“Tell him he has no appreciation for culture,” Kylie said. “Anyway, it’s part of your outfit for Earth Night.”
Zey nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“Will he be there tonight?”
“Him and Saresh both. They said they wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good,” Kylie said. “They’d better be in fancy dress.”
Zey looked doubtful. “I can get them in the door. I can’t promise anything more than that.”
“Earth Night” was what Kylie had taken to calling the intercultural mixer she had arranged to throw in one of the Downhelix bars. There would be specialty cocktails (which we couldn't drink) and blaring pop music courtesy of Kylie’s portable speaker. She was offering a prize for the best human impersonator, and although I doubted there would be many contenders, several of our friends had embraced the challenge. I had lent out half my wardrobe to members of the Pinion’s crew. I wasn’t sure which I liked better, Zey in ripped jeans and a graphic tee or Khiva in tall black boots and a sequined miniskirt. Even Officer Deyn had gotten into the spirit of the thing, borrowing an embroidered denim jacket of Kylie’s that clashed horribly with her hair. As judges, Kylie and I were going to have our work cut out for us.
When we arrived at the bar that night, I was surprised to see that a considerable crowd had already gathered. There were a handful of uniformed security officers stationed throughout the room; no doubt several of their fellows mingled incognito in the throng. Kylie, who was taking her responsibility as DJ very seriously, experimented with a few locations for her speaker before settling in at the bar, phone in hand. Zey and I trailed after her. I ordered a beer for myself and an “Earth elixir,” an unappetizing concoction of mottled blue and green liquor served in a globe-shaped cup, for him. He tasted it and grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s foreign,” the bartender corrected him.
“Yeah. Very.” Zey drank a little more. “Strong, though.”
As the night progressed, I tried to keep my gaze from drifting too obviously toward the door. The music pulled in a steady stream of curious passersby. Few of them were in costume, and even fewer stayed for more than a couple of songs. It seemed that the novelty of the sound, or perhaps the volume, quickly lost its appeal. The energy in the room was good though, and the bartender was doing a brisk trade in Earth elixirs. I myself was having a better time than I’d anticipated. I had to credit Kylie for her inspiration. It had been fun to blast music and dance around in her suite. It was more fun to do it in a real bar.
And the entries in the costume contest were fascinating. I had been somewhat narrow-mindedly expecting to see imitations of Western dress, and there were a number of those. But several people arrived in flowing printed robes with a vaguely African flair, and in a surprise upset, the costume contest went to a tiny black-haired woman in a Japanese kimono and carefully pleated sash. She beamed with pride as Kylie presented her with the grand prize, which was a tote bag stuffed with relics of Earth fashion: magazines, bangles, lipstick. I could see Khiva looking on a little spitefully. I made a mental note to ask Kylie if she had anything else she’d be willing to pass along. My own wardrobe had been hit hard by the decompression of the cargo holds, and Kylie’s things were more exciting anyway. Even when I wasn’t in uniform, she was the flashier dresser.
“How do you know how to do this stuff?” I asked her when we found ourselves side by side in the drinks line a little later. “I never would have thought of throwing a party like this. And if I had, I would have assumed no one would come.”
“That’s because your crewmates weren’t allowed to be curious about Earth culture,” she said. “Mine were. So I knew the interest was there. Although your friends seem to be making up for lost time.” She indicated Sohra and Ziral, who were gamely attempting to dance to a rap song when not incapacitated by laughter. We collected our drinks and went to join them.
Things had begun to wind down by the time Saresh and Hathan arrived. Kylie was arranging with the owner of the bar, who had been favorably impressed by the size of the crowd and the boost to his profit margin, to make Earth Night a monthly occurrence. I was sitting at the bar with Zey. He had spent the last hour taking hysterically amateur selfies on my borrowed phone and was eager to show them off. I was admiring the last picture, an angled shot of him and Sohra that was actually fairly good, when he said irritably, “It’s about time.” I looked up. Hathan and Saresh were making their way toward us. Both were in uniform. I was beginning to wonder if Hathan had brought anything else to wear. Maybe his suitcases had been stashed in the same cargo hold as mine. Even as I thought it, Kylie called over, “Unless you both decided to come as Avery, you’re not in fancy dress.”
