Stone in the Sky

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Another office,” she said.

  I could tell by the way she was acting that she would not begrudge me my attempt to lure a pass from her with a claim.

  “Your representative is Human,” I said, taking another chance. “How does that best serve the Imperium?”

  Her antennae waved softly as she took her time to answer the question.

  “We are satisfied.”

  She was being careful. I gave another little pull.

  “The Yertina Feray has a complaint that the representative is Human.”

  “Do you have a problem with a Human being there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Her antennae folded toward me and leaned to the left. I’d intrigued her.

  “That’s not my department,” she said. “You’ll have to take that up with the Office of Interspecies Harmony.”

  I laughed. Everyone knew that speciesism was de rigeur in the Imperium. You just had to be the right species to ignore that it existed.

  “Speciesism will not be tolerated,” she said.

  “Tell that to the Hort, the Vizzini, and the Calwei,” I said. “And the Humans.”

  The Loor looked up at me and studied my face through the vidscreen. Her antennae were now definitely on alert.

  “The Imperium has been a good thing for Humans,” the Loor said. “Earth is in the fold. There are five human colonies, and you’re on track to becoming an important part of the Imperium. Your people should be grateful we don’t interfere with your affairs.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with those Humans who collaborate,” I said. Here it was, I had to take a chance. “I told you, I’m solo. And I’m against them.”

  The screen went dark.

  Somehow the conversation galvanized me. I called the Office of Interspecies Harmony. They were useless. I tried a new ministry: The Office of Biodiversity Information. Then another: the Imperium Opportunities Office. Then on and on. It was a thankless task, but it felt good to be active. Like I was fighting for my life.

  With each place I left the same statement: I was against the Humans from Earth.

  Something had dislodged, and my instincts told me that even though I did not know what I was doing, I was on the right track. Eventually something would happen. I could feel it in my bones. When you are in the dark, you never know from which side the light will come.

  I wore my voice out trying to find someone at each agency that would talk to me. They kept shifting me around to another office worker until finally I had no one else to talk to there and had to begin again somewhere else.

  While I might have been agitating aggression against the Earth Gov Humans and hopefully undermining Brother Blue in some way, my time was running out. I had still not managed to get a pass down to Bessen from Togni Station.

  Time after time when I mentioned a pass I was shut down, told to call someone else, or hung up on. I felt defeated. I wanted to turn off the vid and head for sleep. It was late, and I was too tired to begin another round of pleas to lower agencies.

  Just one more, Tula, I told myself. Just one more call.

  Eventually, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at the console.

  A few hours later, a Brahar crew member shook me awake.

  “It’s time to go,” she said.

  I still didn’t have a pass. I was going to be stuck on Togni Station space elevator. I may be leaving the ship, but I would be stuck in limbo once again. The Yertina Feray had been bad. This would be worse.

  “Can’t you take me to Brahar with you?” I said. “I’ll give you all of the currency on my chit.”

  The Brahar shook her head.

  “A message was received for you from below. You’re to meet your contact on Tallara. I have the coordinates.”

  “My contact?”

  “A Loor, I suppose.” The Brahar picked at one of its scales, not at all interested in my troubles.

  I had spoken to many a Loor that day, all from different ministries or agencies.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m not going to Togni Station?”

  “A shuttle is docking as we speak to take you down,” she said.

  Although I was no stranger to plans being changed, and I knew that I had overstayed my welcome with the Brahar, suddenly being in the belly of a spaceship with those who didn’t like me felt safer than going down to a planet to meet with an unknown someone alone. Meeting on the planet meant that whatever happened was unofficial. Unofficial was in my interests but now that it was here, I was scared.

  That was bad. Unless things were changing.

  There was nothing to do but to go meet whatever fate had in store for me.

  “I’m ready,” I said aloud to give myself confidence.

  I boarded the shuttle and five hours later I was landing at a remote spaceport on Tallara.

  When I stepped outside and my feet touched the ground, I fell down.

  15

  It was strange to be on a planet again. The sky confused me. The clouds cut the sky like sharp, violent objects. The sun was very bright, and the shadows were everywhere. Bessen, unlike the moon I knew and remembered from Earth, was clear and brown in the daytime sky.

  I held on to Trevor for support. The air was humid and heavy. And I could barely walk.

  Before me stretched a long, red dirt road lined with trees—long, spindly things with fungus-covered trunks and sharp pointed leaves. I could see purple fruit hanging from the branches, but I could not identify them so I did not know if they were ripe. What struck me, as I tried not to throw up, was how much brighter the colors were here than on a ship or on the station. In the arboretum, I thought I knew what the color green was. Seeing the vegetation on this planet made me realize what green really looked like, and it made me miss Thado and his ramblings about planetary flora and fauna.

  I quickly noted that the spaceport was a private one. It consisted of a single landing pad with an old empty-looking building covered with vines that crept up the side of the walls. An old Loor was sitting on the porch in a mechanic’s jumpsuit eating the purple fruit I couldn’t recognize and spitting out the seeds. He didn’t look up at me when I approached him to ask if he was the person I was to meet. He just stuck his hand out and pointed to the exit.

