I nod. "I don't remember much of that, because I was still young when they died. But my brother says tour groups would stop and watch. Just for fun. Just to point and laugh at the savages."
"And has that…” She takes a breath, then she dives back in. “Has that happened to you? With Evah or with one of the others?"
"You don't want to hear about that." About having my intimacy violated by voyeurism or about me mating with other women. "Let's talk about something more interesting.” I tug her down next to me again, and I cover her with a flap of fur when I realize her skin is pebbled with chill bumps. Without a layer of fuzz over her flesh, that happens often. Humans are so delicate. “What would you be doing right now, if you weren’t here with me?”
She seems surprised by the question. “I’m supposed to be on vacation. On a trip my parents gave me as a graduation gift. It’s an intra-galaxy cruise, stopping at all the most fascinating sight-seeing destinations across the galaxy.”
“What kind of destinations?”
"Well, some of them are man-made. Huge buildings, bridges, and space stations. Some are natural phenomena, either on the surface of a planet or something seen from a distance in space. You know, dramatic rings around planets. Gorgeous nebulas. But I've seen it all before. My family is big on travel. Fortunately, my parents have no idea that I canceled the tour and took off on an adventure of my own.
“So, I don't really know what I would be doing, because I try not to plan these adventures. The whole point is to kind of go with the flow. I usually wind up doing a lot of people-watching. People from other cultures. I'm more interested in how people do things differently on different planets than in seeing a bunch of distant cosmic phenomena from the luxury deck of a cruiser.” She shrugs. "So I guess I'd basically be out there somewhere, doing exactly what I'm doing right here."
"You’d be mating with a handsome and virile alien man?”
She laughs. "Hardly. You’re the first one I've ever met. I just meant I’d be on an adventure.”
"Why have you never met another ‘alien?’ Do you only visit human-occupied worlds?"
She gives me an odd look. "Yes. It's very difficult to get a permit to visit an alien-occupied planet. You have to have government-approved business there, because of the noninterference laws."
"What are those?"
"There're a series of regulations intended to protect the native worlds of species that are less technologically advanced than humankind. Basically, noninterference laws say that we can't just land on an alien planet and start building things, or selling things, or sightseeing. We're not allowed to disrupt the native population."
I sit up, staring at her in utter bewilderment. "If humans have laws like that, how does this place exist?" I throw one arm out to indicate the entire planet. Enclosure after enclosure of "aliens,” collected and held here for the entertainment of humankind.
Syrie flinches. “Technically, this place is a preserve. It's a legal exception to the noninterference laws—a compromise lawmakers came up with a couple of centuries ago, because so many people wanted to study and explore alien civilizations, and they would not have voted in favor of a completely hands-off system. But we know from experience what happens when humans come in without rules in place to protect lesser developed planets.”
"What happens?"
She shrugs, and her gaze sinks to the hands she's twisting in her lap. This is something she doesn't want to tell me. "Accidental introduction of disease. Derailing of the local the economy. Overburdening of the environment. Stuff like that." Another shrug. “Anyway, the legal compromise allows for limited sightseeing to satisfy curiosity and for academic study, while ensuring guidelines are in place to protect the alien residents.”
“To protect us?"
“Yes. This place was required to terraform each biosphere specifically with native flora and fauna. To replicate the traditional dwellings and resources of its occupants. The people who run this place have to do everything they can to maintain the structure and quality of life that the residents would have on their homeworld.”
I can only stare at her. "That's what you think is happening here? You think this is maintaining the quality of life I would've had if my parents hadn't been snatched from their homes as children and plopped down here like, what did you call us? Dolls in little glass houses?"
“No! I mean that's what I thought at first, but now that I'm here… Now that I'm seeing it all first-hand…”
“You aren't seeing it first-hand, though. Neither am I, because I've never lived on my homeworld. I can't truly understand how different this world is or what my life would have been like. What my life should have been like. I can't ever know how much of my native culture has been changed, no distorted, just so that you and your people can watch us. So you can study us, as if we were bugs caught in a jar.”
"I know. I'm sorry." There are tears standing her eyes, and suddenly I feel like an asshole.
"No, I'm sorry. This is not your fault."
“But it isn't not my fault either," she insists. “Lohr, I have to tell you something. I have to tell you who I am. I've been avoiding this since the moment I met you, because I'm afraid that when you know the truth, you will hate me. But I am— You're amazing, and you deserve to know the truth."
I don’t know what she wants to say, and I don’t want to, because the thought of telling me this secret scares her, and I don’t ever want to scare her. “You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Syrie.”
“I do though. After everything you've done for me, this is the least I owe you, and I'm sorry that I've waited so long. My, um… my name isn't really Syrie. I mean it is. That's my middle name. My full name is Francesca Syrie Montgomery. Most people know me as Chesca Montgomery." She watches me, waiting for something, but I'm not sure what she's expecting. "It's a beautiful name," I tell her.
She smiles, despite the frown lines etched into her forehead. "I have to admit, I expected more of a reaction than that. Most people at least recognize my family name. But then, I guess there's no reason you should. My parents are Frank and Sylvia Montgomery. They own this planet. The whole damn thing. That's why I was kidnapped. It has to be.