“They didn’t,” said Zey. “Wrong insignia.”
“We were just dismissed,” Hathan said shortly.
Saresh smoothed things over with a smile and a nod toward Zey. “Fortunately, it looks like the family is well represented in spite of us.”
“Not well enough to win,” Zey said.
I patted his shoulder. “You had some tough competition.”
Brightening, he held up my phone. “Check it out. Eyvri’s been letting me play with her tech. It’s like a museum piece. It doesn’t even telescope.” He tugged fruitlessly at the corners of the phone. “See? Nothing happens.”
He held it out to Hathan, who reached for it, then hesitated, looking at me. “May I?” he asked.
I knew he was thinking about the fate of my previous phone. I was thinking about it too. I said quickly, “It’s fine,” and pressed the phone into his hand, trying to end our mutual embarrassment as quickly as possible.
I hadn’t reckoned on Kylie, who said, “Are you sure you can trust him with that? I know what he did to your last phone. That’s my only backup.”
She spoke lightly, but I wasn’t sure Hathan would catch the humor. I glanced at him, afraid he’d take offense. To my relief, he lifted his chin as if acknowledging the hit. “Don’t worry. It’s a long walk to the closest airlock. Although if the next song in your queue is as abrasive as this one, I may be willing to make the trip. That’s your device there on the bar, isn’t it?”
Kylie snatched it out of his reach. “Help, Avery! Abrasive is pretty much all I’ve got.”
“Can I take a look?” Saresh inquired.
She gave him a skeptical look. “Do you know much about Earth music?”
“About as much as I do,” I said.
Seeing her perplexity, Saresh began to explain the unforeseen side effect of the Listening we had shared. Hathan, to my surprise, shifted nearer to me along the bar. “It looks like your party was a success,” he said.
I felt obliged to correct him. “It’s really Kylie’s party. But it’s been great. Can I get you a beer? Or an Earth elixir?”
He cast a doubtful look at the drink in Zey’s hand. “I think I’ll stick with beer.”
I asked for another glass and filled it for him from the pitcher I’d been sharing with Zey and Kylie, then topped off my own. “How are the hearings going?”
“They’re done, as of tonight.”
“Do you think they went well?”
He was silent for a long moment, drinking his beer. Then he said, “I’ll put it this way. I hope you have your song ready.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I had promised to sing in front of the Pinion’s crew at some point before we all parted ways. I said staunchly, “I haven’t been practicing at all.”
“No? You’re more confident than I am.”
“Not confident. Just optimistic.”
Hathan nodded. “Here’s a cultural question for you. Do humans have a way of . . . invoking things they want to happen? When they’re drinking?”
“Invoking? I’m not sure. Celebrating, definitely.” I clinked my glass against his. “Here’s to optimism.”
“To optimism,” he echoed. I drank, and he followed suit.
“How about you guys?” I ask
ed. “What do you do?”
By way of reply, Hathan dipped a finger into his beer and wrote a complicated glyph on the surface of the bar. It gleamed faintly in the light, but I couldn’t make the lines resolve into anything familiar. “What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s the tribute symbol. The liquid is a token offering to your ancestors, or to anyone else you think might be listening. Different people choose to invoke different powers. While you write, you hold a picture in your mind of the thing you want.”
“Is there something you’re supposed to say?”
“If you like, you can name the thing you’re asking for. Or you can keep it to yourself.”
Let me guess which one you prefer, I thought. I dipped my own forefinger into my glass, leaned forward until the damp traces of his writing caught the light, and copied the symbol as closely as I could. “The Ascendant.” I looked to him for approval. “Close enough?”
