Randoms (20 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

O
n Earth, Mi Sun likely might have died. At the very least she would have been in the hospital for months, probably never fully recovered. But as I'd seen in the aftermath of the attack on the
Dependable
, things worked differently here in the Confederation. Before Mi Sun had even hit the floor, the nanites in her system were at work to put her in stasis and stabilize her until she could reach the medical facility across the government compound. There they spent about six hours working their high-tech, largely automated magic on her. All the initiates, even Ardov, sat in the waiting room in respectful silence, the only sound the endless clacking of Ms. Price's keyboard. Finally we received word, via our bracelets, that Mi Sun would make a complete recovery. She was awake and in no pain, but it was a sign of the seriousness of her injuries that she would have to stay in the facility for forty-eight hours, after which she would be back to normal.

“I'm glad that's finally over,” Ms. Price said. She made her keyboard vanish, rose, and walked out of the waiting room.

I echoed her sentiment, and maybe even felt it a little more than she did. I didn't have warm and fuzzy feelings about Mi Sun, but she was a person, if an unpleasant one, and I didn't want anything terrible to happen to her. Nothing too terrible, at least. Setbacks, sure. Embarrassment, you bet. Abject apologizing for her rotten behavior toward me? Absolutely. The bottom line was that she was a member of my team, and I didn't want
Earth to lose one of its delegates, but that was the latter logical reaction. My first emotional response was that I simply did not want someone I knew to die.

I felt a flood of relief wash over me, and it was only then that I realized that Tamret, sitting next to me, was holding my hand. It was nice—warm and comforting. Her fur was like the softest down imaginable, and I felt the cool of her finger pads underneath and just a hint of her retracted claws. Her touch seemed comforting and dangerous at the same time, and I liked the sensation. I couldn't help but wonder what it all meant.

“I thought she was dead for sure,” Ardov said. “Does this mean we can't be killed here?”

Dr. Roop made no effort to hide his irritation, but still answered. “You can survive most serious injuries provided you are near a medical facility. A direct wound to the heart or a catastrophic brain injury is almost always fatal.” He looked at all of us. “But I don't want anyone to take foolish chances. And no more sparring at anything under level six from now on.”

“That's no fun,” Ardov said with a smirk.

“You can all go back to your rooms now,” Dr. Roop said. “Except you, Ardov. I want to see you in my office.”

Charles and Nayana were already leaving. I let go of Tamret's hand and looked at her and Steve. “Will you guys hold on? I want to go talk to Mi Sun for a minute.”

Tamret squinted at me. Her whiskers twitched. “Why? She hates you.”

“It could have been me in there,” I said.

Tamret lowered her eyes, and her ears rotated back. “You're right. But you're nicer than she deserves.”

I wasn't just being grateful and a good teammate. I wanted
to talk to someone from my own world about something I'd been thinking about. Charles was impossible to talk to, and I didn't think Nayana would have any insights. Mi Sun was my best shot, and I hoped her near-death experience would maybe take the edge off of her.

She sat propped up on a bed in a private room, a million machines monitoring her, beeping and humming softly. There were tubes wired into her arm. It looked like a high-tech version of an Earth hospital room. For all the seriousness of her injuries, she was now awake and reading off her data bracelet. She looked at me in surprise when I came through the door.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I couldn't stay away. I'm in love with you, Mi Sun. I have been since the moment we met. From my first taste of your antisocial rudeness, I've longed for your scornful gaze.”

She wrinkled up her face. “Gross. You're messing with me. Aren't you?”

“I am totally messing with you,” I said, sitting in a chair across from the foot of her bed.

“Way to go—trying to stress out the girl who practically died.” She was almost smiling when she said it, though. I don't think I'd ever seen her smile before.

“I'll try to work on my sensitivity,” I told her.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “So, what do you want? You don't have to thank me. I was just trying to keep our planet from—” She stopped herself, and her face softened. I had the feeling she'd been about to say something nasty, and then changed her mind. “If the situation had been reversed, and there was some kind of incredibly dorky thing that needed doing, I know you'd have stepped in for me.”

It was the nicest thing she'd ever said to me. It was maybe the nicest thing any human being had said to me since I'd left Earth. “I would,” I told her.

“Now that we've settled that, you can go.” She turned away.

I was not ready to go. I took a deep breath because I knew this was not going to go well. “Did you ever read
Ender's Game
?”

“Why are you such a geek?” she asked me. “I was almost killed, and you come visit me in the hospital to ask me about a stupid science-fiction story?”

