Damage Control - ARC

by Mary Jeddore Blakney

  "Let me see if I understand," said Jade. "When I'm in interrogation, where are you? Are you somewhere watching?"

  "Yes," he answered, allowing himself another smile. "Our work area has three white walls at eighteen-degree angles." He touched the edge of Jade's tray, on the long side nearest him. "On one wall we project the images you see on the wall in front of you during the interrogation: whatever you see, we see on this wall." He moved his finger to the corner of the tray. "On the second wall we project the interrogation: we can see Chegg and you." He moved his finger to the end of the tray. "On the third wall we project the telemetry from your uniform." He moved her plate to his own tray. She was just reaching for a piece of sausage and her fork nearly connected with his hand instead.

  "Careful!" she warned, "I almost stabbed your hand."

  Gyze laughed. "With that?" He grabbed her fork out of her hand and gave his own hand several jabs with it. "I am not Human," he spat, and gave the fork back to her.

  She stared at him with wide eyes.

  He placed her juice glass near the corner of the tray, an equal distance from the end and the side. "My station is behind those of the cheejes I support," he explained, indicating with a sweep of his fingers the area between the glass and the corner.

  "Why eighteen degrees?" Jade asked.

  "That is a square corner―a right angle―modified by the third wall equally."

  "That would be forty-five degrees, then."

  Gyze growled. "I will teach you like a child, then. There are one hundred forty-four degrees in a circle. There are―"

  "Three hundred sixty," Jade interrupted.

  "Three hundred sixty?" he repeated, openly smiling at the ridiculous Human system. "Humans use three hundred sixty degrees for a circle?"

  "Yes. And Chuzekks use a hundred forty-four, I guess."

  "Yes, of course. I should not be surprised that your geometry is inconsistent with your numbering system."

  "Look, you don't need to insult me, okay? I'm not the one who decided how many degrees should be in a circle. I didn't make up Fahrenheit or inches, either, in case you're wondering. And I'm not a spy. I'm just a mom who needs to get back to her family. My little girl's only seven!"

  14

  the prisoner's child

  The keev-ship's kitchen was a clattery place and a smelly one. Plates of food from around the world traveled on well-lubricated conveyor assemblies, punctuated by other plates containing strange-looking concoctions that could only be the stuff the Humans ate. The equipment seemed to be all metal, shiny silvertone or dull black, to reflect the heat or to absorb it, depending on the function of the part in question.

  Gyze heard someone call his name, and saw his cousin standing in front of a deep counter arranged with vessels full of curiosities.

  “Kaill,” Gyze responded in greeting.

  “What did you do today?” asked Kaill. He was arranging the alien substances in layers in a wide, flat vessel made of matte black metal.

  “I watched another Human put on a show for us. This one’s name is Jodasadbarsolobyu.”

  Kaill’s eyebrows rose. “What part of that is the personal name and what part is the family name?” he asked.

  “It is all the personal name. His family name is Gudig. Jodasadbarsolobyu Gudig.”

  Kaill shook his head. “Do they all have such long, difficult names?”

  “No. Human names seem to vary significantly, but this is the longest name I have seen yet for a Human. Some Humans have easy names. I have seen Bill, Todd and Chadd.”

  Neither cousin spoke for a moment as Gyze stared at the strange layers Kaill was putting into the vessel. No matter how many meals he had with Jade, he was sure he would never grow accustomed to Human food.

  “This is better than chowder,” Kaill shrugged. “Chowder stinks.”

  “What is this?” Gyze asked, indicating a tray of pasty-looking white strips.

  “That,” Kaill explained, “is made of grain that has been ground to a powder, mixed with water to form a paste, shaped and dried, then rehydrated in boiling water.”

  Both men smiled.

  “Does it taste good?”

  “It is tasteless,” Kaill shrugged again. “I cannot guess at its purpose.” He grabbed a little shovel that stood in a vessel of white goo and used it to spread the gloppy stuff as the next layer of his creation. “This is the worst part. It is a mixture of bird eggs and the rancid glandular secretions of a mammal.”

