The Clouded Sky

  Isis makes a humming sound. “Understandable. Our tech concepts go far beyond what anyone’s developed on Earth. You’d need to have a fairly good grasp of them to do any work with Jeanant’s weapon.”

  Britta motions for me to turn. “But if she has the math, there are other ways she could pitch in,” she says. “Maybe you could help Mako with her work, Skylar. It’s mostly numbers, nothing too much on the conceptual side.”

  I glance up, wondering if Jule has any thoughts, but he’s disappeared. Isis follows my gaze. “Jule isn’t much for tech talk,” she remarks.

  “Kind of funny, considering all his money comes from the tech his family’s refined,” Britta says. “His grandfather was the head engineer on the new mechanism that increased flight speeds by fifteen percent. Nobody’s been able to do more than build on that model since.”

  Win said something when Jule confronted us on Earth—about Jule coasting on his grandfather’s success. The same grandfather who introduced him to coffee?

  “Maybe that’s why he’s avoided it,” Isis says. “Family history can create a lot of pressure. It leaves some room for the more lowly of us to get placements.” Her lips quirk up. “Let’s see how far you can get caught up while we’re here.”

  A couple hours later, my head is swimming with terms and concepts I only tenuously grasp. I can’t help feeling Isis and Britta were hoping for a little more from me. I was hoping for a little more from me. Jule reemerges as they gather their things, and Britta gives a strand of my hair a tug with that overbright smile. “And after tomorrow you’ll be able to join us when Thlo puts us to work!”

  A different sort of anxiety solidifies in my gut. When they’ve left, I turn to Jule.

  “I officially ‘arrive’ tomorrow?”

  He nods. “The hauler’s due midday.”

  And then I’ll be on record as a pet, with all that comes with that label.

  “I’ve talked to Tabzi,” Jule adds. “She’s going to ‘borrow’ a pet from one of her friends for you to meet.”

  “Borrow” one. Some of my anxiety tips over into frustration. “How do the Travelers even justify it?” I demand. “Doesn’t grabbing people off Earth shift all sorts of things they can’t control?”

  “They’re careful,” Jule says. “Any Earthling they take . . . They pick people who were about to disappear anyway—lost in the woods or at sea or in the desert—so it doesn’t change anything. Other than in a way, it’s saving their lives. Not that I think it’s a wonderful practice,” he adds. I notice he said “they” and not “we” when referring to the Travelers.

  Is it really saving lives, if the rest of those lives are spent as drugged-up slaves? A restless urge rises inside me. I’m so tired of being stuck in this little apartment. I haven’t run in nearly two weeks. I’ve hardly had room to walk.

  “When I’m official . . . Will I finally be able to see something outside this place?”

  “Has my hospitality been insufficient?” Jule asks with a smile.

  “I’m just not used to this,” I say, and his expression turns more serious.

  “Of course you’re not,” he says. “We’ll work something out. There are places we can go where no one’s likely to pay you much attention.”

  Jule doesn’t leave for work the next morning—I guess they have days off even on the uber-efficient Kemya. When I emerge from my bedroom for breaks from my self-imposed studies, he’s mostly scanning through some task Thlo’s sent him, though once I find him watching a recording of that antigrav sport I came across before.

  Just after I’ve grabbed lunch, he calls over that he’s redirected a message to my private terminal. It’s from Win, via Britta—a list of links to music in the Earth database he hopes I’ll find “refreshing.” I lean back on my bed as the complex melody and rhythmic vocals of the first set of songs, from a group I’ve never heard of in Iceland, swell around me. I can see why he’d like it. There’s a sense of space amid the notes, an openness that makes me think of looking out over the ocean. Which reminds me of making spring break plans with Angela, Lisa, and Evan. Homesickness pinches my chest, and I sit up to try the next link.

  Jule opens the door as I’m reaching for the terminal. “Ah,” he says with a faint grimace when I wave off the sound. “That’s why you couldn’t hear me.” He eyes the message. “Win sent you that? It figures.”

