Tales from Ardulum

by J. S. Fields

  “You can’t afford what I want.”

  The Risalian’s claws clacked against the table. “We pay very well. We might only ask for three or four runs in a given cycle. You’d be free to take other jobs in the interim or simply relax.”

  “I’m not interested.” He’d meant to stand in a huff—maybe kick his chair and storm out—when he caught sight of a sickly bipedal form in a shadowed corner. Yorden could only see half of a face and a shoulder, but the skin was a sunken, translucent copper. Revulsion rose in his throat before everything got still. Really still. His fingers pulled back from the edge of the chair arms. He folded his hands in his lap. His face relaxed, and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. There was still anger there—Yorden could feel it somewhere in his head—but it seemed too far in to bother with.

  “The contract?” Markin Kelm prodded.

  “Hey, I want…” Yorden trailed off. A thought bubbled up from…he didn’t know where, but it wasn’t from his brain and that was more worrisome than the blue iguana sitting in front of him. Information. He wanted information on how the Charted Systems worked and how the governing bodies worked and who, what, was responsible for the invasive peace. That information, his not-brain said, was worth more than his own moon or dancing girls and would be the key to him surviving in the Systems.

  Information wasn’t bad, Yorden argued with himself. In certain circumstances, it was worth more than diamond rounds. Still, he was being led and toyed with, and he didn’t like it. His brain felt slimy, like he’d sucked in a snot ball too far. He checked his mood before answering. He couldn’t manage to summon anger—not the kind he wanted—but disgruntlement was still available. He might also be able to manage indignation.

  “I want to chat. How did you Risalians manage all this?” Yorden pointed to the door. “All of this peace and love and getting along? Tell me why my urge to strangle you seems to have fled.”

  “That isn’t relevant to our conversation.”

  “No? Okay, well, how about this one. Where did the Terran Wormhole come from? Our scientists knew nothing about it until one of your cutters popped out and scared the shit out of everyone.”

  “The wormhole was always there. Your people just didn’t know how to activate it.”

  “Bullshit. Why are you so damn polite? We’re in here like we’re having tea, not like I stole a priceless piece of history, stripped it of its historic value, raped one of the few remaining old-growth forests on Earth, and sold it on the Systems’ black market. Why am I not in detention right now? Why are you letting that Alusian captain unload the cedar, instead of arresting us all? What is so important about me, or my damn ship, that you’re trying to negotiate? I’m not the King of Thailand. I’m a grubby pretend art restorer who grew up under communism and can smell a rat a galaxy away. So, don’t play with me. And give me back my goddamned righteous anger. I’ve earned it.”

  Neither Markin Kelm nor the strange biped moved, but suddenly Yorden’s nails were scrabbling the wood again and his teeth were grinding against each other. He no longer gave a damn about information, either, but the contract the markin had offered still looked real lucrative.

  “We need someone to haul living andal. You are an opportunity.”

  “I am a criminal.” Because he was a criminal, if a petty one, and it didn’t bother him. Yorden relished the spittle that flicked from his lips as he spoke. The feeling of wanting to punch the markin returned. Excellent.

  Anyway, his life had been shit and he was doing something about it, damn it, not just whining on Earth and embracing peace while working at a fast-print shop. If that meant a little crime, so what? At least it got him food. He could go back, he supposed. Go back to that Gaza settlement and the graves. Go back to Poland, which, to be fair, was a lot better now, but be haunted by childhood ghosts all the same. He could go somewhere new—the USA, maybe, or Canada—start over in whatever job a middle-aged Jew could get without prior training. He could do that and just slowly fade from existence while that sticky blanket of peace covered his planet’s history. His history.

  Fuck that.