“Just hear me out,” I said. “It's about this kid who—”

“I saw the movie, okay?” She rolled her eyes.

“The book is better,” I told her.

“Whatever,” she said. “Make a point. I'm tired.”

“You remember how they have Ender playing all these games supposedly to train him to fight the enemy, but it turns out he's really been fighting them the whole time? It looks like training, but it is really the actual battle, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “What are you getting at? You don't think that's what's going on here, do you?”

“No, it can't be, but I do think we're being used, or at least trained. Everything we're doing is either to train us to fight the Phands or to help the Confederation understand Former tech, which is in the service of fighting the Phands. I'm starting to feel like humans were chosen because we're more, I don't know, violent than other species in the Confederation. Before we left Earth, Ms. Price kept talking about how they're all sheep compared to us.”

“So what?” she asked. “They picked us because we have something they need to help the Confederation. I don't have a problem with that.”

“The problem is that they're not being honest. Tamret and Steve and I—”

“Stop,” she said. “I don't care what you and your Scooby-Doo gang get up to, but don't make me part of it. I just want to keep my head down and gain levels. You should do the same. I can't make you stop acting like an idiot, but I don't have to listen to your theories, either.”

“I understand, but—”

“I said I don't want to hear it,” she snapped.

I sighed and rose from my chair. “Okay, fine.” I went toward the door, and then I turned back. “You really put up a fight.”

She frowned. “He still won.”

“He's still a jerk.”

“So am I,” she said.

“The universe is so vast and full of wonders that it actually contains a bigger jerk than you. Feel better.” I was turning to leave again, when she called me back.

“Hey, where are Charles and Nayana?”

“They went to get food,” I said.

“So you're the only one who came to visit me?”

“I guess so.”

“That's pathetic,” she said with a scowl. “But thanks.”

“No problem.” I turned back to look at her. “I have to know something, though.”

“What?” she asked uneasily.

“When you talk about my Scooby-Doo gang, is that a primary reference to
Scooby Doo, Where Are You!
or a secondary reference to
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
?”

“Get out of my room,” she answered.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

S
teve and Tamret and I decided to—literally—take our minds off what happened to Mi Sun, and we took a train to visit the Theater of Plant Experience, a bizarre entertainment where you fed data into your HUD and got to spend half an hour as a tree or a bush or whatever vegetable you liked. It was hard to explain, but strangely relaxing. I left feeling that I'd like to be a plant again some time, but never for too long.

The theater was in what was called the Spin District, and after we left, we used our bracelets to find a restaurant nearby. Steve picked a place that offered a wide selection of living food. The selections for me were more limited, but I figured I could be a sport, and I finally ordered [
seaweed-based noodlelike substance
] in a spicy [
no translation available, but biologically compatible
] gravy. It was good. I recommend it. Tamret proved that girls from across the galaxy share certain things in common and ordered a [
salad
].

The restaurant was on a giant patio, hanging over a busy air thoroughfare, and the floor was made of a durable substance, completely transparent, so we could look down and see the lights of the passing vehicles whisking by in the darkness. It was beautiful and utterly futuristic, like the central planets in the
Firefly
universe.

Tamret was wearing a sleeveless lavender dress, and she had her hair tied up in a bun, bordered by the protuberances of
her ears. She sat with her back toward the railing, and she was lit by the city lights and stars and planet and moon outside the dome. I was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved black shirt that had somehow avoiding wrinkling. I thought I was presentable, but I was under no illusion I looked as good as she did.

I was explaining to them my
Ender's Game
concerns, without making any references to
Ender's Game
, of course. I hadn't been able to shake the notion that we were being trained for something, and that whatever that something was, it probably involved fighting the Phands.

“So what are you saying?” Tamret asked. “That we're like second-class citizens being recruited as their soldiers?”

“I've been thinking about that too,” Steve said as he used a tonglike utensil to grab at individual blue worms, or maybe snakes, or whatever they were, wriggling around in a bowl. He popped one in his mouth. “Been doing some reading, too. You know most of the beings here are herbivores, yeah?

I ate my spicy noodle things. “That's old news.”

“But this might not be. Most of the planets these beings come from have no carnivores at all. Not even among their animals.”

This got our attention. “You're kidding,” Tamret said.

Steve shook his head. “No, I double-checked. Most of these beings come from planets where no creatures eat other creatures. Confederation scientists believe that intelligent life is more likely to evolve on worlds where there are no predators.”

“That's not what I learned in biology,” I said. “I thought that predators promote evolution by forcing animals to adapt in order to survive.”

