I put on my best smart and responsible expression. Thlo tilts her head.
“Perhaps,” she said. “It would be useful to see how you keep up, at least. Come here.”
Keep up. That sounds ominous.
She leads me past an automatic door at the other end of the hall, into an even tinier room with just enough space for two consoles. For a moment, the solid presence of the walls closes in on me. I drag in a breath, focusing on Mako sitting at one of the consoles. Her dark eyes narrowed at the display. Her caramel hair drawn back into what looks like a more intricate version of an Earth braid. Two shades of blue-gray alternating in stripes across her outfit.
Thlo says something to Mako in Kemyate, so quickly that I only make out a couple words and my name. Mako frowns, but she gets up with a remark of agreement. “Do your best,” Thlo says to me as she turns to leave. I have no doubt Mako will report to her how well I “keep up.”
“What can I do?” I ask quickly.
“I’m currently locating sources for the last of the supplies we’ll need to . . . skim for our trip out,” Mako says flatly. “Sit. I already have it started.”
As I take a seat at her console, she leans over my shoulder. “Section list,” she says, bringing up part of the glowing interface. “Go through one at a time. Get the program to calculate the mean and standard deviation there. Here, you set a parameter of five percent of the second standard deviation above the mean. Run it through the data, and note down the list number here of any that are highlighted. Got it?”
Her fingers have moved so fast I’m not sure I remember everything she pointed out. “I’ll give it a shot,” I say.
“Any mistakes you make, I’m just going to have to do over,” she warns.
“Right,” I say, with more confidence than I feel.
She takes the other stool, so close our backs would touch if I tipped back a few inches, and I stare at my floating screen. Section list—that’s this—no, this one. Easiest to start at the top. I recognize the icon she said to use for the calculations, but the figures come up all in Kemyate even after I’ve set the terminal to display in English. I don’t know enough of the characters to figure out how to run the right operation. I hesitate, and then call Mako back.
“That’s because it’s my addition, separate from the network,” Mako says curtly when I explain the problem. “Look, you select here, and here, and here, and the mean shows here, the standard deviation here. All right?”
I nod, my face hot. She stays, watching over me, as I follow her instructions. When the numbers appear, I add and divide in my head without letting myself second-guess, and open up the field where she said to insert the parameters. Mako doesn’t make a sound, so I guess I haven’t screwed anything up. Two listings blink brighter, and I drag their numbers into the list.
Mako waits as I go through the procedure a few more times. With each, my hand becomes steadier. The flow of numbers offers a sort of security I haven’t felt since Win first appeared in my life almost three weeks ago. I don’t know what exactly this list is for, but I’m putting together a concrete set of data the others can use. A tangible step toward getting home and setting everything right.
Finally, Mako offers a small sound of approval.
“Jeanant trusted you,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, startled. “I guess he did.” Not enough to let me try to save him, but enough to involve me in his mission.
She touches my shoulder, lightly, as if she thinks his aura might have rubbed off on me and now will transfer onto her. “It isn’t the same, not having him here,” she goes on. “But I suppose you are better than if he sent no one at all.”
“I— Thank you,” I say. From her, it’s high praise.
She goes back to the other console, and I throw myself into the work. When I reach the end of the list, Mako gives me another set to go through, and when I finish that one, she directs me to the hall. “Not enough time for me to show you the next steps,” she says. “I could send you some samples to practice at Jule’s so you can do more next time.”
“Yes, please,” I say. I grin at her, even though she’s giving me the same skeptical expression as before, and head out.
I’m just coming up to the door to the first room when raised voices carry through it.
“Just the two of us, every night,” Jule is saying in a haughty tone. “You must have some idea what a man and a woman—”
“You think I don’t know her?” Win interrupts. “She’d rather kiss a . . . than a . . . like you.”
Jule snorts. “You think you know her? I’ve been living with her for six days. Think about all the . . . I might know that you couldn’t.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Teeth gritted, I hurry forward. The door slides open to admit me just as Win snaps out, “You keep your . . . hands off her. I found her. She’s mine.” And suddenly I don’t know which of them I’m angrier with.
Jule’s lounging on one of the console stools, across from Win. Thlo and Tabzi are nowhere to be seen, which doesn’t surprise me. I’d hope the guys wouldn’t get into an argument like that in front of anyone else. It’s bad enough they’re having it in private.
They both jerk around when I come in. Win’s mouth clamps shut, a flush creeping up his neck. Jule just crosses his arms, all casual, but I see that flex of his jaw.
“What the hell is your problem?” I say, and switch into my halting Kemyate, to emphasize how much I understood. I fling my hand at Jule. “You know nothing. You would probably know nothing if we lived in the same apartment for six years. And you.” I wheel on Win. “I am not an object you found. I don’t belong to anyone.”
There’s too much more I want to say and don’t know their words for. “You’re as bad as those jerks you call friends,” I tell Jule, slipping back into English. And to Win, “Do you really still see me as some . . . souvenir you picked up in a tourist shop?” I’d thought we were so far past that. My eyes prickle.
The flush has spread right over Win’s face. “Skylar,” he says, sounding strangled.
