Tin Star (9 page)

Instead of eating protein paks, they ordered real food, which meant this week they were eating Per food, which had recently arrived on a Per ship. Very salty. Their faces betrayed nothing of the extreme taste. They looked down, trying to avoid the sneers of the species around them. They were frightened, that much was clear. Seeing Human fear made me feel fearful for them. It was as though seeing it on a Human face made me understand it within myself. Fear was not something that I liked when it bubbled up to the surface.

At last one of them looked up and finally noticed me. It was one of the young men. His dark eyes caught mine, and he looked surprised, as though he had not expected to see another Human here on the Yertina Feray. I wanted to look away but I could not. He tapped the boy and girl sitting next to him who looked over at me as well. Then they all stopped eating and stared. The first young man, the darker of the two boys, lifted his hand up and waved.

My heart raced.
Hello. Hello Human. Hello.

Then my chest tightened. And an ache sprung up inside of me. Memories of my family flooded my mind. My throat constricted, and I thought I was ill, but then I remembered that it was what it used to feel like before I tried not to cry. I hadn’t cried in so long, I didn’t think I remembered how. Yet, the feeling persisted. I coughed, as though that would help dislodge the tightness. It didn’t. I drank a glass of recycled water and as I swallowed I pushed the feeling aside. When the glass was drained, I tore my eyes away from the group and got up. I knew they were watching me as I left. I would not go to them. The last time I’d seen Humans, I had been betrayed. I couldn’t be certain that these Humans were any different.

10

They were still onboard. These Humans didn’t act as though they were leaving; they looked as though they were settling in. Most passers through stayed on their ships, but the first thing that these Humans did after they arrived was to go straight to the luxe accommodations and settle into an empty luxe suite. They created a lot of noise. They expected things. They tried to cheat merchants in not-so-clever ways. It was as though they felt that they were entitled to special deals or privileges and they behaved exactly in the way that made other species despise them. Was it Human nature? I recognized nothing of myself in them on that front. It had taken me such a long time to be accepted among the other aliens, to have my own place in the ladder of things. I was afraid they would undo my work.

While a part of me felt I should go to them, help them to get some basic needs, I could not move. It was as though a wall had been constructed around me that would not fall no matter how hard my humanity tried to scale it. I did not feel like I was one of them.

I wondered how it was possible to feel two things at the exact same time. I wanted to help them and myself, and yet I also wanted to stay away from them. Was it something that I had forgotten about being Human? This duality of mind? Of knowing one thing in your head, of having a plan of how to accomplish your own goals, follow your own agenda, but also having a feeling that opposed it in your heart? It was maddening. It muddied my ability to think properly.

“Why are they moving in?” I asked Heckleck. “Why aren’t they staying on their ship?”

The truth was that seeing other Humans made me feel anxious. I knew how to act when I was the only Human on the Yertina Feray. I did not know how to when I was one of a few.

“The rumor is their ship exploded and they were rescued in escape pods by some Per,” Heckleck said. “We were the closest stop.”

I put my hand up. I did not want to know any more about them. They would surely be on their way soon. There was no reason for them to stay here.

I tried to steer clear of them on my rounds, but I had to pass by their quarters, which were located on a main crossing and therefore unavoidable. Whenever I did, I couldn’t help but notice that they were always playing music. That was something that I had forgotten about, how much music there used to be in my life when I lived on Earth. I never stopped when I passed by their dwelling, but today it was a song that I remembered.

I could almost catch my youth when the notes drifted over to me, as though it was a stray thread of a memory that I could pull on. The melody streamed out and hit me right in the heart and then twisted. It was so familiar, and it brought back such a vivid memory that I had to catch my breath.

I closed my eyes.

I could remember standing on the porch of my house looking out over the field. My father was on the swing next to me, drinking a beer. It was hot. My sister, Bitty, played with the hose as Mother weeded the vegetable garden. The smell of Grandmother’s cooking wafted out from inside. My father turned up the volume on the music player and began to sing along.

This was before my mother had started taking the Children of Earth pamphlets home and leaving them on the table for my father to find. Before she started disliking everything in our life on Earth. Before I noticed that things on Earth weren’t how I saw them.
Before.

In that moment, listening to the tune as it embraced me, I could remember what being happy felt like at the remembrance of things past that I had long ago pushed down and forgotten.

What were the words to that song again?

I leaned forward trying to catch the lyrics but they were too faint to hear. They touched the edge of my brain and snuck in, looking for a pathway to unlock the old memory. I moved my lips as though moving them would somehow make me know the words. But no matter how hard I tried to access it, I could not remember them.

And then I heard a snatch of another voice singing, not from the music recording, but from one of the Humans, the blond one. He had stepped outside of the quarters and was singing to himself. His voice was melodic, bright, and round. There was something about hearing a person sing that was so primal. The notes made their way down to the very bones of me. I stepped back, pressing myself into the shadows trying to blend in, not wanting to be caught. But I stumbled. And suddenly there he was catching my elbow, helping me up from the ground.

“You all right?” he asked.

I nodded.

He opened his mouth again as though to further the conversation. Or perhaps his lips were forming a smile. Smiling in return would be an invitation to more, and I didn’t want to know anything except the name of the song. I was too proud to ask for that information. I pulled my jacket down and went on my way.

“Wait,” he said.

I liked the sound of his voice. Even more when he spoke than when he sang. I liked the familiar common tongue we shared.

He picked up the small bag of tools that I’d dropped. I hadn’t noticed that they’d fallen, and it would have cost me a few days to replace them. He’d unknowingly done me a favor. I nodded in thanks, but still did not speak.

If they were staying on the station, I still wasn’t ready to talk to them. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to associate with them. They were rude and loud and made me embarrassed to be a Human. No. It was more than that. They made me feel as though I were skinless, and that hurt.