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised he has better taste in music than you,” I retort.

  “Your mistake is assuming I’d bother having a taste in music at all,” he says with a grin, but the jibe sounds halfhearted. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

  I follow him to the door. “Go where?”

  “The fitness center seemed like an inconspicuous place to meet up,” he says, and stretches his arms. “Time for a better workout than the home gym can provide.”

  I wouldn’t know, since he hasn’t volunteered a tutorial and I haven’t asked for one.

  “You shouldn’t talk when we’re in the halls unless it’s to answer me,” he goes on. “Security only skims the general public surveillance, but better not to chance someone catching the wrong clip.”

  Right. Because there are Enforcers out there—Kurra might even have returned to the station. A familiar itch creeps into my fingers: the longing for my bracelet.

  “Ready?” Jule says. For an instant, I’m taken back to my first trip in Win’s time cloth, when he opened the flaps to the Roman Coliseum in the midst of a past two thousand years gone.

  If I could handle that, I can handle whatever Kemya has in store. “Sure,” I say, despite the tremor that’s rippling through me.

  Three times three is nine. Three times nine is twenty-seven . . .

  The hall we step out into is so narrow I nearly brush arms with Jule staying beside him. I cross mine over my chest as we walk. The pearly floor and ceiling emanate a faint glow, as if they’re translucent, though I can’t make out even shadows through their glossy surface. I have to resist the urge to scan them for the recording devices Jule mentioned. The thought of Kurra watching intensifies the constricted feeling.

  There’s no sound but the soft tread of our feet as the hall curves a few degrees to the right. It stretches into hazy grayness as far as I can see up ahead—and behind, when I glance back—in a way that gives the sense of walking through a cloud. That impression is broken only by the outlines of apartment doors and a shallow alcove Jule directs me into. He presses his thumb to a panel there and taps in a command.

  A white oblong structure that reminds me of a cable car pulls up behind a set of clear double doors. A middle-aged man steps out, and I tense. But he merely gives Jule a dip of his head and continues past us into the hall.

  Just moments after that car pulls away, another arrives, this one empty. Jule motions me on. The inside is as spartan as every other Kemyate space I’ve seen so far, with narrow benches that fold down at either end and a gleaming pole that seems to float in the middle of the car. At least it allows a little room between me and Jule. It makes a sighing sound as it starts to rise.

  “If you know the right people to buy a code from, you can call a private inner-shuttle,” Jule says. “So you don’t have to share with strangers—or have your trip recorded. One of the benefits of staying with a guy who’s got plenty of extra credits to his name.”

  “You’re sure there’s no surveillance on here?” I ask quietly.

  “Completely,” he says. “There was a head of the Security division centuries ago who pushed for that, but he got kicked out of office in the uproar. There’s hardly enough crime around here for people to put up with a police state.”

  I think back to the diagrams of the station’s layout I’ve looked at—the main saucer shape with its rings of halls and rooms interlaced with glinting lines. “These . . . shuttles go all over the station?”

  “Every second sector has a stop, and all the work sections too.” Jule pats the wall. “Not much flash to it, but you may have noticed we’re about substance o
ver style around here.”

  “Flash?” I repeat with amusement. “You enjoy your American slang, don’t you?”

  “Not just American,” he says. “You should hear me in Hindi and Russian.” His voice takes on a British lilt that’s slightly more authentic than Win’s Kemyate-muddied accent. “Even different forms of English, if you fancy.”

  “Show-off.”

  “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” he says, flashing his teeth as he falls back into the voice I’m used to.

  “I thought it was uncouth to flaunt anything related to Earth.”

  He waves off my objection. “This is a skill. A Traveler’s got to blend in as effectively as possible. You never know when you’ll have to make a comment on the fly. Most people learn just enough to watch the entertainment programs they want. I figure if you’re going to do something, you do it all the way.”

  He says it in that casual tone, but he glances away from me afterward, his expression almost solemn. As the shuttle drifts sideways, I study him. I’ve spent more time in close quarters with him than I have with anyone outside my immediate family and closest friends, and I’m less and less sure I have any idea who he is.

