The green of the sky faded to black as we cleared the atmosphere. I saw the horrible shape of the satellite, crouching above the planet like a monster.
“Are they going to throw us out of the airlock again?” Josephine persisted.
“No one threw you out of the airlock, if I remember,” Trommler said to her. “If you had sat still and minded your own business—”
Josephine forced a smile. “Never been one of my strengths,” she said—much more proudly than I knew she felt.
“Carl’d be dead! Alice’d be dead,” said Noel. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care at all?”
Trommler shrugged. “Earth should have complied immediately; President Chakrabarty knew the consequences.”
“Did I get you into trouble?” asked Josephine, leaning against the wall, gazing out at Yaela through the huge windows. “Because I upgraded the Goldfish with Häxeri and took it to Yaela. The Eemala rebels couldn’t have come so close to destroying the satellite without it. Was that when Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak found out you’d taken Krakkiluk technology, that you’d been selling it on Earth as Häxeri? Ah—”
She bent forward, gasping, the light on the collar flashing.
“Leave her alone,” I said.
“We rescued you,” said Noel, still incredulous. “How can you do this?”
“It’s his chance to get back in with the Krakkiluks,” gasped Josephine. “He had a deal with them, but he messed it up. Are you sure this’ll be enough? It’s because of you that my sister was able to hack their ship. You’re the reason the Eemala fired that missile. That’s all on you—”
She slid to the ground, her limbs jolting.
“Stop!” I begged her. “Josephine, stop.”
But she had succeeded in getting to Trommler, at least a bit. “You seem to think I had some kind of choice in this!” he said.
“Well,” said Carl. “Yeah.” And he clenched his teeth against the jolt of punishment that followed.
“This was inevitable,” said Trommler. “The Expanse would never have tolerated the Morrors seizing that moon. Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak intercepted me on my first trip out there last year. The terraforming had already started; the Morrors were already arriving. She demanded I undo it, but of course I couldn’t without Valerie Muldoon. What could I do? She might have killed me if I hadn’t told her how to get what she wanted. Obviously, Krakkiluk tech was of interest to an engineer. Why shouldn’t I have brought it to Earth?”
“Oh, yeah, Earth,” I said. “The other planet you handed over. Didn’t Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak give you enough for that?”
I was punished for that, of course. But Trommler kept talking anyway.
“It’s inevitable Earth will be absorbed into the Expanse. They’ve spread as far as Alpha Centauri—they were bound to discover Earth and its warm seas before long. Now or twenty years from now, what’s the difference?”
I’m pretty sure I could have thought of a difference or two. But I didn’t feel like telling him about them, and it wasn’t even just that I knew he’d probably zap me.
“Will we go back to Earth? Look after Krakkiluk babies in the sea?” Carl said after a while.
“To Earth, no—why bother flying a handful of troublesome spawn all that way? But there’s plenty for collared workers to do in the Expanse. Yes, you might be nursing Krakkiluk infants, or harvesting Takwuk, or cleaning ships. I’m sure a use will be found for you.”
“Hey, kids, won’t that be great?” the Goldfish chimed in. “It’s super being useful and productive!”
I shuddered.
“Release it,” said Thsaaa—unexpectedly, because Thsaaa had never been the Goldfish’s biggest fan. “It has no weapons; it can’t threaten you. Let it at least be itself. This is obscene.”
“Aww, I’m fine how I am, Thsaaa, buddy,” said the Goldfish. I wanted to believe I could hear a glazed, flattened tone in its voice, something to show how this wasn’t our Goldfish talking. But it sounded as perkily sincere as it always did. “Everything is perfect!”
I could see the Krakkiluk ship now, gold and black in the distance. “Will we be together?” I said.
Trommler snorted. “After the trouble the pack of you caused together? Of course not.”
Noel stopped crying, because this was too big and awful for crying over.
