by David Liss
“I mean, I’m making sure that’s all we are. You don’t, you know . . .”
“Like you?” she asked, as though I’d suggested she might want to pass some time scrubbing alien toilets.
I felt myself blushing, which probably should not have been a surprise, given that this was one of the most awkward conversations of my life. “I’m not full of myself or anything. I don’t want you to think that. It’s just that Tamret can be kind of intense.”
She clasped her hands together in excitement. “She’s safe, then? You’re getting her back.”
“Yeah, I just found out a little while ago.”
“I’m so happy for you.” Alice was grinning now. “For both of you.”
I nodded. “Thanks. Yeah, I’m pretty happy too.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I promise not to steal her man, okay? She sounds really cool, and I don’t want to insult her taste, but she has absolutely nothing to worry about. I mean, like, ever.”
I stood up. “Appreciated, though maybe making your case a little less forcefully would have worked just as well.”
She waved her hand. “Your ego can take it. If I’m bumming you out, go save another galaxy or something. You’ll bounce back.”
“And one more thing,” I said. “Now that you’re here, can you keep my little friend a secret?” I tapped my head so she would know I was talking about Smelly.
“Can I ask why?”
“Better you don’t. It’s safer for me, which is all I can tell you for now.”
She was about to throw another question at me but then decided to hold her tongue. “Okay. Not a word.”
“Thanks.” I turned to the door. “I’ll check on you later. If Knutjhob starts sharpening knives in front of you, shout as loud as you can.”
“Excellent advice. But, uh, what’s going to happen to me?” she asked.
“You have to stay in the brig until we get to the station. For security reasons.”
“Security reasons,” she said with a snort. “It’s just so that I don’t feel like I got away with something. I’m sure some old guy with a stick up his butt came up with that idea.”
Moving on. “When we get to Confederation Central, I’m supposed to be in charge of you, so please don’t mess up or break any laws or get into trouble. I’m going to have enough to deal with.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “I swear, I’ll be good. Anyhow, on a different subject—they injected me with those translation devices, I guess so I could listen to that turtle-goat man talk about how much he wishes my species didn’t exist. Maybe I could get some reading material, so I can learn more about the Confederation before I get there. That way I won’t be as likely to make any mistakes and get you into trouble.”
I sighed. “Fine. You win. I’ll ask Urch if he’d be willing to get you a data bracelet. You’ll find whatever you want on the network.” I opened the door.
“Hey, Zeke,” she said.
I turned around.
“Sounds like I am on vacation.”
She was laughing as I walked into the hall. The blue plasma field covered the threshold, and the door slid closed. As I walked away, Smelly said, Her biological signs indicate she is not telling the truth.
I stopped. “About what?” I blurted out before thinking to check to see if anyone was around. Fortunately, I was alone.
About liking you, it said, imitating Alice’s tone.
“She’ll get over it,” I muttered.
• • •
It was almost 1300, so I hurried off to the conference room to meet with the director. I was a few minutes early, and I waited in the hall for Charles, Mi Sun, Nayana, and Colonel Rage to show up. Once they were there, we all went in together.
Ghli Wixxix was about four and a half feet tall and pale blue in color. The center of her face was marked by nasal slits without a nose, and beneath that she had a long mouth with thin lips. Her ears were large and pointed, and they jutted outward like a bat’s. She had no eyes that I could see, but a cluster of waving sensory tendrils, like a patch of thin sea anemones, protruded from the top half of her face.
She had been sitting at the table, reading through texts on her data bracelet, but when I opened the door, she rose and made several complicated gestures, which I presumed were some sort of greeting. “Mr. Reynolds. It is a great pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I get the feeling there aren’t a lot of beings who feel that way.”
“Beings who know the truth and who are not pursuing their own agendas most definitely feel that way,” she said, “but they are few and far between.”
I introduced her to the others from Earth, and once bows, handshakes, and friendly hand waggles were exchanged, the director gestured for us to sit.
We had only just taken our chairs when the door opened and Captain Hyi entered. “Director. Honored guests. May I sit in?”
“Of course, Captain,” the director said. “I was under the impression that your duties did not permit you the time.”
The captain folded his curious body into a chair. “There is a great deal of administrative work to do,” he explained, “but as this matter is so important to the Confederation, I would like to observe. I am here to be of service, if I can, but no more.”
Once we were settled, the director launched in without further delay. “I am sure you have been briefed on the state of our current relations with the Phandic Empire.”
“Your Mr. Urch told us that you have them cornered,” Colonel Rage said.
The director’s sensory tendrils waved in the colonel’s direction. “For now we do. These young people from your world helped to make certain that we are in our most advantageous position in more than a century. They have saved us from decades of war, and quite possibly from the end of our civilization.”
“I appreciate your saying so,” I told her. “I have to admit, I hated that we were treated like criminals after we tried so hard to help the Confederation, but I have a feeling that you didn’t come all this way just to set the record straight.”
“Sadly, no,” Ghli Wixxix said. “You are here because our intelligence suggests that the Phandic threat, while temporarily contained, is far from over. The danger to our culture, and to your world, remains quite real.”
