“Why wait.” He rose, smiling, his hand holding the contract he expected her to sign.
“Why wait.” She stood with him.
Walliz knew that once he brought Karra’s daughter into the discussion, she would be forced to give up Jon Willo’s collection of illegal books. The new High Commissioner was stupid to outlaw using children for political or military purposes. He would prove it when he finally brought in Jon Willo’s collection of subversive material, finally succeeding where even V’anel Kees Sol had failed. Surely he would be rewarded handsomely. Then maybe the High Commissioner would rethink his position and allow the military to resume its control over Sector Five, and abolish the ridiculous Security Watch. Why, they were hardly more than civilians! And they allowed humans, even Outer Area humans, to join the Security Watch! Once Walliz demonstrated his success, he might also be released from this frustrating education administration position, as if anyone really cared if Outer Area Homelanders were allowed in Inner City schools. Oh, he would keep his promise to this Homelander girl and her child. What did it matter as long as he got what he wanted through them?
Before he realized her fingers clutched a knife, it flew past his outstretched hand. He felt a sharp pain as she shoved the blade into this throat and tore outward in one deep slice. For several very long moments he struggled to breathe as his lungs filled with blood. Then he felt nothing at all.
As her knife tore to her right, she leaned to her left to avoid the dark gout of the bluish ochre Nevians called blood.
Karra returned his smile.
Chapter 3
When she finally came out of the nightmare, Karra found herself dancing. She remembered slashing through ribbons of dark Nevian blood that streaked the air made red with the tears of Homelanders. She did not remember using Walliz’s facility to clean her knife blade and wash away blood residue. She studied the knife still clutched in her hand as it gleamed back at her. No blood. Perhaps she had also imagined…
A nudge of hope welled inside her. She turned toward Walliz. His head on his desk, he appeared to be napping, except for the extraordinary spray of dark Nevian blood on the wall and floor. Her heart fell. Not a dream. I really killed him!
A glance at the wall clock startled her. She had spent nearly two hours in the Chief Administrator’s office altogether. What happened in here? Did I dance for two hours? Before or after I killed him? I’m such a stupid, stupid woman!
Her thoughts, still fuzzy from the bizarre episode, kept tangling. I must leave this place quickly. But his desk held the evidence of her visit, specifically her file now splotched with his blood. Furthermore, no student simply walked out of the building past door proctors without signed passes. If I were an administrator, where would I keep them? Not right on top of my desk. No. They would be in the drawer closest to me. But how to move him…
Just as she eased the file from under his forehead, she uncovered a packet of permit-to-leave-school slips complete with his stamped signature. What luck! She tore off the top slip. Next, folding the bloody side in, she tucked the file under her arm. Now, if her luck would just hold a few minutes longer…
Heart hammering, she opened his door and peeked out, almost expecting Security ready with guns drawn. A person did not kill a Council member and expect to exit unscathed.
One piece of luck, the secretary’s workstation was empty. Karra exhaled in relief as she passed her desk and stole down the hall. She rounded a corner just as she saw the secretary escorting a Nevian female in an expensive business gown.
Karra backtracked toward another door. She pretended to open it, keeping her back to the secretary as they approached. She hoped one school uniform looked so much like another that the women would see simply a non-descript student, not Karra Willo.
Several years ago a friend had tried to teach her how to bend light and shadow to seem to disappear, but she had never successfully accomplished the feat. In desperation, however, she tried to bend the room light around her to appear to be the same as the door she faced.
A frisson of something like cold static electricity stroked her body.
She felt their energy as they passed and tried to hide her own. Each moment she expected the secretary to address her, maybe to ask her why she was not in Walliz's office, maybe just to introduce her to the Nevian female who must be from Barre's.
But they passed her by without incident, just as if they had never seen her. Had it worked? Karra shuddered. The use of the energies, if that was what she had done, terrified her nearly as much as Walliz’s threats.
As Karra left the building, the door proctor's face jarred her slightly. He was different from the one who had seen her enter. While she waited for him to release the door, her fingers brushed against the small bulge in her skirt made by her sheathed knife. But he let her out, barely glancing at the permit-to-leave-school note she held in her left hand.
Alarms rang, signaling an emergency. Karra turned with curious passersby while her heart hammered in her chest. She fought the temptation to run. One of Jem’s old lessons came to mind: Running attracts attention. Blend in. When she turned away, she kept her strides casual, her gait easy, as if she had not just participated in the strangest morning of her life.
But her mind raced as she questioned the morning’s events. The easy answer, of course, was that Barnis Ves’ pills were not designed for human chemistry. Still, Karra prided herself on her ability to overcome every obstacle. She did not react. She acted. She avoided. She lied to misdirect opponents. She twisted events to control the outcome she desired. I do not respond to obvious hallucinations!
Yet that was exactly what she had done. When had she experienced feeling so out of control…? A memory from childhood nudged at her. She pushed it away. No! I am no longer that helpless child! Yet hadn’t she acted exactly like a child caught in a firestorm of events? And wasn’t she now running for her life?