“Surely they will not separate us,” said Qualt-zu-Quo, clutching Kat-li-Yaka, but Trommler didn’t read the Goldfish’s subtitle and didn’t answer. The Krakkiluks keened, a shrill, rattling sound.
Helen spoke for the first time: “Captain, an incoming communication from Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak.”
“Helen,” I said urgently. “Helen!”
Another shock of punishment. Helen didn’t answer me. When it was over, I noticed Trommler looked anxious.
“Not here. I’ll speak to her on the bridge,” he said to Helen. He rose from his chair and sketched an invisible circle around us in the air with the silver device, and another around the Krakkiluks, and strode out.
Carl was the first to jump up and make for the door. As soon as he crossed the invisible line Trommler had left, the collar activated and he fell back, gasping. I tried the same thing, out of sheer perversity, I guess. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what would happen. You couldn’t not try, though.
My body jumped back inside the line of its own accord, the pain still fizzing everywhere, my eyelids to my fingertips to my feet.
Maybe it was like a wall, or an electric fence, and if I could bull through it, I’d be okay on the other side.
I gritted my teeth and stepped through the line, and pain slammed into the back of my neck and scratched down my spine, but I forced another step forward and another and it felt as if my head was going to burst. Just a little farther, I told myself. And then I was on the ground, jerking like a caught fish, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t make my mind’s commands louder than the noise of the collar.
“Alice!”
Josephine lunged through the line with a grunt of pain and dragged me back by one foot. I lay on the floor, waiting for the aftershocks to ease off.
Then we sat still, looking at each other. All the others’ faces—dazed and horrified and dirty—looked somehow even more real than normal, like the colors and definition had all been turned up. I guess I was trying to memorize them.
Josephine let out a long breath and looked at me. “Well,” she said. And for a while, she didn’t say anything else. Then: “I guess at least I don’t have to worry about you writing all this up anymore.”
I grinned. Somehow. “Oh, don’t be so sure,” I said. “They’ll have computers, I expect. Wherever I end up.”
“They’re not going to give you a computer,” said Josephine.
“Pencil and paper it is, then,” I said.
“Your handwriting, though.”
“Doctors are supposed to have bad handwriting,” I said.
But I wasn’t going to be a doctor anymore.
I wondered what color the sky would be on the planet I would be sent to. Whether the people would have shells or wings or four limbs or forty or something completely beyond what I could imagine. I wondered how long I could live in that world’s strange air. Perhaps a long time. I’m not even grown up yet, I thought, and I imagined the skin on my hands weathering from working in alien seas.
I thought how I’d grow old and maybe I’d forget English and Hindi and Thlywaaa-lay; maybe I’d only remember Earth the vague way the Krakkiluks remembered the oceans they were born in, and one day I’d be dying and I’d think, Was I truly born on some other world? Or was it a dream? I think I had friends when I was very young—a girl and two boys and a creature who changed color with every mood—but I can’t remember their names now.
Then I thought, No.
I remembered the Eemala. The bare patch of skin on Hoolinyae’s neck, the little device that hid Eenyo’s collar from the satellite. Though it must be very difficult and dangerous, they had found ways to fight back. It must be possib
le. I had no idea how they had done it, but I would have plenty of time to think about it.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were so angry with me about writing the book?” I asked.
Josephine sighed and leaned her head back against the wall with her eyes closed. “Does it matter now?”
“Yes,” I said.
Because it’s not like she was going to get another chance to tell me anytime soon.
Josephine opened her eyes and watched the Krakkiluk ship getting closer.
“My dad didn’t read it, you know,” she said. “You’d think . . . seeing as I was in it, he might have had a look. And he didn’t watch any of the programs. He didn’t . . . ask me about what happened on Mars. He said he was glad I was all right. But he didn’t think of asking what it was like. These too.” She gestured at the gills under her hair. “He didn’t notice, even though I had to have bandages on my neck for a month. When Lena told him, he said, ‘Isn’t she rather young?’ Like he didn’t know. So . . . all that was going on. And there are all these people out there who did read it, and they know things about me that he isn’t interested in.”
