“Since he came back to the station, you haven’t been yourself,” Tournour said. “It makes me sad to see you sad.”
I looked at Tournour. It was too strange to talk of my hurt heart with someone who I had feelings for, too.
“He was my friend and now he’s angry with me,” I said. “It’s unsettling.”
“He was your mate,” Tournour said matter of factly.
“Mate is the wrong word,” I said.
“What is the right one, then?” Tournour asked. “Partner?”
Partner was wrong. Tournour was more my partner than Reza ever was, but Reza’s was the face I wanted to kiss. Was that just because he was Human and Tournour was not? I looked at Tournour again. To me, his face was handsome. To me, he was the being that I orbited. Then what was Reza? Boyfriend seemed wrong. Lover seemed wrong, too.
“There is no word for what we were. Just more than friends.”
“He’s not even on the station. So I don’t understand why you should care so much anymore.”
Tournour was looking at me with such intensity, as though he were trying to unlock the secrets of Human emotion. I could explain it to him one million times, and he would still be confused. I could not be angry with him for not understanding how intricate and complicated it all was.
“Yes,” I said. “It hurts that he’s cut me off.”
“Human relations are so confusing. With the Loor it’s all chemical. You are chemically bonded to a person or you’re not. It’s very simple. There is no gray area. With you it seems like you can feel a million opposing ways about one thing. It must be exhausting.”
If he had been another Human, he might have felt jealous or threatened by Reza’s arrival on the station. But Tournour didn’t seem jealous at all. He was truly interested in Human dynamics, always seeking to understand how I moved through the world.
We were made in such opposite ways.
“But you feel,” I say. “You feel love and hate and sadness and jealousy.”
“Yes, but it’s tied into our bodies.”
“How is it that you feel for me when I’m not a Loor?”
“I cannot explain it,” he said. “It just is. All beings have a chemistry, and we react well or poorly to it. I do not like the Per, but I have met Per whom I feel for because they are not offensive to me. There is something about Humans. Your species smells like family.
“I can see with my eyes that he is a handsome Human male,” Tournour said. “And I could call myself a bit attracted to him. He smells as nice as you do.”
Tournour wasn’t making my conflicted feelings about Reza any easier. I could understand jealousy. I couldn’t understand sympathy.
“But how do you know that you like me?” I asked.
It is a question that I asked him all the time. He put his hand on my face, his antennae folded toward me, and he bowed his head.
“I feel for you in my heart as much as in my biology.”
I cupped his hand and took the moment in. It was new for me to feel love and I was still suspicious of it, but Tournour’s care filled the hole that Reza was currently ripping.
His arms encircled me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder. This was as close as we got, and it felt good. But I couldn’t deny that it was different than being physically with Reza. That was what my body longed for now that Reza was so close. I wanted to talk to him with my body.
“Are you feeling better now? Are you comforted in a way that is helpful to you?” Tournour asked.
I smiled. Having a relationship with an alien was tricky. Tournour put his hand on my back. He was so busy with all of the rush craziness and yet he still made time for me. It was a hard thing to reconcile that intimacy could mean so many things.
“Yes, Tournour.”
I kissed his cheek. He blushed. Kissing was not something that Loors did lightly.
“I must excuse myself to go on my rounds. The station never stops,” he said, and quickly left.
I headed to the Tin Star Café, which was the only place where I could get a good idea of everything that was going on.
8
Since it was where Reza, who was now a legendary figure, had started the rush, the Tin Star Café was the center of it all. Aliens felt that meant there was magic here. So it was where all of the claims swapping took place. Kitsch Rutsok’s and the new establishments that had sprung up were jealous of how well I was doing.
Along one wall of the Tin Star there was an electronic map of the planet. I flipped it on, and the colored lights swirled. On the map, claims were electronically updated as they swapped hands.
Quint was not that large. It was half the size of Earth, but that was still a lot of space. Every last inch of the planet was being bartered over, and in a rush, every inch counted. It was something to watch, that map. The claims changed hands so fast that the board looked like a moving piece of living art. There was only one claim that stayed steady: Reza’s. It was large and lay in the largest part of the Dren Line, which was the most fertile part of Quint. It was comforting to look at it. Looking at that line was like looking at him.
I was in a prime place to see how all of the allegiances rose and fell. And I took note of who was taking the most advantage of Reza’s position as a rich speculator—by the way they used his name or tried to undermine him—and I gave them the worst waters. Or the water that was slightly off. Or the sweets that had just soured. It was my tiny revenge. I made it clear that any kindness to Reza down on Quint would be rewarded in small ways. It was the only way I could think of to help him. I hoped that one day he would come into the Tin Star Café to pick up some salts and forgive me.
But I had my life to live, and this new economy on the Yertina Feray caused its own problems. Part of me had to reutilize my bartering skills in order to make sure that everything ran smoothly. Every day had some bit of craziness to it now. I had just solved one problem when another arrived.
Kitsch Rutsok suddenly burst into my place with his goons behind him. His scaly skin looked shinier than usual, and I knew that meant he was in a rage. His tongue spat out toward me and vibrated as he spoke.
