The Galaxy Game

by Karen Lord

  ‘You’ll get some control and you’ll lose a lot of protection. There’s no easy solution to this, Rafi. Let’s think things over carefully before we make any grand gestures.’

  Rafi opened his mouth, paused, then rushed on before fear or common sense could make him hold his tongue. ‘It’s already in process. I . . . I went to the Registration Bureau in the City.’

  ‘Your so-called research – you idiot! No, I’m the idiot, trusting you not to get into trouble in one afternoon!’

  Her voice grew too loud to be ignored. Rafi looked anxiously at the faces now turned in their direction. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds,’ he insisted to the room at large. ‘It’s perfectly legal.’

  Nasiha glanced very quickly at Aunt Grace, her eyes flickering over for a split second before coming back to give him a pensive look, and in that moment Rafi felt intensely guilty, as if her problem were being weighed in the balance with his. He was an unexpected, unwanted distraction, a family embarrassment derailing a serious matter of interplanetary importance.

  ‘It won’t be finalised until my birthday,’ he said, seeking a graceful retreat. ‘We can deal with it later.’

  It was easy when you knew what to watch for. Dllenahkh gave his wife a look that was somehow both stern and pleading. She bit her lip, her eyes anguished as she answered her husband’s silent communication, then blinked and smoothed her features leaving only a slight tension in her jaw as she spoke her words softly through clenched teeth.

  ‘Go to bed, Rafi, straight to bed. Don’t do anything – don’t even think about doing anything until we discuss this again.’

  Feeling thoroughly shamed, Rafi got up and walked quickly out of the house, running an uncomfortable gauntlet of guarded, sympathetic, querying and worried looks. At first he kept his head down as he took the short path to the living quarters, but the night breeze was so cool and comforting that he gradually lifted his heated face to the sky and slowed his pace. Stars shone intermittently through patches of drifting cloud, serene and timeless beyond the changeable atmosphere. He glanced back at the lit windows of the main house, suddenly wishing he were an adult in truth and fact, someone who could be told secrets and asked opinions, someone who could help give protection rather than always needing it.

  If he had remained on the homestead, he could have used his majority to take up work at another homesteading with no need for permission or blessing. If he had remained there and the past two years had not happened and there was no cap with his name attached to it. If he had remained there and never had a father – only a mother, a sister and a normal household with the ordinary struggle of selfishness and love.

  But he had a family that was not normal and a brain that was not normal and the government was too interested in both. When he stopped to think about it, he could not for the life of him see how officially becoming an adult was going to make that situation any better.

  Chapter Four

  Rafi had forgotten what it was like to sleep easily without nightmares or student pranks to disturb him. He should have been awake and stressed about when he would be missed at the Lyceum, but instead the next day came at sunrise instead of midnight. He stretched blissfully, cuddled his pillow and listened a while to the morning birdsong before drifting off into a few more hours of slumber.

  A tugging on his ankle finally woke him. ‘Get up and eat before breakfast becomes lunch,’ his uncle told him.

  He uncurled slowly. ‘Aunt Grace?’ he mumbled. She would never have let him sleep so late as to miss breakfast.

  ‘She’s attending to a business matter with a colleague.’

  Rafi sat up straight and alert. ‘What—’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ Dllenahkh interrupted.

  He fell back with a dramatic thud. Part of him wanted to wake up and find his problem solved and another part was scared of what kind of solution his aunt might put together.

  His uncle chuckled quietly. ‘Life looks easier after a meal. Come.’

  Rafi got up and followed Dllenahkh into the main house where he allowed himself to be fed familiar fruit, unfamiliar curds, soft and bland, which might have been dairy or vegetable in origin, and a strongly seasoned broth which burned away the last traces of his fatigue and set his ears tingling. Dllenahkh joined him at the table but only drank tea and scanned his handheld idly.

  Rafi looked around with more attention. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Out on business,’ Dllenahkh replied absently, still intent on his reading material.

