Bebe (30 page)

And then he sat there, finger poised over the ‘send’ key, trying to find the courage to press it. His stomach was roiling. He had never considered himself a brave man, and this all but proved he wasn’t. Certainly, this was not going to be the way his uncle envisioned revealing their secret to the world. But then, his uncle had had twenty-six years to maneuver his pieces and prepare for the backlash.

And there would be backlash. Of that, Tral had very little doubt. He wondered if he were capable of riding it out. Dependant as he was upon his uncle, somehow he didn’t think so.

“Tral?”

Startling, he glanced over his shoulder to find Bebe standing naked in the doorway. She was tapping her fingers, worriedly watching him.
Are you all right?

“I’m fine.” He tried to smile for her sake and then, his finger trembling, he hit the send key.

That he wasn’t instantly struck by lightening was every bit as surprising as the realization that he actually felt...well, not better, per say, but resigned. There could be only one of two outcomes to his report: either it would be summarily dismissed as a crackpot spoof, in which case his superiors would heave a collective sigh of relief before having him fired, arrested and executed (not necessarily in that order); or he’d be taken seriously, in which case every person on every governmental level regardless of relevance was about to have a very chaotic election year—the prospect of which would no doubt heave his superiors into a collective panic, at the culmination of which he could look forward to being fired, arrested and executed (most definitely not in that order).

At any rate, it was all completely out of his control now.

Shutting off his computer, perhaps for the last time, Tral left the table. He went to take Bebe’s hand, giving it the comforting squeeze he sought. “Come on. Let’s go back to bed. I want you at least twice more before I’m sent to prison.”

Or the grave. But he kept that part to himself.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Righting Wrongs

Tral awoke in the morning with a raging hunger, a pleasantly depleted libido, and absolutely no computer access whatsoever. Under the circumstances, he was a little surprised that he still had power.

As he dressed and made his way to the kitchen, he tried to tell himself that he still felt resigned. Not happy, not carefree, but resigned and willing to endure whatever fate his actions of the previous night had won him. If only he could catch a peek at what the news in the real world was saying, he would have liked to know whether this was an internal problem Central was now scrambling to quell or if indeed his report had got out and was even now raging like spreading wildfire across the globe. He would have liked to know whether his next twenty years in prison (tucked in Galnak’s attentive embrace) were going to be worth it.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to suffer his news blackout for long. The coffee had only just begun to brew when the first half-dozen transports touched down in the yard. Not one had taken more than a token circle around the roof, which meant obviously someone was in a hurry.

Since the station had come fully stocked and he hadn’t been there long, there were still plenty of relatively clean cups to be found in the cupboard. Gathering enough for everyone, Tral watched through the window as his uncle erupted from the back of that first vehicle dressed in only pajama bottoms, a long black overcoat and a pair of beige bedroom slippers. He grabbed Pani—also sparsely clad in one of his oversized shirts and wrapped in a blanket to shield her from the biting cold—from the backseat and rushed her into the house.

In a rare show of temper, he burst through the front door without knocking and all but bellowed, “You stupid fool!” Setting Pani down, he grabbed the door and slammed it shut hard enough to rattle every window in the house. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Good morning to you, too.” Tral rinsed the cups under the faucet. “Coffee?”

“Coffee?” Bach echoed incredulously.

“Coffee,” Pani moaned. Still very much half asleep, her hair an unbrushed mane of shaggy grey and red hair, she oriented herself in the direction of the kitchen and shuffled groggily towards the coffee maker. Tral handed her a cup as she passed him.

“There’s no time for coffee!” Bach snapped at them both. His arm whipped out, gesturing wildly at the wall behind him. “If they’re more than three clicks behind us, I’ll fuck my own ass! You just couldn’t wait, could you? You couldn’t give me a few more years to get prepared?”

“This is what
you
told me to do,” Tral bit back. “Reveal to the world that humans are people, you said.”

“I told you to
wait
!” Bach roared. “I never intended for
this
to happen, especially not in such a bone-headedly stupid fashion! You may have killed us all!”

