“We should take what we can for the time being, business and pleasure both.” The Leemuk muttered. “There’s no telling how much longer we have before it’ll all be over.”
“That’s rather nihilistic for a Leemuk, isn’t it?” The Kot’i said, sipping on its drink. “Aren’t you people better known as pragmatists than philosophers? You sound like a Mhatrong floating in drink.”
The sleek green creature shrugged, its amorphous shoulders slumping up around its nearly-non-existent neck and then receding. “Nothing is for certain when a Human holds the Skorahn.”
A shiver of fear and agreement seemed to sweep around the circle. The Leemuk’s enormous wet mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then he continued. “I have a cousin that works in the administrator’s office that saw the creature. She said he was crazed, right out of the old tales.”
The white-skinned woman shook her head, her pale hair rippling in the lounge’s soft light. “I was there at his investiture. Everything you’ve heard is the truth. The beast was a violent, warmongering savage. The sooner we are rid of him, the safer we will all be.”
“I don’t know.” The Kot’i shrugged with far less drama than a Leemuk could ever manage. “I was there as well. A lot of what Marcus Wells said made sense to me.”
“I heard he called for the Galactic Council’s overthrow.” This from a petite Tsiiki whose lightly colored cephalic lobes and high voice marked her as female. “I heard it means war if he stays.”
“Nonsense,” the Kot’i said. “He was warning us of the inevitable, is all. Anyone who doesn’t realize the council is out for our life’s blood is living in a fool’s dream.”
“His presence here could mean war nonetheless.” The Leemuk grunted, squeezing the last gas from the emitter. “There’s no way the council will countenance a Human on the command throne of Penumbra. It would call into question too many of their policies and positions.”
The Matabess snorted, clacking its beak again. “There can be no doubt the creature is a monster, however. It cannot be allowed to remain any longer than necessary.”
The black-skinned Mnymian shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know, as well. He didn’t seem like a monster to me.”
“No more monsters than any other genocidal, apocalyptic force of ravening hunger, no.” The Subbotine spat, her attractive features twisting with a bone-deep hatred. “Look into the eye of a voracious singularity and find more compassion than in a Human heart.”
“Well, that seems excessive.” The Mnymian muttered. “They can’t all—”
Every other creature around the table was staring at him; his voice faded off into silence. Most returned to their drinks and gasses, but the tone of the group was far heavier than it had been.
The Leemuk shifted its bulk, its tiny eyes sliding to the Subbotine and then away. “There is another certainty. The Children will not allow him to stay in power a moment longer than he must.”
The pale woman snorted, her eyes burning. Her back was stiff, her arms folded. “I would not be surprised if some enterprising Diakk solves the problem for us.” She looked over at the black-skinned man with a wrinkle marring her petite nose. “Or some brave Mnymian.”
“The Children do not speak with a single voice.” The Kot’i asserted. “There are many who refuse to judge this Human based on nothing more than ancient tales and rumors.”
“Tales and rumors?” The Tsiiki scoffed. “The evidence is there for anyone aberrant enough to seek it out! Earth is a cesspit, exactly what Humans deserve. And any Child that would stand to breathe the same air as a Human has something wrong with their head, their heart, or their soul.”
The Mnymian stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and stood. “Well, my friends, I believe that is my cue for the evening.” He dropped several coins of Council specie on the table. “Last round’s on me.” He edged past his companions, some of them nodding their thanks or farewells, others looking quickly away. The Subbotine remained icy cold.
The lounge was still crowded despite the hour. He began to move through the mob with a distracted air.
She figured that was why he had not noticed her. She moved up beside him from where she had been sitting alone, nursing a drink, a hooded cloak pulled up over her white hair.
“Running with an interesting crowd these days.”
Justin Shaw spun around at the sound of her voice, and looked sour when he found her approaching him from the shadows.
“Angara.” He nodded sharply and then continued on his way. “Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep, so that you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed for another bout of king-making in the morning?”
“You think I’m beautiful?” She asked lightly, and he shot her a look. Sitting next to a Subbotine for the night had clearly served him his fill of egotistical compliment fishing. She snorted. “I needed to speak with you.”
He nodded, not looking back as he navigated his way out of the lounge and onto the bustling Concourse. “You could have reached me by comms at any time. Or left a message in my rooms.”
“You have not been spending a lot of time in your rooms, Justin Shaw. And you have not been responding to comms either, from what I hear.” She quickened her pace to keep up, her long legs more than equal to the task.
“Whatever.” He looked around for a moment, and then moved off toward a shuttle port. “What do you want? I’m tired. I need to get some sleep.”
“I’d imagine the interface lenses must get irritating after a while.” She pulled up even with him and reached out for his shoulder, spinning him to a halt. “And the beard … how often must you apply the dye?”
“Angara, talk, or I’m leaving.” He looked around with a furtive air. “You won’t be doing either of us any favors if the wrong people see us together.”
“Marcus needs you, Justin. He’s had several levies since the first, and each one is proving harder and harder.”
He nodded, and she thought there might be just a touch of guilt haunting his eyes. “I know. I’ve heard.”
