by Audrey Faye
“He isn’t fluffy, his fur is short. That name doesn’t even make sense,” the man said. Hsissh went stiff in Noa’s arms. He felt a trembling in the waves, as though someone were using it for communication.
“They are fluffy when they’re kits,” Noa said. “We named our werfles Fluffy back on our farm.”
“You named more than one werfle Fluffy? How is that even practical? They wouldn’t know which one you were calling,” the man said.
“Not at the same time!” Noa replied. “After the first died, we named the second werfle Fluffy. That way we didn’t slip up and call werfle number two Fluffy, when his name was actually Rex, or Spot or something. Calling him by a dead werfle’s name would have been rude and weird.” And in the wave Hsissh felt her think, And they were so similar … I felt like they were the same being.
“But technically, you were calling him by the dead werfle’s name,” the maybe-human protested. “Fluffy was the dead werfle’s name even if it was also werfle number two’s name.”
Noa huffed. “Fine, if you don’t like Fluffy, choose another name.”
The man looked down at Hsissh, and Hsissh felt it again, a tiny disruption in the waves that came with communication across time and space. “I wouldn’t even think you’d like werfles. They look like rats,” the man said.
Hsissh’s ears flattened like a cat’s. He tried to send disapproval into the man’s mind, but … the wave felt different in the other human.
Noa’s eyes went wide and she gasped. “They look nothing like rats. Their noses aren’t long and pointy, their eyes aren’t small and beady, they’re clean—well, when they have access to clean water, they’re clean. Their tails aren’t naked, and they don’t eat people.” She lifted Hsissh to her nose. “They eat rats. They’re cute, they’re friendly, and they’re intelligent—smartest creature on Luddeccea—at least as smart as ravens as far as anyone can tell.”
Hsissh could see the irritation flaring in the other human as Noa touched her nose to his. Hsissh purred with the new beginnings of familial love …
… but then a rush of alien waves sparked through his mind. “Fine, call it Carl Sagan if it’s so smart,” the man snapped.
Hsissh’s whiskers trembled, and it all came together. He understood. The other human was extremely augmented, not just in his body, but in his brain—like Kenji! Hsissh hadn’t been able to touch Kenji mentally either, not effectively anyway. The different “augmentation” in the man’s brain allowed him to use the waves. Humans had achieved wave manipulation through their technology! If he’d had more energy, he might have wiggled out of Noa’s grasp in excitement. Ish had been wrong thinking humans would achieve oneness through their prayers—maybe that had shown them the way—but they were inadequate creatures in fur, claw, and mind. Like every other inadequacy, they’d made up for their weakness with their machines. He took a deep breath … would the other werfles accept it? He exhaled. Not fast enough. They still had to leave before the next plague—but maybe someday …
“Carl Sagan?” said Noa.
“Twentieth-century scientist,” the man muttered, looking away from Hsissh. “He theorized that there was intelligent life in the universe, just that it hadn’t visited us.”
Hsissh purred. The One had neglected the quadrant of the galaxy that was home to humans—it had been a complete fluke that the humans had found The One’s home planet first and not the other way around. To think a human named Carl Sagan had theorized that was possible … His purr halted. The One thought that there was no other intelligence in the universe but their own, and so had humans, though they’d been under one another’s noses for a few centuries now. Their concepts of “intelligence” were just too different to allow them to see one another. A purr rose in his chest again. But their sense of love, it was the same. Hsissh tried to send a rush of admiration and validation to the other human. The man didn’t respond. Hsissh almost got mad, but then realized that maybe the human hadn’t felt it. What had Dad said? “New technology, always buggy”?
“Carl Sagan,” said Noa. “I like it.”
Hsissh purred. He liked it, too.
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Blood Ties
A Gaian Consortium Story
Christine Pope
On the outlaw world of Iradia, Miala Fels and her computer hacker father discover that taking the wrong commission can have unexpected consequences.
Blood Ties
Author’s note: This story takes place approximately six months before the beginning of Blood Will Tell.
Even through the closed door of her bedroom, Miala Fels could hear the deep voices of the men who’d gathered in the main room of the flat she shared with Lestan Fels, her father. She hated the sound, since she knew those voices signaled yet another opportunity for Lestan to get himself into trouble.
He never intended to cause trouble, of course. All he wanted was to provide a more stable life for his daughter. Unfortunately, his particular skill set was one Iradia’s crime lords found valuable. And since they could pay far more than any legitimate employer….
She’d been sitting in front of her computer, staring at the old-fashioned flat display — they were too poor to afford the heads-up style — when the men arrived. Her father had given her the order to hide herself in her bedroom well before the time the visitors were due to arrive. Well, it wasn’t really an order; giving orders wasn’t Lestan’s style. But he’d made the suggestion, casting a nervous eye toward the front door of their flat, and she hadn’t argued. Right around the time she’d turned seventeen and had begun to leave a somewhat awkward adolescence behind, she’d begun to attract the kind of attention she really didn’t want from the men who did business with her father, men who cast flat, leering glances at her and even started to suggest that Lestan might make more money by loaning her out rather than setting up their security systems or hacking their rivals’ computers.
