Ardulum
Page 10
“No. Legal would route through the Risalians. That is the opposite of what we need right now.” The captain cursed and slammed into his chair. The wood creaked in protest. “If we do get a tow and ever get the ship repaired, I need to have a long conversation with the Markin. I’m especially curious as to where they think they will find another tramp to haul Cell-Tal’s off-market products at the rates they’re willing to pay. Speaking of Cell-Tal—” The captain pointed at the girl by Neek’s side, who was staring back at him critically. “I think it’s time we took a less literal look at those old myths of yours, Exile.”
Neek winced at Yorden’s use of her clarifier.
“So, then,” Yorden continued, “let’s blend theories. A planet moves into orbit around Neek through some weird physics—a planet inhabited by Ardulans. They teach the primitive Neek people some agriculture for whatever reason, then leave. Maybe they traded or were explorers. Not gods, as you so loudly remind us.”
The girl shifted, and the pilot handed her another long twig of Yorden’s lucky bamboo; any guilt Neek had initially felt at letting the girl eat Yorden’s prized monocot was fading with his persistent hypothesizing.
“That plant is older than you are, Neek,” Yorden said reproachfully. He grabbed the potted remains and moved them to the corner of the galley. “So where would a moving planet go next? Why not Risal? This is hundreds of years ago. Maybe some Ardulans decided to stay. Maybe Risal had a hot tourist trade. Who knows? If we get over the logical leap of a moving planet, the rest isn’t too hard to imagine. Risalians get their hands on a species with unique abilities. They enslave them, breed them. In order to maximize Ardulan use, they engineer cellulose into everything. It’s brilliant. Horrible, but brilliant.”
The girl finished the bamboo stalk. More? she asked Neek while sending the pilot an image of the four stalks that remained in the pot.
“No, you can’t eat the rest of it,” Yorden growled. “Don’t need telepathy to figure that question out.”
“It’s a huge leap,” Neek retorted. She handed the girl a bilaris fruit from the table, which the child pushed away. “But if Ardulum is going to be real, I’d rather it be a race of explorer-traders than gods.”
Yorden and Nicholas stared at her expectantly, but Neek ignored them. Instead, she let her mind drift for a few moments, letting the sporadic beeping of Nicholas’s personal comm steady her breathing. She knew what she needed to do—the Neek people might be xenophobes, but they were connected xenophobes. There was a strong chance her uncle had contacts nearby; she just needed to contact him and convince him to send them out. What she would have to use as motivation, however, kept her from springing to action. This was not how she had intended to introduce the child to Neek society, but her options were now limited.
Neek pushed that issue aside for the moment. Journal reports dredged from her memory—the expanding monoculture plantations, Cell-Tal’s demand for increased production… Yorden was right. It made a lot of sense. Too much sense, in fact, to be dismissed. They had no way of proving it, however, without Risalian cooperation. They’d die before they got that, which meant she had to act. Except she couldn’t call her uncle directly without his ID code, which was locked in her fried personal comm system. She’d have to call Customs directly.
Neek held her hand out to Nicholas. “Hand me the comm.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow, but handed it to Neek without protest.
“I’m getting us rescued,” she muttered as she keyed in coordinates, leaving smudged fingerprints in her wake. A heavy hand fell on her shoulder but then, just as suddenly, left. Yorden would never ask her to make this call, and she appreciated his willingness to suffocate to death in order to spare her humiliation, but her desire to avoid further scorn wasn’t worth their lives. Probably.
The call began to process. The communicator slid between her fingertips as her stuk secretions thinned and her heart rate sped up.
“Careful! It’s the only working communicator on the ship, and Mom will kill me if it breaks!”
Neek snugged the device in her palm just as the comm chirped. The insides of her boots felt damp, and Neek licked her lips, trying to moisten them. Stuk rivulets ran from her fingertips inside the sleeves of her flight suit, tickling her fine arm hair. She wiped her eyes clear with the sleeve as the screen filled with a humanoid male with dark red hair and copper skin.
“Neek Customs Operations,” he answered in Common, his tone bored. “Which agency are you trying to reach?”
Common. She couldn’t do Common right now. With a kid in her brain and Risalians waiting to blow the Pledge apart, the last thing Neek needed was to talk to her own people in a foreign tongue. Instead, Neek sucked her cheeks into her mouth and produced several wet popping noises.
The operator grinned, recognition in his eyes, as he spoke in the Neek language. “Exile! You’re allowed to call in now for your theology lessons? Fantastic! You must be doing well. I can see the light of Ardulum in your eyes, stuk or not. The high priest works such miracles.”
“Speaking of,” Neek cut him off.
“Oh, right, yes.” The operator fumbled with a panel offscreen. “I’ll try to get through to your uncle, but his office is closing in five minutes. Just hold on a moment.” He turned from the screen, and the communicator darkened.
“Why would your government rescue us?” Nicholas asked. “I thought you said Neek bureaucrats had no souls.”
