by David Liss
Nayana signaled us, and Tamret put her on speaker. “Fine,” she said. “We surrender. Whatever.”
Before Steve could say anything, Tamret stepped around to my console, and began to fire PPB blasts. Her fingertip danced happily on the console, sending out blast after blast, until Nayana’s ship exploded.
“Hey!” Nayana shouted over the comm.
“Even when she’s dead,” Tamret said, “she won’t stop talking.”
• • •
“You cheated,” Nayana said as we met out in the hallway. She had her data bracelet streaming three-dimensional data. Clearly, she was smart enough to figure out how we had pulled it off.
“We didn’t cheat,” I told her. “We won.”
“You went outside the sim to monitor us,” Nayana said. “This is supposed to simulate real-world conditions. In the real world, you can’t go outside reality to watch your enemy.”
“In the real world,” Steve observed, “you use whatever you can to defeat your opponent. And we did.”
“Just admit we won,” Tamret said.
“You didn’t win honestly,” Nayana snapped.
“There is no honest,” Tamret said. “You either get the enemy or the enemy gets you.”
“There are rules of engagement,” Mi Sun said, “and you violated them. I know your boyfriend likes to just shoot things out of the sky, but that’s not how we do things in the Confederation.”
“Someone is all high and mighty,” Tamret said. I noticed she was not denying I was her boyfriend, and I wondered if that meant anything, but it seemed like a bad time to raise this question. “Tell me how many points you racked up in there so I can relieve you of them.”
“I refuse,” Nayana said, folding her arms. “And I am disappointed with you, Zeke, betraying your own kind for these aliens.”
“His own kind who won’t have anything to do with him?” Tamret asked.
“I’m not going to argue with an animal.” Nayana lifted her chin imperiously. “And I am absolutely not giving you any experience points. If you try to take them, I won’t hesitate to report you.”
“We did promise,” Charles said.
“I didn’t promise to be cheated.”
“It does seem like a bad idea to take Earth experience points and hand them over to another planet,” Mi Sun said.
“Except that you lot agreed to it,” Steve said. “Not quite cricket to back out now, seeing as you suggested this wager in the first place.”
“And now I’m suggesting you forget it,” Nayana said.
Tamret stepped forward. I knew that look, and it meant nothing good. “You cheating she-[pig].”
“At least I don’t look like I pee in a litter box,” Nayana answered.
I wedged myself between them. “This bet was a bad idea to begin with, so why don’t we move on. We played the game, we learned some things, and we all got XP. Everyone wins.”
Tamret’s ears shot back. “I don’t believe this. You’re taking her side.”
“I am not taking her side,” I said. “I’m taking your side. I don’t want you to get caught doing something that will ruin everything for you.”
“You’re not thinking about me. You’re too busy trying to win over the people who treat you like dirt to worry about your real friends.”
“That is not true,” I told her.
“I’m so done,” Nayana said. “You two can have your little master-pet argument on your own time.”
She headed toward the door, and Charles and Mi Sun followed.
The three of us stood there, me feeling ashamed and angry and nervous from the adrenaline and hormones and who knew what else bouncing around in my system. Tamret seemed to be firing on pure rage. Steve tasted the air, and I could tell he didn’t like what he was getting.
“Yours are emotional species,” he said.
Tamret growled and actually stomped her foot. “How’s this for emotion? I hate her. I don’t care if I get in trouble. I am going to get even with her.”
“Tamret, please don’t. Just leave it alone.” I knew I was in dangerous territory, but I couldn’t let her self-destruct. “Just give yourself a day to cool off. See how you feel tomorrow.”
She stared at me, her disbelief hard to miss. “You really would drop me to get back in with your delegation, wouldn’t you? That’s why you’re trying to protect Nayana.”
“I’m trying to protect you. I don’t see why you don’t get that.”
“I don’t get it because the second she crooked her finger at you, you went running.” She pulled open the door to the hall so hard I thought it might come off the hinges. And then she was gone.
Steve put a hand on my shoulder. “I want you to know,” he said, “that I still love you, mate.”
• • •
Steve and I went out for a snack, but I can’t say I enjoyed myself. I was distracted by what had happened with Tamret, upset that she was so angry with me, and mildly heartened that she seemed to be jealous of Nayana. I was also worried. I hated how ready she had been to hack into secure Confederation files with an enemy’s full knowledge. The thought that she might get caught, might get kicked off the station, filled me with dread. She represented a full third of the beings I fully trusted on the station, and as much as I liked Steve and Dr. Roop, I had never held hands with either of them and, frankly, never intended to.
Steve and I called it quits shortly before curfew. I dropped him off at his room and was heading down the hall to my own, hoping that Charles would be either asleep or, preferably, still out, when I saw Ms. Price coming toward me.
“Well, look who it is,” she said, flashing an unexpected smile at me. “Ezekiel Reynolds, scourge of the Phandic Empire. The Butcher of Ganar. Destroyer of worlds.”
