Stone in the Sky

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Seems like a hard lot,” I said. It was bad enough having been abandoned on the Yertina Feray as the only Human these past three years, but to be the only being on an entire planet. That could break even the strongest soul.

  “They’ll be found soon,” Tournour said. “No one will leave scrap anywhere for long. It’s too valuable. Every time a ship comes to dock at the Yertina Feray they are asked if they have the capability to retrieve and rescue the crashed ship.”

  The music changed again. A Nurlok lullaby. Some Nurloks at a corner table began to sing along, and I could not help but feel soothed.

  I lifted my wrist and shook the gold bracelet with the charm of Earth that I had taken off of Els’s dead body a year ago. Tournour put his hand on it and played with the charm as I kept talking about my hate for Brother Blue. He cocked his head, and it made me think he loved the sound of my voice as much as I loved his.

  I looked at his dark eyes, no whites in them. Sometimes looking into his alien eyes made me long for Reza’s Human eyes—deep and brown. They were eyes that I could understand. Eyes that I missed.

  But I could not deny that these alien eyes of Tournour’s filled me in a way that was uncharted. Feeling guilty, I let go of his hand.

  “I wish I could cut this hate from you. I can’t understand why you hang on to it,” he said, thinking that my sudden shift in mood was because of Brother Blue, as it was so often. I didn’t correct him. I didn’t want to tell him how much I missed Reza sometimes. It felt like a betrayal.

  “Don’t Loors hate?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But it doesn’t consume us the way it does you Humans.”

  We were so very different. It was when he couldn’t understand me that I remembered he wasn’t Human after all. He was alien.

  “Caleb and Reza, if they are alive, are now long awake.”

  “I’m sorry that we don’t know what happened to them,” Tournour said. “Communication is not simple with the Imperium in control.”

  That was true, but it was also true that Tournour was the one who made sure that the communications array was in disrepair and not upgraded quickly enough. He liked to keep the station quiet. That was one of the ways that he kept the citizens of the Yertina Feray safe. If no one could hear you, it’s almost as though you don’t exist. Ever since the Imperium had put Tournour in charge of the Yertina Feray, he kept us as quiet as possible. It was not unlikely for aliens who docked here to comment on how surprised they were that the station was still in operation.

  “You did what was the best option at the moment,” Tournour continued. “Instead of everyone being dead, you all lived. Isn’t that good enough?”

  “No,” I said. “Never.”

  I almost hated myself for sending Reza and Caleb both to the Outer Rim. I traded in favors and promises, and I didn’t like to break them. I was disappointed in myself.

  I looked out the window. Quint was back in view.

  I longed to be on a planet again one day. Any planet. But for now, with the Imperium in power and travel restricted and my being banished from Earth, there was only the wild and unlivable planet below to stare at from this station, never to set foot on.

  “I love to watch your face when you stare at Quint,” he said.

  I laughed. Tournour was learning to change the subject. He was clumsy at it. Awful, even. But it touched me that he tried so hard to make room for my differences. I hoped that he felt that I tried, too.

  Reza had always been open and wide in his physicality. He was dark all around in a way, and there was a loudness about him that brightened a room. Tournour was long limbed and graceful. There was a chiseled aspect of him, the triangle patch between his antennae, the angles that his body formed, and his sunken cheekbones. He smoldered most in his quiet moments. They both appealed to me despite their great differences.

  It was hard to let Reza go. He’d meant so much to me when he crashed into my life. And it was hard to forget the way that he held me. But I was giving in to Tournour.

  5

  A few weeks later there were rumors that a ship had gone down to Quint, but there was no word if anyone had been found alive.

  It was late for most and early for some when an ominous figure stood in the arch of the doorway the next day. I imagined that this was the captain of the salvage ship. I’d heard that they were Pirates, which made sense. They were always looking for easy loot. I remembered hearing that they had found something, maybe someone down there. I tried to remember if I had heard that they had come back already.

  The creature was wrapped up in yards and yards of fabric that covered its arms, head, and face. It wore protective dark goggles, and even though I could not see its eyes, I felt unsettled by the way the creature stared at me with a fixed gaze. I wondered how large its eyes were.

  The being, a biped, staggered to a chair and sank into it like it could barely walk. Perhaps the gravity on the station was too heavy for its species. Nanites could regulate breath and help with language, but not much could be done about gravity.

  “If you want to come in you have to be uncovered,” I said. It was a rule that Kitsch Rutsok had and I followed. Not that this creature was exactly in pirate wear, but it was covered from head to toe. Pirates covered themselves in flamboyant fabrics and bright colors so that their individual species could not easily be identified, but in a bar on a small space station, that could cause problems. Uncovered discouraged trickery. If you were seen, then you were accountable for your actions.

  The creature nodded and slowly started to unravel the bandages that covered its face.

  Trevor sat in the corner playing music. The tune had just changed to an Earth song. The stranger stiffened at the same time I did. Some species’ ears were sensitive to the tones in another species’ music.

  I could no longer listen to Human music without thinking of Reza and Caleb.

