by Amber Stuart
We passed a lone human standing at an open access panel.
Several instruments clamped around different parts of a jelly-like substance the man had hanging out of a cylinder. Slimy filaments arched like worms, wrapping around his fingers until he pushed them aside with a gloved hand.
The engineer stopped his work to stare at me, especially my eyes and hair. Lit goggles and a shag of dark hair eclipsed his round face. The goggles made his eyes look fish-like, weirdly vacant.
I could feel Nihkil wanting to say something, and glanced over at him.
"They think you are from this First World," he said, his voice still a few shades cooler. "Curiosity will be worse on Palarine. You will likely have to submit to a number of indignities because of it."
"Indignities?" Again, I stared at him. "What kind of indignities?"
"They will want to display you. You will be forced to attend banquets... other events. They will want to speak with you, to broadcast your face to others."
"What do you mean, display me?"
For a moment Nihkil only stared at me blankly.
Then his expression seemed to clear.
"You will not be required to do so without clothes," he clarified.
"Damn straight," I muttered.
Even so, another flutter of stress-induced nerves hit me.
I wasn’t used to having so little control over my physical circumstances. I also wasn’t used to being so thoroughly outside of my element. Rubbing my abdomen absently with one hand, I fought again to focus on my surroundings. I touched the walls as we passed, hearing a low hum emanating from several of the longer panels.
Since being here, I’d heard so little ambient noise my ears felt overly sensitive.
When I looked up, I caught Nihkil watching me again.
When the pause lengthened, he took my hand carefully in his. The usual caution I felt on him had returned, only now tinged with mistrust. Whatever he felt towards me, though, he didn’t let go when I wound my fingers around his.
Instead, I saw him exhale visibly, right before he turned back towards me.
"One hundred and ten people inhabit this ship," he said, apropos of nothing. "Thirty-six are mixed breeds. The rest, apart from me, human."
"Thirty-six?" I said. "Why so many?"
Nihkil shrugged. I got the sense he was trying harder not to be offended that time.
"There are few morph,” he said. “Mixed breeds can sometimes change. They can sometimes do low-level work as morph... depending on the parents."
I found myself understanding. "So the humans try to make more morph by breeding them with humans? Is that it?"
"Yes," he said. “But that is only part of it.” He glanced at me, his face still somewhat stiff. "This is a complicated subject, Dakota. Humans also breed with morph to increase the number of humans. They base their racial category on proportion of blood and manifested traits. The mixed-breeds here are all categorized as human, in terms of their citizenship status. It is a risk some humans are willing to take."
“A risk?” I said, confused. “What risk?”
“That they might lose their child,” he said emotionlessly. “That they might lose social status, if their child is declared of high morph proportion, and that information goes public. When that happens, Dakota, then their child is no longer considered ‘theirs,’ in the strictest sense. Their child becomes property, therefore able to be bought and sold.” He paused, then looked directly at me. “Because of this, humans usually give birth to offspring of morph or half-bloods in secret. Depending on the results, they introduce the child into society... or sell them before it becomes known that they gave birth at all.”
Shrugging at my incredulous stare, he kept his expression flat.
“It is a calculated risk,” he repeated. “But the urge to procreate is strong. That is true of all species... even if one must compromise.”
“Compromise...” I muttered.
I stared at him, sure I’d heard him wrong, or misunderstood. When he only returned my look, his eyes dark and impossible to read, I looked away, swallowing.
"So how rare are you?" I said. "Morphs, I mean. Full-bloods."
He made a noncommittal gesture, tilting his head in a way that I hadn't yet learned how to interpret.
"More rare than humans," he said finally. When I rolled my eyes, about to make a sarcastic crack, he added, “...But that could change, too, Dakota.”
My attention was jerked forward as Ledi stopped in front of a blank wall.
He touched his foot to a pedal in the corridor floor, much like what Nihkil had done to close the hatch leading into our room. Instead of the door opening, though, a panel appeared to one side of its rounded frame. Ledi's long fingers tapped out a cadence that suggested keys, but I saw no buttons or breaks in the smooth surface.
Nihkil took my hand again, startling me.
When I looked over, he squeezed my fingers.
"Don't touch anything,” he murmured, leaning close to me. “Don't talk to any of the humans. Stay close to me. Please, Dakota."
I nodded, waving at him dismissively, but didn't miss the eyebrow quirk we both got from Ledi, right before his eyes slid down to our entwined fingers.
Before I could give Ledi a hard stare in return, the ice-blue doors started to open, revealing rotating and flickering lights moving through a darkened space.
I looked up and saw seats dangling from the high ceiling, moving as if on greased rails before a giant, pitch-black wall, taller than any I’d seen in the ship so far. Legs hung down from those same seats, but not helplessly. Foot rests and arm holders seemed to serve as pedals, swiveling the harnesses in several different directions.
Ledi entered the room. Nihkil gently tugged my hand to get me to follow.
I did, wordlessly, but without taking my eyes off those dangling people.
