Stone in the Sky (17 page)

He looked confused.

“You must be from Earth,” he asked while his eyes searched me. “Your blank skin tells me so.”

“Yes and no.”

My skin
was
clear and clean. I had no voyages under my belt. No ships to claim. I had no connection.

“Are you one of them?” he asked, sniffing at me like a dog.

I knew immediately that he meant one of the Imperium Humans.

“No,” I said. “I travel alone.”

“What's your story?” he asked again, this time more aggressively.

Everyone had stopped what they were doing and stared at me with suspicion. It was unsettling to have so many Human eyes upon me. Not one looked at me with kindness. I was not welcome.

I hardly remembered meeting people like this on Earth. I understood why they were referred to as feral. But that wasn't true. They just had a different kind of Humanity, a fierce and frightening one. I had been that way once, when I was first on the Yertina Feray. It's what you do when you have to survive.

“I've heard that there are more of you from Earth out here,” he said.

“There are,” I said. “But I'm not with them. I'm solo.”

“You're the first I've met,” he said.

“You're the first Wanderer I've met,” I said.

He softened, as though there was something to that and by being each other's first we were bonded in his eyes.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” I said.

“This is the only way to know someone's true history,” the bearded man said, pointing to his skin.

He explained to me that they all wore tattoos that showed which ships they'd flown on. What systems they'd traveled through. Who'd been their leader. I had heard about that, but it was something else to see it on people's skin. Arms and necks and some faces covered with rocket ships and names and images of stars.

It was the only way to know someone's true history. It was how a Human Wanderer knew what connections to others or to them you might have. I wondered what I would have tattooed on me. The Yertina Feray on my hand. Heckleck on my arm. Caleb on my side. Els on my back. Thado on my bicep. Reza on my belly. The Tin Star Café on my neck. Tournour on my heart.

“I hear from others that your Earth kind want us to hear you. What do you have to say?”

“You have to be careful,” I said. “You have to leave the central systems. You have to stay away from other Humans.”

“You're Human. You want me to stay away from you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What side are you on?”

“I'm on no one's side.”

“Then go away,” the bearded man said. “You're bad news. We don't want to travel with you.”

I'd done my job. The only thing I could do was find another ship, another Wanderer, another life to save.

 

23

I had to wonder at the madness of my task. Finding Humans who were hitching was difficult, there were so many ships going in so many directions. I had to listen for rumors and hope that my hops would lead me to some tribe to warn and closer to finding Caleb. I convinced myself that every life warned was a life saved. But I had no way of knowing if the Wanderers I found would actually heed me.

After two more months of travel, I saw four more sets of Wanderers on my voyage. Each time, once I'd said my piece, I was immediately shunned for the rest of the voyage.

Not that warning them had been the reason they shunned me. They made it clear that in their eyes, with my blank skin and my non-story, that I was part of the people who had rejected them. I represented Earth. I couldn't make them understand that I was in exile, too. That I was trying to help them. They scoffed at me. Spit at me. Yelled in my face. No wonder the Imperium officers thought the Wanderers were savages.

I was having no luck finding the
Noble Star
, and I was beginning to fear that I would end up wandering forever as well.

It brought back memories of my first months on the Yertina Feray, when I was despised by the other aliens in the underguts. I was cast out and by myself, in an emotional place that I never wanted to visit again. It was hard to bear the fact that I was cared for by Tournour, Thado, and Reza, but it didn't matter. Because out here I was alone again. And because I was always moving, my chances to alleviate my loneliness were thwarted.

To stave off those dark thoughts, I imagined myself back on the Yertina Feray; serving Tournour premium water and holding his hand as he told me about his boring day, listening to Thado as he pruned the trest tree, laughing over some entertainment with Reza that only another Human would find funny.

