“Why?”
“You are here,” he answered, which wasn’t a real answer. All this time his voice hadn’t risen. He stayed far back from me.
If all he wanted were answers, then maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. If.
“We’re at war because you took the alien side. Against EarthHub. Even though the aliens wouldn’t share their stuff from that moon. I forget the name of the moon.”
“Qinitle-na, in my language. Plymouth, in yours.”
“Yeah. Plymouth. We needed that stuff and they wouldn’t trade or anything. You helped the aliens kill humans and steal Hub ships and tech to protect the moon, and you’re human. So you’re traitors.”
“He tells you this, the pirate.”
I shrugged. “Everybody knows.” It was always on the Send, and sometimes my parents had talked about it. And Falcone talked about it.
“There is always a wider view,” this man said.
Then he just walked out.
I stared after him, at the door. He didn’t come back. Maybe it wasn’t a trick. Or maybe he went to get his people because I’d answered wrong. My stomach hadn’t unknotted yet. I went to the door and tried it. Locked from the outside. I wasn’t surprised.
I sat on the floor mat, near the wall, and wrapped my arms around my knees. I just had to wait. Sooner or later he’d come back, or somebody would, and maybe they’d take me out of this expensive, quiet room and show me what they wanted. Take me back to Falcone maybe. Or sell me to somebody else.
Stupid. I wiped a cuff across my eyes. I’d been so close to those soljets but they hadn’t even looked. Or cared. It shouldn’t have been a shock. Bad luck like that happened. Like with my parents, who hadn’t come back. I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, but now they came up in my head and walked around, in Mukudori red and gray coveralls, what they wore for work. Just like that they came out, but they were dead so what was the point. They weren’t here and couldn’t help me and soon Falcone was going to get me back and it would just be like how it had been for the last year.
Maybe that was better than being with a symp who just looked at you with his serious face, like he wanted to own what was inside your head.
I rubbed my face, got up, walked around to give myself something to do. The rug was soft and thick between my toes. Rich thing, like the clothes Falcone had made me wear. It was just a matter of time with that symp. He might be slow about it but he was still a symp, a traitor, and that couldn’t be better than a pirate, no matter what he said.
It was better not to think about it, so I explored this jail instead, running my fingers along the smooth walls. The designs on it weren’t painted, but stuck there, raised from the surface. The edges of the walls brought me to the painted black screen, so I peeked behind it. A geometric toilet that looked basically like the ones I was used to, and a sink and a tub. The tub would take me a while to figure out; it had no showerhead above it and I couldn’t see where the water would come from.
I looked down at my robe. I didn’t smell, which meant somebody had cleaned me while I was asleep.
I folded my arms and looked away from the tub, listened. Nothing, so I quickly used the toilet and washed my hands. You always had to be clean because nobody liked dirty kids.
Above the sink was a mirror. I tried to ignore it but it was close and big. I caught two eyes like red-rimmed gunshot wounds, and messy hair, the color Falcone liked—sable, he’d said.
I felt his fingers in it, sliding through.
I went back around the screen and pushed at it so it hid everything behind from view.
* * *
III.
I slept awhile and woke up and was still alone. Little sounds marred the silence, coming from behind the curtains. Things I’d never heard before. Squeaks and whistles that didn’t sound like any machinery.
I went to the window, slapped the wall panel as I’d seen my jailer do. The screen folded up. Small shadows fluttered away from the other side of the curtains. Through the lace patterns showed large white shapes. I pulled the cloth aside and immediately stepped back.
I expected space. Wanted space, like you wanted good dreams. Just the view from a station.
But here a world fell away at my feet. The room, the building I was in, seemed to be slammed into a mountainside. I knew the word “mountain” from my primer. They were rough monsters coughed up on the surface of planets. I caught glimpses of jagged gray slanting away beneath the window and more flat-topped buildings descending like large steps stuck into the rock. I saw green, then a bright blue sky, before I yanked the curtains shut. My head throbbed and I couldn’t breathe.