Before he can get any further, a thin beeping splits the air. He flinches, and Jule whirls around. A message flashes on Win’s console screen. He must have taken over the monitoring from Tabzi.
“The tech bays,” Win says. “There’s been nothing in the communication logs; someone just showed up.”
Jule leans past him to jab at the display. The screens on the wall shudder on, showing video footage of various hallways. Win gets up, eyeing them.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my hurt and anger momentarily swallowed by fear.
“Someone the system thinks is an Enforcer has gone near where Isis and the others are working,” Jule says. He draws up one of the other console displays. “We should tell them to get out.”
“Hold on,” Win says. “Maybe we don’t have to interrupt them. I don’t see anyone yet—it could be someone wandered a little too close and left again.”
“Why risk it?” Jule argues. “If—”
“There!” I say, pointing to the screen in the lower left corner, where a flicker of movement caught my eye. Two tall figures, one slim and one brawny, stalk into view, heading down the hall. We can only see their backs, but I recognize the belts they’re wearing, like Kurra’s. Win’s stance goes rigid.
The door hisses open and Mako rushes in. “Is it—” she starts, and Win gestures to the screen. The Enforcers are just passing out of view, coming into focus from the front on the next screen over.
“Tell Isis to move,” Mako says, her eyes widening.
“Already doing it,” Jule says. Emmer’s face has appeared on his display. “Enforcers,” Jule tells him with a twitch of his hand. “You have to go, now.”
Isis nudges Emmer out of the way. “How close are they?”
I glance at the screens as Jule answers. The Enforcers have marched on to the third. The slender guy makes a motion toward a door, and his heavier companion shakes her head, striding on without pausing.
My heart thuds. Isis might have Jeanant’s tech plates with her. If the Enforcers confiscate those, we’ll have to start over from scratch.
Win steps closer. “They’ve got at least a minute. We’ve warned them in time.”
But I can hear Isis’s worried voice cutting through his. “We’re right in the middle of an . . . We have to delete all the data. They’ll see—”
Mako pushes past Jule. “Leave it,” she says. “Removing the equipment—and you—is more important.”
Her command carries a seniority, and thus a weight, Jule obviously didn’t have. Isis bobs her head. The display goes blank.
The Enforcers have made it onto the fifth screen, on the top row now. “We should leave as well, in case they notice the connection to this room,” Mako says. “Where’s Thlo?”
“She had to take care of the . . .” Jule replies.
“All right. Everyone, out! I’m sure Thlo will be in touch with more information when she’s able.”
Win grabs my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It takes me a few seconds to remember what he’s apologizing for, and in those seconds Mako’s already prodded him out the door.
“Tabzi?” she asks Jule.
“She left,” Jule says. “Got a call she had to answer—family thing, I think. Let’s go,” he adds to me.
There’s nothing I can do but follow.
10.
They’ll be all right,” Jule says once we’re back in his apartment. “Isis and Britta and Emmer had plenty of warning.”
“Isis sounded worried about the data they’d been using,” I say, slumping against the wall.
“It can’t be that big a problem,” Jule says. “And whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”
“What would happen if the Enforcers did catch them—or any of the rest of you?”
“It depends on how much they figured out we’d done,” Jule says. “If they knew we were involved in the unauthorized activity on Earth . . . We’d be temporarily imprisoned and then put on ‘medication’ to moderate our behavior. Have any saved credits confiscated, be reassigned to one of the lower jobs, or—” He shrugs off whatever that last thought was. “But that won’t happen. There are dozens of layers between each of us and proof of anything we’ve done. Thlo’s been doing this for more than twenty years; she knows how to take care of things.”
Right, with all her council influence. But from the way Jule rubs his forehead, I think he’s more concerned than he’s letting on. To be drugged like a pet, sent into menial labor . . . Then he yawns. Okay, maybe he’s just tired. We were up early for this meeting, and he still has a full day of work ahead of him.
The thought of sleep and beds, and the other reasons one might not get enough of the former in the latter, brings back the conversation I overheard, with a trickle of nausea.
“Did you really have to say that stuff to Win?” I ask.
Jule lowers his eyes with a grimace. It’s the first sign of guilt I’ve seen since I burst into the room, and somehow that rekindles my anger. Back there, with Win watching, he just had to pretend he didn’t care, that my feelings meant nothing. As if allowing that he’d screwed up in even the slightest way would be losing, and what could be worse than that?
“I went too far,” he admits.
“You shouldn’t have gone anywhere near there!” I say. “You like to heckle him—it bugs me, but I realize you’re going to do it anyway. You don’t have to bring me into it, like that . . .”
“I didn’t say anything he wasn’t already thinking,” Jule says. “You should have heard him—I tried to be friendly, let him know you’d headed off with Thlo when he noticed you were gone, and he got on this high horse of ‘Don’t even talk about her.’ I’m supposed to just accept that?”
I glare at him. I’d need to see video confirmation before I’d believe his “friendly” resembled my definition of the word in any way.