I felt something in Nihkil's demeanor shift again, as soon as we crossed the threshold. It took me a few seconds to make sense of the change, but once I did, I found myself staring at him. He didn’t move any closer to where I stood, but I felt his presence envelop mine anyway, as if to hide me from the rest of the room.
Surprised by the overt protectiveness I felt, I tried to decipher the other thing I felt there, too, an almost exaggerated maleness I'd never discerned on him before. Nihkil didn’t return my look; his symmetrical face remained empty, but his eyes trained hawklike on the people in the room, as if scoping for hidden threats.
His expression reminded me more of when I'd first met him, in that alley near Pioneer Square.
I stepped closer to him, in spite of myself.
Heck, maybe he knew something I didn’t.
Just then, a lithe body swiveled in a harness, jerking my eyes upwards.
Cat-shaped irises narrowed down at me from large, hazel eyes. The female had cropped black hair, muscular arms, and a delicate, almost elfin face. Her skin carried a golden fawn pattern, dramatic against the paleness underneath those reddish spots.
A dark red stone flashed from her upper arm, as if embedded directly into her flesh.
It dawned on me suddenly that she was young, maybe only in her early twenties. She reminded me of Irene's little sister, the one who was always dating speed freaks and wanting Irene to bail her boyfriends out of jail. The alien girl's hands gripped black metal controllers on either side of her body, her fingers pale as milk.
The door closed, leaving the room in near-darkness.
Me and that girl continued to stare at one another.
Nik didn’t like it. Some part of me noted his dislike of my interest in the girl, but I didn’t look away from her face.
"Pilots," Nihkil said in a low voice, again speaking right next to my ear. "Both are human." He gestured subtly at the cat-eyed woman, and again I felt that reluctance on him. "Nagre." He gestured towards the second chair. "Artro. It is what they are called."
"You know their names?” I said, tu
rning to him. “All of them?”
Nihkil shrugged. "Not all... but some, yes. We all work for Yaffa in some capacity."
I'd followed his gesturing hand towards the other pilot by then. A man, maybe in his forties, sat in the right-side harness. Salt and pepper hair stuck up unevenly around a square face with mismatched eyes.
He smiled, giving me a half-wave with his fingers without letting go of the controls. Brown hair grew on his thick arms. He was the first person I’d seen besides Nihkil since we’d been on the ship who didn’t have skin the color of an albino mole. While not exactly tan, he was a familiar, sunless beige. I smiled back at him, disarmed by his simple friendliness.
Ledi gestured for us to join him, by a section of black wall.
Only then did I give a sweeping glance around, taking in the rest of the space. People lined all three of the walls facing that larger, taller black one that took up the length of the oval-shaped room. Most of them bent over machines that turned their faces a sickly blue.
When I glanced back at Ledi and Nihkil, I found Ledi watching me again. While I looked, his eyes drifted down to the hand held by Nihkil, holding a darker scrutiny.
I was still staring when Nihkil's voice jerked my eyes back to his.
“Look,” Nihkil said in English.
The darkness of the wall by Ledi faded.
The wall became a window, then a high, glass dome, filling the space with light.
The blue-white glow threw the horseshoe of control stations into stark relief, making me realize they circled a much wider room than I’d realized. The eerie, bluish faces grew more distinct, as did the two pilots hanging from their harnesses in front of the expanse of transparent wall. The starlight washed out the girl, Nagre's, pale skin, making the pattern on top darker and more distinctive.
I barely gave them a glance, though.
My eyes found the window and became glued there, instead.
Night stretched into an endless black before me.
That night was filled with uncountable stars that exploded in a tunnel-shaped tube detailed with intricate patterns. Light cascaded down the curved sides of that tunnel of light, shocking my eyes, causing my breath to clutch in my chest. Starlight spiraled, seemingly so close to where I stood that I flinched, stepping into Nihkil's side. The multicolored light appeared to impact the transparent walls of the ship itself, pooling in iridescent patterns, streams pulling into abstraction once they got close enough for the ship’s speed to be apparent.
Nihkil watched my face, as if hesitant.
"We are in a pre-jump phase,” Ledi said, from my other side. I turned, giving him a blank look, but he didn’t seem to notice. “This is how the field looks during a course change,” he explained. “We are lucky. With the new drives, it is not necessary to exit the field entirely, so we do not have to expose ourselves in standard. This is good, given that the Malek have likely reported our transport of you back to the central worlds."
I nodded, as if what he'd just said made an iota of sense to me.
I watched the balls of light fly past, trails exploding in different colors. My mind fought with the immensity of it, tried to make it real, then tried to make it into a movie.
I pretty much failed at both.
Nihkil gestured towards me, indicating for me move closer to the glass.
"Touch it," he urged. "It is not a projection... nor anything fake. You are seeing a real view outside... real sky. You should look closer, Dakota."
Feeling what he was trying to help me with, I nodded, swallowing.
Releasing his hand, I walked forward, feeling the humans’ eyes on me, including Ledi’s.
Ignoring them, Nihkil followed me soundlessly.
The entire bridge crew watched the two of us now, not just Ledi and the pilots. I could almost feel the intensity of their interest, not just in me, but in me and Nihkil, and whatever they thought was going on between the two of us.