  “And what is this?” asked Gyze, pointing to a vessel containing a soupy red substance.

  “That’s a delicious vegetable preparation, diluted with water until it has very little flavor.”

  “I’m going to Earth,” said Gyze. “Do you want to go with me?”

  Kaill laughed. “Let's go tonight. We'll sample the finest Human restaurants.”

  "I'm going to visit a little girl," said Gyze.

  His cousin stopped moving with a jiggly strip of rehydrated grain dangling from each hand. "I hope you are joking."

  "I'm serious. I have important business on the planet."

  "You are a telemetry interpretation support chiroje. What business could you have on Earth?"

  "This business is not part of my job."

  "You want to risk your life for personal pleasure?"

  "It is not for pleasure. It is for a young child separated from her mother. She needs my help."

  Kaill shook his head. "You are sick, Gyze. You should be on medical leave."

  The alien planet resembled an artificial garden, a fantasy, a play place for children. Gyze stepped out of his pod onto the moist, dark-brown earth that sprouted a succulent soft green vegetable resembling Human hair. He strode up the stone path and over the little step and stood on the wooden platform that formed the front of the house.

  He tapped on the thin metal doorframe with the backs of his claws. The door itself was made of a sort of mesh: it was nearly transparent. Another, more solid door fit into the same doorway, but it stood open.

  A Human arrived in answer to his tapping. This was Becky’s house, but this wasn’t Becky. This Human was as pale as Becky but younger, taller, thinner and male. His hair was so short that Gyze could see the skin of his head. “Hello,” he said, with understandable suspicion.

  “I require information,” Gyze explained.

  “Did you take my sister?” the Human demanded. This was probably Jade’s brother, then.

  “No,” he answered, truthfully enough.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Yes,” Gyze replied. The Human was holding the door closed, so he told him, “I will enter.”

  “I can’t let you in,” said the Human. “It’s not my house and I don’t have…” He stopped speaking once Gyze was inside, and just stood there looking up at him.

  Gyze opened his Personal Device and accessed infrared detection. There were two other Humans in the house, plus two smaller heat sources. One was probably a coffeemaker. The other, Gyze could not identify. He would continue monitoring.

  “What kind of information are you looking for?” asked the Human, still very afraid and trying not to show it.

  They were in a small room with two open doorways, besides the door Gyze had just come through. Before answering, he ducked through the doorway on the left, which led to a room with two perpendicular exterior walls. Then he asked, “Is Jade Massilon’s daughter in this house?”

  “No,” the Human lied, cautiously following him into the room, “she’s not here.”

  The infrared signals of the other two Humans had moved a little, so apparently they were awake. They seemed to be together in the same room. The smaller signals hadn’t moved at all. “Does she live here?” Gyze asked.

  “No,” he lied again, then said. “Becky Sagamore lives here.”

  “Is she well?”

  “Becky?” said the Human, pretending to misunderstand. “Yeah, she’s doing okay, I guess.”

  “Is Geonily well?” Gyze asked pa
tiently.

  “Yeah, well, she lost her mother,” the Human answered honestly. “What can I say? I mean, physically she’s not sick, but…”

  “You are her uncle?”

  “Yeah…” he said. “Yeah, I am.” He struggled to control his emotions.

  “I did not order Jade’s capture,” Gyze explained, “and I cannot order her release.”

  “Then who can?” asked the Human, trying to hide his anger.

  “Only my keev,” Gyze replied, shaking his head.

  The Human did not understand this.

  “The commander of my ship ordered Jade’s capture,” Gyze tried again. “He will not release her until the planet is secure.”

  “My sister can help you with security on your planet?” he asked, again pretending to misunderstand. There was something else showing in his face, too. Physical pain.

  “Your sister will not be released soon,” Gyze told him. “I cannot change that. My concern is the welfare of Geonily.”

  “Me, too,” said the Human earnestly. He was fidgeting, from the pain.

  “I am Gyze.”

  “I’m Brooks,” the Human answered, reaching toward Gyze with his open right hand, in the traditional greeting gesture of his culture. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Gyze,” Gyze repeated slowly, grasping the small, pale, fragile hand in his own right hand and participating in a repetitive vertical movement.