I’d never seen sky except from space. Or in holos, in a cybetorium. On a vid maybe. Always separated by the fact of my feet on a station or a ship deck.
A hand landed on my shoulder, steered me to the mat, and set me down. The sunlight disappeared with the sound of the screen unfolding. When I blinked the man crouched in front of me, held my shoulder again.
“You are not strong.” He watched me as if what I had done told him something interesting.
I tried to pull away from his grip. “Where am I? Who are you?”
He held on a beat too long, just enough to make me stop struggling. “Do not fight me. You will lose.” He let go.
His alien scent wrapped around me. I edged farther back, still feeling his hand on my shoulder even though he kept it to himself now. He gestured to a tray on the floor, near the mat. He must have brought it back with him. What I smelled wasn’t all him, he’d brought me food in a round red box and a white cup full of water. My stomach made noises at the sight of it, despite the memory of that sky. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.
“For you,” he said.
I crawled over and picked up the warm box, glanced back at him. He stayed where he was. Maybe it was drugged but I was too hungry to care. The food looked like rice except it was twice as long, pale yellow, and tasted like peas. Draped overtop were strips of green leaves, strongly salted, and ringed around were balls of meat I had never tasted before. They were spicy and burned my mouth. I was so hungry I swallowed most of it whole, shoveling it all into my mouth.
I watched him to make sure he didn’t do anything fast, but he kept his distance and just let me look. The closer I looked, the younger he seemed. A lot younger than Falcone. His skin was pale brown but his eyes and hair were very dark. I couldn’t look away from his facial tattoo—deep blue and in some places it seemed black. It twisted and turned into itself but never broke the smooth curving line around his right eye, framing it like a sentence bracket. Some of the points repeated exactly in angles. Maybe it was some kind of writing. That would be strange. But everything about him was strange. Uncomfortable. Too silent.
Faint shapes showed beneath the wrapped white strips of clothing, following the lines of his muscles. One shape on his forearm looked like a blade. Another longer one sat on his shin. I thought of Falcone with the knife in his boot.
The man’s gaze moved to my eyes from the wall designs, where he’d been concentrating. For a second he stared, as if daring me to stretch and touch him.
I didn’t move.
He said, “You have questions, what.”
I didn’t answer.
“Ask them now or never.”
It sounded like an order. “Where am I?”
The dark eyes drilled into my own. “Aaian-na.”
The alien world.
I had felt it but hearing it was another thing. This was far beyond Chaos Station. This was—lost.
“Why?” Now even the thought of safety seemed impossible. On Falcone’s ship I’d dreamed of it and when the chance had come I’d taken it. Here there would be no chance. Here I didn’t exist.
“He shoots you. They think you’re dead. You are a pirate—no. You are a good liar—I think no. I am curious. So… now we have you.”
“I don’t want to be on a planet.” Especially not this planet. My hands shook. I
set the food box down.
“Your ship is dead.”
It wasn’t news but it still stung. “I don’t know if it’s dead, I never saw. He just said so and he could’ve lied. I want to go home.”
“There is no home, Jos Musey-na.”
“I didn’t see them shoot my ship!”
He stared at me steadily. “Your starling is dead.”
“How do you know? For all I know you could be with the pirates, you’re an alien. What happened to Chaos? Did you blow it up?”
“Not entirely.” His eyes wrinkled with a hint of amusement. At what I didn’t know.
“Why’d you attack it?”
The amusement grew, a slight twist of his lips. “We are at war.”
“Who are you?”
“You leak with questions.”
“You asked! Look, I want to go back. If you aren’t going to kill me, or sell me, then put me back.”
“With Falcone, you go.”
That almost shut me up. Until I realized it was a question. “On a station,” I said. “I don’t care. On Chaos if you didn’t blow it up.”
“On Chaos I went to rescue my brother, a prisoner there.”
