The drones made their way to the elevators while I hung back with Twenty-One. I tried not to look at him while the cameras were watching, but it was hard not to. He wore a pensive expression, as if deep in thought, even at that mundane moment. The differences between him and the others were striking. He was expressive, emotive, imaginative, while the others were blank, thoughtless automatons going through their day. Drones. My first instinct in naming them had been accurate. They reminded me of the caretaker robots on Earth, cutting off every blade of grass that grew across the lines. Both seemed to be acting on a program, but the drones were organic, as far as I knew. Had the surveillance society really made the people of Valeria stop thinking?
I carried my thoughts with me as I boarded the bus that we had all to ourselves. I had expected some assistants, but it was just the two of us and the cameras. Twenty-One stowed the box of equipment and sat across the aisle from me. The automatic bus started its journey as we sat in an easy silence, both of us lost in our thoughts.
I looked out of the window as we left the city. I saw the brush dwindle until there was nothing left except rocky dirt contrasted against the purple horizon. The bus eventually came to a halt and I stood up, walking to the exit and stepping and out onto the lifeless ground. I looked around me. The wasteland stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see on every side. I suddenly felt small, one tiny drop of life in the midst of a dead world.
Twenty-One followed, carrying the box of equipment. I took it from him and we started walking. I wanted to ask why, but he seemed to be heading for some dead brush and I followed him.
"Here should be good," Twenty-One said. "You can speak freely now."
I put the box down and looked around, and for the first time realized we weren't being watched. "There are no cameras." My voice was laced with the joy of freedom.
"The bus still has cameras, so don't yell, but yes, as long as we stay out of range, we should be able to talk."
"Good. I have so many questions."
"Me, too." Twenty-One was practically buzzing with excitement, and I felt it, too: a kind of electricity running through my body. It was the excitement of conspiring to do something forbidden, coupled with the thought that we could exchange knowledge and learn something new about each other and our respective worlds.
"You first." I wanted to know what he knew more than anything. I sat down on the dirt, the samples forgotten. The bus was a shadow on the horizon as we sat in the sun, the dead brush our only cover from the relentless heat.
"What's Earth like?" Twenty-One sat next to me and we leaned up against a rock. He offered me a flask of water and I accepted. It eased my dry throat as I pondered the answer to his question.
"A lot different from your world," I began. "For one, we don't have cameras everywhere."
"Nobody watches you?"
"Not in private, no. Not in our homes. Humans nowadays would never allow that. We like our privacy far too much. Anyway, Earth is..." I closed my eyes and tried to explain it. "The sky is a brilliant blue. We have magnificent cities all over the world, but amazing natural beauty as well. We have food that comes in a million varieties of textures and flavors. We have things that we do just for fun, like watch movies, where actors create fictional stories on a huge screen, or go to nightclubs and dance the night away to loud music. We have more music than you can imagine, songs that will move you to tears or express your anger. I work at the Science Foundation, but I have a place of my own, too. There's no curfew and the door isn't locked at night." I thought about the clothes I'd left on the floor of my apartment and the pile of science journals on the coffee table that I'd been using as coasters. "Not that I'm there much. I love my work."
"Are all humans like you?" Twenty-One's amber eyes widened, imagining my world as I described it to him. My description seemed inept at best, but he was soaking it up like a thirsty creature drinking from an oasis.
"Oh, no. Humans are all different from one another. We all like different things. We all specialize in whatever we like. We have the freedom to choose what we want to do with our lives."
"Wow." He seemed so young for twenty-eight years in that moment, but I suppose he was young by Earth standards. He'd never had the chance to grow socially or to make choices for himself. "Our talents are decided in the Children's Building. From there, we are trained in our respective fields until we are sent to our building to live."
"Is that how you grew up?"
"Mostly. Supposedly, I was abandoned on the steps of the Children's Building, but I don't know if that's true or simply a fabrication. Everybody wants to believe they're unique."