“Sure,” Steve said, “if what you want is to survive being
hunted by a predator. But when you've got all your mates being eaten all the time, there's more food for you, right? That favors traits like speed, environmental awareness, camouflage, and such. Now take away the predators. You've got more animals competing for fewer resources, so that promotes a different type of adaptation. The animals that can best exploit their environments win out over those that are less efficient, so that means intelligence, creativity, problem solving, invention, and all that. Those are traits that, on our worlds, you tend to find among predators. These herbivores are like carnivores that eat plants.”

“Except they don't know how to hunt,” Tamret said.

“Exactly.” Steve nodded. “Now, the last time they brought in initiates, one species was a carnivore and one an omnivore. The time before that, one omnivore. Then you have to go back eight years to find one carnivore species.”

“The Vaaklir,” I said. Urch's species.

“Very good, mate,” Steve said, clearly impressed. “Before that, almost fifty years. You see what I'm getting at? Looks like the Confederation is trying to get cozy with its dark side.”

“And when you combine that with all the ways they have us train,” I speculated, “it makes it pretty clear they're gearing up for war.”

“I still don't see the problem,” Tamret said. “There are hundreds of worlds in the Confederation. Three more isn't going to turn any kind of tide. It seems to me that they're just fine-tuning. They're tweaking their culture, but they are doing it over the long term.”

“I hope you're right,” I told her, “because I get the feeling that things are more focused than that.”

“Let's keep our tongues scenting the air, but I don't want to worry too much, if you know what I mean. Look at this place.” Steve gestured toward the cityscape and the stars beyond. “No point in looking for trouble.”

“I know what you mean.” Tamret looked out at the city, and a sadness crossed her face. “I hate the thought that we're going to have to leave in less than a year.”

I nodded. “I miss my mom and all, but when I think about the Earth, it doesn't really feel like home anymore. This does.”

Tamret met my gaze, and suddenly it felt like Steve wasn't there: It was just the two of us, and we were thinking the same thing, even if I wasn't entirely sure what that thing was. My heart was pounding, and I wanted so much to say something to her, but I didn't know what. It was like there were words I needed her to hear, but they were just outside my grasp. I felt like a moron, staring at her, but she was staring back. I thought,
Maybe I don't need any words at all. Maybe all I need is to sit here, with the stars and the shuttles and spaceships and lights of alien buildings all around us.
Maybe that was all I needed to be happy.

Then I felt a shadow cross my vision, and I turned to see someone looming over our table.

It was Ardov. Thiel stood behind him, looking bored, and Semj was by her, his expression distant, like he was doing math problems in his head. Ardov was grinning, and I knew that was never a good thing.

“Can you believe how fragile that human girl was?” he said. “They shouldn't let beings so breakable into the Confederation. Anything could happen to them at any time.”

“This is too unpleasant to be a coincidence,” Steve said.

I started to rise, but I felt the smooth scales of Steve's fingers on my wrist, pinning my hand to the table. I understood what he was telling me. He wasn't about to see what happened to Mi Sun happen to me. I nodded to him to show him I understood, and he let go.

“I messaged Tamret,” Ardov said with unmistakable pride, “and told her to let me know where you were. I figured maybe Zeke here wants a chance to vindicate his fellow human in the sparring room. It should have been him, after all.”

Why would Tamret have answered his message? And why hadn't Tamret told us about it? I couldn't figure out why she put up with him the way she did, but that was a matter for another time. For now I knew I had to make sure he didn't push us around. “I'm flattered that you like us so much you want to hang out with us,” I told him, “but we're having a private conversation.”

“I was talking
about
you, not
to
you,” he said. “No one gave you permission to hoot, [
monkey
] boy. We're here for Tamret.” He gestured with his head. “Come on, Snowflake. You've spent enough time playing with the animals. I need you to do my laundry.”

I stood up. My heart was thundering, but I willed myself to be calm. Ardov was taller than I was, and stronger, and a better fighter. He'd almost killed Mi Sun in an environment designed to make injury all but impossible. I had no doubt that he could destroy me without much trouble, but I had to bet that he wouldn't be willing to risk a conflict. I did not want to have to fight him, but I'd rather end up in the hospital with no one but Mi Sun to talk to than let him put his hands on Tamret.

“We're trying to enjoy a nice dinner among friends,” I said,
my voice almost steady. “You've had your fun today. How about you give it a rest?”

“How about you sit back down,” he said, “before I throw you over the rail. You think the nanites would save you from that?”

