Consequences

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “In ways you don’t see.” This time he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows.

  “I see just fine.”

  Flint shook his head. “There are a lot of dangers in this business. Let me give you one more. If this woman’s family did cross one of the more vicious alien groups, and you do some research in those alien communities, you could become a target too.”

  “Is that a threat?” Bowles asked.

  “No,” Flint said. “A fact. And the way the law works, certain aliens are protected even though they’re on Armstrong soil. So you could get in trouble with alien laws without even realizing you’ve done it.”

  “Why do you care about me?”

  “I don’t, really.” Flint found that he rarely lost anything when he was blunt. It usually helped him. “But I do care about all the people you might put in harm’s way.”

  Her lips thinned. “I’m not insensitive or incompetent.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then tell me your story. Remember, everything discussed in this room is confidential.”

  “Only your systems are on,” she said. “So I have to trust you.”

  Touché. Obviously, his comment about trust had hurt her. Flint shrugged. “I’m very trustworthy.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, and then she let out a small laugh. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’re not going to help me, are you?”

  “No,” he said.

  She sighed. “That’s it then. Thank you for your time, Mr. Flint.”

  He didn’t say anything as she walked out the door. He stared at it, wondering what she really wanted, and who the possible Disappeared was.

  Then he shrugged. He would probably never know.

  Nine

  Her first memories are of mud and incredible, powerful rain. She’s chest-deep in the water, arms raised, waiting for someone to rescue her, to lift her to safety, when she hears a voice behind her:

  “What the hell is that?”

  She turns toward the voice, and cries piteously—she doesn’t have language yet or if she does, it has abandoned her—and she sees a big man, broad-shouldered, a hat dripping the rain around his face.

  She cannot see his features—they’re a blur of water and movement—but she can hear his voice as if it’s next to her:

  “My God, is that a child?”

  Then he steps forward, his boots sloshing in the mud, his coat dragging behind him. He swoops down, grabs her by the armpits, and lifts her against his cold, soaking slicker. The water from his hat hits her face, and it seems cooler somehow, fresher.

  “God,” he says, indignation in his tone, “who let this happen?”

  And for the first time, she realizes they’re surrounded by Idonae. The aliens are tall, with feelers running down each side like teeth of a comb. Their chubby torsos are the only solid thing about them, their feelers having turned the color of the rain.

  “Ain’t nothing happen.” The Idonae who spoke has a typical raspy dry voice, and it sends shivers through her. “Nothing happen here.”

  The man waves his hand toward the mud he has pulled her from. “That’s not nothing. I count five bodies and a river of blood.”

  “Not Idonae,” the speaker says and the aliens turn away.

  The man juggles her as if she is an already forgotten burden. “I know they’re not Idonae. They’re human. They’re probably her family, for crissakes.”

  And then she looks, really looks, and it is as if her brain works for the first time. Hair floating on top of the mud is long like Mommy’s, and a hand with Daddy’s ring clasps the edge of the muck as if he’s trying to pull himself out.

  She groans, and buries her face in the man’s shoulder. He puts a hand on her back, holding her in place.

  “Not Idonae,” the alien says again, with that tone, the one that implies the listener is stupid. “Perhaps Ynnels done.”

  “Ynnels did this?” The man asks, and maybe he is stupid. He sounds stupid, dumbfounded, as if the information is—has to be—somehow false.

  “Not Idonae,” the alien says again, and walks away, leaving the bodies in the mud.

  The man puts his finger beneath her chin and lifts her head toward his. She can finally see his face. He is leaning toward her, and for the first time since he picked her up, his hat shields her as well.

  “Child.” His voice is gentle, but his face is not. It is flat, skin taut against bone, eyes narrow and dark. Later, she realizes he has allowed the damage to his skin—scars, heat, strange sunlight—to remain, but then she thinks he looks as alien as the rest of them. “Who did this?”

  She studies that strange face, and for a moment, other faces—softer, rounder, more like hers, beloved faces, with voices that are as gentle as his—come to her mind. She can almost reach them, almost touch them—

  And then she buries her face in the man’s shoulder, head shaking, and he pats her back, thinking she is crying. But she is not crying. She is waiting for him to decide what to do with her, waiting to see if he will place her back in the mud where she belongs.

  Anatolya Döbryn shook the memory away. It always rose when she waited, as if it were her default program. Her brain returned to that moment, the moment she gained consciousness or regained consciousness, since she was pretty certain she’d had it before.

  She had been four years old when Leon Döbryn saved her life. He told her later that he feared she would have drowned there, too shocked to realize she could stand and climb out of the mixture of mud, water, and blood that she had been sitting in since her family was murdered.

  That moment was as real to her as the current one—more real, perhaps, because if she shut her eyes, she could still feel the cold rain, the warmth of the liquid around her, the safety she felt in Döbryn’s arms. In contrast, the bench she sat upon seemed almost sterile, Armstrong’s port decontamination room like all the other decontamination rooms in the known universe.

