by Patty Jansen
Two officers I had not yet seen before sat behind the desk.
Each corner of the room was also occupied by a guard, one of them having stepped forward to open the door for me.
I was told to sit in the single empty chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by six armed officers.
One, who looked like a senior officer with extra decorations on his shirt pocket, met my eyes. He was an olive-skinned man with salt-and-pepper hair and dark eyes. His name tag said Santos.
“For the purpose of the interview, state your full name occupation and place of residence.”
I had known that this was coming, and I had debated what angle to take. I legally had two identities, two legal names that I could use.
I had earlier decided to go with my Coldi name, which was the one I used for most of my official functions, but seeing these intimidating officers, I changed my mind at the last minute, because they would probably react better to my Earth name.
“My name is Cory Wilson. I am officially registered as a citizen of New Zealand. I have not lived in New Zealand for the past twenty-five years, and I currently live in Barresh which is the headquarters of gamra.”
“Huh,” the man next to Santos said. “Can you provide proof of that?”
He was younger. The shape of his face suggested that he was of African descent, although his skin was lighter than his colleague’s. His name tag said Flynn.
“I have the documentation to back it up.”
“You don’t look like no one from New Zealand I know,” Flynn said.
I was tempted to ask him how many people from New Zealand he knew. Not many, I would guess. Nor would he appreciate the question.
Santos said, “Explain to me how you are on this travel document under a different name.”
So they’d gotten a warning through the airline?
“I have two legal names, one I was born with in New Zealand and one since I was accepted into the Domiri clan with my partner.”
“You have been using these two names interchangeably with each other?”
“I have been quite consistent in using my Coldi name, because it is the capacity in which I am here. I have no wish to to disguise myself as otherwise.”
Santos snorted. “You can give it any spin you want, but when you look at the facts, you’ve been playing a game with authorities.”
“Do look at the facts. I have two legal identities. Both are attached to me and not to any other person. Looking up one identity will bring up the other.”
“How do we know that you’re not a spy?”
“If I was a spy, would I be travelling across the country with such a large group that includes children?”
He looked me up and down. Clearly, he didn’t believe a word I said.
“So then, what are you doing here?”
“You will have seen that we have with us a young boy who uses a wheelchair. He is the son of an important official on Asto. It has been his lifelong wish to visit the theme parks. This was why we came.”
“Hah. An alien boy wants to visit Earth theme parks?”
“Yes. It’s been a bit of an ordeal to be honest, but it is what he wanted, and I promised it, because I owed a favour to his family.”
“Huh,” Santos said again, and then he said nothing for a while. Then he continued, “You were not exactly at the theme park any more. We have recorded you visiting Los Angeles, but then you came across the border, and there was no reason for you to do that.”
“We travelled mostly overland to New York because most regular travel options were closed because of the attacks. Someone from the Exchange will pick us up here.”
“Don’t be smart. I’m talking about your inland trip prior to leaving on this overland dash.”
“There were some natural sites that I was interested in. When we returned from those, the attacks had happened and all air traffic was cancelled.”
“You were spotted in an area that’s not regularly visited by tourists.”
I wondered who had told them that. The townsfolk or the military.
“No. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon. It’s been a dream of mine since I learned about it at school in New Zealand. We also have some team members who are interested in hunting. They wanted to hunt rabbits, and our guide knew a location where we could do this. Our guide grew up in this area and this is why we went there.”
Santos glared at me. I wasn’t sure if I had convinced him. Probably not.
“Hunt, huh? Weren’t you just telling us that your team members are vegetarians?”
“Not all of them. The Pengali are keen hunters.”
“Pengali?”
“The ones with the tails.”
“Ah, the monkeys.”
That again. Of course, the officers hadn’t asked Ynggi or Jaki to come for their interviews. It was not a language thing. Most members of my team didn’t speak any Isla either. It was because they thought the Pengali were not human. For fuck’s sake, when were people on Earth going to can this attitude?
Santos made a signal to Flynn next to him, who had said little during the interview, and they both left the room, leaving me in the company of the four guards.
I was wondering how long this was going to take. My stomach was making gurgling noises. Those sandwiches weren’t very filling or satisfying.
But Santos came back not too much later in the company of a female officer.
She was short and broad in stature, with short-cropped grey hair. Her uniform carried a lot more glittering pins and stars than Santos’, so I assumed her to be a senior.
She took the seat that Flynn had earlier vacated, while Santos sat in the second seat.
She nodded at me and then asked all the same questions that Santos had already asked me.
I gave them the same answers. This was part of the game they were playing with us, and because I was the only one who understood their language adequately, they concentrated on me.
