The Clouded Sky

by Megan Crewe

  “How soon will we be at the station?” I ask after she’s motioned for me to sit on the bunk.

  “In a couple hours we’ll dock at Kemhar to pick up a few things from Odgan,” Britta says. “And from there it’s just a short run to Kemya.”

  “But I won’t need to act like a pet right away?” The information I managed to dig up on the network didn’t give me much guidance on how to behave. I know there are approximately two hundred and fifty Earthlings living as pets on Kemya now, that the trend of having them brought over started among the wealthier citizens only in the last millennia, and that as Thlo said they’re considered property rather than people. The Kemyates seem to view them not so differently than Earthlings view their own pets—a source of amusement and a sort of companionship, although here with the side benefit of being able to assign them errands and housekeeping duties.

  After a while, I had to stop reading about it, my teeth so on edge my jaw was aching. They think it’s okay to treat us as less human because of the degrading of the matter that constructs us, when that was caused by them and their experiments.

  “For the first few days, we’ll need to pretend you’re not even there, like we would have if you were staying with Isis and me,” Britta says. “Then when the cargo hauler comes in, I’ll fix the records so it appears you came on it.”

  “And no one’s going to check with the people who were actually on that ship?”

  “No reason to, unless something happens to make someone think you’re a problem. We’ve been working—how’d you put it?—under the radar for years. We’ve got the strategies down. The Security division has never even noticed our activities.”

  “But they have now, after what happened on Earth,” I point out.

  “We knew that would happen. They still don’t really know what they’re dealing with. We can keep ahead of them.” She lifts a chunk of my hair from my neck. “You’re nervous?”

  “I don’t want to screw this up,” I say. I don’t have years of practice blending in to Kemyate society. I don’t want to end up really drugged. Or caught by the Enforcers. Or . . . I clamp down on that line of thought and the growing quiver of anxiety.

  “Why don’t you ask Jule to arrange something with Tabzi? I’m sure she has a couple of friends with pets—you could meet one and see how they act.”

  The image of a person being led over on a leash, like a puppy on a canine playdate, pops into my head, and my muscles twitch. But I can’t think of a better way to learn what I need to know. “I will once we’re there,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “Now, for your new look . . .” Britta brandishes her device. “They don’t have cosmetic tools like this on Earth! We can keep it simple if you’re more comfortable with that—or do you want to try something extreme?”

  “Ah, no, simple sounds good,” I say. “Whatever will make me less recognizable.”

  “Hmmm. We can adjust your skin tone, give you more of a tan and even out the freckles. And your hair: chin length and darker brown?”

  “Sure.”

  She runs the device over my hair and weight slowly drops away. “I’ll tweak the shape of your eyebrows too. After that, anyone who’s seen you before would have to examine you close-up to recognize you.”

  A faint heat tingles over my scalp. “I’ll need to give you a touch-up every few days,” she adds. “The colors will fade.”

  “Of course,” I say with sudden relief. There’d be a lot of questions if I returned home with a brand-new complexion.

  She nudges me to turn toward her. “It might prickle on your face.”

  The heat races over my skin, making the corners of my eyes and mouth itch. Angela would kill to get her hands on one of these. The one time we put streaks in her hair, her mom got so upset she hasn’t dared try anything else since. A magical device that can adjust your looks in a few minutes—that’s exactly what she needs.

  Not that I’ll ever be able to tell her it exists.

  “Kurra,” I say to distract myself as Britta lowers the device, “she was using some kind of tech to disguise her face when she needed to blend in, but it seemed more like . . . a hologram, or something?”

  “Ah,” Britta says. “I don’t know the details of Enforcer protocol, but from what I’ve heard, they use the . . . projectors for when they need to make themselves look very different quickly. Bone structure is a lot harder to change than skin and hair. If someone like Kurra was going to make herself look, oh, Ethiopian, that could take hours to get right, and the projector can do it instantly. But projectors give you a headache if you keep them running very long.”