After deflecting those outrageous suggestions on two or three occasions, Lestan and Miala had mutually decided it was better that she not be present at these meetings, even though he’d been training her ever since she was eight years old, and she knew almost as much about computers and making them impervious to outside attack as her father did. Too risky for her to be anywhere near those men, he’d said, and she knew he was right. According to Gaian laws, she had still been underage at that point, more than three years ago now, but the Consortium’s laws didn’t mean a hell of a lot out here in a backwater like Iradia.
Miala abandoned the project she’d been working on — setting up a secure payment system for Nala, who owned the coffee house down the street, and who had been hit by hackers several times during the last few months, draining her meager profits — and headed over to the door of her bedroom. She didn’t even need to press her ear against it to hear what the men were saying.
“…sure you can do it?” one of them asked.
They hadn’t given their names, but she’d seen the two men around town more than once while she was out running errands. Aldis Nova was one of Iradia’s larger settlements, but even so, it was small enough that you got to know who was a resident and who wasn’t, even if you’d never exchanged a single word. One of the men was tall and well-dressed, with faintly lavender skin that spoke of Eridani heritage a generation or two back. The other one was shorter and heavier, with dull dark eyes that had made a shiver go down Miala’s back the one time she’d made the mistake of making eye contact with him on the street. Somehow, her bedroom door seemed like a flimsy barrier when she considered that it was the only thing standing between her and the black-eyed stranger.
“Of course,” Lestan replied. His voice sounded calm…on the surface. Beneath that apparent composure, however, Miala could hear an underlying tension. He needed this job. He’d delivered on the last one, but
the man he’d done the work for had gotten himself shot up in a dispute with one of his fellow “silk merchants” — all right, smugglers — and the work had never been paid for. That financial blow had been enough to wipe out their meager savings, and they now had only enough left to buy food for another week or so. Paying the rent on their dingy little flat would be impossible without a fresh infusion of funds.
“What about the girl?” the shorter man asked, and Miala held her breath. Of course he couldn’t know she was there listening, since she hadn’t made a sound, but still….
Right then, she wished her door had a lock that worked.
“What about her?” Lestan replied.
“Heard she was doing some work for you. If she is, I think she should be in on this discussion, don’t you?”
Oh, hell no, she thought. But she didn’t move. The last thing she wanted was for them to know that she was right there on the other side of her door.
“I’ve had her perform a few simple tasks, debug a few routines.” Lestan was doing a decent job of sounding casual and unconcerned, but Miala didn’t know if that would be enough to move the conversation in a safer direction. “But I’d never trust her with something this important.”
“Good thing,” said the other man, the one who looked part Eridani. “This commission is far too important to be entrusted to a child.”
“She didn’t look like a child the last time I saw her,” the shorter man retorted. Again Miala had to force herself not to react, although right then she felt sick to her stomach.
“My daughter is a decent programmer,” Lestan said. “In five years, maybe she’ll be in a place where she could take on something like this. Right now, though, she won’t be involved at all.”
“She home?” the unpleasant one asked. “Maybe I’d like to ask her myself.”
“I’m afraid not,” Lestan replied, and this time he seemed unable to hide the edge to his voice. Normally, Miala liked hearing him speak, because he had the smooth, cultured accent of his home world of Gaia, rather than the flatter timbres of those who’d been born out here on the fringes. In that moment, however, she feared that his tone only betrayed the nervousness and fear he was trying so desperately to hide.
“Leave the daughter out of it,” the part-Eridani man cut in, sounding annoyed. “As her father pointed out, she’s not capable of handling this commission. But you, Fels,” he went on, words becoming brisk, “what do you think your timeline will be for the project?”
“Shouldn’t take more than a week,” Lestan said, and Miala experienced a sinking sensation somewhere in her midsection. Her father was always being far too optimistic about when he thought he could deliver a project, a trait that inevitably resulted in both him and his daughter having to work around the clock to meet his employers’ unrealistic deadlines.
“A week?” the man echoed, sounding impressed despite himself. “Well, it sounds as if we’ve come to the right person. Then let’s move forward. Two thousand as a deposit, and the rest upon completion.”
His words were followed by a faint metallic clink, and Miala guessed he’d deposited the promised units on the shabby plastic table in the dining area. The vast majority of financial transactions in the galaxy took place electronically, but on Iradia, people preferred cold, hard cash. It was a hell of a lot harder to trace.
“Thank you, Mor — ” her father began, then stopped himself. Clearly, he’d been about to say the man’s name, and cut the word short before Miala could overhear. She might be included in her father’s programming work when necessary, but he did everything in his power to keep the identities of his employers from her.
“We’ll check in three days from now, see how the work is going,” the part-Iradian said. Then he added, the words carrying an ominous weight of their own, “We expect great things, Master Fels.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” Lestan promised.
No reply, but Miala could hear movement, followed by the tired whoosh of the front door. Its hydraulics had needed servicing forever.
