by M. J. Kelley
Nate strode across the large room, people side-stepping as he passed by. “Hey,” he murmured, crushing her in a hug. “I’m sorry you didn’t get on the team. But I’m glad you’re not going, because I’d be worried about you.”
“You, worried about me?” she repeated, laughing half-heartedly. “You know this entire mission makes me worried about you, right?”
“Aw, Ting, I didn’t know you cared.” The soft, teasing tone took the sting out of the rebuke. But then his lips were on hers, and she melted into the sensation of being kissed tenderly by someone who wanted her. And for a brief moment, she wanted him, too, in a way that both frightened and thrilled her. But then she pushed away, stepped back, and glared at him. Nate’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at her in his characteristic, lazy way.
He caught her hand in his and squeezed, his thumb caressing her knuckles as he let go. “Don’t be mad at me, Ting. I’m a dead man walking.”
And then he was gone.
At nightfall, Ān-tíng found herself huddled in the box hedge, facing a small, human-style house. As the crow flew, the house was a mere kilometer and a half from where she had witnessed the sun crest over the water line of Weka Bay. From this location, she could practically hear the water lapping against the protected shoreline.
Stiff breezes carried the tang of the bay well inland, bringing with it the chill of the Pacific Ocean. Ān-tíng shivered in the hedge but trusted that her black suit would keep her heat signature hidden and help her remain undiscovered in the shadows.
It struck her as profoundly unfair that while thirty of her teammates, Nate included, were beginning their assault against the detention center, Ān-tíng had been sent on a simple retrieval mission, stealing a prototype of what was supposed to be some kind of ansible from an elderly inlari researcher. And while the promise of instantaneous communication was tantalizing, it still didn’t compare to both the risk and the glory of breaking General Holden out of his cell.
Ān-tíng could tell someone was in the house—one person, moving slowly, turned lights on and off as he passed from kitchen to dining room to living room. She waited patiently, leaning into the hedge for warmth, until all of the lights were out. She waited another hour before shaking out her legs and gliding through the moonlight to the back of the house.
The lock was an old-style mechanical one, something she was able to bypass with two picks and a practiced jiggle of the wrist. Ān-tíng turned the knob slowly and entered the kitchen with one soft step, heel to toe, and then another. She turned the knob before pushing the door closed, then slowly allowed the latch to slide home.
“Hello.”
Ān-tíng whirled with her weapon in hand, a stunner she had constructed herself after picking apart an inlari weapon. As her eyes adjusted to the darker interior of the house, she saw her target, Shirrah Opkith, sitting at the kitchen table, his hands empty and held close to his head. The horn structure over his scalp was iridescent in the moonlight, the lattice structure looking familiar and yet foreign.
“No . . . harm,” he said in slow, accented English. “No . . . hurt.”
She kept the stunner trained on him, her heart hammering in her chest. This was supposed to be a cakewalk, one of those missions that wouldn’t have threatened her at all. And yet here she was, holding a stunner on an inlari citizen, something that could easily land her in detainment for the rest of her life, if it didn’t result in her execution first.
Ān-tíng felt for the doorknob near the base of her spine. It was time to abort the mission and run back to the underground bunker. The prototype could wait for another day.
“Please,” he said suddenly in Anshahar, “don’t leave.”
She froze.
“I see you understand me,” he continued. “I mean you no harm, and the comm plate is all the way across the room. You could easily stun me—is that what it is? Clever . . . You could easily stun me before I took three steps toward the comm to call the Parhata.”
It was true, and Ān-tíng relaxed a fraction. Perhaps she could escape without being captured. But the Parhata would still know a renegade human had pulled a stunner on a citizen. The inlari military police would punish every slave they saw walking alone. Every single Ànchù mission from here on out would get progressively more difficult.
“I just want to talk,” Opkith continued. “That’s why I waited up for you.”
“You knew I was coming,” she accused, her lips unused to speaking Anshahar instead of Anshaglish. Her mouth felt as if it were filled with marbles as she spoke.
“I knew the temptation of my research would be enough for them to send someone for it, but my people seem to have forgotten about the human colonies—so much so that they allowed an old man to bring his research home.”
“And so you set a trap.”
“And so I seeded a rumor, in the hopes that someone would come.” His lip pursed in an inlari expression of amusement. “I didn’t think I’d have to wait two days.”
“Why did you want to talk to me?”
“Not you specifically, but to a human.”
“There are humans everywhere in Wellington.”
“Not free ones.”
That gave Ān-tíng pause. He wanted to talk to a free human? “You could talk to a free human in Australia.”
“But not one that’s fighting for the freedom of her people.”
She didn’t have anything to say to him, but swapped the stunner to the other hand.
“Aren’t you even curious why I wanted to talk to you?”
“Maybe.”
Opkith tilted his head slightly toward the door. “The panel on your left turns on the overhead light. Don’t worry. It’s not visible from the front of the house, if you want to keep your presence a secret.”
She slid the dimmer down and turned on the light. Opkith wore a blue tunic and a dark green robe, his thin legs sticking out from them like two chopsticks, ending in an oddly matched pair of bright socks. He was frail but alert, his light purple eyes looking over her with satisfaction.
