by Lee Winter
Lena waited for her to formulate a begrudging agreement—and she would, because Lena had read her mark perfectly. As always. Inherently good people never refused to help.
She always found this aspect of her job disturbing. The fact anyone could be turned so easily, with just a handful of well-chosen words? It was convenient for her, of course, but troubling. This awareness made her hyper-vigilant—always watching and weighing up the words of others for the lie, the con. After all, who knew when someone might turn their psychological games on her?
But without a capacity to trust, Lena also knew the depressing truth—she’d always be alone. It was the price she paid for what she did. Some days she even convinced herself it was for the greater good. Either way, tinkering around the edges of a person’s soul was a bleak way to earn a living. Not that she let that stop her.
Lena made a show of putting away her water bottle and adjusting the contents of her backpack, head bent, to give Shattergirl the necessary privacy to come up with her surrender. Lena’s deliberately submissive pose was also telling the woman subliminally that Shattergirl had the power in this scenario.
She pulled out her notebook and pen, placing them in front of her, but still didn’t look up. Only when there was a sharp, annoyed exhalation indicating a decision had been reached, did Lena raise her eyes questioningly.
Shattergirl glowered at her and waved her hand. “Proud of yourself?” she growled.
Lena shrugged.
“You already knew my answer, didn’t you? Profiled me, I suppose? Who are you? What’s your background? Psychology?”
Lena opened her mouth to deny everything.
“Don’t bother,” Shattergirl said. “I don’t want to hear any more of your slimy tagshart.”
“Okay.” No point denying it now anyway.
“My relationships are non-negotiable. Don’t even waste your breath. But you can ask about the rest. I may answer. So…ask.”
Lena made sure to hide any gleam in her eyes by studying her notepad. “So—what’s your name?” she asked, her pen poised.
“You come all this way and don’t know my name?”
“Come on, I refuse to believe you were born with that name.” Lena lifted her head. “Shattergirl had to be some bullshit Earth invention. Especially the ‘girl’ bit. I mean, hell, it’s not Talon Boy, is it?”
“No. And I haven’t been a ‘girl’ since I was fifty,” Shattergirl said.
Wait, was that an actual joke? Lena peered at her uncertainly. She didn’t want to guess wrong, so she plowed on. “So…what is your name? Your actual name?”
“It’s unpronounceable to commons. But my colleagues often shorten it to Nyah.”
“Nyah? What does that mean?
“Daughter of knowledge.”
“Your parents valued knowledge then?”
“My homeland is…was…a planet focused on the search for knowledge. My parents were scientists. We lived on a continent which was entirely dedicated to various fields of research, so every child got some variation on a science name.”
“Any siblings?”
“No.”
“Children?”
“No.”
“What did you do there?”
“I was trained as a botanist.”
“You’re kidding. Plants and flowers and stuff?” She stared at her in surprise. “Seriously?”
“Why is that so shocking?”
“I don’t know. It’s just you’re so…so…”
Nyah’s eyebrow lifted. “So…what?”
“Kickass.”
Dissatisfaction soured Nyah’s expression. “Back to that are we? You’re surprised I can walk and chew gum. That I’m more than just good for slapping rocks together?”
Lena paused. “I never said that. It’s just…flowers. And you. You know?”
“What’s wrong with flowers? I was part of a team that grew a certain flower that, when cross-pollinated, could treble crop yields and, in turn, eliminate hunger. On a different continent they grew a hardy grass that, when heated, produced an oil that could fuel our vehicles using only a few drops. Botany vastly improved the lives of my people. You look at flowers and see only pretty blooms. I see potential. Knowledge. And yet you mock it because all your limited imagination can picture me doing is hurling big rocks around.”
Lena felt chastened. “Uh, do you miss it? Botany?”
Nyah eyed her coolly. “Very much.”
“Oh. Well, why didn’t you pursue it here? They’d love you. You’re like a living encyclopedia.”
