Stellarnet Rebel (15 page)

“Why would they contact us?” asked Belloc.

“Well, not
us
specifically. The Finders disabled the identity beacon—that was a constant signal put out by the ship, to alert all other Tikati ships of its location. But, if that light blinks, it means we are picking up Tikati communications. And, again, we’ll have to move away from the source of the signal. This one shows the air that we breathe. This one the gravity. This one is the level of the ground, if we’re over a planet.”

Duin went on and on like that, explaining everything as they traveled. When it occurred to Belloc to think of the ship as one giant musical instrument, and keeping it in the sky was like sustaining a long, complicated melody, it made much more sense to him.

“Was long time to learn flying?” Belloc asked.

“Did it take me a long time to learn how to fly the ship?” Duin corrected Belloc’s grammar. “Almost two rain seasons. But most of that was spent trying to get information out of the Tikati we captured. They didn’t speak Glinnish, and we didn’t speak Tikati, and I had no idea what was involved in sailing the sky ocean or operating a machine. Many, many pieces were cut off of them, and ultimately it was the Finders who came along and showed me what to do.” He glanced around. “I cleaned up most of the blood, I think.”

“Will it take me so long?” asked Belloc.

“I doubt it. The length of a few storms, maybe. If you pay attention.”

When Belloc wasn’t on missions with Duin, or learning Earth letters and numbers with Mose’s children, he still followed J’ni. Duin encouraged this.

“I will gut you with my bare hands if you let anything happen to her,” Duin warned him.

As if Belloc needed any incentive. He would gut himself if anything happened to her. Belloc knew about the previous attacks by humans who didn’t like Glin, which didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was that any humans liked them at all.

But J’ni did not seem to be in danger. She spent a lot of time sitting at the table, using the Asternet. So Belloc spent a lot of time sitting beside her. He knew how to read and write Glinnish, as much as his mother had taught him. But he was amazed how much J’ni and Duin would read and write in a day using the Asternet and tapping—they called it “typing”—their fingers on the table. He liked listening to the typing. It sounded like rain.

“I’m torn between sharing the existence of the Finders with humanity, and wanting to protect your people there,” she told Duin one day when they were blogging.

“But didn’t you return with stacks and stacks of notes?” Duin asked.

“I did. I guess I could still write about most of it, without saying where they are. Not that I even know where they are in relation to Earth or Asteria. But I wouldn’t want the Tikati to try and go after them.”

“The Finders are too far away,” said Duin. “Tikati ships can’t space shift. I doubt they monitor or understand the Stellarnet anyway. If they did, they would know I’m here, and what I’ve been doing, and they would have acted on that information.”

So, J’ni wrote about the
Wandant
. She also told the stories of the Glin refugees. She was kind enough to read these out loud to Belloc, since he couldn’t read her language yet. She also read him her email and tickers.

When she wasn’t busy, she showed Belloc vids of Earth. She’d told him many things while they were on
Wandalin
, but being able to see the vids amazed Belloc. Vids were images that could be viewed again and again, like memories. She had one of Belloc, and laughed when she showed it to him.

“Look at you, you look so sad,” she said.

He didn’t think it was funny at all, and he knew neither did she. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he had begun to believe that sometimes her laughter was an act of defiance in the face of things that upset her, and not from constant joy. Anyone who was happy all the time was an
ezzub
, an idiot, and J’ni was no
ezzub
.

“I did not know if I could follow you to Asteria, and it hurt me.”

“It hurt me, too. I’m glad no one took a vid of me at that moment.” She laughed again.

Belloc was glad that the thought of not seeing him again upset her so much that she had to laugh.

***

One morning, while Belloc was curled up by the fish pond, Duin came into the garden and prodded him with his booted foot.

“Why haven’t you built a hut yet? Granted, the materials are a bit unfamiliar, but you could come up with something.”

Belloc sat up. “I don’t know how.”

“How is that possible? In all your entire village, there wasn’t a single dwelling?”

“I didn’t grow up in a village.”

“You had no grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins?”

“Just my mother.”

Duin looked at him for a long time. “I’m very sorry.”

“Why? It wasn’t your fault.”

Duin sighed, sitting down on the ground beside him. “Don’t be an ungrateful brat, Belloc, you’re too old for it. But you’re not too old to have your nose wiped on the ground.”