  “Change,” I commanded. The popular music of the Brahar came on. I started to hum along, singing the strange Brahar words whose meaning was loosely translated by the nanites in my head.

  “… The sun setting. My love is a pig. Wonder. Wonder…”

  “Water,” the stranger croaked in perfect Universal Galactic. “Sweet. Expensive.”

  I knew that voice. This was no stranger. It was Reza. He was alive.

  I watched as the being in front of me slowly removed its coverings. First I saw his dark brown eyes boring right into me. Then came his face, his skin was even darker than when he’d left, probably from being sun soaked on a planet. Then he shrugged the fabric off of his shoulders. He was skinnier than he’d been before, but his muscles were harder, his jaw sharper. Everything that had been open about him looked closed.

  My eyes had a hard time adjusting to what I was seeing. My heart jumped and froze at the same time. But even more than that was the fact that it was still shocking for me to see another Human. It was like seeing something that nourished your whole being. Something so familiar that your whole heart leaps and thinks that everything is suddenly right again.

  “Reza?” I asked. Reza had been the castaway. He’d been trying to get back to me. I reached my hand out to touch him to see if he was real.

  “Water,” he said, darting away from my touch.

  Not hello. Not I’m here. Not what did you do to me? Not I missed you. Not let me hold you.

  I understood. He was angry. He hadn’t woken up on Earth. He probably thought I’d lied to him.

  “I can explain,” I said.

  Surely he could forgive me. After what we’d had together, he would forgive me. Love had to count for something. All this time I had been holding on to my feelings for him because they were good feelings. I had tried so hard to fill myself up with something that was other than hate. I had spent this whole year hoping and now here he was.

  “Where’s Caleb?” I asked.

  He glared at me. Then he coughed. It was an ugly cough.

  I both wanted to reach out and recoil. He was someone I knew and
a stranger at the same time. I found that I was at a loss. If he had been warm to me then I could’ve followed suit. But an impregnable wall had come up between us. I understood that he could be furious with me. What had happened while he was in cryosleep could not easily be explained.

  He leaned closer to me, and I could smell him. As much as Tournour had his own particular smell, it was nothing like this. I could drink in Reza forever.

  He threw a rock onto the table. I didn’t pick it up. A rock was not very valuable.

  “This isn’t worth anything,” I said, reaching for the rock as he pulled his hand away. I never knew an action of not touching could hurt so much. An intense sadness filled me.

  “For the plants.” He pointed his covered hand to my windowsill.

  I reexamined the rock and discovered that it was actually a clump of dirt. That was worth something. Real soil would have mineral elements in it that were hard to find on a space station. My alin plants were hard to keep alive. I could use this, but my pride kicked in. I wasn’t going to give him expensive water for it. I took my cheapest bottle of water and put it on the table.

  We stared at each other for a moment. One of us would break. One of us would have to break. A move from either of us and in a heartbeat we could go from stranger to friend.

  My mind was screaming at me to ask him questions. To throw my arms around him in relief. To push my pride out of the way and make the first move. This was Reza, whose heart beat at the same speed as mine. I had a million questions. Why was he alone? Why was he sick? But instead, the training that Heckleck had taught me kicked in.

  Never assume that someone you care for is still on your side until you see how they behave.

  So far, Reza was behaving like an enemy.

  Everything about the way that he sat looked different from what I remembered. As though he had aged. Or been injured. He had a hunch in his shoulder. This was not my Reza.

  He pushed the cheap water away from him and then he took a small bag out of a fold in his makeshift robes and plopped it onto the counter. I didn’t touch it. I knew it wasn’t currency.

  We were waging a battle of wills, and I saw the few people in the bar lean forward, wondering exactly what this Human was up to. Everyone knew that I was a tough person to barter with. They wanted to see if I would go easy on one of my own.

  I wouldn’t. Especially not him. Especially not after a greeting like this.

  “I only accept currency chits,” I lied.

  His brow rose as though he were surprised. The me he used to know would have bartered. I understood then. He was measuring me up, to see what kind of person I had become. I bit my lip. I could already tell that I’d done everything wrong in our exchange. As someone who was so good at bartering with aliens, I was proving myself terrible at it when it came to Humans. I wanted to laugh at myself. But that would probably be misunderstood and only serve to make things worse.

  When you realize you are losing, lose all the way.

  There was still a heat between us despite the chilly interaction. I could tell that he thought I would bend, and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. It pleased me when he looked surprised. Like I had reached him in some way.

  “You’ll accept this,” he said.

  He opened the bag up and poured a few of the pollen pearls onto the counter. In all my time growing my three alin plants, I’d only collected a few random pollen balls of low quality and little use on their own. Though they’d traded well with the Per doctor in the med bay who used it as a tea.

  Now it was my turn to look surprised.

  “Where did you get that?” an alien at the end of the bar shouted, knocking over her bottle of water in excitement.

  “Quint,” he said to her, turning away from me.

  As the room exploded with excitement, I felt weak and sank my weight into the counter, which was the only thing holding me upright. Everyone left in the bar pressed in around us, wanting to see if the alin pollen was real. The tiny bag was worth an unimaginable amount of currency.