“It’s not that simple. Scientists love to dismiss theories that don’t align with their own, and take apart things they don’t understand.”
“You think they’d do that to you?”
“I know it. I tried at various times over the past century to offer my services. Initially I was seen as a joke—what could a woman possibly understand, especially a strange, dark, alien one? Then I became an object of curiosity to be prodded and poked—my input was entirely irrelevant. Later, when my expertise was seen as valuable, I became a prize to be fought over between several rival universities. But even then, when I had their respect, my dedication to science was dismissed as a hobby while my real job waited.”
“Saving people.”
“Yes. And it’s hard to argue that my being out in the field taking plant samples is of greater merit than saving lives. It’s a pity. I miss the collegial atmosphere. The debates we had were always stimulating.”
“And superheroing isn’t?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you miss being valued for your brain.”
Nyah sighed heavily. “I miss using my brain.” With a frustrated slap to the ground she added, “I was raised to think!”
“Here, we treat you as only worth the sum of your brawn? Or a hobby scientist?”
“Accurate.” Nyah looked at her closely. “So, my turn. Who are you really?”
Lena shrugged. “Not sure what you mean. I’m Lena. Lena Martin.”
“Lena Martin,” Nyah repeated carefully. “Did you study writing formally? At college?”
“No.”
“Were you a journalist before you became a biographer?”
“No. I just fell into this job.”
“Yet Talon Man tapped you for this important assignment. You, out of everyone on your backward little world?”
“Backward?” Lena’s eyes narrowed in distaste. “Are we really so primitive compared to you?”
“Before we landed, you didn’t have timeslides, Dazrs, or FacTrak technology for a start. Culturally you were an abyss too. You didn’t offer full rights to most minority groups. Even now, some commons yearn for a return to the pre-guardian days when they could demean anyone different to them. Your society is disturbing and, yes, primitive. I’m better off far from it.”
“So we’re a bunch of primitive apes? Banging sticks together? Is that really how you see us?”
Nyah began to answer and then stopped, suspicion lighting her eyes. “Well, well, aren’t you the clever one—changing the subject. Avoiding answering how you got this job.”
Lena tried not to show her surprise at being caught out. “It just isn’t a very interesting story. I got lucky,” she hedged. “Talon Man read my biography about a friend of mine—a teenage yo-yo champion from my home town who turned his success into a million-dollar business. Talon Man said he loved how I took someone average and showed that they were extraordinary in their own way.”
“Yo-yos?” Nyah repeated, looking bemused.
“Yes. Evan Young. Have you heard of him?” Lena leaned forward, projecting curiosity and interest.
Nyah stared at her hard. “You know, you remind me of a woman I once knew.”
“Was she witty, charming, and hella good looking?” Lena smirked.
“She sold pirated vids and knockoff timeslides on street corners,” Nyah said, ignoring Lena’s joke. “Pethre had a new story for every customer as to why s
he needed the money. To some she was a sad loner, to others a single mother with four children to feed. She sized up the customers and became whomever they would respond most to.”
“You think I’m some sort of a shark?”
“I know you are. I will work out your angle soon enough. Of course, it would save us both the time if you just told me now who you really are.”
“How cynical,” Lena said. “Do you get that a lot?”
“About as often as you do, I’d bet. Tell me, Lena Martin, when you’re not scribbling up a storm, what do you do?”
“Nothing.”
“No hobbies? Nothing?”
“I’m boring like that.”
Nyah cocked her head. “That’s twice you’ve claimed to be boring. Shall we review? You walked into the face of flying boulders without fear. You scaled a sheer cliff in twenty minutes.” She pointed down, and Lena had to admit it did look ridiculously steep from where they sat.
Nyah shook her head. “The average common male with good upper-body strength would have taken an hour. Longer, if he had a desk job. You took twenty minutes. Are you certain you have no hobbies?”
