The Clouded Sky

by Megan Crewe

  “How do you think she’d like . . . ?” Amad says, opening a new can. When the others urge him on, he pushes it toward me.

  “Try it!” the girl beside Hain insists.

  I curl my fingers around the can, which is warmer than I expected. The liquid I can see through the square opening looks thick and red and not remotely appealing. Jule is still hovering nearby, but he doesn’t raise a protest, so I guess it’s safe enough. I raise the can to my mouth as if taking a gulp, only allowing a sip to pass my lips. The drink sizzles on my tongue. I wince, setting it down, and there’s more laughter all around.

  “Hey, Jule,” Hain says, leaning over far enough that he bumps my shoulder, “what would you think about lending your pet to a friend?”

  Jule smiles back casually enough, but I pick up the careful flexing of his jaw. “I wouldn’t trust you to take care of my . . .” he says, the word I don’t catch setting the rest of the group twittering.

  “Oh, I’d take care of her well,” Hain retorts, his gaze sweeping over me. I have to ball my hands to stop myself from shoving him away.

  The response to this is more groans than laughter. As it quiets, a guy at the far end of the table, whose hazel eyes have grown suddenly round, says in a cautious voice, “Would you lend to someone you did trust?”

  The question is so much more unassuming than Hain’s, and yet it sends a shudder through me that Hain hasn’t quite provoked. Maybe because it sounds like this guy is completely serious. I look down at the can in front of me, forcing my expression to relax.

  “What a bunch of greedy friends,” Jule says. “I’ve only had her one day.”

  “And already very attached, it sounds,” Hain remarks. “Are you going . . . ?” The last part of the question is a word that sounds vaguely like the one for decay, but in a form I haven’t heard before. The girl beside Hain swats his arm, but Jule just shakes his head.

  “Not so much I won’t . . .” he says easily, and whatever he finishes with, it manages to shut Hain up. The conversation drifts away from me.

  I take another sip from the can, to give my hands something to do other than fidget. The warmth burns down my throat and forms a pool of courage in my gut. I don’t have to just sit here and take this. Yenee wasn’t totally blank. A drugged-up Earthling can ask a few questions of her own, scope out the enemy. These are exactly the sort of people who’ve happily allowed Earth to stay imprisoned for so long.

  The next time there’s a lull, I test the waters. “How did you all become friends with Jule?”

  They blink at me. Then the girl beside Hain smiles. “We went to upper school together. He’d trade me the good snacks for . . . what’s it? ‘Homework’ help.”

  “Lived four apartments away from his family,” Amad says.

  “Sectormates and schoolmates,” Sandy Hair puts in.

  “His mom and mine are cousins,” Hain says with a grin. “He had no choice.”

  From the look on Jule’s face, I suspect this is more accurate than Hain realizes.

  A couple of the other guys apparently met Jule playing the sport they were talking about earlier, and the others are from school. There’s a sly tone to their answers, as if they find my asserting myself comical. I grope for a more useful query that won’t sound too aware.

  “Everything’s always inside here,” I say, keeping my voice dull. Jule is watching me— I have to trust he’ll intervene if I go too far. “Not like Earth. Don’t you ever want to go outside?”

  Don’t you ever question the way you do things? I want to add. What you do, to people like me?

  “We go out,” Hain says. “I’ll take you for a ride in my jetter. Got the whole galaxy out there.”

  “It’s better like this,” the girl beside him says, as if trying to reassure me. “Everything’s monitored and safe. Earth is so . . . messy.” She makes a face. “You’ll like it better here soon.”

  Does she seriously believe that? I think I manage not to look completely incredulous, but something must show on my face, because Sandy Hair remarks, “We might get a planet for ourselves, some day. But there’s no point until we’re fully ready. We have everything we need here.”

  He sounds as if he completely believes that. If this is how most Kemyates think, it’s no wonder Thlo and the others have to resort to working undercover to pursue their goals.

