“Naonwai!” screamed Josephine, rising onto her knees at the funnel’s mouth. “Here!”
Acid Green looked around at the strange cry but couldn’t, thank god, place where it had come from. But Naonwai understood. He swept toward us and hurled the wine-red child in through the mouth of the funnel, and we caught her, a shaking bundle of bones and fur. And Acid Green didn’t follow—but only because he was after Naonwai now.
Naonwai zigged and zagged desperately beneath the lowest arches, sometimes catching hold of buttresses as he banked, sometimes skimming close to the surface of the dump, trying to throw Acid Green off long enough to make it to the forest.
“Go on, please,” Josephine urged.
But Acid Green was too fast, and too long limbed. He pounced like a falcon on a sparrow, grabbed Naonwai out of the air and dragged him screaming and flapping to dangle from the nearest arch until Acid Green’s electric-blue colleague came flying back to pick them up. Acid Green manhandled Naonwai into the car, which soared out from under the arches and away, but we could hear poor Naonwai still shrieking and struggling for a long time.
It seemed a long, long while before anyone stirred. The little red child Naonwai had rescued whimpered in Carl’s arms.
Uwaelee emerged from the dump, a long, sad whoop already on her lips. She stood upright, her wings wrapped tight around herself like a blanket, her four eyes huge and unblinking.
A chorus of cries rose from the forest, as the kids returned to the dump in desolate dribs and drabs.
“Naonwai,” moaned Tweel.
Uwaelee shook out her wings and began brushing rubbish from her fur.
“YOOLwa nunoon in!” she called briskly. “Yanael-ul tia LEE.” Which probably meant something like “Stop crying and get back to work,” because the kids began wearily picking rubbish again. Though many of them clustered around the Goldfish for comfort. The Goldfish did what it could, with songs and sparkles and bubbles, which did seem to help a little.
Uwaelee let them play, and within a few minutes, she was as lively and boisterous as ever. But she was acting like that for the others, like Carl did for Noel. And if I could see that, all but the youngest of the Eemala kids must too.
“This happens often,” said Josephine flatly, watching. And it had to be true. There was no shock. The kids’ ears drooped sadly against their heads, but they carried on working or playing, resigned.
“What will happen to Naonwai?” I asked.
The Goldfish asked, or did its best. But Uwaelee only gave an impatient shake of her wings and said shortly, “Yia-OON eetala.”
“‘Not dead,’ I think she’s saying,” the Goldfish reported soberly.
“But I bet the cops are going to put one of those collars on him,” said Carl.
“Can you ask her if there’s any organized resistance to the government?” Josephine said.
“Whoa,” said the Goldfish. “Those are some complicated ideas. . . .”
“No,” said Josephine, getting to her feet. “They’re simple.” And she pointed at her neck, then put both hands around it like a collar.
The Goldfish already knew this: “Nangael,” it said.
“Heewa, Shosfeen! Nangael! Znnng,” Uwaelee volunteered. But I didn’t think the last sound was a word: from the way Uwaelee grimaced and splayed out her hands, it was what the collar did. It hurt. Uwaelee launched into a vigorous series of mimes; she was scooping something imaginary off the ground, but then she looked around stealthily and straightened up with a theatrical sigh of relief. “Znng!” she cried, flailing and grabbing at her neck. “Eep-alye, wee, KraKLOO!” And she raised her fists and began fighting an invisible enemy apparently much larger than she was. “ZNNG!” she shouted again. And acted out falling over dead.
“It shocks you if you goof off your work? And if you try to fight the Krakkiluks, it kills you?” Carl interpreted.
“Nangael,” said Tweel, and pointed to the sky. I wasn’t sure what the sky had to do with it, but Josephine’s eyes flashed with understanding. She held up one fist and spun a fingertip round it, then pointed up.
“Heewa,” Tweel agreed.
“The satellite,” I said, understanding. That ugly thing I’d seen in orbit before we fell. That controlled the collars.
“KraKLOO Nangael Eemala?” asked Josephine.
Krakkiluks collar Eemala?
It was the first proper sentence any of us had attempted, and it was not at all grammatically correct. But Uwaelee understood.