Belloc found that amusing. “I’d like to see you try, Elder Duin,” he said with a laugh.

“Don’t tempt me. Just accept my honest feelings.”

“To be sorry for me is to say my life is lesser than yours. My life is what it is and it’s been mine.”

“Why didn’t your mother ever weave a hut?”

“We never stayed in one place long enough.”

If Duin found that odd, or unfortunate, he said nothing about it. “Well, you shall have a hut, and I shall show you how to build it. Though I doubt any Glin ever had one quite like this.”

While Duin gathered materials, he sent Belloc to the Tech Center to pick up lumina paint and hardware from a purple-haired human named Hax.

“Blue Glin mod. I like it,” Hax said when Belloc entered. “I’ll add that to the game.”

“Game?” Belloc examined the room. The Tech Center was almost like Duin’s garden, full of enigmatic objects and materials. But larger and brighter, with lights and Asternet windows covering every wall and some of the table tops.

“Mysteria.”

“What is Mysteria?”

“Ah, come this way, young Jedi grasshopper noob.”

The translator didn’t have some of those words, but Belloc understood “come this way.” Hax led Belloc to a wall, which disappeared to reveal an empty thoroughfare. Belloc had already seen so many impossible things on Asteria, he didn’t know if anything would surprise him any more.

“Should I go?” Belloc pointed down the corridor.

“Sure.”

Belloc’s attempts to enter sent Hax into a fit of laughter.

“It’s a picture of a thoroughfare, on a wall, not a real thoroughfare,” Hax explained, and had to try hard to stop laughing. “Omigod. ’K, ’k, sorry.” Hax wiped his eyes. “Grab those gloves over there.”

Belloc began to wonder about Hax’s mental stability as he picked up a pair of gloves from a nearby table. The gloves were supple, like
wallump
skin, but had no visible stitching. Similar to J’ni and Duin’s bracers, they were covered with adornments that Duin would have called
icons
and
displays
.

“Put them on,” Hax said. When Belloc hesitated, Hax started giggling again. “Really, ’k? I’m done. I’m done. I promise. It’s fine. Put them on. No more funnies.”

Belloc thrust his hand into one of the gloves and it lit up. It covered not only his hand, but almost his entire forearm. He pulled on the other. They were comfortable, like a second skin.

“Activate the Mysteria app. That little icon that looks like a star. No, not that one, the other one. No…the star. Sparkle. Pointy thing. For the win.”

Duin appeared on the wall. At first, Belloc thought he had contacted him through the Asternet. But when Belloc moved his arm or took a step, so did Duin. Every movement Belloc made was shadowed by the Duin on the wall. And the Duin on the wall was holding a very dangerous-looking, spiked weapon, not unlike the zap-sword real-Duin had in his garden.

“These gloves were for Duin, so he’s the default setting. “Watch out, here come the zombies.”

A group of human corpses were walking straight toward them.

“What do I do?” Belloc asked.

“Kill them,” Hax suggested. “Aim for the head.”

A few minutes later, the Duin on the wall was standing in the middle of a pile of bodies. Hax stared at Belloc, his mouth hanging open as if he would speak, but he said nothing.

“What now?”

“You just keep going.”

Belloc nodded. “Like life.” He pointed, which caused the image of Duin to point. “Why is he turning green?”

“If they bite you, you turn into a zombie, too.”

“May I try again?”

Belloc played through several of what Hax called “levels,” and then decided that he should be getting back to building the
tippa
with Duin.

“Thank you very much, Hax. It was almost as fun as swimming.”

He started to remove the gloves, but Hax said, “You can keep them. Duin doesn’t want them. He is sort of attached to bloggirl’s bracer, y’know, cuz it’s bloggirl’s doodad. So, take them, if you want.”

“I want,” said Belloc. Then he remembered about human money. “What do they cost?”

“Pffft. There is no charge for awesomeness. It’s…what I do.”

Then Hax explained to Belloc that the gloves were also designed to work with the Asternet, anywhere in the colony.

“Like bracers?”

“Uber Bracers of Power,” Hax said in a booming voice. “Can you zap things, like Duin can? With your hands?”

“Hunt?”

“Right, hunt. With the Glin Touch of Doom.”

“I can.”

“That will still work, too, with the gloves on. Try it.”