  “What if something breaks?” I ask, wondering if they know anything about the wear on the station Jeanant was concerned about.

  “We can fix anything,” Amad declares, raising his drink as if in a toast. “And the tech is always getting better.”

  Jule steps over to Sandy Hair and murmurs something to him. Then he ducks into the bathroom. Immediately, Amad leans across the table.

  “Should we tell him?” he says, directing the question mainly at Hain and the girl beside him. “About the parts?”

  “Parts?” the hazel-eyed guy inquires.

  One of the others answers. “Amad’s uncle picked up some ship parts, high tech, but discarded, and . . .” A word I don’t know. “Best you’ll get outside the service.”

  “We’re going to light up our fun ships,” Amad says, which doesn’t totally make sense to me. There must be slang I’m not catching.

  “Leave Jule out of this one,” Hain says. “More for us. He’s got plenty already.”

  With those last words, he turns toward me, running a finger down my arm from shoulder blade to wrist. I recoil, almost sliding off the bench.

  “Don’t!” I snap before I have time to decide whether that’s a reasonable pet reaction. Hain gapes at me. It takes all my self-control not to visibly tremble the way I’m quivering inside. The others have gone silent. Hain lifts his other hand, and then Jule comes back out.

  Hain drops his arm. The girl beside him giggles nervously. Jule glances around the table, raising an eyebrow. “What did I miss?” he asks, and his gaze settles on me for just a second. He asked in English so I could answer if I need to, I realize, with a surge of gratitude. But I suspect getting Hain in trouble is not going to make this situation better.

  “Just appreciating your purchase a little more,” Hain says. “You might want to check her . . . dosage—she’s a bit tense.” He swivels to face the girl. “So when is that . . . going to start?”

  I swallow more of the peppery liquid, and immediately regret it. My head spins. The can feels too solid in my grasp, as if my fingers are going to sink right into it. I set it down and fold my hands in my lap. Stupid. I need to keep my head straight.

  The chatter moves on to something about Hazel Eyes’s mother’s work on the council of . . . Business? It’s hard to focus. Councils are important. I have to pay attention. But I’m losing too many words.

  From the corner of my eye, I catch Jule making a short motion with his elbow. A moment later, Sandy Hair rubs his eyes. “Time to get going for anyone who doesn’t want to be . . . with the boss tomorrow, I think,” he says.

  There are a few sighs, and murmurs of agreement. The group eases toward the door. When Jule has shut it behind the last of them, I drop back onto the bench. My head tips forward into my hands automatically. I feel like I’ve been dragged around by a choke collar all evening.

  Jule mutters something that sounds like it includes a few Kemyate swear words. Hearing the anger in his voice, a fury I didn’t know I had in me ripples through my body. I clasp my hands together on the tabletop, willing back tears and the shriek of protest that’s bubbling in my throat.

  “They’re idiots,” Jule says. “They’re all soft-brained idiots. I’d like to kick Hain out an airlock. When I stepped away—he didn’t pull anything . . . ?”

  I can’t speak, only shake my head. I don’t want to admit how frightened I felt in that moment before Jule returned.

  “I won’t have him here again,” Jule says. “Some of the others, I might have to, but I can find excuses to keep him out.”

  “Thank you,” I manage, hating the tremor that sneaks into my voice. I rub m
y forehead, as if maybe I can wipe that whole experience from my mind.

  Jule pauses. Then, tentatively, he steps closer. He sets his hand on the bend of my shoulder, so lightly I think he expects me to pull away. But the gentle contact sends a rush of relief through me. I haven’t had a comforting touch since . . . maybe Win, that moment in the ship’s lab, before he jerked away from me.

  I lean toward Jule, accepting it. He stays there, still and present and undemanding. The anger inside me seeps out into the warmth of his fingers, the soft circles his thumb has started to trace over my shoulder bone.

  Then it dips a little too close to the spot Hain touched, and all those comments rise up in my mind. What Jule’s friends probably assume is happening right now—Jule touching me in a completely different way . . .

