“Don’t stare, Selwood,” Jones said. “Don’t look him in the eye.”
She shot a furious look at him. She looked everybody in the eye.
“Look at the floor.”
She tilted her head forward. The pressure lifted, disappeared. The baritone voice said something.
“Any suggestions?” She ground out through gritted teeth. “If I can’t see them, how can I do any fucking thing?”
“Look at his shoulder, or the things on his collar. You can look at his face. Just don’t lock eyes with him.”
Settle, Morgan. You’re out of options. Jones is talking sense for a change. She set her gaze on his rank insignia. The golden strands winked in the light when he shifted.
The third man, the one with the red stars, put a hand on his chest and said, “Kamandara-seban Prasad.” He waved a hand at the second man, the one with the silver star and said, “Nakhoda Lomandra.” Then the first man, the one with the amber eyes, “Daryabod Ravindra.”
“What do you think they’re asking?” Jones said.
She rolled her eyes and raised both hands and shoulders in the ‘how the fuck would I know’ gesture. It seemed to cause some amusement or shock on the other side of the barrier. Well, they hadn’t had to put up with Jones.
“Let’s take a guess. Names?” She pointed a finger at herself. “Morgan Selwood.” Then she pointed at Jones. “Tony Jones.”
The fellow with the silver star looked even more disapproving, brows lowered. The senior man just watched.
“Morgan Selwood,” the man with the three red stars said. “Tony Jones.” He spoke in an even, tenor voice, precise and controlled. The pronunciation wasn’t too bad, either. A rolled ‘r’, a slip on the ‘w’ and the ‘d’.
She pointed a finger at him and he frowned.
“Don’t point,” Jones hissed at her.
She put her hand down. “Why not?”
“A lot of people find pointing offensive.”
Shit. Don’t look, don’t point. The medical woman had sort of waved at the door. She duplicated the gesture pointing her hand at the third man, keeping her eyes on his shoulder. “Kamandara-seban Prasad.”
No reaction. Not from any of them. She risked a glance along their faces. The senior man exchanged a look with the one she’d decided to call Prasad. She licked her lips. Don’t stare. It was so hard not to.
Prasad gestured at Jones. “Kamandara-seban Prasad.”
“Well, come on. He wants you to say it.”
“Yeah, I figured that. It isn’t easy.” Jones stumbled over the pronunciation so much the words were barely recognizable.
Now Prasad rose to his feet. He said something to the trooper standing behind her, then waved a hand at the senior officer. “Daryabod Ravindra.”
She opened her mouth to repeat the words but the trooper stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and a growled, “Nahn.”
She shut up. No prizes for guessing ‘nahn’ meant ‘no’.
Prasad waved at Jones, repeating the words. Jones copied, mangling the pronunciation. And one more time for the fellow in the middle, “Nakhoda Lomandra.”
Prasad turned to her. A slight bow, some encouragement. He waved at the senior man. Her turn? “Daryabod Ravindra.” A tiny smile. Next man. “Nakhoda Lomandra.”
One more unintelligible sentence. He waved a hand at her and waited. She repeated the words back to him. Out of the corner of her eye she could swear she saw the senior man smile. Just a little.
An exchanged glance with his two superiors and Prasad sat down.
It seemed the performance was over. Daryabod Ravindra stood, the two lesser mortals followed suit and all three left the room. So far, so good. With a bit of luck they’d teach them the local language; always a good place to start.
“You’re not much good at body language, are you?” Jones said when the door had closed on the aliens.
She bristled. “What d’you mean by that?”
“Be careful what you do with your hands. It’s one of the things you learn in business. The wrong gesture on the wrong planet and you’ll offend somebody. Didn’t they teach you that at military school?”
“No, they didn’t. They taught me how to salute but I wasn’t much good at that, either. They take me as I come.” And if they didn’t, too bad.
“Well… you’re not exactly a people person, are you? But that’s okay. Let me handle the people bit for you.”
