His Little Earthling

by Katie Douglas

  Sarah was sad that they had to go, and she didn’t speak again until they were in the flying car on the way home.

  “Thank you for taking me out tonight. I had a great time,” she said. “I’m really excited about those Innovation Suites. I wonder what else they do.”

  “You can find out all about them in the morning.” True to his word, when they got home, Ral tucked Sarah up in bed. She fell asleep almost straight away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The moment Sarah walked into Dagon’s Drinks, she knew there was something wrong. Laila had a full glass of hot chocolate in front of her and she wasn’t showing an interest in sipping the mallow off the top.

  “You okay?” Sarah sat down beside her friend. Riela wasn’t there yet.

  “It’s Flin. My master. He’s found another slave.” Laila sounded dejected.

  “What? Aren’t you collared to him? Will you get uncollared or something?” Sarah was still having trouble making sense of some of the details about how relationships worked on Minos Kerala.

  “Oh, no, we’ll stay together. He wants both of us. If I don’t try to suffocate her with a pillow in the meantime. That might make him decide he doesn’t want two slaves. I don’t think he’d pick me over her though. I just… have you ever wanted to like someone, but when you met them, you hated them intensely, from the very first thing they say? And she’s living in our apartment! Like she has any right to be there!”

  “Have you talked to Flin about this?”

  “Yeah. He reminded me that monogamy is not his way. He can’t do it. And he reminded me that I have two men. Of course, I knew all that, I just thought if he took another slave that she’d be fun and bubbly. Or that I’d at least want to share my crayons with her. And I don’t. She keeps borrowing my clothes and the worst part is, everything looks better on her.”

  “There’s so many people in Minos Kerala in relationships like yours, this has to be a common issue. Is there a person you can talk to about jealousy?”

  “I’m talking to you. And I’m not jealous. I just don’t like her.” Laila said it as though it were simple.

  “But I’ve never been in that situation, so I don’t know what I would do.” Sarah wished she could help somehow.

  “Y’know what the worst bit is? She can cook. And she’s good at all those handmade thingies, like embroidery and knowing all the uses for vinegar. She has a job, too! And she reads books, like all the time. Never stops. Proper books, like Paradise Lost and things about… oh what did she call it? Identity politics. And Meta-thingummy. Physics. Not like anything I read. I can’t even read the titles on some of them.” Laila looked glum. “What does he need me for if he’s got Miss Perfect?”

  “Maybe he wants both of you because you’re different to one another.”

  “I don’t know that we are! I want to be good at all that stuff, but I’ve never learned. I’d just about stopped thinking I was stupid and useless all the time and now it’s all come straight back. And I feel like he’s replacing me.” Laila started to cry. Sarah wrapped her up in a big hug. Through her tears, Laila added, “Why can’t he find someone like you? I wanted a friend, not a… whatever the opposite is!”

  Sarah knew Laila wasn’t trying to ask her to date Flin, regardless of how it sounded. She hugged her tight until Laila cried herself out.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to Basil about it all, but I didn’t want Flin thinking we were ganging up on him.”

  “You need to talk to someone. Other than me. Nothing will change otherwise.” Sarah didn’t really comprehend how Laila’s relationship worked, it seemed so complicated, so she didn’t know what else to say. Luckily Riela arrived at that moment, and between her and Sarah, they managed to get Laila to calm down enough to get to their first class on time.

  * * *

  After school, Ral had sent Sarah a message to tell her he would be late to collect her, so she went back to Dagon’s Drinks. Once Laila and Riela had left, the café was almost empty, aside from Mr. Tarik and Miss Juniper, who were sat at the bar having a heated discussion about something in low voices. Sarah pulled out her own tablet and started researching how the Innovation Suites worked.

