alt.human (38 page)

“Hear what?”

“!¡
frustration
¡! When we were in the wall. The voices. The presence of people all around, closing in, crushing.”

I remembered my face pressed into flesh, not knowing what flesh it was, and feeling that my mind was the same, pressed hard up against other minds, other presences, not knowing who or what they were, being smothered by them. Every night since then I had experienced nightmares of being trapped in the wall, and I knew that must be what it was like for Hope all of the time, with the voices, the presences, crammed into her head.

I nodded, but then realised Skids probably couldn’t see in the gloom, so I clicked, “!¡
agreement
¡!”

“!¡
anguish
¡! It’s like that,” said Skids. “Can you feel it? A presence. Trapped...”

I couldn’t feel anything. I reached for Skids’ hand and said, “!¡
reassuring
¡! Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

We turned and headed back up the passageway.

As we left, I felt a sudden stabbing in my head, like a pain, but a pain I had never known before. A twisting pressure, a spike of emotion, a piercing sensation. And I knew then what Skids had meant.

A presence. A sense of being trapped. Like all the voices in that nightmare wall, all condensed down to a single voice, a child’s voice, trapped and alone.

A
NOTHER TIME, AN
afternoon when I had been sitting by a lily-covered pool, watching the water beetles skittering about on its surface, musing on Frankhay’s question: what will become of us if we idle our lives away like this, provided for, not driven to learn and explore and survive? What kind of existence would that be?

Hope found me.

I smiled, still surprised at the lift in my chest when I saw her, when not so long ago I had been appalled by her.

She sat with me.

“!¡
teasing
¡! Marek let you go?”

She glared. She had told me about him, about his possessiveness, about being with him in Angiere, and that explained why he acted so jealously now.

“No one lets me go anywhere,” she snapped, and then I was struck again by something in her, in the way she spoke, and I decided to ask her.

“!¡
curious
¡! I’ve never heard you use click,” I said. “When you speak. I know you understand it, but it’s just not something you do.”

She thought about it.

“I... I didn’t realise. It’s just how I speak.”

“!¡
factual
¡! Click’s not a language,” I said. “It’s a gut thing. It says what you’re feeling. It’s
really
hard to fake or mislead someone with click. If you don’t click, you don’t expose yourself.”

“It’s not deliberate!” said Hope, eyes suddenly wide, loaded with tears. “I’m not trying to hide...”

“!¡
calm | reassuring
¡! I know. So why?”

“Maybe I never learnt...”

I nodded, then added, “And maybe it’s a defence, a barrier. Something that protects you from revealing your true nature.”

She looked at me. Up until that point I hadn’t even been sure that she knew that she was so different, that in the purely physical sense she was not one of us.

“!¡
reassuring | tender
¡! It’s okay. It’s okay.”

That was when I put my hands to her head, tipped her face back, and kissed her, softly, tenderly.

Our first kiss seemed so long ago, sitting on the rock by our encampment that time, as night shaded into morning and Hope had kissed me on the jaw and I had been too shocked, too surprised by my own reactions, too fucking dumb, to react.

So much had happened since then.

So now we kissed and it was a first time, all over again.

W
E SAT, MY
arm behind her, knuckles resting on the soft ground, the pad of my hand against the gentle swell of her butt.

“If I spoke click...” said Hope, resting her head on my shoulder. “You’d know that this is what I want, what I’ve wanted. You’d have known it all along.”

“!¡
struggling to articulate
¡! I didn’t know this was what I wanted,” I told her. “Or I did, but I was scared. Scared by what’s in your head. Scared by what’s in mine, by my reactions, by my stupid pig-headedness.”

“Why did you ask? Why did you ask now, about the way I speak?”

I straightened, and turned to face her.

“!¡
teasing out a truth
¡! Click exposes you,” I said again. “It opens you up, lays you bare before the world. It betrays you.”

I looked around, at the lilies, the water-beetles, at the lush green foliage of the trees, the twisting trumpet vines hanging heavy with rich blue flowers. A bird called from the trees, a fluting trill.

