Tales from Ardulum

by J. S. Fields

  “Jeez, buddy. Never seen a Neek before? Don’t you read?”

  The Terran chuckled.

  “Come,” a voice said in Common. That voice was much higher pitched, and it didn’t belong to the Terran.

  Neek pivoted on her hip. The Risalian she’d run into reached out and helped her stand. His black hair was loosely braided down his back, and his blue skin looked pasty in the artificial light. He was only wearing a blue tunic made of what looked like rayon, pressed and sharp. As he breathed, the gill slits in his neck flapped open and shut with a little wisp sound that made Neek feel vaguely seasick. Why was he… Wait, no, not a he. Neek chided herself. Risalians had one sex and reproduced through budding. Their pronouns in Common were…argh! She couldn’t remember. It? No, that wasn’t right. Xe maybe? Not zie though—that was for sure a third-gender pronoun. She’d have to ask directly and hope the Risalian wouldn’t take offense.

  “My Common is bad,” Neek said in Common—the one phrase she’d made sure to memorize—as the Risalian led her through the crowd to a small seating plaza. Colorful flowers grew under an artificial sun lamp. What with the walls and floor of the station all a uniform pale brown, it was a welcome change. Neek even heard the sound of flowing water, although none was apparent. “Your…not name. Your small name. Your…not ‘he,’ not ‘she.’ What?”

  The Risalian’s neck slits flushed purple. “Xe…and hir,” the Risalian said and then motioned for her to sit.

  Well, she was offending beings already. Great start to her first week as Exile.

  “Sit,” xe ordered.

  “Food?” Neek asked hopefully, her stomach growling again. “Job for a wayward Neek, which pays in advance and provides comm access?” she added in her native tongue.

  “Sit.”

  What else was she going to do? Run off? Neek sat.

  The Risalian squinted at her and rubbed hir neck slits. The Common words came slowly then, each well enunciated. “You walk without thinking. Why are you here? Are you lost? Do you…belong here?”

  Neek pursed her lips. Really? Xe was irritated with her? She wasn’t the one who’d done the pushing. And her presence wasn’t that unusual. Neek were members of the Charted Systems. Just because her people chose not to leave the planet didn’t mean they weren’t a fully participating entity. She had the same right to be here as anyone else.

  “Are you Alusian?”

  “Are my arms covered in fur?” Neek asked incredulously, forgetting to use Common. “Do your eyes work?”

  Apparently, her tone didn’t need translating. “Terran?” the Risalian countered.

  That, at least, was a reasonable mistake. Terrans had a lot more phenotypes than the Neek, but they both had a lot less hair than Alusians and their skin didn’t run into the blue spectrum like the Risalians’. “Neek,” she said, pointing to her chest. “Job?” she added in Common, because if she was already a spectacle, then she might as well get something out of it.

  The Risalian spouted a fast string of words in response, none of which Neek understood.

  “Neek,” she said again. This time, she held up a hand and splayed out her fingers. She had eight per hand, like most Neek, and the stuk glistened in the fake sunlight.

  Xe opened hir eyes wide and nodded in understanding. “Neek,” xe repeated. Xe pointed to hir own chest. “Kelm.”

  Neek frowned. A blue tunic on a Risalian, not quite the same color as their skin, signified something. Governing body? Cell-Tal? She couldn’t remember. She knew that Risalians were bipeds with an aquatic lineage, hence their lithe frames and the gill slits in their necks. Everything else was a little hazy. They had only one inhabited planet. Maybe. Maybe a moon or two, as well. They oversaw the Charted Systems’ peace—she was sure of that—which was why this one was hovering over her like she was some distraught child.

  Kelm said another garbled sentence and pointed at the hallway to Neek’s left. Several neon signs hung suspended from the ceiling, flashing in pink and orange. The mass of colors and blinking lights and characters she didn’t recognize made her head hurt. Neek followed Kelm’s finger to a pale green one that had four words on it, one of which was “child.”

  “I’m not a child,” Neek said acerbically, forgetting to use Common again. “And I’m not lost. I need a job, and I need food, not necessarily in that order.”

