Damage Control - ARC

by Mary Jeddore Blakney

  “So that I can breathe?”

  “Yes.” By this time, they had left the little toilet room and entered the shower room. The shower was recognizable, though not familiar. It had a pocket-door and what looked like water jets in the door, walls, floor and ceiling. “The water sources have been disabled in this corner,” Laitt explained. “When you breathe, your face should be in this corner. Otherwise, you should...” She paused and spoke to her Personal Device in her own language, and the rest of the sentence came from the Device in a perky American accent: “...to hold one's breath.” She put it away and said, “Do you require more information about the shower?”

  “I'm just curious about the alterations, I guess. Is it a height thing? Maybe I'm not tall enough to use a shower without alterations?”

  “No,” Laitt answered. “Without alterations, there is no air that is not mixed with water. As a mammal, you would drown.”

  “You're not mammals?”

  “Yes, we are amphibians. When we shower, we breathe the spray. It feels refreshing. If you have no more questions, then I will leave for a short time, then return.”

  “Oh, sure. I think I'll try out the shower.”

  “Yes. Give a shower. That is incorrect. Take a shower.”

  “Take a shower, yes. I'm going to take a shower.”

  When Jade stepped out after showering, her clothes were gone, replaced by a folded slate gray outfit. As much as she hadn't been looking forward to putting her dirty clothes back on, she now felt a disproportionate sense of loss. Aside from her body and thoughts, her clothes were all she'd had left from home. Now even they were gone. She took a deep breath and told herself to be reasonable. Probably they were just out for washing and she would be back inside them soon.

  She picked up the gray clothing and found that it was all one piece. A pair of tall boots stood on the floor, and leaning against the wall was one of those things Zuke had called armor. She didn't see any undergarments anywhere.

  It took her a while to figure out the alien garment, but she got it on, eventually. The boots were easier, and strangely comfortable. The armor was too confusing, and superfluous anyway, so she left it in the corner.

  She heard footsteps, and Laitt came in without knocking. “I was delayed. I will show you how to wear the faltoopp.” She picked up the armor and handed it to Jade.

  “So this is called a faltoopp,” said Jade.

  “Yes. Hold it here and put your head here...fasten this...pull this.”

  Now Jade was dressed in a Chuzekk soldier's uniform. She wore a catsuit, knee-high boots and the faltoopp. Besides size, the only difference between her outfit and Laitt's was the markings on the faltoopp. Zuke had said they indicated “rank and command.” Embossed on her own faltoopp was a sort of rounded rectangle. Laitt's, like Zuke's, was more intricate, bearing a pattern made of many circles. Both Laitt's and Jade's bore identical symbols that Jade didn't like the look of: a claw or talon appeared to be in the act of putting out an eye.

  But the markings were not important right now. She turned to Laitt. “What am I doing here, anyway?”

  “Dressing.”

  “No, I mean why am I here? Why was I captured?”

  “I don't know. Were you captured with others, or was only you captured?”

  “Only me, I think. I was at my aunt's house. A lot of pods landed. They had us surrounded.”

  “I think someone ordered your capture. But I don't know who or why,” said Laitt. “You should eat. The door guards will take you to the cafeteria. You can order food from the round pillars. They understand English. My workday is ending. I will go home now and return tomorrow. My husband's workday is ending, also.” She smiled confidentially. “He is an interrogator.” She watched Jade's face for a reaction, and when she saw none, she explained, “Interrogators are the best lovers.”

  For a moment, Jade said nothing. A lover who made a living torturing people wasn't Jade's cup of tea. She wondered if Laitt's husband would be her own interrogator. She wondered if she would survive the interrogation or if he would realize too late that she had no information that could be useful to the Chuzekk side.

  "Listen," she said, "I've tried to be very reasonable. I know it's not your fault and all. You just work here, you don't make the decisions and all that. I get it. I really do. But there's a lot more at stake here than just some stupid job, alright?" She was yelling now. "I'm not just another day at the office. I'm not some case of hairspray that got shipped to the death chamber instead of the beauty pageant. I am a Human being and I need to get home. NOW! TONIGHT! So do whatever you have to. Crack a few heads together, I don't care. But I need to be on a flight home TONIGHT!"

