Damage Control - ARC (18 page)

Seconds later, she sensed a presence behind
her. She didn't turn around, and he didn't touch her anymore.

"I'll do it," she said, "on one
condition."

"And that is...?"

"You said you could get me off this ship. You
get me home, and I'll do the job."

"Deal. There's a spy ship leaving for Earth
one week from today. It's going to have to make an emergency
landing somewhere in New England, right in New Hampshire if
everything goes just right. You'll be on it."

"They'll put me in a garoshh. I won't be able
to escape just because they've landed."

"Did you really think I would just put you on
the ship and force an emergency landing, and leave it at that? It's
a whole plan, and if you'll stop interrupting, I—" Fletcher
abandoned the sentence mid-syllable and continued in a faster
rhythm, "Your keeper is here. I have to go. There's a clean uniform
in the toilet room. Dry off and get dressed and act like nothing's
happened. I'll find my own way out."

"
The anniversary of your birth will
arrive soon," said Laitt when Jade came out of the bathroom.

"My birthday," Jade replied, willing her
voice to remain calm. "Just six more days."

"I read that the anniversary of birth is
special to Humans," Laitt continued. "You do parties or other
activities to remember your births. Is this true?" She carried a
fresh bunch of green grapes to the food table.

"Yeah, it's true," Jade answered. "My
daughter's birthday was last week, and Chegg wouldn't even make an
exception for that. Wouldn't even let me call her for her birthday.
I mean, he should know better. I can see if it was you: our culture
is new to you. But Chegg knows Humans really well, and he knows me
really well; it's his job. So he should understand that I need to
call my daughter on her birthday. No, it's more than that. She
needs me to call her, and especially on her birthday."

"I will not help you disobey my keev," Laitt
said gravely. She had been standing still and watching Jade
attentively.

"I know," Jade answered. "Just venting,
sorry."

"I am curious how you think of your births
when you remember them. Chuzekks do not remember our
hatchings."

"Actually, we don't remember our births,
either. Once in a while someone will tell you, 'I remember being
born. I remember being in the womb,' but I seriously doubt it. I
think the people who say that messed up their brains with drugs or
something. The purpose of a birthday is to honor the person,
really, not to help that person remember being born."

"What do Humans do on birthdays?" Laitt
asked, standing behind Jade and running her fingers through her wet
hair.

"Oh, there's usually a cake, and
candles."

"I read this, too. One candle for each year
of life to now."

"Yup," said Jade by habit, then for Laitt's
sake she said, "Yes. I went to a party once that had a clown, and
that was nice. But I always liked pool parties best."

"I will try to get you cake and candles on
your birthday," said Laitt.

When Jade got up on the morning of her
birthday, she found a navy blue taper beside the pool, freshly lit.
When she came back from the shower, a bright red one had been
added. While she was making coffee, Rokk, one of her guards, came
in with an orange one. By lunchtime, a long and colorful line of
candles burned beside the pool. Some had burned out and been
removed, and she wondered whether some of the new ones were meant
to replace them, or whether every single candle represented a year.
She began to count them, but was interrupted when the door opened
for lunch.

It was opened every day at this time by one
of the guards. (There were 12 in the rotation, and always two on
duty at once. She'd gotten to know them all.) The time never
varied, and the words spoken by the guard didn't vary much, either.
Sometimes in Chuzekk and sometimes in English, it was nearly always
either, "You will go to the cafeteria now," or "We will take you to
the cafeteria now." Jade grabbed her Personal Device and turned to
go.

But it wasn't one of the guards. It was Gyze.
"Happy birthday," he said in English.

"Thank you." She was about to say, 'come in,'
but he didn't wait to be invited. He walked to the desk and set
something down. It was a small cake on a six-sided plate with a
matching transparent dome. "Happy Birthday!" was written in icing
on the top of the cake.

"I brought you a gift," he said. He handed
her a small clipping from a newspaper. "It's from today's Houston
paper."

Her glasses weren't on the shelf. Then she'd
probably left them on the coffee bar.

