The Clouded Sky

  Thlo arrives at my cabin the next morning as I’m about to look over the scene for the last time. The name that flashes on the computer terminal isn’t one I recognize, so I flinch in surprise at the sight of her outside the door.

  “The name that came up,” I say in hasty explanation, “it wasn’t yours.”

  “Ah,” she says. “It was. We all have code names for the public channels—and the others use mine at all times during our activities. My position requires special caution.”

  Win said she’s on one of the councils. If they’re for continuing Earth research, it makes sense she’d want to keep her involvement with the rebels extra hushed up.

  I grope for something to say. “I, um, haven’t noticed anything odd about anyone so far”—at least not odd enough that I’d risk getting them in trouble—“or I would have come to you.”

  “Continue to keep your eyes open,” she says. “How are you progressing with your re-creation? I thought I might observe what you’ve produced so far.”

  A minute ago I was relieved to think I was almost done, but now a shyness creeps over me. Most of what I’m going to share was only between the two of us: Jeanant and me. I never expected to have an audience.

  “I’ve gotten it all in there,” I say, handing the device to her. “As well as I can remember. There are still a few things I need to tweak, but, well . . .”

  Thlo steps inside, and I back up to make room. Her gaze is intent on the screen as the first scene starts to play. Jeanant says something vaguely French-sounding, and she pauses the re-creation to arch an eyebrow at me.

  “I don’t know French,” I say apologetically. “That’s the best I can remember it.”

  She doesn’t interrupt the sequence or look at me again. So I watch her. For the most part, she stands still and easy, her head tipped with a considering air. But the corners of her mouth tense when Jeanant makes the comment, in the caves, about being worried he’s hallucinating. Her jaw twitches when he mentions she hasn’t always been open-minded about Earth. And as the scene in Ohio plays out, as the exhausted Jeanant argues with me about whether he can risk trying to live rather than accepting his death as inevitable, her spine stiffens by increments. It’s so gradual I don’t realize how wound up she is until the moment of the blast comes, and her hands jerk. She clutches the vision well, settling her face into its usual calm.

  “I think everything that was important stuck with me,” I say into the silence that follows.

  “Everything that was important,” she repeats. Her lips purse, and relax again. I wonder how much of what she saw was unexpected. From what Jeanant said, he didn’t let her in on any part of his plan for Earth, even though she was his closest colleague, his friend, maybe more. He kept it all to himself to keep the others safe.

  Or maybe it’s all as she anticipated, and it just pains her to see it.

  “He thought . . .” I start, and push myself to go on. “He thought that even if he’d managed to destroy the time field generator, his ship would have been shot down before he could get away. When we go back, will someone have to take that place?”

  “It didn’t have to be that way,” Thlo says. “We’ll have a full team, which will give us more options. He chose to go alone.” She pauses. Before she can say anything else, my door chimes.

  “Pavel said you’d be here,” Isis says to Thlo when I open the door, acknowledging me with a flick of her gaze. “We need to have a group discussion. My ‘mail’ just came in. There’s an electrical problem in my and Britta’s sector, and they’re closing it for repairs.”

  “That’s inconvenient,” Thlo says. “Bring Skylar to the cafeteria. I’ll call the others.”

  She sets the well on my bunk and sweeps out, moving to a communications panel in the wall as I follow Isis. “What do we need to talk about?” I ask. “What does that mean, closing your sector?”

  “It means Britta and I can’t go back to our apartment for at least . . . one ten-day,” Isis says. “I can stay with my mother and sister, and Britta with her parents, but they don’t know about . . . this. There’s no way we can hide you.”

  4.

  Everyone gathers in the cafeteria except Britta, who must be on navigation duty. Thlo takes her usual place at the end of the table, and Win heads straight to my side. I notice Pavel’s disapproving glance.

  Jule saunters in last, his eyelids heavy as if he’s just woken up. Which, given the staggered schedules around here, maybe he has. He drops onto the stool opposite Win and runs his fingers over the thick black stubble on his scalp.