  She had been here nearly an hour. It hadn’t taken that long to go through the decon unit and have it declare her free of germs and other contaminants the residents of the City of Armstrong feared. Armstrong insisted that newcomers go through decontamination alone—an Earth Alliance wrinkle that she did not approve of—but she had no say in the matter.

  She might have been one of the ruling council on Etae, but here, she was a stranger, just like everyone else.

  Anatolya got up and paced the small room, peering only once through the webbed window in the door. They were checking her identification, examining her papers, making certain she had the right to come to this pesky moon.

  Even though the Earth Alliance had invited her here, they still treated her as if she were a fugitive.

  And, God’s truth, she felt like one. She shivered in the chill of the decontamination room. The ambient temperature in the Alliance was several degrees lower than what she was used to. She had dressed for it—a long-sleeved shirt and pants instead of her usual skirt and tanktop—but she was still chilled.

  She rubbed her hands on her arms and walked to the mirrored glass across from the decon chamber. The woman who stared back at her was thick, with long hair piled on top of her head and wrapped with seed pearls Döbryn had brought her from his last trip to Earth. He had been dying then, and willing to spend his meager fortune on the only person he’d ever considered a child of his own.

  She sighed, and smoothed the blouse over her pants. Just from that record alone—the way her people managed to turn Etae around in such a short time—the Alliance should welcome Etae with open arms.

  But she knew they wouldn’t. Her government was young, and it had rebelled against the first human government of Etae, overthrowing them. The name Etae had become synonymous with bloody in many, many places.

  The civil war was over now—had been for more than a decade. Her government was actually making a little progress in improving the country, but the government couldn’t do it alone. This had
been their first chance to apply to join the Earth Alliance, and she had championed the cause.

  She had expected difficulties, but not from the moment she had landed in the Port. Being trapped in this small room was one of those difficulties. If the Earth Alliance considered her important, she would have been able to bypass the decon units and head directly to the diplomatic headquarters.

  She’d argued as much with the traffic police who had escorted her here. At first they had ignored her. Then their leader had the courtesy to explain that all must go through the procedures at Armstrong Dome. Even the heads of the Earth Alliance.

  Anatolya did not believe this police officer, but she did not argue. Arguing with underlings was a waste of breath. If the rudeness continued, she’d bring it up with the Alliance delegation and, she hoped, they would change their behavior.

  If they did not, there was little she could do to change it for them. She was here as a supplicant. She needed the Earth Alliance more than they needed her.

  Finally, the door swung open. A slender woman wearing one of the traffic police’s dark uniforms stood before her.

  “I’m sorry it took so long,” she said. “Your decon had some suspicious reads.”

  Anatolya tilted her head slightly. It was her only visible reaction to the other woman’s words. Long ago, Anatolya had learned to control her physical responses.

  “Suspicious?”

  “You carried some unidentified microorganisms, a few toxins that we have banned, and immunities to some diseases we have never seen. So we had to run the scan twice, then take it to some of our experts.”

  The woman smiled. Apparently the look was meant to be reassuring. Anatolya did not find it so.

  “They reread the scans, filtered them through some other equipment, and compared it to some scans done with others from your region of space. Apparently, your reading was quite normal in that setting.”

  Anatolya wasn’t sure what to do with this wealth of information, not certain how it applied to her or why she should care about it. She wasn’t even sure if it was an excuse.

  “We’re not used to getting people from so far away.” Anatolya’s lack of response was clearly making the woman nervous. “We’re a port, but we’re so close to Earth that it’s rare we get anyone outside of the Alliance or the approved trading partners. You understand.”

  “Actually,” Anatolya said, “I do not. But all I truly care about is whether or not I’m free to go.”

  The woman blinked, stepped back, and held the door open. “Yes. I’m sorry. I thought I said that. You’re welcome to continue. There’s someone waiting for you at the end of the isolation units. He’ll take you wherever it is you need to go.”

  Anatolya nodded, then she headed out of the room, taking her time. The woman fluttered near her, even more nervous, as if this had all been a mistake.

  “You do know that we had a close call about six months ago,” she said as Anatolya walked past her into the corridor. “We nearly had a lethal virus released into the dome.”

  That caught Anatolya’s attention, but again, she didn’t let it show. “A bioweapon?” she asked, keeping her tone dry, as if she were merely making conversation.

  “I was never sure,” the woman said. “No one really explained it. Kinda scary all the same.”

  The corridor was even colder than the decon chamber. Anatolya didn’t like the dark walls, the matching black floor, the signage that rotated words in various Earth Alliance languages.

  She was lucky Döbryn had insisted she learn English, Disty, and Peytin, as well as six of the Etaen languages. No matter what part of space she found herself in, she was able to get along.

  Finally, she reached a set of double doors. The woman officer hung back, as if she were not allowed to pass through them. The doors slid open, their movement silent, and sent a blast of cool air toward her. This air was fragrant with perfumes and sweat and some kind of relaxation coolant, added to the mixture to keep anxiety levels low.

