by R. C. Lewis
He hangs in midair like he does it every day, and the winder assembly doesn’t even twitch. Tiav is definitely bigger than I am, so if the tether supports him, it’ll support me. I take the suicidal step before he can encourage me to.
The sensation is the strangest ever. Well, not as strange as going through the portal, or even the streamers, but it’s right up there. I’m hanging almost a hundred feet above the ground, but the way the harness-tether system is designed, it feels like sitting on a dining room chair. My insides flutter at the contradiction.
Tiav taps a command to lower us—I instinctively grab hold of my tether when I start to move—and scoops up two items from the edge of the roof as we pass.
“Here’s your brush,” he says. It’s metallic, rectangular, with bristles sprouting out of one surface and two metal loops arching out from the other. “Brace your feet against the wall like this. First we scrub the walls, then later the windows. Eighth floor is ours.”
When Tiav says scrub, he means it. The cleanser dispenses automatically from the metal base into the bristles, but the rest is old-fashioned work. I slip my hands into the metal loops and start working on the wall in front of me while Tiav does the same three feet to my left. My tether gets in my way at first, until I get used to how I need to position myself. It’s easy to see where we’ve cleaned, where the dingy brown gives way to a brighter tan.
We finish our first section, and Tiav moves us six feet to the right. The winders are on some kind of track system. Halfway into the second section, the muscles in my arms begin to burn. Spending a day in the workshop may be work, but it doesn’t compare to this.
I can just imagine what the media-grubs would say.
JTI heiress Liddi Jantzen got her hands dirty with the only trade she seems to have any skill at—manual labor.
They obviously never saw me have a mud fight with the triplets.
My breath hitches in my chest, nothing to do with exertion. Cleaning walls isn’t helping Marek, Ciro, Emil, or any of the others. Conversely, having Vic here would help me. His biceps would make short work of this whole building. Imagining it, I’m not sure whether I’d rather laugh or cry.
“Are you sure Kalkig didn’t bother you yesterday?”
Tiav misinterpreted my pause, but even with the frustration of silence taunting me, at least some pseudo-conversation will distract me from the ache in my arms. I nod. The Agnac may be a new species to me, but hate isn’t.
He looks uncertain, but I don’t think it’s a matter of not believing me. “I’d say I don’t know what his problem is, but I do. You don’t.”
I give him the most encouraging go-on look I can manage, because I really do not understand Kalkig’s hate when he doesn’t even have the excuse of Jantzen Jealousy.
“Long story. Complicated. But the Agnac don’t trust people from the Lost Points, not like they trust us. I just wish Kal wouldn’t jump to the worst possibility. You came here for a reason, right?”
Yes. I didn’t exactly intend to rediscover the Eighth Point, but my brothers brought me here for a reason. That’s good enough for me.
He raises an eyebrow, half-teasing. “That reason isn’t to destroy Ferinne, is it?”
Is that what Kalkig thinks I’m here to do? For someone who doesn’t know anything about my family’s status, he still thinks I have an awful lot of power. My “he’s-out-of-his-Agnacki-mind” expression must be enough that Tiav doesn’t need a clear no from me, because he shakes his own head.
“And he wonders why the Agnac need the Aelo,” he mutters. “I’ll keep trying to talk to him. Maybe after a year or so I’ll break through.”
I point to my head and knock on the wall I’ve been cleaning. Tiav laughs. It’s nice making someone laugh without wondering whether it’s only because they want to get on my good side.
“Hardheaded. Yes, he’s very. But all the Agnac are. As much as I lecture him about generalizing, I haven’t yet met one of his people who wasn’t stubborn.”
Tiav makes lighter small talk through the rest of the day, telling me about the Ferinnes who first settled Podra and an ancient feud between two architects that ended in half the town’s original buildings being destroyed by sabotage. My arms get a break when we return to the roof for lunch, then it’s back to scrubbing. Below us, pairs of Ferinnes work on the other floors. I worry that we’ll get too close and run into their tethers, but it’s like a dance. Everyone moves just where they need to when they need to. All the other buildings on the street are the same, people dangling like spiders on their silken threads, cleaning away.