That would help for a day or two. But then like a wound that never healed, the anger at Brother Blue would return. I would simmer for days, furious at what he had done to my life. But as I moved through the galaxy, looking for Caleb and for Wanderers—seeing such different suns, marveling at gas planets and rocky moons, at ringed worlds teeming with life—I reminded myself that Brother Blue was so small compared to all that I was seeing.

And yet, on most days my spirits were still low. The stress of the journey was wearing me down, and I didn't feel like I had much reason to live.

I imagined stealing a ship and heading toward one of the suns that I saw and burning into oblivion.

After all, I was small against all of this vastness, too. I worried I was going space mad.

I was in the communication center, staring at the newest invoice that Tournour had sent me on a screen when the Kao captain found me. “What is it?” I asked.

“There's a Hort ship passing with a group of Humans that is willing to take you,” the Kao said. All of his roundness jiggled when he walked. I knew that he was using echolocation to see me and I wondered what I looked like to him.

“Thank you. I'll get myself ready.”

I went to my cabin and retrieved Trevor and the things that I had accumulated on my trip so far. Mostly a grab bag with a change of clothes and protein paks to make moving from ship to ship fast.

I prepared myself for a rough reception from the Hort. Though my long dead Hort friend Heckleck had been kind to me, I knew that the Hort were not the most gracious of species, and I got the impression that they cared for wandering Humans less than most. I expected that Humans would be awarded less than the regular passenger status. The Hort did not travel in comfort, and I assumed that any quarters assigned to me would be the bare minimum of living. Or, more likely, they would throw me in with the Wanderers despite my having paid for a berth. It didn't matter. I was prepared to live on whatever deck they would take me to, even if it meant being with the Wanderers after they inevitably ignored me. That's why I had my own food supply.

The ship's captain, a large Hort, met me at the entrance to the ship. He was much larger than my old friend Heckleck. His exoskeleton was a light brown and his appendages looked as though they had been sharpened. I felt a sudden sense of dread and had the distinct feeling that I'd made a terrible mistake getting on this ship. He did not treat me like a guest. He did not treat me like a hitchhiking passenger. The Hort treated me like a prisoner.

“Take the robot to the electronics bank,” he said to the two crew members with him. “We can strip it for parts.”

“That's my property,” I said. “I paid for a berth.”

But there was no one to help me out here with a deal gone bad. I could already hear the other ship unclamping and moving away.

The Hort opened his mouth and stuck out his barbed tongue menacingly.

“Trevor…” But before I could issue the command, one Hort pushed the switch on Trevor's neck, and I watched as the light that always made it seem alive dimmed to dark.

“I've mined with that kind of robot before,” the Hort said. “And you won't need it where you are going. It's ours now.”

“Where am I going?” I asked.

Then two Hort scuttled toward me, holding my arms behind my back with their pincers. I was shoved and jostled by the Horts' sharp appendages as we went lower and lower in the belly of the ship. Their feet clicked on the metal, reminding me of the insects that they looked like.

“A fortune for every Human,” the captain laughed as we arrived at a cargo bay door that was heavily guarded. “I'm going to be a very rich Hort.”

He made a signal and a small door opened and I was shoved in, the door slamming quickly behind me.

One look around told me everything that I needed to know. This was not going to be like the other voyages. These Wanderers weren't roaming. These Wanderers had been captured and were on their way to a colony to their inevitable deaths.

I was in a cargo bay packed with Humans. It must have been a few groups that had been rounded up. The bay was much too small to hold this many people, and it was too many Humans for just one tribe. I took in the room. There were no windows. The Wanderers had set themselves up as best they could with their makeshift tents, but with no facilities anywhere for waste or refrigeration, the stink was unbearable, and people looked sick. I had to cover my nose with my hands because every time I took a breath I wanted to vomit.

Humans were everywhere. Packed and pressed together. Some alive. I feared that some were dead.

This was a den of hell.

Curious about the newcomer, some Wanderers came close to me and started to shout in my face as soon as they saw my blank skin.

“Hey.”

“You there.”

“What's your story?”