“Heewa!” she confirmed. “Nul-ul LEEL ta-ha.”
“Yes. Many years ago,” translated the Goldfish.
“Ugh, KraKLOO,” Uwaelee finished.
“No kidding, UGH,” echoed Carl.
“Eemala OON Nangael?” said Josephine, putting her hands around her neck again, then taking them away, as if the collar was disappearing.
Eemala with no collars.
Free Eemala.
Uwaelee tilted her head in confusion. “Heewa,” said Uwaelee, pointing to herself. Yes, us . . .
“What about grown-up Eemala? More Eemala?” asked Josephine, miming appropriately. “Do you know ‘fight’?” she asked the Goldfish.
“Yes—well, I don’t have all the cases, yet, but . . . laeWA.”
“Eemala OON Nangael laeWA KraKLOO?” asked Josephine.
Are there Eemala with no collars who fight Krakkiluks?
There was a pause.
At first I thought they hadn’t understood. But then Tweel hissed something urgent to Uwaelee, and I knew that they had.
They weren’t sure whether to tell us the answer. They weren’t sure, and that had to mean . . .
Uwaelee put one pair of hands around her own neck, and then, with the other pair, wrenched them away. A collar breaking.
“Heewa AY!” she admitted.
Yes, she was saying. Yes.
17
The planet was called Yaela. The city was called Laeteelae. The language was WOya.
But the Goldfish knew far more words than that. It was cheerfully but palpably disappointed with my progress in grammar.
Uwaelee had produced something rather like an old-fashioned mobile phone and was circling above the root forest, talking into it. The kids had mostly returned to rubbish picking, hurried and anxious looking, trying to make up for lost time. Every now and then, new showers of rubbish would fall like rain into the dump, catching in the intersections of arches and pattering onto the mounds, and the gang would swoop to search for useful things to sell to the tinkers and scrap merchants who sometimes flew down to trade while we hid under our funnel.
Uwaelee dived down to us again. “NaeYAEna,” she said.
“They come,” translated Tweel, soberly, and the Goldfish showered him with stars again.
“Now, you see that, kids? That’s what happens if you apply yourself. You remember the verb ‘naeYAE.’ Who’s going to use that in a sentence?”
No one mentioned Naonwai again.
The rebels flew in at dusk.
Two Eemala adults swept through the net of arches and dangled above the dump, and the dump kids came clustering around eagerly. A tall cherry-red adult closed wings around Uwaelee, enveloping her. Then, rising on their wings again, both adults placed one pair of hands around their necks and with the other pair, pulled them away.
It hadn’t just been a mime. It was the rebellion’s salute.
Immediately they noticed what was wrong: “Naonwai baeYAE-lia?” said the tall cherry-red one.
“Heewa,” said Uwaelee shortly, and changed the subject, though both adults’ ears drooped at once.
“Yalu, EEPla-la-ya h’yumans.”
“Ay-yalu, heewa?”
The pair stared at us somberly. The stockier, grape-furred one tilted his head and flicked his ears, and the red one exclaimed softly—interested but not amazed. They’d seen aliens before.
Uwaelee introduced us. “This is Hoolinyae, this Eenyo.”
“I think that’s a guy and a gal, ki
ds, just so you know,” the Goldfish said.
Hoolinyae, the red one, wore no collar, but there was a bare, furless scar on her neck where one had been. However she’d managed to free herself, it hadn’t been easy.
Eenyo, the other one, still did wear a collar, resting amid dark mauve fur.
“Amaeleyae WOya?” said Eenyo to Uwaelee. They speak WOya?
“A bit,” I said, or tried to say. The Goldfish said something complicated in WOya and then something in Krakkiluk.
Hoolinyae and Eenyo muttered to each other in WOya; I heard the word KraKLOO.
“OON!” protested Uwaelee.
“They think we might be Krakkiluk spies,” Josephine concluded.
“We’re kids,” I said. “Spawn. The Krakkiluks would never use kids; they don’t think kids are even people.”
The Goldfish translated that, and Eenyo took a wandlike device from his pouch belt and waved it over us. It beeped and this seemed to satisfy him for the time being.
“Goldfish,” I said. “You sang a song for me on Mars once—you shone the lyrics into the air. . . . Do you know enough now?”
