Ride the Star Wind

by Nakamura, Remy

  The Gods let him go, and his mother sent him off kindly. The flaw in his plan, though, was that mortals did not like Vaurians. Nobody wanted a shifty, unpredictable shapechanger in charge of their finances—and Mimoru did not think he could hide his nature for long. Each of his food-service jobs had been short-lived, ending when a customer noticed some small unnatural shift in his skin, some inconsistency in his appearance from one part of the meal to the next, and raised a fuss. By the time he graduated, he was living off his meagre savings, eating little, growing desperate. His grades were good, but his job applications went wholly unanswered, except for the Stardust International Trading Company.

  Leaving human space required some red tape. Aliens were heathens, and not just any human could be trusted to walk among them. But Mimoru, known if not exactly loved by the Gods, passed the security clearance easily.

  “So, it’s settled then,” Mr. Haieray had said when Mimoru handed him the papers. “Now, here are the rules because I’ve seen what you people can do. You do as I say at all times. One fuck-up, so much as a stolen paper clip, and I drop you back down where you came from.”

  Mimoru had nodded automatically, like he would have for an angel back on Vaur. They were halfway to Hex Station before he realized that this might have been a mistake.

  * * *

  Roundness and contrast looked good on the Zora. They resembled horse-sized insects made of beads: heads, joints, and legs made of spherical segments, alternately pitch-black and chalk-white. They spoke a clicking, pure-toned language which was translated into Earth creole by an Íntlànsûran interpreter.

  Mr. Haieray spent five minutes berating them for being late.

  “Time moves as time wills,” said the Zora.

  “Time moves as we agreed, which was twenty minutes ago,” said Mr. Haieray, and in spite of Bûr-Nïb’s glares and the interpreter’s increasingly uncomfortable fidgets, he kept on.

  “We understand,” said the Zora at last, “that your deal does not only involve agreements to the passage of time. There was an offer involving the transport of Zoran blacksteel to human space.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Haieray, reluctantly redirected. “There is great demand in certain sectors for building materials with superior shear strength. Our firm could—”

  “How much demand?” said the Zora. “Specifically.”

  This was where Mimoru came in. Grateful for the chance to actually do something, she pulled out the pages of charts from her briefcase. “Among others, the human planet Salomta uses three hundred million tonnes of steel per year. But Salomta’s seismic conditions . . .”

  She was not the best at public speaking, but she liked data. Zoran steel, if a middleman brought it to human space, could improve the construction industry on many human worlds, and at a fat profit to everyone concerned.

  Humans tended to glaze over when Mimoru went through data. But the Zora seemed to be paying attention. When Mr. Haieray raged, they had twitched and fluttered. But when Mimoru spoke, their gaze fixed on her unblinkingly. They asked sudden questions and sat silent and rapt for as long as the answers went on.

  Unless she was misreading. She could analyze human body language by rote, but she’d never seen Zora before. For all she knew, a steady gaze meant aggression, the way it did for Bûr-Nïb. Maybe Mr. Haieray had miscalculated, and this body was an affront to them in ways that mere ranting could never be.

  She went on talking anyway. She did rather like this data.

  At last, one of the Zora raised one of its limbs in a curling gesture.

  “We find this offer promising,” they said, “and we have more questions. However, there is a pressing matter we must attend to. If you’ll excuse us, please.”

  “No, that’s not acceptable!” said Mr. Haieray. “We are in the middle of a business transaction. You can’t—”

  He spluttered, red-faced, as they filed out of the room anyway.

  “You,” he said, turning after the door shut. “You’re the shapeshifter. Follow them.”

  Mimoru’s already-too-round eyes widened.

  Bûr-Nïb found words first. “Sir, that’s espionage. I’m pretty sure it’s also against your law. They could be doing something you’re forbidden to see. You can’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Mr. Haieray roared. He pointed a finger directly at Mimoru, who shrank before him. “Isn’t that what Vaurians are for? Spying? For all we know, they could be talking to our competitors. If you want your job, follow them. Now.”

