Damocles (28 page)

He had to tell them. Rising from his crouch, he banged his fists against his hips, trying to fortify his resolve. Then he felt the unmistakably delicate touch on his shoulder. Meg.

He felt helpless to resist turning to her. Part of him hoped, as he’d hoped the very first time they’d shown their faces, that she’d have the courtesy to kill him first and spare him the shame. In the Fa-pale, her skin looked colder, paler, like the skin of water snakes. Small patches of redness scattered across her brow where wind pebbles had struck her. Such a strange fragility.

“Loul.” She held out her hand, unfolding the long fingers to reveal his earpiece. He hesitated and then took it from her palm. He didn’t put it on.

“More Urfers are coming, aren’t they?” He knew she wore her translator.

“No.”

He ground his teeth at the lie. He wanted to crush the earpiece and shout to the generals but then he realized what he had heard. She hadn’t spoken through the earpiece. She hadn’t spoken through the speaker patch. She hadn’t even spoken in Cartar. She had said “no” in her language, a small puff of a word, and he had understood it. It still didn’t make it true.

He jabbed his fist toward the sky. “More Urfers are coming, yes?”

“No.” She put her hand on his, pulling the earpiece toward his head, but he jerked his hand away.

“Yes, Meg. Loul hears. Loul hears more Urfers. Urfers coming.”

“No, Loul.” His name in her voice sounded so soft, and he had to fight losing himself in the fascination of her expressions. She dropped her head forward, letting it sway like a reed. Her wet
eyes looked from his hand and the unused earpiece then back to his face.

“Loul. No Urfers…” He couldn’t hear her voice over the wind and rumble of the machinery but he understood her gesture. She lifted her hand to the sky and pulled it down, as if drawing down a string. She was telling him no Urfers were coming down. She swept her hand behind her, encompassing the work site. “Urfers,” she said once more and made another gesture that froze him to the spot. Without thinking, he tipped his head, falling back into their conversational habit of requesting a repeat. She made the gesture again, her eyes shining in the Fa-pale light. He scrambled to put on his earpiece.

“More Urfers coming, Meg? Yes?” His tone was softer now, almost pleading. The bad news he’d feared suddenly preferable to what he thought she was telling him.

“No, Loul.” The translator left no room for misunderstanding. “More Urfers not coming. This, Urfers here,” she swept her hand in a graceful arc toward her team. “Urfers move. Urfers move from Didet. Urfers go.” The water that puddled up along the rim of her eyes overflowed, leaving tracks along the pale skin of her narrow face. She didn’t wipe them away, and Loul thought that just maybe he could hear the sound of the drops hitting the ground at his feet.

None of the other conversations mattered now. The syntaxes, the subtleties, the yawning gaps in data—Meg couldn’t make herself care about any of that now. She had less than seventy-two hours now to tell Loul all the things she’d wanted to tell him, to listen to him tell her everything she needed to know about him. She knew it was sentimentality but even the now-pale light seemed a little rosier, a little softer than usual. Seventy-two hours left and she didn’t give a crap about Dideto’s political structure or cultural inclinations. She didn’t want to upload their historical records or study the impact of the ancient message on their collective unconscious. She didn’t want to do all of the things she had thrown herself across space for because now that she had less than seventy-two hours, all she wanted to do was know Loul.

This was assuming, of course, that the crystal injection worked. If it didn’t, seventy-two hours would just be the warm-up for the rest of their lives spent on this sun-warmed world. Meg couldn’t even begin to approach her feelings about that.

The way Loul stared at her made it difficult to swallow. She knew her tears confused him, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t make them stop. She didn’t really cry, at least not with any force,
but the tears kept puddling up and spilling over her cheeks, and she just couldn’t think of a reason to stop them. This whole mission had been such a fuckup, and if there had been anyone she could put the blame on, she’d have beaten them within an inch of their life. They hadn’t had time to prepare for contact, and now they didn’t have time to wrap up the contact that they’d made. It made her think of those stories of people who went into the light after they died only to get jerked back into their bodies upon resuscitation. It felt like hell.

