Randoms (21 page)

“Thanks for decoding.”

A minute later I saw Semj, the small male Rarel, walking in the hall by himself. I told Steve to head to class, and I hurried to catch up to him.

“What's up, dude,” I said.

He stopped and looked up at me, his eyes an unnerving shade of pink. “They don't want me talking to aliens,” he said in the uninflected tone I tended to associate with complete weirdos.

“I won't be long, then,” I said. “I was just wondering if you know what the story is with Tamret. Why is she going to be in trouble if your delegation doesn't get in?”

“I don't know,” he said.

Maybe he didn't know. Maybe there were a lot of things that other Rarels knew and he didn't because Semj was some kind of supersmart and socially clueless mutant. I was willing to believe that except for the fact that his pink pupils were dilating
and contracting in tiny but rapid bursts, almost like a pulse. I didn't know anything about Rarel behavior, so I had no idea what it meant, but I was willing to guess it suggested he was either lying or nervous.

It was also the kind of minor detail I never would have noticed before. Maybe my enhanced vision was helping me to pick up on subtle details. Those skill points were starting to add up.

“I think you're lying,” I said. “Tell me what you know about it.”

“I guess it's not a secret,” he said, looking at his shoes, which were wide and flat and, admittedly, kind of interesting. “Tamret and Ardov come from the same totalitarian city-state, and her place there is uncertain because she doesn't have a caste. I don't know how she ended up casteless, but she did. That means she has no political protection. If things go badly, she'll be the easiest person for them to take it out on.”

Things were starting to make a little more sense. Maybe.

“I'm leaving now,” Semj said. Then, being a Rarel of his word, he left.

I turned to head back into the classroom, but Ms. Price was standing directly behind me, blocking my way, hands on her hips, her red lips pursed in disapproval. I also had the distinct impression she had been listening to my conversation with Semj, which had been none of her business. I felt myself pressing my teeth together in anger.

“Can I have a minute, Zeke?”

“What?” I folded my arms and stared at her directly. I figured I had nothing to lose by letting her know how I felt.

“I know you've been spending a lot of time with the other random delegates,” she said, “and I suppose I understand that,
but from now on, I'd like you to keep your distance from the Rarel female. She's obviously got some serious issues, and we don't want you making any more trouble than you already have.”

Making trouble. That's what she was calling it. She had already tried to get me kicked out of the delegation, and then to ship me out to the Phandic Empire. Now she wanted to keep me from spending time with Tamret. Somehow that seemed worse than the rest of it.

“I can spend my free time with anyone I like.”

“Yes, I suppose you can.” She blew air out of one corner of her mouth, as though she was finding this conversation tedious beyond belief. I know I was. “You can associate with criminals and misfits, but there are always consequences.”

“You already tried to hand me over to the enemy,” I said. “I don't think you have too many threats left.”

“Zeke, you seem to want to misinterpret everything I say and do as hostile. Please try to remember that I am here to help our world, the planet we come from, which suddenly finds itself a very minor player in a complicated galaxy. You have real responsibilities now. You don't shove aside things that matter because you have a crush on some nonhuman creature.”

My ears were now burning hot. “The only friends I have on this station are Steve and Tamret, and I'm not—”

“Yes, the Ish-hi is undesirable as well. I think you should also stay away from him.”

“You can think what you want,” I said, walking away from her. “I don't have to do what you say.”

She grabbed hold of my wrist. Her grip was tight, and I could feel the points of her fingernails against my skin, and they were sharper than I would have suspected. “The president of
the United States sent me here to be his voice, and the voice of our country and our world. And I am telling you to keep your distance from the other randoms. They are going to ruin their own delegations. I don't want them ruining ours.”

I could get lippy with adults I didn't respect, but being outright disobedient wasn't in my nature. I'd been raised to respect my teachers and authority figures, to assume they were right, even when I didn't like what they had to say. Part of me was trying to figure out if Ms. Price could be right about all this, but I pushed that voice away. I didn't want to believe. I did not believe it. I pulled my wrist away from her.

