Politics. At least I had someone who was more expert than I was with that muck. I found Tekura tending to an old Palmeenee, helping to feed him/her/it/jher some of our last ice-cream. The Palmeenee loved ice-cream, especially vanilla.
‘Tell me about politics.’ I sat on a three-legged stool next to her.
She glanced at me with a ‘what took you so long?’ expression. ‘Make yourself useful. Use a broom while you listen.’
‘I can’t stay long. I have a Martian logistics firm waiting for my response to their offer.’
‘Sweep. Ask questions.’
I swept. ‘So why is the government so keen to stop us from docking at Deimos Station? We’ve got injured beings here.’
‘The government’s making a point. Once refugees set foot on land — and a space station qualifies as land, apparently — they qualify for all sorts of legal status. They can appeal to courts, ask for representation, move from Mars to Earth, the sorts of things that would make it hard to get rid of them.’
‘And the government wants to get rid of them?’
‘The government wants to be seen as taking a tough stand on who comes to Earth.’
I had an answer for that. I’d been doing some research. ‘But universal law states that refugees — of any kind — are entitled to seek safe haven.’
Tekura scooped up some ice-cream and ladled it into the Palmeenee’s mouth. ‘That’s right. It comes from an agreement made way back in the early twentieth century.’ She dropped the spoon in the bowl she was holding. ‘Wars have been displacing people for ages and refugees have been refugees for ages. If we’re going to be humane, and make any claim at being civilised, we have to help those in need. Who’s more in need than refugees?’
I rocked back on my heels, then held the broom in front of me as a mock shield. ‘Hey, I’m on your side, remember?’
Tekura frowned, then patted the Palmeenee on the shoulder and rose. She took my arm and steered me out of the cargo bay.
‘Get ready, Damien,’ Tekura said. ‘The politicians are about to use every tool in their bag of dirty tricks.’
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘It isn’t. And we’re caught up in it, like it or not. Be prepared to be trashed.’
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘Nothing, but that doesn’t matter. Smearing someone is an ancient and effective tactic.’ She sighed. ‘Politicians are really, really clever, in some ways, at least. Find a hair, and they’ll split it. They’ll start to raise doubts. Are these Palmeenee really refugees? Are there Palmeenee aboard who could be criminals? Could these Palmeenee be carrying diseases that could spread? Could it be that some of these Palmeenee are just taking the opportunity to look for a nicer place to live, a place where they could make money? And what about the people piloting the ship they’d come on? Surely they’re criminals of some sort or other. Accepting refugees would be condoning the activities of these lowlifes.’
‘Wow.’
‘Much wow.’
I leaned against the bulkhead near the entrance to the bridge. ‘Can we do anything about it?’
‘Sure we can.’ Tekura’s smile wasn’t pleasant. ‘The government’s spinning stories, but two can play at that game. It’s time we got the media on our side.’
So in between all her other duties, Tekura became our Media Liaison Officer. I even made her a badge out of an old Second Officer badge that Uncle Jayden had left lying around. She held it in her hands and studied it carefully. She turned it over and then back again. ‘Thanks. But I think I need to tell you something.’
Uh-oh. ‘Don’t if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t want to, but I think you need to know that I’m sort of running away.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘I mean it. My mum has no idea that I hooked up with you. She’s been sending me angry messages, constantly, ordering me back home.’
‘Ordering? Ouch.’
‘She’s like that. You get that way when you’re important.’
Double uh-oh. ‘How important?’
‘She a minister in the government.’
‘One of the big ones?’
‘She’s number three in the hierarchy.’
‘Your mum is Minister for the Arts?’
‘That’s right. She was inspecting Banger Station to see about turning it into another artist studio cluster. She dragged me along to stop me jaunting off post-graduation.’
‘And is this out there on the Stream yet? Minister’s daughter saves refugees!’
‘Not yet.’
‘I bet your mum can’t wait.’
‘She doesn’t know. Not yet.’