“You’re here for the research, aren’t you?”
Ān-tíng saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”
They lapsed into an uneasy silence, and Opkith pointed toward the range. “The water’s still hot, if you’d like to make some human-style tea for both of us.”
Ān-tíng understood the underlying message: he didn’t want tea, but he wanted to offer her tea. And so he offered to drink some of it, to prove it wasn’t poisonous. It was a particularly inlari way of handling the offer of a beverage. Ān-tíng considered it. What was his intent in trying to get her to drink the tea?
Her mind whirled, but she finally settled on one thing: he was doing his best to put her at ease. Which, of course, made her even more unsettled. What was he planning to do with her? To her? Was she in more danger than Nate?
“Have you seen Jahama Goes to Australia?” Opkith asked suddenly, as she walked over with an empty mug in one hand and the stunner in the other.
The play had been written a decade before, and Ān-tíng had seen it four times while perched in the rafters of a theatre catering to the inlaris and their oral storytelling tradition. “Yes,” she finally said, returning for the second empty cup. “You’re referring to the scene with the two humans in the diner.” She had to give it to him—Opkith had a sense of humor. That particular scene featured two humans pointing weapons at each other while trying to eat. It was slapstick comedy on the surface, but was infused with inlari references to the subtle subtext that humans were nothing more than beasts, which imbued a pathos extending far deeper than one would initially expect.
“Yes.” He nodded.
She moved the teapot to the table, then brought over the kettle, one hand still holding the stunner trained on him as she did so. She filled the teapot from the kettle, then set the latter back on the stove.
“Thank you.”
“The two humans end up dying, you know,” she replied.
; “It’s implied, yes. But it was of their own doing. Still, they had found their inyata. It made them more than cattle.”
“Love?” Ān-tíng spat out the word in English, sitting down across from him at the table.
“Such a mistranslation,” Opkith sighed, shaking his head. “Your human word of love has many facets. Inyata is what separates a person from an animal. Some of your philosophers have said that what defines a human from an animal is a belief in God. Others have said that it is intelligence and the ability to rationalize. Yet others have said it’s the ability to lie. And still more have claimed that it’s the ability to love.”
“And inyata?”
“One’s soul purpose.” Opkith smiled, his thin lips spreading into a gentle twist. “Inyata can be for child or spouse or sibling or student, or even for a cause, and it changes over time. But the capacity to hold inyata marks someone capable of greatness. You, the freed humans . . . I had to see if you have the capability for inyata. Because if you do, then you are not meant to be slaves, and my compatriots on these islands are terribly wrong.”
“We were not meant to be slaves,” she replied hotly.
“What is your name, child?”
“I’m not giving you my name.”
“Are you going to pour the tea?”
She replied by reaching over with one hand and pouring the fragrant tea, so reminiscent of her own childhood in the Ànchù crèche, into each mug. She took the one closest to him.
“So suspicious for one so young.”
“I’m not that young.”
“So suspicious for one so old, then.” His eyes crinkled at the edges as he held the teacup in both hands and took a sip. “What will it take for me to prove to you that I mean no harm?”
Ān-tíng thought. What would prove that he was willing to be vulnerable? “Tell me about your inyata.”
His soft intake of breath was enough to tell her she had hit the mark. He nodded with his horned head at the wall behind her. “The image there. Can you retrieve it?”
She stood, hand still steady on the stunner, and retrieved the flat image in a picture frame. The image surprised her; she had expected all inlaris to have the tiny projectors that displayed 3D memories in brilliant colors, including those that humans couldn’t see. “Your family?” she asked, gazing at three inlari children and their mother on a foreign world, their skins flashing iridescent under an alien sky.
“My mother. My siblings.” His reedy voice wobbled. “I was born here, on Earth, but they made the trip here in suspension. They passed through the Deep during the Great War.” Ān-tíng guessed from his quiet grief that they had been victims of atrocity. He continued, “They were the reason I had entered the sciences in the first place, to try to find solutions to the problems our people experienced as wanderers. And now that the inlaris are here, I try to solve the problems that would give all of us on Earth a better life—or give us an opportunity to return to the stars.”
Ān-tíng hesitated. Was he genuine? Looking into his light, alien eyes, she saw in them a surprising humility, something she hadn’t even seen in any of the inlari newscasts so far. She holstered the stunner.
“My inyata is our freedom,” she declared, setting the frame face-up next to her.
“That’s your mission,” he replied, “but I don’t see more than passion there for you.” He smiled suddenly, revealing teeth that were graying with age. “But perhaps I am wrong. Let’s talk.” Opkith changed the subject in a typically inlari way, with the common Anshahar phrase and a tilt of the head. “What questions do you have about us?”
She took a breath. It was, potentially, the only way she would get any context into the newscasts she had been seeing and the plays she had read. While humans could and did teach inlari culture, a lot had changed in the half-century since humans and inlari had lived in relative peace, and even more had been lost in the years of conflict. Resistance scholars had educated guesses as to the meaning of newly coined phrases, but Ān-tíng constantly felt she was missing some subtext, some secondary meaning in phrases that were ludicrous when translated literally.