“Dr. Roop is in charge, and he doesn't have any problem with me spending time with Steve and Tamret, so you're out of luck. You don't have any power over me.”

“Not here,” she agreed. “When we get back to Earth, I am going to be the only adult who will be able to report on what happened on Confederation Central. If I want to make your life, or your family's life, difficult, I can do that.”

She was now threatening my mother. I stared at her icily because I could not think of anything to say.

“I'm trying to help you, Zeke. Please remember that.” She turned away and left me standing in the hall.

•   •   •

After class Tamret avoided us for the rest of the day, but she showed up at breakfast the next morning as though nothing had happened. She was in a good mood, smiling a lot, and her eyes lingered on me as she spoke. My breakfast porridge was a little bit better than palatable. A piece of Steve's breakfast escaped and flew around the room, and we all had a good laugh.

Then Hluh sat down at our table. Eager to prove that the
jumpsuit was not a passing phase, she wore a bright pink one today that hurt my eyes if I stared at it too long. “Hey,” she said. “How are things?”

Tamret glowered at me. “What's
she
doing here?”

Several government officials at a nearby table seemed to be wondering the same thing, since they were looking over at us. Hluh grabbed my wrist as though it were a piece of gardening equipment. “The human juvenile and I enjoy an inappropriate romantic entanglement,” she told the beings at the next table. She looked at Steve and Tamret. “Not really,” she said more quietly.

I pulled my arm away from her. “No kidding, not really. What do you want, Hluh?”

“I've got some information for you, like you asked,” she said.

“Hold on,” Tamret said. “You're cooperating with this freak
again
?”

“You don't have to say hurtful things,” Hluh told her.

“Yes, I do, because you are a gigantic green freak. I don't know how you convinced Zeke to cooperate with you after you made him look like a moron in front of the entire galaxy—”

“I didn't look that bad,” I offered, but no one was listening.

“—but I'm not going to let him humiliate himself again so you can advance your career or whatever it is you are trying to do.”

“I sense that you don't like me,” Hluh told her, “but Zeke has promised me his full cooperation over the coming year, and I—”

“The
year
?” Tamret exploded. “Zeke, what is wrong with you? If you don't have the common sense to know that you need to stay away from this . . . this
being
, then how can I trust you?”

There was a moment of terrible silence. Tamret was staring at me, her eyes wide, her whiskers twitching, and I could see that she wanted me to say something that would make her believe I wasn't irredeemably dim or a publicity hound or something equally awful.

Steve coughed diplomatically. “Sorry, mate. You're going to have to work out your mammal affairs on your own time, but this is starting to muck about with my breakfast.” He turned to Tamret. “This data collector over here found out about me and you, love—that we'd spent some time in government housing, if you know what I mean. She told Zeke he could talk to her or she would post about us on the news outputs. He talked to Hluh to protect us.”

Other than when Ardov was working his spell on her, this was the first time I'd seen Tamret speechless. She stared at me, blinking. “Why didn't you tell me?” she asked quietly.

“I didn't want you to, I don't know, feel bad about me having been in that position.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Can I talk now?” asked Hluh. “All these adolescent emotions are getting tedious.”

“Wait a minute,” Tamret said, as if snapping out of a trance. “I get why you talked to her the first time, but why are you still feeding information to Miss Photosynthesis here?”

I explained the deal Dr. Roop had struck, and I told her I figured I could use Hluh to find out some things that I wanted to know about as well.

“Which is why I'm here,” she said. “I looked into the Ganari delegation like you asked me to. It turns out that Sessek, the Ganari random, was awaiting trial. She broke into a secure
government building. Apparently, her brother was accused of a crime, and she wanted to steal evidence in order to prevent a conviction. She claimed her brother had been set up in the first place, and she may have been right—for what it's worth.”

