Nomad (18 page)

Kaen landed the shuttle among the trees and scrubland of southwestern Arizona.

They hiked through the hills on foot, just as they had hiked down from other hills in another country, only that morning. The Envoy went with them this time. Spiked plants stuck to its purple skin.

The sun set. The sun-scorched ground continued to radiate heat. Stars came out, more stars than Gabe had ever seen from the Earth before—but far fewer stars than he had seen from the dark side of the moon.

“Not far now,” the Envoy said. “Just over the crest of the next hill.”

They climbed the hill and looked down at the detention center: a warehouse surrounded by razor wire, illuminated with huge flood lamps and patrolled at the gates by armed soldiers.

Gabe searched for a way in. He searched for a way out. He found neither.

“Can you present yourself as ambassador and demand his release?” Kaen asked. “Or at least
negotiate
for his release?”

“No,” Gabe said. The word fell from his mouth like a dropped brick. “No one knows I'm the ambassador.”

“Difficult to represent a world if that world doesn't know about it,” Kaen observed.

“Very,” Gabe said.

The Envoy spoke kindly and cautiously. “Now you've seen this place. Now you understand that we cannot help your father, not at this moment, not for the duration of his detainment here. We must leave, and fly farther north to rejoin the rest of your family. You must be patient, Gabe, and we must leave.”

Gabe said nothing. He stared at the lights and the wires and the gates. Then he turned away.

Five armed and uniformed men stood behind him.

*  *  *  *

Gabe and Kaen tried to run in opposite directions. This didn't work out very well. One of the soldiers tackled Gabe. Another grabbed Kaen by the arm.

Her bracelet broke in his grip.

Two more soldiers held weapons ready, but the fifth
raised both hands in an
everybody please calm down
sort of gesture.

“Easy, kids,” he said. “Easy, now. What are you doing up here?”

Kaen said something rapid and outraged. None of it made sense to the soldiers, or to Gabe.

Her translator broke
, he realized.
Sweet mango chutney, we are so completely screwed.

The soldiers spoke to each other as though neither Gabe nor Kaen were actually there.

“That wasn't Spanish.
Was
that Spanish?”

“What did they do, break out of the center?”

“Nah. I think they just picked a very bad place to hop the border. Bad for them. Easy for us.”

The soldiers all shouldered their weapons. Then they used plastic zip lines to tie Gabe's and Kaen's wrists behind their backs.

“Come on, kids. At least we don't have to take you far.”

They marched down the hill—all but the unnoticed Envoy, who peeked up cautiously from a hole in the desert sand.

*  *  *  *

The two ambassadors sat in the detention center intake office. It was an ugly room. Fluorescent lights flickered
overhead. A bored and sleepy-looking guard with a clipboard sat in front of them.

“We don't have any more room,” she grumbled. “We're way over capacity already. I turned away an entire busload of unaccompanied Guatemalan toddlers this morning. And now they bring in two strays picked up right outside the door? We should just toss you back.”

Gabe felt a small, bright spark of hope.

The guard noticed. “So you understand English,” she said. “But your friend doesn't.” She took notes. “I'll need to know your names, where you were born, how you crossed the border, and how long you've been in the United States.” She repeated the question in rote and monotone Spanish.

Gabe felt the spark fade.

“Name?” the guard asked again. “¿Nombre?”

I am Gabriel Sandro Fuentes
, he thought.
I am the ambassador of Terra and all Terran life. And I happen to be a U.S. citizen already, thank you very much. I've got a xeroxed copy of my birth certificate in my backpack. Which is back inside the shuttlecraft. But it doesn't matter anyway, because Kaen has no papers and I'm not leaving her here. So you don't get to know who I am.

“Kid, just tell me your name.”

Gabe mixed together his own name and Zorro's. “Gabriel de la Vega.”

“And yours?” she asked Kaen. “Name? ¿Nombre?”

Kaen said nothing.

“Citlalli,” Gabe offered. “Se llama Citlalli Pulido.”