"That's a good thing. You're intelligent and imaginative. You care about your work. You wouldn't want to be a drone, would you?"
"A drone?"
"That's what I call the others. They act like robots without A.I."
Twenty-One laughed, the amusement shaking his whole body. "That's an apt description. I'll have to remember that." His laughter faded. "I never imagined there could be anybody else like me. I've been alone for so long, wondering if there was something wrong with me. Then you came along, and you're everything I thought I could be. You're brilliant. You're independent in a way I've never seen. I want to see your planet. I want to see a world where people can grow up like you and not feel different."
"Oh, I felt different sometimes," I said. "I just had good teachers who trusted me with opportunities, and a society where I was free to make my own decisions."
"Why did you come here?"
"To learn. Valeria invited somebody, with some strict rules. I was considered the best candidate. I'm still not sure that's the truth."
"Why?"
"Because..." I shook my head. I wasn't ready to express the ball of emotion that sat in my gut, feelings I hadn't even identified yet, so I changed the subject. "Are the Sisters your government?"
"...I don't know," he said, in a way that made me think he felt he should have known. "I think so, but there's no way to prove it. I mean, we do have a Government Building, but I don't really know if we have a leader, or who that leader might be. One is in charge of the Science Building, I know that much, but beyond that..."
A sad expression had crept into his eyes and I realized that I had committed the ultimate cruelty by telling him about Earth. I had told him about a life he would never be able to have, introduced him to a freedom that was just not possible here on Valeria.
"I'm sorry," I said, looking down at my hands in my lap.
"Why?"
"I told you about Earth, a place you'll probably never be able to visit. Even if the Sisters would let you, you might not even be able to survive in our lower-oxygen atmosphere." I felt cruel, telling him the universe had wonderful places, but that he would be forever confined to Valeria and its own brand of hell.
"I understand. It's just nice to know that not everywhere is like Valeria." His hands were shaking, and I knew it wasn't okay, not really. I took the hand closest to me and squeezed it. His skin was warm to the touch, his hand soft and yielding. I can't even really say why I did it, only that I needed that contact, that physical connection to tell him I was sorry. Yet even as I did it, I realized I was committing the same mistake again; introducing him to a kind of personal warmth he would never be able to have again once I had left. Valerians didn't touch each other in comforting gestures. Friendships were disallowed; intimate relationships punishable by death. I was just comforting myself. I was surprised when he leaned over and rested his head on my shoulder.
"Is this okay?"
"Of course," I said. He closed his eyes and rested there for a while. I realized I was the happiest I had been since I had arrived on Valeria. This simple act of tenderness was something I'd never needed back on Earth, but on the barren, sterile world of Valeria, it was essential somehow.
After a while he lifted his head and let out a long breath. "We should get to work. We need a hundred samples from each area." He opened the box and produced some chalk, which he used to mark off areas. We spent the rest of the day gathering samples until the sun was on the edge of the horizon. We worked well together, a good team with an easy camaraderie.
"Julian, we should get back on the bus if we are to return before curfew."
I considered telling him to stay and damn the curfew. Part of me wanted to sleep under the stars with him at my side, but I knew it would arouse a lot of suspicion if we defied curfew, so I gave up and started packing the equipment. Twenty-One helped, then stepped back and looked up at the sky. I took a mental snapshot of how he looked in that moment as he wondered which constellation held Earth. I got to my feet and stood behind him.
"Show me where Earth is," he whispered.
"I don't know." I smiled. "All the constellations are different out here. I'm a long, long way from home." The carpet of stars before us was the universe at a different angle to the one I knew. It was then that it hit me that I was truly on an alien planet, a long way from the place I knew as home.
"Saidan."
"Saidan? What does that mean?" I thought it was a Valerian word that I had no understanding of. My Valerian could be inconsistent at times, having been taught from an incomplete database.
"It's my name."