  The area she stepped into was a waiting room, and it was filled with peoples of various races and species.

  A human male, age indeterminate, stood when he saw her. He had silvering hair, clearly an affectation, and a narrow face, the kind the Alliance thought trustworthy. His eyes were a silver-blue that matched his hair, and his skin was a pale almost orangish brown. He wore a long black tunic with an embroidered edge over black pants, and as he walked toward her, he extended both hands.

  “Ms. Döbryn?” he said, his voice silky and warm. He spoke Alkan, the main language of her people. “I am Gideon Collier. I’ve been assigned to you for your stay.”

  “My police escort?” she asked in English.

  He raised his oddly silver eyebrows in surprise. Apparently he hadn’t known she spoke that language.

  “No,” he replied in Alkan, “nothing like that. I’m your guide and your majordomo. I understand you’ve never been this deep in Alliance space before, and I’m to help you with customs and language—although it doesn’t seem you need that—and anything else that may occur.”

  “Like being stranded in a decon unit for the better part of an afternoon.” She was still using English. The time in the decon unit had left her feeling stubborn.

  “We’re sorry for that,” Collier said. “Armstrong is phobic these days about anything coming through the dome. We should have prepared you for that.”

  She gave him her coldest gaze. “If you had asked for permission to search for bio weapons, I would have given it to you.”

  The crowd in the waiting room turned toward her, and all of them wore an identical expression of shock. Collier moved in front of her, as if he could block their gazes.

  “This really isn’t the place to discuss bio weapons,” Collier said in Alkan. His voice had reached the level of a hush, almost as if he were afraid of being understood.

  “Why not?” Anatolya finally answered in the same language. She was beginning to feel childish using English because she had been annoyed. “I thought you people prided yourselves on your openness.”

  “Openness has limits,” Collier said.

  She let her true reaction show. A slight frown creased her face. “Yet one of the hallmarks of the Earth Alliance is its free speech, its willingness to embrace new cultures and new ideas, its willingness to tolerate—”

  “We are careful in the docks,” Collier said. “You never know who might be listening.”

  She felt a slight shiver run through her that, for the first time, had nothing to do with the cold.

  “You’ll have to explain the differences to me,” Anatolya said to Collier.

  He started to speak, to tell her—again—that he couldn’t converse in this place, and she held up her hand.

  “When we’re away from here, of course,” she said.

  He looked relieved.

  She gave him a begrudging smile, then glanced at the walls, struggling to read the various signs as they rotated through the languages. She saw nothing that referred to remaining silent. But then, she hadn’t seen the full rotation.

  “There will be a reception in a few hours,” Collier was saying. “I’m to bring you, if you’re not too tired to attend.”

  She was tired, but it was the exhaustion of a woman who had traveled a great distance for something she wasn’t sure she believed in.

  “Let me meet with the rest of my delegation,” she said, “and I’ll tell you what we decide.”

  “Delegation?” he asked.

  It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “You didn’t think I traveled alone, did you?”

  “We knew you came in your own ship. It’s just that clearances were only for you. No one had informed us that there’d be others who needed to leave the Port.”

  Human or not didn’t seem to matter. Customs apparently varied greatly from Etae to the Alliance.

  “You had my name because I planned to speak to your conference.” She continued to speak in Alkan because it sounded haughtier than the other
languages she knew. “It should be understood that I travel with an entourage. Do any of your ambassadors travel without one?”

  Collier sputtered, then shrugged. “It’s just that we are required to name our traveling companions so that their credentials can be approved by the host government. The fact that you haven’t means that they can’t enter the city without going through the entire entrance procedure.”

  “Which can’t be long,” she said. “Obviously people do it all the time.”

  He cleared his throat, then glanced nervously over his shoulder. The people still in the waiting room had stopped looking directly at her, but several were still watching her from the corners of their eyes.

  Did they recognize her? Did news of Etae make it this deep into Alliance space?

  “Um, Ms. Döbryn, surely you know that Etae has been on the Alliance watch list for almost a century.” He had finally looked at her again, his expression taut.

  “It’s one of the many things I’m here to discuss,” she said.

  “Armstrong is a domed city.” He licked his lower lip, a nervous habit that no one in diplomacy should have. “It doesn’t allow anyone from a watched state inside.”

  So that was why the Alliance had chosen the major city on Earth’s Moon, instead of a major Earth city, as the meeting place. The dome, just by existing, gave the diplomats a level of control they didn’t even have to think about.

  “Well,” she said airily. “That’s your first job then, Mr. Majordomo. You’ll get my entourage approved. And you’ll do so before this evening’s reception, so that I can attend.”

  She walked to the nearest chair, crossed her arms, and sat down. Collier looked panicked.

  “I’ll just wait here,” she said, “until we’re ready to leave.”

  “Ms. Döbryn, there’s no way I can get all the clearances in time,” he said.

  “Perhaps not on your own,” she said. “But I’m sure someone in your delegations can help. You are diplomats, after all.”

  He studied her for a long moment, then gave her a tight smile. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said in English.