“!¡
musing
¡! They don’t use click here,” I said. “The citizens of Harmony. Have you noticed? No click.”

“I hadn’t really noticed,” said Hope.

“!¡
matter-of-fact
¡! It’s not obvious,” I said. “We take it for granted. But when you do notice it, it really stands out. And when you do, you can’t help but wonder that if they’re that scared of betraying themselves, then what is it that they’re scared to reveal? What are they hiding?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

S
KIDS TOLD ME
later that Frankhay and Jerra had been arguing again, earlier that afternoon, which explained the heavy atmosphere and sullen, angry looks when Hope and I returned to the open area by our shared dorm.

At first I thought it was just Marek, glowering at the two of us, but by the time I realised there was something more it was too late.

Saneth and Frankhay were standing together, deep in conversation. The ancient chlick seemed reinvigorated in the warmth of Harmony. I wasn’t sure whether to join them or not, but as I hesitated, the chlick inclined towards me and said, “!¡
demonstrating to foolish junior scholar
¡! Here is one who is young and yet does not have a head that is consumed with resentment.”

Frankhay glared at me, and I wondered what I had done wrong, then realised that it was something else, and nothing to do with me.

“!¡
frustrated
¡! Will none of you listen?” the clan-father demanded. “He’s changed. Jerra’s different now. He’s not the boy he was on our journey. He’s got delusions of power. He sees an opportunity to take me out and establish himself as a... I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants, but he’s turned against me. It’s like he says: he thinks I’m tryin’ to persuade everyone not to trust this place, when all I’m doin’ is trying to make the right judgements.”

“!¡
angry | confrontational
¡! But you are,” hissed Jerra, appearing from a gap in the bushes, a part-concealed path. I wondered how long he’d been listening in.

Frankhay rounded on him, jabbing the air with a finger. “!¡
hierarchy | angry
¡! You need to remember where your place is,” he snapped. “You need to not get above yourself.”

Frankhay had kept tight control of the command structures of the Hay clan back in Laverne. It was shocking to see this unravelling so dramatically before us now.

Jerra stepped forward, so that Frankhay’s pointing finger was almost touching his forehead, and suddenly this made the older man look comical, a fool.

Jerra looked strong, menacing. He laughed at Frankhay; just a chuckle, but it carried more meaning than any words, any click.

“!¡
victorious
¡! Accept it, old man,” he said. “Your time has passed. We’ve found a safe place to stay. We’ll bring the others. We don’t need you any more.”

There was a click, not from Frankhay’s throat but from his wrist.

It was a sound I’d heard close-up before, the sound made when the blade concealed within Frankhay’s wrist flicked out, stabbed forward.

The dagger blade emerged, a flash of metal, and entered Jerra’s forehead.

The boy slumped, and Frankhay staggered forward, suddenly taking Jerra’s weight on the blade. It was too much for him to support, and Jerra fell to his knees, and the blade slid out, slick and red.

Still on his knees, Jerra looked puzzled more than anything else. A small red spot marked the centre of his forehead. As I watched, the spot swelled, budded, and then a line of blood tracked down the bridge of his nose and over his mouth and chin.

He tipped back onto his heels, then splayed and fell backwards, dead.

Frankhay dropped to his knees, sobbing, and it wasn’t clear whether the stab had been a deliberate impulse or an accident.

Saneth stood to one side, false eye swivelling constantly, taking everything in.

Then the old alien stepped towards Jerra’s fallen form, and stooped.

The boy’s eyes were wide open, staring.

Saneth reached towards Jerra’s face and I thought the chlick was going to close the boy’s eyes, but instead, with a jerk of one clawed finger, Saneth flipped at something.

I couldn’t see what it was, but then Saneth repeated the action, and a transparent blob peeled away from Jerra’s eye.

The thing landed on the short grass, and then flattened to a disk, a membrane spread thin, and appeared to dissolve into the grass.

Saneth’s eye swivelled around the gathering. “!¡
factual reporting
¡! It was a watcher. The boy played host to a watcher.”

I
NSTINCTIVELY, WE EDGED
away from Jerra, and from the patch of grass where the watcher had disappeared.