  I straighten up with a sharp exhale. Jule drops his hand. “If you want,” he says, “I can get out something to eat?”

  “Okay,” I say. I can’t remember how much of our early dinner I choked down.

  He grabs two packets, sliding one across the table to me, and sits in his usual spot, perpendicular to mine. When I glance up at him, the concern is obvious in his dark eyes.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, with a pang of guilt over the many harsh thoughts I’ve had about him in the last week.

  “They talked behind your back,” I add, as an offering of my own. “About some special ship parts Amad is getting through his uncle. I guess they’re going to use them on their own ships? Hain said they didn’t need to share with you.”

  Jule blinks at me. “They said all that in English?”

  “No,” I say. “I, ah, Win showed me the Language Learner program on the network. I’ve been picking up Kemyate since the trip from Earth.”

  “So then you—” Jule drops his head into his palms with a strangled laugh. “How much did you understand?”

  “Not a lot,” I say, to avoid getting into the subject of the more . . . questionable comments. “There’s a lot of words I still don’t know, and when people talk fast, I miss more.”

  “But you got enough to pick up on the black market talk,” he says. “That’s impressive. Even more impressive that you made it through all that without letting on.”

  “I told you I’d be fine.”

  “Well, you were,” he says, raising his eyes to meet mine. “Thlo had nothing to worry about. I had nothing to worry about. You’re really something.”

  For a second I think he’s going to reach toward me again. For a second, I want more than anything to feel that gentle touch.

  My face heats and I jerk my gaze down, fiddling with my dinner packet. No matter what anyone speculates, the last thing I’m here for is that.

  9.

  Though I’ve been outside the apartment before, I have the jitters when Jule and I leave early the next morning to meet with the rest of the group.

  “Is it safe, for us all to get together?” I ask as the private inner-shuttle carries us away.

  “Mako finds the occasional gaps when a workroom isn’t reserved, and Britta makes it look as if a little industrial group she made up has booked it,” Jule says. “Isis has a technique that ‘erases’ us from the surveillance footage around the meeting times so no one checking over it will see us. We have someone monitoring the Enforcer frequencies the whole time so we can get out if they look like they’re heading over. And we rarely all meet in the same place. Isis, Britta, and Emmer are going to be down in the tech bays testing out some of the weapon systems. We take every precaution possible, don’t worry.”

  I follow the shuttle’s movements on my mental diagram of the station: from the residential loops near the outer rim to the tighter inner circles of business and industrial space. When the shuttle stops, Jule checks the hallway outside and ushers me to the left. The room we duck into is a cluster of tiny interconnected spaces, the first with three computer consoles crammed against one wall and two rows of small screens on the opposite. Thlo and Mako are standing near the screens in conversation. Tabzi is sitting at one of the consoles. Win, who’s just inside the door, smiles at me as Jule ambles over to Thlo and Mako.

  “It’s been a while,” Win says in an apologetic tone. “You’ve been getting used to everything here?”

  “Some parts easier than others,” I say, but I’ve already started to relax in his presence. “I’m managing.” I tip my head toward Jule. “Anything he’s said, it’s only to needle you, you know.”

  “I figured that,” Win says, his smile slanting. “I just hope he isn’t needling you too much. It would have been easier with you at Isis and Britta’s.”

  “Except then I wouldn’t have been able to come to a meeting like this at all,” I remind him.

  “Of course,” he says. “No, that part’s good.”

  I register the strain in the muscles of his face, the stiffness in the way he stands—the tension I caught glimpses of on our journey back here.

  “I appreciated the messages you sent,” I say. “Thank you. That one band, from Taiwan, their songs are—”

  “Songs?” Tabzi says eagerly, rotating toward us. I hadn’t realized she was listening. “Have you brought music?”

  “Win sent—” I start, and cut myself off at the abrupt tightening of his expression. The others have glanced over. I remember Jule’s disparaging remarks. Maybe having a taste for Earth music isn’t something anyone here except me—and Tabzi?—would consider a virtue.

