Stone in the Sky (11 page)

Staring at Tallara, the planet that Tournour was from, made me feel as though I were with him somehow. I had hoped that I would receive a message from him, but I knew that it wasn't safe, and though I had thought about sending him word when I was looking for the
Noble Star
, I resisted. Silence was the best way to let him know I was all right. Besides, I was sure that he knew that the Per ship had gotten away with me on it. I didn't want my heart's need for contact and comfort to put him into danger. But seeing his planet suddenly made it feel like he was with me across the light years, and I felt stronger.

The clouds and the blue water were familiar. My eyes teared up at the sight of it. As much as I had loved looking at Quint, it was drier and colder; Tallara looked so warm and welcoming, it made me long for what had once been mine.

For the first time in years, I missed Earth.

Tallara looked like Earth, but with more land masses and smaller oceans. I knew that the Brahar home world, also in this system, was an even drier place. From here, that planet was only a red star in the sky.

We were to orbit while the Brahar captain did some business on the surface. The city was the large domed city that sat on the face of the moon, and from the sky, it looked much like the Yertina Feray but laid out flat on the smooth surface. Here it housed the embassies of every kind of species, both Major and Minor. There were also all of the offices that did the various incarnations of government work. To take over the galaxy, one had to rule Bessen. The whole of the known galaxy was represented here.

There were many ships in orbit around the moon, ships that were too big to dock with Togni Station, which had the space elevator. I could see a steady stream of small shuttles going to and from the station in a coordinated dance to dock with the space elevator that would take people down.

I'd never seen a space elevator before. It stuck up out of the moon like a pin and ended in the shuttle port that orbited in sync with the moon.

“I'm ready to go down,” I said to the captain, my bag packed, ready to try to infiltrate the Human consulate.

The Brahar crew members laughed at me.

“You need the proper papers,” one of them said. “And you don't have any papers at all. You're not even supposed to be on this ship.”

My heart sank.

It was true. I was lucky that they had taken me. It was only because they were headed back to their own system that they had agreed to. As instigators of the fall of the League of Worlds, they were a more protected species when it came to navigating Imperium bureaucracy.

Of course I couldn't just waltz down to Bessen from Togni Station. And if I did, I couldn't go and speak to the highest ranked Earth Gov representatives. Even if I claimed to be a Wanderer, they wouldn't care.

I cursed not having found the
Noble Star
before I got here. I needed help and I didn't have it. Bessen had been a good idea, but I'd failed to stitch all of the pieces together to succeed in my plan. I knew the rules and how to bend them to my way on the Yertina Feray. But this was space's center, and I knew nothing about it.

“Where will I go if I don't find a pass?” I asked.

He pointed out the window to Togni Station and the space elevator.

“You can probably catch someone there willing to give you their papers for a price,” he said. “You have a few days before we drop you there.”

Defeated, I went to the mess hall to eat and think, but I could feel all the Brahar with their eyes on me, whispering about their bad luck to have been stuck with me on their trip.

Think, Tula. Think.

I did what Heckleck always told me to do when defeated.
Take stock of what you have, even if it's nothing.

I had some currency on my chit. I had Trevor. I had information about the Yertina Feray and Quint. I had no home. I had desperation.

That was more than nothing.

I started asking my ifs.

If I had to go to the Togni Station without a plan for a way down in the elevator in place, I would need a pass.

If I got a pass to get down the elevator to Bessen, I would need a place to disappear to when in the city.

If I made it to Bessen and managed to move about, I would need a contact that could light a spark to make a fire in the Human Embassy.

It would be hard as a Human on Bessen to go knocking on doors. I needed to use these few days I had left to open one for me if I managed to get down there. If I could reach someone at some ministry, they might get me a pass to go on the space elevator and that was the first step.

When you can't see the long game just think of one step.

There were many ministries on Bessen. Surely someone would give me a pass if I used my skills in bartering.

Times were such that no one would report a strange call from a Human. They would log it as miscellaneous and would make it disappear.

It would be impossible for me to get anyone with high authority to talk to me, but I knew my best chance would be to go lower. Receptionists, clerks, janitors; those were the people that Heckleck always reminded me were the ones who would be most willing to barter. They had the most to gain from under-the-table dealings. And to my advantage, they likely wouldn't know for sure if I was with the Human contingent on Bessen or not.

I took a deep breath and started making vidcalls. I would call everyone except Humans so as not to get caught. And I would start all of my calls dark so they could not see me until I was certain that they were not Human. The first place I signaled was the Office of Extraplanetary Excavations.

I punched the screen and a female Loor filled the screen. She was not looking at her console; she was packing her bag, obviously getting ready to leave.

“Yes?” She said. “It's almost closing time. You'll have to call back when my secretary is in.”

This Loor seemed bored and disinterested. I pressed my camera button so the Loor could see me.

“Hello, my name is Tula Bane.”

The Loor looked up at me.

“You're Human.”

I nodded my head affirmative.

“Have we met?” she asked. “On Earth?”

She'd been to Earth. This was not a low-level worker. Maybe this would work out better for me.

I shook my head no.

“Not a Wanderer,” she said, examining me and likely noting that I lacked the tattoos that Human Wanderers had to mark their voyages.

“Not Imperium.” She motioned to my outfit, which was not the uniform that the Humans who worked at the Embassy wore.

I shook my head again.

When something unexpected happens, the truth is often the right way.

“I'm solo,” I said.

“No one is solo in space,” the Loor woman said. I'd lost her, and her hands began the movements to cut our communication off.

“I belong to the Yertina Feray,” I said. It was what Tournour had always said about me. Even though I had been sent away, it felt truer than belonging to anywhere else. Unless I belonged to myself.

“Where did you say you were from again?”