The windows are easier—less scrubbing, more wiping—and just as the sun dips down to the horizon, we finish. Tiav takes us back to the roof one more time and helps me figure out how to get free of the harness.
“How’d you like your first Daglin?” he asks.
I rub my sore arm and shrug. I’ll feel it in the morning, but really, it wasn’t bad.
He laughs again and stretches his own arms. “Yeah, it takes getting used to. Do they have anything like this on Sampati?”
The idea of Reb “Lies-Through-His-Teeth” Vester scrubbing down a building is so bizarre, I can’t process it. All the swarming vid-cams would get in the way, making the job impossible.
“Once we get the writing a little smoother, you can tell me a few things you do have, then.”
Most of the others have reached the roof now, too, and many of them wave and call over to Tiav, wishing him a good Daglin, whatever it means to have a good one after you’ve finished your chores.
“I’ll be right back,” Tiav says. “Need to talk to Luo before he leaves. Just coil your tether and put it with the others.”
That’s fine, and he trots over to the far edge of the roof. The other Ferinnes gravitate toward him, like vid-cams on Reb at a premiere gala.
I do coil up my tether, but while no one’s looking, I slip it into my pocket, hoping no one will miss it with the dozens of extras.
Super-strong, super-thin cord might be just what I need.
Liddi ran across the playground to the big tree in the corner while her classmate Zeke counted to twenty. Plenty of time for her to wedge her foot in the split of the trunk and swing up into the leafy limbs. The other kids scattered and hid behind bushes, in window wells, or at the top of the slide.
Zeke reached twenty and went hunting. Everyone knew he was fastest in the whole class. He started finding kids right away, tagging each of them out so they had to fall down “dead.” Only Liddi was left. No matter how he searched, even walking right under her tree, he couldn’t find her. When he went to another corner, she dropped from the tree and ran for home base at the center of the yard. Zeke turned when the other kids started cheering her on. He tried to cut her off, but she got there first, throwing her hands in the air.
“Ha, I win!”
“You cheated!”
Liddi turned to face Zeke, her hands on her hips. “I did not. I was in the tree. You’re just too stupid to ever look up.”
He shoved her shoulders, forcing her to stumble back a step. “Don’t call me stupid.”
“Then don’t act stupid,” she said, shoving him in return.
Words were left behind as they went at each other, goaded by their gathering classmates. Liddi had wrestled plenty with her brothers, so she wasn’t afraid of a fight, especially not with someone who called her a cheater when she wasn’t. Not even when he hit her in the mouth and made her lip bleed.
She was afraid of insects with stingers, though, so a buzzing by her ear was enough to make her push off from Zeke and back away quickly.
“Stop it, both of you! Everyone inside. Zeke, Liddi, with me.”
Ms. Bledsoe arrived a minute too late. It was already broken up, thanks to Liddi’s fear of bees.
They weren’t bees, though. A swarm of vid-cams swirled around her. They never got this close, but they refused to be shooed away, sticking right by her as the administrator led the kids into the school.
Several minutes later, Liddi sat in a chair outside Ms. Bledsoe’s office, still surrounded by vid-cams. Emil’s classroom was right down the hall. She wanted so badly to run straight to him, but she knew the cams would follow. That knowledge held her in place. Her parents had been contacted, so she expected her mother to arrive any moment.
The swarm of vid-cams suddenly zipped down the hall, meeting not just her mother but her father, too.
“They’re not supposed to be in the school, Nevi,” Mrs. Jantzen said.
Her husband glared at the vid-cams. “Leave or start shopping for new cams. Your choice.”
The buzzing devices scattered.