“Okay, your dad sucks,” Carl announced rashly, which was pretty much what I’d been trying to stop myself from saying. I wished I had said it, now. “Not as bad as the Krakkiluks or Rasmus Trommler, but still pretty bad.”
“It’s not really his fault,” said Josephine.
“Yes it is,” I said. “It’s not fair.”
“He can’t help it. It’s the war. And what happened to my mother. Lena says he used to be different, when she was a little girl. When my mother was alive. But afterward he stopped being able to—well. Care.”
I’d spent a lot of the war missing my mum. But at least when it was over, she came back. I thought of her hugging me at the hospital, of me and Dad sitting with mugs of tea at the kitchen table, him coaxing me to keep writing things down until the bad dreams from Mars faded away. And then I thought of all that not happening.
“So I thought, if I could be . . . clever enough, if I could get into university now . . .” Josephine looked away, her mouth twisting.
“That he’d notice,” I said quietly.
“No. Well. Yes, maybe a bit. Mainly I thought I wouldn’t have to live at home anymore. But I messed up the exam and . . . you’d written a book. . . .”
I boggled a bit. It would never have occurred to me I could have done anything Josephine could feel jealous of.
“And I didn’t tell you because . . . I didn’t want to be angry with you. I kept trying not to be, but it wouldn’t go away. But I thought . . . I was scared, if you knew, you’d stop being friends with me.”
“Oh, Josephine,” I said. “You are the stupidest genius.” And I lurched off the floor to hug her. “I’m sorry.” Why hadn’t I just said that before? “I should have made sure you were okay with what I’d written about you.”
Josephine sighed and put her forehead against my shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, “I’m sorry too.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I’m not a genius. I can’t think of anything we can do,” she admitted softly.
“You don’t always have to. And I’d rather get sent off to some horrible alien planet than be dead. I know what I’m going to do: as long as I’m alive, I’ll never stop trying to get away. And when I do, I’ll never stop looking for you. For all of you. And I will write it all, wherever I am, so there. But you can be the first person who reads it.”
Josephine smiled with one corner of her mouth. “All right, then. I won’t stop trying either.”
“Nor shall I,” said Thsaaa.
“Yeah, me too,” said Carl.
“Okay,” whispered Noel. “So we’re all set.”
We were close enough to the Krakkiluk ship to see its flags stirring in the plumes of gas.
The door of the lounge opened again. I expected Trommler.
But instead a voice said “Papa?” and Christa peered around the door. Like Trommler, she’d put on some nice fresh clothes but still looked pale and rattled. The first things she saw were the Krakkiluks, and she shrieked and turned to run away.
“Christa!” Noel shouted. “Come back!”
She stopped in her tracks. Warily, she peeped back into the room. “Noel?” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Christa!” I called.
For the first time, she noticed Josephine, Carl, and me. “Oh my god,” she breathed, stepping a little closer. I think somehow she’d realized that the Krakkiluks weren’t a threat. “You’re alive.”
“Christa,” I said. “Help us.”
And then Trommler did come into the room, and he took her arm. “Christa, kom med mig,” he said. The Goldfish translated: “Come with me.”
“What’s going on?” asked Christa, which you had to agree was a pretty fair question.
“Everything’s going to be all right now,” Trommler told her. “When you get back to Earth, you’ll be a princess.”
“Christa, listen!” I called, but she was letting her father steer her away.
Then Josephine grimaced and leaned through the invisible line in the air. She gasped and dropped to the ground, teeth locked.
“Is she having a seizure?” cried Christa in English, and darted back into the room. She stood there, dithering uselessly, a few feet away from us. “Helen! We need a medical dove.”
“She’s perfectly fine,” said Trommler.
“She’s not,” said Christa. Because it was very obvious Josephine wasn’t. She had rolled back inside the circle now, gasping.