Then I asked, “Can I ask why we’re here? What have we done that warrants this special and costly treatment? We have accommodation booked for the night. Are we allowed to go there? We have a group of children with us and we’ve been travelling for days, trying to get home.”
“In this country, we have a policy investigate all unauthorised visitors.”
“We have permits. We have cooperated with you. You’ve found nothing. I request that all our possessions be returned and that we are allowed to continue on with our travel.”
She said nothing, but merely thanked me for my cooperation, and then she and Santos left the room.
Two of the guards returned me to the others.
Both Thayu and Nicha turned to the door, worry making way for relief on their faces.
“What kept you so long?” Nicha asked.
“The fact that they could talk to me for a change?”
“Did they say what they wanted or what they’re accusing us of?”
“No, because there is nothing.” I glanced at the sandwich plate on the table, now completely empty. Something was going to have to happen soon.
It did.
Flynn came to the door and told us we’d be taken to our accommodation.
I asked him if this meant we were free to go, but he didn’t answer that question.
But going to the accommodation was better than sitting here, so we bundled up the kids. Emi had been asleep and was cranky. Ileyu kept insisting that she was hungry. In the last few days, she had picked up a few words that she could pronounce well enough for us to understand, and boy, she made sure we heard them.
We followed Santos and a bunch of guards to the underground car park, where a bus was waiting. Our luggage sat on the ground in a pile next to it.
Sheydu and Reida quickly went through and seemed happy that everything was there.
The officers had no reason to detain us and had found no re
ason to keep us here. I had no idea how long that would last. Especially considering our plans. If we wanted to sneak into this military depot shed where the drone was held, we had to be quick because they were on our case. Our easy run was over.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The bus took us to the accommodation we had booked. We made sure every one of our possessions came with us. We’d have to double-check the content of the bags to see if anything was missing.
While we checked in with the receptionist, who seemed rather baffled by the size and composition of our team, the driver waited outside.
Oh yes, we were being shadowed.
The hotel had allocated us three adjacent rooms on one of the top floors of the building. The rooms all had internal doors and two of those could be opened so that the three rooms formed an apartment.
Ayshada had woken up and was so cranky that he didn’t understand that not all of those doors opened. Some went to other rooms that we hadn’t rented.
He had a screaming fit when Nicha suggested that he stop banging on the locked doors because there might be other people on the other side.
Yes, we were all hungry and cranky.
Finding something to eat was a priority.
Nicha offered to go with Evi and Telaris to buy something. I suspected that he offered so he could take Ayshada for a walk because once he was in a shouty mood, there was no stopping this kid.
They left, including Ayshada, and the rest of us took turns to freshen up.
One of the rooms had a kitchenette, and the surrounding smooth floor made for a suitable surface for Pengali dice and marble games which occupied the kids.
Not being interested in games, Nalya had inspected the drawer to the desk and found a book inside. He had taken a liking to books. Several of our accommodation rooms had contained books with pictures of attractions in the area for tourists to visit, but he was disappointed that this book was very plain and contained closely printed text and no pictures. It was left to me, while Thayu bathed Emi and showered, to explain the concept of “religion” to him.
Nalya tried very hard.
I didn’t think he got it. Coldi were very good at numbers. They were also good at extrapolations and predictions. They were poor at concepts that were hard to prove or fictional. Whole gamra speeches had been written about whether Earth’s religions were fictional and whether gamra should allow entities that used something you couldn’t prove as a basis for government. Fortunately, I’d always managed to keep out of those discussions.
When I grew up, I was told that a person’s beliefs were private and I preferred to keep it that way.
Not that this made it any easier to explain to an inquisitive thirteen-year-old.
Fortunately, Nicha and the others came back. Ayshada was proudly carrying a box which contained several smaller boxes and parcels.
He put it on the table with the words, “See, Dad, I didn’t drop it.” Clear words they were, too. He was growing up fast.
Once he opened the parcels, a wonderful smell spread through the room.
There was fresh bread and crumbed and deep fried squid and fish, oven-baked vegetables with cheese, vegetable curry and salads.
We were all hungry, and the food was gone in no time.
We installed all the children in one room where they could play or watch noisy shows.
It was time to plan our next move.
Evi and Telaris reported that while going out for food, they’d scouted the area for surveillance activity. Some guards had been sitting in our floor’s laundry room, they said. They wore service uniforms but didn’t act like hotel staff. There was also someone in the building’s foyer pretending to be a business guest, and others were hanging around in the street.
Thayu and Deyu found out that our rooms were not bugged to the level that rooms at gamra would be. This was just as well, because our normal procedure to counter surveillance bugging was to meet in the bathroom, and the bathrooms attached to the rooms were tiny, too small even for two people, let alone our entire team.
“As soon as we leave this building, we will have people on our tail,” Sheydu said. “We need to find another way out.”
