The reefs were the Ynaa’s greatest technological accomplishment. Little superintelligent cybernetic cells, used in everything from the building of megastructures like their calcium carbonate cities and ships to the management of Ynaa physiology on the submicroscopic level.
Mera usually kept the link between herself and the reefs on throughout the day, pulling them to the front of her mind when necessary, pushing them to background noise when she needed. She had practiced this for hundreds of years, so that the habit had become second nature. She was good—better, she had learned, than any other Ynaa—when it came to this particular application of the reefs.
At her urging, the reefs relayed updates on the hundreds of thousands of test samples she had obtained during her time on Earth. Cells from several hundred species of animals, plants, and fungi. Samples of bacteria and viruses. Cells from humans, both healthy and not. Mera requested minor adjustments, poked at bits of data that looked promising, demanded further investigation from her reefs where there were gaps in knowledge. Her reefs obeyed, singing to her as they did the work. Close, they said. So close.
Mera pushed the reefs to the back of her consciousness. I’ll do my best, she finally wrote in response to the woman. A bullshit reply. A nothing answer.
Mera knew that her best would not be good enough. She had been helpless to stop all the previous violence, unable to speak out against the Ynaa and unable to speak fully on behalf of the humans. In the beginning, Mera had used what little authority she had to negotiate for extensive background checks and heavy restrictions on officials and tourists visiting the territory. She’d exhausted the rest of her influence by limiting Ynaa movement to the three US Virgin Islands, a concession the Ynaa agreed to only because a high-profile incident might threaten their timetable.
Those early actions bore mixed fruit. The tourists proved to be well-behaved, since they could just leave and go home. But the people of the Virgin Islands, with little means to flee from the oppressive encroachment of the Ynaa, became the sacrifice for the larger peace she had worked to create.
If she replied to the woman by saying she would stop the Ynaa from acting against the locals, she would be lying. If she told the Ynaa to stay away from them, she’d be dismissed. She could force it, but then she would lose her position, replaced with someone who would be less sympathetic to the locals. She could hold her research ransom, but it was too late for that to do any more than slow the Ynaa down. They would discover it anyway, but the delay could spell disaster for the humans, and again, she would be removed, unable to help in whatever little ways she now could.
She might warn the locals to stay in their homes, but that would have unintended consequences, causing greater unrest. The governor was terribly corrupt and couldn’t be trusted, nor could she expect him to create any policy that wouldn’t immediately implode on everyone, human and Ynaa alike. In truth, she could do nothing but watch the train hurtle down the track and hope for better judgment to prevail. Or finish her work fast enough for the Ynaa not to do any more significant harm. She focused on this last option but worried that she would be too late.
And yes, she had tried one other thing: Derrick. But that, in the end, was a foolish idea.
Telepathically, Mera found Derrick’s vitals through the reefs she had passed to him when he kissed her. His readings came back to her, steady and safe. Alive. She would keep it that way.
Come with me, a voice in her mind said.
Mera ignored it.
• • •
In the summer of 1732, Mera walked out of the bush of St. John to begin her first life as a slave.
The Jerson plantage had two windmills, a curing house, and a boiling house near the cane fields that stretched across the St. John hillside for a couple of hundred acres. The fields sloped down a little despite some effort to level the land. At the top of a small hill stood the plantage house. It wasn’t large, but it was neat and well kept, with a foundation of stone and mortar. A winding dirt path led up to the place. Downwind from the plantage house was the slave village—several rows of little thatch-roofed huts.
A minor plantage of insignificant status. Mera had studied the place and found it perfect for her purposes.
A bomba spotted her first as she approached the Jerson plantage from the far edge of the cane field. By the look of puzzlement on his face, he knew that she wasn’t one of theirs. He hurried out to meet her.
“Stop,” he said in Danish. “Where did you come from?”
Mera said nothing.
“Who do you belong to?”
Mera watched the man. He paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. He let his gaze travel the length of her. She was completely and deliberately naked, not wanting to offer any hints of her origin. The bomba seemed to have no feeling about this. He noted each part of her body distantly.
“Come with me,” he ordered. Mera obeyed.
He walked her up the path to the main house. There Mr. Jerson sat in the shade, fanning himself with a plantain leaf. He was a long, thin man with a severe jawline and large, quick-moving eyes. He watched her up and down as well, smiling at her, his eyes lingering on her breasts.
“She is a fine one,” he said, also in Danish. “She’ll be good for work.”
“She won’t tell me where she’s from,” the bomba said.
“How did you get here?” Mr. Jerson asked her directly.
Mera said nothing. She lowered her head.
“Don’t look away, dare girl.” He got up from his chair and lifted her face to him. “You a maroon from another plantage?”
Mera shook her head, contorting her face in practiced confusion.
Mr. Jerson laughed. “It’s all right. Don’t get yourself worked up.”
“Maybe she from off a shipwreck?” the bomba asked.
Mr. Jerson turned his quick eyes on the bomba. The man lowered his head and took a step back, slumping noticeably and drawing in his shoulders.