Then Marek burst forward, dropped to his knees, and started scraping at the ground.

I reached for him and hauled him back, and the two of us fell, exhausted, on the ground nearby, me holding Marek by the shoulders, both of us breathing raggedly.

Marek grunted.

I looked up, and saw Frankhay standing over us, one boot placed hard on Marek’s chest. The clan-father leaned forward, elbow on the knee of that leg, the blade still protruding from his wrist, red with Jerra’s blood.

“!¡
controlled menace
¡! So,” said Frankhay, “you gonna tell us what exactly it was you were just tryin’ to do? Eh?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. Had he been trying to catch the thing? Kill it? I looked from Frankhay to Marek and back again, and then I scrambled to my knees, keeping a firm grip on one of Marek’s shoulders, keeping him pinned to the ground.

“!¡
vicious
¡! You got one of ’em, too, have you?” asked Frankhay. He leaned closer to Marek now, and a tear fell, hit the blade, and ran red down to the tip.

Frankhay had killed one of his own.

He had thought it a simple clash for power, but we now knew that the boy had been carrying a watcher, looking through his eyes, controlling him.

Which was worse? Killing Jerra in straight confrontation, or killing him by mistake?

Marek’s body bucked, but we had him held firmly.

“!¡
menace
¡! You got one, too, eh? We gonna have to cut it out?”

Frankhay pointed the blade at Marek’s left eye, so close that his captive stopped trying to break free for fear of impaling himself.

Marek started to sob. “!¡
terror
¡! No. I haven’t got one. They promised me, but I haven’t got one.”

“!¡
surprised | outraged
¡! ‘They’?” I asked. “Who? Why?”

“!¡
scared | pleading
¡! Mazar. Alya. The watchers here aren’t Hadeen. They want to protect us. Carry a watcher and you’re safe. We all need that. But I don’t have one!”

“!¡
matter-of-fact
¡! The hosting of a non-Hadeen watcher did not afford Jerra much protection,” observed Saneth. “!¡
leading junior scholar
¡! Did you consider that the offer of protection may be dishonest, and that the non-Hadeen watchers are more concerned with taking control of the host?”

“!¡
despair
¡! They promised me,” said Marek, in a cracked, broken voice.

“!¡
brutal
¡! Why should we believe him?” said Frankhay. “If the watchers are controlling these people like this, then how do we know it’s not jus’ a watcher makin’ him say that?”

I realised then that I believed Marek, regardless of the logic behind Frankhay’s words. All it had taken to control Marek was a promise to sway him, an offer of a privileged position the rest of us did not have, an offer of power. He was weak enough, ambitious enough, to leap at an offer like that.

But Frankhay was demanding proof.

Saneth intervened. The chlick leaned over Marek and fixed him with a stare from her-his artificial eye.

“!¡
factual reporting
¡! This one’s eyes are clear,” said Saneth. “He hosts no watcher over his eyes, as Jerra did. There is no indication of interference that this lauded one can detect.”

“!¡
uncertain
¡! What about inside?” I asked. I remembered that time, years before, when Skids had taken to making himself vomit, and we had thought him mad. But then after we had driven him to flee, I had puked up my own watcher from within, and I had understood his distress.

“!¡
matter-of-fact
¡! There is no indication,” said Saneth.

Frankhay moved his wrist-dagger down until its tip was pressing hard against the skin beneath Marek’s chin.

One false move on either part and Marek would be dead.

“!¡
menacing
¡! Which still leaves us a pretty dilemma,” said Frankhay. “You may not be carryin’ a watcher, but that’s not because you didn’t want to. A shit-poor traitor’s still a fuckin’ traitor.”

I saw the muscles in his arm flex, and Marek winced.

I relaxed my grip on Marek’s shoulder, then, and instead put a hand on Frankhay’s wrist.

“!¡
calming
¡! Come on,” I said. “Leave it.”

I moved back, and rose to my feet. Now, looking down at Frankhay as he leaned low over his captive, I met the clan-father’s eyes again and saw that the moment had passed.

I looked at Marek and didn’t know whether there was gratitude or resentment in his eyes.