I rubbed my head. ‘And you’re telling me this now why?’
‘It’s going to come out sooner or later. Thought you might like to hear about it ahead of time.’
Tekura negotiated with some of the spy eye operators and allowed access to half a dozen. She managed things, of course, so that any video would show the Palmeenee as suffering calmly, as acting with dignity in their small family groups, of being no threat at all.
The best response came from showing the Palmeenee playing Go. That rated through the roof. More likes than a cat snuggling with a penguin while a duckling looked on.
I continued my sneaky discussions with Mars corporations, which impressed Tekura. ‘Mr Naive becomes Mr Cunning? Nice.’
I wanted to see if any were prepared to send shuttles to dock with us directly and take the Palmeenee dirtside. Once they landed, Tekura assured me, everything would be different. The Palmeenee would have rights. ‘But don’t be surprised if the government goes to the next stage in the dirty tricks,’ she warned.
‘With the whole galaxy watching? What are they going to do? Blow us up?’
I didn’t like the look Tekura gave me, but she was towed away by a gang of little Palmeenee. She was in the semi-finals of the Go tournament.
Not long after that, two things happened in quick succession. First, another Palmeenee ship drifted into our system. It was detected out near Neptune. It was in a worse state than the vessel we’d rescued, but it wasn’t picked up by a merchant ship like us. It was picked up by the military, which started to tow it away, out of our system.
Everything went supernova.
You see, this crippled vessel started to come apart under the strain of towing and the situation turned chaotic. Soon, all over the Stream were government claims that the aliens on this vessel, the Palmeenee, had ejected their children, thrown them out into the vacuum of space in an effort to get the military spaceship to stop the towing and to take them in as refugees.
None of this actually happened, and that burned. Lies were told with perfectly straight faces. When spy eyes offered evidence that contradicted the government statements, they didn’t apologise, didn’t back down. The Prime Minister just got louder, denouncing such heinous actions and declaring that our borders were sacrosanct, that the decision about who comes to our worlds was ours.
Nice.
The Stream can’t overload, but my doodad nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to cope with the flood of alerts I’d set up. Tekura managed better, but she said it was like trying to navigate through a swarm of bees. Bees that were on fire. With lasers.
Second, while the attention of the universe was on this other Palmeenee vessel and the little ones overboard, we were boarded by the military.
The hatch was blown off and the cargo bay started to decompress. This only lasted a second until a temporary airlock was snapped into place, but it was enough to throw everyone on the Port Vila into panic. Little ones climbed up as high as they could, squeaking and rattling. The mature Palmeenee stalked around, rattling claws. Loose items were sucked towards the hatch. Tekura caught hold of one of the bulkhead struts and grabbed my arm as I stumbled and flailed.
The door to the temporary airlock opened and space marines in full battle gear marched in. They didn’t point their weapons at us. Not quite. The leader surveye
d the cargo bay and made one of those fist-pumping, pointing motions. They flipped their helmets back and I was relieved to see that they all looked embarrassed, uncomfortable and even apologetic. The leader could have been used in advertising — tall, with a good-looking skull, striking angular features. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ she asked.
I looked at Tekura. She rolled her eyes and elbowed me. ‘He is.’
I brushed myself down. ‘Damien Heong. What’s the meaning of this?’
‘Just following orders, Captain,’ the leader of the marines replied. She pointed to the Palmeenee. ‘There,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Secure the area.’ She turned back to me. ‘If you and your crew will leave the cargo bay, Captain, we can complete our business.’
I took a deep breath. ‘And what is your business?’
‘We’re taking these illegal entrants to a safe place where they will receive the best care possible.’
‘Mars? Earth?’
The marine shook her head. ‘A safe place.’
I felt the heat rising in my face, but I didn’t care. ‘These are my passengers. I’m responsible for them. They don’t just need the best care, they need immediate help. I’m taking them to Mars.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Captain.’
‘But the Law of the Sea says we must.’