And this kind of woolgathering and teeth-gnashing was exactly what the situation didn’t need, but everything she could think of to start talking about seemed so trivial, so pointless in light of their impending departure, that all she could do was stare at Loul and let the tears fall. They had at least made it to their booth. All around them, the crews worked with a new urgency, although the Earthers had decided to keep the news of their departure a secret until they could be certain Jefferson could find a source of the proper minerals.

“I’m going to tell Loul,” Meg had said in a tone that accepted no discussion, and none had followed. “He won’t tell.” Cho had let go of her hand, and the five Earthers had gone back to work. Four Earthers. Meg had rendered herself pretty much useless.

He was a young man. He kept himself in pretty good shape. So how did he know his heart didn’t have the strength to keep up with the shocks he kept putting it through? Just minutes before he’d been ready to denounce Meg and her company to the generals as a threat to the safety of his home, and now that he knew they were leaving it was all he could do to not arm cuff himself
to Meg’s leg and demand she take him with her. Or at least lock down the ship somehow so they couldn’t take off and fly away with the only interesting, worthwhile, and notable thing Loul Pell had ever been party to in the course of his entire life.

He did none of those things, of course. He couldn’t do anything but sit across from Meg and watch the drops of water slide down the long, pale cheeks. They didn’t need the translator to explain those drops. Of all the conceptual leaps Loul had made since the Urfers’ wondrous arrival, he knew he correctly read the emotion on Meg’s face, and although he hated to see her upset, he had to admit to himself he was glad she was sorry to leave.

Meg was leaving. The Urfers were leaving. Like a sticky message that has lost its glue, the truth of those words just wouldn’t sink in. Funny how it had been so easy for him to accept the fact that the Urfers had arrived, that aliens existed and wore pants and wanted to talk with him. That he’d gotten on board with right away. Throw a wrench into those plans and his brain shut down like a social kitchen at cleaning time.

He knew just what he wanted to do, what he needed to do. Meg would go along with him. There wasn’t any more time to argue about it. Climbing from the booth, Loul held out his hand to Meg. He’d seen her intertwine her hands with Cho, had seen them walk the site together in the quiet moments before and after stasis. Clasping hands was something Urfers did when they trusted one another, just like the Dideto. Her hand didn’t fit into his the way a Dideto woman’s would, her long fingers wrapping almost all the way around his thick fist yet barely wide enough to cover the tender pads of his palms, but Meg slipped her hand into his without a question. Her elbow knocked lightly against his shoulder as she loped along beside him, their intertwined hands bumping between them. It was a strange and awkward way to walk and Loul loved it.

Two of the generals looked up at their approach, and the third was dropped out on a low bench away from the table. General Ada watched Meg as if he expected her to draw a weapon and leap upon him.

“Something on your mind, Pell?”

“Yes sir. I’ve come to requisition an airvan.”

Ada dropped the papers he’d been reading. “Are they moving? Have they agreed to be moved off-site? Well done, Pell. Good work. We’re going to use the cargo trucks for—”

“No sir, you misunderstand me. The Urfers aren’t moving.” Loul felt Meg’s fingers shift and tighten in his hand. He explained his plan to the generals, who now stood shoulder to shoulder, faces darkening in surprise.

“Impossible, Pell. Have you lost your mind? We don’t have the security in place.”

“That’s exactly why it will work, sirs. Nobody knows about it. Not Baddo, not any of the media. Nobody knows we’re coming so nobody can plan any trouble. We bring some soldiers with us just in case, but nobody else will know. Make it happen.” He couldn’t believe he dared demand so casually from the ranking generals on-site, but something about the dwindling time made him bold. “Oh, and General Ada? I’m going to need my phone back. Now. We’ll be at the airvan.” Without another word, he led Meg from the general’s setup to the small airvans parked at the edge of the barrier.