“Shut up,” Neek shot back, trying to keep her voice low. “I can’t deal with your Journey youthness right now. This is a delicate situation.” Nicholas looked taken aback, but she didn’t have time to explain. Instead, Neek looked back to the screen to see the broad smile of her uncle and, mercifully, no one else. His braids were unraveling near his neck, the weave bunching at the end clasp. Her stuk production slowed. Her uncle always looked like that at the end of a long service, riding the praise of the masses. He was always happiest then, too, which boded well for what she was about to ask him.
“Niece!” her uncle exclaimed. He followed the greeting with several sounds similar to the ones Neek had made.
It occurred to Neek that she would have to use Common. Fucking Nicholas wouldn’t be able to understand a word she said otherwise, and she didn’t want to rehash the entire conversation later. “Good to see you too, Uncle.”
Her uncle’s eyes narrowed, and his smile dropped. “Two communications in such a short period of time. Common language formality. Are you all right? I didn’t expect you to resume our conversation, even though it was abruptly ended. It’s not like you to willingly request more time with the books.”
“Uh, no.” Stuk dripped into her eye, and Neek wiped it with the back of her hand. The movement shifted the comm enough that it slid over slick skin and onto the floor. It skittered and spun until coming to a rest on its edge against the leg of a chair, the camera facing the girl.
Neek heard the gasp through the audio feed. She hoped her uncle wasn’t having a heart attack. That wasn’t the way she’d planned on breaking the news, but it was likely more effective than anything she could have come up with.
Neek let the comm sit near the chair for several heartbeats—long enough for her uncle to take in the swinging legs, the translucent skin, and the triangular marks on the girl’s face. As great as it was having a Journey youth onboard as insurance, a potential Ardulan was even better. Assuming, of course, that her uncle bought it.
When she finally retrieved the comm, the face staring back was a different person. It was still her uncle, of course, but there was no mirth to his eyes, no upturn of his mouth. Stuk began to bead on his forehead, and Neek was almost certain he was shaking.
“Praise,” her uncle managed to choke out. “Praise Ardulum. They’ve come back. I always knew they would. We always knew they would.” The older man scooted closer to his own screen, causing only his eyes and the bridge of his nose to show on Neek’s end. “She chose you, Exile?” he breathed. “The planet…did you
see the planet?”
Neek’s face flushed, and she fumbled again with the comm. “Uh, no. No planet. Sorry. Just the kid. And, uh, I want to bring her personally to Neek. You know, do things right. Do you think you could arrange that? Right now,” she added, closing her eyes firmly as she tried to shake the image of the girl’s facial bruises from her mind. This was a ruse, she reminded herself. The girl was not an Ardulan. Lying to her uncle was far better than the crew suffocating to death.
“Right now none of us are going to get out of this system, much less to Neek, without a lot of help.” She ran three fingers over a small keypad on the back of the communicator. Numbers scrolled across the screen. “These are our coordinates. We’re dead in space with a Risalian cutter trying to figure out how to destroy us. They want to destroy her. We have no weapons, we’re missing part of our shielding panels, and main communicators are down.”
Her uncle’s hands came up and covered his face for a long moment. He brought them down quickly, exhaled, and turned abruptly towards a large, white panel off to his left.
“Risalians… She can’t be destroyed,” he mumbled to himself. Whistling and plopping noises began to filter through the audio. “I’m sending out a planet-wide alert. If we have trading partners near you, we’ll know soon.” He turned his attention back to Neek and gave her a pained look. “Regardless of your views, Niece, the child needs you. She needs your faith.”
Neek brought the comm closer to her face. “I don’t need a conversion—I need a tow.”
Several chirps went off on a nearby screen, and Neek’s uncle diverted his attention. “Responses are starting to come in. There are two Minoran galactic liners scheduled to exit the Minoran Wormhole in one hour. They’ve confirmed their assistance.”
“I hope it’s enough,” Yorden said, getting up from his chair. “I’ll see if I can repair any of the damaged computer systems while we wait. Thank you, High Priest. It will be…interesting to see you again.” He gestured to Nicholas. “Come on, kid, lend a hand.”
Nicholas smiled weakly at Neek and the girl before hopping out of his chair and following the captain out of the room. Neek terminated the connection to her uncle, unwilling to prolong the conversation. She caught the tail end of a “Niece, we should—” before the screen went dark.
As the clomping of Yorden’s feet drifted into silence, Neek collapsed back into her chair, stuk still falling in thin layers from her fingertips. The girl stared at her—eyes unblinking—her presence in Neek’s mind patient as the high priest’s words danced through her skull. Minorans were coming. They would be rescued. She was going back to Neek. She would see her parents again. She was going home.
The wispy presence shifted, and Neek finally looked to her left. No words or images came into her head. The girl had been quiet since the incident with the cutter, and Neek couldn’t figure out if she was frightened by the event or merely being respectful of Neek’s personal space. Curious, she gently prodded the presence.
You okay? You can stay here in the galley, if you’d like, Neek offered. Chairs are more comfortable than the floor. Sorry we didn’t put you here to begin with. We were all a little shaken up.
I didn’t mean to frighten you, the girl returned. She took a cushion from Yorden’s chair and dropped it onto the floor, sitting down in a twirl. I’m not a god, Neek.