“He should have known,” Jule goes on, throwing his hands in the air. “If you and I were getting up to anything remotely intimate, I wouldn’t be joking about it. I don’t go around broadcasting my and other people’s private affairs to the rest of the world. I never have. If Win paid any attention to who I am and not just the things he resents about my family, he’d have known the fact that I hinted at it at all meant there wasn’t any truth to it. He was being an idiot.”
“Says the guy who started an argument that didn’t need to happen in the first place?”
Jule opens his mouth, and closes it again. “Well,” he says after a moment, “that may have been a little idiotic too.”
“You guys obviously just . . . push each other’s buttons,” I say. “Whatever. I wasn’t exactly happy with him either, in case you didn’t notice. We’re supposed to be working on this mission together. I’d like to think that freeing my planet is more important than getting in a few digs.”
As soon as that final sentence bursts out of me, my anger dulls. That was it. What I was most upset about, underneath. I’m working my butt off trying to see this through, this mission that’s about not just my planet but making all their lives better too, and it was nothing to them to waste time arguing over the stupidest thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected more from Jule, but I’d thought both Earth and Kemya mattered too much to Win for him to let a little goading distract him.
But then, I’d never have thought I’d hear him say what he did either. She’s mine. Maybe he really meant something like, She’s my friend, and his words got twisted in the heat of the argument. Or maybe some part of him does see me as just a curiosity he’s brought home. Like everyone else here seems to.
A heat has risen behind my eyes, threatening to turn into tears. I swipe at them, hoping Jule will take it for fatigue.
When I raise my head, he looks startled. He takes a couple steps toward me, and then stops, his dark brown eyes holding my gaze. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you manage to quit it?” I say. “The heckling, the arguing—at least, until all this is finished?”
“You have to ask?”
“You haven’t exactly been a model of self-control in that area.”
He winces. “Fair.” Then he raises his hand, palm toward me, like a courtroom witness swearing in. “I will keep my smartass remarks to myself for the duration of this mission. At least, the smartass remarks that relate to Win.” He adds the oath I heard Win use back on Earth, though now I don’t need a translation. “By my heart, by Kemya.”
As much as I hate to admit it, the tentative smile he offers as he drops his hand sends a whisper of warmth through me. But I can’t quite find it in me to return it. There’s too much else weighing on me.
“All right,” I say, dragging in a breath. “You’re sure Isis and Britta are okay?”
“They’re fine,” Jule says, but he isn’t looking at me anymore. “I’m supposed to be arriving for my shift at Earth Travel soon,” he continues abruptly, “I’d better get going, or the wrong people might wonder.”
He retreats to the door, leaving me stuck in this enclosed space with no idea what’s happening beyond its walls. When he’s gone, I push myself toward my bedroom. I’m tired, but too wound up to consider trying to catch up on my missed sleep.
How long will it take for Isis to check in with Thlo? For Thlo to contact the rest of us?
I open the closet and tug out my two photos. Family and friends. The edges are already creased, the glossy surfaces curved from the last two weeks of handling. But the affectionate glow on my parents’ faces, my friends’ grins, are still just as bright. Seeing Lisa sends an uncomfortable twinge through me. I don’t know if she’s even still alive, back on the Earth in this present.
Which just makes it all the more important that I stick with this, so I can go back to the world I belong in and reset all those lives to how they were supposed to be.
The group reconvenes two days later, in an even earlier morning slot that has everyone except Thlo and
Pavel, who must be on more complementary sleep-work schedules, blinking wearily. Relief washes over me seeing Britta, who shoots me a smile when I walk in, and Isis, bent over in discussion with Mako across the table—even Emmer, his tall form folded onto one of the stools and his dark auburn hair mussed, whose gaze settles on me for a moment and then flicks away. Thlo reported yesterday that the three of them had made it out safely, but I feel better having the proof before my eyes.
In the cramped space around the table, only two stools are empty, between Win and Pavel. Win meets my eyes, his posture uncertain. But I’m not interested in testing Jule’s recent promise by making the two of them sit next to each other. So I take the seat beside Win, smiling automatically to cover my own awkwardness.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” he says quietly. “What you heard, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s my fault, for letting myself get angry.”
There’s a rehearsed tone to the apology that makes it feel more formal than personal. As I hesitate, groping for a response, a floating image forms in the middle of the table. Thlo claps her hands together to draw everyone’s attention. She inclines her head toward the image as it sharpens into the face of a man of about thirty, with straw-pale hair slicked back from olive skin.
“Thank you for joining us, Odgan,” she says as the murmured conversations around the table fall off. Her gaze sweeps over the rest of us. “I’ll get straight to the point. Everyone here is aware of the disruption to our activities the day before last. Thankfully, none of us was directly compromised. However, we’ve faced a considerable setback.”
My stomach sinks at the word setback, but at the same time I note that she’s using English. Does she think there’s some insight I can offer?
Thlo motions toward Isis, who shakes back her red-tinged curls. “We were running a simulation of the primary beam, to confirm the exact density and curvature needed in the sections of its casing,” she says. “It required a certain amount of setup, and we didn’t have time to erase all the traces before we left. The Enforcers clearly discovered some.”