  Laitt listened to Jade's whole speech with a look of professional courtesy, then nodded and walked to the door. "You will stay in your room now," she said. "The guards will take you to the cafeteria later, if you are calm." Then she stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

  9

  the cafeteria

  The cafeteria was huge and crowded. There must have been thousands of Chuzekks there. Most were in uniform, but some, both male and female, wore dresses or shirts and pants. Jade saw two or three pairs of blue jeans. The guards took her to the door but didn't follow her inside. The food-dispensing pillars were easy to spot and she began to make her way through the crowd and over the uneven floor to the nearest one.

  One of the uniformed Chuzekks grabbed her bicep. “Gashh,” he hissed, glared at her and then let go. Several times she felt hands stroking her head or claws playing with her curls, but she didn't object. She was, after all, apparently the only one there with hair.

  When she got to the food dispenser, a uniformed soldier was just leaving it with his tray of food. When he saw her, he balanced his tray on one hand and grabbed his Personal Device. He spoke to it and the Device responded, “Do you know that it serves Earth food?”

  His companion, who was female and also wore a uniform, spoke into her own Personal Device, and it said, “He's talking to you, Human.” The Chuzekks themselves always sounded congested when they spoke English, because they couldn't say their Ms or their Ns. But the Personal Devices had no impediment: they spoke with a perfect Cleveland accent.

  “Thank you,” Jade answered politely, and both Personal Devices translated in unison.

  “I'm Leed and this is Vyke,” said the female through her Personal Device, and extended her hand. Jade shook it.

  “That's not how you should greet,” Leed responded, and Vyke said, “We'll show you how to greet, at the table, if you will eat with us. Will you eat with us?”

  “Thanks,” said Jade. “But how do I order food? Do I just talk to the thing?”

  “Yes,” Vyke answered, then said to the pillar, “Show me the Earth food selection.”

  The dispenser responded before the translation came. On the side of the pillar appeared a series of pictures of dishes, labeled in Chuzekk and in English.

  “New England clam chowder!” Jade exclaimed, very surprised to see such a regional dish on the menu. The Chuzekks didn't really have a presence in New England, as far as she knew.

  The chowder came out of an opening that looked something like a small oven. It was on a tray with coffee and juice, a set of ordinary silverware and an ordinary napkin. It smelled good.

  There were no chairs around the table, only hard metal devices for kneeling in. She set her tray on the small orange table and knelt, ready for her knees to hurt. But the uniform-boots they'd made her wear were thickly padded in front, and shaped just for this purpose, so she found the position very comfortable. She adjusted the back of the contraption and settled back on it.

  “How to greet,” said Leed through her Personal Device. She and Vyke were both still standing, and after checking to be sure Jade was looking, each grasped the other's right upper arm with the right hand.

  So that was why people kept feeling her right bicep: they were trying to shake hands. Jade stood and grasped Leed's arm, and
Leed grasped hers.

  She turned to Vyke to do the same with him, but Leed gently took Jade's wrist and said, “First, tell us your name.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “It's Jade.”

  “Jade,” Leed repeated. “You have a Chuzekk nickname, then.”

  “No, that's really my name.”

  “We're lucky, then,” said Vyke, kneeling. “Most Human names are hard to say. Yours sounds just like a Chuzekk name.”

  “When we greet,” said Leed, “we are not silent. We say each other's names. Or if the person you are greeting outranks you, you should say his or her rank.”

  “But only if you mean it,” said Vyke. “Never say it if you don't mean it.”

  Jade settled onto her knees and realized eating would be awkward, since the table was so high. “I don't understand,” she said. “Only if I mean what?” She dipped the edge of her spoon into the chowder, braced herself, and tried it. To her relief, it tasted like it had come straight from a Boston diner.

  “When you say a person's rank in this way,” Vyke answered, “you recognize his or her authority over you.”

  “So it's a gesture of respect,” said Jade, to confirm that she understood.

