by Patty Jansen
“You know what I’m going to say,” I said.
“I want to make bubbles!” he said.
“Not inside. It’s very annoying. Look, Emi has soap in her eyes.”
She was wiping her eyes furiously. I picked her up. She started crying. I tried to wipe her face, but the bubble soap was very sticky.
Pykka pushed himself back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest. “This place is boring. There aren’t even any fish to catch.” He glared at Larrana in the corner, but refrained from mentioning the collection and how sick he was of listening to Larrana carry on about it. “I want to play and hunt.”
“You’ll get to blow your bubbles, I promise.”
But clearly he didn’t believe me.
Considering how active and free the Pengali kids were at home in Barresh, going fishing and collecting things and climbing things, I thought it was a wonder they’d behaved this well for this long. But they were getting tired. We were going to have a difficult few days ahead with them.
Junco had warned us that we’d soon cross the border and there might be shenanigans from guards if they felt like kicking up trouble. He had advised us to stay vigilant.
The train slowly slid into the night. There wasn't a lot of room to lie down in the cabins, so we tried to sleep sitting up. This wasn’t as unsuccessful as it sounded. All the days’ worth of travel had made all of us exhausted.
We took turns in sleeping on the pile of bags.
The children slept anyway, the Pengali youngsters curled up together with their tails wrapped around them.
As far as I knew, the train crossed the border without problems. I must have been asleep, because I didn’t even notice that we stopped, although Deyu said that we had, and that guards had come aboard the train but hadn’t entered any of the cabins.
We got off the train when it was still dark. Junco had told us to take a bus to a regular airport where it was also busy with panicked people with entire families and lots of bags.
We got something miserable to eat from a harried and too-busy food outlet and sat in a quiet corner while the sun came up over the eastern horizon. It was a cloudy morning, and the sky briefly went bright orange before the sun disappeared behind the clouds with an ominous flash of bright orange that lasted a few minutes.
Our flight to New York departed after breakfast.
It was one of the suborbital type, with comfortable seats, where the children soon fell asleep.
We were now so far out of the influence of anyone who could rescue us, I felt we might as well be back on the snowy surface of Tamer and surrounded by violent meat-eating dinosaurs.
But during a brief meeting with myself, Sheydu and Veyada, we had decided that it was time to prepare our escape after we’d seen the drone.
Sheydu and Reida had confirmed its locality in a military depot about half an hour out of New York. We needed to plan how, once we saw the drone, we would leave the continent. The first step was to let Amarru know, and then to contact Nations of Earth about what we were doing. Presumably, they would want to see proof of what we discovered. I wrote those messages and put them in our send queue.
We tried to look as inconspicuous as we could. Nicha had grown up doing this, wearing local types of clothes, dying his hair, trying to look like a local, but the others had not.
It was hard to shut the children up. The Pengali kids were cranky, Ileyu was cranky, and Ayshada had eaten something that made him thirsty. When we weren’t looking, he had scored a container of a sweet drink that made him hyper-active, and in need to visit the facilities several times. Larrana’s wheelchair was getting a fair amount of attention.
I was sure that the other passengers knew that we were from off world, and that they would report it to someone, and we would meet with trouble sooner rather than later.
This flight took us straight to New York in about two hours.
We arrived when a storm was coming in, and the tall buildings of the city were silhouetted ominously against the cloudy sky.
From the air, the damage done during the drone attacks was clear. Several buildings had collapsed, leaving rubble and smoking holes in the ground. A pall of smoke still hung over parts of the city.
This was much worse than Los Angeles. And other than the Aliens! accusations, we’d seen no clear evidence of where the attack had come from.
Reida and Deyu were preparing for the next, most dangerous, stage in our journey.
Taking the bulk of our group to a safe hotel.
Contacting Amarru with details of where we were and arranging a pickup through someone in the register.
Finding out the fine details of how to get to the base where the downed drone was held.
Getting enough materials to allow us to sneak in.
I was guessing it also involved communicating with the Asto military who were shadowing us on where we were going and what to do if things went wrong.
The craft landed, and we were allowed off the flight with the other passengers not much later.
But as we entered the arrival hall, a uniformed officer stopped Evi and Zyana at the front of the group and directed us to a room to the side. Sheydu and Isharu went into a heightened level of alert. Sheydu inserted her hand under her jacket.
A group of armed personnel was waiting for us in the room.
The officers surrounded us, a menacing wall of grey uniforms with badges that said Metropolitan Police. We were outnumbered.
“We’d like to speak to you,” one of them said, his eyes searching the group for someone to address. Eventually, his eyes met mine.
I made a back off gesture to my team. We could absolutely not afford an incident right here, in a busy airport where people streamed past us and everyone would carry a device that could record what happened.
The use of off-world weapons would not be a good idea.