Belloc extended his hand and zapped. Rather than coursing across his palms, electricity arched from the ends of his fingers in bright, thick bolts.

“Careful with that,” Hax warned. “And you might want to keep it to yourself, so you don’t get them confiscated.”

“Yes.” Belloc flexed his fingers and examined the gloves. He had never owned anything so wondrous in his life, could never have dreamed of anything like this. “Thank you.” He reached out to touch the human in a gesture of gratitude. But his hand passed right through Hax. “You are a spirit?” Belloc was both terrified and awestruck.

“No.” Hax shrugged. “Just a sim.”

“I appreciate the offer, Director Hewson, but what you need to do is take that food to the slums of Los Angeles, and the medical supplies to the earthquake victims in Turkmenistan. It would cost too much to bring it here, for Glin who can’t make use of it. We need armaments and military assistance. Then we can provide food and medical care ourselves.”

Duin tapped on his bracer and began recording another vid-mail as he walked down the thoroughfare.

“Doctor Syed, until someone from Earth establishes a military base on Glin, or sends in a private security firm, I can’t ensure the safety of your scientists. It would be dangerous to try and set up a research outpost. Even if you send science blocks to Asteria Colony, I won’t be able to help you gather specimens from my planet. I have my hands full here.”

He sent that vid-mail and then opened a window to his alternate email account, which was encrypted and routed through Hax’s servers, outside the Extrasolar Space Colonization Consortium’s system.

Secretary Yao, your country seems to have no remorse about sending unauthorized blocks of colonists to Asteria. I don’t see why you couldn’t also ship a few unauthorized munitions within those unauthorized blocks, so that I could make a very authorized deposit into your account.

A group of humans with shaved heads and Glin-like colors tattooed into their skin were waiting for him in the thoroughfare. Duin kept walking.

“When are you going to take us to Glin?” asked a woman wearing a shirt programmed to alternate between the phrases “I <3 frogs” and “Unnatural Slut.”

“
When it freezes over
,” Duin said in Glinnish. In English he said, “I’ve told you, several times, it’s not an MMORPG, it’s a war zone. You need to join a military and ask them to send you. Please. I would love for them to send you. In HIG360 ships, with rockets and bombs.”

“We’ll go and fight Tikati.”

“Yeah, we’d waste the fucking Tikati.”

“With what? Your good looks?” Duin sighed. “Thank you, yes. I’m very busy. I will contact you as soon as possible.”

He entered the private hallway of R-51 and shut the door on the would-be Glin. In his compartment, he found J’ni and Belloc unpacking what looked like a crate of trash.

“Do you miss your grandmother?” Belloc asked her.

“I do. She was—”

“What’s all this?” Duin interrupted.

“Augla, nagloim,”
J’ni greeted him. “It’s what’s left of my block. They returned the evidence from the investigation.”

“One crate?”

“Looks like. We received thirty-six crates today, but the rest were addressed to you. Belloc put them in dot-5.”

They’d ended up with the full use of every compartment in R-51. No one else wanted to live there, for their own safety, considering what had happened to J’ni’s block, and because most of the lights, Asternet walls and other features weren’t working. And those who did want to share their block were fans like the ones Duin left outside.

“Did the crates arrive in authorized or unauthorized blocks?”

“Authorized,” she said.

“Then not a single one of them will contain anything like a programmable missile launcher or a particle grenade. Nothing like
that
will get past the ESCC inspectors.” He knew. He’d tried.

He looked over the items on the table—bits of broken teacups, scraps of fabric, various twisted and blackened objects. Then he glanced at J’ni and Belloc. They were giving him concerned looks, even as their eyes were having silent conversations with each other.

“Did you talk to Owen?” asked J’ni.

“Yes,” Duin replied. “He said the IRA hasn’t been active for decades, and if any Provos show up in a time machine, he’ll let me know.”

J’ni chuckled, but Duin did not find Owen’s flippant attitude amusing.

“Don’t count Owen out, yet,” she said, seeing the look on Duin’s face. “What about Blaze? Any progress there?”

“No! All day long I sit in meetings, send email, repeat myself ad nauseum, while my people and our water continue to disappear. Damn it!” Duin kicked over a chair as he paced the room. Belloc picked up the chair and set it right.

“Duin…” She tried to soothe him, but he did not want to be soothed.