  Way down the fenced lane, I could see a hexagonal house. There was no one else waiting for me, so I headed toward it to meet whoever had called me here.

  I dragged myself to the gate holding on to Trevor. It was a slow process.

  Wherever I was it looked rural, as though I were far away from any urban center. I couldn’t hear any of the busyness that a city or a close-by dense population made. There were only the sounds of insects, birds, wind, and the cries of animals on what I assumed was an unseen farm.

  I took a deep breath. The air was real. Overwhelming. Sweet. Sticky. There were new smells everywhere. Chemicals from the landing pad. Dirt. Leaves. Rocks. Animal manure.

  The sun was warm on my face. It felt so much like my sun. How had I managed with only Sunspa lamps? They were nothing compared to the real thing.

  My legs shook as I stumbled forward. I was not sure that I could make my way down the lane by myself, and Trevor was too awkward to hang on to for long amounts of time. He rolled too fast for my slow steps. I let him go as I moved to the side of the road and was sick into the scrub-like grass. Then I pulled myself up to hang on to the fence posts and started dragging myself toward the house. It was a near impossible task. But I had no choice. The shuttle had taken off immediately after I left, as though it didn’t want to be here any more than I did. It was already long gone.

  Planet sickness.

  That’s what I was suffering from. I’d heard about it before, first in Kitsch Rutsok’s and then in the Tin Star Café. Travelers were always laughing and telling stories about new space voyagers, who hadn’t heeded the warnings of landing on new planets after long journeys.

  It wasn’t the gravity of the planet that was making it difficult for
me to walk. Although it was slightly heavier than the Yertina Feray, I knew that was a little lighter than Earth. It was the sky I could not get used to. It was the birds. It was the wind. It was the trees. It was the sound that a planet makes. Even in the quiet of the country, it was deafening.

  I was so used to the dome of the station that the sky troubled me. The largeness of it and the color, an unreal-looking indigo, confused me. It was as though the sky wanted to scoop me up and fold itself around me one million times.

  As I got closer, I could see a Loor standing in the doorway of a house, observing me as I approached.

  I stumbled again. My inner ear ached, and the ground in front of me spun. My balance was off. I felt a wave of vertigo wash over me. I gripped on to another fence post on the path to the house to steady myself. Trevor had stopped so that I could catch up. I pulled myself a little farther along the post, dizziness overwhelming me. When the fence ran out, I commanded Trevor to glide beside me, so I could find my balance. Eventually I stared at the ground, so I did not have to face the sky.

  “How long have you been in space?”

  I looked up. The Loor was female. She’d come down the road to meet me and was now offering me her hand. She was covered in scarves so I could not see her face or her antennae or the form of her body, but I could tell by her voice that she was female. Not that I cared. I gave her my hand, and she put her arm around my waist to help me walk toward the house. I was grateful that I had someone to lean on. Someone who knew how to go slow. Someone who walked, not rolled.

  “Years?” she asked.

  I nodded, unable to speak for fear of vomiting again. As we walked, it was as though I could feel the planet spinning on its axis. I could feel us orbiting the sun, which the Loor called Blan. Everything was moving.

  “You’ll be fine in a day or two. You’ve got planet sickness.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  I nodded again, wanting to believe her. But I felt so sick that I had my doubts that this feeling would ever go away.

  We reached the door at last, and she let me go in first as she opened it and ushered me inside.

  “Please sit down. Food and drink will settle you.”

  She disappeared as I sunk into the couch. I looked up, curious for a clue about where I was. Before my vertigo overtook me again, I noticed that the room was tastefully decorated with sleek angled furniture in all shades of blue. There were flowers on every available table space. In the corner there was a wooden sculpture of two Loors heads leaned into each other, antennae entwined. Red, yellow, and blue circular windows lined one wall. The sun streaming through them made beautiful hues on the floor.

  She reappeared with a tray. Her scarves were a bit looser now, so I could see her face. She looked familiar.

  Usually when I dealt with an alien, I knew within minutes what they wanted. On the Yertina Feray it was easy. But I could not begin to guess what this Loor wanted me here for. With the scarves on her head covering up her antennae and the loose shift she was wearing it was hard to read her body language. She could read everything about me. I tried to still my body movements and my facial tics so as to not give anything else away.

  I realized I was in the presence of a master negotiator.

  There was only one reason that she could possibly want me here. I must have said something that either spooked her or intrigued her when we spoke on the vidcall.

  I had spoken to so many people the past two day cycles that I couldn’t remember what I’d said to whom. So I couldn’t imagine what I’d spun to get her interested in me.

  When you are lost, be direct. Heckleck’s teachings reminded me. I broke my rule and spoke first.

  “You’re from the Office of Extraplanetary Excavations.”

  “Yes,” she said, serving me a plate of snack-like items and a bowl with a steaming clear orange liquid. “My name is Hendala.”

  “You severed the connection,” I said. Most of those I’d called had gotten me off quickly, but she had gone dark. There was a difference between hanging up and severing a connection.