“The climbing wall at my local gym isn’t a hobby. It’s a necessary evil to stay in shape,” Lena said. “Come on, you think it’s suspicious that a writer works out? How paranoid is that? Can you never take anyone at face value? That’s a depressing world view.”
“Now you’re trying reverse psychology? I have to somehow prove my world view is not depressing by believing you? Is that your argument?”
Lena halted, shocked to have been so accurately called out on her manipulations.
“If you’re anything like Pethre, you’re trying to present yourself as something I want to hear, a reflection of what I value,” Nyah continued. “So why do you think I appreciate someone with no hobbies or interests? Or do you feel that I have no life and might respond better if you present yourself as just as woeful? Mirroring, I believe it’s called.”
Lena’s palms became slick with sweat, and she wished she could wipe them down surreptitiously. “I think you appreciate someone who tells the truth,” Lena argued. “Which is what I’m giving you. I’m boring. It’s sad but true.”
Nyah shook her head. “Don’t lie to your elders.”
Lena twiddled her pen. “Elders? How old are you, anyway?”
“By Earth’s calendar? One hundred forty-one years.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lena deadpanned. “You don’t look a day over a hundred and forty.”
There was a long pause before Nyah suddenly laughed. She offered a flash of white teeth and a crinkling around her eyes. It transformed her face from severe to stunning.
Lena watched in complete astonishment. She had never seen her look like this. In perusing a century’s worth of videos and news photos, this smile was entirely undocumented. Lena offered a weak, awkward, half laugh to cover up her shock.
She made a show of flipping the page on her notebook. Staring intensely at the paper, Lena forced that disarming smile from her mind. “I have another question.”
Nyah’s amusement in her voice faded. “What?”
“Were you all special on your home planet?”
“Special? We aren’t special even now. Despite our fearless leader’s best efforts to portray us as demi-gods, most of our group bleed when people shoot at us, and we all can die too.”
“I don’t mean that,” Lena said. “I mean were you all super-skilled on your home planet? Able to toss rocks around and fly and all that sort of thing.”
“Yes, we could perform these feats on Aril. Were those abilities unusual? No. Everyone had something different they were born with. It’s only here that our abilities are seen as amazing. Back home they were seen as useful and incorporated into whatever career we choose. Here they are the career.” The irritation was back and her frustration seemed to claw at her from a deep place.
“So there you were on Aril,” Lena replied, “just one scientist among millions, and then you came here, and for the first time you get worshipped as a demi-god. How did that make you feel?”
“What makes you think here was my first time being worshipped?” Nyah said lightly. Her eyes gleamed.
Lena grinned at her expression. “Oh?” she asked, intrigued. “Were you famous? Did you cure cancer or something?”
“No cures.” Nyah rubbed her chin idly. “I was a botanist, like I said. I am just pointing out how much your people assume things. How much you take for granted about the founders, for instance, without question.”
Lena paused at the odd statement. Like she was hinting at something. “The founders,” she repeated slowly. As far as Lena knew, no one assumed much of anything about the founders beyond what they’d shared with Earth’s inhabitants. Which wasn’t a huge amount. Talon Man was the most gregarious of the bunch, and it was universally agreed he was a born leader who…
Lena stopped. “Um…what did Talon Man do on your home world?”
Nyah’s smile was approving. “What do you think he did?”
“Politician maybe? Diplomat?”
Nyah looked at her in dissatisfaction. “Not even close. Tal was what we call a speed agent, one of the best who ever existed. A speed agent is the equivalent of a used-car salesman here. He slings so much kineerl it’s amazing he doesn’t slide in his own oily puddles when he walks.”
Lena stared in shock. “Wait…are you saying you came to a new planet and chose a lousy car salesman as your leader?”
“Who else to win over the suspicious populace than one skilled in the art of wooing? As I said, he was one of the best we ever had. He’s proved his value in that sense.”