  Again, Kelm growl-sighed. “You are paranoid. Peace came because sentients everywhere strive for peace. It is an inevitability. You have no history of major crime, merely of being exposed to it, which leads me to believe your actions were born out of desperation, not malice. Your ship fits our needs, and we pay better than the black market. We need those trees, Captain. Play your games and destroy your world—destroy your solar system if you like—but we need those trees. As long as whatever you do doesn’t affect Neek or Risal, we don’t care.”

  Well, that was…a thing. Yorden swallowed his wonderment and sat back. “You’re giving me release to do basically whatever I want as long as I move andal for you?”

  Kelm tilted hir head. “More or less. Your application to take on a Journey youth is approved, and we’ve transferred four thousand diamond rounds for the safety upgrades needed to take on a child. So, go. Go back to your ship. There is andal waiting for transport presently on Neek. We would appreciate delivery within ten standard days and will pay, whatever your price.”

  There wasn’t really anything more to say. What else was there to ask for? What else could he possibly want? He could do whatever he wanted, be whomever he wanted, and as long as those trees made it from point A to point B alive, well…damn. Damn. He’d have a teenager along for the ride, but still. Damn.

  He signed the contract.

  Yorden wanted to feel victorious, but as he stood and stalked from the room, too many questions danced in his head. The unease in his stomach wouldn’t settle. The whole situation, from the happy beings here at the spaceport to the Risalian Markin Council all but begging for Yorden’s help, spoke of…well, trouble. It was a deeper trouble than going weeks without meat or not being able to get a toy or even avoiding the fallout from the lethal squabbles over territory. Andal was a useful tool, but the Neek exported it by the shipload. Live trees versus dead ones shouldn’t have made that much of a difference.

  There was a secret here. There was a secret here that no one seemed to care about unraveling, and that made it all the more dangerous. Dangerous for him, but also dangerous for Earth and Mars and maybe the Neek people too, since they seemed to have some of the same unique quirks that Terrans did.

  Yorden hated secrets about as much as he hated governments. If the Charted Systems were supposed to be his escape, then they were failing him already. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy his time away from Earth until he knew what those secrets were. But maybe, just maybe, if he worked in the Systems long enough, did enough hauls for the Markin, they’d slip and he’d figure it out.

  Or, he’d just have a lot of fun pissing them off.

  Exile

  220 AA

  I have seen the barren forests! I’ve heard the voices of our scientists! We have to fight before our planet becomes a wasteland of fairy tales and woody detritus!

  Snapping awake from her dream, Neek sucked in a chestful of air and nearly rolled out of her bedding. She blinked the room into focus, her eyes tight and dry from the rally last night, and her throat burned from all the yelling. She was planning another one for next week—well, her brother was, but she had every intention of going—but Neek tried, for once, to push politics from her mind.

  She swallowed, cringing at the burn of spit on her dry throat, and pushed away her soft cotton blankets. Today, the andal failing, the deforestation of their old-growth forests, and the president’s asinine policies could wait. Today, she would pretend to be a devout Neek. In a few hours—or a few minutes, depending on how late she’d slept—she and her family would leave for the ceremony marking her graduation from the Heaven Guard Academy, where Neek had taken top honors. Today was the day she officially moved out of the academy dorms and into a Heaven-Guard-sponsored apartment and began real pilot training. Whether there would be formal charges brought against her for the anti-government rally last night, or subsequent vandalism ther
eafter, it wouldn’t matter in a few hours. In a few hours, she’d be untouchable.

  “Are you coming down for breakfast?” her mother called from downstairs. “We need to leave soon!”

  “Shit.” Was it that late already? Neek grabbed the first pair of pants and shirt she saw on her floor, shoved them on, and then slammed her feet into her boots before quickly braiding her red-blonde hair. She took a minute to press stuk-covered fingers to a poster of a gleaming, crimson settee and her favorite Heaven Guard pilot dressed in the traditional golden robes piped with forest green.

  “Soon,” she whispered to the petite woman on the poster. “I’m going to be there soon.”

  “You going to meet Guard Four in that?” Neek’s brother asked from the doorway.

