Damage Control - ARC

by Mary Jeddore Blakney

  Before arriving, he had planned to find the child and look at her himself. Now he had come to realize that this plan was both unrealistic and unwise. He hadn’t sufficiently appreciated the fear and suspicion his mere presence would arouse in the Humans. He should have. Centuries of oppression had of course caused them to be confused about their liberation. And, given the lies their oppressors were telling them even now about Chuzekk intentions, Gyze should have expected this reaction.

  Becky’s arrival startled Brooks. Ellison seemed to have been expecting her, but seemed to find Brooks’s reaction annoying.

  Gyze spoke without delay, to try to ease the tension. “I am Gyze,” he said to Becky. He continued to rub Ellison, who quickly became calm again.

  “My aunt, Becky,” said Brooks.

  Becky gave Brooks a questioning look, but with minimal movement of her face and body. Perhaps she was hoping Gyze wouldn’t notice it. Brooks shrugged slightly, and Becky approached.

  “Hello, Becky,” said Gyze. “Brooks asked who I am, what is my job and why I am here. If you wish, I will answer now.”

  “That would be good,” Becky answered tensely. She was standing with them now, across one of the desks from Gyze.

  “My title is Telemetry Interpretation Support Chiroje,” he repeated. “I assist with interrogations. The commander of my ship ordered Jade’s capture. He will not release her soon: I cannot change that. Jade is well, physically. But she worries about her daughter. I came here to learn whether Geonily is well, and whether I can help.”

  “Well, to be honest with you, she’s having a hard time,” said Becky. “It’s her imagination more than anything. She doesn’t know what’s going on with her mother, so she makes things up. She’s got all sorts of visions in her head. We do our best to help her, but we don’t know, either. We don’t have facts, we just have speculation. And even if we had facts, I’m not sure if she’d believe us or not. She really needs to hear from her mother.”

  "And that idiot boyfriend of hers had the good taste to send Geonily a wedding invitation," Brooks added. "To her, that's proof enough that her mother's dead."

  "Perhaps I'm not familiar enough with your customs," said Gyze. "Geonily's boyfriend wishes to marry her?"

  "Jade's! Jade's boyfriend," Becky corrected him, with a force that was almost worthy of being called Chuzekk.

  Brooks explained, "My aunt is upset because Jade's boyfriend Diego didn't want to wait for her. A week after she was captured he started seeing someone else, and now they're getting married. I say good riddance, have a nice life."

  Gyze felt a thrill start in his toes and flow up to the top ridges of his head. He hadn't expected such good news. Now Jade would have no reason to reject him. But many years of intelligence training kept him from betraying even a hint of emotion. He asked in the same calm tone he'd been using since he'd landed, "Diego has invited Geonily to his wedding, and that has upset her even more than before?"

  "That's about it," Becky answered. "If you could arrange a phone call, even a note, it would make a huge difference to that little girl."

  Gyze shook his head. “My commander will not allow Jade to communicate with Earth. She has requested many times that he change this order. He refuses.”

  No one spoke after that. The Humans were deeply disappointed. Ellison continued her purring.

  Brooks turned his back to Gyze and opened a door in the wall. There were shelves behind it, full of Earth-style drinking vessels, stacked up so precariously that some of them seemed in danger of falling. Brooks extricated an opaque blue one with a pattern on it, set it on the desk in front of himself and filled it with coffee. He turned to Gyze. “Coffee, Gyze?” he said, looking at his eyes. Pain, fear and calculation still showed in his face.

  “Yes, please.”

  Becky was behind Gyze, standing next to the biggest box in the room—the cold box that had been the source of Brooks’s green lumps. The box had two doors, an upper and a lower one. Brooks had used the upper one to get his green lumps. Becky now opened the lower one. “What would you like to put in it?” she asked. “I have half-and-half, milk, non-dairy French vaniller…sugah rin the cubbad.”