“So three of the four randoms had legal trouble,” I said.

“Correct,” Hluh said. “That is far outside the realm of statistical probability.”

“They told me that I was selected from a ‘contoured' pool of candidates,” I said. “They wanted someone male, from my part of the world, and so on. Is there some reason the selection committee would try to recruit kids who had been arrested?”

“It's a good question,” Hluh said. “I wanted to let you know this in person. I don't trust that your messages aren't being monitored, and I thought you should be warned.”

“Warned about what?” I asked.

“If the selection committee deliberately chose you,” Hluh said, “it means somebody wanted you here for a reason, and until you know what that reason is, you should probably be on your guard. It also means that the selection process was tampered with, and that amounts to all three of you being here illegally. If anyone finds out about this, you and your delegations are all finished.”

I thought back to my conversation with Ms. Price. Had she wanted me to stay away from Steve and Tamret because she knew about their criminal records? I couldn't imagine how she could have found out about that, but Hluh had, which meant it wasn't impossible. Maybe socially challenged people were better at finding out secrets. The bottom line was that if Ms. Price knew about my friends, she could hurt them, and she might only be waiting for the right moment to do it.

•   •   •

The three of us went our separate ways after class that day. Steve wanted to spar, Tamret wanted to go to the coding facility, and I spent a couple of hours in the gaming room that afternoon, and then called it quits because I had already booked two hours in a spaceflight suite for later that night. I wanted to work on my solo piloting, which was a bit shaky, to be honest, and I noticed I earned more points when I worked on my weak areas.

When I staggered into the hall after two hours in the sim suite, it was close to curfew. I was still a bit dizzy from trying to maneuver a small mining craft through a series of increasingly dense asteroid fields, but when I saw Tamret and Ardov going into the sparring room together, I was suddenly sharp and alert. Ardov was dressed for fighting, but Tamret was not, wearing a long black skirt and a lavender tank top. I watched as he led her into the control room and then into the main sparring chamber.

Pretty girls sometimes put up with guys like Ardov treating them terribly—I had seen it happen back on Earth—but I just could not believe that Tamret liked Ardov. She would do whatever he asked, but she never seemed like she was happy to spend time with him; it was more like she had no choice but to do what he said. I knew I might have been reading into things because I wanted to believe they weren't close. The only thing I could be sure of was that their interactions gave me the creeps. All of which meant I had no choice but to spy on them.

I went into the control room to make sure she was okay. That was all I was doing. I told myself that I didn't have to know exactly why she was putting up with Ardov. It wasn't my business—she'd made that clear—but I was just being a good friend and making sure she was okay.

She was not okay. Tamret was on the mat, slowly getting to her feet. Ardov kicked her. The force field sparked blue, and Tamret let out a little grunt. Her eyes were narrow slits, glinting with anger.

“It doesn't have to be this way, Snowflake,” he said. “Just tell me what you did, and fix it, and I'll leave you alone.”

Tamret set her face hard and stony. She wasn't about to tell him anything.

“Be reasonable. I would hate to have to explain to Dr. Roop and the others that you asked me to spar with you. You told me you wanted to learn a thing or two.” He kicked her again. She grunted. “She turned the protection down to level one, but she didn't tell me. You know what she's like. Impulsive. I didn't mean to hurt her. It was an accident.”

“You'll have to kill me,” Tamret said. “And I know you won't do that. You won't ruin our chances of getting into the Confederation.”

He lashed out so quickly, I didn't see the windup. I heard the crack, saw the electric jolt of blue, and then Tamret was hitting the wall mats, bouncing hard. Force field or no, Tamret was going to get hurt if I didn't stop this. I checked the panel, hoping he had been exaggerating. No such luck. The force field was turned down to the lowest possible setting, and there was no way to turn up the shielding, not without turning it off entirely. I could try that, but if my timing was off, I could end up exposing Tamret to the full force of Ardov's violence.