  “Huh?”

  He came in, picked at the sleeve of her battered rayon shirt, and critically eyed her pants. “Your clothes. You can’t go to graduation like that. You look like a Terran. Uncle will have a fit.”

  Neek huffed and batted her brother’s hand away. His hair was a few shades darker than hers, his skin more ocher than copper, but no one would mistake either of them, even at a distance, for a Terran. Well, not unless they had never seen a Neek in person before. “No one cares what I wear underneath. The trainee silver robe will cover everything, and I want to be comfortable. You know those graduation speeches go on forever.”

  “And when they change your silver robe for gold?” her brother asked, his face turning smug. “When you sit in your trainee settee for the first time? This is what you want to be wearing?”

  Neek frowned and ran a hand over her hair, tucking loose strands behind her ear. He had a point. She was hours from being in the Heaven Guard and having the freedom to fly wherever she wanted, to be whomever she wanted. Neek could fly her settee to the upper atmosphere of her homeworld and look out at the galaxy beyond filled with Risalians and Terrans and Minorans and so many others she had heard about but had never seen. She could even stay low to the ground and look at all the forests of Neek laid out before her—at the wilting leaves, the barren understories.

  Neek’s stomach turned. Even dying, the trees couldn’t possibly care that her shirt was torn and that the hems of her pants weren’t neatly tucked into the tops of her thick, brown boots. The trees—and the Heaven Guard, really—would care more about her intent, surely. She wouldn’t be the heretic niece of the High Priest of Neek once she put on that gold robe. She wouldn’t be Daughter from the Tertiary Forest Preserve. She would be Pilot, Heaven Guard Pilot, beholden only to the andal and a fantasy planet that didn’t exist.

  “Do I really need to change?” Neek muttered. She scuffed her boots against the floor. “What do you think?”

  “I’ll get you one of my high-necked shirts. A green one. It’ll look amazing under both robes, and you won’t look like a vagabond anymore.” Her brother turned to leave, but Neek swatted at his shoulder.

  “I look fine,” she insisted. “I’m not dressing up for anything, not even the ceremony.”

  He clucked at her. “Not even for Guard Four, it appears. But hey, no violence now. Don’t forget the most recent set of Charted Systems laws. You leave a bruise and they’ll…I don’t know. Lecture you to death or something.”

  Neek punched his shoulder, hard, for good measure.

  Her brother laughed.

  “The shirt won’t fit. I stopped wearing your hand-me-downs last year. I’m taller than you, remember?”

  Her brother tousled his curly, red hair and pursed his lips. “Yeah. Thanks for that reminder. Jerk.”

  Neek stuck out her tongue. That she was nineteen years old didn’t matter. If her brother was going to act like a kid, then she was happy to meet him at his level—even if she had to duck down to reach it.

  “I’m better at carving than you.”

  Neek snorted. “I’m better looking than you.”

  “Your girlfriend tell you that?”

  “Did yours?”

  “Children!” Neek’s mother stormed into the room, took one look at Neek’s clothes, and set her jaw. Her auburn hair hung limply, and although her clothes were clean and well pressed, they draped sharply from her shoulders, poorly concealing a thin frame. “No. Daughter, change. Son, stop.” She shook her head and sighed. “Just…stop. We have to leave in ten minutes. Your talther and father are already in the land skiff.”

  “I didn’t bring any other clothes,” Neek said. “They’re all back at the dorms.”

  Her mother produced a hacking cough. Neek’s stomach twisted. How long had she been sick? Four months? Five? After the ceremony, after Neek had her robes, she’d take some time off. Help nurse her mother. Give the family a break.

  “Then, go get something from your talther’s closet. You two are about the same size. Meet your brother and me outside.”

  Her brother blew a raspberry at Neek before brushing past their mother and leaving Neek’s childhood bedroom. Neek was about to follow, ready to punch him again, when her mother grabbed her wrist.