In that moment, she did run, her free hand pulling up her heavy uniform skirt to give her legs freedom. She rounded a corner to race to the nearest airway and stumbled into the membrane, not pausing for the elderly couple who protested at being shoved aside. Hand trembling, she let go of her skirt and fumbled to press the code that would take her to the exit closest to home. As the bubble sped her toward its destination, she tried to take deep breaths to calm the panic threatening to overtake her.
By the time the membrane opened and Karra stepped into the Area streets, she looked very much like a girl taking an unauthorized school holiday.
Oh, baby, she told her little girl within the silence of her mind. I’m so sorry this happened. Her plan to get both herself and her daughter out of the Area had vanished in the insanity of deadly hallucinations and the murder of one very public official. No matter that he intended to use her daughter to force her to turn over her father’s priceless history collection, Chalatta would never understand why her mother was suddenly running from Nevian authority. Always before, she had left certain jobs to alternate identities, never performing them under her own name. Had she been under control, Karra would have lied her way out his door, and dealt with him later, especially if he made good his threat and tried to take Chalatta in for questioning. Instead, she had responded to a red storm of fear and paranoia, laughing in victory, as she danced through ribbons of black blood and red tears, as if she were a savage drunk on the blood of an enemy.
She stopped in mid-stride, touching her fingers to her lips. Had she actually drunk that Nevian’s blood? The thought churned her stomach, threatening to toss its contents onto the street. Karra leaned against a brick wall to steady herself, pushing the unwelcome image away.
Once she regained control, she began to wonder why Walliz suggested bringing Chalatta in. After her parents’ deaths, some laws had changed. As a Council member, he should have known it was no longer legal to abduct children for political purposes. Had his suggestion been no more than a threat, and she had overreacted?
She scowled. At least the headache was gon
e.
Karra headed for the closest public incinerator to destroy the file she still clutched in her left arm. Although positive that Walliz kept a copy somewhere in his database, she refused to give any accusers ammunition to point to the printed file as the reason for his death. With it gone, nothing except her presence in his office pointed to her.
Yes, he called me into his office. But after a long discussion about my barbarian story, he became so angry he gave me the permit-to-leave-school note and told me to never come back. It sounded plausible, she decided as she tossed the file into the incinerator.
People called to her from the pushcarts. She ignored the vendors selling food, local handicrafts and tools, and strode through the familiar, winding streets. She passed bars where one could meet friends or make enemies, pick fights or pick up a person, get drunk or drugged enough to forget for a while that this was home and escape was rare.
Manroy crossed her mind briefly. Who benefits? he had asked, knowing who did not.
In a moment of impulse, Karra turned around and stared at the Nevian city structure, admiring the pastel colors under the bright autumn sun. Shades of vibrant yellow, orange, gold and red blended with the muted hues of the lightweight structures that climbed above her. Tiny neighborhoods, called pads, leafed and branched overhead, all connected with the silver threads of the airway system, a xansitweb in a flower garden planted in the sky.
She breathed in the aroma of the Inner City gardens. From her position, however, the Area street smells overwhelmed the fragrance. The remains of the Homelanders culture lived here, and, like the survivors' treasures in her story, would be buried here. But her father's treasure, his special collection of books, research and papers, no longer remained where he had hidden them. Karra, along with his collection, resided elsewhere.
It took an hour, unless she ran the whole way, to reach her neighborhood. By the time she arrived, she knew Security aircars would already be patrolling her neighborhood, looking for someone wearing a school uniform. In the Area, Inner City schoolgirls attracted attention.
“Pretty mirra,” a vendor called as if reading her mind. “You’re a long way from school, erren’t you?”
Karra barely glanced at the woman, noticing instead the goods she peddled: used clothing, probably rummaged from someone’s garbage bin. But rags would be less noticeable than the uniform she now wore.
“Yeah,” Karra said. “And I erren’t going back, neither. It was a stupid idea to think I could better myself. What sass!”
“So what’re you gonna do now, lollie?” The woman peered at her from under a mop of gray hair.
“Dunno.” Karra looked through the woman’s clothing and picked out pair of thickweave pants. “That school thing broke me. I had a job, y’know? But I quit it for something called the Second Start Option. It was supposed to give me a chance for a better future. That’s what they said. A better future.” She frowned.
“It didn’t work out that way?”
“They got me doing all this freet slappin’ stuff that don’t get me nowhere. Like what’s writing stories gonna do for me? They call it ‘rounding out’ my education. Sass! Give me something I can use, like…I dunno…maybe work in a bank or something?”
The vendor chuckled.
Karra fingered a pair of thickweave pants. “These look remade. Good work. You fix the pants yourself?”
“Me daughter and her husband, they remake what we find. I used to do the mending meself, till me eyes got too bad, but I trained me girl well. Keeps us fed, and warm in winter.”
“Yeah? Willing to bet that’s a skill they don’t teach in the Second Start Option. Nice pants. Wish I hadn’t quit my job. Coulda used a good pair of pants more’n this stupid uniform they gave us. Gave us! I wish they gave us the uniforms. No, we had to buy these freet suckin’ things. Can you believe it?”
“You had to buy that?” The old woman pretended to be repelled by the uniform, while her eyes gleamed with desire.