“But that’s crazy. That’s not a leader…that’s just style over substance. Why not you? You’re smarter than him, right?”
Nyah’s nostrils flared and Lena knew she’d scored a direct hit.
“It wasn’t that simple. Tal had the right look.”
“The right look?” Lena pictured the orange-clad guardian leader with his fake smiles and ready charm. His resonating voice made females weak at the knees, and his enormous online fan base had no equal.
“Must I spell it out?” Nyah asked in dissatisfaction. “His personal attributes matched the characteristics of the caste in ascendancy on your world when we landed.”
Lena exhaled. “Caste in ascend…” She blinked. “You mean he’s a straight, white male.”
“Yes.”
“And you aren’t any of those things.”
Nyah met her gaze wordlessly.
“And so you all had to sit back and take orders from a used-car salesman? Just because he’s the pretty poster boy? Sucks.”
“It was an adjustment. Especially given the fact the scientists on my world were used to a certain stature.”
“In what way?”
“Our political leaders were all chosen from the thinkers—academics, philosophers, teachers, and scientists—because the logic and teamwork traits prominent among these groups were seen as necessary when making decisions for our people.”
“So Talon Man, as a speed agent—”
“Would never have come close to a leadership position. His massive ego alone would have rendered him unsuitable.”
“No wonder he looks so happy all the time. He’s like a pig in mud.”
“This has far exceeded his life’s ambitions by a hundredfold,” Nyah murmured.
“And, meanwhile, you’re…” Lena wondered how to say “sidelined” in a polite way. “Um…”
“I’m well aware of how our fortunes have been reversed.”
“The world’s changed now, though. Would you ever challenge his leadership?”
“What and miss all this?” Nyah asked, waving at the vastness in front of her. “Do you know that your ‘most alien place on Earth’ is actually the closest thing to what my home looks like?”
Lena took in the purple mountains and eerie silhouetted dragon blood trees with new interest. “Is that why you ca
me here?”
“Well, I can’t very well go home, can I? At least here I am free.”
There was the bite of bitter bile again. Lena felt her usual dismay creep over her that came with her disappointment in guardians. Overdues always had such massive chips on their shoulders. Only they had suffered. Sure, they’d lost their whole world, and that was awful, but it had been a hundred years now. How long were they going to haul that trauma around instead of moving on? Humans didn’t have the luxury of wallowing for a whole century. They just got on with it, buried their hurts, and faced life because that’s all they could do.
Lena sighed. She now realized she had a far harder task ahead than she’d imagined. Nyah clearly wasn’t someone easily enticed back to a civilization that she saw as uncivilized by a reminder of the glory days that had never been glorious for her.
“You weren’t free before?” Lena asked carefully.
“If you have to ask, then you have no concept of our lives. But I do miss home.” Nyah’s gaze softened as it took in the landscape.
“Your world must be beautiful then if it looks anything like this.”
“It was.” Her expression lit up. “We had the Three Moon Seas. That’s a spot on the planet where the reflections of our moons would glimmer on the water and give the most stunning effects. We had the rainforest waterfalls. Plants would weep over these waterfalls, their leaves touching the streams, forming a lush green waterslide. There’s one like it, not far from here.”
“I saw it on my way here. It was pretty.”
“It wasn’t pretty on our world. It was magnificent. The craters of Casterna were stunning too. I could go on, but what’s the point? They’re all gone. Our planet is dead. Riddled with meteorites, torn apart. Even though we knew they were coming and prepared well, still, seeing it happen…” Sadness washed her face.
Lena tried to imagine how hard that must have been. She couldn’t. “Why are there only fifty of you? Where are the rest?”
“Our best minds selected an uninhabited, distant planet that would meet our world’s needs. My ship, which was the last to leave, developed a problem and we knew we wouldn’t be able to reach the destination. We plotted a new course. Earth was the closest planet which we could reach that had a compatible atmosphere. Unfortunately…”