  She eyes me, surveying her work, and says a word in Kemyate I recognize as meaning, done well.

  “Thank you,” I say, the unfamiliar sounds clumsy in my mouth. Britta’s amber eyes brighten.

  “Hey!” she says. “Look at you, picking up the local language.”

  “Win showed me the language program on the computer,” I say. “It seemed like a good use of my spare time . . .”

  Britta says something in Kemyate, too quickly for me to follow. She slows down, emphasizing the breaks between the words. The gist, as far as I follow, is that yes, she agrees it was a good idea. Then, in the same patient voice she’d probably use on a toddler, she asks, “How do you like our ship?”

  I scan through the vocabulary I’ve picked up. The Kemyate tongue seems a little peculiar in its range of adjectives.

  “It is well made and . . . efficient,” I say. Britta beams, so I guess I didn’t mangle the words too badly. I switch back to English. “The pilot should be proud.”

  Britta bounces on the bunk, her chestnut ponytail swishing. Then her delight dims. “You’ll have to hide that when you meet anyone outside this group,” she says. “There’s a . . . sanction, against teaching Earthling pets Kemyate.”

  “Oh.” It doesn’t surprise me. Letting us speak their language might make it too obvious how much like them we really are.

  “You never took up my invitation to visit,” Britta says, changing the subject.

  I feel odd mentioning Isis warned me off. “I didn’t want to interrupt at a bad time.”

  “I guess it’ll be a bit more complicated now that we’re in Kemyate space. Was your work on Earth anything like this?”

  “Well . . . I was still in school. But I took all the math and science courses, and did some extracurricular stuff. I was thinking I’d go into chemical engineering.”

  Because it seemed safest, I realize, remembering that decision. I figured I’d find a position that would let me use math and the natural laws without having to cope with quite as many shifts as would inevitably come within constantly updating fields like electronics. For so long, that’s been my first priority—to avoid the wrongness and the panic attacks that were always on the verge of overwhelming me. When I make it back home, I could consider other options, couldn’t I? What actually appeals to me the most, instead of what protects my sanity.

  “I hadn’t read much on astronomy, though,” I add, and gesture to the walls. “How far is Kemya from Earth? Does this ship go faster than light speed? How does that even work?”

  “We have a unit for distance that doesn’t completely translate, but . . . this trip is a little less than two thousand light years, I think, in your terms,” Britta says. “And the engines—we have drives based on . . .” She says a word in Kemyate, and hesitates. “I’m not sure how to explain it in English.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say hastily. “I don’t know if I’d be able to follow it anyway.”

  “You’ll pick it up—you just weren’t exposed to concepts at this level on Earth,” she says, as if reassuring me that my deficiencies are my planet’s fault. “I can catch you up a bit as long as you have some of the foundation. This is my playground, out here. All this space to explore.”

  Her words remind me of the way Win talks about Earth. So much space. “Is that why you got involved with the group?” I ask. “To help work toward find
ing a new home for Kemya?”

  “A little of that, a little of this. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’m looking forward to living on an actual planet.” She gives a tiny shudder, and pokes the side of the cabin. “I like my protective walls. It’s what we all grew up with, you know? But I realize we can’t sustain the station forever. My parents, they were very vocal about pushing for moving to a new world. Until they were both, what’s the word? Downgraded, at their jobs.” She grimaces. “This way, I get to see more of the galaxy and spite the Council on my parents’ behalf at the same time.”

  She pauses, and a blush colors her tan skin. “I’m sorry. That must sound horrible. For you it’s about stopping us from completely ruining your planet. I’ll be glad when that’s over too. And . . . anything else I say . . . I haven’t talked to any Earthlings before now. If something stupid comes out, assume I don’t mean it, okay? I think it’s great that you’re helping us.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, touched. She is trying, clearly. And I need all the allies I can get.

