Damocles (18 page)

Meg rose slowly from her seat, leaning across the table to come very close to Addo’s wide, hairy face. She leaned over far enough that she could smell his breath. His smile stayed very wide but his eyes twitched as she drew close. When she could hear the hitch in his hum, she spoke loudly enough for him to hear.

“Bite me.”

She knew he couldn’t understand her. At least he couldn’t understand the words, but she thought his instincts would have to be pretty dull to not glean her meaning. He ground his teeth.

“Meg talk cameras. Loul move.”

“No.” Meg felt a stream of profanity ready to leave her mouth when she heard Prader shouting those very words to the far left of the field. The team of engineers she’d been working with at one of the ship’s landing legs crouched and shifted as another dark-clad team pushed its way through. It seemed Loul wasn’t the only one being replaced.

“What the hell is this?” Prader waved a wrench at a thick Dideto woman who was unlatching a metal box in the middle of Prader’s work area. “Get out of here.”

Meg switched on her coms. “Are they pushing your team out?”

Jefferson switched his com on midargument. “—isn’t going to work. Put it down. Meg! How do I say put it down?”

All around the field, the number of work teams had more than doubled, the usual Dideto personnel being pushed aside by well-orchestrated teams in heavier, darker work clothes. She heard Cho protesting over the rising tones of the Effans as another bulkier testing lab was rolled into his area. Wagner rose from the table where he had been working with a computer team, closing his light screen when the dark-clad group crowded in.

“Good idea,” Meg spoke low in the coms. “Everyone, screens closed. Shut them down.” A grumble of surprise and protest rose from the work site as all five light screens disappeared. “Tools down. Stand up and back away.” She moved her mouth as little as possible, knowing the only Dideto that could hear her was Loul with his earpiece. To the rest of the group assembled, especially the newcomers, the sudden synchronicity would be unnerving.

Baddo and crew barked rough words at Loul, at each other, and at the crews on-site. The original teams stood around uncertain, clearly getting orders to move and yet sensing tension. Meg activated the audio command for the translator.

“Loul need/want move?”
Need
/
want
had been an important breakthrough concept, especially when the discussion of food and water had arisen. “Loul,” she jabbed her finger at him where he sat sunk low in his seat. “No Ba, no Addo, Loul need/want move?” Ba and Addo, Baddo presumably, shouted loud and convoluted phrases the translator caught, picking out “yes” and “need/want,” but Meg didn’t care what Baddo needed or wanted. She leaned in close to his face and whispered, “No Baddo. Loul. Loul need/want move?”

Loul’s voice was gravelly and low. “No. Baddo need/want Loul move.”

She leaned down farther so he had to look in her eyes. “Fuck Baddo.” The word itself didn’t translate but the meaning certainly did. Loul sighed and Meg straightened up, turning off the translator com, leaving only the crew coms active. “Everyone, on three, step away from your work site and meet in the middle at the captain’s shelter. Small, slow, controlled movements. You know the drill. One, two, three.”

Meg stepped out of the confines of the booth, not deigning to look left or right, and moved with small, precise steps toward the center of the field. One of Baddo’s security guards made a move to step in front of her but she froze him with an imperious glare. Eyes front once more, she made her way to join her crew, who matched her calm, steady strides.

Wagner put his hands on his hips, a furrow of frustration between his brows. “Anyone want to guess what the hell is going on here?”

“They want me to talk to the press.”

“And so what?” Jefferson rolled a sample case around in his palm. “You talk to the news and the goon squad rolls in? Who are these people?”

“Maybe whoever is in charge wants their team in place when the cameras are rolling. Maybe they’ve just decided to replace our crews.” Meg struggled to keep her hands from flailing. She knew all eyes were on the five of them, and she wanted to create the illusion of calm. That grew harder and harder as she thought of Loul being forced out. “I don’t know about you guys. Maybe you want new teams. Maybe it’s the-more-the-merrier, but I for one do not want Loul replaced, especially with the gravel-tooth duo they’re throwing at me. And Loul doesn’t want to go either.”

