“Help you, mate?” Steve finally asked.
“Yeah,” he said, turning toward us. I now saw the black Movement for Peace armband. “Maybe you should take your trays and eat outside, so you don’t stink up the place.”
“Son, we’re not bothering anyone,” Colonel Rage said. “I get that you joined this organization because it made you feel good about yourself. That’s what small-minded people like to do. If they can’t take pride in their achievements or their abilities, they become racists so they can take pride in not being the other guy. Well, congratulations. You’re not us. I’m sure your friends over there”—he gestured toward a table of a half dozen aliens of various species, all of them wearing armbands, and all of them looking at us—“dared you to come over and intimidate us, and you did your best. You had the courage to lurk menacingly. Now why don’t you head on back and feel great about yourself for what you had the guts to do here today.”
“That is exactly what I would have expected from you primitives,” the deer guy said. “My polite conversation is met with mockery and scorn.”
“You complained about our odor,” Charles said. “I do not see how this is being polite.”
“I’m done being gentle,” the deer alien said. “It’s time for you to go.”
Steve stood up and was about to say something that probably would have been cool and menacing, but Alice cut him off.
“I know I would like to learn how to be less primitive,” she said, offering the deer guy her sweetest smile. She brushed some of her hair out of her eyes. “Is it an advanced trait to be polite to strangers?”
“That you would even ask shows how savage you truly are,” the deer alien told her.
“I’m really trying to understand,” she said, as though she were struggling to puzzle it out. “So, if others who are less advanced than even I am were to visit my home, what would be the right way to treat them?”
He stood there, kind of like a deer alien in the headlights. He either had to contradict what he’d just said or admit that his behavior had been rude. Finally, rather than say anything else, he slinked back to his table.
Steve sat back down, and Alice turned away from the colonel, a radiant smile on her face.
“Not bad,” Mi Sun said, sighing with relief. “Way to defuse.”
Alice shrugged and went back to her food. “I figured if I didn’t do something, one of these hotheads was going to pick a fight, and then we’d all get in trouble. I was just trying to make Bambi uncomfortable.”
“That’s the kind of thinking we need,” the colonel said. “We need to come at problems from new angles. Our goal isn’t to get our pictures in the yearbook, kids. We’re trying to stay alive, stay out of prison, and get back home, so anything that works is fair game in my book.”
And with that he returned to his lunch. I found that I was no longer very hungry.
• • •
I kept an eye on the news outputs, which were pretty varied. There were plenty of voices—including regular postings by Hluh—that defended me and suggested Junup’s government was covering up its own involvement in the destruction of the Kind Disposition. Unfortunately, most beings in the Confederation had a hard time understanding the concept of criminal deception, and it was easier for them to believe that a primitive off-worlder was to blame than it was to suspect their own political leadership. It didn’t help matters that Junup’s Movement for Peace seemed to be growing in popularity. People involved with it were arguing that I needed to be tried for the destruction of the Kind Disposition. Seeing those words made me want to curl up into a ball. I didn’t think I could take another rigged trial.
The evening of our second day I finally got some good news. Tamret had arrived on the station and was being processed. They expected her at the compound within a couple of hours.
I was too excited to eat anything. I sat nervously with the others while they finished, and then I told them that I would wait for her outside.
“We’ll keep you company, mate,” Steve said.
The colonel announced that he’d booked time in the flight sim, so he excused himself, but everyone else began to take seats on benches that offered a good view of the transport-shuttle landing pad. I found myself standing next to Alice and feeling kind of uneasy.
“Listen,” I said, “maybe it’s best if you aren’t around for this.”
“Oh, come on,” Alice said. “I’m not going to be locked up like I’m some dirty secret. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You stowed away on a spaceship,” I said, “which is kind of wrong.”
“Whatever,” Alice countered. “I’m here now. Besides, from what I’ve heard about Tamret, she’ll probably respect me for that. Do you really think my just standing around is going to make your girlfriend flip out?”
“You have to understand that Tamret can be kind of—”
“Intense,” Alice interrupted. “Yeah, I think you might have mentioned that. The thing is, I don’t know Tamret, and I don’t know much about Rarels, but I know about girls, and I’m going to tell you right now that if you try to keep me out of her way, then she really is going to start to wonder why. Oh, and here’s another tip: You and Tamret are going to get along a lot better if you stop acting like she’s a bomb about to go off. Maybe show her a little respect, and you won’t have to be so afraid of her intensity.”
It was true that Alice didn’t know the first thing about Tamret, but I was still a little stung by her rebuke. Was I being too cautious about Tamret’s feelings? If so, maybe it had nothing to do with Tamret’s jealousy. Maybe it had to do with my own feelings of guilt for leaving her alone for so long and then showing up with another girl by my side. It wasn’t that I liked Alice or anything, I assured myself, but she was smart and pretty and brave and resourceful. Most guys would kind of like her, wouldn’t they?
I sighed. “You’re probably right. Besides, whether you are supposed to be here or not, you’re now part of our team of unwanted outsiders.”