  Rafi stared at him until he stiffened, raised his head and stared back apologetically. ‘It is better for me not to know details. I’m very bad at lying and I am the first one they would ask. I have tried to maintain a neutral position in all this.’

  ‘How is that even possible?’ Rafi demanded. ‘Can’t they make you order her to leave?’

  Dllenahkh winced at his bluntness. ‘It is a strange but not uncommon situation. By Cygnian homesteading law, I do indeed have that authority over the Commander. However, according to Sadiri spacefaring regulations, the Commander most certainly outranks me. I could order her to leave the homestead, but I could not order her to leave the homesteading, nor the planet. Few remain in the Science Council who outrank the Commander, and most of those are occupied with research on Punartam. Her behaviour may be described as negligent, but the structure no longer exists for it to be called illegal.’

  Rafi took a momentary guilty pleasure in the complications of someone else’s life – very momentary.

  ‘So, as I am not in a position to help Commander Nasiha, Grace has asked me to talk to you about your situation. I understand that you will not be missed for a little while yet?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rafi mumbled into his second cup of broth. ‘Lots of people go away for the weekend, but I’m not sure how long Master Silyan will forget I’m supposed to be there.’

  ‘Hm. Your mother has barred you from her Tlaxce residence. Your grandmother travels frequently and I’m sure you would agree that it would be irresponsible to involve her in this kind of trouble at her age. I do have the authority to make you leave this homestead, and you can’t . . . persuade me to allow you to stay.’

  He listened in horror as Dllenahkh implacably reeled off his list of dead-end options. ‘I thought you were supposed to be helping me.’

  ‘Pretend for a moment that I will not help you. What will you do?’

  Panic, Rafi thought immediately, but he bit his lip and controlled his breathing. ‘What I’ve already done. I can apply for adult status and go to another homesteading.’

  ‘You are sure that Central Government will leave you alone?’

  ‘I’ll go to a remote homesteading,’ Rafi said stubbornly.

  ‘You could have done that a year or two ago but not now, not when the government is starting to ask questions about you and those questions are not yet answered.’

  ‘Go back to the Lyceum? No!’ Rafi’s voice shook very slightly on the last word. He swallowed and breathed deeply again. It was actually very clever of his aunt to delegate this discussion to her husband. There was something about Dllenahkh that made him want to match the elder’s calmness and maturity. He wanted Dllenahkh to take him seriously – which he was clearly doing, uncomfortable though it was.

  ‘Grace and I have discussed this and we do not believe that returning to the Lyceum is the right thing for you to do.’

  At first Rafi was comforted, but then he felt suddenly and deeply suspicious. ‘Is she listening in on your thoughts right now?’

  Dllenahkh shook his head with a smile. ‘We have become very good at keeping secrets from each other. It began as a game, but it has proven useful on other occasions. She too prefers not to dissemble, and she cannot tell what she does not know.’

  Rafi thought he heard a slight, sibilant stutter on the dissemble which then rendered it disassemble to his ear and sent him on a mental digression with images of government interrogators picking his aunt’s
mind to pieces and curiously turning the smooth fragments over in their hands like tourists examining pebbles on the beach. The brain was a bit-piece sculpture of specialised and adaptable segments, and the mind a nebulous entity of chemistry, energy and mystical je ne sais quoi that still baffled Cygnian scientists. How would his aunt pretend to not know? Don’t turn over that rock, don’t look at the words boldly written on the surface underneath. The question felt familiar in ways that were both exciting and disturbing.

  ‘You influence each other,’ he accused.

  Dllenahkh dipped his head briefly in apologetic acknowledgement. ‘Not quite influence but . . . something. Openly, in full awareness and with full agreement.’

  ‘She must really trust you.’