The guard noticed Kaen respond to the name that was actually her own. “Good enough.” She stood up from behind the desk. “Follow me. We'll finish your intake procedure in the morning.”

*  *  *  *

The detention center was really just a warehouse. Chain-link fences split the one big room into separate sections, which made it look massive and claustrophobic at the same time. The air was dry and cold. Sunlight never baked the ground in here.

Many hundreds of kids covered the entire floor, trying to sleep. Silvery mylar blankets covered the kids.

Everybody in here is young
, Gabe thought.
Really young. So where's Dad?

Kaen and Gabe each got a folded mylar blanket of their own. Then they got separated, Kaen to the girls' half of the center and Gabe to bunk with the boys. They had no chance to speak first, and they wouldn't have understood each other anyway.

The guard shut Gabe into a small square of fenced-in floor. Gabe stepped over and around the other boys to reach an open stretch to lie in. Then he tried to get comfortable, but that wasn't really possible.

The smaller lump of blanket to his left was sobbing and trying to hide it. Gabe made a low shushing noise, the same noise he always made to comfort his twin toddler siblings. The younger kid snuggled up closer. His sob-hitched breathing turned to snores.

“You're good with the little ones,” whispered the kid to the right, his Spanish thick with an accent Gabe didn't recognize. “Excellent. I nominate you for babysitting duty tomorrow.”

I'll still be here tomorrow
, Gabe realized with slow certainty.
I'll still be stuck behind warehouse walls and razor wire in the morning.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Sure. I'll watch him.”

The other kid stuck out a hand. “Gustavo. Call me Gus.”

Gabe took it. “Gabriel. Call me Gabe.”

“Let me give you a quick rundown of the place,” Gus whispered. “This
could
wait until morning, but I'll probably get transferred in the morning. We get moved around a lot.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Okay, the first thing to know is that permisos are a lie. A bad rumor. Practically everyone in here comes believing that the U.S. grants children a permanent pass if we ask for sanctuary. But they don't. They just toss you back—fast if you're from Mexico, and slower if you hiked here from farther south, but either way they'll throw you out again. And the guards
get angry if you ask them about permisos, so don't ask. Especially not Huppenthal. He's the worst. Tall white guy. Look for the name tag. If it says ‘Huppenthal,' do everything you can to avoid him. Don't even make eye contact.”

“Got it,” Gabe whispered. “Avoid Huppenthal.”

“And take care of little Tavo there. Especially if I get transferred tomorrow. Find somebody to take over watching him before you get yourself processed and transferred. He's tough. Made the crossing all by himself. They picked him up in Texas by the side of the road. But he's also three, and he has trouble sleeping. Usually. Nice to hear him snoring now.”

“I'll watch him,” Gabe promised. “His name's Tavo?”

“Octavio,” Gus told him. “Little Octavio Fuentes.”

It took all of Gabe's diplomatic skill to smile and nod rather than scream at the distant ceiling.

Octavio Fuentes. Three years old. That's thirty-six
months,
not thirty-six
years.
Translation glitch. I came looking for Dad and found a toddler. Which means that Dad might still be free, still crossing over the coyote trails. That's the good news. But the bad news is that I'm a tremendous idiot. We're stuck. Kaen is going to hate me. I've created a serious intergalactic incident by getting another ambassador arrested.

Gus rolled over and away. “Buenas noches, Gabe. Bienvenido a los Estados Unidos.”

“Buenas noches,” Gabe mumbled. “Welcome to the U.S.A.”

He closed his eyes, slipped into a trance, and traveled.

*  *  *  *

“Be welcome, Ambassador.”

“Greetings, Protocol. Is Kaen here?”

“Ambassador Kaen is currently entangled, and she is expecting you. Please proceed.”

“Thank you, Protocol.”

Gabe walked through the wide expanse of the Chancery, surrounded by the games and negotiations of his fellow ambassadors rather than fences and walls, armed guards and razor wire. He felt like he could breathe again. Then he wondered what he could possibly say to Kaen. Breathing became much more difficult.

One of the clouds shifted to make an arrow. It pointed
up
.