  “It's more than that,” Leed answered. “It's a promise to obey.”

  “How do I know what rank someone is?”

  “You can ask,” said Vyke. “The most common rank is cheej, and the insignia looks like this.” He pointed to his own chest. It bore the claw-and-eye symbol and another symbol that reminded Jade of a necklace. She looked at Leed's uniform, and it matched Vyke's.

  “So when I greet you two, I should say, 'Cheej'?”

  “Yes.”

  Jade stood and extended her hand to Leed. Leed also stood up and they practiced the greeting.

  “Cheej,” said Jade, grasping Leed’s right bicep, or at least as much of it as she could manage.

  “Jade,” said Leed, returning the gesture.

  Vyke stood and they grasped arms.

  “Cheej.”

  “Jade.”

  They knelt again.

  “So where are we?” Jade asked. “I mean, what is this? Is it a ship? Are we going somewhere?”

  “We're going in circles,” answered Vyke, between bites of something that looked remotely like a thick spaghetti sauce. “This is a keev-ship and we are in Earth orbit.”

  Jade wasn't sure whether that was a joke or not. “What's a keev-ship?” she asked.

  Neither Chuzekk responded to this immediately. The two consulted each other and their Personal Devices for a minute before Vyke's said, “mothership.”

  “Buthership,” Leed repeated, then she continued through her Personal Device, “It's like a city in space. Everyone on the ship reports to the keev, so it's called a keev-ship.”

  “How many people are there on this ship?” asked Jade.

  “The actual number varies,” Vyke answered, “because not all the staff is on the ship. Sometimes our jobs take us to the surface, or to other ships. But a keev is responsible for twenty-two thousand, six hundred twenty people.”

  “Wow,” said Jade. “That’s a lot of people for one ship.”

  “Maybe you’re thinking of the smaller ships,” Leed suggested, “the ships that travel.”

  “This ship doesn’t travel?” Jade asked. She wanted to say, ‘then how did it get here? It couldn’t have been built here,’ but she didn’t want to sound disrespectful—not yet, at least. She needed to get her bearings first, and come up with a plan.

  “Of course it travels,” Leed replied, “but it doesn’t travel much. It’s like a city, not a vehicle. It goes to the place it needs to be, and then it stays there until the mission is over.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.” She was glad she’d kept her mouth shut: she would have sounded stupid, or worse. “The symbol on my uniform,” she said. “Sorry to change the subject, but I don't see anyone else with this. Lots of cheejes, though.”

  “It means that you're a prisoner,” said Leed, still speaking Chuzekk and letting her Personal Device translate. “In Chuzekk, the word is 'prisoner.'” When she heard the translation, she slapped the device as though it were a naughty child. “Gashh,” she said, slowly and clearly, and her Personal Device said, slowly and clearly, “Pris-on-er.”

  When she had said goodbye to Leed and Vyke and made her way out of the cafeteria, the guards met her at the door. She reached for Koll's bicep and Koll returned the gesture.

  “Cheej,” she said solemnly.

  Koll’s response was polite and easy. “Jade.”

  She repeated the process with the other guard, and they all began to walk through the hallways with their strange uneven floors, back to Jade's room. It wasn’t quite like they had installed extra features in the floor—features like mounds and dips, ramps and steps. It was more like the floor had never been flat, had never been intended to be flat. Walking in the keev-ship felt a little like walking on Earth, outdoors in a wild place. The floor’s color varied along with the terrain, so it was easy to see its contours.

  “I have a question,” said Jade after a minute, “that I don't know if you can answer.” Koll said nothing but appeared to be listening, so Jade continued, gaining confidence, “Why am I here? Why was I captured? What's going to happen to me?”

  Koll grabbed her Personal Device. “Repeat, please,” she said.

  Jade said it again, and Koll's Personal Device translated.

  “That is three questions,” Koll said. “Why was you captured? I don't know. Probably somebody ordered. Usually zeeds do order the captures. Usually a prisoner knows—”

  “What are zeeds?” Jade interrupted.