Mrs. Jantzen knelt down to check Liddi over for injuries beyond the bloody lip as Ms. Bledsoe came out of the office. “Mr. Jantzen! I thought your wife would be coming alone. I’m sure you’re very busy.”
The words made Liddi’s mother’s lips thin, but the teacher didn’t see that.
“We’re both very busy, Ms. Bledsoe,” Mr. Jantzen said, “but when we learn a boy was allowed to pick a fight with our daughter, we make the time. Come on, Liddi-Loo,” he added, scooping her up in his arms. “Let’s go.”
“I’m afraid we still need to sit down and have a talk about appropriate behavior,” Ms. Bledsoe protested.
“We saw the media-casts on the way here. The boy started it, and we’re going home.”
There was no more arguing as the Jantzens took their daughter away. Liddi’s father only spoke again when no one was close enough to hear.
“Liddi, are you all right?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“What that boy did was wrong, but you need to be very careful. Remember that you’re always being watched.”
“Nevi,” Mrs. Jantzen cut in. “She’s barely five. You really want her growing up with that kind of paranoia?”
“I know, Sav. But they’re already pushing the boundaries. I’m afraid it’s the life she’ll have.”
Liddi already knew the vid-cams were part of life. She’d seen them around and heard her brothers talk about them plenty. She knew nothing was ever secret.
Someone was always listening.
“HOW DOES THIS SOUND?” Tiav asks the next morning, gesturing for me to sit at the desk in the Nyum office. “I was thinking I could program the computer to read off the sounds for you. If you wear an earpiece, whoever you’re ‘talking’ to won’t hear anything until you have the words ready.”
That seems like it’ll work. I can only imagine how maddening it would be for the Ferinnes to listen to all those sounds a dozen times or so for every sentence I try to say. Like Dom listing the top-rated media-casts when I already know all of them.
“Okay, give me a minute to put the program together.”
He sits with me at the desk to work, and symbols start flying across the wallscreen in front of us. His fingers are confident as they tap out words too quickly for me to follow. Something’s familiar in the intent focus of his eyes. It reminds me of Fabin when he’s working. Or any of my brothers, really.
Too much reminds me of my brothers. Sitting here not doing anything makes me twitchy, but so does not being able to explain anything. I need to communicate. I’ll have to be patient, so I wait while Tiav works.
It shouldn’t be a super-complicated program, but there are a few things he’ll have to cover. Telling the computer to stop reading once I choose a symbol. Giving the option to start from the beginning again if I think I missed what I wanted. Piping the sound for the symbols just into the earpiece, but to read the finished words in the queue to the whole room.
For all that, Tiav finishes way too soon. He must have forgotten some things.
But no. As he hands me the earpiece and walks me through the process, pointing out the new symbols on the keypad for engaging the subroutines, I realize he thought of everything I did, and a few other things I didn’t. Like creating a “word bank” where I can store words I might need later. That’ll only do me so much good once I have more than a few words in there, but he even included a feature for me to draw an icon for each word, helping me remember what it’s supposed to be.
He already stored his name and drew a cartoony little face for the icon. All in a very few short minutes.
Maybe he should go back to Sampati and take over JTI.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake off the feeling. The silly icon he drew hardly looks like him, with exaggerated ears and a zigzag of spikes for hair. It makes me want to smile, so I do.
“All right, let’s try it out. I’m always asking you questions. Why don’t you ask me one?”
The first question that comes to mind is a random one, but I am curious about it, and I think I can ask in three one-syllable words, so I go for it. Tiav’s program works well, reading the symbols into my earpiece and lighting up each in turn. It takes a few minutes because I have a hard time finding the right sound for the last word—the computer predictably has a Ferinne accent—but finally I get it.
“Tock saym wye?”
“Why do we speak the same language? That’s on purpose. Our linguists monitor the broadcasts from the Lost Points just enough to keep our language mostly in line.”
I delete the first two words and repeat the last. Why?