“That’s not why you’re angry.” His own temper beginning to rise, Tral faced his uncle. “You’re pissed because now Pani faces the exact same backlash as Bebe and the rest of their kind.”

“You did this deliberately,” Bach seethed.

“You bet I did,” Tral growled back. “You’d move the world to spare Pani the shit-storm raging to descend on us, and that’s the only reason you wanted me to wait! Spare Pani, but leave my Bebe to face the consequences!”

“Your Bebe?” Bach moved toward him. Just one step, but that was plenty close enough considering the scorching fury burning deep in the back of his unwavering eyes. “
Your
Bebe? You’ve known her a bare handful of days!”

“Sometimes a handful of days is long enough.”

Angling his head, a look both curious and enraged all boiled into one, Bach stared at him. “Who are you, and what have you done with my malleable nephew?”

“Your malleable nephew has decided he’d rather die today than spend the next twenty-six years pretending Bebe and the rest of her kind are animals.”

“How very noble...tender-hearted...you stupid ignorant fool!” Bach snapped around, raking his fingers through his own unbrushed hair as he stalked distance between them. His hands clenched and clenched again, indulging a curious twisting, wringing motion before Bach again dared to face him. Striving to regain his customarily impassive mask, he growled, “There’s no point arguing about this now. Get your stray. We have to get out of here now, while we still have a chance to flee the system.”

“She’s not my stray,” Tral snapped, not moving. “She’s a human being. And anyway, I spent most the night thinking about it, and I know for a fact there’s no place we could run that they wouldn’t eventually find us. Without Pani and Bebe, maybe. With them, we haven’t a prayer.”

“Damn!” Bach roared to the ceiling. He stabbed his fingers through his hair again, grabbing and pulling as he paced the room restlessly. The house rumbled under heavy engine vibrations as another transport arrived in the yard. Each stopping where he was, they both looked up at the ceiling, the rattling light fixtures, and finally the shadow passing beyond the closed curtains of the main-room windows.

Drawing a deep and bracing breath, Bach glared first at Tral and then reluctantly approached the nearest one. He pushed the curtain aside with the tip of his finger.

“Is it one of yours?” Tral asked, subdued.

“No.” Bach was quiet. All trace of volatile emotion was gone, replaced instantly by calculating stillness. “It’s the magistrate.”

Tral arched his eyebrows, both surprised and startlingly relieved. Of all the things he’d expected to happen, receiving a visit from the magistrate hadn’t even broached the list. “Should I fetch down another coffee cup?”

His uncle snorted, watching as the very old politician was helped down from the transport. “I think you should bend over. We've a slim chance that he might still be amused by the impetuousness of youth, in which case he may satisfy himself with merely dealing out a good thrashing. Or he could be seriously annoyed, in which case you’ll be fucked. Either way, it’s going to be long and hard.”

“He’s smiling,” Tral noted.

“You’re fucked.”

He suspected as much.

The magistrate made his way through the deep snow to the porch, requiring help as he ascended the three short steps. With a cup of hot coffee in each hand, Tral met him at the door. For the first time in his life, he came face to face with not just the largest cog a governmental wheel could possess, but with the wheel itself.

“Bach,” he greeted, the blackness of his gaze locking on Tral and staying there. Silver-haired, his back slightly hunched, he was lean and thin, his beige robe hanging on a lanky frame, and yet despite his truly advanced age, his eyes still possessed a clear and steely cunning that his smile could not quite allay. “Introduce me to your...impetuous nephew.”

Ah. A thrashing then. Although certainly the more desirable of Bach’s two options, somehow it didn’t see appropriate to relax just yet.

“You honor me with your visit.” Tral stepped aside to allow him entrance. “Please, come inside where it’s warm and welcome to my very humble home.”

“Is that for me?” The magistrate took the coffee but never took his eyes off Tral.

“I’d offer you sugar, but the humans stole it when they tied me to the bed.”