  ‘And I her. The things she could do to me if she wished . . . but we are wandering away from the subject at hand. You. What is to become of you? Where will you go? We may be concerned for your well-being and honoured by your confidences, but is it wise for us – your aunt and I – to hold such information when we work so hard to convince the government of our compliance with Cygnian law?’ It was hard to read Dllenahkh’s face. His eyes rested steadily on Rafi, conveying a sense of stability and reassurance that did not mesh well with his words of cold self-interest. ‘We are not in a position to take risks, but fortunately we know someone who is.’

  He got up from the table as if that was the end of the conversation. Rafi looked up at him in complete confusion. Dllenahkh started to walk away, then paused and said casually, ‘You should rest for the remainder of the day. It may make you wakeful during the night but . . . well . . . we shall be able to find something for you to do.’

  Dllenahkh stepped out of the dining room, crossed the garden and left through the front doors before Rafi could move his lips to frame a sensible question.

  *

  If nothing else, the way he was completely left to himself indicated how much there was going on beneath the surface at the homestead. His aunt put her head around his bedroom door around mid-afternoon, her eyes tired and her face uncharacteristically glum. She saw that he had a snack and a spare handheld, nodded as if to reassure herself that he was not being neglected and weakly returned his ‘it’s okay’ smile. His smile did not lie; it was okay. Sleep and trust and love combined was the panacea, a day of idleness perfected the recipe, and if – if – there was something else to his peace, some air that breathed in and through each human mind, it did not surprise him that even during a time of uncertainty the Dllenahkh homestead had a more wholesome savour than the secretive, competitive Lyceum. And yet he did not know how he knew this. The Lyceum taught ancient civilisations, ethics, philosophy and sociology. It taught structure, organisation, rules and duties. It did not teach root causes and reasons, nor anything beyond the boundaries of its narrow remit of socialising the dangerously gifted.

  That was going to change. Dllenahkh had given him a handheld . . . not the student slate open to all the teachers’ eyes, nor yet a junior handheld with restricted access, but a guest handheld with wide-open access answerable only to the settlement’s authorities. In addition to that, he still had an old but serviceable datacharm – a gift from Aunt Grace years and years ago, when she used to send trinkets and letters by post. It had been a useful eccentricity which got past his father’s notice in a way that could not have been managed by calling or sending messages via the family comm. The charm was similarly eccentric and useful, resembling a tiny padlock made of dark wood and brass (and whether it was truly wood and metal, he had no idea). He had quietly left it at his grandmother’s condo before attending the Lyceum, then just as quietly moved it to his mother’s place in the City.

  Tucked in a lazy nest of sheets and pillows, he industriously copied every article, report and manual that looked vaguely helpful, even the ones that were too technical for him to understand. Then he began collecting what looked interesting. Anything authored or co-authored by his aunt and her friends automatically made it in, which left him with an eclectic selection from biodome waste treatment to the history of interplanetary liaisons on Cygnus Beta. He went from skimming summaries to reading and fell asleep so suddenly that when he woke up and found the room dark he panicked, thinking bizarrely that he had slept away the weekend and it was time to leave the homestead.

  At last he remembered where he was, checked the time on the handheld and saw it was barely two hours past sunset. He carefully shook the datacharm out of the bed-sheets and into his hand. The original wristband had disintegrated long ago, so he unhooked the lanyard from the handheld and fiddled until he had a double-loop high on his arm and the charm securely attached to it, resting between his inner arm and side ribs. He prayed that it was waterproof. He had done a lot of nervous sweating over the past few weeks and he doubted that would improve.

  Dllenahkh looked in on him very soon after. ‘Get ready. It will be wet and windy, so dress appropriately.’

  ‘What about you?’ Rafi asked, eyeing his uncle’s light tunic, short trousers and sandals.

  ‘I won’t be going with you,’ Dllenahkh replied. ‘Commander Nasiha will meet you at the front gate in half an hour. Do not be late.’