She hurried back to her chair and sat down, then returned her attention to the display in front of her. The subterfuge probably wouldn’t fool her father, but she figured she might as well pretend that she hadn’t been eavesdropping. Besides, he would wait a little bit before coming into her room, just to make sure the men were truly gone. That would give her some time to ease back into her work, even though this particular bit of coding was so simple, she could have done it four or five years ago. She’d only taken on the job because Nala had asked for help, and the elderly coffee house owner had slipped Miala free drinks on enough occasions that she figured helping out was the least she could do.
As she’d thought, her father entered the room not quite five standard minutes later. Since there was no place else to sit down, he took a seat on the bed.
“I suppose you heard all that.”
She didn’t see the point in lying. For too long, it had been just Lestan and her. They didn’t keep a lot of secrets from each other…except the ones that might get them into trouble. “I did. They sounded like a couple of choice specimens.”
“The one isn’t too bad.” Lestan paused there, as if he knew there wasn’t a single thing he could say to defend the shorter of his two visitors.
“I suppose.” Miala swiveled her chair partway so she could face her father. He looked back at her with a sort of tired acceptance, and it seemed to hit her then. Lestan had always been there, the one fixed object in her universe, but for the first time she really noticed the gray in his hair, which had long ago overtaken the original dark brown, and the worry lines around his eyes. Sometime during the past few years he’d slipped into middle age, and only now was she beginning to realize what a toll living on this world had taken on him. Because he looked so weary, she bit back what she’d been about to say, that he needed to be more discriminating in his choice of commissions, no matter what their financial situation.
He truly believed they had no other choice.
Tempering her own dismay, Miala went on, “At least it’s just a standard data security setup, right?”
Her father let out a sigh, then ran a hand through his hair. It needed cutting, and stuck out in all directions. The effect wasn’t comical, though, but instead only served to intensify the aura of weariness that surrounded him. “Not exactly.”
Despite herself, Miala’s voice sharpened. “Not exactly how?”
“There’s more than one facility involved. And the person paying for the commission wants a layered system.”
Of course he did. Not that these crime lords didn’t have a lot to hide, but still. Building the sort of electronic fortress they all seemed to require took time, and time was the one thing Miala and Lestan didn’t have, thanks to his overly optimistic assessment of how long this would all take.
Well, she’d pulled all-nighters before. And they did have two thousands units of actual cash sitting there in the flat with them, which meant the rent would be paid and the refrigeration unit could be stocked again. She hadn’t really been looking forward to yet another evening meal of leth, a cheap grain-based dish usually relegated to breakfast fare and the only thing they’d been able to afford for the past few days.
“All right,” Miala told her father. “Then I suppose we’d better get to work.”
Thank God she actually had inherited her father’s facility with computers. Sometimes Miala wondered what Lestan would have done if it turned out that she’d gotten more from her mother genetically than just her red hair, and didn’t have the skill to replicate her father’s efforts. Would he have kept on trying to teach her the tricks of his trade, whether or not she had the talent for it?
As with so many other topics that skirted her parents’ past, Miala had never worked up the nerve to ask her father that question. He never spoke of her mother; the few tidbits Miala had gleaned over the years were due entirely to listening to neighborhood gossip. Apparently, even in as jaded a town as Aldis N
ova, it was something to take all your husband’s money and disappear off-world, leaving him with an infant daughter.
But since Miala had never known her mother, she couldn’t really miss her. Occasionally she’d wonder if there was anything about her own looks or speech or mannerisms that might be similar, besides her hair, but again, she knew better than to ask. Lestan Fels was a mild man, but prying into his past was one of the surest ways to arouse his slow-burning anger.
The job was just that, a job. Harder than some, not as tricky as others. If they’d been given a full two weeks to work on it, or, even better, an actual standard month, Miala might have said she even found the task enjoyable. Numbers and code were a lot easier to deal with than people, after all. You knew how they were going to react. Plug this formula in here, get that result over there. Oh, occasionally something would blow up, but again, tracing the problem back to the original input would usually give you a solution.
Too bad real life was a whole lot messier.
Its current messiness was a direct result of not having enough time. She knew better than to reproach her father for that, though. They’d had this argument several times in the past, and his response was always the same: “You don’t know these people the way I do.”
It was a truth she had to acknowledge, although she didn’t like it very much. Maybe if she hadn’t lately been engaged in the mildest of flirtations with young Captain Malick, who’d recently been posted to the Gaian Defense Fleet’s station here in Aldis Nova, Miala might have felt differently about the corruption that powered the place…and the way she’d gotten sucked into it because of her father’s activities.
Her father didn’t like her connection with Captain Malick, tenuous as it might have been. Of course he wouldn’t; Lestan Fels had dealings with some very questionable individuals. He justified the work and the people who paid him by saying all he did was write programs. It wasn’t as if he was hired muscle, paid to break heads in alleyways or take out business rivals with a well-timed pulse bolt. Miala still thought the services he performed inhabited a very gray area, but since she didn’t have the freedom to leave, she mostly kept her protests to herself.