Probably he’d gone just to wreck something. Strit ships attacked Hub ones all the time and they hit stations too, and who cared who was in the middle. “You’re just like the pirates.”
“That—is wrong.” His finger poked between my collarbone.
I moved away fast, blinked, and rubbed at my eyes. “What’re you going to do with me?”
“You think, what. Don’t cry.”
I thought suddenly of Evan, holding toys above my head. I forced the memory out. “I’m not crying.”
“Think.”
“What—to dress me up and teach me manners?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He stood. “I want only what you want.”
“I don’t want to be here!”
As if what I wanted ever mattered.
“There is only here,” he said gently.
* * *
IV.
When next I awoke he stood near the door holding clothes. I sat up and slid to the wall. Sleep made my head heavy but I watched him, tense. He didn’t approach, just tossed the clothes at my feet from where he stood. The pants and shirt were black, loose, and looked new and. soft. I gathered them together, glanced up at him. He still watched me but after a moment his eyes widened slightly and he turned his shoulder, looking away.
My hands shook as I changed. The clothes spread out from my body like wings. Maybe I hadn’t upset him with all my rebellion before, since he gave me new things now.
Without warning he started to talk to me but not in a language I had ever heard.
I stared at his back, arms folded against my chest. After a moment he turned around to face me, still talking. He had to know I didn’t understand a word. Then I noticed he was repeating the same phrase in a steady way, so clear I was able to pick out individual words by the way he breathed. His voice rose and fell in a definite rhythm, the beat of sentences, and seemed lighter than the voice he used when he spoke my language. The lilts, slurs, and long sounds were almost musical. I didn’t understand any of it but the first short part.
“Oa ngali Nikolas-dan.”
A human name in the middle of the alien words. He watched my eyes and made a gesture over his mouth, repeating Nikolas-dan. He said it Nee-ko-las.
“That’s your name,” I said finally, grudgingly. My words sounded foreign in the room.
“Enh.”
I took that as a yes. He chattered on, a flood of different words, and pulled a slate reader from one of the black drawers near the wall, held it out to me. Still looking at me as if he could read my genetic code. As if I should understand what he was about. I had no idea. But it wasn’t something I could figure out unless he wanted me to, so I took the reader and activated it.
Symbols blurted across the screen, mixed with words I recognized, some of them broken up by short lines and spelled out. Translations. The angular symbols, so much like the wall and tattoo designs, were their written language. I stared at the strit writing, not knowing what to do with it. I didn’t want anything to do with it.
“Alien,” I said, remembering his reaction to the word “strit.”
“Why do you want me to learn alien?”
He said something sharply. Somewhere in there I heard “alien” and saw the heat in his eyes. So alien was off-limits too.
Too much like Falcone’s lessons, except these weren’t even in my own language.
It was stupid, but my eyes started to burn. I brushed at them angrily and held the slate out to him.
“I don’t get it.”
He put his hand on it and gently pushed it back toward me, making me still hold on or else it would drop. “The answers are in here.” Said in my language.
“Answers to what?”
I was hungry. I was tired and at this point I was too far away from any kind of rescue to think obedience could get me back—
Not home. But somewhere I could go where hands didn’t yank me around.
“Mukudori lo’oran,” he said.
That was dirty, to say that. I gripped the reader. “What?”
“Mukudori lo’oran. Falcone lo’oran.” He pointed to the slate.
“What does that mean? What do you know about my homeship? What about Falcone?”
I still wasn’t convinced he didn’t plan on selling me back at some point. Pirates ransomed prisoners. Why wouldn’t strits?
He took the reader, poked at it, then handed it back. It showed a different screen. Staring out at me was the four-armed woman of Falcone’s tattoo and below it the word “Kali,” then a long paragraph of strit symbols.
“What does this mean?” Frustration spilled out of me like blood. I glared up into his dark, direct gaze.
