by Amber Stuart
“Forgive me, Admiral Yaffa,” he said, confirming my guess. “I am very pleased to see my old friend in better health. The difficulties of our trip made it nearly impossible to track his progress and that of his new ward, as I informed you before... and I admit to being somewhat ashamed for having mistreated him at our last meeting, on Trinith.”
Turning, Ledi smiled at me directly that time, his eyes a touch warning.
“...Although his behavior at the time much alarmed me, I confess,” Ledi added. “He clutched this female like his life depended on it... covered in blood, a knife sticking out of him. I thought he had quite lost his mind.”
Something in Ledi’s tone as he met my eyes made me stare at him again.
I wondered just how scripted this meeting was, and what the show meant exactly. Clearly they wanted Yaffa to believe Ledi had no interaction with Nik or me following our capture. What I couldn’t puzzle out was why. Was Ledi covering his own ass, so he had plausible deniability around whatever Nihkil might have told the hierarchy about me?
Or was he trying to protect Nihkil in some way, too?
Nihkil’s fingers tightened.
Remembering the supernatural, I did my best to blank out my mind.
Even so, I couldn’t entirely prevent my eyes from flickering briefly to Yulen.
The woman... or whatever she was... stared back at me in complete disinterest. When I couldn’t hold that stare and looked away, I found Yaffa staring at me, too. Unlike Yulen, his eyes roamed over me with a great deal of interest. In fact, he looked as if he were planning to buy me and was trying to figure out exactly how much I was worth.
After a few more seconds of that, I felt my teeth gritting.
“I am told you have not been successful in impregnating her,” Yaffa remarked to Nihkil, as he continued to stare at my legs. “How hard have you been trying?”
I coughed... or maybe choked, it was hard to tell.
When I glanced up, I saw Ledi watching me, a borderline-amused look on his face. Even so, I caught the thread of seriousness beneath the surface expression.
He glanced between me and Nihkil, as if trying to answer Yaffa’s question on his own.
Nihkil’s expression didn’t falter. “I have only recently made the request of her, sir,” he said. “But I assure you, the attempts have been sincere.”
Again, I had to fight not to laugh.
Replaying something in his words then, I glanced up, realizing he’d said something similar to me once before, something that perhaps meant more than how I’d taken it at the time. Something about making requests... or perhaps he’d wanted me to request something of him? Frowning, I studied his face, trying to remember the exact context, what words he’d used. I continued to stare until I saw his eyes harden. Realizing he didn’t want me looking at him right then, I took a breath, facing forward with a blank expression of my own.
The fat man didn’t appear to notice, but Ledi clearly had.
“I suppose the creature is suffering,” Yaffa said, still staring at my body. “These primitive humans, they do suffer, don’t they? They feel the absence of animal contact, particularly in a new situation such as this. Well, we will certainly remedy that, and soon—”
“I have not given her permission for that, sir,” Nihkil cut in.
There was a silence.
I felt all three sets of eyes shift to me.
Even Ledi’s eyebrows lifted slightly, right before he glanced between the two of us, letting his eyes linger longer on Nihkil’s expression.
Turning my head away, I murmured to Nihkil in aside.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” I said in English, so softly it was more like an exhaled breath.
Nihkil answered in the same language, his voice equally low.
“I suppose that depends,” he said. “Do you want Yaffa visiting our quarters while I am being questioned?”
I glanced up at Nihkil, then at tabernacle-hat guy.
Up close, he looked even more like a fish than he had from a distance.
Ledi had a poker face once more, but I couldn’t help wondering if he understood more of our words than he was letting on. I thought about what he’d told me about Nihkil changing, becoming different since I’d been around.
Nik certainly picked up Earth sarcasm well enough.
“And if I decide to stop being a nun?” I said, my head once more turned away from the other three. “Are you going to cast me aside... husband? Have me stoned? Or simply force yourself to ‘do your duty’?”
Nihkil’s expression blanked.
That time, he didn’t answer me.
When I glanced back at the others, I saw Ledi staring between the two of us again, that time, the curiosity on his face overt. The amusement was back, but the puzzlement remained equally, if not more prominent in his eyes as he looked between the two of us. Clearly, he was trying to understand what he was seeing. Whatever he understood of our words, I definitely got the sense that he’d picked up that we were arguing.
Either way, something in the way Nihkil stood there, staring at the high tower of rock on one end of the mesa, made me think that perhaps I’d gone too far. Startled at the look I could see forming on his face, I squeezed his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
Hesitating at his continued silence, I glanced at Yaffa before adding, “...And no worries about the kid thing. I get that you’re trying to help. Hell, if we get stuck here, maybe we should. Maybe if I was pregnant they’d leave me alone...” When Nihkil remained silent, I added, “But no way are you naming it... or teaching it self-defense. Or explaining the facts of life... or much of anything else, really.”
My joking grin faded when I saw the look rapidly rising to Nik’s face.
Nihkil was staring at me.