"You should stretch your eyes," said
Gyze.

Jade stopped on the way to the coffee bar,
turned around and looked at Gyze. "Stretch my eyes?"

"Yes. I believe you have difficulty focusing
them because you spent many hours looking at one place almost
exclusively."

She nodded. "Eyestrain, yeah."

"Eye focus is a muscle action. Your eye
muscles require stretching."

"But you can't stretch your eyes, Gyze," said
Jade, laughing. "I mean, we can't. Maybe you can."

Gyze pursed his lips, as though trying to be
patient, then said, "Yes, you can. Without moving your head, you
should look up as far as you can..."

Jade looked at the ceiling.

"...then look to your right as far as you
can..."

She looked at the bathroom door, then
realized she could see a little farther and concentrated on the
wall to the right of it.

"...then look down as far as you can..."

She looked at the floor. She never had
figured out if it was ceramic or quarried stone or something beyond
her own experience.

"...then look to your left as far as you
can..."

She looked at the wall beyond the
couches.

"...look up as far as you can again, then
focus on something far, and immediately after, on something
near."

"Ouch," said Jade, and rubbed her eyes.

"Perhaps a massage will help also," Gyze
agreed in such a serious tone that Jade laughed.

After that, the newspaper clipping was easy
to read. It was the baseball standings. Her beloved Red Sox were
the league leaders, but then they often were at this time of year.
She wanted to hug Gyze but decided not to. "Wow, thank you," she
said sincerely. "This is a great gift. I'm surprised you could get
permission. I thought Chegg would say it could be a coded
message."

"It could be a coded message if the people
making the graph knew you would see it."

"I know," Jade replied. "You take everything
too seriously, Gyze. They're not going to put a secret code all
over every newspaper just in case—"

The door opened again, and Leed and Vyke came
in together with clam chowder and red glop. Soon one of the
off-duty guards showed up with a table, then another with a bag of
fruit and onions.

Ten minutes later, Laitt arrived with Koll,
five more of her guards, various Chuzekk vegetables, nuts and
packaged foods, a ladder, various bits of hardware, a few tools,
and something else. It was a very large item, oddly shaped, much
longer than it was wide, and apparently made of plastic.

"Hi, everyone, thanks for coming," said Jade,
even though she knew it wasn't Chuzekk custom to say thank you, at
least for something like that. She followed the strange object with
her eyes as three cheejes carried it to the pool along with the
ladder and the hardware and tools. "What is that thing?" she said
to Laitt.

"A slide." Laitt grabbed her Personal Device
and spoke to it, and immediately an American pop song filled the
room. Jade recognized the artist but not the song. It must have
been a recent release. Laitt spoke to her Personal Device again to
adjust the volume. It was satellite radio.

"Increase the humidity," Koll ordered in
Chuzekk, and the radio was interrupted by a voice asking, "How much
increase do you require?"

"Switch control to my Personal Device," Koll
replied, reaching for it.

Another group arrived, but Jade didn't
recognize any of them.

"Hello," said Jade. "Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome," said one of them, a cheej.
He grabbed Jade's hands with two fingers and shook it like a bottle
of medicine, then reached for her other hand.

Behind her, Gyze laughed. "That is not what
is meant by shaking hands,” he said. He offered Jade his hand in
the classic Human style, and Jade took it. They shook hands. "These
people are all part of your interrogation team," he said to
Jade.

"Nice to meet you," she said to the
strangers, then to Gyze she said, "So these are the people you work
with every day."

"Some, yes," he replied. "Some work in other
areas of the interrogation and I see them less often. For example,
the job of the three cheejes at the food table is to find
supporting material."

"Supporting material," said Jade, "like those
documents Chegg puts on the wall sometimes?" she thought the air
felt muggy. And she wondered if the three cheejes would be the ones
taking her home tomorrow.