  “Gyze,” Brooks repeated. “I hope I can remember that.”

  “You will not offend me if you do not,” Gyze assured him, “and I will not stay here long. Does Geonily attend the Town school?”

  “We’d...I’d rather not say,” said Brooks. Apparently, the answer was yes. “I need to get some food,” he announced, and without taking his eyes off Gyze, started slowly toward a doorway on the other side of the room. Gyze followed him as he walked through it to another room, but not too closely. They were moving away from the two other Humans, and toward one of the smaller heat sources. Gyze had guessed right: it was a coffeemaker.

  There were many other things in that room as well. There was furniture that looked like desks, only lower, but had no stations. There were boxes of varying sizes. Two of the boxes had no tops and seemed to be made of metal, and had a pipe built over them: probably a water source. There were shelves stacked with round eating vessels similar to the ones in the cafeteria back on the ship.

  Brooks walked stiffly to the largest box, opened a door and retrieved a bag from inside it. Steam escaped from the box, and according to Gyze’s Personal Device, its interior was very cold. “So how’s Jade?” Brooks asked, setting the bag down on one of the desks. It crinkled.

  “She is healthy,” Gyze answered.

  The Human had one fist on either side of the bag, and was trying to pull it open.

  “But she is anxious about her separation from Geonily,” Gyze continued.

  Brooks repositioned his fists on the bag and tried again. “I, um…” he began, then hesitated before continuing, “I need a knife. Can you tell me how she’s being treated?” Slowly, he turned and retrieved a small knife from a rack on one of the desks.

  Gyze grabbed the bag and clawed it open. “Yes.”

  Brooks shrugged and put the knife back. “Thanks,” he said.

  “We give her food, air, water and the opportunity for sleep, exercise and hygiene. She—”

  “Sorry, exercise and what?” Brooks took a vessel from a shelf behind a small thudding door, and emptied the contents of the crinkling bag into it. It seemed to be a vegetable: lumpy and green.

  “Hygiene,” Gyze repeated. “Her room contains a modified shower.”

  “Oh, hygiene,” said the Human, pronouncing the word correctly as only a Human can. “A modified shower, what does that mean?” He got a piece of shiny, transparent film from a box in the side of one of the desks, and covered the vessel with it.

  “We modified it for air-breathers, so that she will not drown.”

  “Oh!” said Brooks. He grabbed a fork from the side of a different desk and stabbed the film. “Yeah, that’s important, I guess. What else? How’s the food? Do you know if she’s been able to find any Chuzekk food she likes? Can we send her any?” He put the fork back.

  “It is unlikely,” Gyze answered, “that she has found Chuzekk food that she likes. Our nutritional needs differ. She eats Human food.”

  “Human food, like what?” Brooks asked, opening yet another box and putting the vessel of cold green lumps in it. He closed the box and pushed on the front of it with one fragile finger. The box beeped once, paused, then began to whir.

  Like bland white paste, thought Gyze. “Like goatherd’s…” he began aloud, trying to remember the names of the dishes Jade chose, “cake? No, the word is ‘pie.’ Goatherd’s pie.”

  “Goatherd’s…” Brooks repeated thoughtfully. “Shepherd’s pie, maybe?”

  “Yes,” Gyze replied. “Shepherd’s pie…and clam chowder.”

  “Yum,” said Brooks. “So she’s healthy, then? She gets plenty of sleep? She’s warm enough? Does she have medical care?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” said Brooks, looking confused. “Yes to all of it? Yes to health? Yes to sleep? Yes to warmth? Yes to medical care?”

  “Yes,” Gyze answered again.

  “Okay,” said the Human, as though Gyze were being difficult. “So, um, if you don’t mind my asking, who are you?”

  The other non-Human heat source had begun to move, and now it was coming toward them. It was slightly hotter than a Human, but much smaller.

  Brooks continued, “I mean, I know you’re Gyze, but…. Is that your name? How do you know Jade? What’s your job, if that applies?”