  I am starting to think he’s more than just a run-of-the-mill jerk.

  The shuttle slows, reminding me of the role I need to play. “What if someone tries to talk to me out there?”

  “Stay quiet for now—act shell-shocked,” Jule suggests. “It’s not likely anyone will bother us, but if they do, I can always say you’re overwhelmed. You did, theoretically, just get here.”

  I drag a breath in and let it out. The shuttle glides to a halt.

  Jule ushers me down another hall as narrow as the one we left, and turns us toward a transparent door. A girl about my age—pretty, with sculpted waves of russet hair framing her heart-shaped face—springs forward as we come in, beaming and holding out her hand at a stiff angle. It takes me a moment to realize she’s offering it to me. I take it carefully and give it a quick shake.

  “Hi, Tabzi,” Jule says.

  Beyond her, rows of metallic cylinders twice as wide as the one in Jule’s apartment fill the room. A large group of Kemyates is bunched along the wall where the light shimmers oddly, raising and lowering their arms. In one corner there’s a small windowed chamber where I can see several children practicing antigravity moves. Quiet music quavers around us in a rhythm I think is supposed to be energizing.

  It’s a lot more sterile and orderly than Mom’s gym back home, scattered with bikes and rowing machines and weight stations, noisy with the whir of levers and wheels and the chatter of clients. I wonder if she’s still working as a personal trainer, seventeen years later, and swallow down the burst of pain.

  “We’re over here,” Tabzi says in a hushed voice. “I got the private room.” She all but bounces as she leads us to a doorway etched in the closest wall. As soon as the door closes behind us, shutting out the murmur of activity on the other side, she spins around. “I’m so glad I’m able to meet you . . . Skylar? It is extraordinary. There are so many things I would like to ask. Earth is so fascinating. But the Earthlings I have met . . .”

  My gaze has already fixed on the figure standing inside the cramped room, which holds two of the cylinder contraptions and a tiny strip of flooring with that wavery light. The woman, who I’d guess is in her late twenties, gazes at us vaguely. Her dark hair is twisted into dreadlocks that fall to her shoulders, her athletic body clothed in a brightly patterned dress that looks more like a Halloween costume called “Tribal Princess” than anything I imagine any actual Earthling ever wore. There’s a slackness to her jaw, a distance in her eyes, as if that body isn’t totally inhabited.

  She bobs her head to Jule and me, saying something that sounds like a greeting. Tabzi says a few words to her in what I assume is the same language, and turns to us.

  “This is Yenee,” she says. “She doesn’t have any English. But you can still see. The . . . implant, it keeps her . . . relaxed.” She touches the inside of her own wrist.

  Implant—for the drug Thlo talked about. Yenee smiles dreamily at us, and a knot forms in my chest. Maybe her life on Earth wasn’t the best ever, maybe she’d managed to end up on the brink of death before some Traveler grabbed her . . . but it had to be more life than I see now. No wonder Kemyates can keep Earthling pets around without seeing how human they are.

  I want to express my sympathy, but I don’t know what I could say even if I did speak her language. “It’s nice to meet you,” I force out. Tabzi leaps to translate, and Yenee keeps smiling. She says something and bobs her head to me again.

  “She is happy to meet you too,” Tabzi says. “And she wants to know if you will . . . exercise with us.”

  “Sure,” I say, my own smile increasingly stiff. I can’t help adding, “Do you like it here?” I’ve left the question purposely ambiguous. Does she have any feelings at all about the situation she’s been forced into?

  When Tabzi repeats my words to Yenee, she answers in what I can hear is the affirmative.

  “It makes her feel well,” Tabzi says. “She is glad to share with a new friend.”

  A “friend”? I wonder how exact that translation is.

  “Must be pretty different from the exercise she used to get on Earth,” I remark, and Tabzi giggles.