“Five months ago, no one on Earth knew anything about our oppression and the destruction of our world. Now, they know everything in minute detail. ‘Oh, here is where the Tikati built a dam and all the
j’ni
downriver died.’ And, ‘Here is where they keep two hundred and four water tanker ships.’ And, ‘There is where they put a great big compound where they force Glin to dig in the mud.’ For what?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He swung his arms in furious circles. “And yet nothing has changed, not one scrotum.”

“I think you mean
mote
,” she suggested. “Or
smidgen?
”

Duin waved his hands, as if swatting away a cloud of flies. “I meant
iota!
” He stomped out into the garden.

J’ni followed him. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s the worst part. I deal with what’s in front of me, J’ni. I had a ship, I learned to fly it. I flew it here, I tried to get help. Blaze wants water, I got him water. You offered to help, I told my story. You were incarcerated, I helped you get away. Blaze asked for information, I went and got it. I brought you back. Now… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Everyone has answers, but no one has solutions. My patience is drying up, like everything else on Glin.”

“They’ve got to figure out what’s in it for them,” said J’ni. “We understand what’s at stake for you and your people. But do you understand what’s at stake for Earth? I’ve done my damnedest to get them to care, but caring only goes so far. The people with the power and the money don’t need to care, they need to profit.”

Duin gripped the edge of his work bench, which was a scavenged piece of metal paneling laid across some water tanks. He hung his head in mental and physical exhaustion. The lights on his bracer flashed incessantly with incoming messages and notifications.

She moved to his side. “It takes time. Dr. Geber’s work is one potential benefit to humanity. The possibility of your world becoming a source of textiles and other exports, that’s another. There’s also so much more research that could be done on the planet itself, its ecosystems, minerals, natural resources and the biotechnologies used by the Glin. But you’re asking Earth to invest trillions of units, to send people and weapons, to go toe-to-toe with the entire race of Tikati, to sustain a war because the Glin can’t?”

A piece of the metal panel snapped off in Duin’s hand. He tossed it aside. “I don’t need them to fight our war, just give us a fighting chance. I can
pay
for the weapons with money, if seeing justice done is of no value to them.”

“Who’s going to teach the Glin how to use them? Who’s going to teach them tactics and strategy? Where? And how long would it take? You can’t hand them a laser cannon and say, ‘Here you go. Try to kill Tikati, not yourselves.’”

He wondered how she knew about the solar-powered laser cannon that was hidden on Glin at that very moment. He couldn’t remember telling her about it.

“You are up against the worst of humanity itself,” she continued. “You try to address the strong and heroic within the human heart, but there are so many others who play on our fears. For every blog post we make, there are a hundred more that say helping Glin will bankrupt Earth, or damn our souls, or cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands of humans.”

Duin’s voice strained under the weight of his dismay. “Those who stand aside in the face of tyranny, only clear a path to their own door.”

She grasped his arm and rested her chin on his shoulder. “If the Tikati came to our door, there are quite a few people on Earth who would consider that a favor.”

“Tikat won’t stop at Asteria,” he warned.

Her hands tightened on his arm.

“J’ni?”

She didn’t answer, but gazed off at something he could not see. He touched her cheek and she blinked.

“Have you been drinking the Water of Life, again?” he asked.

“What? Oh…no. What you said, it worries me.”

“It should.”

The bioluminescent lights in the garden cast soft shadows of purple and green over her face, and highlighted the patterns of glowing threads in the
bava
his mother had given her.

I have too much anger
, he thought as he looked at her.
I am forgetting joy.

“When you’re in a river, Duin, do you know what else is around you?”

“In the water, you mean?”

“Where the river started, and where it ends. And what is swimming up ahead of you.”

“Yes. In the water, our senses are changed. We feel a
wallump
is near. Or another Glin. Or a waterfall. Perhaps we taste it, somehow, or we feel different vibrations in the water. It’s yet another mystery for your scientists to unravel.”

“Sometimes I feel that way,” she said, “as if I can feel what’s coming.”

Duin wasn’t surprised. She was a Truth-Teller, after all.

“And what do you see for us, in the river of time?” he asked.

“I think that, whatever comes, you will have the strength to prevail,” J’ni said. Then she smiled. “And I see you coming with me to Aileen’s. Belloc is going to sit with the session players tonight. He’s been practicing with them, with the
pelu
and
ooji
, and learning to play…well, every instrument he can get his webbed hands on, I think. Fiddle, harp, pipes. He’s amazing.”