‘The Law of the Sea?’ The marine frowned. ‘What century are you living in, Captain?’
So maybe I shouldn’t have sworn at a marine. And probably, certainly I shouldn’t have pushed a marine in the chest. That’s what caused me to be beaten up by a squad of marines, I guess. ‘Restrained’, I think they put it, but with a few well-placed punches and kicks just to let me know not to mess around with marines.
Groggily, from my position on the deck, cable ties around my hands and feet, I looked for Tekura. She was being cooperative, apparently, as she wasn’t on the deck and cable tied. She caught my eye and gave me a grim thumbs-up sign. What for, I had no idea, so I fumed and struggled and swore and all I did was end up exhausted and bruised and ignored by the marines.
What they were doing was wrong. It was inhuman. All the good things like kindness and pity and sharing were thrown overboard just to help win an election by playing to the worst in us. The Palmeenee as bogeymen? Spare me. Evil outsiders, nasty others, we fear them … Well, the big guys didn’t, not really, but they knew they could use the Palmeenee to scare enough voters into voting for them.
Smart.
I lurched from angry to feeling sick — gut-deep, punishing nausea. I lay there, helpless and ashamed, until the marines had gone and Tekura cut me loose.
The marines took the Palmeenee somewhere way out in the Oort Cloud, somewhere the government claims isn’t part of the solar system, and so landing them there doesn’t grant them any rights. No rights at all, no chance for anyone to learn about their hardships and suffering, no pity.
Tekura and I were left on a ship that was now allowed to dock at Deimos Station, but the cloud of spy eyes and actual news vessels gave me the shudders. Tekura and I put our heads together and set course for Saturn.
It’s funny, but the Port Vila was back to how it was when we left Earth’s orbit, but minus the Palmeenee it now felt so much emptier.
We talked a lot. Now, after everything, Tekura was able to share about her mum and about politics and what it had cost her. She laughed at the embarrassment all this had caused her mum. She said it was payback time. I told her about my parents, Rob and Daz, and how scarred they were from the war and how I’d like to stop that sort of thing from happening.
‘We can change things, you know,’ she said. I’d set up a wide horizontal display on the bridge to show us the way ahead. Saturn was a tiny bright dot, getting bigger.
‘How?’
‘Politics.’
‘I thought you hated politics.’
‘I’ve just seen too much of it much too close.’ She shuddered, then grinned. ‘But that’s taught me a few things, like how not to do it.’
‘Are you sure you’re not just trying to surprise your mother?’
‘Oh, it’ll surprise her all right when we get a whole lot of people on our side and start a movement for change.’
‘Lovely idea, but what’s going to get people on our side?’
She pulled a spy eye out of her pocket. ‘A nice close-up video of space marines beating up a heroic ship’s captain who was only trying to do the right thing for dozens of despairing and injured refugees?’
‘Heroic?’ I liked the sound of that.
‘It’s the truth, and that’s what we’ll offer that old-style politics doesn’t. We’ll be open and truthful. No lies just to grab and hold onto power. We’ll share what we know. We’ll even answer questions when we’re asked instead of talking around in circles.’
‘You really have seen it up close.’
‘You bet. Close enough to know that even if the truth is a sticky and uncertain concept, it’s worth striving for.’
‘What about the Palmeenee? The refugees? We have to do something for them.’
She was drumming her feet on the deck with excitement. Her cat tattoo waved at me. ‘We have to help anyone who is so desperate they flee their home. How could we not?’
How could we not? That was something to live by. ‘Let’s do it,’ I said.
‘That means we won’t be seeing Saturn.’
‘Saturn can wait.’
Tekura’s hand found mine. ‘It’s going to take us weeks to get back to Earth. What’ll we do in the meantime?’
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
She did. We used the time to plan how we were going to change the system.
With time left over for other stuff.
9 p.m.
This is how it goes.