  Gyze concentrated to understand her. ‘French’ he understood. ‘Vaniller’ he had never heard of. The last phrase, he realized after a moment, was “sugar in the cupboard.”

  “No,” Gyze replied, “Just coffee. Thank you.”

  “You like it black, then,” said Becky

  Brooks put the mug on the desk near Gyze—not right in front of him, Gyze noticed, only somewhat close. The Human was afraid to risk touching him, then, or perhaps to risk offending him. He waited respectfully until Brooks had pulled his hand back, then picked up the vessel. The coffee inside wasn’t black: it was dark brown, like the coffee on the keev-ship.

  Brooks removed an orange vessel from the crowded shelf and filled it with the hot liquid. He added two little shovelfuls of sugar and poured in some half-and-half. It was almost the way Jade prepared her coffee, only slightly less sugary.

  “Cup,” said Gyze, looking at the vessel and recalling its Aberikekk name. Some of its markings vaguely resembled the hair-like vegetable that covered the soil in front of the house. “What is this?” he asked, holding up the cup and indicating the markings with his claw.

  “Grass,” Becky answered, but Brooks said, “firing glaze.”

  In the pod on the way back to the keev-ship, Gyze monitored his instruments carefully. He was a competent pilot and a better gunner, but he knew there was no substitute for preparation and alert observation. And the Humans had found a way to detect even pods now, although their equipment needed to be aimed just right to be effective.

  He reached an altitude of nearly 1,728 units without incident, then the pod’s sensors detected a flare on the surface, probably a weapon launch. A moment later, the weapon itself showed up on the sensors. He got it in the targeting sites, but the angle was wrong. If he shot it now, he’d hit whatever was below it on the planet, too. Somehow, he had to get the thing to come up beside him, and that wouldn’t be easy, since it probably had him targeted, too.

  He did his best to fly in a complex pattern. That was a challenge because his expertise was in guessing emotions from unconscious physiologic signs, not in stunt flying. His first task was to stay away from the weapon—chances were slim that it wouldn’t kill him if it hit. Pods were built to withstand attack to some extent, but by now the Humans knew what kind of weapon was needed to penetrate their armor, and even they weren’t disorganized enough to waste resources on ineffective projectiles. His second task was to lure the weapon to fly higher, then take his own pod into a dip that would put it and the weapon at roughly the same altitude.

  Heart pounding, senses and reflexes quickened by his instinct to survive, his hands flew over the interior surfaces of the craft. Immediate course changes, frequent and sudden, bought him precious moments of life. Meanwhile, he also mapped out a route that should put the weapon where he needed it, assuming he could get it to cooperate.

  Finally, the thing was at nearly his own altitude, chasing him as he flew in a sub-orbital arc. This was his chance, but he needed to seize it quickly—it was gaining on him, fast. With one clawstroke, he released the two waiting torpedoes and hoped.

  15

  the plan

  Chegg's right office door swung open just as he was reaching to open it, and it took a strong act of will to keep himself from jumping. A male chiroje walked in.

  Normally, Chegg wouldn't have worried. The visitor had no way of knowing what Chegg was about to do, and Chegg knew how to keep his nervousness from showing. You don't become a Counter-Intelligence keev without learning how to maintain your composure even in the most extreme circumstances.

  But this visitor was different. Even Chegg didn't know exactly how how far Gyze Quejj's interrogation skills went. He reminded him of himself at that age.

  They grasped arms.

  "Keev."

  "Gyze." />
  "Do you have three or four minutes?" Gyze asked, "or should I make an appointment?"

  "I have three minutes," Chegg replied, still standing by the door and leaving Gyze in the open doorway. "Even I don't like to keep a health plan administrator waiting."

  "The most powerful cheejes in the Organization," Gyze agreed, quoting a popular saying. "I checked on Jade Massilon's daughter. According to her relatives, she is safe and healthy, and I believe they are telling the truth. But Jade's mate Diego has given up and found another mate."