“The people bit, huh? So what are you expecting? That we’ll get invited to the officers’ mess for dinner?”
“No, of course not. But we’re going to have to try to fit in—”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. You don’t know anything about these aliens or what they intend to do with us.”
“Well, given they haven’t done anything horrible yet, I figure we might as well try to set up some sort of rapport with them.”
She snorted. He must fancy himself as a diplomat. Idiot.
Jones frowned. “What are you expecting them to do?”
“I don’t know. But we’re still in quarantine. Better hope they don’t find any exotic bugs and decide to squash the threat.” She ground the heel of her hand into the table top.
He swallowed. He obviously hadn’t even considered that option. “That isn’t funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
****
“Party tricks,” Lomandra said as the three men walked along the corridor toward the ship’s transit foyer. “Does she really expect us to believe she can’t speak our language? She was word perfect.”
He directed a neck bow at Ravindra. “I recommend we send then to Mahanadi and let the experts at Headquarters assess them.”
Ravindra stared at the captain, who had the sense to lower his eyes. Lomandra had a bad habit of getting beyond himself.
“But the decision is yours, of course, Admiral.”
“With respect, Admiral, I do not agree with the Captain,” Prasad said. “I want to question them further, discover where they come from, how they got here, what they intend. Particularly the woman. I wonder if the strange eyes and the things in her head may have some significance, that her ability to mimic comes from there. And what else it may mean. If they can give us more information about the Yogina, so much the better.”
Lomandra glowered but maintained his silence. As he should. Prasad pressed a button on the control panel next to the transit doors to summon a car.
“I see your point, Prasad,” Ravindra said. “Find out what you can. But they are to remain in isolation until the doctors release them and then they will go into detention.”
Prasad responded with a formal neck bow. “Thank you, Admiral.”
The car arrived and the doors slid apart. Ravindra entered the transit car first, the others behind him. “There is to be no talk of aliens on this ship. We will keep this encounter to ourselves as far as we can for the time being.” The last thing he needed was for some news channel to start a scare campaign.
“We can’t keep this incident secret on the ship, Srimana,” Lomandra said. “Too many people were involved. Troopers, medical—”
“Have the medical staff sworn to secrecy. Let it be known that this new ship is one of our own experimental vessels or something, that the occupants were affected by radiation,” Ravindra said. “Prasad, I will leave the details to you.”
The car stopped and he alighted, leaving the other two to go about their business. The guards at the entrance to his suite slammed to attention as he passed. Inside the privacy of his office he chuckled. She’d repeated Prasad’s words perfectly. ‘You will be taken to the kitchens, killed and served for dinner.’ With not a flicker of understanding. He settled in his chair. Two sets of aliens. Incredible. And yet, when the incredible waves a hand at you… it must be true. And he was still no closer to understanding the Yogina.
When the boffins on Mahanadi heard about his latest prizes, they’d be clamoring, wanting to conduct their tests. He’d have to send them. Event
ually. But for now, they may just prove useful in another way.
Chapter Five
A trooper shook Morgan awake and tossed her some clothes, a totally sexless undergarment, trousers and a loose top. Stifling a yawn, sticky-eyed, she dragged herself off the bunk. What with new and different sounds and weird dreams about aliens, she hadn’t slept well.
The guard just stood there, solid as a wall. Maybe they’d sent a woman. How could you tell under a helmet? She pulled the trousers on. They were loose around her waist and a little long in the leg but at least it was better than the horrible yellow jumpsuit. The top wouldn’t rate too high in the fashion stakes, either, ballooning around her body like a tent.
She braced herself when she was led out of her cell, ready for the next battery of tests. Maybe this was how lab rats felt.
She was taken back to the observation room they’d been in yesterday. Jones was already there, holding a weird-looking, crooked spoon poised over a bowl. She sat down opposite him, balanced the spoon as best she could and poked at the contents of the bowl dropped in front of her. Some sort of porridge and purplish fruit. “What’s it like?”