“I’ll do my best, Alice,” said the Goldfish.
The rebel adults were conferring: “What can we do, Hoolinyae? Ah—look!”
They turned and examined the floating letters the Goldfish was projecting into the air. Hoolinyae ran a hand through them, fascinated.
“You can understand, through this?” Eenyo said in WOya, pointing at the English words that appeared even as he spoke.
“We think so,” said Josephine. The subtitles didn’t work both ways—the Goldfish didn’t know WOya writing, so it translated aloud. Its WOya voice was changing. It was becoming more natural, less like a human American imitating an Eemala.
“Then we will try to have a conversation,” said Hoolinyae, with a faint chirrup of laughter in her voice.
Sometimes it took more than one attempt, but from then on we could more or less work out what they were saying:
“You are aliens,” Hoolinyae went on. “I have seen many pictures of many species, but nothing like you before. Are you subjects of the Grand Expanse?”
“No,” said Josephine. “Not yet, at any rate. We were abducted.”
“We have to go home,” I said. “We can’t stay much longer on this planet without dying.”
And so we told them everything. I wasn’t sure they understood all the details. But they understood enough.
“The Krakkiluks are our enemies too. If you can help us get home, then if there’s anything we can do to help you, or anything our planet could do . . . ,” Josephine pleaded.
Eenyo looked even sadder. “You are lost children,” he said, “and you are sick. We are not yet so cynical that you would need to buy our help. But you would need a very advanced ship to take you home. Only the Krakkiluks and their lackeys have such ships. We Free Eemala have no ships at all.”
“And yet,” said Hoolinyae. “The ships exist. If all the people of Yaela were free—then we could take those ships, could we not?”
“Hoolinyae. That day is very far away,” said Eenyo.
“I wonder,” said Hoolinyae. She was studying the Goldfish closely.
“I’m a very powerful computer, ma’am,” said the Goldfish sunnily. “And boy, if I can help these kids here by helping you, then I will.”
“Well,” said Eenyo. “You cannot stay here on the dump, and even if we cannot send you home, perhaps we can help you a little.”
Uwaelee turned a sudden backward somersault. “MUNAlae-EEY-yae!” she was saying. “I want to come too! I want to see where you go. I found the aliens, I should be the one to show them to Ningleenill!”
“Show us to who?” Carl asked, but the Eemala were too busy arguing to tell us.
“You never take us! I want to fight the Krakkiluks too. I can help!” Uwaelee cried.
“Sweet one, no,” said Hoolinyae. “If the Nangaelyeva find us, you must not be with us. Think what could happen to you.”
“I don’t care,” said Uwaelee, and I thought her voice wobbled. Hoolinyae stroked the fur between her ears, and Eenyo spread a wing around her shoulders. Like the parents she evidently didn’t have.
“Come, then!” said Hoolinyae, starting into the air. And then turned back and looked at us, perplexed. She had forgotten we couldn’t fly.
“Like Krakkiluks,” said Uwaelee. “But so few limbs.”
“They are like living rocks,” Tweel volunteered. I gave them a betrayed look. It is a bit much to find out the people you’ve been hanging out with all afternoon think you’re like living rocks. Though we’d been thinking of them as like fruit bats, but surely that’s nicer.
“We’ll help carry them,” said Uwaelee staunchly. “They are amazingly heavy, but we managed it.”
Eenyo tested this rather rudely by trying to pick up Josephine and exclaiming, “Yalu!” Heavy, yes. Heavy.
And after this assault on our self-esteem, the team of kids crowded in and hoisted us up again without so much as a by-your-leave, and flew us off over the roots. They held us a little more carefully than before, but it was still far from comfortable.
“Um, we’re not going far like this?” I squawked.
“Only to the clearing,” I glimpsed Eenyo saying, though I thought that was more to the Eemala kids than to me.
They set us down on a bare stretch of golden moss between whorls of root.
“So what’s here?” said Carl, looking around. It didn’t seem like a particularly distinctive clearing.
“Now you must go back,” Hoolinyae was telling Uwaelee and the others.
Uwaelee sighed noisily. She seemed resigned to being left behind now.