He said, “I forgot you could do that.”
“What, copy a symbol the first time I see it? I took four years of Mandarin before Vardeshi came along. I'm just glad it’s still good for something. Now what?”
Hathan emptied the pitcher into our glasses and signaled for a refill. “Now we wait. There’s nothing else we can do.”
“Except drink.”
“Except that,” he agreed.
We sat for a few minutes in contemplative stillness—quiet would have been the wrong word, as Kylie’s speaker was still blasting—before he said, “I saw Vekesh today.”
Alarmed, I said, “Where?”
“At his sentencing. I was asked to attend as a representative of the Pinion’s crew.”
“How was it?”
“Brief,” he said, and paused, “and that’s the best thing I can say about it. He was convicted, to no one’s surprise, of treason, attempted murder, and destruction of Fleet property.”
“To the Vardeshi criminal justice system,” I said, and knocked my glass against his. “What will happen to him now?”
“He’ll remain in custody here on Arkhati for the present. Eventually he’ll be transferred to a prison facility on one of the outlying worlds, where I expect he’ll spend the rest of his life. He’s not a very promising candidate for—” he used a word I didn’t recognize, noted my confusion, and said, “you might translate it as . . . thought clemency.”
“Thought clemency,” I repeated.
Hathan nodded. “We believe in an individual’s capacity for change. Prisoners convicted of non-fatal crimes are given opportunities to demonstrate remorse and personal growth such that they would be unlikely to repeat their offenses. Vekesh would have to prove those things telepathically, through a series of Listenings, before he could even be considered for reintegration with society. And, if released, he would be closely monitored and subject to regular—” he used another word unfamiliar to me, frowned slightly, and settled on “intention checks.”
“Does this . . . thought clemency . . . happen often?”
“No. But it happens.”
I thought about that. “What about Blanks?”
He turned his empty glass slowly around on the bar. “There, I’m afraid, our criminal justice system runs up against the same problem as yours: we can’t read their minds.”
“It’s unfair,” I said, and looked toward the dance floor, where Zey was leading Kylie through a set of modified ranshai forms in time to the music.
Hathan followed my gaze. “It is, yes, inherently unfair.”
Some time later, Kylie and I walked back to her rooms. We were shadowed by the handful of security personnel who permitted us to see them and, I now knew, by many others who moved invisibly before and behind us. The dim corridors of Arkhati no longer felt quite as inimical as they had in the beginning, and I navigated them without difficulty, though I doubted they would take on the familiarity of the Pinion’s intuitive corkscrew design even if I stayed here six months. We’d been walking for a while when Kylie said abruptly, “Are you sure you’re not in love with him?”
I knew an instant of sheer terror before the words are you sure registered. Of course. She was talking about Saresh. “I’m sure,” I said firmly.
“I think I would be, if I were you. He’s quite fit, isn’t he?”
I couldn’t resist teasing her a little. “I thought they were all creepily polite robots.”
“At least Saresh smiles once in a while. Not like that brother of his.” I knew she wasn’t referring to Zey. She added, “They’re quite different, aren’t they?”
My mind offered up a picture of Hathan at the music concert on our last night on the Pinion, his face intent, Ahnir’s mandolin cradled in his hands. “Not as different as you’d think.”
* * *
It was with mingled dread and relief that I checked my flexscreen late the following morning to find a message awaiting me from Governor Tavri. The message itself was innocuous enough, an invitation to meet with her in the administrative wing that afternoon, but I knew what it signified. Within a few hours I would know whose instinct had been correct, Hathan’s or my own, and whether our combined prayers of the night before had achieved anything.
Kylie got up from the table to make more toast. While she was gone, I used the gently cooling remnants of my tea to write the tribute symbol on the table. Please, I thought. Give us another chance. We all deserve it. I wasn’t sure who to whom I was appealing. I heard Kylie’s approaching steps and wiped away the marks with my napkin rather than explain them.
