Damage Control - ARC (16 page)

A Human arrived in answer to his tapping.
This was Becky’s house, but this wasn’t Becky. This Human was as
pale as Becky but younger, taller, thinner and male. His hair was
so short that Gyze could see the skin of his head. “Hello,” he
said, with understandable suspicion.

“I require information,” Gyze explained.

“Did you take my sister?” the Human demanded.
This was probably Jade’s brother, then.

“No,” he answered, truthfully enough.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yes,” Gyze replied. The Human was holding
the door closed, so he told him, “I will enter.”

“I can’t let you in,” said the Human. “It’s
not my house and I don’t have…” He stopped speaking once Gyze was
inside, and just stood there looking up at him.

Gyze opened his Personal Device and accessed
infrared detection. There were two other Humans in the house, plus
two smaller heat sources. One was probably a coffeemaker. The
other, Gyze could not identify. He would continue monitoring.

“What kind of information are you looking
for?” asked the Human, still very afraid and trying not to show
it.

They were in a small room with two open
doorways, besides the door Gyze had just come through. Before
answering, he ducked through the doorway on the left, which led to
a room with two perpendicular exterior walls. Then he asked, “Is
Jade Massilon’s daughter in this house?”

“No,” the Human lied, cautiously following
him into the room, “she’s not here.”

The infrared signals of the other two Humans
had moved a little, so apparently they were awake. They seemed to
be together in the same room. The smaller signals hadn’t moved at
all. “Does she live here?” Gyze asked.

“No,” he lied again, then said. “Becky
Sagamore lives here.”

“Is she well?”

“Becky?” said the Human, pretending to
misunderstand. “Yeah, she’s doing okay, I guess.”

“Is Geonily well?” Gyze asked patiently.

“Yeah, well, she lost her mother,” the Human
answered honestly. “What can I say? I mean, physically she’s not
sick, but…”

“You are her uncle?”

“Yeah…” he said. “Yeah, I am.” He struggled
to control his emotions.

“I did not order Jade’s capture,” Gyze
explained, “and I cannot order her release.”

“Then who can?” asked the Human, trying to
hide his anger.

“Only my keev,” Gyze replied, shaking his
head.

The Human did not understand this.

“The commander of my ship ordered Jade’s
capture,” Gyze tried again. “He will not release her until the
planet is secure.”

“My sister can help you with security on your
planet?” he asked, again pretending to misunderstand. There was
something else showing in his face, too. Physical pain.

“Your sister will not be released soon,” Gyze
told him. “I cannot change that. My concern is the welfare of
Geonily.”

“Me, too,” said the Human earnestly. He was
fidgeting, from the pain.

“I am Gyze.”

“I’m Brooks,” the Human answered, reaching
toward Gyze with his open right hand, in the traditional greeting
gesture of his culture. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Gyze,” Gyze repeated slowly, grasping the
small, pale, fragile hand in his own right hand and participating
in a repetitive vertical movement.

“Gyze,” Brooks repeated. “I hope I can
remember that.”

“You will not offend me if you do not,” Gyze
assured him, “and I will not stay here long. Does Geonily attend
the Town school?”

“We’d...I’d rather not say,” said Brooks.
Apparently, the answer was yes. “I need to get some food,” he
announced, and without taking his eyes off Gyze, started slowly
toward a doorway on the other side of the room. Gyze followed him
as he walked through it to another room, but not too closely. They
were moving away from the two other Humans, and toward one of the
smaller heat sources. Gyze had guessed right: it was a
coffeemaker.

There were many other things in that room as
well. There was furniture that looked like desks, only lower, but
had no stations. There were boxes of varying sizes. Two of the
boxes had no tops and seemed to be made of metal, and had a pipe
built over them: probably a water source. There were shelves
stacked with round eating vessels similar to the ones in the
cafeteria back on the ship.

Brooks walked stiffly to the largest box,
opened a door and retrieved a bag from inside it. Steam escaped
from the box, and according to Gyze’s Personal Device, its interior
was very cold. “So how’s Jade?” Brooks asked, setting the bag down
on one of the desks. It crinkled.

“She is healthy,” Gyze answered.

The Human had one fist on either side of the
bag, and was trying to pull it open.

“But she is anxious about her separation from
Geonily,” Gyze continued.