  * * *

  The Stardust Interplanetary Trading Company staff were the only humans on Hex Station. If Mimoru wanted to be discreet, she needed a non-human form. She’d heard some Vaurians could do that, if the form was human-ish—two arms, two legs, two eyes, and so on, like Bûr-Nïb. But those were the most famously skilled Vaurians. Mimoru was just an accountant.

  Well. If she wanted this job, she could try.

  Mimoru let his cells relax back into his Vaurian base body: a slight, slender, translucent thing that sparkled inorganically when the light hit it right. He looked straight at Bûr-Nïb—mentally apologizing for his rudeness—and shifted his features, one at a time, to look like hers.

  Scaly, olive-green skin. A tuft of something more like feathers than hair. Outslung jaw, long nails. Flat chest, but a swollen belly protecting what, for an actual Íntlànsûran, would have been an egg pouch. Limbs—Mimoru grunted with pain as his joints ground against each other, trying to replicate the effect he saw in Bûr-Nïb—bipedal, and with the right number of joints, but off just slightly, longer here and shorter there, a few degrees away from human-normal anywhere.

  Everything hurt. He felt like he’d been hit by a streetcar, and he didn’t even know if he’d done it right. He glanced in the mirror. He thought he looked like Bûr-Nïb, but who knew what details he was missing to an alien eye?

  “Good enough,” Mr. Haieray barked. “Go. We’re losing time.”

  “Do you even want to know how many laws this violates?” Bûr-Nïb demanded.

  They were still arguing when Mimoru slipped out the door.

  He wasn’t sure which way the Zora had gone. He was still dressed in a loose robe, which was not a common Íntlànsûran style, and he looked awkward and out of place. He knew only a few simple phrases of any Íntlànsûran language and nothing at all of any of Hex Station’s hundreds of other tongues. He leaned on the wall, trying to slow his racing heart—anxiety, probably. Or had he screwed something up in the Íntlànsûran metabolism? Probably just anxiety. Occam’s Razor.

  As a child, Mimoru had introductory espionage lessons like every Vaurian. But he had failed them miserably. He was not going to manage anything suave here. He was not, for instance, going to infiltrate the kitchens and befriend someone who could steer him in the Zora’s direction. He barely even had friends as himself.

  He remembered the older kids talking strategy, though. The best strategy for tracking, reportedly, was smell. Mimoru had never done it, but . . .

  He concentrated on his nose, on the finest level of detail, finer even than hairs and pores and freckles. What were scent receptors supposed to look like? He tried the quick and dirty route and mentally ordered every tiny structure on the inside of his nose to multiply itself tenfold.

  A sharp, quick pain burned through his sinuses—followed by an assault of sensation. There were too many smells to take in: metal and ceramic, dust, a dozen fabrics, the reek of cleaning chemicals, the musk of thousands of bodies. He gagged. How had he never noticed what a burden it was to smell things?

  He leaned on the door and waited for the nausea to subside. There were so many stinks in this corridor, most of which he could not identify; he could not remember what, if anything, Zora smelled like. He put a hand to his head. The Zora would be an organic smell. They were carbon-and-water-based, and since they had just been here, their smell would be the strongest organic one. Right?

  There it was. A watery, reptilian, faintly familiar smell, starting
at the door.

  Mimoru followed the trail. Aliens passed him here and there on their way to meetings or meals or whatever else. He did not greet them and kept his eyes downcast, like a proper Íntlànsûran. Smells twisted, turned, and mingled, making him retch.

  What was he doing? Bûr-Nïb had said this was illegal. If he brought trouble to Stardust, he’d be fired. If he saw forbidden things, religious things, like Bûr-Nïb had mentioned, he might be investigated. But the Gods knew Mimoru was no heretic. And if he refused, he was even more sure to be fired.

  What was she afraid he’d see? Zora praying, chanting, preaching sermons at each other?