I felt that twisting feeling in my stomach again. I guess it had been too much to hope that the Phands were really out of the picture.
“Okay, I understand that’s not good,” I told the director, “but I’m not sure why you need me.”
“It has come to my attention,” Ghli Wixxix explained, “that in addition to the skill tree that has been part of our culture for countless generations, there is a secondary skill tree developed by the Formers. This one was designed for military application.”
“It came to your attention because of my father,” I said. “He’s the one who found out about it, and he’s the one who was desperate to make sure the right beings took action, since he was afraid Junup would bury the whole thing.”
He had also told me that he’d stolen a copy of the tech tree, so why didn’t Ghli Wixxix know about it? Maybe, after they’d locked him up, he hadn’t known who in the Confederation he could trust. Still, something didn’t seem quite right to me.
“I do not dispute that it was your father who brought us word of it,” the director agreed. “The intelligence he provided was of the greatest value. Were it not for your father, we would not now know that the Phands had already acquired the technology to begin accessing this skill tree. This threat will manifest itself not this year or next, but over the coming decade. Whatever advantages we have gained in ship technology may well be negated by Phandic mastery of Former military skills. While we bask in our success, you may be sure they will continue to develop new military technologies. I have urged our defense committees to invest in the same, but I have encountered a great deal of resistance. All of which means that, in perhaps ten standard years, the Phands will reappear on the galactic s
tage, and we will be able to do little more than slow them down.”
“Sounds like you need to put some pressure on your politicians,” Colonel Rage said. “And you need to get your hands on this technology and level the playing field. From what I hear, this idiot Junup is your problem. Why not fix your problems in-house?”
The director moved her tendrils in a rapid rippling motion. “Junup is not an idiot. He and I were once friends, and I believe he is still a good being, but he has allowed his ambition to cloud his common sense. He will yet come around, but for now he has too much influence for me to pursue a purely political solution. That is why I have chosen to pursue other goals.”
“And in order to accomplish these goals, you need some middle-school kids from Earth. Does that about sum things up?” Colonel Rage asked.
“First, you must understand that we believe that there are software copies of the skill tree hidden on Confederation Central itself. If we can find them, we can completely nullify this Phandic advantage. The galactic threat will remain contained.”
“But why do you need us?” Mi Sun asked.
“There are parts of the station that have fallen into disrepair. We are not particularly proud of them, but they exist.”
I nodded. “I remember. Dr. Roop told me about them.”
“There is an even more dangerous area to which all access is denied,” the director said. “This is known as the Forbidden Zone.”
“The Forbidden Zone!” Charles cried. “This is like the original Planet of the Apes. I enjoyed it immensely.”
“It’s a classic,” I agreed, only mildly irritated that he had beaten me to the punch.
Ghli Wixxix made some sort of gesture with her hands. I could only guess it was impatience. “This area contains an outpost, located below the surface of the station that has not been visited in centuries, at least not by citizens of the Confederation. Every child born in our culture is implanted with nanites that track that being’s location. This is to prevent children from becoming lost. When a being comes of age, those nanites are neutralized for privacy reasons, but residual traces remain. There are security measures at the entrance to the Forbidden Zone that detect and block any beings who retain any trace of these nanites. In other words, in order to gain access to this area, we need the services of beings not born to the Confederation. In light of past events, such as your leading the team that brought us the stolen Phandic cruisers, I thought of you as being uniquely qualified to offer us assistance.”
I said nothing for a moment. I had been fetched from my backwater planet because I didn’t have a child-safety chip? There were lots of beings all over the galaxy who met that criteria. I didn’t see why I had to be the one to do this.
“Couldn’t you just use Urch and his people?” I asked. “There must be plenty of them who weren’t born in the Confederation.”
Urch snorted in reply.
“You may request that Mr. Urch accompany you,” the director said. “I have no objection, but the remainder of his kind cannot join this expedition.”
“Too many of them been recruited,“ Urch said in disgust. “By Junup’s Movement for Peace. Having members of my carnivorous species as part of their organization helps disguise just how much they hate beings like us. Unfortunately, it’s too hard to know who, among the Vaaklir, to trust.”
So much for that idea. “But we’re not professional soldiers,” I pointed out. “Did you ask the American government to help? I bet they would be happy to send Navy SEALs or Special Forces guys to do this.”
“Colonel Rage is here to serve as a military advisor, but to be honest, I could not convince the rest of the committee to agree to allow the armed military of a primitive world onto the station. With Underdirector Junup opposing my every move, this was as much as I could manage. I believe you can help us, Zeke. We know you and trust your motives.”
I looked around the room. I wasn’t the only one who clearly thought this idea was nuts. Charles, Nayana, and Mi Sun looked like they’d each taken a mouthful of rotten milk. Colonel Rage was sneering with disdain.
“So you want us to gain access to this lost part of the station,” Mi Sun said, “a place that is completely invisible to your surveillance and inhabited by who-knows-what. And there we’re supposed to wander around like idiots until we find some sort of software.”