  She found out they used a special type of hologram projection called Hardlight, and she even found out how people designed the Innovation Suite with their own requirements. It was very easy, and only required downloading a program called Desinnovate. Then, it was a case of picking what options to put in the room and saving the design on the Cloud, to use it in an Innovation Suite. She looked through the options, all of which were ready-made. There were, she was surprised to see, only six different styles of table. If someone wanted a different type, it didn’t exist. There were five different styles of light fitting. As she scrolled through the options, she decided there had to be a way to make custom items for the Innovation Suite. Playing around with the program, she decided that her plan for the rest of the evening was to hack into Desinnovate and make her own items.

  Since no one in the future knew how to do the simplest computer programming, computer security was nonexistent, and Sarah found it far too easy to break into the program and change things. She might not be employable, but her computer skills were second to none now that she might be the last programmer alive.

  By the time Ral arrived to collect her, Sarah had started figuring out the code that the computers generated, and she had used it to change the color of a table from brown to pink. She felt proud of herself, and she showed Ral what she’d done.

  “I won’t get into trouble, will I?” She was suddenly worried that she’d done something very wrong.

  “No, sweetheart. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to anyone to make laws about things like this, since no one knows how to do any of it. Are you going to do an entire room?”

  “Yep. I’m going to base it on the Barbie Dreamhouse. That was a toy that a lot of little girls had when I was growing up.”

  “As long as you do all your homework, that’s fine.”

  By bedtime, Sarah had made a pale pink floor, and bright pink furniture for a whole room of the Barbie Dreamhouse. It was so simple, she thought, it was a shame no one else had done this. Once it was complete, she posted her work on an online forum dedicated to Innovation Suite designs. Amongst all the boring standard designs that other people had made, with their brown flooring and furniture, hers stood out considerably.

  Sarah couldn’t decide if she was surprised or if she’d really expected anyone to actually try out her Innovation Suite designs, but there were already two reviews, and they were both good ones. She couldn’t help smiling as she read about what people had liked, and the things people might have also wanted her to include in her design.

  Three days later, she’d posted several more rooms, using the improvements people had suggested, and then someone offered her money to design a room exactly how they wanted it.

  “Ral, am I allowed to take payment for making something for someone?” Sarah showed him the message she’d received. He read over it then nodded.

  “I don’t see why not. Try taking a commission, see if you like doing it, and if not… don’t do another one.”

  After she accepted the first commission, there was another, and another, and in the space of a few days, Sarah found herself inundated with requests for work and had to make a waiting list.

  “Ral! I’ve been working on this for hours and need a fresh pair of eyes. Are these curtains too bold?” Sarah held her tablet out but Ral shook his head, engrossed with something on his own tablet.

  “Not now, Sarah. I have to finish checking this finds inventory because someone used four different ways of writing ‘Early modern’ in the same database, they seem to have applied those four different phrases to thousands of artefacts, and now it’s not searchable. A museum is going to sue me if I don’t sort this out by midnight.”

  “It’ll take less long than this conversation!” Sarah persisted.

  Ral gave her a stern look, an
d she went back to her own beanbag feeling left out.

  Two days later, she got an email from a website that wanted to interview her about her designs. Unsure if she should agree to be interviewed, she went to find Ral. He was in the middle of a very animated conversation with a hologram of the mealy-mouthed assistant who had been mean to her before. She would have to come back later.

  The next time she went to speak with him, he was talking to a stern-looking man in a suit. The man in the suit didn’t seem happy about something.

  “Vartuk will do a great job on this if you let him, Chambers,” Ral said.

  “Ral, old chap, I hired you because I want you personally to take care of this. It’s not some backwater heritage center on a distant moon, I’m running the Nidian Museum Trust. You’re the best man for the job, old boy. I’m not going to accept some second-rate assistant in your stead…” the man was saying. Sarah went back to her room clutching her tablet in both hands. She flopped back on her bed and sighed heavily. This was supposed to be Ral’s weekend, and instead he was stuck talking to a man who clearly thought some stupid dead people were more important than living ones.

  Her tablet buzzed. She sat up hurriedly.