Neek sat down cross-legged on the floor opposite the girl, trying to process that comment. Already the bruised areas on the girl’s face were starting to fade, leaving purple-green blotches surrounded by the strong, black outlines of the triangular marks under her eyes. It gave the child an ethereal look, and Neek considered how beings so pale with such dark markings could have made an impact on a primitive culture like the ancient Neek—had they existed at all.
The pilot took her pointer finger and traced the outline of first one marking and then the other. The girl was so little, so obviously a juvenile, but there was no denying what she had seen her do.
She’d grown up with her parents telling the old tales as bedtime stories. Her primary school staged pivotal moments of history as little plays. Like all Neek children, she’d pretended with other young Neek countless times—games where the children were Ardulans of different Talents, coming to teach the Neek.
I’m not a god.
The words came again, but Neek mused on old memories. Each child would pick a Talent and emulated the skills. Neek had always been partial to the Aggression Talent—she’d never had any qualms about shooting imaginary beings. Her friend, Ikorin—at least that had been the girl’s name before she’d grown and taken the common name of their people—had always been of Science, and her other friend, Belkuy, of Hearth. They were a perfect trio of Ardulan power when they played together, and Neek thought fondly on all the imaginary antagonists she’d slaughtered to protect her friends while they befriended their wooden toys and “taught” them a better way of life.
That was all before she grew and gave up her child-name. It was before her brother had gotten her a subscription to The Neek Journal of Science and Technology, and before she’d really started to think about things. It was before Neek realized that she had a lot of opinions that other Neek didn’t share.
Now, there was a child before her that could be Ardulan. A real Ardulan, not some exaggerated deity with questionable motives. A girl who, despite the matted, blood-soaked hair framing her small face, could be older than Nicholas. The first don lasted twenty years, which meant the girl might only be a handful of years younger than Neek herself, especially if she was surviving without her mother’s presence.
What are you, then, Neek asked the girl, if not a god? Are you a genetically enhanced slave? A member of some long-lost species that shaped Neek civilization?
The girl looked thoughtful. Their connection tightened, but this time, Neek didn’t fight it. Why should she? The girl had already dredged up her most painful memories. What was there to hide? They were already way beyond personal boundaries.
I’m just me, the girl said finally. I want a name.
That took Neek by surprise. Of course the girl would want a name once she understood the concept, but it was embarrassing that she’d had to ask.
Well… Neek frantically ran through child-names from her homeworld. If she named the kid something foreign, her people would never forgive her. Again. If she named her something the Terrans couldn’t pronounce, that’d be one more headache she’d have to deal with. If she named her after an Ardulan from one of the holy books…she didn’t want to think about all the ways that could backfire. She needed a simple name. Something easy to pronounce across the Systems.
Neek picked the first single-syllable name that came to her mind.
Emn, she sent. She said it out loud then, too, so the girl could get used to the sound. “In the old language, it means something like ‘motherless child,’ which seems appropriate, and it’s still a common enough name on Neek that no one will ask questions.”
Emn, the girl said slowly, picturing each letter. The smile was slow to come, but when it did, Emn’s face lit up in a grin Neek couldn’t help but return. It made the question that came next more disconcerting than it should have been.
Why don’t you use your other name?
Neek’s mouth opened and shut several times before she managed to speak. Child-names were never spoken aloud on Neek after the child’s ascension ceremony. They were beneath adults, beneath society, and irrelevant to daily life. Of course Neek still remembered hers, but speaking it seemed almost blasphemous, especially in front of Emn.
“I…”
Neek was cut off midsentence when the ship juked to port. Both Neek and Emn tumbled from their sitting positions and rolled, slamming into a nearby metal pillar.
Stay here! Neek instructed as she pulled herself to her feet, pushing away from their connection and lunging for the door. Racing down the corridor, she skidded to a halt in the cockpit and found both Yorden and Nicholas staring at the viewscreen, unmoving.
Neek pushed the men out of her way and stared out the viewscreen. She absentmindedly flicked a small crystal shard across the broken console with her finger, ignoring the skittering sound it made as it bounced along the jagged surface. The Minoran galactic liners were huge. How did one even fly something with so many curves?
“Think the Risalians have raised their shields?” Neek wondered out loud. “With that liner in the way, we have no ability to see what the cutter is up to.”
“I hope the liners have better armor than we do,” Nicholas commented, his eyes glued to the screen.
“The Minoran liners are reinforced for extra security during financial transactions. They’ll be fine.” Yorden pointed a thick finger at one end of the screen. “They’re a long way from Baltec. See those pocked markings on the underside ship ports? They all look full. Must be some important people they’re carrying. Your uncle has quite the connections, Neek.”
Neek refused to take the bait. “The Risalian cutter just opened fire with one of their smaller lasers. See the yellow discharge bouncing off the starboard end of the liner? I’d say the Minoran armor is getting scorched but appears to be holding.”
“Minoran galactic liners can take a beating, but they’re no match for a Risalian ship. Nothing is, because the Charted Systems won’t let any of the rest of us have real weapons.” Yorden finally broke his scrutiny of the screen. “Let me see Nicholas’s comm.”