“A couple of reasons. Back when we cut off contact with your worlds, we hoped it wouldn’t be forever. If we ever reestablish the link, we want to be able to talk to your people. Then with the Agnac, Haleians, Crimna, and Izim around, we knew our language might change really quickly if we didn’t keep an eye on it. All the alien races said they wanted to speak a ‘clean’ form of our language in case they ever run into people from the Lost Points.”
There’s a lot of information in there, not least the idea that Ferinne cut off contact with the rest of us, and I tuck it away in my mind. Tiav’s answer about the language makes sense, I guess. If they have access to our broadcasts, though, they might know things about my family or the company. I dig back into the symbols and take a little longer for my next question.
“Liss-en con-tent?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not for a long time now. The linguists have computer programs that monitor linguistic patterns and alert them when they start to veer too far from ours.”
Too bad. No shortcuts to explaining about the Jantzen family situation, then.
Tiav coincidentally follows the same track for his own question. “So, can you tell me why you left Sampati to come here, or how you did?”
I start to look for the symbols, then freeze. I’m pretty sure Minali didn’t include a live audio transmitter with the implant. If she had, she’d have heard my planning with Dom. I’d never have made it out of the house.
But what if the implant is programmed for more than watching whether I use my voice? Voice-recognition might just mean it’s programmed for my voice, or it could also mean it listens for certain words said around me. Key words that’ll trigger the booby trap set to kill my brothers.
My ribs tighten on my lungs, refusing to let me breathe. Dom said a lot of key words when I was still home, but maybe the implant is sophisticated enough to recognize if I try to spell out Minali’s whole plan. Maybe I’m becoming completely paranoid.
Maybe, maybe…maybe a lot of things, and I have precisely zero way of knowing whether any are true. Tiav’s program means I just need time to write things out, but I can’t risk it. Not yet, not without figuring out more first.
Tiav’s hand moves to rest on my shoulder. The contact startles me.
“Are you okay? You said you’re in trouble back there. Did something bad happen?”
I nod and work out the only thing I can think of that might be safe. “How—dont no. Ack-sih-dent.”
“But you said you came here for a reason.”
True, I did. “Naht mye ree-sun.”
This little bit of conversation has taken forever. I’m not sure how long, because I can’t decipher the Ferinne clocks. But between my false starts and some symbols soundin
g the same at first but not really and my mind wandering off mid-alphabet when I need to be focusing, I’m pretty sure we’ve been in the office for at least an hour. I don’t know how Tiav puts up with the waiting, but the inefficiency is making me want to punch my fist through the desk.
I have Tiav’s voice and the voice of the computer, but it’s still like when I’m alone at the house. Silence suffocates me.
It’s worse than that. I’m alone away from home. Something I’ve never been. Not really. Not for more than a day. I miss Dom. Dom could find a way to speed it up. A lump of emotion adds to the constant pressure in my throat.
Tiav sees that, or sees something, because he blanks the computer. “Let’s take a break. Come on.”
That kind of break sounds like a better alternative than the kind I was about to put in the equipment, so I stand and follow him out of the room.
We walk down to the second floor of the Nyum, the balcony overlooking the circular lobby. Tiav leans comfortably against the railing, waiting for me to join him. Then he gestures to the shelves along the walls.
“See all those books? They hold the history of Ferinne, everything ever written by the Aelo for nearly two thousand years. It’s all in the computer databases now, of course, but we keep the books. My mother has rooms full of them at home, too.”
The word books seems vaguely familiar, and I realize it’s why this place reminded me of Tarix. Old records and history. The “thinkers” on Tarix have the last remnants of our written language, maybe in things called books. I must have seen a few during a childhood visit.
“You don’t use writing anymore, but you still keep history, right?” Tiav continues. “Recordings, images, computers that can dictate it back to you?”
Yes, that’s the only form of record keeping I’ve ever known. Talking to Dom or having him find old news-vids for me. Never had a problem with it.
“We do all that, too, but sometimes it’s good to go back to the books. Quieter. Slower.”