“We do have some idea where you should look,” Ghli Wixxix said. “And behaving like an idiot is not advised. Within the Forbidden Zone is an ancient structure. This hidden fortress was, for many centuries, the place where the Formers stored their most dangerous weapons and technology. That is where you must go.”
“The Hidden Fortress,” I repeated.
“Correct,” Ghli Wixxix said.
Perhaps under normal circumstances I would have been tempted to mention the Akira Kurosawa film The Hidden Fortress, which was a huge influence on the first Star Wars movie, but given that I needed to convince the director that I was not the person for the job—and that she should let Earth into the Confederation anyhow—I figured I should soft-pedal this one.
“Wasn’t that a Japanese movie?” Colonel Rage asked.
“Kurosawa,” Nayana said.
“It was a major influence on Star Wars,” Charles added cheerfully.
By now I was already regretting having brought Charles, Mi Sun, and Nayana into this—not to mention Alice, though that hadn’t been my decision. It seemed like Ghli Wixxix saw us at worst as expendable commandos, or at best as the Young Avengers. I wanted to get Earth back in the running for joining the Confederation, but I wasn’t about to try to talk my friends into going on a suicide mission. I’d already agreed to consider the request, which meant I’d gotten Tamret off Rarel. Now I figured the smart move would be to not agree to anything until I’d seen her. Maybe there was a way to do what they wanted that wasn’t ridiculously dangerous.
“This sounds pretty risky,” I ventured.
“You have successfully led dangerous missions before,” Ghli Wixxix said.
That was true, but before, I was risking everything to save my father and, I believed, to save my planet. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I’d had Tamret by my side—Tamret, who said she could do anything and really could. Tamret, who had made me feel like I could do anything, and who’d stacked the deck so it was pretty near true. Now I would be ordinary Zeke, who was not about to lead his ordinary friends into something better suited for trained soldiers.
“I’ve been ordered to cooperate with the director,” Colonel Rage said to us. “That means I’m going to help her as best I can. You kids aren’t military, however, and I can’t order you to do squat. If you want to go, I’ll back you up to the best of my ability, but I’m going to be straight with you: I’ve got a son about your age, and there’s no way I’d let him do this.”
“That is not helpful, Colonel,” the director said, waving her eyestalks in a way I thought might suggest disappointment.
“My job isn’t to agree with you or anyone else,” the colonel said. “I call ’em like I see ’em. If I need to risk my own life to complete the mission, I’ll do it, that’s who I am, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that’s not who these kids are.”
“The last time we did something insanely foolish,” Nayana said, “Tamret bent the rules and that gave us an advantage.”
“Yes, your hacking of the skill-tree system,” Ghli Wixxix said. “The encryptions have been upgraded, and Junup’s security team is monitoring the network for any suspicious activity. I’m afraid you won’t find it possible to do that again.”
“I understand that we must do this if Earth is to join the Confederation,” Charles said, “but I nevertheless believe it is a bad idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Nayana said.
“Look,” Colonel Rage said, “your committee wants these kids to risk their lives to help you because you know they won’t cross you. I get that. But they’re children, and they’re not trained for this. You’re not comfor
table with American military on your station, and I get that, too, but you can’t always have exactly what you want. I think you need to bite the bullet and go back to your people. Convince them to allow a small group of elite personnel from our armed forces to help you out. If there’s going to be risk, it shouldn’t fall on a group of minors whose only qualification is that they yanked your fat out of the fire once before.”
“Colonel Rage makes a lot of sense,” I said. “I’d need to hear more about this plan before I could make a decision, but it sounds pretty dangerous.”
“I can’t force you to do this,” Ghli Wixxix said, “and your friend Tamret will be freed regardless, but I believe what we’re offering you as payment for your efforts is worth some risk.”
Now the room fell silent. That was the prize at the end of this whole ordeal: Earth could become a place without poverty or illness or war. We could, in my lifetime, be accepted as a full member of the Confederation, a part of the larger galactic community. Somehow, whether that happened was now up to a bunch of kids who weren’t old enough to get a learner’s permit.
“We need some time to think about this,” I said, figuring that delay was my best tactic. “And I want to talk to Steve and Tamret, and I want them to be included in briefings where we get more specific information. We’ll decide what we want to do then.”
“No, we won’t,” Nayana said. “I’ve already decided, and I don’t care what your lunatic friends say. I’m sorry, Zeke. I sort of like Steve, and I even came to not entirely hate Tamret—she made me her sister or something, which I suppose was nice—but those two are both loose cannons. I’m not going to put my life in the hands of a couple of aliens who aren’t afraid of anything.”
“No matter what anyone else decides, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, Nayana.”
At that her eyes began to glisten, and she turned away. “You are such a jerk,” she said. “If you go, I’ll have to go too.”
“Zeke has the right idea,” Colonel Rage said. “We don’t have to make a decision now. All the players aren’t here, and we need time to process. Let’s take this under advisement, and we’ll reconvene to bring the other aliens into the loop.”