  "I'm aware of that," said Chegg, even though it was obvious.

  "With your permission, I'll go to Jade's quarters now and make her aware of it." Chegg inferred from Gyze’s tone that he considered the request a formality, and Chegg’s permission a sure thing.

  Chegg shook his head. "No. She is to remain in isolation until the planet is secure."

  Gyze's eyebrows flicked up and pulled together. His mouth tensed, and the sound of his breath changed as the muscles in his stomach and throat tensed as well. It was an adrenalin response: although he chose to remain silent and respectful, Gyze was angry.

  Chegg had no time or patience for explanations, and wouldn’t have bothered with them in any case. "If you have no more questions,” he told the chiroje, “I'll go to my meeting now."

  “No more questions, Keev.” Gyze waited an uncomfortable second for Chegg’s nod of dismissal, then turned and hurried down the hallway.

  Chegg followed at a slightly slower pace, and walked to his quarters to wait for the health plan administrator.

  She was an air woman with a habit of stealing frequent glances at her boots.

  "Keev."

  "Piall."

  They remained standing. Piall opened her Personal Device and began typing. "Your parastomach function continues to decline. We may need to cut out insect powder from your diet altogether if this trend continues.”

  "We are alone," said Chegg.

  Piall nodded, turned off her Personal Device and put it away.

  Chegg closed the short distance between them so that they stood close together, almost touching, and spoke in a low tone. “Give me the disease report first.”

  The air woman stared through the ceiling for three seconds before speaking. “The Humans have had no more cases of what they are calling ‘streptococcoid syndrome’ since our last meeting. One hundred forty-three other diseases of Chuzekk origin test positive in the environment, including the common bone itch, but Human medical professionals haven't discovered them yet.”

  “How many individuals have died from these diseases?”

  “I gave the order not to count the deaths. My investigators encountered unexpected obstacles to performing autopsies because of Human death rituals. I decided that the measures necessary to gain access to the bodies would have constituted too great a risk of exposure.”

  Chegg nodded. “Have the alien abduction stories gained any credibility in mainstream Human culture now that we have shown ourselves?”

  “Yes, but they don't seem to have made the connection to disease control because they’re still looking for a complicated conspiracy of evil. Our plants are encouraging that, of course. I think we're safe, at least for now.

  Chegg walked to a nearby desk, reached under it and turned on the artificial rain by pressing a clumsy mechanical switch he had installed himself. Security concerns were no reason to give up the simple comforts of home, after all. He watched the drops form on the ceiling and fall to his face, then breathed them in. “Go on,” he said.

  “Sanitation,” Piall continued, making no indication that she even noticed the rain. “My workers continue to repair sewage systems and other sanitation infrastructure damaged by the war. It’s still too early to say whether our attempts to prevent sanitation-related epidemics have been successful or not.

  “Water and food. Our strategy of delivering water and food using Chuzekk technology while giving credit to known Human charity groups seems to be working. No one seems to suspect that the charity groups did not do the work—not even the charity groups themselves.

  “Drugging the Human population is proving beneficial. So far the people in general are much more docile than our projections show they would normally be. The military leaders are much harder to handle, of course, but we have managed to make some of them lose their focus and patience, resulting in hasty decisions that worked to our advantage.”

  When she finished, Chegg said nothing for a minute or so, just stood and let the rain fall on him while everything sunk in. When he brought his mind back to where he was again, he realized that he had been staring at Piall’s boots. “What do you think are the chances that the Humans will discover our drugs in their environment?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Probably very slim. We have had to use drugs they have no tests for, which is part of the challenge.”

  “Then I think we may have grounds for cautious optimism. My contacts have found no indications so far that either the Bdasekks or the Asirekks are aware of our treaty violations on this pesky little planet. Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are fully aware of our activities, and also of who our spies are. All we can do is continue to monitor through multiple avenues, but as of now it actually seems possible that we may be spared an inter-empire war.”