“WURRRRGH,” boomed an enormous voice from above, and a great shadow passed over the clearing. We looked up.
It was one—no, two—of the huge purple winged beasts from the mosslands. For all their bulk, they lowered themselves to the earth as delicately as dandelion seeds, and one bent its long, shaggy neck and rubbed its face against Hoolinyae and then Eenyo like a friendly cat.
At second glance, they weren’t quite like the wild creatures we’d seen before. They were a little smaller, and their fur was brindled with orange. Whether because they were a different subspecies or just because they were domesticated, I couldn’t know—but there was a simple harness around each one’s shoulders, to which Hoolinyae and Eenyo were now fixing a set of reins.
“We’re riding those things?” said Carl, goggling.
“Yes. I am sorry,” said Eenyo unexpectedly.
“About what?”
“That we have to take you by Wurrhuya. It is difficult to keep any kind of vehicle without attracting the attention of the Nangaelyeva.”
“We get to ride a flying furry brontosaurus, and you’re apologizing?” said Carl, catapulting himself onto the nearest Wurrhuya’s back.
“A flying what? I don’t understand,” said Eenyo.
Well, the rich people of Laeteelae had flying cars; I guess I’d have felt slightly awkward if I’d had to take an alien visitor somewhere on a donkey, even if the alien thought the donkey was incredibly cool.
Josephine and I climbed up onto the second Wurrhuya, and the creature rumbled agreeably underneath us. I stroked its fur: somehow very soft and coarse, both at once.
“NweelaLUya, Shosfeen, Ally, Cal!” shouted Tweel in farewell.
But the rest of the kids weren’t so upbeat. “Goltfeesh,” they mourned.
The Goldfish chirped back to them in WOya, without translating itself for our benefit, and produced the biggest torrent of sparkles yet.
“Waaay!” cheered the kids.
“Huh,” said Carl, which made me feel a tiny bit better about the fact that for an absurd second I’d been slightly jealous. I hadn’t known the Goldfish could even do that many sparkles.
Then the two Wurrhuya took to the air and we waved as the kids made the collar-breaking salute in farewell. The ground fell away, and tired and ill as we w
ere, it was exhilarating—the warm air of Yaela whipping our hair and gliding over our skin, our hands buried in the Wurrhuya’s fur, and their song booming into the green evening sky.
“So, hey, you guys are, like, the responsible adults in those kids’ lives!” said the Goldfish to Hoolinyae, flying backward alongside us, projecting subtitles as it went. “That sure is nice.” Then its eyes went red and its voice dropped three octaves. “WHY AREN’T YOU TEACHING THEM MATH?”
Hoolinyae had seemed like the more cheerful of the two rebels, but now she growled low in the back of her throat and her expression grew worryingly close to that of the stone warrior we’d seen at the ruined city. “Assume less, robot.”
“We do what we can for them, but we are already stretched so thin. And there are so many such children,” said Eenyo sadly.
“They do things for you too,” said Carl, sounding not quite as disapproving as the Goldfish, but still not happy.
“We have people in the city—Free Eemala in spirit—who still wear Nangael. Everywhere they go, they are monitored, every communication is listened to. But the children of the trash heap are not. They can pass messages from our allies, sometimes hide things for us. We hate to use them, yes. But without them . . .” Eenyo sighed again. “Our defeats would have been still greater.”
“Eenyo,” said Hoolinyae. “Please. We have made such advances.”
I figured she was the one who did all the jollying along when things got bad. I could relate.
“You say people who still wear the Nangael,” said Josephine hesitantly, in case this was rude. “But . . . you still have one.”
Eenyo ran a hand over the tight-fitting black ring. “So many have died trying to remove the Nangael. A few are lucky, like Hoolinyae— but no one has found a safe way to do it. So instead, Ningleenill invented this.” He touched a little device about the size of a matchbox, clamped to the side of the collar. “It interferes with the data sent to the satellite. Now it cannot tell I am going anywhere or doing anything I should not. But when there are group punishments, I still . . .”
He shuddered and trailed off.
“Group punishments,” said Carl sickly.
“The device is so simple, but we will never be able to make enough to free everyone,” said Hoolinyae.
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