Forcing that out of my mind, too, I approached the curved bulkhead and placed my hands lightly on the transparent pane. I brought my face closer, like Nihkil suggested, touching my forehead to the cold surface as I stared down the curved sides of the ship, watched the lit lines of starlight follow the smooth, whitish hull. More windows appeared below me, artificial light flickering in warm contrast to the stars.
I felt my chest clench.
I tried to think about my apartment in Seattle, about Irene and Gantry and my brother, Jake. I tried to think about the stockbroker who’d nearly killed me during my last job in Seattle, and my favorite coffee shop on Capitol Hill. I tried to think about all of the people I’d left back home, my boxing coach and my neighbors and all of my friends, but all of it felt unreal somehow, as I stared down the side of that ship.
Whoever I was, back then... I'd never be that person again.
My lens shifted.
The stars grew colder, more physical. I tried to force myself to somehow feel what lived on the other side of that glass. The hugeness of that void stopped my breath, balled my hands into fists. The night sky pulsed and sang inside my head in unfamiliar tones and frequencies, filling spaces so empty and huge I couldn’t categorize how any of it made me feel. Disjointed lights combated harmonious ones, waves and pulses of energy with properties I didn’t recognize, violent shards of light and warmer flames, rocks and gases and exploding coronas...
Nihkil moved closer to me again, as if reminding me of his presence. Refolding his hands, he stood close enough that I was forced to feel him there.
"I asked Ledi to bring you here," he said, soft. "I thought maybe it would be good."
I nodded, unable to speak.
When I glanced behind me, I saw the humans still staring at me.
Fighting to ignore the fear that tried to rise, I turned back to the glass. I looked for holes in what Nihkil was showing me, anything that might indicate that this wasn't real.
I couldn't find them.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I met the gaze of the girl in the ceiling harness. Her catlike pupils narrowed, right before I heard her speak, her words seeming to come from inside my own mind.
"Dirty, off-world bitch... should kill her where she stands... morph bringing dirty female here. No way is she from the First World. Why the hell would he mate with her? He is one of the explorers... the chosen ones. Yet they say he takes her as a permanent mate, even with––”
Ledi snapped a command at the female pilot.
Immediately, the voice faded from my mind.
"I am sorry," Ledi said, approaching us hastily from behind. "I had forgotten she was equipped with a translator. I should have remembered both pilots have these. I am sorry, Dakota...”
I nodded, but still fought with the emotional reaction that had risen in me.
Hatred. It had been a long time since I’d heard the kind of hatred I’d heard in the other woman’s voice. Whatever changes had happened in me since I'd stepped through that circle of white stones, they hadn't been nearly enough... not if this was my new normal.
I needed to open Nik’s lock.
I needed to learn more, or I’d never survive this place.
In any case, the tattooed and bejeweled female no longer reminded me of Irene's little sister. Truthfully, nothing here really reminded me much of anything back home. None of the good parts of home, anyway.
Well, I thought, glancing ruefully at Nihkil.
... Except when I desperately needed it to.
14
RUMORS AND A PERSONAL FAVOR
"DAKOTA...”
Nihkil's voice came through my implant link, via the private channel code he'd given me over two weeks ago now. He'd given me my own translator over the same period, then took it away when he decided it was making me “lazy” about learning Pharize.
And yeah, okay... he was probably right.
The implant link got in the way of learning Pharize, too, of course. Nik seemed to think it had other
compensations that made that acceptable, however... and anyway, I could only use the link with him, not with the other humans and hybrids of the crew.
The link itself, which was a connection between my implant and the implant of whoever I shared the connection code with, wasn’t triggered by actual speech, I’d discovered... but by the speaker’s thoughts. It was easy to forget that while using it.
It was also easy to forget to shut the danged thing off, especially when I didn’t want Nik hearing every thought running through my head that was loud enough to trigger the danged thing. Using the link was more personal than the translator, too, in that the link often carried more than just the precise meanings of the words we used.
Nik also intimated a few times that it was closer to how the lock worked, so better for me to use as practice than the way the translator functioned.
Like now, I could feel his mind sharpen, so that his thoughts carried an edge.
It was almost like hearing an irritated voice in my head.
"Dakota... please, come here." Abruptly, he seemed to change his mind. "No, wait. Wait there... right where you are."
Sighing a little, I watched him make his way across the winding cargo bay, fighting not to smile when irritation continued to seethe off him. Folding my arms, I studiously ignored the human guards I felt watching me from several sides. I refused to return their insistent stares even when I could tell they wanted me to look back at them, following Nihkil's progress across the hold with my eyes instead.
They'd started letting me out of the room something like six weeks ago.
I hadn't been able to see much.
I'd also been forced to tolerate guards tailing me wherever I went, even when I had to use the facilities, but I’d been permitted to go to several of the common rooms with Nihkil, as well as to a number of the less-restricted areas in the rest of the ship.
I'd even been allowed to wander the main corridors, although Nihkil hadn't liked it much when I did that without him.