“Support for those early proposals has not solidified. The tradition of petitioning he seeks to restart will not work without the good will of the citizens.” She looked away. “And we lose that more and more every day. It seems like the rumors spread like weeds, growing more violent and implausible every day.”
“They’re coming from Taurani’s office.” He muttered, almost as if he was ashamed to admit it. “I’ve tracked more than enough of them to his agents to tell you that.” He looked up at her and planted a rigid finger in the center of her chest. “And you should have done that too. He needs me? He’s got me! He needs you and Bha to be working at your best! Why do you think I’m doing all of this?” He gestured with his wide-sleeved tunic, indicating his galactic garb. “If he needs more from me, maybe he should come himself!”
She grabbed his finger and applied just enough pressure to bring a wince to his dark face. He pulled his hand away and snorted. “I heard him plain as day up on that stage. He doesn’t need me. You just don’t know which Marcus you’re dealing with. That wasn’t my friend you got up there. That was his brother, hell, that was his father up there. He might think he needs me, but he’s going to do fine on his own, now that he’s decided to run down a new path.”
The words made no sense to her, and so she dismissed them with a shake of her head. “He needs his friend, Justin Shaw. None of us can give him what you can: a feeling of normalcy.”
That made the black man laugh, and the sound rolled through the crowd around them, drawing unwanted attention, but he scarcely seemed to care now. “Normal? You kidnapped us! In a spaceship! There’s nothing normal about any of this!”
That confused her. “I thought you wanted to be here? I thought you had planned to stay…”
He nodded his head. “Yeah, it’s exciting, I won’t deny that.” He pulled out a wallet and waved it in front of her. “And thanks to my bugout bag, I had some gold, was able to parlay that into
a nice small pile of specie, and I’ve got several transactions in the works now. I’ll have a network up and running just in time for you to kick us both out, but I don’t care.” He shook his head with frustration, looking away again. “Listen: I’ve still got Marc’s back. I’m watching out for him, and his interests, every day. If he really needs me, I’ll be here. Tell him that. But I saw the way he looked at me during that first gather, levy, whatever you called it, and I heard the words. He doesn’t need me near him right now, trust me. When he used to get like this, he always did much better on his own.”
He started to turn away, and then stopped, looking at her with his colorless, sparkling eyes. “Tell me one thing, and I’ll stop by to see him.”
She nodded eagerly, but felt a crawling sense of suspicion shift in her mind. “What?”
He turned back to face her, looking to either side, then leveling a weighted stare directly into her eyes. “Who are the Children? Every time I try to bring it up, all I get are hostile looks and the cold shoulder.”
She blinked. She and Bha had decided to keep certain things from Justin Shaw and Marcus Wells, and she still believed that to be the best course. But she also believed, despite what Justin said, that Marcus needed his friend beside him if his foolish scheme had any hope of success. But given the crowd to which he seemed to have gravitated, it was no wonder they wanted nothing to do with a conversation about the Children.
“They are not called merely ‘Children’. The more common term is Children of Man, and it is a term used to refer to a group of Humanoid races that share a common ancestry stretching back into the mists of ancient time.” She kept her face calm, willing it to reveal nothing.
“Common ancestry,” he repeated. “You mean Human ancestry?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly.”
He blew out a breath in an exasperated hiss. “Just the same old shit with you, eh? The truth, or Marc can do without any handholding from me.”
She could feel her nostrils flare as she tried to control her reaction. Why did this Human have to be so infuriating? She blinked, and met his gaze with flat eyes. “The Children of Man share many genetic markers with Humans. They are differentiated by color, morphic type, intellectual capacity, and other traits. Typically, they hold a more negative-than-average view of Humans.”
His brow furrowed as he puzzled this out. “So, they are at least part Human?”
She shook her head. “No part that any of them would admit to. Justin, that is all I can say. Please, leave it alone.”
His lips pursed within the red beard. “So, let me guess … Subbotines are Children of Man?”
She nodded. “Some of the most emphatically anti-Human, yes.”
“And the Namanu, the,” he indicated himself, “the Mnymians? The Diakk?”
She nodded, folding her arms and dipping her head. She wanted nothing more now than for him to leave with a promise to visit Marcus.
“And you.”
That brought her up short. Her eyes narrowed and her head lifted. He was smiling. “Your people … the Tigan? They’re Children of Man too, right?”
She wanted to spit at him. Any reminder of her people irritated wounds that had never healed, that were still open and painful after all this time. She forced herself to nod with a sharp jerk, her mouth set into a firm, thin line.
And he smiled. His smile caught her completely off guard with its warmth. He had clearly gotten more out of her answer than she had intended to give.
“Don’t worry, Angara.” He patted her gently with one dark hand. “I’ll go talk to him. We’ll all make it through this together.” He nodded one last time and turned away to move toward the shuttle port.
She watched him go, nonplussed.
When he turned around, his old grin firmly in place, her eyes tightened.
“And when it’s through, we’ll see what we shall see.”
Before she could respond, he was lost in the crowd.