He seemed to have forgotten the other three standing there as his eyes widened on mine, the shock in them palpable. I was still trying to understand his expression when a pained look crossed his face, filled with enough emotion to startle me. It took me a second to see it as real, and that it actually came from what I’d said to him. By then, I could barely breathe from the lock. My fingers tightened as the feelings coming off him grew more intense, flaring into a near-physical heat in my chest.
I felt him fight to control whatever it was and fail.
Looking up at his face, fear hit me.
“Hey, Nik,” I whispered. “...I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to make a joke of—“
Yaffa sniffed loudly, with obvious annoyance.
“It is rude to speak in another language without translation,” he said loudly. “In front of us. An alien language. One I do not know...” he added, as if concerned the point of his irritation wasn’t clear. “...It is rude,” he repeated, louder.
Nihkil didn’t answer that, either.
He stared off to the side now, not looking at any of us, an oddly blank expression on his face. Despite the lack of expression, he looked completely different than he had just seconds before. I barely knew him in those moments, and it scared me.
Yaffa sniffed again, louder.
“We are screening candidates for your own cards, morph,” he said, his voice still carrying that peevish irritation. “Your new pet hasn’t forbidden you that, has she?”
“Yes,” I said in Pharize, turning sharply. “I have. Forbidden it, that is.” I looked between Yaffa and Ledi. “I don’t want him taking cards. I already told him so, on the ship.”
Yaffa blinked at me, his jaw dropping. At first, he seemed to be nearly as startled that I had spoken Pharize as he was at my actual words.
“That is illegal,” he said finally.
“I am told it is not,” I said, my words clipped, as uncompromising as his. “I was told I had rights over his reproductive capacity, as his lock-holder. Is that not true?”
Ledi cleared his throat.
Both Yaffa and I looked over. Nihkil didn’t.
Yaffa’s face turned bright red. Rather than aiming his anger at Ledi, however, he turned, aiming it deliberately at Nihkil.
“Is that true?” he said sharply.
“Yes,” Nik said.
“Not the law,” Yaffa said peevishly, raising his voice. “What she says. Did she ask this of you, morph? Did you agree to it?”
Nik’s voice sounded strangely far away. “I will, of course, do whatever my lock-holder wishes in this regard.” Giving me a bare glance, he added emotionlessly, “It is true she has forbidden me this, yes. She was not pleased with the cards I chose to take en route. She demanded that I stop.”
There was another silence.
That time it stretched.
I felt my face warm from Nik’s words, but kept my mouth shut.
Yaffa, on the other hand, stared at me with his thin mouth open, making him look even more like a flabby fish. Nihkil was staring at the rock floor as if he’d forgotten the rest of us as soon as he stopped speaking. Ledi studied Nik’s face, a deeper thread of puzzlement in his eyes, one that bordered on concern now. When the quiet continued, I felt my own nerves rise. I was deciding what to try next, wondering if kicking Nihkil in the shin right in front of everyone was an option, when Ledi did the equivalent.
Stepping forward, he clapped Nihkil’s shoulder, as if to snap him out of his trance.
“Ah,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at Yaffa. “Perhaps I should have warned you this might happen, sir. I had noted the fondness these two shared for one another. If I am not mistaken, he put up quite a fight in relation to her own rights of association with the male members of the crew, not long after we brought her on board... didn’t you, Nihki’?”
The morph didn’t answer him, but I saw his face harden slightly.
“What can I tell you, sir?” Ledi grinned. “Our boy is a bit of a romantic, it seems. Who would have thought such a thing possible?”
Boy? I hid my incredulity badly.
No one in their right mind could call Nihkil “boy” and mean it.
I didn’t detect any sarcasm in Ledi’s words, though; in fact, something in his tone made me grit my teeth, even before I glanced at Nik. Even so, I couldn’t help noticing that Ledi’s words had what must have been their intended affect.
Yaffa recovered his color anyway, and sniffed.
Nihkil seemed to snap back from wherever he’d retreated, too, right about the time that Yaffa addressed him directly again, fanning his face with one of those cloth drapes.
“You are expected to report promptly for debriefing tonight,” he said.
Nihkil acknowledged that with a polite gesture.
Yaffa sniffed, looking me over once more. “She is younger than you led us to believe. And obviously carries other attractions, even dressed as a beggar’s brat. I hope both of you will consider liberalizing your arrangement... for her sake, at least.”
Yaffa let his eyes linger on my legs and feet.
I had to fight not to hiss at him, or cross my arms over my chest.
And what was the deal with my age? I was twenty-six, not twelve. I didn’t know the exact conversions for calendars here, but found myself wondering if they thought I was younger than I was, simply because of my height and the heart shape of my face, which sometimes got mistaken for baby-fat, even in Seattle. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I couldn’t imagine what Yaffa thought he was looking at, in any case.
I wore a pair of Nihkil’s cut-off work pants, tied at the waist with one of his belts under a longer shirt. My entire body was dwarfed in his oversized clothes.
Yaffa’s eyes fell to where our fingers locked.
“You are touching her. Why?”
Nihkil didn’t answer.
When he maintained his silence, I glanced up.
Nihkil wouldn’t return my gaze, either, though.