Steve had a pair of wiggling creatures trapped in his tongs, but he made no effort to eat them. Instead, he sampled the air with two quick flits of his thin tongue. “You could try that, I reckon, but I can taste what you're going to do before you do it—you couldn't so much as reach out to my mate here with one furry hand without me seeing it coming. Then it would be you going over the rail wondering how the nanites factor in when you hit the ground from a quarter mile up. You want to bet I'm wrong? Give it a try.” He dropped the creatures in his mouth and swallowed without chewing.

Ardov grinned down at me. “You can't fight your own battles? You need your pet to do it for you?”

“Nice try,” Steve said, “but we're a team. There's no you against him. It's you lot against us. You like those odds? I know I do.”

Tamret now rose. “It's fine, Zeke.” Her voice was quiet, soft. “I'll go with them.”

“No!” I said, more loudly than I intended. “You don't have to go if you don't want to.”

“She wants to be with her own kind. Don't you, Snowflake?”

“Yeah, I want to go.” She didn't sound like she meant it, but she didn't sound like she didn't, either. I just couldn't read her and couldn't understand why she was letting Ardov order her around. I watched them walk away, Ardov's arm around her shoulder until they disappeared into the elevator.

“You can probably sit down now, mate,” Steve said.

I sat. “What is going on with the two of them?”

“No idea,” Steve said. “I don't know mammals, but I do know beings, and there's something weird there.”

“I just hope she's okay,” I said.

“You find out that git is messing with her, you let me know,” he said, picking up some more of his worm things. “I'd like to have a good reason to break his arms. And his legs. The medical blokes will mend him when I'm finished, so no harm done.”

•   •   •

I wanted to see if I could gently pry some information out of Tamret at breakfast the next day, but she didn't show up. I tried to act like I wasn't worried, and resigned myself to waiting until class to see her. As we approached the classroom that morning, however, we saw there was a commotion up ahead, by Dr. Roop's office. There were several beings in peace officer uniforms, and they appeared to be arguing with Dr. Roop. And then I noticed the Rarel delegation hanging around outside the door. I didn't get along with any of them, but I had to know what was happening.

“What's going on?” I asked Thiel. Semj was the least objectionable of their group, but I couldn't guarantee he would speak to me if I asked him, and after last night's generous portion of intimidation, I didn't want to so much as make eye contact with Ardov.

“Ugh,” she said. “It's Tamret. Who else? She's been caught.”

“Caught doing what?” I asked, not bothering to keep the alarm out of my voice.

“Hacking. I swear by [
the deity of the caste system
], she's such an embarrassment.”

“Is she in real trouble?” What if she got kicked out? What if they put her in some kind of jail? I couldn't bear the thought of it.

“Could be,” said Ardov, coming up behind me. He was chewing on a piece of dried meat, like jerky, and grinning like this was the best morning ever. “Though if she ruins our delegation's chances, she is in for a hard time when she gets back home.”

“Good,” Thiel said. “She deserves it.”

“I don't think our Snowflake deserves
that
,” Ardov said.

Finally Tamret came out of the room, looking embarrassed, something I had never thought possible for her. Dr. Roop had a hand on one of her shoulders, and his neck was lowered, as though this were his own shame. The peace officers left without Tamret, however, and I considered that a good sign.

“Tamret has made a mistake, and she's sorry,” Dr. Roop explained to us. “We'll talk about it more at another time. Suffice it to say that between this and Ardov hurting Mi Sun, the Rarel delegation has not made the best impression.”

I immediately pulled her to a quiet corner of the hallway. “What happened?”

“Calm down,” she said, pulling away from my grip. “It's no big deal. I was just rooting around in the experience-points database. They found out and overreacted. It's not like I could harm them. You can't even tinker with Confederation citizens' accounts.”

“That's still careless, love,” Steve told her. “They don't muck about with that sort of thing.”

“Maybe.” She looked sullen and defiant, like she didn't much care one way or another.

“What's going to happen to you if your delegation doesn't get in?” I asked her.

Her eyes latched onto mine. There was something fearful there I didn't like. When Tamret was crazy or defiant or foolish I could handle it. I couldn't deal with seeing her afraid.

“Did someone say something?”

“Ardov kind of hinted things might be bad for you.”

She shook her head, and then she gently brushed strands of lavender hair from her eyes. “That's not your business.”

“I just want to know if there's anything—”

“I said it's not your business!” she shouted. Then she pushed past me and stormed down the hall toward the classroom.

“I don't think she wants to talk about it,” Steve told me, watching her go.