  “Atalant.” Her mother’s voice was low. Dangerous.

  Neek cringed at her child-name, at how demeaning it felt—today especially.

  “Last night was too far,” her mother warned, pulling her close. “You’ve made it about all of us.”

  “The riot wasn’t planned. I had already stopped speaking by then.”

  “You think that means you won’t be held responsible?”

  Neek closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t have the mental energy for this right now. “It’ll be fine, Mother. No more until I’m Pilot. I promise. The family will be safe.” Neek tried to soothe with her words, but her insides squirmed. She felt like a child being scolded for something she’d done just to get attention, instead of an adult who was desperately trying to save her planet and her people.

  “You’re naïve,” her mother said.

  “We can debate later. Shouldn’t we get going?”

  Her mother sighed and released her arm. “At least change your shirt.”

  Grumbling, Neek stalked from her room to the one her three parents shared, pulled the first tunic she saw from her talther’s closet, and shoved it over her head, on top of the shirt she was already wearing.

  “Hurry up!” her mother wheezed from the foot of the stairs.

  Neek heard the door open and then caught the scent of trillium as it wafted up to the second floor of her house. For the briefest moment, she thought about running into the forest, hiding amongst the andal trunks as she had as a child, feeling thick moss between her toes, and bathing in a field of white petals. But it was only for a moment. She didn’t have those dreams anymore, not since the first time she’d flown a ship. Not since her brother had bribed an engineer to get her a ride in a decommissioned settee. Not since she’d sat at the stuk interface and the natural secretions from her fingertips had linked her with the ship’s outdated computer core.

  Flight was what she wanted. A pilot was who she was. And nothing—not even the tempting smells of trillium flowers and andal sap—would keep her from her goal.

  CRIMSON SETTEES FLEW overhead in a perfect parabolic formation, pulling Neek’s attention from the graduation speaker. Neek stood on a short podium, just a step ahead of the rest of her cohort, but she could still hear her roommate gasp as the small ships flew overhead. Neek’s heart soared with them as her silver robe flapped against her legs. She wouldn’t get her own settee at the end of this ceremony, but soon. She was first in her class, after all. Her flying had shattered every record, her timing and reflexes stupefying her professors. Master training would only be a formality, no doubt. A superficial step. She could pass the skills exam now if the academy would let her take it, but she doubted they would break the rules just for her. Still, she’d fulfill any stipulation, participate in any stupid ritual, to get into her own settee. She’d have a communal trainee ship in the meantime to practice in, and Neek knew that the moment her fingers hit the interface, the moment her stuk gelled into t
he cellulose biometal, she would fall in love.

  “And now, I will introduce the graduates. Twenty in all—like the twenty years of the first don—but only ten will graduate to master class, and of those, perhaps two will receive permanent assignment to the Guard. Look upon their faces, dear family and friends. Our future stands before you.”

  The crowd cheered. Neek’s parents and brother sat in the front row, their hands clasped to one another’s, their faces beaming. The joy in Neek’s chest burst across her face. Her stuk gelled.

  Thank you, she mouthed to her brother. He frowned at her, seemingly confused, but it was him, after all, who had encouraged her to apply to the Heaven Guard. He had taught her to fly. To question. That she could calculate a p-value as well as she could turn a settee into a barrel roll was his doing. His patience. His guidance. This was her moment, but in some ways, it was her brother’s, too.

  “Daughter of the Tertiary Forest Preserve, N’lln, step forward and become Pilot.”

  The crowd fell into silence. Neek took two steps forward to the short gatoi who held a gold robe out to her, its hem, sleeves, and collar piped in green. She reached for the folded robe, let her gummy fingers grasp the fabric, and pulled it to her chest. It felt like touching a cloud, like if she loosened her grip even for a moment, the robe might condense and slip through her fingers. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she swore she could smell hints of trillium in the air, even though the academy was over an hour away from her parents’ land.