“Well, I was kidnapped for ransom, almost certainly, but as near as I can guess, the reason I was dropped here is because this is my family’s planet. I have to imagine the kidnapper thinks this is some kind of irony, keeping me close to home, but in a place no one would ever look for me.”
Her words echo in my head, bouncing around too fast for their meaning to sink in. “How can one family own a planet?" My family didn’t even own the den my parents died in.
“Well it's complicated," she says. "My great grandparents were insanely wealthy. My great-grandmother invented some kind of lightspeed engine that revolutionized space travel, and that made my family a lot of money. Like, a lot. Enough that her kids had to come up with some way of investing a fortune unlike anything ever seen before. They tried several things, but the most successful by far has been this planet.” She shrugs. “Fast forward a couple hundred years, and this place is now run by a board of executives, but when he was not much older than I am now, my father and his sister inherited the majority share of the stock, along with the controlling interest. All of which is just to say that it's my family's fault that your family is here. And I'm so sorry."
I stand and leave her on the bed while I pace the length of my den. I have to think, and in order to think, I have to move. And I need a little bit of distance from her right now.
"You're mad at me, and that's fine," she says. "I don't blame you if you never want to speak to me again. And if you want me to leave…" She stands and heads toward the door, glancing around as if to gather her things. Until she remembers that she has no things here. "Well then, I'll just go."
She turns toward the door again, and I lurch in front of her, a fierce snarl scraping its way up my throat. "Stay," I growl. "You will stay."
She retreats, her e
yes wide and frightened.
"Please stay, I mean. I want you to stay."
“After what I just told you?"
"You are not responsible for what your family has done."
"You don't understand.” Fresh tears fill her eyes. “I just graduated. When I get back from this trip to my parents sent me on, I'm supposed to start working for the family business.” She throws her arms out to indicate the entire planet. “In marketing. I'm supposed to advertise this planet. Market it to consumers. It will be my job make sure tour pods roll through here regularly. I mean, I won't do it, now that I understand. I won’t take the job. I may not be able to stop what's happening here, but at least I can choose not to contribute to it."
I nod. I'm not sure what else to say. I don't know what she should do or what she could've done before now. I only know that I want her here, and I don't want to think about what's going to happen after they come for her.
“I just… I keep thinking about all the missed opportunities. I've had access to this place my entire life. I could've come down at any time and I would have seen—"
"No, you wouldn't have. Not from a glass bubble, and not from a surface glider. You would not have seen what you're seeing now unless you were here, for real. Unless you lived here, like you have for the past few weeks. Short of that, you would've seen what everyone else sees. A living museum. Glass dollhouses. Savages living our lives just to amuse you.” I watch more tears form in her eyes, and suddenly I'm not sure that's true. "Or maybe you would have. Maybe you would have, even if no one else would. As I said before, humanity would be fortunate to be judged by the standard you set.”
But her tears fall, in spite of my attempts to ease her guilt, so I pull her into an embrace and suddenly she's sobbing in my arms. “I did— I did see it like this once.” She says into my chest. “The one time I was here before. When I was just a kid."
"You don't have to tell me about that if you don't want to." I lift her and carry her to the bed, where I lower us both with her curled up on my lap. I stroke her hair down her back, and I purr, distressed by my inability to comfort her. Or to even understand her tears.
“I— I'm so confused about it all. When I got here, I was terrified and in shock, and you found me, and I expected you to be one thing, based on what happened to me here as a child. But you're so different from what I expected. Everything here is different from what I expected. And now I don't know what believe.”
“Then just tell me what you remember."
"I came here with my dad once, when I was four. He wanted me to see what this place was. He's always loved it here, and I think he really wanted me to love it too. But now… Now I have to question his love for this place. I think he loved it more like an accomplishment than like a passion. Looking back, I realize that he had just started making real contributions to the family business. Putting his ideas into practice. The transparent tour vehicles—the glass bubbles—those were his idea. Before those, tourists drove around in surface gliders, and they had to hit certain waypoints in order to trigger the habitat transitions. But now that's all triggered by proximity to one of the… never mind. My point is that he was proud, and he wanted to show me what he does. He’d taken my brother a couple of years before, and Paul loved it. But with me…something went wrong.”
“What happened?”
“Our tour pod crashed. The ones you see today are shatterproof, but the first model had some flaws. Something big ran out in front of us—maybe an ezaki—and my father turned too fast. We hit a tree, hard, and the pod shattered. My dad was knocked unconscious. I think I was too, because when I woke up, my head was bleeding, but I was okay, other than that. But I didn't understand how the com system worked, so I left to get some help."
No. It can't be.
A chill rushes through my veins. I already know this story.
"I wandered around for a while. In retrospect, it seems like a miracle that nothing found me and ate me. I would've been less than a bite for that ezaki. But I got lucky. At least, that's how it seemed first.
