Damocles (29 page)

Loul slipped his phone from his pocket, hating to tear his eyes away from Meg for even a second, but he had to send this message. He thumb moved quickly, rolling the letters out.

“Get to the booth
RIGHT NOW
. Leave work. Leave everything. Booth. Now.” He sent it to Hark and Po and, after less than a second of hesitation, to Reno Dado.

She never thought she’d see a day when she ran out of words, but watching the world flying by beneath her feet in this strange, silent wind truck, Meg thought she might be wrong. She commented on details as quickly as she could—buildings disappearing behind her, she tipping the camera on her shirt forward to
be sure it captured as much as possible. The first three rounds of drones launched from the
Damocles
had brought back grainy images, unfocused but for the largest details. The video drones were to have been launched much later, once the crew had some idea where to focus. All they had seen of Didet was what had flown toward them upon descent and the images the newly interfaced computers revealed. This? Nothing had prepared Meg for this.

No building was more than a story high and all were rounded, topped with clear ceilings and dotted with large windows. It had never occurred to Meg that on a planet with seven suns nobody would feel compelled to invent a lightbulb. Now the thought made her laugh out loud. Or continue to laugh out loud. Every turn revealed some new sight, colors shifting in the changing light, tinting the landscape with pastels. The pilot shouted something and the soldiers braced themselves more rigidly on the benches. By now Meg had thrown propriety to the wind and perched on Loul’s thigh, her face pressed to the glass.

He grabbed at her hip when the wind truck dipped in a descending spiral. She yelped in surprise and then laughed at herself, balancing herself between the glass and Loul’s solid leg. Loul’s thrum stuttered a little, and she wondered if he was nervous about flying or just about flying with a crazy alien jumping around the ship. That made her laugh even harder and she could feel an edge of hysteria washing over her. She was sailing in the air in a glass pill over an alien planet surrounded by soldiers watching mounded sand-colored buildings tinted pink and orange by multiple suns, sitting on the lap of her short, new best friend. She gave herself permission to feel a little unhinged.

“Meg okay?” Loul smiled up at her as she continued to laugh. He seemed wholly entertained by her reaction. She turned and
put her hands on either side of his face, her pinkies just brushing the edges of his thrum spots. She leaned in closer, the tip of her nose brushing his as the ship dipped again.

“Meg okay. Very okay. This wind truck—Loul has wind truck?”

Loul huffed out a choppy sound she knew was laughter. “No. No. Wind truck is for Dideto…” He said something the program didn’t pick up, and when he saw she didn’t understand, he tugged at the front of his tunic. She’d seen him do that when they spoke of the generals at the work site.

“Generals?” she asked. Maybe these were military-only vehicles.

“Generals and cameras and Baddo and…” He said a few more lost words and then one word came through. “Black.”

“Black?”

Loul waved his knuckles, a one-handed
yes
gesture, and pulled at his shirt again. “Black.”

“Oh, the people who wear black? Like the crews who tried to push you out.” She knew he couldn’t understand her but there was no room to pull out the light screen. Plus the way the ship tilted and dipped she could hardly imagine being able to focus on it. She gripped Loul’s shoulder as they tipped hard to the side and she nearly tumbled from his lap. His breath caught but Meg could only laugh.

A long, fat building came into view before them, the rough stone exterior blushing red in the changing light. The ceiling shone back their reflection until the ship hovered directly above it and Meg could see the space below filled with people moving through snaking corridors and around high partitions. Whatever this place was, it was busy. Before she could ask Loul to explain what it was, the ship dropped quickly enough to make Meg bounce on his leg. Another little cry of surprise and she
couldn’t help but laugh again. Loul looked down into the building as if searching for something.

“This? Loul talk this? Meg Loul go here? What is this?”

She felt him shift beneath her. He seemed to have spotted something that made him grin even harder. “This is Loul…site.”

They hadn’t refined the word
live
well enough to distinguish anything clearer than residing on the planet, Meg assuming she would have enough time later on to clarify social-structure issues. She’d been surprised by Prader’s insight. If the Dideto didn’t sleep, what sort of home life did they have? The building they were landing on was enormous and seemed to be very full of people.