Wagner sighed, shaking his head. “Do we have a choice? Could this be some sort of conscription thing? Their work laws? Maybe they’re legally only allowed to work so many days without a break.”

“Come on,” Jefferson said, “they don’t sleep. Have you gotten the impression from anyone you’ve been working with that they want a break? They practically fall apart every time we have to stop to sleep.”

“So what do we do?” Cho asked, looking around the group.

“I’ll tell you what we do,” Jefferson said with a grin. “My daddy was a titanium miner on Galen and I was a pro football player. Trust me when I say I know the power of a strike.”

Prader’s eyes grew wide. “You mean just stop working? Stop everything?”

“I’m with Jefferson,” Meg said. “We stop interacting in every way until we’re sure our work crews are allowed to stay.”

“Do we really want to create an incident?” Wagner asked.

“It’s more than just personal preferences,” Cho said, although Meg knew how fond of the Effans he’d become. “Meg’s been breaking her back building the language, but each one of us has made our own sort of, I don’t know, pidgin language with our crews, haven’t we? Haven’t we all found a rhythm, even without words, to make ourselves understood? We get all new teams and we’re right back to square one. We’re right back to making the same mistakes and committing the same offenses as we did in the beginning. Oh, and for the record,” he shrugged, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, “you know that dark spot of skin underneath their jaws? Where the sound comes from? Don’t touch that. It’s sort of the equivalent of sliding your hand between their legs. Found that out the hard way.”

Prader laughed. “That would explain why Kik/Kek, whatever his name is, has become so fond of me.” She kicked at the dirt
with her toe. “He drives me crazy. He’s stripped five valves in two days and he’s like a wrecking ball, but he’s my wrecking ball, you know?”

They looked from one to the other, each shrugging and nodding. Meg knew then she wasn’t alone in the bond she’d formed with Loul. This far from home, this much pressure on a mission, this type of isolation couldn’t help but make each of them struggle to reach out. Even a grinder like Prader who claimed to be so callous had clearly been affected by her team. After several minutes of silence, the captain nodded.

“It’s decided, then. We keep our original crews or we shut them out. If we have to, we leave. There’s no avoiding the fact that if we cave on this, if we start giving ground to their authority, we’re going to lose our control over the camp, our safety, and our privacy. Meg, any ideas how to handle this?”

“I do, sir. I get the feeling the two at my booth are kind of important.” She tipped her head toward Baddo. “They have the biggest entourage. Let’s move as a group toward them.” They turned on her cue and walked slowly toward the pair of booths where Baddo, Loul, and the crew stood waiting. Loul pressed his fists into the front of his hips, a sign Meg recognized as anxiety. Ba and Addo straightened up as the Earthers approached, smiles wide, their thrums rolling low and in sync.

The Earthers stopped in a straight line three feet from the crew. The cameras purred, catching the encounter from several angles, and Baddo stepped forward together, Addo holding out his hand to block Loul from stepping forward as well. Meg took a deep breath to control her temper before taking another step out in front of the Earthers.

She pointed at Addo, looking at the Earthers. “Addo.” She spoke loudly so the Dideto could hear her. Her four crewmates repeated the word, nodding at the man. Then she pointed at the
woman. “Ba.” Again, they repeated the name and the Dideto duo smiled large.

Then Meg turned to Addo and tapped her own chest. “Meg.”

“Yes,” Addo shouted through a smile aimed at the cameras.

Then she pointed at Cho and said nothing. Addo blinked at her, not understanding. She tapped Cho’s chest and tilted her head. She tapped her own chest. “Meg.” Then tapped Cho.

Addo looked to his partner first and then to Loul. Neither said anything. Meg moved down to Wagner, tapping his chest and arching an eyebrow at Addo. When still nothing came, she moved to Jefferson and then Prader, all to silence. “No?” She asked Addo.