“In Lamasha Cries, the main character loses a child. What does she mean when she says: ‘The waters run wide, but space always touches the ground’?”
They continued talking well into the night, until yawn after yawn split her part of the conversation.
“I’m not sure you have found your inyata yet,” he finally said, “but I think you have the capacity. You are still young, child, and one does not find inyata easily. Sometimes, it only comes through suffering and loss.” When she offered a sleepy protest, he raised a hand. “Come,” he offered. “I have a spare room upstairs, and you may use it to rest before you take your leave.”
“Thank you,” Ān-tíng said honestly, covering her mouth as she yawned violently.
He led her up the stairs to the second floor. “My own sleeping chamber is downstairs, so I don’t make it up here very often.” The small bedroom at the end of the hall was clean but had the stale air of disuse.
She looked at him intently as he turned to leave.
“My name is Ān-tíng,” she said softly. “It means elegant peace. My family wanted peace for our people.”
“Ān-tíng,” he repeated, pronouncing the Mandarin tones correctly. “What a beautiful name.”
She closed the door behind her. She would sleep for half an hour, maybe an hour max, leaving before dawn to return to Ànchù headquarters.
Taking off her boots, she slid underneath the covers and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Open up, sabha Opkith! This is the Parhata!” The announcement over the anlaya speakers jolted Ān-tíng awake, and she jumped out from under the covers, hurriedly smoothing them down to make the bed look as if no one had disturbed it. She pulled on her boots, zipping them closed, and left the door open as she slid out of the room. She could hear the military police at the door as Opkith spoke to them in a gentle, reasoned tone.
She couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but she wiggled into the hall closet next to the heating unit, hoping the heat signature would mask her own in any infrared scan. Despite her uniform, her body would still leave a mild heat trace. All she had to do was keep from sneezing.
As long as Opkith kept her presence a secret.
“We’re doing a house by house search, sabha, to look for any fugitives. There was an attack on the Central Harbor, and one of the prisoners escaped.” The officer’s voice was agitated.
Ān-tíng could hear Opkith’s voice reply in measured tones.
“I believe there were casualties on both sides, but some of the insurrectionists made it out. We’re looking for them now. They couldn’t have come far.”
Had she hidden her trail well enough? Had she left human hair on the bed? She had forgotten to check. But it sounded like the Holden team had actually broken the General out of his imprisonment. Were they transporting him out of Wellington, out of the North Isle of New Zealand, and across to the the human-dominated Australia?
Her thoughts whirled like the dervishes of old, peppered repeatedly by worries over Nate—Nate, with the front tooth that overlapped the other slightly; Nate, with the goofy grin and the wicked sense of humor; Nate, whose arms had held her against him and kissed her goodbye.
Ān-tíng fought her panic, slowing her breathing and pinching her nose shut, breathing shallowly through her mouth.
“It smells like human,” the officer snapped, his voice frightfully near the door.
Opkith’s voice was patient, weary. “I rarely come up here anymore. Only the housekeeper comes up here, and she’s human. I would expect it to smell like human.”
Ān-tíng breathed a silent thanksgiving that Opkith seemed to want to protect her.
The Parhata officer didn’t respond. Ān-tíng could imagine the officer’s silent glare as he contemplated Opkith’s response. The sound of boots moved down the hall toward the stairwell, followed by Opkith’s quieter tread.
&nb
sp; “Thank you for your help, sabha Opkith. Stay on alert for the escaped humans; they are considered armed and dangerous.” The formal phrasing didn’t escape Ān-tíng’s notice.
Opkith’s voice murmured in response, and Ān-tíng waited until she heard the front door close and lock. She crouched for what seemed like two hours, but was, according to her wrist chrono, no more than twenty minutes.
She sneezed as soon as the knock came, four or five great sneezes that almost caused her to lose her balance. The door flew open, revealing Opkith, a look of consternation on his face.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t sneeze while the Parhata were here,” he noted wryly, backing up to allow her out into the hallway. “They went to the neighbor’s house, then suddenly ran out and back into their vehicle. I believe it’s safe for you to leave now.”
Ān-tíng dusted herself off.
He continued, “This is for you, Ān-tíng. I hope it brings you clarity. The encryption key is written on the label.”
She accepted the cube and stared at the code in wonder. “Why are you giving this to me?” Ān-tíng demanded.
“I have my reasons,” Opkith replied. “Indulge an old man for once. I think it will bring a measure of trust between our two peoples, something that I think we desperately need at this juncture in our shared history.” His eyes changed slightly, making him look older, more frail, and, perhaps, a little afraid. “As much as we like to pretend otherwise, there are many things about this universe we inlaris do not understand. Things we may need help with. Things, perhaps, that only humans can help us to grasp.”
Ān-tíng nodded, even though she didn’t understand.
“Come back in two days if you’d like to talk again. But this time,” he chuckled, “come in through the front door. I haven’t had a human slave in years, and the Parhata may be suspicious if a human doesn’t show up every once in a while. The key is under the second flowerpot.” He smiled wryly in recognition of the irony of the all-too-human hiding place, his face twisting in an inlari expression so familiar, Ān-tíng almost thought of it as human.