Chapter 13
Marcus sat in one of the comfortable chairs in the preparation room, swiveling it back and forth morosely as he watched the vision field in the wall niche. He had attuned it to an exterior view of the large docking port at the base of the Red Tower, and watched as ship after ship slid from the docking stations and sped away.
The citizens of Penumbra were fleeing.
He had been singularly incapable of recapturing that burning rhetoric that had carried him through the first meeting. The cold, analytical part of himself that he had taken to seeing as his younger alter-ego had remained silent. Sometimes he felt that presence lurking behind his eyes, watching silently as everything fell apart, but it had been weeks since that first meeting, and nothing he did had arrested the slide toward failure he now saw unfolding before him.
Iphini Bha sat nearby, her wide blue eyes unfocused as she accessed information through her nanites. She shook her head as if clearing it of daydreams and pivoted it toward him on the long neck to regard him from across the room. “Shall we open the wall?”
They had entered through the side corridor, rather than through the council chamber. The mutters and dark looks had gotten progressively worse, and he had been spending less time near crowds as things in the city continued to deteriorate. He had started to avoid the lift tubes, instead falling back on the administrator’s shuttle from the executive docking bay. It now took more than half an hour to get from his office to the damned chamber, but at least he didn’t have to deal with the rising hostility and suspicion.
He looked down with a snort. He still wore his watch. The artificial day of the enclosed city was just over two hours longer than a twenty-four hour day back on Earth, but it wasn’t broken down into any smaller increments he had been able to make sense of. Still, if he started his stopwatch when he first woke up, it gave him a sense of where he was over the course of the work ‘day’, which lasted just about fourteen hours.
“Administrator?” Bha repeated, waving at the pale wall.
Marcus hated when she called him that. He tried to remind himself that any attempt to read meaning in subtle changes in tone or inflection were depending on the nano-bugs in his head, but it was Human nature, and he thought he was getting pretty good at it. And Iphini Bha definitely sounded insincere whenever she used his title.
He nodded. “Sure. Might as well see what’s waiting for us today.”
He didn’t wait for her to do it. As he said the words he looked at the wall with one upturned eyebrow. The wall became transparent at once, and the deputy snorted through her delicate nose, her eyes shifting back to that inward stare.
He had been making steady improvements in his work with the medallion they called the Skorahn, anyway. He was almost never surprised by doors opening for him, lights coming on as he approached or going out as he left a room. Everyone, especially Bha, still seemed surprised at the level of control he was gaining over his environment, but he didn’t much care. His work with the delicate necklace was the only thing he had been doing that had met with any success at all.
He had tried to get in touch with Justin several times, but his friend seemed to be quite busy with some project of his own. He had spent days trying to dig deeper into the anti-Human prejudice he found still clinging to his treatment from most of the denizens of Penumbra, but again, with no success. The bias seemed to be so deep, coming from so far back in time, that any actual events that might have triggered it were not to be found. It was an assumed value in almost anything he came across. Humans were evil, dangerous, and vile. It was a truism, and explaining why didn’t seem to be overly important to any of the sources he had found so far.
A sharp knock from the room’s rear door made him jump to his feet. He hadn’t heard anyone knock on a door since he had first arrived. He shot Bha a glance, but she shrugged, standing slowly, watching the door with a strange look on her marbled face.
Marcus moved to the door and waved it open.
Justin stood on the other side in his galactic finery. I
t was unsettling to see those blank white eyes where the expressive dark irises used to be, and the bright orange-red beard was jarring. But it was still his friend, and the only Human within God alone knew how far.
“Where the hell have you been?” Marcus snapped, abandoning the calm he had promised himself he would exhibit when this moment finally came.
Justin blinked, his smile fading. Then he shrugged, strange eyes narrowing, and he folded his arms. “What the hell do you care? I figured you’d be far too busy changing the galaxy.”
Justin pushed past him and went into the room. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been by. You looked like you were dealing with things just fine on your own.” He shot him a look. “Last time, you were hardly yourself. I haven’t heard you sound like that in years.” He shrugged again, turning to the wall and watching as the multiform citizens of Penumbra took their seats. There were markedly fewer of them than there had been at the first gathering.
“What?” Marcus turned away from the door and let it slide shut behind him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Justin didn’t turn around. “You know what I’m talking about. You could have been channeling your father up there with that speech.” He shot his friend a sidelong glance. “You were never much fun to hang out with back then, when you were dancing to your father’s tune. You know that, right? I much prefer the Marcus Wells that is his own man, not his father’s stooge. Alex and Liz always did better at that role anyway.”
Marcus remembered those years, long ago. His father’s expectations had always been high. And living in a military family, in his military family in particular, there were certain things that were expected of Colonel Wells’s offspring. Meanwhile, he had watched his childhood friend, attending the much more relaxed local public school, growing up at a far more normal pace, and having a lot more fun. It had all led to the cataclysmic battle that had essentially ended his relationship with his father and begun what now seemed like a long succession of easy, expedient choices. He had won a great victory, and then immediately surrendered the trophy.
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