“He’s doing it,” Noel said. “He’s taking us back to the Krakkiluks! He’s put these horrible things on us!”
“The collars induce pain,” wheezed Josephine, “whenever we resist or disobey.”
“Papa, why are they wearing those things?” Christa said in Swedish. “Where are we going? Why aren’t we in hyperspace yet?”
“He’s handing Earth and Aushalawa-Moraaa to the Grand Expanse,” I said.
Scowling, Trommler took the little silver wand from his pocket and triggered my collar.
Christa cried out at the same moment I did, in shock. Then she turned, slowly, from me to Trommler, eyes very wide.
“Christa, come with me now,” Trommler cajoled. “The EDF, the EEC, they took my ships and my weapons for their war, and what do I get in return? Lies and threats—they want me in court, they want me in prison!”
Christa was still staring at him, and yet she didn’t seem to be hearing him. “I want to go home,” she whimpered.
“We will, sweetheart, we will,” promised Trommler.
“I thought those things were going to throw me into space,” Christa said, jerking her head at the two Krakkiluks.
“No, no, darling. You were safe all along. You see now why I had to take you with me? You don’t want to be on Earth when the Grand Expanse comes. But when it’s all over, no one will be able to touch you. You’ll be able to snap your fingers and have everything you want. We’ll delete that book from every server in the world.”
“What about Mama?” said Christa. “And you said . . . you said Archangel Planetary was about humans taking their place in the universe. You said the stars belong to us.”
“They belong to me and you,” said Trommler. “Of course you will have all those things. You and I will be citizens not just of Earth, but of the Grand Expanse. You’ll be able to travel anywhere you want. Everything will be perfect.”
“You’ll be a puppet king of ten billion people who hate you,” said Josephine.
“Will you be quiet,” Trommler said, and pointed the controller at her.
And Christa reached up and plucked it out of his hand.
There was a moment when Trommler was too surprised to understand and Christa looked almost as surprised herself. She held the controller loosely between her fingertips. Then Trommler said, in a reasonable, grown-up voice, “Christa,” and reached to take it back, and Christa tightened her grip and step
ped away.
Then he grabbed for her wrist and Christa struggled and pulled the controller tight against her chest, gripping it so hard she must have set it off, because a jolt of pain kicked through all of us, knocking us off balance so we stumbled and clutched at each other. I think that was the moment the Trommlers stopped being scared of actually hurting each other.
Trommler wrenched at Christa’s wrists, and Christa kicked at his shin and twisted so he was behind her, his arms still wrapped around her. And she screamed something incoherent and threw the controller forward, through the invisible barrier holding us in.
It bounced. Rolled across the floor.
It stopped at my feet.
I stamped on it as hard as I could.
I felt a dying buzz of sensation prickle through my nerves like a nettle being dragged down my spine, and then there was a click and the collar slipped down onto my collarbone. I reached up and touched it, a tiny gap had opened, where before there had been seamless metal. I pulled, and it came apart in my hands.
Thsaaa wrenched their collar free with one tentacle and, with another, slapped the tiny device from the Goldfish’s forehead.
The Goldfish dropped a foot in the air before catching itself, the light behind its eyes blinking rapidly.
“Hey, what’s going on, did I malfunction?” it asked dizzily. But then its lights steadied. “Oh . . . boy. That sure was a lousy thing to do, Rasmus Trommler.”
Eight accusing sets of eyes turned to Trommler, who hadn’t let go of Christa but had switched to using her as a human shield. He backed away a few steps, then shoved Christa away and ran from the room.
“Clk-clk-clk!” uttered Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo, a furious clucking war cry, and surged after him.
22
“Don’t kill him!” called Noel, because Noel is an incredibly nice person.
“Helen!” Carl shouted, yanking off Noel’s collar and then his own. “We have to get out of here!”
But there was only silence. And up ahead, the huge doors of the Krakkiluk ship were opening to swallow us.
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