“You’re fortunate they didn’t kill you.” Kicking off the snow, the magistrate started past Tral but stopped abruptly, staring at Bebe who must have been awakened by Bach. She stood in the hallway behind Tral, swimming in Tral’s smallest shirt and already shivering from the cold of the wide open door. As all eyes in the room turned to fix on her, her face slowly flushed and then her fingers began to tap.

“So.” Remeik offered her a kindly smile. “This is the little one who started so much trouble.”

“As kidnappers, I would think that burden lies more squarely with us,” Tral countered, not at all liking the way the magistrate was looking at her.

Reaching out around Remeik’s withered shoulders, Bach smacked Tral up the back of his head.

The magistrate pretended not to notice. “It does. Still, the task of setting it to rights is not a straightforward thing. Nor will it be easy. Not for us, and certainly not for them. What exactly,” he turned his black-eyed stare back on Tral, “did you think your little report was going to do?”

“To be honest, I had no idea.” Tral closed the door before Bebe turned blue.

The magistrate arched a silvered brow. “And you sent it anyway?”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t more...” Bach paused, searching for a word that wouldn’t prove prophetic, “upset.”

“Were I not retiring, I’d have both your balls on my desk by the end of the day. However,” Remeik turned on Tral with a toothy smile, “your nephew is right. It is time for things to change. It’s time for the old to step aside and let younger, fresher minds control the world. But I do not intend to go quietly into retirement; they’re going to have to work if they want to replace me. And what better way to show how wonderfully smooth was my reign and how tumultuous unstable shall be their own, than by liberating the humans first.” He laughed, a low and throaty growl that made his dark eyes dance. “If we do this right, I will be remembered fondly, reverently, for years.”

“
If
we do this right,” Bach repeated, much more subdued. “If not, humans will be without a champion in any position of government to help them.”

Remeik’s dark eyes glittered, dancing. “They will if you replace me.”

“Ha!” Bach threw back his head with a hard bark of laughter. He also retreated from the old man. “No! No, no, and fuck you, no! I am retired.”

“No one ever truly retires.” The magistrate pursued in measured steps as Bach paced restlessly as far as the mantelpiece. “Did you really think no one would notice you struggling to solve the human problem? You’ve been moving in the shadows, old friend, like an
ucca
worm, slithering by the barest of inches to avoid Central detection. But I saw you. And if I saw, with my poor eyes—”

Bach laughed again, even less amused than before.

“—others will have seen it as well. Replace me. Ensure that the good we begin here today will never undone.”

“You want to throw all levels of government into upheaval and then leave me at the head of it all, to either flounder or succeed however I am able?”

“I will forever be remembered as the magistrate who freed the humans,” Remeik said. “You will be remembered as the first to marry one. Replace me. You may as well agree; I’ve had you scheduled to win the next election for months.”

Tral blinked startled. “What?”

Bach actually looked pained. “Not in front of the boy, Remeik, please. He can’t keep his mouth shut to save anyone’s life, least of all his own. And he might still be naive enough to think the government actually works the way we say it does.”

Tral stared from one to the other, stunned. “The
elections
are faked?!”

Tsking, Bach all but rolled his eyes. With one open hand, he gestured at Tral as if to say, ‘See?’

Smirking, Remeik only shook his silvered head. “Oh Bach, we are old beasts, you and I. And we know well how this game should be played.”

“And yet the last time we tried to play it an entire race was destroyed,” Bach pointed out dryly. “To this day, nothing grows on Kadmeir.”

“A bane on all our consciences to be sure, but also a lesson learned. Because of it, none of our competitors will want to tackle the human issue—the attempt alone would automatically bring failure and failure would bring the deaths of their careers.”

Tral glanced from one to the other, not at all sure he followed the leap of their logics. “But we’re going to tackle it?”

“Yes,” Bach said, frowning.

“And we’re going to succeed,” Tral said slowly, taking his best guess, “because you’re not in politics and he’s retiring.”

Both Bach and the magistrate looked at him, waiting.

“Except that no one ever truly retires,” Tral said, coming to the obvious conclusion. He looked from one to the other. “Do I still get to keep my job here?”