Alice cocked her head. “You mean that?”
“Why wouldn’t I mean it? It’s not like being a despised interloper is such a great thing.”
“But you guys are pretty amazing despised interlopers. You have all this experience together. I’m just a fifth wheel, and sometimes I feel like you guys don’t trust me.”
“Believe me, we trust you plenty,” I said. “And we’re racking up enough new experiences. More than I’d like, to be honest. You’re one of us.”
She grinned. “Thanks. Now you can get on with the business of your reunion.”
I hoped it would be that easy. I had no idea what Tamret had been through since the last time I’d seen her. I told myself that whatever had happened, whatever was going on, we would make it right. Whatever physical harm had been done could be fixed by Confederation medicine. Any emotional harm could be mended with time and attention.
“We all suffered a great injustice,” Charles said to me as I watched the shuttle grow closer. “None of us more than Tamret, but we all paid the price for doing what was right.”
“She may not see it that way. Maybe she feels like she’s been punished because I wanted to rescue my dad.”
“Zeke, I do not wish to overstate our importance, but we saved the galaxy. In the short time we were in the Confederation, we saw the Phands kill and hurt and capture innocent beings. We saw them do incredible damage, and we gave the Confederation the power to put a stop to that. You can only take responsibility for what you do, not how others choose to react to it.”
I knew he was right. I just hoped Tamret did too.
I watched as the shuttle docked, and then had a long wait as the walkway equalized its air pressure and the doors were made safe to open. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. A million possibilities passed through my head: Tamret leaping toward me, embracing me in an uncompromising hug. Tamret, limping, walking with a cane, wearing an eye patch like Colonel Rage. Tamret, angry and cold, accusing me of abando
ning her. Tamret, broken and withdrawn but trying to pretend that she was the same girl I remembered.
I told myself that these things never really play out the way I think they will. I could work something over and over in my head, trying to imagine how it will be, and then it always goes in some direction I didn’t anticipate. It was time to stop inventing scenarios. The time had come to see the reality.
Finally the door hissed open, and I felt myself walking forward, unable to control myself. I didn’t care what she looked like, how badly injured she might be. I would be the one leaping forward with the uncompromising hug.
Then there were two silhouetted shapes emerging from the transport. Two Rarels. They stepped out of the shadows, and I saw that the first was Tamret, her fur almost blinding white. She wore a white skirt that went down almost to her ankles and a long-sleeved shirt the same lavender color as her eyes. Her dark hair was cut a little shorter than I remembered and pulled back, her eyes were wide and sparkling, and her lips curled into a grin of happiness.
There she was, looking happy and healthy. She didn’t look like she’d endured torture or mistreatment of any sort. She was positively beaming. Her pretty face was full of life and, if I wasn’t telling myself stories, mischief.
She was also standing kind of close to the Rarel boy who had come out with her.
He was maybe six inches taller than she was, with tan fur and brown hair. He was broad-shouldered and muscular and handsome in the way of Rarel boys I wanted to see fall into a latrine pit.
I felt myself standing rigid and still. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. No one was moving.
“Hey, everyone,” Tamret said.
Charles broke the spell. He stepped forward. “Tamret, it is so good to see you again.”
“Thanks,” she said with a huge grin. “I want you all to meet Villainic. He’s my fiancé.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
After Tamret announced that she had brought along the guy she intended to marry, events unfolded in a bit of a haze. I think I gave Tamret a quick hug. I shook Villainic’s hand, which puzzled him, but he smiled and told me he had heard a lot about me and wanted to get to know me better. I tried hard to find the menace and threat in his words, but I came up short. He sounded like he actually did want to get to know me.
Tamret seemed, frankly, happier than I’d ever seen her before, and it made me uneasy. I excused myself, saying I had to use the bathroom, but really I wanted to talk to Smelly alone.
“Can you check her vital signs?” I asked. “Is she being coerced or on drugs or anything like that?”
I’ve already done so, Smelly said. I’ve accessed information on Rarel physiology from the Confederation database, and I’ve compared it with that female’s behavior and biometrics. I can detect nothing wrong but a light agitation, which, in my view, can be ascribed to the awkwardness of her showing up and completely crushing your dreams of happiness into little chunks of rancid, festering bitterness.
I went back outside and sat with the group, though as far away from Tamret as I could. She was busy showing Alice and Mi Sun her engagement necklace. I tried to look like I was interested, when Villainic came and sat next to me.
“Zeke! I am so glad to have the chance to meet you,” he said with the enthusiasm of a preschool teacher on the first day of class. “Tamret has told me how kind you were to her during her last visit to this place.”
“Yeah?” I was looking at him closely now. It’s hard to guess someone’s age when their face is entirely covered with fur, but I got the impression he was a few years older than Tamret. His voice made him sound older too.
“She said you were a good friend. She told me about everything you guys did together, and how it got everyone expelled from this remarkable space city.”
“Hold on,” I said, in no mood to have yet another being willfully misinterpret everything that had happened.