“Uh, hey there.” I said.
“You’re up kind of late, aren’t you?” she asked.
There was something about her mood that I couldn’t quite make sense of. She was upbeat, but it didn’t feel natural to me, like she was trying to convince me, all of a sudden, that she was my buddy.
I shrugged. “I was just hanging out with—” I stopped myself. She didn’t want me hanging out with Steve.
“I know who you’re spending time with.” She shook her head, not quite able to fathom my foolishness. “I recall telling you to spend less time with those aliens.”
“I don’t see the humans lining up to hang out with me,” I said.
“Hmm.” She put a finger theatrically to her chin, pantomiming contemplation. “Maybe we should do something about that.”
Or maybe we should run away screaming, I thought. I said, “Sure. I guess.”
“What do you say I take you out for a bite to eat. I think you and I have a great deal to discuss. You have this idea that I’m not looking out for you, and I suppose I can see things from your perspective, so in the best interests of our delegation and our planet, maybe we should get to know each other better. There’s this place that serves amazing plant sushi in Nebula Heights. You know that neighborhood?”
I checked the chronometer on my data bracelet, hoping the time would get me out of this conversation. “It’s like five minutes before curfew.”
She waved her hand. “You don’t need to worry about that if you’re with me.”
I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I had the strangest feeling that it wasn’t, and that Ms. Price was trying to get me into trouble. Not that it mattered. Even if I was entirely sure she was right and I was allowed to go out and have vegetable sushi with her, the last thing I wanted to do was make conversation with her in the middle of the night in a strange part of the city about how I needed to abandon my friends.
“You know, I’m really tired,” I told her. “Maybe another time.”
“Of course.” She smiled with all the warmth of a vampire. “I th
ink it’s time for the two of us to become friends. To trust each other.”
I felt sure that was never going to happen. “Okay,” I managed to say. “You betcha.”
“I look forward to it.” She put out her hand. “Friends?”
I wanted to walk away, to tell her I did not trust her and I never would. She’d proven she was my enemy, and now she was trying to separate me from the beings I most cared about on the station. I was never going to trust her, but I could not tell her so.
“Sure,” I managed, and I shook her hand, which was colder than Steve’s reptilian grip.
She seemed pleased with herself. “Good night.”
I stood there, in shock, watching her walk away and disappear into her room. What had that been all about? Why was she suddenly trying to get me to trust her? I had no idea how I could make sense of it, but I knew I didn’t believe it.
I sighed and then turned in the other direction, and there—close enough to have seen everything but far enough away not to have heard a word of it—was Tamret. The universe had taken the time and trouble to position her in exactly the spot where she could most effectively misread what had transpired between me and Ms. Price. Tamret’s eyes were wide with disbelief or anger or confusion. She had seen me shaking hands with Ms. Price, my enemy and hers. I was once again, in Tamret’s eyes, putting the members of my own species first and being chummy with the woman who wanted me to avoid the other randoms.
“Tamret,” I started to say, but her name caught in my throat and came out like a cough.
She turned and ran in the other direction.
I hurried after her, but by the time I reached the main junction, she was long gone, so I went back to my room before any more insanity could track me down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
* * *
I wanted to hide from everyone and everything, but since that wasn’t really an option, I hid from everyone and everything until after breakfast and then went off to the classroom. I showed up exactly on time, hoping the others would already be inside and seated so I could avoid conversation, but Ms. Price was waiting for me outside.
“Good morning, Zeke.” Her smiled was crooked and almost endearing in a reptilian sort of way. No, I take that back. Steve was endearing in a reptilian sort of way. Ms. Price was something else. I would settle for insectoid—at least until I had an insect friend.
“Hey,” I said, dazzling her with my linguistic charm.
I tried to walk past her, but she stood in front of the door. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk last night. I want to be sure you understand that I have a job to do, Zeke, and it isn’t always easy.”
“I get it,” I said, cutting her off. I didn’t want to hear her speeches. “You think I’m swell, but you don’t want me having friends. Oh, and if it should prove to be in the best interests of the planet Earth to ship me off to be tortured and killed, you’ll be first in line with the packing tape.”
“Not first in line,” she said.
“You big softie,” I said, and made my way into the classroom.
• • •
Things with Tamret were not so easily resolved. She barely looked at me during class, and she sat with me and Steve for lunch, but she didn’t say more than three words. Steve, somewhat oblivious to mammalian moods, talked cheerfully about our victory over the other humans the night before.
After she finished picking at her food, Tamret excused herself and began to walk away. I hurried after her. “I want to talk to you about what you saw, or what you think you saw, last night. Ms. Price and I aren’t friends. She just kind of came up to me.”
She did not slow her pace. She may have quickened it. “It’s not my business what you do with the members of your own species. I know how important they are to you.”