“You’ve stolen all of my customers,” he hissed.
“I’ve stolen no one,” I said. “Aliens do what they will, and your place is always full.”
“Not as full as it used to be,” he said.
“There are more places to go now,” I said. “You’re not the only game on the station.”
“But I’m the first, and I’m the best,” Kistch Rutsok said. He said it out loud to everyone, as though he were advertising himself.
“That you will always be,” I said. “Everyone knows of your reputation.”
“I wish you’d keep your Human friend in your place,” Kitsch Rutsok said. “He comes into mine with his dust and bad energy and smolders in a corner. I’d offer him one of my comfort girls, but no one really knows what to do with a Human.”
That stung. I wished that Reza would come to my place. To me. I knew that being the start of something could be a burden, and I knew that talking with a friend was the relief. I could be that friend—that comfort—if he’d only let me.
“He’s got free will,” I said. “He can go where he pleases.”
“But he’s Human,” Kitsch Rutsok said. “You could reason with him. Influence him.”
I laughed.
“Perhaps I would feel better if you paid me a tax since I was here first,” Kitsch said. “After all, you likely learned how to run a place from me.”
I laughed again. “Go back to your place, Kitsch,” I said. “Don’t bother me anymore, or I’ll use what I know about you as payback.”
That made him quiet down. I knew too much about the illegal things he did. While he might be able to strong arm a tithe from the new aliens who were setting up shop, he could not force me to give him currency credits.
“Besides, we sell different things,” I said. “We have no competition.”
“Yes, you sell hopes, and I s
ell dreams,” he said, changing his tune. “You just have a better class of clientele.”
“Are you jealous?” I said.
It took a minute for the nanites to translate the precise meaning to him.
“Me? Of a Human?” Then he laughed, his scales rippling up and down his body, while his sly reptilian-looking eyes squinted and teared up. The Brahar only cried when they were laughing.
“Then we both have what we want,” I said. “Now leave me alone.”
Just then, Tournour entered the bar and took a good look around. Everyone hushed when he came in, as though somehow Tournour would ruin the excitement of the times. He nodded to me and then sat down. Once everyone was certain that he would not interfere with their dreams, the excitement flared up again.
“It’s a bit calmer here than in your place. There, people are already spending money that they don’t have,” Tournour said to Kitsch Rutsok.
“Then I’d best get back to it,” Kitsch said. “I wouldn’t want to miss a single drop of currency.”
Kitsch left with his goons, but I knew that a line had been drawn. Territory had been staked up here on the Yertina Feray just as much as it had been down on Quint. I could have the business of Quint on my back wall, and sell my treats and sweets, but the gambling and the whoring would belong to him.
I opened up a bottle of premium water for myself. I imagined my old friend Heckleck and what he would do at the news of the rush. He would know exactly how to place it, how to trade it, and how to make the best of it all. I wondered how I could turn it into getting me back onto the path of destroying Brother Blue.
“I’m just back from Quint,” Tournour said. He was overwhelmed ever since the Yertina Feray administration was suddenly charged with handing out claim stakes to the once uninteresting planet below, and I had seen very little of him.
I was jealous that Tournour had gone down to the planet, but with the rush in full swing, infrastructure had to be put into place.
“What’s it like?” I asked. Although I could have easily staked a claim and jumped down to Quint to harvest alin pollen, I only daydreamed about doing it once or twice. But in the end, that kind of madness wasn’t for me. I still had a larger mission in my life, and it didn’t involve becoming a speculator. I repeated the names of the colonies to myself so that I would remember what my path was. Killick. Kuhn. Marxuach. Andra. Beta Granade.
“It’s an explosion,” he said. “It’s beautiful. I suppose with everything else stripped away, the alin had a chance to bloom.”
“I’m going down as soon as I can to lay a claim,” said the old alien at the bar next to Tournour.
“You do that,” Tournour said. He drained his water and tipped his antennae toward me and did what passed for a Loor wink.
“What’s down there?” I asked. I had imagined my own booming town, but I supposed that really the image that I still had so firmly in my head was the vision for the town I had hoped to grow on Beta Granade with my mother and sister and the other Children of Earth colonists. That was a hard dream to shake.
“There is a shantytown down there. Mostly tents. But Reza has built himself a little cabin. It’s quite sweet,” Tournour said.
“You saw him?”
“Of course,” he said.
I searched Tournour’s face to see if he’d noticed how I’d sounded desperate when I’d asked about Reza. A Human would have picked up on this and been annoyed with me. But Tournour wasn’t ruffled at all.
“He seems to be doing well. A little thin, I think. I was worried for him, so I insisted on taking him out for a meal. We had a good time. He’s quite amusing. We did a lot of laughing together.”
They were supposed to be rivals, but here Tournour was showing him kindness. It stung me that they got along when I felt torn in my feelings for them.
“Does he have enough sweaters?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Tournour said. Then he jotted something down on his data pad. “I’ll make sure to tell him you want to check on that when I next see him.”
“No!” I said. “Don’t tell him I asked about him.”