  Everyone disembarks when we dock at the smaller station of Kemhar—except me, because I’m not supposed to be here at all. But not everyone stays there the whole time. When I’ve had enough of the language program and wander over to the lab where I worked with Win yesterday, Jule is standing by the large screen, which is still set to a view of the space outside. I hesitate, and then make myself walk in.

  Jule doesn’t move, as if he hasn’t heard me enter. But as I approach the screen, he points to the bottom of the view.

  “That’s our final destination,” he says, in his perfect American accent. Somehow it makes me miss home even more in that instant.

  I can only make out the faint diamond-shaped outline if I stare, next to the curved edge of the shadowed planet. Most of the original Kemya is obscured by the station we’re docked at, an asphalt-gray surface dotted with box-like protrusions that fills one side of the screen. I step closer to it, resting my hands on the material that’s too dense to be plastic and yet too soft to be glass.

  “It still looks pretty far.”

  “When you’ve never been off your planet, I guess it would,” Jule says. He glances at me then, with what feels like a measured consideration. As if he’s only willing to expend a fraction of his mental energy on me.

  I make myself look back. A frank appraisal: he’s attractive enough, with those wide-set eyes, the toffee-brown skin, the muscular build Angela would gush over. But even when he’s not talking, hints give away the jerk underneath. The way the corner of his mouth curves at that angle that’s more smirk than smile. His casual stance as the silence stretches, as if it’s nothing to him how awkward I might feel.

  “Britta did a good job with your new look,” he says, just as that silence crosses over from awkward to excruciating. “So. We’ll be spending a lot of time together. If there’s anything you’re going to be fussy or weird about, I’d appreciate a heads-up.”

  He manages to make the request sound friendly even as he insinuates that I’m going to be a nuisance. My fingers curl by my hip, missing the beaded bracelet that used to ground me during my panic attacks, the touchstone I lost in my travels through Earth’s past. My new touchstone is the image I hold in the back of my mind: the Kemyate generator exploding. The time field that encircles Earth disintegrating. My planet free.

  “It’s a little hard for me to say, when I don’t know how fussy or weird you’re going to be,” I reply. “But I got by fine jumping with Win across several centuries and three continents while being chased by people who wanted to kill us. I doubt there’s anything so horrifying in your apartment that I won’t be able to handle it.”

  “That’ll depend on how horrifying you find me, then,” he says with a teasing lilt. “Darwin, well, you can’t judge the rest of us by that hopeless soft-brain.”

  Despite my best efforts at control, I bristle. “What’s your problem with Win anyway?” I say. “The way you go after him, when I’ve never seen him do anything to you, you’re the one who comes off like a . . . a ‘soft-brain.’ ”

  Jule waves away my words. “Ah, I don’t care about him that much. It’s just so easy to wind him up. And he’s so . . .” He shakes his head. “You should have seen him, the first year we were in Traveler training. Making the most obvious comments, asking the stupidest questions—he’s lucky Thlo caught on to just how Earth-favoring he is and taught him a few things before the instructors sent him off for interrogation.”

  I suspect he’s exaggerating, but there’s probably some truth in the picture he’s painting. Win’s never been able to hide his emotions, even with me. Which no doubt has made him an even easier target for people like Jule.

  “I’ll admit it’s not really his fault, considering the rotter family he’s stuck with,” Jule goes on. “Naming their kid Darwin?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s almost a cliché—picking an Earth figure that famous. They might as well have stamped on his forehead that they’re obsessives. His dad’s trying to be an artist, of all the useless things. It’s like they’ve forgotten where they live.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “And ‘Jule,’ what’s that short for? Julius, as in Caesar?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “It’s just Jule. That’s the way to do it. Let people take or leave the connotations—you’ve kept it your own. Most people back home know that.”

  Then most people on Kemya are not just over-cautious, self-centered hypocrites, but also snobs.

  “You don’t harass Isis,” I say. “Or are Egyptian goddesses more acceptable than British scientists?”

  “Isis has seven years seniority on me,” Jule says. “I respect that even if I don’t respect her parents’ taste in names.”