  I’m saved from having to reframe my answer when Thlo steps over to join us. Tabzi spins back toward her console, and Win draws his posture straighter.

  “Let’s get started,” Thlo says, her gaze settling on him first. “I’d like you to scan the records from . . .” The rest is something about talking and “important words.”

  “I was thinking,” Win says in a rush when she’s finished, and takes a breath before he continues, “It might be more useful for me to look at the Enforcer communications from the last two weeks. To see what they’ve been saying about our recent . . . activities on Earth. Since I’m most likely to recognize what they mean if they’re talking in code, as one of the two people most familiar with those activities.” He shoots me another small smile.

  Thlo pauses. I half expect her to tell him just to do what he’s been told, but after a moment she nods. “That’s a wise idea,” she says, matching his switch into English. “Here, let me bring up increased access for you. But remember, we’ll still need to take care of the other records after.”

  “Of course,” he says, lighting up for just a second. I can’t help smiling myself. It’s about time she decided his taking initiative is a good thing.

  As Thlo leans over the console Win will be using, Tabzi waves me to the other at her right.

  “I think you’ll be helping me with the . . . monitoring work,” she says. “That’s what we get being the new ones!”

  “Okay,” I say, recalling Jule’s explanation of the group’s safety precautions. “That’s making sure the Enforcers aren’t heading our way?”

  “Ah, yes. I can watch both areas myself, here and . . . downstairs, in the tech bays. But it’s easier with two.” Her fingers weave through the data in front of her, and the display above my console flickers on. Three boxes appear, periodically updating with strings of characters. “Oh!” Tabzi adds. “Of course.” Without asking, she leans over and taps something into my controls. The characters transform into English words and numbers. Logs of sectors and wards and other figures I don’t know the significance of, mostly brief reports of the “all clear” variety.

  “We’re in 2-29-7,” Tabzi says. “Just say something if you see any . . . activity in 27 through 31. If they come right into 29 without us catching on, an alarm will go off. But it’s better to see faster.”

  I can handle that. Only a couple of new lines have come in so far, nothing that’s anywhere near us. I reach to rearrange the boxes in a way I find easier to follow, and an errant twitch of my
finger flips one on its side. Still haven’t quite mastered gesture control. A yearning for my laptop back home fills me—a yearning, really, to have one piece of equipment here with an interface that feels normal.

  “Much nicer than your computers on Earth, yes?” Tabzi says. “Maybe a few things you’ll miss when you go back?”

  I suppress a laugh. “The ones at home I’m used to,” I say.

  “It’s interesting that you have so many different kinds. Here we keep everything the same type, the best type. Which kind do you use at home?”

  Does she want to get into a Mac vs PC debate? “Um . . .”

  Before I have to answer, Thlo moves into my view. “Skylar,” she says, “if I could have a word?”

  “Of course,” I say, springing up. Tabzi’s face falls, but she tweaks her screen to reclaim the data she’d passed to mine.

  Thlo brings me into the narrow hall just off the main room. “Anything to report?” she murmurs.

  My observations of the group. I swallow. “Well, I’ve only seen Jule, Isis, Britta, and Tabzi since we got here,” I say. “And Win, just now.” What can I tell her? “Win seems a little tense, but I think that’s just because he doesn’t really like being on the station. I know he’d rather be working on this mission than anything else. Tabzi is . . . maybe a bit overenthusiastically curious about Earth. Um, everyone else has been fine, as far as I can tell. I’ll keep watching.”

  “Good,” Thlo says, and I sense she’s about to dismiss me, back to the monitoring work that even Tabzi admitted she can do on her own. Is this the only reason she wanted me here—so I could take a brief look at people and give my report?

  Win had the courage to suggest an alternate assignment. And I have the idea Britta gave me, after all.

  “Britta suggested I might be able to help Mako with the scheduling and supply data,” I say. “I’m good with numbers—if you think that’d be useful?”