  “We’re here talking now, aren’t we?”

  I nodded and took a sip of the warm liquid in front of me. It was a smoky broth that I knew Tournour was fond of.

  “Why are we meeting here?”

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  “You are a Human unaffiliated with your own representative who was trying to make backroom deals about something that my office is not in charge of but would like to have a piece of. It would be inappropriate for me to meet with you in any kind of official capacity.”

  “I didn’t want to talk officially,” I said.

  “What did you want?” she asked as she folded her long arms in front of her chest and leaned back in her chair as she took me in.

  “I wanted a pass to get down to Bessen from Togni Station.”

  “Where you would have raised many red flags and likely have been killed,” she said. Her antennae had not moved, and I knew that meant she was apprehensive about me.

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “I have a way of blending in.”

  She laughed, and I could see her antennae had softened under her scarf, signaling that she was slightly more at ease with me.

  “Do you even have papers?” she asked.

  I shook my head in the way that Loor used to say no.

  “You’re not very smart. You’re like a shosho in a glass shop. Causing havoc in its wake.”

  It took a moment for the nanites to translate the word shosho, but I knew she meant some kind of large, lumbering dumb animal.

  “A Human doesn’t blend in on Bessen. There are far too few of you that are seen in public spaces. To have one rogue Human wandering around the city without an Imperium uniform the way some of you wander around space would be obvious.”

  “I fit in on the Yertina Feray,” I said.

  But I knew she was right. No matter how un-Human I felt sometimes, I could not deny my biology. I was a Human. I would stick out as I always had.

  “You’ve been pressing and prodding every ministry on Bessen for a pass down from Togni Station,” she said. “Did you mean to draw that much attention to Earth? I’ve had twenty inquires about excavation possibilities there today.”

  I sucked in my breath. It was one thing to ruin Brother Blue. It was another thing to condemn Earth. Before Earth Gov joined the Imperium, it had been isolationist and there was a policy to not accept anyone back who had left the planet. That was why the Wanderers, descendants of the first intergenerational ships, wandered and why I no longer had any great love for my planet since it had ignored me. Even now, return to Earth was only possible for those Humans who had left under Imperium rule, but the thought of it being harmed in any way was still unbearable to me. I should have been more careful.

  “I just wanted a pass,” I said, opening my arms in front of me to show vulnerability.

  She cocked her head to the side.

  “Being loud in a time of quiet can have a disastrous effect.”

  It sounded like something Heckleck would say. Something I would hate to admit was right.

  “What would you have done with the pass once you were on Bessen?” she asked, her hands smoothing her skirt down.

  “I meant to draw attention to the alin on Quint. To speak for the Yertina Feray Space Station. For the claimants.”

  The claims were the only card I had.

  Despite it making the room spin again, I leaned forward in my chair.

  “What authority do you have to speak for a space station or for the people speculating on Quint? You don’t even work there.”

  I could see her antennae moving beneath the fabric of her shawl swaying from side to side in agitation.

  “I am a citizen. I’m from the underguts,” I said, touching my heart.

  “You’re not even on their roster of citizens,” she said. “How did you come to be there?”

  Her hand stabbed th
e air as she pointed at me.

  “My colony ship left me there.”

  “On its way to its colony?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “Yes, but the ship exploded soon after, and I was declared dead.”

  “So you’re a dead Human with inside information,” Hendala said. “Still a shosho.”

  She paused. I had to defend myself. I was not a shosho, whatever that was.

  “Everyone on the Yertina Feray has dealt with me in some way before. I own and run a sweets, water, and salts shop.”

  Her broad shoulders relaxed.

  “Smart. Everyone longs for those homeworld things in deep space,” Hendala said. “Go on.”

  “Before that, I lived in the underguts of the station. I ran errands and barters for a Hort named Heckleck. They couldn’t trust him, but they could trust me. I strike a fair deal.”

  Her antennae peeked from under her shawl and folded toward me in a way I remembered Tournour doing; it meant curiosity.

  “So you’re trusted by the low and the high?”

  I nodded. Talking was still a little difficult. I took another sip of the broth.

  “I know the way deals are made on the Yertina Feray,” I said. “I know how we survived before the money came. The speculators don’t want to pay all the fees. I wanted to bring attention to that.”

  She nodded.

  “Before the rush, the Yertina Feray was a ghost town, and Quint was abandoned,” I said. “Now every wing has reopened. Ships arrive in droves every day.”

  I had her interested. I could tell from the way that her body settled itself and her head turned that she was beginning to trust that I knew what I was talking about.

  “Is the rush really that big?” she asked. “Certainly alin pollen and its medical use derivatives have become more available since this boom, but I haven’t noticed anything along the lines of what you are saying.”

  That surprised me. I had assumed from the cargo I’d seen on the Per ship that more would have followed.

  “It’s the new economy on the station,” I said.

  She leaned back, taking it all in. I could see from the slight tics in her face and shift in color of the triangle between her antennae that she realized I was the one telling the truth about Quint and the alin.