Fiction River: Moonscapes (31 page)

She remained standing for a minute. Then she took one of the nearby human chairs, as much to prevent herself from going to him as to wait for him to calm a little.

He folded his arms on his knees and buried his head. His shoulders shook.

She watched. She’d seen similar reactions before, usually from parents who had lost children or people who had lost lovers. Sometimes it took quite a while for the person to calm down.

She didn’t have quite a while. She was going to have to interrupt him eventually. Just not yet.

After about five minutes, he raised his head slightly, and wiped his face with his sleeve. He didn’t apologize for his reaction like some people had done. He didn’t seem to care what she thought at all.

“You’re going to give me to them now?” he asked, voice trembling.

“To whom?” she asked.

“The
enclave
.” He used her word, as if it were forbidden.

“Of course not,” she said. “They tried to kill you.”

He bit his lower lip again, but he couldn’t seem to stop it from shaking. He took a deep breath.

“You’ll let me stay with the Eaufasse?”

How to explain to this boy, who didn’t even seem to know what the Earth Alliance was, the politics of the situation? Treaties, agreements, preliminary negotiations, all of that would have an impact on him if he stayed here.

Not to mention the fact that he was probably a clone, the third of the second—whatever that meant—which made him not human. If Okani was right, and the Eaufasse understood that the boy was property, then they might fight for him in a different way.

“You need to clarify some things for me before I can decide what to do,” she said. She had to tread lightly because she didn’t want him to reveal his origins. “Can you explain the twelve coming after you four?”

His expression hardened. “It’s a training exercise.”

“So you were what? Running from them and those who survived got higher marks in the training?”

“I wasn’t supposed to survive,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to go back until we’re all dead.”

She froze. She had asked Rainger to locate the twelve, but he hadn’t gotten back to her on them yet. She had no idea if they had gone back into the enclave.

“What happens if one of you escapes?” she asked.

“We won’t escape,” he said. “They’re supposed to kill us.”

But you all look the same,
she wanted to say.
How will they know if they missed you?
But she didn’t say any of that. She had to be careful, with the Eaufasse involved.

“And if they don’t kill you?” she asked.

“They will die too,” he said flatly.

So much death. What was the point of that?

“Why would they die?” she asked.

“They failed,” he said in that same flat voice.

“Does everyone die if they fail?” she asked. If so, how many clones lived inside that dome?

“On training, yes,” he said. “You can’t have a failure in a unit.”

Again the voice was flat. As if he were telling her something normal but painful. Something he didn’t want to think about because he didn’t want to know exactly how it made him feel.

“Training,” she repeated. “What are you training for?”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Not for anything. For training.”

“But training is for something. You train for something,” she said.

“We have a job. The best of us will do it.” Then he looked at his hands. “The best of
them
will do it.”

He filled the word “them” with anger. All of the emotion he had felt but hadn’t expressed so far.

He saw himself as a failure. Or someone as a failure. And it had made him disposable. Useless. Something worse than a failure.

“You can’t do the job? Even though you’ve survived?” she asked, wanting to know what all of this was.

“
I cannot survive
,” he said. “Don’t you understand? That’s why I need to stay here.”

She let out a small sigh. “You can’t stay here.”

His mouth tightened and his eyes flashed. “So, you’ll send me out to die, just like the others. You
lied
. You said you didn’t want to hurt me.”

She held up her hands again in that I-don’t-mean-harm position. “I will not send you out to die. I will make sure you stay here until we can get you safely away.”

“Then what?” he asked. “Where will I be if not with the Eaufasse or in the dome?”

“I’ll take you somewhere else in the Alliance,” she said.

“How can you? There is nowhere else.” He spoke with great conviction. This little stretch of Epriccom was his whole universe. He had no idea that any place else existed.

His ignorance took her breath away.

“Oh,” she said, sounding odd, because she couldn’t bring herself to say his name, “there are so many places. You’ll be happily surprised.”

“Surprise is bad,” he said.

She supposed in his world, it would be. “Do you know what a universe is?”

He shook his head.

“A world?”

He shook his head again.

“A city?”

“No.” He sounded sullen.

“What do you call the dome?” she asked.

“The dome,” he said as if she were stupid.

“There are thousands of domes,” she said. “Millions. Tens of millions.”

“I’ve never seen another,” he said in a tone that implied
you lie
.

“You’ll see many if you come with me,” she said.

He studied her for a moment. “You are female.”

“Yes,” she said, wondering if he’d ever seen a woman in the flesh before.

“You have dark skin,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to add
Like almost everyone else
.

“Brown eyes.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Brown hair.”

“Yes,” she said, wondering where he was going with this.

“I’ve only read about creatures like you,” he said. “In the Forbidden Documents.”

He said that like she should know what those documents were. She didn’t. She would have to find out.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said.

“No,” she said, trying to sound calm. “You’re supposed to let twelve of your siblings find you and kill you.”

He closed his eyes. A tear ran down his cheek.

