Stone in the Sky (13 page)

“You're talking about the League of World laws and about non-status,” Hendala said slowly as though she were carefully choosing her words. “That doesn't exist anymore. Obviously the Imperium has different views about the claims on abandoned planets than the League of Worlds did. So in this case a harvest tax would go to whatever species owned the original claim.”

I wished that I had a better command of intergalactic politics. I wish I had listened to all of Heckleck's conspiracy theories. To Tournour's disagreement with the new protocols that he'd been handed down. To Thado's grumbling. But all I knew was what I had gleaned from slinging water at the Tin Star Café when the claims board was being set up.

“The Loor have nothing to complain about with these terms. We have a large swath of Quint so my people are sure to be getting a large harvest tax.”

“But not in the right place,” I said. “Not where the alin grows.”

“The Quinters should be glad that the Imperium is willing to lease the claims back to those that are working them. Everyone wins. If we were still governed by the League of Worlds, I'd agree with your reasoning wholeheartedly and I'd deal directly with you to eliminate any middleman to make a profit on imported alin.”

I sank back into my chair defeated. I had no real cards in my hand.

“By Imperium law, the speculators have to accept to pay a tax for harvest rights,” I said.

“Nothing is free,” Hendala said. “It's the Imperium that rules. Now, if they—
we—
want those old mining maps to still hold, then those old maps still hold, regardless of Quint's former status in a now-defunct government.”

She then waved the conversation away with her arm and offered me a glass of water.

“I don't really care about the claims. And I don't think you do either.”

She was right. The claims mattered and didn't matter. I had to think of something new. There were layers to our conversation that were going over my planet-sick head. I knew that there was something not right in the way that Brother Blue was dealing with the claims. I took a sip of the water in front of me to clear my head. It tasted high in minerals.

Minerals and water.

“There is an Imperium officer, Brother Blue, who is asking for a tithe to him for the mineral and water rights to those lands on top of the harvest rights,” I said slowly trying to articulate the pieces I was putting together in my head.

Hendala didn't say anything, but her antennae went rigid. I could tell that something I'd said was disturbing her.

“That's not right,” she said. “The speculators on Quint are paying a double tax.”

She leaned back and looked at me for a good long while in silence. Luckily, I didn't get the sense that she brought me here to kill me.

 

16

Something else was going on here that I couldn't understand. Something larger.

“You have a private landing pad. That means that you're important,” I said.

“Or rich,” she said.

“You have an interest in keeping me alive,” I said.

“I do,” she said.

“You don't want the alin,” I said. “You don't care about it.”

She smiled. The smile was a genuine Loor smile. There was nothing fake about it.

“I care about the good it can do and the money it can bring. But the alin gives me an excuse to make inquires about the things that I am really interested in,” she said.

She loosened her headscarf, revealing more of her face and antennae. She was starting to feel at ease with me.

We were finally getting to it for real. I leaned forward and took one of the snacks, some kind of curdled spread.

“And what's that?” I asked.

“I have reason to believe that the Human representative from Earth Gov is not what he claims to be,” she said.

My eyes snapped up to meet hers. Then I remembered that she was the Loor with whom I had said I wanted to file a complaint about Brother Blue. Maybe that was what had piqued her interest.

She could be an ally.

“Your kind is making its place on Bessen and beyond,” she continued. “Brother Blue excels at being in the right place at the right time. He has a way of charming everyone around him. He has a way of getting things done.”

This was the thread I could pull on. I leaned forward, intrigued.

“The Imperium has changed the way things are done. First, it was the razing of planets, which was unheard of in the past. Now there are rumors of culling the less desirable species. They go in and take everything. But Earth is very protected,” she said.

“Do you want Earth?” I said.

“No. I just can't understand how a species like yours, barely starfaring by our standards, rises so quickly.”

“Why does it matter?” I asked.

“Because something is not right. Earth colonies get grants and funds and equipment and medicine and aid. It takes away from all of the other species who have been Major for centuries. He's running some kind of scheme, and I can't seem to find a way to catch the beast. And now this extra tax…”

I looked up at her. She knew something was wrong, too. She was on my side.

All the hairs on my arm were raised. I had goose bumps. Someone was going to listen to me. It was interesting that an alien would be suspicious because another alien was doing well. Just because the Loor had been spacefaring first didn't mean that Humans didn't have the capacity to thrive. It was small-minded of her.

“Do you know how he does it?” she asked.

I pulled out my data plug.

“May I?” I pointed to Trevor.

“By all means,” she said.

I motioned Trevor forward and then put the data plug in it. I managed to project my data onto the flat of the wall across from Hendala. It showed the data that Els had gathered from her ship before it exploded. It showed all of my attempts to communicate with the colonies.

“What is this?”

“The only proof I have,” I said. “Ship logs from former Earth Imperium Alliance Officers who were supposed to help with integration but whose attempts to land were repelled. They never visited the colonies. Communication logs. It clearly shows that no one but Brother Blue has any real-time communication with the Earth colonies. Everything was relayed and coordinated through him. But my data is over a year old now.”

She didn't say anything as she looked at the scans that flipped on the wall. She sat in silence, but her eyes and antennae betrayed that she was fascinated.

“So what are you saying?”

“There are no Humans on those colonies. Brother Blue lied. He lied to everyone,” I continued.

Saying it out loud to someone who had some authority was such a huge relief that I immediately felt my heart lighten. Secrets can be such heavy loads.

She stood up. She looked pleased.

“I've always wondered about you Humans. Always plentiful but invisible. In my youth, when I was on Earth, I saw a population ravaged. Cities left to go back to nature. A people plagued by famine and drought and super storms. Yet, miraculously out here you thrive. And now I know it is based on deception.”