He grimaced. “It’s edible.”
She tasted a mouthful and screwed up her nose. Bland cereal, sour fruit. “It’s horrible.”
“They didn’t offer a menu.” He dug up another spoonful of the stuff and raising the spoon to his mouth, added, “If you don’t eat, you die.” He put it in his mouth and chewed.
She sighed and started shoveling. If she swallowed really quickly maybe she wouldn’t notice the taste so much. A mug of water washed it all down. When she’d finished, one of the troopers took the plates away.
Jones prowled around the room. Dark circles under his eyes bore testament to his lack of sleep. She didn’t expect she looked any better.
When the door opened it took her a moment to realize one of the two figures in isolation suits was Prasad. He offered them a slight bow and said something. ‘Good morning, nice to see you here?’ she thought.
A hand-wave to his companion. “Pratinidh Sayvu es vara.”
Morgan did the neck-bow thing in greeting. She’d seen it often on the holovid she’d watched last night.
The newcomer said something, the voice soprano. So maybe a woman? It was hard to tell, dressed in an isolation suit. Yellow eyes, alive with curiosity, sparkled at her through the transparent faceplate and the lips curved in a slight smile. She placed a hand on her breast. “Sayvu.” She waved a hand at Morgan. “Morgan Selwood.”
So maybe her name was Sayvu?
Jones seemed to think so. He smiled, bowed to the woman and said, “Sayvu.” He even managed to not mangle the syllables completely.
Prasad nodded at Sayvu, once, and she responded with a deeper bow from the waist. He afforded Jones and Morgan a swift glance and then left.
Sayvu turned on a view screen at the far end of the room and took a black device from her belt. The signal resonated in Morgan’s mind. A communicator. Sayvu said “Adami”. In response, a stylized drawing of a man appeared on the screen and beside it, in beautiful, curling script, the written presentation of the word.
Morgan grinned. Language lessons. They’d be staying here, for a while anyway.
****
Three chimes, a pause, three chimes, a pause, three chimes. End of the second shift. Lessons over for the day. Jones stretched his back while Selwood stood.
“I’m off to find out about navigation systems. See you tomorrow.” She nodded a bow to Sayvu and headed for the door, her trooper at her heels.
Jones gazed after her. He’d heard about Supertechs and he’d watched her work on Curlew but he’d never imagined she’d be able to suck up a language in a few days, while he still struggled after… what was it?... ten days. Huh. Language is codes strung together with rules, she’d said when he asked. He wondered if the alien systems were all that hard for her.
One thing for sure, Lieutenant Sayvu was good. A nice girl conducting language lessons and at the same time learning an awful lot about them. She’d shown them a hologram of the galaxy to find out where the two humans had come from but he hadn’t known and Selwood couldn’t pick anything out, either. Or if she did, she hid it well. They asked about the first alien ships, too. But neither of them had anything useful to say about that.
Then it was where were you born? What’s your job? Whose is the body in the cargo hold? How did he die? Who killed him? The same questions, repeated often, phrased in different ways.
He still wondered if they believed him. How do you explain to aliens that the ship’s captain and navigator were drug-runners who had tried to swindle their contacts?
The stop at Belsun station had turned into a nightmare. He shuddered. He could still see Banstock lying face up with his chest blasted away and Tariq clutching the hole in his stomach, blood oozing between his fingers. The journey back to Curlew had been torture with Tariq slowing down by the minute and the enforcers on their heels. Selwood got them out of Belsun, but only just and then the shift drive failed.
Huh. Some smuggling operation. Tariq and Banstock both dead, no drugs, no money and a one-way trip to nowhere, stuck on an alien warship with no way out.
Ah well. Another boring night of trying to understand the alien vids. He made an effort and smiled at Sayvu, who smiled back.
“I look forward to see you again tomorrow,” he said, making that little neck bow.