  “Zeed is a rank.” Koll explained. “Zeeds are few. You must give much respect to zeed. Usually a prisoner knows the reason for the capture. Often, prisoners lie to say 'I don't know,' but only very few prisoners truly don't know why. I cannot know which is you. But if really you don't know, then probably is an error and you will go home soon.”

  “I met a Chuzekk before the war,” suggested Jade nervously. “It could have something to do with that.”

  Koll stopped walking and looked intently at Jade. “Zuke Gevv?” she asked.

  “He said his name was Zuke,” Jade answered apprehensively. “I think he was a zeed.”

  Koll said something in Chuzekk to the other guard, and his eyes widened. He took out his Personal Device and set it to translate.

  “I just tell him that you is the Human who sees Zuke Gevv on Earth. Everybody knows the story. Nobody knows is you. But I don't know if this why you was captured.”

  “I'm concerned,” said Jade, even though 'terrified' would have been a more accurate word, “that they may think I have some kind of secret. But I'm not in the military. I don't know anything, except what I see on TV.”

  “I think you should not worry,” Koll reassured her. “Zuke's pod failed because...” She consulted her Personal Device for the correct word. “...fabrication error. He fixed the pod because he is very smart. He used resources he had. He had you. He used you. This not makes you look like a spy, see? If really you don't know why you is here, probably is an error and you go home soon.”

  “Thanks,” said Jade, relieved.

  “Thanks for what?”

  “I feel much better now.”

  “I say what I think only.”

  “Well, thanks for saying what you think, then.”

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, and when they got to the painted shape that was Jade's door, Koll grabbed her Personal Device and said, “I will report that you is here now.” She held it to her face like a Human with a cellphone, and had a conversation in Chuzekk. Jade thought she looked surprised.

  She put the Device back on her hip and looked at Jade intently. A sly, sneering smile spread over her face. “You did lie, Jade Massilon,” she stated, her voice a mix of amusement and triumph.

  “About what?” Jade asked, confused.

  “Chegg Jaigg did order you
captured.”

  “Who's that?”

  “Chegg Jaigg is our keev. He is commander. Very big. He is very expert interrogator.”

  “The CO of this ship ordered me captured?”

  “C-O” Koll said to her Personal Device. The translation was long, and she shut it off. Then she looked back at Jade and demanded, “What is CO?”

  “Commanding Officer. The highest-ranking officer, basically.”

  “Yes,” Koll answered simply, then repeated, “You did lie.”

  Jade’s heart was pounding. “Lied about what?” she asked.

  “You did say you don't know why you is here.”

  “I don’t.”

  Koll’s smile freshened. Her face said, 'You don’t fool me.'

  Jade switched tactics. “So what happens now?” she asked.

  Koll just looked at her. The other soldier shifted his feet and kept his eyes on Jade’s door.

  “What will happen?” Jade corrected. “The kid gave the order for me to be captured; you think I’m—“

  “Keev,” Koll interrupted.

  “Keev, sorry. The keev gave the order to capture me, you think I’m lying. What happens next?”

  “Next, you sleep,” the soldier answered, “and tomorrow you go to keev for he interrogate you.”

  Jade couldn’t help feeling that she had just been handed a horrific sentence without being allowed a trial, without even being allowed to know what the charges were. She thought of a dozen things she wanted to say, but all that came out of her mouth, in a faint squeaky voice, was “The keev…is going to be my interrogator?”

  “Yes.” Koll wore a broad, sneering, cold grin that spoke of victory. Jade looked at the other soldier, and he wore it, too.

  “Why?” said Jade. It was almost a whisper.

  “Because you is big spy.”

  10

  the keev

  Two cheejes escorted Jade through a maze of hilly passageways and down a high, broad hallway. Facing them at the end of it was an imposing pair of metal doors, each about ten feet high and five wide, inlaid with stones and a single horizontal line of tiles bearing Chuzekk characters. Above them was a thick, intricately carved mantel, and above that, nearly as wide as the doorway, a symbol on the wall that seemed to be made of gold: a giant gilded claw pierced a giant gilded eye.