“Is he?” asked Duin with forced pleasantness. There were other Glin he’d known, long ago, who’d had incredible—some believed supernatural—musical aptitude. And they were also dark blue. Duin didn’t want to be reminded of them. He had enough to worry about.

“You need to come with us,” she said. “Come and relax.”

Duin went, but he didn’t relax. A young man in a “Free Glin” T-shirt brought them water and the sentiment drove Duin to distraction. Belloc sat up on the stage with the musicians, playing a reel on Danny’s fiddle as if he’d been doing it his whole life. Duin pattered his fingers on the table, not in time with the music but in time with his own agitation.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” J’ni said. “Belloc hears a tune once, and he can play it.”

“Mm.”

I should be making him practice with the Tikati ship, not with a fiddle.
Then again, if Duin were correct about Belloc, what he should do is make him swim in the sky ocean without a space suit. Duin sighed.
One problem at a time.

His bracer flashed with an incoming top-priority message, and he noticed that J’ni’s flashed as well. She glanced at Duin and the look on her face said,
What now?

Over the music and voices in the packed pub, J’ni was able to hear the message through her earrings. Duin could hear it by feeling the vibration through his arm. It was from J.T. and addressed to both of them. Her INC catalyst had paid extra to send vid-mail, and his round, craggy face appeared in small windows on both of their forearms.

“Heads up, girls and guppies. We just got word that Tikat is sending a representative to Asteria Colony. Blog the shit out of it, will you? Like I have to ask.”

Duin was out of his chair and pushing his way through the crowd before J.T. even got to the word
shit
. Leaving J’ni and Belloc at Aileen’s, he ran to the military zone. Considering the lag from Earth, and the unknown amount of time it took someone to tip off INC, for all Duin knew a Tikati could be on Asteria already.

He called the colonel.

“Blaze, damn it, this is an epic mistake!”

“So, you’ve heard,” Blaze replied.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Duin headed down the I-40 thoroughfare to one of the little-known military zone entrances.

“I just found out. I was going to tell you, but you seemed to be having a good time there at the pub, I didn’t want to spoil it. There’s still several hours before their liaison arrives.”

“How can you let a Tikati into this colony after the abuses they’ve heaped upon Glin?”

“It’s not in the colony, yet,” said Blaze. “And you need to remember not to mistake my congeniality for complicity. Earth is neutral in this conflict.”

“‘Conflict?’ This is a war. This is a crisis.”

Duin waved his bracer at the guards, so they could see the small window through which he conversed with the colonel. A larger window, showing the colonel from a different angle, also appeared on the wall.

“Let him in,” Blaze told the guards. Duin continued toward Blaze’s office.

“A conflict is deciding between
shellon
or
hidal
for dinner,” he said. “A conflict is when your wife doesn’t want you leaving
klup
on the floor of the
tippa
. This is not a conflict. This is tyranny. This is sin. This is evil.”

“Christ, you’re excitable. It’s only one Tikati, on only one ship.”

Duin groaned.

“I have my orders,” Blaze said.

“Did you even
try
saying no?” Duin acted out both roles of an imagined conversation. “‘Colonel Villanueva, please don’t shoot the Tikati ship out of the sky when it arrives.’
No
. ‘Invite the Tikati for tea, and you provide the water.’
No.
‘Give it a tactical tour of the station, so it knows all of your vulnerabilities.’
No.
That’s not so hard, is it?
No.
It’s a
two
-letter word.”

“I’m not an idiot, Mr. Envoy of the Freedom Council. There’s nothing in those orders says you can’t be here to greet him. Where are you?”

“Outside your door!”

***

Less than ten hours later, Duin was sitting in a conference room across the table from a Tikati named Kitik.

This stale piece of shit has the audacity to wear a
bava. The fabric was draped around the Tikati’s head and body, hiding its true form. It appeared to be a little larger than the largest human, and the thick plating of its head was carved to resemble a human-like face. The placating mock-smile made Duin want to reach across the table and slap it with his zappy hand. When it spoke, in perfect English, the mouth did not move, of course. Its voice came from somewhere within its throat. Its eyes glowed yellow, flickering like flames.