“Tavri wants to meet with me later,” I said when she had rejoined me at the table.
She slid a piece of toast onto my plate. “That’s it, then. What time?”
“Three.”
“Want me to come along?”
“Of course.”
“Good, because I want to hear this.”
Reflexively I texted Zey. Heard anything from the Echelon?
No, he sent back immediately. You?
They want to see me later today.
Sigil to the stars, he wrote. I had to think about that one for a moment. Belatedly I placed it as the Vardeshi equivalent of crossing one’s fingers.
Me too, I replied, hoping that would make him smile. I’ll let you know what I hear.
* * *
I could read nothing in the polite neutrality of Governor Tavri’s expression as she welcomed us into her office several hours later. She complimented my haircut and Kylie’s silver highlights, as well as the success of Earth Night, which had apparently generated quite a buzz on the starhaven. The pleasantries concluded, she addressed her attention to me, but not, as I expected, to raise the subject of my departure from Arkhati. Instead she said, “I thought you might like to know that we’ve gathered fairly conclusive evidence that the man who threatened you in Downhelix has no clear ties either to Vekesh or its subordinate houses or to the most prominent anti-alliance groups. We believe that, like Reyjai Vekesh himself, he was paid to act as he did.
He claims to have been approached by an anonymous stranger in Downhelix who offered him a substantial advance payment to make the threat. He was paid in black-market rana, which carries no chemical signature, rendering it untraceable.”
“Of course,” Kylie said.
“Of course,” the governor agreed. “As an explanation, I find it unsatisfying but credible. I’m afraid it doesn’t offer much guidance as to how to prevent such incidents moving forward. We’re continuing to process new arrivals on the starhaven thoroughly for possible anti-alliance affiliations. Your security team reports no incidents of concern in the past few days. Has either of you noticed anything out of the ordinary?”
Kylie and I looked at each other. Both of us shook our heads.
“Good. Then I’d say we’re doing all we can. The best advice I can give you is to remain alert for anything that seems unusual or out of place. But I imagine you’re both veterans at that by now.”
“Avery certainly is,” said Kylie.
“Good.” The gove
rnor shifted a little in her chair and flicked to a different display on her flexscreen. Then she looked up and said with a kind of resolute brightness, “I have good news for you.”
My heart leapt. “Really?”
“Yes. After a great deal of deliberation, the Echelon has made a decision. We’ve decided to place you on one of our ships for the remainder of your journey.”
“An Echelon ship,” I said.
“We feel you’ll be safer in our hands. The events of the past few weeks have shown that this mission is far too important to be entrusted to a civilian organization. An Echelon officer would never have fallen victim to the kind of coercion that led Reyjai Vekesh to betray you, for the simple reason that they aren’t susceptible to bribery. Echelon training incorporates rigorous ideological coaching. The success of the mission isn’t just the primary objective for them—it’s the only one.”
“You want to put me on a ship with soldiers?”
“Technically they’re officers of the interstellar navy, but yes. We feel that that’s the wisest course.”
Confused, I said, “But I signed a contract with the Fleet.”
“A contract which is no longer valid.” Tavri seemed to be on firmer ground here. Her words rang with authority. “You were assured safe working conditions, which the Fleet has spectacularly failed to provide. I think any legal expert on either of our worlds could attest to that fact. In consequence of their breach of contract, the Fleet owes you the remaining sum of your year’s salary.” Such as it is, her expression said. She concluded, “You owe them nothing.”
“But I asked . . .” I couldn’t seem to get the words out past the constriction in my throat.
“I heard your request, and I can assure you that the Echelon gave it due consideration. You’re the first representative of an alien world ever to travel to our home planet. Simply put, you’re precious cargo. You’ve already had one incredibly close escape. If anything were to happen to you, it could have a catastrophic outcome for the alliance. It’s just too risky.”
Bright Shards (The Vardeshi Saga Book 2) Page 9