Gabe looked up. Flying ambassadors circled and soared above him. Most of them had wings. Gabe didn't.

“Okay, then,” he said. “So now I need to learn how to fly. Does anyone else down here know how to fly?”

Many of his colleagues did, but their help was not helpful.

“It's not so much about wanting the sky as it is forgetting about the ground.”

“Picture the way matter bends space, and change how
you see that shape. Just fall whichever direction you want to go.”

“You want to fly? Why would anyone want to fly? The hidden and burrowing games are much better than all of that ball throwing and cloud hopping. Don't fly. Learn how to dig.”

“Just think happy thoughts.”

Gabe listened to several offerings of contradictory advice. Then he stood on tiptoes, clenched his hands, and focused hard on the clouds above. Nothing and more nothing happened.

“Learning how to breathe underwater was so much easier,” he said to himself. “I already knew how to swim. I just needed to convince my lungs that they were far away and safe from drowning. But I can't fly, and my whole body knows it. I've got to convince every single part of me that I can.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Sapi said from somewhere above him. She dropped down lightly to the grass. “Stop arguing with all of your various bits. This is a dream, remember? You're dreaming an entangled dream. Haven't you ever dreamed about flying?”

“Hi, Sapi,” Gabe said. “No, I haven't. Or maybe I have. I don't know. I never remembered my dreams before coming here.”

“You poor, sad thing,” Sapi said. “Well, come on. Kaen is waiting for us. The thing about a flying dream is that there aren't really any mechanics involved. No flapping limbs, no imaginary wings. Just movement and intention.”

“That's what I've been trying to do!” Gabe protested. “But
intention
isn't producing much
movement
.”

Sapi pressed all of her fingertips together. “Calm down, close your eyes, and hold both hands up in the air.”

He did. “Now what?”

“Now shut up and be patient. I'll need to take a running start.”

Gabe waited. He kept his eyes closed. Then Sapi grabbed both hands and pulled him into the sky.

*  *  *  *

Kaen sat waiting on the topmost cloud.

Sapi dropped Gabe beside her. He expected to sink through the mist and plummet back down to the Chancery floor. He tried very hard to expect the opposite, just in case his own expectations would determine what happened next.

He sank partway into the cloud before it felt solid enough to sit on. Mist swirled around him like slow fog creeping across graveyards in very old horror movies.

Star clusters filled half of their view above.

Absolutely nothing filled the other half.

“What is that?” he whispered.

“The heart of the sky,” Kaen told him.

“The center of the galaxy,” Sapi clarified. “This is the view from the Embassy, perched on the edge of the great, big, supermassive, Sagittarian black hole—the violent swirl of nothingness that we all spin around. And these stars are the oldest stars, all dead and dying. The first galactic civilizations started here. They ended here. They're all gone now, everything but the Embassy.”

Gabe watched the riotous and overwhelming view. Long streams of fire erupted from suns while they consumed each other.

He glanced sideways at his friend.

“Hi, Kaen,” he said.

“Hi, Gabe,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“I am deeply unimpressed with Terran hospitality,” she said. “And those silvery blankets are useless. But yes, I'm fine otherwise.”

“Good,” Gabe said. “And I'm sorry. I'm such an idiot. You're used to traveling between suns, and I got you stuck in the middle of a petty border dispute in the desert.”

“We'll find a way out again,” Kaen said. “And if we don't, then Speaker Tlatoani will send more ships to find me.”

“I hope it doesn't come to that,” Gabe said, “much as
I love the idea of space Mexicans swooping down on Arizona.”

“Then let's find a way out.”

“Okay. Try to avoid a guard named Huppenthal in the meantime.”

“How will I know any of their names?”

“They're wearing small name tags,” Gabe explained. “Which you can't read without translation. Okay, then. Look for name tags clipped to the front of their uniforms, here. Avoid anyone whose name starts with the letter
H
. That's two parallel lines with one perpendicular line between them. Like this.”

He made an
H
with his hands. Kaen copied it with her own.