Tournour looked completely confused.
“I don’t understand. You did ask about him.”
“Yes, but in general. I was really asking about the planet. The town. Not him specifically.”
Tournour processed what I was saying, and I could see him chalk it up to one of my strange Human emotional quirks that were beyond his comprehension.
For the past three years when I looked at the empty Quint from the arboretum window, it filled my imagination with possibilities. I knew that while it was cold and barely fertile, it was livable for a Human. Livable in the way that the arctic or the deep desert was habitable before the Earth warmed up. Now Reza was down there alive, walking around, eating, sleeping, and looking up at the stars from that planet. He was looking up at me.
Truth be told, I was jealous. It bothered me that he was down there. When I looked at Quint, instead of seeing the oceans, the clouds, the rust belt, or the landmasses, I imagined his shadowy figure lumbering across what I had begun to feel was my special place. My lonely world. My stone in the sky.
Now with all of those people down there, it was as though my own heart was being invaded.
And I preferred for my heart to be untouched.
9
The one thing about the rush is that there was no time for anything else. No time to think about Reza. No time to spend with Tournour. No time to wonder about Caleb. No time to mourn my mother and sister. No time to hate Brother Blue. Everyone wanted something from me: a rack of water, a trade for an introduction, a currency advance for gears and parts.
The quality of items that arrived to be bartered on the station rose as the empty wings filled up and the wealth from the alin began to flow.
Everyone wanted more than what their goods were worth. Everyone tasted riches just within their grasp, and they were impatient to start accumulating their wealth and spending it. Prices were inflated, and I noticed that those with the worst attitudes felt that their claim would be worth the most. Most of them I saw days, weeks, months later, defeated and broke. Then they would sit and be glad to trade someone their useless depleted claim for a glass of mediocre water.
I argued with everyone. I did not budge. I held the line. I charged high prices to keep up with the rest of the madness on the station and with Kitsch Rutsok’s outlandish prices, but I never refused a person their water, salts, or sweets. All of my years of trading favors to survive made me bend in strange ways. They could pay what they wanted, and mostly I found that they paid me fairly. It wasn’t that I was a soft touch. They knew they owed me, and they knew that while I preferred to deduct from currency chits, I could still always be paid in favors or information, just not in pollen.
In the middle of arguing with a particularly obnoxious Hort by the bar, a silence came over the room as someone entered. It struck me because it had not been quiet in the Tin Star Café since the beginning of the rush.
“What’s going on?” I asked, straining my neck over the throngs of aliens to see what had everyone’s attention.
I started to move away. The Hort put her appendage on my arm to stop me from moving.
“An alien who wants to stay alive never leaves a Hort in the middle of a negotiation.”
I shook her off.
“You’ll take your stub off me or you’ll never come in here again,” I said.
She knew that my threats were not empty and that a ban from the Tin Star would be worse for her down the line than an interrupted negotiation. She removed her appendage and let me pass. She would never dare kill me.
The door opened again, and Kitsch Rutsok came in with his goons. They had knives prominently displayed. Guns were not allowed on the station or on spaceships, since a stray laser or bullet could tear through the hull and cause damage and death for more than just the intended.
“No knives in my place,” I said, following Kitsch, who was ma
king a beeline for the claims board. His face told me that something was going terribly wrong. I put my hand on him to slow him down but he shook me off as he headed straight for an alien. It was only then that I noticed that near the claims wall there were two bipeds in bright Imperium uniforms of high rank with their backs to me. I had heard through Tournour that the Imperium would be sending some people to check into the situation on Quint, but he had said that wouldn’t be for a few more weeks. I hadn’t seen them come in because these days it was so crowded it was difficult to see everyone that came into the place. But I was surprised that these Imperium delegates looked like Humans. Tournour had inferred that it would be low ranking clerical workers. He’d made certain that it would be nothing more than a formality.
“You can’t do this,” Kitsch Rutsok said. “I’ve paid my taxes. I’ve paid my hush money, and I’ve paid my Imperium operating dues. I’ve paid.”
“You should be glad that with all of the illegal activities you engage in you are not paying more to stay open.”
I knew that voice. When he turned around to face us, I couldn’t speak.
It was Brother Blue.
Kitsch signaled to his goons who flanked him.
“Hey,” I said, finding my voice. “Take it outside!”
“Whatever this Imperium stooge is doing here, he’s going to make your life a living hell, too. You should let me cut him,” Kitsch said. “Maybe then they’ll send another whose hands are not as sticky as this Human’s.”
“Get out of my place, Kitsch,” I said, hoping beyond hope that Brother Blue would follow him outside. Kitsch didn’t leave, but some of the tension in the air dissipated.
I hadn’t recognized Brother Blue at first because his hair was short and his face was cleanshaven. He looked like a younger man. His eyes met mine, and I could see that he looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He managed to compose himself faster than I could.
“Tula Bane? You look rather well for someone who is dead,” he said.
When he actually said my name out loud my heart leaped to my throat. I stumbled backward and placed my hand on a chair to steady myself.
Stone in the Sky Page 5