  “I think so. She does not say very much about it. Even when I try to talk to her about where she came from, it doesn’t always . . . make sense. Her memories are not very clear. She has been with her family here eight years now.”

  Tabzi beams again, as if proud to have produced that entire statement. From her hesitations, I guess English isn’t her strong suit either.

  “It’s better, hearing from someone who’s lived there, instead of . . . recordings, and reports,” Tabzi goes on. “You are from close to the current century?”

  “In the current century,” I say, tearing my gaze away from Yenee.

  “You’ve had licorice?” Tabzi asks. “My friend’s father bought some once. There isn’t any snack here that’s the same. And—Jule has put you in Kemyate clothes.” She fingers the sleeve of my shirt, as if I’m a shiny new toy she’s figuring out how to play with. “What did you wear on Earth? Do you have it still? I would love to see . . .”

  I have to resist the impulse to jerk back. I guess this is the first part of my training as a pet. Tabzi might know I’m not one, but she obviously has no idea how to relate to an Earthling who’s anything else.

  “I, um . . .” I start, and Jule steps in.

  “We should make use of the equipment while we’re here, or someone might notice and wonder,” he says.

  “Yes, yes,” Tabzi agrees. She glances at Yenee—the old toy that’s no longer quite up to scratch—and gives an instruction. Yenee moves into the stretch of shivery light without question. The three of us follow.

  It’s not just the light that’s shivering. The air there oscillates into my skin, making my muscles from brow to toes twitch. Jule raises his arms over his head and then lowers them again, the way the people outside were. “Nice to have a proper warm-up,” he says.

  “This is very different from your . . . gyms? On Earth?” Tabzi says to me.

  “Yeah,” I say. For one, we don’t let some weird tech do our warming up for us.

  “What do you do there? You have a job, or school?”

  “Both,” I say, forcing my tone to stay friendly. “Mostly I’m in school, but I also tutor—teach—a boy who’s having trouble with math.”

  “He does not learn at school?” she says, looking puzzled.

  “Well, there are a lot of kids in the class, and the teacher doesn’t have time to help the ones who are struggling as much as they need . . .” I trail off at her increasingly befuddled expression. When you have programs like the Language Learner, the idea that anyone would need extra help from another human being must be pretty much inconceivable.

  “Do you—” she starts up again, and this time I cut her off.
>
  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I should concentrate on watching Yenee for a while.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. So you can pretend. I love it. It is like spies in the movies.” She twitters, but thankfully continues her warm-up quietly, though I notice her sneaking regular glances at me. While I sneak glances at Yenee.

  Studying the woman this way gives me a creepy-crawly feeling I can’t blame on the vibrating air. I hate seeing another person like this, and yet I’m using her. But I have to. If I can get through this, if we can set things right on Earth, maybe there’s some way to return all the Earthlings here home.

  I try to imitate the slackness of her face, letting my eyes go unfocused. The slight hesitation to her movements, arms up, arms down, as if her body’s a little behind her intentions. I’m not sure how much time has passed before Jule announces, “I’m ready. You want to try a Kemyate-style workout, Skylar?”

  I eye the cylinders. I am eager to get out of this muscle-twitchy light. “Why not?”

  He fiddles with a control panel before motioning me over. “I’ve put it on the lowest setting,” he says. “For the shortest time. Just go with it, no resistance. ‘No pain no gain’ is Earth logic.”

  “All right.” I step inside the chamber with growing apprehension. The entrance slides shut, leaving me in a space just a fraction too wide for me to touch the lead-gray walls with my arms outstretched. Something clicks above my head.

  Then it starts.

  The air vibrates like it did in the warm-up area, but quickly rises to a higher pitch. My nerves wobble right down to my bones. The walls flicker—blue, red, yellow—and my limbs move of their own accord.

  A yelp jolts out of me as my arms swing up and around. In toward my sides and back out they go, as my feet step this way and that in an unfamiliar pattern. I try to yank them still and a prickle of pain shoots through my kneecaps and elbows. Tears, more from shock than anything else, form at the corners of my eyes.