Wanderers near me pushed and poked me, trying to get at my things, knowing that there were probably things inside that they could use. They ripped at my clothes. Pinched my clear skin. There were so many of them.

They were all shapes, sizes, ages, color. They were a blur of hands pulling and mouths shouting.

In my months of travel, I had never thought that I would get caught, but here I was. I cursed my naïveté. I had stupidly thought that if I kept moving, and was mostly on my own, that I'd be safe. I was wrong.

I had to find a space to think about what I should do next. Perhaps I could throw some of Reza's credits to the Hort to get me out of here.

“Stop it,” I said. “Please, stop it.”

Every time I found a corner where I thought I could be alone, they pressed in on me, forcing me to move again.

Somewhere I lost my bag. Somewhere else I lost my shoe. Somewhere else I tore my jacket. They were like bugs biting me. I just wanted to get away from them, but there was nowhere to go.

The crowd's faces morphed together becoming mostly indistinguishable, except one girl who seemed to always be flanking me. She was the only one not yelling, but perhaps that was because half her face was a mottled mess. Half of her hair was missing due to a terrible burn scar that I could see went way down below her collar. I wondered how far down. It was hard to look at her. One of her arms was badly burned, and yet both were covered in tattoos. She must have been in some awful accident. As I went past her, I noticed two terrified Humans, not much older than I was, wearing Imperium uniforms, looking shell-shocked. That's when I knew that nothing would get me out of here.

I tried to get ahead of the mob and picked my way until I found a corner with a little bit of space. Exhausted, I gave up being alone and sat down and tried to make myself as small as possible.

A big, burly man pushed me and then squatted down, getting in my face. He was so grizzled that I could not tell how old he was. He could have been either thirty or seventy.

“You an Earth girl, Blankie? You come here to sell us like those Imperium lovers? Like them?” he said.

He pointed over to the two Imperium officers who I could see were cowering in the corner. Their uniforms were tattered, and it was easy to figure out that these Hort had swept them up along with the Humans they were supposed to deliver. I felt sorry for them, but I had to take care of myself first.

“You're far from home now,” the grizzled man yelled in my face. His breath was rotten. “You're in here with us.”

As I tried to move away from him, he grabbed my wrist. I screamed at the strength and pain of his grip. At first I thought I was done for, but then he stopped, gently turning my wrist around. The gold bracelet I had taken off of Els's dead body with the little charm of Earth peeked out from under my sleeve.

“Take it,” I said. I had reached my end. It would be of no use here. I was dead along with the rest of them. “Take it and leave me alone.”

I thrust my wrist to him so he could unlatch the bracelet rather than rip it off of me. I braced myself for a violent tug, but instead of taking it, he let my wrist go.

“I'm sorry,” he said, taking a step back from me. “I know your story.”

Then he shooed everyone away from where I was sitting, and he started talking in low tones to the people around him. The other Wanderers kept staring at me, but I no longer felt threatened. Strangely, I felt safe. The grizzled man took my hand and patted it reassuringly. He smiled; his two front teeth were missing.

I didn't understand what had happened to make him suddenly treat me with respect. But I was relieved as slowly, all of my things were returned to me.

The two Imperium officers inched closer to me, curious at the change, too. Clearly they had been treated just as badly by this group and wanted to know what the difference was now. They were trying to catch my eye, but I didn't want to associate myself with them. I didn't know what was going on yet, and even if these people all came from different tribes, they were not my allies.

I dug into my bag and got out one of my protein paks and some water. I took my time eating the scrap while trying to figure out what to say. To figure out what was going on and how to stay alive. I'd done it before with aliens; I could do it again here with Humans. After I'd had my fill, a ruddy-faced middle-aged woman with a long, dark braid that fell all the way down her back was ushered over to me. I could see that she had everyone's respect. It was clear that she was this journey's leader. The girl with the burned face stood tall next to her. She was probably her daughter or a second.