  “Well, growing up that way obviously did Win some good,” I say. “How much did your sophistication help you follow Jeanant’s trail? It’s because Win was willing to break a few rules that he thought to ask me to join in, and we put the pieces together in a fraction of the time you’d already spent wandering around revolutionary France.”

  Jule opens his mouth, but apparently he has no snarky comeback for that. He pauses, and laughs. “You know, you have a point there. I’ll give you that one.”

  He nods to me, with what might be a real smile. “I can see this’ll be interesting, anyway.” Then he saunters out. The door sighs open and closed. And I turn back to the skyscape on the screen. To the faint outline of the man-made world I will be both invading and trapped on in just a few hours.

  When we reach the station I’m in my cabin, stuffing my backpack into the Kemyate bag Britta lent me to disguise it. A shudder runs through the ship. I grab the upper bunk to catch my balance, and the door chimes. But the name that flashes onto the screen isn’t the one I was expecting.

  “Quickly,” Isis says when I open the door, her face uncharacteristically drawn. “We’ve found out the Enforcers are doing an in-person inspection of every ship that’s been off-Kemya in the last few ten-days, as they come in.”

  I stiffen. So the Security division is tightening their efforts faster than anyone here anticipated. “What do we do?”

  “We can’t let them see you,” Isis says. “Come with me.”

  As she ushers me into the hall, Win rushes up. “We don’t have time,” Isis says to him.

  “It’ll just take a second,” he says, his breath short, and then to me, “I wanted to tell you, just in case . . . If you need me once we’re on the station, my family’s apartment is Ward 23 Sector 8 Apartment 17. You’ll remember that?”

  23-8-17. My mind files away the numbers automatically. “Yeah,” I say. “But— I couldn’t just show up— your family—”

  “If you’re in danger, it doesn’t matter,” Win says. “I’ll figure out a story for them. And I’ll find ways to keep in touch with you at Jule’s.”

  He looks like he might say more, but Isis clears her throat and he just bobs his head, backing away. His words tumble
inside me as Isis hustles me down the hall.

  Just a precaution, I tell myself. Hopefully, an unnecessary one.

  Isis opens a door at the end of the hall and motions me through, into a dark space so deep I can’t make out the other end. A smattering of tiny lights glint on ahead of us as we walk, illuminating the silhouettes of boxes and cylinders stacked around us. The air has turned cool.

  “We have a special section in the cargo bay that should be undetectable,” Isis says. “We’ve smuggled equipment back and forth dozens of times without any problem—you’ll be fine. This development just means we can’t walk you through the docking area the way I’d thought. We’ll have to cart you out with the luggage.”

  That doesn’t sound like fun, but I’ll take it over the Enforcers. “Whatever we have to do,” I say.

  She stops partway through the room. “Wait here.” As she hurries farther amid the cargo, the lights that flicker after her barely outline her curvy form. She nudges over a round-edged container about the size of the 150-gallon aquarium Evan’s dad is constantly puttering around in their basement. I don’t see any wheels underneath it; it glides along half an inch above the floor. When Isis pinches one corner, the side folds down.

  “Sorry,” she says. “You’ll hide in here during the inspection, and then we’ll bring it through processing and on to Jule’s apartment.”

  I drag in a breath and crawl into the tight space. “They aren’t going to, like, scan the luggage?”

  “I’ve got tech that can take care of that once we’re off-board,” Isis says.

  When she closes the side again, there’s just enough room for my shoulders to graze either side of the box. I rest my chin on my knees as it glides on. The motion stops abruptly. The world outside is silent.

  The container’s walls feel thick enough, but the cold still seeps in. Even with my arms wrapped around my legs, I can’t help shivering. I hope the others can get this inspection over with before I’m an icicle.

  The Enforcers have no reason to assume anyone’s smuggling an Earthling onto the station, I don’t think. They’re probably looking for signs of any suspicious activity, knowing the rebels who caught their attention on Earth a week ago will eventually come home. As long as Thlo’s cover story holds up . . .