There was nothing we could do except comply with their demands.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The officers took us aside in a large and empty room inside the airport building, where we sat on hard seats while waiting for them to decide what they’d do with us. We needed escorts to visit the bathroom, which was down a long hallway—I went there several times with various kids.
The kids didn’t take long to declare that they were bored, and, unlike us adults, had no inhibition to show it. The officers had not taken the bag containing the bubble device off the Pengali kids, although they’d looked at it and deemed it not dangerous. They might regret that decision.
After taking our IDs, and examining them slowly, in a different office, one by one, the officers declared that they needed to speak to a supervisor, and would take us to their head office, which was elsewhere. We were then all bundled into a van and taken across the city. By that time, it was mid-afternoon.
I wasn’t quite up with the plan devised by Sheydu and the others, but I was sure they’d booked accommodation for tonight. I’d make sure I did my utmost best to get us there.
The police van was small and cramped. We still had all our luggage, but I wondered how long this would last and when and how many of our supplies and electronics would be taken off us. Veyada and Mereeni were busily reading up on legal stuff. The police could only hold us without a charge for a day, but in the past, I’d also found that all those rules didn’t apply to those not holding an Earth-based citizenship, which was all of our group except myself.
While we were being driven, Reida collected data on where we were. He seemed to have limited Exchange coverage, and I asked him to send the prepared messages to Nations of Earth now, rather than later. I had a feeling this situation could get ugly very quickly.
The van took us through busy streets.
We passed an area affected by the drone attack, but a barrier stood across the side street that had sustained damage, and we couldn’t see anything except construction equipment and emergency vehicles e
ntering the area past a checkpoint.
I thought we were getting close to the city centre but didn’t want to distract Reida to ask.
Old buildings took up both sides of the street.
There weren’t many people about. Emergency crews occupied almost every intersection.
The main police office was in one of these streets, a modern building with an underground car park down a ramp with a steel gate.
Different officers waited for us here, with guns drawn, fanning around the vehicle as it stopped. These guys didn’t mess around.
One of the officers came into the cabin when we had stopped.
We were told to leave everything except our personal items in the van. They searched us. We had to take all weapons and communication devices off. They even found the feeder in Isharu’s hair. I had to explain what it was, and she had to take it off, too.
I watched Sheydu during this procedure, but she underwent the search with a steeled look on her face. So did Thayu. So did Isharu.
Reida was the most upset when they asked him to leave all his electronics behind.
But the others? No. They’d expected it. They had contingency plans. They had backups. What they were... I guess I’d find out soon.
I made a fuss because that was my job. In absence of a reason for our arrest, I demanded a formal statement that our possessions would be returned as soon as we left this building. I said that I wouldn’t enter the building until I had that statement. The officers were very obviously annoyed. A supervisor was called. I blustered my way through potential diplomatic disasters if they treated us improperly. I got my statement.
They took us through double security doors into a lift foyer. By now, there were at least twenty armed officers, keeping us separated in small groups.
Sheydu was in a different group. I met her eyes in between the uniforms. She gave a single appreciative nod, as if saying, You keep doing your thing, we’ll do ours.
On second thought, Reida’s protest at having to give up his equipment was probably an act, too.
Thayu stood next to me holding Emi, but she couldn’t have looked less motherly had she tried. Her expression was lethal, her eyes took in everything that happened, every notice on the walls, every tiny move that the officers made.
Veyada’s face held that distant look that he used to wear so often when I had first met him, and he was part of Ezhya’s guard association.
Nalya stood next to him, his expression emotionless and hard.
Ayshada held his father’s hand, his chin in the air.
The Pengali were in the group furthest from me. All I could see of them were three tails—one large and two small. The large tail, which I thought belonged to Ynggi, waved at thigh height and snapped occasionally, which startled the officers the first time he did it.
They took us five floors up in the lift in three groups, because the lift wasn’t big enough to hold all of us at the same time.
I tried to remember as much of the details of the surroundings as possible.
They allocated us a room at the end of the corridor. It was a corner room with windows on two sides that looked out over the street and the buildings opposite the police station. From one of the windows, you could see through a gap between two buildings to a river.
The room contained couches and a low table.
“Someone will be along to bring something to eat,” one officer said.
He didn’t ask what we could or couldn’t eat, so I told him in clear terms. When he objected to say that they might not have vegetarian food available, I demanded that we could go out to buy our own. He caved in on my demands then, because obviously, us leaving the building was out of the question.
He also said that we would be interviewed individually. I said that most of us wouldn’t understand the questions, but that didn’t appear to bother him.
I asked him if they had translators, but he didn’t answer the question.
He left us, locking the door behind him.
If rolling eyes had been a Coldi thing, Sheydu would have done it. But my team were professionals, and they went into stealth mode straight away. Not a word was spoken about the situation. They did all of it with hand signals, after they had established where cameras were likely to be, and faced away from them.