"Yes." He took out his Personal Device,
opened it and typed. The American female vocalist currently playing
was interrupted in mid-syllable and replaced with a different one:
apparently Gyze had changed the station. "I prefer internet radio,"
he explained. "It is easier to customize." He glanced at the cheej
who had shaken Jade's hand, and a female cheej who stood beside
him, and they opened their Personal Devices, too. While Jade stood
watching, the three of them customized the music mix. She knew they
were watching her reactions, as they tried style after style. It
was interrogation practice, no doubt about it. But it fascinated
her: usually she didn't get to see this side of the operation.
Before long, the station was perfectly customized to her own
unusual tastes: a little merengue, a little old-fashioned British
rock'n'roll, a lot of modern Russian rock, and a lot of Chuzekk
dance music with its deep-voiced male vocals, its techno-sounding
air instruments and its warbly-sounding water instruments. She
decided to keep listening to see if there were any songs sung by
female artists.

The guests certainly seemed to appreciate the
change. Every time a Chuzekk song came on, a lot of them started
dancing. Jade had to work hard to keep herself from laughing:
Chuzekk dancing was hard to take seriously.

But what surprised her was what happened with
the first merengue song that came on after Gyze and his cheejes
were through. Vyke called her name enthusiastically, crossed the
floor quickly and began to dance the merengue in front of her.
“Please dance with me," he asked in Chuzekk, and she tried, but his
merengue was much better than hers. What made it worse was the
humidity, which had increased beyond mugginess now. She could
actually see it if she looked at the far wall.

"Jade," a female cheej called from beside the
pool as soon as the song was over, "you should be the first to use
the slide."

Jade shrugged, smiled, walked to the ladder
and climbed it. When she got to the top she hesitated. Should she
sit? No, she'd better not risk it. She lay on her stomach and let
go, and slid down on her faltoopp, feeling a little bit like a
turtle. Her boots hit the water first, with a splash.

Two female interrogation cheejes jumped into
the pool as soon as she was finished her slide. "The air is much
too humid," said one in Chuzekk, and the other one said in English,
"We find it annoying."

"I'll see what I can do," said Jade, and
began to swim toward the steps. But by the time she had reached
them, the rest of her guards had arrived. She knew this more from
sound than from sight: a haze hung in the air and made it hard to
see across the room. She wrung out her hair and went to meet them
at the food table. She'd barely said hello when the door opened
again and Chegg walked in with a zeed she didn't know. She hadn't
seen Chegg since the day he'd refused to let her call Geonily on
her birthday, and she didn't want to. Knowing she was going home
tomorrow made it hard to keep on suppressing all the hate she felt
for him. She decided to go look for Laitt, to see if anything could
be done about the humidity.

The fog made it nearly impossible to find
anyone in particular, but by wandering around you tended to meet
people randomly. You also tended to bang your shins a lot, but that
didn't matter if you were wearing Chuzekk uniform-boots. The uneven
floor was a problem: you had to step carefully to keep from
tripping. Jade kept wandering until she managed to randomly meet
Laitt. She almost randomly met Chegg, but when she realized it was
Chegg, she turned and wandered in the opposite direction, fell into
the pool and swam to the edge.

When she did come across Laitt, she nearly
collided with a male zeed. He and Laitt were slow-dancing even
though the song was a fast one.

"Do you like your party?" Laitt asked, still
dancing and apparently not bothered by the intrusion.

"Yes," Jade answered in Chuzekk. "But what is
the fog for? Is it a Chuzekk tradition to have fog at a party?"

"I don't know," said Laitt thoughtfully. "I
have never heard of this tradition. I do not know the purpose of
the fog."

So Jade began wandering again. This time she
didn't run into Chegg or fall into the pool. She nearly hit her
head on the ladder, but it touched her hair first, and she stopped
herself just in time. Eventually, she found Koll.

"Koll," she asked without ceremony in
Chuzekk, "why the fog?"

"It is by your request," Koll answered,
taking advantage as always of the chance to speak English with a
native speaker.

"There must be a mistake," said Jade. "I
didn't ask for fog."

"Laitt told me that you went to a birthday
party that had a cloud, and that was nice."