them six or seven stories high. They’re all stone or gray brick, with small windows and not many of those. At least they block the force of the wind, but its coldness stings my cheeks and I have to clap my hands to keep them from freezing. There are people out in this weather, women and children as well as men, all dressed in dark, ankle-length robes, the women’s a little looser than the men’s but otherwise the same. Don’t they have the sense to stay inside on a day like this?

  No one approaches us, or smiles at us, or lets on that they’ve even seen us. When we stop to ask directions, however, we receive a polite reply expressed in terms as close to friendliness as the Malemese language permits between strangers.

  Prophet’s Lane is no more than an alley leading to a small, gray, single-story stone cottage crouched on a narrow plot of land between the tall apartment buildings, like a nervous toad surrounded by cranes. Even the groundcover around it is gray, dull and flattened under the beating of the wind. We hurry up to the metal door, eager to get inside.

  There’s no infra sensor. We wave our hands all over the front of the door and its frame but the door doesn’t slide open. Nor do we hear the echo of a chime inside announcing our presence. Finally I kick the door in frustration, despite Agatha’s frown, but it’s more solid than it looks. If I wasn’t wearing heavy Malemese boots I’d have broken my toe. As it is, I lose my balance and fall in the low g.

  Agatha taps on the window. The tapping, like my kick, is drowned by the howling wind. We walk all around the house. Every window is dark.

  “We have to find someplace to stay!” I shout over the gale. Agatha tries the door and the windows again before agreeing to go to an inn for the night and find the Select in the morning.

  “There’s only one inn, the Brief Sojourner,” we’re told when we finally find someone still out on the streets to ask. He gives us directions which I have to strain to hear over the wind whistling down the narrow streets. Naturally it’s on the other side of the city.

  I lean against a doorway, half-protected from the wind. I won’t make it. I will freeze to death right here. The thought is almost tempting, till Agatha gives me a look.

  There’s none of that sympathy I got when my parents died in this look. Nope. This is an if-you-are-stupid-enough-to-die-here-don’t-expect-me-to-stand-in-this-wind-praying-over-your-body look. Despite the allure of freezing to death, I am impressed. I didn’t know she had it in her. I push myself out of the doorway with a shrug, as if she was totally mistaken about me.

  This walk seems even longer than the trek into the city. I promise myself I’ll never take transit strips for granted again. I wind the cords of my spacebags around my wrists to prevent them from being pulled from my stiff fingers by the wind. At least my tunic has a hood that ties in place; the hood of Agatha’s Select cape keeps being blown off. I watch her bare neck go from scarlet to white as I follow her.

  Three months on that cramped little spaceship for this? Come with me to Malem, Agatha begged me. All I wanted today was a little sunshine. My disappointment turns into a bitter pleasure at the thought of leaving Agatha on this horrible planet while I head back to beautiful, warm Seraffa—really beautiful, not some weird, warped concept of the word that only Agatha understands. I imagine waving farewell at the door of the ship, grinning down at her as it closes.

  I pull at the neck of the woolen tunic. It’s frozen stiff from the hail. At least it’s warmer than Agatha’s blue and white habit, meant for Seraffa’s climate. Even so, I’m shivering and she’s not. I glare at her back ahead of me. It’s probably a Select thing. She could freeze to death and never show it.

  Agatha turns and smiles at me.

  She’ll probably have to wear two of those outfits at a time, or get some of this wool for underclothes. Yes, this nice, rough, itchy wool right against her skin. She didn’t throw up once on the spaceship. The Captain didn’t refuse to talk to her. But I’m the one who’ll get to go home with him.

  I smile back at her.

  There’s no sensor on the door to the Brief Sojourner’s Inn, either, but the door swings open after Agatha taps on the window. The Innkeeper cuts off her embarrassed apology and shows us how to turn the handle of the door and push it open to let ourselves into the small interior porch, where we can call out our names and wait to be admitted.

  The room at the B. S. Inn is small and sparse but scrubbed so clean it almost glistens. It has a bed large enough for two and a small table, both made of the same metal as the doors, and an electric lamp operated by pressing one’s thumb against a button on its base. The inside walls, like the outside ones, are gray brick.

  I can still hear the wind howling outside. The innkeeper thumbs on a small machine he calls an electric heater, which looks inadequate to the task of warming even this small space. At least there are plenty of blankets on the bed. He shows us how to operate the facilities, all of them strange and awkward, requiring physical manipulation. I look at Agatha, wondering if our voyage here has included time-travel.

  Agatha offers three of the local coins she’s been supplied with to the skinny, hollow-eyed innkeeper. He returns one of them.

  “We need dinner,” she says, offering the extra coin again, “and breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “Included,” the innkeeper says, pocketing the two coins.

  ***

  We’re finishing our breakfast in a little room set with tables at the front of the inn when a man wearing the robes of the Order walks in. The first thing I notice is that he’s brown, like the Malemese. He fits in, blue robes or not. I look at Agatha’s milky complexion, and down at my own black skin. What are we doing here? We’re piano keys in a coffee bar.

  “There you are,” he says in Malemese, taking us in without a flicker of expression.

  “Yes, here we are,” Agatha replies serenely, in Edoan.

  “You’re speaking Edoan,” he says, in Edoan.

  “Yes.”

  “No one here can speak it.”

  “Then it is convenient that you are not no one.”

  He pauses a moment, but then continues smoothly, “I was not home last night.”

  “No. But then, you weren’t expecting us.”

  “You were not in orbit long enough for the news to reach me before you landed. I would have met your ship if I had known.”

  “That wasn’t necessary. As you can see, we have had no trouble finding our way.”


  “When you’re ready we can move you over to the Order’s lodgings.”

  Agatha finishes her breakfast serenely as he waits.

  “What was that about?” I demand, as soon as we’re back in our room.

  “What?”

  “That verbal dance the two of you just did.”

  “You know very well what it is, Kia. You play it yourself often enough.”

  I concentrate on packing the few things I took out of my bag for the night.

  “He’ll get over this soon enough,” Agatha says. “We’ve surprised him, and the Select are not accustomed to being surprised.” Her eyes twinkle.

  So that was why the Select was so cool and formal after Agatha’s comment about him not expecting us. She held her own, although he did his best to put her at a disadvantage with his comment about her not speaking Malemese. I seal my bags and grin at her.

  “Perhaps we could keep the surprises to a minimum while we’re here?” she suggests.

  My grin fades. Is she just guessing, or does she know my secrets?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The stone house on Prophet’s Lane is as sparsely furnished as the rooms at the inn.

  “The Malemese stand to talk, or sit on cushions on the floor,” the Select explains, noticing my expression as I stare at the table and two metal chairs in the main living area. “There is little wood on Malem and no petroleum for plastics. Furniture is an expensive luxury. We will move your bedroom chair into the dining room in order to eat together.”

  I shake the excess water from my hair, staring around glumly, and hang my dripping robe on a hook beside the door. The floor slopes slightly toward a drain beneath the row of hooks.

  Only two of the bedrooms are furnished. Apparently they don’t expect many guests here—I wonder why? I’m willing to sleep on the floor in order to have my own room, but Agatha vetoes that, probably afraid I’ll freeze to death. She could be right.

  “The Malemese have few resources,” the Select says. “But there is water and hydro energy. Just not much modern technology to go with it.”