I am standing in a corner, ’cause I always seem to find myself standing in corners. Not in the centre of the sweaty, heaving dancers, and not in the back sunroom with the stoners and smokers. Definitely not too close to the front door — that would imply that I’m eager to escape, or eager to be seen. Party rules are vague and complex, but even I know that eagerness is never a good look.
I am holding a warm beer, handed to me ages ago by some guy in a baseball cap. He might’ve been one of Abdul’s brothers, but it’s hard to know for sure who lives here. I reckon there’s, like, eighty bajillion people crammed into this tiny house, and, unlike our primary school socials, none of them are wearing nametags. Man — how many life situations could be clarified by nametags? Like, the guy hovering next to me with that smarmy look on his face? His nametag would read something like, ‘Hi, I’m Ian! I’m gonna try to start a conversation by commenting on the juiciness of your lips, and will probably cop a feel of your arse as you try to flee.’
Yeah, and no doubt my tag would read, in pointy all caps: ‘Gabrielle. Wicked crabby, despiser of parties, hater of mankind. Approach with caution.’
I take an accidental sip of beer. It tastes like what I imagine the Razaks’ bathroom floor might taste like right about now: a soupy combo of dirt and cig butts. A hip-hop song is blasting, the walls and windows vibrating with bass, and the grind of dancers in the lounge are feverishly yelling the lyrics, as though there’s some cosmic affinity between this ramshackle house on the edge of the Broadmeadows train line, and South Central LA.
I shouldn’t be here. I should be hiding in the Razaks’ granny flat with the other dorks who only score an invite to these things because their group, mysteriously, contains people who are considered cool. I should be exchanging snarky observations with Lara in front of Abdul’s TV in said granny flat, or skulking with Tommy and his maths-nerd mates. I should be sharing silent, knowing glances with Louis, who went to round up our friends ages ago and has yet to return. Hell, if I were honest — I should be home, in bed, with a book and my daggy sixties music, which would reap me so much crap if these people knew it was the music I preferred.
I should be giving Ian my practised f-you
face, ’cause even without looking I can feel him inching closer, the threat of mouth-breathing bearing down upon me.
Instead, my eyes are locked on the dancers. They’re all silhouette and shadow, the dark broken only by the glow of a dozen mobile phones. In the middle of the space is Cameron, familiar floppy black hair a head and shoulders above almost everyone else in the throng.
There’s nothing unusual about Cam being smack bang in the centre of the crowd. If there’s a crowd of any kind — in Year 12 Theatre Club, or the Chinese Youth Society soccer team his parents made him join — Cam will inevitably find himself in the centre, the rest of us mere mortals drawn to his smiling, too-pretty light. It’s weird, ’cause in all the years that we have been friends, I’ve never found it intimidating — Cam is just my tall, affable, popular friend, who Mum likes to describe as ‘our very own Gene Kelly’. I had to google that one, and no, I still don’t get it. Though I suppose the shiny hair and perpetual shiny confidence do sort of fit.
Yeah, it’s not unusual to see Cam grinding it up on the dance floor. Except, if this were any other party, Cam’s side should be occupied by his beautiful girlfriend, ’cause Claire and Cam are never more than tongue length away from each other at these things. Claire and Cam are perfect, broad and tall and dark to tall and slim and light; kind and confident to warm and funny, and their babies would be adorable and flawless, like the mixed-race kids from a Bonds commercial. For four whole years, this is how it’s been. Cameron and Claire are inevitable.
But now, as the music shakes the sticky floorboards, Cameron is kissing a tiny girl with bright-blue hair, and all I can think is this has to be some kind of elaborate Claire-and-Cam prank. My brain is doing strange things — well, stranger things than usual — but it seems to be telling me that one of my best friends is kissing some chick who is not one of my other best friends, and definitely not the person he is supposed to be kissing. My brain might be short-circuiting, but man, all I can think is that they do not look inevitable together. They are wrong, and incongruous, and would have some weird-arse-looking kids, with his cheekbones and her disproportionately long neck. Like photoshopping an otter’s face onto a horse.
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