  Here he was, three turns later, at a closed door in a narrow, vacant side-hall. It was button operated, like most doors on this station, steel, and windowless. It was undoubtedly locked. Mimoru smiled in relief. Definitely, when he pushed the button, it would be locked. He could tell Mr. Haieray, I’m sorry, I followed them to their room but the door was locked. I did the best I could. That would solve all of his problems.

  He pushed the button.

  The first thing that registered, when the door slid open, was the smell. Like blood and rotten flowers, like seafood going bad, like an immense inorganic sea that hated him, specifically.

  The Zora were in the room, all six of them, crouched down in what might have been a supplicatory position. But the room—

  The room was not a room. Somehow, even though they were comfortably ensconced in miles of halls and corridors, the room opened out and out on the whole galaxy. Mimoru could see all of it, staggering in its size, and behind it, infinite blackness.

  Something was alive in that dark. Something bigger than a galaxy, watching with dark eyes bigger than stars. Looking back at the Zora, through the angles afforded by the way the stars aligned. Wondering—Mimoru was certain of this, the way one is certain in nightmares—wondering if it was worth the effort not to destroy them, this time.

  Two Zora turned to look at him.

  As their heads turned, something in space twisted, like elastic pushed to its limits, and lurched the other way. The room spun and slammed shut, and it was just a room again, a dinky corporate room, like Stardust’s, with a set of woven blankets spread over the floor. Just a room. But he’d seen what it was before.

  The Zora made a noise, but Mimoru didn’t understand. They moved toward him.

  Mimoru ran.

  * * *

  By the time the gnawing panic left Mimoru’s head, he had already run back to the meeting room on autopilot. Shed his Íntlànsûran disguise almost by reflex, yowling in pain when his joints and scent receptors reverted sharply to their usual forms. Babbled out a half-coherent story to Mr. Haieray. Been sent to the company medic, a squat, usually bored-looking woman named Ushiwo, who had looked him up and down with sudden alarm, dosed him a puff of panic-suppressant gas, took out her diagnostic book, and began a thorough battery of psych tests.

  Mimoru’s heart rate slowed enough to register that the doctor was on the questions about hallucinations. This was the third time.

  Had he hallucinated? Did that explain all this? It would be a relief if he’d hallucinated. It would mean that massive being wasn’t still out there.

  I’ve ruined it, he wanted to say. Maybe he said it out loud; he wasn’t thinking clearly. I distracted them, and now, they can’t placate that thing, and maybe, we’re all doomed. Out here in alien space where the Gods could not save them.

  “In the last six months,” said Ushiwo for the third time, “have you experienced anything else you couldn’t explain? Flashes of light, spots or shapes in front of your eyes, insects on your skin, voices other people couldn’t hear?”

  “No,” said Mimoru. “Not at all before this.”

  Ushiwo’s initial alarm had subsided into an intense concern. Every few seconds, she frowned, flipped several dozen pages in her diagnostic book, and scowled more deeply.

  “Have you taken any recreational substances, legal or illegal, or any medicines other than the ones in your file?”

  “No,” said Mimoru, his mind still churning. “Listen, are you trying to diagnose if I’m crazy? It’s okay if I’m crazy. I’ll believe that.”

  Ushiwo sighed and, for the first time in at least ten minutes, put down her diagnostic book.

  “No. I don’t think you’re crazy. You have no symptoms of anything, aside from the mild Asperger neurotype in your file and this . . . um . . . experience. You’re not even mood disordered, for fuck’s sake.”

  “But there could be something wrong with my brain,” Mimoru babbled. “I was—shapeshifting unwisely. I tried to look like an Íntlànsûran. My joints were out of alignment. I was modifying my scent receptors totally untrained. Who knows what I might have done to my brain? Cranial pressure could have . . . anything could have . . .”

  “Did you, at any point, modify the size and shape of your skull?” asked Ushiwo.

  “No, but—”

  “Did you make any attempt, however minor, to physically modify any part of your brain?”

  “No, that would be crazy.”

  “How about the inner workings of the cardiorespiratory, endocrine, or any other systems that can chemically affect the brain’s workings?”

  “I modified my scent receptors.”