  Piall’s shoulders stiffened. “I have one more item to report.”

  Something in the tone of her voice made Chegg’s stomach contract. He caught his breath and just looked at her.

  “Someone is interfering with our work.”

  “A sabateur?”

  “We don’t know yet whether they are committing intentional sabotage, or just working toward their own goals and getting in our way. We do know it is not the Aberikekk military, not the Russian government and not the Chinese government. Whoever they are, they’re quickly becoming an unacccounted variable in most of our calculations. Intentional sabateurs or not, they could be—“ She cut herself off suddenly, bowed her head and darted a glance at Chegg past her eye-ridges.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Unless we can identify and control this variable, it could plunge half the galaxy into a war like we haven’t had in twelve generations.”

  16

  guilty party

  Jade stripped by her bed, balled up her uniform and dropped her faltoopp on top of it. There were no sensors in the faltoopp, Fletcher had said. She walked naked to the shower room, turned it on and stepped inside.

  Seconds later, she sensed a presence behind her. She didn't turn around, and he didn't touch her anymore.

  "I'll do it," she said, "on one condition."

  "And that is...?"

  "You said you could get me off this ship. You get me home, and I'll do the job."

  "Deal. There's a spy ship leaving for Earth one week from today. It's going to have to make an emergency landing somewhere in New England, right in New Hampshire if everything goes just right. You'll be on it."

  "They'll put me in a garoshh. I won't be able to escape just because they've landed."

  "Did you really think I would just put you on the ship and force an emergency landing, and leave it at that? It's a whole plan, and if you'll stop interrupting, I—" Fletcher abandoned the sentence mid-syllable and continued in a faster rhythm, "Your keeper is here. I have to go. There's a clean uniform in the toilet room. Dry off and get dressed and act like nothing's happened. I'll find my own way out."

  "The anniversary of your birth will arrive soon," said Laitt when Jade came out of the bathroom.

  "My birthday," Jade replied, willing her voice to remain calm. "Just six more days."

  "I read that the anniversary of birth is special to Humans," Laitt continued. "You do parties or other activities to remember your births. Is this true?" She carried a fresh bunch of green grapes to the food table.

  "Yeah, it's true," Jade answered. "My daughter's birthday was last week, and Chegg wouldn't even make an exception for that. Wouldn't even let me call her
for her birthday. I mean, he should know better. I can see if it was you: our culture is new to you. But Chegg knows Humans really well, and he knows me really well; it's his job. So he should understand that I need to call my daughter on her birthday. No, it's more than that. She needs me to call her, and especially on her birthday."

  "I will not help you disobey my keev," Laitt said gravely. She had been standing still and watching Jade attentively.

  "I know," Jade answered. "Just venting, sorry."

  "I am curious how you think of your births when you remember them. Chuzekks do not remember our hatchings."

  "Actually, we don't remember our births, either. Once in a while someone will tell you, 'I remember being born. I remember being in the womb,' but I seriously doubt it. I think the people who say that messed up their brains with drugs or something. The purpose of a birthday is to honor the person, really, not to help that person remember being born."

  "What do Humans do on birthdays?" Laitt asked, standing behind Jade and running her fingers through her wet hair.

  "Oh, there's usually a cake, and candles."

  "I read this, too. One candle for each year of life to now."

  "Yup," said Jade by habit, then for Laitt's sake she said, "Yes. I went to a party once that had a clown, and that was nice. But I always liked pool parties best."

  "I will try to get you cake and candles on your birthday," said Laitt.

  When Jade got up on the morning of her birthday, she found a navy blue taper beside the pool, freshly lit. When she came back from the shower, a bright red one had been added. While she was making coffee, Rokk, one of her guards, came in with an orange one. By lunchtime, a long and colorful line of candles burned beside the pool. Some had burned out and been removed, and she wondered whether some of the new ones were meant to replace them, or whether every single candle represented a year. She began to count them, but was interrupted when the door opened for lunch.