“A child found me. A Fetoji child. He was bigger than I was, but I think we were about the same age. My memory of it is hazy now, but I remember walking with him across a field of beautiful green flowers. He led me by the hand. He didn't say anything, but when I cried, he made a soft, soothing sound. I think he was purring.”
He was.
"I remember that he took me to one of the habitats, like this one, only bigger. The kid was really nice, but he delivered me to a whole gang of… Well, that's where my memory goes hazy. I… I'm not really sure what happened, I wasn't there for long before my father found me. And he brought a whole team. Like, an extraction team, with uniforms and guns and everything. I was too young to understand that they were there to rescue me, so the whole thing was terrifying. But they got there just in time." She frowns, and her gaze loses focus. “A few more minutes, and who knows what would have happened to me."
I exhale slowly. "What is it you think would've happened?"
“I don't know, but my dad said they were dangerous and violent. He said that he got there just in time to save me, and he made me promise never to wander off on my own again.”
“That's what your dad told you, but what do you remember?"
“I don't… My memory of the event is faulty. That's what my therapist said. I was too young to understand what was really going on. How much danger I was truly in.”
I stifle a growl of frustration. “But Syrie, what is this faulty memory?” My voice is too deep. The answer means too much to me. “Just tell me what you actually remember. Please."
She frowns for a second, then she closes her eyes. "I remember the child. A boy. He was sweet, and I believe he meant me no harm. He took me to his home—at least I think that was his home—but the others who were there, they were bigger. They had weapons. Things like I've never seen before. Blades."
"What kind of blades? Hunting knives? Kitchen knives?”
“I don't know. I only know that they were big and they were sharp.”
“What else? How many people were there?”
"Three, other than the child. Two men and a woman. The men looked gruff. They kept saying things I couldn't understand, speaking to each other. Arguing. The woman seemed kind, at first. She…" Syrie frowns, her eyes still closed. “She cleaned my head wound.” Her eyes open, and she looks surprised. "I'd forgotten about that. The men seemed mean, but the woman was kind."
"And the boy?"
“He mostly just watched me. He seemed taken by my hands, like he was trying to figure out where my claws were. He had a poofy golden mane and golden cat eyes. And he tried to touch my hair. He seemed fascinated by that as well.”
"It was lighter back then,” I murmur, staring at her long, dark hair.
“What?"
“Your mane is darker now," I tell her. “Back then, it was a light brown, shining almost golden in the sun." I reach out to run my fingers through one of the strands. "You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen."
She blinks at me, and her brow furrows. “What— What are you saying, Lohr?”
"But your eyes are the same. I can't believe I didn't see it before."
"Oh my god. That was you?" Her hands cover her mouth, her eyes gone wide.
"Yes. And the others were my family. We meant you no harm."
"No. No that can't be right. It was two men and a woman, and the men were—”
“My father and my brother. Mahr was twelve. He was almost as tall as my father by then.”
“But they were angry. Violent.”
“No, they were scared. They didn't know what to do with you. My brother said we had to take you to one of the guards. We had to go out and find someone to help you. My father wanted to take you back to where you crashed and leave you. He said your people would find you there. My mother didn't want to do that because she knew something else could find you first. But my father didn't want you in our home, because he was afraid… Wel
l, he was afraid of exactly what happened. But I didn't understand. I just wanted to help, so I left.
“While my mother was tending your wounds, I went back out and found your crashed vehicle. I hoped I would find your father, so I could tell him where you were. And I did, but he wasn't alone. There were men with him. Men in uniform, carrying guns. I told them I had taken you to my home, and they asked me to show them the way.”
I thought I was helping. My father wanted her out of the house, and I thought that they would just take her and he would be happy.
"But when we got there…"
"Oh my god." Her words are stifled by the hand still clamped over her mouth. "No, no, no. That can't be right. My dad said… My therapist said… Everyone said that I was lucky to be alive. That if the extraction team had gotten there a few minutes later…”
"If they gotten there a few minutes later, they would've found you with a bandage on your head and a belly full of stew. That's what we're going to do to you. My mother was going to fix you up and feed you."
“Oh my god.” Her words are muffled by her hands, but I know what she’s saying. "They shot her. She was just trying to help me, and they shot her. They shot all of them. Your whole family."
“Syrie." Her hands are shaking. Tears pour down her face.
"I'm so sorry. I got your family killed, and I'm so, so sorry."
"No, that wasn't you." I take her hands and pry them away from her face so I can hold them. So I can try to make her trembling stop. "You were just a child. You got lost in a strange place, and I found you, and what happened after that wasn't your fault or mine."
“But if I hadn't come with you—if I hadn’t been here in the first place—they would still be alive.”
“If I hadn't brought you home… If I had taken you back when my father told me to… If I hadn't brought those men to my home… If any single thing had happened differently, it all would have ended another way, but we have no way of knowing how that would have gone. The problem is the men with guns who assumed that we were savages bent on hurting you.”
"The problem is the man who called in the men with guns. The problem is that this planet exists. The problem is that my family profits from this place, from taking people like you from their homes and locking them up here."
The Lion and the Mouse Page 15