  Kelm gave her a tried look. Neek really, really wanted to smack hir in the neck slits. Instead, she took a deep breath and said in Common, “No child. Adult.”

  Kelm laughed and again pointed down the hall. This time, xe spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable.

  Neek pursed her lips. Memories tumbled in her head for a few moments as she tried to recall how the Systems dealt with childcare or even orphaned children. What did they do with vagrants of any age? Were there vagrants in the Charted Systems? Hadn’t poverty gone away when crime had—or had it been the other way around? Who would just be wandering…

  “Withering andal. No. I am not a Journey youth.” Her Common disintegrated as her temper flared hot. “I don’t need two years of guided wandering set up to teach kids how to act like competent adults. I am an adult. I’ve finished my education. I graduated with top honors from the Heaven Guard Academy. I’ve been through every form of apprenticeship and training I will ever need. I’ve had a gold robe in my hands. I know where my life is going, I’m on track…sort of, more or less, and I don’t need your—your guidance. I’ve had enough well-meaning oversight to last me a lifetime. You can take your asinine cultural exchange program for teenaged symbionts and shove it through your neck slits. Some of us take real jobs when we become adults, instead of going on a two-year vacation around the Systems. Some of us are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves!”

  Kelm tapped a claw against hir mouth.

  Neek growled, bunched her hands into fists, and tried again in Common. “Adult! Pilot! Adult!”

  “Identification.” Kelm held out hir hand expectantly. Neek cursed again. She knew that word well, but of course she didn’t have any on her. The president had made sure of that. Bodies orbiting in space didn’t need identification when they were sealed up in a golden coffin.

  “Neek adult fifteen rotations!”

  Kelm exhaled through hir lung slits and shook hir head. Again, hir words came slowly and clearly. “Eighteen old enough to leave with guide. No guide, only Youth Journey. At twenty, apprenticeship. At twenty-one, free travel. How old are you?”

  “No.” Neek wanted to yell that it was none of Kelm’s business, but she didn’t know how to say that in Common, and it technically was Kelm’s business. But she’d be damned if she was going to be babysat for the next year, and Ardulum could fuck any apprenticeship. She’d become an apprentice pilot when she was ten. She was a damned adult. If she was adult enough to get kicked off her homeworld, then she was adult enough for the Systems. She didn’t need her failure, her exile, rubbed in her face constantly for the next year by being forced through some mentorship program for children. She needed food, and she needed access to a comm. She did not need this.

  “How old?”

  “No!”

  “How old?”

  Neek tried to storm off back into the crowd of beings and well away from the brightly lit, little hostel that no doubt held eager, star-eyed teens from across the Charted Systems, but a clawed hand across her wrist held her back. Kelm stood, eyes dark and a stony expression across hir face. Neek caught sight of the bushy Terran slouching against a wall and watching the whole scene with amusement.

  “How old?” Kelm asked again, with maddening calmness.

  Neek jerked. Claws broke through the thin fabric of her talther’s shirt, ripping it further.

  Her talther’s shirt.

  Her family…

  Neek’s arm went slack. Her bluster bled away. Her stuk thinned. Aliens surrounded her, their smells and bodies and languages grotesque and wild, and the last part of her family lay shredded against her skin. She had nothing. She was
nothing. Andal help her, she was supposed to have returned to her parent’s home after the ceremony to help her talther slaughter a titha so they could have bacon in the morning. They had been planning on going hiking afterwards—a big celebratory thing for her graduation. And now…this.

  The stuk on her fingertips dried. Her body would reroute it into tears if she didn’t get control of herself. She felt the tears gather anyway.

  “How old?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Follow.” Another clawed hand closed around Neek’s upper arm, and she was half led, half dragged, around a group of carousing Terrans, a short Minoran, and a shimmering slick of something towards the cheerful, green neon sign. The gigantic Terran didn’t follow, which was a shame, because Neek could have used someone to punch that wasn’t an authority figure, although she’d be damned if she let anyone see her cry. Still, given the stains on his flight suit, that half smirk on his face, and the way he was trying so hard to look nonchalant, he looked like the kind of guy that kept a few antique pistols around, just to piss off the galactic constabulary. Maybe if she wiped off her damn tears and just punched him, he would shoot her and then she’d have a quick death in a spaceport instead of a slow, maddening death by asinine teenaged conversation.