He genuinely liked the girl and he was pretty sure she liked him. After all, they’d been together now for a number of days.
She walked over to Jones, catlike even in an isolation suit. “Your friend finds this very easy.” She spoke very softly and he had to strain to hear.
“She finds everything very easy,” he blurted. Shit. He shouldn’t have said that. “She is very clever. Much cleverer than me.” He gave her a wide smile. Maybe he could make friends with her. “But not as pretty as you.” She wasn’t bad looking. At least as far as he could tell, with her all covered up in an isolation suit.
Sayvu’s lips curved. “I could give you extra lessons.”
“How?”
“I can have you brought back here in an hour, say. We can work together, you and I.”
Work together at what? He wished she didn’t have to wear that blasted helmet. The light reflected off the curved surface, hiding her expression. “I would like that.” He bowed a little deeper this time, careful not to stare.
****
When Jones returned, Sayvu made the trooper stand outside.
“This is very kind of you,” he said when he’d seated himself at the table.
“I feel sorry for you. You are so much like us.”
He grinned. “I still will not be able to tell you where I come from. I do not know.”
“Yes, I understood that. So you will never be able to go home.”
“Probably.” Unless Selwood could work something out.
She hesitated, licked her lips. “Do all your people have eyes like yours? Or just the men?”
“Oh, everybody. Including the women. Selwood is different. Why do you ask?”
“Nothing. If you can’t go home, what will you do?”
He gazed at the tabletop, smooth and unmarked. “Do? What do you mean?”
“Well, from what you have said you are Vesha, like me.”
Vesha. Merchants, businessmen and in the military, most often cargo masters, stores people, accountants. People like him. “Yes.”
“So you do not wish to be on a warship.”
A statement. “No. Not really. What about you?”
“I had no choice. We all must serve for two years. I have two months before I may leave.”
A conscript. “So you’re not likely to end up as a ship’s captain, then.”
She scowled. “Only Mirka become command officers.” She gestured behind her head. “Those with the coti.”
“Coti?”
“Mirka officers wear their hair short on top and sides but at the
back a long piece.”
Ah yes. He’d noticed that when the senior officers came to visit them all those days ago. He’d have to be careful here. He was sure he’d detected some resentment.
“You don’t like the Mirka?”
“It is not fair. We are just as capable of command as they are.” She stiffened, frowning, urgent. “Please… you will not tell I said that?”
She’d just told whoever was monitoring the room hadn’t she? He looked pointedly at the nearest sensor.
She jerked her head up, their body language for ‘no’. “I have switched them off. It is the end of the day. Our conversation is private.”
Had she, indeed? “Well, no. I won’t tell.” Why would it matter anyway? “Look, why don’t you tell me about you? Where you were born, where you grew up, your family?”
By the end of the evening, he knew her father was a wealthy merchant and that she had elected to serve the fleet in training so she could meet many different manesa and learn more about them. Market research, you might say. And she told him her personal name was Indra.
The following evening Sayvu did the same thing, bringing him back for extra ‘lessons’, with the guard outside. More ordinary conversation, about families and politics, the Mirka planetary rulers and their despotic rule.
“So not all Mirka are military?”
“No. But of course, the military helps to maintain the power of their own. They crush any resistance.”
Contempt again. A curled lip, a scowl. Maybe, just maybe there could be an opportunity here for an enterprising individual like himself. “You don’t like the system?”
“No. I like the way you said your society works. With choice.” She hesitated, searching his face. “I am a Bunyadan.” She rushed on, almost as if she feared she’d change her mind if she did not. “The Bunyada believe that all manesa were created equal, that all with the ability have the right to command,” she said.
“Even the Shuba?”
“No, no.” She inclined her head, smiling. “Only those with the ability. Not Shuba. They are laborers, ordinary soldiers. And Hasta…” she raised both palms to shoulder height, a gesture of contempt. “They are artisans.”
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