  “Isis?” Thlo says.

  To my relief, Isis speaks in English—despite my practice, I still know hardly enough Kemyate to carry on a simple conversation, let alone follow a debate. She explains about the message she received. Mako frowns, and Jule rolls his eyes toward the ceiling as if we should have known I’d be too much trouble.

  “So we have to come up with an alternate plan,” Win says as soon as Isis is finished. “We can’t bring Skylar back after all this.” His hand finds mine under the table, and I grip it, grateful.

  “No,” Isis agrees. “The station will have logged our presence already. It’ll look too strange if we vanish for several days.”

  “Can I stay with you?” I ask Win. It seems like the most obvious solution.

  Win shakes his head. “I live with my parents and brother. They have no idea I’m involved in this.” He turns to Thlo. “What about the vacant apartments in the backup sectors?”

  “The power’s turned off there,” Mako says. “They’re uninhabitable.”

  Pavel says something in Kemyate, too tersely for me to catch a word of it, and Isis retorts. Thlo claps her hands together.

  “We had another viable option when we first discussed Skylar’s accompanying us,” she says evenly. “Pavel, Mako, and Emmer also have family members who would be a problem. Tabzi’s only been an active participant for a few months, so I’m hesitant to trust her with such responsibility. But Jule, you live on your own.”

  He does? Remembering my research about Kemyate housing restrictions, I have to wonder how he pulled that off.

  “Wait,” Jule says, blinking fully awake. “I told you before, I can’t get away with stashing someone in my apartment. My friends would get suspicious if I suddenly stopped inviting people over.”

  “But we can get around that problem,” Isis says. “We dismissed the idea before because it’ll be more complicated, but Britta can doctor the records for the next cargo shipment from Earth. You’re well off enough that anyone could believe you’d bought a ‘pet.’ Then Skylar wouldn’t have to hide at all—she could even come to our meetings.”

  Well off enough—that could explain the private apartment. And not having to hide does have a certain appeal, as much as I balk at the thought of Jule as a roommate. But . . . “Pet?” I ask tentatively.

  “Some of the rich families pay to have an Earthling brought home for them,” Isis explains. “They usually act as a servant, or a social companion, or . . .” She hesitates.

  “No,” Win says. “We are not going to pretend Skylar’s a pet.”

  “Is she going to fake being drugged, like all the older ones are?” Jule asks. “She can’t give away why she’s really there.”

  “I’m not stupid,” I snap, but inside I’m queasy. Win didn’t mention this before.

  He must read the question in my eyes, because he lowers his. “I didn’t want to give you another reason to hate us,” he says.

  To be fair, I kind of wish I didn’t know now. It’s bad enough that Kemyates have been treating Earthlings like lab rats for the last several millennia. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised they’d take some of us as . . . pets too. How many Earthlings are on Kemya right now, stolen from their home, drugged?

  “There is a shipment scheduled to arrive a few days from now,” Thlo says. “The timing is good.”

  “Britta has her . . .” Isis says a Kemyate word I don’t know. “She could change
Skylar’s appearance so she wouldn’t be easily identifiable to any of the Enforcers who’ve seen her.”

  Win’s free hand has clenched on the tabletop. “There’s got to be something else. What about Odgan? He has his own apartment on Kemhar, doesn’t he? We’ll be docking there before going on to Kemya anyway.” He looks at me. “It’s a smaller station, farther from the planet, mostly partitioned for science and industrial work.”

  “That might work,” Thlo says. “Though it would cut her off from the rest of us.”

  “Better than acting as a pet.”

  Jule opens his mouth as if to echo the thought. His gaze settles on Win’s curled fingers. He glances up at Win’s face, and then at me. A hint of a smirk touches his lips.

  “I thought the reason you wanted her to come along was how much she could ‘help,’ ” he says. “If staying with me is the best option, I’ll have to step up. What are you so worried will happen to her, Darwin?”