  “Hey.” Neek tugged against Kelm’s grip. Hir claws tightened. “Hey!”

  “You are to go here,” xe said irritably. “Just walk.”

  “Given a choice between being a Journey youth and being pushed out an airlock, I choose the airlock.” Her sentence was in Neek. She didn’t care. At least her voice hadn’t trembled despite her throat swelling with unbearable emotions about a family she’d never see again.

  Kelm stopped moving long enough to scowl at her before pushing her through a flashing doorway into a brightly lit foyer filled with Charted Systems teens playing a kicking game with a ball.

  “No choice,” xe said firmly, in Neek’s own language, before turning from her, exiting the hostel, and slamming the door behind hir.

  “I GOT IT.”

  “Turn another five degrees to starboard, Sticky. Otherwise, you’ll break the back thrusters before you finish rotation. I thought you said the Neek went to junior pilot school or something. You fly like an Oori.”

  “I said, I got it.” Neek ground her teeth and leaned into the console. Her stuk was already thin from irritation, so her fingers slipped across the bioplastic interface. The shuttle banked slightly to port.

  The Alusian captain threw up her hands and stormed over to the console. “Clumsy, undereducated Neek! Just stop. Stop! I’ll do it myself.”

  Neek continued rotating the ship. “I’m not clumsy, and I’m almost done. Just give me another few seconds.”

  “No, you’re done!” The Alusian pushed Neek from the console. With a sneer, she used the sleeve of her long, white robe to wipe the console dry and then reentered a set of commands. The shuttle listed, and the hull thruster misfired. The ship banked into the wall and acquired a five-meter-long gash in its biometal.

  Horrible, ear-piercing alarms blared throughout the docking bay. Neek backed away from the console and glared as the Alusian frantically tried to control the ship. Everything would have been fine if she just would have let her finish. She’d done the calculations three times: there’d been plenty of room. She’d flown land skiffs with half as much maneuverability, and through much smaller areas. A little trust, for once, would have been nice.

  The shuttle jerked again and launched itself into the opposite wall. This time, the wall itself dented. “Your contract is terminated!” the Alusian screeched. “You are incompetent. No wonder you people never leave your planet!”

  The shuttle finally smashed to the biometal floor, Neek barely keeping her balance where she stood. Outside, the sounds of thuds echoed throughout the hangar as Minoran plating fell from the hull of the ship.

  With a curse, the Alusian slammed her fist against the console, releasing the lock on the exit hatch. As the gangplank descended to the hangar, Neek snarled, shoved her hands into the pockets of the Youth Journey coveralls she wore—mint green and far too snug across her hips—and stalked out of the ship and into the bay. She was most definitely not going to be paid for this job, especially as she’d only put in half a day’s work. She hadn’t been paid for her last job, either, since the gas leak she’d reported but had not caused had been blamed on her, nor the time before that, when the Terran shopkeeper had taken one look at her hands and demanded she leave the store.

  The comm—the pay comm in the corner of the hostel—remained frustratingly out of reach.

  She was about to turn towards the hostel—ready to spend the rest of the day staring at the bottom of the bunk above her, practicing the hand motions for settee drills and dreaming of all the vile curses she could hurl at the president when she could finally afford a comm—when an open bay door caught her attention. Neek was in the beta wing of the spaceport, which mostly housed single berths for the wealthier clientele, as well as for those who had something to hide. Doors weren’t just left open.

  Since the worst anyone could do was yell at her when she was wearing the ridiculous Journey coveralls, Neek changed course and walked right in. Maybe she’d find a comm with a broken credit charger. Maybe she’d find a ship so beautiful that she’d forget she was stranded on a stinking space station—even if only for a moment.