The room contained an entertainment screen. The kids grew tired of exploring the very boring room, so we had to turn it on and let them watch some stupid, loud and shouty show. It included singing and dancing across the stage. The music was fake-cheerful and repetitive.
Ayshada seemed baffled by it.
He asked Larrana what this was, but Larrana said he didn’t know. His voice sounded flat.
All the kids sat on the floor, watching it like zombies. They were worn out, physically as well as mentally.
The officers started the interviews not much later, with Deyu.
I silently wished them good luck getting anything out of her.
While Deyu was gone, Nicha paced back and forth in front of the window. He never spoke much about it, but I was sure that being questioned, yelled at, by police in a room by himself with no one to help him, brought back memories for him of the time when I’d just started my job, was still working for Nations of Earth, and President Sirkonen had been murdered. They had suspected Nicha with no evidence. They’d held him captive for weeks without allowing him contact with the Exchange or legal representation.
I went to stand in his way and stopped him when he walked past me.
“It’s different now,” I said in a low voice. “You have us. There are quite a number of us who don’t have local ID.”
He met my eyes, his expression intense. “That won’t stop them.”
“Yes, it will.”
“I don’t want my father to become involved in this.” We all knew how close Asha had been to ordering an operation by the Asto army under his command to free his son.
“He won’t be.”
Deyu was back quickly, and this calmed Nicha. Next they took Isharu, who came back really quickly. She genuinely didn’t understand any Isla.
My team communicated with each other and Deyu in sign language about the interview. She indicated that it was all right, as long as you pretended not to understand any of their words.
Next Anyu went in, then Zyana, and then Thayu. She gave Emi to me and walked out with the officers holding her back straight. Things like this never seemed to faze her much, but that was looking at it from our side. Even when we were wearing feeders, she usually kept that part of her thoughts well-hidden. Thayu did not like to admit fear.
I waited, feeling nervous. I presumed Thayu would be fine, and she’d been in worse situations, but still didn’t like it.
Then I worried about the kids.
Ynggi and Jaki had kept them quiet, and the Pengali youngsters were asleep, but when they woke up, they’d be full of beans and the dreadful show that was still blaring from the screen would not keep them entertained much longer. Even Larrana had grown bored with it. He half-lay on the floor in the strange position that only he could take up with his harness and was using his thumb to spin one of the wheels.
When Thayu came back, she made a sign to indicate that she thought the officers were idiots. Nicha went in after Thayu, giving me a nervous look as he left.
Thayu went to inspect the tray of sandwiches an officer had brought in and put on the table.
Despite what I’d told them, most of them contained some type of meat, which other members of my team had already taken out, so she likewise fished out the floppy pink slices and deposited them on the tray. She pulled a face when biting into the bread. It was gluey and sticky. And as usual, too sweet. Emi didn’t have a problem with it. She reduced a sandwich to crumbs in no time. She wanted another one, but Thayu didn’t trust that it would end well, so she produced an energy bar from her bag. These were from our dwindling reserves of Ast
o military supplies. They were highly concentrated, very spicy, and usually kept Emi busy for a while. But today she decided she didn’t want it. The gluggy sandwiches were much more interesting. So Thayu took another one, making sure she scraped off all traces of meat and butter.
By this time, Nicha returned and told Evi to go in.
I looked for traces of discomfort on Nicha’s face, but found none.
He stopped at the entertainment screen, and picked up Ayshada, who had fallen asleep. His little chubby hand twitched when his father carried him across the room to deposit him on the couch next to Larrana, who had borrowed Deyu’s reader. Earlier, she had explained a mind game to him, which he’d been playing since. A very proper Coldi game.
Nicha then came to me.
“You were quick,” I said.
“Yes, I had no interest in speaking to them. These people are really convinced that we are responsible for this, and there is not much we can say that convinces them otherwise. You should hear all the things they say about Nations of Earth and gamra.”
Yes, having been here for several days now, I could completely imagine.
After Evi came back, Telaris went in.
Evi also came to me and repeated the things Nicha had said. Everyone was careful with what they replied, because the room was sure to be bugged. We weren’t about to give the police any ammunition to further attack us, or make up additional conclusions aided through poor translation.
Deyu was fiddling with her equipment. She had told me in bits and pieces that they had taken photos of her from the side and the front and standing up and sitting down, and they had asked her to remove her suit so that she could be photographed only in a singlet. In case of Deyu, that seemed disturbingly voyeuristic, because she had an impressive physique.
This did not improve my opinion of the officers undertaking the questioning.
I was the last one to go into the interview room.
Two officers marched me down.
The room was a window-less concrete box, a couple of steps long in each direction. There was a table in the room’s corner and a couple of darker coloured panels at the top of the wall where I assumed recording cameras to be. A single chair stood in the middle of the room.