Before the gravity of what he had told me could sink in, he marched back to the bus, where the cameras would shield him from any further conversation about it. I stood, stunned, for another moment before following.
Something changed between us while we were out in that rocky wilderness. The two people who came back were simply not the same. We had seen each other in another light, and there was no turning back from it. I now knew his name—Saidan—and he knew mine. According to Valerian custom, that made us close in a way that was certainly forbidden.
I was careful not to use Saidan's name in the lab as we processed the samples over the next few days. It was hard, as his name longed to slip off my tongue, but I ran every word through a mental filter and probably acted as stiff as a board. If the Valerians noticed anything was off, they didn't mention it. Saidan, for his part, was ruthlessly efficient in the lab. Absorbed in his work, he had no time for distractions, and I assume that's how he managed to keep our little secret.
The forbidden nature of our friendship made everything a little more intense. It was something shared only between him and I, a feeling transmitted through knowing looks and the occasional brush against one another. We both reached for equipment at the same time, and I finished one of his sentences for him. We had become attuned on another level. Perhaps we were always on the same wavelength all along, and that's how we'd become so close. Two scientific minds, never knowing they needed other people, and yet requiring one another.
Things were becoming complicated.
There was something new in our relationship too. A tension that bristled in the air. At first, I thought he was angry at me. I pondered on the possibility that I had said too much about Earth, but my hypothesis was thrown out of the window when he sought me out at Feeding Time.
"Nineteen." He was careful not to use my name. "The samples we extracted have met with an untimely end." His mouth seemed to be holding back at the edges, quivering with a smile he could not—should not—express, and yet, there it was anyway. Too subtle for the cameras to catch, but as far as I was concerned, he was loudly expressing his joy at the situation. "One of the lab assistants dropped the last fifty before they could be processed into the database. We will have to obtain a new set."
He was trying to find a way to spend time with me alone. It was a risky proposition, one that could see him punished if his ruse was discovered, but that only showed me the depth of his desire to be with me one-on-one.
"I hadn't analyzed them at all," I said, with mock frustration in my voice. I sighed audibly and then worried I was laying it on too thick. "Can you obtain permission for another expedition?"
"Already done. Tomorrow." Saidan nodded and his braid bobbed. There was a conspiratorial spark in his bright amber eyes that seemed to ignite a fire inside me. He'd gone out of his way—despite the risks—to see me alone, because he wanted to spend time with me. I knew we were on a dangerous path, yet I couldn't snuff out the fire burning in my gut.
I caught a breath in my lungs and held it there, listening to the alarm of my body as it screamed out for air. I slowly let it out, uncoiling the knot inside my soul. If he caught any sign of my internal turmoil, he didn't show it. He got up from the table like a man with his business concluded, stiffly walking to stand in line for the elevator as the buzzer sounded. I watched the red light of the camera set on the wall as its eye rolled over me. I wondered if it saw what I saw. If it did, we were both in a lot of trouble.
*~*~*
"There's absolutely nothing here," I said, analyzing the remaining samples. Saidan had taught me how to use the Sisters to zoom in on particles. Soon, I was manipulating the images like a professional.
"That's the last one we have, " Saidan said. "The others were contaminated with glass when they were dropped. I suppose we won't have conclusive evidence until we retrieve more samples."
I knew it was untrue. Saidan had been working for years on the project, had taken thousands of samples, all showing the same thing. The land was dead for no discernible reason. It might have occurred to me at the time that Saidan was putting me above his life's work, that he was wasting valuable moments of a short life on our friendship, but I never saw it that way. I know now that the only waste was our continued analysis of the facts we already knew, and our growing friendship was the only fragment of truth in the whole world. At the time, I didn't understand it at all. I'd come to Valeria to learn, and all I was doing was hitting a scientific brick wall.
Before I knew it, my frustrated fist hit the table. The beakers and instruments rattled, moving from the vibration. Saidan turned to me at once, horrified by this outburst of emotion.