Brooks repositioned his fists on the bag and
tried again. “I, um…” he began, then hesitated before continuing,
“I need a knife. Can you tell me how she’s being treated?” Slowly,
he turned and retrieved a small knife from a rack on one of the
desks.

Gyze grabbed the bag and clawed it open.
“Yes.”

Brooks shrugged and put the knife back.
“Thanks,” he said.

“We give her food, air, water and the
opportunity for sleep, exercise and hygiene. She—”

“Sorry, exercise and what?” Brooks took a
vessel from a shelf behind a small thudding door, and emptied the
contents of the crinkling bag into it. It seemed to be a vegetable:
lumpy and green.

“Hygiene,” Gyze repeated. “Her room contains
a modified shower.”

“Oh, hygiene,” said the Human, pronouncing
the word correctly as only a Human can. “A modified shower, what
does that mean?” He got a piece of shiny, transparent film from a
box in the side of one of the desks, and covered the vessel with
it.

“We modified it for air-breathers, so that
she will not drown.”

“Oh!” said Brooks. He grabbed a fork from the
side of a different desk and stabbed the film. “Yeah, that’s
important, I guess. What else? How’s the food? Do you know if she’s
been able to find any Chuzekk food she likes? Can we send her any?”
He put the fork back.

“It is unlikely,” Gyze answered, “that she
has found Chuzekk food that she likes. Our nutritional needs
differ. She eats Human food.”

“Human food, like what?” Brooks asked,
opening yet another box and putting the vessel of cold green lumps
in it. He closed the box and pushed on the front of it with one
fragile finger. The box beeped once, paused, then began to
whir.

Like bland white paste
, thought Gyze.
“Like goatherd’s…” he began aloud, trying to remember the names of
the dishes Jade chose, “cake? No, the word is ‘pie.’ Goatherd’s
pie.”

“Goatherd’s…” Brooks repeated thoughtfully.
“Shepherd’s pie, maybe?”

“Yes,” Gyze replied. “Shepherd’s pie…and clam
chowder.”

“Yum,” said Brooks. “So she’s healthy, then?
She gets plenty of sleep? She’s warm enough? Does she have medical
care?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” said Brooks, looking confused. “Yes to
all of it? Yes to health? Yes to sleep? Yes to warmth? Yes to
medical care?”

“Yes,” Gyze answered again.

“Okay,” said the Human, as though Gyze were
being difficult. “So, um, if you don’t mind my asking, who are
you?”

The other non-Human heat source had begun to
move, and now it was coming toward them. It was slightly hotter
than a Human, but much smaller.

Brooks continued, “I mean, I know you’re
Gyze, but…. Is that your name? How do you know Jade? What’s your
job, if that applies?”

The small heat source continued to approach.
A wall still hid it from view, but at its current speed and
direction, it would soon be in the same room where Gyze stood.
Quickly, he pulled a hand weapon from his waist and aimed it at the
spot, low in one of the doorways, where the appearance of the heat
source seemed most likely. “Gyze is my name,” he explained as he
did so. “My job title is…” The heat source appeared—a fuzzy
quadruped—and when Gyze saw it through the site of his weapon, he
was tempted to put the weapon away, kneel on the floor and attempt
to attract the creature. But his training told him to remain as he
was, except for slight movements to keep the creature centered in
the weapon’s firing line. Meanwhile, he continued his reply to
Brooks without interruption. “…Telemetry Interpretation Support
Chiroje. I assist with interrogations.”

“You’ve never seen a cat before, have you?”
asked Brooks.

“Yes,” Gyze confirmed. The creature stopped
walking and contemplated Gyze with an expression he interpreted as
surprise and curiosity. Then it continued to a small vessel on the
floor and began to drink, using a complex movement of its tongue.
The creature fascinated Gyze. Despite its very different
appearance, it had a grace, a poise, a fluidity of movement that
almost mirrored the bearing of a water person. It stopped drinking
and glanced at Gyze again, then at Brooks. The expression it bore
as it did so, Gyze would not soon forget. On a Chuzekk or even a
Human, that look would have meant tolerance and benevolent
condescension. It was the look of one who was in the presence of
lesser beings.

“Ellison,” said Brooks, stooping with
difficulty, putting his hand near the floor and signaling the
creature in what appeared to be a gesture language. “Come on.”

The cat looked intently at Brooks’s hand,
blinked, and turned away.