As they moved farther from the work site, Loul saw Meg checking over her shoulder, her eyes moving back where she could see her crewmates. When she saw the line of vehicles, she froze in place, her grip on Loul’s hand tight enough to jerk him backward when he didn’t stop with her. “Move? Urfers no move. Meg no move.”

“Yes.” He stood in front of her, looking up at her and not breaking eye contact as his other hand reached for hers. They
looked like a badly matched dance pair, he too short, she too nervous. Loul gently squeezed her fingers, careful of the shift of thin bones between his pads. “Meg go with Loul. One go. Meg see Cartar. Meg see Loul Didet.”

Her eyes were wide, the brown centers surrounded by white all the way around. “Meg Loul come back, yes? Meg need/want come back here.”

“Yes. Meg Loul come back soon. Much soon. Now Meg Loul move. Good/okay.”

Her smile took a moment to fully arrive but when it did, it was brilliant.

“Okay/good. Meg Loul go. Talk this to Cho.” She touched her earpiece and Loul heard the soft, bell-like sounds of her words punctuated by the lower sounds of Cho. Something in the scientist’s voice sounded harsher than usual but Meg smoothed it over. Touching her earpiece again, she looked to the airvans. “Talk this?”

Wind truck. That was the closest she could get to the translation of the ingenious contraption she and Loul bundled into. On the ground, it had looked like a giant pill, oblong and smooth, all glass except for the top and bottom panels. Bench seats, low like all Dideto seats, ran the length of the truck, and Meg, Loul, and the eight soldiers accompanying them barely left enough room to clamp down the clear door. The soldiers and Loul straddled the benches back to front, but Meg couldn’t contain her curiosity. She clambered forward to look out over the driver’s shoulder, watching his thick fists punching into the console, activating the mechanism. She expected to hear a loud motor, like a combustion
engine. Instead she heard gears whirring and a metallic clicking on the overhead panel. Seconds later, the capsule lifted off the ground with a jump.

She spun around to Loul for an explanation. Whatever he saw on her face made him laugh and he reached out a hand for her. Maybe he thought she’d fall, but unlike the Dideto riding with her, she could easily brace herself on the ceiling of the truck. She saw more than one soldier’s eyes go wide at how far her reach really was. Loul just kept smiling that smile she loved and tapped his knuckles against the bend of the glass beside him.

Sails. Above and below the capsule, sails had unfurled, and then she understood why they called it a wind truck. “Amazing,” she said to nobody, high-stepping over the bench between Loul and a soldier, pressing her face to the glass for a better view. So mesmerized was she by the broad, billowing canvas sheets, it took her several moments to even realize what they flew over. Didet. The planet rolled along beneath them; smooth, rounded structures with shaded glass ceilings, shaped and positioned such that she could see pale dust blowing like ribbons up, over, and around them. In the fading light of the palest sun, the glass ceilings seemed to shift and lighten, and if she squinted, Meg could make out walls and tables and moving figures within.

He didn’t know how Meg kept from tipping over in the unsteady airvan. She didn’t even need to keep her hand on the ceiling—and wasn’t that a sight, that long arm shooting up, the fragile fingers splaying wide to grip an ungrippable surface. Where he and the soldiers had to press the low benches between their thighs to keep from being pitched around, Meg’s reedy legs and whip-thin
body somehow managed to ride the drafts, bending and balancing itself with a shift of her hips and a lift of her shoulders. Loul hadn’t had many rides in an airvan, but he found Meg far more interesting to watch than the windows of the city below him.

Her heard her voice in his earpiece and knew she spoke into the small microphone as she so often did, describing things for her database, taking note of details her camera couldn’t pick up. She spoke too quickly for the translator to decipher, using words the computer hadn’t converted, but the sounds she made sounded like delight. They had the long, lilting sounds she’d made when Loul had brought her fresh
tut
or shown her a comic book. They were the sounds that were often accompanied by the quick slaps of her palms together, although she didn’t do that on board. Instead, she lifted one leg impossibly high, easily stepping over Loul’s thighs and nearly shocking the soldier in front of him to death as she slotted in between them to press against the glass and watch the city fly by beneath them.