“The rules of the dome no longer apply to you,” she said. “Either you die following them or you come with me.”

“I can’t stay with the Eaufasse?” he asked.

“They don’t know what to do with you,” she said.

“Tell them what to do.” He opened his eyes.

She let out a small involuntary chuckle. As if she knew what to do with him.

“I can’t,” she said. “Their choice was to call me and ask me to take you away from here.”

“If I leave, they’ll kill me.”

“The Eaufasse?” she asked.

“The ones you call the twelve,” he said.

His use of language was fascinating.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll protect you.”

She used that word on purpose. Protect.

He heard it. He looked up at her, his eyes wide. “We?”

“I have an entire crew of people,” she said. “Dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned people.”

“Not from the dome?” he asked.

“None of us have even been near your dome,” she said.

“And you can keep me safe?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “We can keep you safe.”

***

In the end, he decided to trust her. She wasn’t sure if he trusted her because she had used the word “protect” or because she looked nothing like the people he was used to or because he was smart enough to realize he had no other choice.

The result was the same. He was coming with her.

Once the boy decided what he would do, she opened the door just a little and asked for Washington. Okani stood near the window, swaying slightly, as if he were worried. The Eaufasse watched. She couldn’t tell what it thought.

For that brief moment the door was open, her links clicked on, filling her mind with familiar static, the sound of possibility. Then Washington entered, carrying the body suit, and she closed the door. The links shut out.

Except Washington’s. She could sense it more than hear it.

First the boy looked at Washington. He stood near the door, the suit draped over his right arm. His weapon was half hidden beneath it. She should have had him remove the weapon.

She had no idea how trustworthy the boy was.

The boy looked from Washington to her. “He’s darker,” the boy said.

He hadn’t learned social skills, or at least, acceptable social skills.

“We’re all different,” she said, wondering as she spoke the words, if the boy knew that.

“I know you’re different,” he snapped. “Everyone’s different. But your skin is different.”

She glanced at Washington, and saw a look of compassion on his broad face. This poor boy had a lot to learn, and much of it, he wouldn’t like. Not as long as he was a clone.

“Yes,” Gomez said. “Our skin is different.”

“Was that a deliberate design choice?” the boy asked. “Was there a purpose for it?”

Her breath caught. It seemed the boy had no end of ways to surprise her.

“We’ll answer the questions as best we can once we leave here,” she said. “Let’s get you out first. This is my deputy, Kyle Washington. He brought you a protective suit.”

“Why?” the boy asked her. Yeah, no social skills. He didn’t even acknowledge Washington’s existence beyond his appearance.

“We want to make sure you’re safe as you leave here,” she said.

“And that will do it?” the boy asked, nodding his head toward the suit.

“It will help,” she said.

Washington set the suit on the table between them. The boy looked at it, then looked at Washington.

“I can’t wear this,” the boy said, his voice trembling.

“It should fit,” Washington said.

“It’s for an Elder,” the boy said.

“It’s for someone we need to keep safe,” Gomez said. “Remember, the rules here are different from the dome rules. We decide who gets to wear the good suit.”

The boy reached out with his right hand. He touched the suit ever so lightly. Then he glanced up at her.

“This is a trick,” he said.

“No trick,” she said.

“You do not wear a suit,” he said.

“My clothing gives me protection,” she said, instead of the thing she originally thought:
No one’s trying to kill me
.

His eyes narrowed. She could see him weighing his options, trying to figure out what to do next.

Maybe we should explain that we’re on his side?
Washington sent through the links.

Are we?
She sent back.
We have no idea who he is or why they tried to kill him. For all we know, he’s defective and they were just protecting their enclave.

Damn strange way to protect it
, Washington sent.

She agreed. But she wasn’t going to make any assumptions. Not yet.

Finally, the boy took the suit. He held it in front of himself as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

“Just step into it,” Washington said. “It’ll do the rest.”

The boy looked up, startled that Washington had spoken to him. Then the boy touched the interior of the suit, sniffed it, and rubbed his fingers against the edge. He glanced at Washington again, as if he could tell if Washington were lying to him just by speaking.

Finally, the boy put one foot inside the suit, and then the other. His face registered panic for just an instant, and then the suit closed around him.

Gomez half expected to see him flail. He didn’t. He didn’t do anything for a long moment after the suit assembled itself on him. Slowly he raised a hand and looked at it.

She knew how he was feeling. The suit was heavier than expected, and it had information running along the bottom of the visor: temperature, oxygen levels, even danger fields—if it were programmed that way. She wasn’t sure this one was.

Finally the boy lowered his arm. “Do I get a weapon?” he asked. He nodded toward Washington’s laser pistol.

Gomez cursed silently. She had hoped he wouldn’t notice it.

“No,” she said. Then she sent an override command to the boy’s suit. It would be under her direction. The boy could make it do minimal things—move, walk, change the information on the visor. But she could stop it at any point, shut it down, or make any part of it buckle.

In other words, she could send it tumbling to the ground if need be—with the boy in it.