Brooks repeated the motion, at the same time
making a short sucking noise with his mouth.

The smaller creature looked again, feinted
toward the Human, and turned away once more.

Gyze put his weapon down on the desk in front
of him, and kept his hand on top of it.

Brooks tried a third time to attract the cat.
This time it went to him, stopped just out of reach, and sniffed
the outstretched hand. After a pause, it rubbed the hand with its
face, neck and shoulder, and began to make a soft vibrating sound,
a sort of throaty, thrumming buzz. It allowed Brooks to pick it up,
and lay in his arms, rubbing Brooks’s arm and making the sound.
Brooks rubbed the cat in return.

Gyze holstered his weapon. “What is the
meaning of the vibrating sound?”

“Oh, that’s purring,” Brooks answered. “They
do it when they’re happy, and sometimes maybe for other
reasons.”

“May I touch?” asked Gyze. This was not the
correct phrasing in Aberikekk, but he didn’t know how to form the
question properly. A direct object was required: a personal
pronoun. But Gyze didn’t know the sex of the creature, and he had
read that in this culture it was an insult to call a male ‘she’ or
a female ‘he,’ and equally insulting to use the convenient neuter
‘it’ for a conscious being.

“Well,” Brooks replied, taking his time and
apparently trying to think fast, “I guess that’s up to her.” He
turned to give Gyze and the cat better access to each other. “Gyze,
meet Ellison,” he said with a polite formality. “Ellison, meet
Gyze.”

Slowly and smoothly, Gyze reached his right
hand toward the two Earth creatures. The cat, still purring,
reached out to him with her nose and sniffed his knuckle. She
hesitated, apparently thinking. Her purring didn’t stop, but its
pattern faltered. Then it continued at a faster tempo than before,
and she rubbed her face against the knuckle she had sniffed. Gyze
rubbed her head.

Brooks smiled for the first time. It looked
like Jade’s smile. “She likes you,” he said. He sounded surprised
and relieved. Apparently he valued the creature’s opinion.

The infrared signal of one of the Humans in
the other room had not moved for a few minutes now. Perhaps the
Human who emitted it had fallen asleep. The other signal began to
move toward the spot where Gyze stood with Brooks and Ellison. Gyze
waited, rubbing Ellison and watching the Human’s signal-indicator
move on the screen of his Personal Device.

It was Becky: he recognized her from the
intelligence pictures as soon as she appeared in the doorway. That
meant that the other Human—the one who seemed to be sleeping—must
have been Geonily.

Before arriving, he had planned to find the
child and look at her himself. Now he had come to realize that this
plan was both unrealistic and unwise. He hadn’t sufficiently
appreciated the fear and suspicion his mere presence would arouse
in the Humans. He should have. Centuries of oppression had of
course caused them to be confused about their liberation. And,
given the lies their oppressors were telling them even now about
Chuzekk intentions, Gyze should have expected this reaction.

Becky’s arrival startled Brooks. Ellison
seemed to have been expecting her, but seemed to find Brooks’s
reaction annoying.

Gyze spoke without delay, to try to ease the
tension. “I am Gyze,” he said to Becky. He continued to rub
Ellison, who quickly became calm again.

“My aunt, Becky,” said Brooks.

Becky gave Brooks a questioning look, but
with minimal movement of her face and body. Perhaps she was hoping
Gyze wouldn’t notice it. Brooks shrugged slightly, and Becky
approached.

“Hello, Becky,” said Gyze. “Brooks asked who
I am, what is my job and why I am here. If you wish, I will answer
now.”

“That would be good,” Becky answered tensely.
She was standing with them now, across one of the desks from
Gyze.

“My title is Telemetry Interpretation Support
Chiroje,” he repeated. “I assist with interrogations. The commander
of my ship ordered Jade’s capture. He will not release her soon: I
cannot change that. Jade is well, physically. But she worries about
her daughter. I came here to learn whether Geonily is well, and
whether I can help.”

“Well, to be honest with you, she’s having a
hard time,” said Becky. “It’s her imagination more than anything.
She doesn’t know what’s going on with her mother, so she makes
things up. She’s got all sorts of visions in her head. We do our
best to help her, but we don’t know, either. We don’t have facts,
we just have speculation. And even if we had facts, I’m not sure if
she’d believe us or not. She really needs to hear from her
mother.”