  “Hi, this is Judy Selkvest from Design Online! Are you Sarah?”

  “Yes, hi, sorry I haven’t replied to your email, I wanted to ask my… uh… housemate?” Sarah finished lamely.

  “No problem! We can do the interview right now!”

  “I’m not sure I can.” Sarah was worried about doing anything so public without speaking to Ral first.

  “Then I can call back in a half-hour?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Sorry, I can go if you don’t want to do this interview?”

  “I do, but…” Sarah didn’t know how to explain that she couldn’t get hold of the man who expected her to let him run her life, and that she didn’t know if she was allowed to do something so public as letting someone interview her. She decided that since Ral wouldn’t let her talk to him, she would just do what she wanted. “You know what? Let’s do this.”

  She placed her tablet on her bed and did the interview. When it was finished, she looked up and saw Ral standing at the entrance to her room.

  “Did you run that past me before doing it?” he asked.

  “No, but—” Sarah started trying to explain but Ral cut her off.

  “I had the executive director of Nidian Museum Trust on a holo-call and he kept asking me what the noise was. It was you, laughing at whatever frivolous thing you were doing on your tablet.”

  “It was an interview for a website! It’s going to be great publicity for my design work! I tried to ask you but every time I came within three feet of you, you waved me out of the living room!”

  “Do you think I’d be talking to work people at the weekend if it wasn’t very important?”

  “I know your work is more important than me! I get it! You don’t have to keep rubbing it in.”

  “Young lady, if you continue speaking to me in that tone, I’ll have you fetch the wooden spoon, and if Chambers calls back, I’ll take the call even if he sees your bottom bared over my knee at the time. I understand that you wanted to spend time with me—”

  “You don’t understand anything! You think I just want attention all the time! I keep having to make these big decisions, and, so long as you expect to be included in those, I have to wait for you to tell me what to do, or you threaten me with that dumb spoon!”

  “I want to be included in big decisions because you don’t understand how the world works and you sometimes do things that are unsafe or badly thought out without thinking about it.”

  “I can make decisions just fine on my own! I think you want me to fail so I’m dependent on you again. Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can make the deposit on an apartment. Thank you for all your help, but I don’t need you bossing me around when you’re never here to do it. I don’t need you. I hate you! You’re useless and you just make everything worse!”

  Ral stared at her as if she’d kicked him. When he next spoke, his voice was very measured. “If that’s what you want to do with yourself, then do it. I thought we had something special, but clearly I was mistaken.” He left her alone in his spare room, and Sarah was speechless.

  How had she messed everything up so quickly? She wanted to call him back, tell him she didn’t mean any of it, but she also wanted him to acknowledge that he couldn’t treat her like this.

  All through Sunday, Sarah stayed in her room except for mealtimes, which were conducted in a frosty silence. On Monday, Ral was in the apartment, but he didn’t come to wake her up for school. Sarah overslept because she hadn’t set an alarm, and she had to rush to get to class on time.

  “Where were you? We thought you got sick again or something!” Laila whispered from behind her easel as Sarah arrived at her art class seconds before the music played to signal the beginning of class.

  “I slept in. How are things with Flin’s new friend?” Sarah asked, trying to push her own problems down as tears threatened to come out. Laila talked so much, it was easy to coast through a conversation without having to think about anything much.

  “She keeps finding us when it’s my time to see him, and she always pretends she’s so sorry. Yesterday was the worst, she made out like it was a complete coincidence that she just happened to travel two miles across town to the dungeon we’d booked, to ask some inane question about what type of milk we need or whether he wants his socks sewn or whatever. And he thinks she’s being diligent! She’s going to get defenestrated one of these days!”

  “De-what?” Sarah tried to make sense of the syllables Laila had spoken because, surprisingly, they were in English. That, or the Speakeasy chip hadn’t even tried to translate.

  “I learned it from Basil; Pombossian doesn’t have a direct translation. He says it means, ‘to be pushed out of a window.’”