  There are very few things in the universe that are rare and wanted by everyone and alin was one of them. Alin was not indigenous to Quint. It came from a planet that had long been forgotten and destroyed. It did not grow well, and it was difficult to pollinate. When it did bloom rarely, it produced the pollen that was so coveted by species across the board. The pearls of pollen were highly healing. They could be made into oils that soothed some species. They could be used as teas that helped other species. Pollen pearls could be made into a paste. Or a suspension. Or a broth. They could be smoked or eaten. Pollen pearls were a flexible, universal drug that interacted differently with many species, but for each, did something specific and wonderful. Since alin was so difficult to grow and even impossible to simulate, it was coveted by all. It had been brought to Quint by some miner, and it had done well on the planet, but never really bloomed.

  The aliens were crowding around Reza, asking him a million questions. Cursing themselves that they had not thought to go down to Quint. Although, why would they? There had been nothing down there to go to since the mining stopped. And most people who came to this system were just on their way somewhere else.

  “Something happened. It’s grown wild. It’s grown hearty. It must have adapted to the quiet of Quint,” Reza talked with authority.

  “Who knows how a planet infected with other nonnative species will react?” a Nurlock chimed in.

  “The churning of the land those centuries ago must have brought whatever the alin needed to thrive to the surface,” a Per mused.

  Whatever had happened, the alin had begun to produce. To have a few plants produce was not unusual. To have fields of it meant there would be a boom on Quint. It was strange what one little blooming yellow plant could yield.

  All around me, the first plans were being made. It was like watching a storm come in. It was a wall of unknown forces at work. It was exhilarating and terrifying. Those with ships ran out of the bar, and others began negotiating terms for ships to get to Quint. Others hit their communiquers and frantically shot orders to their shipmates.

  The shift in the atmosphere of the Tin Star Café made Trevor alert, knives whirring. People were yelling with excitement and making plans. Only Reza was calm.

  “Off, Trevor,” I commanded. It powered down.

  “Caleb really modified that thing, didn’t he?” Reza said.

  Reza and I looked at each other, and it felt like the first moment that we were really seeing each other. His brown eyes were deep and hurt. The skin around his eyes had lines like an old man’s. I saw that he looked harder than I’d remembered him. As though all of the beautiful openness that I loved about him had snapped shut. I wondered what had happened to make him so tough.

  Whatever it was that had happened to him, I was afraid it was my fault.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked as though he were finally really taking me in.

  I looked down at myself. I had long ago ditched the simple clothes with the many pockets that I used to wear when I lived in the underguts for a more fashionable style.

  I blushed. I suddenly felt self-conscious standing behind the bar in my finer colorful threads that flounced.

  “You know, I couldn’t believe it when the Brahar who rescued me talked about a Human female running a water bar on the Yertina Feray,” Reza said. “An old gutter girl who’d risen high. I couldn’t believe it was you. I had to see for myself. And here you are, all cleaned up and full of power.”

  “Where’s Caleb?” A lump formed in my throat. Had Caleb died on the planet below? I couldn’t bear the thought of Caleb being dead.

  Reza took a deep breath.

  “He’s out there,” Reza said, waving his arms in front of him indicating the whole of the galaxy.

  “He’s alive?”

  I gripped the counter. The guilt I had been feeling for almost a year overwhelmed me.

  “I assume he is. We parted ways on the Outer Rim.”

&
nbsp; Relief flooded me. I had not killed them. They were both alive. I leaned forward needing to know more.

  “Why did you part ways?” I asked. I would never want to be alone out there.

  “We had a disagreement about what our plan should be once we figured out our situation.”

  The situation I had put them in. I knew that they had been at odds before I had put them in the cryocrates. They had both wanted to save Earth from different directions.

  “I thought you weren’t staying here on the Yertina Feray,” he said. “Now it looks like you’ve settled in and done well for yourself. I’m actually surprised that you’re not in Bessen with Els. I had half a mind to go straight there first.”

  It startled me that he didn’t know that Els was dead. But of course he wouldn’t know that. He’d been in cryosleep when Brother Blue had killed her in the cargo bay and I had cowered in a corner.

  “Els is dead,” I said. “Brother Blue killed her. I barely made it out of that situation alive.”

  I could see Reza register this information. It opened him up, but only for a second.

  “Well, I suppose Els had it coming,” he said. “She was a slippery one.”

  I touched the gold bracelet with the charm of Earth that hung on my wrist. I had taken it off of Els’s dead body. Part of the reason for keeping it was that it kept me real. It reminded me to never be like her. We felt the same way about Els. Her manipulations. Her lies. She was willing to kill Caleb and Reza, and I was willing to save them. If he didn’t know that, he knew it now.

  That he had been looking for me didn’t escape my notice. I wondered if despite his anger, he thought we were still connected. Perhaps that was a way to reach him. It was like negotiating with an alien. I needed to find out what it was that he wanted. Once he had it, he would soften. But first, he had to know the truth.

  The truth was, I was the most powerless Human in the galaxy, and if he couldn’t see that, then being on the Outer Rim and all alone on Quint had addled his brain.