I put a hand on Tamret’s arm, and she shrugged me off, but at least she stopped. “I get that it looked like we were being all chummy, but we weren’t.”
“I’ll tell you what it looked like,” Tamret said. “It looked like there is no amount of abuse you won’t take from someone as long as they come from your own world. That woman wants nothing more than to throw you to the Phands, and she wants to keep you away from the only beings who care what happens to you. But even after all that, you’re still trying to get on her good side.”
“I was not,” I insisted. “I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“And what about Nayana, who’s so beautiful? Are you still ready to run off with her?”
“You asked me if she was pretty for our species, and I told you. But so what? Some people are pretty, but I still don’t like her, because she’s unpleasant.”
“I’m unpleasant!” she snapped.
“Not to me, you’re not,” I said quietly.
That seemed to have some effect on her. She lowered her defenses, if only slightly.
“I like you, Tamret,” I told her. I wasn’t admitting to anything, but I was still saying I liked her, and that admission made the rest of it somehow easier. The words just came out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I don’t know how to be any clearer about it. I don’t know why you’re so angry with me.”
She took a step back, and she looked sad, which was not the reaction I’d been hoping for. “I don’t think you know what you feel. What I do know is this—you never miss a chance to try and get closer to the people who treat you like you’re garbage. You are so desperate to belong with them that you don’t care how they treat you or how they treat us.”
“Of course I care, but you don’t understand what it’s like to be totally shut out.”
“Don’t I?” she asked.
Okay, that was stupid. “Maybe,” I attempted, “it’s not the same with your kind, but human beings are social creatures. On my world, cats don’t live in groups, so maybe—”
Her eyes went wide, and I could see that the word “cat” had produced some kind of unflattering translation. “Is that what I am to you? Some kind of domesticated animal?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that we need to be part of a group, and I don’t think it’s so terrible that I want to be part of my group.”
She took a step back, like she didn’t trust herself not to hurt me. Her jaw jutted out, her whiskers twitched, and her eyes tightened to narrow little slits. “That’s your problem, Zeke. That’s why I’m so angry with you. You are part of a group. Steve and I are your group, but to you it’s just a temporary arrangement until the beings from your planet take you back.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but I wasn’t sure now. Was she right? Would I have dropped the randoms if the rest of the humans had invited me in? Would I have lost interest in Tamret if Nayana had liked me? I honestly didn’t know how I would have felt in that first week on the station, but now things were different. There was no way I could ever imagine choosing to spend time with the other humans over Steve and Tamret, who had proved themselves the best friends I’d ever had. I knew that was true, but I wished the other humans would accept me as one of them. I didn’t want to choose one group over the other. I didn’t want to be rejected by any of them.
I was certain that was how I felt, but Tamret had seen my face, my moment of indecision. She was walking away, and once again, I wanted to go after her but there was nothing I could say that would make a bit of difference.
• • •
Over the next few days, I continued to log as many hours as I could in the flight sims and the game room. I knew that Tamret was also spending time in the computer lab, working on programming and, I hoped, nothing illegal. I continued to gain XP, and now had enough points to move up to level thirteen, though I kept myself at level nine so I wouldn’t freak out the other humans, who were all tens. I was tempted to put points in strength, but I stuck with the starship-pilot track and continued with agility, intellect, and vision, with a couple of points i
n health. Steve and Tamret were also at nines, but I knew Steve was an actual twelve, well above the rest of the Ish-hi. Tamret refused to tell us how many XP she’d racked up.
About a week after the disastrous incident in the flight simulator, Tamret showed up in the cafeteria just as Steve and I were finishing breakfast. She looked tired. Her fur was a little matted, and her hair was unkempt. Her clothes were wrinkled, like she’d slept in them, or hadn’t slept at all, and her eyes were streaked with red.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I was up all night working on something,” she said, “and I don’t think any of us are okay. You both need to come with me.”
We followed her outside to a courtyard, where Hluh was sitting on a bench by a fountain, waiting for us. She had her data-bracelet keyboard materialized, and she was busy typing away. “You might as well sit down, not that it matters. You’re all pretty much doomed.”
Under the circumstances, sitting seemed liked good advice. Tamret and I sat on the bench, on opposite sides of Hluh. There had been room next to me, and I’d been hoping she would sit near me. If I were doomed, I’d rather be doomed next to her.
“Since when are the two of you friends?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re not friends,” Hluh said. “I don’t much like Tamret. She’s too moody.”
“But I’m useful, apparently,” Tamret added.
“Yes, she has some remarkable computer skills, and she’s been helping me look into these matters.” Hluh’s fingers skittered over her virtual keyboard and called up a file on the selection committee. It was just a bunch of names in their indigenous alphabets or pictograms or whatever. If I looked at them for another few seconds, they would transliterate, but I couldn’t be bothered. The names of a bunch of dead aliens, no matter how important they’d been in choosing me, wouldn’t much matter.