“Yeah. Now I got me something I wouldn’t wear to a street fight. What good is it?”
“Well,” the woman offered. “The fabric’s nice.”
“So it’s nice. I erren’t your family. I can’t make sass out of this thing. I’m stuck with it.”
“Not exactly.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I could trade those pants you like so much for that skirt.”
“Really? You would do that for me?”
“Of course I would, sweetie. I could also trade you that ugly child’s shortvest for a pretty blouse. See this frilly little jewel? Imagine how you would look in it! I’m sure it would help you find another job in a heartbeat!”
The woman held out a scrap of flowery fabric.
Karra hesitated. “It don’t look too warm.”
“Depends.” The woman gave her a sly smile. “You’ll look so lovely, your next employer will fall over himself wanting to hire you.”
Karra brightened. “You really think so? I would look nice in that blouse, wouldn’t I?”
“You would have those sassin’ freets linin’ up. What do you say?”
“What about my blouse?” Karra removed the shortvest and handed it to the woman who gave her the frilly blouse in exchange. “Could you trade, oh, I dunno, that flannel shirt for the blouse? And where would I change clothes? I erren’t taking off my clothes in front of all these people!” Not that she cared. She was more worried someone would see the knife strapped to her thigh under the skirt and associate the school uniform with the knife. That could lead to some interesting conclusions, should a few locals be stopped for Security questioning.
“Tell you what.” The woman pulled a blanket from a shelf under her cart of clothing. “I got me back to this wall, here, and I’ll step forward and hold the blanket in front of us. You change behind the blanket. But just the blouse and the pants, no extra flannel shirt. See this piping around the collar and cuffs? And just look at all that lettering. Don’t know what it say, but who wants to wear something like that? Me daughter would just about have to completely remake that uniform blouse to make it look less Inner City. You get me meaning?”
Karra nodded, not caring. She had no intention of wearing the uniform blouse, regardless.
The deal made, Karra changed quickly, dropping the uniform on the ground as she hurried into the thickweave pants. While the woman rattled on about the fine work her daughter and son-in-law did, Karra slipped from behind the blanket and slid a flannel shirt off the cart. She stuffed it inside the front of the shapeless pants walked away, leaving the woman still holding the blanket. Once out of sight, she lost the frilly blouse designed to make a future employer take notice of her, and replaced the uniform shirt with nondescript flannel.
Then she loosed her waist-length hair from its binding and shook it free. She had hated the bun she always wore at the nape of her neck at school, but Nevian regulations required bound hair, long sleeves and ankle-length skirts. She felt as if she were shaking herself free from chains. Finally liberated, she strode purposefully into the streets.
Karra checked the skies. Security knew where the Willo siblings lived. Theirs was also her legal address, even though she lived elsewhere. She wished she could warn her sister Suzin that Security would soon invade her home. But she dared not take the chance. She did not, however, worry that any of them would take her daughter. The new High Commissioner, A’nden something, had made it plain that the previous administration had stepped out of line by practically ripping children from their parents’ arms. Thinking back on it she was more convinced that the Administrator of Education had probably been making an empty threat about bringing Chalatta in as a bargaining chip. How she wished she had been able to think clearly enough to see through him at the time!
A’nden had earned a grudging respect from most Homelanders. She doubted the Security would even consider taking her daughter into custody. But even if the reports were true and her daughter remained safe, her sister Suzin wasn’t. No matt
er who the Council voted in as the current High Commissioner, the Security Watch would probably still knock Su around until she convinced them she knew nothing. Karra wished she could at least warn her they were coming.
Chapter 4
Suzin Willo hummed as she cleaned the apartment. Now with all the children in school, even Karra’s Chalatta, she could enjoy the quiet all to herself. She had been caring for children since she was twelve, since her mother had taken ill before the birth of Benej, her last child. Mama had birthed Benej, but aside from nursing the infant, Suzin had provided most of the care, as well as the care of the rest of her siblings. Suzin took pride in her home, happily noisy from the sounds of her five younger siblings. Well, four younger siblings. Karra never stayed around much, even as a child.
Suzin hummed louder. Her home was too quiet, actually. The quiet left too much time to consider that life may have passed her by. She was only in her twenties, but she had been her youngest siblings’ only parent figure for years, ever since their mother died. Now no one claimed her attention except after school or after work. It felt strange not to be needed.
She had now passed her mother who had never achieved a time in her life when little ones no longer claimed her attention. Maybe she should get a job. Saril and Dugaan worked after school. Karra had been working since she was fourteen. Suzin frowned. Karra had been working as a paygirl since the birth of her daughter, maybe before, although who knew what Karra did?
It was kind of strange that no one knew the details of Karra’s life. Although prostitution was legal, Carlon, especially Carlon, believed Karra was involved in illegal activities. Su never saw Karra doing anything illegal, except that sometimes she brought home some extravagance with no explanation as to how she got it. Neither did Karra admit to doing anything dangerous, but occasionally she had returned with bruises, and never satisfactorily explained how she got them either. Then there were the times she arrived home drunk and passed out on the couch in the living room. No explanations for those times either.
Her Darkest Beauty: An Alien Invasion Series - The Second Generation Page 3