Nicha said, “Good luck with that. We’re on the twentieth floor.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this operation,” Mereeni said. “Would there be a legal avenue that we can use to demand to see the remains of this drone instead of trying to break in?”
“Good luck with that, too,” Sheydu said. Sometimes she still liked to needle Mereeni.
Veyada came to the rescue. “There might be such an avenue, if we were in a country that was a member of Nations of Earth.”
Which we were not.
“But even so, I wouldn’t like the prospect of it actually happening,” he added.
“Why not? Atlantia signed the agreement on the exchange of information in conflict,” Mereeni continued. “It’s called the Bangkok Accord because that was where it was signed by most countries on Earth. It governs the right to demand verifiable data as a basis for conflicts and sanctions.”
Yes, I’d almost forgotten about that, and I’d learned about it in my degree. There was a time that countries sought to limit information coming into their countries so they could control the news accessible to their population.
There had been wars, uprisings and boycotts based on information that later proved to be false. The accord gave the aggrieved country and international bodies the right to demand to see the data that was the basis of the policy or military action.
“I doubt it applies to gamra,” I said. “Even if it does, someone will object to our interpretation of the accord and while we could potentially prove that it applies to gamra, who knows how long that’s going to take, and how much the Atlantian government is going to manipulate the evidence?”
Veyada nodded. “Any time you take a fight to a court, it takes years.”
“We don’t have years,” Sheydu said.
Isharu nodded. Thayu nodded as well. They had always signed up for my stealth operation.
“That doesn’t change the fact that we’re being watched,” Mereeni continued. “They’re looking for a way to arrest us and turn this into a diplomatic incident. If we create an incident, then this will harm existing agreements. Everyone will be upset with us, including Nations of Earth and gamra.”
She was right, of course, but what was the thing they said about hindsight? If I’d known that there was going to be an attack by unidentified drones on the world’s cities, I wouldn’t have come to Earth at all, let alone this part of it.
“We just have to be quick,” Sheydu said.
Several people nodded. Isharu, Anyu and Thayu all cared little for diplomacy.
“We could bust our way out of this room,” Reida said. “We have enough people to overwhelm a couple of second-rate security guards.”
“It’s not those guards we need to avoid,” Sheydu said. “I’ve seen the size of their military. Their equipment is not that good, but they make up for it in numbers.”
“And I’m not having the Asto military involved,” I said.
Nods all around. They knew this. I’d said it before.
I continued, “I would also prefer to do this without dead bodies. The relationship between Atlantia and Nations of Earth is precarious enough without us causing a diplomatic incident. Mereeni is right about that. We have to deal with two more years of Dekker, and that’s if he doesn’t get re-elected. I have to build up some sort of working relationship with the man.”
“We can sneak out of here,” Ynggi said.
Both Thayu and Isharu said, “How?”
And Nicha repeated, “There is security in the corridor and we’re on the twentieth floor.”
Ynggi gestured with his tail to Reida, and Reida gave him his reader. Ynggi didn’t normally use devices—and I reminded myself that I should give him one
and insist that he use it—and he asked Reida to bring up something.
A schematic.
A representation of the building.
We were on the third floor from the top, he said. The building had two lift shafts, one for general use and one for services only. The services lift gave access to one extra floor below ground, where things like storage and the laundry were located. The emergency stairs also led there. We could get out that way, he said.
“But I’m missing how we’re going to get to these stairs,” Sheydu said.
“It’s easy. See this room?” He pointed with his tail. “That’s one of our rooms. The room next to it has its main entrance in a little alcove next to the emergency stairs.”
“But the door between our room and that room is locked.”
“I can probably open it,” Reida said.
“I’m sure you could,” Telaris said, “but you’d also damage the door and set off an alarm.”
“We don’t need to do anything like that,” Ynggi said. “We can just climb in. Over the balcony. The door is open.”
“We’re on the twentieth floor,” Nicha and Deyu said together.
“That’s not a problem,” Ynggi said.
He jumped up and went to the balcony door. An icy breeze came in when he opened it.
“Keep it shut,” Anyu said.
I squeezed through the gap before pushing the door closed.
Up here, the sounds from the street had faded and mingled with the general hum of traffic, the electric buses, the driverless vans that trundled along their designated paths.
The street lights and the pale pools of light they created seemed a long distance away. The light was hazy through the remnants of smoke from the extinguished fires.
I shivered. The breeze was cold indeed.
The balcony to the next room was not very far away.
Linking it and the balcony to our room was a thin stone ledge along the wall, and a gap twenty floors deep.
Ynggi said, “We can climb onto the ledge and get into the other room. Then we can open the door and you can come through. We can leave through the door without being seen.”