“Maybe she did,” Mr. Jerson said after a long moment. “Is that right, girl? Did you survive a shipwreck?” Mr. Jerson mimed the movement of swimming through water. His long arms swooped in and out of imaginary waves.
Summer in the Caribbean also meant hurricane season. Mera knew that ships occasionally got trapped in storms or seized by pirates. She smiled sheepishly and nodded at Mr. Jerson.
The plantage master seemed satisfied. He grinned, revealing a missing tooth on the bottom row. “See to it that this one gets situated. Get her working in the fields as soon as you can. I’ll visit her later to see about her progress.”
The bomba grabbed her by the hand, still making himself small, and quietly took her away.
That night, Mr. Jerson visited Mera in her slave quarters. He knelt down to enter and called out to the dark.
“Are you awake?”
Mera watched him quietly. She got into a sitting position on the slab of wood she used as a bed, figuring he would hear the movement and know that she was awake. She was staying in the quarters of a man who had recently died. She could still smell the sickly stench of the disease that took him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice low and gentle, as if he were coaxing a child.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, still gently, “you had no chains on you.”
Mera could see perfectly in the dark, but even blind, she could have smelled Mr. Jerson. His scent was a sharp mix of sweat and alcohol, so close to her now in the small dirt-floored room. She readied herself.
“You must have been a prize to your last masters, or you’d have been in chains. No branding scars, so you must have had a sheltered life. Also means you must speak at least one European language. Am I wrong?”
He placed his hand on her shoulder. She took a quick breath and tried to shift her body away from him as if frightened.
“Shhh.” He put his hand to his lips. Mera
could see the sweat beading on his face.
“Don’t worry,” he said, this time in English. “I will take care of you—give you a good life as a loyal slave. Put you up in the house to make and serve food. Your life will be easier.”
Not a bad guess. The English colony of Tortola was only ten miles away.
“What do you want?” Mera asked in English.
“Nothing at all,” Mr. Jerson said, smiling at his great intuition. “Just to be near you.”
His hand went from her shoulder down to her thighs. He applied gentle force, trying to ease her legs apart.
Mera grabbed his hand and squeezed so fast, he had no time to protect against it.
He sucked in air sharply. “What are you doing?”
“I won’t be going to your house,” she said in Danish. “I’ll be staying here. And you won’t be causing me any trouble. You won’t tell anyone about this or you’ll be dead before you say the words.”
“What!” he screamed out. He tried to get his hand free. Mera held firm. “How are you doing this?” he asked.
Mera spoke to the reefs on the surface of her skin. They passed to him, biting at the free nerve endings in his arm. For the next hour, Mera educated Mr. Jerson on her capacity to keep promises.
• • •
A little after noon, someone knocked on Mera’s office door. She knew that it wasn’t Derrick.
When she buzzed the caller in, the door inched open, and a tall man stepped through.
“Afternoon, as the locals say.” The man smiled and let the door close behind him. “What? No pet today?” He frowned. “I was looking forward to seeing him.”
Mera recognized the man, of course, though he had changed his face since they last met. Several hours or days in a reef bath could make an Ynaa into anything he desired.
Underneath the disguise, the real Okaios still hid, the whorl of tentacles on his head stretched and flattened against his skull, his paper-thin gills visible only as creases on his neck, the claws shaved down and tucked under rounded, deceptively delicate fingers. At night, he might still glow a little if excited enough. As he walked casually across the room, Mera noted how natural he seemed in the disguise. So many of the other Ynaa looked uncomfortable, as if they had been stuffed inside a jar and wrapped up tight. Okaios looked quite comfortable in his human skin.
He sat in the chair in the middle of the room and crossed his legs, his right foot kicking out in a sort of rhythmic tic. His pointed dress shoes shone.
“Nice office,” he said.
Mera nodded. She let her eyes travel across the small room before settling on Okaios again. “What do you want?”
“To talk about recent events,” he said. “The protests—”
“You caused.”
“I didn’t kill that poor young boy.” Despite his sorrowful delivery, Okaios smiled.
“But you were the first. You set the trend.”
He put his hand to his chest as if hit by a bullet. He grimaced just a little, as if in pain, but his lips curled with self-satisfied pride.
“And how many times since then have you killed?” Mera added. She let the question rest at his feet.
Okaios didn’t bother to pick it up. “Father O wants to know what you are doing to rectify the situation,” he said in Ynaa. His voice came out low and whistling—layers of sound on top of each other. Impossible to do with just human vocal chords.
“And he needed you to come here to ask me that?” Mera said, code-switching as well.
“No,” he said, tapping his hand against his creased dress pants, matching his rhythmic kicking. “But you were on my way.”
Ohoim didn’t need a lackey to tell Mera anything. He could do it over any number of communication channels without ever leaving Ship Tower. She bristled inside at whatever mind game Okaios was playing.
“I can’t do anything,” she said, switching back to English. “My hands are tied. I can’t make the Ynaa behave. I can’t make the humans any less angry at your misbehavior.”