  “Bet you can’t spell it.”

  “Not a chance. Basil’s been teaching me all kinds of grownup new words to use to express my feelings. I can’t believe Flin’s being so blind about her!”

  “What if he isn’t?” Sarah asked. Laila looked at her. “Maybe he’s giving her lots of chances to settle into her role, and if she doesn’t, perhaps he’s going to let her go? Let this take its course.”

  “When did you start giving me relationship advice?”

  “I don’t know. I managed to wreck things with Ral yesterday, so I’m not an expert.” Sarah mixed some paint on her palette as she remembered her argument.

  “Yikes, what happened?”

  Sarah was about to answer when she turned around to see Miss Juniper heading their way. Instead of continuing the conversation, she furiously splodged paint onto her paper.

  “Going for abstract today, Sarah? That red paint looks exactly like cane marks, don’t you think?” Before Sarah replied, Miss Juniper had gone back to her desk and was staring at her tablet again.

  At lunchtime, Riela found them both and they all squeezed onto the edge of a table.

  “Your designs are all over the internet, I bet your daddy is so proud of you!” Riela said, and Sarah burst into tears. “What’s the matter?”

  Laila passed Sarah a tissue and she tried to calm herself. People were staring at them.

  “He’s never there. It’s like living with a rollercoaster. When he’s home, he’s all over everything I do, telling me off for putting my feet on the table, eating with my hands, snacking, swearing… you name it. Then when he’s gone, these big important decisions keep popping up and I’m left to make them on my own. It’s always all or nothing, and I can’t stand it any longer. So I gave him what-for and told him I didn’t need him.”

  “I bet he spanked you good for that.” Laila opened her lunch. Staring into Laila’s lunchbox wistfully, Sarah wished she’d made herself some lunch this morning.

  “No, he didn’t. He left me standing there. And since then, even when he’s hom
e, he barely speaks to me. I’m not sure he’d throw me a safety rope if I was drowning right now.” The tears were threatening to come out again. To Sarah’s surprise, Laila and Riela wrapped her up in a hug together. She felt less alone, and when the tears overflowed, they were from a rush of gratitude for her two friends.

  “I’m sorry… it’s just… I feel like I’ve lost him. I miss him. I can’t even speak to him but I miss him so much. Isn’t that ludicrous?”

  “It’s not silly to want consistency. In fact, I think it’s the most important thing for people like us,” Laila said. “I know the boys like to tell us about all our responsibilities and that they’ll control everything else, but we’ve still got to take care of ourselves, and sometimes that means standing our ground even when they don’t want us to, or telling them something they don’t want to hear.”

  “But, doesn’t that go against being good?” Sarah frowned.

  “There’s a chasm between being good and being honest, but being dishonest is always supposed to be bad. It’s very confusing sometimes. And they’re supposed to be completely honest too, but sometimes they still don’t say what they mean, or they hide behind what’s polite instead of what they really think. Like Ral. It sounds like he wanted to say a few things to you the other night, but he chose not to. Seems like he cares enough to not hurt your feelings.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Sometimes they need hurting. Otherwise how will I know anything?”

  “I know that, you know that, but try telling it to men!”

  “I’m s-so glad I don’t have to deal with any of this n-nonsense.” Riela spoke hesitantly, like she was amazed at what she was saying.

  “One day, you’ll fall in love with someone and then you’ll know,” Sarah pointed out. “Do you think I should speak to him?”

  Laila had just taken a bite of food, and Sarah tried not to giggle as Laila struggled to avoid talking with her mouth full. Laila nodded emphatically and waved her hands to illustrate how strongly she agreed. “Of course! Are you sorry?” Laila spoke as soon as she’d swallowed. Sarah nodded. “And do you really mean what you said? That you didn’t need him?” Sarah shook her head. “Why wouldn’t you just tell him then? I mean, he needs to know how you feel! What if he got hit by a train tomorrow?”