“Humans still need to settle the stars and trade with aliens. Becoming a multi-planet species is the way to ensure species survival. That's why I left with my mother and sister. We were hoping that we could show Earth that she should open up from her isolationist stand. To save Humanity we would settle the stars.”

I didn't want her to use this information against me, and I worried for a moment that I had sold out Earth.

“Now we have something to talk about,” she said. “You must be tired. Get some rest. We have a lot to discuss.”

I was exhausted.

She pressed a button, and the Loor from the launchpad came in from a hidden sliding door and led me to a bedroom. I sunk into the softest bed I'd ever been on in my life and, relieved of the burden of my biggest secret, I fell into a deep sleep.

 

17

When I awoke, my body was adjusted to being on a planet. The light outside could have been dusk or dawn. I checked Trevor and realized I'd been out for two days. It was early morning, and I had space lag. The house was quiet as I wandered through it, marveling at how it was so different than a bin in the underguts or quarters on the Yertina Feray or the quarters of any of the spaceships I had voyaged on recently.

Most quarters on the Yertina Feray were economical in their use of space. Things slid out and tucked in to give a body all that they needed, but in a confined area. Here there was room after room to weave through and windows galore with a view of planetary vistas that took my breath away. I felt as though I could stretch in a way that I hadn't in years. I had been so cramped for so long.

I made my way outside and sat on the porch of the house and looked up at the sky and sun and the trees and the birds. I filled my lungs with the cool, unrecycled air.

Tallara was beautiful. The birds in the sky looked slightly prehistoric to me. The mountains in the distance were like black cut glass. The sky was still that unreal shade of blue. The dirt in the garden was a deep blood red. The trees were bursting with strangely shaped orange leaves. I wondered if it was fall or if that was the natural color of the fauna. It didn't matter. It was beautiful.

I thought of the arboretum and how it had sustained me for years on the Yertina Feray, but that was nothing like a planet. I stepped off the porch onto the strange scrub-like grass and walked to the tiny garden below a trellis. There I dug my toes into the red dirt; real planet dirt.

Excitement coursed through my body. For this moment, despite everything that was happening, life felt good.

I took my time taking in every part of the landscape as far as my eyes could see. I was standing on another planet. After dreaming about it for so long and being so close and so far away, I had made it. I wished that it were something that I could have shared with my mother and Bitty. I took a moment to think about them. To miss them.

Blan was high in the sky, and I shaded my eyes to look at it. I knew it was the same class of star as Earth's sun, but it looked a bit larger in the sky. Was Tallara closer to Blan than Earth was to its sun? I wished I had asked Tournour questions like that.

“You're better.”

Hendala stepped out onto the porch. Her antennae folded toward me in a sympathetic way, and she smiled.

“I have missed being on a planet,” I said, shaking the dirt off of my feet and joining her on the porch. “Solid ground. Flowers. The cries of animals. It's nourishing. It's so different here from Earth.”

“I've been to Earth,” she said.

“When? How?” I asked, then remembered that she must have told me when we had talked. Things were slowly coming back to me. Space sickness must have made me foggy.

“Loor youth must go on trips to other systems to expand their understanding of the universe. It's a rite of passage. My daughter is on hers now. I used to do supply runs on cargo ships going from planet to planet. Earth seemed like an exotic stop.”

I thought about Earth. I remembered tearing out of the atmosphere and heading to the
Prairie Rose
, docked in space waiting to take my mother, sister, and me away and to a new world, Beta Granade, a planet that Brother Blue had secured from the League of Worlds to promise followers like us a new life.

Hendala took a moment to stand there with me on the porch, pointing out things; the names of flowers, trees, animals, landmarks.

“Thank you,” I said. It was nice to have someone care enough to be a planetary tour guide. I couldn't help but smile up at her. It felt so good to have someone mothering me, making sure that I had food and warmth; someone who wanted to show me things. It made me miss my mother something fierce.

“Do you know why the Loor help the Humans?” she asked.

“I've heard rumors,” I said.

“It's your smell. Your entire species smells like family.”

I wondered if this was why I felt so inexplicably close to Tournour and so comfortable with Hendala. But not all Humans were the same. Brother Blue was nothing like me, even if he was my same species. And I remembered the Loor, Ven Dar, who had died along with Els. I had never felt anything about him. Surely the Loor were as varied as Humans were.

“We're not all the same. We don't all smell the same.”

“No, but most Loor can't tell the difference,” she said. “We're a trusting species. That's why the Brahar, who share our system, had such an advantage over us during our first contact. They're reptilian, not mammals. They don't have a scent that registers with us. They evolved in such a different way then we did, as life does on all other planets. When we met them, we couldn't understand how alien an alien could be. The stars are very different from the way the poetry of our ancestors described them. Those poets knew nothing about aliens, they only knew the Loor way. It limited them.”

“Or preserved them,” I said. I tried to think about the things that I'd shed once I'd landed on the Yertina Feray in order to survive and about the Human things that I had kept and lost.

“Many Loor have been seduced by the Humans. They'll believe anything that your species says. They'll remain loyal for no reason. I was one of the first to welcome Brother Blue when he came to Bessen to negotiate the first Children of Earth colony on Killick.”

“That was many years ago,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “But I was charmed by your funny little species. He was so different than the sad Humans that wander and hitch from ship to ship.”

I could not tell her age, but I knew that Tournour was young by Loor standards and that Tallara had a quicker orbit around its sun. But Brother Blue had claimed to settle Killick forty Earth years ago, according to his history about himself.

“But things didn't add up,” she spat, her antennae coming to full attention. “Perhaps that's why I take it so personally. I feel invested. Taken advantage of. Or betrayed. I'm afraid of bringing shame to my family for trusting him.”