“The Yertina Feray,” I said.

That got her attention. Like everyone else, she would be aware of the rush on Quint.

“It's on the outermost…”

She waved her arm at me, indicating that she knew where it was. I was familiar enough with the Loor to know that her antennae told me that something about her attention had shifted in my favor.

“I'm representing the claim holders on the planet Quint,” I said. It was a lie, but I needed something to keep the wedge I had with this Loor open. I could see that she was interested in me.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I'm looking for a pass to come down and talk to someone about the tracts of land for sale.”

I checked my list. Office of Extraplanetary Excavations.

“There's land and work to be had. I thought I would offer it to your department first,” I said.

“Claims on Quint aren't an issue,” she said. She looked old and tired. “We Loor have had a claim on Quint since back in the days of ore mining.”

“The Loor do, but how about you? People like to speculate.”

I bit my lip. This could be a big mistake. Even though many government officials were corrupt and not averse to making a little on the side, I could also be wrong.

“The Imperium has a representative on the ground, dealing with the situation,” she said.

“Your office?” I asked.

“Another office,” she said.

I could tell by the way she was acting that she would not begrudge me my attempt to lure a pass from her with a claim.

“Your representative is Human,” I said, taking another chance. “How does that best serve the Imperium?”

Her antennae waved softly as she took her time to answer the question.

“We are satisfied.”

She was being careful. I gave another little pull.

“The Yertina Feray has a complaint that the representative is Human.”

“Do you have a problem with a Human being there?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her antennae folded toward me and leaned to the left. I'd intrigued her.

“That's not my department,” she said. “You'll have to take that up with the Office of Interspecies Harmony.”

I laughed. Everyone knew that speciesism was
de rigeur
in the Imperium. You just had to be the right species to ignore that it existed.

“Speciesism will not be tolerated,” she said.

“Tell that to the Hort, the Vizzini, and the Calwei,” I said. “And the Humans.”

The Loor looked up at me and studied my face through the vidscreen. Her antennae were now definitely on alert.

“The Imperium has been a good thing for Humans,” the Loor said. “Earth is in the fold. There are five human colonies, and you're on track to becoming an important part of the Imperium. Your people should be grateful we don't interfere with your affairs.”

“I don't have anything to do with those Humans who collaborate,” I said. Here it was, I had to take a chance. “I told you, I'm solo. And I'm against them.”

The screen went dark.

Somehow the conversation galvanized me. I called the Office of Interspecies Harmony. They were useless. I tried a new ministry: The Office of Biodiversity Information. Then another: the Imperium Opportunities Office. Then on and on. It was a thankless task, but it felt good to be active. Like I was fighting for my life.

With each place I left the same statement: I was against the Humans from Earth.

Something had dislodged, and my instincts told me that even though I did not know what I was doing, I was on the right track. Eventually something would happen. I could feel it in my bones. When you are in the dark, you never know from which side the light will come.

I wore my voice out trying to find someone at each agency that would talk to me. They kept shifting me around to another office worker until finally I had no one else to talk to there and had to begin again somewhere else.

While I might have been agitating aggression against the Earth Gov Humans and hopefully undermining Brother Blue in some way, my time was running out. I had still not managed to get a pass down to Bessen from Togni Station.

Time after time when I mentioned a pass I was shut down, told to call someone else, or hung up on. I felt defeated. I wanted to turn off the vid and head for sleep. It was late, and I was too tired to begin another round of pleas to lower agencies.

Just one more, Tula
, I told myself.
Just one more call.

Eventually, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at the console.

A few hours later, a Brahar crew member shook me awake.

“It's time to go,” she said.

I still didn't have a pass. I was going to be stuck on Togni Station space elevator. I may be leaving the ship, but I would be stuck in limbo once again. The Yertina Feray had been bad. This would be worse.

“Can't you take me to Brahar with you?” I said. “I'll give you all of the currency on my chit.”

The Brahar shook her head.

“A message was received for you from below. You're to meet your contact on Tallara. I have the coordinates.”

“My contact?”

“A Loor, I suppose.” The Brahar picked at one of its scales, not at all interested in my troubles.

I had spoken to many a Loor that day, all from different ministries or agencies.

“I don't understand,” I said. “I'm not going to Togni Station?”

“A shuttle is docking as we speak to take you down,” she said.

Although I was no stranger to plans being changed, and I knew that I had overstayed my welcome with the Brahar, suddenly being in the belly of a spaceship with those who didn't like me felt safer than going down to a planet to meet with an unknown someone alone. Meeting on the planet meant that whatever happened was unofficial. Unofficial was in my interests but now that it was here, I was scared.

That was bad. Unless things were changing.

There was nothing to do but to go meet whatever fate had in store for me.

“I'm ready,” I said aloud to give myself confidence.

I boarded the shuttle and five hours later I was landing at a remote spaceport on Tallara.

When I stepped outside and my feet touched the ground, I fell down.

 

15

It was strange to be on a planet again. The sky confused me. The clouds cut the sky like sharp, violent objects. The sun was very bright, and the shadows were everywhere. Bessen, unlike the moon I knew and remembered from Earth, was clear and brown in the daytime sky.

I held on to Trevor for support. The air was humid and heavy. And I could barely walk.

Before me stretched a long, red dirt road lined with trees—long, spindly things with fungus-covered trunks and sharp pointed leaves. I could see purple fruit hanging from the branches, but I could not identify them so I did not know if they were ripe. What struck me, as I tried not to throw up, was how much brighter the colors were here than on a ship or on the station. In the arboretum, I thought I knew what the color green was. Seeing the vegetation on this planet made me realize what green really looked like, and it made me miss Thado and his ramblings about planetary flora and fauna.