  “You didn’t want her here at all.”

  Emmer makes a remark in Kemyate that sounds teasing, though the only words I pick out are Earth and want. Pavel mutters darkly as if in agreement, and Win stiffens, his hand slipping from mine. “It’s not,” I think he says.

  “She’s here now,” Jule says, leaning back in his chair. He cocks his head at me. “I assume I wouldn’t have to worry about you tearing up my home like some stray mutt off the street.”

  “No,” I say, fighting to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “You’ll be safe enough, then,” Jule says, and to Win, “I haven’t had a guest complain about my hospitality yet.”

  I don’t like how much of this conversation is happening without me. “If I’m the one who’s going to have to live one place or the other, shouldn’t I get to decide?” I say.

  Thlo fixes her cool gaze on me, and I wonder if I’ve overstepped. But she says, “I think that’s reasonable.”

  Then everyone’s watching me the way they did that first moment Win and I appeared in the Travel bay. I take a breath. “So . . . once I’m in these records as Jule’s ‘pet,’ I can’t just move over to Isis and Britta’s place when the repairs are finished—is that right?”

  “Yes, unfortunately,” Isis says. “By that time people outside our group will know about you in that . . . context.”

  That makes sense. Maybe I wouldn’t even want to move, if that would restrict my involvement. “And what exactly would I have to do to act like a pet?”

  “When you’re with only members of our group, it won’t make a difference,” Thlo says. “But around others . . . Jule is right: a new pet your age would be drugged. You’d need to act as if your feelings were numbed. Which might be difficult, because other Kemyates will see you as a possession, there to serve or entertain. They won’t necessarily be polite. If it seemed you couldn’t handle it, we might have to give you a small dose of the drug so you could maintain believability, for all our safety. Though presumably Jule can adjust his social activities somewhat.”

  Jule shrugs. “I can manage a few accommodations.”

  Well, that sounds . . . completely horrid. But the alternative is hiding with a guy I’ve never even met, not even on the same station as Win and the others.

  So far Jule’s been all bark and no bite. Thlo wouldn’t have suggested this option if she didn’t trust him. It might even be her way of testing my nerve. I’ve been getting practice at suppressing my feelings since I started panicking over the wrongness of the shifts eleven years ago, and trying to hide that panic so I didn’t worry my family and friends—if any Earthling’s up to this role, it should be me. I certainly didn’t come all this way to let a little discomfort stop me from pitching in.

  “I can handle that,” I say. “If staying with Jule means I can be more involved, then I’ll stay with Jule.”

  “I’m glad we have that settled,” Thlo says. “All of you, back to what you were doing.”

  Jule tips his head to me with that hint of a smirk. I force a thin smile in return. As everyone ambles out, Isis bumps shoulders with Emmer and murmurs something. Pavel eyes me narrowly before jerking his gaze away. Mako seems to be studiously ignoring me.

  “I was on lab duty,” Win says, bringing me back to myself. “Come with me?”

  I follow him down the hall. The lab we step into is about half the size of the navigation room, with a dozen tiny consoles crammed along the walls. A thick glass column with bits of metal and plastic-looking material protruding from its sides stands in the center of the room, leaving just enough space to sit at the consoles without touching it. A wide rectangular screen on the far wall displays images from the universe outside. Every few seconds, it flickers to show a slightly different angle of the stars glinting around the hazy reddish arm of a nebula, as the ship soars on. I’d be awed if I weren’t so wound up inside.

  “I’m sorry,” Win says as soon as the door has closed. “I wish you could stay with me.”

  “I’ll survive,” I say, exhaling. “Jule isn’t going to, like, hurt me or something, right?”

  “No,” Win says, “but that doesn’t mean he’ll make it easy. He’s just . . .”

  “A jerk?” I offer, and the tension in Win’s face breaks with a chuckle.

  “Yes,” he says. “That would be a word for it. I shouldn’t worry—I know you don’t let people push you around. Just tell him off like you’ve always done with me, and you’ll be fine.”