I noticed that his fingers were sweating and tightened my grip on him, trying to reach him that way. I still felt discomfort on him, even if the emotions felt muted now, further away. I was about to try to speak, when Ledi stepped between us again, taking my arm.
“Let us by all means venture indoors.” He yawned, giving me a level but laden look. “...Before we all die in this sun?”
Yaffa looked about to argue, then seemed to take the point about the heat, squinting up at the red star. That time, when Ledi tugged on me, I hesitated only a second, then released Nihkil’s hand. I glanced back, but Nihkil still wasn’t focused on me. His now-gray eyes appeared to search the horizon instead, his face still carrying that blankness that somehow wasn’t blank at all, or maybe just not to me.
Before I could think about that more, Ledi steered me towards the nearest break in uniforms.
“Here we go.” Ledi smiled, patting my hand. “Into the... (I missed the word in Pharize) “...gullet, as it were.”
I looked up, right as the sky was disappearing.
We entered a wide, dry tunnel.
The tunnel sloped steeply into the rock, curving down in slow spirals.
I tried to tear my mind off Nihkil and whatever was wrong with him by thinking again about what I knew of this place.
Nik told me about the divided nature of the capital of Palarine, which had the somewhat-confusing name of Pharae. It had been rebuilt over and inside the ruins of one of the oldest known cities on the planet, which originally belonged to the ancestors of the humans who lived there now. The two sides of the city that shared the same name, meaning the military half and the civilian half, were divided by a series of heavily-guarded tunnels that spanned the distance between the twin rock formations.
Nihkil mentioned that the rock formations themselves were at least partially, if not entirely, man-made, but he told me they were very old, too.
He also said I wouldn’t set foot on the civilian side of the city.
Well, not unless things went badly wrong while we were here.
Everyone gave me and Ledi a wide berth, I noticed. Most also gestured in deference as we passed. I distinctly got the impression that the hangar tunnel was a back door, though, not the main entrance.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched Nihkil walk alone behind Yaffa and Yulen. Yaffa wheezed as he walked, navigating the spongy robe with what seemed like an awful lot of effort. I found myself wondering if the guy left his comfy chair all that often, or maybe if something was wrong with him. Meaning, with his actual health.
Up ahead, a bright light shone between moving shadows. Sentries stood on either side of a high, translucent door.
Beyond that I heard... people. A lot of people.
I glanced back at Nihkil again, but he still wouldn’t look at me.
The line of sentries parted at a gesture from Ledi. Their eyes rounded when they saw me, then one grinned, nudging his friend. Before I could ask Ledi what that was about, parting doors let in a rumble of crowd-familiar sounds from the next room.
As those smoky, glass-looking doors opened, I could only stare up, my shoulders once more tense and fight-ready as people swirled before us like brightly-colored fish. They were talking and laughing, standing with projections by informational queues, walking purposefully crosswise to one another, staring up at moving walls. Odd stitches of fabric covered their bodies in moving pictures, often cut to display jewels embedded in flesh and even bone. Face and body paint accented their forms and features, studded with more sparkling stones, along with expensive-looking drapes over bright stockings.
Mixed in wit
h the richer colors was a mass of dark uniforms and drab work jumpers, as well as more revealing costumes flashing mostly bare skin.
I felt both highly conspicuous and completely invisible as we entered that crush and flow of bodies, a pebble in a stream that the water avoided.
Once we were deep in the center of that hall, my eyes shifted up.
Walls stretched over ten stories high, the ceiling vaulted with transparent panes that let in streaming shafts of red-gold sunlight. Walkways spiraled off pillars the size of office buildings on Earth. Under one platform, a giant orb rotated like a miniature yellow sun. Animal-shaped arches stretched to the tallest points in the room, standing like sentinels and feeling older than the civilization they helped to house, as if the city had been built around them. A wall-mounted screen, easily five stories in height, displayed waving grass under a bright blue sky.
That last almost could have been an Earth billboard, if not for the extra moon.
Ledi leaned closer to me, presumably to be heard above the crowd.
“With a military link, there is sound and additional information.” He pointed at his neck, as if to indicate his own implant. “Nothing terribly interesting, but I could give you the frequency... ?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said in Pharize. “Thank you. Perhaps another time.”
Ledi smiled. “Remarkable. Scarce an accent... and polite, too.”
That irritated me.
Surprisingly, he noticed.
“I apologize,” he said at once. He even managed to sound sincere. “I confess I am a bit thrown as to the effect you’ve had on my friend.”
His gaze slanted towards Nihkil, as if that were explanation enough.
I didn’t return his smile, but decided to keep my distance, at least until I could get a better read on Ledi and his angle in all of this. Studying his face as he watched Nihkil, I tried to decide why his words irritated me so much.
“Dakota. Pay attention. You are being watched.”
I jumped a little when Nik’s voice rose in my ear.
I’d forgotten about the implant.
I glanced back and saw that Nihkil stood behind me now, his hands clasped at his back, his face blank in that way I knew from the ship. Clearly, if he hadn’t recovered from whatever bothered him on the landing platform, he meant for me to think he had. In any case, the warning was so normal and Nihkil-like that my muscles relaxed.