  An Oorin dredger sat in the center of the bay. Its massive, open hold had been recently cleaned. Neek could smell the disinfectant. There was heat coming off the plate armor, which meant it was likely getting ready to leave. Lost in thought, Neek toyed with the insignia on her coveralls, plucking at the stupid embroidered words. A steady rotation of Risalians checked up on her every night in the hostel. If she stowed away on the dredger, even if she was legitimately offered passage, they’d have her back in half a day in that moldy bunk with her Minoran and Terran roommates. But there’d be a general comm on the dredger. She could call home. She could talk to her parents and brother. She could just sneak on and use it. Quickly. No one would ever know.

  “You lost?”

  Neek jumped, feeling guilty despite herself. Wincing, she looked down. On the ground was a silvery puddle of…goop with a rectangular metal box floating on top. It looked like an old universal translator, which meant this was an Oori. That box would be their breathing apparatus, too, since the station was set up for oxygen breathers. There was a separate spaceport, a smaller one, near one of the other moons where the Oori did commerce with just each other.

  “Just dreaming,” Neek quickly replied. “I used to be a pilot.” There was no particular reason to add the last part. Wistfulness would only bite her in the ass later.

  “Can you pilot a dredger? My last pilot died.”

  Tone didn’t really come through on a universal translator, so Neek had no way of knowing if that was supposed to have been a joke, a lament, or a warning. Still, her stomach fluttered. Piloting was a job a Journey youth could undertake, and it would get her off the station and away from Risalians. She’d be able to use the comm. It didn’t even matter if the dredger was just going to one of Oorin’s moons. She’d be flying.

  “Why did the pilot die?”

  “Methane poisoning. Hold had a leak. It’s just done being repaired.”

  “Your comm work?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Could I use it when off duty?”

  The surface of the Oori rippled. “If you know how.”

  Neek huffed. “I had a standard education.”

  “Yes, but you are also a Neek.”

  Her face flushed, and her stuk became tacky. Yeah, she was a Neek. Yeah, they didn’t use much technology. Yeah, they worshipped a planet that disappeared hundreds of years ago and probably never existed at all. Yeah, they were xenophobic, but they were still her people. With balled fists, Neek managed, “I know how to fly, and I know electronics. Neek aren’t technologically inept. We just don’t use them a lot. Do you want a pilot? I’m
here, and I want off this station.”

  The Oori shimmered into an off-green tint. Their puddle body rolled in on itself, like the being was trying to make themselves into a drippy baguette. The translator box continued to float on top, although now it looked more like it was embedded in green putty than floating on a pool. “The job of a dredger pilot requires a waiver due to dangers.”

  Neek ground her teeth. “I don’t care. I’d rather be poisoned than go back to that hostel. Are you registered with the Risalians? Can you sign the waiver for these ‘dangers’ and my paperwork?”

  Bubbles foamed across the surface of the Oori. “I am registered. You’re not my first Journey youth.”

  “The last one wasn’t—”

  “Systems law forbids you from being put in danger. My last pilot was…unlucky. The hold is fixed. I have the inspection paperwork. I can send a contract to the Youth Journey headquarters now. Processing the paperwork will take one day. You may familiarize yourself with the controls immediately.”

  A small animal was trying to fly out of Neek’s chest. She needed her heart rate to slow down, her breathing to find a rhythm again. She needed her stomach to stop trying to jump through her throat. Three weeks in this dung heap of a spaceport, and this was the closest she’d ever come to having access to a comm. If it slipped through her stuk-covered fingers now, Neek didn’t think she’d recover. “And the comm?”

  One of the Oori’s bubbles popped, and Neek was pretty certain it was supposed to be a laugh. “Yes, you may use the comm.”

  “And the contract?” Neek breathed. Her mouth was too dry. The sides of her pants were wet with stuk. “How long would the contract be for?”

  “A year. A month. A week. I don’t care. I need a pilot now. We can do week to week if wanted.”

  She would have worked on one of the Oorin moons and worn an oxygen respirator for the next year if it meant getting at a comm and away from the Risalians. “Deal.”

  Three more bubbles burst near the edges of the rolled-up Oori. With the translator staying firmly on top, the being rolled to the bay door. They paused at the threshold and gave a very loud burp. Neek thought they might say something, but the Oori resumed rolling, eventually turning a corner.