  I can’t help smiling. “I haven’t been that hard on you, have I?”

  “No,” he says. “Only as much as I needed.”

  Silence falls between us. I watch the stars travel across the screen. “So we reach Kemya tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” Win says again, but this time without any humor. When I glance back at him, his expression makes my heart pinch.

  “You’re not looking forward to it.”

  One corner of his mouth curls up. “It’s not as though I don’t want to see my family, or my friends, but . . . Just being on the ship, I can tell it’s going to be harder. In Traveler training, the longest we ever spent on Earth was a day—and half of that was in one of the safe houses. This time I had a whole month.”

  He doesn’t need to say any more. I saw him there. A whole month of sun and unfiltered air, wide outside spaces and buildings with room to breathe. And as much as his companions here might hassle him, they believe in the same mission. How much harsher are his neighbors, his regular colleagues at home, who have even less respect for his family? I’m lucky they even let me into Traveler training, he told me back on Earth. We’re not considered worthy of very much.

  “But it’ll be easier too, knowing we’re so close to moving on,” he adds. “I can wait, for that.” He pauses, and then ventures, “Are you still upset about how I brought you here?”

  It’s the first time he’s mentioned it since my little freak-out. The question drags up the same jolt of alarm, the pain echoing what I can only imagine my parents have felt. But I can’t hang that on Win. It was my decision to come, my decision not to ask what it would cost.

  “I’m not happy about it, but I’m not upset with you,” I say. I don’t want to think about the hurt I left behind. I want to do whatever I can to get closer to going home and fixing it. I turn, motioning to the consoles. “What have you been doing in here?”

  “I suppose I should get back to that,” he says with the same half smile. “Right now it’s just running programs, putting the equipment through the motions, so if anyone checks, it’ll look like we did spend the last month doing what Thlo’s ship request said we’d be doing.”

  “Is there any way I can help?” I ask. “I can read some of the characters now. And I’m just about finished making the vision well re-creation of Jeanant.”

  Win’s eyes light up. “Did Thlo say when she’s going to show the rest of us?”

  I should have realized he’d be as eager as everyone else. Because he and Jeanant were from different present times, they could only communicate with e
ach other through me. It’s the one part of our travels that he didn’t fully share.

  “I think she will soon,” I say. “Isis came before we were finished talking.”

  “You know, what you’re doing is a lot like him,” Win says. “Heading off alone to a planet that’s not yours to try to set things right.”

  “But I’m not alone,” I say.

  In that instant, despite the uncertainties ahead of us, I feel how true that is. Instinctively, I reach out and take his hand, like I did when he first asked if I’d come with him, like he took mine during the meeting. My skin tingles as I meet his gaze, and this time I don’t think it’s just because of how there his skin feels against mine. It takes me back to another time, when we stood sheltered from the rain in Win’s time cloth, when he leaned in and kissed me.

  Back then, it wasn’t okay—not least because he was doing it mostly out of curiosity, to know what it’d be like with an Earthling. But we’ve come so far since then. If he tried now . . . I think I’d know he meant it.

  I think I might want him to.

  I’m leaning closer when Win recoils, dropping my hand and flicking his gaze away, breaking the connection I felt. He recovers quickly, motioning to the consoles with a little laugh. “Well, let me show you how all this works,” he says, but there’s terseness in his voice.

  My cheeks flush. Were my thoughts that obvious? If so, he clearly isn’t on the same page. It’s not as if he’s given me reason to believe he sees me as more than a trusted traveling companion and friend. I’m not even really one of his people.

  Well, that’s not what I’m here for anyway. It’s probably better for things not to get that . . . complicated. A friend is all I really need.

  “Let me at it,” I say, and squash down anything that could be disappointment.

  5.

  Britta comes by early the next morning to tell me it’s time for my “makeover,” with a glee that makes me squirm. She’s holding a shiny copper-colored device about the size and shape of a lipstick tube.