Villainic shook his head. “I am not blaming you. You and your friends ended up with dangerous enemies, and they took advantage of a bad situation. But I know she got through everything as well as she did because of you. I just wanted to thank you for looking after her. Besides, if things had not gone as they had, she and I would not be bound together today, so it all ended well.”
He smiled his nice-guy smile, and I had the terrifying feeling that this Villainic was being totally sincere. He was thanking me for being Tamret’s friend, like she was his responsibility and I had helped him out.
“How exactly are you two, uh, bound together?” I demanded. “Aren’t you a little young to be thinking about marriage?”
He laughed. “I am three years older than Tamret, and mine is the age that matters according to our law—it is the same with your species, I hope. In any case, it will be at least four years before we are actually married. The engagement this early is practical, though, since it legalizes the association of families, and it allows Tamret to join my caste.”
Okay, this was making sense to me now. Tamret had been casteless before, and though I’d never understood precisely what that meant in her society, I knew it had left her vulnerable. This engagement to Villainic had clearly been a way for her to protect herself, make influential friends, and probably get herself out of the clutches of her enemies.
While I mulled over all of this, Villainic excused himself and got up to go sit next to Tamret. They both seemed so happy, and I knew that whatever practical benefit Tamret got out of her relationship with Villainic, that wasn’t the end of it. She liked him.
I supposed I had no reason to complain. I had been stupid to think otherwise. While I’d been negotiating the horrors of the lunchroom, Tamret had been facing prison and political enemies and real physical dangers. She’d met Villainic, and he’d saved her, and I was just a memory.
She caught me looking at her. Her face broke into a grin, and she gave me a shy wave. I waved back, because it was ultimately more socially acceptable than bashing my head against a stone bench. The wave, it seemed to me, was her way of letting me know that we were still friends. I guess she had to let me know somehow, because since she’d been back, she hadn’t spoken a single word meant just for me.
• • •
“His name is Villainic,” I said to Steve and Charles. We were out in the hall, and everyone had gone to bed, so I was keeping my voice down. “Villainic. People are only named something like ‘Villainic’ if they happen to be villainous. Otherwise he’d be Heroic.”
“I think I’m having a translation issue, mate,” Steve said.
“Your name is your destiny,” I said. “Think about it. Sinestro. Atrocitus.”
“And that is without even leaving the pages of Green Lantern,” Charles said helpfully. “It goes deeper. Annihilus. General Grievous. Doctor Doom. Ra’s al Ghul.”
I snapped my fingers. “Exactly. You don’t call them Decepticons because you can trust them.”
“Darkseid,” Charles continued. “Vandal Savage. Kraven the Hunter. There is a tradition here.”
“Is it possible,” Steve inquired, “that you are looking for reasons not to trust this bloke?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“He stole your girl, so of course you want to think he’s a tosser, but maybe you should just give him a chance, yeah?”
That was the last thing I wanted to do.
Now that Tamret was here, I thought that maybe Junup would contact us and let us know what he had in mind, but there was still no word from him. In the meantime, we needed to bring Tamret up to speed with everything that had happened, but I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it in front of Villainic.
“We need to get Tamret alone,” I told Mi Sun the next day when we were walking back to our building after lunch.
“How do you know you can’t trust her husband-to-be?” she asked, trying not to smile.
“I don’t know that I can, which is more important. He’s an outsider.”
“So was Alic
e,” Mi Sun replied, “until she wasn’t.”
The fairness of this point upset me. I told myself it was different. Alice, after all, might not have been invited to join our expedition, but she’d proven her loyalty back on Earth. I had no reason to worry about her having any kind of hidden agenda. It wasn’t like she’d just been dropped in on us out of nowhere.
I sped up to match pace with Tamret and Villainic, who were holding hands as they strolled back toward our building. “Um, Tamret. Can I speak to you alone for a second?”
“I am completely confident that you mean no offense,” Villainic said cheerfully as he stepped in front of Tamret. “You are an alien, and you must have different ways on your world. For us, it’s not permitted for an engaged female to speak alone to another male, even an alien male. Even asking is rude, but since you didn’t know that, I won’t take it as an insult this one time.”
“You are super nice for being so understanding,” I said to Villainic. “How about if Tamret talks alone with me and Mi Sun, who will be our chaperone? She can slap my shins with an umbrella or something if I step out of line.”
“I know you and my betrothed have shared adventures, and I don’t want to interfere with your friendship,” Villainic said, “but we have our own ways in our culture, and I’m afraid things just can’t be the same as they were before she joined my caste.”
“If you don’t want to interfere with my friendship,” I said, feeling myself starting to anger, “then maybe you should stop interfering with my friendship.”
Villainic froze in place, which meant Tamret had to stop as well. Everyone else kind of stumbled for a minute, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe they were lurking in case my polite inquiries ended up with this gigantic Rarel pounding my head into the ground. They ultimately decided to have their own private conversation about fifteen feet away. This involved, as near as I could tell, exchanging awkward pleasantries about the weather while pretending not to look at us.