She turned to Ba, whose smile dimmed. Meg got the feeling Ba was the smarter of the duo. Meg started from the top, pointing as she went. “Addo. Ba. Meg.” When she pointed to Cho, she tipped her head and waited. Ba’s hum hitched as she barked out what sounded like a command to Loul, who remained silent. One after another, she pointed to the Earthers, who stood as still as stones, waiting to hear their names.

“No?” Meg asked again. She made a little huff of disapproval and walked slowly until she stood directly in front of Loul. She had to struggle not to grin as he raised his eyes to her.

“Loul,” she said, loving the way the flush rose around the edges of his face. She repeated the list of names. But this time, when she pointed to Cho, she didn’t have to wait.

“Cho,” Loul said, his voice steady as she moved on. “Agnar, Cheffson, Prader.”

Meg turned toward her fellow Earthers, who made a point of glancing up and down the line at each other. After a moment, Wagner shrugged. “Close enough.”

“Indeed.” Meg smiled and turned back to the Dideto. “Loul no move.” When Ba and Addo started shouting protests, she held
up her hand directly in Addo’s face, silencing them both. “Baddo move. Meg Loul talk. Loul no move.”

She stepped back in line with the Earthers. “Loul no move.”

Cho spoke next. “Effan Effan no move.”

Wagner: “Olum no move.”

Jefferson: “Ben Na no move.”

Prader: “Kik no move.”

Nobody moved. Meg could hear teeth grinding and pitches rising and falling as the simple statements sank in. Addo broke the silence, stomping up to Meg and letting loose a torrent of words loudly enough to blow the hair away from her face. Meg didn’t flinch. She let him talk and yell, never looking away from his eyes. When he finished, she said simply, “No.”

On her whispered cue, the five Earthers turned on their heels and, as one, sank cross-legged to the ground, their backs to the stunned Dideto.

“You want to tell us what the hell is going on here, Pell?” Ba squeezed his arm, her breath unpleasantly sweet as it blew across his face. She was the first to break the long, stunned silence after the Urfers’ remarkable standoff. Nobody moved; even the camera operators froze when the five aliens turned and folded down onto their legs in that bizarre way of theirs. Of course, to the contact crews, the teams who had been working face-to-face with the Urfers since their landing, the flexibility and agility weren’t so shocking anymore. And once he’d been fitted for the earpiece, Loul now understood how they pulled off that eerie synchronized movement. But even with that, the effect of the movement and the sight of those slender backs sitting perfectly still amazed him. He could only imagine the effect it had on the newcomers.

True to what he’d learned of the reporters, however, Baddo reacted with a distinct lack of wonder and huge dose of umbrage. It didn’t seem to matter that a team of space-traveling aliens had confronted them; all that seemed to matter was that someone had dared to defy them, block them, and turn them away. And that those someones had chosen lower-level work crews over
the vaunted presence of the world-famous Baddo, well, that was beyond science fiction, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ba,” Loul shrugged, keeping his voice low in the habit he’d assumed since working with Meg. He didn’t really need to. With their backs to the crowd, he knew the sound wouldn’t be as loud to the Urfers. But he sort of hoped the altered tone would remind Baddo that he was the one who knew how to talk with the aliens. He was the one who knew how to express and explain concepts to them, and, most importantly, he was the one Meg had insisted on working with.

Meg had more than insisted. The look on her face and the way her voice had dropped into a low, hard tone sent a thrill through Loul he could barely contain. These Urfers seemed so frail in so many ways, their limbs fragile and their voices high and breathy, but when she’d leaned into Addo and held that bony palm in his face, there had been no mistaking the power radiating from her. It was almost ferocity. And after the weeks roaming freely though the work field, Loul had gotten used to the loose expressiveness of the Urfers, their reedlike body movements and wide liquid eyes. To see them lock up like they had and stand as one rigid, unmovable force before Baddo and the administration’s work teams, that they had come together like that because of the lower-ranking work crews, Loul really wasn’t lying to Ba. He didn’t have the words.