It’s all right
, I thought.
Just because we’re the same species didn’t mean that we had to be friends.

11

I made my way to the arboretum. The music had stung me, and when I was upset, the arboretum was the only place that calmed me. Besides, Thado owed me a favor and he had at least one bale of Machi leaf that I needed.

Thado was on a ladder picking some blue trests that had ripened and looked ready to eat. I watched him for a minute; sometimes I imagined that he was like a glorious sea creature, but then inevitably my eyes always drifted to the window, reminding me that I was far away from any ocean. Quint looked angry to me today. Right now the largest ocean on its surface was facing us. I knew it was windy season. Winds were whipping over parts of the planet at high speeds. I wondered what it sounded like. I missed wind. I watched until the Dren Line came into view.

“Here,” Thado said, and as I turned he threw me a trest, my favorite alien fruit, which I caught and began eating. The juice was sweet and delicious.

“What can I do for you, Tula?” Thado asked.

“Machi leaf,” I said.

He shook his head.

“It’s not doing well right now. Some pest someone brought onboard is eating it.”

“One bale.”

“It will be a skinny bale,” Thado said.

“Just make it look pretty,” I said.

Thado nodded, meaning that I would get my bale. He descended the ladder in his elegant way and then handed me two baskets of trests.

*   *   *

I had dropped off the first basket with a merchant who had traded me some working power packs when Tournour and his guards cornered me.

“Tula,” Tournour said, taking one of the trests from the baskets and eating it. “Your hair looks shorter.”

I knew that he hadn’t caught up with me to talk about my hair. I ignored him. It was still best to remain quiet until he revealed what his real motive was.

“Have you seen them?” he finally asked.

“Seen who?” I asked. But I knew whom he meant. The Humans.

He smiled. He knew I was lying. He waited for me to speak. We were each waiting for the other to tip their hand. With his new position as chief constable he did not make as many rounds anymore, so we’d rarely spoken. There was a silence between us. But the quiet that stretched from me to him spoke volumes.

It was telling me that he was concerned for me. And it was telling him that he had a right to be concerned. He knew I was rattled. With Tournour there were always multiple layers of meaning between the words and the pauses.

“Just because I’m Human doesn’t mean that I know every Human,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said.

“If you have questions about them, go ask them,” I said.

“I’ve interviewed them already,” he said. “That is my job.”

He waited for me to ask what he knew. I wouldn’t bite. He knew then that I knew nothing.

“They are from Earth. Their ship was destroyed in an explosion,” he said. “And they are part of the Earth Imperium Alliance.”

That surprised me. It meant that the Imperium had stretched its reach even further than the usual borders that shifted hands when power changed. It meant that Earth had changed its position on everything. Perhaps it meant that I could return there with time and currency. The map could be changing dramatically for me.

“They ran into trouble,” he continued. “But they don’t seem as though
they
are trouble.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“They’re planning on leaving soon,” he said. “They’re just passing through. They’re waiting for new travel passes from the Imperium. Then they’ll get new orders.”

“None of my business,” I said.

I closed my eyes and tried to calm my wildly beating heart. Tournour stood there saying nothing. It bothered me that he was watching me as I tried to sort out my feelings. Sometimes I felt he could see into me in a way that no one else ever had. It was not pleasant. I wanted my dark insides to remain hidden. I wanted to be left alone.

I would risk a night in the brig to make him go away.

“Are you hauling me in or are we done?”

Tournour stared at me for a bit longer, likely trying to see if he could decipher what I was thinking. I kept my face as neutral as possible.

He took four more trests from the basket.

“Now we’re done,” he said, and then left me to go on his way.

12

I wound my way up to the Ministry of Colonies and Travel and planted a voucher for exotic girls at Kitsch Rutsok’s on the desk of the alien in charge, Disanter, who knew me well. I had been in so often trying to reach the Children of Earth colonies since he’d told me about the fate of the
Prairie Rose
, always to no avail.

“Tula Bane, I know what you want. The colony at Killick has been on auto reply for three months. And the colony at Andra reports it is still only responding to other Children of Earth colonies unless there is an emergency,” Disanter said.

I couldn’t understand why the colonies were so impossible to reach. When I first gathered enough currency, I had tried to reach the other Children of Earth colonies hoping that they would change their policies and take any Human who wanted to settle. I used a fake name since I was afraid of Brother Blue. But in the end it didn’t seem to matter who I was, they never answered. When I got through once to Gelen, they had sent a message back saying they were a closed colony. These days, I did not send messages when I went to the Ministry of Colonies and Travel, rather I listened for chatter. I listened for the movements of Brother Blue, but his whereabouts seemed to always be hidden from me.

I had long ago given up on contacting Earth. But now I wanted to know a little bit more about what was happening in my home section of the galaxy. Clearly Earth had joined the Imperium, and I did not know if they had joined willingly or if the Imperium had invaded.

“I want to listen to Earth chatter,” I said.

His two mouths made surprised-looking Os and hummed an even tone. Disanter loved a change in routine.

I watched as he dialed in the coordinates for Earth and made a hail.

“It is interesting to note that they are using an Imperium channel now,” Disanter said.

I could tell that he wanted to grab the voucher, but he restrained himself. He knew if he took his time, he could get bigger favors from me.

“What was the last transmission sent to or from Earth?” I asked.

It was not so easy to get immediate answers when trying to communicate in space. A message could take hours, and to some places even a day. And I was not the first to complain about the Yertina Feray’s unbearably slow and outdated communication arrays. But if I could read those transmissions from the Humans on the station, or decode some Earth chatter, I would know a lot more right away.

“That’s private information, and I am bound by the galactic communiquer laws to not divulge the any transmissions by private parties,” said Disanter.