  Ushiwo looked at him impatiently. “In your brain or in your nose?”

  “In my nose.”

  “Anything else?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then that doesn’t count.” She picked up the book again. “Shapeshifting has nothing to do with this.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said, feeling desperate. “You’ve never worked with Vaurians. You don’t have the specs for Vaurians.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Ushiwo. Her mouth had flattened. “What I do have is training in the Gods’ official health standards for humans traveling outside human space. I’ve now run you, more than once, through the full testing that any such human with a report of strange and disturbing sensory experience requires. The results are clear. Your experience today wasn’t a hallucination, Mimoru. It was heresy.”

  Mimoru stared at her and spluttered, his mouth suddenly so dry that he had to work through the muscle movements several times before he could speak.

  “Alien heresy,” he said. “Alien. The Zora were heretics, not me. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know they were doing—whatever it was—when Mr. Haieray sent me to find them. I just—walked in on it and ran away. I didn’t do any of what they were doing. I don’t believe what they believe.”

  Ushiwo smiled a bitter little smile with no humor in it. “You believe,” she said, “on some level, that there is a great horrible being beyond the galaxy who can be placated through the Zora’s ceremony. A being more powerful than the Gods. No matter how you deny it, how you attempt to repress the memory, that belief will remain. And it is a belief that cannot be allowed to defile human space, Mimoru. No matter the cost.”

  “But—”

  But that isn’t fair, he couldn’t say. When had he ever called the Gods unfair?

  But what will happen to me? he wanted to say.

  Ushiwo sighed and tucked the book away, heading for the door. “The Zora weren’t on our list of dangerously heretical species. Their specific beliefs were unknown. Obviously, they’ll have to be listed now, and this business transaction will be cancelled. The rest of us will go home cranky. You, well, you’ll have to wait here. The angels will come for you soon.”

  “But—” said Mimoru.

  The door swished open, and Ushiwo stood at the threshold a moment, regarding him.

  “I didn’t make the rules,” she said, a pained twist at the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned away. The door swished shut, and the lock clicked.

  * * *

  Heretics were terrible people. That was one of the first things they’d learned in school. In between the ABCs and addition, they’d watched history vids about heretics. Watched heretics cut the te
rrified throats of children, to feed the blood to false gods. Watched heretics blow up buildings, scattering bodies across the ground, just because they didn’t like the real Gods. When little Vaurians slept, they feared heretics, not bogeymen, under the bed.

  Vaurians had been created to stop them. That was why the Gods had given them so many good things. Being an angel was hard, and the Gods didn’t force anyone. But a Vaurian angel could infiltrate heretic groups in ways no other angel could. Tens of times more heretics would be caught, the teachers promised, if Vaurians did their duty. Hundreds. The world would be so much safer.

  Only much later had Mimoru learned about minor heresies, degrees of heresy. You didn’t have to blow up buildings to be a heretic; you just had to believe the wrong things.

  He hadn’t known that, yet, when his fifth-grade class was summoned to the amphitheatre, a wide, bright room in the centre of Vaur. They’d huddled together on the plush steps while a group of angels dragged a struggling heretic out in front of them.

  He remembered the man: a slender middle-aged man with disheveled black hair. He was the first non-Vaurian, other than angels, that the class had ever seen face to face. Mimoru had memorized that man, in the automatic way that a Vaurian memorized any face. The lines on his face, wrinkles, pockmarks, scabs. He had clearly been tortured. He was trembling. His legs shook so hard, it was a wonder he could stand. The class, callous like most children, giggled. For weeks afterward, in the corridors of Vaur, Mimoru and his classmates had mimicked that man’s struggling walk. Jeering to cover an unease they scarcely had words for.

  The angels had read the man’s crimes to the class and shot him very precisely in the head. There was an immense amount of blood. The class sat silently a moment, shaken, staring. Then a ragged cheer broke out.

  What child wouldn’t cheer when their bogeyman died?

  Mimoru considered all this as he sat, shaking, in the excuse for an infirmary.