  The small heat source continued to approach. A wall still hid it from view, but at its current speed and direction, it would soon be in the same room where Gyze stood. Quickly, he pulled a hand weapon from his waist and aimed it at the spot, low in one of the doorways, where the appearance of the heat source seemed most likely. “Gyze is my name,” he explained as he did so. “My job title is…” The heat source appeared—a fuzzy quadruped—and when Gyze saw it through the site of his weapon, he was tempted to put the weapon away, kneel on the floor and attempt to attract the creature. But his training told him to remain as he was, except for slight movements to keep the creature centered in the weapon’s firing line. Meanwhile, he continued his reply to Brooks without interruption. “…Telemetry Interpretation Support Chiroje. I assist with interrogations.”

  “You’ve never seen a cat before, have you?” asked Brooks.

  “Yes,” Gyze confirmed. The creature stopped walking and contemplated Gyze with an expression he interpreted as surprise and curiosity. Then it continued to a small vessel on the floor and began to drink, using a complex movement of its tongue. The creature fascinated Gyze. Despite its very different appearance, it had a grace, a poise, a fluidity of movement that almost mirrored the bearing of a water person. It stopped drinking and glanced at Gyze again, then at Brooks. The expression it bore as it did so, Gyze would not soon forget. On a Chuzekk or even a Human, that look would have meant tolerance and benevolent condescension. It was the look of one who was in the presence of lesser beings.

  “Ellison,” said Brooks, stooping with difficulty, putting his hand near the floor and signaling the creature in what appeared to be a gesture language. “Come on.”

  The cat looked intently at Brooks’s hand, blinked, and turned away.

  Brooks repeated the motion, at the same time making a short sucking noise with his mouth.

  The smaller creature looked again, feinted toward the Human, and turned away once more.

  Gyze put his weapon down on the desk in front of him, and kept his hand on top of it.

  Brooks tried a third time to attract the cat. This time it went to him, stopped just out of reach, and sniffed the outstretched hand. After a pause, it rubbed the hand with its face, neck and shoulder, and began to make a soft vibr
ating sound, a sort of throaty, thrumming buzz. It allowed Brooks to pick it up, and lay in his arms, rubbing Brooks’s arm and making the sound. Brooks rubbed the cat in return.

  Gyze holstered his weapon. “What is the meaning of the vibrating sound?”

  “Oh, that’s purring,” Brooks answered. “They do it when they’re happy, and sometimes maybe for other reasons.”

  “May I touch?” asked Gyze. This was not the correct phrasing in Aberikekk, but he didn’t know how to form the question properly. A direct object was required: a personal pronoun. But Gyze didn’t know the sex of the creature, and he had read that in this culture it was an insult to call a male ‘she’ or a female ‘he,’ and equally insulting to use the convenient neuter ‘it’ for a conscious being.

  “Well,” Brooks replied, taking his time and apparently trying to think fast, “I guess that’s up to her.” He turned to give Gyze and the cat better access to each other. “Gyze, meet Ellison,” he said with a polite formality. “Ellison, meet Gyze.”

  Slowly and smoothly, Gyze reached his right hand toward the two Earth creatures. The cat, still purring, reached out to him with her nose and sniffed his knuckle. She hesitated, apparently thinking. Her purring didn’t stop, but its pattern faltered. Then it continued at a faster tempo than before, and she rubbed her face against the knuckle she had sniffed. Gyze rubbed her head.

  Brooks smiled for the first time. It looked like Jade’s smile. “She likes you,” he said. He sounded surprised and relieved. Apparently he valued the creature’s opinion.

  The infrared signal of one of the Humans in the other room had not moved for a few minutes now. Perhaps the Human who emitted it had fallen asleep. The other signal began to move toward the spot where Gyze stood with Brooks and Ellison. Gyze waited, rubbing Ellison and watching the Human’s signal-indicator move on the screen of his Personal Device.

  It was Becky: he recognized her from the intelligence pictures as soon as she appeared in the doorway. That meant that the other Human—the one who seemed to be sleeping—must have been Geonily.