“My misbehavior?” Okaios said. “You don’t mean just me, right?” He stopped kicking, his body going completely still. Then, with an exaggerated gasp, “Ah! You mean us. The Ynaa. Not you.”
Mera checked herself before speaking, drawing in her anger before it could betray her. “I am not the problem.”
“You’re not?” Okaios asked, as if the statement were the most revelatory thing he had heard all day. “So carting that boy around to bars has no effect on current tensions?”
“Not nearly as much as tearing someone’s dog in half.”
Okaios ignored the accusation, instead turning his head to look at Derrick’s empty desk. “Where is the boy, anyway?”
“He has the day off.”
Okaios turned serious. “You shouldn’t lie. It’s easy enough for me to find out.”
Mera watched him for a moment, noting the faraway look in his eyes, as if his attention had been drawn elsewhere. Fear rushed through her. She tried not to change her facial expression. She kept her breath even and slow, whispering through her mind to her reefs.
“You know how many planets I’ve been to?” Okaios asked, the faraway expression breaking just long enough for him to dart an intense look at Mera—an indication that he truly wanted her to answer the question.
“Dozens,” Mera guessed. Safe, the reefs replied. Safe.
“Hundreds,” Okaios corrected. He mouthed something that was barely words at all, and then added, “Most of them empty. A few populated only with microbes and other simple life.”
Mera tightened her fists. No way to know anything but safe. No way to get there if a threat sat lurking where her reefs couldn’t see, but close enough to do harm. She felt the rocks rushing toward her, the froth of violent waves.
“You know how many I found with abundant life like the rock you found here?”
“None,” Mera said, holding her voice back from shaking.
“Two. And you know what I did?”
Mera sensed he didn’t need an answer, so she waited.
“I collected samples. I did my research. So I could find Yn Altaa. The one true goal. Yn Altaa,” he repeated, almost singing the words. “I spent one thousand combined years on those rocks. And nothing. Nothing at all.”
Mera thumped her finger on the desk. She whispered again and again. Safe came back, over and over.
“How many planets have you been to?” he asked.
“One.”
“Just one.”
“I got lucky.”
“Not yet. There’s still time to fuck it up.” Whatever he was doing, Okaios stopped. He refocused on Mera and smiled. “I’m not who you should worry about,” he said. “I’m a friend.”
Mera watched him. Alive, the reefs said.
“Hurry up and finish your work before the universe notices what we’re doing here,” he said, standing up. “The enemy’s eyes are on us.”
Mera followed him as he walked to the door and opened it.
“And be careful with that pet of yours,” he added right before slipping out. “This world is filled with fragile things.”
When the door closed, Mera got up. She grabbed her keys and waited the appropriate number of minutes. Then she left the office. As she walked to her car, she texted Derrick again.
I’m coming.
• • •
For the first few months, Mera kept to herself, trying not to make Mr. Jerson any uneasier than he already was. The man spent a lot more time inside the main house since their encounter, and Mera didn’t want to frighten him further and risk getting him replaced by someone she couldn’t control as easily.
She also didn’t want to develop relationships with fellow slaves. Her ability to mimic a human seemed to be holding, but taking on a particular background and wearing it convincingly
would be trickier.
Still, despite her efforts to hide out, she aroused the interest of some of her fellow field slaves. Men, mostly. And one in particular, who, she knew, would eventually introduce himself.
During the midmorning break, he approached her as she ate.
“Where are you from?” he asked in his native Twi.
She considered him but kept quiet, eating a bit of boiled plantain from her clay bowl. She didn’t like the stuff and would sneak away at night to get fish from the sea, but she had to keep up appearances.
The man waited patiently, watching her eat. He held his bowl of salt herring and sweet potato in his hand, paying no attention to it. After a while, he said, “Not Akwamu, then. Adampe?”
“Yes,” Mera replied in Adampe.
He watched her longer than the comfortable span for humans. “Are you telling the truth?” he asked in Adampe, careful not to sound accusatory.
“I am,” she said, mimicking the language from her study of it. “Though I was taken when I was very young. I don’t remember my time there, but my mother has kept the tongue.”
“And where is she now?”
“Gone.”
He chewed on her answer and seemed to decide not to press further.
Mera knew his tongue, too, but decided it best not to fabricate a story that he could easily dismantle with knowledge unknown to her. She worried that this ruse wouldn’t last long, either, but she had already committed. There was something she liked about the man. Perhaps it was his confidence, the gentle, assured way he approached her, with both respect and a directness she found atypical of the humans she had studied. He was an Akwamu noble, she was sure. He had taken the time to learn the tongues of nearby tribes. He himself might have had slaves from those tribes.
“You know Danish, then?” he asked in Danish, although with a heavy accent.
“I do,” Mera answered, accenting her own Danish just a little.
He smiled at her. Apparently, she had passed the test. “May I eat with you?”
Mera didn’t answer right away, considering the situation again. It would be dangerous to develop a relationship with this man. But it would also be advantageous. She could learn more things in actual interaction than by piecing them together through distant observation. A calculated risk, and a necessary one.
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