  His excitement turned to nerves. Commander Nasiha was scary at the best of times, and with the distractions of her new trouble she appeared even colder. He got himself ready with the swiftness of a Military Services recruit and half-ran to the dining room to snatch some portable food from the cupboard. If he thought this extra piece of preparedness would earn him points from the Commander, he was wrong. When he came hurrying to the gate to meet her, she began to sniff the air as he approached and preempted his stammered greeting with, ‘What is that?’

  He stared at the bundle in his hand for inspiration, almost forgetting what he had grabbed. ‘Cold meat paste and pickled vegetables in flatbread.’

  ‘It stinks,’ she declared.

  ‘Ah . . . that’s probably the fermented hot sauce,’ he mumbled.

  She took it out of his hand and whipped it briskly into the hedge near the gate – not with anger, but with enough determined force to make sure it settled firmly behind the spiky twigs and broad foliage. ‘Dangerous. You can eat when we return, but that is the worst possible choice for this trip.’

  ‘But I don’t even know where we’re going!’ he wailed, his anxiety about the larger adventure overcoming his shyness with Commander Nasiha.

  She was taken aback. ‘You do not? What did Dllenahkh tell you?’

  ‘He told me to sleep and to meet you, nothing more!’

  She pursed her lips, considering, but soon the line of her mouth softened and she allowed a small smile to show, tacitly approving the secrecy. ‘Then follow me,’ she commanded.

  He followed. She went through the gate and turned down the road that led away from the main highway. First it was a quick walk, later she gradually increased the pace to a jog, and then, before he could protest or even ask why, they were almost running along the dirt track, crunching old leaves and gravel under their feet. The road’s footlights came awake on sensing motion and painted the way ahead in a faint red haze that matched their pace. However, as they left the gates behind, the lighting gradually thinned then ended, leaving only starlight partly obscured by the trees marking the boundary of the homestead.

  Wallrunning practice had made Rafi fitter, but Commander Nasiha was still slightly taller, with a longer stride and the certainty of knowing her destination. She waited on him when he stopped, once to catch his breath, a second time to retch unproductively at the side of the road, and a third time when he tangled his feet with a stray vine and was brought down roughly.

  She pulled him upright and spoke with an attempt at kindliness. ‘It is not much farther. We can go slowly now.’

  She ran ahead of him, keeping within sight so that he saw when she stopped just where the rise of the road reached its crest. He staggered the last few steps to stand beside her, looked out over the landscape and had a moment of complete disorientation. Star
s were in the sky, but there were also unfamiliar constellations below the horizon, twinkling . . . no, not twinkling, dancing. He dropped to one knee and breathed deeply to steady his head. Sense gradually returned; he was looking down at Grand Bay: the moving lights were boats and buoys on the waves; a fixed sprinkle of stardust showed the line of the coast; and a handful of bright fingers fanning out was a grouping of piers of varying lengths. It was very pretty, but nothing worth running for.

  Commander Nasiha led the way downhill, talking as if she had been strolling all the way. ‘This is where the pilots stay when they come to Cygnus Beta. Of course, there are staff lodgings at the Tlaxce City terminal, but it is not too strange that Sadiri pilots would wish to visit their settlement. Sometimes they bring their ships. Why not? More and more young ships and dwarf ships are being pressed into service after the fleet losses. They transport important communications and key personnel, and they are small enough to manage planetfall into Cygnian oceans.’

  She turned to Rafi for a moment. Her face was unreadable in the dark but her voice held a hint of dry humour. ‘Few planets have the resources to patrol and police the depth and breadth of their oceans.’

  Later, Rafi realised she had been attempting to prepare him for what he was about to see, and if he had been paying more attention to what at first appeared to be small talk, he might have been less confused. It would not have lessened the shock. His eyes widened, his steps slowed and at last he stood on the sand a few metres away from the main pier, staring and staring at the massive silhouettes that reared from the water and blotted out the stars. At first he imagined them to be closer and smaller, but when his brain finally took in the entire scene, including the length of the pier and the regular spacing of its lights, he understood at last and let out a squeak that was both excitement and fear.