“Loul go to this site much?”

Loul grinned. “Loul go to this site very much.” As the wind truck maneuvered through its bumpy landing on the roof, Loul started to laugh. By the time the clear door opened and the soldiers climbed out ahead of them, they were wrapped arm in arm, laughing to each other.

The arrival of an airvan at the social center brought more than a few curious stares up through the glass. The team of soldiers surrounding them would spark some more excitement. But Loul knew nothing would prepare the crowd below for the arrival of Meg. He knew they couldn’t see her yet, or at least see what she was staring up at, just their feet, but once they stepped out of the elevator he knew word would spread quickly. Meg stood more than a head taller than him, and he was tall. She’d be easily visible over the crowd. That’s why he instructed the soldiers to take them down through the E elevator, the one closest to his booth.

How many rounds had he been gone? Eleven? Twelve? Loul had lost count, but the instant the elevator doors opened, the noises and smells and sounds of the social center blew in at him, filling him with longing. He’d missed it. For all the unbelievable events he’d experienced, he missed his friends and his center. All around them people froze, conversations dead in midsentence, as the soldiers cleared a path for Loul and Meg through the narrow E Corridor. This section of the center contained mostly service quarters—laundry, dishwashing, recycling pickup. That’s why he and his friends had been able to afford the booth for as long as they had. You didn’t see a lot of people in black in this part of the social center.

Meg’s eyes were wide, her fingers holding tight to his upper arm, and he could feel her tremble against him. He knew it wasn’t fear. He could tell she struggled to keep her movements small and contained the way the Urfers had when they’d first arrived. He’d become so accustomed to Meg’s quick, willowy gestures and broad range of expressions he’d almost forgotten how strange they’d seemed at first. From the stunned looks on the faces of the people they passed, however, he doubted she could have shocked them any more if she’d flown in on flaming wings.

He heard her make a long, whistling sound as they passed a row of vendor stalls. Cheap overshirts, tacky movie toys, fake finger tattoos—the vendors on this side sold to their market, the underemployed or overly cheap. Loul could see Meg draw her fingers through the air and curl them up to her side, knowing the temptation she felt to trace every surface with her hands. He wanted to let her. He wanted to show her everything but he had something to show her first. They turned the corner he found without looking, watching instead the open-mouthed stares that followed them. Before they could get halfway down the corridor, Meg squeezed his arm with force, drawing in a loud sudden breath and pointing her long arm toward the ceiling.

He turned to see what she pointed at as she dropped all pretense of keeping her gestures small. Her head fell backward, her spine dipping over as well, and her mouth opened wide. The hand that didn’t clutch at Loul pressed into her stretched stomach and she let out the loudest laugh Loul had heard any of the Urfers make.

It was official: her mind was blown. This building, this rabbit warren of walls and shelves and cans and cabinets, teeming with Dideto pushing shoulder to shoulder through the throngs to the hammering pulse of machinery and music and voices and thrumming—it pushed up against her senses, clamoring for attention, and making her cling to Loul. After the ride in that amazing machine she thought she’d be ready for anything, but this was beyond her comprehension. Had she been shorter, Loul’s height or smaller, she probably would have balked with claustrophobia, but standing an easy ten inches above the throng it felt like standing waist-deep in a bizarre, colorful tropical aquarium—if that aquarium smelled like cinnamon, pepper, motor oil, and dryer lint.

She saw mouths drop open as she passed, ripples of stalled conversation washing through the crowds. But even as their voices dropped, the powerful pulse of the thrums built, pulsing loudly enough to be palpable. She thought if she untied her ponytail, the pulsing of these throat noises would blow the hair off her face like a breeze. She wanted to run her fingers across their faces, between their bodies, to feel the surge of shock and friction as they pushed against each other jostling to either see her better or to move away.