“Haa ta lo’oran. There the answers. Jos-na. Kaa-n sa’o-ran ne. You want them, how much.”
The roll of understandable and alien words together seemed as threatening somehow as the face of the many-armed woman scowling at me from the reader. On her belt hung severed hands; it brought up the image of people walking around with bleeding stumps that made it impossible for them to touch or hold anything.
He wanted me to grow hands, like Falcone had wanted. But not my hands.
I held the reader and didn’t look up. The symbols made no sense, no matter how long or hard I stared.
My fingers turned white. This place, this strit. Symp. Why didn’t he send me back to space? I just wanted to go back. On a ship, not a planet. What would I have to do to get back?
I rubbed my cheek. It was damp.
Nikolas-dan touched the reader lightly and scrolled back to the first screen. He pointed to one strit symbol among five rows of symbols, and then to three other thorny shapes from other places in the rows. “Jos,” he said. Then his finger moved, very slowly, over nine more symbols from the same group. “Nikolas.” He touched them all again and they lit bright yellow, while the others stayed green. Yellow like the alien sun outside.
I understood finally. Like birth, or an identity, you first began with a name.
* * *
V.
I learned new words from Nikolas-dan and the reader, like “day,” which is when we had lessons, and “night,” which was when I was supposed to sleep. The planet had natural shifts, Nikolas-dan said, which were dictated by its rotation. He said “dictated” and explained what it meant, and “rotation,” which I knew already because stations rotated; so did the cores of the old Hurricane-class merchant ships that we used to sometimes meet on layovers.
He didn’t teach me these things in my own language. It was all in strit.
I never left the room, not once for a planet month, which Nikolas-dan said was twenty-seven days and nights. I didn’t know what that would be in EarthHub Standard, so I didn’t know what the date was and how long I had been gone from home. Or from Falcone. Nikolas-d
an didn’t let me leave the room, just like Falcone those first few days. He said I wasn’t ready and since I’d grown up on a ship it shouldn’t bother me so much. It didn’t, at first.
It took a month just to get used to the fancy room, to realize that other people weren’t going to just walk in and out. Only Nikolas-dan came at the same time every day. In the morning. So I got used to him coming and going in his silent way. He was a lot quieter than Falcone.
Sometimes at night I opened my eyes to the total darkness and thought I was back on Genghis Khan, except there was no sound, none that made any sense. Busy noises sometimes came through the glass. Nikolas-dan said they were animals, birds, and insects. They were outside because on planets you could breathe outside of buildings, it wasn’t like on ships. The noises were small and high, sometimes, in regular beats that made it hard to fall asleep. Others were loud and long, like someone moaning. Nikolas-dan said I didn’t have to be afraid. The animals couldn’t get inside unless I opened the window. But I didn’t even fold up the screen.
The animals came anyway, into my dreams. Shadows with pointed faces, like the pictures in my primer long ago. They sat beside Falcone. All around us a woman danced with hands hanging from her belt. Sometimes I dreamed that I yelled at Falcone in strit and he laughed because it was babble. Once I dreamed of my parents and they didn’t understand me either. So I had to leave them. Had to.
Sometimes Nikolas-dan was there in my dreams, but he didn’t laugh and he didn’t let me leave. And he never left me.
I knew all the corners of my room now. Nikolas-dan helped me roll up the rug and stand my pallet against the wall, then made me clean the glossy brown floor with a big brush and water. But it wasn’t so bad because once it was washed it smelled like the fruits he brought for dessert when I learned all my lessons for the day.
In the mornings he brought me food and clean clothing and took out my dirty ones. We spent hours on the floor going through screens of basic strit words and sentences like “My name is Jos-na.” When I asked him about Kali or Mukudori he’d point to the screen with the information but I couldn’t yet understand anything but simple words here and there that didn’t add up to much. He’d locked out the reader so it wouldn’t listen to any command to translate, and looking up words in the dictionary took too long. He refused to just tell me. I had to work for all of it.
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