Her first thought was chaos. In every direction with no discernible pattern, corridors opened and branched and turned and forked, divided by stalls and carts and freestanding drapery frames.
Booths like the kind she and Loul worked in clustered together in circles and arcs and train-like chains. Some booths contained wide circular tables with enough room for a dozen Dideto; some were narrow and low. There were booths with built-in closets and shelves; booths with video screens; booths piled high with piles of fabric. Fabric panels and folding screens cut some booths off from sight, but as they moved through the corridors, the soldiers clearing a path for them, Meg saw hundreds of faces poking around edges and popping up from under tables. Nobody shouted. Nobody approached them, but nobody missed their arrival.

Loul let her hang on his arm, and she used every ounce of restraint to resist clapping her hands and pointing and jumping up and down in delight. Rhythms rose and fell, banging against each other in an almost harmony as people reacted to her presence. She prayed the recorders were getting the nuances of the sounds. When Loul guided her down yet another ribbon of a corridor filled with shoulder-to-shoulder Dideto, Meg looked up, trying to maintain her bearings. Hanging from the low ceiling, draped over a long rod, were banners of fabric or paper; she couldn’t tell which. She didn’t look that hard at the material. Instead, all she saw were the enormous photographs, drawings, cartoons, and multicolor renderings of her face, Cho’s face, and planet Earth. It was too much. They were famous. Meg threw back her head and howled with laughter.

He saw the soldiers tense at Meg’s strange reaction and he gave them a reassuring nod. The comic vendors at the edge of D Corridor were selling posters of the Urfers. Of course they were. If Loul hadn’t been on-site with the aliens, he’d have been first in
line to buy one of every picture. He’d bet his last paycheck that Po already had. He took a deep breath, hoping with every fiber of his being that his friends had gotten his text. With a look to Meg and the softest squeeze of her thin arm against his body, he urged her forward. She straightened up, the wetness in her eyes a strange contrast to her wide grin, and let herself be led again. He could feel her breaths soft and fast, her laughter quiet now as they moved.

One more turn, two booths in, and Meg squeezed his arm once more. She craned her head forward to look into his eyes, the fingers of her free hand moving as if to touch his rose spot. She didn’t. Instead she bit her glass-like teeth into her lip before speaking.

“Loul okay, yes? Loul very okay, yes?”

He laughed. Whatever it was she said she could hear, she could obviously hear it now. He pressed his knuckles together tight. “Yes. Loul very okay. Yes very okay. Here.”

He led her another dozen steps to where he saw the wide staring eyes and wider grins of his best friend, Hark, and Reno Dado. Po was there too but he wasn’t grinning. He wasn’t standing. He sat at the edge of the booth, collapsed over the armrest in a way that must have hurt like hell, staring slack-jawed at Meg. For the first time in all the years they had known each other, Po was struck speechless.

“Everyone”—he smiled at each of them—“this is Meg. Meg, these are”—he pressed his palms together—“my friends.”

They didn’t look alike. She’d gotten adept enough at recognizing Dideto features to see there was little resemblance among the four of them. It didn’t mean they weren’t family, but that wasn’t
what Loul wanted her to know about them. That gesture, the palms together, was neither an Earther nor Dideto gesture. It was their own sign, their gesture for people together. Thinking she might be leaving forever, Loul had taken her to meet the people that mattered most to him. In the face of it, all Meg could think was “how human.”

The man and woman on the left of the booth seemed happy to see her. The little one on the right with the funny wispy strands around his eyes didn’t seem pleased at all. She couldn’t figure out how he perched on the dividing wall of the booth—she’d never seen any of the Dideto sit like that—and it looked uncomfortable. When Loul made a gesture to invite her to sit down, the little one stuck where he sat, and she wondered if maybe he was disabled in some way.

“Hark,” Loul said, pointing to the smiling man and then to the woman. “Reno Dado.” Meg thought that even if the Dideto couldn’t hear their own thrums there was no way anyone could miss the change in timbre when Loul said the woman’s name. She looked different from the women in the work crews somehow. Her thrum spot blushed a deep rose, or maybe it was just from the light catching off the gold strands wrapped across her shoulder. Both she and Hark dressed differently from the work crews, the fabric of their tunics rougher in texture and darker. She’d noticed before the same texture in the generals’ clothing. Loul’s and the little one’s—Po was his name—were both of paler, thinner fabric. For the first time, she wondered if maybe Loul was poor, if such a condition even existed on this world.